After turning on the television one sleepless early
summer night, I realized that many of the sounds
I make, as a result of having Tourette Syndrome,
are insane from-the-gut grunts and hollers, like
the sounds Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth character
makes in Blue Velvet. It’s not endearing. Like
Frank Booth himself, it’s strange, disturbing,
what Tourette’s on its casual days persuades me,
and on its ruthless business days requires me to do:
the sudden motions that look like dance moves
from a ballet about senseless violence, the occasional
unprompted obscene advice I give to strangers,
my tendency (a symptom that often goes along
with Tourette’s like a best friend for life) to obsess.
Obsess on the remote possibility that the most ghastly
accident, heretofore asymptomatic sociopathic killer,
or natural disaster may be steps, moments,
or a simple opening of the bathroom door
at a fast food restaurant away. Luckily, I don’t
scream random obscenities on the street,
another symptom that occurs, but not that often,
though I will at times say or do what’s mildly
inappropriate. Like stare at a beautiful woman’s
nose hairs, a stare that’s interpreted by the woman
as an act of chauvinistic aggression,
an indication that I might be about to say
the sort of thing Frank Booth says in the movie, like
What’s your name, neighbor? or Baby wants to fuck,
ha ha ha. Though I am actually a rather kind and
considerate man who doesn’t like to complain, I often
do. Still, as far as diseases go, Tourette’s is both
a good and bad thing to have, with the bad being
the things I’ve just mentioned and the good being
that Tourette’s is never going to kill me. But
because of that, people tend not to take it seriously,
because if a disease doesn’t kill, it must be
a weak, ineffectual disease that a person
of greater inner resources would shrug off
or swat away like a gnat. Or it’s something akin
to a fifty dollar ticket for speeding, whereas
a real disease would be a death sentence so
shouldn’t I stop all this fucking complaining,
fucker? I am not a violent, sadistic, brute
like Frank Booth, just a person who regularly
makes ridiculous noises and moves in ridiculous
ways. Someone who could never build a house—
I’d just end up screaming at the nails, the two
by fours, and every fucking thing that isn’t
fucking going right in building that fucking house.
Someone who on occasion will call a horrible person
a horrible name, though horrible people aren’t
the only people I call horrible names—whether
a person is good or bad, I have a terrible name
for that person, and an image, like from a funhouse
mirror that indicates my essential lack of respect.
But in dreams I walk the way other people walk,
straight and steadily, my arms swinging without effort
by my side, talking to strangers about sports or
about the weather or about the house I’m building
with my own hands. And I see feathered wings,
a calming sea green light, a bright red stripe painted
upon the side of an old wooden boat—but not all
the time. To me, a mind that always thinks
of proper actions and is prepared to think
only peaceful thoughts is a mind that will one day
explode. When I contort my face, or suddenly
shrug my right shoulder, I am neither winking
self-consciously, nor nudging someone
in an attempt to help them understand
a clown’s joke. And through tense afternoons
in open spaces, long waits in line at the store,
I cannot put my disease in you, and I am
bloated then thin through all this, my hands
like bricks pounding my sides until late, because
the clown is candy-colored, and it is night.
-Jose Padua
Poetry