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Now he averted his eyes whenever we passed in the hall. He avoided me, my parents and friends as politely as he could. When cornered, he was evasive.

We figured that Dale must have given him hell for letting me get away, and then when I returned a few weeks later in even worse shape than I had been on my first admission, McNice was lucky to still have a job. Dale must have given him strict orders to have nothing whatsoever to do with my case.

And it was my fault. Poor me. In spite of myself, I was the most telling argument against all that he and I and all my friends and humanitarians everywhere wanted to be true.

I looked in a mirror. “Mark, you’re the best argument fascism ever had.”

I had worked my way out of the locked wards. Even had all my own clothes back. I was in one of the best rooms. I had been supergood for what seemed like an awfully long time. The doctors said I was doing well. The nurses and orderlies thought likewise. The patients all thought I was OK. My mother and Virginia seemed to think I was OK.

All Dale would say when I hinted about getting out was that we’d talk about it later. He started getting stingy with his information again. Maybe he just didn’t have any more. It was back to “You’ve been a very sick boy. We don’t have all the answers.”

I found myself sobbing uncontrollably, scared to death they were going to catch me at it and lock me up in that little room again.

I was crying because, among other things, I was doubtful that they were ever going to let me out. They were very much “them” and I was cracking under the strain of trying so hard to be patient and not knowing how long I’d have to keep it up. Sure enough they caught me at it. “I suppose it’s not manly to cry. I suppose this means I’m nuts.” But they didn’t zap me into the little room. The nurse even sat down and comforted me some and said crying was OK. It didn’t mean I was crazy. It didn’t mean I wasn’t a man. I cried with her holding my hand for a while.

Then Ray showed up. I think the nurse asked me if I’d be more comfortable talking with a man.

I had seen Ray around the hospital before but never really talked with him. He looked maybe a couple of years older than I. He was my version of what I would have been had it not been for the war, dope, the draft, America, Virginia, whatever this biological condition was that they kept talking about, and a few other things. I too would have been a bright, earnest, clean-shaven young man, very possibly a clinical psychologist. My feelings toward him were a mixture of envy and superiority. He seemed so naïve. I didn’t know whether to thank or hate whatever it was that had me turn out differently from him.

“A whole lot of shit happened to me all at once.”

The talk I had with Ray wasn’t all that extraordinary except that it was the first time I had talked about things in a down-to-earth way. He was the first person whose attitudes toward what I was going through seemed remotely related to mine. I felt that he liked me. It was the first time I had felt that in a long time, too. I didn’t feel threatened or abused or greatly misunderstood.

“My woman went off and balled another man… My parents are breaking up…

“A whole lot of shit happened all at once,” was what it all boiled down to.

I talked some about the hospital and not understanding at all how the score was being kept. What sort of things did I do that were considered crazy? What sort of things did I have to do to be considered well?

I talked about feeling horny and wishing there was some way to get laid. I talked about there being nothing to do and wishing I could at least take some long walks. I asked him why they had held me down and shaved off my beard and cut my hair. Wasn’t that maybe not such a hot thing to do to someone who was having a hard enough time identifying with his body and trying to believe this wasn’t a repressive institution, hostile to everything that had ever meant anything to me?

He offered to take me on a walk the next day. It was a