Short-term memory loss chronicles: Ben’s Story or Are you afraid of me? I’m not gonna attack you!

London, spring of 2015

Though I was late for work, last minute I decided to grab a coffee in Starbucks on Buckingham Palace Road. I was waiting for the barista to take my order, headphones in, when a scruffy looking middle aged man wearing track suit bottoms and shell suit jacket nudges me and says “Sorry, is there a cue?” I look at him a bit confused (I was the cue), smile and say “Well, it’s just me”.

He says “I’m disabled, I can’t see.” I instantly regret my slightly sarcastic comment, as he continues “I was in bad accident, I spent 5 years in hospital.”

Then he says “Are you afraid of me?” I say “No, not at all” and at that point I still don’t fully realise what’s going on. He hears my name as I was giving it to the barista and asks “Where are you from?” I say “Romania” and we start talking about travelling for a bit, about how even though he’d never been, Romania must be lovely and how Spain is lovely. His favorite country is Spain.

He then tells me he loves ballet, especially Tchaikovsky and immediately jumps to add“I’m not gay, I’m not!” So now I look at him and think, hmm, okay, I didn’t think you were and also this is weird. He is weird and this is unrelated.

He carries on“I was a stuntman .I was nominated for an Oscar, my first film was Gladiator. Russell Crowe isn’t very nice!” Before I can reply (not that I had a response) he jumps again and says “Are you afraid of me? I’m not gonna attack you!” 

Stunned,I say “No, not at all!” At this point I thought he said this because he must have heard my voice grow fainter as I was walking along to the end of the counter to get the coffee. He continues ”I had an accident” and I ask what happened. He says “Parachute, I don’t remember, I was in hospital for 5 years, my brains were smashed, they thought I was gonna die, they were lovely in hospital…I have no memory.” I say I’m sorry to hear, get the coffee, say goodbye and walk out to go to the office, my head kinda spinning with the weirdness of this conversation and this guy.

At that time I was fascinated with the idea of blindness, of what suddenly going blind would be like, of what it would do your brain and spirit, of how fast or slow you’d lose the concepts we take for granted, like color and the familiarity of your own face and of those you love, of the basic logistics of going to the the toilet, let alone trying to navigate a city, even if it is the one you grew up in.

So I’m walking towards the office and I can’t settle. I stop in the middle of the street thinking this is my chance to answer some of these questions. I also think what if he didn’t hear me say goodbye and felt abandoned like that? I had to go back.

I find him sitting at a table, walk over, sit down and say “I’m sorry Ben, I left in a hurry but I didn’t want you to think I’m rude.” He says “I’m sorry, I’m disabled, I can’t see. I was in an accident. My brains were smashed”

And then I realise — he doesn’t remember…

We have the exact same conversation again and every now and then, he would say “Are you afraid of me? I’m not gonna attack you, I know you’re a woman but I don’t want to have sex with you.” This happened every time when he would touch my hand, which was on the table, playing with the cup of coffee. An innocent, unplanned, inoffensive gesture. I was probably a bit more weary, a bit less comfortable than normal, since my mind was blown by the whole situation, but I’m not sure if he picks up on such cues. The question would sometimes come out of the blue, even if he hadn’t touched me, but certainly accompanied every contact.

I realise it’s a reflex response, more or less, definitely compulsive, so I keep ignoring this and ask him gentle, simple questions about himself and he gets over it and tells me more. He struggles a bit with finding questions to ask me so I smile and take the pressure off ( he was probably trying not to lose the momentum in his head) by asking him some more questions. He still loops, like a record that jumps and needs resetting. At this point I’m still a bit skeptical about his story, when he says “I have a website do you want to know my full name so you can see?”

He says “Ben Bellman” …

We keep talking, he tells me his girlfriend at the time of accident is now married to someone else and has two kids and a lovely husband. “I’m not angry…I was in an accident, they thought I would die….but I’m not angry….she’s my best friend…I want to be married to a female and have children”.Here, his demeanor changes and expresses deep, deep sorrow,but so fleeing, maybe a second not more and then the most genuine, child-like, happy smile would shine on his face as he would move on to something else.

He lives in Victoria (station) with his 86 year old mum, who is his caregiver and he loves to talk to people.

He loves ballet, especially Russian — he thinks it’s beautiful. He taught sports — ten different kinds but he especially loves triathlons and yoga. He thinks yoga is beautiful, ashtanga yoga in particular. He thinks sports are beautiful and he thinks he only survived his accident because he was so strong. He is aware that if I disappeared for 5 minutes, he wouldn’t recognise me. His body is covered in scars, but he only showed me the one at the base of his throat, where the tube went in (it was a deep, cruel scar); he has more but he didn’t want to be naked in front of me. He’s a vegetarian and seeing as I’m an animal, I shouldn’t worry — he wouldn’t hurt me anyway.

He gets up every morning at 4 am and stretches for an hour in his room.

He’s been to Spain and thinks Barcelona is beautiful; he’s also been to Kenya last year and found it beautiful. The animals are beautiful- he loves animals, horses in particular, but monkeys are his favourite, he thinks the people there are beautiful, black people are beautiful — “I’m not a racist”, he assures me.

In the end he says “My life is almost over” (he’s 47) and I look at him and say but it’s new every 5 minutes. He smiled this huge smile and said “yes!”

Ben said I was very kind and I said he was beautiful, as beautiful as yoga, animals, Africa, black people, sports and Barcelona.

An hour went by and I did have to go back to work. We said goodbye.

Back in the office, I looked him up online: Ben Bellman, stuntman, worked on Gladiator, Die Another Day, Band of Brothers,etc, sports teacher, journalist for Time Out, DJ and the list goes on! Chilling realisation: Russell Crowe most likely is not very nice! 

Ben was a skydiving instructor and in 2001, after more than 1000 jumps, his parachute dis not open and he fell for almost 2 miles to the ground, smashing all the bones in his body and he sustained severe brain damage, which affected his eye sight. He retained or reclaimed his mobility ( I’m not sure of the time and effort this entailed) and indeed, spent 5 years in hospital in Barcelona. From our conversations, it seems he can’t remember anything about the experience, only the events.

And what remains once lucidity, functionality, social and cultural coding are scrambled, once the thread is violently torn? While everything becomes beautiful, Ben needs to assure everyone that he is not violent, not angry, not a sexual predator, not gay by mere association, nor racist. My question is why?? Did someone (re)teach him that he must repeat these assurances, as means of self-protection, minimum standards for returning to society, or is it a product of the powerful control that once was working subliminally, that guided behaviour, that prescribed the subtle and commonly understood cues, suppressing the need to verbalise?

Out of all the people I shared this with, one reaction struck me in particular. Upon reading the story, my dear Spanish friend said “ Que penita” (one would normally say Que pena! to mean What a shame! or What a heartbreak!(a more literal translation). But he used the diminutive, which in this case diminishes nothing but humanises the sentiment that much more.

I also found a blog post which a guy had written in 2008, after he ran into him at the underground and he gives an account of what they had talked about. I’m shocked — it’s pretty much the same….a loop….

It isn’t the only account and a few people have written to me to say they either knew and loved Ben, or met him, in the same cafe, around the same time of day and had the same conversation.

After it all, I remember feeling overcome by an immense feeling of relief, joy and clarity that I have trouble expressing, which somehow stemmed from realising a deeper level of it’s not all about me.  It felt like it unlocked a door in my head so I can step out and breathe in the warmth and soak up the sun that was particularly kind that day. I felt, for the first time and so incredibly clear, a sense of utter freedom, as if my mind was empty and all encompassing at the same time. I can’t explain it and I won’t try. It had something to do with the feeling of being central to your life experience and the lifted burden of feeling exactly that.