The Bull Years

by Phil Stern

But let’s back up a second. Smoking itself should be illegal. We know it causes cancer, not only in the primary user, but for the secondary victims inhaling all their poisonous fumes. And just in case you were wondering, civilized societies don’t normally allow that sort of thing.

  Or let me put it another way. Let’s say the cops got a call that someone was walking the streets with a device emitting carcinogenic clouds for everyone to breathe. He’d be immediately arrested, right? So what the hell do you think a cigarette is?

  Now, don’t be a tard and claim smoking is a victimless crime. Number One, there’s the secondary smoke. And Number Two, we spend millions each year, as a society, treating smoking related illnesses. So not only isn’t it a victimless crime, smoking is almost unique in that it victimizes all of society at once!

  We should grandfather out cigarette use. Let’s pass a law that everyone under the age of 21 is legally forbidden to smoke. Annually, the smoking age would go up by one year. In sixty years or so all the smokers will be dead (one way or the other) and everyone else will be legally forbidden from smoking. But no one’s had their individual “right” to smoke taken away. Actually, I think that’s kind of clever, don’t you?

  And please don’t tell me about all the people thrown out of work by outlawing cigarettes! You know what? I’m sure all the people driving tractors down on the “tabakee” farms can find something else to do that doesn’t involve harvesting carcinogenic crops.

  I mean, that would be like someone arguing in the 1950's to retain all the racist Jim Crow laws, because to repeal them would throw all the guys making those clever “WHITE PEOPLE ONLY” signs out of work. Trust me, they’ll find something else to do.

  And all those devious ad people coming up with new and better ways to hook teenagers on cigarettes? Why not put them to work coming up with better ways of promoting birth control instead, so those self-same teenagers aren’t all getting pregnant! What the hell are people thinking?

  And hey, speaking of pregnant teenagers, here’s a memo to all parents everywhere. “Abstinence” isn’t a form of birth control.

  Listen, there are two kinds of teenagers. Those who are sexually active, and those on the verge of becoming sexually active. Abstinent teenagers exist only in the minds of parents who can’t deal with the real world.

  Think about it. When your kids are younger, you tell them to put their lost teeth underneath their pillow, and overnight the “Tooth Fairy” replaces them with money. It’s a fable imposed on simple minds quite willing to believe in magical beings turning teeth into cold, hard cash. Why? It allows parents an easy out in explaining why teeth fall out, helps alleviate the child’s worry about the experience, and provides an utterly artificial, positive outcome for everyone involved.

  But, just because you told them there’s a Tooth Fairy, does that mean there really is one? I mean, think about it. Does some winged perv really invade your kids room in search of baby teeth? Or is that simply a story you tell them so they don’t have to deal with an unpleasant, frightening reality?

  Get the picture? By the time kids hit 15 or so, the roles have been reversed. Now teenagers talk about the Abstinence Fairy in order to relieve their parents from worry, all while fucking their brains out every chance they get. Now it’s the children soothing their parents with a warped form of alternate, happy reality.

  Here’s another way of looking at it. Would lung cancer go away by simply pretending cigarettes don’t cause malignant tumors? Of course not! They why would anyone think the issue of teen pregnancy will be solved merely by pretending kids aren’t having sex? I rest my case.

  So if you really want to believe all those bracelets, charms, and bullshit really mean anything, remember this. That’s just what your children tell you so you won’t worry about their burgeoning sex lives.

  Because there really isn’t an Abstinence Fairy, any more than the Tooth Fairy.

  DAVE MILLER

  I don’t remember actually arriving at the mental hospital, but I do have a vivid recollection of that first night in my room.

  It was standard practice to have all new patients on a fifteen-minute watch, meaning someone had to visually check on them four times an hour. So all night long my room door was regularly pushed open, bathing my face in harsh light from the hallway, while some bored attendant checked off on some clipboard that I was still alive. By the time I drifted off to sleep again it was time for the next jolting trespass. It was as if I’d been transported to some futuristic realm where a race of super moles had enslaved humanity, dashing around our bedrooms all night long with wild abandon.

  Technically I hadn’t actually been “committed” to the hospital, but instead had “voluntarily” checked myself in for a twenty-one day stay. (In mental health lingo no one ever said “three weeks,” “two months,” etc. It was always twenty-one days, or sixty days, etc.) This was a crucial distinction. When you’re committed, they can basically keep you there forever. I, on the other hand, could only be held after my twenty-one days through some sort of legal hearing. It was like the difference between a guy doing a month for unpaid parking tickets, as opposed to someone serving life for murder. They might both be in jail, but the perspective was radically different.

  And no, this being a “closed” ward, we couldn’t just leave, even those in there on a voluntary basis. There was only one (obvious) point of entry or egress, consisting of a large, heavy wooden door at the far end of a hall. One needed to have a special key to open the door. And though the door wasn’t guarded, per se, there was always a burly attendant lurking nearby.

  And you didn’t want to fuck with these guys. Anybody got out of line (which often happened), the attendants would shut them down on the spot. Gang tackling was the favorite tactic. I think there were maybe six or eight wards radiating out from a central location, like spokes on a wheel, with a reserve force of attendants in the center. Within seconds, four of these guys would come charging out of nowhere to assist the attendants on duty in the ward, and they’d all just pile on.

  See, you’ve got to understand something. In society you have rights. Let’s say you park in a standing-only zone. Okay, a cop might give you a ticket, but a phalanx of linebackers won’t come rushing out of the nearest doorway to paste you to the pavement. There’s a measured reaction to any given stimuli.

  No so in a mental ward. Let’s say a patient decides to beat the crap out of his doctor. He gets the squish treatment. This seems reasonable. But let’s say another patient merely drops his pudding on the floor, and then immediately apologies for it. Well, guess what? He gets the squish treatment too. And this applied for women, men, everybody. Don’t like what’s on tv? Want to yell about it? That’s fine. Explain it to the six 230-pound muscle men sitting on top of you. Public outbursts simply weren’t tolerated.

  And by the way, you want to hear the greatest euphemism of all time? This was called “pacifying” patients. On occasion guys were pacified one day, then appeared in group therapy the next with their arm in a cast. One maniac actually decided to fight back, and he showed up two days later looking like he just crawled out of a car wreck. No, you didn’t want to fuck with the attendants.

  But remember, all these people were mental patients. If they always did what was good for them, or were able to resist their own impulses, they wouldn’t be there in the first place. It was quite a scene, let me tell you.

  Which brings up an interesting point. In many cases, I couldn’t figure out why some people were in the mental ward as opposed to jail.

  Everyone there exchanged stories. Hey, Bob, why are you here? Well, see Dave, here’s the thing. My wife burned dinner last week, and I decided to throw her out an upstairs window. Bessy’s all right, though, landed in a hedge and all. Hell, she’s okay. Broken leg, sure, but that’s nothing. But the bitch gone and called the cops, and seeing as how I did the same thing last month, here I is.

  See what I mean? Who decided Bob threw Bessie out the upstairs window because he was i
nsane, and not because he legally assaulted his wife and should face judicial sanction? It was all willy-nilly. Sometimes that’s just where an overworked judge, short on jail space, would send them. Sometimes the cops themselves would simply haul guys in there. On occasion the actual victims of these people would sign their attackers into the mental ward, thus forestalling the courts and real jail system. It made no sense, but I’ll tell you, clearly some of the people in the ward were more dangerous than many guys serving hard time.

  Same thing with drugs. The place was sprinkled with addicts whose only mental health issue was being hooked on some illegal substance. And all they wanted to do was get out so they could get high again.

  There were even a few occasions when a guy was thrown in the ward one night, then realizing a mistake had been made, the police came to arrest him the next day. In those instances a posse of white clad attendants would accompany two cops to a corner of the ward, where the ax murderer was now napping in an armchair. Following the predictable melee, the now semi-conscious ax murderer was then hauled off to jail, while the nurses spent the next hour quietly asking all the patients how they “felt” about the violence that had just transpired.

  Sadly, the real mental patients, who comprised about half the ward population, never thought in terms of being “cured” and living a normal life. Instead, it was accepted as a matter of faith that once you landed in a mental hospital you would inevitably return there. People would brag that it was their third, or sixth, or tenth stint in a mental hospital. They’d compare institutions and doctors from the tri-state area, wishing they could be here or there. Clearly they considered themselves part of some downtrodden subculture from which there was no escape.

  Actually, as a first-timer I was somewhat unique. The old hands greeted me fondly, as if I’d just been initiated into an exclusive, life-long club. When I objected that I really shouldn’t be in the ward at all, and certainly wouldn’t return, they simply laughed.

  “You’ll be back,” was the incessant refrain heard a dozen times a day, delivered with a firm, understanding nod. “But it’s all right, Dave. Ain’t nothing wrong with being like us.” I soon stopped arguing with them. It was obviously impolite to question the permanent nature of my new condition.

  The whole place was set up like a honeycomb of living rooms connected by hallways. All of the couches and carpets were green, the walls themselves a soft emerald hue. Obviously had someone decided green was a soothing color for mental patients. For me, it’s now my least favorite color.

  There wasn’t much of that stereotypical looney behavior, although on occasion someone would sneak over to sit beside you, frightfully glancing all around, then conspiratorially whisper about the Martians living underneath the building just waiting to steal everyone away. (That, by the way, is one hallmark of true mental illness. They almost always invent powerful beings, living nearby, who wish them harm.) I would appear concerned, assuring Martian Lady I would raise the alarm should any Martians invade the ward. Nodding in grim assent, these zany warnings would always end with the proviso not to tell anybody what she said, lest the Martians do her in just for blowing their cover. Of course I’d agree.

  But you know what would happen then? As soon as Martian Lady walked away, a nurse would come charging over with a clipboard, demanding I relate all that Martian Lady just said. So, while Martian Lady herself stood nearby, desperately waving her arms for me to stop, I’d have to give a blow-by-blow account of the Martians underneath the building. At some point, crying hysterically, Martian Lady would flee.

  So the next day Martian Lady would again approach me, frightfully relating how the psychiatrist, reading from the nurse’s report, had confronted her about the Martians underneath the building. Of course, Martian Lady had never said that, but she did want to tell me about the Russian spy living in her mattress, just waiting for the chance to attack. At least it passed the time.

  In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t too concerned about the staff thinking I was the one inventing things. The doctors routinely referenced, word-for-word, hushed conversations between patients, or what patients rambled in their sleep, so I knew they had microphones planted all over. Curiously, the “permanent” population never referenced these listening devices. I don’t think their existence ever occurred to them.

  Once a guy took me aside (the ward had plenty of semi-secluded nooks and isolated couches, possibly to give the illusion of privacy) and bragged how he was fooling his doctor. The asshole really believed all that bull about his abused childhood and dark dreams! Hell, he was just telling the psychiatrist what he wanted to hear, so he would be “cured” that much sooner and get out of this hell hole. Then he’d be free to beat his brother’s head in once and for all. Wouldn’t that be great?

  I told no one of the exchange, yet the next day the guy came charging down the hall, screaming that I’d squealed on him to the psychiatric staff. Instead of being up for review and possible release next week, his stay had been automatically extended by sixty days.

  This, by the way, illustrates one of the basic contradictions of a mental hospital. Patients were constantly being assured by the doctors, nurses, cooks, housekeepers, handymen, and any other staff member who wandered by that they weren’t prisoners. Perish the thought! No, no. We could leave anytime we wished! After the doctors cleared us, of course.

  In the meantime the door was kept locked for our safety. Oh, and the big man guarding the entrance and all his mean friends who would beat us silly if we tried to leave? They were there to help us too! We certainly weren’t being jailed, and there wasn’t anything punitive about our incarceration. It was all for our benefit.

  And while this sounded nice, it simply wasn’t true. Just like a prison, your “stay” would be extended for breaking certain rules, chief among them manufacturing bullshit to fool your doctors. So, ignorant of the hidden microphones and certain I’d snitched him out, this guy began yelling he was going to kill me.

  This was the closest I ever came to getting pacified by the attendants. Thankfully they only squished the guy raging at me, though one attendant stood right by my side, hand lightly on my arm. Once the crazy guy was hauled off a nurse told the attendant I’d done nothing wrong and to leave me alone. Clearly disappointed, the mental ward bouncer wandered off.

  So where did they take these guys to cool down? That’s where the traditional padded room and straight jacket came in. I never saw it myself, but you could certainly hear these guys, raging and screaming somewhere close by, throwing themselves against the walls with dull thumps.

  And of all the things I experienced at the mental ward, this made the least sense. Like I said, many people there thought someone was out to “get” them or attack them in some way. It certainly didn’t help to have the padded room nearby, providing auditory proof of the Martians, or Russian spies, or gangs of homosexual midgets trying to break in. It almost seemed a little sadistic.

  As I’ve mentioned, impulse control was the major issue for many people in there, which led to all sorts of odd comments and propositions, especially during “orientation” visits from neophyte mental health staff.

  There must have been some teaching college nearby, because every three days or so a group of college-age psychiatric under grads would drop by the ward. A surprisingly high percentage of them were super hot chicks who’d clearly eschewed more traditional teaching or nursing careers to work with nut jobs.

  “So…Edwin!” a beautiful blonde would gush, glancing at some notes as she sat down beside a middle-age pervert. “How do you like it in here?”

  “Huh?” Eyes growing wide, Edwin would begin massaging herself.

  Oblivious, the girl again consulted a clip board. “So, I see you’re from White Plains! Why, my brother lives in White Plains!”

  “What?”

  “White Plains,” she’d insist, now putting a hand on Edwin’s shoulder. “I bet you love it there, don’t you Edwin?”

  Unable to resist, Edw
in would now leap on the blonde and try to stick his tongue up her nose. Of course Edwin didn’t get very far because an attendant, knowing how fucking stupid these psych grads really were, was standing ten feet away. Sobbing quietly on the couch, the blonde would then watch in horror as Edwin as pacified and removed from the ward, all the while declaring his undying love for her.

  Look, it makes no sense. Clearly these kids had absolutely no training. They hadn’t even received the basic ward orientation, which included not invading other people’s space, never prying about their past, and certainly never touching anyone else. You’d have more luck sending kittens to play in traffic than these students had in the ward.

  They didn’t even know the real score there. All those cooks, housekeepers, handymen and the like I mentioned before? Obviously they were all mental health staff, usually the senior ones, in fact, observing the crazy people incognito. The undercover staff would routinely engage the patients in “casual” conversation, often drawing more from them than they were comfortable formally sharing with their doctors.

  There were even a few times when the handyman from Tuesday, now dressed in a suit with an official ID badge, would show up to lead group session on Wednesday. Lost in their own little worlds, very few patients seemed to notice. Hey, when you’re dealing with nut jobs anything’s possible.

  Anyway, one day a psych grad asked a “housekeeper” to get him a glass of water. Glaring, the housekeeper walked off. About thirty seconds later an attendant tapped the guy on the shoulder, telling him he was wanted somewhere else.

  Puzzled, the guy walked around the corner, where he was confronted by the housekeeper. I slipped down to the end of the hallway to listen.

  Furious, the housekeeper quietly identified herself to the young upstart as Dr. Blanton, the Assistant Associate Director of the facility. The good doctor then proceeded to dress the psych student down, ticking off a dozen mistakes he’d made in five minutes in the ward, culminating in his desire to (gasp!) drink an “unauthorized” glass of water in front of a patient. Finally, Dr. Blanton told the guy to clear out, assuring him the appropriate notations would be made to his permanent record. Blushing furiously, the kid left the ward. Ten minutes after that Dr. Blanton was back dusting coffee tables.