Pixiq

Of course, my parents were upset that I hadn't finished school.  They were first generation Jews, and like most immigrants of the day, and probably today as well, getting an education was everything.  But I was convinced that I could be a writer.

[ In the last post, I had just dropped out of college for the first time and hitched back to the Bronx after a night spent with witches.]

Part I  Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Part Five

A writer of what exactly, that I didn't know.  But one thing that I was certain of was that I would need more of life's experience to have something to write about.  So far as I could see, I had only school to write about.

In retrospect, this wasn't true, but that's how it seemed to me.  As I've mentioned previously, I don't think that men are really "all there" until they've hit their thirties.  And for some of us, it never happened.

For some reason, I was always about a decade behind my friends.

At any rate, I spent a few nights with my parents in the Bronx and as things turned out, my father knew someone who worked at the Kingsborough Mental Hospital and he was able to get me in on the ground floor - the job - and I remember this title so well, was Mental Health Therapy Aide.

What they used to call an orderly.  

They say it's not what you know, it's who you know, and the joke in our family was that we really never did know anyone of importance. 

Did I have any interest in working in a city mental hospital?  No.  But of course I told myself that it would be a good experience for a writer to have.  If only I could have never been exposed to that thought my life would have had a more direct and I think happier course.

At the same time, I moved into a one bedroom apartment in Flushing Queens with my best friend Lester.  We were both 21 at the time.

We both wanted to be artists.  Whether we had talent or not is another story, but we had artistic temperaments.  And certainly were both unhappy with the jobs we had.

I won't go into his job now - since this chapter is supposed to take me to the mental hospital where I can tell you some of the things that happened to me there.

But I do feel compelled to tell a few stories about Lester at that time and what our life was like in that apartment.

First off, Lester is a gambler.  I know that his father was a gambler, and when I say gambler, I mean that many was the time that Lester would come home as a kid to find the furniture gone.

Lester worked at a company - and here I kid you not - called The Blank Book Company.  And that's what they made and what Lester sold - blank books.  Pads, journals, ledgers and the like.

He spent a good amount of time that year stoned, and doodling in the blank books.  He wanted to be an artist - and he had the skill to have been a good one but his real passion was the track.

I suppose I was the weak one in this relationship.  I ended up playing the wife in the sense that Lester was compelled to give me his cashed paycheck every two weeks, and I would hide it to make sure that he money to pay the rent.

Frankly, it was nearly impossible to hide the money from him because I was working at the mental hospital on the night shift, and he plenty of time to hunt for it when he got home from the Blank Book Company.

I was forced to find harder spots to hide it.  And one day, I had what I thought to be a brilliant idea:  I removed the plate that covered the light switch in my room (Lester slept in the living room), and stashed the wad of bills in a plastic bag behind in the mess of wires, and put the plate back in place.

Sure enough, one weekend night - I was off from work and fast asleep when I hear a loud shout - and awaken to find Lester with his hand holding the light switch plate, and sparks flying from the inside.  Then the fuse must've gone out because all the lights were out and I stumbled around to find Lester unconscious on the floor, still holding onto the money.

It was like something from an early silent movie except that I wasn't really sure if he was okay or not.  Well, I ended up calling an ambulance, and he was taken to the local hospital in Flushing where he was treated for shock.

He had regained consciousness in the ambulance and gave me the money back to hold again.  It was slightly burnt and still smoking.

At that point in my life I had no understanding of addiction.  But I used to question him about it.  What was the big thrill with the racetrack - because that was his particular poison.

He gave an answer that I remember, word for word, to this day and it went like this:

Dave, suppose I go to the track and I win a bunch of money.  It makes me feel like I know more than anyone else there.  I feel alive.  Everything that happens during the rest of the week is just a bore.  I'm waiting to go back again to have that feeling of omnipotence.

Yes, I say, but what about when you lose, which you usually do?

Ah, he says, but then I feel terrible.  Morose.  Depressed.  But, I also feel alive.  Don't you see - whether I win or lose - the excitement makes me feel alive.

So I came to understand a little bit about this addiction thing, though my own addictions were simpler.  I eventually was addicted to cigarettes.  And that stuck with me off and on through the years, but that was purely a physical addiction.

And so back to the story of the Mental Hospital.  It was Kingsborough Psychiatric Hospital and was located in Brownsville Brooklyn.  The whole thing was crazy from the start.  I had a beat-up VW bug that constantly broke down.  These were in the days when a white kid walking through Brownsville at night was not going to last long.

My father gave me a baseball bat which I kept under the front seat in the event that the car ever gave out before I got to the hospital.

I was put into a training class with ten other would-be aides.  The hospital was like most state psychiatric hospitals of the time.  Closer to a prison than a hospital.

You were always opening and closing heavy metal locked doors.  The nurses and aides could, if they wanted to, escape into the nurses station which was just like the one in One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest with glass with wires in it and a small opening to pass pills through.

The staff, were about one step removed from being patients.

Did they test us in any fashion when we arrived?

Yes.

They took us up to a ward where patients who were in the last phases of syphilis were.  Mostly men.  Mostly in their 60's.  And it was like walking onto an island of deformed freaks.  It wasn't only that they were mentally out-of-it but they were covered with sores, and protruding veins, and slobbering, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

We were supposed to feed them.

I found myself next to a guy with a blank face that seemed catatonic and did my best to feed him the slop they called lunch.  It was like feeding a baby.  One of the nurses showed me that if I flicked his left ear with my finger, he would in fact begin to chew.  And that's how it went.  I put food in his mouth with a spoon, flicked his ear, and he would chew. 

He would chew until I touched his hand which was mottled and seemed to be filled with pus, and then he'd stop chewing and wait.

His eyes were glued to a ceiling fan that was going around.  He didn't follow it's movement, but I had a sense that there was someone in there, if you know what I mean.  After a while of this I asked him what his name was.

And much to my amazement, he began chatting.  He knew that I was a new at the hospital.  That this was the test that they gave all the new aides.  He had read my name - which was on a tag on my white lab coat - and he began to tell stories about his life on a tramp steamer.

Then, just as suddenly as he began - something - it might have been a house fly landed on the table.  How he could see it, I don't know because his head was still perched up towards the fan.  But he stopped, and without looking - made a stab to catch the fly.

And sure enough, just the slightest bit of a smile crept across his parched lips and he opened his hand to show me that he had caught the fly.  And let it go.

It was the first lesson for me.  Not to judge any of these people by their appearance.

Half the new staff never returned after that day.  If I had had money, I don't think I would have either, but I was assigned to the night shift and the following Monday I arrived at the hospital at midnight.  The shift was midnight to eight in the morning.

Although it wasn't a hospital for the criminally insane - there was Creedmoor for that, it didn't take long to learn what a dangerous place this could be.

On my very first night there, I found myself alone on the floor.  Normally there were three of us.  Myself, a guy from the neighborhood, I'll call him Marcus, and a part-time nurse, who I'll call Mary.

I'm changing their names because both were guilty of many criminal acts while they were there and it's better off that way.

Anyway, Marcus and Mary had left for a cigarette break.  I eventually found out that what they called a cigarette break was actually a reefer break.  And the buzzer goes off indicating that there's someone at the main door - a door that was heavily locked - with a little window to look through.

You heard your own steps at that time of night as you walked down the long halls towards the door.  You also saw your shadow follow you on the wall.  Look, it was a spooky place and worse at night.  You could hear the guy in the isolation room ranting and raving, even at that hour; and other patients yelling for him to shut up.

I looked through the little window to see something I didn't want to see: two armed city cops, and a small guy, handcuffed, and being held by both cops.

Damn, I was thinking.  What a time to be on my own.

Oh, well.  Nothing to do but open the door, which took two keys.

And so the door opens and the two cops, both in rain slickers, and the handcuffed guy who was soaking wet (yes, raining too) came in.

The cops didn't seem to want to come very far in.  They told me a bit about this guy.  He had just been in a knife fight with his girlfriend.  And during this fight he had stabbed her several times.   She was in the hospital and not expected to survive.

The guy was shifting back and forth from one foot to another.  He was hispanic.  He wasn't big.  I don't know how to describe him - but he had the physique of a feather weight boxer.  His ripped tee shirt stuck to his body.

And he was wearing pajama bottoms and sandals.  The cops had an order to have him brought to Kings County for a psychiatric evaluation and he'd probably be sent to Creedmoor the following day.

I had to sign some papers.  They signed some papers.  It was done as if he were a Fedex delivery except that when they left, they took their handcuffs off the package and the two of us were left standing in the hallway as I locked up the door again.

I heard their footsteps and realized I was alone with this guy who may have just murdered his girlfriend.

There really was this long pause where neither of us moved, but both turned our heads to look at each other.  Of course I was raised (as I'm sure he was) not to show fear, but our eyes locked for a moment.

I kept thinking - no more handcuffs.  What was I supposed to do with him.  He was waiting for me to give him directions.  And that's what I did.  I told him that I would show him to a room where he could stay in my best hotel bellboy manner.

We were now standing near the main room when at the end of the hallway - that room with the bad smell, and the seats for watching t.v. all day which was the main activity, and next to it was the nurses station.

As we walked, I asked his name, which he said was Jesus.  Not pronounced Hey-Suz by him, but Gee-suz.

That's one of those moments I remember vividly.  And then he tells me that he was a boxer once, and that he's really feeling strange and would it be okay if he did some push-ups.

I told him yes.  And he went into a corner of the room, and simply began to do lots and lots of push-ups.

Every once in a while he would say something in spanish that I couldn't understand.  The same thing - over and over.  Something like - oh - I won't make up the name because I don't remember it.

But when he was finished, he got up and sat down in a chair - breathing hard.

I decided just to wait before approaching him again.  I went into the nurses station, locked the door, and waited for the rest of the staff to arrive. 

He didn't move a muscle that whole time. 

And eventually they arrived and I showed them the paperwork on the guy.  They had seen him before and knew him.  They said it was fine to let him sit there as long as he wanted.  And eventually, I found out that the word he had been repeating was his girlfriend's name.

Both of them had been on crack.  She ended up dying in the hospital.  The next day about ten cops arrived to take him to Creedmoor.  He never did get a psych exam at Kings County, and I don't to this day know why he was always dropped off here first, unless it was to give him time to cool off.

There's more to tell about that place.  In fact, it was just in the news while I'm writing this for some scandal or other.  People sometimes ask me, which was the worst job I ever had and no.  We haven't reached it yet. 

But there were moments, and rituals, from those days that I haven't talked about yet - that have shown up in my images through the years.  I think I'd like to try and go into that next.