Blackouts

by Justin Torres

“Après moi, le déluge.”

After the hospitals, I’d spent many years pretending: either to be younger and more innocent, more oblivious, than I was, or else to be unafraid, or sluttier, or more radical—a provocateur—and many times I’d be tripped up, or caught out, and burnt by the exposure.

“Youth with its enthusiasm saw to it that neither the fire nor the singing would die out. That’s Colón. I am delivering his message to you, from across time.”

If you move along, you’ll find another diagnosis, introduced in the 1950s, by army doctors, a condition with which I was first diagnosed when they brought me to the nuthouse: Puerto Rican Syndrome.”

“To be released of the want of the want of release.”

“Criminalized, stigmatized, pathologized. The student sees the lesson.” “Ha, nene, very good. Now understand that with the 1950s came a kind of Puerto Rican Craze. The advent of easy air travel changed everything about migration, especially to New York, and Puerto Ricans, increasingly visible, attracted that gaze, the cops, the journalists, the doctors. And what do you think they found? And no surprise this specific diagnosis emerges from military doctors, because other things were going on, in the army especially, with the Borinqueneers … and more broadly, with the long colonial relationship … But another lesson, as you say, for another day … The point is that every culture has codified ways of expressing overwhelming emotion, panic attacks, nervous breakdowns, ataques de nervios, these are all related to one another. Even in a breakdown, there are cultural codes, behaviors that render the breakdown legible, if not acceptable. You know, I’m sure, the history of the term hysteria?” “I do, Juan. Basically I do. But you said the syndrome is describing something. What then?” “Well, the hysterical reaction, the Hispanic panic, whatever you want to call it, to the increased Puerto Rican presence.” “White People Syndrome?” “Colonizer Syndrome. This is being projected onto Puerto Ricans themselves, and then they are attacked. Surely that’s one thing. And the other is that people living under enormous pressure do sometimes break down, don’t they?” “They do. I mean, we did.” “But t...

I read how a chronic loser constantly misplaces objects, useful or necessary—in my case, watches, keys, wallets, gloves, hats, sunglasses, eyeglasses. Sometimes they are recovered; mostly they are not. From what I understood, this is a symptom of altered libidinal processes; something misfiring in the deep, where desires are formed, making attachment difficult. (So I’m reenacting some infantile drama of neglect? Perhaps, nene, who knows?) But this made sense to me: In our attachments, whether to objects or others, there exists a continual fluctuation of our energies. We wish to possess, to be possessed, and to be relieved of our possessions all at once. The hoarder solves the problem of value and attachment by holding on. The chronic loser lets it all go.

Explaining away the “bad father” and redirecting us toward the “good enough father” is so often one of a mother’s covert responsibilities.

Do you know why we fetishize, nene? To survive our own ambivalence. Perhaps the chains, and especially the crucifix, became totems, able to absorb both hatred and desire. Perhaps in their glimmer and weight you saw a reflection of all that you wanted, and all that you feared.”