A Man Who Has Clinical Tourette's and Must Still Ride the Subway
A middle-aged man who has just spit his orangina soda onto another man next to him without apology. Next to him a young couple is talking and he is punctuating their conversation with low growls and barking sounds.
His hands are trembling.
A man who is going to spend his whole life getting beaten up for spitting orangina, being ridiculed for barking. A man who spends his entire life suppressing the most basic urges in the world, the urges to punctuate silence, cut neckties, to trip the elderly, to fart in elevators. To throw snowballs at police. To laugh and to cry. Spending his entire life suppressing these and all the other urges.
And in this, it's clear that Tourette's is a difference of threshold, not initiative. Quantity not quality. Different from everyone else only because of the effort required, in the effort to suppress the same goddamn thoughts floating through every head in the subway.
His hands are trembling.
A man who is going to spend his whole life getting beaten up for spitting orangina, being ridiculed for barking. A man who spends his entire life suppressing the most basic urges in the world, the urges to punctuate silence, cut neckties, to trip the elderly, to fart in elevators. To throw snowballs at police. To laugh and to cry. Spending his entire life suppressing these and all the other urges.
And in this, it's clear that Tourette's is a difference of threshold, not initiative. Quantity not quality. Different from everyone else only because of the effort required, in the effort to suppress the same goddamn thoughts floating through every head in the subway.
posted by Unknown at 9:14 PM
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