The Beginnings - Part 3: LONELINESS

It isn’t a question of mood.  It’s a question of concentration.
-BLITHE SPIRIT
An Improbably Force
A Noel Coward Play

Sunday
March 13, 1983

I listened to the FLEETWOOD MAC “MIRAGE” album today. I kept playing it over and over again. The “OH DIANE” song reminded me of my first love at St. Anthony’s: Diane Laschatz. The album is simply beautiful, easy listening sort of music. I also like the songs “EMPIRE STATE” and “HOLD ME”.

I cleaned out my closets and drawers today of unwanted shirts and pants in order to donate to a mentally retarded organization that left a card in my mailbox. Before all of my clothing was boxed my dad insisted on keeping a few of the items.
Dad said, “I could lose weight in a few months and fit in these.”
I laughed. It was fine with me. He can keep the clothes I don’t want. I just can’t see the day he reaches his ideal weight to fit into some of them. My mom also believes that dad will ‘show me up’ and fit into a pair of jeans that I gave up.
I said to mom, “Okay, only time will tell.”

I persuaded mom into making a few pancakes for us this evening. It’s strange but I craved pancakes for dinner! In Sweden pancakes are eaten for dinner…not breakfast. Why not join the club?

Nothing much else happened today. I did have a minor nap and a hot, relieving shower. Of course, I gained more insight into the life and times of good old Sigmund Freud as well.

At this point in the PASSIONS OF THE MIND book, Sigmund is twenty-seven years old (four years older than I am now). Most of his patients are suffering from some sort of mental illness. It brings back some memories of when I was institutionalized from November 23, 1980 through April 17, 1981. I think I can write about the situation a little more extensively now. Time has passed and I have learned from it:

I remember I was attending Cal State University, Sacramento at the time. I had only one more semester to complete before graduation. I can make a list now of all of the things that were bothering me ‘at the time’:

LONELINESS:  There was much yearning for and ‘not having people’ with me that I really liked. I liked Jeff Thurman, my next-door neighbor but he wasn’t always available. Lynne Major, who was geographically undesirable in Martinez, CA, was going through a separation from her husband. Linda Lore had a boyfriend. Michelle Von Thaden had a boyfriend and wanted me but was torn between the other guy who was divorced and had a child from his previous marriage. Pat Shikuzawa, my supposedly good friend who lived in Sacramento spent limited time with me. My parents were quite a distance away and I missed them very much. There was also the break-up of that dwindled romance with Lauralee Robertson of Tustin, CA. I met her via a wrong number and took a bus to Southern California and she sent me a photo of another pretty girl in her class. She was pretending to be someone else and it became very awkward once I met her in person.

SCHOOLWORK:  The pressure of exams and the shifts of thought one course in particular gave me that was called THE AGE OF INCOHERENCE. The instructor was obsessed with his Yogi and the New Testament and focused this Communications Studies course into diverse subjects like religion, rape, advertising, futurism, love and sex. The instructor had a full bear that covered his face and he was intimidating. Frankly, he was downright scary.

EMPLOYMENT and MONEY:  My limited budget and possibilities of employment with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) were at a high point. I was being screened and interviewed for the position of ‘Special Agent’. The testing, questions and investigations put me into a paranoid sort of feeling.
One interviewer in at the CIA office in San Francisco said, “Don’t be surprised if you see someone following you. It might be one of our employees watching your activities.”

LOVE, ROMANCE and SEX:  My deep, heavy courtship with Lynne Major was so exciting for me; however, there was a bothersome conflict. She was married and I wanted to please her. I wanted her to want me. In addition, an instructor in the Communications Department named Bob Sellner asked me to meet him in his private office one evening. He was my Speech teacher on Monday nights. He ‘came on’ to me. He was a married man who was extremely attracted to me. The move was made at the University. He was in his early forties and I was not attracted to him. In fact, he caught me so off-guard when he put his hand on my leg. He reminded me of the weather forecaster named Pete Giddings from San Francisco.
I told him, “I’ll have to think about it.”
That’s all I could think of saying. Then I wondered if this was a planted activity by the CIA to test my reaction. I was alarmed. It added to my paranoia.

And so…during the Thanksgiving recess from college I had a heavy date arranged with Lynne Major. We went to dinner at the Stanford Court Hotel at a restaurant called Fornou’s Oven. I bought her six red and six yellow roses. After the fine dining we twirled around at the Top of the Mark bar over a couple of pina colada cocktails. It was romantic. I felt as though I was on cloud nine and ‘so in love’ with this beautiful long-haired blond twenty-six year old woman. I was a mere twenty-one but the five year age difference didn’t matter to me. We kissed, kissed and slept together in her bed in Martinez, California. I loved lying next to her. Her body wasn’t perfect. It seemed as though one breast was slightly irregular to the other. Her golden haired pubic hair was all that I had hoped for.

Lynne and I made plans for dinner the next evening. I arrived at her apartment. I was so excited about seeing her again that I left early from my parents’ house in Alameda. When I arrived I got the crazy impression that there was another man in her apartment. I was fuming.
When I arrived I thought she’d be excited to see me but she opened the door by just a crack and said, “What are you doing here?”

I left  because she wouldn’t let me in her apartment. I drove back to Alameda and simply went to my room and listened to some tunes on the radio. I was in such a paranoid state that I began to believe that every song that played on the radio related to me in a very strange and connective way. How could this be? Is it the CIA that is doing this? I turned off the radio and decided to watch TV. Every show and credit and phrase that I saw on the screen seemed to pertain to me. My folks thought I was acting strange. They were also surprised that I had lost so much weight.
I explained, “Well, I ride my bike to school every day!”

My weight was at 145 to 150 pounds. I knew I wasn’t eating right. I skipped meals. While home I had bread and wine as a nightcap. I began to feel some religious undertones that took over the ‘passions of my mind’ from reading excerpts from the New Testament. I was reading it for that strange AGE OF INCOHERENCE Communications Studies course that I was taking. It was extra credit reading. I didn’t have to do it—but I did because some people at the University were handing out the New Testament books for free.

On this night I truly had the crazy impression that my longtime high-school friend, Suzy Miller, and her friend, Sandy Renk (her roommate at the time) were engaging in a lesbian affair. I had to make sure that it wasn’t so. I had to see her.   I felt a need to be with her.  Why I thought this was beyond me? It was pure hallucination on my part. My mind was effortlessly afloat and drifting further away from me.

My parents did not want me to go to Suzy Miller’s house because they thought I was acting strange. My mother especially felt I was ‘not myself’. She believed it was all the fault of Lynne Major.

I recall that on this very morning I said to my mother, “You know, Mom, I think I saw the Mother of God and she spoke to me as ‘Michael, the Archangel.”
My mom cried when I told her this.
She said, “I think I saw the Mother of God once, too—when my grandmother died.”
I was amazed by her comment. I was also curious about her tears. Were they tears of joy or sadness?

Anyway, I ended up escaping the house for Suzy Miller’s house quietly. I ran out of the house. I remember running through the middle of the street on Maitland Drive. I was wearing my Dad’s lamb’s wool vest and cowboy boots. I was running in cowboy boots! I was also carrying my mom’s VIRGO blue-green medallion-like pendant key chain, believing it was some sort of illuminating force.

It wasn’t long until I reached the Bay Farm Island Bridge and startled a girl who was on her bike. She looked like Paula Rodriguez, the daughter of my parent’s best-friends).
I stopped her on her bike and shouted, “I need to get to Suzy’s house before it’s too late!”
She looked at me with fear in her eyes. The look on her face even scared me, so I let her go on her merry way. I know I must have scared her.
I believe I said to her, “Watch out and be careful tomorrow because something’s going to happen to everybody!”

This was also about the same time that Ronald Reagan was newly elected as President over Jimmy Carter.

I never did make it to Suzy Miller’s house but I do often wonder what would have happened if I did get there. Would I have calmed down? Would I have been brought back to my ‘normal zone’? Was I really that abnormal after all? I guess I was out of my realm because I sort of remember my mom and dad arrived by car while I was on the Bay Farm Bridge and got me into their car. They promised to take me to Suzy’s house but instead drove back home. I made a foolish attempt to choke my mother by the neck because I was mad that they’d brought me back home. After they’d lured me into the car I thought they were taking me to Suzy’s house. I became enraged when I realized they were returning home.

By the time we reached our house I was so upset I kind of recall dropping my pants when Dad parked in the driveway. I was still in the back seat.
I grabbed my penis and yelled, “Look, it stretches!”
My mother turned around and gasped.

Before I knew it the police arrived and carted me off to Highland Hospital. There was a black cop and white cop.
I shouted at the black cop, calling him, “Mohammed!”
I kept muttering the “Mohammed” name during the drive to the Alameda County Hospital where I was escorted to the Psychiatric Unit. I felt angry and like a fiend (a very evil person). I felt remorse about these cops taking me away to an unknown place.

I remember the cops carried me inside. I was strapped and put into restraints by my ankles and wrists. It was as if I was an animal. I felt like I was being crucified. I sort of remember my folks visiting me there. They peered through the window while I was lying in restraints. I thought I saw them. I can’t be sure.
I yelled at them, asking, “How could you allow them to take me away?”

By morning I was calm. I persuaded a fat, black nurse maid into taking off my restraints. They were so tight. It was such a relief to be loosened from the straps. My ankles and wrists were so hurt and sore from it. I could hear the screaming and yelling of other victims in the other rooms. This was no consolation. I hallucinated about butterflies because butterflies are free. I also hallucinated about Brazil and my Brazilian girlfriend, Lucia Junquiera Franco that I met on a flight to Hawaii. I thought of butterflies and Brazil.

When I was released I was taken to a breakfast room with a bunch of mentally disturbed people that were all overly medicated. I started to talk to a lot of them, trying to understand their problems. I became fixated as a psychologist for these other people in lunatic mode. Suddenly, and for some unknown reason I ended up getting upset at some of the looks the people were giving me. I took it personally and chose to lift the dining table up and down. I wanted to ‘wake these people up’.

The security guards began to rush in to for me. I could see them running from the window. It scared me so I ran for the door and held it so they couldn’t come in for me. I didn’t want them to hurt me again and put me in restraints. I couldn’t hold on to the door any longer. They forced their way through. One of the violent chaps pulled and yanked my arm so hard that it felt like he pulled my arm out of the socket. In reality, he broke my left arm. It was horrifying as I didn’t want to look. I felt my left arm dangling.   I thought my arm was torn off.   How could this be happening to me?
I yelled, “Just put it back ON…please!”

Luckily, I was in a hospital and was transported. My upper arm was broken and out of place. After a night there I had a huge cast on my arm.

I remember seeing sunlight the following day as I was transferred by bed and ambulance to Gladman Hospital, a private psychiatric unit, nestled in the foothills of Oakland. This place was expensive and had better facilities. They were better there but I should not have been there for as long as I was there. My Dad’s insurance covered me because I was a full-time college student and under the age of twenty-three.

I felt like a monster with a giant cast on my left arm.  I felt trapped.  I couldn’t get out.  I was put on diverse medications like thorazine and lithium.   I was diagnosed as a schizophrenic.   I knew I was fine after a week.   I just had to persuade my doctor.   It wasn’t easy as I would falter back, becoming confused with the medication and flirting with the nursing staff.   I had to maintain seriousness and a yearning to be out again ‘to finish school’. 

My experiences at this Gladman Hospital can be greatly detailed but I am not in the mood to write about them now. I am only glad that it is all over. I am happy that I can write about it constructively at this time. The fact that this happened early in my life has made me conform to balance. I read that if I never had another manic-depressive psychotic episode for seven years after this incident that it would be likely that it would never happen again.

I am so glad that I will be in Guadalajara, Mexico next week. I am considering a trip to New York in early June. My friend, Helen (at Pacific Telephone) and I are also thinking about a Caribbean Singles Cruise vacation.

“LIFE is a flash and so is DEATH.”
-Mary Stuart
2009 New York BROADWAY Play