"So, What's New?" : Once Upon A Time In My Life - Part 6
I have an appointment to meet my psychiatrist at the local community mental health center. I've been seeing this very pretty, dark haired, young resident for about a year. There is much I can't tell her, much that seems to go unspoken between us. I know she has feelings for me, strong ones that must be causing her discomfort as well as pleasure. It feels good to be in beautiful women's company for an hour each week. But just how do I tell my pdoc that I care for her as much as she cares for me? And how in the world can Doctor G. tell me how much she wants to be with me, how much she surely thinks about me in the hours before our weekly sessions? I am acutely aware of the camera and microphones in her office that, when she and I are meeting, are being closely watched by the other members of the center's psych staff as a kind of "How To" teaching session on how to deal with the most important of patients.
This knowledge, that we are never alone and can never be honest about our shared attraction, makes me do and say things that otherwise I would not. I try to get her to laugh out loud, to blush, and also to feel sorry for me without my ever mentioning the desperate plight I find myself in. She knows, though, and understands why I hold back, causing this beauty to be all the more attracted to me, which this fills me with a lust for her and her runner's body. I am aware that the situation is strange and almost unthinkable: the cameras and mikes everywhere I am, the government's involvement, the "Truman Show" appeal of my ordeal to the general public. But we never speak of it. Instead, I tell her and her goofy grin the funniest stuff I can come up with, then utterly sad stories, and weird details of my life. Anything but the truth. She is charmed, of course, and I know she wants to dump her doctor husband and move with me to a small house out in the Berkshires, where she will practice medicine and I will write for "30 Rock" during the day and spend time with whatever writing strikes my fancy in the evenings.
Just weeks after being discharged from Concord State Hospital and the renewal of Doctor G.'s and I work together, I make my move on her, albeit in a bit of a backhanded way: I tell her that I have broken up marraiges before and am willing to do so again. I also inform her that I've also obsessing a bit about my utterly hopeless life , a life where nothing good will ever happen for me. Is this an attempt to garner sympathy from my soul mate? She seems interested in what I'm saying but strangely doesn't pursue my talk of suicide. Instead, at the end of the session she stands from her arm chair, which is just across from mine in her office in McGeachey Hall, and saunters away from me, over to her computer to "check her schedule to see if she can fit me in next week." When she bends at the waist to get a closer look at her monitor she gives me a full view of her body, and I know this is her signal that all my dreams will come true, that we will be together soon. Maybe Doctor G. has even already begun looking at houses we might buy. Maybe she has already told her husband about us, and the life we would have together: children, careers, holding hands in our old age. Right now everything is within my reach. I leave her office feeling wonderful and yet a bit fearful at the same time. I guess this is what it's like to be excited about the future.
Later that afternoon, back at Apartment 404, I hear a couple of large bodies come down the hall. My flat is at the end of a long hallway and, with only four apartments on the fourth floor of the large old building, I pride myself on monitoring the comings and goings of this corridor. They stop in front of my door, whisper, then knock loudly. They are police. I'm polite to them when I open the door (Thankfully and hilariously, I had turned the "Welcome" mat in front of my door to be read upside down, so that when I leave 404, the mat reads to me, not when I return. I hope they get the joke.) and invite them in. There are two of them, sizable men but agreeable, without a hint of agitation or urgency. I am not scared and only wonder why they are here. They tell me Doctor G. is worried about me, that she thinks I may want to spend a few days in the local psychiatric hospital, Spring Harbor in Westbrook. What? Why? I am utterly shocked the woman I was to run away with would suddenly turn on me like this. What is she covering up? She doesn't want to get in trouble and is going to lock me up. Again, cold feet. This is fucking bullshit. I think of violence, but do not want to fight these two beefy, experienced looking cops who have to this point been nothing but pleasant and professional. I explain to them, calmly, that I'm fine. Perfect actually. Never felt better, boys. Can't you see? She is dead wrong, just dead wrong. They call the doc from a cell, in my presence, and she must do a good job of snowing them as they now are insistent on bringing me in. I give in. We walk down the three flights of stairs to the first floor and out to the front driveway of the renovated hospital, where there are three cruisers outside, with lights flashing and several other cops standing around looking bored. I joke with the older of the two officers leading me out that I must be an important prisoner, with all this manpower devoted to me, and he laughs knowingly. I like him.
The stay at Spring Harbor starts out extremely productive, as I begin to take notes for a book based on my recent experiences, which I call "So What's New?", something a fellow patient said to me the other day in a note of either brilliant irony or complete stupidity considering my fame and recent struggles. At night I hear the cleaning women laughing at me and the erections I keep having as a result of my dreams about the various women who want to rescue me from this latest misadventure: Baylor basketball Coach Kim Mulkey, Tina Fey, Amy Sederis, Doctor G., even Ellen DeGeneres.
My pdoc in the hospital is a pill. She gives me coldhearted stares when I question her about just why I'm being held here. Doctor H. is a dour, humorless woman, a self professed "tough cookie" in her thirties who I know hates her job and the patients she treats. Her callousness makes me despise her, just as she despises me, and I know this will not end well. One afternoon Doctor G, Doctor H. and I sit down together, at a table in the main patient room of the unit. The hospital doc is clearly in charge and my doc, the woundrous but wounded G., says next to nothing. Is she in trouble? Are there ethics charges to be filed against her for falling for her patient? I want to help her, to hold her for the first time, but she barely makes eye contact. I am told that I won't be treated by Doctor G. once I leave the hospital. That's fine, I understand. She wants to hold on to her life, her husband, her residency. Completely forgivable, as I am becoming used to disappointment from those I am in love with. Doctor G. and I will not be together.
The other patients on the unit do not seem to be actors or military professionals, as they were in Concord. They mostly seem to be pretty nuts. Have I taken a step down in importance to the government that they would put me in a facility with real live whack jobs? This disappoints and worries me. I have let someone important down.
Talking to some other patients one morning after breakfast I discover a former prize figher who is from a fairly prominent boxing family up in Lewiston, one that has produced a former world champion and several well known trainers. I steer the conversation toward the great Marvin Hagler, a man I've spoken to from my apartment, and find out that he fought once or twice up here in Portland in the 70s. Maybe that's why the former middleweight great has taken such an interest in me on his frequent trips back home to Boston from his home in Italy. Does this patient in fact know Marvelous, how I can reach him? No? My chance to reach out to yet another helping hand evaporates.
As always I quickly sink into the routine of life on the ward. The other patients keep to themselves mostly, and when they do interact they are like lambs; meek to the point of irrelevance. The staff are generally friendly, pleasant, and helpful, all except the charge nurse, a large bearded man with an intense disposition who seems to never move from his spot at the nurses station in front of his computer monitors. I don't like him from the moment he calls me "Mr. Sweeney" with a mocking tone and a seeming smirk, but he I can live with. This place is a decent waiting ground while I figure out what I comes next on this great adventure.
One sunny afternoon through my window, I notice several passenger jets flying well overhead of the hospital, one after another, and know they are signaling down to me with the exhaust stream leaving their tails. The planes are flown by former Air Force pilots, who must be quite angry at my imprisonment. The military is still on my side! I remember that I have many friends in the world. That this detour through Spring Harbor is going to just be a footnote to my heartwarming, heartbreaking story. Thanks to these pilots actions my heart is lifted, and I think, "Thanks to all those who are with me, in thought, spirit, and deed.".
As I watch the exhaust make beautiful patterns in the air above my window I know good things are going to happen to me, and soon. I am not alone and never will be.
This knowledge, that we are never alone and can never be honest about our shared attraction, makes me do and say things that otherwise I would not. I try to get her to laugh out loud, to blush, and also to feel sorry for me without my ever mentioning the desperate plight I find myself in. She knows, though, and understands why I hold back, causing this beauty to be all the more attracted to me, which this fills me with a lust for her and her runner's body. I am aware that the situation is strange and almost unthinkable: the cameras and mikes everywhere I am, the government's involvement, the "Truman Show" appeal of my ordeal to the general public. But we never speak of it. Instead, I tell her and her goofy grin the funniest stuff I can come up with, then utterly sad stories, and weird details of my life. Anything but the truth. She is charmed, of course, and I know she wants to dump her doctor husband and move with me to a small house out in the Berkshires, where she will practice medicine and I will write for "30 Rock" during the day and spend time with whatever writing strikes my fancy in the evenings.
Just weeks after being discharged from Concord State Hospital and the renewal of Doctor G.'s and I work together, I make my move on her, albeit in a bit of a backhanded way: I tell her that I have broken up marraiges before and am willing to do so again. I also inform her that I've also obsessing a bit about my utterly hopeless life , a life where nothing good will ever happen for me. Is this an attempt to garner sympathy from my soul mate? She seems interested in what I'm saying but strangely doesn't pursue my talk of suicide. Instead, at the end of the session she stands from her arm chair, which is just across from mine in her office in McGeachey Hall, and saunters away from me, over to her computer to "check her schedule to see if she can fit me in next week." When she bends at the waist to get a closer look at her monitor she gives me a full view of her body, and I know this is her signal that all my dreams will come true, that we will be together soon. Maybe Doctor G. has even already begun looking at houses we might buy. Maybe she has already told her husband about us, and the life we would have together: children, careers, holding hands in our old age. Right now everything is within my reach. I leave her office feeling wonderful and yet a bit fearful at the same time. I guess this is what it's like to be excited about the future.
Later that afternoon, back at Apartment 404, I hear a couple of large bodies come down the hall. My flat is at the end of a long hallway and, with only four apartments on the fourth floor of the large old building, I pride myself on monitoring the comings and goings of this corridor. They stop in front of my door, whisper, then knock loudly. They are police. I'm polite to them when I open the door (Thankfully and hilariously, I had turned the "Welcome" mat in front of my door to be read upside down, so that when I leave 404, the mat reads to me, not when I return. I hope they get the joke.) and invite them in. There are two of them, sizable men but agreeable, without a hint of agitation or urgency. I am not scared and only wonder why they are here. They tell me Doctor G. is worried about me, that she thinks I may want to spend a few days in the local psychiatric hospital, Spring Harbor in Westbrook. What? Why? I am utterly shocked the woman I was to run away with would suddenly turn on me like this. What is she covering up? She doesn't want to get in trouble and is going to lock me up. Again, cold feet. This is fucking bullshit. I think of violence, but do not want to fight these two beefy, experienced looking cops who have to this point been nothing but pleasant and professional. I explain to them, calmly, that I'm fine. Perfect actually. Never felt better, boys. Can't you see? She is dead wrong, just dead wrong. They call the doc from a cell, in my presence, and she must do a good job of snowing them as they now are insistent on bringing me in. I give in. We walk down the three flights of stairs to the first floor and out to the front driveway of the renovated hospital, where there are three cruisers outside, with lights flashing and several other cops standing around looking bored. I joke with the older of the two officers leading me out that I must be an important prisoner, with all this manpower devoted to me, and he laughs knowingly. I like him.
The stay at Spring Harbor starts out extremely productive, as I begin to take notes for a book based on my recent experiences, which I call "So What's New?", something a fellow patient said to me the other day in a note of either brilliant irony or complete stupidity considering my fame and recent struggles. At night I hear the cleaning women laughing at me and the erections I keep having as a result of my dreams about the various women who want to rescue me from this latest misadventure: Baylor basketball Coach Kim Mulkey, Tina Fey, Amy Sederis, Doctor G., even Ellen DeGeneres.
My pdoc in the hospital is a pill. She gives me coldhearted stares when I question her about just why I'm being held here. Doctor H. is a dour, humorless woman, a self professed "tough cookie" in her thirties who I know hates her job and the patients she treats. Her callousness makes me despise her, just as she despises me, and I know this will not end well. One afternoon Doctor G, Doctor H. and I sit down together, at a table in the main patient room of the unit. The hospital doc is clearly in charge and my doc, the woundrous but wounded G., says next to nothing. Is she in trouble? Are there ethics charges to be filed against her for falling for her patient? I want to help her, to hold her for the first time, but she barely makes eye contact. I am told that I won't be treated by Doctor G. once I leave the hospital. That's fine, I understand. She wants to hold on to her life, her husband, her residency. Completely forgivable, as I am becoming used to disappointment from those I am in love with. Doctor G. and I will not be together.
The other patients on the unit do not seem to be actors or military professionals, as they were in Concord. They mostly seem to be pretty nuts. Have I taken a step down in importance to the government that they would put me in a facility with real live whack jobs? This disappoints and worries me. I have let someone important down.
Talking to some other patients one morning after breakfast I discover a former prize figher who is from a fairly prominent boxing family up in Lewiston, one that has produced a former world champion and several well known trainers. I steer the conversation toward the great Marvin Hagler, a man I've spoken to from my apartment, and find out that he fought once or twice up here in Portland in the 70s. Maybe that's why the former middleweight great has taken such an interest in me on his frequent trips back home to Boston from his home in Italy. Does this patient in fact know Marvelous, how I can reach him? No? My chance to reach out to yet another helping hand evaporates.
As always I quickly sink into the routine of life on the ward. The other patients keep to themselves mostly, and when they do interact they are like lambs; meek to the point of irrelevance. The staff are generally friendly, pleasant, and helpful, all except the charge nurse, a large bearded man with an intense disposition who seems to never move from his spot at the nurses station in front of his computer monitors. I don't like him from the moment he calls me "Mr. Sweeney" with a mocking tone and a seeming smirk, but he I can live with. This place is a decent waiting ground while I figure out what I comes next on this great adventure.
One sunny afternoon through my window, I notice several passenger jets flying well overhead of the hospital, one after another, and know they are signaling down to me with the exhaust stream leaving their tails. The planes are flown by former Air Force pilots, who must be quite angry at my imprisonment. The military is still on my side! I remember that I have many friends in the world. That this detour through Spring Harbor is going to just be a footnote to my heartwarming, heartbreaking story. Thanks to these pilots actions my heart is lifted, and I think, "Thanks to all those who are with me, in thought, spirit, and deed.".
As I watch the exhaust make beautiful patterns in the air above my window I know good things are going to happen to me, and soon. I am not alone and never will be.
posted by joe sweeney at 3:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home