[36] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • HOME • May 24~28 (Patreon)

May 24, 2023

Day after the hospital. Rest. Ice. Repeat. My leg is noticeably less stiff than it was the day before.  I call the sports medicine clinic at the second hospital.  “We can get you in for an MRI in five months,” they tell me.

May 25, 2023

Two days after the hospital.  Rest. Ice. Repeat. My leg hurts even less.
It’s stable when I put weight on it. I go into the studio to stretch my back, to train handstands. I keep my knee brace on. It goes okay. The muscles above and below my knee are sore, tender, feel a little odd, but everything works. I move about gingerly, and go home and ice it some more to be safe.

The sports medicine clinic calls me to tell me I’ve been admitted to the fracture clinic. I explain that there’s been a mistake on my paperwork; that this was happening even at the emergency room. I have no broken bones, I tell them. If you’ve got someone cancelling an MRI appointment at 3am tonight though, call me.

They don’t call me.

May 26, 2023

I see Garnet for physio. “I think you dislocated it," he says. Ah. That makes sense. It feels better to have a theory about what happened. I can make sense of the sensations I’ve been feeling. I can feel more confident that this is something I’ll move forward from without issue.  It’s going to be okay.  I let myself start to feel a little better.

May 27th, 2023

Travelling tomorrow. I spend the day getting a brazilian wax (thank you, tiny contortion costume), packing, pausing to elevate and rest my knee. I start to feel a little excited. This is going to be great, I tell myself firmly. This knee is going to hold. I’m going to do this act. It’s going to go well. I’m going to get through this week and then I’m going to rest and heal this properly.

May 28, 2023

Travel day. 5am at the airport. The barista is slow and salty. I regret ordering my coffee.

Soon, turboprop engines leap into a stuttering blur. One city falls away beneath my window. Within an hour, we’re dropping down into another one. The Hudson river is sparkling under a warm summer sun. I see the Empire state building out the window as we bank and turn towards the runway.

Baggage claim, curbside, taxi. The freeways turn into a tunnel turn into Manhattan turn into a bridge turn into Brooklyn. It’s quieter than I thought it would be: people are liberal with their horns, but there’s no sirens, no screaming and yelling, no harsh auditory clatter and jumble.

Pull up at the hotel. A handful of the other artists on the contract are there already. We store our bags and head out on a walk to while away the hours until we’ll be given access to our rooms.

It’s a beautiful day in June. A holiday tomorrow.  Green everywhere. Colourful outfits. Music rolling out of every car and storefront and scooter. Old facades crammed in next to graffiti’d roll-down store covers next to slick new glass edifices next to soaring iron and steel. Every restaurant and cafe has thrown open its windows and doors to the golden breeze. There’s that feeling that comes at the start of a good summer weaving through the smell of hot pavement, of coffee filtering out from a café, expensive colognes walking past. An everythings-new, anything-is-possible feeling.

Hot summer sun rolls over us and crowds of tourists and locals alike tanning bare limbs. People stomp by in platform goth boots with faux-leather coffin-shaped backpacks swinging; tap by in mules and stilettos with Christian Dior bags; stride by in sneakers and comfortable clothes. I watch people meeting on first dates. Holding hands with comfortable familiarity. Pulling arms away from another’s grasp; the chill of a breakup on the horizon.

Afternoon drifts into evening. Some of the artists go to their rooms. Others head out for pizza. I catch Matthew on the corner a block away from the hotel, walking back from the corner store. I tell him about my leg. That I’m good to do the contract, but that I’ll wear the brace in our rehearsals for the next couple days to be safe. I tell him I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. That I hope this was okay.

As I’m babbling, other artists return from their dinners, their walks. I don’t want the others to be part of this conversation yet. I stop my explaining.  Matthew tactfully says to let him know if anything else changes and we part.

It’s not how I wanted it to go at all.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives Monday at 7am EST / 1pm CEST!

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess