The Stoned Apocalypse (The Vassi Collection)

by Marco Vassi

  Then, one day, she came running into the lounge, claiming that Larry had “attacked” her. He had flown at her in a rage, threatening to do her in. There was a great deal of serious discussion as to whether or not he would be transferred to another ward. But when she told the story, she left out one detail. That she had been angry with him all morning for refusing to take his Thorazine, and at the time of the “attack” had been walking toward his bed with a hammer in her hand.

  Of course, she was going to hang a picture. But if someone hadn’t seen her with the hammer, and called attention to it, we would have had another instance in which the insane man was judged guilty because he was insane, and the nurse was put in the right because she was, by definition, normal. The analogy to black men and white women in the South is clear.

  One afternoon, while things were particularly frazzled, Joel came up to me and said, “Let’s take a ride.” We drove around the hospital grounds and got pleasantly stoned. And when we returned, were much calmer.

  But we came back to an almost unrecognizable ward. Peace reigned. The patients were sitting around, rapping, reading, looking out the windows. One was fixing a phonograph. Two were playing checkers. Even Larry was having a talk with one of the others. Joel and I sat down, and soaked up the vibrations. Within a few minutes, we became part of the milieu and sensed the deep feeling of order in the large room.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Joel looked around. “Ain’t none of the staff around,” he said.

  Sure enough, there was not a staff member to be seen. For the first time, the context within which the insane are judged as insane was removed, and lo and behold, the abnormal were normal. One imagined them having no more difficult problems of survival than any other group of people and, perhaps, if left on their own, would construct a whole new society. “Where are they?” I asked.

  And then we heard them, faintly, from the small meeting room way in the back of Bill’s office. Muffled shouts. We got up and went over. The voices got louder as we approached. And when we opened the door, we recoiled as from a blast furnace. The staff were sitting around in a circle, their faces distorted with hatred, their voices harsh and rasping, their bodies in the clenched attitudes of attack. As I stepped in, Marvin was screaming at Al, “I’ve never liked you, you motherfucker, and if you don’t get off this fucking ward, I’ll kill you.”

  The doctors were having a meeting.

  Another week dragged by, and one day the hospital’s assistant director visited us. He was a fuzzy old man who told us that we shouldn’t get too excited by our work, because every five years someone comes along with a new theory or new idea, but in the end it’s always the same; things don’t get any better. The important thing, he reminded us, was to see that the buildings were maintained, and the fire laws obeyed. He was so senile, so feeble, so innocuous, that we didn’t even bother mocking him or trying to talk to him. He was the final result of homo administratus, a pale shadow of humanity.

  Loren went on another window-breaking spree and was transferred. I saw him a few days after his move to his old ward. He had been shot up with massive doses of Thorazine, and he was entirely changed. The light had gone out of his eyes, and he stuttered when he spoke. He told me to apologize to everyone for his behavior. He said he had seen the light and promised to reform. “I hope I can get well enough to get out of here and get a job,” he said. “The doctor says that if I behave, he’ll put in a good word for me.” I couldn’t bear to look at him. He had been utterly broken.

  And then Sam flipped out.

  There had been little bizarre behavior on the ward until then, unless one counted relatively minor things like Larry’s running monologue, or Loren’s window-breaking, or Julio’s periodic dashes for freedom. Julio was a Mexican, born in California, who spent most of his time in a mildly catatonic state. He was mobile, but just didn’t move very much. Every once in a while, when one of the ward personnel opened the front door, he would leap up and burst out of the ward with amazing speed. Once out, he would run for several miles, and then stop, and sit down until he was picked up again. Once, Irene and I followed him in her car as he jogged down the highway. He was physically magnificent, superbly muscled, and with a natural animal rhythm. No one ever got into his head, and I never got the slightest notion of what his scene was.

  But one day, during a meeting, Sam came in shouting. He was completely naked and dripping wet. He had been taking a bath. “You fuckers!” he shouted. “Doesn’t anyone see me?”

  The grins that flushed the faces of many of the people there are such as I hope never to see again. It had finally happened; someone was freaking out. The blowout center had its first blowout. And after all the theoretical discussions, the preparations, the fights, the intramural strife, we were going to get a chance to “do” our first patient.

  “You bastards. I’m talking to you!” he screamed.

  He was about five feet ten inches tall, with a medium build, and a handsome face. He had an extremely small cock. “I’m impotent,” he said, more quietly. And then, screaming again, “I’M IMPOTENT!”

  David, one of the ward doctors, went up to him. Sam jumped back. “Stay away from me,” he warned. “You don’t understand what I’m saying.”

  Al stood up, but Sam just ran away down the hall, whooping like an Indian, and disappeared in the bathroom, the place used to cool patients off. In a few seconds we heard a splash; obviously he had jumped into the tub as though it were a swimming pool. And then there was a long silence.

  “Let him work it out,” Al said.

  And then everyone went right back to the details of the meeting, some vague and heated discussion concerning what we might do to make the patients more interested in attending the daily discussion groups.

  I got up and went to the back. Sam was sitting in the tub. He seemed quite calm. He looked up at me.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “It’s all bullshit.”

  I couldn’t agree more. “That’s right,” I said.

  Then the fury flashed again. “You’re no better than the rest of them,” he shouted.

  “That’s right,” I said. “So what? Neither are you.”

  He hung his head. “I’m no good, I’m no good,” he chanted over and over again. There was no way to get into his space without doing him violence.

  “You want me to stay?” I asked.

  “STAY?” I heard him scream and he leapt up, rushed past me, and ran back into the meeting. “Stay where?”

  One of the other patients went over and said something quietly to him, and he seemed to relax. The two of them went off into the side wing of the ward. I rejoined the meeting. David said to me, as I sat down, “What’s happening with him?”

  I got angry. “What’s happening? He’s freaking out, that’s what. He’s losing his fucking mind and you people are sitting around having inane discussions. That’s what’s happening.”

  Their guilt transformed into anger and came shooting at me. And for twenty minutes, as I sat, half the people in the room again lacerated me with long lists of grievances, dredging up almost everything I had said or done since I arrived. I listened less to the words than felt the waves of hatred washing over me. Their faces became biting masks, their voices cut like razors. The months took their toll, the scenes I had been in, the constant fear of madness, the long weeks of having no money, the corrosive quality of having to crash just to sleep, wearing hospital issue, having not a single person around who knew me well, the drugs, the historical context of my entire previous life being obliterated, the mounting hostility. I became comatose and sank lower in my chair, Donna leapt up and showered me with needles of invective. I was burned raw. I felt myself coming apart.

  I made one last effort to preserve my ego, pulled out the last weapon of defense. I sat forward. “You may all be right,” I said, “but I never wanted anything except for the ward to live
up to its early promise.” And I began recounting what our initial vision was, our early dreams, and contrasting that to what we had become. As I spoke, my voice fell into the hypnotic rhythm I use in relaxation workshops. I made an effort to steady and deepen my breathing. I used eye contact to center the group’s vibrations. And within five minutes, I had almost regained everything. I had single-handedly climbed out of the psychic pit I had fallen into, and was now directing the group in the way that I wanted it to go.

  I was just at the point of letting the reins I had on myself slip a bit; the world was barely coming back into focus; and I felt that I was all alone inside my head with what I was doing.

  And at that moment, Sam, who had walked up behind me, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Naughty, naughty.”

  I turned around suddenly and found myself staring right into the pit of his crazed eyes. He smiled a smile of deep complicity and said, “It’s not nice to cast spells.”

  For a moment I stood on the brink of the most momentous decision I had ever made in my life. I could, from this position, treat what he had just said as “crazy” and gather to me the approval and acceptance of the doctors and staff, of my civilization. Or I could cop to the fact that what he had just said was chillingly accurate, and showed the kind of perception with which schizophrenics are constantly frightening their doctors. And while my mind pondered the choice, my instincts made the decision, and, letting out a full throat-wracking scream, I leapt from the chair and ran from the room.

  I had crossed the line.

  Sam and I spent the next six hours in total psychic contact. His mind and heart opened to me as mine did to him, and we were locked in a deadly ride which promised to destroy both of us. And the more terrifying the ride became, the more we needed to hold on to one another. Yet, it was that very holding on which brought us closer to disaster. It was like a long marriage compressed into a very short time.

  Since we were human beings, with all the fallibility that implies, we showered one another with as much hate as we did love, as much violence as we did gentleness. And since we could read one another’s hearts perfectly, we had absolute power over the changes we put one another through.

  There was one difference between us. Sam was a pro. He had been “crazy” for a long time, and he knew the ropes. I was stunned by the revelations which were pouring in, living at a height of intensity in communion with another human being that I hadn’t conceived could be possible. I was trying desperately to integrate my experiences so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by them. And I had to give up. Too much came in too fast.

  “You’re selfish,” he said to me. “You are the single most selfish human being in the world.”

  And I knew it was true. I examined my conscience and realized that I had never done a single thing which didn’t take as its starting point the benefit it would bring me. Later, I came to understand that I was just for the first time getting an insight past the myth of altruism with which we are inundated since we are small. In that time, I lived the experience of the fact that we are born alone, and die alone, and during our lifetimes pretend to keep one another company.

  But then, I knew only what struck me the hardest. And I was coming face to face with all the copouts of my entire life, all the times I refused to see what I was seeing, all the times I turned my fellow human beings into two-dimensional projections, because I couldn’t admit that they were as real as I. In this state, this catacomb of echoing insanity, there was no place to hide. Pain was real. Existence was immediate.

  And a strange thing began to happen. As I got crazier, that is to say, as I got more real in the awareness of my actual condition, others began to fade to the degree that they couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize me. Most of the staff began averting their eyes when I went past. A few, like Al and Harish, recognized me, but refused to see the dimensions of my trip. And astonishingly, the other patients emerged as real people in a way I had never seen them when I was “on the other side.” For the first time I realized that I had been afraid of looking at them, and afraid specifically to see that they had, whether they were aware of it or not, more balls than me.

  This is not to make a romantic myth about schizophrenics, but to point out that unless one has been trapped in their confusion and helplessness, which is actually only a different level of clarity; unless one has cut off all sense of acceptance by the world, one cannot deal with them as equals, for one is afraid. Laing saw this, and that is why he went crazy, to know what it was all about.

  The ward became jumpy, like a cattle pen at shipping time. Four o’clock came, and the new shift arrived, but much of the day staff stayed on. Some of the other patients went into more quiet freak-outs, and generally there was an increase in the pacing and muttering and demands to be let out for fresh air. At one point, Sam began threatening people with physical violence. I went up to him and he punched me in the chest. Three of the staff came over to hold him and I could suddenly see in their grotesque postures the mixture of fear and bravado which had them put their heads forward while holding their shoulders back and bringing their lightly clenched fists up in front of their groins.

  “Get away,” I spat at them. And with that, two more of the patients came over and moved Sam away, one of them saying, “Come on, man, don’t be such a fuckoff.”

  I saw the difference. The patients spoke to one another as human beings, while the staff set up an unbridgeable gap between themselves and their charges. I found myself going off with the patients, leaving the staff members to chatter among themselves, hitting their jargon back and forth like Ping-Pong balls, encapsulating the experience neatly into prestructured categories.

  “Calm down, man,” Adam was saying to Sam. Sam broke loose again and ran into the dayroom.

  “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?” he screamed. “I’M TRAPPED IN TIME, I’M TRAPPED IN TIME.”

  And with that, I fell over the final edge, and plunged deep into eternal fear. For I understood precisely what he meant, what he was feeling. He was all at once understanding his own historical mortality as an ephemeral pattern against the screen of eternity, and the vision was so vast that it pinned him to himself like a butterfly on a mat. He was having the kind of insight which the mystics revel in, and which LSD makes potentially available to everyone. It was a profound moment, unbearably rich in its human and divine implications, and it came through a naked crazy standing on the blowout ward at the state hospital. And not a single other person there, not one of the educated doctors, or prominent analysts, or trained nurses, or well-wishing attendants, not one bowed to the moment and gave the man his due for standing so fearful and exposed in the searing light of Truth.

  A mammoth fury boiled up in me, and I charged out to stand next to him. I swept the ward with my frenzied eyes. “YOU’RE ALL DEAD,” I cried. “DEAD. YOU FRIGHTENED FOOLS. YOU STUPID MACHINES. YOU PLAGUE-RIDDEN SCUM. WAKE UP AND SEE. LOOK!”

  They all stepped back from us. I ran into the art therapy room. I pulled out a giant sheet of paper and wrote, “YOU’RE ALL DEAD,” on it in large black letters and pasted it to the front door. I heard myself yelling, screaming, unintelligible things, mad things. From time to time, I would pass Sam, who was also freaking, charging in the other direction, and our eyes would meet in a flashing glare of pure freedom. For the time, we were brothers against the foe.

  I heard music and ran to the stereo. It was the Airplane singing “Crown of Creation.” . . . . “You are the crown of creation, and you have no place to run to.” Yes, I thought. I am finally outside the inside. I am standing where everything is pure becoming, pure being, pure appearance, pure thought, all at once. I have stripped myself of all convention, of all inner stricture, of all sham. I am ready to stand at the edge of the earth, with all life pulsing in my veins, and stare into the unknowing void of the universe and cry out in terror and joy. I have finally become a man.

  I ran into the dayroom, and found it alm
ost empty. The day shift had gone. Seemingly, they had become bored with the floorshow now that the novelty of it had passed. Sam crashed, and went into the side wing to sleep. And I stood there, with the shreds of my satori, trembling.

  As always happens, the higher one gets, the farther one must fall. And in an instant, I went from the peaks of manic realization to the depths of depressive confusion. What was I doing here? Who was I? I cast about for some familiar and comforting fragment of my personality, but none was there. For the moment, I was sheer essence, inchoate and raw. The fear began to choke me. I felt an animal need to escape, to get out.

  I went into the office and found Al sitting there. For a moment I was cheered by his face. Al was my friend. He had got me the job. I had stayed at his house and we had got stoned together. I went up to him. “Al,” I said, “let me out.” And the moment I said it, I knew he wouldn’t.

  He looked down at his desk. “I can’t, man,” he said.

  I got very scared. “Al, please.”

  “I’d like to,” he said, and I watched with horror as he psychically stepped into his role of psychiatrist. “But I can’t.” He meant legally. “Look at yourself,” he said. “If you went out like that, they’d never let you get off the grounds. The cops would pick you up and bring you to Ward Seven.”

  Ward Seven! The Marat/Sade ward, where the crazies drooled all day long and hit their heads against the walls. “You’re better off here, with us,” he said.

  I stepped back. He was speaking to me in the condescending tones I had heard so often when doctors were talking to patients. And then it hit me. Inside me, I was crazy with confusion and fear. Outside me, my behavior was grotesque. I was penniless, dressed in patient’s clothing. And the ward psychiatrist wouldn’t let me out. By any standard, the door had closed behind me. I was mad.