by Avery Corman
So, getting back to what happened, the man’s name was Owen D. Shallimar, Jr., a conservative, wealthy, God-fearing, God-loving man, a former corporation counsel, who in his twilight years handled real estate deals in Newport, R. I., where he lived, keeping a token apartment on Park Avenue in a building which he owned. I had offended him. Outspoken I. Jewish I. Godless I. Somehow he had me Jewish and Godless. Unkempt in appearance I. Have I mentioned yet that I have a moustache and sideburns? I have a moustache and sideburns, an obvious compensation for my previously referred to thinning hair. It was a classic matchup of the old world, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant versus the Balding Immigrant.
With a nod to Bob Dylan, I tell you we both felt we had God on Our Side. Actually, I had God. Shallimar had The Law.
The Law appeared in the form of Officers Vincent T. Sabatello and John F. G. Kearney of the 13th Precinct who came to my apartment with little American flags in their lapels. They had come to answer the complaint of Mr. Owen D. Shallimar, Jr., that I was “a dangerous lunatic capable of doing injury to himself or others” as it was read aloud to me by Officer Sabatello.
“Well, as you can see, I’m just a peaceful person at home with my wife.”
“Are you the same individual who appeared last night on Johnny Carson, said appearance causing immediate disturbance in the studio audience, as reported in today’s edition of the New York Daily News?”
“That is not exactly what happened.”
“Are you the same individual who has been appearing publicly and making public statements saying that you have seen and spoken to God?”
“Yes, but surely there is no law against that.”
“Are you the same individual who caused a lady to be carried screaming from the studio of the aforementioned Johnny Carson Show, as also was reported in the New York Daily News?”
“She was a crazy lady—”
“Now just one minute, Officer. My husband does not have to submit to any questions.”
“Is your husband the same individual who has been said to be acting psycho and who claimed God talked to him in his basement, causing hystericalness …”—at this point Officer Sabatello paused to look in his notebook—“in one lady, Miss Jane R. Foster of Flushing, Queens, who is now in a state mental hospital for observation?”
“What is this, Kafka? Are you charging me with a crime?”
“Are you the same individual who caused a crowd to collect after the Johnny Carson show last night and in said crowd that you caused to be collected, an argument ensued and one Robert R. Basehart of the Bronx was struck with a fist and suffered minor contusions?”
“I don’t know anything about that—and I want you out of this house!” I was getting pretty damned mad and we were squared off chin to chin.
“Do you claim you have seen and spoken to God?”
“I don’t have to answer these questions.”
“He doesn’t have to answer anything. I’m calling our lawyer.” Judy went toward the phone and reactively Officer Kearney moved with her movements, seeming to step in her way.
“Don’t you threaten my wife!”
“Don’t become violent,” said Officer Kearney, his hand on his revolver.
“I want you two fascists out of here!” Not the smartest thing to say.
I pushed my way past Officer Kearney to get to the phone, bumping into him in the process, he responding by grabbing my arm with a “Now listen here—” I responding by trying to pull my arm back, he responding by not wanting to give it back to me, and with Officer Kearney tugging at me and me tugging back, I somehow managed to reach the phone and dial Lester’s number and I got his answering service.
I was really furious now. “Get out of here or I’ll call the police!”
“We are the police.”
“I know that. I’m trying irony on you, you galoots.”
“Doesn’t know who the police is.”
“You have no right to be here,” Judy screamed.
“Out!” As I firmly took Officer Sabatello by the arm and forcefully guided him toward the door. Lesson learned. Never put your hands on a cop.
“I think he’s becoming dangerous by virtue of his mental condition,” said Officer Sabatello to Officer Kearney, while grabbing my arms and pinning them behind my back.
“Is the public safety at stake?” said Kearney to Sabatello.
I howled, “Let go of me. This is not Nazi Germany!” “Where do you think you are? Can you tell us that?” “What do you mean, can I tell you that? This is my home and you’re in it and I want you out of it and release me and release my wife!” Officer Kearney having embraced my screaming, kicking wife in a bear hug.
“We are here to answer a complaint by Owen D. Shallimar, Jr.” And who the hell was he and why the hell was that officer bodily restraining my wife and this officer holding me, and if two cops come into your house, asking questions, bumping you, accusing you, refusing to leave and ultimately wrestling with you, physically touching you and your loved one, what you might do is get so angry you wriggle free and kick one of them hard in the shins and try to pull his badge off his uniform, remembering in your anger that in a dispute it’s good to get the officer’s badge number, and there, after all, is his whole badge? And if one of the cops calls for reinforcements and in what seems like seconds the room is filled with cops, and you’re screaming, fighting mad at this incredible intrusion, and if the more you rage and pull away from them, the more it reinforces what they came to check out, which is that you are a violent person, and if one of the officers tries to handcuff you to your own radiator pipe and you attempt to make a small political point about Fascism by pulling his American flag off his lapel—then what could happen is that your wife is reduced to a bewildered creature not believing that her husband is actually being arrested, actually being informed of his rights while being deprived of his rights, actually being told that for the good of the public safety he is being detained, actually being placed in a straitjacket and actually being taken off to Bellevue in a police van for observation. Yes, that’s right. Arrested. Straitjacket. Bellevue.
Of course, afterward lawyer Hirsh would point out, citing Warner v. The State of New York, that an officer has the power under common law to arrest and detain the mentally ill—guess who that allegedly was?—to prevent the party from doing injury to himself or to others, and any peace officer may take that apparently mentally ill person into custody, based on his appraisal of the situation, arrest you, straitjacket you, paddy-wagon you, Bellevue you—and do people know that, people who are in the same pizza-pie category as me?
I was riding along in the back of the van like a criminal, I, who had only recently been in direct communication with The Lord God. Suddenly, like dawn breaking over the roof of Bellevue, it occurred to me that the more I had protested, the more I had confirmed their preconceived opinion of me. So in the great tradition of the Count of Monte Cristo and the Birdman of Alcatraz, I decided to outwit my captors.
I would protest no further, give them no more crazy-person documentation for them to wink knowingly about. However, you would think that if you protested strongly and that made them think you were a crazy person, then if you acted passively it would convince them you were not. But it only made them suspect you even more, because how come you’re acting passively under the circumstances, and you still must be a crazy person. It’s sort of like Catch-23.
So much for my strategy. I knew that at that very moment Judy would be in touch with Lester to obtain my release. All I would have to worry about was whether or not to sue for false arrest. Listen to me—The Bellevue Lawyer.
What I didn’t know was that Judy was mad out of her mind simply trying to find Lester, and if not Lester, any other attorney. Elaine didn’t know where Lester was, in court, she thought, but when Judy asked if Elaine could give her the name of somebody else, Elaine said that Lester would be very offended if I had done anything as colorful as getting committed without giving him a crack at it.
Judy called the lawyer at the company she’d previously worked for. He didn’t want to get involved, he said, but he told Judy, free of charge, that what she needed was a court order from a judge of the Supreme Court—and how could she get that? Through a lawyer. He did give her the names of some lawyers, all of whom were out of town, in court, or in conference. You wouldn’t think it would be such a hassle to get a lawyer in his office and at his desk, but try it some time, preferably not when your mate has just been carted off to the booby hatch. She was about to dial anybody at all out of the Yellow Pages when she remembered that my play agent retained a lawyer and she called my agent, but my agent, as is the custom of agents who represent playwrights who have unsold plays and who might be receiving a call that had something to do with the business of their doing their job of selling the plays, had her secretary tell Judy she was out to lunch, which was a pretty automatic response, considering it was nearly 6 P.M.
On a hunch, Judy called the tennis courts at Central Park, the spot at which all the lawyers, doctors and analysts you couldn’t reach if you were desperate were convening, and there indeed was our Lester. I’ll say this for him, he did break off his game, stranding the other lawyer. But there was no way of his getting my release. I was being formally and legally held for observation and that was that. The best he could do was get me scheduled to appear before a judge the following day, which he did. Meantime, I was in custody and had to undergo the indignity of an enforced psychiatric examination by two doctors at Bellevue.
The procedure is a lot like every movie you’ve ever seen on the subject and while it’s happening to you, you’re saying, I saw this movie, only it’s not a movie and it’s happening to you.
The most important thing about it is that these doctors have seen them all. The wilder your story, the more logical it becomes for them to accept it in their usual context, that of having seen all these crackpots. So if a fellow comes in who is supposed to have met with God, they have this terrific overview. They’ve seen you before.
“You’ve met with God? That’s nice?”
Yes, once you enter the circle of the crazies, it’s very hard to get out, as it was becoming clear to me. So I started relying on as much name-dropping as I could muster, throwing a lot of “As reported in The New York Times-es” into my answers. It didn’t seem to impress them. They had absolutely no outward reaction to anything you said. They just wrote it down. You got the feeling you could say anything and they would just write it down. There was this perverse temptation to do just that, just to see them not respond. “I can fly.” And they would write down: “He can fly.” “I am a zebra.” “He is a zebra.” I fought off that temptation, though. I was having enough trouble with the basic line of questioning.
“How many times have you seen God?”
“I’ve actually seen Him three times. Twice we spoke by intercom.”
“Seen God three times, spoke twice by intercom,” they write down.
“Does He appear to you in different shapes?”
“Same shape. Different outfits.”
“Different outfits?”
“Yes. He seems to have a flexible wardrobe.” It was impossible. There was just no way I could relate it all in that place to those doctors and make it sound believable. Some of the questions didn’t help either.
“Does God ever appear to you as a beautiful woman?”
“What kind of sick question is that?”
“Please answer the question.”
“No. Just as a little old fella.” Writes down, “Little old fella.”
They had me in that room for four hours, cataloguing every minute detail of my meetings with Him, running me through physical tests and mental tests, these two incredibly dry, humorless men, whom I wouldn’t want to meet at a party.
“Look at this.” It was a Rorschach. “What do you see?”
“A corned beef on rye and a side of potato salad.”
I was famished, but at Bellevue there’s no sending out for a sandwich from the Stage Delicatessen. Doctor Browder, the dull man of about fifty of the team, not to be confused with Doctor Hauptman, the dull man of about fifty, phoned for dinner to be brought to me. It arrived on a plastic tray, canned string beans, mashed potatoes and a piece of some mystery fish. Since it was their custom to observe everything I did in that room, they also took notes on how I ate the fish. I ate it tentatively.
Finally, it appeared as though they were finished. Doctor Browder thanked Doctor Hauptman—you’d think they’d thank me—and called for an aide to come for me.
“I’m told your lawyer has a court order for you to appear before a judge tomorrow morning at ten.”
“Then I’m free to go?” His response was to write down my remark.
“And your wife says she loves you.” That really lost something in the translation.
“Do you know if God called?” Trying for a little sarcasm after four hours with The Twin Doctors. Their response was to write that down also.
“Might I know your verdict?”
“You’ll be given a bed for the night with clean sheets.”
“That’s an odd answer to my question.”
“I think that does it, Doctor.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
That’s the way they talked to each other, calling each other “Doctor.” My buddies nodded a doctor’s goodbye to me and left.
A policeman and a big hospital orderly came for me. They took me to a ward where there were four men, all fast asleep, two of them strapped to their beds. It wasn’t exactly a group house on Fire Island.
The orderly didn’t have anything to say to me but:
“Make any trouble and we’ll tie you up.” I didn’t feel there was much to negotiate on that.
A nurse came by and wanted me to take a sleeping pill, but nobody was going to conk me out. If I was going to spend the night in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue, it was going to be with all my faculties and wide awake.
The bed to my left was vacant. To my right was a man of about forty with a crew cut. He was moaning. This was going to be some night. His moaning kept getting louder and louder. Then he suddenly sat straight up in his bed, wide awake, and looked at me.
“Ask me why I’m moaning.”
“Huh?”
“Ask me why I’m moaning. You got the bed next to a guy who’s moaning and you don’t ask him why he’s moaning?”
“Why are you moaning?”
“The state of the world is heavy on my shoulders.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ask me why the state of the world is heavy on my shoulders.”
“Look, mister, let me—”
“Cutting me off? You don’t cut me off. Do you know who I am?”
“Good night now—”
“I am God!”
Wonderful. Somebody in the hospital thought it would be cute to put the guy who thinks he met God in with the guy who thinks he is God.”
“You’re God. That’s very good.”
“Don’t humor me. God knows when you humor Him.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Doing it again! You think I’m crazy and you can humor me. But you’re the crazy one. You think you’ve seen God.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know. And even if I didn’t know—the nurse told me.
“Well, I did see God.” I was actually arguing with him.
“But you didn’t see me. You don’t believe I’m God, do you?”
“I’m going to sleep now—”
“I’ll show you. I know everything. Ask me any question.”
“You go to sleep, okay?”
“Ask me any question. If you don’t ask me any question, I’ll keep you up all night.”
“Look, I’m going to call the nurse.”
“And then what? She thinks you’re crazy, too. Ask me any question.”
“Now look here—”
“Ask me, ask me.”
“Oh,
dammit. Who was the center fielder for the Washington Senators in 1945?”
“Bingo Binks.”
“What?”
“Bingo Binks! That’s the answer! People are crazy—they always ask you sports. Sports and geography. No imagination.”
“You are very smart.”
“Humoring me again. You know, you’re crazy. Want to know how I know?”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything. Ask me a question.”
“How do I get you to be quiet?”
“Hey, that was very clever. You get me to be quiet by saying, ‘Good night, God.’ ”
“Good night, God.”
“Hear what you just said? Now doesn’t that make you feel crazy?”
Delighted with himself, he turned over and chuckled himself to sleep. He slept through the night, except for one time when he sat straight up and said, “Will the real God please stand up?” and then he chuckled himself to sleep again.
Poor guy. That I was considered suitable to occupy the next bed from that unfortunate fruitcake was a fact I had no intention of accepting. I just lay there, awake all night, reviewing my life. They did a Fellini march in front of me, like that last scene in 8½—family, friends, old girlfriends, all showed up in Bellevue to say hello and tell me it would turn out all right, because I had found my calling—I was a Chosen Person. Clearly, in this crisis situation I had adopted the attitude that it wasn’t really a crisis situation. And with my firm grasp of the Law—see Pizza Pie—I didn’t know that the judge, if he felt I needed mental care, could hold me for thirty days of observation, after which time I could be sent to a state mental hospital for treatment for a six-month period, with various options to renew, all options on their side. Of course, in my self-deceived Chosen Person Mystique, I half expected I wouldn’t even stay the night. God would steal into the ward like Peter Pan and take me home.
