Chapter Thirty-Two
My freedom to witlessly meander eventually came to a close, terminated by the law and medical science each adroitly applied in its fashion. I think that I would have walked around in my rags, talking to myself and bathing in the river for the rest of time had I not one day behaved in a way that tweaked somebody’s sensibilities, alarming them in such a way that they just had to call the fuzz.
My undoing began a week or so before the police were summoned to deal with the menace that I was. It was then that I had bumped into a friend of mine, Ken. He too was riding the difficulties that go with being pushed around by a psychosis. Neither of us was taking medicine when we met. We were both saddled with an untreated, acute mental illness or, leaning towards the colloquial, a serious head problem.
We were foreigners from the mental hospital; neither of us knew the lay of the land in the real world, nor did we speak the language. All either of us had to do to understand that we were on the outside looking in was to try to get friendly or quick service in a restaurant, store or bar. We looked and behaved like non-citizens and were treated as such.
We both knew that the only way to please was to give in to the chemical solution. An imitation of reality was just a prescription or two away, free of charge and highly recommended. We would not be apt to cause problems anymore, we could integrate to a certain degree – it would all be for the best. Misguided as we may have been, we believed we were doing our level best with what we’d been dealt. I myself was starting to somewhat enjoy life without psychiatry and its pills and milligrams, its antidepressants and antipsychotics. After months on end of being sick, it was as if I’d endured a hard fought battle and was suffering from unconcerned fatigue. I wanted to be left alone, even if it meant bathing in a cold river or trying to get a bank loan with nothing but fancy white shoes for collateral, which was what Ken was doing when I first saw him.
He was sitting in a bank looking forlorn and shabby in his tattered clothes while sporting a very expensive looking and entirely out of date pair of white dress shoes. He hadn’t seen me so I had waited outside that I might, as mentioned, ‘bump’ into him
My friend exited the bank with nothing more substantial in his pockets than perhaps a colony of microorganisms that lived on cotton. I was there to accost him in a friendly way. I remarked on his shoes and said he looked well. I noticed that something was different; something had been added or taken away. The sun came out and shone on his face. When his ears twinkled I realized he was wearing earrings in both ears. I complimented him on his fashion sense and shortly after and for the time being we parted ways, once we had each dropped words and names that had special meanings to us.
I walked on while mirth and melancholia contradicted one another inside me, both hard to control without chemical gallantry. I was often up and down, unsure of whether to laugh or cry, to kiss a stranger or frenziedly destroy something that, unlike my life, had meaning. Exaggerated mirth was like a hot air balloon gone out of control and melancholia a frothing river hell bent on causing a flood.
Later that day I was still walking, something I could easily do to excess. I was walking off my frustrations, an activity which put in the time, cost nothing and was seldom boring. I considered myself good at it. At the time, I was in short supply of things at which I believed I excelled, except perhaps reading minds. As I passed the Salvation Army thrift store I looked in the display window, as was my habit. I saw some costume jewelry and, on a whim, went in to see just what they had.
They were waiting for me at the counter, just what I wanted, two studs with stones of sparkling, blue glass. I had barely enough to buy them but I didn’t think twice about laying the asking price on the counter in the form of nickels, quarters, dimes and pennies.
I walked toward the river. Once there I cupped my little treasures and their counterfeit jewels in one hand and spewed a beautiful incantation over them, secret, mystical, wise and lyric words meant to ward off evil.
I stretched the lobe of my left ear, plunged the post of the earring through and fastened it at the back. The other ear received the same treatment. I walked around like that for a good spell, picking off the scabs as they formed. I knew that it was different for a man to have two earrings and for that reason I liked it. I didn’t feel any pain but I thought the mosquitoes would drive me to distraction at night.
Four days after meeting my friend outside the bank I ran into him again.
“You too, eh?” he inquired with a wink as I scratched at one ear and then the other.
“Me. Me too?”
“You, the earrings. I had two but I got rid of them.”
“What do you think, Ken,” I asked, “be honest.”
“Well,” he said and paused, “they’re bloody. Let’s get some wine.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” I confessed, “but don’t let me stop you.”
“Okay, let’s go, I’ll buy you a coke or something.”
“Could you buy me a big bottle?”
“You just said you don’t drink. I have witnesses.”
“I meant a big bottle of Coke. Who are your witnesses?”
“Sure, I’ll buy you a bottle of Coke. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Who are his witnesses, I wondered as we walked? Eventually we found ourselves by the river. Ken took a pull on his bottle of rotgut. He was of the school that believed drinking outside was far and away the best way to drink. In the time I’d known him I’d never seen him buy a bottle that didn’t have a screw top.
“I have a proposition for you; listen first and then tell me what you think.” he said straight out. For a moment I thought, Oh, no, not him too. Why do they always go that way around me? He took another healthy swallow.
“Well,” I said in a small voice, “lay it on the table, I can handle it.” He must have read my thoughts.
“Oh,” he said, “oh. Cheer up, it’s not that, I’m surprised, I mean, you know me better than that. Though, you are kind of cute.”
Simulating innocence I blustered, “What are you talking about, lay it out, I’m interested.”
“Are you sure you’re interested?” he asked and made funny eyes at me.
“Cut it out,” I said and laughed which something I’d been meaning to do for some time. He drank some wine and I drank some coke.
The plan was for me to share with him a townhouse that he had found. I balked, explaining that, as much as I appreciated the offer, I really preferred to live outside. After some persuasion, (the more he drank the smoother he got), I agreed to have a look. As we were walking there, my two strides to his one, he explained that we were going to a student residence. I stopped in my tracks while he made haste to explain that the students were gone until mid-August and that further, the landlord would take just about anything rent-wise until the little angels returned. We could have it for next to nothing.
“Don’t you see,” he said, passionate, a pitch man selling an exotic remedy, “we’ll live like damned kings. Think of the chicks and the parties. We’ll have a party in your name; you’ll be the guest of honour. We’ll have the best place in town, eh?”
“Let me see the place first. If it’s as good as all that, you’ve got a deal.”
When I saw it I agreed to share the rent with Ken. It was a great place, roomy, nice kitchen, two bathrooms and four bedrooms. Those students must show up with a truckload of silver dollars every year I thought, they have to be about the richest people around. Just then a truck bumped noisily down the street, its banging and clanking talking to me. “Silver dollars, silver dollars,” it parroted.
We moved in the next day with a skimpy payment and a promise: “We’ll pay the rest, in full, when we get our cheques.” This guy must be desperate for tenants, I thought, I only gave him twenty bucks I borrowed and it was as though he was less one burden, relieved, really happy to have us move in. It suddenly seemed to me that he was a bit too happy. I thought some more:
I wonder if there’s some type of mafia thing happening here or maybe the doctors at the hospital are keeping track of us, maybe we’re being monitored, maybe someone’s watching us. I think that son of a bitch landlord sold us down the river.
“Ken, I think you may have been fooled.”
“Why do you say that, this place rocks man, it just plain rocks.”
“Did you ever stop to ask yourself why we’re getting it at such a good price?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t, Mr. Downer and I’m not going to start now. Relax man, enjoy it while it lasts,” he replied, mildly annoyed.
Three days later life was a bad experience with no end in sight. I wandered the streets and saw hit men shaven so close that all that was revealed of their faces was the colour blue. Their collars were pulled high and their hats pulled low. They lurked down alleyways, crouched behind parked cars and hid behind shrubbery. I felt their fully loaded weapons trained on the sweet spot between my eyes.
Mob muscle confidently strutted its oily self up and down every street I crossed or attempted to walk down. Doctors with syringes up their sleeves drove by, slowing down now and then for a closer look.
I would have throttled Ken if I could have reached high enough to do so. I had known from the beginning that the place was too good to be true. It made perfect sense that it was owned by the mob. I didn’t know why but it made perfect sense.
What really surprised me was that the medical community would have a hand in all this; were they answering to organized crime? Or maybe they were working together - but that didn’t make any sense. Suddenly none of it made sense. I concluded that I was as good as dead.
I sat on a park bench and tried to summon God. I was only too aware that it had been a while since I’d last tried to reach Him. Maybe, I thought, horrified, He’s severed the connection. In good time I received an answer to my prayers.
I could hear someone behind me saying, “Sleep, go to sleep.”
In mere seconds, I understood. I was to go back to sleeping outside, under the sky where most of God’s creation slept, where my forefathers had once slumbered with one eye open. I embraced the answer. Once I was away from the townhouse I wouldn’t have to worry about the gangsters. As for the doctors, well, I was somehow sure they’d give up quite easily.
Daydreaming about storing food for the winter and building a shelter that would protect me from the cold, I curled up on the bench and there, as the voice had directed me to, I fell asleep.
I woke in a hospital room hours later. I remembered most of what had landed me there. I remembered walking down the main drag in my pajamas with my stuff in a bag. I was going to sleep outside all right and I was going to do so in apparel designed for the bedroom. I remembered that just as the cops pulled up, the person with the delicate sensibilities mentioned earlier, having no doubt dialed them to report my criminal garb and demeanor, had come running up and taken a cut at me. One of the cops packed me into the car and his partner and he got in, making the vehicle sink closer to the ground.
I was admitted to the hospital. I wouldn’t let them give me a needle so I was strapped down by four orderlies and then injected by a nurse. Later on, to my relief, I was un-strapped. It was thought wise by those in charge to leave me in the locked room by myself. I closed my eyes on the day that had been and fell into slumber, a state I all too often had to enter for sanctuary.