A kind of mirraculas par.., p.19
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise, page 19
part #1 of Kind of Mirraculas Paradise Series
He did a high-rise next, hung there over the edge, hundreds of feet up, drilling holes with a thirty-pound drill and putting in clips where windows would be, and then someday, he figured, people who worked in offices, people like his dad, would stand there and not even realize how amazing a thing it was, a skyscraper. His boss told him he better be careful up that high—you spit and hit somebody in the head, you could kill them, and then wind up in jail for the rest of your life.
Bob didn’t mind his boss. Guy was a Christian, at least. Sometimes he and Bob would talk at lunch. Bob told him how he’d been kicked out of Berkeley High for fighting with a guy who wanted to charge him a dime to piss.
“I would have whipped it out and pissed all over him,” his boss replied, which was just about the funniest thing Bob had ever heard.
A given job might last a couple of days or even a couple of weeks. After, his back would ache and palms would bleed and he’d sleep in the dark for a week.
:::::
When Bob wasn’t working, he’d bum around at this pizza joint in Berkeley called La Val’s. He’d eat pizza and drink beer, which seemed fine given that he wasn’t hanging out as much with the Mormons these days.
One time this black dude was standing out in front of La Val’s, yelling at everybody walking past: “What time is it, motherfucka? What time is it?”
Bob bought him a slice and they played a game of chess.
After that, whenever the guy saw him—his name was Jude, and he was crazy and a genius—he’d yell, “The king! The king!”
Another night this Davy Crockett–looking guy named Jim was reading poetry and Bob started playing some Hendrix on the pizzeria’s busted piano. The combo was a hit, and they scheduled a show together, even got it listed in the paper.
Problem was Jim liked to drink and he always got Bob real drunk, too.
The night of their supposed show, they got so drunk they themselves forgot to show up, and instead Bob was splayed in front of La Val’s puking into a storm drain.
He spat into his beard.
He rested his head on the pavement.
:::::
It just so happened that right across the street from the ironworkers’ office was an air force recruitment office. Bob was getting pretty tired of how much rodbusting was kicking his ass and walked into the recruitment office one day, just to see.
As with the Mormons, the first thing they had him do was watch a video. Bob told the recruiter he was a certified welder, which the recruiter said was great. Then Bob said he had a MENTLE RECORD.
“Just don’t mention it,” the recruiter said, and set Bob up to take an examination to see if he was air force material. A few days later he passed WITH FLYING COLORS.
He told his dad about the idea and his dad said it sounded good.
:::::
It was 1979. He was twenty-five. Finally, after so much transience and being made to do so many insignificant things, he had found his calling. It made sense, actually, that what he’d end up doing was being in THE SERVICE.
He imagined what it’d be like, coming home, standing on his dad’s doorstep, saluting him.
He imagined how proud his mom would be.
He fantasized about stopping by La Casa Via for a visit, or even going down to Herrick to find Dr. G., to show him what an impressive person he’d managed to become.
Maybe someday he would have a wife waiting for him back at the base, maybe in Germany, where he’d work as a nuclear missile technician—they’d given him an option of becoming either that or a radio dispatcher in Alaska. He figured missiles sounded cooler.
He imagined walking in the door to his own house each evening. He imagined holding his wife through the night. He imagined waking up to coffee and his shined shoes waiting by the door.
The wife he pictured was sometimes Helen in her ice cream parlor uniform or sometimes Nancy. Only occasionally was it Wendy or Bonnie with her green eyes and the rabbit in her purse. He still thought about Lydia Treeantopolis, too.
He wondered what she looked like now.
Before he left for the service, he met up with his friend Becky, who was out of La Casa Via, too. She was doing good. They went on a date to the City, to this light show called the Laserium. They stood outside beforehand and smoked a joint.
Inside, it was dark and then the lights began.
Becky by his side, his eyes were full of shit nobody actually understands.
:::::
The shaky military plane landed on a gray Texas day.
He ducked and ran across the tarmac behind the line of fellow recruits, deafened by the engines, his hair whipping about. He didn’t mind that they were going to cut it off.
He’d heard about all the other things he’d be getting this first week in the air force: clothes, boots, new glasses. Six weeks of hard work and he would be on his way to a salary, stability, and a level of respect he had never before commanded.
Week zero of basic military training, new trainees were up at 4:45 a.m. and running. The chilly San Antonio morning woke up his mind and he kept up easily with his group of new recruits, called his flight, despite the blisters his new boots were giving him and the odd feeling that generally came with adjusting to living without his meds. He had figured they would piss-test him and so hadn’t taken a single pill with him to Texas.
After running came inspection, class, drills, inspection, running, class, drills.
:::::
Everywhere they went they had to march, which Bob was great at, just like he’d been great at traffic boys as a kid and at hiking on those expeditions down in the Sierras.
Bob felt sharp in the service. There was no time to think and also no need. A command would be yelled at him—they all called him by his last name—and he would yell back, “Sir, reported as ordered!”
The mess hall was beautiful and kind of terrifying. Bob was overwhelmed by how many guys would all be in there at once. The thousands of recruits, their tens of thousands of fingers clutching thousands of trays, their tens of thousands of piles of mashed potatoes. All their uniforms, all their newly buzzed heads.
He only got twenty minutes for each meal, and most of that was spent in line. By the time he actually sat down with his own food, he only had time to chug and slurp and then had to be back in a line again.
Lights were out by nine and Bob slept hard.
:::::
They’d been told of the various jobs they could choose to have at Lackland. Bob listed his preferences as :::MEDIC::PILAT:::ASTRONAUGHT: AND SOUL SAVER::: He also volunteered to be his flight’s chaplain when they got to attend relig-ious services on Sundays.
The next day, his training officer told Bob, “Son, I have a sorry feeling in my heart that you are not going to make it.”
Bob asked him why.
“There are no soul savers in the service.”
This guy didn’t know that no one tells a chaplain he can’t bring souls to God.
When Sunday came, Bob marched his flight to the chapel doors. They were locked, which was weird. “Wait here,” he told them.
He found a side entrance.
He passed several little rooms, and he could see people of different faiths worshipping, each in their own way.
Nobody seemed to respond to him being there. He wondered if he was invisible.
Now he heard a QUIRE singing, a lot of them, coming from somewhere.
He thought, WOW, WHERE THE HELL I HAVE I BEENM::
He went back outside.
His flight was all still waiting. He told them church was over; it was time to go.
:::::
During inspection later, this guy wouldn’t give Bob a hanger. “Where’s mine?” Bob asked. Lots of people heard. Bob asked two more times: “Where is mine? Where is mine?” Guy must have been embarrassed when Bob reported him for what he’d done.
Then someone called out his last name.
“Pack your things!” he was told.
He stuffed his junk into a duffel and followed behind.
:::::
They walked to a big building.
He was admitted to the psych ward.
How familiar: syringes.
How familiar: drugs.
How familiar not being taken seriously when he complained that somebody stole all his money the afternoon of his arrival, which someone had. He told them exactly what happened and nobody did anything about it.
Soon he settled down.
He got to know the dining options and what the place had to offer—arts and crafts, piano, volleyball, movies. A guy even showed up one night and told jokes so funny Bob was rolling on the floor.
Group therapy was even more intense than usual, given how many of these guys had been in ‘Nam, how many of them saw bombs falling when they closed their eyes. One guy had been a pilot, talked about all the napalm he’d dropped, talked about how horrible he felt all the time. IT WAS OUR JOB TO HELP HIM, ORDERS YOU KNOW:
:::::
One day there was word, on the ward, that a highly classified mission had just rescued an important family from Iran; they made them all move beds to accommodate the family when they arrived. An elite squad showed up, too. Guys were all too cocky for Bob’s liking.
He ate in the cafeteria alongside the son of the Iranian family a few times. He enjoyed their conversations. Bob advised him that they should melt the entire Middle East and make freeways and buildings and castles from glass.
:::::
He had lately been thinking a lot about Helen. One night he went down to the phone and gave her a call.
A man’s voice answered, sounded mad.
Bob dropped the phone.
He leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
Why had he done that.
:::::
On Christmas morning, there were presents beneath the tree in the dayroom.
A general was there. He admired the presents and the tree. He stuck out his hand and Bob shook it. After the presents were all open, Bob sat down at the piano, banging out what carols he could conjure.
He and then others sang.
They sang about angels.
They sang about peace on earth and mercy mild.
They sang about God and sinners reconciled.
:::::
They had him back on Prolixin, but he was still getting ANCY. He started pushing them to let him out. They asked if he wanted to stay in the air force or split, walking him down a hallway where about three hundred girls were changing, all stripped down to their bras. He understandably couldn’t help but look at them. Some big sergeant screamed at him, “What are you looking at, boy?”
What kind of head games were they playing with him?
He had to get out of there.
A few days later in group, someone called his last name and said he was free. He got to keep his medals and his chaplain’s cross and silver bars. They gave him his pay and a piece of paper saying he’d been discharged honorably.
He sat on the bus on his way to the airport. The comedian whose jokes Bob had so enjoyed was on the bus, too, and asked Bob if he could borrow money for his flight. Bob knew he’d probably never see the guy again but gave him fifty bucks anyway. Figured what the hell; everybody in the service was always screwing over everybody else, far as he could tell.
When he called his dad to explain he wasn’t staying in the service, his dad sounded DICUSTED LIKE YOU COULDNT BELIEVE:
He told Bob to just take a taxi from the airport, said he’d pay.
They didn’t want him staying with them for long. It was his birthday a couple days later anyway, so his dad paid for a month’s rent at a board-and-care place in the City.
:::::
He dropped by an ironworkers’ meeting to see if they’d still let him work. They asked where he’d been.
“The air force,” he replied.
“What for, asshole?” they asked.
He said he didn’t know.
The Story of Annadonia
At the end of his manuscript, Bob discussed society as a whole. He talked about materialism and sexual promiscuity. He talked about violence. He discussed the tremendous population of people who would not, by his estimation, make it into heaven.
The imperfect nature of society is a common theme in some of his other writings, which I’ve since collected. Some years ago, for example, he wrote a short story on a computer, which he’d periodically mail to various relatives. It’s called “The Story of Ishmall.”
It’s about two societies—Ishmall and Annadonia—between whom power is imbalanced. Annadonia is strong and Ishmall is weak. Annadonia seizes control of Ishmall. Annadonia grows even stronger and Ishmall even weaker. Perceiving this inequality but not remembering its root, the people of Annadonia decide that the people of Ishmall must be lazy. They give the people of Ishmall medications that make them even lazier. The people of Annadonia compel the people of Ishmall to take these medications against their will.
“The people of Ishmall were considered a burden by the rest of the world,” Bob wrote, “and the world thought they should be compassionate and humane and feed the remaining people of Ishmall until they died a natural death. Six hundred years later there was no record or remembrance of the people or country of Ishmall.”
But the story of the people of Ishmall does not end there. There is, in this story, an afterlife, and the people of Ishmall, who are very religious, get to be with God and have control over the souls of the dead people of Annadonia.
“Ishmall had won!” it ended.
He then signed it “Uncle Bob.”
:::::
For a long time, I tried to figure out what it meant, the phrase psychotic paranoid schizophrenic. Whenever I tried to grasp it, it would fall through my fingers like wet sand.
In trying to figure that question out, I actually ended up thinking a lot about its converse. Through these years, I’ve wondered what they’re supposed to mean, words like “normal,” “sane.”
I’ve thought about this desire that we—whom you might call the people of Annadonia—have to define abnormality. I have thought about our desire to think about schizophrenia as if it is caused by a pathogen; to segregate people who are told they have it; to ignore or doubt, on principle, what they have to say.
I’ve thought about our desire to imprison a man within that diagnosis, to let it become who he is, and to cast a shadow of silence around the subject.
I think it’s because we are very afraid. None of us knows for sure what’s in store for us inside our own brains.
What an especially frightening word it is, too. For years now I’ve said it to all kinds of people—not only people I’m talking to about Bob but friends, strangers, people I’ve just met, people who’ve asked, “What do you do?” and then, “What’s the book about?”
For years I’ve watched how they react.
How their voices, their eyes, fall.
People sometimes ask questions that give away all kinds of things they think about my uncle because he had that diagnosis. That he was less than human somehow. A monster. A liar.
Some people are familiar with the word. They usually begin to tell me about their job or about someone they know—an estranged aunt, which second cousin—or their own parent or own child. Occasionally, people will start telling me about themselves, about experiences they’ve had, diagnoses they’ve received.
But most people, I’ve found, are more like I was before Bob mailed me his manuscript. When I say “schizophrenia” to them, I don’t know what kinds of images flash through their minds.
Sometimes people ask me how working on Bob’s project has changed me; it’s a question that makes me laugh, it’s got so many answers. I’ll give one: before, I was someone who didn’t much care about schizophrenia or what it did or didn’t mean, or what did or didn’t happen to people told they had it. I must have believed such questions didn’t much affect me. Now I know that the way in which my uncle was treated betrays something very wrong with our society, something that hurts us all.
Some people would have preferred that I hadn’t gone this route, that I’d never agreed to help get Bob’s story out there. Some of my own relationships have been irrevocably damaged because I made this choice. But in a sense I felt I had no choice.By the time everything was out in the open, I had come to believe that going forward with the project was the right thing to do. That I would tell what I have seen, painful and shocking as the details often are.
:::::
Through these years, I have read about societies that don’t segregate and punish differences in this way. Ones where people like Bob are able to live lives not so greatly dependent upon figures like their parents, lives not so marked by the looming threat of incarceration and death, lives less marred by the violence and judgments of a hegemony who—generously—just haven’t been taught any better.
I’ve read about what people in other places and times have thought about people like Bob, which is to say, people who experienced things that others determined were unbelievable, people who believed those experiences with conviction. Occasionally, such people were able to convince others of their truth. I’ve contemplated the lives of so many prophets, so many artists and revolutionaries and martyrs.
All the time I encounter news articles about the “suspected link” between some quality and another—“creativity” and “madness,” for example—and to me it’s kind of obvious that some of us have heads that are likelier to wander beyond the supposed edges of reality, whatever that is.
And that we are each just ourselves: whatever we inherited, whatever we’ve become along the way.
:::::
I have also chewed endlessly on the irony that my uncle’s manuscript boldly stated his variously hateful views, and yet he also yearned for greater understanding and harmony between all kinds of people. I’ve often thought about how, in that note he sent along with his manuscript back in 2009, he implored me to not worry about his beliefs.
He did believe peace was possible; I don’t think he would have bothered to write the whole thing down if he didn’t believe that.
Because I don’t think he did it for himself.
