Only someone with significant head injuries could write this book…
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I can vividly remember my first concussion. Well, kind of, because it was the opposite of vivid. During my freshman year of high school football, while playing cornerback, I shed a receiver’s half-ass block and drove up field towards a running back who just received a toss. For those who don’t know what that means, I ran fast at man with ball who also ran fast. Like all smart, undersized corners (I had not hit a growth spurt yet), I dove at the running back’s knees. You can’t run without your knees. I made the tackle in the backfield, receiving one of those knees to the temple, and got up ready to celebrate. It was a solid knock, but I was fine. I looked up at the once blue sky and only saw gray. The players with the darker gray jerseys came up and hugged me, the players with the lighter gray jerseys sulked back into their huddle. I was confused. Where did our green jerseys and the opposing team’s white jerseys go? Color did not return to my life until the end of the game.
It was an odd sensation going completely color blind. I’ve always been color challenged – not being able to see the subtle differences between blue and purple or brown and green – but only seeing in shades of gray and black should have scared the shit out of me. If this didn’t happen mid-ballgame I would have shit my pants and called an ambulance. But it did happen during a football game of which my entire self-worth was tied to, so I didn’t tell a soul. I played the rest of the game understanding lighter gray bad, darker gray good. Caveman like. We won the game and that’s all that mattered to me at the time.
This was probably one of many concussions I’ve had in my football career that went unreported. Toughness is a key attribute for any football player worth his salt, and I had my fair share. Shit, I had enough to walk on to the D1AA football squad at Monmouth University. This, fortunately or unfortunately, is where I would receive my final concussion that would send me on a path to writing.
Before my last unreported concussion and end of my football career, I enjoyed reading but never considered writing for a second. I hadn’t so much as written a single word of fiction before the age of 20 unless you count writing prompts in elementary school. About a month after quitting football and having significantly more time on my hands, I started reading more than ever. I’m a slow reader but the books started to pile up. All of Hemingway, all of Bukowski, all of the other old dirty white men went down the hatch and, at the end of about a 6-month period of devouring as many books as I could, I decided to try writing. For about a week or two I tried to write short stuff, which read like hot garbage, and then, out of nowhere, the words came to me. Something clicked and everything became clear. An entire story, with an entire voice, spread like wildfire in my mind. I saw it all so vividly. It came to me the same way color left me that day on the football field. Suddenly. All at once. Knee to the dome.
Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts.
Since then, the spout in my brain that connects words to page has flowed. I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. I wouldn’t want to. Full stories come to me in an instant. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes with my eyes wide open. Sometimes in a second, sometimes over hours. I have no idea why. But the spout was nonexistent before that final concussion. It’s possible that once my football career ended, I was simply bored and that boredom turned me to the pen. But it’s also possible, and well-studied, that brain injuries can affect creativity.
This phenomenon is well documented, and two cases fascinate me.
The first time I heard about brain injuries affecting creativity was listening to Chuck Palahniuk on Joe Rogan. Talk about being an Alpha fucking Male, huh? That’s right, I listened to this podcast while at the gym, bro. Get over it.
The entire podcast was captivating. The way Palahniuk attacks writing is very interesting and he seems like a certified psychopath nice guy. But the most illuminating part of the podcast was when the two go down the rabbit hole of brain injuries. The tangent kicks off with a conversation about two comedians, Roseanne Barr and Sam Kinison, who had reportedly been hit in the head at some point in their life and were completely changed post injury. Roseanne Barr, at the age of 16, was a good girl, proficient in math, perfect grades, until she was hit by a car while walking. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and was institutionalized. She (obviously) survived but began acting erratically post institutionalization. She went on to become the legendary crazy Ambient loving comic we know today. Joe then goes on to talk about a book written by Bill Kinison, Sam Kinison’s brother, called Brother Sam. In the book Bill outlines “Kinison one” and “Kinson two”. At a very young age Kinson was hit by a car. Before the accident he was a docile kid but after, he could not be contained. Shit, just listen to Kinison preaching (yes, he was a preacher before becoming a comedian) and you might actually be converted.
They go on to talk about some telltale signs of a person who has suffered a brain injury. They can become narcissistic, violent, impulsive, reckless. Some of these things sound like perfect ingredients for a writer, or just a description of a writer. If you expect people to read your words at all, ding-ding, you’re a narcissist. If you sit down to write something that has popped in your head out of thin air, ding-ding, you are probably impulsive too. Reckless? How about self-publishing or publishing anything at all. A writer is clearly not thinking about consequences when they hit send on their latest post. Luckily, I’ve not become violent yet, but three out of four ain’t bad.
The podcast makes a quick left turn into toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by a parasite in cat shit. The infection has a weird effect on rats. It rewires the rat’s brain to not feel fear when they see/smell/hear a cat. It actually attracts them to the smell of cat piss. There is a similar effect on the human brain when testing positive for toxoplasmosis. Fear becomes minimal. Impulsiveness increases. Erratic behavior abounds. Sounds like a brain injury. I’ve never had a cat, I am allergic, so this can be ruled out in my case unless at some point in college I drank too much and passed out in a litter box. (This didn’t happen, I swear.)
Speaking of drinking too much, another classic in brain injured behavior is the proclivity to imbibe in substances. Many people who have had brain injuries tend to get hooked on some legal or illicit drug at some point. Whether this is some way to become even keel, sort of like a crutch for the brain, or whether it’s the erratic, reckless, irreverent behavior that comes with injuries to the brain, is unknown. Hemmingway boxed. Hemmingway was involved in not one, but two plain crashes. Hemmingway drank heavily. Was it the chicken or the egg?
A few minutes later in the podcast, Palahniuk reveals something he had never talked about before - his own brain injury. One day he was leaving the gym in Portland. It was a Friday night, and he needed to hit the ATM post pump sesh. Alpha. After the stop he was walking home and was subsequently jumped and beaten by a bunch of teenagers. Beta. The teenagers were yelling out numbers. 100 points. 200 points. 500 points. It was a sick game teenagers played at the time where they received “points” for hitting an unsuspecting victim in certain areas, as if they were playing a video game. It’s kind of funny, if it weren’t so fucking awful. The teenagers beat the living shit out of him, breaking his jaw.
Before the beat down Palahniuk says, “I was a fantastically shitty, cowardly writer.”
After the beating Palahniuk says, “I started writing really good stuff. I was writing off the charts stuff. I’m not saying go outside and beat your head against a concrete wall, but it was night and day.”
Palahniuk won’t say it, but I will.
Do it.
Kidding…but seriously.
Not to weigh in on the MFA debate but the last thing Palahniuk says is, “I think every MFA program should include boxing, or at least one good headshot.”
I vote
to run this new MFA/boxing program. I’d sign up for that shit immediately.Another example of this is Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of Oasis. I’m a fan of theirs since they got back together. I am NOT an OG. I am a bandwagon Oasis guy. Their first album came out when I was four. At the age of ten I got swept up by Country Grammar and had no time for rock n’ roll. But I got hooked after going down a treacherous yet hilarious rabbit hole of Noel and Liam interviews, documentaries, and listening to songs other than Wonderwall. I now understand the reunion hype. They fuck.
Pre Oasis, Liam Gallagher was a hard drinking footballer. Not the same kind of football I played, but soccer. He was an athlete with no fucks in the world given about music, unlike his older brother Noel. Then the magical beatdown occurs. He’s out at a pub (at the ripe age of 15) and gets hit on the head with a hammer by some blokes who were afraid to go fisticuffs. He woke up in the hospital with stitches in his head. The way he describes it is that a couple weeks later he started listening to music. Not just music from the outside world, but music in his head. Before the head injury all he cared about was fucking around, drinking, smoking, and playing football but suddenly he hears Like a Virgin by Madonna and thinks…“That’s a chune man”. Next thing you know, he’s the lead singer in a band.
Rogan goes on to say in the podcast with Palahniuk that the problem with head injuries is that they are hit or miss (literally). Some people become geniuses and others are never the same in all the negative ways. He’s seen it up close. He’s been in and around martial arts his entire life. He understands that some people go onto become great writers or comedians or artists and others die on the streets, either drugged out or schizophrenic or both. And of course, the last thing Joe says on this topic is that he would let his kids fight because if you are a properly trained in martial arts you can avoid a lot of damage, but one thing he would NEVER let his kids do is play football…
Perfect!
My hero growing up was a guy named Brandon Hoyte. You probably have never heard the name unless you are from Central New Jersey (yes, there is such a thing) or an insane Notre Dame football fan. I happen to be both.
Brandon Hoyte was an ALL-STAR football player at Sayreville high school. He played quarterback and linebacker, which is an insane feat, and went on to win a ton of awards as a high school athlete. He received a full scholarship to Notre Dame University to play linebacker and ultimately became a captain on a stacked 2005 team.
But the football accolades pale in comparison to his life outside of football. He held a high GPA in both high school and college. He wrote poetry. He was a Jehovah’s Witness. Don’t hold that last bit against him because he was one of those very few Christians who actually practiced what he preached.
In a piece titled, A Man For All Seasons, Katie Stuhldreher writes, “Most poets can’t hit a quarterback hard enough to separate his shoulder. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t attend Catholic universities. Most college football players don’t have time to work three jobs, maintain a high grade-point average, and engage in volunteer work. Irish fifth-year senior linebacker and co-captain Brandon Hoyte is not most people. In fact, he is the exception to almost every rule.”
Brandon Hoyte was something special.
Hoyte was born in Trinidad, moved to Harlem at the age of three, then moved to Brooklyn, and finally ended up in New Jersey, which is where I got to meet him.
My best friend Sean’s uncle, Coach Pat, was a football coach at Sayreville high school when Brandon Hoyte played. A couple of years later he was a coach for our Jr. Pee Wee team along with Sean’s dad. I was close to Coach Pat and to Sean and to Big Sean and spent a lot of time with their family. On special occasions Coach Pat would bring Brandon around to family gatherings or even to training sessions. The first time I realized I would not be going pro in any sport was the day Brandon Hoyte played tag with an entire team of 14-year-olds in a 20 foot by 20 foot square room and none of us could touch him. But what I remember most is Brandon always talking about using your head instead of your body. How important school was and how important watching film was to becoming a great football player. He constantly talked about how football was a sport about brains and not just brawn. When he talked his voice was soft. He was kind. He was this jacked dude, captain of the Notre Dame football team, an absolute beast on the football field, and yet off the field he seemed gentle. He wrote poetry for fucks sake! He was a real-life hero. A north star any young boy could point to on how to live a good life.
It came as an immediate shock when I heard the news that Brandon had been arrested. What could this man have possibly done to get arrested? Be TOO nice? Be TOO kind? He must have sat in on a protest or something for a great cause and got rounded up. But no. The shock turned to something different. Something incomprehensible. Something I still can’t put into words. It was worse than devastation. It was like an unshakeable pillar that held up my entire world view horizontally cracked. Brandon, after playing in the NFL for a couple years and going on to a successful career outside of football, had cracked. Something in his brain stopped working. He became manic and depressed, showed schizophrenic tendencies, and had been living on the streets. The arrest came when an interaction between a police officer and a homeless Brandon went awry. At least that’s what I was told. I don’t know the entire truth. I don’t know if I could stomach the entire truth.
Regardless of what happened, and where Brandon is now, it’s clear to anyone what occurred. Too many hits to the head had caught up with him. A once thriving brain with an impeccable moral compass matched with creativity and insane work ethic had faltered. It just stopped working. There’s no other rational explanation except that the game that Brandon loved betrayed him. It’s fucking heartbreaking.
Another hero of mine is my best friend Dr. Kevin Pecca. Kevin was a hockey stand out at Red Bank Catholic in New Jersey and went on to play in college. Hockey, if you didn’t know, is just as contact filled as football with even less head protection. If you’ve never been to a live hockey game, I highly recommend you do. You’ve never seen speed and mayhem in a sporting event until you’ve watched a hockey player fly on ice and throw his body into another person’s up close. It’s like a fucking car crash.
Kevin, unfortunately, had a bunch of real, diagnosed concussions throughout his career. The ones where the pupils in your eyes stay dilated and you puke and you are forced to take time away from the game to let your head heal. These took a toll and ultimately forced Kevin to stop playing collegiate hockey. But the worst part came next…
The symptoms never went away. Kevin felt depressed. He had blurred vision, as if he were walking around in a fog all day. He couldn’t concentrate. He got debilitating headaches. His joints hurt. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The Kevin Pecca I know is the exact opposite of an anxious person, yet he was filled with a deep anxiety all the time. The scariest part of all of this is that outwardly Kevin looked like himself, but inside he was falling apart.
What seems like something not so terrible, but in retrospect was, is that Kevin couldn’t really hang out with the boys for a long time. He couldn’t go out for a couple beers and watch the game. Every time he drank the symptoms took over tenfold. Our entire friend group’s MO around the time this happened to Kevin was partying. I remember one time Kevin decided to be the DD one night because he couldn’t handle any alcohol. How did I reward him? Puking all over his dashboard 1 minute from home. Sorry pal!
Kevin goes into full detail of what happened to him. I tear up every time I listen to this. Kevin is one of the best people I know and one of my best friends and even I didn’t know how deep his pain was.
Luckily for Kevin, after years of searching for a solution, when doctors told him he would either have to live on painkillers or just deal with the pain the rest of his life, after he considered ending it because he couldn’t take it anymore, he found Upper Cervical Chiropracting. It saved his life. It also changed his life because he is now an Upper Cervical Chiropractor himself, making sure that no one feels the way he felt after his head injuries. This type of luck is rare.
Life is a game of tradeoffs.
Before I started playing football, I was afraid of everything. Roller Coasters. Girls. Halloween. Etc… I’m still kinda scared of Halloween and I’m definitely scared of my wife (she’s Sicilian). This fearful behavior was beaten out of me, partly due to confidence in being good at something, partly possibly probably maybe due to head injury after head injury after head injury. It’s not the ones that make you lose color that do the damage, it’s all the mini ones you shake off that add up. Not all boys start like this. Some are born fearless. Some are born with that IT factor. Some are born as if they came out of the womb with head trauma. Narcissistic, violent, impulsive, reckless, fearless.
If I had to do it all over, the same exact way, I would. I’m lucky…for now. Maybe the writing ability was always there. Maybe it came from a few thousand knocks on the head. Maybe one day I’ll be drooling a different tune. But, for now, I’ll try to take care of my brain the best I can and try to harness it creatively. Maybe I’ll put down the bottle. Maybe my proclivity to drink is a way to combat what is surely a deteriorating brain. Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. Who knows. The brain is a fickle beast. It’s also insanely durable. I guess you could say the same about consciousness in general. Fickle and durable. The human condition. Are we all just firing synapses and neurons? What is the soul? These questions are unanswerable, especially when you’ve seen the good and the bad of how a faulty brain can change a person. There is a fine line everywhere you look just waiting to be crossed. You can ditch the writing class and bash your head against a wall but beware – madness lurks around the corner.
P.S. - Don’t ditch the writing class.
There is in fact a Central New Jersey [grew up in North Jersey Industria, educated in Central Jersey - can verify].
This was excellent. Thank you for it. *subscribes instantly*
I kind of want to read the book but only if you tell us which characters are Anna and me.