from my book, ‘PLAY’

The entrance. Two angels with flaming swords are on either side (nurses, smoking, coffee cups in hand), as I walk between them. One is saying to the other, “Jesus! This place is SO fucked up! I don’t know if I can work here any more.”

And that was even before the all-important Evaluation of my mental state. Which consisted of: “What’s your name, sir? Can you tell me your date of birth? Do you know what day it is?” November 13, 2013. Wednesday. That was basically it. Once you’ve been handcuffed, you’re guilty until proven innocent.

And I have no defense. I’d made the trip before, as you already know by now, so I’ve confessed. I’m bipolar. It’s on my rap sheet. To be precise, thrice, each time for about a week, at roughly 17-year intervals. Like the Magicicada septendecim, the most common species of cicada in eastern North America, which, according to its Latin name, comes out once every 17 years, as if by magic. They mate, molt their exoskeletons, and go back underground, suspended in a dream, waiting to be awakened the next morning, as though 17 years were a day.

This time, the interval was less than 3 years, and though some of my thoughts may have seemed odd, or even disturbing, to my friends, they made perfect sense to me, and still do. To me, bipolar isn’t a disease description, or even a state of mind, since it never stays the same. It’s more like a continuously shifting perspective, a way of seeing and appreciating the world, as a cycle, a big loop in space/time, going round and round like a Möbius strip, a mathematical surface with a half-twist:

If you were an ant walking on the surface, half the time you’d be walking on the inside, facing inward, and outward on the other half, though from the ant’s perspective, it would just seem like a continuous path, with no distinct boundary line to cross, one side always sliding into the other.

I’m always on the same path, like normal people (aka “neuro-typicals”), but always feeling there is another side to everything, the one I’m on at each moment, and the Other side, always hidden from view, but I know it’s there, even if I can’t see it with my eyes. My mind sees it. And I am trying to get you to see it too, from that peculiar double perspective, so you can share the view, and see what is there, behind the seen, from the Other side.

The Möbius strip is only a metaphor. Indeed, that’s what metaphors are. A double view. X and Y equated. All the world’s a stage. And that in fact is how I managed to survive my 11-day involuntary stay in the Hotel Bassett. By imagining what was actually happening as a kind of stage-play. (Which I’ve titled “PLAY.”)

But not by using my imagination. All I did was record what happened: my literal, daily interactions with the staff and especially, with the other patients on the floor. And after, I’d go back to my room and write it all down from memory, word for word, as if it were a scene in a play we were all writing together. [And indeed, long before the Marquis de Sade staged plays in his asylum, loony bins like Bedlam were used as theater settings, going back to Shakespeare’s day and to the crazy people who often appeared as masked performers in ancient Greek comedies.]

Often, I’d even go back and play the “scene” for my fellow performers, just to make sure I’d gotten it right, and sometimes had to correct my original script and re-write some of the dialogue.

Wanna meet Fonzy? There he is in the day room. Standing in a daze, his hospital bathrobe hanging loose. Every tooth in his mouth is bent, grotesquely splayed, as though he’d just been in a terrible accident. Which he had – apparently his fourth serious car crash. His knee’s been replaced. A variety of surgical pins holds him together. How he’s managed to survive is not clear. Under his robe is a Superman shirt.

Bob: [pointing]: Who’s that?

F: That’s Superman.

B: Are you Superman?

F: No. [pointing to his chest] That’s Superman!

[He rolls up his sleeve and shows me a tattoo with a Big S on his arm.]

F: See? He’s my favorite hero.

B: Why is that?

F: Because he only does good things. And never asks for a reward.

B: Hi, I’m Bob. What’s your name?

F: Super Mann.

B: But I thought you said he’s Superman?

F: Yeah, he is. I’m Super Mann. M-A-N-N. Arthur Mann. But everyone just calls me Fonzy.

I suppose Fonzy’s “crazy” but he’s also brilliant. Talk to him for a few minutes and you’d understand just how extraordinary his mind is. He’s about 30, married, with 4 kids. With only a high school diploma, he works as an engineer, on projects for ******** Construction, one of the top companies in the tunneling business.

One day, a construction crew showed up on the ward and started work on a couple of rooms at the end of the hall. What are they doing? I asked Fonzy. He took one look and said they were going to convert half the ward into a surgical unit. And so they have. How he knew I don’t know. Fonzy’s bipolar, he just sees things other people don’t.

* * *

The very next day, I decided to play doctor and took on my first case, a young woman who had these awful nightmares, so bad she was afraid to fall asleep. I said she was just the person I was looking for. I told her about the play I was working on and how it began – on an unlit stage, everything in silence, in the round, with the audience on all four sides. And then this voice coming out of the dark: “This place is so fucked up! I don’t know if I can work here any more.” Another long silence. Breathing sounds. Snoring. Someone is sleeping…

A sudden cry – NOOO!! – an image flashes on a big screen above the audience: a terrible image, lasting just a second or two, from a nightmare. The first of several that would appear in the play, growing in intensity, like a premonition. And I ask her right then and there if she’ll help, and supply the images for these nightmares from her own. But she says she couldn’t possibly do that. After she wakes up from one, she can’t bear to look.

But maybe she can. And I tell her how. “Close your eyes. and imagine you are in a movie theater, your nightmare is the movie, and you’re waiting for it to begin. But don’t look! Face the screen but keep your eyes shut. Just wait. If you wait long enough, you’ll find a moment when you begin to get tired of waiting, and your eyes will start to relax. Then open them, just a little. If you see anything you don’t like, then just close your eyes again, and wait some more. You’re in complete control. Never look at anything you don’t want to. But if you see or hear something, anything at all, then just write it down, or draw a picture of it, even if it’s only a small detail. And see if anything more appears on the screen.”

“Is that it?” she asks. “Yes, that’s all there is to it. Just try it. Trust your mind. And see what happens.”

A few days later, she tells me she has finished watching three of her nightmares, all the way through, except for a few scenes, and shows me a drawing of one.

With many colors, a few indicated above (since my book is in black-and-white), so you’ll have to imagine them. Like the wings of many birds. She says I can use it in my play. She even signs it, but the next day she left, so I don’t know if my cure worked. But you understand my Method. A sensory feedback loop. It seems so simple, even obvious, but I’ve no idea if anyone else has tried it. Sometimes people miss things just because they are so obvious.

*  *  *

I ask Jean the cleaning lady the names of her grandchildren, since they are all she ever talks about whenever I meet her in the hall, swabbing the floors with a big mop, which she squeezes into the pail on her cart. White gloves, a kerchief around her frizzy hair, sneakers, no socks, a big maroon apron draped over her skirt.

“Taylor, Tucker, Kirby, Swift. And of course, Indie. Indiana Jones.”

“These are your grandchildren?”

“Yes, every one of them is spoiled rotten. The worst is when they get up on top of the bookshelf. Then you need a spray bottle to get them down.”

“Your grandkids?”

“Yep, my cat brats. Can’t wait to see ‘em when I get home. Except Indiana Jones, he’s almost never there, out on some adventure, always gettin’ himself into trouble. Like you, I suppose.”

“I promise not to get up on the bookshelf, if you just let me come home with you. Meeow…”

* * *

My first night on the ward, my roommate can’t sleep. Joe, such a sweet gentle guy, but really big, maybe 6-foot-three. A bit like Lenny, the big fella in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, who could shake your hand, but squeeze it to pulp, not knowing his own strength. But Joe isn’t retarded, just schizophrenic, like my brother. And the reason he can’t sleep isn’t the voices in his head, it’s the noise over his head. From the central air circulation system. The grate is just above his bed. And it’s incredibly LOUD. Like a giant buzzing bee.

So I get up from my own bed – it’s maybe 3 am – I put on my floppies and go out into the hall, and down the end of the corridor to the nurses station.

I explain the situation to the nice lady. It’s not the voices that are driving my roommate nuts, just the noise. Is it possible to turn it down a bit, so he can finally get some sleep? No, she says, sorry but we can’t do anything about the air circulation. I sigh and start to pad my way back, but she stops me: “Sir, if you want, we can give you a pill.” The answer to Everything. And this pill is for me – she doesn’t believe for one moment the voices are my roommate’s.

That’s it right there, in a nutshell. The whole system.

Need another example?

Nurse: Have you been sleeping ok, Mr. Rosen?

Me: Not too bad. I got 6, maybe 6 1/2 hours last night.

Nurse: Is that normal for you?

Me: No, I usually need 8, or even 8 1/2, but I keep on waking up.

Nurse: Are you having bad thoughts?

Me: No, well yes, but only about the staff.

Nurse: What do you mean?

Me: Well, you know how it is, someone’s always opening the door to check on us. Wham! The whole room is suddenly flooded with light, And that often wakes me right up, and it’ll take me a while to get back to sleep. It goes on like that ALL night.

Nurse: Well, we’re just following the rules. The nurse on duty has to monitor each room every 15 minutes to make sure you’re ok. It’s for your own safety.

Me: But why can’t you follow the rule – and just not wake us up?

Nurse: How would we do that?

Me: By opening the door s-s-s-s-l-l-l-o-o-o-w-w-w-ly. It would only take five seconds. Is that asking too much?

But yes, it is asking too much. You just don’t get it, do you, you schmuck? You’re not a person, you’re a patient. You’re sick. You need help. So that’s what you are going to get.

That’s the real point of opening the door of everyone’s room every 15 minutes, over 30 times each night! TOTAL control. Over the entire environment. aka Help.

It’s impossible to open a window, even one with bars. Impossible even to adjust the blinds. If you want to open them, you have to request it, and wait until a nurse finally shows up an hour or so later with a crank, which he or she inserts into a recessed hole. And when you want to close the blinds, you have to go through the hole ritual all over, so you just accept whatever position the blinds are in, half the time too dark or too bright, and try to find comfort in the discomfort.

“It’s for your own safety” – so you won’t hang yourself with the cord. Well then, how about a small wheel on the side of each blind, also recessed, so it can’t be pulled out, but with a knob that you can turn by yourself? Then the nurses wouldn’t have to bother at all. Or is that asking too much? Yes, schmuck!

Once upon a time, they’d even let a few people out on day passes, and the rest could go outside for short walks, attended by a nurse’s aide, at least a few times a week. Until one day the fellow at the end of the line ran off, and the insurance company decreed that outside walks were an unnecessary “liability” – so now you are locked up tight 24/7, hermetically sealed, and just have to live with it. It being the central air circulation system, which is on all the time, a constant hum, like tinnitus, continuously regulating the temperature, though in such a way that you’re always putting something on because it’s too cold, then taking it off again 15 minutes later when it’s now too warm. An invisible Torture Chamber.

So you pace the locked hallway back and forth, forth and back – 40 feet, turn right, 30, turn right, 90, turn around, 90 back, turn left 30, turn left 40, each floor tile is a square foot – like a caged animal that has learned the trick of counting. Worst of all, you must learn to deal with the unbearable humidity. Or lack thereof. The air so dry that your mucus membranes become like cardboard, your nose is always stuffed and you constantly smack your lips – and your tongue, just to keep it from sticking to the roof of your mouth. Almost everyone, even the nurses, carries chap stick and a small supply of hard candies, to create at least an illusion of moisture. You’re always thirsty. Day in, day out, it’s enough to make you scream, but don’t. Scream and you’ll end up in the Quiet Room with your butt full of Haldol, mind and body in a sloth-like stupor.

Each little turn of the screw is just one more thing for you to put up with. Like life, the point being to put up with it, no matter what. That’s why you are all in here, all of you nutcases, because you couldn’t put up with it. And you lost control. But not to worry. If you can’t handle it, we can always give you a pill.

                                *  *  *

                           [to be continued]