The Desire and Consequences for being Called On

Sister Catherine repeated her question to the class. She scanned the classroom with indigo eyes. "Anyone?" she said. I groaned, my head propped against my raised arm.

"Does anyone know the answer? Brett?"

"Robert Louis Stevenson?"

"No, Brett. Good try. Anyone else?"

"Charles Dickens!"

"Raise your hand please, John, no, not Dickens. Anyone else? Anyone?"

She frowned at me then sighed. "Yes, mister Richter?"

"Edgar Allan Poe's-"

"No, Mr. Richter, Herman Melville's Moby Dick is the story that is similar to our Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner poem the librarian read to us on Thurs-"

"Edgar Allan Poe's, the Man in the Maelstr?m, Sister Cathrine. Where the two brothers are caught in a giant whirlpool and everybody dies except the one brother who stays calm and notices a barrel then holds onto it and is rescued by fishermen but it was so terrifying to him that his hair turns white and he becomes an old man, like the old man in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner who also has to tell his story to everybody again and again and-"

"The story is called, A Descent into the Maelstr?m, mister Richter, not the Man in the Maelstr?m and that was not one of the stories we read. Now, who can tell me the name of Captain Ahab's boat? Anyone? "

I raised my hand.

"Anyone else please...?"

Decades later, sitting in the front row of a University lecture hall, the scene from elementary school repeated itself, much to the annoyance of my classmates, except the professors were more tactful and my embarrassment much more acute.

I'm autistic, and unfortunately that is just the way I process information. I have to hear myself say things out loud for them to really stick, even better if I am walking or pacing around when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, a miraculous fountain of information, an endless stream of related and interconnected data points flow through me like a river, stretching backwards and forwards in time, in multiple languages: films, books, quotations, people, places, dates, unfolding, elaborating, adding context to whatever it is that I have been asked to examine.

Learning has been at the same time, a wonderful and horrible experience for me.

The wonderful part is the rapture of discovery that almost takes your breath away, as lines emerge, connecting dots in a galaxy of a billion points of light and the excitement of wanting to share that epiphany, the eureka moment, with the entire world. The terrible part is the reception, or absolute lack of, either due to my socially inappropriate delivery at times, or for one reason or another, at least in academic circles, the lack of anyone wanting to hear such information from me- a very loud, 6ft 4" 260lb. Black Marine Jarhead.

From elementary school, (Community College being the one exception) my undergraduate studies, the MFA, and throughout earning my Ph.D. this has been my learning experience in academia.

In the objective "real world" beyond the ivory, however, my experience proved quite the opposite. I have motivated, trained, and led countless groups of people to uncover and exploit alternative ways to accomplished missions that have been deemed impossible, time and time again. Perhaps that is what drove me away from school as a teenager and into the arms of the Marine Corps, where our mantra is to improvise, adapt, and overcome "the enemy," in creative ways. Years later in Mexico, I was greatly rewarded and severely punished for making those same connections between people, places, and things by individuals, who like the Marie Corps, were highly invested in breaking those same connections: destroying targets, killing enemies, cutting supply chains, etc.

The worst, or definitely one of the worst moments was just after Chapo Guzmán was arrested for the first time. My friend Rafa and I made an early drive up to the "tienda" just outside San Jose del Cabo to grab some herb for a fishing trip to Los Barriles on the East Cape, only to find the compound overtaken by a sea of men with automatic weapons. Black Suburbans were everywhere, surrounding the fenced-in compound and blocking any possibility of escape. All of the guard dogs were dead on the ground. Someone shot Chucho in the forehead with a pistol as they pulled us from Rafa's Jeep Cherokee and immediately began to dismember his body with a cordless Sawzall, placing his head alongside the others against the wall of the tienda, beneath the makeshift drive through window. It was 10:30 on a Saturday morning.

After a brief amount of threatening and questions, we told them the absolute truth: where Rafa's boss, Juan lived, our planned fishing trip on his boat "el Pez Gordo," how Juan's cousin from Culiacán?had just married the head of the local PGR, and how the new innovative drive-through tienda had been built and operated by Juan but belonged to Sinaloa. They told us that one of us would hand deliver a message to Juan and his associates from the Arellano Felix brothers in Tijuana. He then asked which one of us wanted to be the one to deliver the message for him.

I raised my hand.

Rafa was shaking, stuttering and pleading them not to kill him. Men laughed. Their boss pointed and called on me, asking why should they trust me to deliver the message to Juan. I looked him in the eye and said, "because I will remember every word that you tell me and I'll repeat it back to Juan word for word. If I hear myself say it out loud, I won't forget anything."

He told me the message. I repeated it back to him. He nodded to his men.

They beat Rafa, angered by his tears, then dismembered his body as I was allowed to walk through the gates of the compound, leaving the keys to Rafa's Cherokee with a teenager wearing a cowboy hat and a chrome .38 tucked into his jeans.

I walked till sunset, through arroyos, along the Carretera ?Transpeninsular, under the overpass of El Tule where Juan's body would be discovered almost a year later, strapped to a chair and set on fire, with his genitals stuffed into his mouth. The entire journey I carried a rolled up trash bag containing intimate pieces of the dismembered men I had left behind in the desert, too afraid that they might somehow be following or watching me to muster the courage to throw the bag away. I worried what might happen if the policía judicial stopped me and opened the bag. I repeated the message for Juan over and over again as the sun set and the stars became visible overhead. I still wake up sometimes, sweating, screaming and kicking, repeating it word for word.

I suppose I am writing this as a form of reflection after my 6th session of Ketamine infusions, for treating PTSD, that sometimes feel like a through-the-looking-glass triple Lindy swan dive into a fractural sea of ranch dip, accompanied by Jimi Hendrix playing sitar, but regardless of how atomized you may become in the vastness of the infusion experience, the moment eventually arrives when you can no longer hold on to any one single thought, and you are forced to let go of the barrel and allow yourself to be swept silently into the Maelstr?m.

There are a lot of kids like me out there, arms raised, wanting to be heard, burning to share what they've discovered. God only knows what we'll learn, if we allow them to take the floor for a moment and tell us.