Chapter 3
“I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, Barry.”
Barry closed the door behind him for some privacy.
“You know you’re not supposed to do that. We must stay out of each other’s rooms.”
Barry locked the door.
“What the hell are you doing?” He walked to the door, pushed Barry aside and unlocked it.
“You’re even strong when you’re not on meth.”
“When I’m on meth, my strength is…supernatural, if you will, but when I’m not on it I am just a strong as you are, so I suggest you don’t mess with me. I don’t care about being kicked out of here for kicking somebody’s ass. I know they’ll put me on medication and bring me back, and put me on a state where I can’t hurt anyone, but boy, that’s all they’re going to do, so like I said, stay off my case.”
“I just came here to talk to you.”
“Yeah? Why did you have to lock the door, huh? You know you’re on violation? If I beat the shit out of you all they’re going to do is send me to the psych ward early, put me on Xanax and bring me back because they know I am seriously mentally ill, but you, what you’re doing? You could be kicked out of here and even put away for suspicions of intent of sexual assault. You don’t lock my door. You don’t even lock your own door. You’re not even supposed to be in my room. I told you. When you came here and asked to talk to me I thought you wanted to meet with me in the entertainment or the gathering room. Those are the only areas where we’re supposed to talk, not in our rooms. If I make sexual advances toward you, I could also be incarcerated. This is not a whorehouse.”
“Man, you better hear me out.”
“Ok, then get out of my room and I’m going to go get a nurse. I don’t trust you anymore.” When Langston was about to get out of the room to get a nurse, Barry pulled his arm, forced him back inside, closed the door and locked it once again. Barry’s body was a lot smaller than Langston’. Langston looked like a wrestling superstar in front of him. Still, Langston was scared to death. It was notable that Barry was under the effect of some powerful drug. He’d violated more than one rule. “I am the one who’s going to beat the shit out of you because I hate you. You’re on the losing streak because I’m high on something, and you’re normal. All the effects of the meth are gone. Your blood is clean. That means you’re defenseless,” he said, walking towards Langston and trapping him onto the wall.
Suddenly, a nurse, as if sent from heaven, knocked on the door, infuriated because Langston violated the no-doors-locked rule. “Langston Ainsworth, open the door right now! I came to give you the first dose of your anti-psychotic! Your psychiatrist just authorized us to treat you here, and there’s even a psychiatrist here, man, just in case you need an explanation, because you’re always asking questions, driving everyone crazy! Open the damned door!”
Barry whispered, “If you dare to tell him anything, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
Crying, Langston said, “What did I ever do to you to drive you to hurt me, or kill me?” He couldn’t help saying this very loud because he was so frightened he wet his pants.
“Langston? What’s going on in there? I know you ain’t talking to yourself! I ain’t stupid! Who’s in there with you?”
“Tell him you’re talking to yourself,” whispered Barry. “Tell him you’re hallucinating.”
Langston nodded, and then, while Barry hid under his bed, for the first time in his entire life, he broke a promise. As soon as he opened the door for the nurse, he whispered in the nurse’s ear, “He said he came in here to beat the shit out of me because he hated me and if I dared to tell you anything, he would kill me. Then he said to tell you I was hallucinating and indeed talking to myself. He’s thin framed and considerably smaller than me, but he’s under the influence of meth, therefore a lot stronger. Help me.”
“Where is he?” the nurse whispered, inaudible to Barry.
“Under my bed.”
The nurse looked under Langston’ bed and although Barry was wearing all black to go unnoticed, he made the mistake of letting the wire of the headphones of his iPod slip out from under the bed. Careful not to destroy the artifact, a patient’s property, the nurse pulled the wire delicately to force Barry to pop his head out from under the bed. Barry’s head was out. Now he was the one who was in trouble. “Barry Hinds. You were the one to lock the door, weren’t you?”
Barry didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t lie to me. Ainsworth here is a meth addict and ill in the head, but he ain’t no three year old. He can follow directions, and I know he wouldn’t lock the door, or else he would be punished.”
Barry came out from under the bed and stood up. Coming toward the nurse as Langston got back farther and farther until he closed the door with his body, he said, “Yes, I locked the door.”
“He told me about the threats you made to him, and he told me that you were on meth.”
“I’m not…”
“Oh, come on, Barry. You should know. A meth addict that hasn’t had a fix for almost a month can smell an addict to any drug who’s still going at it from a mile away. I repeat. I am not stupid. Tell me the truth, Barry. Otherwise you’ll be in serious trouble for breaking the rules and for lying. Not only will you be kicked out like an unruly dog, but you’re also going to be in legal trouble for violating all of the judge’s orders. Then, you’re going to jail. Is that what you want, Barry?”
Langston took this chance to get out of the room and run to any place in the building that he knew would be full of people.
“Look at that. You’ve got Hulk scared like a little girl, and he’s like ten times bigger than you! Come on! Fess up or else.”
“Everything he told you is true.”
“You’re finally acting like a real man.” He handed the iPod back to Barry. “Next time you do this, try not to bring your iPod with you because it’s always going to be evidence of your foul play. Just my humble suggestion.”
“I won’t do it again,” he said, shedding tears. “It’s just that he drives me crazy. I hate him with a passion. He thinks he’s the shit, he’s better than everybody, when he’s only what? Twenty-six, and he looks like a decrepit old man! He might have been handsome once, according to his words, which I doubt, but he’s fugly now. He doesn’t even look human. I don’t get why his wife hasn’t divorced his ass. She should divorce him just for looking forty years older than he really is! That son of a bitch! I can’t stand him!”
“Damn! It’s really the meth and the steroids talking. He was right. You probably just started and that’s why you haven’t become fugly like Ainsworth, but believe me, if you keep using and abusing, you’re going to get there so fast you won’t even be able to track your trip there! You won’t know when you left home and when you arrived there! Oh, and about you doubting him being handsome once.” He lifted a frame wedding photo of Langston. “This is one of the wedding pictures Ainsworth was talking about.”
That left Barry out of breath and openmouthed.
“I thought I might bring it to him to remind him of the great-looking lad he used to be, to take him back there, to make him want to go back to that, to those few moments of happiness. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to come back here ever again.” He walked to the nightstand and placed the picture right by the center of the nightstand, where it couldn’t be ignored. “Meth is really doing a number on you, making you see things that are not there. Did you know that’s why Ainsworth is taking this antipsychotic? Now I have to go after him just to give it to him because of you. Meth destroys the body, the mind, and the soul. Ainsworth is by far one of the most humble and positive patients we’ve ever had. He’s cheerful, he’s always complementing everyone…what’s more, he’s always telling everyone how much better they are than him! So, you see, he’s exactly the opposite of the man you see. Rather than threatening him and insulting him, you should support him, like the majority of us are. That man has gone the lowest anyone can go. He’s beyond the floor. He has no self-esteem at all. He hates himself.”
“He should.”
“Barry…”
“He’s right in doing so because he’s a…”
“Barry, I was thinking of not reporting you to my superiors, risking my job, and giving you another chance, but you know what? You don’t deserve it. You’re way out of line.”
“Emmett…”
“No! First it’s Ainsworth! Tomorrow morning it’s going to be like ten other people and then the day after tomorrow everybody’s going to be your target! No! You’re out of your mind, way out there, and I am not going to let this happen. I will report you.”
When the nurse turned around to leave, Barry tried to attack him, unaware, but just in time, his training in tae-kwon-do became useful. Given all the authority to do so when feeling threatened, the nurse incapacitated Barry temporarily using his techniques of self-defense and then went and reported him. Emmett didn’t really hurt Barry. He just made him unable to move. Barry was used to this. He’d been beaten thousands of times and survived.
* * * *
Hours later, Langston was hanging out with his new friends in the entertainment room. Some people were listening to music on their iPods, some were on their laptops, writing and surfing the net, others were drawing and others were singing a cappella, quietly enough to have a good time without disturbing other patients or the staff. They were drinking Coca Cola. All of a sudden, Pablo started talking about the incident between Langston and Barry this morning, what caused Larry to be kicked out like a dog, talking about the details he’d heard and wanting to get it all straightened out because he didn’t know Barry and Langston were enemies. He was a great friend to both of them, and it saddened him to know that he would probably never see Barry or talk to him ever again because of a problem he had with his other best friend. “So tell me exactly what happened between you and Barnaby.”
“That’s his real name?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Langston said and accommodated himself even more in that reclining chair, “he was high on meth and he was using steroids. He said he hated me and he was going to beat the shit out of me. Then Emmett knocked the door, mad at me because he thought I had locked the door. Barry had locked the door so he could beat me senseless and no one could help me or find me and make sure I got the medical care I needed. Maybe he was planning to beat me and just leave me in my room until I died. He hates my guts and I have no clue why.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Barry I’ve known since I came here six months ago. He’d been here for six months! What the hell came over him?”
“He was high on meth. He wasn’t thinking. He was seeing me as this conceited, megalomaniac asshole that was rubbing it in everybody’s face how much better I was than them.”
Smiling, but with sadness in his heart, Pablo replied, “But you’ve been doing exactly the opposite. You tell us day in and day out how much better we are than you and how you don’t deserve such wonderful friends! At first we would take it as a compliment, but now it makes us feel sad. Almost four weeks later, we hate hearing that, and we all think you should stop the crap because frankly, that’s a signal that you’re severely depressed to the point where you have no self-esteem. That’s horrible. We don’t want to be around someone like that. It makes us feel like crap, feel the way you’re feeling. You should get better. You know, there are professionals here and they will give you the help you need. You should request to talk to one of them. This rehab center had to get its own mental-health professionals because they’ve noticed that there are too many mentally-ill drug addicts here, and they can’t let them go home like that. They have to make sure that everyone’s ok before they let us leave or before they allow us to interact with each other.”
“I understand.”
“Request to talk to a psychologist. I’m sure you will feel so much better within the next few weeks.”
“I will.” He got up from the recliner. “I’m going to see if I can talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist right now.”
“You know when you leave here for a few hours and have your plastic-surgery procedures? Well, they’re working like a charm. You’re already starting to look more like your age. Almost all your wrinkles are gone.”
“Thank you.” They shook hands and Langston left.
A while later, Langston was talking to a psychiatrist, his psychiatrist, Dr. DePandi. Dr. DePandi just sat there and listened to what Langston had to say, without saying a word, and writing everything down. Langston was pouring his heart out to her, letting her know what he’d been feeling all these years, and what a loser he felt he was for becoming afraid of a scrawny man, all because that man was on meth and he wasn’t. He had just realized how meth can really destroy lives, and now, more than ever, he was determined to stay away from that crap. He felt Barry humiliated him, and now more than ever before, he felt like utter scum.
“I understand how fearing someone smaller and physically weaker than us can make us feel. However, you don’t have to feel that way. The man was on meth, Langston. Of course he was going to be stronger than you at the moment. If you had both been normal at the moment and he dared to threaten you, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. But he was high on meth and steroids. Lethal combination. Crazy and supernaturally strong. You weren’t high on anything. You were normal. Of course he was a lot stronger than you at the moment.”
“He was thin-framed, but I could see his bulging muscles. Oh, man…”
“I know. I know. Look, what we have to concentrate on is building your self-esteem.”
“Answer me this. How could I possibly love myself when I’ve destroyed so many lives?”
“Ok, first of all, about your mother—yes, you did destroy her life indeed, but she’s in a much better place right now. No one can hurt her where she is. I know she’s looking down on you and she’s very sad that you’re in this state, that you haven’t been able to get over her departure after seven long years, and you’re killing yourself over it now.”
Crying, Langston said, “What am I supposed to do?”
“You should’ve gotten help seven years ago, the day your mother died, you should’ve sought help. If you had, you wouldn’t be going through all of this. You would’ve never started using meth. You wouldn’t have needed to. We all feel guilty about a lot of things, even horrible things that have happened. I feel responsible for my father’s death because I didn’t have my glasses on, my vision was blurry, and at the moment I couldn’t see anything, so I gave him the wrong medication and he passed away. I would’ve gotten arrested if my mother hadn’t begged them not to press charges for manslaughter.”
“Wow…”
“But I got help. I was sixteen at the time. Now I’m forty-two. I became a functional person, someone helpful to society once again, and despite everything that happened, I was able to realize my dream of becoming a psychologist because I left all that behind me. My mind is healthy now, and I stopped taking antidepressants a long, long time ago, months before I started preparing for this profession. I haven’t relapsed. I know I am responsible for my father’s death, you know if only I had put my glasses on before giving him his medication, none of this would’ve happened, but I honestly thought that since the medication he needed, the bottle was of a different color, I was giving him the right medication. I didn’t know that two of the medication bottles were blue and all the others were green. However, I don’t beat myself up over it. I have to put all that behind me, otherwise I won’t be able to care for my husband, children and grandchildren. I have two grandbabies.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. My husband has cerebral palsy, mild to moderate. Oxygen was depleted from his brain after a car accident we had. He’s mostly independent, but he still needs help for like two or three things, like washing his back or reaching things up high because this happened a few months ago and he still hasn’t gotten his reaching tool. A nurse takes care of him while I work and then when I get home, I take over. I help him get into the bathtub and wash his back before he washes the rest of his body so that I don’t have to worry about doing that before helping him get out so he can get out and get dressed before he leaves the bathroom. I don’t actually help him in and out, I just watch him.”
“He’s become almost independent in so little time?”
“Yep! He vowed never to give up. He said that as long as he had a breath in his body that he would fight for what he wanted until taking his very last breath and that no one and nothing would keep him from realizing his dreams. He’s a songwriter now, and his songs are all top ten in the Superstar charts. Top ten. He used to be just the vice president of some company and now he’s a millionaire, practically, with those songs. We moved from a modest, middle-class house to a mansion, with all the commodities for handicapped people. We’re living the sweet life, like he says, la dolce vita. He’s Italian.”
“That’s nice. I’ve always wanted to be a singer, but I’m twenty-six, so it’s kind of late.”
“Look at Barbara Cambridge. She released her first album when she was thirty-three. Did you hear that? Thirty-three! Seven years older than you! And today, she’s one of the top recording artists of all time, at fifty-five years old, and her incredible voice is still going strong, like the day her first single was released, back in 1988.”
“That’s true. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but on the other hand…”
“Aha, let me hear it. There’s always a but. Tell me.” She said, arms crossed across her chest.
Langston laughed. “Women can start their singing careers whenever they want, thirty-three, forty-three, even sixty-three if they want to! But men, we have to start young. Otherwise we flop.”
“Says who?”
“That’s what I think.”
“Ah, exactly,” she snapped. “There you go! That’s what you think! I’ll tell you what. I know this is unprofessional, but let’s make a bet, shall we? Yeah, I know you like doing that with your fellas.”
He laughed harder now, like watching a comedy movie that wouldn’t allow the viewer to stop laughing. “And how do you know? Tell me that before we make the bet.”
“I know a lot of things about you, Langston. I’ve talked to your family.”
“Oh, now we’re talking. So what are we betting on?”
“I’m going to ask my husband to write a song for you. I’m going to summarize your life story for him and he can write a song for you based on one of your most painful experiences, just one, because I know there are a plethora of them, and you can make an autobiographical album. That’s a great way to start, letting people know who you are and what you’ve been through to your music. That way, in interviews, less questions have to be asked and answered.”
“Oh, if I were to make an autobiographical album, then my whole repertory would have to be autobiographical because I have a lot of things to tell, lots of things that I think the world should know, and I will let them know.”
“So my husband will write one song for you. Then you will release it as a single. If people like you, then you will have to make your debut album, and if your single is successful, just that single, you will have to put all that money in an untouched bank account and when I retire, I want you to give all that money to me, every cent.”
“The money for my single or for my album?”
“For your single.”
“Deal.” They shook hands, sealing the pact.
A few days later, and after several sessions with Dr. DePandi in five days time, a record-breaking two sessions a day for any mental-health professional in the world, Langston was feeling a lot better about himself. His self-esteem was at a seventy-three percent. He was writing a new entry in his journal.
TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY. ANOTHER SESSION WITH DR. DEPANDI AND I FEEL LIKE I AM ON TOP OF THE WORLD, ALMOST. I AM REGAINING MY PHYSIQUE AT A FASTER PACE THAN I EXPECTED. I HOPE TONY’S RIGHT IN SAYING THAT IF I DON’T USE THAT SHIT EVER AGAIN I WON’T NEED ANY MORE PLASTIC SURGERY TO GET MY ‘BEAUTIFUL’ FACE BACK. I AM ALMOST THE MAN I USED TO BE, BEFORE I STARTED BECOMING JEALOUS OF MY BROTHER. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER I AM PROUD OF MYSELF. MY ANTIPSYCHOTIC MEDICATION IS KEEPING ME IN THE REAL WORLD, ALTHOUGH IT MAKES ME SLEEPY, BUT THAT’S OK. I’D RATHER BE FUNCTIONAL AND SLEEPY THAN INCOMPETENT AND AWAKE ALL DAY, IF I HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THE TWO. I JUST HOPE THAT I CAN SEE MY MOTHER ONE DAY, EVEN IF IT’S JUST IN A DREAM, TO TELL HER HOW SORRY I AM.
RELIEVED, LANGSTON A. AINSWORTH.
When Langston finished his new entry, he suddenly got a vision of his mother in a white gown. He thought this was either a dream or a hallucination. She was dressed in a white gown, looking like an angel, but without the wings, her blond hair silky as ever, like a waterfall, long and beautiful, and her eyes resembling emeralds. “Langston, you don’t have to apologize anymore.”