Chapter Twenty-Six
My conduct was normal. I carried myself, as one would be expected to if they suffered under a domineering mental illness. That having been said, on some levels I knew my behavior was perplexing, that my carrying on might have been completely unacceptable.
The answer to my problem came in a phial. The solution could be ingested. All the same, every time someone tried to steer me towards the psychiatrist’s office I would rebel; everything was a plot, the world was out to make a zombie of me. The doctor was a devil and couldn’t be trusted.
It would have been nice if I could have made some concrete sense of it all. The person I was when I was medicated was the version of me people were apt to be square with and possibly grow to like. Yet some would argue that the psychotic isn’t well when medicated, only different. My feelings whispered in my ear, telling me that all I was when people liked me was a head full of chemicals, one whose veins percolated with the laboratory’s version of what was genuine.
Even people with a ‘just say no’ aversion to drugs urged me to take my pills. When in my natural state I was a curiously galling thorn in the paw. I got under people’s skins. I was a fly in the ointment, gumming up the works by throwing a monkey wrench into everything. Those who didn’t understand mental illness or who ungraciously chose not to, found me to be exasperating. Yet, I was human, and when I was alone at night in my room, I understood I was a vexation.
I liked to go to the Indian Friendship Centre, the library or the YMCA where I had somehow managed to get a membership. I knew I ruffled feathers to varying degrees at all three places but I went anyways. I would pretend that I was well liked at the library, even when the pretty librarian would narrow her eyes in my direction and, flipping her hair, walk briskly away as though she had to tell someone that I’d arrived.
I knew it had to be my imagination, the guy who worked at the Friendship Centre wasn’t telling the odd joke at my expense, even if the guy next to me asked, “Hey, did you hear what he just said about you?”
I spent a lot of time in the steam bath at the Y, shedding excess pounds, unaware that they had all been shed. Nobody bothered me much at the Y. I imagined I was known as the guy who was either wrinkly from steam or who swam lap after lap in a deliberate way, as if he was going to stay in the pool for the rest of his life.
Sometimes I would be a little sad when I figured I’d been talked down to and looked down on throughout the day, spoken to by others as if I was the original simpleton. There were times when I sat in the park and thought if I could only sprout wings I would, in an instant, go off to live with whatever birds would have me. I was not happy with having a bothersome nature. No one wants to be a pest.
It was a simple concept, yet I just couldn’t sink my teeth into it; pills–healthy, no pills–sick. There are few books of dime store psychology and even fewer dime store psychologists that would resist the idea that I was anything but in denial.
One day, when I was particularly maddening, when I had just been chewed out at the Friendship Center for some infraction or other, I decided to go for a little trip to see what the world had to throw my way.
I hitchhiked to nearby Swift Current. The trip was uneventful. The song of tires on the highway on which snow was in short supply, the music playing softly, the satisfaction I was getting from the cigarettes I was smoking, all of these, as I punctured the outskirts of the city, lulled me into a an unguarded state.
After thanking my ride, I walked directly into the nearest bar and started bumming money. It wasn’t exactly a fair-minded establishment when it came to the type of behavior I was displaying. It was the type of place that primarily administered beer, one where you paid your own way. Panhandlers of any type were unwelcome. Eventually I would come to understand that most establishments that cater to the public believe that beggars are bad for business.
Some men who were drinking beer started giving me a hard time, demanding to know why they should give me money.
“Hey, asshole, what have you ever done for me?”
I didn’t take that as a question. I thought I was being goaded.
“What do you want me to do for you,” I inquired, as though I was being prompted.
“Stand up in front, on the stage there and sing us a song.” They promised to buy me a beer and give me a few bucks if I did.
I stood up and sang, off key, but loud and clear.
“There was a man from Pakistan....” When I’d sung all the words I could make up I dropped my drawers, those thick woolen ones that are often held up by suspenders, the same kind my Grandpa wore. Of course, I was wearing another pair underneath.
A man stood at his table and started shouting, “Cut it out, that’s enough, cut it out!”
His voice invited confrontation. He motioned for me to come to his table and I did so for the same reason that no one had stood to him – he was an imposing man.
“What’s the matter with you,” he hissed in disapproval as I approached.
I thought that hissing didn’t suit such a large man. He was staring at the group that had given me a hard time, and, as a group, they laughed at him.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” He seemed angry. A waitress made her way over wearing a smirk and not much else.
“Wanna beer?” she asked.
“No thanks, I don’t drink much.” He bought me a ham and cheese sandwich but I didn’t eat it.
After he had lectured me every which way about the importance of self-respect, he mentioned, in an offhand way that he owned a motel and that I could spend the night there if I wanted to.
“And don’t worry,” he said loudly and clearly, “I’m not some kind of freak like most of the assholes that drink here.” He was having a hard time letting go of his anger at what he’d seen. I was unperturbed; sadly enough it was just another day. I took a chance on him and we left the bar together.
That night was as pleasant a night as I’d had in a long time. I could watch a coloured TV, take a hot shower or lie on a vast, cloud-like bed. Around supper Rick’s wife brought me a plate of food and a pot of tea, not a cup, but my own pot. I spent the night trying to figure out what the small people who lived in the television were trying to say to me.
But, I was shameless. I was up the next day before most of the province and within minutes of waking I was skulking away from the motel with the innkeeper’s bed sheets hidden underneath my coat. I was an ingrate of the first degree. I was a disgrace.
I gave nor received any goodbyes. There were no, “Let’s have a coffee before we part,” or, “Maybe you can make it up to the cottage this summer.” There was only me hitching down the road waiting for the perfect field to catch my eye, one that would suit my designs. In it there could be no livestock for they have owners. There must be many trees and most importantly the land I was going to trespass on had to be in the middle of nowhere.
I was a little disappointed with myself for stealing, but my idea of a place in the very heart of all that was obscure, a place that was altogether mine, was just too hard to resist. I thought that the man who had helped me would forgive me when he learned why I had stolen his bedding. I had a feeling he would understand
There were so many fields that seemed deserted. Finally I told the man who was giving me a ride to let me out.
“Right here, are you sure? There’s nothing around for miles.”
“Yes sir, if what you say is true, then this is the perfect spot.”
“Alright, here you go.”
“Farewell,” I said and I felt somehow worldly having said goodbye in that way.
“Farewell, farewell,” I rolled the word around my tongue as I made my way through the mud and dirt I needed to traverse in order to begin construction on my version of paradise.
I knew the place when I saw it. There was a large tree surrounded by smaller ones that would be perfect for keeping out the wind. I noticed when I drew closer that the big, old tree was brown and black and quite knotty. There were patches of snow around its trunk and the ground around it seemed to have less give to it than the field I had crossed. The fact that the earth at that spot seemed different from the rest of the field convinced me that the hallowed status I had assigned to the big, old tree, on sight, had been the correct assignation. It was a tree among trees.
I just wasn’t in a state to appreciate that the bedding I was about to use to construct a crude tent had always been cared for, laundered after each use and stored in a neat pile until the day it would, in a business-like way, be coaxed from where it lay and put back into service. The innkeeper may have been pleased, knowing that nobody had ever slept on dirty sheets at his establishment. Whoever made the beds up may have enjoyed working with the high quality, crisp, white linen. And there I was ready to put the bedding to a dubious use. Under blue skies, they would flap in a crisp, cool wind. I started to doubt that Rick would forgive me.
Once I had done the best I could do, I gathered twigs, dead leaves and anything else that looked like it might burn. Huddling inside what amounted to a lean-to, I put my hand to lighting a fire. It started stubbornly and I fed it slowly. Eventually I ended up with a lot more smoke than fire. I put my face close to the smoldering confusion I had evoked. In mere moments my eyes could have been nothing but ruby red. Tears rolled steadily down my cheeks. They weren’t droplets; they were sharp edged, triangular. The more they cut into my cheeks, the more I felt their strangeness and the harder I wept.
When I left the seclusion of that odd, little spot I left the sheets behind. I also left in my wake my delusions about Indians, living off the land, forsaking my fellow man and so on. But, I was wonderfully refreshed.
I started hitchhiking. I was going back to Swift Current, not knowing what to do with myself, aimless and bored. Maybe the blanket police are out, I thought, maybe the police don’t have anything better to do around here that to chase those who steal bedding. I started to laugh much harder than was warranted. I turned to check for cars and found myself looking at two lawmen as they slowly drove by. I was as surprised and guilty as a mouse caught stealing cheese. They stopped abruptly, turned on their rooftop lights, let loose with a ‘blip’ of the siren and backed up to where I was standing. They acted as if they didn’t know I was guilty, but, from the description I imagined they had of me, I knew they had to have me pegged as the desperado with a passion for quality, starched, white cloth.
Rick didn’t press charges nor did he forgive me. He said that if I came on his property again he’d kick my ass. I asked the police if he was allowed to do that and they said if I was on his property he could kick my ass if he wanted to. I promised not to bother anyone and our meeting evaporated.
I wiled away the hours until dark picking rocks out of the ditch and hurling them into the bush and seeing how far I could piss and spit. I bummed a couple of smokes off some guy who was also wandering around. He seemed to want to be chums but I told him I had somewhere to be and walked away.
That night I slept in Rick’s doghouse. I kicked one of the German Sheppard dogs out and slept with the other one, on a bed of straw. They were strangely gentle for guard dogs. The following morning I hitchhiked back to Moose Jaw.
I was still acutely embarrassed by my screen debut, chronicling the life and times of everyman’s favourite degenerate as he attempted to defile me. I started to stay in my room most of the time. I grew a beard and had my hair cut very short. When I did go out I wore sunglasses and this seemed to help. People won’t recognize me now, I thought.
If I’d only known that the people I’d seen at the theatre were lined up to see Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, it might have made some kind of difference, but then, maybe not. There’s always something around the corner to scare the hell out of you.
Though I didn’t know why, town graciously dissipated, became one less problem, scattered, blown by the prairie winds to places best left unexplored. Once in a while voices from town would start in on me and they were frightening, but they just weren’t as menacing as the whole illusion/delusion/hallucination that was Universe City.
I weighed ninety-three pounds when I finally left Moose Jaw, bound for the province of Ontario, yet I still believed I was fat.