Day One-Hundred and Forty-Five

About a year ago, I walked to my car after a presumable Bocce victory in Wyman Park, cigarette in mouth. This  occurred every Thursday evening. My team - The Big LeBocce - would play (and soundly defeat) our opponent, then stand around for a while to share the cigarettes of whoever happened to be holding a pack that evening and finish our Bohs. We would critique terrible throws, chuckle at the deficiency of our opponent, and watch the pack of random dogs run around the park, biting ankles and occasionally misunderstanding the other's intentions.

I could have directed my gaze into the front seat of my car; I could have allowed the blurry image approaching me on the sidewalk to remain an impressionistic image; I could have eluded the shady looking early-twenty-year-old man with his sideways O's hat, silver chain, and saggy pants to the confines of my locked Impreza. I desperately wished I could...

My teammate (and illustrious chef) kept me honest. Parked one car closer to the approaching image looked back at me, refusing my forced ignorance.

'Guys. Guys. Please help me. Please'.

Where was this voice coming from; this sound rich with humility, and pain, and desperation? It couldn't have come from that young man a block away. But now, directly in front of me, his superficiality washed clean from his skin and collecting along the curb, he was nothing but a helpless man. Helplessness not from without, but forced upon him by the passenger within the wheelchair he was attempting to pull up two small flights of steps leading to his row-home.

He didn't want to reach out to us: particularly to me. He peers into my eyes and looked into my intentionality. He knew me, and would have rather told me to 'Fuck off'. Even as my teammate and I grabbed an armrest and helped this man carry his helpless father up the ten steps, he could smell my disgust - overwhelming the retch of his father's foully soiled pants - and taste my reluctance - rather than the sweat dripping down his face.

He looked at my teammate. "Thanks guys. I got it from here'. I assume the 's' was for me. He had seen all he needed from me.

I drove home holding the steering wheel with a napkin.

****

This moment came rushing back to me last night at 'Crime and Punishment', performed at CenterStage. As Raskolnikov and Sonya reflect on the events of her father's - Marmeladov - impalement in the street and eventual death, my forgotten memory of this moment came rushing back to me with great force. Surely, Marmeladov soiled himself as he was trampled by a horse-drawn carriage in the street, but Radya picked this man up and carried him back into his home without a second thought about himself or the grotesqueness of the situation - the presumed blood, guts, and shit.

Embarrassingly and shamefully, I recount this memory. Is this the function of our memory: to be able to correct our past actions through experience in the future? When I find myself in this same situation in the future, will I be able to shake off my reluctance and disgust of the past; acting in a solely self-less manner? Do I believe in the story of Lazarus rising from the dead?

What does this have to do with cigarettes? I have no idea...