mercuryfern

talk radio

“Yes, Kelly from Kansas City, you are on the air.”

“Yeah, ah, hi, Mike.  I, ah, work at a mental hospital, and most of the people at my place are schizophrenic, but, I mean, ah, they say that guy was bipolar, and those people, when they are manic, are really dangerous, you know?  So, I can’t blame the cop, I support him 100%”

I used to follow news very closely.  I read newspapers, magazines, played hooky from 7th grade to watch C-span.  When these weren't enough, I read books, threw myself into debates, went to protests, circulated petitions, took classes.  I looked down on everyone then, but most of all on the people who didn’t have any opinions, didn’t bother to stay informed.  How could they imagine the details of their own little lives were worth attending to at the expense of striving for a better world?

It’s been a few years since the details of my own little life have pushed everything else out of my brain.  I don’t even feel guilty about it anymore.  Snippets of what is happening outside my head make it through while I am scanning around for a good radio station, not even, just a song I don’t despise, not even, I am pressing the button out of habit.   

When I heard Kelly say she worked at a  mental hospital, I stopped, because those two words make me sit up and listen every time.  Maybe this will make sense of it, will make it real, will chip away at my shame and isolation.

Apparently a man was shot, maybe on a plane, maybe for threatening somebody, maybe for saying he had a bomb.  I didn’t listen long enough to really find out. 

I’ve met nurses like Kelly, I’ve been in their care.  They will not let you go to the bathroom, they will not let you wear shoes, they will not let you drink water, they will not they will not they will not. 

They will take blood for vague reasons.  The kids who are on meds need to have their levels checked, sure, but you are refusing, you are involuntary, so what, exactly, are they doing with so many vials from you?  The soft parts of your arms turn black and blue after just a few days, everybody’s do, but your veins collapse sooner than most, she is looking and not not finding, she is missing, her aim is bad, you joke that you would be a stunning failure at heroin addiction, she is not amused, asks you can you stop moving your leg like that and you make full on unsmiling eye contact, “No, I can’t.  You are hurting me.” 

Yes, lets be honest, you are angry.  You shouldn't even be here, this is fucking rediculous, you are fine you are better than fine you are beyond coherant and on into brilliant.  It’s not as if you are claiming to have authority over your body, though.  The male nurses are stronger than you even when not working in goups of four, even without the aid of straight jackets, padded rooms, four point restraints.

Anytime she asks, you give her your arm, make a fist, relax.  Teeth clenched with rage and fear, you hang your dignity on little acts of defiance.  Telling her it hurts, telling her a bit maliciously, true, implying she is doing her job poorly, yes, gets you a look you’ve gotten before; from her, from other nurses, from doctors, from authority figures and caregivers various and sundry.  It will frighten you that time, it will frighten you every time, but not until ten years later will you quite understand. 

If a cop puts a bullet in your brain, she will support him 100%.

Rides Various and Sundry

Have you ever noticed that blogless rodents come up with the best memes?  Well, they do.

I rode horses first.  In the earliest recesses of my memory, where things are a jumble of contextless sensation, there is the repeated image of two small children in addition to myself piled in to the western saddle of a palomino named Peanut.  The horse belonged to my aunt’s fiancé.  Later that year, she left the man for his best friend.

When horselust hit me at seven my parents (claimed they) couldn’t afford lessons (so what’s with the trips to Cancun?), but they did send me to riding camp for two weeks every summer.  I was the only girl my third year who could jump.  Now matter how I begged my aunt, now a dairy farmer with the husband/best friend, to keep horses that I might fulfill my destiny as a great horsewoman, her stalls stayed empty.

I’ve ridden waves on the Jersey Shore in the days after a hurricane, a rectangle of styrofoam carrying me repeatedly onto the sand too fast too fast; such quantities of seaweed and primordial corpses to contend with.  By the end of each annual week, I fancied myself an expert on reading the undulations, on knowing just when to turn my back and launch.  Getting too far ahead meant that, rather than being propelled forward with all the force of the worlds largest body of water coddling you to a safe thrill, the board would suddenly catch on the fast approaching sand then your stomach, allowing the water to exhaust itself dragging your ten year old face across the high tide line.  For the rest of the summer, strangers stared horrified when I wasn’t looking but cringed from my gaze.  It didn’t heal in time for school pictures.

I’ve ridden a candy mogul’s rollercoasters shouting obscenities with my dearest pierced friends.  It meant less than the annual Catholic High Fair, lasting only a week each June.

I’ve ridden poems like luck dragons late into the night when pubescent rage and an excess of spine kept me from taking any small blue pills.  The words came to me but not from me in a torrent of snot and angry tears to give me resolve.  It would be broken.

When I got out, my grrls took me first thing to our hometown’s annual hosting of itinerant gravity defiance.  We got the bracelets and rode all night.  Danny didn’t come, though I called him.  As he took the phone in his hand, the older brother mumbled that some white girl was on the line.  Waiting for the pirate ship, I ran into a cheerleader who was wont to punish herself with impressive feats of starvation.  She’d gotten out weeks before and hadn’t heard from anyone.  Our posses eyed each other menacingly and declined to borrow lighters across clique lines while we embraced.

I’ve ridden trains two hours each way; pain the tuition myself at fifteen because I wanted to spend my days in a place where my passions could be honed rather than quashed; even if I had to labor at the greenhouse four days weekly; even if there was always a critical mass too busy smoking snorting injecting to revel in learning without coercion.

I’ve ridden in cars; but come to think of it, usually driven when the miles went to three and four digits: back and forth between New England and Amish Country for college and breaks; to the southwest instead of Christmas with our families; fast and sleepless weekend trips, the tiny Geo Metro seats full to the brim with dissidents journeying down the eastern seaboard to register our complaints in crowns of fifty sixty one hundred thousand.  The papers always underestimated.

I’ve ridden my bike through summer traffic in Philadelphia, through all seasons of double decker highways in Austin, through a union organizer's spring in Chicago.  I do not block traffic.  I am traffic.  Live more; drive less.  Cars are coffins, etc etc.

I’ve ridden Navy Pier’s cheap sentimental Ferris Wheel; the city that fired me tiny below the slow peak.  Teenagers jockeyed for romantic position on all sides of us.  I did not cry for the quotas I missed on crutches; shock at the futility of hard work in the face of petty office politics emptied me of any emotion.  People who devote their lives to big causes are as small in their daily interactions as everyone else.

I rode the clumsy circle that night and others, let it spin my injury into knowledge.

Not because I don't have anything to say, but because I don't have time to say it: something from the archives.

Danny Welch was a drug dealer. High up, it turned out. From the city even. Apparently he dropped my name later to a kid at my public high school who fancied himself tough. Hey, Danny Welch? You were in lockup with him? He says hi. The resulting credibility among thugs was not without its benefits. For instance, the nonconsentual groping stopped. It gives me some satisfaction to imagine that sadist feeling a little afraid when he heard my name linked with Danny's. His assumptions and everyone else's, though, were wrong. I could have, sure, if we weren't both flight risks, if it wasn't run like a prison.

They used the padded room frequently, though it wasn't sufficiently soundproofed. My first night there, I woke up who knows how late to the sound of them hauling the short haired girl down the hallway, terrified and swearing, some furniture or something breaking and the scuffling scuffling scuffling towards my room and then past it, finally a heavy door closing. It was only seconds before the terrifying silence was polluted by a sound just at the edge of my hearing. After a few minutes it seemed I was drowning in it. A faint little noise, barely recognizable as human. I couldn't make out the words, but her fear was clear enough. The next morning I found out they even put her in a straight jacket.

Danny and I; we were pissed. No one deserved to be treated like that. We exacted our revenge on behalf of the less brave patients. We discussed breakout plans loudly within earshot of nurses, left maps and lists lying about so they would ask us about them, angry and worried. It was a laughing triumph, to upset them so needlessly. The two of us could get the other kids to work together seamlessly. All the patients would be in on these elaborate pranks and inside jokes, finely crafted to mock and humiliate the poor grad students who thought they were helping us. He was brilliant.

They were very strict about our media consumption. Basically, we were only allowed to watch Disney movies. The Lion King, in particular, was favored by the staff. I remember having a discussion with some authority figure: Don't you think we need art that speaks to our real emotional turmoil, to help us make sense of our lives and hearts? something like that. No. We are afraid of you was implied. So, we adopted the Lion King as our mascot, would memorize weird lines from it, reenact little skits at inopportune times. It made them so very very angry. We were on the floor laughing everytime. Not just Danny and me, all the patients. We made that insipid movie our own.

And of course, we sang the Tiny Toons theme song incessantly, the whole fifteen of us, from different parts of the hall sometimes. It was the juvenile psych ward, you see. Again, universally hilarious to the patients, annoying to the staff. Perfect. We injected some joy into that place despite them.

In the end, the adults had all the power. Danny and I weren't allowed to see anyone, not even our parents, for weeks at a time. They took our shoes; strange how degrading that was. Everyone else went on walks, went outside, but we never saw the light of day. The other kids brought us stolen cigarettes, some kind of pat on the back to our rock star selves. I liked to imagine we gave them courage.

You would think, with all that time stuck inside- but no, I never got any psych ward lovin. It is a fine tradition, two of my dearest friends lost their virginity that way. He was fifteen, it seems we would have been able to find, what, five minutes away from nurses? No, no. They were on to us. It was obvious, the chemistry we had.

It takes so much away, to be restrained like that. They will deprive you of control, of privacy, of your dignity. The worst thing, though, is that they take might take all intimacy away, romantic and otherwise. My tribe of girls were not allowed to contact me while I was there, of course I couldn't make any calls or write any letters. For six weeks my friends didn't know where I was. I think of Danny sometimes, of the small adolescent flirting we had, of the joyful rebellions we started together. Just now, though, I am thinking of all the memories and connections they kept us from making.