The Treatment Program of Absurdity: 1

Intake

On August 5th 2010, my grandfather arrived in Kingsville, after a 12-hour flight, in which we stayed at the Marriott; and the following morning, we drove to the Kingsville’s Old Post Office, which is the Georgian building that’s used as the program’s headquarters. The admissions coordinator, Janet Ramsey, greeted us in the main hallway, and presented our paper work that needed to be filled out, so that I could begin the program. Upon arrival, I had the pleasure of encountering James Old, the program recruiter who I had met while visiting the program, and had acclimated myself with; but James’ main focus area was recruitment, which didn’t provide much social opportunity with him, and that disappointed me.
I then met the head psychologist, 37-year-old Frank Gore, and I also met his therapist, 38-year-old John Butler - Frank Gore was a tall, but thin, figure with a brown mullet; where as John Butler had a mullet, but it was black, and he was buff, like a football player. Along came the misfortune of being belabored the rule that sucked the most: as long as I was in the program, I was not allowed to drink or use drugs, even when he was on vacation. Using illegal narcotics was an experience I hadn’t yet had, but I loved getting intoxicated on a Saturday night. The thing that pissed me off the most was the fact that I could only take one college course to start with, meaning that I wouldn’t graduate college until I was 22.
Dr. Gore gave my grandpa and I a tour of the OPO: The top floor consisted of rooms that were used for vocational classes. The main floor consisted of a grand hallway that was used for seminars; Jennet and Gary’s offices; and once you went through a locked door, laid the offices of the clinicians. The bottom floor consisted of The Coffee Cellar, which was used as the Great Ascendency lounge.
I was taken down to the coffee cellar to meet four of the students. One of them was 23-year old Sara England, who it was surprising that she was ever invited, since she is arguably comparable to Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird; Sarah had a pimpled face with a Bob cut hairstyle, and she wore glasses. There was Lily Kilo - a fat girl with long bouffant hairstyle and a puffy face - who had been at the program for two years; and due to her laziness, she hadn’t advanced through the program. We then had, Jared Hoon, who was the only one in that group who was in transition housing; Jared was buff, like a football player, and he had a comb over, like Donald Trump. I was pissed off over how all of the girls I’d seen so far were girls I would never masturbate to in a million years.
There were two different houses at Great Ascendency: Core and transition; one for each gender; and all of them were red brick-Victorian houses within proximity. Every student started out in core, where there were rules that applied to him/her, as opposed to the transition students. Core students were not allowed to have cell phones or computers, unless they got permission form their educational consultant; they had 12:00 curfews on weekends and 11:00 curfews on weekdays; they made their meals as a group, as opposed to making them separately; they did not have Internet access, except for one computer in the house; and they had cameras in the core houses, which kept them from doing things like running around the house naked, as Jared had done in transition. Once a student got into the transition house, these rules seized to exist; some students would get into transition after 4 weeks, and some students would take 3 years.
There were two groups of students at Great Ascendency: those who were in substance abuse and those who were socially awkward. The SA students were not the extreme cases whose bodies had been worn out by narcotics; the Great Ascendency students in SA were socially competent and well educated. There were also those who had executive functions issues, which usually came from Autism Spectrum Disorder.
A beautiful female staff member in her mid 20’s, Priscilla Pool, came over to meet us; her hair was the color of raven's wings and cascaded like a waterfall down her back, reaching almost to her waist, but this was no more striking than her eyes, which were like sapphires set symmetrically into her almost colorless face, brimming, to the point of overflowing, with peace, wisdom and compassion. After acclimating herself with us, she then proceeded to take us over to the program headquarters, which was known as Polly House, an old Victorian mansion that was used as the office building for the program staff. I had felt uncomfortable about being in a program with most of the students he had seen, so she comforted me by talking with him about how the place wasn’t going to be that bad.
Before we continue, it is important that you, the reader, get an idea of the layout of the city of Kingsville. Kingsville is the 5th largest city in Utah - after Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Provo and West Jordan - with a population of 92,320. Kingsville’s downtown was quite affluent; it consisted of a high-end walking mall, Moroni Square; it was where the Old Post Office was; The Joseph Smith Hotel, which costs about $300 a night; an abundance of law firms, banks, and high-end cafes. To the east of Downtown, laid Grove Street: Kingsville’s historic working-class neighborhood. Further east, was a cheap shopping center; the shopping center was still common among those with money, since it consisted of the cities only bowling alley, the only large movie theater and a major sportsplex. South of the Downtown, stood a newer middle-class neighborhood, which extended 10 miles to the city’s outskirts. North of the Downtown, consisted of another higher-end shopping plaza, which also coincided with some other middle class neighborhoods; the establishments included a Wal-Mart, a J.C. Penny, an Applebee’s, a Best Buy, a Staples, an Olive Garden, a Dicks Sporting Goods, a Sears, a Target, an Old Navy, a TJ Maxx, and it is where Oliver North Community College was located. To the west of the city, consisted of modest, though expensive, historic homes that went for at least $600,000, the houses got bigger and more expensive as you moved towards the city’s outskirts; the western part is where Polly House and all of the Great Ascendency student housing is located. In the center of Western Kingsville, lies a major state park that is used by Great Ascendency, Brigham Young State Park.
When we approached the garden of Polly House, I noticed a Mercedes in the parking lot of the clinical director, which gave me hope that this man was prominent. Upon entering the building, Priscilla gave us a tour of Polly House. The basement consisted of a more causal lounge than that of the coffee cellar in the OPO. If you enter the building from the backside, you will stumble into a causal dining room that was used for special meals, and it was where the desk was for the house managers; adjacent to the dining room is a narrow hallway, and when you walked down, you would come across a private lounge for meetings; and to the right of the lounge, you would stumble upon the offices of the Student Life Managers, the SA Coordinator, and the lady who was in charge of medication, Garry Old’s wife Margaret.
Priscilla brought us upstairs, which consisted of the offices of the clinical director, 55-year-old Dr. Tommy K Linkins, and his associates. I walked inside to meet Dr. Linkins, who was a tall figure with short grey hair and a 4-inch beard. Tommy was kind hearted and sensitive to me, who, at the time, was angry that I would graduate college when he was 22 instead of 21, and Tom cheered me up by telling me that nowadays, graduating 5 years after high school isn’t abnormal. Tommy took a liking to me because I reminded him of why he started the program.
Tommy founded Great Ascendency in 1985, with the hope of helping some of the most intelligent people in this world who also struggle socially; and help those people fix their mild issues, to allow them to go on to be CEO’s, doctors, lawyers, and even President of the United States. The one mild factor that Tom overlooked is that very few parents are able, or even willing, to pay $120,000 a year, and even fewer would pay unless there kids had severe disorders and they no longer wanted to deal with them. Tom, instead of receiving geniuses, which was his ideal, had received a bunch of underdogs who would only make substantial progress in society.
My grandfather and I went over to the guys’ core house to drop off my stuff, and then my grandfather departed back to Connecticut. My next encounter was with the day house manager, Winfield Miott – who was a 30-year old former military veteran, who was buff, had a wide face, and a brown high-and-tight hairstyle. I remember as we began to unpack my stuff, I was called down to Polly House to meet with Barbara Stross, to set up my agenda.
When I got there, I was repulsed by her appearance. Barbara weighed 350 pounds, had chubby cheeks that nearly blocked her facial features; wide lips that were similar to those in a minstrel show; a nose that dropped down to the top of her mouth; and a poorly cut pixie cut. Later that night, a student would tell me that her father is the president of a large bank, and he donated $200,000 to the program annually. During the introductory section, she told me about this really hard class I would have to take called “Computer Skills II,” which was “so hard,” the class taught lessons like Amazonn instead of Amazon was not really amazon.com. I had to take “Computer Skills I” first, but was allowed to test out of it, which Barbara discouraged me from testing out of, since she claimed it is, according to her, a very hard course; it was merely learning to use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. In retrospect, I would say I like her about as much as Roman Polanski likes Charles Manson, but I am probably being a little generous.
When I got back Winfield Miott helped me unpack my belongings. Upon the unpacking, Winfield began to gaze upon the items that I possessed: I owned a Calvin Klein suit, a Mac Book Pro, an iPhone 4, a $200 Wilson tennis racquet, two Samsonite suitcases, 8 nice sport shirts with 8 nice pairs of kaki pants, 6 blazers with 4 nice pairs of dress pants, a Brookstone back massager, a $100 chess set, an iHome alarm clock, a fancy overcoat, a fancy leather jacket, a fancy leather backpack, a Sector 9 longboard, a Nike basketball, a Tippman X7 paintball gun, nice shoes, an abundance of Ralph Lauren polo shirts, a pair of Bose speakers for his computer. Even though students are not allowed to have game consoles or televisions, I pointed out to Winfield that, at my home, I had a 12-inch Samsung television, along with an Xbox 360, PS3 and a Nintendo Wii.
Even though the students come from families that pay $120,000 annually, most of the students lived modestly; students had a basic computer; a few books; clothes from Target, and if they were lucky, they would be from H@M; potentially one piece of athletic equipment, a few students would have a cheap guitar; and most students had a per-minute cell phone [to remind everyone that back in 2010, in order to have even a nice basic phone, you needed a plan]. I was surprised, since the program costs a lot; and I felt deprived for having a Seiko instead of an Omega.
To be honest, I felt completely trapped. I didn’t want to be here at all, but I knew I had no where else to go, so what the f*** was a poor boy to do. I was tempted to call up my grandfather and tell him that I will just get an apartment in this city, and attend Oliver North Community College; but as soon as I picked up my cell phone, I began to reflect on the brutal treatment I would likely endure with some of my slightly inappropriate behaviors. I prayed to God and asked him if I should go live on my own or stay in this place with these f***ing retards. I then went out for a walk, where I saw some guys who looked like a couple of Crips, and realizing the people I would likely be dealing with in the real world, I noticed that god sent those low-class gang members by to send me the message that even though I have class, I need to change some of my behaviors before entering the real world. For some reason, Great Ascendency also felt like the only place I could walk around my Dolce and Gabbana polo shirt – I got it on sale, of course – and not worry about getting beaten up.