The time I got my head stuck in a balcony

My whole life summed up in one story of love, loss, and laughter

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photo taken of me MINUTES before ‘the incident’ (read to the end to see who I became after ‘the incident’)

My therapist says that your first memory is a microcosm of your entire life.

She also says I need to stop quoting her to start my essays and focus on ‘my healing’ but honestly I don’t see how those two things are mutually exclusive aka BOTH ARE TRUE ring the bell let’s get into it.

My first memory

My first memory is when I, little Sasha Shuralmashka¹ in Odessa Ukraine, got my head stuck in a balcony.

My parents, somehow age 26 and 28 with a five year old child, juggled full time jobs and school, which meant I was often with my grandparents Nona and Vova or Emma and Alik. And yes I did call them by their first names because I understood what it meant to be part of the pre-k counterculture.

I loved being at Nona and Vova’s because there were other kids to play with - we'd usually all get together in the shared inner courtyard of the U shaped apartment building and, though I have no memory of what we actually did, I know it was very, very fun.

But on this day, no one could play. Vova was out and Nona was watching something on TV. Which left me - an only child, a lonely child (title of my forthcoming memeoir) - shit out of luck.

Wait a memeoir is a good idea actually. Calling my friends at the trademark office, brb.

They didn’t answer? Weird let’s keep going.

I tried to hang out with Nona but she was really into her show so I tried to change the channel to watch something I liked but she wouldn't let me.

So yea I guess you could say I was the maddest I had ever been.

I wanted to make sure Nona understood that my little five year old body could not contain the anger coursing through it, so I decided to storm out of the apartment and out to the balcony.

Now outside on the balcony, still fuming, I was…at a loss. I had assumed Nona would say "Sasha stop, come back and watch whatever you want on TV" but weirdly she didn't?

So I did what I always did when I got bored or pensive or angry: I stuck my lil head in between the iron wrought bars of the balcony.

This was normal and NOT a big deal; every day I went to Nona and Vova's I’d get steamed and stick my head in the balcony, and every day I would wriggle my head back out of the balcony. Easy peasy, the lemons, make em extra squeezy.

So far my therapist’s theory of my entire life in this memory is spot on. My adult identity is exactly who you see here — an overly sensitive only child who acts out in low level dangerous ways to make sure everyone around him KNOWS that he is FEELING THINGS.

Except today the boundaries pushed back. Today the boundaries grabbed me with their cold, metal bars and said no, you're not going anywhere.

You see today was the day my head went in and did not come out.

Probably not a big deal

I wasn't worried at first. Sometimes, especially lately, getting my head back out of the balcony had become a whole to-do - squirming and twisting and brute force galore, which, coupled with a healthy sprinkle of hemming and hawing, resulted in my freedom. But not today.

I was like, actually, stuck.

I started to panic and cry for help. Nona, ever the kind diplomat, immediately came out to my rescue (oh so you had to watch TV but now that I’m in danger you’re cool to stop?? guess the show wasn’t that important was it?).

Nona tried to help me wriggle out, but nothing worked. 

A few minutes later and I’m screaming and crying and whining and thrashing and flailing and squirming and, what's this?

I look down to the courtyard and, yes, a crowd has formed.

There, looking up with their worried, undivided attention, were the parents and grandparents of the neighborhood. Also present, wtf, are all my friends who I guess couldn't play but have plenty of time to watch me suffer?

All of their faces looking up at me, confused and concerned and....ENTERTAINED?

It was here, at this exact moment 1992 in Odessa Ukraine, that I got my first hit of the best drug in the world: people's rapt, undivided attention.

They like me, they really really like me

As Freud once said “The child knows not what he do, but baby he do it oh so well. Especially when he’s performing for an audience with his head stuck in a balcony.”

I wept, I howled, I whimpered as Nona tried everything she could to free me including pouring very hot water on my neck which did not help and actually very much hurt. A three dimensional performance at its finest from Nona who, pretending to be the dutiful caring grandmother, showed her true colors in the joy she felt causing me a little pain for being such a fucking idiot. Oscar for Nona when??

As the crowd got much bigger (this was obviously the talk of the town and early reviews were STRONG), my parents arrived.

Always worrying about me but now actually having something to worry about, my parents took charge by rubbing butter on my neck.

Moments later, I reeked of butter and was still stuck.

I was no longer aware of the audience, fully lost in the performance, genuinely terrified that I would be stuck here forever - a method performance Daniel Day Lewis has cited as “my north star.”

Also it was cold, so I was cold and smelled like soviet butter and no one knew what the fuck to do.

It all comes down to this

If we were in America, the fire department would have arrived by now and I’d be eating all you can eat pasta and pizza at Papa Ginos as the whole town gathered to celebrate my safety.

But here in Russia, they didn’t really do the whole fire department thing, instead adopting more of a “if you can beat the fire, you can stay alive” mindset.

Lucky for us, a random guy (!) with a hand saw (!!) had gotten up to the balcony and said "I know what to do" and for some reason my parents decided to trust him??

I started to hear the scraping electricity of metal against metal which is VERY LOUD because its next to my ear, back and forth, back and forth. My parents watched on, terrified about their little boy, their only child, the boy they want to liberate from this hellscape country and take to America so he can eat Rainbow Nerds, play pop warner football, and if all goes well even try his hand at improvisational comedy when SNAP.

Was that my neck? Was I dead?

No.

It was the metal bar.

I was alive.

The crowd went absolutely nuts - applause, cheers, agents calling their bosses the phone up to the pandemonium saying “Charlie, get a load of THIS.” 

But wait there’s more

the man I became after getting my head out of that balcony

Some balconies, you can never escape. Yes, I was free from the bars of metal, but I was still stuck, my head between the bars of the suffocating love that was and continues to be my parents, one on each side of my neck, each holding on tight with fear and love both.

When I was whisked away on a magical carpet ride to America, land of milk and honey toast crunch, those overprotective bars only held on tighter.

I’ve the next 29 years and counting trying to escape the balcony and become a full fledged American by watching sitcoms, doing drugs, even - gasp -going to a therapist (the worst sin you can commit as a Russian) - but I couldn’t.

Our motherland’s paradoxical Soviet-Jewish Ukranian heritage just wouldn’t let me go.  

But isn’t that a good thing? Since me trying to escape is what the audience clearly loves (see - BalconyGate).

Which would be true, if I shared that escape with the world. But I did it in silence, in darkness, at night when no one was around and owls ruled the world. I didn’t want anyone to know I had this balcony around my neck — they needed to think I was just like them, an American where at least I knew I was free.

But I wasn’t free. I was ashamed because we were DIFFERENT and that meant no one would LIKE US. So I tried to hide everything I could about our family and who we really were from the world. I’m ashamed to say I used to hate my parents’ accents because they ‘gave us away.’

I wanted us to just fit in and eat McDonald’s Big Macs like everyone else. (my parents adamantly REFUSED to ever let me eat McDonald’s a fact that, to this day, I cannot forgive nor can I forget).

Now, as an old man, I am realizing that in trying to escape the grip of the balcony, the grip of my parents, I’ve tried to escape who I am. I have tried to run from story, my heritage, my people.

Which means that whenever I’m writing or making stuff, I’m also lying. Meaning, you as the audience would be seeing a kid with his head stuck in a balcony pretending that his head wasn’t stuck in a balcony trying to entertain you about, I dunno, how weird water is (really? of all the stuff that could keep us alive, its just…water?)

But you as the audience can obviously see that my head is stuck, you can FEEL that my head is stuck, so you can feel that I’m lying. 

What I’m realizing and what I’m trying to do with my work from here on is acknowledge that my head is stuck, to accept it and embrace it and talk about it. Because that’s what you the audience are here to see, I think.

And even if not, that’s really all I can talk about truthfully because its my actual life.

From how my parents wouldn’t let me have sleepovers to how they always made everyone who came over wear slippers in our house or how my dad didn’t trust rearview mirrors (instead he would open the car door, sticks his head out the door - very safe - and drive the car in reverse. I mean, who do the mirrors work for?).

The balcony represents my parents way of loving me - they cannot let go and I would be terrified if they did. And I’d be terrified too.

So lately instead of trying to escape I just put my arms around the bars and say, hey I love you guys, but also you are driving me crazy - you’re weird as hell and I gotta start telling our stories to the world, but also also: I’m not going anywhere. I like being stuck here with y’all. 

There will be a day hundreds of years from now when they are no longer around and I will miss them and beg for just one more day of their overbearing, beautiful love. But even then, I tell myself so I don’t cry an ocean of sad, the bars won’t really be gone. They are here always, a part of me, hugging me close and saying, it’s okay Sasha, we’re here.

PS: To Nona I just want to say that after having 29 years to reflect on it all, I really do think you should have just let me change the channel on that TV but also I’m glad you didn’t because otherwise I wouldn’t have this indie Marvel dramedy superhero origin story.

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Comments?

1. What’s your first memory and how have you pathologized it?

2. Are you like me and have the need to let everyone KNOW you are FEELING THINGS? Please tell me everything about this so I can feel less bad, thank you in advance.

3. What things did you get stuck in as a child or as an adult? Tell me your stuck stories.

6. I am still doing this bit with the numbers I don’t even care

1. which basically translates to a cute version of Sasha The Crazy