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I set up my tape recorder on the table and Lowell Handler touches this Sony instead of my shoulder. I've been reacting to his actions like the worldly cosmopolitan that I am. I've ignored him. I know that Lowell Handler -- freelance photographer, college teacher, author -- suffers from Tourette's syndrome. This is why he must do what he does.

"How many people suffer from TS?" I ask. He answers by saying, "How many people have it and how many suffer?"

"Two hundred thousand people have it," Sue Levi-Pearl answers as she enters the room and takes a seat. She is the president of the Tourette's Syndrome Association, a family organization that's been around for 27 years. Levi-Pearl is pleasant looking. Like a librarian. Or a dentist. "TSA was started by the handful of folks who believed they were the only ones in the world who had a child with this disorder," she explains.

I reach out and check to make sure my tape recorder is running while Levi-Pearl explains that her brother-in-law has Tourette's. "I married into the family with certain professional abilities. My father-in-law determined that I should become involved in encouraging more science."

Just what is Tourette's syndrome exactly? Levi-Pearl waves her hand at Handler. He should answer. "It's a neurological disorder which in its essence is a lack of ability to inhibit," he says. "A lack of ability to inhibit movement, noises, thoughts, gesture and behavior."

Handler's first book, "Twitch and Shout" (published last year), is his memoir of the disease. "Before I was 24, I had no idea what Tourette's was," he says. "I'm 43 now. I felt a relief when I learned that there were thousands of people who have it. But I felt a tremendous burden -- I had fooled myself into thinking that it would go away. And here is this doctor telling me that it's never going to go away."

So just what is a "Tourette" exactly? "Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette," Handler answers. As he talks, I check on my tape recorder. "He was a French neurologist. He practiced in the 'Golden Age of Neurology.'"

You should know that I am checking my tape recorder because of an optical illusion. This little Sony looks like its tape is still instead of running. Handler reaches across the table and touches my Sony as well. He doesn't care whether the thing is working or not. He just has to touch it. "Tourette was a contemporary of Freud," he continues. "He was the first one to see that this disorder was not psychotic. There is a spectrum of Tourette's and compulsive/obsessive disorder in the frontal lobe of the brain."

The first official sufferer of the malady was Marquise de Dampierre, a 19th century French noblewoman whose symptoms included tics and coprolalia -- the involuntary shouting of curses and obscene language.

"A friend once said to me, 'There's a little Tourette's in all of us.'" Handler laughs, touching the tape recorder again. "'We all want to say "Fuck you" to our boss. Only you guys have the ability to do that.'"

Next page | We could have gone Touretting in the East Village