Jazzy D's Soul Notes

= July 27, 1982 (Day Nine) =



“Turn to your left and high-five your neighbor”, Irma tells us. Now turn to your right and do it again! Good morning, community!”

The hands I smack belong to Ronald and Valerie. “Go back to bed, Barbie”, Valerie tells Irma, not loudly enough for it to actually carry to her but sufficient for those of us nearby to hear. Jake makes an amused sound.

I’m not exactly sure why, but it feels like there’s been a subtle shift. It’s not quite that Valerie and Jake and Noelle and April have decided I’m bestfriend material, but more like they’ve inspected me and decided I’m all right. They’re more okay with me seeing that they’re not entirely in love with Elk Meadow and its programming and staff. I won’t use it at their expense to make a point to Barnes, and at the same time I’m no longer the symbol of opposition around here either. They know I won’t mock them for trying to get something out of being here.

I’m more comfortable around them too. They can roll their eyes at Gary Stevens and Dr. Barnes and Mark Raybourne, they aren’t creepy indoctrinated cult followers.

So I’m looser around them, a bit sillier. When I’m trying to describe an example of some kind of behavior or attitude, I’m more likely to act out a parody. Any of them may speak critically of me, say something dismissive or even downright contemptuous, but it’s at the same level of caustic familiarity with which they speak to each other, not real hostility. I’m not carefully picking my words as if they might be used against me later.

They still treat me as a nerdy bookish sort but they’re less critical of me using obscure words. I’m more inclined to giggle when they say something that hits me as funny, and I catch myself skipping down the hallway towards a cluster of them when I see them outside the cafeteria.



* * *





There’s someone sitting at the piano stool, which is unusual. It’s Emily. She hasn’t opened the wooden cover that goes over the keyboard and isn’t poised like she’s going to play, just sitting there. She sits very still in the piano alcove, leaning slightly forward, arms tight at her side. The overhead light is turned off, so she’s in the dim light from the corridor, the green and yellow mural colors on the wall faded to shadowed olive shades.

I approach slowly, walking quietly; when I’m within about four feet of her, I pause and wait for her to become aware of me. I see a slight lift of her head. “Hello”, I say.

“Do you want to play the piano? I’ll leave...”, she says dully.

“What’s wrong? If you don’t mind me asking...?” I wait quietly. She looks like she might have been crying. Not that she’s red-eyed as if she’s been bawling for half an hour, just a little smudgy and disheveled around the face.

Emily looks at me from the side for a couple seconds, then shifts on the piano bench to face me. “I miss my boys. My children. Do you have kids?”

“No.” Which means maybe she won’t want to talk to me about it, whatever it is. I wait again.

Emily sighs. “I just got promoted to Level One. Did you hear? Emily Sanders, that girl’s really pulling it together.” She pauses. “I’ve worked hard in here. I’ve really tried to listen? And do what’s expected, what they want, to show I’m serious about getting my life in order.” She speaks faster, more emphatically. “I’ve been Unit Leader for two months now. I’ve got Mark for individual. He promised me if I made Level One I could get a pass and go home and visit my kids. I’ve done everything they ask. Well, Dr. Barnes overruled Mark. He says I’m treating it like a trade, what he calls tit for tat, and says it doesn’t count if I only do what’s right because I expect a reward from Mark in return.”

“That’s twisted. They should keep their promises.”

Emily scowls. “It’s not like Dr. Barnes didn’t know about it. They all talk with each other, and nobody would tell us anything like that without running it past Dr. Barnes first. They dangled that in front of me just so they could pull it away and say I want special favors for making progress. They set me up.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that they can be really manipulative. It’s not fair.”

Emily looks at me, long and slow. Then she says, “Don’t tell anyone. If they see I’m angry about it they’ll hold it against me. Thanks for listening. Hey, you better go out for recreational, okay? I don’t want to make you late.”

Having been dismissed, however gently, I leave her to the aloneness of her own space and go out the doors, although it’s actually a good ten minutes before I’m due out there.



* * *





Joanne comes around the corner. So far the only other residents are a couple of new admissions I don’t know yet — Kim and Javier. We’ve done mutual intros but otherwise we’re just shuffling back and forth waiting. “Oh...umm... listen, Derek”, Joanne fumbles as she gets closer. “I, umm, we... staff had a discussion”, she says, trailing off. She’s trying to hold on to her confident smile but it’s sliding, and her eyes skitter away from my face. “...it’s not a good idea for you to be outdoors without sufficient supervision. So I need you to go back inside.”

Seriously? They’re worried I’m going to scale the fence and run away? Or is it that I might ...disobey instructions and engage in unapproved forms of exercise?

These people really need to synchronize their messaging better. So much for ‘Derek has made good progress and has decided he likes it in this place’. I reach out for some low-hanging contempt and stare at Joanne without replying and whirl around and stalk back into the building.

Emily is still over by the piano but Mark and Jeremy are there too, Jeremy sitting next to her on the bench and Mark hovering, standing and holding on to the top of the piano.

They’re being circumspect about anything specific, but as I walk by, I overhear Jeremy saying, “Just play the game. Put this all behind you”, so I figure Emily decided she can trust them enough to tell them about it.

I feel like I’m getting some privileged insights. Perhaps more people on staff than I realized are less than fully enthusiastic about the things that happen in this place.

I would like to play the piano, actually, but I’ll come back later; meanwhile may as well hang out in the cafeteria area until psychodrama. I’m still not interacting as much as I should.

Jake and April are over at one of the tables, with an open bag of potato chips in front of them. I wave, get a return wave, and go to sit with them. “What’s going down?”, Jake greets.

“I’ve been demoted down to Level Five”, I tell him.

“Say what?”, April reacts. “Level Four is the lowest level they’ve got. There isn’t any Level Five.”

“They’re not calling it that, but I’ve got fewer privileges now than when I came in. They don’t want me to go outdoors any more.”

I recap what Joanne had told me. April and Jake proclaim this to be seriously fucked up.

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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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