The Stardust Lounge_ Stories From a Boy's Adolescence - Deborah Digges [19]
Stephen's problem is different in kind, though the statistics are a clue for me. He has never been abused. On the contrary, much loved, perhaps even overly deferred to. He seems to suffer from detachment disorder; i.e. the world is dying away from him, deanimating, but he still feels alive to it. He is mad at it because it won't play anymore, or offers to him the same old games, games he has outgrown and tired of. Still, what else is there? He is mad at himself for still wanting to play
From my reading I remember that one way in which professionals report some success in treating children with attachment disorder is by supervising their care and training of animals. Children are put into direct and intense contact with one particular dog, or a particular horse. They are solely responsible for taking care of the animal's needs. They feed and water, walk and groom their animal, keep daily journals, discuss behaviors, progress.
I set up an appointment with the realtor for next Sunday regarding a particular house that caught my eye in my travels, hang up, and lie back in bed. Stephen once had such affection for his hamster Fergie. How he loved and fussed over the little animal. And then when Fergie died, Stephen was indifferent toward the replacement, poor little what's-his-name.
Stephen was afraid to love the second hamster because, as he had learned—just at the onset of adolescence, when the world had stopped playing, when the world had abandoned him who still wanted and needed to play—that with love comes loss, and with loss comes grief. Grief hurts. Some people give up to it, some fight it. Grief makes Stephen want to hurt back.
“It wasn't a real gun,” he'd said.
“But she thought it was,” I'd offered.
“Well, she's stupid then,” was his reply.
Stephen's sadness belongs to him, and the way out of it. Much as all of us have tried, we cannot take it away. His sadness has stranded him. He is alone and can't cross over. But what if Stephen could feel empathy for something again? Maybe through empathy, he might find his way. Then and only then would his need subside, his need to taunt the world with a gun.
Portrait Essay
Eighth Grade English
(Columbia, MO)
My brother moves quickly, with purpose. He always seems to have a piece of useful knowledge for those who will listen. Strands of his long brown hair often fly with his words as he explains something. Peering over the tortoiseshellframes of his circular glasses at you, he checks to see how attentive you are to his words.
I see no physical resemblance to myself when I look into his face, but I know that my brother's eyes see things in a similar perspective to my own. He needs to document moments—/ through my camera and he through his writing and painting.
Before he went to college, he used to paint in his room, all night sometimes, images flying from his fingertips. By about 3:00 A.M. the paint would be thick in his hair, and whispers of color smudged his cheeks and neck. He looked like an ancient medicine man. The brush was his wand and remedy.
He would often wear suits to school, in a ragged style that was all his own—like they had been draped over him at the last minute before some important business meeting. Dabs of paint brightened the black pin-striped pants and ruined the businessman look. But that's exactly what he liked about it.
If he wasn't painting he'd be reading things like Karl Marx, James Joyce, or John Cheever, or looking at books about painting by David Hockney and Edward Hopper. On these days I learned the most.
When I came in from skating, he would invite me into his oil- and turpentine-scented room, the odor stinging my nostrils, caking a taste in my mouth. He would explain whatever it was that was registering in his brain at that time in a way that I was able to understand fully, simply because