The Brain Fails Me

It's fucking cold.

I mean it's tremendously cold. Temperatures are down to the twenties and the windchill brings it down to the single digits. That's fucking cold. That's very cold. I get up and get ready. It's 8:00am and I've awoke with enough time to get to Metropolitan Hospital. The thought of braving the cold makes it an uphill journey. I wonder how I'm going to walk my blocks today. I get outside and down the hall to my building, waiting for the elevator when a woman comes down the stairs, grumbles and approaches me.

I frown. What am I going to have to do this morning, stomp a grown woman to the floor this morning? Where am I going to hide her crumpled body? I take a defensive posture. She walks right past me, pressing the elevator button. "Shit!" She exclaims. "It's not lighting up!" Referring to the elevator buttons. She is right. She returns to the stairs and I follow. The elevator is out of order. I walk downstairs with this vituperous old bitch, venting a stream of invectives all the way down from the Eighth floor.

I get outside and I'm hit by a blast of air so cold that it fuses my balls together, because I go through life now commando. Yeah, my weather testers are my two little testes, and they said that they didn't like today. Fuck. I knuckle under the wind and head to the bus which is pulling into the corner the minute that I get there. It takes something like eight minutes to get across town and the bus lets me off right in front of the hospital. How do you like that for convenience? I head on into the confusion, lobbies filled with milling people, nurses and doctors walking about, people pushing people in wheelchairs. Organized confusion.

I walk over to a guard station and ask for directions to the Mental Health depart- ment. Easy directions. I'm there in minutes. They give me a number, 12, and tell me to take a seat in a near empty waiting room. I sit here watching television until my number is called. They take my information, take my urine, take my vitals, give me a health review, and then back to the waiting room where the minute that I sit down does the psychiatrist call me into a room. I cop a squat and we talk. The usual mental interview. Do I want to kill anybody? Do I want to kill myself? What orifice on a woman do I like to fuck? No! Just kidding with the last one.

He finally sits back after a battery of questions. He is not going to change my drugs. I seem to be doing pretty good on them. Little does he know that I'm doing much better without them, save for the side effects of withdrawal. I chose not to tell him this because I don't want to eat my hat and have to go back on them again. That would not be fun. I hear where a lot of mental patients, thinking that they are normal, stop taking their meds, only to make things worse for them. I'm taking a big risk, but I think I can handle it. Let's see. I am escorted back to the waiting room, and I wait another minute for the director and the psychiatrist to invite me into a room.

This time she goes through some practice relaxation techniques that I find imme- diately helpful. I stay with then, learning these for another ten minutes, and I'm finally released to return to my own life. While walking out I find an eye doctor, and I go in and make an appointment. Everything in the coming weeks.

I hit the driving cold again. There is a bus right outside waiting for me. I take it back to Broadway, and then I strike down the avenue for my walk. I get no further than two blocks when a gust of cold blows this idea right out of my mind. I mean clear out. It is just THAT cold in Manhattan today. I head home, read emails and kill time. Tonight is the big reading at La Pregunta. I'm nodding off in my chair. I get tired and crawl into bed. No sooner do I drop off does the doorbell ring. I frown. The doorbell? I rise, open the door. On the other side are two of my counselors from the box. I am surprised to see them. I am in fact amazed. All smiles, they want to know what I'm doing, how things are. I am too ashamed. I'm not dressed and my room is a mess or I'd have them in. They said that it was okay, they were giving me my final check up. Did I like everything here? I had finally reached my year, and they were going to close the book on me. A Year? Already? Shit.

This was it. They bade me farewell and good luck. I was both frightened and sad. They turned, knocked on Paula's door, and I closed mine. Damn. I'm on my own now. I wonder what did that mean? Would I be manhandled now by the people of the Spot, now that the watchers over me from the Box were gone? Would things go neglected? Would I be treated roughly like a cougar in a boys camp?

Would this spell a turning of the screw? Would things now fall apart for me? I wonder. My year with them is over just as 2009 draws to a close. There is something about this that is interesting. What does the New Year hold? We are at the brink of 2010. I want to go small, to shrink, to find a corner of my room and withdraw. I want to stay home.

There is a spark. I jump up. Get dressed. Leave.

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