Friday Night at 8

Walking down Lexington Avenue in the 20s with my teenaged niece, it was in the mid-80’s, a homeless man jumped in front of us and yelled out with a fierce look on his face “HOMELESS!”  Not missing a beat, I shouted back “SAGITTARIUS!”  He looked bewildered and walked away.  My niece thought I was cool.

Some time in the 80’s, if I recall correctly, they changed the commitment laws, folks couldn’t be forced into mental institutions any more, so many were released.  I remember the Big Apple when the streets were lined with homeless people, sure not all of them were mentally ill, but plenty were.

Senior year in high school, in the midwest, I volunteered for a summer as a candy striper at the county mental institution — I was put to work with the occupational therapists in the chronic ward.

I read some of the case histories, people who were mentally retarded being put away and after long years they became psychotic as well.  One day during the summer they had a fire drill — I got separated from the staff and ended up milling about with the folks from the locked ward — none of them made me feel threatened, on the contrary, being among them I felt as though I were the odd woman out, and perhaps I should start babbling and carrying on as the normal thing to do.

I remember working in the OT room with a patient who wouldn’t say a word, had a slight frown on his face, I was babbling at him to try and “cheer him up,” and then I just stopped, looked at him and said, “well this is stupid, what’s there to cheer up about?”  And it wasn’t what I said, I don’t think, but he looked back at me and smiled and we talked for a little bit.

Afterwards the OT said to me, “you know, that patient hasn’t talked to anyone in months.  What did you do?”  And I couldn’t answer her, I didn’t know what I had done.

Flash forward, I’m 22 years old and it’s February.  I had, several months earlier, made a move to New York City, but it didn’t work out and I was back in the midwest, living with an old friend of mine.

One morning, in February, I woke up mad as a hatter.  Just plain crazy.  I was found wandering up and down the street directing traffic, having a gay old time.  I ended up in the same place I had done volunteer work as a teenager, only in the acute, not chronic, ward.  I was given medications and made connections with the other patients in the bizarre sort of way looney folks do.

I remember walking through a tunnel that connected the two old buildings, coming back from some therapy or another, and I felt lost and started to cry.  One of my fellow patients appeared, a thin, fey sort of young man, very ill, and he took me by the hand back to the ward.

And of course there was occupational therapy, which I despised.  I was not into any kind of crafts or art and refused to do anything, just sat there and moped.  One day the perky young occupational therapist that I loathed took us all to a shopping mall.  A very surreal experience, indeed, and I was so out of it I didn’t really know what was going on.

As we got back to the car, the perky young occupational therapist stopped me and said, “oh, you dropped this” and held up a new lipstick and gave it to me.  The delicacy of her gesture astonished me into a moment of lucidity which quickly vanished — but to this day I remember what she did.

We also had group therapy, we’d sit around and talk or play music.  I remember sitting at a table with a bunch of other folks and I saw a hand in front of me, on the table, trembling terribly.  I didn’t even see the person the hand belonged to, just the hand.  Instinctively, I put my hand over his … and the trembling stopped.

After three months in the hospital, I was released, pronounced cured.  I didn’t feel much different, but I went home, back to my parents’ apartment, for several months, to day hospital 5 days a week, and then after a couple of months I went back to the job I had as a typesetter.

My dad noticed I was kind of bleary and said to me, “you need to get your mind working again, it’s all out of shape.”  My older brother said to me, “take a course in something you aren’t good at and try to get an A in it.”

So I went to the community college downtown and took a course in accounting.  The teacher, a very dynamic fellow, was a controller at GM, a tough fellow — his opening introduction to the class was so fierce that the next class saw only half the original number attending.  Turned out to be a great class and I did get an A.

Midway through that semester of night school, I ran into one of my fellow patients, on the street.  He looked all scruffy and mad, and I started going on about how oh, it’s not so bad, you can get better, rah, rah, rah.

He turned to me and said, “you know, Kitty, what you had was a headcold.  I got pneumonia.”  Turns out he had no family to come home to, no job to go back to, was living in a group home and wound up in and out of the hospital on a fairly regular basis.

Toward the end of the semester, I was to meet my sister, who was also taking a class, to get a ride home.  I took the elevator down one floor, and it stopped mid-floor, didn’t budge.  I pressed the alarm button and forced the doors open a bit, saw two feet and a bit of leg in my view and a person said, “oh don’t worry, help is on the way.”

Help was not on the way.  I ended up spending the night in the elevator.  It was not a pleasant experience — I knew my sister would think I had no doubt gone mad again and was dashing all over the dark downtown streets trying to direct traffic.

And then I just figured, what the hell, there’s nothing I can do about it.  If I could get through this calmly, I probably was “cured,” whatever that meant.

Next morning someone finally opened the doors of the elevator.  I was so calm that at first they didn’t believe I had been stuck there overnight.  My sister and my mom were very relieved.  Ended up getting in the local paper (don’t remember how the reporter found out about it).  The title of the story was:  “It Wasn’t An Uplifting Experience.”