N-D-S Presents "Facelessness"
In The Essay Series
By
F. William Bracy
We've seen them in the low end of town shuffling past accordion security gates and boarded up store fronts as we try not to envision ourselves walking in their shoes. Most are alone, their features often obscured inside hooded garments--heavily soiled--with only a nose, perhaps, jutting out. The few centimeters of skin not covered by scraggly hair is often blotchy, sometimes red with sores or scabs. They travel light and ask for very little, perhaps schlepping the sum total of their worldly possessions along with them. We might even have wondered where they're going before turning quickly away, finally chancing a second look only to find that they’ve disappeared into an alley or behind a trash dumpster. It doesn't seem as though we've ever seen the same person twice. But then, how would anyone know? They're the faceless.
Maw? Oh my god, what're you doin' back in the old neighborhood? I ... Maw, wait! Don't you know me? Look, I know it's you. I don't know how, but ... say, could you slow down fer a minute? That's a nice shopping cart y'got there, Maw. It don't make no noise--none a'tall.
The cart lady seems oblivious to her surroundings.
Look, I just want t'say how sorry I am, okay? It's not like I didn't try. I mean ... with the distance and all. They did say you had a nice service ... after I heard. Look, there's no doubt I should a' stayed in touch, and anyway ... I can see you're in a hurry, so take good care now. Hope we can get together sometime ...
Across town the cars are bigger and the security gates more sturdy with all the evidence pointing to a citizenry that indeed has a lot more to lose. It's also where the class wars begin to heat up ... where all the official signage comes from, having been posted by the rule makers for all the rule breakers out there--No Loitering In The Park; No Sleeping On The Beach; No Loud Noises; No Car Washing; No For Sale Signs; No Clutter; No Litter and, as though the residents would never expect a UPS delivery, No Tandem Wheeled Vehicles On Beachmont Street--our personal favorite.
We're in the midst of the city's High Pointe district and a multitude of new faces, wherein the many can be represented just as well by a common face, really--the face of the masses--and where also, in spite of appearances, any one of them could be just three paychecks away from joining their faceless brethren. Yet where we'd seen only bars on the windows in the part of town best known for its challenges, here we see gated communities, high-walled estates, sound barriers of all types and standing security forces at nearly every shopping plaza.
There was a time when high profile security would have sent a different message ... Stop! Rough neighborhood! Keep a hand on your wallet! Well times have changed. Residents of High Pointe recognize the fact that a shift has taken place and are fearful that rogue elements from just over yonder will spill into their area ... soon to begin diving into their dumpsters and hauling away all their good stuff.
Yet for the upwardly mobile there's always a need for more stuff, so for most of them it's all about the rat race ... driving the same streets to work--even habitually gravitating toward the same side of the elevator every day. Then stuck in p.m. traffic they glance across at the other drivers--if they dare--trying not to remember what it is they're running away from ... marital problems ... a troubled childhood ... quiet moments where some life lessons still click. Never look a stranger in the eye, they think. It could be misinterpreted ... thought of as gawking, and one never knows about strangers. Better they should remain faceless.
I brought your maw uptown, kid, when she had no place else t'go an' don't you never ferget it. You should be thankful I let her bring you with.. What in God's name are you ever gonna do for her, huh? I made my first million at nineteen, an' I'm tellin' ya you'll never amount to a hill o' beans, you little snot-nose. Give it up, why don'tcha? Go jump off a bridge or somethin'.
The thirteen year old youth offers nothing beyond an icy stare, as if to say--Screw you, you fat pig. Maybe when I get older I'll throw you off a bridge. I'm just as good as you-- prob'ly better. At least I don't spend my time getting drunk and slapping women around.
Hey, don't gimme that look ... like you're gawkin' at me! I know what you're thinkin'. an' believe me, buster, it ain't never gonna happen.
Blood Martini
So is blood really thicker than water? That depends. The game changer here is often the discovery that two ounces of fresh squeezed beet juice and two ounces of orange juice in an ounce of vodka with a splash of Triple Sec--the heartwarming Blood Martini, stirred, not shaken thank you--makes the two almost indistinguishable.
And yet the fact remains that most of us over a certain age can't recall having met anyone who had come from a so-called "broken home." Instead they were known to us only by reputation--usually as mischief makers and ne'er-do-wells. As children we were told to shun them. Unbeknownst to us, of course, many of those children were being used as wedge mechanisms ... driven between partners in their failed marriages and forced in the end to bear the brunt of parental resentment before, during and after numerous battles over child custody and other messy divorce settlement issues.
It is also well documented that on a psychological level many of the children involved lived out their most impressionable years feeling rejected, unloved and indeed somehow responsible for the pain and suffering they saw all around them. As adults they will inherit a five-times-greater risk of turning to mood altering substances in order to fill a certain hollowness at the center of their being. And from there it's often just a short trip to the mirror where it's likely that they will experience their first personal glimpse of facelessness.
'Bout time you got home. There's that whole list o' things you ain't done. An' don't go eating none o' that pie, neither. I baked it special for yer paw.
He ain't my paw.
Listen, smart ass, you need t' get four things off'a that list b' fore he gets home, y'hear? 'Cause if'n you don't you'll sure know he's your paw once he stands up an' takes off his belt.
Aw, come off it, Maw. That was then. I'm sixteen now--I ain't a kid no more. Besides, it’s you that needs t’worry. He's gonna kill you one o'these days, can't you see that? Where's he at right now ... gettin' all liquored up b'fore makin' the rounds on his night job?
You watch yer mouth, young man. Think you’re so much better 'n everybody else? I know all about yer little stashes, an' so does he. You're just about that close t' landing on yer ear, sonny boy.
Every generation sees the rise of individuals who engage in do-or-die efforts to become millionaires by age 30, and the Boomers were no exception. But by 1970 the American landscape had changed drastically. Many of lesser means--in other words, those who could be counted upon to lose in a rigged drawing--saw their dreams either being put on hold or eliminated entirely ... all 58,193 of them. There was a war on--already it its twelfth year--known officially as the Second Indochina War ... Vietnam.
They were also among the first generation to be peer parented--some would say self parented--through "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll." Baby Boomers, variously known as Generation Me, suddenly found themselves confronted with a powerful dilemma: spend the rest of their lives in Canada, or perhaps never reach the age of 30 ... lives left hanging in the balance on a roll of the dice and a spin of the wheel. Many who shipped out with the troops took with them the weight of excess baggage ... fighting not only on the battlefield but also the war that raged within.
It's Charlie, I tell ya! Charlie's down there! No! No, don't go! Come back! Fer God's sake!
Listen, it's not Charlie. Got that? The area's been swept clean. You're okay--I'm okay. We're fine. Listen to me ... get a-hold o' yerself, will ya?
No, no, no, you don't understand! He's down there! I saw! I saw with my own eyes! Raike! Raike! Come back! Don't leave me!
Silence--then the sound of a short burst from an AK-47. The 19-year old soldier backtracked ... got outta there. He never found out what happened to Raike, and he never saw his buddy again.
In the jungles of hell we were the round eyes in the ancestral homeland of a proud people ... yet another instance of humans eating their young by sending them to their deaths over the bad behavior of old men. On top of that, the enemy carried Russian-made weapons ... weapons superior to those brought over by the most powerful nation on Earth and a mistake we managed to avoid in two later wars. But only when the Chinese entered the shooting war against us did it occur to the Americans that they had crossed a bridge too far.
And yet they came home disgraced, many of them ... the first Americans to lose in an armed conflict. A few received treatment for their mental and psychological wounds. Most did not and simultaneously ushered in an era never before seen in this country--the era of GI suicide. In all previous wars GI veterans had been immortalized on film, running down gangplanks into the arms of overjoyed family members. There had been ticker tape parades down 5th Avenue, yet at the conclusion of this war a disproportionate number of returnees had gotten hit with yet another round of facelessness. Call it faceless twice.
Of the 2.6 million service men and women who did in fact make war (not love) in Vietnam, one in every four returnees is today in one way or another a ward of the state--faceless--either through incarceration, institutionalization or homelessness. Fifty-eight thousand plus died, of course, during the conflict, while some fifteen hundred others are still listed as MIA, missing in action at various points throughout the entirety of the Vietnam Era. Then of the thirty-two thousand individuals who commit suicide each year in the U.S., as many as twenty percent are thought to be veterans--more than sixty-four thousand in just the past ten years.
And that's not all. Based on the population at large where over the same ten-year period nearly two hundred thousand died of drug overdose, one-in-four--another fifty thousand--may have been wartime veterans. Added together, the losses from suicide and addiction alone could be double the number killed in action during the sixteen-year span of Vietnam, not to mention another quarter-million are thought to be roaming the streets of cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago where confrontations with police are regular occurrences.
We're talking about a condition a little like psoriasis or eczema ... incurable but one we're forced to live with. It's the one we know as the human condition. Because when the final chapter in the biography of humanity is written an uncertain number of millennia from now, the compendium will almost surely conclude that while Man showed a degree of promise, his great failing derived from the fact that he was an extremely slow learner.
There's not a lot we can do. You're going to need medication, probably for the rest of your life and unfortunately it won't come cheaply. You’re the victim of a condition once called shell shock--clearly present after all the great wars and yet just beginning to be understood. You probably know by now that there is a certain stigma associated with it, but hopefully, with the help of your family ...
I don't have family.
Oh come, come. That can't be right. Everyone has ...
I told you I don't have family! What's the matter ... you deaf or something?
Now, now, now. Please retake your seat. We can discuss this calmly, I think. No need to get excited.
The psychiatrist presses a button under his desk and within seconds two men burst through the door.
What are you doing? Let go of me! Get your hands off! I'm a trained killer, understand? I'm not afraid to kill again!
With art as the imitator of life we may wish to pause and reflect for a moment, since it is through art that we regain our lost sense of humanity ... that rather elusive sense of connectedness both to our past and to one another. In a timeless literary work of fiction we come across this one individual--an axe murderer--who during a siege of drunkenness targets a woman as his victim, then a second as a potential witness … all having been conceived within the mind of a man who believes that he has risen above morality. It's a ground breaking psychological thriller of the first order and considerably ahead of its time as the author threads in themes of nihilism and utilitarianism ... very avant garde in the mid Nineteenth Century, only to be reincarnated in the Twentieth as rational egoism, objectivism and ultimately, the ubiquitous Ayn Rand.
Critics lament the emphasis on the crime and apparent de-emphasis on punishment in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, yet this is precisely the illusion that the author intended. After committing his brutal murders the protagonist Raskolnikov--derived from the Russian word raskolnik and translated in modern psychiatric terms, as "schizo," presciently enough--begins to suffer from sudden fainting spells, ostensibly due to deep-seated, unconscious doubts over whether he has been making the right choices as of late. Finally--in the end--it is the unbearable torture of unrelenting self doubt that does him in. Point made.
In the real world, however, things are not so easily dismissed. What many fail to realize is that there is a totally bipolar relationship between society's guilt-ridden attitude toward the need for treating psychological disturbance and its unabashed desire to turn the whole perceived problem over to the department of corrections where in this day and age criminals–even suspected murderers--are notified of their rights. The emotionally troubled, the traumatized and cognitively impaired, however are not--either before or during treatment--advised of the fact that "anything [they] say can and will be used against [them] in a court of law," thereby setting some of our proudest and bravest on the road to their third tour of duty in the facelessness conflict.
I find that you are a danger to both yourself and to others, and I therefore commit you to Oak Meadow Hospital for the Criminally Insane where you shall remain under observation for a period of not less than two years.
And speaking of the homeland's so-called correctional infrastructure--one of the great misnomers of all time--3,225 out of every 100,000 Americans are under the direct control of the criminal justice system in the United States with 750 per that same figure being held behind bars. After Russia with 628 per 100,000, the next highest competitor for the title of Most Imprisoned is The World with 166. The estimates are that when all is averaged out, the cost to the U.S. taxpayer for holding these numbers of people is at least 0.2 trillion dollars per year. However, considering America’s obsession with fiscal bottom lines and typical neglect of long range accounting, the number should be much higher--a minimum fivefold increase when lost productivity and other indirect economic effects are included.
Add to this the fact that 4,000 per each 100,000 Americans are now confined to some type of permanent in-patient health, recovery or long-term care facility in this country with over half of those requiring psychiatric attention. Another 250,000 per month are seen on a revolving door basis in psychiatric hospitals throughout our mental disorder treatment system, such as it is ... millions of faces--not counting a greatly under-served prison population--forced to exist behind walls that have no mirrors ... millions of lives that have nothing to reflect upon besides hopelessness.
Hey, man, I heard you could get all the drugs you wanted over there in 'Nam. Is that really true? Like, I mean, how could that be? You were fightin' in the war, wer'n'cha?
Damn right I was, but hey, a few jolts o' nose candy an' ain't nobody gonna touch ya--not even.
God damn! How many gooks did'ja kill? Did it give ya a rush too? Man, I can jus' see it ... runnin' like hell through the underbrush ... pushin' them small trees aside with that big weapon ... chasin' down Charlie. Bet'cha cut 'im down, too--square in the back. Man, it must'a been somethin' t'see.
It wer'n't so bad. I survived. I can take care of myself. I know the street, man. The street's my home--always was, an' always will be. The more things change, the more they remain the same, y'know what I'm sayin'?
Wow, you're a hero, man. Jus' look at you. I'd give anything t'have done what you done.
Endowment efforts are underway, and have been for some time, to search for clues, reach for causes, and to otherwise explain away the various forms of facelessness in America, particularly among those who have sacrificed the most--our young American war heroes. And yet it shouldn't take charitable foundations and the expenditure of millions to identify the root causes of the problem. The problem is a systemic one. Look to The Four Horsemen of American Politics, if you dare ... neo-conservatism, libertarianism, the aforementioned rational egoism and Randerian objectivism--all based on a brand of political narcissism that borders on misanthropy. Here on display is the kind of born-in-America platinum card attitude that says, depending on your skin color, your ethnic/regional background or, God forbid, your sexual orientation, We're gonna get ours, but you? ... well frankly, my dear, we're not so sure about you. Why don't you go out and look for work, you lazy-assed slob?
It pains us to point out that the lazy-assed reason might be because the poor slob has never known anything but war of one type or another almost since birth, and to put a slightly finer point on it, some of these slobs did in fact go to war thinking they were protecting you, just in case you happen to be among the skeptics. As for the "lesser types," those who haven't served militarily, then perhaps if America began seriously educating its young people ... if in grades K - 12 the school day, including lunch, were longer than 5-1/2 hours ... and perhaps if children were being raised by their parents and not by each other ... then what? Well, perhaps we wouldn't be having this conversation. Because, you see, in this country, the richest nation on Earth, our lower middle class parents are too busy just trying to survive ... trying to provide the bare essentials for their kids as many are forced to rush a child to the ER with each asthma attack. High Pointe residents don't want to pay a nickel for any of this and yet they are paying--big time--with a focus that never leaves their short-sighted, day-to-day bottom lines.
Police shot and killed a homeless man today who, according to reports, had been released from a mental facility just 6 months ago. It happened as the man, a Vietnam War veteran whose name has not been released, cowered behind a trash dumpster and called out the officer's name, that being Charles Rasmussen III assigned to the 2nd district. Circumstances surrounding the confrontation between the two men are still unclear, but it's reported that the shooting victim called out the name "Charlie" several times in a threatening manner. The officer opened fire fatally wounding the man with a bullet to the head. The unarmed man had been prescribed medication for his condition, but apparently had not been taking it. Police are investigating.
We have personally witnessed, in Ventura, California--on Alessandro Drive, to be specific--police with their night sticks combing the thick underbrush with full-force blows, having no idea what, or who, might lie below. Not just on one occasion--or two. Not three times, but regularly and routinely. Moreover, officers we've observed seem totally detached from the process, proceeding with bone-crushing ferocity only to see what can be yielded up--be it man, dog, woman or child. There might be many ways to characterize this behavior, but it certainly would not qualify as, "good will toward men." Can one imagine that a cop knows or even cares that he is using a night stick on a homeless Vietnam or Iraq War veteran? We think not. "Just doin' my job," is what one is most likely to hear. Once Uncle Sam comes to grips with the fact that he has a very sick society on his hands, only then will there be an answer.
Well ... at least now I can go home. Yeah, y'know what? It would be a great time for this little ol' love child t'go back and celebrate the big three-O with the old gang ... check out the old neighborhood ... why not? After this much time away, there's no tellin' who I might run into.
Copyright © F. William Bracy 2009 – 2011
All Rights Reserved