The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [84]
Mark went bonkers. What does it mean?
I just couldn’t get into thinking about it much. So much had happened, I had so much more raw material than anyone imagined, that I could spend the rest of my life sorting it out and just barely scratch the surface of “What does it mean?”
Maybe I didn’t think much about it because of all the Thorazine they had pumped into me. Thorazine makes thinking pretty unprofitable proposition. Or maybe when enough people tell you you’re crazy you lose a certain amount of interest in trying to figure things out. Who wants to take a nut’s word for something even if that nut happens to be you? Another thing was that being in a nut house was small change compared with most of the things I had been convinced were happening. “Oh, I’ve been committed to an institution for the mentally disturbed. Well, if that’s all it is, why bother me with it? I was worried for a bit there that something bad had happened.”
GETTING OUT. The first time was a funny combination of running away and being discharged.
Dr. Dale, who was in charge of me, had to go to some conference in Hawaii. He was going to be gone only a week and left orders that I was not to be discharged until his return. In the meantime, Dr. McNice was in charge of me.
I had been ready to leave as soon as I got there. I recognized that that might have been foolish. I had been in strange shape and a mental hospital was as good a place as any to put me. But that was then, a whole two and a half weeks ago. I was OK now. I didn’t want to spend an extra minute in that place.
If I stayed in that hospital till Dale got back I’d go nuts again. Those stupid rules, those stupid nurses, stupid orderlies, that awful food, all those nuts wandering around doing crazy things. Also, there was no guarantee that I’d be let out as soon as Dale got back. All he had said was that we could talk about it then.
How could I convince a man who drove Cadillacs, wore baby-blue alligator shoes, etc., that I was sane? Why should I have to?
I recognized his brief absence as a golden opportunity that might not come again. Dr. McNice was a soft touch for mysticism and literature and had a bit of sympathy for hippiedom. A liberal. If there was one thing my life had taught me, it was how to manipulate liberals.
I didn’t think I was being tricky or devious at the time. I was just trying to have the reasonable thing happen: my getting the fuck out of the nut house.
After a few more urbane chats about medieval mystics, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jung, and the fallacies in Freud’s essays on religion, we decided my brain was in working order.
“I feel fine. I have a place to go with good people who love me and want me back.”
What liberal, especially after such a nice chat, could say no? According to Dr. McNice, I had my walking papers. The staff was split. The nurses seemed to run about two to one against my being dischargeable. The orderlies were two to one in favor. I packed up my things and did the best I could to avoid the controversy.
Virginia was going to pick me up in the morning. Back to the farm, back to Zeke, back to where life made sense.
I asked some nurses who were in charge of such things to fill me in about what the pills I had been taking were and if they would give me some to take along in case I started getting shaky again. I met with no real information, a firm “no” to taking any pills with me, and thinly veiled threats about cops. I split during the opposition’s coffee break. It was March 7. Three weeks of Hollywood was plenty.
If disease was a cleansing process I was some clean. My ideals, hopes, friends, and life style had all come through it with me. We had been tried and had come forth as gold.
We wasted no time. After a brief visit to Stevens Street, we were on a ferry an hour or so after my exit. Virginia had Simon’s car.
If misunderstandings between Virge