Electroboy

by Andy Behrman

  I’m hanging out with people from my past and coming up with ridiculous ideas to make money. The medication doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Dr. Wallenstein believes I should start the ECT again on a weekly outpatient basis—he refers to it as “maintenance,” which reminds me of the term “tune-up.” At this point I’m ready to believe ECT will bring some balance back into my life, because it did once for a while. In August I have my first maintenance treatment. It’s no different from the others. My father brings me to Gracie Square, carrying a bag with a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke for me to have after my treatment. The sandwich tastes delicious. That evening I host a tenants’ meeting in my apartment for twenty people as if nothing had happened that morning, and I feel like I seem totally clear-headed to my neighbors, although it’s a struggle to pay attention. I miss a lot of what is said. I have the treatments weekly, on Fridays, for the next four months. After each treatment, it’s always the same routine that puts me at ease: I slowly reacquaint myself with my apartment, eat, try to get in a comfortable position (the surfaces always seem so hard), and take a nap. The goal is simply to get my brain functioning again at a normal speed.

  Sometimes I think I’m addicted to the Brevital and the ECT process. I rearrange my schedule so that a treatment falls on my birthday. It feels like a wonderful gift to myself. I start believing that electric current purifies me. I become addicted to the rituals—fasting the night before, driving across Central Park to the hospital in the early morning, connecting to the machines that monitor my vital signs, closing my eyes and counting backward. It’s an oddly religious experience. It’s my meditation, my yoga, my tai chi.

  On the Town

  In the middle of August, a while after Jonathan returned to Lauren and Nicole in Denver after a separation, he calls me and tells me he is leaving Lauren. Can he come stay with me in New York? Without asking too many questions or becoming too involved, I tell him that he is more than welcome. I guess I’ve now officially taken sides, but I will do anything for Jonathan. He’s been such a good friend for years, and he really has no other place to go. As a result, Lauren accuses me of ruining her marriage; it’s many years before she speaks to me again. Soon the two buddies are finally reunited. When he arrives I send him on a mission to pick up a pizza and some beer for us because I’m still under house arrest and can’t go out. Over dinner we both recount what we’ve been through over the last two years and manage to have a couple of laughs. Jonathan tells me about some of the places he’s stayed in and describes the characters he’s met along his way: a beautiful Southern blonde who has gashes on her arms starting from her wrists and ending, rather symmetrically, on each bicep; a guy who looks like a movie star who spends hours at a time lying in the sun and takes 60 milligrams of Prozac a day; a sex addict who is forced to surrender his collection of pornography—“a collection which would, I might add, put yours to shame,” Jonathan says. Most recently, Jonathan has been living in Boston, working for two lesbians in a flower warehouse. I reminisce about Allison and my Kostabi period: jetting around the world, wads of cash in the freezer, spending recklessly, my trial, and my months at Esmor. On Friday he comes with my father and me to Gracie Square Hospital. After the treatment he covers his mouth with his hand and looks in amazement at my “mummylike” condition. He can barely keep himself from laughing.

  Two weeks after Jonathan arrives, 152 days after my house arrest began, I yank the Home Escort out of the wall and return it to Probation. Mr. Henry removes the monitoring device from my ankle. I lift up my pant leg, and he clips the rubber strap with heavy-duty scissors. My ankle feels light. I’ve been carrying that metal box around for five months. I want to jump up and down and scream, but it’s not the appropriate place. I can’t wait to get out of his office and onto the street. I’ve been locked up every single night for five months. I just want to stay out all night. Jonathan, Annike, and I go to Florent at about 3:00 A.M. for dinner and stay until about 6:00 A.M. I’m amazed at how aware I am of the time—I keep checking the clock on the wall. It’s the first time in several years that all three of us have been together, and we have quite a few good laughs sharing Kostabi stories from the past. It’s like a homecoming reunion.

  When in Rome

  November 17, 1995.

  The mania is still alive and kicking, and tonight I’m looking for subversive fun. I’m out with a couple of friends at Rome, the club of the moment in Chelsea, which is packed, and I’m working on my sixth or seventh vodka tonic and having difficulty standing up. I’m also having a hard time breathing because everyone is blowing smoke in my direction, and I can’t hear well because of the cacophony of music and conversation. Some L.A. actor type named Max is keeping me propped up, and I’ve been successfully freaking him out with tales of electroshock therapy, particularly the parts about the electrodes, the bite block, the 200 volts, and the memory loss. Throughout the conversation, he jokingly asks me to repeat his name. I think he’s just trying to pick me up. I go along with the game and purposely screw up, but I’m actually so drunk, I’m really having a hard time remembering it. Ben? Sam? He’s laughing loudly, and we’re making lots of noise. He guzzles down his beer, and brings me another vodka tonic, and pulls me by the arm to the back of the bar to check out what’s going on. In the back room, someone is dancing on top of the bar, and a lot of guys and girls and even a band of transvestites are crowded around him. A gap opens in the crowd, and I recognize that it’s Greg, who attracts a pretty big audience here on the weekends. The room is overheating from the lights and all of the people crammed in it, and I can see the smoke rising to the ceiling and my scalp is sweating and Max is wiping the sweat off his forehead with his T-shirt. He’s pointing at Greg and smiling and leans toward me to say something, but I can’t hear. Greg is several feet up on the bar, not too far away. He’s bare-chested, wearing a baseball cap and a pair of black Versace jeans that are unzipped and hanging loosely on his hips. He has a perfectly sculpted chest, smooth skin, and tousled blond hair. He moves slowly across the bar, carefully stepping around a maze of martini glasses and beer bottles like a kitten, looking at nobody in the audience and kind of half smiling at everyone. He doesn’t really dance at all, he just stands and poses, then moves on until he circles around the whole bar. He lets his pants fall to his ankles, revealing a jockstrap and an incredible ass and tan line. His ass is round, hard, and smooth. His cock looks huge in the jock, and he puts his hand inside and gently strokes it. Then he teases the crowd as he gets down on his hands and knees and crawls across the bar like some overgrown toddler. Guys with greedy hands shove dollar bills in his jock. He never flinches; he’s like a robotic sex god. I take a $5 bill from my wallet, put it underneath his jockstrap, and stare right into his eagle eyes, expecting some kind of response, but nothing happens. He’s from another planet. What does he do in real life anyway? Does he take it from behind or on his back? Does he like tuna and tofu? I want to know, but I’m too frightened to approach him. After he finishes his routine, he jumps down off the bar and walks over to a group of kids in the corner. As Max and I look at each other in awe, he joins them, half naked, for a drink and a cigarette, as if his performance never even took place. We turn our backs and walk over to the bar, and Max gets us both a shot of vodka.

  Lox Around the Clock

  Sometimes after my ECT treatment I feel like I can just go about my usual daily routine without giving myself any time to recuperate or even rest for an hour or two. I make plans to meet my friend Brian for a 2:00 P.M. lunch at Lox Around the Clock, a diner on 21st Street, after a noon treatment. Feeling a little groggy and light-headed, I hail a cab outside Gracie Square Hospital and direct the driver to Live Bait, a bar on 23rd Street. When I arrive, Brian is nowhere to be found. I’m frightened. Finally, when it dawns on me that I’m in the wrong place, I find my way to Lox Around the Clock, which is right nearby but seems like it’s hundreds of miles away. My legs feel heavy, and I’m confused about the time and place and having difficulty rem
embering where I just came from. When I arrive at Lox Around the Clock, I see Brian waiting at the bar. I shuffle up to him, and he looks frightened. “What the fuck did they do to you?” he asks as politely as possible. “You look like hell,” he adds. But I’m feeling pretty happy. His eyes are wide open, and he’s covering his face. I don’t know how to calm him down. “What’s wrong?” I ask. I try to compose myself and pull it together. I’m speeding a bit. I sit down at the bar and order an Amstel Light. I start telling the bartender about my ECT and show him the bruises underneath my bandages from the IV on my right arm. “Look, look at my bruises. I had electroshock therapy this morning,” I tell him. “Do they still do that?” he asks me. “Sure,” I reply. He keeps pouring drinks and talking to other customers but is fascinated with where I’ve been this morning, while on the other hand Brian is mortified and embarrassed to be seen with me in this condition and attempts to stop me from talking to the bartender. “Andy, he’s busy,” Brian says. “He really doesn’t care. Please don’t do this now.” He rushes us through lunch, gets the check, puts me in a cab, and directs the driver to my apartment, in case I attempt to make any crazy detour.

  Mutt and Jeff

  When our funds begin to dwindle, Jonathan and I finally decide that it’s time to pool our talents and resources and resurrect Ivy League Painters. We are an inimitable team, the Mutt and Jeff of the contracting world. We also get a gig working for the “Intelligencer,” the gossip column of New York magazine. I play snoop and make calls around town, researching items about writers, politicians, actors, and models (we report that a well-known model stuffs his briefs), and Jonathan writes them up. We do this for about six months, scraping together just enough money to live on the Upper West Side. We go out drinking quite a bit with friends and are popular on the dinner-party circuit. Dinner parties are the perfect venue for us because they provide us with what we both need: free food, alcohol, and a good audience. We’re invited one evening to the apartment of Suze Yalof, a fashion editor at Glamour magazine, who has also invited a group of other people for a dinner party. We both show up a little late, making a loud entrance and announcing ourselves as if we are the guests of honor. Suze gives us both a beer to start our night (she didn’t know we had already had two each). Everybody is sitting around drinking cocktails, and we begin telling stories of our day’s events—there are absolutely no boundaries. We’re a great comedy team, Jonathan playing off my weaknesses and teasing me about all of my medications, electroshock treatments, and prison experiences, me poking fun at him for his great belief in AA and his joblessness. We tell funny stories about some of our painting jobs and our gossip-column experiences. We recount the most irrelevant details of our childhoods. Our speech roams from intelligent to crazy to silly to lewd in seconds. The guests are trying to keep up with the speed of our crazy routine. Our energy is magnetic. We are the two misfits living together, trying to make sense of our lives, and entertaining our audience with our illnesses.

  Sometimes I feel as though I’ve taken on the responsibility of caring for Jonathan as a child or a spouse, and I’m barely able to take care of myself. He takes care of me, too. I take him to an attorney to get advice about his divorce. Our relationship becomes very intense—I’ve never had such a good friend—and we rely on each other for support as we slowly fall apart together. I’m holding on to him so I don’t fade away. Jonathan is also seeing Dr. Fried, and we see Dr. Marks together on one occasion because there’s some tension between us. We can’t make a move without each other. We share all of our meals, go to the movies together, accompany each other to parties. I fear being separated because now I have somebody to care for me and somebody that I can care for, and the only other people he has any real contact with are his mother in Washington and his daughter, whom he visits in Denver. He also visits Mr. O’Neal, a ninety-year-old drunk who lives upstairs in the building. They drink blackberry brandy together in the middle of the day and talk for hours. I don’t know how he even understands Mr. O’Neal’s English through his thick brogue. But Jonathan continues to accompany me to the ECT treatments, which become as routine as dental cleanings.

  Late one night Jonathan and I are sitting in the kitchen when we begin arguing over a silly issue—money, or rather our lack of it. We’ve never had a fight before. But this time, for some reason, I provoke him physically until he retaliates by roughing me up and punching me in the face a couple of times. There is plenty of blood, and I am badly bruised. I’m shocked by how violent both of us become. Unfortunately, the next morning I have an appointment with my probation officer and have a lot of covering up to do. I wear a pair of dark sunglasses and I explain that I was mugged at my ATM the night before. She doesn’t seem to question the story. Jonathan and I call Dr. Fried to see if she will meet with us that afternoon and serve as a mediator. She’s amazed to see us coming in this condition. In a forty-five-minute session she comes to the obvious conclusion that the two of us are not well enough to be living together and need to be taken care of by healthier people. It is probably best that we separate. The next day Jonathan’s mother comes to pick him up and take him home to Washington. I never speak to Jonathan again.

  Alternative Healing

  After Jonathan’s departure I feel particularly desperate for an immediate “cure” to my manic depression. I don’t think the ECT and medication are working, and I don’t have Jonathan to fall back on. I am open to anything, and people suggest just about everything to me. The number-one suggestion is probably exercise. It isn’t a bad suggestion, but there are some days that I can’t even make it downstairs to check my mailbox, so I don’t feel I can count on myself to exercise every day. One friend suggests a meeting with a well-known Kabbalist, one with an acupuncturist, and another with a dominatrix, and I try them all in a period of three weeks. I actually believe that each holds the key to curing my illness. The Kabbalist, a man in his midforties, instructs me to read certain passages of the Scriptures with him and counsels me. He has me convinced that I am somehow possessed by the devil. This does not work for me, and I do not return to see him. The acupuncturist is a tattooed lesbian who lectures me on meridians and sticks needles into my ears until I scream so loud she is forced to take them out. I quickly pay her the $100 fee (minus $10 for my insurance coverage) and never look back. Miss Joanna, the dominatrix, greets me at her door with a small child. Her nanny takes the child to another room, and we talk about a program of wellness. I discuss my illness, and she seems to have a real understanding of manic depression. She suggests nipple piercing and spanking for $150 an hour. I tell her that I don’t have time today for a session and that I’ll have to schedule something later in the week. I leave her apartment, hail the first cab I see, and throw away her number. But what I really want is a healthy diagnosis. I don’t want to be a manic depressive. I call Dr. Heller, a psychiatrist on the Upper West Side, referred to me by a friend. When I sit down in his office, he asks me for payment up front because of my “legal history.” I write him a check for $150. He asks me a battery of questions; I’ve heard them all a hundred times. After forty-five minutes he tells me that I am a manic depressive. The words torture me still.