The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [85]
“Virge, our sex life has been a disaster from the word go. Part my fault but part yours too. You’re all screwed up about men. Every time I’ve tried to talk about sex, you get rigid as a board. Don’t you know you’re denying yourself and it sure isn’t doing me any favors?
“And other stuff too. Ninety percent of your new-age liberation stuff is full of shit rhetoric masking a scared little girl. Probably half the things I think are all screwball, but that’s ’cause I had to figure them out all by myself with no outside feedback. Whatever else happens, I’m not going to keep any of this shit buried inside any more.”
She didn’t seem terribly interested in responding to any of this. Maybe there was something that eclipsed this stuff and made it irrelevant.
“Mark, you’re sane, you’re very sane,” was about all she could muster. She seemed afraid of me. I had never seen that before.
There were several things that needed asserting. I was not crazy. I had not been permanently damaged. I was no god-damned invalid. Being dismissed, coddled, or humored was not my idea of a good time. I wanted to fight all the screwy conclusions people might want to draw from my going bonkers. Conclusions about me, the farm, Virge, my parents. Conclusions about the past, about the present, about the future. I’ve never been much of a conclusion fan anyway, and the ones people seemed most likely to draw were simplistic and insulting to boot.
Energetic and tough as nails as I was, there were several things worrying me. One was what had gone on in all those blanks. I knew about the picture window, running around naked, and a few other antics, but had I seriously hurt anyone, possibly even killed them? Had I unforgivably insulted anyone? Those blanks could have been filled with anything.
Was medical information being withheld from me for my own good? A brain tumor? Something incurable that was going to land me in the bin over and over again and again no matter what I or anyone else did or didn’t do?
And what had happened to the rest of the world while I was away? Was there news about my family or friends or the world situation that I’d be told about as soon as they decided I could take it?
Would everybody be afraid of me?
And still in the back of my mind was the suspicion that, crazy as I had been, there were some very real and valuable things back there, and just what did that mean?
It was a lovely day for a ferry ride. So nice to walk around without nurses and ass-busting orderlies everywhere.
Simon and good old Car Car were waiting in the parking lot at the Works. The place had changed ownership, which upset me some. I wondered about the wonderful waitress I was sort of in love with. I wondered if she was unhappy about it, though I figured she’d do just fine wherever she was, whatever happened. The mill stacks were, per usual, spewing forth their poison puke. B.C.’s prime minister called it the smell of money. The world’s largest pulp mill, using three times as much water a day as New York City. What kind of neighbor was that for Eden? Just one more thing my going crazy hadn’t managed to put much of a dent in. Nixon was going to visit China. That was a step in the right direction, but there were just as many cars on the road as ever. My parents were tentatively getting back together, but I didn’t really know whether I wanted that or not. Bengalis were still starving. I don’t remember what the Dow Jones was doing. Virginia was treating me with a new respect, a new caring. Maybe something good would come out of all this.
We went out to Prior Road. Virginia and Simon got into his car and I into mine. It was the way I wanted it. Being trusted to drive my car alone was a big step. They drove behind me, which bugged me slightly. I wondered if they had planned it.
Zeke was waiting for us at Prior Road, in exile from the farm because Tanga was in heat. He was suitably excited