Gorilla and the Bird

by Zack McDermott

  An old man walked around the common area with his pants dropped well below his bare ass. He was stroking his cock but no one really seemed to mind. He looked like he’d been living in a shack in the woods plotting against the government for several years: coarse, scraggly gray hair, beard to match, decaying brown and yellow teeth. Finally an orderly told him to put it away. He mumbled something guttural, sounding incapable of regular speech.

  “Monk Monk! Monk Monk! Monk Monk!” A chiseled beast of a man—six foot five, 240 pounds at least—was roaming the halls and yelling “Monk Monk! Have you met Monk Monk?” over and over again. He got in the faces of fellow patients who were either indifferent or too terrified to tell him to fuck off. That he was speaking in a six-year-old’s voice made him even more terrifying—a six-year-old with a silverback’s size and strength.

  As soon as he noticed me, he sped over and started in with the Monk Monk routine. “Monk Monk. This is Monk Monk. I’m Gregory and this is Monk Monk. Say hi to Monk Monk.” His pupils were dilated and pinballing back and forth inside his eye sockets. Even a crazy could tell he was fucking crazy. I figured I’d better say hi to Monk Monk.

  In a high-pitched voice, the stuffed monkey perched on his shoulder said hi back. “Give Monk Monk a kiss,” commanded Gregory, utterly childlike in his glee.

  I kissed Monk Monk.

  “You’re gorgeous, you know that?”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  “I could have a lot of fun with you.”

  “I think we’ll be keeping it platonic, if it’s all the same.”

  Gregory laughed hard and continued to Monk Monk around the room.

  I noticed on my first trip to the bathroom that there were unattended group showers here. Not to mention we were on the ward for violent and sexual offenders. Which was Gregory? Which would I even prefer him to be? Or was he both? I looked up and saw the second masturbator of the day. This one was sweating heavily and quietly groaning with pleasure.

  The Bird drove to Osawatomie the next morning and checked into a motel that shared a parking lot with a Pizza Hut and a liquor store. The carpeting crackled and was sticky if she stepped on it barefoot. There was a wobbly table with a mini fridge, which she moved onto the floor so she could use her laptop there. The water in the toilet rose nearly all the way to the lid when flushed, and the DO NOT DISTURB sign had a Band-Aid stuck to it. But the motel was one exit from the hospital—that’s all that really mattered.

  The Bird told the owner, a middle-aged man from India, that her son was sick and in the hospital, and that she couldn’t afford to pay $45 per night. She told him $40 was the most she could pay, and he told her no way. “I’ll just have to leave tomorrow, then,” she said. When she got to the room, he called and said that $40 would be okay. He would lose money, but he would do it for her. He told her that his wife “stay in India,” and he was a teacher and had a son who was a doctor. She told him that she was a teacher too and that her son was a lawyer.

  On the drive to the hospital, she spoke with Dr. Singh. After my sixteen days of psychosis, he was coming around to the view that a more aggressive approach might be warranted. She made it just in time to line up early for visiting hours.

  An African American orderly with a thick Kansas twang walked me down the corridor and led me to the visiting room. I was the only patient with a visitor. She followed me into the room and sat on a metal folding chair in the corner. No unsupervised visits.

  I could barely lift my head, but I knew I was in the violent and sexual offenders ward. The screams rattling off the walls of the ward were constant and horrifying. Their distance made them more unsettling—without a visual, the imagination was free to suspect the worst. And like a pack of coyotes, the howls of one would ignite a chain reaction, the pack instinctually set off by its own energy. Terror, on a fucking loop. Psychosis doesn’t shield you from fear. “You gotta get me out of here,” I kept telling her. “You gotta get me outta here.”

  In between visits, she was either power walking (when there wasn’t a blizzard), working at the makeshift desk in her motel room, or going to Walmart. Unlike at Bellevue, we were permitted a few of life’s creature comforts at Osawatomie, but they had to be shipped. So the Bird would go to Walmart and buy beef jerky, Doritos, Snickers, candy, and juice, then mail them to me. The provisions were crucial, as the food was awful at OSH—even worse than at Bellevue. Since no one else got care packages, I shared my spoils with the other charges of the state. A “first to ask, first served” policy seemed fairest. The inmates devoured everything, especially the candy. Altruism aside, my generosity served me well. I was like a mob boss in prison. You want the Snickers, you don’t fuck with me. You try to fuck with me, I got plenty of folks on my Snickers payroll.

  The Bird sometimes shopped for herself as well. At the Dollar General, townies would stare her down for wearing slimmish jeans, even though they were from Walmart. In her motel room she read journal articles about black males in alternative education programs. Between my two hospitalizations and the death of her fake husband, she’d fallen well behind on her PhD research. Graduation would have to wait another year.

  During the Bird’s second visit, an orderly told her, “No one ever leaves this unit.” The Bird was again the only visitor. That’s the other thing: “No one gets visitors here. Sometimes we go months without seeing anyone. No one cares. They don’t have anyone. Some of these people have been here for years and never had a visitor.”

  I may have been the Gorilla, but Gregory was King Kong of that motherfucker. Anyone else could have walked around with a spiked club in hand and you’d prefer it to Gregory wandering the halls shirtless with his stuffed monkey resting atop his shoulder. Fights were common on the ward, but no one stepped to Gregory. The staff kept their distance as well, and he was eager to tell me why.

  “I was a Navy SEAL. And I’m a black belt. Nobody can restrain me here. When they try, they have big problems.”

  Normally, an infantilized giant living in a psych ward with a stuffed monkey best friend would be at the top of my probably-not-a-Navy-SEAL list. But Gregory reminded me of my high school friend Lance—a Green Beret, aikido and knives expert, top of his class in physical conditioning at West Point—only bigger. I believed him.

  “Can you show me some moves? Like, don’t hurt me, but show me how to fend off an attack?”

  “Oh yeah.” If a laugh can be calmly maniacal, that’s the sound he made.

  “But don’t hurt me, okay? Nice and slow.”

  “Won’t hurt you. Too pretty.”

  “Okay, so I throw a punch.” I slowly directed my fist toward his face. “And you…”

  “Grab wrist.” He did. “Rotate counterclockwise.” He did. “Shatter nose with left hand.” He didn’t.

  Even in slow motion, his fluidity and power revealed how effortlessly this man could break me. I was sure he wouldn’t even need his hands—he could roundhouse kick my face off. But, also like Lance, he was gentle; he stopped when I said “Stop.” If he understood nothing else, he seemed to understand his own strength.

  He clearly enjoyed demonstrating his talents, but he’d also confirmed he was a trained killing machine. Sure, he liked me now, but what if that switch flipped? What if the thing that had landed him in here was a propensity to attack people he’s close to? Like a kid getting riled up before bedtime, he wasn’t entirely in possession of his impulses. The maniacally calm smile never exploded into full-on hysterics, but it simmered, slow and steady.

  Osawatomie was not only a state hospital, but it also housed criminal defendants who’d been found not guilty by reason of insanity. I discovered this when I asked a young Hispanic patient what he was in for.

  “Murder,” he said. I waited for a laugh or some indication that it was just the crazy talking. “Double murder.”

  “You’re fucking serious? Wow.”

  “It’s fucked-up. Yeah. I killed two people. I was young. I had a drug problem.”

  “S
o you have to stay here forever? Or they can only hold you until you’re no longer a danger to yourself or others?”

  “That’s right. It will probably be a couple of years.”

  He was short and baby faced. It was impossible to imagine him killing one person, let alone two. Did he shoot them? Hammer? Stab? Choke? Stabbed seemed most likely—it just lined up with the psych ward element. Shooting requires a certain coordination and skill, no one carries a hammer with them, and it would be hard to strangle two people at once. Stabbed. Had to be stabbed. I told him I didn’t judge him. There was nothing wrong with staying on the murderer’s good side. But I meant it too. People always ask public defenders how we can defend people we know are guilty. One of many reasons for me is that I don’t believe too strongly in the existence of choice. Nobody wants to be fucked-up.

  Although there was no shortage of screamers or fighters, many of the patients at Osawatomie bordered on comatose. The two masturbators lacked vigor; sometimes it seemed they weren’t even conscious of the fact they were jerking off in a crowded, semipublic space. It was hard to determine how our dosages were calculated. Was the staff actually aiming for comatose? The default was clearly to err on the side of overmedicating. From a liability standpoint, it made sense: should a patient (say, Gregory) lose control and become violent, the hospital would be open to lawsuits. But what are the damages if a patient is overmedicated? The cost of a load of laundry to clean up the drool on his shirt?

  My overmedication had messier consequences. Going back on Depakote introduced a level of constipation I’d never known existed. After three days without being able to shit, I could barely walk. My abdomen felt like it was full of concrete. We had to go to the nurses’ station for any medical needs, minor or otherwise. Headache? Need permission to take a Tylenol. And so I had to explain to the attendant what I was going through.

  “I need something,” I pleaded, holding my stomach.

  “What you need, man?”

  “I can’t shit. Haven’t shit for days. I can barely move.”

  “I can give you some Milk of Magnesia.”

  Milk of Magnesia sounded like something you’d purchase from an apothecary.

  “This is gonna work?” I asked him.

  “It should. If it don’t, come back, man.”

  “I need this to work. I am suffering. Really.”

  He handed me a plastic shot glass and I threw back the sweet, chalky substance.

  “Now what?”

  “Wait twenty or thirty.”

  “You serious? You don’t have something that works quicker? This is an issue here.”

  “You gotta try this first.”

  I waited the twenty. Nothing. I tried to quit thinking about it, but the discomfort was rapidly increasing. I asked for something else. He poured me another shot of Milk of Magnesia.

  “You sure I can’t just chug that whole thing?”

  “I know you in pain, man. Just wait a little bit.”

  Ten more minutes and I was back at the medication desk. This time I just shook my head.

  He opened a different drawer and pulled out a plastic bullet that looked like half a glue stick for a glue gun. “You put this in your rectum. It should work.” I waddled down the hall, wondering why we hadn’t pursued the “should work” option first.

  In the bathroom, I sat in the community stall and pushed the glycerin bullet up my butt. It hurt a little. Hoping to take my mind off my excruciating discomfort, I decided to take a shower while the bullet worked its magic.

  You’d think it would be impossible to shit yourself while standing eight feet away from a toilet, especially when you’re already completely naked. You’d be wrong. In my defense, I was not given sufficient warning regarding this product’s efficacy. My body skipped entirely the moment of Go, now. Drop everything you are doing and run or walk, whichever gives you the best chance, to the nearest bathroom or open field. Skipped right over it. I exploded. Like a fire hydrant. All over the shower floor. It was one of the most embarrassing and relieving moments of my life. Luckily, even if I had been caught in the act, I’d never been around a peer group I cared less about impressing. Who was going to judge me, the hallway masturbators?

  Still, I am a human and my primordial instincts kicked in to tell me, Clean this up and get the fuck out of here. Even a dog kicks some dirt behind him after he does his business. I was ill-equipped to erase the entire crime scene, so I just tried to get myself clean and dressed in under sixty seconds, all the while praying no one would come in. Miraculously, I got away with it.

  Or so I thought. Upon exiting the bathroom, the obvious move was to walk to the complete opposite end of the ward. Then I’d casually mill about, at a safe distance, of course, but close enough to hear any shrieks of discovery. Minutes later, what I saw instead was a janitor walking down the hall with the official industrial yellow mop bucket. “Feeling better?” he asked as we passed each other in the hall. I looked at the ground and mumbled “Yeah” in a tone that I hoped conveyed I can neither confirm nor deny.

  For some of us, B2 was a prison; for others, it was home. One evening, after the customary “Monk Monk!” salutation, Gregory invited me back to his room. “I have some stuff I need to show you,” he said, as he fished a shoebox full of mementos out of his dresser. “You see that, it says ‘Langley.’” He displayed what looked to be a legit photo ID. “I’m ex-CIA,” he said. “Well, actually,” he corrected himself, “I am CIA. Once in, never out. I’m an expert in hand-to-hand combat, scuba missions, explosives, and covert ops. I’m Rambo,” he told me. “Feel my head—right there…” He grabbed my hand and placed it on top of his skull. “Right there. You feel that? Knock on it.” I gently tapped it. “No, go ahead, really knock on it.” I gave it a knock. “I have a metal plate in my head.” It felt hard enough to be plausible. Then he showed me scars on his torso where he’d been stabbed, and discussed his high body count and the methods he’d used to achieve it—sniper rifle, knife, helicopter gunner. “Oh, and I’m an eighth-degree black belt.”

  Then he grabbed my belly, shook it like he was playing with a baby, and roared like a lion. “RAAARRRRR!” That crazy-ass laugh started bubbling to the surface again. His kettle seemed to always run just a little below boiling. “Monk Monk! Monk Monk! Monk Monk misses you!”

  “I’m right here, Monk Monk. Chill.”

  Then he was right back to telling stories about killing jihadists in various Middle Eastern countries. “Oh, and this box—this is what I need to show you. You live in New York, right? You recognize that?”

  “No.” It was a photograph of a giant mansion.

  “That’s Connecticut.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s my family’s house. I am super, super, super fucking rich.”

  “Why do you live here?”

  “Have you heard of Random House?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My family owns it. We are billionaires.”

  “Random House makes you a billionaire?”

  “Look at that house!”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Do you know how much I could pay you for a blowjob?” he asked, with a hint of maniacal laughter.

  “Well, a lot, I guess.”

  “You’re smart.”

  “Let me ask you a question.” I figured now was as good a time as any to switch gears. “Have they ever had to take you down in here—shoot you full of tranq darts?”

  “Ohhhh yeah! Oh yeah!” His face lit up. “First they sent three security guards. I took all of them out. Then they called the police and they tried to storm in. I took all six of them out. Then they brought in the sheriffs with rubber bullets and shot me up. It took several rounds to get me to the ground. Then I grabbed on to the drinking fountain. I ripped it off the wall! They finally got on top of me and hog-tied my ankles to my wrists.” He gestured toward the water fountain outside his room. It looked sturdier than when I’d first regarded it. Of course I’d yet to consider what it
might take to rip a water fountain out of the goddamn wall.

  “I told you—I’m Rambo.”

  “I believe you.”

  Gregory and I sat together at most of our meals. Breakfast was served at 7:30 a.m. and it truly was the most important meal of the day—you can’t fuck up cereal. In the evenings, Gregory wouldn’t go to dinner without his expensive-looking, but old and shabby, houndstooth blazer. Occasionally I couldn’t take his “Monk Monk!” and I sat by myself. But you’re never truly alone in these places—personal space is a foreign concept to most, and certainly there is no expectation of privacy or peace and quiet. Screaming never becomes ambient; it’s always screaming. We are biologically designed to be made uncomfortable by it—to be incapable of tolerating it, really. Our irritation is the only reason babies survive infancy.

  After twenty-six days in the hospital, my sanity finally started to crystallize. It felt more like a fog lifting than a light switch flipping on. It was a double-edged sword. I began to see the ward for what it was—a dangerous place full of volatile patients sensitive to provocation. I started to spend nearly all my time in my room doing push-ups by the hundreds to calm myself.

  The nurses at B2 continued telling the Bird that I didn’t belong there. But she couldn’t lobby for my release until I’d regained lucidity. As soon as she detected Zack returning in my eyes, she reminded me of what I needed to do: I wrote out a request to be discharged, affirming that I was not a danger to myself or others.

  I got an exit interview with the head psychiatrist the next morning. Trying to establish early and unequivocally that I was of sound mind, I told him I was aware that I’d been in the throes of a psychotic break for twenty-six days now, and that I wasn’t any longer. And then I asked him, “My mom says I might be borderline schiz. What does that mean?”