Thirty Rooms To Hide In

by Sullivan, Luke

  Irene’s God thundered down at all the skinny boys whacking off in the bathrooms of Daytona Beach and roared, “ONANISTS, GO YE TO HELL!” People who didn’t pray to Irene’s God went to hell. People who missed Sunday services went to hell. People who had heretical thoughts, or who were horny, or opinionated, or drank, were all sent to hell by Irene’s God.

  Further separating Roger from any consideration of spiritual help was the disease itself. Doctors do not expect patients to lie to them about their ailments, but that’s what Roger did once he arrived in Hartford; it’s what all alcoholics do – “I’m fine.” How strange it would be to hear a patient protest, “Shut up. I don’t have lupus. … You have lupus.” Yet an alcoholic will look up from his pool of vomit, from his slashed wrists, from his smoking wreck of a car and say, “I’m fine. Leave me the fuck alone.” Little wonder A.A. calls the disease “cunning.”

  It is chilling in fact the similarity between alcoholism and good ol’ fashioned demonic possession, the kind seen in The Exorcist. Like the devil, an alcoholic just wants to hide in his room, curse God, puke on visitors, and die. Attempts to cast out either alcoholism or devil get the same response: both demon and disease will deny they exist. And when exposed, both will try to make deals to survive, or threaten suicide, or lash out, or play dead. Alcoholism is well described as a sickness of the soul because it is in the soul the alcoholic’s problem lies.

  In the soul of every alcoholic, of every addict, there is an emptiness. Years before he ever takes his first drink he feels this void, this sense of incompleteness and melancholy, and it tells him, “You are different. You’ll never fit in. And you’ll never be truly happy.” One day that first swig of vodka comes along, or that first hit of meth, and as the feeling swarms up through his body it fills that empty place with light and warmth. He feels the missing piece in the puzzle of his life click perfectly into place, and thinks, “I’m home.” The experience is seared into his memory and not merely as the first time he feels high but the first time he feels human. “This must be how normal people feel,” thinks the grateful addict and so begins the long and fatal attraction.

  Seen in this light, booze isn’t the problem. To an alcoholic, it’s the solution. Seen in this light, alcohol is a coping mechanism, the symptom of a deeper spiritual problem.

  Unfortunately, none of this spiritual instruction was to be part of Roger’s treatment. During the four months of his stay in Hartford, he was given pills and tests and lots of care by well-meaning professionals, but not once did anyone tell him it was his mortal soul which was in need of care.

  Dad and his first-born, Kip, circa 1948.

  CASE #34233

  On my desk, dropped carelessly by the office mail-room boy, is a manila envelope that may contain some answers to my father’s death. Inside are his psychiatric records that I’d ordered months ago from the Institute of Living in Hartford; 50 single-spaced pages of his private conversations with psychiatrists; Rorschach interpretations, I.Q. tests, and other measurements of Western medicine that had been dutifully recorded and stored away in a file cabinet through four decades of Connecticut winters.

  I open the envelope like it is an undisturbed crypt.

  From the Hartford psychiatrist’s notes on my father, August 31, 1965

  It is almost impossible for the patient to date the onset of his illness. The patient was brought up in a home in which there was no drinking permitted.

  On completion of his [medical] residency, he was drinking only on occasion until one year after he became a staff member, when he was using alcohol to “get rid of my emotions.” The frequency at that time was less than once per month. As he recalls it, the drinking was always increased after a “spat with my wife.”

  The intake of alcohol increased continually until the patient began seeing a psychiatrist about a year and a half ago. The patient was able to reduce the drinking, until Christmas of 1964 when his wife and family moved out of the house into another home.

  * * *

  Daydream: I Am “The Bullshit Police”

  We’ve rappelled down the side of Building C at the Hartford Institute of Living and are hanging outside the window of the room where Roger is in session with his psychiatrist.

  We’re waiting for a “Code BS-10F” – SWAT lingo for Bullshit to the Tenth Fucking Degree. At 1300 hours, the conversation inside the room hands us a BS-10F on a silver platter.

  “Well, I didn’t drink much, um, until Christmas of ’64 but then my wife and family moved out of the house, you see, and so that’s when I began to drink and ...”

  “All agents, move in!”

  The sounds of a breaking window. Of boots crunching over broken glass. Of the psychiatrist’s Waterman pen clicking shut. Through the voice-speakers on our haz-mat suits we warn the psychiatrist, “Sir, please step away from your notepad.”

  The psychiatrist’s eyes say something to the effect of “Well, I never,” but he obeys.

  “Sir, are you aware you just came in full contact with Bullshit to the Tenth Fucking Degree? This part right here.” My gloved finger taps a passage on his notepad:

  The patient was able to reduce the drinking, until Christmas of 1964 when his wife and family moved out of the house…

  “Do you have any idea how dangerous this kind of bullshit is?” I ask. “He’s makin’ it sound as if he began drinking after his wife and family left.” I gesture at Roger, who rolls his eyes (busted, goddammit) and I turn back to the shrink.

  “He’s telling it backwards. The family left because of his drinking.”

  I give the other guys the sign to “bag and tag” the notepad and in seconds it’s sealed in an airtight orange zipper case and on its way downtown for analysis.

  * * *

  Psychiatric notes, August 31, 1965

  [After his wife and family moved out] his drinking increased to two or three Manhattans before supper, three or four scotches after supper, and a morning drink of gin and coffee. During this time, he would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning feeling quite anxious. During the evening and sometimes at night he would have crying spells. This continued until April, 1965, when his wife and family moved back into the house. At this time, the patient said that as his drinking decreased, his wife “started throwing tantrums.”

  During the period preceding admission, the patient became more and more unhappy with himself and found it necessary to “get plastered and call up my chief.” He would go to the home of his senior surgeon and talk about his difficulty with his wife at these times. During one of these visits, he indicated that his hands had begun to shake during surgery. He says he has not been assaultive but has struck his wife on two or three occasions in an effort “to get her to control herself.”

  September 14, 1965

  PERSONALITY BEFORE ILLNESS: The patient traced a history of being an only child who never felt close to his parents and indeed felt pushed by them into academic aspirations. … He recalls his mother saying, “Oh, you are so nervous” and going to church services and prayer meetings where it was difficult for him to “sit still.”

  The patient smokes three packs of cigarettes a day at this time and describes strong anxiety feelings, which include “a feeling that I’d like to die and a trembling of my hands.” He has denied any suicidal tendencies but has stated that when he’s had too much to drink he’s talked about himself being better off if he were not alive…

  INTERPRETATION OF TEST FINDINGS: Underlying the patient’s unreliable defensiveness is the absence of a concept of self. He is analogous to a building with elaborate decorative features but without a foundation…

  While he is presently able to regain control when lapses in reality testing occur, the inner turmoil and the increasing external threat he experiences are at such a boiling point that the potential for a psychotic reaction appears very great.

  * * *

  I put the psychiatric records down.

  “The potential for a psychotic reaction appears very great.�
��

  It’s the sort of thing you like to hear about somebody you’re already mad at.

  I remember hating my high school study-hall teacher and there were times when I would’ve given my letter jacket for a peek into his horrible little psychiatric folder.

  With such a file in hand, I’d get up on my desk and read aloud to the whole class the smoking gun. “Excuse me, people? Everybody? Mr. Vellue’s psychiatrist says his ‘potential for a psychotic reaction is,’ and I quote, ‘very great’.” Having made a Citizen’s Diagnosis, I accept the applause of a grateful classroom and call the men in white uniforms to come cart the crazy bastard away.

  Now, after forty years of wondering if my father was insane, here it is in black and white. Is this relief? Perhaps it’s what victims of crimes feel when they hear the bad guy’s been caught. There’s no closure really; I’m simply reminded of the crime.

  I used to look at criminals in the newspaper and study their pictures. I thought perhaps if I could somehow learn the telltale wrinkle of brow or glint of knife edge in the eye I might glean what marked a man as a murderer. (So, this is a murderer’s face.) But it was always just a picture of a man. It feels the same way today. This phrase “psychotic reaction” brings me no closer to understanding my father. I look at his picture and see just a man.

  * * *

  Psychiatrists’ notes, continued

  SUMMARY: In view of his difficulties in his role as a husband and father, as evidenced by his need to be indecisive and clinging at times, and obstructive and irritable at others, it is apparent that the patient’s diagnosis is most likely passive-aggressive personality, passive dependent type. Because of the use of alcohol as a primary defense against his inability to handle these stresses, he must be further classified as having the diagnosis of addiction, alcoholism. Additionally, one must consider the possibility of an organic brain syndrome considering the evidence of physical manifestations of the alcohol, as well as some apparent deterioration of judgment.

  His frantic use of defenses seems to be a search for some kind of stability. His interpersonal contacts are affected by his own impaired sense of self, so that he cannot view people without projecting his own negative feelings about himself into the situation. While he appears to be maintaining a borderline adjustment at present, his precarious defenses and rapidly mounting inner tension suggest very strong potential for a psychotic mode of adjustment.

  Psychiatrist’s notes, September 28, 1965

  Dr. Sullivan has been utilizing his town pass and denies any drinking on the occasions he has been off the hospital grounds, but admits that this is primarily because he’s concerned that Institute employees might be observing him. He is still waiting to hear if his wife will be coming to visit him and is quite hopeful that she will come. However, he worries it will be “the same old story” in her ways of dealing with him.

  The Pagans, from left: Jeff Sullivan, Jim Rushton, Steve Rossi on drums, Kip Sullivan, and Jerry Huiting.

  “OUR DRUMMER COMMITTED SUICIDE.”

  Mom’s letters, August 21, 1965

  Jeff has had his Beatles ticket for many weeks – locked away in a drawer and he checks it every day or two to see it is still there. I have not yet had the chance to talk to him about it but I know he’ll think of it as an experience of a lifetime.

  In August of 1965, the Beatles’ song Help! was number one on the charts and occasionally you could hear one of the Pagans playing it on the piano in the Millstone’s music room. From their concert at Shea Stadium, the Beatles moved through America arriving at the Met Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, on August 21st. There, to the grinding envy of the other brothers, Jeff saw the Beatles live in concert.

  Back at home, we gathered on the floor of Dad’s study to watch the concert on television. It was a happy night in a house that was enjoying an uninterrupted string of them. Dad’s sudden absence created only a temporary hole, one quickly filled by the busy lives of the family he’d retreated from years ago. If asked, we might have said how much we missed our father and how eagerly we anticipated his return. Privately, we were elated; guilty about the feeling, but elated.

  Kip was winding down life in Rochester as he prepared for a September trip to California to begin studies at Pomona College. He filled out the college financial forms and where it asked for “adjusted family income” he remembers asking Mom, “Shouldn’t it read ‘maladjusted family income’?” A week before the Pagans’ final concert, Kip gave Jay Gleason – his friend, diving pal and sometimes Pagans drummer – a phone call.

  Kip’s diary, August 31, 1965

  Jay committed suicide!! We were just getting ready for Collin’s birthday cake. I called Jay’s house, his step-mom asked who it was, I said, “It’s Kip. Is Jay there?” Sad voice on the line says, “Kip, haven’t you heard?” She cried. Jay put a vacuum cleaner hose from his car exhaust into the front window of his car. Our band is ended. It’s over.

  Jeff’s classmate, Steve Rossi, who’d been drumming for the Pagans off and on since January, stepped in. After a few practices the Pagans got back up to speed for their very last performance on September 10th in nearby Spring Valley. After the final song, Kip was to get in a car and drive to California. The concert was poignant for both the Pagans and my mother. She drove the four little ones to Spring Valley for the great goodbye.

  This was her first child to leave home but by then Kip was more than a son.

  He was her battle companion, her witness, a guardian who’d more than once kept Dad from hurting her or one of us. On those medevac-motel nights, Kip often stayed behind at the Millstone playing rear guard to our retreat. Now, with Dad’s recovery more wish than certainty, she knew Kip’s departure would make the Millstone feel lonelier than ever.

  From Oldberg’s “The Flip Side: An Illustrated History of Southern Minnesota Rock & Roll Music”

  The last recollections of the Pagans Kip can remember happened in summer of 1965. “I can recall singing Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey off of a flat bed trailer truck in Spring Valley. It was after 11 o’clock at night and this was the last song we were gonna do. I was pouring my whole heart and soul into the song; doing it the way the Beatles did it – ‘Bye, bye. Bye, bye.’ After we finished that song, I literally grabbed my guitar and amp and jumped into Chuck Rushton’s car and headed for California.”

  Grandpa’s letters, September 10, 1965

  I know that you are lonesome tonight. Your #1 boy is on the way to California. You have found him a real help in the recent years. Our thoughts are with you. And eagerly you await the first letter home from him. We also know that soon you travel to Hartford. This is, of course, a very important trip and we await with anxiety what will issue.

  Christmas Eve for six boys. Monnie made all the stockings.

  ONE LAST GOOD CHRISTMAS

  Mom, in a long letter to her parents, November 6, 1965

  I have just returned from Hartford very much encouraged and – this you will find hard to believe but will have to accept as a fact – in love with my husband! This whole thing is so mysterious to me – the working of the mind and the heart – that I realize you cannot be expected to understand any of it – nor do I.

  From the moment of arrival in Hartford, I could see this was a new man! He looks in splendid health – thinner, tan, his face free from the harassed lines and frantic eyes. He may be greyer but he looks younger. But the most miraculous part is the personality change! He is kind, considerate, eager to understand me, tender and loving. I spent the entire week with him – from Thursday noon to Thursday noon – and never a hard word, never a criticism, nothing but gentleness! I know this is hard for you to believe – it is for me, too.

  But when my train pulled out of Hartford, I felt an anguish of separation such as I haven’t known since the Navy days. Except for Monday and Tuesday when we were in Mystic Seaport and two nights when we saw a play and a movie, we did nothing but talk! It was as exciting as a courtship – it was like getting to know a n
ew person.

  Of course, there are many things I see in him that are troublesome – he is very unsure of himself, uncertain how to do ordinary things like make a telephone call, and he is extremely nervous about being with people, and his memory is very faulty. But Dr. Spence says these things will gradually improve. He thought that it might be possible for Roger to make a Christmas visit home, but warned that everything depends upon how he feels as that time draws near.