“Good night, Mark. No blame.”
The pill went down easily and took effect quickly. My breathing, my pulse, my heart all became softer and softer and softer until there was nothing. “Everyone was swell.” My last breath, last whisper, and I lost consciousness.
If someone had told me that at the end of the world I would be reciting Moby Dick from memory to a guy like Joe, if someone had told me that what I would really feel was worth passing on to someone who might survive me were things about art, I would have thought them utterly insane and totally misreading who I was. But they would have been right.
A lot of why the arts became so all-important to me was tied up with the limitations of my situation, both real and imagined. I was cut off. Cut off physically and otherwise from friends, from life, from civilization, from all sorts of things. In the real world I was less than useless. I was a liability. In the imagination it was another story. As a carpenter, a farmer, even a dishwasher, I was a dead loss. But I could still move people deeply. I could still be an artist. That was what was gorgeous about the arts. That was what I had never understood about the arts before.
A baseball glove. How the hell did this get here? Pounding my fist in it. “Pitch it in, Pop. Chuck it in there. Wop wop wop. Sock sock sock.” It was an old, huge pancake mitt, no stringing between the fingers. Overstuffed with whatever they stuff them with. Impossible to move the fingers, no pocket. If you were good, maybe you could use it to knock down a few balls, but it certainly wasn’t designed to catch anything.
In junior high I used to dream that I was walking down the hall or sitting in class with that dumb baseball glove on. What a jerky thing. What the hell am I doing with a baseball glove? It alternated with dreams of being in school and finding out all of a sudden that I had no pants on.
“Wop wop, pitch it in, Pop. Wop wop wop, sock sock sock. Fuck ’em. There are worse things than having a baseball glove in class. At least I ain’t napalming babies.”
“Wop wop. No time for Italian jokes. No telling where Gentile might be.”
“Wop wop.” It was just like the glove Mike Levin had given me when I was five or six. “Wop wop Jew.”
“No time for Jew jokes either. They seem to have ways of finding out.” Mike Levin. He had a lot to do with things. He gave me my first chess set, the one I had learned to play with. The set that was still at the Barnstable house, if the Barnstable house was still there. He had an ESP thing with my mother. Whenever she was in a tight situation Mike would call up out of the blue and say, “OK, Jane, what is it?” According to her, he never missed. My mother loves ESP stuff. Can’t get enough of it. My father’s not so hot for it any more. I think he’s about had his fill. You would think everyone in our family would have.
So here it was, just before the heavyweight championship fight. Frazier vs. Ali. “OK, Pop, so who do you want to bop?” We had the machine, the father and son team he had dreamed about, he had worked on me with things like the match game. “Who do we bop? Who do we buzz? I’m supposed to go back to Caesar’s grave, huh? OK, ready when you are, Pop, I’m as much there as anywhere else. How about a little job on Maharishi and then Billy Graham? Those fuckers thought they had a touch of cosmic clout. They’re gonna shit their pants when they see our show.”
“Billy.”
“Who’s that?”
“Who do you think, Billy.”
“No.”
“Billy, who taught St. Vitus how to dance?”
“Mark.” Joe was tapping on my shoulder.
“What is it, Pops?”
“Mark, you’ve had a relapse!”
“Relapse, synapse, Pop. Snap crackle fizzle, Pop. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Pops. Go find some higher ground. I’ll be fine. I came through this once. I’ll come through it again. Those fuckers want to fight, they don’t have the faintest idea who they’re fucking with.”
“Mark, OK, Mark, you’ve had a relapse. Listen to me. We’re going to have to take you back.”
“Back to my little room? Back to Dr. Dale?”
“Yes, Mark. But you’ll get out again just like you did before.”
“Have I hurt anyone? Am I dangerous to myself and others?”
“No, it’s just that you have to go back.”
“And after I get out again will I have to keep going back and keep going back over and over again? Mary said that I had already been down as far as I could go. Why would she lie to me?”
“It’s OK, Mark. It’ll be all right. You’ll get out again. You’ll get well again.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise, Mark. A lot of people love you and are behind you. No matter what’s wrong, we’ll find a way out. When this is all over I’ll come and get you.”
“And we’ll go fishing and play some chess.”
“Well, I’m not much of a chess player, Mark. But, yes, I’ll take you to some of my kind of country and we’ll fish as much as you want. I’ll take you fishing up in the Kootenays.”
“Can’t I come with you now? Can’t you take me with you now?”
“No, Mark. I’m sorry. I can’t explain it all now. But as soon as things get straightened out I’ll come get you and we’ll go fishing.”
“OK, Pop, I’ll go back. It’s not really so bad. Easter break is coming up pretty soon. I have a feeling this is going to be one hell of an Easter.”
Mary made me tea now and then or a sandwich or gave me paper and crayon to play with. She was terse with me but not unloving, just a harried mother with a big problem son. Trying to keep me out from underfoot. Trying to reason with me on an adult level wasn’t very rewarding.
If Daddy knew that Marky wanted to fuck Mommy, Daddy probably wouldn’t like it much. If Daddy knew that Marky wanted to fuck his sister, Daddy would most likely not approve. If Daddy knew that Marky wanted to fuck the little doggy, he might think his son a little weird. He maybe might think that Marky should have an operation. He might be right. Isn’t there anything I can do to it? I don’t want an operation, Daddy. Please, Daddy, don’t be so square. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Daddy, now really, a big strong man like you afraid of a thing that maybe weighs three ounces? Now really, Daddy, let’s get serious. How can something so small be so much trouble? Isn’t this the sort of thing daddies are supposed to clue little boys like me in to? Come on, Pops, give it to me straight. Daddy, stop fidgeting.
One way or another, I found myself in Powell River Hospital again. Nurses and doctors would come say inane things and give me all sorts of shots. An old girl friend brought a baby she had had by me that I never knew about. I had a good view of the parking lot and you wouldn’t believe some of the people who came to pay their respects. Jackie Kennedy dropped by. Everything was terribly confusing, but I had told everyone everything I could. It was all up to others now. I just sat around or danced or sang or did acrobatics, and several hundred dollars’ worth of property damage, waiting for whoever was in charge to tell me what I should do next.
Simon and Virginia came to visit me. Virginia said something about my needing energy. She hugged me and then went limp in my arms. I guess she thought that was how you gave someone energy. She was probably just trying to keep from getting crushed.
A cop on either side of me. Half holding me up, half holding me down. Virginia and Peter behind me. Virginia saying, “Walk, Mark.”
“What the fuck you think I’m trying to do, bitch?” That’s the last thing I remember for quite a while.
There’s a whole day, maybe more, that’s just completely gone. I’ve looked pretty hard but can’t find any of it.
Apparently we went to the airport and the two cops and Simon flew me down to Vancouver. They put a straitjacket on me and kept me in a cell for a while and then took me to Hollywood Hospital. I remember nothing. Simon says I was alert and pretty chipper on the flight. I kept patting the youngest, most uptight cop on the thigh and Simon kept having to talk him out of clubbing me.
THE END. At this point the
last few threads between my reality and that of others snapped. Throughout most of my insanity I had been responding, albeit bizarrely, to external events. My perceptions of those events had been bizarre and there was much else going on, but now what was really happening stopped happening altogether. It was the end.
I didn’t mind its being the end. Ending it there gave things a pleasing full-circle aesthetic balance. In terms of cosmic brawls, religious quests, and even life on the planet earth, I felt I came off rather well ending there, maybe even heroically.
Earthquake. Sun too bright. The sky looking like no sky I had ever seen. Noises, deafening roar. Everything quaking, trembling. The foul stench everywhere. Harder and harder to breathe. Rush upon rush, summing it all up.
“How far did you get?”
“I think it was somewhere round 1971.”
“1971! I don’t think I ever heard of someone making it that far. It must be some sort of record. You must have been about the only one left. Most of us gave up a long time ago. There didn’t seem to be much point in sticking around. It was all over.”
“There seemed to be others.”
“Think about it a minute. If there really were others around, what are you doing here? You must have had your suspicions that something was going on. Weren’t they more and more just reflections of yourself? It got lonely and so you decided to hang it up? That’s the way I figure it works. I don’t know for sure. I’m still trying to find out.”
“From time to time I figured something like that might be going on. I just thought it would be bad manners to call them on it.”
“1971? Jesus, are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“That’s amazing. I thought I was something making it to ’54.”
“I guess I was just trying to be polite.”
“I’m pretty sure there really wasn’t much of anybody left when you split. There was just about no one when I finally hung it up. Just a bunch of bodies people left around that sat around reflecting you in funny ways. Like I say, I’m not sure of that. It’s just how I figure it. They leave their bodies with just enough vitality to make a half-passable show and just sit around giggling, waiting and wondering how long it will be till you figure it out. Giving more and more hints that they’re not really there, making you curious about where the hell they went.”
The last thing I wanted was to be a mental patient again. To be dragged through all that shit. To face the prospect of a later but less pleasing ending. The last thing I wanted was to identify in any way with a body again, especially the one I had at times called me.
It would have been such a nice ending, but little by little, against every fiber of my will, my heroic marble features became more and more like putty, putty I was reluctantly forced to admit I could partly control. Little by little I became a mental patient again.
HOLLYWOOD, TAKE TWO. “The first time you were in here you were the Father. Now you’re the Son. Next time you’ll be the Holy Ghost and you won’t need me and my keys any more.” It was said affectionately. It was an orderly bringing me some food.
“Oh boy,” I said slowly, just shaking my head. “Oh boy, I’ve fucked up again.” Shrug.
“Oh boy,” he said, agreeing, nodding as he left.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.” I ate slowly. I didn’t have the faintest idea how I had gotten there but I knew where I was.
And then I wouldn’t know where I was or wouldn’t care or the place was some elaborate hoax or sinister plot, and back and forth several times a day for about a week.
Dr. Dale came into my little windowless seclusion room one day and asked if I’d like to see my mother. I figured he was just asking to torment me. Of course I wanted to see my mother, but even if I wasn’t dead and in hell or being kidnaped by Martians, even if I was a real patient in a real mental hospital, my mother was in Jamaica. And then alakazam he materialized my mother and she was hugging me and we were both sobbing and sobbing under Dale’s tight satanic grin. “That guy really is the devil.”
Our first few visits were fairly disjointed. I tried to explain what I thought was being done to me. They were draining my blood and replacing it with something else and changing the lines on my palms and…
My mother didn’t argue with any of my crazy notions and even elaborated a bit on the milder ones involving astrology and palmistry. My mother is one of the world’s greatest empathetic suspenders of disbelief. If there’s a thread of sense woven into a vast tapestry of nonsense, my mother will find it. And even if there’s not, she’ll spend forever and a day looking, always assuming that it’s her denseness and not any lack of sense.
Just after I recovered I thought my mother’s attitude and behavior had been a big mistake. “Ma, the first time you visit someone in a seclusion room, you don’t read their palm.” But the more I think about it, the less I think it was a mistake. Arguing with them wouldn’t have made the crazy ideas go away, and being willing to talk about them gave me a chance to get them all out where I could look at them. It made at least part of my insanity a lot less hellishly lonely.
She talked Dr. Dale into letting Virginia visit me and they’d show up together like clockwork every afternoon. They spent lots of time together talking over their visits and plotting my recovery. They were an ideal visiting team.
When I recovered enough to care about where I was, my first reaction was to be pissed off at the hospital. If only they had given me a few pills to take along, this whole thing could have been avoided.
If anything, I was less patient than before. There wasn’t much magic about pills three times a day. What did I need all these jokers for? Why don’t they just give me the fucking pills and let me the fuck out of here?
Then they seemed to loosen up a little. Dale told me about what he thought was wrong with me, what could be done about it, what the pills did. What I had was schizophrenia. It was probably genetic. It was biochemical. It was curable. It might have something to do with adrenaline metabolism. There were dietary adjustments I could make that might help. Dope wasn’t such a hot idea for someone like me.
I was skeptical about some of what he said, but I accepted much of it and was glad to at last be told something. All the same, I was still angry. Why hadn’t they told me any of this earlier, the first time I was here? I still didn’t think of the hospital as a good place to spend much time, but I gained at least a marginal faith that they were trying to help me and a glimmer of hope that they might know what they were doing.
I also found out that my legal situation was quite a bit more complicated than it had been last time around. My first stay I was, technically at least, a voluntary patient. This time I had arrived in a straitjacket accompanied by four Royal Canadian Mounties armed with, among other things, commitment papers signed by three doctors. They could lock me away for years. I decided to work on patience again.
I doubt if the staff would believe how hard I worked at being patient or that I worked at it at all. They steadily maintained that I was the least patient patient they had ever seen. “Look at Mary. She’s been here for years. She’s not jumping to get out of here.” Somehow I didn’t find Mary a very attractive model.
Impatience was a symptom, so I did my best not to mention anything about getting out or thinking that maybe I was ready for grounds privileges or that I was anything but tickled to be a patient at Hollywood Hospital. I read a lot of novels, wrote a lot of letters, drew a lot of pictures, played the old piano as often as I could, tried to develop relationships with patients and staff, all the time saying over and over to myself, “Patient, patient, patient.” I used it like a mantra in meditation. Very careful to keep it quiet and make sure my lips weren’t moving. “Patient, patient, patient.”
Poor Dr. McNice. Hollywood Hospital’s saving grace. The man who allowed us to salvage a bit of dignity.
No hippie, to be sure. But at least he didn’t drive Cadillacs and wear baby-blue alligator shoes. There wasn’t much chance of his activ
ely joining our quest, but we knew he had sympathy and understanding and hope for what we were doing. He had in his eyes a vague apology for not being more like us, an ever-so-faint hint of self-contempt for an even vaguer cowardice.
Poor Dr. McNice. He had tried to be a good doctor much the same way I had tried to be a good hippie. He had acted reasonably and compassionately. He honored noble precepts.
Now he averted his eyes whenever we passed in the hall. He avoided me, my parents and friends as politely as he could. When cornered, he was evasive.
We figured that Dale must have given him hell for letting me get away, and then when I returned a few weeks later in even worse shape than I had been on my first admission, McNice was lucky to still have a job. Dale must have given him strict orders to have nothing whatsoever to do with my case.
And it was my fault. Poor me. In spite of myself, I was the most telling argument against all that he and I and all my friends and humanitarians everywhere wanted to be true.
I looked in a mirror. “Mark, you’re the best argument fascism ever had.”
I had worked my way out of the locked wards. Even had all my own clothes back. I was in one of the best rooms. I had been supergood for what seemed like an awfully long time. The doctors said I was doing well. The nurses and orderlies thought likewise. The patients all thought I was OK. My mother and Virginia seemed to think I was OK.
All Dale would say when I hinted about getting out was that we’d talk about it later. He started getting stingy with his information again. Maybe he just didn’t have any more. It was back to “You’ve been a very sick boy. We don’t have all the answers.”
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity Page 25