Straitjacket
If it helps: this is fiction.
* * *
Four days ago I'll walk down that brick sidewalk round the bend in
God, this was going to be a long story. I had to skip most of it.
On the way, though, he'll make talk that sounds deceptively small.
"So is there anything about Harvard that has been good? How have your classes been?"
He'll have this sort of shy, reserved slant to his voice. It will remind me of early in high school when my friends' voices would suddenly turn deep and they would seem vaguely uncomfortable with the pitch.
I'll take a while answering the question because the voice is so distracting, but after maybe twenty seconds I'll say calmly:
"Actually, not really. Frankly it's been unimpressive. I think I liked my high school classes more, and that's saying something."
He'll be shocked but try not to show it.
"So, so what's been the problem?"
I'll answer straightaway. "The TFs aren't invested, the professors are aloof. They've been too easy and little more than irritating. Overall I think this whole year has been a waste of time."
He'll be quiet for a long moment and I'll practically be able to hear the cogs turning in his head. I'll recognize now just how brilliant he is--Harvard undergrad, Oxford doctorate, and a career spent dealing with schmucks like me out of the pure benevolence of his soul and all that--but it won't be that opaque brilliance everyone finds so fascinating in artists and physicists and schizophrenics, rather that transparent intelligence one perceives while watching an army of ants rebuilding their anthill in fast-forward.
What an interesting dude, I'll think. Too bad this is how I meet him.
All this will happen while we're still out on the street. People will pass by in t-shirts and tank tops wearing flip-flops and carrying bags from the bookstore. The sun'll be shining through a thin weave of white clouds and the ground flashes on and off in the yellow rays and the gray shades that click by like different lenses at the optometrist. I'll still be walking ahead of him, not looking at him. I'll seem contemptuous and I'll feel it, too.
"So if you don't come back next year, do you have any plans for what to do?" he'll say.
"Not really," I'll say. "Might work on the
He'll have no response. He'll remain in that loud silence you feel near someone searching for a thing to say until we get inside University Health Services.
We'll take the elevator up. He won't say anything.
At the receptionist he'll explain things. "I'm Dean Cooper here with Tim Lambert."
"Right," the old woman will say, "I fixed that up just now."
In the waiting room I won't pick up any of the literature. I'll have read it all before. I'll look straight ahead and not say anything until spoken to. And he'll speak to me.
"So, did, so have you spent summers on the
"Most of them when I was growing up."
"Oh."
There will be silence. It will drag on.
"You know, I've, uh, only been to the
I won't know what the fuck he'll be talking about. So I won't say anything. He won't bother with words after that.
Ten minutes will pass and he'll get up and go to the receptionist. I'll have noticed the sign already that says "If it is ten minutes past your scheduled appointment time and you are still waiting, check with the receptionist." Now it'll be twelve minutes past. He'll say something to the old woman.
"She still hasn't seen you?" A pause. "Apparently she's running late and is on her way up."
"Ok, ok," the Dean will say, and come to sit again next to me.
The doctor will come in all flurried, wearing cross-trainers and a weird sun dress. Oh boy, I'll think.
She'll introduce herself and so will the Dean. I'll stay silent. She'll stick out her hand. I'll take it, shake it, stand up, and follow her wordlessly.
We'll all sit down in an office with walls covered in children's drawings. Dean Cooper will explain things, badly.
"So Tim here, we're worried about him and we thought we'd bring him in here and have you talk with him and hopefully help him with his problems."
She won't look at him. She'll keep her eyes on me. They'll be kind eyes. Only slightly patronizing.
"Another student came to us and told us he might be a danger to himself, so the College decided to intervene. He's been struggling with depression, and uh, we've talked about the possibility of taking a leave of absence."
"Ah, and how do you feel about that option, Tim?" she'll say.
"I'd like to leave today, if that's all right."
They'll both sit back.
Dean Cooper will say, "Ah, well, then uh, if that's the case we can talk more about that later today and I'm sure we can make that happen."
"Great," I'll say.
The therapist will lean in. "How do feel about all this, the college stepping in and everything?"
"It's ridiculous. Not going to help. The only problem I have can only be solved through exactly the avenue they've closed off."
The therapist will look confused. Dean Cooper will step in: "I assume he's referring to talking with this other student. She's requested that all contact be severed between the two."
"Ah," says the therapist.
"I just asked that she speak with me so that we could sort out this problem, or at least acknowledge me so I can act like the problem is solved," I'll say, "but apparently she decided that was too much to ask, and instead is trying to get me kicked out of the school."
"Now--" both the others will start. The therapist will defer to the Dean.
"That's not--we're just trying to respect everyone's wishes and find a way to keep you safe and comfortable."
"You're saying I can't talk to her, and I need to talk to a shrink or you'll make me leave. That's what you said."
"Yes," he'll say.
"Now, why is it that you want so badly to talk to her," the therapist will ask. The deconstruction will have begun.
"Because she’s standing in the way of my functioning normally and comfortably at the College. The Dean's Office seems to think the best way to resolve this is to support her in this immature behavior and make me jump through these hoops so that I can lie down and accept her abuse."
The Dean will respond: "She has asked not to be contacted and we have to respect her wishes."
"Right," I'll say. "That's her right, not to be bothered even if she's bothering someone else. This is
"Are you depressed now?" the therapist will ask.
"No," I'll say, too angrily. "Or if I am, so what? I'm not a danger to myself or anyone else. It’s my stone and I have to carry it, and it’s as simple as that. I'm just angry that I'm being forced to come here and miss class because someone else is trying to screw me over. I don't need this."
Dean Cooper will be clearly uncomfortable. He'll have places to be. He'll be a busy man, after all.
"Well, I'm going to head out now and let you talk, but first, I, uh, I'll need you to agree to a, ah, breach of confidentiality, that Dr. Gurier will, ah, be allowed to talk to be about what you say."
I'll be livid. "Sure, whatever," I'll say. 'Just get the fuck out,' I'll be thinking. 'Hell if I'm going to say anything important now.'
He'll stand up and leave, assuming the healing will commence.
* * *
Meanwhile back in that twisted hellhole of a mind I weigh my options. I find a striking lucidity flowing under everything and I can understand exactly what sort of behavior will lead to what sort of a result. I can rank all the possible moves in order of ease, self-interested rationality, clinical pathology, moral legitimacy, and visceral appeal. I can shuffle them. I can alphabetize them. I can juggle them. I can cut the deck and make one disappear in a puff of smoke and reappear behind your ear and then chew it up and spit it out and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Here's my first thought: say the hell with everything and hop a bus to
Why crabs? It's the darkest, most isolated, least glorious job on the face of the earth to fish for crabs in Alaskan waters. It's dangerous as hell but somebody has to do it, and somebody will always do it, because so long as this world is filled with billions of greedy mouths there will always be a demand for any edible product, and whether or not somebody died (or missed the first seven months of his son's life and had his wife leave him for some nomadic environmentalist with a trust fund and too much time on his hands who just wanted to shack up for a night
Here's my second thought: track down the bitch who is trying to get me kicked out of school, chew her out, tell her she can go fuck herself and then spray-paint on the front of her dorm that she puts out on the first date and has a dry, razor burnt cunt—which might be vandalism, but not libel. Then proceed with Plan A sans email to the Dean.
Third thought: stop going to class, hang out till exam period, and then tell the Dean I want a leave of absence, say my goodbyes to my friends, meet up with my woman flying in from across the country to see me, buy a one way ticket to follow her back out West, work at a restaurant or library or a national park for a few months and apply to her school for next year's spring term.
Fourth thought: play by the rules, put up with therapy, ignore Ms. Dry-Cunt, ask for a leave of absence and see how a fall on my own feels. Come back in the Spring and hope for the best. Sacrifice my sense of self-worth and disregard my abused sense of justice and accept that the world is a rotten place that favors rotten people and the only thing for it is to make enough money to live on an island in the sun until a long cancerous death undoes everything.
Fifth thought: pretend nothing ever happened, and pray nothing ever will.
Sixth thought: buy a huge bag of weed, light up, and don't stop until I find God or some greater or equal substitute. Accept that whether I'm insane or the world's insane, the fact remains it's much easier to shape my mind to fit the world than to shape the world to fit my mind, and whether I've lied and cheated myself out of myself in order to live in some facsimile of happiness, it makes no difference because I won't be able to tell the difference between the facsimile and the real thing, and that the truth doesn't matter and ought to be cast aside for its inflexibility given the fact that our beliefs are functionally identical and far more comforting if we make them pretty and invest ourselves in them. Call it all growing up and delete all evidence of thinking otherwise.
Seventh thought: stop half-assing self-obliteration and just—
Look at that.
* * *
I come back from all this. I look around the office. Behind me: a dollhouse with felt-covered dog figurines that shake their heads when you squeeze them. Children's pictures everywhere. I especially like one of an iguana eating a bee with its massive curling tongue. Sun's not coming through the window because this crumby place looks out into an alley. Doctor's waiting for me to talk. What has it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? When can I go?
"I'm fine," I say. I look her in the eye.
"Really?" she asks.
"You know I'd come back in if I weren't." I say.
"Would you?"
"Yes, provided I was the one making the decision. Or someone who knows me. Cares about me."
"And you have people like that?"
"More than I can keep track of."
"And what will you do about school? Are you still going to leave?"
"I'll finish the semester."
"And after?"
I sigh. "Ma'am, I don't know what I'm eating for lunch today. Talking about 'after' won't amount to much of anything in the way of truth or honesty. All I can say is that I'll be sure to think it all over."
"Good. That sounds good."
I don't say anything.
"I want you to come in later this week."
"Why?"
"Just to check in."
"Do I have a choice?"
She thinks it over.
"Never mind," I say. "I'll come in."
"OK. Friday at 11:30. I'll see you then."
I stand up. She hands me her card. I thank her. She wishes me luck. I leave.
Ten minutes later I'm in my room. My phone rings. I ignore it. I lie down but I can't keep still. I sit up. I feel sick. I stand. I pace. My phone rings again. I ignore it. The sun is shining through the window. I open it, light a cigarette, blow smoke through the screen. I throw it away after two drags. I contemplate the vodka in my drawer. I look at the clock. It's 1:30 on a Monday afternoon. Hours, hours, hours, hours. Shit.
Pills on my windowsill. I stopped taking them weeks ago. I remember what they did to me. To hell with it, I think, and pop two antipsychotics. Then I pass out and agree to forget how scary it can be living in this skull until the next time I really think about it. In my sleep I’ll wonder whether it’s the skull or the world outside that’s really the scary thing. And I won’t get anywhere at all. When I wake up I’ll still have to bite my lip and stand in line and listen to my sensible friends and grow up straight and narrow and never do anything more meaningful than living up to expectations. And when people ask me what I want to do with my life, I’ll have to say “This, that, and the other thing,” because nobody really gets what I mean when I say I just want to keep it.
