Almost Famous

I've been reminiscing lately about one of the stranger periods of my life - the year in Atlanta when I was a professional in-home caregiver.

I hadn't intended to come into that line of work, mind you. My first job out of college was being a shipping-recieving clerk on a loading dock for a big chain store in Lenox mall (I graduated with a degree in philosophy, only to find that no one was hiring philosophers in Atlanta. So: loading dock). I worked that job very well for about a year (I think I was the only clerk in Lenox whose manager gave a raise to in the hopes of keeping - I was not making enough to live on with the student loans and I was starting to look for other options) and I had read an ad looking for child care workers, and so I applied.

Those of you who know me will be raising their eyebrows at this point, knowing my long-standing antipathies. But see the logic: I really wanted to teach, ultimately, but had no idea how to go about that and no credentials to do that. So this seemed like a 'back door' to me - a temporary solution to get me moving in the direction I wanted to go. Paying my dues, if you will - what my Ma used to term 'cleaning the turkey.'

The service I interviewed with was on the north side of town, and was run from the lower level (I hesitate to call such well-furnished rooms a 'basement') of a house off Roswell road. The process took a couple of hours, and at the end, the consultant I was working with told me that there were, in fact, no child care positions available for me. But they did have this one, slightly strange, case. Would I be willing to hear about that one?

I was willing. The loading dock had made me very willing.

It turns out that I was being asked to consider becoming a caregiver for Steve, a 35 year old man who had been involved in a terrible accident. He was born with blood that coagulated too readily (think of the opposite of haemophaelia) and had been hurt in his early thirties in a basketball accident. He went up for a layup, was knocked down, and hit his head. He didn't know that he was concussed, and that a clot was forming in his medulla (the brain stem that controls motor functions) which would lead to a massive stroke. That afternoon he laid down for a nap, and didn't wake up for six weeks.

When he finally awoke, he had lost all his fine motor control, most of his speech, his ability to walk, he had become acutely walleyed, and his emotional pallette had been decimated. He still had gross motor function, but that meant that he was, for eaxmple, as likely - more likely, in fact - to knock over or break something as pick it up. Moreover, when he spoke to you it was vaguely like talking to a Picasso painting, with regard to his eyes. I don't intend this description in a mean way - I just want to convey that his physiognomy was one that many found a bit unsettling.

So when I entered the picture, Steve had been in this state for about five years. He worked hard to keep his body in good shape, and to fight every day to regain little pieces of his abilites. I would aid him in his daily exercise regimen at the YMCA, and (with the aid of a thick leather belt around his middle and a walker) help him work on slow, laborious walks - mainly to and from his van at the beginning and the end of each of our days together.

Now, among the differently abled, as one might imagine, there is a sort of hierarchy. And this hierarchy is often based upon financial resources. Part of what made my work with Steve possible was that he had vast economic resources (from both his family and from a medical settlement surrounding his accident). This allowed him to have a very functional, semi-independent life - one that would not be available to everyone in his physical condition.

It also allowed him to get into all sorts of mischief, and that's really what I want to muse about here.

Because of the uniqueness of each traumatic brain injury (TBI) on individual patients, every injury of this sort presents its own set of interesting complications. Steve was extremely limited physically, but he still thought like an athletic and attractive 35-year-old. Which means, mostly, that he tried constantly to flirt and chat up women. The difficulty was that many women were not patient with his speech, and even those who were found his uncanny appearance unsettling.
What this led to was a cycle of despair. TBI victims often have limitations on their brain's stamina to process emotion and they often evince what is referred to as "blunted affect" - which means they sort of 'cut corners' on emotions at times, seeming insensitive or short to folks who don't understand the mechanics of the injury. Combine this with the constant frustration of desire, frustration resulting from physical limitation, and you can imagine the depths of sadness and rage that might result. Steve and I talked about this a lot, when he felt like talking to me.

But Steve was not fully limited, simply because of his financial resources. And it was interesting to watch the effects of wealth mixed with blunted affect.

In the time I knew him, Steve went tandem skydiving, took a trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on a mule (with a specially crafted saddle to support him), and was flown in loop de loops in a glider plane. For each of these adventures, part of my job (in addition to the regular tasks of care) was to videotape the proceedings, and later edit the footage together to a punchy soundtrack.

With each adventure complete and documented, we sent these tapes to David Letterman.

"I've got to get famous, David," Steve would tell me repeatedly. "If I can get on David Letterman everything will be fine. I know just what I'll say to him..." and he would proceed to tell me, in halting growls and slurs, how the conversation would proceed.

I edited the tapes and dutifully sent them, and I found myself wondering what, if anything, the staff at the Letterman show thought of this strange phenomenon - if, indeed, they thought of it at all. I wonder if the tapes even ever got to them, or just were lost to the mailroom and mid-level factotums.

The effects of economic difference on the perception and ability to live differently is, of course, nothing new. In older days the difference between being labelled 'eccentric' and being confined to a sanitarium was often contingent upon one's breeding, one's family resources. But in the years since working with Steve I have often wondered, as the likes of "American Idol" and its cousins have flooded the airwaves, the extent to which the same motivations which drove Steve are driving the hearts of these celebrity-wannabes.

By which I guess I mean, to what extent, and why, do we all seem to think that the answer to everything is to get famous, to get on televisions, to talk to Letterman?

And I don't just point that finger at my culture, at those around me. When I send out CD's to magazines to be reviewed, or get my mug up on stage for my fifteen minutes, there's that same desire. Watch me, love me. Make me more complete, meaningful, neccessary than I currently am. Validate me, because I feel disposable and broken.

In the end, I probably have spent an equivalent amount of money and time on musical equipment as Steve did on adventures and videotape. And who knows how much the "American Idol" crowd spends on image, haircuts, publicity? The mind boggles.

Being as I don't own a TV, I don't have much occasion to check in on the Letterman show, but the few times a year I do see it, I am always a bit curious. I wonder if I'll ever see Steve on it. I wonder, if I do, if being-there will have done the trick he wanted it to. I wonder if everything would be fine, then. I wonder.