Brush with death

I was knocked on my ass with the flu all weekend. All my life I've had a fairly healthy constitution and never had a propensity to get sick. Since I have no benchmark for what it's like to be really ill, something like the flu seems cataclysmic to me. But this was a bad one. I didn't leave my bed for two days and was delirious.

I slept for astonishingly long periods of time. I occupied a half awake/half asleep dream state whereby I could hear things going on around me but couldn't respond to any of it. I looked really, really bad and was moaning a lot. At one point, 9-Year Old Daughter walked up to me and asked, in all seriousness, "Dad, are you going to die?"

I was tossing in bed having one of my torturous fever-dreams. Mrs. Wife and the two Daughters were gone from my life. Just like that! Pfft! No reason was provided by the devils sticking forks in me. Someone walked up and asked me, "Do you feel liberated?" I knew what he meant. And I thought about it. And my answer welled up from the part of me that was still of sound mind and I yelled at him, "No! Bring them back immediately!"

* * *

I started feeling dizzy on Friday night while in a Broadway house seeing Venus in Fur. If you were in the audience for that performance and don't feel quite up to par, you can blame me.

Hugh Dancy is such a good actor. He holds his place on a stage well. Not just a pretty boy. He turned out an exhausting, effective performance. But here's his problem: The show is a two-hander and he's sharing the stage with a newbie just out of acting school named Nina Arianda and she is a friggin' firecracker. She spends long swaths of the show in black leather and lace underthings seducing him and, I felt, me. It's hard to take your (my) eyes off of her. What I did see of Dancy was great. It's a play about control. Who has it. What are you willing to give it up for. It'll be interesting to see if any community theaters have the guts to put this on.