by Tess McInnis
“I'll be right back, just hold on...” he stood up to leave, “ Just give me one second...” and out the door he went. Panic. Wondering if he was coming back, or worse with ants or sedation. Expect the worse. It had only been a few seconds, his smile met the open door first. The door was different. Different than the one I had in the other padded room. I had just now noticed for the first time it was not gray. Still the small window near the center top was the same.. The “peeking” window is what I had always called it. Too little to be an actual window. Just a glance spot for eyes upon you. All kinds of eyes. Different eyes on different days. Some eyes concerned. Some smug and egotistical. Some fast and moving with little regard to the human inside the room. And on this door there was no wide slot further down which opened and closed for sake of daily feedings for the animal I had become. The slot where I could manage a hand to gather human contact by reception of plastic. Clanking of keys. The sound here as well, but the intensity of arrival and departure not as angry. Controlled. The keys here bared single purpose to the lock. They did not have a walk all of their own. In the other padded room, the keys were powerful in the distance as the rhythm accelerated upon approach. Each day or night given to a different stroke of walking the halls outside the tiny window in the large gray door. The screaming, fighting, and all sounds born of hell was beyond the gray door. Sometimes so loud throughout the night, I would find myself doing the peeking with my kind of eyes in attempts to follow the agony.
And sometimes, in a jolt ,second eyes would jump out to see mine, causing me to hide down on the floor in fear. More often, it was anger, the worst type I carried with me in there. I wanted to hurt, no kill. I could have found such satisfaction in it. I would fantasize about it. Just taking a sharp edge to the throat of the whole situation, piercing another human deep into my anger and relieving them of this life. The capacity to kill is in every soul. It is a random pocket inside us which begs to surface when being treated less than human. It is a Ferris wheel of intention and rage sharing the same chair, riding around over and over in you...which probably should never stop to get off. It is frightening to acknowledge the dark side could actually flip a switch and come out to play.
“Here, I managed to sneak these in for you” Doctor gentle presence shook me back firmly. Still I was wearing anger now. I looked at the bed and before me was a pack of cigarettes and a cheap store bought ashtray resembling the sixties type my parents had. He knew me well. Talk was easy hiding behind my puffing. I smiled somewhat and worked my magic with the stick and lighter.
“Thank you” Oh, God, how long has it been since I said those words and even meant them I thought to myself.
“I figured it was a top priority given the session” he kinda giggled. Not really a giggle. Something new and refreshing from a smile though. He continued, “ your mood has changed since I left the room, I sense a heightened anxiety, perhaps anger...your face tells me something unpleasant came to you, was it the reason for the screaming?” And he went on, I was listening. But he was right, a different woman was sitting here right now. I was pissed. More than pissed, enraged. The Ferris wheel was moving, I prayed it would not stop. Not with him. I smoked fiercely with my dark side painted on my face. He got quiet and watched. Had I scared him? I was scaring myself. I forced the word 'calm' into my brain and repeated it. Calm. I would try to talk. There would be no knives today if I could help it.
“I need to tell you something” I stumbled on those words. How many times will I ask myself why?
Not knowing where or how to begin.
“Okay, so let's hear it” he said with a friend's grace.
“I don't like this room,” I choked out barely.
“Yea, I don't like it much myself, it just seems...” I interrupted my chatty Kathy Doctor gentle.
“Nooooo....this room I have been in before, is what I am trying to say” pissy me speaking. “I have been trying to forget a god awful place like this ever existed for one minute in my life. I buried the goddamn room in my past and now it has followed me here.” I stood up and paced, with cigarette in mouth like a mean bitch from the streets. My form was changing to suit her. How many times will I ask myself why?
“Where exactly are you now?” He said with caution draping his voice, his body mannerisms.
I looked up at the ceiling and replied “In prison”. Not once would I make contact with his eyes in lieu of judgment of me. I had already received one too many verdicts from every ass out there.
“No wonder you are so angry” was he patronizing me.
“How would YOU know? Have YOU ever been locked down, treated less than an animal...chained to a system who created YOU to be what they wanted YOU to be...” I was yelling at my Doctor gentle and he graciously was accepting. “These hungry power and control beasts own you, and they tell you they own you, and they show you just how much they own you....” falling out of me now, please don't let the Ferris wheel stop. “I fuckin HATE how humans can be given an ounce of power or control...the big fuckin say-so and they manipulate it to feed their own sadistic ego's for the sake of feeling like someone they are not! They get a fuckin' badge and it's on! They run the law according to their 'own personal' agenda, leading the way to emotional torture in your own life for all to witness... especially my small children.” I paused in a breathe to see my youngest daughter, six at the time, standing on the sidewalk watching me from the street. I could never forget her look as I sat in the police car. Innocence stunned and caught in my mind's camera. Her gentle little face trying to figure out what was going on. Why mommy was being taken away. How many times will I ask myself why, how many times will I cry? In the same moment within our home, my oldest daughter scurried around in a panic trying to save her prized possessions from the nosy grips of hands of police tearing her world apart. My son just hid. Rage meet Red...Rage this is Red. I could feel the blood gurgle in my throat as I reflected and spoke of things so awful to Doctor gentle.
HOW MANY TIMES by ICP
“Let's talk about accountability doctor” I was a street bitch now. Gone were thoughts about love, my fantasies of prince charming coming to save me. Gone were the tears I cried previously for a heart's longing to a fairytale. The dreams had become as flippant and unpredictable as my mind. I was ugly here. “What is accountability....WHO is accountable...and WHO decides? Well, I will tell you. In real life it should be everyone, but in any given floating bubble you land into, which I did...is a depraved human of it's own bullied past. There they are hiding behind some pseudo power, just waiting for it's prey. And it goes beyond that...once you get in their system...you are reminded even more of your non human status. Caged into being a revenue generator for a higher purpose. They reduce you to use you. It's all about money and not a single inkling of care for the flesh in their cages. I was a broken person who needed a support system, not a criminal system! I needed help, and I got cuffs instead. It was this, this...these people...telling me who I was as if they truly knew me. They created another version of me. I only wanted the hell out of it all...that nightmare of intrusive badge pushers, that world. If I could have only ran and started over somewhere else. I would have been fine. They would never let me. They owned me like their puppet. I fucking hate them, all of them. I hate them for not letting me find my way out and throwing me to those fucked up prison walls.”I was yelling at the wall, at the floor, and I was feeling the sickness from smoking too fast and too many. I was finished. I had to be. Rage was pounding my eyes and clenching my fists. I was pulling out knives. More sharp edges always stabbing at my meaning for existing. Stabbing. Slicing. One human after another, all who had pulled meat off my soul for their own sick and twisted feedings. I turned to face my doctor gentle for his forgiveness in manner, expecting the sentence pronounced once more. He asked me to sit. I did. Quiet thoughts a road between us in silence. Neither knew words now. So, I let him off the hook with, “such is life...lies and truths where one could be the other....”and quietly, I said “I need to sleep d
octor.” I laid down, knowing this was only the beginning of lies and truths to come. I kind of declared to myself I would confess every corner of my being to this man. Confess. And there was so much more...yet little did I know the shit confessions would not come from me.
I have been under this streetlight before. I have been under this overpass before. I wait. Here in the night by this wall between the road and an apartment building. Wooden stairs on the outside lead up to a collection of souls connected by addiction in a crummy three room flat. I don't even know the people, I only know I am freezing out here, waiting for him. He will have what I need, and not be angry with me this time. Both thoughts are elusive. I am always standing waiting here. And he never shows. Alone in a big city with no name in which I come to often. The faint feeling of love. Of freedom in high. Of running the streets like wild teens without rules. Yet, I just wait, smoking a cigarette, listening to chatter from the flat. Always wondering why I am here, and why my feet never move. Why I never say anything to anyone, if anyone was to pass by which they don't. Just me standing in the shadows on a wet night, under a streetlight...waiting for him, or my high.
SOBER by Pink Before this final curtain call, here in my caged coffin, I had so many layers of personalities within me. Different shelves for each one. Depending on who wanted to come out that day was the one I took off the shelf. There were times I was so moody, I flipped each off the shelf throughout the day. Switching back and forth in unpredictability, leaving heightened states of mind laying around with the dope pipes. The lows almost would kill me each time. A moment so high, I was draped over a table, wondering if I so sick I would die right there. Wondering if I had clean panties on when they found me. I willed myself to crawl on hands and knees in beaten, heavy breathes to the couch so I could at least look posed when they came. This is what loving a man had come down to. Shallow breathing on a couch worried about clean panties when the ambulance covered me with a white sheet. What began by him in initial tidings of love, or I should just say dope... stayed after he left. And each relationship after was built on dope. Black hole moments of one such dope lover cold cocking me, and knocking me out, head into laundry basket in the hall. Faintly, I hear my oldest saying “Call 911” to her brother while she felt for a pulse. Coming too, I swore he would never do that again. I proceeded to beat his head on the corner of the bathroom door until I saw blood and I felt my rage simmer. All the time with my kids watching. Each time I slammed his head into the wood I thought... I had put up with his lying, smack on the wood, his psycho tape recordings of me, smack on the wood and his insatiable appetite to be even more violent than the evil one before him...smack on the wood three more times. Until the blood spattered beautifully like art on the bathroom sink, on the walls, and on the floor. My color red. I left him laying there and began to pack up my kids in my shitty little car. Grabbing my belongings and stepping over him to retrieve my make up. That would teach him to hit a woman. I needed to get high, or come down for good. I picked getting high for the next few years. I received the handcuffs for the first time while at a so called house party. The evil one before had decidedly chose to flaunt my victimization one more time by way of my checking account. I took the rap. Stood before the judge with my free lawyer, both making it seem like an three minute carnival ride I could get off and leave behind. It didn't work out that way. The evil one didn't pay for his crimes against me or my family. I did. And then I got high to forget it. Funny thing about meth, it's a love affair deep in you. Meth loves you when no one does. Meth makes you invincible to the world when you wanna be, and invisible when you need to be. There are few rules to this lifestyle. Shut down. I don't want to talk about this anymore. To anyone. Not myself . Not my doctor. For diving in means to take razors to the scabs, scraping the hardened yellow crust to see what oozes out. My pus is not pretty there. It will take the heavens above me to steal the razors and begin. I know what is to come, I always do.
Doctor gentle has decided I am cleared to return to my other room. Leave the white room. He walks with me down the hall making small talk about things of his day. I am half listening, too busy glaring at those glaring at me. I know my hair is of strings, snakes coiled about my face. I know I smell of my mother's smells. Doctor gentle doesn't seem to mind, but they do. I hate their faces. I can see all behind them. I hate the way the world sounds outside. As we walk, I hear cars hustling, loudness in life's daily repetitions of getting somewhere. The honking, the gibberish spoken by ants...all of it swallows me and I have no weapons to stop it. He keeps talking, and I am somewhere else. Fighting between the humility of my situation, Rage leaking slowly, and a sudden desire, no demand, to run. Run. “Run before they swallow you” a voice screams in my head. My head is down looking at my feet pacing foot in front of other on dark, cold, institutional tiles. “Why won't they run” I say aloud. Doctor gentle stops his babble and says “huh...did you say something dear?”. I shake my head no. This is the longest hall of my life. Imaginary world of my head is entertaining the idea of 'last man walking'. It could be me. In fact, It could be me right now should I decide to reach over the ant's desk for the syringe I saw and plunge deep into myself, better... into the ant holding it. I then trip my head to the prison walks, single file and quiet, looking for the mean mugging coming from a native up way in the line. I dare my thoughts not to plunge reverse into the worst past of consequences. Yet silently, I manage to file through endless mind hauntings of a past which shouldn't have been mine. But it was.
Now I am here, in this corridor smelling of pine adding yet another gruesome memory. In my fight or flight stance, my mind says 'run'. I can't...but I will. I enter my familiar room in a blur of speeding thoughts and muted awareness of everything else around me, including words from Doctor gentle. I am crawling in my skin without notice. Ants buzz in and buzz out. The doctor leaves. I am stoic in face, but racing bugs have got me all the way in. Little Mex, the orderly, walks in with a beige food tray. He is bouncy as usual, wide creases of laughter and mischief in a small face. I don't recall having seen him in awhile. He grabs a French fry off my tray, eats it, and comes towards me.
“So, your still here yo..”he smiles while chewing, while talking. “I thought your ass be long kickin rocks out the door. Man, you sure are fucked up huh?” He is just standing there waiting for my answer. I oblige.
“That depends...on what you consider 'fucked up', maybe I am perfectly sane and you are the one who is fucked up...after all, you work here...how fucked up is that?” I said, deciding he was just what I needed right now. A street voice who had no vested interests in whether I lived or died. I had decided he was alright from first meeting though. He was simple and maybe some innocence thrown together with some ghetto. A mix I could talk freely too.
“aiy, don't be hatin cuz I'm drawin the big bucks” he joked “I get free meals too” And he proceeded to eat more of my fries.
“You gonna eat these, cuz if not..”
“You can have them” no sooner than I finished the sentence, he had plopped himself and my tray onto the end of my bed. Next came a bite out of the hamburger. “These are kinda gross” he mumbled as he was chewing and I was witnessing the process as it washed around his mouth.
“Your kinda a trip too” I actually smirked a smile when I said that.
“Yea, but I'm not gross” shaking the hamburger at me.
“No, just bold”
“Why, cuz I'm eatin your food...you said I could” And he was moving on to some yellow pudding.
“You act like your freaking starving”I was actually giggling. Not school girl giggling, motherly giggling. He made me want to cook for him. The racing bugs were leaving, and I was calming down to a human capable of holding a decent conversation. With none other than lil' Mex.
“So, what's gonna happen to you yo?” he said while chugging milk. “like what is wrong tha hell is wrong with you...are they gonna med you up and let you out?” Let me out. Those words took me back. How many times have I heard or u
sed those three little words before. Let me out. I could ruminate those words. Just loop them. Instead I had lil' Mex here before me and I was thankful for the diversion. “I haven't a clue, and I imagine neither do they...just a lot of busy work for them, crazy people getting paid to play fake concerns for other crazy people”
“Damn girl, you sure don't like people very much do you?” he was finished eating. I was thinking the ants would be happy the tray was clean...some kind of an award for them to signify I was improving. They could take a bow at their healing abilities because the wild one in room 206 ate all of her food today.
“I like you” I told him with a half turned smile.
“What, why you like me?” his cockiness was showing. He reminded me of the Westminster Kennel Club dog shows, where those annoying little fluffy dogs would prance around in circle with their owners. Those dogs had ego's, I swear they did. Lil' Mex had an ego too.
“uh, not like that” I said watching his face lose the player mode.
“I knew that...I was just sayin' that's all”
“How often are you here, I mean, what is your work schedule like?” I asked him out of my own dire need for future conversations from him.
“See, you do want me to come back” backed by cockiness, a fluffy dog, my lil' Mex.
He continued with, “I am here on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday...in the evenings. They won't give me days, but it's cool..I still can get my party on Thursdays and Saturdays. Sleep all day and then show up here to visit the wildies like you.”
“What is Sunday like here...do they run on a skeleton crew then” I asked trying not to be too damn interested.
“Sundays are just like that, in fact, I love Sundays....do what I want, you know...run around like a big cheese...eat..just fuck around, ain't no one here to boss me so much...it's cool” He was a happy little shit.