Back in September '13, when the GATJ book was first published; I was asked to write a feature article for Astoria Magazine, since I live in Astoria and I've been known to string a few sentences together from time to time.
My article "Astoria is for Lovers… and Second Acts" was published in the magazine for their January 2014 issue. Give her a read when you get a chance, the article is below! I hope you enjoy!
-Josh
Astoria is one of the best communities in all of
New York City. We have the museum of Moving Image, Socrates Sculpture Park, and
the new SingleCut craft brewery. We have swaths of Greeks, Italians, Turks,
Bengalis… and me all living in harmony in one centralized location. If Astoria
were a pizza pie it would the “deluxe” with a little extra of your favorite
topping, the “everything” dripping with umami, it would be the pie that people
would wait ninety minutes for outside in the pouring rain just to get a slice.
But why am I telling you this? Why wax poetically about Astoria?
Because after going through three circles of hell
and a near death experience, it’s the place in the world where I got my second
chance at life. It all goes back to the word “community”— a pivotal piece of
the puzzle in defining one’s quality of life. I found my community in Astoria.
But much like a slingshot, we have to stretch
backward in order to gain the proper amount of momentum to propel forward with
this story. We have to start with a few of my predecessors—a few guys from New
Jersey named Haakon and Douglas. My paternal grandfather, Haakon Rivedal, died
long before I was born and is someone of whom I have very little knowledge. I
know that he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, was
shot down over Hamburg, Germany in 1941, and I know that he killed himself in
1966.
Forty-three years later, in 2009, Haakon’s son
Douglas, my father, killed himself. I was twenty-five years old at the time. By
the time I turned twenty-five, I thought I’d have the perfect life—a few years
singing on Broadway, followed by a starring role in my own television show.
After which, my getaway home in the Hamptons would be featured in Better Homes & Gardens, and my face would grace the cover of the National Enquirer as Bigfoot’s not-so-secret lover. Instead, my
resume was filled with an assortment of minor league theatre and an appearance
on The Maury Povich Show—my career sidetracked by my father’s suicide and
a lawsuit from my mother over my father’s inheritance. Life looked less like a
happy-go-lucky Disney movie and more like a George Romero zombie flick. I had
no idea what I was supposed to do with this new information.
So, I did what any normal person would do in that
situation. I decided to take all those sad, ridiculous, and tragically funny
experiences and followed in the footsteps of Eddie Izzard, John Leguizamo, and
that really desperate weirdo that shows up at the local coffee shop on open-mic
night; and created a one-man show for myself, The Gospel According to Josh. In less than a year I put the show up in the Midtown International
Theatre Festival in New York City, got great press reviews, and got invited to
do a run of the show at The Media Theatre in Pennsylvania.
But while my professional life was reaching new
heights, my community, my personal life was continuing to plunge ever so close
to the abyss toward Captain Nemo and his Nautilus. My relationship with family and even friends at
this point was nearly non-existent. And my girlfriend of six years decided it
was time for us to split up. In a span of less than two years I lost three
important people and two families.
How does someone deal with that many losses in a
row? Ben & Jerry’s? Therapy? Tae Kwon Do? Not this guy. I kept piling on
work and artistic projects and avoided my problems until they exploded in my
face. In January, 2011 my thoughts took a downward spiral very fast. I thought
I had nothing left to live for if I didn’t have the ex-girlfriend, my family,
or a successful acting career. There was also something going on inside my body
which I couldn’t explain. For three weeks, I could barely eat and I had trouble
sleeping. A terrible pain constantly coursed through my body and a knot was
growing inside my stomach,
born of malnutrition and anxiety. I was able to pull off working a few days
each week, but not without questions of why I looked so ill—questions I
wouldn’t and couldn’t dignify with a response.
In late January I
had four scheduled days off in a row from work and nothing to do but stay
inside my apartment.
The first three
days were a blur. I stopped showering and didn’t even leave my bedroom. On the
fourth day I decided it was time to make it to the bathroom and clean the stink
off my body that now smelled like a cross between a sweaty foot and rancid taco
meat.
For the first time
in four days I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were bloodshot
and my skin lily white save for a few blotches of pink and yellow that gave a
more complete color palette. Compassion for the man in the mirror quickly
soured to displeasure and disgust. I didn’t know this pathetic piece of a man
anymore and I couldn’t stand the pain any longer.
I found myself
backing away from the mirror and moved my body back through the doorway and
over to my bedroom window.
In front of my
fourth floor window was a radiator too hot to touch from the steady flow of
heat emanating from its center. My bare feet found a pair of slippers lying
alongside my bed and I carefully stepped onto the radiator. The bottom opening
of the window was protected by rusty bars fastened to the window’s frame but
the top was free. I pulled it down till both top and bottom portions of the
window were aligned and the hole on top was large enough for me to pass
through.
I pushed my head
through the opening and looked out at the building across the street. It was
singed from a fire that nearly destroyed its top three floors a few months
prior and whose smell of ashes made its way to my nostrils whenever the window
was open and the wind was blowing in just the right direction.
With my large head
still protruding through the opening, I gaped at the sidewalk lined with cars
and heaps of trash spilling into the street four stories below.
My arms shook like
weeping willow trees in the middle of a violent tornado. The wind was whipping
around something fierce. Tears dribbled every which way across my face, wetting
the hair on my temples. With my left hand I supported the weight of my body and
with the right, I slapped myself repeatedly. My temples were now completely
soaked. With the right hand back in place, I hoisted my torso halfway through
the window. But before I could pass all the way through, a strange and
unfamiliar voice spoke to me. It was powerful yet tender and barely audible,
but the voice told me that this wasn’t the way and this wasn’t my time. I held
myself suspended for a few more moments, my body halfway out the bedroom
window. I then climbed back through and sat beside the radiator. I needed help
To whom could I
turn to ask for help? I hadn’t asked for anything from anyone in a very long
time, maybe decades. It was a matter of pride. I had paid my own way for
everything since I was fifteen years old. But if I didn’t ask for help here, my
pride was going to get me killed.
So, I called my
mother. The person who gave birth to me, raised me, and then completely
betrayed me. But none of that mattered anymore. She knew my father and she knew
me all too well. Maybe there was something she could do or say that would make
it all better, like when I was a little boy. I just wanted my mommy.
I called her and
she did exactly what she was supposed to do. She became my mom again and talked
me through what I was going through. She wasn’t judgmental. She listened to
what I had to say and told me I could call her anytime if I needed anything.
After hanging up with her I knew that I wasn’t going to die that day, not by my
own hands. How I would live—that was another story.
In the first few months of my
recovery, I began a slow and steady climb back to life. I had to take baby steps. I started seeing a
therapist. I began tapping back into the community by reaching out to old
friends. I worked on rekindling relationships with my family. And I decided
that best way I could help myself would be by helping others. I took that
one-man show, my Gospel, on the road and started talking to college and
high school students about how to get help if they were depressed or suicidal.
Around this same time, a good friend needed new a
roommate in Astoria and so I crossed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and put roots
down in the 11102 zip code. I had much more room to spread my wings and was in
close proximity to old friends with whom I needed to reconnect. The hustle and
bustle of Manhattan was and is not nearly as present in Astoria and I was able
to find a new creative life. Words flowed effortlessly from my fingertips once
again and in the two years that I’ve lived in Astoria, I wrote and released a
full-length memoir The Gospel According to Josh: A 28-Year Gentile Bar Mitzvah, an accessible and expansive addendum to the
one-man show. I’ve completed commissions to write the book to three musicals
and will have a short story published in early 2014.
But in spite of that professional success, the
greatest achievement I’ve garnered in the past two years has simply been life
and connecting to a community—friends and family. And finding a place in the
world where I can live, and be creative, and feel comfortable being
myself—Astoria, the home of my second act.
Great, moving article!
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