by Phil Stern
“Shut the fuck up!” Smashing a fist down onto her own knee, Amy would then whirl on Martin. “God damn it, you selfish prick, don’t you get it? Helen was bored out of her fucking mind!”
“I think not.” With grave formality, Martin shook his head. “Helen loved our life…”
“Then why’d she fucking leave, dick wad?” Like a snake coiling for a strike, Amy leaned forward. “Bingo and little sandwiches? And you’d ignore her all night and then make her listen to your dickey shit the next day? You’re lucky Helen only took off, Martin! I’d have stuck a fucking knife in your heart.”
That was another great thing about group. It was the ultimate equalizer. Where else could a psychotic teenager describe an esteemed college professor’s work as “dickey shit?”
“Helen’s probably off fucking some other guy right now,” someone else offered.
Martin raised an eyebrow, thoughtfully massaging his own chin. “I don’t believe that’s to be the case,” he mumbled. “Helen was never a very carnal woman…”
“What! Says you!” Laughing hysterically, Amy flounced back in her seat. “Hey, Professor Dick Wad, here’s an equation to ponder. How many sailor’s cocks can a pent-up college wife suck in four months?”
At one point Martin revealed their adult daughter had hinted her mother was now in Hawaii. This made no sense to Martin. Sure, Helen had always wanted to visit Hawaii, but he’d never had the time or inclination. But surely Helen wouldn’t take a trip of that “magnitude” without him, would she?
This prompted Amy to propose another equation based on Hawaiian cocks and wild beach sex. Once Martin actually passed a picture of Helen around the room. Amy flung it back at him, telling Martin to imagine the picture covered with other men’s semen.
Anyway, Amy had absolutely no patience for the few legitimate crazy people in the ward. While everyone else tolerated the clinically insane as one might a quasi-retarded golden retriever, Amy let them have it.
“You bitch!” she might yell at the Martian Lady during group. “There are no fucking aliens living underneath the building!”
“But there are! I saw them…”
“You crazy fucking loon!” Pausing, Amy might now smile. “Actually, check that. I did see a Martian yesterday!”
“You did? But…did they say anything? About me, I mean?”
“Oh yeah.” Ignoring the group leader’s fervent hand waving, Amy would then bore in for the kill. “One of them said he’s going to rape you with long, barbed tentacles before sucking your brain out!”
“Oh no!”
“Yes!” Now Amy was screaming as an attendant hauled her off. “And I hope he does it! That way we wouldn’t have to listen to any more of your nutty bullshit!”
But these outbursts were merely the precursor to the main event. Because nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, could top a philosophical debate in the mental ward.
“Here’s the thing,” a patient named Bob might begin. “If God is all-powerful, and created the world and everything in it, why do horrible things routinely happen?”
“Hmmm.” The psychiatrist never knew what the fuck to say. “Tell us more, Bob.”
“Well, think about it,” Bob would persist. “If God can do anything, why doesn’t He save people from storms and diseases?”
“Why doesn’t He just prevent storms and diseases from ever happening?” someone else added.
“Yeah,” Bob agreed. “I mean, why does God allow children to die in car accidents? I mean, if God has the power to stop these things, why doesn’t He?”
Eyes blazing, Eleanor sat forward. “BECAUSE WE HAVE FREE WILL!” she announced. I think she’d been a nun or something years ago before joining the circus as a trapeze performer. Dumped in the ward a few days ago, the story was she’d recently attacked her lesbian lover with a giant candy-striped dildo.
“That’s crap!” Amy declared. “You’re saying God gives children the ‘free will’ to die in a car wreck? That makes God a sadist.”
“Blasphemy!”
“Who knows if there even is a God?” Clearly, Bob was unperturbed by Eleanor’s vehemence. “After all, nobody’s ever actually seen God, have they?”
“God is around us every day!” Properly disgusted, Eleanor shook her head. “God is everywhere!”
“Everywhere, huh?” Amy said. “You mean like in everything?”
“That’s right!”
“What about that chair underneath you? Are you sitting on God right now?” Laughing, Amy began twirling her hair in that manically sexy way of hers. “Is your ass on God’s face as we speak?”
“What? No!”
“Actually,” Martin ponderously interjected, “some philosophers have observed there to be more direct evidence of aliens having visited our planet than any mythological deity.”
“Oh no!” shrieked Martian Lady. “I don’t want them sucking my brains out!”
“I think someone already has, you fucking freak show!” Amy snarled. One of the attendants flexed his knuckles.
The group leader smiled inanely. “Good. I think we’re making progress here.” Of course he didn’t, but that’s what they taught him to say in mental doctor school. “Does anybody else want to share anything?”
Actually, I’d had a mind-blowing thought the night before. Tentatively I now raised my hand.
“David wants to share,” the group leader announced.
Before I could begin, however, one of the addicts began crying that he needed drugs. After he was hauled away I started speaking.
“Do we all even exist in the same world?” Pausing, I then bulled ahead. “I mean, think about it. In a way, aren’t we really all independent universes in our own heads?”
At this pronouncement Amy looked disgusted, muttering and turning away. Eleanor began mumbling about God. Eagerly Bob slid forward, as if he’d been thinking along similar lines. Martian Lady began quivering, while Martin fidgeted with his bow tie.
“I mean, think about it,” I heard myself saying. “I, Dave Miller, exist completely in my own mind. Every thought, every memory, every impulse or emotion exists in my mind, and only in my mind. There is no me outside of here.” I tapped my head. “Sure, I leave impressions of me, and my actions affect others, but I exist only in here.”
One of the attendants noticeably frowned. “So what are you saying?” a woman patient asked.
“Well, look. Aren’t we all fooling ourselves? Work, play, sex, love…all human interaction. I mean, everything, the whole world outside of us, is really nothing more than stimuli to be interpreted in here.”’ Again I pointed at my head.
“That’s bullshit,” Amy announced. “We don’t just exist in our own heads!”
“No, I think he has a point,” Bob said. “For example, we all might see what we interpret as the color orange. But how do we know we’re actually seeing the same thing?”
“Because it’s orange, you moron! That’s how!”
“But I’m saying even more than that,” I persisted. “Everyone here now, in this room, is an independent entity. We don’t exist outside of ourselves, and we never can. But the world, the stimuli we receive, does shape us inside our own minds to whatever extent we allow ourselves to be influenced.”
“That’s actually pretty deep.” Impressed, the psychiatrist began making notes.
“But the aliens exist,” sniffed Martian Lady. “I’ve seen them.”
“But that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Aliens exist in your own mind, so they’re real to you…”
“Damn it!” Amy nearly leapt out of her chair. “Hey, church lesbo! Did God create everyone and everything on this planet?”
“Yes, He did. God’s the Creator of all!”
“And He loves all His creations?
“Absolutely!”
“What about Hitler?” Boy, did Amy love this stuff. “Did God love Hitler?”
Even Eleanor had to think about that one. “Well, in a manner of speaking, G
od loves all his creatures…”
“So then God doesn’t love the Jews!” Amy triumphantly pounced again. “Because Hitler killed Jews, so God can’t love both Hitler and the Jews, can he?”
“Aren’t we going a little far afield?” Martin complained. “I still don’t understand why my beloved Helen would leave our wonderful life…”
“Because she hated you, you selfish prick!”
“Okay, wait a minute.” Now Heather, a 30-year-old pretty mother of two, spoke up. She’d only been in the ward since yesterday and seemed fairly normal, all things considered. “I saw a story on the news last week about a kindergarten teacher who got AIDS and died. She left behind her husband and young child.”
“How’d she get AIDS?” someone asked.
“A dirty needle at the doctor’s office. Some lab assistant didn’t do their job,” Heather explained. “Now, if God controls everything, why did this woman have to die?”
“God punishes the wicked!” Eleanor said.
“But this woman wasn’t wicked.” Sighing, Heather shook her head. “Everyone loved her. She was named Teacher Of The Year! She was pregnant at the time with her second child. So why didn’t God do something to help her?”
“That’s a good question,” Bob added.
Even Eleanor didn’t have anything to say. She looked off into the distance, steamed.
“And I pray for her,” Heather softly declared. “I pray with all my heart and soul. And her family is so sweet. But God didn’t help…” Trailing off, Heather was utterly forlorn. “Why wouldn’t He help her? I just don’t understand.”
“God is supposed to answer prayers,” Bob numbly agreed. “At least, that’s what I thought.”
Eleanor rallied herself one final time. “Everything happens for a reason!”
“No, it doesn’t,” Amy snapped. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. There’s no reason that woman had to die, other than God wouldn’t save her! And I think that’s awful!”
That kind of took the wind out of everyone’s sails. Group broke up a few minutes later, and I was released from the mental hospital the next day.
Finally being allowed to pass through the ward doors out into the real world again was one of the most uplifting moments of my life. I’d stared into the gates of Hell, decided I wanted to keep living, and turned away. Despite everyone’s predictions, I knew I’d never return there.
At 26 my life was completely stalled, but at least it was my own and whole. Now it was time to get moving again.
SOPHIA DANTON
I was sitting across from a billionaire once, having breakfast, the Aegean Sea shining below our veranda. At one point he thoughtfully looked up, asking what I wanted out of life.
“To write a great article that everybody reads, and then recommends to their friends,” I replied. “That people remember. That possibly affects some kind of change.” For the past 18 months I’d been working my so-called “dream job” as a national magazine writer.
My lover raised an eyebrow. A self-made genius who was unpretentious almost to a fault, he’d launched his wildly successful software company a decade before. Still in great shape at age 40, he made a point of speaking at college commencements and other youth-oriented functions, exhorting the next generation to make a difference.
Though I’d followed his career for a while, we’d met only four months before, while doing an article on his life and success. During the interview process he’d been very appropriate, never suggesting we continue a session over dinner or back at his mansion. There weren’t even any pointed glances at my body or questions about what type of perfume I was wearing. All in all a perfect gentleman, recognizing me for the professional that I was.
Still, it had seemed perfectly natural that, following the article’s publication, he asked me to accompany him on his private jet for a two-week Grecian vacation. There had been no question of my acceptance.
“No, that’s not what you want,” he stated, eyes resting comfortably on my own. “You like it when people read your stuff, but that’s not what you live for. That’s not what gives your life meaning.”
And of course he was right. I took a sip of coffee, thinking. “I want to help people. To ease the suffering of the poor. To heal the sick.”
“Really?” Now he sat back, bemused. “So if I was to give you ten million dollars right now to start a hospital anywhere in the world you wish, and you had to build it and run it, that would make you happy?”
Maybe a little, but again, he was right. “Are you making an offer?” I smiled. “Ten million dollars to do with whatever I wish?”
“No,” he said. “Because as intelligent, and able, and beautiful as you are, Sophia, you have no idea how to give your life true meaning. The money would be wasted.” Unstated was that another commodity, more precious than the money, was being squandered as well.
This is a question more people should ponder. What gives your life meaning? To just exist for the sake of breathing and eating isn’t enough. And slaving away only to pay the mortgage and the light bill is merely the existential version of treading water.
No, there must be something else driving you to get up in the morning, to put in long hours and monumental effort. There must be some result, or condition that you wish to actualize, that would give you greater satisfaction than anything else. This is what we live for.
And it’s crucial we define it for ourselves. Otherwise the true wonder of the world is always fated to elude us, life outside the cave nothing more than Plato’s frightening shadows on a rough stone wall.
Actually, many people try to give their life meaning in the wrong way, simply becoming more and more miserable each year.
For example, my friend Susan threw herself into one of those pyramid sales organizations three years ago. Six months later she married a guy from her “team.” Soon they were living in a pleasant Delaware community about an hour out of Philadelphia with their infant daughter Beta.
Why name a child Beta, you ask? Well, there are various plateaus of sales success in Arnade, the multi-billion dollar conglomerate that somehow hijacked Susan’s life. Namely, the four levels are Delta, Chi, Beta, and Alpha. Jason, Susan’s husband, was currently at the Chi level, but wanted to “inspire” himself to reach Beta level. Hence their daughter’s name.
So my friend was part of a cult…er, excuse me, “Financial Independence Community,” that encouraged members to intermarry, not socialize with friends outside the organization, and actually utilize company buzz words in naming their children. But somehow Susan thought this was the greatest thing that ever happened to her.
“Oh Sophia, I’d love for you to come to one of our meetings!” she’d always gush at some point during our phone calls. “Jason and I are about five years away from complete financial independence! Can you imagine? Complete financial independence! Oh Sophia, you can have that too, with your own Motivated Success Team working underneath you! You can do it. Come on!”
Every time she inflicted me with this tired old pitch I seriously considered just ending the friendship. But then I remembered laughing and playing with Susan as a child, having dress-up parties in her mother’s bedroom (such things weren’t allowed in my home), setting up a lemonade stand on the corner…so many wonderful memories. In some ways she’d helped me stay sane, providing a connection to the real world outside my family.
So I put up with her persistence, for a while. Finally, though, I told Susan in no uncertain terms not to mention Arnade any more. Surely there were other things to talk about.
“Don’t you want complete financial independence?” she’d ask, plainly disappointed.
“No, I want my friend back,” I’d reply. “And I really don’t want to hear about all this nutty cult shit anymore.”
“No, Sophia! You don’t understand…”
“It’s a cult,” I’d firmly interject. “You’re just in too deep to see it.”
We didn’t speak at all for two months, the silence fi
nally broken with a sudden invitation to stay with her and Jason for the weekend.
The first thing I noticed, after effusively being greeted at the door by Susan, Jason, Beta, and their dog Coffee, were odd missives posted all over the house, clearly intended to inspire the home’s occupants to greater sales success. “YOU CAN DO IT!” was plastered on a small sign hanging over the television set, with “TODAY IS THE DAY FOR SUCCESS!” glaring out by the entrance to the kitchen. Stepping into the bathroom, I was confronted by “JASON AND SUSAN ARE COMMITTED TO COMPLETE FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE!” on the mirror. Susan would be forced to stare at it while doing her hair and makeup in the morning.
As near as I could tell Jason was a robot, talking of nothing but Arnade and the wonderful “opportunities” awaiting me. I pointedly ignored him.
That night some of their “team” members showed up for an impromptu pitch session, hauling out literature and sales CD’s for me to listen to. I irritably went out for a walk.
Sunday morning, instead of going for a hike at a state park as we’d originally planned, Susan told me she had to attend a pep rally led by Arnade Alphas who’d specifically flown in for the weekend for this event.
“I didn’t think I had to go,” she almost tearfully explained, “but this morning Jason said we couldn’t let up with Complete Financial Independence so close.”
Fed up, I physically dragged Susan outside, railing against Arnade and her overly-controlling husband. Numbly staring off into space, she finally ran back inside. Quickly gathering my things, I just left.
But there is a happy ending. Six months later Susan packed up Beta and Coffee and moved back home with her mother, soon getting a real job and her own place.
