by Terri Cheney
“You look so beautiful,” it cooed. “You look better now than when you were thirty. Any man would be lucky to get you.” So in lieu of my normally clean-scrubbed looks, I lavished my eyes with thick black mascara, swiped on a vampier lipstick, a bolder blush. I painted my toenails in Pirate’s Blood red, then showcased them in the cruelest pair of stilettos I own. Jeans I’d bought two sizes ago were somehow slithered into. The woman in the mirror gazed back at me with complete and absolute approbation.
I shudder to think what I must have looked like, all dolled up for the kill. I live in L.A., so I’ve seen my fair share of women who refuse to acknowledge their age. It’s never pretty. Nor am I, when I look this way and act like a tigress on the prowl. It’s embarrassing, and it isn’t me, except it’s wearing my face and fingerprints—which means I’m ultimately responsible for any havoc that may ensue.
That didn’t deter me. I got in my car and sped down to the Sunset Strip, which may be the only place in town where I truly belong when I’m manic. It’s even gaudier than I am, and the flashing throb of the neon signs is music to my heart. I cruised the Strip looking for diversion, feeling the energy shimmer up like heat from the road. I started to drive faster, weaving in and out of the heavy traffic, ignoring the horns that kept honking at me. I opened the windows and let the hot night air flow through my car. It ruffled my hair, so I stopped to smooth it in the mirror, and a car slammed into me from behind.
I was livid, until I saw how handsome the driver was. He was very angry—“What the hell do you think you’re doing, stopping right in the middle of traffic like that?”—but I summoned up my most dulcet voice, confessed that it was all my fault, and would he like to join me for a drink while we exchanged insurance information? The Chateau Marmont was just a block away… He looked surprised, but agreed. I can’t remember what happened several dirty martinis after that, only that I woke up somewhere in the Hollywood Hills and my manic bravado had completely deserted me. I looked at his sleeping face on the pillow and wondered who and how and now what?
Quickly tiptoeing out, I found my way back down to the Strip and eventually back to my house. My fickle mirror didn’t welcome me this time. I looked just like the mess I was: mascara smeared around my eyes, hair a rat’s nest, clothes rumpled—what remained of them. My underwear was missing, or had I even worn any that night? Once again, she—that harridan who steals my face—had triumphed, leaving me feeling small and lost and terrified.
I tried to recall exactly what had happened, but it all blurred together in a messy montage. The only reliable evidence I had was my car’s mangled bumper and a Chateau Marmont cocktail napkin in my purse, bearing some indecipherable manic squiggles. Not much, but it sparked my memory. Bits and pieces slowly came back to me—his lips, my purrs, those elusive panties—and I burned with shame. Maybe a shower would help, I thought. As I stepped in, I noticed how immaculate it was: crystal clear glass, gleaming chrome, shining tiles. But it didn’t matter. No matter how hard I tried—and I try awfully hard, every time—I just couldn’t scrub myself clean.
JUDGMENT DAY
When I accepted the offer, I was perfectly sane. It seemed like an excellent opportunity, a career building block, although the prestige far outweighed the money. I’d been asked to speak to 350 federal judges in Oklahoma about mental illness and the law. I knew a lot about mental illness, but as a lawyer I’d limited my practice to the very narrow field of entertainment and intellectual property. So I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I had to say about the topic. But the conference was over a month away, and I figured if I could prepare for trial in a month, I could handle this.
For a brief, uneasy moment I remembered what high-pressure trial prep always did to me. But I was so much better now and besides, I was thrilled to be invited. A lot of my cases had been in federal court, and I was in thrall to its mystique. Federal judges are the rock stars of the judiciary. Unlike state court judges, they’re appointed for life, so they operate in a realm beyond censure or esteem; they can be as nasty, or as nice, or as eccentric as they damn well please. But for all its perks and glamour, this tenure comes with an awesome responsibility: they hold the Constitution in their hands.
For the next two weeks, I walked around in an ambient glow of anticipation. I treated myself to a new black suit in a more conservative cut than I already owned. I liked how professional it made me look—it erased all the years of mental hospitals and suicide attempts and multiple DUIs and electroshock therapy. In that suit, I had no sordid history. I blended in with the rest of society—better yet, the serious and sober part.
Ten days before the conference, I finally overcame my deeply engrained habit of procrastination and buckled down to research. The first night, I worked until midnight. The next night, until 2 a.m. The next until 4 a.m., and then I just stopped sleeping. I didn’t worry that this would make me manic. I felt fine. Better than fine—I felt fabulous. In fact, the loss of sleep didn’t hurt my performance at all: with each successive hour I grew more and more creative. Thoughts bloomed like roses; I simply had to reach out and pluck them.
The central thrust of my speech was about the increasingly urgent need for diversion programs and mental health courts. Normally, I wouldn’t find this very scintillating, although I knew it was an important and worthy subject. But I was so enmeshed in my beautiful words and facts and figures, I couldn’t imagine anyone not being moved to tears by what I had to say. I thought it was surely the best speech ever written on the subject, and was certain to rouse the judges to action. Why, who knew what impact I’d have on the nation?
With the speech out of the way, all I had to do was pack. I pulled the black suit out of my closet and shuddered with revulsion. Seriously? I was going to wear that? It looked like I was attending the funeral of somebody I didn’t like very well. Emergency action was required—I needed edgy, radical styling that shouted “success.” Simply put, I needed Barney’s.
When I’m not manic, I never go into Barney’s. I don’t even look at the windows. It’s so high-end it both awes and repulses me. But I quickly found my desire: an Ozbek original, the saleswoman said in a hushed tone as she gingerly handed it over. I didn’t know who Ozbek was, but the suit was certainly original. It was silvery black with long, swooping sleeves and a plunging neckline and narrow pants that were notched at the ankle. It looked sexy with nothing on underneath, but I bowed to the occasion and bought a wisp of white shirt.
I had a mild coronary when the saleswoman told me the price. My entire wardrobe wasn’t worth that. But what was money? I’d always make more. After all, 350 federal judges were eagerly awaiting my wisdom, and who knew where that would lead? I walked out of Barney’s on a cloud of confidence.
Somewhere high over Arizona I got a headache. The lack of sleep was beginning to prey on my nerves. I took two Benadryl, hoping they would soothe my throbbing head and knock me out, but they did just the opposite: they made me wide awake, wired, and angry. Angry that the judges were putting me through such an ordeal: all the angst, the preparation, the anxiety, the expense. Who did they think they were, anyway?
I thought back to the federal magistrate who had handled all the pretrial issues in my big Michael Jackson case. I constantly had to appear before him, usually to defend Michael’s inability to attend some legal proceeding. He’d rip into me in front of opposing counsel and the rest of the courtroom. “Look, Little Missy,” he’d say. “I know your firm, and I’m sure they wouldn’t approve of such B.S.” It was hard enough being the only woman amongst all the male attorneys; “Little Missy” made it almost impossible.
The gall of them, that murder of crows, to call me “Little Missy” and then expect me to meekly bow to their demands. They wanted me to opine on mental illness and the law? Fine. I jettisoned diversion programs on the spot. Instead, I’d give them a rip-roaring example of how the law—their precious, high-minded, beautiful law—had cruelly trampled on the rights of the mentally ill. In short, I’d tell them the sto
ry of me.
I spent the rest of the night drafting a new speech, ignoring any qualms about changing the topic without notice. Then I showered and tried to camouflage my pallor and the purple bruises under my eyes. I pulled out the new suit and poured myself into it. It looked a whole lot funkier in Oklahoma than it had in Beverly Hills, and I felt a twinge of concern, but only a twinge. I figured I could get away with anything so long as I told them I used to practice entertainment law.
The conference hall was echoey huge, and cold as court. It was odd, I’d expected the judges to be wearing their robes, but they weren’t and that disturbed me. I was nervous when I started to speak but quickly warmed to my story. I told them how I was jailed for driving under the influence of prescription medication. I told them about my repeated requests to take my dangerously overdue psychiatric drugs and to contact my attorney and psychiatrist—all of which were blatantly ignored. Then I told them about the guard’s reaction when I lost my temper and demanded a phone call:
“She was all over me, all two hundred pounds of her. She forced my head to the floor. It was sticky with what I later realized was my own blood. She jammed one knee against my back, and started hitting. Not with her fist, with the club that hung by her side. I was shaking so badly I don’t know how she managed to land a solid blow, but she must have been thoroughly trained because my ribs were exploding, one after another, a most thorough and systematic attack… Nothing has ever been the same for me since that endless moment on the cold stone floor. Nothing ever will be again. I know now that I am touchable, that I am not immune.”
I implored the judges to appreciate the consequences of such treatment on an extremely vulnerable population. I told them about my own resulting suicidality, and how difficult it’s been for me simply to stay alive since. To my surprise, I started tearing up. It had been hard, harder than they could possibly know. It suddenly seemed very important that these highly influential people understood the struggle of all those like me. I stopped being worried about changing my speech. This was the story I needed to tell, and maybe even the one they needed to hear.
I folded up my pages and let my final words linger in the air. The judges were eerily silent. Then it began in the back, a ripple that quickly spread through the room and grew louder with each passing second. It couldn’t be, but it was: applause. To my astonishment, people began to get to their feet, until the entire room was standing. The last thing in the world I ever expected was a standing ovation.
I fielded questions from all sides—good questions that showed the judges had really listened—until the next session was due to start, and the auditorium was almost clear. Then a tall man with a craggily handsome face came up to me and took my hand. “I want you to know how much your speech meant to me,” he said. “I tried to kill myself five months ago, and it gave me hope to hear that you’ve been suicidal, too. As a judge, I don’t get to talk about it with anyone. Now I don’t feel so alone.” I’m sure I was breaking protocol, but I reached out and hugged him until I could feel his trembling stop.
The federal judges would be the first to say it: Sometimes justice is served in the oddest ways. Mania can bring such strange gifts with it—in this case, a genuine passion that ignited minds and moved people. But obviously, it all could have gone sideways; one can never really predict what the impact will be. It was a thought to ponder at great length someday… But at that moment, what I desperately needed was to lie down on crisp cotton sheets, order room service, and absorb what had happened. Then maybe, finally, to sleep.
THE BIG CON
A few weeks ago, for no cause at all, I found myself elated, enraptured, and obviously manic. Terrific, right? But here was the hitch: I had plans to meet a former boss for lunch, and I wanted to pass as “normal.” I’d done my best to hide behind a tightly clenched professionalism back when I used to work with him, and I wasn’t sure what he knew about the real me. Even if he did know I have bipolar disorder, I wanted him to think it was well under control. Ten years had passed, and I was still trying to hoodwink him with my aplomb. It’s funny how our poses cling to us.
So rather than the flashy colors and big bold prints that were begging to escape my closet, I wore a classic uniform (classic, at least, for L.A.): a tailored black jacket, white shirt, and jeans—not skanky skinny jeans, either, just a clean tapered cut. On my way out of the house, though, I grabbed a pair of neon cats’ eyes shades, to satisfy my lust for self-expression. But I took them off when I reached the restaurant. Such amazing self-control, I thought. I’d have no problem at all with lunch.
Then again… I’ve been found out before. No matter how hard I work to keep my mania a secret, people who know me well often guess the truth. I hate this. It’s deeply humiliating to be told that I’m manic, just as bad as being told I’m drunk or sloppy or out of control. And then it starts: the hovering, the unspoken disapproval, the buzzkill.
Until recently, I never understood how my friends saw through my facade. But then I saw the film House of Games, about confidence men. It seems con men know how to read their marks because they watch them closely for “tells.” We all have tells: unconscious movements or facial expressions or subtle tics that give away what we’re feeling. Apparently, my friends have learned my tells.
But maybe if I camouflaged them really well… Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I’d do the exact opposite of what I was feeling. I’d play an upside-down version of myself: quivering on the edge of depression, instead of a manic high. Dysphoric, not euphoric; or at the very least, extremely unemotional. It would be like a game of hide-and-seek, except only I would know what was hidden. Instead of dreading the lunch, I now looked forward to it with a fiendish glee. Hah! This was going to be fun.
He was waiting for me in a booth by the window, in his ubiquitous gray gabardine suit. I wondered if he ever wore anything else. He still reminded me of a wizened, near-sighted clerk who looked nothing like the fierce litigator he really was. He stood up, and there was an awkward pause where I didn’t know how to greet him. I wanted to say, “Hey there, Georgie boy,” and give him a great big hug. But I held out my hand and gave his a firm shake. “Nice to see you, George,” I said.
We small-talked about people we used to know. I’d never realized that George was such a gossipmonger, but then he’d never seemed so fascinating to me before. (When I’m manic, every dullard is bewitching.) After the waiter took our order, George just kept on chatting away, but I’d stopped listening by then because I didn’t like how his silverware was arranged. Mania demands perfection, down to the teeniest-tiniest detail. His fork and knife were okay, but the spoon was askew.
I was aching to reach out and straighten it. All of me wanted to, but I sat on my hands and endured the godawful asymmetry. To anyone who might be watching, I no doubt looked still as a statue. But I was jiggling my legs under the table so hard I accidentally smacked it with my knee, spilling my coffee all over George. I apologized profusely, but gabardine’s easy to dry clean, I thought, and he must have a million more of those suits. As he wiped the coffee off his pants with his napkin, I reached over surreptitiously and moved his spoon.
We got through the appetizers okay, but by the time our entrées arrived I noticed that George was staring at me. Damn it, I thought. He knows something’s up. But instead he said, “I never noticed before that your eyes are green,” which was the most personal thing he’d said to me in all the years we’d known each other. I should have been pleased, but it was another tell: when I’m manic, my hazel eyes glow yellow-green, like a cat’s. I quickly narrowed them into the hostile squint of depression.
“I’m sorry, did I offend you?” George asked.
Rapid-fire speech also gives me away, and a spurt of words was trying hard to escape: “Of course not, don’t be silly, tell me more about my green eyes,” I longed to say. But I swallowed my eagerness, lowered my vocal register, and… talked… like… this. “Nooo, not at alll,” I said, in a dulled-down drawl.
The check came, and we both reached for it. He was more insistent than I was, and to disguise my manic aggressiveness, I gave in and let him pay. “Ah, I remember now,” he said as he took out his wallet. “You never were quite tough enough.” We said our goodbyes, and I was politely furious. He might be a junkyard dog in the courtroom, I thought, but he knew nothing about tough. Tough was hiding your tells, living against your instincts. Tough was pulling off the endless con.
MANIC CHEAT SHEET
Back when I had money, I developed a lovely bad habit of dropping out of sight and reemerging in Santa Barbara. I didn’t tell my friends or my bosses where I was going. I just disappeared into the sunset over Pacific Coast Highway, listening to Joseph Campbell’s “Follow Your Bliss” audiotape and scheming how I could quit my job. I was usually manic when I did this, or on the brink of becoming so.
I remember one time pulling into the sweeping driveway of the Biltmore Hotel. The pink bougainvillea that draped the entrance rustled in the ocean breeze, welcoming me. “Aaaah,” I sighed, as the valets and bellhops swarmed my car. A disturbingly handsome young man, dark-eyed and deeply tanned in a spruce white uniform, opened the car door for me. Mindful of his gaze, I extricated myself slowly, holding his hand for balance. I felt like a princess making an entrance—until I gracefully tripped, landing splat on the cobblestones. My purse flew open and all its contents went sprawling out over the drive.
The valet did his best to recover my things, even scrambling under my car to retrieve my lipstick. Despite his efforts, a few papers were lost to the wind. It was probably just something related to work, I thought. Good riddance. I tried to tip him, but he refused. “Please,” I insisted, but he shook his head. “It’s my pleasure,” he said, as he ushered me into the lobby.