"The More Real Skin"
Jennifer Benningfield
Presently, life hangs. "Between" is the nebulous area in which I have lived much of adulthood anyway, so upon release from the hospital, genuine concerns such as contacting close friends and family were shoved to the rear. One solid week as an inpatient rebirthed a ravenous carnivore. Neither I nor the cabbie wasted any words from the time he picked me up until the moment he deposited me in front of the Boli's Pizza one block from my apartment building. Had my time away taught me nothing about prioritization? What decent man puts a cheesesteak, swimming in mayo, onions and pickles, ahead of his own mother? Just two more questions for the shrink-resistant pile.
Boli's had only been open ten minutes, yet I still had to wait in line behind a plaid-clad man half a century old, his egg-shaped head covered with bruises and bumps, and I'd say, "Ha, I'd hate to see the other guy," but for the suspicion I have that he was the other guy.
The belligerence suggested by his appearance bore out almost immediately.
"Whaddayamean, I gotta wait thirty minutes? I'm your first customer! Ain't that a kick in the back sack. Hey, check this out, I just lost my appetite for pizza. Not just your pizza, I mean all pizza, everywhere. Congratulations. Take two and drown, you poor schmo. Go home to your ugly wife and change your socks. What're you lookin' at, paste-face?"
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Consider, these celebrated upsets of history: David downing Goliath, Truman toppling Dewey, Chaminade knocking out UVA, Preston victorious over Severe Depression. A battle I fought without deadly weaponry, until a disturbing irregularity began flaring up with disturbing regularity, until I stopped delivering mail, until I stopped answering the phone, until a regretful misalliance of Johnnie Walker and Seconal sent my ornery self first to the ER, then to the fifth floor, where they store the nuts.
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Consider, these celebrated upsets of history: David downing Goliath, Truman toppling Dewey, Chaminade knocking out UVA, Preston victorious over Severe Depression. A battle I fought without deadly weaponry, until a disturbing irregularity began flaring up with disturbing regularity, until I stopped delivering mail, until I stopped answering the phone, until a regretful misalliance of Johnnie Walker and Seconal sent my ornery self first to the ER, then to the fifth floor, where they store the nuts.
Even with a tray of stunningly edible food, and a sweet-natured woman extracting important information, it still felt as though I were sitting underneath a naked light bulb, shirtless and scarred, plucked unceremoniously from a bad patch before I'd been given the chance to wind my own way out. I answered questions while nibbling mashed potatoes and conniving to gain my freedom. When the nice lady informed me that patients stayed a minimum of five days, I thought, Welp, you can pencil me in for 120 and not an hour extra, little mama.
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The experience sucked no harder or gentler than most others.
Via mandatory meetings (both individual and group) with well-trained well-wishers, twelve sick souls learned the value of proper prioritization, various mental and physical exercises intended to strengthen our mental health, and the eternal blessing of self-love. All leading to the most vital lesson: how to process stress without sending tables airborne.
In between, we passed time by sipping soda, flipping pages, or talking small. Most of us gathered round the conference table did not fit the stereotype of a crazy person. Except Skinny Santa. I needed a Coke at the ready just to keep my mouth occupied, otherwise I would have been hysterically laughing every time he began babbling on aliens jumping rope to keep the Sun from exploding.
And I would have been the only one.
Of all the lessons I learned about myself over those 120 hours, "I'm An Asshole" was the harshest.
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Also the most common. The recent pie apostate, he became hip to his own contemptibility probably on his own, likely before he learned his penis was good for more than just wizzing over high walls.
At least that's what I concluded after staring into those broken marbles he sees the world through. I guessed on, on the spot, that ol' egghead was no stranger to inpatient programs. I surmised he'd made several visits, perhaps even willingly. Maybe he and I missed each other by a week. Guy's spent 120 hours, minimum, fantasizing about breasts and beers as a nerd with bonafides drones out the agonizingly obvious. He's spent 120 hours, minimum, with a straw between his lips, pondering how many milligrams of caffeine the body requires in order to read Wuthering Heights without attempting suicide via paper cuts.
"What're you looking at, paste-face?"
"Nothing, sir. Have a good day."
Watching his face fold in on itself caused me to curse the distance between us and the store's beverage case.
"Agreeable bastard," he sneered. Before I could let loose with a helplessly liquid laugh, the employee behind the counter pretended to have a coughing fit. This snapped Eggy Gourdo back into a reality where he didn't force me to swallow three of my teeth. A reality where he walked on, walked out.
I walked up, specifically to the counter to place my order, shrugging off the employees attempts to joke, vowing internally to not eat my own hands, no matter how long I had to wait.
Which luckily wasn't long. Green for silver, grunt for grin, and I headed for the door.
(I'm not an unfriendly man; I just don't care.)
(I'm not an unfriendly man; I just don't care.)
The walk home would take four minutes, tops. Given that I'd not made the trip in a week, I took a moment to savor my surroundings. I'd hit an emotional and professional rock-bottom that could have killed me on impact. I emerged, improved. More aware. More sensitive. More thoughtful. More real.
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To be a good little inpatient, you had to be an attendee and participant at daily group meetings, held a half hour after breakfast, a half hour after lunch, and an hour after dinner. When your appointed psychiatrist shows up for one-on-one time, you will answer their questions sincerely. When the distressingly young staff hands out sandwiches after the last meeting of the day, you should really ask for the peanut butter and jelly, 'cause the turkey is sweaty and the mustard is the same shade of yellow as a late-Seventies new wave album cover.
And you must, you must, you must ingest the daily modifiers.
My day five was day one for a young heroin addict whose crisp appearance suggested an unearned affluence he could scarcely bear. I sat across from him at the huge table, empty except for arms and papers. He was too good to be in that spot, yet not good enough to be in the spot he'd been programmed to think he deserved. I could foresee a confrontation between the young man and one of the counselors, even more heated than the time Blond Rob interjected himself into a talk between another inpatient and their psychiatrist.
Those meetings meant to me what a cracker means to a grasshopper. There was a chalkboard, a TV set, neither of them used. I hated letting so many other people know anything about myself, never mind how unpleasant the things. Perhaps if these strangers had a chance of meaning something more, of playing a significant role in my life, of representing a real chance at positive change, I would have cottoned to the racket. But no. Frivolous and futile, every second.
After the final group meeting at eight, we'd have another two hours to make calls and take pills before bedtime. I was always so drained by then, not even my roommate's pitiable moans could keep me from the bliss of unconsciousness. (The road to mental health is littered with shredded rubber and bloodied fur.) I was always one of the first served, made damn sure of that, approached that counter and wasted no time giving my name to the plump lady who apparently asked her stylist for the "Judi Dench," who in turn gave me two small paper cups like the ones you put ketchup in at restaurants, one with the pills and the second containing just enough water to chase the little trip stops down.
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What's better? To live day-to-day, or to live knife-to-neck? The doctors and counselors couldn't answer me--refused to, actually--and understanding their reticence only makes it slightly less infuriating. Mental health care is one of America's profound failures, and no one wants to be a player in a failure story. I think I'd rather have cancer than severe depression (although some people would say that's not thinking at all). As great a thought as it is, no one on the fifth floor of the local hospital can be wheeled to the floor below for relatively convenient extirpation of their malignancy.
Walking home, plastic bag of hell-rock hot deliverance swinging lightly at my side, I began reminiscing on my imprisonment with fondness. Freedom stretched over me like a new skin. Newly lively, I met the eyes of people on porches as I doddered along.
I could see the awning of my building, I could envision the side gate, the concrete path, the wooden steps meant to be navigated with annoying caution, until I was no longer moving towards the dim light of a tunnel whose walls narrow with every step, regardless of direction.
Lesson #23 learned during my time inside the antiseptic box-within-a-box: Each person must follow their instincts before joining the insects.
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Either the man possessed ninja stealth, or I'd been utterly oblivious, ensnared by a web the design of which I played a considerable hand. Lost in blissful thoughts of a return to routine, I felt something dash by my left side.
Eggy Gourdo. The very same belligerent jerk from Boli's, throttled by an enigmatic agitation which left us both overwhelmed. The wisest expenditure of energy would have been to steal a meal. Instead, this guy wanted me (the sucker) to view him (the suckee?) as the superior, alpha male he'd mentally sculpted himself to be. Steel-chinned and brick-cheeked, with a mind like a god and a heart like a dam.
Alas, the portrait looked no less unflattering in natural light. He was older (by two decades, I figured), and larger by a few inches all around. Still, mine was only one perspective. The old, misshapen guy blocking my path might have been factually fearless, able to dismiss mustang lizards attired in titanium armor and rocket helmets with a single sniff...or perhaps the schmuck messes his underwear at a thunder roll.
I had no way of knowing for sure. I didn't collect those fallen parts of myself and reassemble 'em just to stand by with my thumb in a gnarly pie while some schizo tells me to run the cheesesteaks.
A voice from within commanded me: ask his name. I didn't; what could I hope to accomplish with possession of that knowledge? On the spot, I decided the wrinkly, discolored Humpty Dumpty shaking before me was a clear "Clayton." "Clay" to his loved ones, who probably don't care much for the guy. A man whose seduction attempts end before they begin. A man whose childhood featured a succession of dead pets and broken promises. A man covered with a short-sleeved shirt faded to the color of raw ground beef, the neck of the thing barely hanging in there.
He leaned forward. My heart defied time and space, a neat feat for a muscle stuck between two sponges. My hand gripped the bag tighter. Many places to run, nowhere to truly hide. No one approaching on either side of the street. The license plate of the jeep parked next to us would, once decoded, guide me to the next move. Meanwhile, Eggy continued breathing decay into my face.
"Tell you what, fella. Gimme that bag, and I won't cut ya."
A miniature Dagonet blew a giant, soggy raspberry behind my eyes, daring me to make an assessment and act on that assessment. Food, blood--which hunger growls loudest? I reached down and drew strength from the words of not some well-meaning yet ultimately demeaning doctor, but a well-meaning yet ultimately demeaning father: "Don't run away from a challenge. Walk with it. Take a hold of its hand, look it directly in the eye, and let it know--you will not back down."
I dropped the bag in front of my feet, eyes glued to their broken blue counterparts, relishing the surge of confidence, face fixed into a grin I prayed matched my inner delirium.
I waited for Eggy to make a move. When he didn't, I did, stomping the bag's contents into a cheesy, meaty, starchy mess.
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After 120 hours, release day arrived. Once a big day for the music industry, still a big day for the mental health industry. Before my breath could rejoin the breeze, though, I'd need to hop aboard the "cut-loose carousel," providing short, sincere answers to loaded questions while a hospital worker filled out a form on my behalf while also scrutinizing me, ready to leap over the table and place me in a full nelson at the first indication of trouble.
My replies felt sincere.
Knuckle-down time. Slip off the old, slide on the new. Breathe in the sun, pay off the brittle plastic. That seven-layer dip I always see at the grocery and wonder, Who in hell would pay for that? I knew the answer.
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Egghead gaped, devastated. I was one well-timed endorphin rush from gripping my junk while busting out a James Brown ad-lib.
"You're nuts!" he spluttered. I prepared for a blow to the chin, a bop to the nose. He had no response--at least, not a direct one. His skin paled. His bruises darkened. The moisture abandoned his lips.
Victory was mine to seal. Soundlessly, I walked on past his frozen form, past the flattened food, never looking back to see if the poor guy had torn some skin off his knees.
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Surfaces rule. They promote falsehoods, and earn reams of praise. My mother uses recordings of waves as a sleep aid. She claims it's not only the sounds which soothe, it's also the everlasting images they arouse in her brain, lustrous blue and foaming white, serene and familiar.
Mom's mind is never invaded by visions of the ghastly hazards that dwell underneath the gorgeous immensity--sizable creatures with nightmarish appearances, some with flesh-shredding teeth, others bearing venomous gifts, none of them amenable to outsiders.
I am visited by such visions often.
Freedom is earning six figures, parenting obedient children, owning a golden gun. So it stands to reason I'll never be free.
