A Fan's Notes (14 page)

The wide rubber band containing the electrodes was wrapped tightly about my skull, just above the ears; the doctor checked my pulse, told me he was going to give me an injection to relax me (most of the uncomfortable effects of electroshock are back injuries caused by the patient
’
s inordinate tension). I wanted to say something in a very manly though pleasant way—
”
Whatever you say, Doc
”
—something to get
the man back on my side. I did not know then that these goodly men did not know any more about electroshock than about insulin therapy, and I thought it might be prudent to remind him, despite his apparent hostility, of my humanity in the hope that he would not approach his work too stridently. But my fear was so great that I despaired of saying more than a word,
okay
; even this came out to the tempo of my palpitating heart,
‘
kay
!—came with a rushing, girlish feebleness. Then I felt the needle go into my arm, my eyelids came over my eyeballs like a deep blue velvet curtain over my mismanaged life, I sensed a quick movement behind me, all was darkness.

Many times after that I lay down for electroshock. Never once did the despair and the fear of the initial treatment diminish, the fear of having one
’
s consciousness so irrevocably laid on the indifferent altar of science. My insulin shock was continued mornings, and I believed that I was getting these new treatments twice a week, in the afternoons. Rising out of the deep slumber of the insulin one morning, and beginning to experience that incredible hunger, I was suddenly aware of that tight rubber band about my skull, conscious that they were giving me both treatments simultaneously. At first I was astonished, then terrified, then angry. About to bellow my protest, I sensed that quick movement behind me, all again was darkness. Because of the temporary loss of memory induced by electroshock, I did not, until some time in the afternoon, piece together this knowledge. I lived that day in an agony of apprehension, conscious throughout it that something disturbing was lurking beneath the conscious level of my mind. When I finally did remember, feeling again that inordinate hunger and that strap about my skull, I was once again surprised, again frightened, finally furious.

Subsequent to the consultation that had ended in my perpetual and uncontrollable giggling, my doctor had discontinued our sessions together; and
it suddenly occurred to me that
where he—or I—had failed, he was determined that science would succeed. This possibility opened before me fantastic vistas; I could not help wondering how far the man was prepared to go. I had seen my fellow patients reduced to infantilism by a gymnastic treatment called regressive shock, an intermittent series of electrical whacks on the head that go on night and day for ten days. I had seen the results of that ultimately humane treatment, the frontal lobotomy. For this, they remove a chunk of skull in the forehead area, stick an instrument not unlike an ice pick down to the brain where, with a few curt brushes, they scrape away all grief, all rage, all violence, all the things that make us Man, leaving one great hulk of loonily smiling protoplasm. Although I knew that either of these treatments would be out of the question in my case, I had this fear. In a way I suppose I was prepared to believe them guilty of anything.

For days I lived in a cocoon of rage, wanting to strike out, to run, not knowing what to do. For a time I thought of telephoning attorneys and writing passionate, eloquent letters to the Governor and the New York Post, letters which would arouse a slumbering world and bring it, indignant and righteous with wrath, descending upon the grounds to free my fellow patients and me. Had I not taken a long, hard look at my fellow patients, I might have done these things, too.
“
On my word
”
and
“
Don
’
t tell me,
”
they were still blabbering away at each other, quite unaware of poor Exley
’
s indignation. I had to laugh.
“
My God,
”
I thought,
“
they are insane—and always will be, whether they leave the grounds or not.
”
I laughed and laughed and laughed. This discovery led me to the obvious question: how about me? Was I, too, insane? It was a difficult admission to make, but I am glad that I made it; later I came to believe that this admission about oneself may be the only redemption in America. Yes, I was insane. Still, I did not despise my oddne
ss, my deviations, those things
which made me, after all, me. I wanted to preserve those things. To do it, I had to get out of that place. Then—as quickly as the rage had come over me—I suddenly knew how to do it. I would be the kind of man I suspected the world wanted me to be. I played the game with all the loathing the benevolent doctor had put at my command.

I whistled. My gait took on a cheerful, nearly joyous bounce. Each Wednesday evening I went to the dances in the Recreation Room and there waltzed wacky old maids round and round the room. I was of good cheer, exclaiming to all and any who inquired after my health,
“
Great! How
’
s yourself? Wonderful! Couldn
’
t be better!
”
I spent my mornings in the Arts and Crafts Room making a briefcase. With it, I never tired of proclaiming, I intended to re-enter the great and wonderful world. That briefcase became symbolic, the conspicuous admission on my part of the efficacy of the doctor
’
s decision to give me electroshock. It was made of grained, extremely expensive black leather. With the intense and cheery disposition of a saint, I wove it together at the seams, whistling. For its interior I fitted it with celluloid containers. In these I put samples of the deathless prose I had written for various corporations (when I had worked, I had worked in public relations) and a sheaf of handsomely printed résumés from which I excluded certain information, such as that they had been printed up at a mental institution. For the case
’
s crowning touch, I had it fitted with a gold-plated zipper and had mounted on its grained surface a gold-plated name-and-address plate. Completed, it was a wonderful creation. It was so wonderful that as work had progressed upon it the doctor put at my disposal a younger head shrinker, one with whom I whiled away the lethargic afternoons, feeding him incredible stories of my ideas of future bliss.

“
Look here,
”
I said, with stunning self-assurance,
“
I
’
m a relatively intelligent you
ng man,
”
and smiled modestly to
await his nodding agreement.
“
I can, when I
’
m up to it, put on a rather striking appearance. There
’
s no reason whatever I shouldn
’
t go right down to Madison Avenue, make boodles of money, and start raising a family. Yes,
”
I added gravely, as though the latter had struck me as an unusually vivid idea,
“
I think I
’
d like a family!
”

My relationship with this doctor was strange and not a little unsettling. He was leaving the hospital—to begin his own practice, he said; but I suspected that he had come to be disturbed by some of the practices he had seen around him, suspected that his thoughts about the hospital were not incompatible with mine. He never said as much, but I always suspected that he saw through me.
“
No, no reason whatever, Exley, if that
’
s what you want,
”
he would reply to such nonsense as the above. And he would smile. That smile seemed to say,
“
Let
’
s cut the bullshit and talk about baseball.
”
But if he did suspect that I was frolicking, he understood and held his peace. In his defense, I did my job so beautifully that when it came time to leave the hospital I had all but convinced myself that these things were what I thirsted after.

Moving into my aunt
’
s guest house in Westchester, and adhering to a strict diet to lose the weight the insulin treatment had put on me, I bought in Chappaqua a splendid, olive-green, snug-shouldered suit; a half-dozen regimentally striped neckties; a pair of expensive black shoes; and for my head—for it was that summer—a wild, preposterous, round-rimmed, plaid-banded, pancake-topped, yellow straw hat. Tilting that marvelous thing to one side of my head, my wondrous briefcase under my arm, I began bouncing all over New York, practically glad-handing strangers on the avenue. Carrying my new-found self-assurance into job interviews, I didn
’
t so much ask for jobs as tell employers they must have me; I didn
’
t beg, I commanded; I wasn
’
t deferential, I was haughty. And no one was more amazed than I t
o discern the favorable impres
sions I was making: I left employers quite fearful of their own jobs.

It was at the moment when I was being seriously considered for a half-dozen positions that I went, one afternoon after an interview in which I was practically assured of the job, down to Greenwich Village. I ordered a Budweiser, two, three. Then I switched to whisky. Awaking the next morning in a hotel room, I could not, after dressing, find my straw hat. I found it finally in the bathroom, in the bathtub, immersed in a foot or so of sad, still water. With either my fist or my foot I had knocked the top of it completely through, and I left its unhappy remains, its striking plaid band floating out from it like Ophelia
’
s gown, for the chambermaid.

That afternoon I went back to the guest house behind my aunt
’
s. I lay there the month of August, unshaven, reading, and scratching my joint. On a lovely day in early September, I looked out the window and saw the men in the white jackets moving wide apart from one another up the lawn in the cool shade of the trees toward me, one a white man and the other a Negro as huge and forbidding as the late Pittsburgh tackle, Earl Lipscomb. Sighing, but really rather relieved, I lighted a cigarette, took a drag, got up, opened the door, and stepped out to meet them, saying,
“
Relax, Big Daddy—I
’
m okay.
”
A few days later found me standing up close to the bars in Avalon Valley, looking down into the autumnal mists, imagining that I was at a university. A few days later still, I was sitting and waiting for the truck to bear me
down the hill
.

The truck driver finally came for us. He was cheerful, too.
“
All set, kids?
”
he said. We rose, gathered our clothes, followed him out the door, got into the back of the truck (it was built like a paddy wagon), and started down. No one spoke all the way; neither did we look into each other
’
s eyes. I suppose the others were
apprehensive, but I was already
beginning to apply Exley
’
s Law of Institutional Survival (be of good cheer, yearn for color-television sets). It had worked for me once; it would again. The main thing was to avoid those attachments, to avoid setting myself up for the possibility of experiencing another
’
s defeat. When the truck finally came to a halt, we heard the cab door open and close, the driver
’
s footsteps on the drive, the sound of him opening the door into the back of the truck. When he stood exposed to us, he was cheerful no more. He said,
“
The end of the line, sweethearts.
”

After a few more days of observation, I was placed with seventy others in an open ward—one from which the patient was permitted, during the day, to wander freely about the grounds. On close scrutiny the hospital no longer seemed a university. The foliage was now above one
’
s head, not a sea of autumnal hues beneath one. Between the trees
’
bare trunks the buildings were a veritable triumph of fact. Each had three stories, each was of red brick, and each was so like the other that a stucco cottage stuck amongst them would have seemed an outrageous piece of shilly-shallying. Even the separate wards consisted of three main rooms. We slept together in a long, partially partitioned hall, with ten or twelve of us grouped together. I did not sleep for many nights—or, rather, I slept the sleep of the aged, a sleep diffused with wakefulness, or a wakefulness diffused with sleep. The only man in my section I recognized from the Reception Building was my Negro friend. He had stopped speaking to me. His medications had started to give him relief, and he was now embarrassed by what he had revealed to me. Perhaps, though, the attendant had just scared the poor bugger to death. For whatever reason, he now avoided my eyes. Each night he pomaded his kinky hair, put some kind of snug tuque fashioned from a woman
’
s nylon on his head, slipped quickly out of his pants, and kneeled do
wn by his bed. His skinny blue-
black fanny exposed beneath his shirt, he said his prayers quite loudly. I don
’
t remember them, but I know that Jesus was mentioned a good deal. Later I heard that the tuque business was an attempt to get his hair as straight as mine, and I was sorry to hear it; apparently he figured if he couldn
’
t beat us, he
’
d join us. He was always the last in bed, it would be silent for a time, then the night noises would start. They began with unobtrusive things like snoring and scratching and belching; later in the night one would hear terrified screams or violent, crushing weeping. The odor was always heavy with male sweat. In the first nights I often rose and went to the john for a cigarette. But this was sometimes more unnerving, for I often discovered one of my bunkmates kissing another
’
s genitals. Some of them were flauntingly homosexual and did not embarrass easily; one had either to smoke his cigarette and look away, or go back, lie down, and wait for sleep. After a time I said to myself,
“
Fuck you guys,
”
smoked my cigarette, and looked right at them.