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Punishing cold supposed to lift today. It was zero when I awakened and already it’s up to a tropical eight degrees!
Had a brief but satisfying chat with Max who told me something funny. I’d mentioned to him some time ago that the first time I saw a person talking on a mobile phone headset I’d thought, “Man, what a well-dressed schizophrenic.” It only occurred to me some hours later what he’d been doing.
So then I realized that all those of us who like to shuffle along and mutter to ourselves occasionally – guilty! guilty! – needed to do in order to avoid the “Weird” tag was to take out our cell phones and use them as props.
Max somehow misheard me as saying that cell phone were talismans for distressed psychological states and recounted an recent acid trip where he ran into some rocks, started remembering that conversation with me, whipped out his phone, and immediately… felt better.
“I’m afraid you’re going to turn into your Aunt Jane when you get older,” he told me then. “Mad and reclusive.”
“Not likely,” I said.
“Well, you’re halfway there now, aren’t you?”
“Max, Max, Max,” I said. “I’m not reclusive. The fact is that I should never have moved to Monterey. My entire support network was in the Bay Area. I had lots and lots of friends in the Bay Area. Friends and casual social acquaintances. In retrospect, that was a very bad move.”
“Well, I was only eight when we moved to Monterey so I really don’t remember very well.”
“Right. And that part of it worked out well. You had a great childhood. Maybe you would have had one in Oakland too. I don’t know. But I wanted to make sure of it.”
“But you put your own happiness on hold. And you’re doing that again with Robin. No offense, but that seems kind of crazy.”
“Yeah. I can understand why you say that. But the thing is…” I took a deep breath. “I think because of the incredibly dysfunctional way I was brought up, on some deep, deep level I’m incapable of happiness. I mean my life could be perfect in all outward respects and I’d still feel this deep sense of personal despair. It’s just who I am. So being happy has never been a personal goal for me. But your happiness, Robin’s happiness, could be goals. So I’ve lived my life since the two of you were born as much as possible to ensure that. Trust me, before you were born, I was a very different person.”
“Sounds awful,” he said.
“I’m not trying to guilt trip you! It’s given me pleasure to break the curse, as it were. To make sure the Greek-tragedy-cm-House-of-Atreus ended with the curtain down on me, not you. But anyway, in June my life will change dramatically and I think I will go back to being the person I was before you were born.”
“So the past two and a half years have been hard?”
“So hard, Max. I can’t even begin to describe it.”
“How did you manage to survive it?”
“I have – I guess in psychological terms, you’d call it a dissociative personality. There’s always a part of me – the narrator part of me, I suppose – that remains somewhat detached from the present tense. That says, Now, now – this too shall pass, and other comforting things. I suppose that’s my legacy from all those acid trips because I can remember exactly when it sprang up –“
“When?”
“Well. I always did very well on LSD so long as I could stay outside, but the minute I went into a confined space I began to hallucinate intensely. So somehow late one night, I ended up in a supermarket stoned out of my gourd on blotter and I was freaking big time. I mean, supermarkets are kind of the temple of American consumerism, you know? All that creativity going into differentiating 20 products that are essentially all the same. It was just mind boggling to me, I felt like I was lost in it and there was no way out. And all of a sudden I heard a voice in my head, I mean heard it literally.”
“And what did the voice say?”
“The voice said, The exit is exactly 10 yards to your right. Start walking. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. And the voice got me out of the supermarket without a 5150, and it’s been with me ever since, in one way or another. I mean, not as a literal voice. But as an inward guide. My nanny!”
“That’s fascinating,” Max said.
“Ummmm. That voice is what got me through the last two and a half years. Only failed me once.”
“When was that?”
“About six months after I got here. Ben had just walked out on me. Robin was at summer camp. I was – as usual – completely broke. And alone. And despairing. And I’d stockpiled pills. And I thought, I can’t do this anymore. You know, it’s really kind of an odd place, that suicide place.”
“I’ve never been there,” Max said.
“Good! That means I did my job right as a mother.”
“I’ve known a lot of people who’ve been there, though.”
“And now you know another one.”
“What did you do?”
“I called Jeanna. She talked me down. She tried to commit suicide once, a very long time ago, so she knew the drill. She was strung out on smack at the time and actually got as far as an intentional overdose. But woke up in the psych ward of the local hospital: One of her no-account drug buddies had the presence of mind to call 911.”
“Jeanna!”
“Yes, Jeanna. Pillar of the local business community today and I’d have to say, for all intents and purposes, a reasonably happy human being. She did a very good job of putting her life back together. Big props to her.”
“I’m glad you called her.”
“Yes. Well, it took some… I don’t know what you would call it. About a week before the suicide fest, I’d ended up in the emergency room. I’d come down with some sort of flu and started vomiting. I couldn’t keep anything down. And this went on for days, I was completely dehydrated, and I was lying in bed and all of a sudden it occurred to me – I was seriously sick, like I was no longer even a little bit in control of my own body. I needed outside intervention and I needed it fast. Calling Jeanna felt exactly like that.”
Had a brief but satisfying chat with Max who told me something funny. I’d mentioned to him some time ago that the first time I saw a person talking on a mobile phone headset I’d thought, “Man, what a well-dressed schizophrenic.” It only occurred to me some hours later what he’d been doing.
So then I realized that all those of us who like to shuffle along and mutter to ourselves occasionally – guilty! guilty! – needed to do in order to avoid the “Weird” tag was to take out our cell phones and use them as props.
Max somehow misheard me as saying that cell phone were talismans for distressed psychological states and recounted an recent acid trip where he ran into some rocks, started remembering that conversation with me, whipped out his phone, and immediately… felt better.
“I’m afraid you’re going to turn into your Aunt Jane when you get older,” he told me then. “Mad and reclusive.”
“Not likely,” I said.
“Well, you’re halfway there now, aren’t you?”
“Max, Max, Max,” I said. “I’m not reclusive. The fact is that I should never have moved to Monterey. My entire support network was in the Bay Area. I had lots and lots of friends in the Bay Area. Friends and casual social acquaintances. In retrospect, that was a very bad move.”
“Well, I was only eight when we moved to Monterey so I really don’t remember very well.”
“Right. And that part of it worked out well. You had a great childhood. Maybe you would have had one in Oakland too. I don’t know. But I wanted to make sure of it.”
“But you put your own happiness on hold. And you’re doing that again with Robin. No offense, but that seems kind of crazy.”
“Yeah. I can understand why you say that. But the thing is…” I took a deep breath. “I think because of the incredibly dysfunctional way I was brought up, on some deep, deep level I’m incapable of happiness. I mean my life could be perfect in all outward respects and I’d still feel this deep sense of personal despair. It’s just who I am. So being happy has never been a personal goal for me. But your happiness, Robin’s happiness, could be goals. So I’ve lived my life since the two of you were born as much as possible to ensure that. Trust me, before you were born, I was a very different person.”
“Sounds awful,” he said.
“I’m not trying to guilt trip you! It’s given me pleasure to break the curse, as it were. To make sure the Greek-tragedy-cm-House-of-Atreus ended with the curtain down on me, not you. But anyway, in June my life will change dramatically and I think I will go back to being the person I was before you were born.”
“So the past two and a half years have been hard?”
“So hard, Max. I can’t even begin to describe it.”
“How did you manage to survive it?”
“I have – I guess in psychological terms, you’d call it a dissociative personality. There’s always a part of me – the narrator part of me, I suppose – that remains somewhat detached from the present tense. That says, Now, now – this too shall pass, and other comforting things. I suppose that’s my legacy from all those acid trips because I can remember exactly when it sprang up –“
“When?”
“Well. I always did very well on LSD so long as I could stay outside, but the minute I went into a confined space I began to hallucinate intensely. So somehow late one night, I ended up in a supermarket stoned out of my gourd on blotter and I was freaking big time. I mean, supermarkets are kind of the temple of American consumerism, you know? All that creativity going into differentiating 20 products that are essentially all the same. It was just mind boggling to me, I felt like I was lost in it and there was no way out. And all of a sudden I heard a voice in my head, I mean heard it literally.”
“And what did the voice say?”
“The voice said, The exit is exactly 10 yards to your right. Start walking. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. And the voice got me out of the supermarket without a 5150, and it’s been with me ever since, in one way or another. I mean, not as a literal voice. But as an inward guide. My nanny!”
“That’s fascinating,” Max said.
“Ummmm. That voice is what got me through the last two and a half years. Only failed me once.”
“When was that?”
“About six months after I got here. Ben had just walked out on me. Robin was at summer camp. I was – as usual – completely broke. And alone. And despairing. And I’d stockpiled pills. And I thought, I can’t do this anymore. You know, it’s really kind of an odd place, that suicide place.”
“I’ve never been there,” Max said.
“Good! That means I did my job right as a mother.”
“I’ve known a lot of people who’ve been there, though.”
“And now you know another one.”
“What did you do?”
“I called Jeanna. She talked me down. She tried to commit suicide once, a very long time ago, so she knew the drill. She was strung out on smack at the time and actually got as far as an intentional overdose. But woke up in the psych ward of the local hospital: One of her no-account drug buddies had the presence of mind to call 911.”
“Jeanna!”
“Yes, Jeanna. Pillar of the local business community today and I’d have to say, for all intents and purposes, a reasonably happy human being. She did a very good job of putting her life back together. Big props to her.”
“I’m glad you called her.”
“Yes. Well, it took some… I don’t know what you would call it. About a week before the suicide fest, I’d ended up in the emergency room. I’d come down with some sort of flu and started vomiting. I couldn’t keep anything down. And this went on for days, I was completely dehydrated, and I was lying in bed and all of a sudden it occurred to me – I was seriously sick, like I was no longer even a little bit in control of my own body. I needed outside intervention and I needed it fast. Calling Jeanna felt exactly like that.”
