lollardfish

Our hero, we’ll call him Sameer, because that happens to be his name and he gave me permission to write about him, and besides, whoever heard of something written on the internet going astray, stands on the Academia Bridge, Saturday night, December 6, 2003, clad only in his boxer shorts. He climbs up onto the railing, and gazes down into the current, the dark water, his head reeling from far too much rum, too many nights spent on the drink, too much time. He thinks, “I can’t do this.” And then …

I first met Sameer in my usual internet café hangout, watching the Red Sox lose to the Yankees in game four of the ALCS. Pedro hit Karim Garcia in the head, conveniently when first base was open and he might have chosen to walk him anyway. Next inning, Clemens threw a high-inside pitch to Manny, and Manny walked towards the mound. Benches cleared. A 77-year-old bench coach for the Yanks charged Pedro, ready to throw punches, and Pedro knocked him to the ground. Pedro’s pitching settled down, but the Sox couldn’t come back. I suspect during this enterprise I was not exactly quiet, and Sameer noticed me.

Sameer is tall, Indian, but totally American from Chicago. A good-looking guy, if you’re into the tall, dark, handsome, sort of thing, nicely dressed and groomed, very professional, and asking the Philipino guy at the desk about watching the Cubs game on the Satellite. They didn’t get the right station, though, and I told him he wouldn’t get much of a feed on the crappy computers they had in the café, he realized I was an American who spoke some Italian, and offered to buy me a beer if he could ask me questions about Venice, as he was thinking of moving here. I am a musician, and a student. I never turn down free beer.

Sameer was here, in Venice, to chase a woman. He’d been chasing her for over two years, and I’m still cloudy on a lot of the details. Our conversations about her, Tiziana, were filled with shared rage over the inconstancy of women, the pangs of devotion spurned, the desire for both revenge and readmission to our lost one’s good graces, and such things. I’m almost a year ahead of Sameer on the stages of grief (loss, sadness, anger, and heading towards acceptance these days), so was a good counselor and friend, especially in those first days when he was trying to navigate Venice, find Italian classes, and still clung to hope. But as near as I can tell, Sameer met Tiziana in America a few years ago, and they dated. He fell in love. She also fell in love, but with reservations and complications, most important being distance. She returned to Venice. He, being an IT consultant with excellent people skills but a lousy work ethic, found work in London (for a company that manages email and online credit card sorts of accounts, and then sells your information to other credit card people to get you better rates and such), thus getting across the ocean and closer to his woman. Time passed. He chased. She was caught from time to time, but still was Italian, working in law school and then in the brutal apprenticeship system they have here, and she was not going to leave the Veneto. Finally, tearfully, painfully, in London, she ended it.

A few weeks later, with his contract in London ending, Sameer got on a plane and came to Venice. He found a potential IT-type job in the area who would possibly hire him in December, January, June … but he’d need to know Italian eventually. He speaks Spanish, so this seemed (and was) doable. He arrived, got a beautiful, pricey, apartment (terrace, two huge rooms, satellite TV, near Campo Santo Stefano), and contacted Tiziana. No doubt there was a dream in his mind … ‘Ok, you said that you couldn’t work out the distance thing. Well, I’ve solved it. I’m here in Venice. I’ve got an apartment. I’ll cook you dinner. I’ll get a job here. I’ll learn Italian. I can fix this!’

Men. We want to fix. Some things can’t be fixed with tape or glue. Or by moving to Venice.

Except for Italian classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights (three hours each), Sameer essentially had nothing to do in Venice, except go out to the bars, drink far too much, and chase Tiziana. They had some meals, some drinks, some painful conversations, no reconciliations. He sought solace in two different German girls, neither of which made him happy. He was tempted by a potential work offer in London. He improved his Italian. He drank. For me, Sameer was the guy I called when I needed company, which I did often enough in lonely October and November. We shared misery, and drinks, over the LCS collapses of our baseball teams (I gotta hand it to the Cubs – I think they out-collapsed the Red Sox this time). We found a fabulous little Osteria over in Dosoduro, on the way to the student bars which Sameer favored. Through him, I met a wonderful Greek Ph.D. candidate doing Venetian History at U. Warwick, and a fellow Delmas grant recipient from Maryland, as well as a motley collection of drunks, bartenders, and oceanographers. After a short while, I ceased to be Sameer’s only friend in Venice, which was good for the both of us. I needed to work (and I was, writing tremendously productively during those months), not go out with Sameer until two. Sameer needed people to stay out late with him. All those mornings when the water was high in the late Autumn, Sameer never noticed, staying in bed until 2, 3, or 4, eating pizza, drinking Rum and Cokes, chasing Tiziana. Depression can be hard to shake, and, in my personal experience, you need to hit bottom first. To hit bottom, you have to surrender all hope, every last shred of it, and plunge to the depths of loss, and from there, you can start to climb again.

I use the word ‘plunge’ deliberately.

Sometime before last Saturday night, Sameer saw Tiziana for what may be the last time. In terms of Sameer’s narrative of hitting bottom, it was the last time. She told him, finally, she was seeing someone else, and had been for awhile. We (his friends) suspected that this could well be the case. By all reports she is a stunning ‘natural beauty’ (I’ve never seen her), vivacious, attractive, and looking for a ‘good Italian man’ (maybe an oxymoron). Maybe she’s found one. At any rate, as you might expect, the news hit him hard. Drink followed drink followed drink followed …

And so he paused on the Academia bridge, walking homeward with two friends. He stood staring at the water, and said, ‘I should just jump in!’ He was drunk. It seemed like a good idea. Of the friends, Christian, being male, said, ‘If you do it, I’ll totally jump in after you.’ Sameer said, ‘I’m going to do it!’ He pulled off his shirt, got up on the railing, looked down, and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ He got down.

But by that time, a crowd of Italians, no doubt also drunk and coming home from the bars (because that’s what happens at 2:30 or so in the A.M.), had gathered. They began to egg him on, and there is nothing more powerful than peer pressure to the drunk American male (except possibly bladder pressure). Sameer’s other friend, a woman, just said, “Either do it or don’t, but stop vacillating.” Ok, so, she probably didn’t use the word vacillate. Sameer stripped off his shoes, socks, pants, and stood on the railing again, only wearing boxers. The crowd cheered, and he thought, “I can’t do this …”

I told Sameer that while baptism rituals, ritual cleansings, and such things are useful spiritually and psychologically, and that I’m not surprised his seems to have worked so well for him, I doubt his particular choice will spread to the secular American Muslim population. He tells me that he hit the water, and had no idea how deep the center of the canal was, but sunk down a bit. He opened his eyes a little, and saw some light above, and made it out again. Christian did, in fact, follow him in. The current began to carry them, and they made for shore quickly. Neither got terribly sick, and our oceanographer friend who studies groundwater corruption in Venice just shakes his head and doesn’t tell us what he’s found in the water.

And Sameer feels better. Not healed. Not whole. But better. He’s past hope. He’s past grief. He’s feeling anger. I told him that my shrink told me, on the day when I felt better (through events that did not include canals in Venice, but were no less drastic and terrifying, last March), that I had to remember this feeling. I’d feel worse. The pendulum would swing back the other way, but the key to avoiding depression was to know that it was still possible to feel good. I keep her words close at mind a lot, especially during the lonely and hard days here.

I just wish I had been there to witness the baptism. And no, Mother, if Sameer jumped off a bridge, I would not follow him in.