from my book, ‘PLAY’

One day, I ask my (new) roomie if he wants to contribute anything to the play I am writing. I took down the following spontaneous dictation, as he lay on his bed.

Know/No Letter from John [his own title, after I read it back to him]:

Bunched in a box in a book [he moves like an accordion being squeezed] and it’s many sentences and breaks off at the end [he coughs] and then a brand new story can begin. That’s all I know about paragraphs. Ever hear any stories? You make stories for books. Put the dog in your belly button. [he laughs] It will go off the windows and the air will just disappear. 22 sentences long and short. It can be many paragraphs in word-by-word sentences. They go in a book… and there are many books… they may go from… beginning to end, from b e g i n n i n g … t o…. [snores]

Top that if you can, Gertrude Stein. And not a bad description of this book. A bunch of stories in a box.

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Stephen has tinnitus. He says there’s always a hissing noise, rising and falling in a big slow wave in his head.

Most of the time, he sits by the exercise bike, which no one uses. It’s been broken for months. He plays solitaire. So I cast him as The Solitary Man in my play and put him at the back of the stage, turning the cards over, and over. Every once in a while, you hear a hissing noise, rising like a wave, drowning out the dialogue…

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Visiting Nurse: Sir, could you take a few moments to talk with one of my students? They’re in a training program and it would be helpful for them to have some practical experience working with a patient.

Me: Well, maybe we should have a little talk first.

N: Can you tell me how you came here? Is this your first time?

Me: You didn’t hear me, did you?

N: Why do you think you are here?

Me: Because no one ever listens. Like you’re doing right now. You don’t have to say a word. Just listen.

N: Okay.

Me: When I see you listening, I relax. It’s that simple. But here you are talking to me like I was some animal on display in a zoo, so your students can observe me, just like they did a couple of hundred years ago in London and Paris – for a penny people went for a pleasant excursion on Sundays to the asylum to see the inmates perform a few crazy tricks. How about just treating us like human beings rather than sick animals? Maybe you could just give it a try. And see if that helps.

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I feel so naked. We all do. I don’t mean you. I mean us.

We’ve lost it all. Our minds. Even if you feel perfectly sane, they tell you you’re not. Why else would you be here? It’s the final stop on the line, nowhere else to go.

But what we have is each other. Interaction on the ward, between you and the others like you, is very intense. There is nothing to hide. If someone has a bandage around a wrist, and you ask them why – why did you do that? – they will tell you straight away, even if they don’t know your name, and you are speaking for the very first time.

Conversations are very direct and personal. You’re in bondage and so you want to share, bonding with one another becomes a kind of freedom, the only real freedom possible. We form a club. We hang out. We tell stories to each other, about our lives. We play ping-pong or shoot pool. It doesn’t matter if there’s no net, or the 8 ball is missing. We laugh. We joke about Them. The staff. Most of whom are not really bad, just clueless. A few are actually quite human, and a couple really get it, the whole deal, what is really going on here, and they like hanging out with us, and share their own stories, but they mustn’t be too obvious about it, so that only really happens on weekends, when a skeleton crew is running the ship.

The rest of the workweek the rules are strictly enforced. There are rules for everything. Rule Number One: NO TOUCHING. No hand shakes, not hand slaps, no shoulder pats, worst of all a held-hand or a hug. Ugh. Any sign of physical affection or strong emotion is interpreted as a prelude to aggression and potential violence. Everyone is so raw, things will escalate in a flash, the staff is forever on guard, a fight always waiting to happen. Then it’s off to the Quiet Room, with assistance from the security guards if necessary, and a shot of chemical tranquilizer will be administered to your posterior.

Never mind that most of the time things escalate only because a Rule had been violated. You yell at someone who just ate the ping-pong ball you were trying to play a game with, and it’s the yell that is the problem.

“Don’t shout!” and “Keep your hands to yourself,” you are immediately admonished by the nearest staff member. “NO touching!” you are told again and again, as if right then and there you were “a danger to others,” already spoiling for a fight just because you slapped someone’s palm after they’d banked a particularly nifty pool shot.

One day I decide to violate the rule, without violating it. Instead of shaking Alex’s hand, I extend my right arm, with an open hand, and slide it past his, an inch or two away, like two cars nearly side-swiping each other from opposite sides of the road. Then we both do it with someone else, and a wave of near-fatal car crashes spreads across the day room, to the dismay of a nurse standing nearby. A collective mind-shake.

But even on weekends, things can get out of hand. The worst, a food fight. Not between patients, but between Them and Us, over one of the most strictly enforced rules of all. You hate bananas, but the uneaten apple on the tray across the table looks quite appealing, so you offer an exchange. NO SHARING!! Streng Verboten.

But on this particular occasion, a sunny Sunday lunch, everyone seemed to be doing it. As though we were all outside on the grass having a picnic, people trading one item for another, or simply offering something for FREE! If Roger likes the chocolate cake but you don’t, or you’ve already had enough of everything else on your tray, why let it to go to waste, but to someone else’s waist?

It spread, like everything else on the ward was always threatening to do. And this time, when we were being told not to, someone had the nerve to ask Why Not? And then we were all told yet again (by no less than the Acting HEAD Nurse) that it was all “for our own safety” – so that germs weren’t passed between us. What if one of us were sick? And then someone else could get it and pass it on to another, and soon…

We all just laughed. And someone yelled back, “So then maybe someone on the staff will get IT – isn’t that what you’re really afraid of? That We will all contaminate You!” A few others chimed in, and that was when the Acting Head Nurse decided it was time to call Security and things really did get out of hand. And several of us soon found themselves headed for the Quiet Room.

I wasn’t one of them — but the next day I got a black mark on my report card, for having touched someone — when I was seen trying to restrain one of my buddies, who’d picked up a chair.

But it never quite got that far. The situation was defused, by a very large security guard. Who crossed the line and stood on our side, and turned to the Acting Head Nurse and said that after all, we did have a point. What was so terrible about people on a Sunday wanting to share a little food? Suddenly the room grew very quiet and calm. Someone had listened.

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Sometimes I hear music when I am writing something. Does that ever happen to you? It’s like I have a jukebox somewhere in my head and someone has just put a quarter in the slot – like right now, it’s E3, an Irish jig. What is it? A memory? Maybe if I don’t pay any attention, it will just go away.

If I felt so naked, like everyone else, it was because of the energy. Naked Energy. You could feel it, a Thing that was in the room with you. Every room, every space has it, it doesn’t belong to anyone and can be passed back and forth, from one person to another, shared among us all.

Jen was a master at it. Everyone was scared of her. She was the toughest and the roughest. Mess with Her and you’d be big-time sorry.

But that’s all she ever did. Mess with us. Mess with our heads. The way passive-aggressives like to do, always pushing your buttons, but pretending they weren’t doing anything at all.

So once a day, every day, Jen would do her routine. We all knew it was coming when she’d make her entrance with that special sort of walk, very slow and casual, but shifting her hips ever so slightly as she moves toward the open half-door separating the day room from the Fishbowl. Ever so slowly, she approaches the counter, to ask a nurse some question. But as she converses, she leans over, and her jeans slide, slowly, back down, revealing the… C r ack of Her Ass, not just an inch or so, but all of It, because she never wore panties. Everyone would turn and look.

Sometimes Alex would scream, “Uh, oh, I’m on crack again!” But she never paid the slightest attention. And then she’d walk out, the same way she walked in, knowing we were all watching, pulling the Energy in the room behind her (as it were), like it was a kite on a string and she was just reeling it all in. And then taking a bow.

One day I decide to play a game with her, or rather, with the Energy. So when she comes into the day room, and everyone looks at her in anticipation, I totally ignore her, as though she didn’t exist. But when she leans over the counter, I turn and stare right at The Crack, as though I can’t take my eyes off of it. It’s at the center of the galaxy, a Black Hole into which everything disappears. Then I see her shift her body to the side and casually look around to see who is paying attention, and I quickly look away and pretend I wasn’t. And we do that a couple of more times before she leaves the room, moving the Energy back and forth between us, like a yo-yo.

A week of this went by, and one day I found myself walking next to her, both of us on the way to the day room. And without looking at her I ask if it’s time “for the Big Show.” She stops and turns menacingly to me, “What did you say?” Ready to punch me out. But instead of making some sexist remark about her backside, I tell her how much I admire her performances. She is SO good at it. One of the best in the biz. I wasn’t lying. I really meant it.

I looked right at her, and smiled in appreciation. “Have you ever considered a career on stage?” She just stood there.

A half-hour later, there was a commotion down the hall. Someone was being taken out of her room, strapped down on a gurney. It was Jen. She never came back.

The Rules of the Game. There are always rules, some are stated very plainly, but perhaps the most important are the ones that are left unstated. And maybe should remain that way.

But what’s done is done. I go back to my room and put Jen in my play. She walks back and forth on stage, then turns her back to the audience. Slowly she drops her jeans and squats. Everyone on stage turns and looks. She pulls up her pants, sits down in a chair by the side of the stage. She sits there alone, staring out into space.

A distant music fades into darkness. Ta da-da-da DAT / ta-da-da DAT / da-dat da-dat. E3. Jig’s up.

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                                [to be continued]