Acrobaddict (12 page)

I could no longer work at the restaurant with my new look; the only job for freaks like me was at a music store. I worked at Sam Goody Music Land in the local mall, which gave me listening access to all the music I dreamed of. This was the perfect job, and my boss even had connections to a great piercing place in Providence, Rhode Island. My friend Randi—a daffodil holding a machine gun, with bleached-blonde
hair and a hoop through her nose—and I drove there with no thought of the consequences, and decided to get our tongues pierced.

My mother had a new rule: If I were to get my tongue pierced, she would kick me out and I would have to live with my father. I didn’t think she was serious, and knew she would never see the piercing unless I deliberately showed her. Randi and I shared the same anger with the world and saw the piercing as a necessary solidification of our identities. Still, we were both nervous to get it done.

I went first. Trance music played in the background and beautiful, stainless-steel body jewelry was on display in glass cases all around. This was nirvana. I picked a long barbell for my tongue and headed into another room. The piercer looked exactly like the entity I wanted to become—covered in piercings and tattoos that blurred the boundaries of his skin. I couldn’t see where his flesh started or ended, and the line dividing his art and life’s creation became one unified body of work, transforming him into something new through ink and steel—becoming his own God and creator. He looked beautiful and mean. Those weren’t just decorations, they were tribal scars, and I was eager for my next initiation.

The room looked like a doctor’s office, immaculately sterile and clean. Small gargoyle statues hovered on shelves above the piercing chair. Would those little silent demons watching my baptism allow me to pass? The piercer clamped my tongue with something that looked like hotdog tongs and said calmly, “Don’t move it and take a deep breath out.” Then a quick, sharp pain shot through the center of my tongue. He removed the huge needle and inserted the precious metal through the center. I was instantly high and filled with euphoria. I knew I would be back for more.

Randi and I were thrilled on the drive home. Sucking on ice cubes to keep the swelling down, we kept sticking our tongues out in the rearview mirror, making sure they were still there. I knew when I arrived home I wanted more, and I returned a week later for my septum, a bullring through the center of my nose. This was much more painful, but easier to hide since I could wear a curved barbell
and just flip it up into my nose. Nobody would know it was there unless they did a nasal inspection—angel by day, demon by night.

The tension between my mother and me grew to monstrous proportions. It was constant screaming, and during one of our shouting matches my mouth opened wide and she saw the steel ball on my tongue—a precious silver pearl resting on the belly of an oyster. She looked mortified and betrayed. It was either take it out or move out. With perfect teenage conviction, I told her, “Over my dead body!” and started packing. We had driven each other to the point of rancor and she was angry with the results, unable to look at me—her homemade suburban Frankenstein.

Enraged, I threw all of my stuff into the trunk of my car and left my mother’s house, thinking,
I’ll never come back here. I hate you. This is all your fault
. I sped away in pure hatred. I thought of how I had sat by her side as she cried over my father, and now she kicked me out for a pierced tongue. I had the perfect justification for even deeper self-destruction.

My father didn’t know what to do with me. He could tell I was a ticking bomb, but had no clue as to what wires to cut so I wouldn’t detonate. Deep within my eyes rested the question he feared most: “Did I do this to my son?” He didn’t like the tongue and septum piercings either, but was afraid to pick a fight with me. He saw where I was headed and feared that maybe his leaving my mother had contributed to my induction into darkness. I could read his thoughts as he looked at me. “My son. What happened to my beautiful son, the amazing gymnast and good kid? Why is he doing this to himself?” I couldn’t explain my transformation to my father. All I knew was that the ugliness made me feel alive, and the reaction on people’s faces gave me joy. I thought my piercings made me look tough and mean. That was my armor, my protection against the world. I would reject everyone before they could reject me, and I would never again have to go through the pain of being denied or unaccepted. I was
different, and felt comfortable with my metamorphosis into a thing people feared.

The ocean by my father’s house was magic, and I believed it could heal my pain. I would stare at the sea for hours, watching the waves roll back and forth, crashing to the shore. My anger became nothing in those moments, and I breathed in a sense of peace.

A summertime New England beach is luxurious, but New England winters can be harsh and unforgiving. It was an hour’s drive from my father’s house to my high school, and my little gray car didn’t have heat. I didn’t have enough money to fix it since all of my cash went into body piercing and gas. I passed through each town with a sheet of ice on the windshield and would sometimes stick my head out the window to better see where I was going. The ocean air was freezing, and I didn’t have gloves so I wore socks on my hands. I couldn’t imagine what that must have looked like to the morning commuters: a boy covered in steel driving a block of ice with socks on his hands.

I was happier living at my dad’s house, and his girlfriend tried to ease my pain with her kindness, but the drives to school and gymnastics were killing me. I was beyond exhausted, and would fall asleep at the wheel. I don’t know how I didn’t crash my car. I think on those long nights something powerful and caring took hold of the wheel. I started smoking cigarettes to keep me awake in case my angels didn’t show up. Before I finished a cigarette, I would take two inhalations of my asthma medication because of how badly the smoke hurt my lungs. I drove those long hours into the night with smoke in my lungs, anger in my heart, and the sea by my side.

13

LIGAMENTS AND TENDONS

L
URKING WITHIN A VICTIM’S OWN GENETIC CODE, A VILLAINOUS DISEASE CALLED
fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva
IS ABLE TO CONVERT MUSCLES, TENDONS, LIGAMENTS, AND OTHER CONNECTIVE TISSUE INTO BONE, FUSING INTO A TYPE OF EXOSKELETON THAT CAN TRANSFORM A HUMAN BEING INTO A LIVING STATUE
.

As I watched my past roll out to sea, a falling star dropped into the empty space over the horizon. The ocean reflected the night sky like a huge liquid mirror. I sat on the soft sand and knew deep within my bones that my dream had not yet turned to stone, that behind my fury and hysteria, I still had the desire to compete. Together with the sea and the moon, I decided to continue to try my best in gymnastics.

Despite all my body modifications, I was in the best shape of my life. I trained every day—stretching, lifting, and performing routines better than ever. My grades and SAT scores, on the other hand, were not doing as well. I needed to bulk up my senior year average in order to continue my education and gymnastics. I needed to get noticed by college-level coaches, which made my senior year a very important one.

Once I would get into a good college, I hoped to turn my education around. I had stopped drinking and smoking pot, and increased the intensity of each workout. I had accepted that my Olympic dream would not happen; the best I could aim for now was to compete at a good college. Although I admitted this truth to myself, I still hadn’t
accepted that I had fallen so far behind. To be an Olympian remained my secret aspiration, even if it was submerged in a sea of regret.

The Junior Olympic National Championship was being held in Oakland, and I wanted to go for more than one reason. California, in my mind, was a wonderful land of palm trees and hope, the complete opposite of the dreary seasons of New England. I secretly planned to run away after the competition and stay in California to start my life over again.

Although I felt like I was spiritually drowning, the warrior in me made a pact to rise up from the ocean floor for one more fight. I strategized and obsessed and focused on the perfect execution of skills, solidifying every bent knee and pointed toe. Gymnastics competition is a science of safety and numbers. We had to do our routines hundreds of times exactly the same way, error-free, but more importantly, we had to be perfect on the day of the competition. What we did in practice ultimately didn’t count. I ran through my routines in my mind every night against the throes of insomnia. Those routines were my flesh and blood, my children, and I mentally and physically knew every inch of them. Even sleep allowed me no rest, as my muscles twitched and my body perspired, executing harrowing skills instead of having sweet dreams.

Gymnasts all over the country were preparing for their state championships. We were strong, dedicated athletes used to extraordinary amounts of pain. Every day we woke up with incredible amounts of soreness. We murdered our bodies, and the apparatuses we used gave us horrible beatings. It’s an odd relationship between the gymnast and the structures we flip on, swing around, and hang from. Anyone with a love or respect for his or her body would not endure the slow re-formation, or the bone-bashing and joint-jarring challenges gymnasts place upon themselves in their obsession to achieve greatness. But the deep love and bizarre devotion kept us flipping on fire as our ligaments, joints, and muscles ripped and stretched. Years of pursuing this agonizing relationship had hardened our bodies and conditioned our minds to transcend normal pain.

Each apparatus was unique as it doled out its own punishment. Our knees and ankles were destroyed after endless punching of the floor, sending crunching pangs of agony through our bones. We pointed our toes and tightened our legs to extremes. The pommel horse never appeared dangerous, but it was a hard, leather-covered beast, and hitting it wrong was like getting punched by a prizefighter. The leather covering the horse sometimes ripped the top layer of our skin, like the bite of its namesake. Swinging from the still rings stretched our shoulders to their fullest point of flexibility, until it felt like our ligaments and tendons would pull out of their sockets.

The worst discomfort for me was the high bar. It took years of training to strengthen the muscles in my forearms to hang from the bar, and then the constant friction between the steel bar, chalk, and leather grip tore the skin off my palms. We called these deep, bloody, flesh tears “rips.” Even with multiple rips, we still had to perform. A drop of water on the torn flesh stung like rubbing alcohol poured on a wound. Rips made everything unbearable—showering, opening doors, holding a pen. When we slept, the raw meat of our hands pulsed in pain, like skin on fire, as if pain found its birth in our open wounds.

But, for us gymnasts, this was our love and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We begged for the glory to battle against gravity through the extreme movements of man. Our obsession, desire, loyalty, and discipline overshadowed any treacherous notions of quitting this beautiful sport. We were protected and possessed by the unspoken power of gymnastics. We wanted to be warriors, and in many ways, we were. If we weren’t going to be great, what would we do? What kind of future would we have after years of dedication to the sport? Our bodies were broken and whipped into the human machine gymnastics demanded.

For the true gymnast, physical pain becomes as natural as the tortured breathing I experience during an acute asthma attack. We get used to it, hate it, love it, sleep with it, and absorb it into our beings. But if we tired of the agony, or hated the never-ending endurance testing, or couldn’t wait for the war to be over, it was never spoken. Those
things go beyond the sport of gymnastics, and every athlete feels a deep passion to push through the affliction of injury. I often wondered if my desire to win was worth the mutilation and destruction of my body.