40. Vertigaga

          The new Tulsa arena was one of those huge spiraling Frank Geary-like tuna can buildings, but done by a cheaper architect. Lit with blue neon steaks, the interior lobbies and hallways and restaurants and offices and bars and souvenir stands spread out in a myriad labyrinth of ramps and escalators and secret doors heading off in all ways before us. And pulsating within every inch of this mini-city was the oddest sorts of people you could ever imagine.

          Before we had even entered the arena I had seen Lady Gaga twice outside: there were two of her  kneeling and genuflecting outside a tour bus also painted with a giant bas-relief of her Gagaian head. The bowers, one of whom I think was a man, appeared to be paying homage to the Gaga bus as if it was Mecca.  Then once inside the arena I saw her three to four hundred more times. Almost every other girl, and many of the boys, were dressed like Gaga, all dancing and snapping pictures with their cell phone and high-fiving each other in a Technicolor celebratory riot.

 Every look from every one of her videos was represented, every still photo and poster, and in every outfit you had ever seen her in on the TV, news report, talk show, or award show: lobster hat, bubble dress, meat dress, Alexander McQueen Godzilla shoes, girls and boys splashed in gallons of fake blood and strawberry red sequins. But amid the costumed perversity, there was laughter and hugging and kissing and an air of pure unadulterated acceptance: the Little Monsters were out in fervent force.      

          And we just stood there, two forty year old gay guys in semi-comfortable outfits to hide our guts, mouths open, blindingly impressed by the sprawl of the arena and the jubilant buoyancy of her preening, high-heeled, eyebrow plucked devotees.  

          “It’s like the Emerald City,” Thad gasped.

          “From The Wiz…,” I added.  

          Still having not even seen the arena proper, we stood in the outer halls trying to find our assigned entrance. We had already gone up three levels and still had not found it. Thad stopped a passing usher and held up his ticket.

          “Where are these?” Thad asked.

          The old black man peered at the ticket and then whistled through his teeth, “Them way up. Take that last escalator and go on up.”

          “Thanks!” Thad smiled. He had tried to apply glitter in what he called a ‘Rock Video Way,’ but with his raspberry streak he had only seemed to accomplish a ‘fourth-grade extra from a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream’ look.

          “Way up huh?” I said looking down the three escalators we had already taken. “Where did Bettina get the tickets?” We were already about four stories up, and I wouldn’t say the air was thinner, but my breathing was getting slightly strained.     

          “Internet.” Thad said with a shrug, which sent his glitter cascading. “She said she got some of the last seats they had, and that they’re way up.”

          I frowned, hoping we’d at least have a good view.

          We took the final escalator up and roamed until we found our curtained entrance. It was guarded by a young usher allowing access to a line of mutating people, which we joined.   

          “This is so exciting!” Thad said when he reached the usher, handing him his ticket.

          The usher looked it over and whistled through his teeth, “In and to the right and all the way at the top. You’re one row from the roof.”  

          “Thanks!” Thad said as the man pulled the curtain back: A long thin hall full of people stretched before us. We entered and started walking in toward the arena, the roar of the crowd beginning to beat in our ears, the lights flashing ahead of us. The pounding excitement was lavish.

As we walked, the floor began to shake with the rage of the interior crowd. I leaned into Thad, “Why do they keep doing that whistle thing when they see our tickets?”

          “Because of that,” Thad said with a point as we exited the hall into the arena.

          And the breath just left my body. We had exited out onto a tiny balcony about five thousand fucking feet up in the air, surrounded by fifteen thousand screaming writhing freaks. I had to squint to even see the stage, it so, so far below: It was just a tiny smidgen in the far, far distance, as if it was a fleeting image in a dream, like the nighttime sighting of a sprinting chupacabra.

But what was suddenly real was the instantaneous vertigo that entered through my toes with a jagged burst, crawled up my jiggly- oh-so-jiggly legs, and exploded into my wiggling gut with the feeling of a thousand terrified June bugs winging for freedom.    

          “This is kinda high,” Thad said making exaggeratedly movements that I knew would sure would lead him to cascade down to his doom ten thousand feet below.      

Without thinking I stumbled backwards and gripped the wall behind me, pressing my body into it, terrified, as the ground began to swung up one way and then back the next, up one way, and back the next. I knew I had a fear of heights-this had happened a number of times before-Towers in Paris, Needles in Seattle, Duomos in Milan-I just had no idea we would be perched so precariously high that vertigo would even be a factor at a stupid concert! People pushed by me and I held onto the wall, just flat shaking with fear.  

          Thad, not having the same reaction as me at all, swiveled to point up, “And I guess our seats are way up there.”

          It went up even higher? Oh good God!

          In white, white fear I rotated my head without moving my body, and yes the  tiny perch we presently stood on was not even close to the top of the arena. From our scandalously delicate position an almost vertical stairway lead up and up and up, and at the very top of this monstrously mammothly, gargantuanly huge arena, just one row from the frickin’ roof, you could barely make our two lone seats.

          “Here we go!” Thad said, turning to sprint up the stairs.

          And I looked back down at the stage, oh so far away, and felt like I was falling to my death. The fear was so great I had no control; all I could think of was flight: to run, to be free, to be back on solid earth, not just dangling up in the sky as people shook around me in all directions, to run to safe Mother Earth.   

          But I had to make a choice. I could demand to leave and we could try to go get better seats, but the concert was completely sold out and had been for months; there would be no more tickets. Or I could suck it up and just make myself do it. I could not ruin Thad’s trip; he had invited me, he had paid. I could not ruin it. I had to just suck it up. I had to. I had to. But all I wanted to do was run.

          As I stood there not moving, two teen dudes pushed past me and my feet got tangled and I almost fell from the balcony, but I grabbed for the wall and held on for dear, sweet life. I did not want to die at a Gaga concert; although it would make a good story for Thad to tell at bars after I was dead, as I was sure he would start drinking again the moment the dirt hit my coffin. I pulled myself back to safety and willed myself not to cry.

          Thad bounded back down to the tiny balcony and snapped, “What? Are you coming?”

          I looked back down at the ground, so far away, and then just made myself suck it up. I had to. There was no other choice. So I nodded a ‘Yes’ and turned to follow him up the stairs.

          The following all kinda runs together in my memory, it was all just so horrible, like a car wreck, house fire, or early childhood abuse. The stairs to our seats could have doubled as a ladder they were so steep, like those Lord of the Rings stairs that led to the top of the mountain thing. But I just climbed them, head down, trying not to vomit.

When we reached the seats, we found that were on the aisle. I sat myself down as quickly as possible, but being on the aisle meant I sat dangling off into the void of nothingness. Sitting there was like being perched on the ledge outside of a two-hundred story building or lounging on that stupid plexy glass deck over the Grand Canyon or just falling to your death.

 A line of huge fat drunk girls sat behind us, bouncing up and down as fat girls often do. Thad tired to make conversation with me, but I was incapable of speech. In fact I realize I had said not a word since we exited the warm canal of safety that deposited us in this huge cruel chasm; speech did not exist here for me. He had finally found something to silence me: eminent falling death.

          Over the next twenty minutes, as I clawed at my seat and tried to keep my eyes closed, we had to get up and down three times to let people into the aisle. The first time I stood, I almost pitched forward , but instead just fell back to grab my seat, hardly giving the people room to get by. And that was the successful try. The second one had me almost falling into a tall dude and sending him tumbling, but he caught himself and pushed me back to safety The third time I just had to crawl into the aisle on all fours to let the people by. Hand to God: Dr. Michael Stiles, Professor and noted international Shakespearian scholar, bowed on all fours not by Lady Gaga, but by gravity, the great equalizer.      

          As I crawled back into my seat, the fat girls behind us guffawing and bouncing happily, I turned to see Thad staring at me.

          “What’s wrong?” he said, with no anger in his voice, just concern.

          I couldn’t speak. Him moving out. The doctor visit. The AIDS. The Garden Rapist. The police and now this. It was just too much too quickly. I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t do it.  I just couldn’t.

          Thad took my hand. “I have never seen you paler or more covered in sweat. Are you okay?”

          I still couldn’t speak, but apparently I could cry a little, as fat tears began bubbling out of the corners of my eyes.

          “Michael, what’s wrong?”

          “I can’t do it,” I whispered, mortified, trying to make myself calm down but only wanting to flee, flee, flee. “It’s too high. I feel sick.”

          “Do we need to go?” He asked again with concern, not anger, which just scared the shit out of me, as if he was being the bigger man, the protector, the savior, how the Hell scary must I look to force him to act so responsibly?

          “No,” I said unconvincingly.

          “Are you sure? Because we can just go. It’s awfully high up here. I had no idea these seats would be this bad. It’s okay if you want to go.”

          I could tell he meant every word he said. He only wanted to protect me, but I could not let this irrational baseless fear beat me.

          “I can do it,” I lied, my teeth chattering, tears continuing to gathering in my eyes. I just hated, hated, hated Lady Gaga at that moment, hated her and hated her meat dress and hated the stupid architects of this terrible building for displaying me in such a splay of weakness.

          From down the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, a giant fat man dressed in a quadruple-XXXX Gaga t-shirt began to stomp up toward us. Even at twenty steps I knew he was heading to our aisle. There was no way he was going to be able to get in without me, no small man myself, completely moving out of the way. I would have to stand freehanded at the top of the stairs, above God and the world below as the fat man maneuvered his giant ass into the row, and all I could see was me falling, falling, falling…

          “I can’t do it!” I cried to Thad, clutching at him. “I am so sorry. I can’t. Let’s go see if we can get better seats, somewhere down there. I just can’t. I’m so sorry…” I looked down and the fat man was still making hard-breathing strides right towards us.

          “It’s fine,” Thad said in a much more adult voice than I thought him capable. “We just need to make sure you’re safe.”   

          “Thank you. Thank you….”

          And shakingly I rose and began to take the long steps back down, one at a time, backwards, eyes closed, holding on to the stair rail as Thad held on to my shoulder. After what seemed like an hour, I reached the tiny balcony and I pushed a number of idiots out of my way to get back down the long hall and back to solid ground outside the arena, Thad right after me.

          We did not get to see the concert. We did not get to see Lady Gaga. We talked to a number of different ushers; there were no more tickets. The only way we would be able to see the concert was sitting in our assigned seats. I tried one more time, just as the opening band went on, but I couldn’t even make it out of the long hall because now the whole place was pitch black inside. I just turned and ran back out, arms out in front of me, like I was running from a Scooby Doo villain. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. And Thad was completely okay with that.

         

          As we walked back to the hotel, he took my hand and I felt privileged to be with a man so strong.