In the psych ward, everything is a sweet fog...

Everyone is nice, and everyone else is crazier than you are. I was wearing my xxxl crazy people pants pulled up through my underwear to keep them on, the vest/dress that wraps around your body three times, non skid socks and a white towel/blanket around my shoulders like a rebozo, and a bunch of gauze taped over my track marks.

Antoinette, a pillowy older woman sat where the orderlies had set up to check my blood pressure.

"ANTOINETTE!! Get up." "oh.....oh.....ohh....I'm sorry" She shuffled off.

After I had finished my beef stew and plastic cup of cranberry juice, I deposited my paper bag of belongings in my closet with "HELP" medicatedly scrawled on the back wall in red crayon, took my librium, and went outside for my hourly cigarette...I adjusted the blanket around my shoulders against the chill, and lit my cig off the recessed wall lighter.

I sat down. Antoinette was sitting across from me with her white blanket on her head. she looked at me totally agog...

"You're a virgin TOO?! I'm so sorry I took your seat....I didn't know...I didn't know..."

I asked her where she was from, and she mumbled something in spanish, so I switched languages.

She said she was from Rome. I asked her why she spoke spanish if she was from Rome. She told me that she was a virgin too, the Virgin Mary actually. She posed coyly in the moonlight for me.

She showed me the braided hairdo that some nebulous patient had given her and told me that her father had stolen her teeth...she gave me a big toothless grin and chomped her wet gums to illustrate her point.

I cried silently over my cigarette, next to Antoinette, who looked like the virgin mary if you squinted hard enough and forgot where you were.










Currently listening:
Games, Dames and Guitar Thangs
By Eddie Hazel
Release date: By 07 September, 2004