I've often wondered why I'm so attracted to the viler side of life; why I feel as much at home in an alley as I do in my own apartment; why I find a certain peace and comfort in the solitude of destitute places, abandoned, forgotten places; why, in some perverse way, I find the company of felons, drunks and the mentally ill more reassuring and validating than that of my own peer group.
I suppose the psychology behind it is no big secret: my father was shot and killed by his youngest brother in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona when I was a child, and altlhough the charges were subsequently dropped to accidental manslaughter, I've always felt robbed; that something critically important to my upbringing had been violently ripped away from me, irretrievably lost. Which of course it had been, and was. I wasn't allowed to attend the funeral, as my mother felt I was too young for such things (I was four years old at the time).
They were married soon after the trial and his release from jail. On the one occasion that I asked my mother about my father's death and her subsequent marriage to his brother, she told me that his mental anguish was so great (at the trial, the D. A. actually took the blood-soaked clothes my father had been wearing the day he died and stood them up in the courtroom); that every time she visited him in jail he couldn't stop crying; that she married him out of pity. Shortly after they were married, my mother became pregnant (I have one brother and two sisters who are also my cousins).
It was at this time, or around this time, and for no apparent reason, that I suddenly began losing consciousness every five minutes, and had to be rushed to the hosptital. My head was pumped full of dye, x-rays taken, and a lesion discovered above my right ear. There was a 50/50 probability that I would lose my eyesight or my ability to hear as a result of any cutting in the area near the lesion, but it was my only option; anti-convulsants weren't working, so I was prepped for surgery.
Inexplicably, the seizures stopped before I went into the operating room. The neuro-surgeon diagnosed me as epileptic, prescribed a barbituate known as phenobarbital (which I very much liked and was soon asking for more than I was supposed to have) and then released me from the hospital. The lesion and why it had developed was never medically explained. As one neurologist put it, dictating into his dictaphone, "subject will have epilepsy for the rest of his life", a statement I deeply resented, and I told him so (I was in my early 20's at the time) but which has, so far, proven to be true. I will be 53 in October.
These were the profoundly life-altering experiences of my childhood, my defining moments.
I suppose the psychology behind it is no big secret: my father was shot and killed by his youngest brother in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona when I was a child, and altlhough the charges were subsequently dropped to accidental manslaughter, I've always felt robbed; that something critically important to my upbringing had been violently ripped away from me, irretrievably lost. Which of course it had been, and was. I wasn't allowed to attend the funeral, as my mother felt I was too young for such things (I was four years old at the time).
They were married soon after the trial and his release from jail. On the one occasion that I asked my mother about my father's death and her subsequent marriage to his brother, she told me that his mental anguish was so great (at the trial, the D. A. actually took the blood-soaked clothes my father had been wearing the day he died and stood them up in the courtroom); that every time she visited him in jail he couldn't stop crying; that she married him out of pity. Shortly after they were married, my mother became pregnant (I have one brother and two sisters who are also my cousins).
It was at this time, or around this time, and for no apparent reason, that I suddenly began losing consciousness every five minutes, and had to be rushed to the hosptital. My head was pumped full of dye, x-rays taken, and a lesion discovered above my right ear. There was a 50/50 probability that I would lose my eyesight or my ability to hear as a result of any cutting in the area near the lesion, but it was my only option; anti-convulsants weren't working, so I was prepped for surgery.
Inexplicably, the seizures stopped before I went into the operating room. The neuro-surgeon diagnosed me as epileptic, prescribed a barbituate known as phenobarbital (which I very much liked and was soon asking for more than I was supposed to have) and then released me from the hospital. The lesion and why it had developed was never medically explained. As one neurologist put it, dictating into his dictaphone, "subject will have epilepsy for the rest of his life", a statement I deeply resented, and I told him so (I was in my early 20's at the time) but which has, so far, proven to be true. I will be 53 in October.
These were the profoundly life-altering experiences of my childhood, my defining moments.
posted by Steve at
2:28 PM
