Jazzy D's Soul Notes

= July 24, 1982 (Day Six) =

I wake up recalling my conversation yesterday with Ellen out by the piano and that somewhat cryptic final comment about it being better in here. Now I realize what she might have been telling me: “It’s actually even more controlling out there, the life I have to go back to.”

Okay. I admit that this place is not the most bluntly coercive place I’ve ever had to cope with.

But they are paying close attention, and constantly seeking control. For the amount of communication taking place, they should be doing more of the listening.



After showering and dressing, I pad out to the cafeteria to get breakfast. I realize I miss cooking for myself, preparing what I specifically want, the way I like it. I want the base of a well-toasted English muffin, with strips of bacon, then an egg fried solid in the bacon grease carefully layered on top of the bacon, and sharp cheddar cheese on top of that, broiled in the oven until the cheese melts, then several shots of tabasco sauce and topped with the other side of the muffin.

More to the point, I want what is familiar to me and to my preference. I want the experience of doing for myself and living my own life as I’ve chosen it.

All institutions like this have to deal somehow with how they displace all that and impose something foreign onto the people who come to them for treatment. They don’t really have a choice about providing all these services in an environment that the patient is already comfortable in. It has to be a new and unfamiliar place. What’s fascinating, and disturbing, is that in Mountain View two years ago and now here again in Elk Meadow, I don’t see a pattern of therapists helping people settle in first and get comfortable so we can speak from some semblance of a position of familiarity and confidence. Instead, if anything, it’s tended to feel like they deliberately strip new arrivals to the bone to throw us off-balance as much as possible.





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Dr. James Barnes doesn’t always appear at our morning unit meetings; after all, there are other units on other wings of this place, all of which are holding morning meetings, so he rotates, doing the rounds. We had him yesterday.

The meeting rooms we use are U-shaped, with shallow risers to elevate the back rows, a half-dozen folding chairs up front for people who know they are going to be speaking, and a wooden lectern that people sometimes stand behind while they speak, although a lot of times people stand in front of it so they can walk around more.

That’s where Dr. Barnes is pacing as we file in, Irma and Mark following behind in his wake as he turns and stalks. He looks annoyed and impatient.

As I’m watching him scowling and prowling, he looks in my direction. Recognizes me.

“Hey everybody, look who we have with us today”, he exclaims. “Look who has decided to grace us with his presence this morning. People, we have with us ‘Derek Turner, HB, Pt.’, right there in the flesh. ...” he pauses and stares from a face twisted with theatrical concern and pity. “What does that stand for, Derek? Habitual patient?”

I can’t out-boom him, but I speak as resonantly as I can, trying to enunciate crisply: “Human being, comma, patient.”

“You want credentials, and credibility. That’s understandable. I have both, Derek. You have neither. You haven’t managed to make it through your freshman year of college after two tries, but you still need to think of yourself as a great master of psychology and social science, and I think you really need to ask yourself why. What you’re compensating for. Do you know how many years I’ve studied? I’ve spent years building this therapy center, to help people like you. In order to be able to provide that help, I attended and graduated from medical school, where I learned research methods and the principles of medical intervention, and after four years of that I put in another four years doing my residency, gaining experience and learning at the side of established medical professionals, and another two years training on top of that to specialize in psychiatric behavioral services.

“People respect me! Do you want people’s respect, Derek? Can you even imagine being respected the way I am? I get telephone calls from newspapers asking for my opinion, asking if they can quote me! I built Elk Meadow to offer services to people, people like you, who can’t function in society, who might never be able to function in society, and I have put many of those people back on the street to live lives they could only dream of.”

Barnes turns and gestures with both palms, “So... you took out your crayons and made a pathetic little homemade sign for your door.” “Who do you think you’re going to impress? Look around! Nobody cares what you think!” I stare back at him wordlessly. I do look around, and I notice a roomful of other rather stunned-looking people taking sidelong looks back and forth to each other. Barnes continues, “Everyone here at Elk Meadow is embarrassed for you! We bend over backwards to try everything in our power to reach you, to include you, to help you find the courage to take your life in your hands and do something with it, but, no, you persist in throwing the lifeline back in our face! And you smirk and preen, you’re so proud of yourself for what you’ve done. You’re like a little toddler showing off that he made a dookey, ‘Come see, come see Mommy, come see Daddy, look what I put in the toilet bowl’. I’m glad you’re proud of your accomplishments, but sadly nobody else thinks as highly of them as you do, and sooner or later you’re going to have to come around to recognizing that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an institution to run and I’m needed elsewhere.” With that, Barnes whirls and exits through the side hallway door.

Following several silent awkward beats, Irma ahemms and starts the morning meeting, which I scarcely take any notice of.

I file out with the others and end up walking in the corridor with several hospital staff quickly coming my direction. My counselor Mark and Gary from AA and NA walk next to me. Gary says to me, “I bet you were one of those students who likes to provoke the teacher. I can’t high-five you for being an asshole, but I gotta say, I never seen him so upset.”

Gary peels off down an adjoining hallway while I’m still processing that backhanded compliment. From somewhere, Marie from psychodrama also comes alongside.

Mark speaks first though. “You definitely pissed Barnes off. I’m not seeing a lot of good judgment in action here. I mean, think about it, now the guy who runs the place where you live isn’t pleased with you, and that could be a problem.”

Marie chimes in, “Yeah, watch out. Seriously.”





* * *



Biofeedback is next on my schedule. It briefly occurs to me to miss it. I don’t. I settle into my chair to watch the blips on the screen. It feels like a safe place to relax and process what just happened.

Biofeedback chairs are among the better chairs in the place, they’re professional office chairs with supportive backs and height adjustment switches, lightly padded, swivel seat on five roller balls, comfortable arm rests. I sit down in the nice chair and they hook the sensors on. There’s a display with dots that move against the backdrop of scale lines, and a dim trace of where each dot has been, its trajectory, with several dots and their patterns all fitting on the same screen, color coded, superimposed. They have names for the things being measured, but those names reflect the process of the making of the measurement, not really expressing what the data itself means. Means to whom? I’m in here, in this body, so potentially it has meaning to me, but I still have no frame of reference to understand what I’m watching. Nurse’s training didn’t cover the specifics of these measures.

Meanwhile, more cynically, I guess, you could say I am watching what process or function is being served by us being in biofeedback. The desired effect on us, the change targets. We’re the people they think of as here to be changed. The cynical eye isn’t seeing what the institution is getting out of this any more clearly than the trusting side understands the moving colored lines and dots on the screen.

My mind is still on Barnes and the morning meeting. Maybe I should have answered back and defended myself, but his attack seemed so over-the-top. His usual style is to smile benignly and insert sharp little verbal needles and make his intended victims lose their cool, but he sure hadn’t been doing that this morning.

Not just that, but he already targeted me during the big community group meeting yesterday evening, and normally he’d be on another unit, and then when he was next on Unit 4 again, move on to someone else. For him to come at me again so soon makes it look like a personal vendetta. Or... paints me as a problem who needs to be kicked out? But I don’t think they want to acknowledge that anyone can be disruptive here. That would mess with how they want this place to be perceived.

Ultimately, I probably handled it perfectly by just standing there, not responding. That had been accidental, I mean it wasn’t a carefully calibrated thing I’d decided to do or anything. And I hadn’t been the only one nonplussed — I’d been in a roomful of rather shocked-looking people looking back and forth at each other while Barnes did his rant.

So yeah, I think my silence in the face of his hissy fit allowed his behavior to speak for itself.

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I'm seeking feedback on my book Within the Box right here, one chapter at a time.

I'm hoping people will read it and comment on it as I go. I'm hoping that if they like it, they'll spread the word.

When I get to the end, I'll start over with the first chapter, by which point I'll no doubt have made changes.

Meanwhile, I'll keep querying lit agents, because why not? But this way I'm not postponing the experience of having readers.



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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.




Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

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