The Day My Brain Exploded Read online

  Dad joined me as we pushed through the human traffic into the men’s room, which was situated way in the back. The men’s room was rectangular, gray, and shockingly clean, except for the standard pornoglyphic graffiti. Dad and I walked to the only two empty urinals available. They were next to each other.

  As I began relieving myself, I realized the resentment I still harbored for my father. Why would he take away the home I had made for myself? How could he be so cruel to his own son? At age twenty-five, this apartment was all that I really had. It’s odd how the most powerful feelings emerge while showering or excreting, but that is what happened as I stood pissing away.

  “Dad, why did you do it?” I asked abruptly.

  “Not now, Ashok.” Dad knew what I was starting.

  “Tell me, what satisfaction did you have removing my entire life?”

  “I’m not going to discuss this right now,” Dad murmured. “Are you mad? People can hear.”

  I masked my fury with a polite nod. “Fine, we’ll discuss it later.”

  “You had all this time, and you pick a public restroom to talk about the apartment removal? What’s wrong with you?”

  I was furious. What’s wrong with me? This man took away my home and he’s asking what’s wrong with me?

  “Fine, we’ll talk about this outside.”

  “Correct,” he responded sternly.

  Done pissing, after nearly two minutes, Dad appeared. He had a habit of admiring himself in public restroom mirrors, so his late arrival, though irritating, was expected.

  I looked at him, in his Rockport Slip-Ons, sky-blue dress shirt, and brown slacks. His face was worn, his spectacles dirty. He looked very, very old.

  “Why, Dad?” I blurted. “Why did you take away my apartment?” I could hear the urgency in my own voice.

  “It’s complicated,” he answered immediately.

  I had entered a state of near combustion. “I’m listening,” I said, with forced calmness.

  “When you had the hemorrhage, nobody knew what to think. We were told you would be okay, but the full prognosis was unclear.”

  “You didn’t think I would survive?”

  “I didn’t know what would happen to you. Neither did the doctors.”

  “But Mom had faith, she knew I wouldn’t die.”

  “How could she! None of us did! I did the only smart thing to do. I closed your place up because we didn’t know when or if you’d come back to us.”

  “I can’t believe this!” I was getting very loud. “Why couldn’t you have just stopped all electricity and phone services but still kept up the lease?”

  “It was costing a lot per month. You know that. And with your future unknown, it made no sense to keep it. I had to think of the money.”

  “It was all about money, pure and simple? You know the doctors said I would need to see photos and personal materials of my life so the amnesia wouldn’t increase!”

  “Ashok, there were many complicating factors, but naturally the financial situation was at the top of the list.”

  “But how could you not be there for Mom? Seems you were too busy cleaning up my home to be in the hospital with her.”

  “She was in a dreamland. She wasn’t thinking practically; one of us had to handle the finances.”

  “She was alone, so alone. She needed you in the mornings as she sat down by my bed, in the afternoons when she visited the chapel to pray, in the evenings while she sat alone eating in the dark cafeteria.”

  “I had a job, Ashok.”

  “But I feel now that most of your time wasn’t spent on your job, but trying to find a maid to clean my house, and to get movers to take all my stuff into your garage.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I was doing my normal job! But you have a point . . . I focused on closing up the apartment. It was a big enough job itself. It made sense to deal with it.”

  I paused for a moment, tears welling.

  “You saw everything in my apartment.”

  “Well, I had to, since we were moving you out.”

  “You saw everything.”

  “Yes, I did, and everything’s okay.”

  “How can you say that? I’m just twenty-five! Did you want your parents to see all your private stuff at that age? Or even now, do you want anyone to go through your private stuff?”

  “You’re right about that,” he admitted with a sigh.

  I was still horrified. My memories were quarantined in stacks of bland cardboard boxes. I had things to hide from my parents, like empty vodka bottles and stacks of porn. My father had gone through all of those things in clearing my apartment.

  Dad spoke bluntly. “Bottom line, Ashok—I didn’t know how or if you would make it through this.”

  Dad rubbed his eyes. “Forgive me for getting rid of that place.” He continued, “But as they say, what’s done is, well, done. We’ll find you a new place, don’t worry.”

  I didn’t want a new place. I wanted my home back.

  I didn’t forgive Dad that day. But as the weeks continued, I finally did. I came to realize that by packing up my home, he was able to escape the real-life terror of the hospital. He could concentrate on his son’s existing belongings rather than on the possibility of his son not existing at all.

  He was my dad and I loved him, no matter what. And I would never stop loving him, no matter what.

  But that day, as we sped off to Long Island, neither of us wanted to speak, so we combated the glaring silence by listening to the radio. I was surprised by how well Dad could sing along to Beyoncé.

  Mom’s Tears

  “I killed you.”

  Mom’s words awakened me.

  “What?” I asked groggily, looking up at her. I was surprised to see her. She rarely entered my bedroom, but she was now near my bed, her flannel kaftan brushing my wooden bedpost.

  I quickly located my eyeglasses on the dresser next to my bed. She appeared exhausted, her cocoa skin sickly, pale, and gaunt. Under her eyes were near-black blotches.

  I looked at the alarm clock next to me. 10 a.m. Good thing she came, I thought. At least I wouldn’t oversleep.

  But looking up at her, I immediately remembered her awful statement. I questioned her once more. “What are you talking about?”

  “I said, I killed you.”

  “Mom,” I said, laughing, “the bhaji last night was awful, but I can assure you that I’m still alive.”

  She knelt down and held me tight. I could feel her tears as she hugged me.

  “Mom, I don’t know what drug you’re on, but I promise I’m breathing. Nobody killed me. I’m still here.”

  “Ashok, I ruined your life. I’m to blame.”

  I could barely understand her as her continued weeping muffled her voice.

  “I gave you the AVM. I destroyed your brain. I destroyed your world. I destroyed your life.”

  Her crying became louder, the sobbing unstoppable.

  I squeezed her closer to me. I began crying too. “Please don’t say that, Mom. You heard the doctor, it was a congenital defect. You had no control.”

  “Exactly. It was not genetic, it was congenital. That tangle grew in my womb. Heredity or not, it grew in my womb.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I will always know that my body destroyed you. How could any mother do this to her own child! Dear God, what have I done?”

  “Mom, stop. I made it through this. It’s okay. What happened had to happen, but it’s not your fault. You never drank or did drugs or anything like that! This was just a quirk of nature.”

  “Ashok, there will be times you won’t feel that way. You will hold it against me, and you have every right to.”

  “Mom, that will never happen! I love you too much.”

  I hugged her tightly. Still weeping, she left the room, her hands over her wet face.

  Unfortunately, as always, Mom’s words would prove correct.

  In time, the blame game would explode.
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br />   Baby

  Because my death—and new birth—occurred on one fateful day, March 17, I decided to celebrate it as a second birthday every year. I even dubbed the milestone Birthin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

  By this new calendar, I had not even turned one yet. So I had a lot to learn, a young lifetime’s worth.

  It required strength, courage, patience, and a paradoxical combination of resistance and surrender, but like many survivors, I was damaged but still alive. Death had already visited, and he no longer scared me.

  Yet evidence of the full extent of the damage caused by my hemorrhage kept manifesting itself. It began with my legs—they started to hurt severely. Two orthopedic doctors reassured me that after being in bed for many months, my legs weren’t used to supporting my weight. I was ordered to take it slower, walking just a few times daily until the limbs adjusted to my weight. In addition, the left side of my body had become weaker from the hemorrhage, so I was made to lift tiny weights to strengthen myself.

  I had become one of those old crones in adult diaper commercials. But somehow, I was prepared for that. Maybe it was because I knew every episode of The Golden Girls by heart.

  The body aches were accompanied by severe headaches. The doctors said that continual headaches were normal following brain surgery, but I had no idea they would be so painful. They always made me think of just-opened potato chips: crispy. Yes, the headaches felt crispy, as if my skull’s insides were being snapped apart, ready to be bitten and chewed by sharp, hard, pointed teeth.

  Unfortunately, it also felt as if the teeth were already in my head—the potato chips were being snapped and broken right then and there. I just wanted to scream and pass out.

  I was supposed to record my headaches on a number scale from one to ten, ten being the most excruciating. It was pointless—I always had “tens.” I was advised to take aspirin. My stomach couldn’t tolerate it, so while my head throbbed, I also felt constantly nauseated.

  My sweet and gentle brain had been partially destroyed, violated, and torn. How could I be resentful while it fought back? If it had to punch and kick the membranes within my skull, so be it. It was allowed to misbehave. And I could only cry from the pain. Sometimes, two or three Motrins would provide relief and calm the tantrums of my intercranial baby. Usually, though, the inner problem child kept on abusing me.

  The daily drugs began to deplete my energy. Some mornings I couldn’t even wake up. If I did, I was so exhausted that my only activity was sitting on the sofa and watching TV. I created a name for this type of day: High Fatigue Day, or “HFD.” On an HFD, a gravely weakened Ashok emerged—like a tiny bit of earthworm, squirming, after being cut off from its larger self. Cut off, but still living.

  I used to look healthy, strong. Now, I was skeletal, broken. Cheekbones, once protected with fleshy chubbiness, were now bony protrusions jutting obscenely from each side of my face. Nausea and exhaustion had rendered my body ineffective in fighting off the pain and fatigue. On HFDs, my mind now had trouble simply adding two and two.

  Adrift

  Besides weakened legs, headaches, and HFDs, I soon discovered there were other painful consequences of the AVM bleed: a severe loss of spatial relations. Even before the hemorrhage, I would lose my sense of direction easily. Maps confused me; I was always quick to ask a passerby for help in finding my way. Yet I was still able to get around. Now, my sense of direction had vanished completely. North, south, east, and west were just words to me. When I ventured out alone, I would often get lost in neighborhoods I used to know well.

  This handicap took center stage when Juan, a friend from Chicago who was concerned about my condition, came to visit me in New Jersey. It felt great to have him in our isolated home. The first day he arrived, he took me on the bus to New York City so I could show him my old haunts. We were planning to see Washington Square Park—the campus of my old college, New York University—after I showed him the Chelsea neighborhood of my previous apartment. The first part was easy: from the Port Authority bus station at Forty-second Street, we simply took a cab to Chelsea. After ambling through the area, we only had to walk a few blocks southeast to reach the park. But I had no idea how to get there.

  “I know where we’re going,” I told Juan with feigned confidence. “Can’t wait to show you where I went to school,” I said.

  “But we’ve been walking around in circles for the last twenty minutes,” Juan protested.

  It must be a wonderful spectacle, I thought: one oblivious tourist walking with one oblivious brain patient down the streets of Manhattan. I usually had no problems asking for directions. This time I couldn’t bear to. After all, I had gone to NYU for four years, and I had worked in the area after that. I’m not that stupid, I thought. After searching for the park for thirty minutes, Juan and I finally returned to the bus station.

  The next day brought a similar experience. Juan and I went to New York City for a meal at a renowned Lower East Side dive restaurant. After lunch Juan went to stay with a relative. That meant I had to return to Port Authority and then get back to Jersey—all of it alone.

  My departure gate at the Port Authority was 435, located on the fourth floor. I reached what I thought was my gate and walked through the door, which closed swiftly behind me. There was no bus, only trash cans: I had entered the garbage area. I panicked until I located another door that allowed me reentry.

  My spatial difficulties were also evident in my trips to the movie theater back in New Jersey. I had to remember the location of the restroom in relation to the auditorium. My movie partners—usually my parents—would always help me find my way. When you leave the theater, make a right, then a left, and then another left. Then you’ll see the men’s room. Come back using the opposite directions, right, right, left. When they offered such instructions, I would nod and say thanks. But deep inside, my pride was hurt. Not because they were wrong, but because they were right: without their directions, I’d easily be lost.

  Different Sounds, Same Semen

  Tinnitus is the term for ringing in your ears and head. Temporary tinnitus can be caused by anything from waxy buildup to high blood pressure. But permanent, large-scale tinnitus is caused by severe damage to nerve endings in the ears. You always hear inner whines, high squeals, or even police sirens. And even worse, there’s no cure.

  I didn’t know about the condition at all. When I was alone, in complete silence, I heard sounds. What’s happening to me, I would ask myself, consumed with panic. The television and every appliance is off, the family’s gone out. Still, I would hear the buzzing of swarms of bees, a high-decibel stereo, and even some distant ambulance siren. The trouble was that they were all inside my head.

  One time I was sitting in the house and the noises grew particularly loud. I cried out to Dad, sitting in the next room.

  “I can’t stop the noises! Help me stop them!”

  “What noises?” he said, rushing into the room.

  “You don’t hear them at all?”

  “You should quit listening to your music so loud. It’s messing with your ears.”

  After two or three weeks of ceaseless noise, I made Dad take me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist.

  Dad and I nervously waited in the outer room. I thought about what the doctor would say. My mind strayed to the worst health scenario: perhaps another tiny hemorrhage had occurred. To distract myself from growing worries, I picked up Highlights, the kiddie magazine, and read the cartoon Goofus and Gallant. As an adult, I now found it oddly sadomasochistic. Why would Goofus put up with that abusive shit from Gallant, unless it turned him on to be a slave to his friend? And why would Gallant seem to get hard every time he hassled Goofus?

  The doctor finally ushered me into his cramped, wood-paneled office. A tall, lanky white man with surprisingly full lips and darker than black eyes, he resembled, oddly, a black female model. He was a white, transgendered Iman.

  He listened to my concerns and then directed me to what looked like a re
cording studio, where his nurse fitted me with oversized headphones. I suddenly felt like Prince, singing eccentric rhymes in his all-lavender studio in Paisley Park.

  The nurse went to a separate room and began speaking softly through my headphones. She asked me to repeat some words. She sounded like a phone-sex operator, seductively purring random words like “SSSensssational” and “Mmmissing.” Was I supposed to echo her, or get aroused?

  After the tests, which I thought I had passed easily, I returned to Dr. Keele’s room. Dad was already sitting there.

  “Here’s the reason for the noises,” Dr. Keele said. “Ashok has lost half his hearing in the left ear. Could be from the meningitis or the brain surgery. His head has suffered so many traumas, it’s impossible to say.”

  “Will he become deaf?” Dad asked.

  “Not a chance,” Keele said.

  Dad looked relieved.

  “There’s only one problem. The damage to your left ear is extensive. The hearing will never come back. The noises will stay forever. It’s called permanent tinnitus.”

  I said nothing, more than a little disturbed by the on-going discoveries of internal damage.

  Dr. Keele tried to offer encouragement by giving me coping methods to block out the noises.

  Here were his three “Tinnitus Treatment Tips”:

  1. Don’t be in quiet spaces.

  2. Converse a lot.

  3. Just try and ignore it.

  I thanked him for his help.

  Dad and I drove back to the house in total silence. That is, except for the ambulance siren still screaming in my head.

  Masturbating had made my brain explode. So for a long time after, I was afraid to play with myself. However, after two months of living in New Jersey, I decided to go for it.

  There was just a little problem: I had no idea if I liked boys or girls after the hemorrhage. This might seem ridiculous, but it was completely true, a very frustrating predicament. You see, a guy has to be attracted to something to get him aroused, and I didn’t want to be asexual. So I gave myself a test to see which gender would get me hard. I looked through my parents’ magazines for the closest thing to porn. I found two candidates: a Victoria’s Secret catalog and Men’s Health. I went to my room, took down my pants, and got to work.