As I handed her one, I noticed what looked like shoelace marks around her neck.
“So what are you getting off of?” she asked me.
“Heroin. How did you know I was in here for drugs?” I asked her.
“’Cause you’re not wearing a gown. That’s how you can tell the druggies from the psychos.”
I looked around the patio to get a sense of how many psychos surrounded me. The druggies were outnumbered four to one.
“So I take it you’re the reason they took my shoelaces?” I said, unsure if it would be taken as a joke or set off another suicide attempt.
“Those fucking bastards took everything from me. Not just my shoelaces…all my clothes, even my bra and underwear. Now I have to walk around looking like one of these psychos.”
I didn’t bring up the fact that strangling yourself with a shoelace was clearly psychotic behavior.
“How does that help someone who has just lost their kid and is trying to build self-esteem, not lose it? All they do is try to make you feel shittier to justify keeping you here, so they can take more of your goddamn money,” she said, getting completely worked up. In a change of tone, she asked, “Heroin, huh? I’m here for speed.”
“Speed? Where are your clothes, then?” I asked.
“Oh, they took them yesterday when I supposedly tried to kill myself. They’re supposed to be these professionals and they couldn’t see I was just trying to scare my ex-husband? Fucking bastards. Do they know how degrading it is to walk around dressed like one of these nuts?” She said it loud enough for the nurse to hear. The nurse ignored her, but the other gown wearers were starting to give her nasty looks.
“You believe me though, right? That I’m not one of these crazy people?” Again she was talking a little louder than I thought she should have. I didn’t know what to say. I was never good at these on-the-spot situations.
“Honestly? Well, I only met you two minutes ago.”
“True. I’m in a psych ward, but you can tell that I’m just angry, right? Not crazy like the rest of them. Who wouldn’t be angry the way I’ve been treated? In fact, I would be crazy if I wasn’t angry. They took my daughter away from me.” With that she broke into tears. I stood there uncomfortably for a while. “I needed the money. I was broke, and Gary wasn’t paying his child support. What’d he expect me to do? I only did it once,” she sobbed.
“Canfield…Oran?” The nurse with the lighter called to me just in time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was she had done just once. “Time to get your meds.”
“Uh. I guess I have to go,” I said, but the girl didn’t respond. She just stood there crying. I wasn’t safe anywhere in this place.
The nurse walked me through the door and said, “You looked like you needed some help. I would stay away from that one. She’s a bit crazy,” which seemed an odd thing for her to say. It seemed to me that everyone here was more than just a bit crazy, they were totally fucking nuts. “We’ll find you when it’s really time to take your meds,” she said.
I shuffled back to my room and was relieved to find my roommate lying down, staring at the ceiling. I did the same until a nurse came in with my medication.
“Thanks,” I said and quickly nodded off.
Again, I was woken up by the doctor. “So how are we today?”
“What? I have no idea how we are, but I feel like shit.” My eyes were trying to adjust to the sunlight.
“Really? Because based on what you told us during your intake, we’re giving you more than enough medication. You should be quite comfortable.”
“That’s the thing. I think I might be a little too comfortable. I feel like a fucking zombie. I’ve been mostly asleep for two days. I may regret saying this, but I think it might be too much,” I said, neglecting to mention that I had been doing heroin on top of whatever else they had me on.
“I’ve been at this for twenty years, and I’ll never understand you heroin addicts. When you guys are out on the street, you’ll stick anything that some stranger tells you is dope in your veins, but when a trained doctor gives you something, you don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“Yeah? And?”
“So we’re going to stick to the regimen as planned for now, and we’ll start tapering you down tomorrow. Okay?”
“Uh,” I hesitated, but I was too medicated to come up with an argument.
“Good, and I would try to check out some of the groups today. You might hear something.”
“From these people? I doubt it, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“There you go. Just give it a shot. You never know, right?”
I did know, but I gave him a noncommittal nod in the hope that he would leave.
After getting high in the bathroom again, I went out on the patio. I found an unoccupied corner to smoke my cigarette in peace, but the girl from the day before found me and interrupted my isolation.
“Hey. Sorry about yesterday. You must think I’m crazy.”
“I’m here, too,” I said, neither confirming nor denying her.
“Anyway, I just wanted to explain—so you don’t think I’m crazy—that all this started when my ex-husband saw me acting in a porn movie. It was stupid, but I was broke and it was just a onetime thing. Anyway, he flipped out and used it as evidence to get my daughter back from me, and that’s when I started doing too much speed.”
It was a strange explanation for not being crazy. I had never met a porn star, though. I didn’t actually know whether being in one movie qualified someone to be a porn “star,” but suddenly I found her a lot more interesting.
“Yeah, that’s terrible. I mean, you said he wasn’t paying child support, right? What did he expect you to do?” Jesus. What the hell was I saying to this girl? Not receiving child support seemed like the worst excuse to have sex with a stranger for money—especially on camera.
“Exactly. What’s the big deal? I don’t know how I could tell, but I knew you would understand,” she said, stepping a little closer to me.
Because I will say the stupidest shit in the world to avoid awkwardness, I thought to myself.
“It’s too bad we’re stuck in this hospital,” she said, edging even closer.
“Oh, the doctor told me to check out one of these groups,” I said, uncomfortable with where my thoughts were going. “I should probably go.”
“I’ll go with you,” she volunteered.
There were three groups sitting in circles when we went back into the ward. We found one with two chairs available and sat down as people were introducing themselves. Two of the other patients got up and left when we showed up. It wasn’t long before I understood why.
“Hi, I’m Oran,” I said when it came around to me.
“Do you mind telling the group why you’re here?” the counselor leading the group asked.
“I’m kicking heroin.”
“Okay. Very good. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I’m Stacy and I’m here because my ex—”
“Thanks, Stacy, but I only asked Oran because he’s new to the group.”
“Now, who wants to start?” she asked, staring directly at me.
“I will,” Stacy said.
The other patients rolled their eyes and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“Actually, I was hoping to hear from Oran, since he hasn’t been with us. Oran, would you like to start?”
“No, thanks. I’m still pretty foggy. I thought I would just listen today.” I had learned in the other rehabs that this was the right way to decline because it implied a sort of silent participation.
“Anyone else want to start then?”
“See what I mean?” Stacy turned to me, but she was obviously talking to the counselor. “They don’t want me to get better. Every time I try to help myself, they try to shut me out.” Then she turned and stared straight at the counselor. “It’s because they know my parents’ insurance is covering t
his and you want to keep me here as long as you can.”
“Stacy. We’ve been through this over and over again, and you know that’s not what’s going on.”
“Oh yeah? Well then, tell me again because I don’t understand why else you guys would keep me here when I’m about to lose my daughter to that fucking asshole. Do you even know why I was in that movie? Because that bastard…”
“Yes. Everyone knows why you were in the movie, Stacy,” she said condescendingly. “And you know as well as I do that that has nothing to do with why you’re here. The reason you’re still here is that when someone tries to take their own life, we are required by the State of California to hold them until we see evidence that they are no longer a threat to themselves or others.”
“Oh, that’s great. Now tell me how losing my daughter is going to give me a reason to live. I’ll die without her.” She started crying.
“What are you implying by that?” the counselor asked, totally unfazed by this display of emotion.
“See what I mean?” Stacy said, turning toward me.
“You can’t even open your mouth without them interpreting it as suicidal. It’s fucking evil!” she screamed, turning her attention back to the group. “I bet that bastard’s paying you to keep me here till after the court date. Is that what he’s doing? I should have just kept my mouth shut like this guy…You’ll probably release him right away! From now on I’m not saying anything!”
“That sounds like a great idea, Stacy. Let’s move on,” the counselor said without even taking a pause. “Brian, how are you today?”
“Fine,” said the guy sitting next to Stacy. Brian was wearing a robe, indicating he had a real problem.
“That’s great, Brian. Can you tell me what ‘fine’ feels like?” she asked.
“Like okay,” he said.
“That’s a very good start. Now can you elaborate on ‘okay’?”
“Jesus Christ,” Stacy interrupted. “He said he was fine. How come when someone’s fine you try to get them to talk, but when someone isn’t at all fine you just want to shut them up? It’s so obvious you’re just trying to get him to say something that you can use to keep him here longer.”
“This isn’t helping your case, Stacy.”
“Since there’s obviously nothing I can say to help my case, I might as well tell the truth……What? Are you afraid the other patients are going to get wise to your plan, too? I’m going to tell everyone. Then see what happens.”
“…And that’s more important than seeing your daughter?”
“You fucking bitch! You have no right to bring her into this!” she yelled hysterically.
“Okay, group. Stacy and I are going to have a chat in my office, and I hope to see the rest of you this afternoon. That will be all.”
I SAT IN THE CIRCLE awhile longer by myself, staring into space, wondering how the hell I had ended up here. It was almost as if Stacy had held up a mirror for me. Did I sound that crazy at my first rehab? I, too, had been convinced that I was right, and no one had come up with a single argument that didn’t reinforce my various theories about AA, rehabs, and God all being a huge conspiracy to get people into their cult. Even when someone said something vaguely sensible, I thought, These people will say anything to get me to join up with their bullshit. Although I still wasn’t convinced that I was wrong about them or nearly as crazy as Stacy, I did see a glimpse of my own paranoia through her, and it scared me. I needed to get the hell out of there now. I only had one more day before I would no longer be faking withdrawal. I’d be going through it for real. I struggled out of the chair to look for the doctor.
twenty-one
In which he is saved from untimely death and avoids broccoli and zucchini through his own resourcefulness
I NEVER THOUGHT I would look forward to school, but after the worst summer ever, I couldn’t wait to go back to Arizona. I had been fired from a job and kicked out of summer camp for smoking cigarettes, and Mom and I did nothing but scream at each other once I got back to Berkeley and had to face the consequences of admitting I took acid. For the first time in my life, Mom started treating me like a kid, and our interactions often escalated into yelling matches within twenty seconds. She wanted me to tell her where I was going whenever I left the house. Whom I was going with. What I was going to do, and when I was going to be home. Stuff normal kids had to deal with their whole lives, but, as far as I was concerned, it was too late to all of a sudden start treating me like a fourteen-year-old.
High school didn’t end up being much better. We came back to a new headmaster, various new teachers, a crop of new kids, and a staggering number of new rules. The only good thing about this, if there was one, was that it was easier to make friends under the new regime because nothing brings people together like a common enemy. The common enemy was Joe, the new headmaster. Joe had no business whatsoever at our hippie school. He had come from a stuffy East Coast prep school and, at our first assembly, went on and on about the life lessons he had learned playing rugby and how it was his honor to pass these virtues on to us. He then explained that the tie he was wearing was given to him by his former headmaster as he lay on his deathbed and told Joe he was passing the mantle on to him.
Joe was hell-bent on purging the school of its bad apples, but enrollment was already down. The costs of losing more kids were being passed on to us in the form of fewer activities, crappier food, and a new air of paranoia as supposedly people called “finks” were walking around, collecting data on everyone and reporting straight to Joe.
ONE OF THE NEW rules Joe instituted was that we were no longer allowed to smoke on campus. The campus itself was huge, and the nearest place to smoke was behind the girls’ dorm, which was built only twenty feet from the barbed-wire fence that separated the campus from what was officially state property. Any other direction and it would have been a fifteen-minute walk to get off the grounds, plus this new smoking rule was my only excuse to go anywhere near the girls’ dorms. The dorm had a big courtyard that we walked through in order to go to Cow Pie, a huge rock formation/smoking patio that looked exactly like its name.
Shortly after returning from working at an orphanage in Oaxaca—my field trip that year—my friend Matt and I were having a cigarette during lunch break, and on our way back we staged a ridiculous fake fight in the girls’ courtyard. I hardly ever used my circus skills, but I had been teaching Matt how to fall without getting hurt, and how to slap his thigh, and turn his head when I took a swing at him to make it look like he was being punched, and other slapstick tricks. Although neither of us would admit it, we were probably hoping to get some attention from the girls, and the fight escalated to where Matt was throwing me against the wall and kicking me when I was down. He then picked me up and gently threw me against a big window that looked out onto the courtyard from one of the girls’ rooms. We had a crowd of about five girls watching who didn’t know what to make of it all, and when I bounced off the window they seemed a little freaked out. We both started laughing.
“Wow, that was a good one. Let’s try that one again,” I said.
This girl Caroline who Matt had a crush on walked in just then and Matt said, “Hey Caroline, you got to see this. It will freak you out.” He grabbed me by the collar and…
Climbing out of the window, I found everyone staring at me in total silence while Matt, who was sitting on the ground next to me, held his head in his hands mumbling, “oh no,” over and over. I looked down and noticed an eight-inch gash on my chest and a flap of skin hanging down to my waist. It looked like an anatomy drawing from a textbook, as if the muscles around my rib cage had been woven on a loom.
Feeling something wet dripping down my fingers, I looked at my hand and saw a two-inch gouge in my wrist, all the way down to the bone. The gash in my side had been kind of fascinating, but the cut in my wrist and the blood squirting from it brought me back to earth. I figured I only had a few minutes left to live, and I decided to spend them running around in ci
rcles yelling, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” until this girl named Anna appeared out of nowhere, grabbed on to my wrist with her hand, and pressed herself against my chest wound.
Anna was a bit of an anomaly. While almost everyone else dressed in cutoff jeans, tie-dyes, and Birkenstocks, she always wore these amazing matching outfits. That day it was a white one-piece tennis suit with a white sash for a belt, white socks, and a pair of white Keds. All the other kids were standing around dumbstruck until Anna started barking orders at them.
“Matt! Run to the infirmary and tell the nurse what happened. Let her know we’re coming, and tell her to stay there. Caroline, go get John. He’s down in the music room. Tell him to meet us at the infirmary with a van. And Sarah, I need you to untie my belt.”
Anna wrapped her sash around my wrist as tight as she could, then grabbed onto it again, squeezing hard. With her other hand she reached around my waist and pulled her body against mine, applying pressure on my chest.
“Good. You’re going to be okay, but we need to get to the infirmary. You ready?”
I wasn’t so sure I was going to be okay, but I nodded and we awkwardly set out to find the nurse.
We ran into her, hurrying down the path holding a fistful of Band-Aids. At this point Anna must have looked much worse off than I did, with her white tennis suit completely covered in blood.
“Oh dear. Let me see what happened,” the nurse said, trying to peel open a Band-Aid.
“Don’t let go of me,” I said.
“Those aren’t going to help right now,” Anna said. “Go back and get your car started in case John doesn’t show up.”
“But I need to see what happened,” the nurse said again.
“I’m not letting go of him. Get your car, or go find John,” Anna said with such authority that the nurse actually turned around and ran away. “Don’t worry. I’m not letting go of you,”
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