What it feels like ...

August 1, 2002, 12:00 AM, Esquire Magazine

What It Feels Like...to Have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
By Craig Strobeck, 23,aspiring actor.

The moment I would get into the shower, I would feel exhaustion. I had to ready myself for between one and two and a half hours of shower time that I did not feel like doing, but I knew I had to, to stay clean. It would always start from top to bottom -- from my head all the way down. Everything had its own specific ritual. Washing my hair would take about an hour. I would wash the back of my hair, the sides of my hair, the front of my hair, the very top of my hair. Washing the front of my forehead, I would scrub it sixty times; it could never be sixty-one. The arms would start with the shoulders, and I would have to scrub them to the point where I was scrubbing so hard on my collarbone and shoulder blades that it almost felt like the bone was piercing through the skin and touching the soap. When it hurt like crazy, then I would know that I had completely scrubbed each area. I would run the soap up and down my arms at least one hundred to two hundred times each, just on the front side. I'd wrap the soap around my neck at least sixty to eighty times. Then I'd continue in this way down to my feet. Sometimes after I was fully dressed, I would go back into the shower, sometimes in my clothes, or undress again, and just do one area that felt not clean enough. This voice in my head would speak to me, saying, "You're done, but I'd like you to do it again." There's this feeling in your mind like some terrible fate is going to meet you if you don't perform a certain ritual or task. Like you're trying to avoid paying your dues. The pressure to do it was constant and overwhelming. Like a voice saying, "Do not stop." Like a locomotive out of control.

What It Feels Like...to Be Buried in an Avalanche
By Lester Morlang, 47, contractor.

My partner, Jack Ritter, and I were at 12,300 feet, putting a snow shed over Bessie G, a gold mine in the La Plata Mountains in Colorado. It was about four o'clock. I was standing in the loader bucket, and Jack was handing me twelve-foot-long planks. There was no warning; it was instant. All of a sudden, I was curled up in a ball, doing somersaults. They figured out later I was under fifty feet of snow. It was totally dark. My mouth was packed with snow. The pressure was enormous; it was hard to breathe. I literally didn't know which direction was up. I thought, Oh, my God, am I going to die like this? And then I thought, Oh, my God. Maybe I'm already dead. Luckily I had my hands over my face. I cleared the snow out of my mouth with my fingers, and then I was screaming for Jack, may he rest in peace. I was bawling, out of my mind. The tears and snot and stuff were flowing. And then I noticed it: All the tears and snot and stuff were running crossways across my face. I realized I was lying kind of upside down and backward. That was a real moment of truth. Now I had a mission: I had to get out. I moved my hands around, compacting the snow, giving myself a little more room to move. Then I got my upper body loose, and I started digging. I made a little game of it. I'd count to four and then I'd reach up and grab a handful of snow. I'd pull it past my face, past my chest, down to my knees. And then with my knees I would kind of push it down to my feet and stomp it down. I dug like that for twenty-two hours, and then I finally broke through. I jammed my hand out and saw the first little bit of light, and I was jubilant. I screamed and hollered and thanked the Lord. It was another fourteen hours till the rescuers found me.

What It Feels Like...to Be Really, Really Short
By Gabriel Pimentel, 23, 2'11" actor

People are always staring at me. I guess I understand why: I'm two eleven, which is really short. Technically, I'm a dwarf, because all the parts of my body are in the right proportions, but the term you're supposed to use is "little person." I really don't care what anyone calls me as long as they don't say, "You're so cute!" I hate that. Cute is for babies or toy poodles. That's why I work out. I weigh only 54 pounds, but I can bench-press 110. I'm like a little pit bull. Being small was tough growing up. But I was lucky because Billy Barty once visited my school and pulled out a diamond and showed it to everyone and said, "This is really, really small, but it's extremely valuable." After that, everyone treated me better. Still, it's not easy. Every little thing that people take for granted is a workout for me. If I want to get something from a cabinet, I have to hop up onto a chair and then onto the counter like a monkey. I always have to use handicapped bathrooms so I can use the support railings to balance myself while I stand on the toilet edge and do my business. When I'm in an elevator, I have to jump as high as I can to hit the button if I'm going to a high floor. If I go to the movies, I fold my leg under myself and sit on it. If I'm involved with a woman, my face usually spends a lot of time in the middle of her belly. The only thing that's not difficult is clothes shopping. I go to the Gap. It's funny -- they always have clothes in my size. But it's kinda cool being short. I bill myself as "the Shortest Guy in L.A." and have done some movies and music videos. I'd like to be the Al Pacino or Robert De Niro of little people, but it's tough in Hollywood. They think little people can only be used for laughs. But we can be tough like anyone else. We can be mad. We can be sad.

What It Feels Like...to Be Really, Really Tall
By Shawn Bradley, 30, 7'6" center, Dallas Mavericks.

When I get up in the morning, I have to duck through the bathroom door. I have to duck down to see the mirror. I have to duck down for the shower. The shower hits me in the middle of the chest. I have a specific way to get in the car; my right knee goes in first, around the steering wheel, then I slide in. Call me a contortionist if you will. I remember in high school I was seven six already, and we were in an opponent's locker room. I could see over the tops of all the lockers, and it was disgusting -- dusty, with empty bottles and discarded clothing. My coach stood on one of the benches so we could see eye to eye. He said, "You live in a dirty world, don't you?" Even in people's homes, there's dust on top of the molding. The tops of fridges are never clean. When I was young and I'd go out with my parents to a mall, I was the place that you'd meet at. Everyone would say, "Meet at Shawn." When I'm in a crowd, I can see all the bald spots. All the clothes that I get pretty much have to be custom-made. I wear a 42 inseam. I have to get a sleeping bag made special. I grew up my whole life with my feet hanging off the bed, and I'm kind of used to that.

What It Feels Like to...Have Leprosy
By Jose Ramirez Jr., 54, social worker.

I had just turned twenty when I was diagnosed. My theory is that I got it from digging in infected soil in Texas. I didn't have any sensation in my arms. My feet and hands would swell up. I had high fevers, sometimes 105 degrees. Then I got what looked like pimples that grew from the size of a dime to the size of a lemon. They came up like a volcano and were filled with pus. And even though I lost sensation, there was still pain. I had sores on the bottoms of my feet and all over my body. My earlobes and testicles were swollen. I ended up at a facility in Louisiana that cared for leprosy patients for eight years. When I would leave the hospital, people would point at me and whisper, "There goes the leper." One time, there was this guy peeing next to me in the bathroom. He saw me and he turned white, his eyes were bulging, and he was peeing all over his pants. He was that afraid. Now I educate people about the disease, explain that it's not communicable, how it can now be cured in a few months, and that noses and fingers don't really fall off. I still have no sensation in most of my legs, arms, and hands. I have to be very careful and check my shoes twice a day, because recently I had a pebble there and I didn't know. It ended up causing a sore that became infected. I can cut myself and not know. When I was younger and I smoked, there were times when I burned my hand and didn't know until I smelled the flesh. I have a lot of scar tissue on my legs, but my face was luckily never affected because I got treatment in time.

What It Feels Like...to Be Shot Out of a Cannon
By Jon Weiss, 40, of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The countdown starts at five. I'm locking my legs in place, my buttocks, my lower back, my upper back. I'm lying down on my stomach with my elbows and wrists together. Then I'm locking my neck muscles with my head perched back like I'm looking at the sky. At two seconds, my whole body is locked into place. At one second, I take a deep breath and then hold my breath and close my eyes and lock every muscle tight. My wife pulls the trigger. The blast is like if I was to park my truck on the Long Island Expressway and have another car hit me from behind at sixty-five miles per hour. The first thing I do is duck my head. When you're in the cannon and all you see are steel beams going across the tent's ceiling, you think you're going to hit the beams. I know because of physics and training that I won't hit the beams, but psychologically, I still have to get past that. I don't remember the first twenty or thirty feet. So I only have another two or three seconds to react for my landing. I travel up to 120 feet, but I'm only 30 feet high. It's a line-drive shot. I probably reach speeds of seventy or eighty miles an hour. I use my hips when I fly. I can use my arms to maneuver left and right. Then I tuck my head at the last minute, bring my legs over my head, and land on my back. I can't tuck my body too early because I can break my leg in the net or seriously hurt myself. You can never get cocky. You can always fly straighter. You can always fly farther.

What It Feels Like...to Swallow Swords
By Brad Byers, 42, performer.

When I first started it was the strangest sensation to have this cold steel blade in my esophagus, going down. Now it feels natural. I can swallow up to ten swords. I lay them flat on the back of my throat like a tongue depressor. You have to suppress the gag reflex. The tighter it gets, the more difficult it is to control. If I do seven or more, sometimes my eyes water. When I do large numbers of swords, my esophagus is filled so much, and it's so close to the heart, I can actually feel my heart beating. If I twist the sword, it gives my throat a raw, dry feeling. I scraped an actual hole in the back of my throat from too much performing. I only got freaked out once. I was performing at a shopping-mall grand opening. At that time, I used to let people push the sword down my throat. I chose a big, macho guy. I gave him the stop signal, but he pushed too far. I felt a stretching sensation in the bottom of my stomach. I withdrew the sword and there was no blood, so I thought I was okay and swallowed seven other swords. When I pulled them out, all seven of them were covered with blood. Now I have people withdraw the blade from my mouth instead of pushing it down. You can't pull out a sword too far.

What It Feels Like... to Be Bitten by a Shark
By Rodney Orr, 61, electrician.

I was on my paddleboard in the Pacific near Santa Rosa, California. I was getting ready to dive off the side and go spearfishing when the lights went out. I heard this big, loud noise like a garage door slamming, and it was completely dark. All of a sudden, I could see these big white things out of my left eye. At first I thought it was busted fiberglass. The first thing that went through my mind was that a boat ran over me and stuffed my head through my board. But as soon as I touched the white things, I realized they were teeth. He had a hold of my head. I was at a right angle to his mouth, hanging out the side. The front teeth were buried in through my cheekbones and my nose. It was quick and sharp. The teeth were like razors. When he clamped onto me, it was a god-awful crunch. I heard the crunching of teeth plowing through bone, but it didn't hurt. Something in the brain clicks so you don't feel it till later. He didn't take me down -- he took me out of the water. When I saw the water, it was like three feet below me, but I could see we were moving fast. I tried to pull my head out. I reached up on the shark and it was flat, like the side of a Buick, and it had a sandpapery feel. And then I just started pounding on it. I went berserk. I shredded my gloves on its teeth. I was just striking at him blind. I don't know if that's what made him let loose of me. If he would've finished the bite, I would've had no brain. When the thing let go, it went underneath me, and I saw part of its head. It was a great white; it was wider than my shoulders. He had a hold of me for eight to twelve seconds. We probably traveled about sixty to seventy feet. I swam back to my board. I was bleeding like hell, blood pouring out of my nose, out of my face. I couldn't feel nothing from the top of my head to my butt on the right side. I had a two-and-a-quarter-inch hole in the back of my neck. I looked like hamburger. They took me away in a helicopter, and I got to Santa Rosa hospital. Now I've got one bad scar near the corner of my eye and across my nose, but, hell, they've faded down. They fit in with the wrinkles.

What It Feels Like...to Undergo an Exorcism
By Kellie, 27, assistant director

. We call it a deliverance, not an exorcism. Besides me, there were four other people in the room -- two pastors and two women -- praying over me and commanding the spirits to leave. One of the women, June, stayed face-to-face with me the whole time. She had the ability to sense the presence of evil -- and she read my face. From what I understand, you could see it in my eyes. I saw things. And I smelled things, too. There was a sulfuric, acidic, burning smell. When I smelled it, I looked to the right, and I saw something. I can't even describe what it was, but it was horrible. June saw it, too. I remember freaking out and asking her, "What is that?" And she said, "It's okay, it's okay." And then it left. At times I became violent. When the pastor commanded a spirit to leave, I would feel it rise up within me, and I would want to bolt. I would want to hurt someone, want to hurt myself. I would bang my head against the floor. But it wasn't me. I couldn't control myself at all. That first session started at ten in the morning and lasted until after eight at night. I had three more sessions over the next few months before God delivered me. Before this all started, I was ornery as all get-out. But as time passed, I started to feel different. It was like my heart had a little shell around it, and we were breaking off the pieces. Still, it's an ongoing battle. We all need deliverance, every day.

What It Feels Like...to Get Shot in the Head
By Laura Elena Harring, 37, actress, star of Mulholland Drive.

I'm twelve years old at the time, and my mom and stepfather take me and my sisters to the movies in San Antonio. We're driving through the parking lot, and I'm craning my head out the window looking for the cinema. There are two cars behind us. Suddenly, one of them screeches off and someone in the other car starts shooting. We hear three loud bangs, but I only hear two because the second one hits me in the head. It feels like my head was hit with a rock from a slingshot. My stepfather yells, "They're gunshots! Get down!" and I say, "I think they hit me." I immediately put my head down into my mother's lap. She grabs my white sweater and starts pressing down. And all I can hear is blub blub, blub blub from the blood running down my face. It's very warm. Everything is going part in slow motion, part in fast motion. There's this low-pitched ringing in my head -- naaaaaaaa -- and my mother is saying Hail Marys in Spanish. My sister peeks over the seat and sees all the blood. She crinkles her face and opens her mouth like that painting The Scream. It's the scariest face I've ever seen. She lets out a shriek that gets my other sisters crying. That's when I think, I'm going to die. At the hospital, I'm on a cart and my parents are above me running with the doctors. The coating of blood is so heavy and thick on my face that I can't open one eye or my mouth. I have long, dark hair, and they shave off half of it. They take X rays but can't find the bullet. Turns out the bullet hit the side of my head, then continued on to the rearview mirror. Later my stepfather found it crushed on the floorboard. The doctor said it missed my brain by a millimeter.

What It Feels Like...to Win an Oscar
By Stephen Gaghan, 37, screenwriter of Traffic

Arthur C. Clarke announces the award via satellite from Sri Lanka. Because Sir Arthur is seated and projected onto a screen, I think of Dr. Strangelove -- he looks like Strangelove -- and he says, "The nominees for best adapted screenplay are ..." I stare at the back of Sting's head eighteen inches in front of me while my fiancee, Michael, squeezes my hand. She whispers, "Be present and remember this moment forever." I hear blood in my ears, then Sir Arthur says my name for perhaps the last time. I turn and Michael has tears in her eyes. I'm so present, I think, that now I'm even thinking in italics. I start down the aisle and hug Steven Soderbergh. I feel okay. I can do this. I turn the corner and look up and notice thousands of people in black tie are seated and staring at me, except for Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who are standing. I think, Hey, it's my friends Catherine and Michael hugging me. Instantly, I am hundreds of feet above my body, watching myself walk across the stage to shake hands with Tom Hanks. I'm saying something. I wonder what it is that I'm saying. I remember I have in my back pocket an emergency index card scribbled with the names of people to thank. I pull out the card. I stare down at it and realize it's blank. Blank? I snap back into my body. I think, You always do this: a billion people watching and you've lost your homework. I look up. A huge monitor is flashing "Time's up, time's up." Maybe it is, but this is a helluva moment, and for once I'm actually here to enjoy it.

What It Feels Like...to Have Tourette's Syndrome
By Eric Heath, 42, marionette maker.

Having Tourette's is kind of like having a lightning storm going on inside your body. All of a sudden you'll just shout out a word. Or your whole body will whip to the side violently. You never know when it's going to strike. It's a genetic thing; it was passed on to me by my family and kind of hung in the background until I was in my thirties. I was working at the Maryland Renaissance Festival selling pretzels one weekend and all of a sudden my arms were shooting up to the sky like I was a football official signaling a field goal. There was nothing I could do about it. It just happened. I didn't want to limit myself because of this. So I continued to do things I'd been doing all along. I went to sing in a big concert choir along with a symphony orchestra. There were probably 150 of us on risers. I was in the middle, and of course I hadn't told anybody I had Tourette's syndrome. Once the lights went on and the music started, all the tension welled up in me and I jerked to the left, knocking a person off the end of the riser. I then came to the conclusion that standing shoulder to shoulder in a big group of people on risers is probably not a good idea. You don't know whether what's about to come out is going to be physical or verbal. Fortunately, most of the words that have come out of my mouth have been kind of goofy and nonoffensive. All of a sudden, I might just shout out, "Monkey!" Some people with Tourette's have coprolalia, which brings out swear words and obscenities. Their brains might get fascinated with the four-letter word that they just said and they'll have to say it a few more times, making the f really long or holding on to the u. Aside from monkey, other words that have come out of my mouth have been butter, toast, and boing. Nobody usually pays attention to butter except waiters in restaurants. When the word toast kept coming out of my mouth at a friend's wedding, people who didn't know me said, "Good idea!" I've studied opera, so it's hard to go into stealth mode, especially when a huge operatic "boing!" is coming out of my mouth. There are times you get depressed and don't want to go out in public. But a lot of times people react to it wonderfully. When I shout, "Monkey!" they'll shout it back. It's as if they're saying, "Wow! I don't know why you just shouted 'Monkey!' but it made me feel good."

What It Feels Like...to Pitch a Perfect Game
By Len Barker, 47, former pitcher, Cleveland Indians.

I didn't notice anything different until I was warming up in the bullpen. The curveball -- I was a fastball pitcher, but I threw 103 pitches in the game and 65 of them were curveballs. I never really had that same curveball again. Everything just came together. It was a special night -- a little misty, foggy, raining. It was in the low 40s. A typical night in Cleveland for that time of year. After the seventh inning, I really started thinking about a perfect game. Toby Harrah and Rick Manning, they both said something. Not about the perfect game -- they said, "Come on, we're behind you." The last sixteen or seventeen guys I faced, eleven of 'em I struck out. The last inning, I felt real different. It was an overwhelming feeling. I was nervous, but at the same time I was confident. I came out, picked the ball up, and dropped it. I nearly fell on my face. I think there were seventy-nine hundred fans there, but they were all behind home plate. I just blocked everything out. I didn't hear anything until the last out. It felt like a five-hundred-pound weight was lifted off my shoulders. Then it was just exciting. Unbelievable. I couldn't go to sleep that night. I was still excited the next day.