It was raining when I said “bless you” to The Man Who Sneezed.
I was on a walk at two thirty-five a.m. to the park by my house when I said “bless you” to The Man Who Sneezed.
The dark sky was overcast, and the air tense with the promise of rain. I could feel the first of the droplets echo off the hard casing of my headphones – the rather large ones that fit over my entire ear, sound-proofing ones that don’t really soundproof, only replace thoughts with momentary white noise. I wasn’t even listening to anything at the time, just that white noise humming through the cushioned speakers latched to my ears.
Something was off that morning, that pre-dawn, before I went for a walk and crossed paths with The Man Who Sneezed, but to this day I cannot pinpoint just what was off. Maybe it was the fact that I had cream in my usually black coffee that afternoon, or that my daily conversation with my mother got cut short, or maybe the fact that I was so low that night that I got high so as to forget about the low, and the sleep that usually washes that relentless cycle away into the ocean of forgotten feelings never graced my presence. Who knows?
The park, visible when I’m lying in bed, peering out of my window, my right ear pressed against the pillow, was screaming my name. Not calling to me like a mother to her daughter, not whispering to me the way you would while we laid, skin on skin, so long ago. The park was screeching my name. The park was roaring and howling my name, and I couldn’t help but fall victim to its cries, not dissimilar from a sailor to a siren. The walk to the park was a tedious one at the crack of dawn, but I had my lighter and my Spirits and the primal need to get the all-too familiar, pestering, infectious thoughts that were threatening my sleep out of reach.
There is something gloriously and terrifyingly romantic about the isolation that accompanies these thoughts. Somewhere within me I recognize that unhealthy cycle of it all, acknowledge those heavy feelings; subliminally allowing my bed to turn from my cradle of comfort to an insolent creature luring out of me the bits of myself I have to cling to. I let myself deteriorate; I let my own brain eat itself clean. Normally. Something, or someone, pulled (lured? coaxed?) my tired bones out of bed. Somehow, I was forced to put on pants, and I headed out on this walk. I fingered the pack of lime green American Spirits in my pocket, feeling the rolled paper and shamefully acknowledging the stain that the smell of the tobacco will leave on my skin. My headphones covered my ears, but nothing was heard besides my sedated thoughts pinging about.
My mind was rather empty when I stepped out into the cool rain, my bare chest tensing up with shivers as the crowded, chilled air hit my skin. I don’t know if the rain is some shitty metaphor for the teardrops that reside permanently on my cheeks, that act of crying calming my nerves and attempting to wash away the pent-up negativity, or for the crisp wetness that splashed on my wanting, needing, longing, pleading skin. Or maybe my cheeks were shocked at having a different kind of wetness caress them, one that isn’t harsh and salty and streaming from red eyes. Maybe subconsciously I could feel that soon The Man would sneeze, and I would say “bless you”, and he wouldn’t hear it.
But I fell into a comfortable rhythm, my body being pulled by an invisible string, and somewhere between rising from my bed to making the graveyard walk, my mind took on a pensive trail. One of those times when, prior to acknowledging that I was in a thinking mood, my skin crawls and my mind feels like it’s pulsing. It’s that mood where my legs are numb and want to give out on me and I feel like everyone is staring at me even though it is two thirty-five a.m. and I am the only poor soul surfing these sidewalks right now and is there really a difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero? And why did you do that to me? Why pretend, and were you even pretending? And why do my fingers feel funny? And how do we really know that the universe is expanding and that there is Black Matter and what if those radical evangelicals actually are right and holy shit I don’t knowhowtobreatherightnowhowdoIamIbreathingrightno-
And that is when The Man Who Sneezed, sneezed. Such a simple, uncontrollable gesture, but one that stopped my bare feet in their tracks, made my trail of thought sprint brusquely out of my collapsing mind, and God himself slowed Space and Time so that He could feel my heart bypass one or two beats.
The rain increased its torrent, almost as if The Man’s sneeze commanded it to. I was mesmerized by him. Not because of the sneeze, but because of the way that simple noise filled up the entire night, my entire body, the entire Earth, at that very moment. That sneeze made shooting stars glance down at him as they passed by, and the busiest of bees quit their buzzing for a fraction of a second.
The rain continued its downpour, the cicadas insisted upon their singing, and the wind kept caressing my wild hair, but in that piece of a moment of time, I was cleansed. My heart stopped racing, and my lungs filled with the sweet pressure of air, and God breathed a sigh of relief that came at my unkempt hair.
How did The Man Who Sneezed know just how important he was to me at that moment? How, had I made it to the final destination that was the park, I would have stayed out until the sun awoke, bare feet frozen and wetness clinging to my shivering body? He couldn’t have known that my body as well as my soul would have completely frozen over, he couldn’t have known that I would pull out my last cigarette, vomit the emptiness of my stomach out onto the grass, and probably – no, accidentally – slip and fall into the iced-over lake when I got sick of sitting on the soaked grass. He couldn’t have known that I wasn’t driven to that park because I had nowhere to go and nothing to do; that I walked to that park because I needed to go there and I needed it to end.
He had no clue that his sneeze was the sound that cracked my neck, my spine, my hips and my toes back into place, that he was my therapeutic, existential chiropractor that drowned my early morning plans before I could do so to myself.
And so, I said, “bless you”.
And he didn’t hear me. But of course, he didn’t, my words were but a breath heard only by the currents of air kissing my cheek. I wasn’t as courageous to state my presence in this dark morning as The Man Who Couldn’t Hear Me was; I’d prefer it that way, in fact. I’d prefer to keep mine and his connection a secret from the rest of the world, letting us share this moment of unknown sanctity between us and the tears of the sky affixing us.
I turned on my heels and composed myself, and as I did so, I let my mind wander. I let myself believe that The Man Who Couldn’t Hear Me was awake alongside me to bring someone’s God into such an ungodly hour of morning. That he was sitting in a chair with his window open, contemplating his own life while the cold air brusquely soothed his bare skin. I began to hope for The Man Who Couldn’t Hear Me. Hope he would receive the same kind of quiet solace he had just given me. Hope that if he ever found himself floating down a road, to a park with a lake, with nothing but a pair of jeans and a pack of Spirits on his person, someone would awake from their slumber with a sneeze.
Photo by Sylvester Sabo on Unsplash
