by Peter Kocan
It’s getting late and turning chilly. We get up and walk along.
“Would you like to come round to Admission later? They have a rumpus room at the back. We could play records or something.”
“I wouldn’t be allowed,” you say. You are wondering if you’ll be grabbed at the stairs tonight. You can’t bear the thought of it. Being with Julie has begun to give you back something. Perhaps the sense of being a real person. That’s an awkward sense to have if you are very possibly going to be grabbed by the collar and kicked up some stairs.
“I’ll come and see you then.”
“You wouldn’t like my ward. Anyway, they wouldn’t let you in,” you say. Then you add quickly, so she’ll know you really want to keep seeing her: “Want to go to the film tomorrow night?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll meet you at the canteen at, say, six.”
“Okay.”
“By the way, how old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“I’m twenty-five.”
“Poor old codger,” she says, smiling.
There is an hour before the film starts so you and Julie have a walk along the lake shore. It seems natural to hold hands. When we go into the hall we see some young Admission patients and Julie leads you over and introduces you to one or two, then we sit at the end of their row, against the wall. We hold hands the whole time. Julie is clasping your hand between both of hers and letting it rest on her lap, then she rests her hand on your lap and it feels lovely when it makes a slight pressure where your prick is. The nicest thing is that it doesn’t seem deliberate but just as if we are relaxed enough to touch like this without even thinking. You are thinking though—you’re thinking how this is the first time you’ve held hands with a girl in the pictures. At twenty-five you are getting a taste of life!
Afterwards we stand in shadows outside your ward.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asks.
“I have to work at OT. What about you?”
“We have Group Therapy and stuff.”
“Is it garbage?”
“Pretty much.”
“I leave OT at four.”
“Where’s OT exactly? I’ll meet you outside.”
So it’s arranged. You want to kiss her here in the shadows, but you aren’t sure how to make the right movement so it’ll seem natural. Julie makes the movement. Her mouth is very soft and when you feel her tongue against yours you go weak and hold her tighter, then step away slightly so she won’t feel your prick getting hard. Half your mind is terribly clear and you are like a bystander watching yourself with this girl, as though you need a witness to tell you it’s truly happening; the other half is like a gibbering idiot who wants to kiss her and fuck her and cry on her shoulder all at the same time.
Julie meets you the next evening and the two of you wander to a nice spot at the lake shore. You have your hand on the front of her blouse.
“I’m an idiot!” she says.
“Why?”
“Wearing this blouse with buttons on the back.”
“You’re a darling.”
“I left my bra off but forgot about these buttons.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You can undo it at the back if you want.”
“I’d like to, but someone might come along. I don’t want anyone seeing you half-undressed.”
“Except you.”
“Except me.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“I just want to keep kissing you. I can’t get enough of your mouth.”
“Be my guest. And in future I’ll wear buttons in front.”
Every night this week you’ve had a sweet hour with Julie. Every night you’ve held her small breasts in your hands while her tongue presses against yours. Now it’s Friday.
“Do you want to make love?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anywhere?”
“There’s plenty of bush.”
“Let’s lose ourselves in the bush.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
You are lying in bed, thinking about tomorrow. A big moon is outside the window and a breeze is making the leafy branch move gently against the glass. The movement is like the motion of lovemaking. You get out of bed to look at it. The lake is lit with moonlight and the stars overhead and the lights on the distant shore are all pulsating. You wonder if there is a single word which could mean so much beauty. The word is Julie.
And now you are seeing the sun’s orange blaze through closed eyelids. The sun is on your body and on the long grass flattened around you. You could float out of your body now, except your body feels too good to leave. Your nipple tickles and you open an eye. Julie is sitting naked beside you, playing with a grass stem. She leans to kiss you.
“You’re so beautiful,” you tell her. “It makes me want to die.”
“Don’t die.”
“This was my first time,” you confess.
“I wouldn’t have known. You’re awfully good at it.”
“Was it nice for you, really?”
“Yes, you horny devil!”
“Let’s do it again!”
“You’ll have to ask me nicely,” she says. “I’m just a modest maiden.” Then she takes your rising prick in her mouth.
We are kissing in the shadows outside your ward.
“I can’t bear to leave you.”
“I don’t want to either.”
“Tomorrow won’t be long.”
“No.”
“We’ll go to the bush.”
“Yes please.”
“Will you be a modest maiden again?”
“If you’ll be a horny devil.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
You get into the dining room just in time. It’s the same as always, but now you don’t mind the noise and stink and madness. Nothing can touch you. You just wish you could use your own wonderful luck like a wand and touch these wretches and light them up.
A screw comes to your table with the medication tray. He gives Stark his dose, then Stern and Gilroy. He hands you some blue tablets.
“I’m not on medication,” you say, smiling. This mistake sometimes happens.
“Yes you are. The doctor’s put you on it.”
In your head an image: a gigantic black snake, lunging from the sweet grass.
10
You deserve it. For being so stupid. For thinking you could ever come in from the cold wastes of the world of The Survivor. In those wastes there are no hopes and only the worst can happen, and when it does happen you are ready for it. When you leave that world you immediately take on hopes which disarm you. Or if you let yourself have hopes they must be tiny ones, ones so close to being nothing that they can’t hurt you much. The thing with Julie was too big, stupidly big, so you deserve whatever will happen now.
When the meal is finished you file out with the others and get through The Gauntlet—though it doesn’t matter now—and go into the dayroom and sit alone in the alcove. You are trying to feel whether you feel different yet and wondering how the effects will come. The blue tablets are Stelazine. You know from seeing others they can have very bad side effects. You picture various men you’ve known who became slobbering zombies. Barry Clarke was like that in MAX. He dribbled green slime.
After a couple of hours you begin to feel strange. A sort of restlessness is on you, making it hard to sit still. You walk across the alcove but you immediately feel weak and must sit again. As soon as you sit the restlessness comes back. By bedtime you feel very bad.
It is impossible to rest. It has nothing to do with sleeping. You couldn’t sleep properly in the dormitory before anyway. Now you can’t even bear to lie prone because the restlessness is too much. You think perhaps if you do some push-ups you might be able to tire yourself out, so you go into the shower room and try it. After two push-ups your energy is gone and you have to stop. You l
ie in bed again, then try more push-ups, then lie down for another few minutes, then try push-ups again. The two forces are exactly balanced—restlessness and lack of energy.
Morning takes years to come. You have to force yourself to sit still at the table. You feel so weak the spoon seems heavy as lead. They give you more Stelazine. You’re to have it three times daily.
You go to your spot at the side and try to read, to return to David Allison and the cold muddy wastes, but you’ve no concentration. You put the book aside, take it up, put it down. You had arranged to meet Julie at the canteen at nine-thirty. You aren’t going. To see her would only start you crying or something. Anyway, it’s all different now.
Just after nine-thirty the thought of Julie overcomes everything and you go to the canteen. It seems a long way and you must keep stopping to gather your strength. She isn’t there. You are almost glad. You sit by the water till it seems lunchtime, but you find it isn’t even ten-thirty. Time can’t drag this slowly, it’s impossible. The thought of Julie is powerful again, so you make your way, slowly, like an old man, to a part of the road where you can see Admission. She doesn’t come. You are almost glad. Better it ends this way.
They give you more tablets at lunchtime and now the effects are building to full strength. You hobble to the canteen after lunch, then to the place where you might see her coming from Admission. The only thing that could make this bearable would be if you knew that when the day ended, years and years from now, you could sleep. But all that will happen is that years and years of night will start.
OT isn’t a refuge any more, not from this. You can’t stay at the sewing machine for more than a minute and must get up to fiddle with some other job, then the weakness drains you and you sink into the chair again for another minute. You tell Con Pappas about the Stelazine. Just the fact of it. It isn’t a thing you can describe properly to anyone.
Cheryl and Janice know you are on this medication and can see you aren’t too happy. But they are nurses and part of their job is to make things like this happen to people. If they really understood how you feel they’d have to understand that their job is partly cruel and wicked, and you can’t expect them to do that. Mr Trowbridge thinks the Stelazine is a mistake, not because it’s cruel and wicked but because Work is the best medication.
“There’s usually a period of discomfort before you become stabilised,” he tells you. “Two to three weeks.”
But you can’t grasp normal time any more. Two to three weeks will hardly get you to the end of today.
Going back from OT you hear her call. She’s walking quickly along from Admission.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, looking at you.
“Nothing.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Yes you are. You think I’m a bitch for not meeting you yesterday.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“My parents came. I couldn’t get away. Truly.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I felt like a bitch, if that’s any consolation to you.”
“You aren’t.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“D’you want to have a walk now? Look, buttons all in front.”
She’s so sweet, so kind. You just want her to go away and leave you in the cold wastes.
“I can’t go for a walk.”
“Is something really wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t?”
“I can’t see you any more.”
There is a long silence. You are staring at the ground.
“I get the message.”
“There isn’t any message.”
“You used me!”
“No,” you say. You don’t want her to think that. “If I’d just used you I’d try to use you some more, wouldn’t I?”
“Then you’re tired of me!”
“No.”
“God, I haven’t any tabs on myself, but I thought I could satisfy a man for longer than a week!”
“You’re a wonderful person.”
“That’s a bloody easy thing to say!”
You have no energy left. Standing here has sapped you.
“I have to go inside now.”
“Len,” she says in a softer tone. “Are you sick? You look it.”
“No, I just can’t see you any more.”
“Just like that?” Her voice is hard again.
When you are heading into the cold wastes it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you. It’s better and simpler, really, if they hate you. But you don’t want any of the hate to rub off on her. You don’t want her to think this is happening because of something wrong with her. There’s one more thing you can say.
“I’m doing Life. You know that. Sooner or later, in a few weeks, you’ll have to go away. I’d rather have the break now while I can still stand it. If I’m with you for a few more weeks I won’t be able to.”
“Christ, is that all? I could keep seeing you! Every weekend!”
“No.”
“We’d still be together!”
“I have to go inside now.”
“Wait a minute!”
“I have to go in.” You walk away, with your last bit of energy.
“You’re a liar!” she calls after you. “I was a handy fuck, wasn’t I! Well fuck you!”
You think she is crying. A thought comes. It might be important if you had the energy to examine it. Maybe all the stuff about the cold wastes is a way for you to kill the ideas of things, kill them symbolically in your mind—love and optimism and innocence and other things. You pretend you’re a victim. Maybe you are really a kind of sadist.
It’s been a week. You have tried to talk to the Charge Sister but your mouth has gone peculiar. You can say a few words okay, then you get a sensation like lockjaw and if you try to speak any more the words begin to sound like a retard’s grunts. If you try to speak to the screws and nurses they look at you as if they can’t imagine what could possibly be wrong apart from there being something wrong with your mind. You manage to ask the Charge Sister why you’re on Stelazine.
“The doctor noticed you in the grounds one day and decided you required extra help.”
“But why?”
“Better ask the doctor.”
Of course it’s because of the lovemaking. It has to be. You’ve done nothing else wrong. You don’t bother asking “The German”. In Group Therapy you hold yourself rigid in the chair, trying to seem composed. You try to get at the back of the group where “The German” won’t notice you so much. But you mustn’t appear to be hiding or she might pay you extra attention. When she asks you a question you answer as much like a bright five-year-old as possible, so she’ll be satisfied and not press you. If you had to say very much your jaw would seize up and you’d be grunting.
It’s been two weeks. You are at the waterfront on Sunday morning, lying with your face pressed into the grass. You are counting seconds. Counting seconds is a way of keeping a slight grip on things. You count sixty and another minute is over, then count again and you’ve got through another minute. If you could do it sixty times you’d be through a whole hour, but you can’t concentrate for more than three or four sixties and must get up and walk about until the weakness drains you and you sink down again to count some more.
Someone comes past. It’s one of the Admission patients Julie introduced you to at the film night.
“Hi,” he says.
You don’t want to answer in case he stops and wants to talk. You can’t talk to anyone now. But you need to ask him something.
“Hi,” you say, looking up. “How’s Julie?”
“Oh, she left,” he says. “Got herself discharged the other day.”
You bury your face in the grass so he’ll go away.
Walking back to the ward you feel a sensation like goose pimples in your legs. Your legs won’t move properly. You stop by the roadside and the feelin
g goes. After you’ve gone another little way it comes back and you have to stop again. The feeling now is a bit like the feeling when your jaw seizes up. Your legs are paralysed. You wonder if this is how polio begins, or some other disease like that. You are terribly frightened. You hobble to the ward with many stops and starts and tell the Charge Sister what has happened. It’s hard to tell her because of your mouth going peculiar. She’s busy and hasn’t time to listen properly, but you manage to make her understand what your grunts mean.
“It’s just a side effect of Stelazine,” she says. “It isn’t uncommon.”
You can’t go to OT because of your legs, so you stay on the courtyard, counting seconds, for a few days. It’s hard even to walk into the dining room. You hobble a few paces in and then must grip the nearest table and stay there trying to keep your balance until the paralysis eases a bit and you can hobble a few more steps to your chair. A screw sees you acting this way and tells you to get to your place quick smart. You can’t explain because your mouth has gone peculiar again. The screw tries to frogmarch you across the room but your legs won’t stay under you and you fall over and bump a table. The screw thinks you are just being difficult in an idiot retard way and is ready to thump you. After that the Charge Sister says you can have your meals on a tray in the dayroom if you wish, though that would obviously be a nuisance for the staff. Her tone indicates just how much of a nuisance it would be, and also that you seem to be playing on your condition at least a teeny bit and could pull yourself together if you tried. So you keep hobbling into the dining room and the screws and nurses are fairly tolerant.
The paralysis stops after four days and you go to OT again, though you still can’t work properly because of the restlessness and weakness alternating every half-minute or so. You ought to be stabilising on the medication now but it’s as bad as ever.
You are writing to your mother, asking her to come and help you. Your writing is all squiggly and crazy. What will she think if she gets a letter that looks as if it was written by a madman? And you can’t concentrate well enough to frame what you need to say.
You understand you are in another of the brilliant traps. If you claim the doctor is treating you wrongly or cruelly you have a persecution complex. And if you aren’t claiming that then there’s no point saying anything at all. You try to make the letter sound reasonable but urgent. That doesn’t alter the trap of course. If you are being reasonable it shows the Stelazine is doing you good. If you aren’t being reasonable it shows you need the Stelazine to help you become reasonable.