Catharsis-a one woman play
Act 1-Memorium:
The Curtain raises, the stage pitch black, a voice begins:
Gabi: How to begin…well, conventional wisdom tells you to begin at the beginning….but I think not this time. For this story, I will begin at the ending…or at least the ending of something that was the most magical, most affecting, most amazing thing in my life: ‘Me and Kon.’
…..”Me and Kon”…one word longer than the shortest bible verse, same number of syllables…”Jesus wept.” Oddly appropriate, despite neither of us being particularly Christian…
So, ah yes…the ending. It’s odd how much I can recall after all these years, 13 years (ok, 13 years 4 months, & 25 days if you want to know….I refuse to count the hours, it might make me sound fixated….that’s a joke by the way…sort of.)
(a full stage scrim, behind the speaker, begins to glow with light, pictures and scenes including Kon play across the scrim, in muted tones, evoking a sense of memory)
August 17th, 1994: The last thing I ever said to Kon was, “I love you.” It was standard fare, not said with any particular emphasis….just the last thing you say to the person you someday plan to marry when you drop him off at home, to sleep…because you have to work in the morning, and he has to work that night. Standard fare because it’s the truest thing in the universe…so that saying it out loud is the tiniest way in which you express it….but I digress….avoiding the next bit.
(as the story progresses, a light starts to illuminate the speaker, weakly at 1st but growing, centering on her face…..note: use a color wash, or something to keep it toned down...we just want to see enough to see her expression…but not enough light to detract from the pictures on the scrim)
So, I dropped him off, went to work…finished there, ran an errand, and, as was virtually ritual by then…went to visit Kon at work . Let’s just say I spent so much time with Kon at work that his manager knew me by name, & I her….
When I got to his work, a gas station convenience store, it was quite clear something was wrong. So, I thought, “Oh, Kon must have gone home.” (ok I know that when you see police tape, that’s not likely….but I couldn’t entertain the possibility of him being the reason why there was police tape……I couldn’t comprehend him being anywhere near it….I certainly couldn’t consider crossing it to find out….). So, I drove the extra 2 minutes to his apartment, that he shared w/Brian and J.R. They weren’t home, neither was he….as I was standing there, mentally flailing…the upstairs neighbor saw me and said something like, “are you looking for the guy that lives downstairs….they took him to the hospital.” My heart in my mouth and my head set on disbelief & denial, I drove back to the store, where I crossed the police tape, uncaring if I was supposed to or not….figuring in fact, that if someone wanted to stop me, they’d better be pretty big.
Images….blood on the floor near the door, young-adult girl sitting on the left side of the sidewalk outside the store crying, Kon’s manager standing just to the right of the door, cops everywhere. Oddly, no one tried to stop me. I guess if I could see my face, I wouldn’t try to stop me either. I went up to Kon’s manager. She told me what she knew…beer run, Kon stabbed....She didn’t know where they’d taken him, or if they had caught the person who did it. I was very calm. I tried talking to one of the officers, to find out what hospital he’d been taken to. They were very helpful, but ‘didn’t know’ which hospital he’d been taken to. I accepted the story. There are too many hospitals around here to just start driving to all of them, so I didn’t really have a choice but wait for someone to tell me. So, I did, tho’ not for long.
I was standing next to his manager when a red car, with Fire Department insignia, pulled up. A tall man got out, spoke momentarily to one of the officers, and started to walk towards us. My eyes went to his throat. I turned to Kon’s manager and said, “Please tell me that man isn’t wearing a clerical collar.” She looked and weakly said, “ok, he’s not wearing a clerical collar.” We both knew that meant something bad. So, all the bad things started to run through my head. Kon was in really bad shape, he might not make it, I needed to come right now. I hadn’t felt him die, so he must still be alive, right….anyone I loved so much….I’d know if he were dead… My thoughts were interrupted by the serious looking man with the collar. “Are you the girlfriend?” “Yes.” “I don’t know how to tell you this.” Steeling myself, thinking that I knew the worst. “Just say it.” “He didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
Silence
Disbelief….I hadn’t included that possibility…..wanting to cry, wanting to scream, wanting to wake up…very very badly.
Silence
“Do you want to see him?” (or was it go to the hospital??? Honestly, I don’t know…I’m not sure I was hearing anything clearly over the screaming in my own head)
“Yes.”
“I’ll take you, you shouldn’t drive.” (ah, that’s why the officer “didn’t know” where he was…)
He escorted me to his car, and I sat in it a minute, alone, while he finished talking to the officers. I think I was crying…. He came back and drove to St. Joseph’s ER. He tried to talk to me, to offer comfort or counseling if I needed it. I remember thinking that he couldn’t offer me anything…he was a stranger, an outsider. So, I just sat, not saying much, just trying to be calm….well, controlled.
We got to the hospital. As we went into the ER I saw a girl in scrubs come out crying. I thought she must have worked on Kon. That everyone was crying for him. A few steps inside the ER, I found our friends. JR, Brian, Jamie, there might have been others there…but I didn’t register them. They saw me…..we moved like two streams of water poured into the same glass. It wasn’t so much a hug as a group cling…some attempt to hold each other up. I know I cried then.
At some point, a police officer came to talk to me. He offered me the chance to see him one last time. My first thought was, “Oh, yes!” followed closely by “No!” as the officer explained to me that they hadn’t had time to get him to the O.R. that they’d opened his chest on the table in the ER…that he hadn’t been “cleaned up.” Then he told me the worst part of all….his body was considered evidence. I couldn’t even touch him. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to see him, I felt I should see him. I wanted to touch him, but I couldn’t. I was scared to see him, like that. Jamie, the one most of us called ‘mom’ most of the time, talked me down. She told me her experiences of when her mother died, and that when she thought of her, she couldn’t help but picture the end, and she wished she only had the good pictures. She told me that it was my decision, but that if it were her, she wouldn’t see him. I listened, I decided not to go. It was probably the right decision. For me. Sometimes I wish I had made the other one. Mostly I just wish I could have touched him one last time.
After some amount of time passed, we all agreed to go back to the boys’ (Kon, J.R. & Brian) apartment. There were lots of us there, sitting vigil…whether for Kon or each other was anyone’s guess. It didn’t matter, being with people who loved him was better than being with strangers, or alone.
At some point, it occurred to me that someone had to tell his mother. It didn’t occur to any of us that the police would be taking care of that…all I could think was, “ohmygod, she doesn’t know, she’d want to know.” So, I searched Kon’s room, no address book, but I found a letter from her with a return address. Called information…there were 4 S.Hawks in Tucson. Someone took the phone away from me…”You shouldn’t have to do this…do you want me to make the call?” “yes.” I think it was 2 in the morning, we woke her up, made sure she was the right S. Hawk….told her her son was dead. We must have been insane…but I only remember thinking she had a right to know, now, like the rest of us who loved him. That she shouldn’t be the last to know…
What didn’t occur to me until a little later was “Oh Shit, we told her her son was dead, and I have no idea if she has anyone there to be with her.” I called her back, told her who I was. Asked her if someone was with her…yes her mother had come to be there with her. Awkward doesn’t begin to describe the experience, for either of us, I’m sure. One shouldn’t meet one’s boyfriends mother/son’s girlfriend this way. Kon & I had been talking about a trip to Tucson to do the “meet the parent” thing…but that didn’t matter now….this was the 1st impression she was going to get of me. I suppose it shouldn’t really matter…but he loved her, and said she was an amazing, strong, incredible woman….I wanted her to like me. She was amazing, so graceful, so calm…even tho’ I knew it had to be all on the surface, that she was dying inside, just like me, maybe worse.
I don’t know what my surface was like during that time, but I was trying for the same thing….I look back now, and wonder if I didn’t do too good a job. I remember friends telling me I was too calm. I remember being watched almost constantly, other than sleeping (mostly in Kon’s bed..it still smelled like him) & going to the bathroom, I was never alone. Of course, it was mutual, nobody, me included, was leaving Brian or J.R. alone either. I know that people worried that one of us would try to follow him. I knew in my heart that I couldn’t, because if I took the easy way out, Brian and J.R. would too. I knew too, that if I killed myself, Kon would be disappointed in me.
You know, people say things like, “I would trade my life for his.” as the ultimate statement of love. They haven’t thought it through enough…..having someone you love die sucks….there is nothing in the world that feels worse…nothing…..why would you ever wish that feeling on someone that you love? So, as my ultimate act of love, I tried to accept that he had died before me, and find some comfort in the thought that he’d never feel the way I did. I wore that thought like a cloak. I still believe it. That doesn’t mean it gives me much comfort….but I believe it.
Fast forward to the funeral. There was a mix of horror and beauty…and tho’ it sounds odd to say it, comedy.
The horror is obvious. Tho, less obvious is the bit where I thought I might be pregnant, that despite our precautions that had made so much sense, that the universe had seen fit to let me keep little piece of him. But on the morning of the funeral, I got proof that I wasn’t.
The beauty….so many people came, almost all of them having to drive from somewhere else, that we overfilled the room. Many of his friends and SCA “family” had brought or even made offerings to bury with him. If you’ve never seen that kind of love, I can tell you, it was painful beauty, several people stood up to speak about him, and I didn’t even know all of them, I don’t recall the details of the speeches, but they all had one common element…Kon touched them, got them, grokked them, affected them.
The comedy: Kon’s mom asked me to send clothes down for him to be buried in…when I got there and saw him in this other outfit…..(plaid shirt, buttoned all the way up, tan docker pants), I almost lost it….had the clothes I’d sent not been good enough??? But no, the funeral home had lost his clothes, causing his parents to have to shop for new clothes for the viewing…they did the best they could. Brian, J.R. and Kon had a running joke….that they’d each better be the last man standing, because whoever went earlier, the other(s) were going to make sure they were buried in a dress. As Brian later observed, “He would’ve preferred the dress.” His skin was the wrong color…oddly ooopma loompa-ish, especially when you know that Kon’s natural skin color was the kind of pale that 12 Century women used cosmetics to obtain. On the good side they left his beautiful hair long, and his earring in. I’ll admit that as I stood there looking at him, not looking like himself…I didn’t see the comedy. But a friend, a really wise really good friend, saw me there and said exactly the right thing. “Coyote had his paws all over this.” Kon’s animal totem was Coyote…the trickster. In that moment…I could feel him there, and hear him laughing, and suddenly the clothes & the makeup were not only tolerable, but fitting…Kon’s last joke on us all.
(blank scrim)
Ok, some of you are doubtless asking, “why won’t she answer the most obvious question?” So, here it is: Yes they caught the guys, mostly because THEY FUCKING BRAGGED ABOUT, and I quote, “SHANKING THE CLERK” afterwards. There were 4 of them.
(pictures of the killers, from the newspaper article,show on the scrim, in time with their names, followed by all 4 of them together)
Gatlin, Goodard, Mendez & Flores. Flores actually held the knife, he got 22 years, the most of all of them….not enough….but nothing would be.
I almost didn’t include this in the story because I just don’t know what to say about it. But I will try ….after it happened, I tried very hard not to get angry, because I was afraid if I started I wouldn’t ever stop; because I want to be a good person…a good witch….and I believe that words and thoughts are power & shouldn’t be abused. And mostly because I refused to give them any more than they had already taken. They’d taken my love…taken Susan’s son, Brian * J.R.’s “brother.” If I let myself go to the dark place that was waiting for me, if I was trapped there….I was letting them take me too.
I’ve waited a long time to get angry. So here are my words of power, to satisfy my anger, without betraying my training and beliefs. I ask that each of them knows true remorse. That each of them dreams of what they did, and feels fresh and strong the pain & loss of each and every person they harmed., that the knowledge should haunt them all, until they are driven to do positive things to try to balance the scales… It won’t bring Kon back…and there’s no way to truly balance the harm they’ve done…but I want them to TRY. This I ask, So Mote It Be.
(pictures on the scrim show scenes from the last 13 years of my life, including kids, etc. The colors & themes of the pictures should get slowly, but progressively brighter and happier through the course of the following monologue)
What is there to say about the last 13 years…I tried to do the right things, the expected things…move on, new relationships, children, the business of living. I thought I was better, a dozen times. I learned I wasn’t done mourning, a dozen and one times. I did things to avoid dealing with it, feeling it. And yet, was overcome by the need to feel it. I built things and destroyed them. I felt I wasn’t being true to Kon, but told myself that was what everyone in my place felt….ignore it and move on, that it would pass. I thought I was wise and strong enough to do it without help, or at least with only the help of my friends, our friends, because who could understand it, except those who lived it. How could I explain it to anyone else? I finally got help….it’s helping… maybe I just had to recover enough to be able to actually be strong enough to do the next bit of work toward getting better. Maybe I just had to hurt long enough that I didn’t have anything left to prove, to anyone, including myself. Maybe especially myself….to Kon, I never had anything to prove….he was mine!...I was his! Our love was like something out of a story. Strangers could see it, never mind our friends. We knew that this was “the one.”
It was truly one of the “great loves.” Unfortunately, like so many of the “great loves’ it was also a great tragedy, lacking only my pining, withering and eventual demise to elevate it to myth, fairy tale, or Shakespearean tragedy.
(scrim black with large white words)
An End
(Lights up on front of stage)
Thank you for coming, for sharing this evening with me. This work was created to honor and share the memory of Kon Byron Hawk, born June 6th, 1969….died on the morning following the night of August 17th, 1994. There are so many stories about Kon, All of us who love him have our version of the story above, and there are also beautiful stories, and funny stories. There have been songs written, and a truly stunning poem in his memory. He was a performer, greater than I could ever be…and so this performance, as always, is dedicated to him.
(gabi leaves the stage)
(Scrim to white…Large black lettering)
Act II, Life, To Be Continued…….