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“We can stop....”
Humphrey raises his hand, peaceably – he doesn’t mind. He resumes.
“There had to be ... I had to put myself through..." he searches for the words. "Public excoriations. Standing up and cutting myself, or just walking over to a wall and with great intensity smashing my head against it. Never when I was alone – I would commit these things when I knew others were watching. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. It didn’t interest me. I was on a lot of amphetamines, I was on early forms of meth, but the clarity of the decision to do something to myself at a given moment ... I can still achieve that. So I don't think the drugs ... they probably only speeded up the decisiveness."
“For example, this person, this young guy who had just shown up, was telling this story, showing off his bona fides to the others, made eye contact me. And I grabbed a fork and holding that eye contact, into the palm of my hand it went.“
“You did that.”
Humphrey nods, dispassionately. “He got weirded out. Stepped back. Laughed. I held up my hand and flicked the fork at him with my fingers. It was ... dumb."
Over a closeup to his right palm, searching for the scars, Humphrey continues. "Except for the response it generated in me. I realized later, was: that wasn’t very pure. That wasn't real. It was affect, then effect. And I was really pleased with that epiphany. I felt as though I actually owned something. For the first time.
“They must have thought you were crazy. Dangerous crazy.”
“Some were scared. A few wanted me to fuck off. Some decided I was just the evening’s entertainment. But there was a visceral understanding among the group of what I was, just a fucked up creature who didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t steal or break any other social bond, so I was tolerated.
“But from then on, I wanted to find that purity. A physical structure of hate. I turned it into a trial.” He raises his large, unshaking hand like a pointed wedge. “Find that narrow line between hate for society of any level, groups, people, and still maintain a passive disconnection for those around you. And be vigilant about it. I wanted to be alive with execration. But not alone. And the drugs – they were getting in the way.
“As for the others – if they wanted to act against me, or use me, that was their prerogative. But the engagement wouldn’t come from me. I wanted to see how long that would last. And not go away by myself. If I did, I always knew it would be to kill myself.
“After awhile, this fragile, blank composure took over,” Humphrey says.
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| photo © by eschlabach |
“I took this alcove, a closet really, and I would sit at the edge of this place, at the edge of my own murk and just watch. The place was always in twilight, echoing. I placed this mental shroud over myself: I wanted to feel dead – pretend that I was gone and see what the world, this space, would be without me. This went on for days and was pretty thrilling.
"I watched these two men – boys – stoke up a rivalry, work each other up. I liked watching it develop. It had a featureless, undisciplined feel to it. Wandering in the air between them like electricity and carrying them with it until they eventually collided.
“I’d watch them over days, even weeks, months. They would go through loud, unbelievable announcements like ‘I’ll do anything for you.’ ‘You’re my bro.' My this or that. And they would compete with put downs and the number of others who would agree or join in on the put downs. They were the center of the group that way, the passion of the group. Nothing happened that didn’t circulate around them. And a few times a year, it would explode. A terrible bloody very intimate, carnal fight. Pounding, wrenching, kicking. Broken faces and hands. Head wounds. I remember the sound of it, the crunching and thudding and actually enjoying it. It was like theater.
“Then one would win and yet some how the other one would be the leader. The other one, the winner, would be shunned, especially by the girls. In their inverted world, that was order. The boys didn’t care. Their excitability was exhausted for a while, and then they’d just begin it all over again. The rise and fall of the seasons.
While Humphrey tells this, the images of industrial decay return, their emphasis shifting. A patient drip from a pipe that feeds a thin line of mildew on the floor. Dowels of weeds poke through cement. A hallway steadily being reabsorbed by vines jamming through a partially closed door, mold on the ceiling, wisteria easing itself down from high broken windows, moss in the wall cracks, tree branches reaching in. “Finally, there was this time, it was late summer, when a few of the boys decided they were going to make a bomb or some such. They went to find and steal the ingredients. Some of the girls headed out on their own excursion. Heading to a concert in the desert, I think. I stayed. No one asked me to come, which was fine.
“A girl who came and went, a small girl, dirty, and probably not mentally sound came back where we were after months of being away. Everyone was gone, I was alone, for whatever reason. It might have been raining. Sitting inside this alcove, this indentation in a wall, part closet, part cave. She seemed even more lost than before, in bad shape. Cuts on her forehead, bruises on her neck and jaw, and, I found later, her forearm was swollen, with a bit of bone poking through the skin, as if she tried to protect herself.
“She had climbed the stairs to our floor, crossed this enormous space we had taken over with a shuffling light step, as if she were moving only to keep from falling over and made her way to this small filthy alcove where I was sitting. She didn’t really acknowledge me, but I got the feeling she knew I was in there.
Other photos come up while Humphrey continues, different in scope and feel. Not documenting a brother's squalor, but perfunctory. Evidence. Sad, flash-lit police photos of the girl's body in Humphrey's alcove.
“I sat there the whole time, even when she laid down next to me. I sensed right away what was going on and it seemed perfectly reasonable to let her die like that. I even allowed myself to get up and pull over some cardboard and a crappy blanket no one was using to cover her up because – and I was very rational about it – she was using me as a vigil. To help her on out of here.
"When it was over and I knew it was over, I walked down and went to the police."
Carson, off camera. "That's how I found you."
"That's how you found me."
Carson over a walking shot of a city sidewalk, broken and bursting from tree roots: "That's not the complete story. Humphrey actually first approached two priests who had been working in the area recently with a shelter, Peter Giles and Max Lincoln. And together they went to the police, who later found a huge amount of heroin in her system. And the injuries she sustained were days old. The police sealed up the warehouse, and the kids, Humphrey included, moved elsewhere."
Meanwhile, a picture of a man in jeans and black sweater among a sidewalk encampment of street kids. Like a teacher forgiven for his attempts at hipness, the man lays on the sidewalk, propped on an elbow, his back against a wall papered with torn bills, petting one of the kids’ pit bulls. He is surrounded by filthy clothes, and a farrago of debris and personal items, camped in their camp. The only one standing, shielding a match from the wind, a little outside the camp, is pierced and filthy Humphrey.
Carson zooms patiently on the man visiting the streetkids. “By the time I met Peter, then Father Peter,” Humphrey says, “I was ... aglow ... in this perfect kiln I made for myself. I was convinced I'd achieved that perfect, narrow line of hate, poised with hate. I had seen and relished what life would be like after I was dead. He didn’t try to soften it or dilute any of it. I remember congratulating myself that this handsome, interesting man was actually impressed with this state I made for myself. Maybe he was.
“But inch by inch he led me somewhere else, where ...” he pauses, retreating with a stiff, restrictive pull of his lips and a slight thrust of a wettening tongue, easing the words out one by one, “I was so vain with what I thought I’d done on my own and so eager to show this man what I could do with it. I stayed out on the street, longer even than I wanted to. And every time I'd see him, that resolve just chipped away. Rather than being this body without any kind of sentience, Peter led me to grab a hold of that fire with both hands. And pat it down, like ....” his face loosens slightly, a self-conscious raise of the eyebrows, “.... in his words, Prometheus."
A short video image, slowed to a mesmerizing crawl, in the poor, orangey candle light of a sanctuary somewhere. Peter and Humphrey, side by side. Peter looking watchfully as Humphrey, short hair mushrooming from his head, leans forward, head down, arms triangulated on his knees. Peter runs his fingers over Humphrey’s head in a single petting motion. The touch sends Humphrey out of his crouch, back against the pew they are sitting in, a smile opening on his face.
“I don’t have much else at my disposal to describe Humphrey’s relationship with Peter. He declines over and over again, and I’m often left to my imagination. This may seem like self-censorship on his part, but I think it’s more like preservation. He likes to hold on to things. Participate in their weight.”
A quiet moment of monastical light in Humphrey’s Mashipan room. Then a slow pan to four crosswise photographs on the wall: two of Humphrey and Peter together, top and bottom. And to the left and right, two pictures of men not Humphrey or Peter.
“Despite my brother’s circumspection, though, I should be more clear here. Especially since I met Peter and visited the two of them occasionally.
“To me, Humphrey and Peter enjoyed one of those rare charismatic relationships you find in a book or a movie. At the time, Peter was a Jesuit priest, though an openly gay one at that. And involved in a long time relationship with Father Max Lincoln. While Peter was working his way into Humphrey, Humphrey was doing the same to Peter.”
Carson slides the camera across the wall to a photo of Father Max: dark, sharp and kind like Anthony Perkins. “Together, Max and Peter had started the outreach that led them into the lives of Seattle runaways and squatters which eventually led Peter to Humphrey. And away from Max.
We slide across to the fourth photo, an older, goldenbrown, shiny headed man with thick eyelashes and glasses. “And from there, it led Humphrey to Father Archibald Solano, the founder of Mashipan."
The bottom photo on Humphrey’s wall is a photograph of Peter relaxing on a tidy midcentury mustard couch, his legs on a glass coffee table, reading. Behind is a wall of books. Humphrey, his head on Peter’s lap, sleeps with a book on his chest.
“Which may have just been a way not to lose himself entirely. He was vigorously devoted to whatever ideas Peter had for ministry. Organic soup kitchens. Bedside readings in prison hospitals. Difficult return visits to the anarchists. But as Peter pulled Humphrey toward engagement, Humprhey led Peter to renunciation.”
Carson lingers on the top photo of Humphrey and Peter sitting on a rock, shirts off, vividly talking. Humphrey picks up where he left off.
“One of our favorite pasttimes was fine-tuning a plan, our mission. Waiting for a train, going up an elevator, one of us would say ‘convert derelict buildings into housing’, or ‘organic farm for shelters.’ “
“Did anything come out of this?”
For the first time, Humphrey grins, sentimentally. “One of us would get excited. And then usually it was me who’d look a little more closely into it.” And then reasserts himself. “And inevitably I’d find that these were being done already, or someone tried and it didn’t work. Maybe not in the church. Which usually was Peter’s point. To work them through the church. Which was not something I wanted to do. To do on behalf of the church. Any church.
“For one, the bureaucracy is monumental. And the church itself is prone to siphon for other purposes. But clearly, the church – his Church – would never allow the kind of partnership we had in mind, let alone enjoying in our home. And I didn’t particularly want to join Catholicism.
“He had gotten very good at accepting what he could from his church. And ignoring the rest. To me, the Catholic church was – “ he leans back into his chair. This is Humphrey’s favorite act of mischief, unveiled: “I assigned my own anathema to the Catholic church.”
Carson waits to hear more – this is one of Humphrey’s thoughtful pauses – but has to ask, “Which was ...?”
“That for whatever ideals it professes, the church is antithetical to them by its structure. That it exists as an institution is eternally contrary to itself and thereby abominable.”
Another wayward grin, more self-conscious, reflective. “Peter could tolerate a lot.”
“Whatever their plans were," Carson says, turning back again to the four photos on Humphrey’s wall, moving in with long steady zoom, "they never had a chance to enact them. Peter died five years or so after my brother left the street. He had been a voracious smoker and died of emphysema.
“The passage of time muddles things even further. On this trip I learned Father Max eventually made the move to Mashipan himself, a few years ago, with Humphrey’s urging. Humphrey maintains this has been a platonic, working relationship. But together they started Mashipan’s juvenile mission. Which opened and expanded Mashipan for the first time down to the valley. On a wide, easily accessible meadow they built a retreat and sanctuary which has since become Mashipan's face to the world. They also work in prisons, established health and pregnancy clinics, worked in city shelters and delinquency halls, police gang units and provide pro bono legal help. Almost everything Peter and Humphrey talked to each other about."
Down in the valley, a shot first of an unassuming sign on the road: New Mashipan. Then, the gently rolling community of buildings and grounds under snow. Many more people are down here, just not in robes, many of them young, excited, gathered in small groups with backpacks and dufflelbags on the ground near a line of buses, as if they'd just been dropped off. Some of them wear red Santa hats. Two girls walk past Carson. Both smile and wave.
“It’s sad, but also a little reassuring to think that all this sprouted from Peter's death. Though how Mashipan got to this point is really where we're going here. In the meantime, I asked my brother if I could meet Father Max.”
Cut to Humphrey, listening to the request, demurring, nodding as if he should have known Carson would ask. “He’s not well. We’ll see.”
/continued
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Next: Christmas at Mashipan and the end.
"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011
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