Batshit Craziness

This morning's reports from Myanmar are very disturbing.
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My mother enjoyed beating me with hangers but her real expertise was psychological torture. At random intervals she would grab my arm so hard she practically pulled it out of its socket and march me down to Broadway, tell me to wait.

"I've had it with you," she would say. "I'm not doing this any more. Someone will come."

"Who?" I'd ask.

"Your fucking creep of a father. Or maybe the foster care people. Whoever picks up their phone first. The point is you'll be someone else's problem."

I was six, seven, eight. I never knew exactly what it was I'd done that was so bad. Just that I was bad, a rotten kid, a blight.

She'd come back eventually, announce, "I've decided to give you a second chance."

I was too young not to be grateful.

My mother was the first batshit crazy person I'd ever met. And she had absolute power over me, there was no one else.

I remember a certain gleeful expression on her face when she was doing these things. Her eyes would pop slightly, she'd have this merry smile. Not so over the top as Jack Nicholson cackling, "Here's Johnny!" in The Shining, but sure – that's the basic template. Much of the time she was nice and even as a young child I understood the cards were stacked against her – every other kid I knew had a father. So I came to think of that expression as a virus, a disease, and when I became old enough to start recognizing it on other people's faces, it frightened the shit out of me. It's not just her, I thought. Nothing's safe.

I imagine that same grin on Lindy English's face, on the faces of anonymous Burmese soldiers beating monks to death in remote prison holds.

All this by way of explaining why it's always so difficult for me to shrug batshit crazy people off.

I'm always afraid the virus is going to jump fence.

I'm always afraid it's going to infect me.
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Had The Dream last night. In this variant I was a teenage boy dressed in a white shirt, a tie and a baggy sports coat two sizes too large for me – I remember the sleeves kept getting in the way when I reached for my wine glass.

The dinner conversation was about Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major. The soloist's violin had been slightly out of tune. Or so my father claimed. He was a very dignified looking gentleman in a waistcoat with a long gold watch chain and my mother had very dark hair in a chignon and a long evening gown with flowers and there were sisters as well. The glassware we were using was thick and multi-faceted. I was bored with the conversation, I practiced throwing surreptitious rainbows.

I didn't know it was a dream, but I had some sense of déjà vu, of events repeating themselves. Above the civilized murmur of the dinner conversation, I as waiting to hear other sounds.

And then they came.

Thumps on the door. Coarse voices.

"Open up!"

Soldiers.

"Come with us."

My mother and father exchange frightened glances. One of my sisters begins to cry.

"Where are you taking us?" I ask.

The soldiers laugh. One of them says, "Oh, it's a great place. You'll be with all your friends."

"I'm not going," I say.

"Oh, yes you are," says the soldier, raising his rifle and pointing it at me.

"No. I'm not," I say and grinning, the soldier works the trigger. It's too heavy for him. There's a momentary fumble. "Fuck!" he screams.

And then I hear the blast.

And wake up.

First time I've had The Dream in – what? four years? As always I feel depleted and slightly nauseated the following morning. As I say, the first time I can ever remember feeling any sense of foreshadowing. The only other new details were the rainbows and the soldier's fumbling before he kills me.