The Surreal

A Personal Essay about the Times of my Life

I can feel the earth turning underneath me. I can feel myself turning with it. I can see time moving past me. Only it’s not linear.
Not really.

There’s a shift. Revealing things. But is the shift in me or in the universe?

It’s 1968.
I see myself; I’m six. I open a comic book for the first time. I see colorful panels and superheroes with impossible muscles cascading across them, flipping, twisting, flying. They are incredible. I want to do what they do. I want to be fantastic.

It’s 1975.
I’m thirteen. I’m walking into a gymnastics open gym at the Flatbush YMCA in Brooklyn for the first time. I live in a slum, and until this very moment, I had never heard of the sport of gymnastics. I see kids—Black, Brown, White, all poor like me—cascading across old, worn mats, flipping, twisting, flying.

In time, I’m flipping, twisting, flying too.

It’s 1978.
Sixteen. I’m walking down Times Square in Manhattan. No, not the Times Square you know today with its fancy jumbotrons and pretty promenades. I’m talking about old, gritty Times Square with its pimps, pushers, and whores, the peepshows, super rats and greasy diners where cockroaches are most assuredly on the menu—the secret sauce. Times Square also has one thing more. The only thing that interests me. The reason why I’m here: the grindhouse theaters. The movies they play run the gamut with triple features of old horror and action movies. But that’s not what intrigues me. It’s the imports. The Hong Kong kung-fu films, and in particular, the Shaolin Temple films. I pay for my ticket and take my seat among the streetwalkers resting their sore feet, the junkies shooting up, and the others like me. Action film aficionados

For the next four and a half hours, I’m transported back to old China.
I am a monk.
I am a warrior. I fight with the legendary weapons of kung-fu.
I am a blood-soaked god of broken bones. A pain god.
I kill my way to glory.

It’s 1979.
Other kids I know in my Brownsville, Brooklyn neighborhood, tell me I’m wasting my time with gymnastics. That I’ll never make any money with it. They all play sports like basketball, baseball, football, all looking for sports scholarships, a one way golden ticket out of the ghetto with the ultimate goal of playing professionally. Making the big money. Living the good life.

I don’t know how to tell them I didn’t choose the way of the acrobat. It chose me.
And it isn’t what I do. It’s what I am.
At night, I dream of superheroes and kung-fu masters.

It’s 1981.
It’s after workout at East Stroudsburg University. Some of my gymnastics teammates and I go to the field-house to stretch out and take steam showers. As is inevitable, when we’re stretching out, we end up in mock combat, inspired by kung-fu movies, comic book super-heroics, and the antics of pro-wrestling madmen of the era.

One of my teammates, Kenny Hardigan—a tough Irish kid from Staten Island—casually leans over and tells me, when he graduates, he’s going to move to Los Angeles and become a Hollywood stuntman. I don’t know why he’s telling me this. Somewhere in my subconscious, a seed has been planted. A week later, Kenny gets into a drunken brawl with the dorm RA and is kicked out of school for good. He never moves to Hollywood; he never becomes a stuntman.

It’s 1987.
I’m standing in a gym with a wooden bo staff in my hands. I am face to face with then-superstar Eddie Murphy. I am stunt-doubling actor Arsenio Hall in the movie Coming to America. It’s the acrobatic martial arts fight scene. At the end of the scene, Eddie Murphy whips my feet out from under me with his staff. I go flying through the air and come crashing down on my back on the floor. Because of the small shirt I am wearing, I can’t use a back protector. Legendary stunt coordinator, John Sherrod, is looking at me in concern. A few years later, Sherrod would die in a car accident driving back from a movie set. Ironically, he was most well-known for his car driving stunts. The stunt community and many stars come out for this funeral. Hit director John Landis is excited about the scene we are making. He wants to film my fall from all different angles, which means I have to hit the ground over and over again. Sherrod had told me, in addition to all the other money I have already made for the fight scene, I would be paid $400 every time I hit the ground. This is what is called a stunt adjustment or bump.

The crew winces every time I make impact. They don’t realize that I’m getting one foot down right before I hit the ground, softening the blow. Sherrod looks worried and keeps asking me if I’m okay. I keep saying yes as I think of all the money I am making. He shakes his head. I’m considering buying a new car.

I hit the ground twelve times. I buy the car: a sky-blue classic Mustang.

It’s 1994.
I’m in the middle of a dry lake bed in the desert outside of Las Vegas. I am surrounded by Power Rangers. I am a monster. They defeat me and my cohorts.
But there’s always next week.

It’s July 4, 2022.
There are no fireworks. I’m not in America. I’m in Ypres, Belgium. I am on an operating table. Both of my hips are being completely replaced by a European surgeon. I feel like Steve Austin, the Bionic Man. Then, I feel nothing at all.

It’s July 5, 2022.
I wake up and don’t know where I am. I’m in a hospital room. A pretty nurse asks me how I feel. I feel reborn.

I feel the earth turning underneath me.
I close my eyes.
I smell sweat and old mats at the Flatbush YMCA.
I smell the buttery popcorn, feel the cool dark of the grindhouse movie theater.
I feel the desert heat and a devastating blow, delivered by the Pink Ranger.

The pretty nurse leans over me to adjust my pillow. I smell the scent of her perfume.

Past.

Present.

Real.

Surreal.

I am everywhere all at once. Living these moments.