Аманда Палмер - The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Iremember seeing Yana again, at the Kickstarter house party in Melbourne. It had been over a week since our nudist park escapade, and she looked a little ragged. I’d seen her in the front row of my official theater concert the night before, her chest pressed against the lip of the stage, getting smooshed by a few hundred people behind her. The hostess of the house party was a drummer, and her grunge band was playing in the backyard while everybody ate picnic food and nursed hangovers from the show the night before. I bumped into Yana outside the bathroom. She’d flown all the way from Perth to come to the Melbourne concert and house party. She looked sad.

Yana! How are you doing? I asked.

It’s been a hard week. Symptoms of all sorts , she answered, in a voice that seemed like it didn’t want to elicit any pity.

Is it just physical? I asked. Body stuff? Or is there other stuff going on?

I’m fine , she said, shrugging. It’s been a brutal week, with all the travel. Just dealing with all sorts of shit .

I hugged her, then rejoined the party, talking to the guests, watching as people took turns sharing songs they’d written on guitars and ukuleles. My band came by with the tour van and flocked to the potluck food. I was about to play for the whole crowd in the garden and ducked back into the house to put on some makeup.

I made my way into the hostess’s bedroom, where I’d left my suitcase, and sat down in front of a cracked mirror. As I tossed my ukulele onto the bed, I saw a pile of clothes in the center of the room that seemed to be moving. I looked closer. The pile of clothes was Yana. She was lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket.

Damn, girl. You doing all right down there? I asked. Don’t you want to lie on the bed instead of the floor?

No… I’m good , she said.

Really? I asked.

Yeah. Just need to rest .

I put my hand on her cheek and looked down at her. I knew those eyebrows so well. I still wished I hadn’t fucked them up so much in the painting.

Feel better, okay? I whispered. She shut her eyes and I pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Then I went back to the party.

I got to Berlin a few days ahead of the Kickstarter art party, and started noticing the same girl and guy everywhere I went in the city. They struck me as nice enough, albeit a little overenthusiastic, the first few times I ran into them. Which I did, seemingly coincidentally, in every spot where I happened to be eating or hanging out in Prenzlauer Berg, even though I was eating in pretty random neighborhoods and staying with different friends with no mention to Twitter of my specific whereabouts. Every time I ran into them, we’d say hello, and take another picture together. By the fourth time, I’d figured out that somehow they were following me, maybe even waiting for me at a distance to see where I was headed in a taxi. It was creepy. There was nothing threatening about this couple—they were sweet—but it seemed to me like they’d crossed a line.

The Berlin art party was held in a bunker-like pop-up gallery called Platoon, and the night had been electrifying from the start. The commissioned album art fit perfectly on the vast cement walls; the gallery staff were all thrilled and offered to kick in a bunch of free beer; there were some spontaneous last-minute guest performers, including a ragtag marching band I knew from the States called Extra Action, who happened to be playing a show a half a block away. I’d seen on Twitter that they were in town and invited them to come busk in the parking lot, and they made a perfectly ecstatic racket with their brass horns, banging on their beaten-up instruments, shouting into their megaphones. We passed the hat for them and everybody threw in a few euros.

The gallery fired up a barbecue. My German is still pretty fluent, and I danced between speaking German and English, running around in my kimono with my glass of wine, bringing requests to the DJ who was set up on a few milk crates, eating a vegan sausage as the sun set. Thrilled.

The band and I took our places in the middle of the gallery to play our acoustic set and a local string quartet accompanied us. At the end of the set, I took off my stage dress and invited the crowd to decorate me with marker. I wound up using a beautiful photograph of that moment for my TED talk, accompanied with a suggestion: that if you ever wanted to experience the visceral feeling of trusting strangers, I recommend this exercise—especially if the strangers in question were drunken Germans. The night, the venue, the bands, the fans—everything felt perfect in that moment.

A tipsy girl squeezed right up to me, saying something incomprehensible, painted a star on my nose and staggered away. People started markering one another’s faces and arms. One overbearing American was gently escorted away by the crowd because he was getting a little too racy with his marker. I laughed. It was like the street all over again: the crowd was taking care of me, an army of love police. Once I was thoroughly drawn on, which only took about two minutes, I volunteered to do something I hadn’t been planning on, but was happy to do given the mood: take pictures with people.

But only for like one minute, you motherfuckers . I laughed above the din, as someone handed me another wheat beer. I’M NAKED!

The couple who had been stalking me around town was in attendance at the art party, and as a photographer friend jovially agreed to grab people’s cameras to take photos, they stepped up. They flanked either side of my naked body, and while we posed for the photo, the girl slid her hand behind me and thrust her fingers between my legs.

It was a sudden, startling violation. Caught up in the crazed moment of the photo frenzy and the blaring music and the laughter, I shifted my body, whacked her hand away, and grabbed the next person who’d been waiting.

I was so irritated. But, I told myself, I was fine.

Later that night, I didn’t feel fine. I felt very shaken up. I went to my bus-bunk and texted Neil.

I had a nasty run-in with a pervy fan tonight, post-markering. I think I need my husband for a second.

I lay there with the phone on my chest. Neil texted back.

Hello, brave wife. I’m sorry. Do you need to talk?

Yeah, actually I think I do.

Only when I called him did I let myself collapse a little. Talking to him made me feel better.

Shit’s going to happen , I said. Right? And it’s not like I haven’t done a million pieces of naked physical performance art and had lots of sex with lots of people. But man… what a skeezy thing to do. She ruined the perfect magical everything. Or… maybe she was an important part of it. Maybe I should actually be grateful .

I’m not sure I follow you, darling , Neil said, in a British way that suggests that he’s listening but is sometimes baffled by me.

I mean… she’s the extreme exception to the rule, right? I’ve been trusting people for years, and it’s all come to this moment, where I lay myself literally bare and then she sticks her hand in my vadge and breaks my heart. But maybe she has to, right? To drive the cosmic point home .

And what point would that be?

I trustedthem, Neil , I said, feeling a lump growing in my throat. I guess the point is, there is no trust without risk. If it were EASY… I mean, if it was all a guaranteed walk in the park, if there wasn’t a real risk that someone would cross the line… then it wouldn’t be realtrust. Now I know it’s real. She proved how much I couldtrust everybody else. Her stupid drunk move just reminds me how safe I am. Like, there’s a set of statistics I just need to accept and there’s a definite one percent probability that when you trust people like that, someone will fuck with you. Is that crazy? Am I stupid? I feel stupid .