My Childhood Trauma PTSD as Triggered by the Following Movie Montage
That scene in American History X. You know the one. Or maybe it was Higher Learning, I always get those confused. That curb stomp scene always reminding me of the time I tripped and face-planted in the barn while corralling bull calves, to get castrated, my two front teeth chomping down on all that jagged concrete and manure, it adds a different flavor to the recurring nightmare I have, though in my case, usually nothing to do with race relations. I wonder if everybody else who watched that movie also missed the whole point of it. Except the Curb Stomp. Everybody remembers where they were when their stoner friend with big ideas about ending racism across the world made them watch the movie with the Curb Stomp.
Mel Gibson getting drawn and quartered in Braveheart. You may take our lives, but you will never takeā¦ ourā¦ FREE-DOM!
Mel Gibson ripping his shoulder out of its socket in Lethal Weapon.
Mel Gibson torturing the shit out of Jesus, then blaming the women and Jews for everything, including his drunk-driving and plummeting career options.
Fuck pretty much any Mel Gibson movie. Except maybe that one with him and James Gardner and Jody Foster and all their comedy hijinks. Itās the gambler one but not The Gambler. But now that I think about it, isnāt Jody Foster a big Mel Gibson apologist? So I guess fuck that movie too.
Any movie where somebody gets shot or stabbed or thumbed in the eyeball or has one or both of their eyeballs squeezed or ripped out, which always reminds me of that time I got elbowed right below my eye but also on the eyeball and it literally pushed in my eyeball a millimeter and I still get double vision to this day whenever I line up a shot playing pool or line up a screw to hang a photo on the wall or sometimes re-hang the toilet paper dispenser next to the toilet. Iād been playing pickup basketball and my buddy who was like four inches taller than me elbowed me on a rebound and like I say I went down and lay there on my back and then all the blood started pooling in my eye socket and I couldnāt see anything and my friend couldnāt see my eyeball and he kept hissing through his teeth grossed out by it but then telling me it would okay and the whole time lying there thinking Iām thinking about my eyeball Iām thinking of the scene in Any Given Sunday where the guyās eyeball is just lying there on the football field. Iām thinking of that closeup all the way to the hospital when they unwrap the mummy gauze from around my head and the ER doctor breathes a sigh of relief after peeling off all the dried blood to reveal that I needed fifteen stitches and Iād broken my orbital bone, but I still had my eye.
Any movie where somebodyās sitting there reading a book before bed, watching TV, gossiping with girlfriends, when the camera pulls back only to zoom back in on the dark night window behind themācue the string section.
If I had to choose one, Iām thinking of that one zombie movie, something 28 Days something but not the one about Sandra Bullock finding love with Viggo in rehab. Itās not even about the zombies. Itās about the dark night window, not to be confused with the Dark Knight window, sorry that was a shitty pun for no good reason whatsoever, but also maybe not completely random with the guy from 28 Days also having played the scarecrow in Batman Begins where he sprays people with a drug and makes them see their worst fears, which never really did it for me, at least not like the secluded house with the zombies lurking around. I grew up in a big old farmhouse out in the barrens of northern Wisconsin. Lots of windows, no shades. In so many ways I grew up in the dark. It wasnāt the zombies I worried about. It was the methheads. Which, sure, I guess if youāre getting technical about it, same thing, fine, you win, Iām scared of zombies.
The Zapruder film, but as replayed by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stoneās fever dream of a conspiracy theory. The magic bullet, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left. How it gets stuck in my head, JFKās exploding head replaced with my brotherās exploding head, sometimes my own, except unlike my brother and JFK, my headās still mostly intact. Back and to the left, back and to the left. Sometimes I think about that too with that one Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez and the magic loogie, but usually the loogie gets replaced with a bullet and Kramerās head gets replaced with my brother, mine, back and to the left.
The sound of the gun shots in the final scene of that Tom Hanks movie where he plays himself again, a good guy, a family guy, a sly sense of humor, but this time a mob hitman with a strained relationship with his oldest son. The look on Tom Hanksā face walking back to the house from the oceanāhaving survived it all, the hit that his old mob boss Paul Newman had put out on him for putting a hit on his old mob bossās son as played by James Bond who also played Ted Hughes in that movie about Sylvia Plath killing herself. But this is past all that, itās the happy ending. Theyāre on beach somewhere, white sand, somebodyās house that Tom Hanks and his kid are going to live in now. The silence before and after. Jude Law! Itās Jude Lawās face, his eye all fucked up, how did it happen, I donāt really remember the specifics but I remember the specifics. Bang, bang, bang. I think it mightāve had something to do with Jude Law being a photographer, like one of those where you pose with your kid or something or say you get promoted to head CEO or godfather of the family. Smile. Click, click, except in this case with a gun.
The gunshot at the end of American Beauty, pretty much the same thing, different movie. Chris Cooper confusing Kevin Spacey as gay but before Kevin Spacey actually came out as gay and a sexual predator. Not that the latter necessarily had anything to do with the former. Neither in the movie nor real life, well not really, but sorta. You get the point.
Jared Leto as Angel Face getting his face smashed in by Ed Norton as Brad Pitt as Tyler Durdenās split personality in Fight Club. Not so much Jared Leto, but the wet mushy sounds of it. That part on the audio commentary where Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher defend the violence of the movie, Fincher pointing out that he was not glorifying violence, he was making it realistic. Thatās what it sounds like to punch your opponent into the concrete, Fincher says and Palahniuk laughs and agrees. Donāt worry Iām not going to make any puns about the first rule of fight club.
That part of that one weird depressing Robin Williamsās movie where Robin Williamsās kids get killed in a car accident while backing out of the driveway on the way to school. The one where Robin Williams later on gets plowed over by a truck going the wrong way while Robin Williams is out trying to help another couple whoād been injured in a different car accident, but before all that his wife kills herself because she canāt take it and then Robin Williams goes to the suicide afterlife to save her. But then thereās fucking Cuba Gooding Jr. whoāspoiler alertāturns out to be the ghost/angel of his dead son who then explains to Robin Williams that his wife/Cubaās mother canāt be saved because she killed herself. It doesnāt matter that she had a pretty fucking good reason too, sheās still stuck face down floating around in that black swamp of bodies of everybody elseās killed themselves and nobodyās getting to heaven. That shit really messed me upānot the car accidents, but the afterlife for selfish losers like me who kill themselves. And/or my brother.
The bulging vein in Tom Cruiseās head from Magnolia. Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy, Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy. I think probably my therapist would have some thoughts about all this, and some questions. Questions and thoughts.
That one version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past undoes his robe to show off the alien children living under his robe.
I got the worst set of blue balls you could imagine while taking my best friendās girlfriend to Baz Lurmanās remake of Romeo and Juliet. That Romeo and Juliet. I missed most of it, I kept having to go to the bathroom to masturbate in agony and to no avail. Leo and Claire Danes are hot and heavy on an acid trip, and every time my best friendās girlfriend reaches for a handful of popcorn she makes sure to wipe the butter off on the inside of my upper thigh. This is what I get for being the good guy of falling on the grenade for my best friend, the grenade in this case being Shakespeare and my best friendās hatred of literature.
Mark Wahlbergās flaccid rotten dick in Boogie Nights.
The Secret of the Crying Game but not in a transphobic way. No, itās the smallness of it what got me back when I watched it as a teenager. The tenderness. The growing tent in my pants at its sudden appearance on the screen. Maybe you donāt believe me but I was a naĆÆve podunk kid from off the farm. I didnāt have cable. I didnāt have access to the internet. His/her (now their) secret opened up a lot of questions for me. I often dream of dressing up in drag and someone sucking my little bitty dick and if that makes me a little bit gay or maybe bi or whatās it called, body dysmorphic. I mean I guess it doesnāt matter anymore, itās the new millennium, weāre all a bit sexually confused arenāt we?
This one porno my friends and I watched at somebodyās uncleās cabin up in the U.P. for a three-on-three basketball tournament. The Snapping Pussy. The sound her vagina made, like somebody really dramatic at clicking their tongue and slurping a half-empty malt the same time. The scene of us boys all sitting there with our boners watching a porn and wanting to masturbate but not because we were all boys and we were afraid weād be gay. Not that thereās anything wrong with being a little bit gay.
There was this made-for-TV movie, me six years old and home alone while my big brother, supposed whoād toāve been baby-sitting me, the only time he ever babysat me that I can remember, maybe because his one timeāthat timeāhe didnāt actually babysit me. He went out to a party, while I watched the made-for-tv movie about some kid whoād watched his mother get murdered, and then goes mute, keeps drawing these pictures of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The kidās grandfather, one of those big hooks, like the one in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this was long before that, though Iām not sure it was before the book. Did you know that there was a book I Know What You Did Last Summer? I mean this isnāt about the book or the movie, this is about that kid whose grandfather had molested his daughter for years and then as an adult gutted her with a fishhook and then how heād then come back to finish the job with his mute grandkid, I donāt know how this movie ever got green-lighted (green-lit?) for TV, but then itās weird to even think about those made-for-tv movies and if they actually existed or if Iām just making this whole thing up, but then my brother, we had a walk-in basement at the time, this being before Iād accidently burned that house down with two space heaters stolen from the barn, before my brotherād killed himself, heād come back late, or probably it was only eight or nine, but I was young and alone out in the woods where we lived, and heād come back through the basement, which was attached to the family room, where Iād been watching and then all of a sudden that kid on TV was being stocked by his granddad with a fish hook and the door to the basement was opening, and for god knows why Iād turned off all the lights to watch the scary movie by myself, and it turns out it was just my brother whoād go on to kill himself in like a year, maybe six months, and he was just playing a little prank on me, or maybe heād just come through the basement for some reason, he was always hanging out down there and tinkering around with things, but in my mind, I can remember that exact look on his face, that smirk, even in the dark, the light from the television in a blacked-out room, a blacked out house, reflecting off those pop-bottle glasses of his, the shiny too-big-for-his-face silver frames. My mother always tells me I should try to remember the happy times I had with my brother, and honestly, I canāt, I can only remember that smirk, those glasses, the handle turning a moment before he appeared.
Any and all sequels where it turns out that the dead character didnāt actually die at all, or maybe itās magic, or maybe thereās time travel.
Every ending in my worst nightmares involves everyone Iāve ever loved or hated, their faces turning to snake faces. Snakeheads, snake arms, snake butts. Snakes snakes snakes. They slip out of their clothes and come up from under my bed, slither under my covers. They bite me, they kiss me, poison me, they consume me whole and regurgitate my bones. Thatās how they always end. Me dead and abandoned.
That scene in the first Indiana Jones with Indiana Jones and getting trapped in the cave with all the snakes. I hate snakes. All my worst nightmares turn to snakes. Fuck snakes. This all might have something to do with my undersized penis. If you want to go down that path. The Secret of My Crying Game.
Has Mel Gibson ever made a movie with snakes? I donāt know, you tell me, but fuck that movie if he did. Mel Gibson is snakey enough on his own.
BENJAMIN DREVLOW is the author of Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father, which won the 2006 Many Voices Project, and the author of Ina-Baby: A Love Story in Reverse, which was Ā released by Cowboy Jamboree Books in 2019. Ā Buy his books here.
He is currently at work on a novel, a novella, and a collection of story-poems. He serves as the Managing Editor of BULL Magazine (@BULL_magazine_) and is a lecturer at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.
