Post by ALPHONSE "AJ" JAMES ROYCE on May 20, 2013 0:56:44 GMT -8
| [atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/6jh1H.png); padding: 5px, bTable] ALPHONSE J. ROYCE TWENTY-THREE | HETEROFLEXIBLE | RESTAURANT CHEF | COLLEGE | JOSH BEECH THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? Alphonse pulls a notebook and pen out from his lap and sets them on the table, flipping to the marked page—the first empty one—and immediately starts writing things down. He takes his time, gently gliding the pen over paper until finally he removes his hand and slides the book across the table. ”My full name is Alphonse James Royce, though that’s a bit too formal for my tastes. I was named after Alphonse Mucha and while I appreciate his artwork I don’t appreciate the name. Most people call me Al though I prefer A.J. There are a select few people who call me Ali or even R.J. but I’d really just prefer everyone stick to A.J.” He sits patiently while he waits for the other to finish reading, spinning the pen through his fingers in the mean time. THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? AJ slides the notebook back towards himself and starts a line below where he left off, yet again taking his time. “I’m in my third year of college and I’m an English major. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with that major just yet but I’ve been leaning towards teaching high school. In the perfect world I won’t have to teach and can make a living as a best selling author but I’m not naïve enough to believe that will happen very easily. From home I do data entry work through the school and I also work part time as a chef at the Cheesecake Factory.” Yet again he turns the notebook around and pushes it forward to be read and this time puts his hands in his lap while he waits. INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? “I don’t do much,” he writes almost immediately, having to flip to a new page now. “I go to school, I work, I read, I go to the gym. Most of the time when I do something my best friend has dragged me there. She likes to pull me out of my comfort zones, which I’m all right with I suppose. As long as I’m not stuck indoors for too long I don’t really mind what I’m doing.” As he slides the book over this time it occurs to him how boring he must sound. Did he seem this boring to the outside world? Most likely. WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? He hates this question. He never knows how to respond. For a long time silence falls over the two and AJ stares down at the lined paper wondering what to write. He taps the pen on the table and then finally starts writing, opting for the easy way out. “In my first year of college I had to take a Myers-Briggs test and it came up at INFJ. Introverted iNtuitive Feelig Judging. “The Protector.” I’d have to agree that it’s a fairly accurate representation of what I’m like. I relate to a lot of it, perhaps a bit more than I’d like to admit. I fit under the adjectives of “gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive.” I’ve been through a lot in my life and there honestly isn’t much that someone can confess I won’t be able to relate to. I’m an incredibly empathetic person but if you’re someone I don’t know very well I have a hard time showing that. I relate to people easily but I can’t communicate very easily—deafness and muteness aside—so creating strong bonds with people is very difficult. I rely too much on my emotions and gut feelings of things and lack that logical and strategic way of thinking. Even though I can relate to people so easily I have a difficult time showing people who I really am. I have a difficult time letting people in. Admittedly, I have trust issues. Think of an abused dog. The kind of dog that is sweet and cuddly to one member of your family from day one but growls and snarls at everyone else for a long time. While that one person can see the soft side of this aggressive dog, to everyone else it’s mean and nasty and they don’t want to go near it. And then after months and months the dog comes to you and nuzzles your hand. Months of snapping at you are now forgotten because this ‘nasty’ dog has nuzzles your hand to ask for attention. That’s what I’m like. That’s the best way to describe who I am and what I’m like.” With a bit of a scowl he slides the notebook forward. COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? He audibly sighs as soon as the question he’s asked and a somber expression takes over the face that had been relatively neutral up until this point. There’s a flicker of something deep and broken within him as he writes this time, having to start a new page. “I never knew who my father was but my mom talked about him often. About how much I look like him. How I’m exactly like him, which trust me isn’t a good thing in her eyes. She used to get really angry with me if I made an expression that looked too much like something he would do. She’d cringe when I smiled because it was ‘his smile’ and she told me on several occasions she was glad I’m non-verbal so I wouldn’t sound like him either. By this point you’ve assumed we don’t have a good relationship and that’s a very safe assumption. There was no room for a good relationship between me and my mom and there probably never will be. I haven’t talked to her since I was sixteen and I don’t plan on breaking that any time soon. I have a sister—Analise—who I always had an on and off relationship with. We didn’t really get the chance to be friends per say but we got along for the most part. She always viewed me as more of a dad than a brother so sometimes it got a bit strenuous. I haven’t had much contact with her either these days.” His head lowers as he slides the notebook forward and he stares down at his hands, tracing the tattoos on it with his eyes. He’s made his body language small and closed off and watches the other person from his peripheral vision. AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. AJ’s head doesn’t raise and he looks away as soon as the question is asked. He pushes his notebook aside the places the pen on top of it and reaches into the backpack he came in with to pull out another notebook that clearly much older than the current. He slides that forward and gestures to it. The following are snippets from different pages (with deeper explanation for application purposes.) He didn’t know what discipline was. Not real discipline, at least. Other kids got grounded or sent to bed without dinner. They got sent to Time Out or a swat on the hand. The boy was only four years old, he didn’t know what how he got disciplined was different from how other people got disciplined. He didn’t know much of anything, really. He didn’t know how to talk. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t hear. People talked to him but he never knew what they were saying. How was he to know his life was different? The boy didn’t know much of anything, which was only fair as most people didn’t know much of him either. All he could do was play with the grass and hope for the best. The little boy was running desperately low on hope, though. Four year olds were supposed to be filled with joy and wonder and this one felt like he was being sucked into the shower drain very slowly. He felt like all the darkness in the world came from him and leaked into the rest of the world. And worst of all he felt numb, but he could never be sure if it was because that’s just how he was or if it was from the backhand he had just received. In other words: Alphonse was born to a single mother living in a run down, roach invested apartment. Some nights he shared a bed with his mother and other nights he slept on the floor. She was an alcoholic and a drug addict who didn’t pay him much mind. He screamed and screamed and screamed until she’d hit him to get him to stop. It was a wonder she didn’t smother him to get the piercing shrieks to stop, because that’s what kind of a parent she was. Despite being born deaf he wasn’t “diagnosed” until he was nearly five years old because his mother simply never cared enough to find out what was wrong with her son. It wasn’t until AJ entered kindergarten when a teacher noticed that he was completely non-responsive when people talked to him and took him to the school nurse. The school had to force AJ’s mother to get his hearing checked. He was immediately transferred to a deaf school. His mother made no attempt to learn sign language for her son. He thought of her as one of the most beautiful things to ever exist. She was precious to him. She was his world. He'd do anything for her. He would never forgive anyone who dared to hurt the girl so dear to him. It killed him to see her so depressed and so unhappy. He couldn't live with himself if anything happened to her. To see her lying like that killed him. Among this perfect being it would be hard to imagine any flaws. But they were there. Everywhere. Defiling this perfect image of a woman. Purple, blue, red, green, brown. Every color that a bruise could be. A fist mark on her thigh, a heel on her side. And these were small compared to what she usually had. These were new ones also. New dreadful memories to add to the many old ones. AJ was eight when his sister was born and he took his role as a big brother incredibly seriously. Mostly because there was no one else to take care of her. Their mother was hardly around and when she was he had to help take needles out of her arms or clean up empty bottles. He learned how to take care of himself very early on in his life. He became extremely independent and introverted, as no one around him actively attempted to learn how ASL. His only safe and comfortable place became school, and even then he hated having to leave his baby sister all alone with such a horrible mother. This was most of his childhood. Getting beaten around by his mother and antagonizing her so she’d stay away from his sister. Cleaning up after his mother and his sister, who he could barely communicate with. His mother made no attempts to communicate with her son and the communication he had with Analise was minimal at best. AJ was an angry and depressed child who grew into an angry and depressed teenager. The feeling of being held by someone else was an odd one. He’d only ever let two people hold him like this. It wasn’t the same but it was still nice. When she squeezed a bit tighter he felt ever so slightly better. Nowhere near perfect but it was a slight improvement and at this point he would accept anything. He let herself get lost in her embrace for a moment, not wanting her to say anything right away. And she didn’t. She let him talk and she let it all get processed before trying to console him. It would take a lot of time for him to ever get over feeling like he wasn’t worth anything. Maybe he would never get over it. Only the powers that be really knew what was in store, but for a split second he felt like maybe there was a sliver of hope. When AJ was sixteen he was emancipated from his mother and moved in with a friend’s family, a friend he still remains in contact with. He lived with them for two years, sleeping on the couch and doing errands and chores for them to earn his keep. As soon as AJ turned eighteen he moved from Fort Kent to Brunswick and took a few community college courses before getting into the college to begin his English major. He got his own apartment and his best friend Darsee and he’s doing much better for himself now than he ever was with his mother. AJ regrets leaving his sister behind but he didn’t have much of a choice at the time he left. He puts a lot of references to his childhood into his writing but scarcely ever openly admits to the severity of the abuse that he faced. What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. “I didn’t give myself these scars,” he writes with an aggressively done underline and a fierce scowl. “There’s a scar on the back of my head from my mom smacking me with a frying pan for not paying attention. Burns on my hands, arms and thighs from her cigarettes. I have a false tooth from where she threw my down a flight of stairs. A gash on my hip from getting slashed with a broken bottle. My mother may have been frail but she was a lot stronger than she looked, especially when she was high.” This time AJ nearly tosses the notebook over the table, sliding it hard enough to shoot it into the wall. It gets caught before it can get that far. His arms cross and the scowl remains fierce and unwavering. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! The question releases a bit of tension from his shoulder and he flips open to an earlier page that’s marked off on one of the corners. “Bucket List: Look into cochlear implants (?), publish a book, have something be on the best seller list, reconcile with my sister, graduate, find myself, have a son, be a better parent than mine ever was, work on my anger issues.” Not a single one on the list is crossed off. AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. AJ gives a brief nod and closes the notebook, slipping the pen into the spiral rings that bind it while he raises from a chair. He gives a small wave and leaves in silence. BEHIND THE MASK SETH | 24 | EST | DON’T REMEMBER | ABEL ADAMS  |
