Sunday, June 20, 2010

Virginia Blare

By the time I got to the Sleep Center on Friday I had already been prepared for the evening by several text messages from Rex Tugwell.  Although they began very cryptically, they slowly made sense: a woman was coming for analysis that night who I would find fascinating.  Rex’s texts went like this:
--Freak!  Coming yr way and ur going to like it!

--Weirdos stick together.  Don’t get excited, she is older.  U like that?

--Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

--Read her file when you get in, unless ur illiterate.
When I got to the Sleep Center I found Rex before he went off-shift.  Since I wasn’t about to read her file due to my promise to Rachel, I told him to give me some details about the woman.  Rex told me that Virginia Blare was coming to the Sleep Center tonight, and according to her file—and he was very excited by this—she’s a regular at the local “nutbag joint.”  I had no idea what this meant.  Was Virginia Blare a prostitute or a line worker at an almond processing plant?  The fact is I still cannot rule out either possibility, but what Rex meant was that a psychiatric hospital recommended Virginia Blare to the Sleep Center.  Once Marcel entered the break room he was able to give me straightforward facts.  She is voluntarily imprisoned in a mental hospital.  When Marcel told me this Rex began an array of pantomimes of different suicide attempts, but Marcel said he didn’t know why she was in the hospital. 

We began to talk about any experiences we had with people from mental hospitals.  Rex said his uncle once ran a guy over with his semi, but no one was ever sure if he was drunk or suicidal.  I didn't even ask if Rex meant his uncle or the guy who got run over.  I told them I didn’t know anyone from a hospital like that, but my mother often told me that my father had escaped from one. 

Marcel told us about a guy he worked with on a fishing boat on the North Sea.  He had recently been released from a hospital and told Marcel and the guys on the ship that if there was something to find in the world, it was most likely to be in the bottom of a cold ocean.  No one ever knew how to take the guy, but Marcel said they sometimes stayed up together at night.  The guy would want to hear about Marcel’s adventures in the different ports of the world, but the stories he shared in return never made any sense, and often contradicted each other.  Rex and I asked Marcel what happened to that guy, and he said he wasn’t sure.  “He was only with us for one season, but a couple of the guys the following year said they saw him in an Alaskan town, buying supplies to go in-country for a year.  What I would give to know what happened to that guy.”  Lunatic or not, eaten by wolves or not, that guy is clearly awesome since he got Marcel to say, "What I would give to know what happened to that guy."  Maybe one day I'll wave goodbye to Marcel from a dinghy on Lake Erie, then, when he's not looking, hide in the weeds while the dinghy floats into the horizon.  After a month or so, I'd hide out in the bushes by Marcel's car so that when he walks a beautiful woman out for a date, he'd stop everything to say, "What I would give to know what happened to Cyrus, one of my best friends.  You would have loved him."  Whether I remain content or jump out of the bushes and say, "Wings, everyone?  I'm buying!" is undecided.

Marcel said he had already down a preliminary interview with Virginia Blare, and she was so open about where she was currently residing that he had no worries about talking about her to me and Rex.  He said if I so much as pass her in the hallway I’ll hear her whole life.  I told him I generally didn’t care what other people had to say, especially someone from a mental hospital.  Marcel said people that are called crazy have the most freedom to talk, so they should be listened to.  But Rex said if you spend any time at a gun show you’ll know the crazy people just talk about crazy stuff, and the only reason you listen is because they have a rifle in their hands.

I didn’t meet Virginia Blare when she got to the Sleep Center, but I did when she threw up when they were putting a whole bunch of the nodes on her.  They paged me and I came, and Virginia Blare apologized.  I said, “They’re not going to electrocute you with those,” and one of the attendants told me to hush.  But Virginia Blare thought it was funny and laughed.  She said I must have known where she was coming from, and one of the attendants said, “Oh god, does he ever.”  Virginia Blare laughed at that, too.  The attendants left while I mopped, but Virginia Blare just watched me do it.  She asked if I knew why she was in the mental hospital. 

“I tell everyone.  I’m not ashamed.  You know why?”  I knew it would be good for The Bird Casino if she told me, but I just wanted to pick up the vomit and leave.  “What’s your name?  Cyrus?  You know what it is, Cyrus?  Do you want to guess?  Maybe if you guess you’ll see you can’t offend me.  Go ahead.”

I leaned on my mop and told her I had no idea why anyone would put themselves in a mental hospital, but it seemed like a good way to get a free bed.  So I asked if she was just lazy.  She said no, giggled, and laughed again.  I said suicide, but she said, “Lord no, I don’t ever want to die.  One more guess.”  So I guessed that birds talked to her, but no one believed her.  She said no, and my slight hopes for caring about Virginia Blare’s life disappeared as quickly as they came.

“You want to know, Cyrus?”  This, despite the fact that I was doing my best to show I didn’t care.  “A ghost, Cyrus.  I’m in the hospital because of a ghost.”  Then she looked at me like she could read my mind, which made no sense because her track suit whooshed a little bit, and I’ll be damned if anyone in a track suit can read my mind.  “That’s right.  A ghost.”  I told her that was great, slapped my vomit-filled mop into the water, and rolled the bucket out.  I know she was expecting more of a reaction, and it felt pretty great not to give it to her. 

Once Sammy and Rachel were talking about books, and they talked about one that had a ghost in it.  We all started talking about the believability of ghosts.  Sammy said he didn’t know if ghosts were real, but if he only had one choice, he’d wish for ghosts over love.  Rachel made him explain himself, and to be honest, I don’t know how Sammy replied.  Rachel generally shredded Sammy’s clever lines, which made Sammy love her even more.  “Man, am I the biggest bullshitter or what?” he’d say, like he won a prize.  Boyce didn’t think there were ghosts, but if there were, he’d appreciate a ghost who came back and said, “You know what, I don’t want to haunt you, but I’ll help you bale some hay because what better things do I have to do?”  Rachel thought that was brilliant. 

I said I didn’t believe in ghosts because I had no reason to believe in ghosts.  I had no reason to believe that anything happens to us after we die.  Rachel didn’t believe in ghosts either.  She believed in a whole bunch of stuff, like heaven and angels, but she said ghosts didn’t make any sense and she’d like to have a few words with anything in this universe that claimed to be a ghost.  So I told her I would ask one to come.  I told her I knew a lot of dead people, that a lot of people seem to die around me, and there were plenty to pick from.  I didn’t pick my mother because if she did come back, she’d just do weird stuff like make some exaggerated burping noise when I talked to Rachel.  So instead I called out to my father to come visit us, and guess what, my father never came.  Primarily because my father doesn’t exist anymore. 

Once, in the eighth grade when I told my teacher my father didn't exist anymore, she said he’s still alive in my memories.  Rachel called stuff like that “de-balled religion.”  Even when I was in the eighth grade though I knew that was silly talk, so I told my teacher that if my father was still alive in my memories, then he’s just going to die again when I finally get killed.  What's more, if my father lived in my memories, wouldn't that have been the case when he was still alive?  Which meant that the father in my memories was actually some kind of Frankenstein-like pseudo-father built out of childish perspectives and distorted recall who probably saw my real father as an enemy; at his death, no doubt the pseudo-father of my memories rejoiced at the destruction of his nemesis, leaving him free to erase all record of the existence of the actual man.  The teacher started to cry, and when another teacher came by and asked what had happened, I just said, “My father is dead.”  It took like thirty minutes to get everything straightened out, and by the end of it I think everyone just wanted me to go away.

Which is what I wanted in the first place, and which is exactly what I did with Virginia Blare.