The Moth Presents Sheri Holman: Rescue Mission

let's hear it for Shari Holman in 1988 I moved to New York to suffer and I moved here with $800 in my pocket and a box of books and I moved here with this great ambition to be a Shakespearean actress and I moved here with two other women and one had a very rich boyfriend and she lasted about a month and the other had was a beautiful exotic Russian woman and somehow within being in New York for only three weeks she'd hooked up with Alec Baldwin and but I was the true artist of the bunch and you could tell I was an artist by the way I suffered and if you opened up my refrigerator you would see that I had a bottle of champagne and a little tin of contraband caviar and a box of pop-tarts nothing else and if you followed me through the streets you would see that I went out to my auditions where I was rejected and and then I came home and and I worked my job which I'd somehow found for myself which was with this really disreputable literary agent who paid me five dollars to read these phone book sized manuscripts that I was I was directed to reject and so I would stack these manuscripts up in my living room when I would put like a sheet over them and that was my furniture and I was I was there to suffer and while my friends went out on these fabulous dates I laid in my little room in this crappy little Hell's Kitchen apartment on my futon on the floor and I was reading Dostoevsky because you know he is the patron saint of all who suffer and especially when you're 21 you really love it and so I would lie there sort of you know naked with my Dostoevsky all around me and and I would think about how I wanted to love and the way you loved in Dostoevsky is to give everything you you hold nothing back and and the the highest compliment you can pay your beloved is to follow him to the gulag and that's how I wanted to love that's how I moved to New York and so I would lie there you know naked with my Dostoevsky all around me and the the cross from the rescue mission next door would flash into my window and on one side it said get right with God and on the other side it said sin will find you out and I loved it so I kind of chosen that this particular apartment in Hell's Kitchen because of the rescue mission some people wouldn't want to live next to a rescue mission but of course I did and I would sit every morning on my fire escape and I would watch the men kind of come from all over the city and I was new to New York in 1988 and there were other things that were new also hiv/aids was new and crack cocaine was new and and even this term homeless was new you know up until then you know men had been bums and it was sort of a personal failing but now it was a little bit in noble dand they were more of a victim and they were just lacking home and so I would sit on my fire escape with my battered yellow journal and I would I would write about these men that I saw and they would come from all over the city and they were mostly black and brown bodies and in the middle of this human suffering there was this one white boy and I was 21 years old and from Virginia and I was like oh what's he doing here you know and I he seemed very incongruous to me and he was clean and he had curly blond hair and big blue eyes and he sort of seemed to be almost in charge he would get all of this enormous group of men in for breakfast every morning and then a few hours later I would see him lead an elderly blind priest and a seeing-eye dog down the street and and then a few hours after that I'd see him sitting on the steps of this brownstone reading theology and smoking cigarette and I became fascinated by this man and I would sit on my fire escape and I would watch him for hours and speculate upon him but I obviously preferred the fantasy to the reality because I never introduced myself and then one night when my roommate was out with Alec Baldwin somewhere I I went to the refrigerator and I got that bottle of champagne and I you know I went out of my fire escape and there was this man talking to another man in this pool of lamplight and I thought it was a little drunk and I wanted to meet him so badly but I couldn't just say it so I went back into the kitchen and I got this big bouquet of flowers and I I went out on the fire escape and I took one of the flowers and I went and I threw it down over the fire escape but of course it landed in the dark and he didn't even notice it it's almost like and so I took another flower and I threw it and another flower and I threw it and another and I pelted this man with flowers until finally he looked up he's like what the is going on and then I realized what have I done and I ducked back into my apartment and about two seconds later the doorbell rang and I thought well this is what you wanted so I buzzed him in and it was the other one and he's like oh beautiful lady I think you dropped these flowers and I was like no no they were for you and for your friend and I said where's your friend he said and he said oh well he had to go in for the 10 o'clock curfew and I said curfew for someone who works there you know I thought does he work there is he an actor I didn't know where he fit in and and he's like pretty lady he doesn't work there he lives there and so that I realized this man that I had spent all these weeks speculating about was not just not classically successful and not just Alec Baldwin but he was in fact homeless and then I remembered I'd been reading all this Dostoevsky and the thing about Dostoevsky is that you don't care what somebody does it is all about the person and you give everything to somebody's humanity so I continue to watch him for several more weeks and then one day I locked myself out of my apartment and I realized that he had been watching me too because he came around to the brownstone steps where I was sitting and he introduced himself and he said his name was Patrick and he described himself as a skeptical optimist and he said well since locked out would you like to come with me to services at I'm gonna call it for the sake of the story st. Vincent's house and he said would you like to come with me to st. Vincent's house and I was like God and then I thought well why not so I followed him down into the basement of this rescue mission where this cross had been flashing I've been watching for so long and as I walked in it was this you know nasty place with in a basement with brown mildewy carpet and you know these folding chairs I'll set up a little Casio keyboard in the front and a single microphone like this and and when I walked in the door I realized all when all the heads turned it was again a room full of men it was all men and I was the only woman in the room and I sort of felt them define my body you know what their gaze and I was I was kind of uncomfortable but I walked with Patrick to the front and we sat down and there was this amazing service and the man who was the musical director had actually penned this song in the 50s Jimmy Mac when are you coming back and there was like this really kind of rocking out sort of place and and as I was sitting there in this room full of men I realized that I've been going out to these auditions and getting rejected and coming home and rejecting would be novelist and here I was sitting in this room full of sort of society's most rejected men and for the first time I felt really accepted and so I started spending almost every day at Saint Vincent's house and I started volunteering there and I was flipping pancakes every morning for hundreds of men and I felt like Wendy among the Lost Boys you know I was the only woman and you know I got a lot of attention and I felt like I really mattered and I was there for the men and I was there for God but I knew I was really there for Patrick and one day we were in the back rebuilding a wall that had crumbled and we were mixing the mortar to lay the bricks and I was walking with two heavy buckets and when my hands were full and my shoulders were aching he kissed me and we were lovers the next day and then I realized how somebody like Patrick ends up in a rescue mission and he had come down from Canada with $8,000 of his business partners money to be a record producer and in one weekend he'd locked himself in a hotel room and he had smoked it all in crack $8,000 worth of crack in one weekend but everything was gonna be okay because first he'd found God and now he'd found me and he was saved and it felt like I was saved too because I'd been living this sort of like lonely life feeling so small in this big city and now I belong did and I started eating at sort of the best restaurants in New York courtesy of City Harvest you know those trucks where they donated all the leftovers they drive up and saw I was eating chocolate-covered strawberries and poached salmon and and I was wearing the best clothes because people would donate clothes to the rescue mission and one day he showed up with an armload of dresses with the Macy's tags still on them and they had been the last they were the purchases of a manic-depressive woman on the last shopping spree before she threw herself out of an eight-story window and then one day Patrick asked me for something in return and he said I live with all these men and I never have any privacy and I would really love to just take a shower alone and could I have a key to your apartment so that I could come and take a shower sometimes and I looked at him this man that I said I loved with this complete full self and this absolute trust and I remembered that $8,000 worth of crack and where I had found him and I said I'm sorry I can't and he said you are a selfish and he turned and he left and that might have been the end of the story except that a few days later I was walking down 51st Street and I saw him passing a joint with two other residents of st. Vincent's house and in that moment I realized that my love was the only thing that stood between him and complete oblivion and that if I just loved him a little bit harder and a little less selfishly that I could save him I was 21 years old and so instead of walking past and we're calling the is I probably should have instead I dropped to my knees in the middle of this Hell's Kitchen Street and I said I love you I don't want you to die will you move in with me and he did and he left st. Vincent's house and we left behind the cross and we tried to live like a normal couple and I realized once we were living together that the crack and the pot had really been sort of self-medicating a profound manic depression he would be super high and they would crash super low but we still try to live like normal people and we had fun times and we had so little money you know I'd gone back to rejecting manuscripts and I got some solace temp job and he got the job as a bike messenger and lost it and whenever he was broke he was clean and whenever he got the littlest bit of money he would go back and start doing drugs but I was gonna save him and and we would have these good times one time we we went down some back alley of Chinatown and we found this arcade if any of you have been here long enough where these two have his dancing chicken and you'd put the quarter in the slide and it was on the like an electrified plate you know when the chicken we get shocked and it would sort of dance like that and then next to it was another chicken that played tic-tac-toe and so you would put your money in that slot and you'd play tic-tac-toe with his chicken and Patrick was like calling out strategy to me you know but the X but the oh and I'm like playing tic-tac-toe with his chicken and I'm laughing so hard I made all the wrong choices and I didn't even force a draw I lost to a chicken and it was about that time that we ran completely out of money for any of those luxuries like going to the arcade to wrap it up or you know going to the movies or eating or birth control pills with the inevitable result and I told Patrick I was pregnant one day in Central Park on a bright beautiful sunny day and his face just like lit up and he was so excited and he's like that's great he said we'll move back to Canada and we'll live with my parents and we'll get on the dole and I was like I'm 21 and again he was asking me for trust and again I had none to give him and so we went to the doctor and the night after the operation he went to bed and I got out that battered yellow journal that I'd been writing about him and I wrote the date September 9th 1989 and I underlined it and that was all I had to say and I felt so trapped and I felt like I tried to be Wendy among the Lost Boys and instead I was just lost and I walked up the steps of this horrible tenement apartment we lived in in Hell's Kitchen and you know even then I was so self-conscious it's like I was wearing this long white nightgown that I'd worn in some Shakespearean play and and I was so conscious of the picture I made this young girl you know on the roof of this Hell's Kitchen building and I was I was still living my life and third person except now it wasn't a story anymore I had actually caused real damage and I was trapped and I remember I walked out onto the roof of this building and I sat down and I sat down with my legs dangling over the edge of this five-story building and I I thought about that woman with her Macy's price tags and I sort of leaned forward and I thought I'm not here to do that but if I fall would I stop myself and I was so dark and I was thinking in this huge city where I felt so small it's like if only anybody cared about me and if only there could be one good deed in this world and at that very moment I heard this voice behind me this deep rich voice and it said step away from the edge and I was like holy you know maybe I am not important and then this voice repeated it said step away from the edge and I turned and there were these two police officers standing in the doorway of the tenement and the first police officer said we got a call from somebody who said there was a woman on the roof who was getting ready to jump and the second police officer said you weren't really gonna jump where you miss and I thought for a minute and I said well well you know it's what John Paul Sartre always says he says when you're walking along the edge of a cliff you're not worried whether you're gonna fall you're worried whether or not you're gonna jump and the second police officer said miss don't talk that way we're gonna have to take you to Bellevue and so I looked back at them and I looked back over this dark City and I realized the impossibility of ever rescuing anybody and yet somebody out there had been watching me in the way I had been watching Patrick and the suffering men at st. Vincent's house and in this city that lets you fall people also stretch out a hand to help you back up and that night I took it and I followed those police officers back inside thank you sherry home

Channel: The Moth

Views: 47,045

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, story, storyteller, storytelling, New York, homeless, Sheri Holman, 1980s, young, girl, Girls, author

Id: soR996AcbJQ

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2013