And what’s happening to my car while I’m in here? I’ll tell you what’s happening: those two are running around the countryside in it. She’s added her name to the insurance – cheeky cow.
Still, what does it matter; I think I’m going to give up driving – too many cars on the road. Gridlocked – that’s what we’ll be in ten year’s time. But where will I be in ten year’s time. I get depressed thinking about it. I looked at my hand in bed this morning – yes I know, I’ve done this before – I thought: you used to have the skin of a young boy; what have you done with it – got it all wrinkled, that’s what you’ve done. It looks like a tortoise’s neck.
Deepak Chopra says you can reverse the ageing process – but he’s in California, and I’m in a psychiatric ward in the middle of England.
As I was musing upon these things, Clive walked by. I said to him ‘Clive, what are we living FOR?’ And when it’s all over, where do we GO?
Clive is a poet and he speaks in verse:
Where do you go to when you die?
Do you go up to a home in the sky?
Or do you come back, as a wasp or a fly?
It’s a bugger to live, and a bugger to die.
I said ‘Thanks Clive, you’ve been a great help.
He nodded sagely:
Many are called but few are chosen,
Some get thawed but most stay frozen;
Be prepared –
Sleep with your clothes on.
I was about to tell him that he had said that before, when the ward doors swung open with a clatter, and Greta came in pushing the medicine trolley. At the sound of the trolley, Clive bolted for the lavatories. He always tries to avoid taking his medication – says it drives away the muse. But Greta always finds him.
‘Nothing for you today, George’ she announces breezily.
‘Are you sure?’ I am surprised.
‘Yep – Amanda’s orders. Oh, and she wants to see you at 2.0pm.’
‘What about’
She wags a finger. ‘Now George, she’s not going to tell me, is she – she’s the engineer, I’m just the oily rag.’
‘You could give me a rub down any day.’ I quip.
She laughs. She thinks I’m joking.
But I am worried. Why would Amanda want to see me today? And I remember the scribbled blog address. I head for the lavatory.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Condoms on the car park
I was walking across the car park (24 hours surveillance has now been dropped - orders of Amanda) and I noticed a used condom. And these lines came back to me:
The sordid limpness of a used French-letter -
I had to use one 'til I knew you better...
(Anon)
Actually, this one must have been used a few days ago: it had been driven over by many car tyres and was not so much limp as dried out in the dust; like a flower pressed between the pages of a book: poignant, beautiful in its own way.
And I got to thinking, who might have used this once sleek sheath of pleasure. Who was on the inside, who was on the outside? What deep and abiding love was consummated here. Or was it sudden uncontrollable lust that was satisfied here on this grey expanse of tarmac? Well, I don’t suppose it was on the tarmac itself; although knowing some of the staff here, it would not surprise me. Oh yes! It was the STAFF car park!
But what concerned me most was the problem of litter. You'd have thought whoever it was might have taken it home with them. Nowadays you get fined for letting your dog's shit foul public places so why shouldn't a fine be imposed on those who leave their own bodily fluids fouling car parks?
I am going to put a suggestion in the hospital suggestion-box to the effect that a notice should be posted at the entrance to the car park:
"You are welcome to shag on this car park - provided you have ‘paid and displayed’ - but please take your litter home with you. A fine of £50 will be imposed on all those leaving used condoms, semen-stained Kleenex, articles of clothing or other evidence of sexual activity on the car park.
A special bin will be provided, clearly labelled ‘Sexual Detritus’ and painted green to distinguish it from the normal black waste bins.”
I jotted a few notes down in the margins of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ I was carrying and continued my stroll.
But something from the events of last night kept nibbling at the edge of my consciousness. I pulled from my jacket pocket the piece of paper Amanda had given me. Yes, there was another address, right at the bottom. It had been scribbled out and I had to peer closely but – Yes, I thought it looked familiar: www.brokeneenglish.blogspot.com. - The princess of darkness herself!
Why would my psychiatrist have a note of my wife’s blog?
The icy fingers of paranoia grope my entrails.
The sordid limpness of a used French-letter -
I had to use one 'til I knew you better...
(Anon)
Actually, this one must have been used a few days ago: it had been driven over by many car tyres and was not so much limp as dried out in the dust; like a flower pressed between the pages of a book: poignant, beautiful in its own way.
And I got to thinking, who might have used this once sleek sheath of pleasure. Who was on the inside, who was on the outside? What deep and abiding love was consummated here. Or was it sudden uncontrollable lust that was satisfied here on this grey expanse of tarmac? Well, I don’t suppose it was on the tarmac itself; although knowing some of the staff here, it would not surprise me. Oh yes! It was the STAFF car park!
But what concerned me most was the problem of litter. You'd have thought whoever it was might have taken it home with them. Nowadays you get fined for letting your dog's shit foul public places so why shouldn't a fine be imposed on those who leave their own bodily fluids fouling car parks?
I am going to put a suggestion in the hospital suggestion-box to the effect that a notice should be posted at the entrance to the car park:
"You are welcome to shag on this car park - provided you have ‘paid and displayed’ - but please take your litter home with you. A fine of £50 will be imposed on all those leaving used condoms, semen-stained Kleenex, articles of clothing or other evidence of sexual activity on the car park.
A special bin will be provided, clearly labelled ‘Sexual Detritus’ and painted green to distinguish it from the normal black waste bins.”
I jotted a few notes down in the margins of the ‘Daily Telegraph’ I was carrying and continued my stroll.
But something from the events of last night kept nibbling at the edge of my consciousness. I pulled from my jacket pocket the piece of paper Amanda had given me. Yes, there was another address, right at the bottom. It had been scribbled out and I had to peer closely but – Yes, I thought it looked familiar: www.brokeneenglish.blogspot.com. - The princess of darkness herself!
Why would my psychiatrist have a note of my wife’s blog?
The icy fingers of paranoia grope my entrails.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Getting down to it
Why do they call it a BLOW-job? A misnomer if ever there was.
Amanda says that’s part of my trouble: too much attention to detail. She’s even hinted that I might be anal-retentive. What a cheek! But it wasn’t so much that as the other stuff she said, out there in the woods.
She began by asking me if I was familiar with Melanie Klein and the Kleinians…
- I certainly am; greatest rock band to come out of Austria. I never miss one of their concerts.
- Oh very amusing.
- Well of course I know about Kleinian theory: Object Relations and all that stuff.
- There’s more to it that that.
- Okay: It’s about how we deceive ourselves as to our desires, intentions, beliefs and how these create conflicts between our expressed goals and our actions.
- That’s a textbook definition.
- I got it from a textbook.
- Also it defines psychodynamic therapy in general. It does not say much about a Kleinian approach.
- Okay, you tell me then.
- I would like you to consider a possibility: All the women you have had relationships with – you didn’t really want to fuck them, did you?
- I don’t know what you mean.
- Oh I am not saying you didn’t enjoy it, in some sense, despite the heavy burden of sin and guilt. But what I AM saying is that it was not the primary motive in starting the affair, relationship, call it what you like.
- So what was then?
- Georgina, Anastasia, Carol and all the rest – and yes, even me, are all… how can I put this… opportunities, challenges.
- For what?
- For 'getting it right'. For getting ‘right’ your relationship with your mother all those years ago. A relationship you could never get right and never CAN get right. You know this deep down but you cannot accept it. So you keep trying. That is why your relationships all end the way they do.
- You mean I see you as my mother?
- No, I do not mean that, and you are smart enough to know it. So stop playing games.
- Ouch!
- That’s better. Until you confront and admit the reality you will never move forward. You know that intellectually , after all you are ‘in the trade’, as you keep telling us. But you’ve got to know it in your body – in your very being. And that is what tonight is all about. Unorthodox yes. But who gives a shit about orthodoxy.
I couldn’t think of anything to say after that, and in any case we had arrived back at the hospital. But before I got out of the car she said something rather strange. She said ‘George, despite all your "experience" you really don’t know an awful lot about women.’
Well, as you can imagine, I was flabbergasted.
‘But’ she went on ‘I like you and I think you are worth the effort, so we are going to continue with the therapy.’
I was thinking, well you arrogant bitch, but before I could say anything she pressed a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Next time you’re on the internet have a look at this website’ she said.
I’ve got the paper in front of me now – www.goodgirlzoot@blogspot.com
Well if she thinks I’m going to look at some feminist propaganda she’s got another think coming.
I’ll keep it for now though – just in case I change my mind.
Amanda says that’s part of my trouble: too much attention to detail. She’s even hinted that I might be anal-retentive. What a cheek! But it wasn’t so much that as the other stuff she said, out there in the woods.
She began by asking me if I was familiar with Melanie Klein and the Kleinians…
- I certainly am; greatest rock band to come out of Austria. I never miss one of their concerts.
- Oh very amusing.
- Well of course I know about Kleinian theory: Object Relations and all that stuff.
- There’s more to it that that.
- Okay: It’s about how we deceive ourselves as to our desires, intentions, beliefs and how these create conflicts between our expressed goals and our actions.
- That’s a textbook definition.
- I got it from a textbook.
- Also it defines psychodynamic therapy in general. It does not say much about a Kleinian approach.
- Okay, you tell me then.
- I would like you to consider a possibility: All the women you have had relationships with – you didn’t really want to fuck them, did you?
- I don’t know what you mean.
- Oh I am not saying you didn’t enjoy it, in some sense, despite the heavy burden of sin and guilt. But what I AM saying is that it was not the primary motive in starting the affair, relationship, call it what you like.
- So what was then?
- Georgina, Anastasia, Carol and all the rest – and yes, even me, are all… how can I put this… opportunities, challenges.
- For what?
- For 'getting it right'. For getting ‘right’ your relationship with your mother all those years ago. A relationship you could never get right and never CAN get right. You know this deep down but you cannot accept it. So you keep trying. That is why your relationships all end the way they do.
- You mean I see you as my mother?
- No, I do not mean that, and you are smart enough to know it. So stop playing games.
- Ouch!
- That’s better. Until you confront and admit the reality you will never move forward. You know that intellectually , after all you are ‘in the trade’, as you keep telling us. But you’ve got to know it in your body – in your very being. And that is what tonight is all about. Unorthodox yes. But who gives a shit about orthodoxy.
I couldn’t think of anything to say after that, and in any case we had arrived back at the hospital. But before I got out of the car she said something rather strange. She said ‘George, despite all your "experience" you really don’t know an awful lot about women.’
Well, as you can imagine, I was flabbergasted.
‘But’ she went on ‘I like you and I think you are worth the effort, so we are going to continue with the therapy.’
I was thinking, well you arrogant bitch, but before I could say anything she pressed a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Next time you’re on the internet have a look at this website’ she said.
I’ve got the paper in front of me now – www.goodgirlzoot@blogspot.com
Well if she thinks I’m going to look at some feminist propaganda she’s got another think coming.
I’ll keep it for now though – just in case I change my mind.
Friday, February 17, 2006
I had no idea I was so hungry. Amanda drove to an Indian restaurant on the other side of Grimley Woods. She ordered the vindaloo - I played safe with the Korma.
Have you ever watched people in restaurants? There is something obscene about the way they shovel food into their mouth, don't you think? And another thing: why is it ok to watch folk stuffing food into one end but not ok to watch it come out of the other? I wonder if it is something to do with the sexual organs being in such close proximity? But then again, the mouth is an extremely sexual organ. It is no coincidence that prostitutes (most of them) refuse to kiss their clients - at least so I am told.
Talking of sexual organs, I always think that the human body has been 'built down to a price' so to speak. I mean, making the excretory systems double for the sexual functions. If that is not cost-cutting I don't know what is.
On the way back. Amanda drives like a lunatic (oh, I have just realised the irony in that remark). She says she often has an orgasm whilst driving. Georgina couldn't achieve an orgasm whilst have sex - or was that just with me?
I am getting a sense of deja vu - all over again. I seem to remember saying that about Georgina somewhere before. But as I said, the old memory is going a bit so you will have to excuse me.
Amanda is speaking:
- I suppose you've heard the rumours about me and Freddie?
- Well, I...
- Does incest shock you?
- Not as long as you keep it in the family...... Sorry.
- We were not brought up together. Freddie’s father was a visiting American emeritus professor; Annie (our mother) was a research assistant at the time. She was quite a bit younger but evidently it was ‘love at first sight’. We don’t know the full details but when Freddie was two years old they split and his father took Freddie back to the states.
- Oh, I didn’t realise…
- I was born a year later – the result of a one-night stand - as Annie loves to tell me. I don’t think she even knew his name. Annie never told me about Freddie. Well, not for a long time.
- Look, you don’t have to explain all…
- Fast forward 27 years. I was a young trainee psychiatrist, working at The Maudesley. I got a year’s sabbatical to go to America to study exciting developments in the thinking regarding ‘Right-hemisphere syndromes’. That’s where I met Freddie: The University of Chicago, a freezing cold November evening – he was giving a lecture. God, I was bowled over; not by his looks – well, you’ve seen him – but by his mind. You could call it ‘love at first syllable’ – sorry!
- Why are you telling me all this?
- We made love that first night. Neither of us knew that we were related, let alone step brother and sister.
- How long before you… er… found out?
- Not for over a year. We were going to get married but I though I should first take him home to meet my mother – who turned out to be HIS mother.
- So what happened, I mean…
- It isn’t important.
- I’m sorry.
- Have you read ‘The man who mistook his wife for a hat’?
- Oliver Sachs? Of course, it was required reading for my diploma.
- That’s Freddie’s field: neuropsychology; but in particular the study of right-hemisphere syndromes. He’s been published. Not as famous as Ollie of course, but well respected among his peers.
- But what has all this to do with me?
- Did you know that it is impossible for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know their own problems?
- Why are you looking at me like that?
Instead of answering she slowed down and swung the car into a small lane – well it was little more than a cart track, the car lurching over ruts and bumps. If I’d have owned a Porsche I would not have treated it like that. She stopped and switched off the engine.
Have you ever watched people in restaurants? There is something obscene about the way they shovel food into their mouth, don't you think? And another thing: why is it ok to watch folk stuffing food into one end but not ok to watch it come out of the other? I wonder if it is something to do with the sexual organs being in such close proximity? But then again, the mouth is an extremely sexual organ. It is no coincidence that prostitutes (most of them) refuse to kiss their clients - at least so I am told.
Talking of sexual organs, I always think that the human body has been 'built down to a price' so to speak. I mean, making the excretory systems double for the sexual functions. If that is not cost-cutting I don't know what is.
On the way back. Amanda drives like a lunatic (oh, I have just realised the irony in that remark). She says she often has an orgasm whilst driving. Georgina couldn't achieve an orgasm whilst have sex - or was that just with me?
I am getting a sense of deja vu - all over again. I seem to remember saying that about Georgina somewhere before. But as I said, the old memory is going a bit so you will have to excuse me.
Amanda is speaking:
- I suppose you've heard the rumours about me and Freddie?
- Well, I...
- Does incest shock you?
- Not as long as you keep it in the family...... Sorry.
- We were not brought up together. Freddie’s father was a visiting American emeritus professor; Annie (our mother) was a research assistant at the time. She was quite a bit younger but evidently it was ‘love at first sight’. We don’t know the full details but when Freddie was two years old they split and his father took Freddie back to the states.
- Oh, I didn’t realise…
- I was born a year later – the result of a one-night stand - as Annie loves to tell me. I don’t think she even knew his name. Annie never told me about Freddie. Well, not for a long time.
- Look, you don’t have to explain all…
- Fast forward 27 years. I was a young trainee psychiatrist, working at The Maudesley. I got a year’s sabbatical to go to America to study exciting developments in the thinking regarding ‘Right-hemisphere syndromes’. That’s where I met Freddie: The University of Chicago, a freezing cold November evening – he was giving a lecture. God, I was bowled over; not by his looks – well, you’ve seen him – but by his mind. You could call it ‘love at first syllable’ – sorry!
- Why are you telling me all this?
- We made love that first night. Neither of us knew that we were related, let alone step brother and sister.
- How long before you… er… found out?
- Not for over a year. We were going to get married but I though I should first take him home to meet my mother – who turned out to be HIS mother.
- So what happened, I mean…
- It isn’t important.
- I’m sorry.
- Have you read ‘The man who mistook his wife for a hat’?
- Oliver Sachs? Of course, it was required reading for my diploma.
- That’s Freddie’s field: neuropsychology; but in particular the study of right-hemisphere syndromes. He’s been published. Not as famous as Ollie of course, but well respected among his peers.
- But what has all this to do with me?
- Did you know that it is impossible for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know their own problems?
- Why are you looking at me like that?
Instead of answering she slowed down and swung the car into a small lane – well it was little more than a cart track, the car lurching over ruts and bumps. If I’d have owned a Porsche I would not have treated it like that. She stopped and switched off the engine.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Sin and Amanda
“He wasn’t good at forgiving himself, even for things he’d never done”
(The ‘SAS’ vicar – Frank Collins)
I used to think I was ‘steeped in sin’ – I think I must have heard the phrase before, somewhere. Sin and guilt: two feelings that keep the psychiatrists in business the world over. I don’t think they are really feelings; feelings are raw, primal, basic things. Sin and guilt are learned concepts. Where do we learn them? In the family, at school, in church. (When I was about eleven and attending ‘confirmation classes’, we were told by the unmarried vicar that masturbation was a sin – in fact, come to think about it, he called it self abuse)
I may have mentioned that I have a friend who is a Christian but is not very happy with ‘Organised Religion’.
Okay – what about DISorganised Religion!
Here are a few basic tenets:
We don’t know WHAT we believe in - but we believe in SOMETHING.
We worship at the altar of doubt.
Our God is not a jealous God.
We do not smite anybody.
We do not have a duty to convert – or kill – non-believers.
Tolerance and respect are more important than certainty.
We are allowed to wear brown boots at a funeral.
(I am going to ask the rest of the ward for suggestions)
Amanda opens the wardrobe door and produces a bottle of gin and two glasses. I am not sure I should be doing this.
- What, having a drink with your psychiatrist?
- You know what I mean: being here, with you, in this room.
- You seemed happy enough to be in my consulting room.
- Yes, but you know… this is your BEDroom.
- No, it is my overnight duty room – does the bed bother you?
- Well…
- Consider this therapy.
- Therapy… how do you mean?
- I am helping you with your ‘sin and guilt’ complex – on a practical level. You are a therapist (or were) you know all about CBT… exposure and response prevention?
- Well yes, but…
- You have a problem with sex – no, don’t interrupt. Despite all your affairs and philandering you have a real problem: sin and guilt. Every time you have sex you feel that you have ‘sinned’ – I mean at really deep level. And along with this sin comes guilt. Oh yes, you have sex but you always feel guilty afterwards. And you know why?
- Because if I feel guilty I am somehow protecting myself …
- Against what?
- Punishment, I guess.
- So you punish yourself in order to escape some higher punishment?
- I’ve never thought of it like that, but yes I suppose I do.
- So you are afraid to be happy – because you associate being happy with some kind of punishment. I wonder what really happened to poor five year old George… way back there?
- I don’t know.
- I do – or at least I have a good idea.
- (silence)
- You see sex (at a really deep level) as some kind of sin. But it is a basic need – like food. Tell me this: if you were hungry would you consider it a sin to have a good meal?
- No, of course not.
- Well right now I’m fuckin’ starving - so finish your gin and lets tuck in.
(The ‘SAS’ vicar – Frank Collins)
I used to think I was ‘steeped in sin’ – I think I must have heard the phrase before, somewhere. Sin and guilt: two feelings that keep the psychiatrists in business the world over. I don’t think they are really feelings; feelings are raw, primal, basic things. Sin and guilt are learned concepts. Where do we learn them? In the family, at school, in church. (When I was about eleven and attending ‘confirmation classes’, we were told by the unmarried vicar that masturbation was a sin – in fact, come to think about it, he called it self abuse)
I may have mentioned that I have a friend who is a Christian but is not very happy with ‘Organised Religion’.
Okay – what about DISorganised Religion!
Here are a few basic tenets:
We don’t know WHAT we believe in - but we believe in SOMETHING.
We worship at the altar of doubt.
Our God is not a jealous God.
We do not smite anybody.
We do not have a duty to convert – or kill – non-believers.
Tolerance and respect are more important than certainty.
We are allowed to wear brown boots at a funeral.
(I am going to ask the rest of the ward for suggestions)
Amanda opens the wardrobe door and produces a bottle of gin and two glasses. I am not sure I should be doing this.
- What, having a drink with your psychiatrist?
- You know what I mean: being here, with you, in this room.
- You seemed happy enough to be in my consulting room.
- Yes, but you know… this is your BEDroom.
- No, it is my overnight duty room – does the bed bother you?
- Well…
- Consider this therapy.
- Therapy… how do you mean?
- I am helping you with your ‘sin and guilt’ complex – on a practical level. You are a therapist (or were) you know all about CBT… exposure and response prevention?
- Well yes, but…
- You have a problem with sex – no, don’t interrupt. Despite all your affairs and philandering you have a real problem: sin and guilt. Every time you have sex you feel that you have ‘sinned’ – I mean at really deep level. And along with this sin comes guilt. Oh yes, you have sex but you always feel guilty afterwards. And you know why?
- Because if I feel guilty I am somehow protecting myself …
- Against what?
- Punishment, I guess.
- So you punish yourself in order to escape some higher punishment?
- I’ve never thought of it like that, but yes I suppose I do.
- So you are afraid to be happy – because you associate being happy with some kind of punishment. I wonder what really happened to poor five year old George… way back there?
- I don’t know.
- I do – or at least I have a good idea.
- (silence)
- You see sex (at a really deep level) as some kind of sin. But it is a basic need – like food. Tell me this: if you were hungry would you consider it a sin to have a good meal?
- No, of course not.
- Well right now I’m fuckin’ starving - so finish your gin and lets tuck in.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
I used to sit and think a lot – now, in here, I mostly just sit. But when I DO think…
My body bears the imprint of the years
My cells remember
It’s all there -not just in the brain but
In the body
My blood hears voices from the playground
My heart thumps to a jazz beat
My veins resonate to harmonics
Set in motion long ago
Fear, Joy, Laughter, Ecstasy, Sadness
The creak of the marital mattress
The lying awake before dawn
The wondering why
The thrill as the motorbike cants and swings through the bend
The grinding of the dentist’s drill
The morning after taste of stale beer
The first time holding our newborn baby –
(You hold her like an unexploded bomb, they said)
The stomach lurch as the telephone rings
The thud-thud of the aeroplane’s wheels as we touch down
The taste of cigarettes and toothpaste on a kiss
The body is not just a vehicle for the brain, for the mind. It is YOU – at least while you are on this material plane of existence. So don’t despise Shakespeare’s ‘mortal coils’ after all, none of us are in a hurry to ‘shuffle them off’.
She switches on the small bedside lamp. Very tasteful, Amanda’s room. Not her consulting room, no, the one she uses when she does her stint of overnight duty in the hospital. I can’t help wondering how many other patients have been in here. I am going to tell myself that I am the first!
Nice pastel colours. Would you call that ‘rose pink’? I’m not much good on colours.
Not much in the way of furniture: an easy chair; chest of drawers; small wardrobe; bedside table (holding a carafe of water and a glass, and a telephone with an orange light on the top) and the bed - a single bed of course; well, perhaps it is what they call ‘three-quarter’. Enough room if you are careful!
Oh, and as she closes the door, I see there is a full-length mirror screwed to the back of it. I look up at the ceiling: just plain red emulsion. RED! A RED CEILING?
My mind goes back to that weekend in London with Georgina. We had not been married long and we stayed at this hotel – I forget what it was called, it was in Kensington Gardens – but the room was all done in red: red flock wallpaper. It reminded me of a brothel – not that I have ever been in one. But what a weekend that was. I caught a cold.
My body bears the imprint of the years
My cells remember
It’s all there -not just in the brain but
In the body
My blood hears voices from the playground
My heart thumps to a jazz beat
My veins resonate to harmonics
Set in motion long ago
Fear, Joy, Laughter, Ecstasy, Sadness
The creak of the marital mattress
The lying awake before dawn
The wondering why
The thrill as the motorbike cants and swings through the bend
The grinding of the dentist’s drill
The morning after taste of stale beer
The first time holding our newborn baby –
(You hold her like an unexploded bomb, they said)
The stomach lurch as the telephone rings
The thud-thud of the aeroplane’s wheels as we touch down
The taste of cigarettes and toothpaste on a kiss
The body is not just a vehicle for the brain, for the mind. It is YOU – at least while you are on this material plane of existence. So don’t despise Shakespeare’s ‘mortal coils’ after all, none of us are in a hurry to ‘shuffle them off’.
She switches on the small bedside lamp. Very tasteful, Amanda’s room. Not her consulting room, no, the one she uses when she does her stint of overnight duty in the hospital. I can’t help wondering how many other patients have been in here. I am going to tell myself that I am the first!
Nice pastel colours. Would you call that ‘rose pink’? I’m not much good on colours.
Not much in the way of furniture: an easy chair; chest of drawers; small wardrobe; bedside table (holding a carafe of water and a glass, and a telephone with an orange light on the top) and the bed - a single bed of course; well, perhaps it is what they call ‘three-quarter’. Enough room if you are careful!
Oh, and as she closes the door, I see there is a full-length mirror screwed to the back of it. I look up at the ceiling: just plain red emulsion. RED! A RED CEILING?
My mind goes back to that weekend in London with Georgina. We had not been married long and we stayed at this hotel – I forget what it was called, it was in Kensington Gardens – but the room was all done in red: red flock wallpaper. It reminded me of a brothel – not that I have ever been in one. But what a weekend that was. I caught a cold.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Nothing to do with me
“…the world is just a great Bedlam, where those who are more mad, lock up those that are less” Thomas Tyron
I have just come back from a session with Amanda. She had a black eye. I said to her – how did you get that?
- I trod on a garden rake, she replied.
I don’t believe her. Clive told me that he was passing her office yesterday and her and her brother were going at it ding dong. You could hear them shouting and swearing through the closed door. I think he has punched her.
Now I don’t hold with that – hitting a woman. Despite all our rows, I have never hit Georgina – and that’s not because she is bigger than me.
Anyway, my session with Amanda went very well. She asked me about when my dad came home from the war – remember I had not seen him for five years.
I was in the house with my friend, Andrew. And I can remember being all excited, mostly about what he might have brought me back from Egypt. I was also slightly embarrassed because I did not know how I was supposed to treat this ‘stranger’ who was now suddenly a part of our household.
I watched him unpack his kitbag in the kitchen. He handed me a penknife. Straightaway I went out into the shed with Andrew, and cut my finger. It was not some sort of symbolic act; I was trying it out on a piece of wood and it must have slipped.
Amanda gave me a strange look, and made a note on her pad. Oh I know what she was thinking – there are no such things as accidents. Well maybe not.
It bled quite a lot; nowadays I would have been taken down the ‘casualty’ to have it stitched but in those days no one would have dared to knock on the door of the ‘Cottage Hospital’ unannounced, unless you’d had you’d had your leg severed by a tram. The hospital was run by a formidable woman – her name was spoken in awe in the village – ‘Matron Bone’. If she told you it didn’t hurt, it didn’t.
A swell of emotion rises as I remember all of this and my eyes are wet. Amanda gets up and comes over to me. She is so close her perfume fills my head. What is going on here!
I have just come back from a session with Amanda. She had a black eye. I said to her – how did you get that?
- I trod on a garden rake, she replied.
I don’t believe her. Clive told me that he was passing her office yesterday and her and her brother were going at it ding dong. You could hear them shouting and swearing through the closed door. I think he has punched her.
Now I don’t hold with that – hitting a woman. Despite all our rows, I have never hit Georgina – and that’s not because she is bigger than me.
Anyway, my session with Amanda went very well. She asked me about when my dad came home from the war – remember I had not seen him for five years.
I was in the house with my friend, Andrew. And I can remember being all excited, mostly about what he might have brought me back from Egypt. I was also slightly embarrassed because I did not know how I was supposed to treat this ‘stranger’ who was now suddenly a part of our household.
I watched him unpack his kitbag in the kitchen. He handed me a penknife. Straightaway I went out into the shed with Andrew, and cut my finger. It was not some sort of symbolic act; I was trying it out on a piece of wood and it must have slipped.
Amanda gave me a strange look, and made a note on her pad. Oh I know what she was thinking – there are no such things as accidents. Well maybe not.
It bled quite a lot; nowadays I would have been taken down the ‘casualty’ to have it stitched but in those days no one would have dared to knock on the door of the ‘Cottage Hospital’ unannounced, unless you’d had you’d had your leg severed by a tram. The hospital was run by a formidable woman – her name was spoken in awe in the village – ‘Matron Bone’. If she told you it didn’t hurt, it didn’t.
A swell of emotion rises as I remember all of this and my eyes are wet. Amanda gets up and comes over to me. She is so close her perfume fills my head. What is going on here!
Monday, February 06, 2006
6th February, 2006
06/02/2006
I wake, exhausted and depressed after a night of disturbing dreams, alone in my narrow bed (standard issue – leather straps optional), and wonder if I will ever share my bed again.
I imagine myself on ‘Trisha’ or ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ and people coming on, one after the other, telling me what I have done wrong. How I have hurt them, let them down. Telling me why I am in this situation. And I want to explain to them how it is not my fault, how it is nobody’s fault. How nothing is anybody’s fault and that that is the great tragedy we are unable to face. So we invent blame: it’s God, the government, YOU.
How we talk about ‘mother nature’. Why do we have to personalise, maternalise even, a force that is as blindly indifferent to us humans as it is to the animals in the wild. Nature is impersonal , so why the ‘mother’ bit? I wonder if there is any connection with the way we personalise God. Do we have to put things in a human terms so that we can understand – or think we can understand – them?
Mother and Father sound so cosy, so caring. But what’s so cosy and caring about a TSUNAMI?
But I don’t say any of this. Instead I shout and scream at them – tell them to fuck-off. Tell them they know nothing of what it is like inside my head. And a big security guard comes and puts me back in my chair.
Outside, it is another dull morning - neither one thing or the other. It is not raining, not especially cold, just dull. And I sit and stare out at the dullness. And it matches the dullness inside me.
And the great ‘aging bird’ flaps his wings above me.
I wake, exhausted and depressed after a night of disturbing dreams, alone in my narrow bed (standard issue – leather straps optional), and wonder if I will ever share my bed again.
I imagine myself on ‘Trisha’ or ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ and people coming on, one after the other, telling me what I have done wrong. How I have hurt them, let them down. Telling me why I am in this situation. And I want to explain to them how it is not my fault, how it is nobody’s fault. How nothing is anybody’s fault and that that is the great tragedy we are unable to face. So we invent blame: it’s God, the government, YOU.
How we talk about ‘mother nature’. Why do we have to personalise, maternalise even, a force that is as blindly indifferent to us humans as it is to the animals in the wild. Nature is impersonal , so why the ‘mother’ bit? I wonder if there is any connection with the way we personalise God. Do we have to put things in a human terms so that we can understand – or think we can understand – them?
Mother and Father sound so cosy, so caring. But what’s so cosy and caring about a TSUNAMI?
But I don’t say any of this. Instead I shout and scream at them – tell them to fuck-off. Tell them they know nothing of what it is like inside my head. And a big security guard comes and puts me back in my chair.
Outside, it is another dull morning - neither one thing or the other. It is not raining, not especially cold, just dull. And I sit and stare out at the dullness. And it matches the dullness inside me.
And the great ‘aging bird’ flaps his wings above me.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
The demize of a King-Size
Greta wanted me to witness her signature on a mortgage application. Her and her partner are going to buy a house together. Not get married – they don’t hold with that institution, and who can blame them.
She says it will look better if it is signed by a ‘member of a profession’. A bit of an irony that, eh? I am incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital against my wishes and yet my ‘professional’ status still carries weight.
The lesbian rang… was it yesterday or the day before? Pestering me about the ‘equity release’ business. I told her where to go. She retaliated by informing me that she has chucked out the marital bed! Said it held too many memories – and several stains.
How about that for cheek? It was king-size, and her and the Swedish tart (oh yes, they’re speaking again) couldn’t get it round that awkward bend in the stairs. So what does she do? Only sends for old Walt (sexton and gravedigger) to come round with his chainsaw! Cut it in half, he did. MY BED! I only wish he’d slipped and cut HER down to size while he was at it.
I told John, my schizophrenic friend, about it. He weighs 280lbs, and when the radiators are going full blast – which they always are - he smells.
He hears voices, telling him to do things – horrible, violent things. Most of them come from the old Long Playing Records in his eclectic collection. He can hear them – insidious and tempting, an insistent hiss underneath the lyrics. When he cannot stand it any longer he takes all his records back to the shop and sells them. They keep them, knowing that in a couple of weeks he will be calling in to buy them back.
He tried to hang himself from a lamp-post. I don’t think it was a serious attempt - he was being ‘harassed by the neighbours’. He calls this place ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, nevertheless it provides a refuge when things become too difficult for him in the ‘real’ world.
He has threatened to ‘bop’ me a couple of times, but he is not dangerous. He is more likely to hurt himself than anyone else. Of course, because of his size and obvious strength, he can be quite frightening when he gets upset. That is, frightening to those who don’t know him. We get on very well. He shows me his drawings: very violent – torture, stabbings, decapitations, blood flowing all over the place. He has quite an eye for line and colour.
Freddie encourages him to draw, always asks him to bring his drawings to the group therapy sessions. Oh yes, we have group therapy – more about this later
John says he is addicted to women. He says there should be a W.A. (Women Anonymous) just like there is an A.A. and Gamblers Anonymous. Someplace you could ring, 24 hours a day, whenever you got a craving for a woman. And they would send someone round (not a woman, obviously) and they would stay with you and talk you out of it.
He might have something there.
She says it will look better if it is signed by a ‘member of a profession’. A bit of an irony that, eh? I am incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital against my wishes and yet my ‘professional’ status still carries weight.
The lesbian rang… was it yesterday or the day before? Pestering me about the ‘equity release’ business. I told her where to go. She retaliated by informing me that she has chucked out the marital bed! Said it held too many memories – and several stains.
How about that for cheek? It was king-size, and her and the Swedish tart (oh yes, they’re speaking again) couldn’t get it round that awkward bend in the stairs. So what does she do? Only sends for old Walt (sexton and gravedigger) to come round with his chainsaw! Cut it in half, he did. MY BED! I only wish he’d slipped and cut HER down to size while he was at it.
I told John, my schizophrenic friend, about it. He weighs 280lbs, and when the radiators are going full blast – which they always are - he smells.
He hears voices, telling him to do things – horrible, violent things. Most of them come from the old Long Playing Records in his eclectic collection. He can hear them – insidious and tempting, an insistent hiss underneath the lyrics. When he cannot stand it any longer he takes all his records back to the shop and sells them. They keep them, knowing that in a couple of weeks he will be calling in to buy them back.
He tried to hang himself from a lamp-post. I don’t think it was a serious attempt - he was being ‘harassed by the neighbours’. He calls this place ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, nevertheless it provides a refuge when things become too difficult for him in the ‘real’ world.
He has threatened to ‘bop’ me a couple of times, but he is not dangerous. He is more likely to hurt himself than anyone else. Of course, because of his size and obvious strength, he can be quite frightening when he gets upset. That is, frightening to those who don’t know him. We get on very well. He shows me his drawings: very violent – torture, stabbings, decapitations, blood flowing all over the place. He has quite an eye for line and colour.
Freddie encourages him to draw, always asks him to bring his drawings to the group therapy sessions. Oh yes, we have group therapy – more about this later
John says he is addicted to women. He says there should be a W.A. (Women Anonymous) just like there is an A.A. and Gamblers Anonymous. Someplace you could ring, 24 hours a day, whenever you got a craving for a woman. And they would send someone round (not a woman, obviously) and they would stay with you and talk you out of it.
He might have something there.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
untitled
I had never tasted a fish-finger until I met my wife.
As you can see, I am very much pre-occupied in going back over my life, and I realise that I am in danger of repeating myself. But never mind, if I say something twice I am sure I will say it differently the second time.
Time – the phenomenon fascinates me. Clock time is not real time. It is just something we have made up. Time is elastic. When I fell off the bridge I was in the air for ages, whereas my session with Amanda was over in seconds. Generally, however, in here time crawls.
Being in a loony bin frees you from the constraints of normal life, and with it the normal conventions of ‘writing’.
Tenses, for example. I may be writing in the present tense but then suddenly slip into past tense. At times I may be imagining – imagining what might happen in the future. But I may be writing as if it had already happened. The bit about the pillow actually did happen in the past – the long ago past. But it is here in the present too, in the form of a ghostly imprint on the mind. In fact everything that ever happened to you – and your reaction to it - from the moment you were born is recorded in the brain - like a high quality video tape, ready for replay at any time. All you need is the right trigger: a word; a phrase; a glance, a smell. And of course, under hypnosis – did I mention that I am a trained hypnotherapist?
I want to talk about brain – particularly the reptilian brain: the bit that sits on top of your spinal cord; the old, primitive part of the brain.
But not now, because it is getting late. Well, it might be getting late – or am I talking about yesterday?
Greta is here with the night- time medication. She is starting to look at me in a “funny way”. Is she bent upon seduction, I wonder, or am I being paranoid? Well if you want to be paranoid you are in the right place.
I no longer bother asking what medication I am being given. It’s too much of an effort. I am starting to itch though, especially at night. It’s mostly in the legs and ankles and sometimes I scratch so hard that I bleed – but not much. Could that be the “meds”? (see how I am getting into the medical slang).
If they were to make a film of your life, what would it be? A comedy? Tragedy? Thriller? Farce? That is a question I sometimes would ask of my clients – now I ask it of myself.
Hello! Here comes Greta again. She’s already given me my tablets. What can she want!
As you can see, I am very much pre-occupied in going back over my life, and I realise that I am in danger of repeating myself. But never mind, if I say something twice I am sure I will say it differently the second time.
Time – the phenomenon fascinates me. Clock time is not real time. It is just something we have made up. Time is elastic. When I fell off the bridge I was in the air for ages, whereas my session with Amanda was over in seconds. Generally, however, in here time crawls.
Being in a loony bin frees you from the constraints of normal life, and with it the normal conventions of ‘writing’.
Tenses, for example. I may be writing in the present tense but then suddenly slip into past tense. At times I may be imagining – imagining what might happen in the future. But I may be writing as if it had already happened. The bit about the pillow actually did happen in the past – the long ago past. But it is here in the present too, in the form of a ghostly imprint on the mind. In fact everything that ever happened to you – and your reaction to it - from the moment you were born is recorded in the brain - like a high quality video tape, ready for replay at any time. All you need is the right trigger: a word; a phrase; a glance, a smell. And of course, under hypnosis – did I mention that I am a trained hypnotherapist?
I want to talk about brain – particularly the reptilian brain: the bit that sits on top of your spinal cord; the old, primitive part of the brain.
But not now, because it is getting late. Well, it might be getting late – or am I talking about yesterday?
Greta is here with the night- time medication. She is starting to look at me in a “funny way”. Is she bent upon seduction, I wonder, or am I being paranoid? Well if you want to be paranoid you are in the right place.
I no longer bother asking what medication I am being given. It’s too much of an effort. I am starting to itch though, especially at night. It’s mostly in the legs and ankles and sometimes I scratch so hard that I bleed – but not much. Could that be the “meds”? (see how I am getting into the medical slang).
If they were to make a film of your life, what would it be? A comedy? Tragedy? Thriller? Farce? That is a question I sometimes would ask of my clients – now I ask it of myself.
Hello! Here comes Greta again. She’s already given me my tablets. What can she want!
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