Chapter Nine
I heeded the advice I’d been given and spent less than one day in jail. When we reached the jailhouse on the swell of earth commonly known as “The Hill”, I immediately applied for a transfer to the halfway house. Accepted and processed, I was out of jail and relocated by mid afternoon.
“First time eh?” asked the guard who was driving.
His huge, dimpled caricature of a chin was an outgrowth that he seemed casually unaware of, or so spoke his easy manner. He knew the answer to his question, first time offenders were the only type of crook accepted by the group home. He wants to see me react, I thought, and ignored him. He turned up the radio and we drove.
It was a windy day and the only noise I heard, besides the radio, was the sound the wind made as it pulled and pushed the trees about. I was captured by the sound of wood and wind and then became disturbed. Looking at the tightly shut car windows I realized I couldn’t have heard any of what I’d been hearing, the sighing, moaning, creaking and cracking of the trees as the wind, that had seemed to be whispering and hissing, had its way with them.
Soon after I had blanched and recovered, the shock of having such a vivid hallucination also wore off. I sighed, drawing a look from my keeper. I shrugged off the mental confusion as best I could and watched life as it passed the passenger window. Presently we turned up a winding driveway of gravel and coloured stone that took us to the front of a faded yet imposing house.
I was received as I imagined a long lost son would be. Why this was so eluded me. I was given the grand tour toward the end of which I was guided past a smoky room full of men who seemed to be captivated by the television. I thought that this was strange, yet it goes on all the time in institutions where there’s little else. If by the TV they’re entranced, then because of TV their life’s enhanced, I thought. There was that annoying voice again, making me feel foolish.
I had the distinct impression that those men weren’t into collecting stamps or playing checkers. Though they were incarcerated for the first time, I came to believe over the next few days of listening and watching that far from planning anything constructive, most of them were putting in the time as best they could until they were released. Once free, they would return to whatever had got them pinched in the first place.
Just as my tour guide was showing me my bed and locker a huge burst of laughter turned my ears hot. They’re talking about me, I thought and became dejected.
“I think I’ll take a rest,” I told my escort.
“That’s fine son, you just rest up a bit.”
I suppose I didn’t realize how tired I was. Shortly after laying down I gave in to sleep. As I drifted away I asked myself in a whisper, “Why are they always laughing at me?”
I roved around the outside of a dream and then into it. A door opened slowly, and through that door was a room. I entered it. It was filled with colours that made me feel warm and safe. I knew there was a vast world of wonder outside of the room, yet I didn’t want to leave the beauty I’d stumbled upon. I eventually exited and found myself at the top of a huge slide. There was every colour ever known at the bottom of it. Every hue and tone was represented and they seemed to move as one. I’d never seen anything like it; the bright colours were brilliant. Even the dull ones had a happy edge.
This ornamental mass began to ebb, flow and buzz. It began to grow until it was all I could see. Distinct voices made themselves heard. They wanted me to slide; I obliged and it was exhilarating. Near the bottom, as I realized the mass had been made up of more people than I’d ever seen, the slide turned upwards. I flew in the general direction of the sky, higher than I’d dreamed possible and then, elated, I plummeted. I was falling fast. It took mere seconds to land in the arms of a crowd of millions.
“You’re one of us, man,” someone yelled.
“You’re just like everyone else.” I felt accepted.
Someone was shaking me, touching me and I wished they wouldn’t. I wished they’d go away and leave me alone with my wonderful dream. Whoever it was persisted and I gradually woke. While I was regaining consciousness I was wondering absently if whoever was bothering me was some kind of pervert, like the kind of guy you hear about when you talk about jail. Suddenly and swiftly, I was upright, awake and on guard.
“Carmen,” a soft voice said, “it’s time to take your medication. Come on, sit up.”
My head was sleep befuddled. I thought I’d already sat up, but a fuzzy second look told me I was still lying down, that I’d only sat up in my dreams. The medicine sure made me sleep and dream crazily. I wondered if there would always be one stranger or another at my bedside with a cupful of pills for me to take and just imagining it made my spirits droop.
The dorm was mostly dark. Enough light filtered in from other rooms to allow my keeper to administer my medicine. When he was satisfied that I had taken my pills he said, “Supper in fifteen minutes, okay?” I nodded. “Are you okay?” I answered again with a silent nod and then realizing he may not have seen in the semi-darkness, I spoke.
“I’m fine - couldn’t be better.”
“It’s not so bad in here,” he confided, “don’t let the others fool you.”
“Okay, boss,” I replied, and as he walked away I wondered why he was being so nice. It crossed my mind that I’d had my problems from time to time with men hitting on me. Oh Christ, I thought, not again. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face.
Looking in the mirror, I readied myself for my first supper with my housemates who, like me had done something stupid and been caught or unlike me, had the misfortune of being caught when they knew very well what they were doing and expected to get away with it.
Life continued – the only cure for that being death. My world may have been in turmoil, it may have resembled tumbleweed in a sandstorm but I was too new to mental illness, I believed, to have misplaced my survival instinct. I might, like the tumbleweed, end up stapled to a cactus, upside down and bewildered but I would always try to extricate myself. Well, that was what youth and naivety would have me think. In truth most of the instinctual prowess I credited myself with having at the time was largely a fantasy. A day would come though, when I would be faced with actual hardship that would challenge my will and ability to survive. Until then I would carry on, thinking absurd thoughts about the world and wondering why people looked at me funny.
In the halfway house I was left to my own devices, though life was limited as I wasn’t allowed off the property without an escort. Sticking to myself, I endured fits of depression that lasted a few hours or full days. I had my share of despair and gloom. You’ll never amount to anything I’d tell myself, and then you’ll die. You’ll never meet a woman. The only people attracted to you are old homos. Even the other residents seem indifferent where you’re concerned.
It was true that the other inmates didn’t bother with me. Perhaps they didn’t really like me. When I wasn’t depressed I was glad that my friendship wasn’t coveted, grateful for the indifference of those around me. They made just enough effort to rattle me for me to know that the only ones they held in high esteem were themselves. They were willing to tolerate me and I had the impression that I was supposed to be thankful for this. The type of head game they were playing can wear you down. I dealt with it all by finding more and more comfort in solitude, wherever and whenever I could find it. I had tears in me, when I was alone I was aware of them and that I could easily cry, but I didn’t.
The days dragged by and the nights were almost as long. I enjoyed the pool table and books. Sometimes I tried to fit in, watching TV with the others, but I always felt out of place. After all, when push came to shove I was more crazy than criminal. I was the only person there for whom most everything was a brainteaser, a failing the others were aware of. They had seen me taking cups of pills and knew why I took them. Socially, I was doomed to fail from the beginning, as those possessing criminal minds largely hold people who are mentally ill in contempt.
I began to think that the TV watchers were plotting something, that they had a scheme in which my role was that of a victim. This idea began to root itself and I started to become desperate, wondering just what my roomies were up to. To help me cope, I dreamt up a strategy that would get way out of hand. Instead of helping me to escape my life as it was, I would secure a medicine that would leave me playing the role of a dismal guy who got too high. It was a role I didn’t want but that’s the way it all worked out.
I called a doctor who had treated me for the migraine-like headaches I was prone to in the days prior to medication. He agreed to prescribe over the phone what was necessary for the vacation I planned to take from reality. I had him phone it to the pharmacy where I had been buying my smokes. Of course he fully expected me to take the remedy as directed.
I fooled the staff into taking me to the drug store and waiting for me while I went to buy cigarettes. An hour or so later, right after supper, I took my first codeine/barbiturate capsule and, by doing so, jumped on a fast track to trouble.
I took one hit after another. I kept thinking that nothing was happening. Maybe, I thought, the doctor had been alerted to my plan and had a placebo dispensed instead of what I had asked for. Eventually, as could have been expected, the pills caught up to me. I hadn’t wanted to get so woozy. I didn’t want be seen staggering around.
I briefly woke in my hospital bed, a day and a half after the incident. Up to that point my hospital stay had been a thirty-six hour period of deep and heavy, drug induced sleep.
There was a woman in my bed, lying there as clear as day. “What are you doing in my bed?” she asked with a hint of malice.
“This is my bed,” I answered and I moved my hand towards her, fully intending to touch her breast.
“It’s my bed,” she insisted and then she disappeared.
When I could understand what people were saying, I was told that I was discovered half-dead in the bed of another inmate, hugging his radio while it played love songs and rock and roll. I was then rushed to the hospital where everything that was in my stomach was coaxed out. By all accounts I was lucky to wake up. That, I would later think peevishly, depends on your definition of luck. It was generally believed that I had tried to off myself.
Two days after I had encountered a phantom in my bed, they took me back to jail. I was to spend the rest of my sentence in a small cell without human interaction. I felt as loathsome then, as I had ever felt.
In the cell I remembered a guy I had met in a hostel who wore dark glasses all the time. When I had asked him why, he told me he had spent years in a cell where the lights were always on. I had a vague idea of what he must have felt like after my short stint in what became an vexingly bright cell – the light something like a dripping faucet, getting on your nerves the longer it keeps you from sleep, steadily pissing you off until you want to holler or strike out. The difference, of course, is that if it’s all that bad, you can get up and fix a leaky faucet.
What really bugged me about being confined to a small cell, besides being completely alone, was suffering the indignity of begging for a cigarette and once having begged, of being ignored. I wasn’t allowed tobacco or matches in my cell. Maybe they thought that I’d do something patently crazy like lighting myself on fire.
I asked for something to read and was given a Bible. Now there was a book that I was at that time unfamiliar with, and, sadly, one that just increased my level of frustration. If God loved Jesus, I’d think, then why would he send him to this screwed up world and let him be murdered? How did that benefit me? Or I’d think: how could God have a son when he had no wife? Or, who did Mary think she was fooling anyway? The questions swirled around and around in my cell until they were a small cyclone and I couldn’t handle them anymore. The next time they let me out for a smoke I shoved the Bible at a guard and said, “No thanks, you can keep it.”
“Well maybe you just don’t know what’s good for you, eh?” he asked, nudging the guy next to him, without looking at him.
“How so?” I asked, “It’s nonsense. Making sense out of this is like beating your head against a wall.”
“Ah… but what if it’s all true, I mean, we believe, don’t we boys?”
There were a few half-hearted nods and one enthusiastic halleluiah. The rest of the men were ignoring the situation or didn’t know a situation existed. I thought there must be a shift change going on, as there were more guards present than usual. The man who was goading me knew he hadn’t much support.
“Alright finish up that cigarette,” he barked.I was perturbed and blatantly took my time.
“C’mon,” he said in a tight, slightly meaner voice, “let’s get you back in your box.”
I followed him back to my cell.
“You know,” he whispered, “according to that book, if you had died from your little overdose, you’d be in hell right now. Pleasant dreams, loser.”
The door shut behind me and the lock turned in place. I went and lay on my cot and closing my eyes, I took to imagining angels and demons fighting for my soul as I passed on in the tiny, brightly lit cell.
It’s said that all good things must end and I say, why discriminate? It wasn’t too long after my overdose, after solitary and guards with their cryptic remarks, that I was free as a bird and pleased by everything around me. All bad things must end too.
Of course there is fresh trouble around most every corner; enemies disguised as friends just itching to make you feel good, a seductress, a snitch, a good deal which break your spirit and makes you lose your wallet. I sensed that trouble was bearing down on me as soon as I walked away from the jailhouse. I wondered if I would be smart enough to elude it or if I would again be my own worst enemy. I told myself I had to run from trouble at the first sign of it. Avoid the wrong people, be nonviolent and sober. That was a very nice theory but I still had some wild in me that balked at common sense.
I was required to visit the psychiatrist whenever he wanted to see me. That was a condition of my probation. I also had to continue seeing that therapist who seemed, frankly, to be thinking with a soft head himself. I really didn’t think much of him because, among other things, I knew he hadn’t put in a good word with the judge. He’d probably thought it would do me some good to go to jail.
I had been ordered by the court to comply fully with taking medication. I was far from knowing myself and had little conscious memory of just how emotionally and intellectually lax I could be when I was without my meds. I didn’t realize that the pills had been helping me.
I decided to quit taking them, reasoning that the law would have no idea if I were medicated or not. I lacked sufficient insight to know that without medication noticeable changes would take place in me, that I would fall back and the system would catch up to me. All I knew was that I felt okay. To my way of thinking, the garbage pail looked as good a place as any for the sweet, brown tablets.
The first consequence of my breach of probation was an increase in motivation and energy. I walked a lot those days and soon enough found myself stopping at bars and licensed restaurants in order to quench the thirst that taking the air gave me. Well if you breach one condition of your probation you might as well get in deeper and breach two. So I had the odd beer which turned into two, four and so forth. As could be expected, I started to get a little messed up.
The whole problem with medication, as I saw it while looking through smudged glasses, was that while it could keep you from being crazy it could also make you feel like a zombie. So, because I didn’t want to feel like one of the walking dead, I found compliance with drug treatment very difficult. My therapist told me I was in denial and I swore up and down that he was wrong.
Finally, after months spent living in a little rat’s hole of a room in a rundown hotel, I thought a change was needed. I was tired of sitting in the doctor’s outer office every two weeks or so and being bugged by the quiet whisper of music there that was supposed to pacify. I was sick of getting drunk with anyone that I happened to meet and believed I was spending way too much time in the therapist’s office.
I decided to go west again, but before I got things together enough to go, I would end up in another jackpot, would be sentenced to more time in jail and, after that, some time in a drug rehab center. It never seemed to end with me; it just didn’t seem to want to end.