kagablog

3.03.2007

The difference between crazy people and normal people is not what you might think. It’s some of those things: yes, they see reality in ‘distorted’ ways; yes, they take blades to their wrists, steak-knives to their throats, they burn themselves down to the bone with cigarettes; yes, they hear the voice of Jesus and answer only to the name ‘Mary’; yes, they experience life mostly as a constant and unremitting shit-storm. Yes, they do and experience all of these things, and that’s what makes them insane and you normal.

But the real difference between the sane and the mad is the language they speak: the sane speak English, French, Chinese or Zulu; the crazy speak in the language of cigarettes. The societal structures, roles and conventions of the ward are much like society outside of these barred windows and doors. The power-play is just as present. Just as insidious.

Upon entering the ward, it is not your name, or even your reason for being there that is important, or of any concern. It is your cigarette status:
1. do you smoke?
2. if so, do you have any?
3. if so, will you give/sell them?
Your status is determined within seconds. And word spreads. If you’re known as a carrier, you are approached constantly. Whether you say yes or no is inconsequential. They will keep asking, more so if you make the mistake of saying yes the first time you’re asked. It’s like feeding a dog off your plate one time. Just that one time. From then on, that dog will sit at your feet, staring pleadingly, then barking, sometimes ferociously, until you feed them again.

The hierarchy in this place is based on two criteria. The first, from the outsider’s perspective, seems to be the most distinctive: there are those of the frothing-at-the-mouth variety who are in a constant state of legal, governmental induced intoxication. They come off the street, their schizophrenia, paranoia and psychosis induced by heroine, crack, alcohol or marijuana. Here, there schizophrenia, paranoia and psychoses are perpetuated by seroquel, risperdal and lithium. You can tell them by the look in their eyes; the glazed, dead-pan marble. They have that constant look of being perplexed. As if someone has just asked them the meaning of the universe. Their mouths open, their heads down and slightly askew. They shuffle endlessly around the ward in shoes they’ve stolen from someone outside, or some unwitting and even more doped-up inmate inside. Or they walk around barefeet, their heels cracked and crusted from pacing the sleekly polished ward floors. I wonder why the nurses haven’t done anything about all this blood?

Then there are the garden-variety of depressives, bi-polars, suicide attempts: people who are just “Taking a bit of a break, a rest, to get their medication stabilised.” You can tell them from the street-clothes they wear. They only don their pyjamas at the civilised and agreed upon hour. Unless they smoke, or one of them are in your section of the ward, you only see them at communal gathering times: meal times or pill times. They seem strangely incongruous here, in this place, as if they’re undercover nurses, gathering info on the other patients for the matron. They are friendly, but quiet and keep to themselves.

There are, of course, the liminal – those that are difficult to distinguish and place in one of these two categories. You warily strike up a conversation, trying to determine whether you’re dealing with a pseudo-nurse or a psychopath. And trust me, it’s fucken difficult! If someone in a nuthouse tells you their name is Andrew and they’re a librarian or a fashion designer, how do you know he’s telling the truth? You don’t. there is no truth in here. The only truth, the only meaning and stability is the Brooklax-induced certainty of meds and mealtimes.

It is the second criteria for the hierarchy of this place which is the more powerful, the more insidious in the hierarchisation of the ward. It is this criterion that determines your place in the caste system. It is the same criterion as in the larger society – the haves and the have nots: those that have cigarettes, and those that don’t.

It is this 5cm cylindrical carcinogen that wields the power, regulates the ward, determines the rules. It’s the same as in prison. Cigarettes become the power tool, the bartering chip, the only intelligible language. It’s strange, isn’t it, this common element of cigarettes in the institutions of jails and nuthouses? I have my own little anthropological theory about that. (My meds make it difficult to concentrate, think and remember, but I know my little theory had something to do with the prison and the loony-bin as microcosms of societal structure and interaction between humans. I remember some ingenious thought I had about cigarettes being the lowest common denominator of the unhappy, the rejected, the scapegoated. I remember thinking that Claude Levi-Strauss would have been proud.) The dogs are also distracting me, lapping up the blood. How did the dogs get in here? The matron would never allow that…

More than any sedative or mood stabiliser, it is the cigarette that determines the placidity or paroxysms of madness of the inmates. The first rule is, do not, under any circumstances carry more than two cigarettes with you. You learn this rule within the first half an hour from one of the arse-licking pseudo-nurses. So you walk into the cramped, un-airconditioned smoking cell and you light up. The vultures appear from their wards, as if the meal-time bell has been rung, scurry, then settle, begging you for just one cigarette. just one gwaai my sister just one my people are coming tomorrow and its been so hard without a smoke so hard so hard theyre coming tomorrow and Ill give you a cig sister and theyre bringing coke too and Ill give you some coke too thank you sister thank you so much they just left me here with no clothes no cigarettes but they promised theyre coming tomorrow tomorrow or the next day maybe Saturday but they definitely coming sister and then Ill give you something sister god bless you. Depending on your mood, or more to the point, just to shut them up, you either give them the cigarette you’re not smoking, or you break it in half so that you can get rid of two crazies at one time; or, you simply shake your head, let them watch as you smoke both, leaving them behind to fight over the smouldering butt.

Why am I here? It was a simple matter. I couldn’t lug my breasts around any longer. They just got too heavy. And I thought it much more practical to put a pillow and a breadboard under them. Sawed them off with the breadknife. Apart from feeling a bit dizzy – all the blood-loss, I suppose – I felt ok. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I just didn’t want to carry those fucking things around anymore. The hardest part was that I had to cut two-thirds of an awesome tattoo off. It ran from my collarbone to my nipple. And then it lay there, on the floor, misshapen by the lump of breast which lay mutating as the blood and lymph flowed out of it. I considered taking the nipple rings out. They’d come in handy later. But the metal in the breasts in the blood on the floor was rather aesthetically pleasing. I took a few photos. I remember that piercing taking months to heal. But it is – I suppose ‘was’ now – one of my favourites. Why are the breasts still lying there?

So that’s why I’m here.

Which group do I belong to? The mouth-frothers or the garden-variety pseudo-nurses? Well, I have cigarettes. I don’t hear voices (William Burroughs’ doesn’t count. If it were Jesus’ or Alistair Crowley’s, that would be a different matter). There’s so much blood. Where are the fucken nurses? The matron wouldn’t tolerate this from them.

I realise now, as I write this that the whole breast story might sound a bit incriminating in terms of my sanity status. And I know what you’re thinking. Unfortunately you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

There’s so much blood. It’s ruining this book, fuckit! And I’m feeling very tired now. Can’t write anymore. Must be the meds. I’m sorry to have to leave you at this point in the story, but I think I should sleep now. If only the dogs would stop licking up the blood so that I could rest.