January 15
 
 
 

I keep thinking about Spalding Gray.  (Here's the story, in case you don't know what I'm talking about.  There was a better one in NY Newsday, but the link isn't resolving).  A long while back, I had sort of a running crush on him.  Something about his delivery or his face or some idiosyncratic thing about him appealed to me when I was in college.  I'd seen him in a few things (of course, The Nanny) and was always pleasantly surprised to be reminded of his existance.  There was a tremendously unfunny skit on Saturday Night Live with, and it was a couple years ago, so my memory is a little sketchy--with someone playing Spalding Grey (Michael Mckean) talking over someone (and this is where I'm not positive) playing Eric Bogosian (heh, or Garrison Keillor).  I have nothing insightful to say about the skit, other than it wasn't funny, and not even a little bit timely (do a lot of the drunken morons watching Saturday Night Live [note: not everyone who watches SNL is a drunken moron.  You are certainly not] are going to know who Eric Bogosian [or Garrison Keillor!] or Spalding Gray are) and it made me think about Spalding Gray again and wonder how he was.

I'll be honest.  I'm not an obsessive fan.  I didn't really know he suffered from depression.  I never knew that he tried to kill himself, even halfheartedly.  I didn't know a lot of things about him except that I like him and he seemed like someone who'd be interesting to spend some time with.

So, when I read that he was missing, and the details about what everyone thinks he's done began to unfold, it spoke to some deeply buried thing inside me.  Think of it.  Waking up in the morning, your charmed life, your kids with the nanny, your money, your lovely apartment in Soho.  What makes someone leave their wallet and their keys and just go? Where do you drum up the courage to do that?  To bounce.  From everything.

There are reports of him being sighted on the Staten Island ferry, leading to speculation that he jumped.  Again, how does someone come up with that as a solution (although jumping seems to be his method of choice, since he'd jumped off a bridge once before)?  I'm not talking about suicide, because I do understand how people are driven to that point, the ways you can get desperate and lonely and heartsick and disgusted, but about the way he seems to want to go.

Anyhow, this isn't me saying I'm giving thought to my own end, just that I am thinking of Spalding Gray, I empathize with the demons in his head, and although I don't think the story will have a happy ending for him, I hope that it does.
 
 

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