SNAPSHOTS: From the Laughing Academy

Tuesday, Apr. 30, 2002 - 12:55 a.m.

His name is Mike. But he calls himself The Lamb. He believes that he is the Lamb of God. He won't speak English with us, but he does bleat. He walks in a very stilted way. Slowly, cautiously. I realize after a while that he has been forced to walk on two legs. A lamb should be on all four.

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His name is Chuck. He is the son of an Important Canadian Politician. He is retarded. His parents prefer that he be institutionalized where others are NOT retarded. They have hired a special tutor who will try, in vain, to teach him how to write his name. One day he comes into my room and I am playing a 45 RPM of the song "No Particular Place to Go," by Chuck Barry. Chuck beams at me like an infatuated puppy. I can't tell if he loves me, or the music, or the combination. "Hey Chuck," I say. "Guess what? This singer is named Chuck too." Chuck beams. He asks me to play the record again. After a while I give it to him. It clearly affords him more pleasure than anything else I have seen.

Eventually I give him all my Chuck Barry records. People are not interested in Chuck; I am not really interested in him, but his heart is large and he likes me a lot. I enjoy giving him gifts.

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Her name is Liz. She is a kleptomaniac; she has wild curly red hair and freckles. People hate her; she walks into rooms and steals things. For a long time I try to defend and befriend Liz. She can't help it after all. One day Liz comes into my room and tries to steal my record player. She can't lift it up, but she rips off the arm and the needle in her attempt. I proceed to go around telling people that I, too, don't like Liz.

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Her name is Donna. She has fiery black eyes. She can think of one thing only: she needs to kill herself. She has a twin sister who is not allowed to visit. Nobody is allowed to visit her from outside. Because she won't follow the line and say that she won't kill herself, she is kept permanently in one of the Seclusion Rooms. Additionally, her family has hired private nurses to guard the rooms. As if it was needed. Sometimes I visit her. She talks. He eyes flare up and she says that she wants nothing but to die. "But you're only 18, I say. That's still fairly young." (I am 15 and I privately think that 18 is rather old). "Good things might happen." "No, Throcky. There's nothing good in life. Case closed." I am frightened. She was a debutante. How can a debutante want to die so much? After a lengthy campaign or many years duration, she manages to kill herself on her second try. I still remember the piercing black eyes: intense yet unmoving. How can such intensity remain for so long without taking a moment to blink?

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His name is Davie. Yes, Davie. He is autistic. He is tall and reed-thin. People laugh at him because he still calls himself Davie even though he is about 20. Maybe even 21. I try to make friends with him. I think that maybe there's an important link, because Davie and I share the same birthday (September 16th) albeit in different years. He's older. When I talk to David, quietly, soothingly, he moves his tongue around in his mouth like a horse chewing oats. I finally realize that maybe Davie does not want to talk.

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His name is Joe. He's gay. But he's in the hospital because he is gay. His father is an important publisher in the city. They have a lot of money. Joe is here to be cured. Joe is plump, soft, gentle, and kind. Very kind. He greets new patients and tries to make them feel at home. It is bad enough that the psychiatrists think he is "sick"; the patients make relentless fun of him. They ask him about his dick as casually as if they were asking anyone else about a cold or a headache. Joe is the first person I have ever met who is "out." But "out" is not even a word of the time. Joe knows that he does not need to be "cured" but he has been committed. In a hospital full of divas, lunatics, drama queens, psychotics, and the suicidal, Joe is the only person who goes about, day after day, month after month, year after year, being a quiet voice of reason. He is the opposite of narcissistic. I like Joe a lot and looking back, after so many decades it pains me to say that Joe was NOT universally liked, as he should have been.

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Her name is Laurie. She is also retarded. Her father and step-mother; her mother and step-father are famous. Between them they have many Oscars and quite a few Tony awards. She can barely keep herself clean; nobody has told her about shampoo. Occasionally a dramatic pair sweep in to see her for five minutes and to put a movie or a broadway poster up on her wall. These visits diminish with time. People shun her. She listens to bubble-gum pop. Nobody ever pays any attention to her except for one night a year: Oscars. Then everyone wants to sit next to her as we watch television. I am not mean to her; but I find it uncomfortable, very uncomfortable to think of how to make her happy. Unlike Chuck, who is too easily made happy, Laurie is moody. One day in a vast Patient-Staff meeting one girl speaks up: "Why can't we all just admit that Laurie is retarded and can't do things like the rest of us?" Some people gasp. People ignore the question. We move on, not missing a beat. I notice tears slowly pouring down Laurie's cheeks as she holds her head up and continues to pay attention to the meeting.

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His name is Tom. He plays the ill-tuned piano in the music room all the time. He effortlessly moves from classical music to pop music to cocktail music. Every night, the last thing before Light's Out, he plays "Cast Your Fate to the Wind." He has terrible acne; he feels ugly. The ugliest. But many, many of the girls have a crush on him because he is smart, musical, self-effacing. One night he manages to escape and he leaps off the tallest building in New Haven: Yale's School of Architecture. A few months later the television starts to play "Cast Your Fate to the Wind." Someone turns it off and we all go off to our rooms to remember Tom and to cry, perhaps.

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