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1.

Sheldon

         The bridge dwellers.  We live under bridges, huddled together for warmth and a sense of camaraderie.  We lay our bodies down on stained mattress’ thrown out by graduated college seniors off to the ‘real world’ where they’ll work as lawyers and doctors.  Students we will never know personally, but how much personal can you get than laying on the crusted semen stains of Johnny football star? 

         Awaking each morning, about seven, the greasy smell of McDonalds churns my aching guts and rotting stomach into sickening nausea.  Eating is a luxury and we go to great lengths to find nourishment.  Dumpsters behind pizza shops became Timbuktu and the advent of dollar menus has probably done more to save our kind than any other system of help.  Of course, alcohol and drugs help to stave the pangs of hunger, but only for so long before bile, chum and blood burn our esophagus‘. 

         Like most mornings, I awake to rush hour traffic buzzing above on the tenth street bridge.  Cars traveling to work.  People off to get their coffee and donuts.  Some mornings the whirring sirens of an ambulance or a police car would wake me, some mornings it was the bass of some punk kid’s car.  That boom, boom, boom shaking, rattling solid steel.  It was probably the tremors, convulsions that woke up Sheldon, or maybe the spiders.

         Sickness is common among us BD’s, as we’ve come to call ourselves. Some of us ’Jitterbugs’, enduring ‘The Fear’.  Uncontrollable tightening, tremors of the arms and legs are signs of the fear.    Twisting, bending the vertebrae so inhuman I can’t fathom the pain.  Bones crack like lightening strikes, muscles spasm and hyperextend until they looked flexed like a bodybuilder. Convulsions so jarring they would induce vomiting. Meet Sheldon Sparks.  Sheldon the contortionist. 

         Hallucinations. Spiders and creepy crawly things wriggled their way over his body until, of course, he’d get his alcoholic cure.  Question and answer. Back and forth, conversations with the air around him.  Hours spent talking to himself. Sometimes it would be so unnerving I’d answer back, just to feel part of it.  . Delirium tremens doctors call it . Long periods of drinking,  then abrupt stopping.  Any medical textbook will tell you this:

          Constant consumption of alcohol causes a counter regulatory response in the brain in attempt to regain homeostasis. This causes down regulation of the Benzodiazepine GABAA-chloride receptors, as well as an up-regulation in the production of excitatory neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine,  dopamine, epinephrine, and serotonin, all of which further the drinker's tolerance to alcohol. When alcohol is no longer consumed, these down-regulated GABAA receptor complexes are so insensitive to GABA that the typical amount of GABA produced has little effect; compounded with the fact that GABA normally inhibits action potential formation, there are not as many receptors for GABA to bind to — meaning that sympathetic activation is unopposed. This is also known as an "adregenic storm"; the effects of which can include (but are not limited to) tachycardia, hypertension, hyperthermia, hyperreflexia, diaphoresis, heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke, anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia, and agitation.



         A sponsor at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting will tell you this:

         “Don’t drink, no matter what.  Start with step one by admitting you are powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable, then work the step.”  I never understood that, working a step, but I’m not an alcoholic.

         There is no curing us from alcoholism or drug addiction because rehabilitation is not in our equation.  We can’t afford it.  Money is the biggest of our luxuries, every five dollars made is five dollars spent on a cure. Alcohol, food or dope.

         Each morning Sheldon would wake up, if he slept, to the seismic shakes, swatting away the imaginary spiders.  He was, by all means, an alcoholic.  I would tell him he needed to quit drinking but “wha fo’” is all he’d say.  That was his answer for damn near everything.  And really, I don’t blame him. 

         When his wife died he started drinking.  His beautiful black queen,  he’d call her.  Ebony was her name.  He would tell me how they’d go to jazz clubs, sip martini’s, make love all night.  She loved to dance, he’d say over and over again between sips of cheap vodka.  She’d let the music take over her body, writhing in rhythm, her hips swinging sensually and sexually to the beat.  He’d tell me it was all he could do not ravish her on the dance floor right then and there.  Ebony, he’d say, my beautiful black queen.  Then she died, unexpectedly.  Massive stroke, he told me, one morning while brushing her teeth.  Just like that.  Here, then gone.  His beautiful black queen gone.  Now he lives next to me under the bridge.

         After his morning constitution we’d walk to the corner and hold up signs.  ‘Will work for food’, or ‘Homeless Vet’, or even ‘I need money’ printed in black marker on cardboard.  Most people would just drive or walk past, some would give us change, and some would tell us to get a fucking job.  I would want to tell them Sheldon’s story.  Tell them about Queen Ebony and how she‘d dance the night away.  I’d want to tell them what an amazing artist he was, but they wouldn’t listen.  All they saw was the vodka bottle and smell the breath of a man who hadn’t brushed his teeth in well over a year.    This is Sheldon.  Bum, beggar, alcoholic, starving artist.

         After we collected about ten dollars Sheldon would make me buy him a pint of vodka.  He’d say, “You ain’t be smellin’ like me,  clothes ain’t as dirty.”  I looked ‘spectable,  he’d say.  But believe me, there’s no respectable way to look when you’re homeless.

The Artist

         You can still see Sheldon’s work among the bridges and tunnels all over the city.  SHELL, written in graffiti.  His tag, he called it.  In the poorest parts of the city murals of street life and the struggles along with it could stretch as far as a block long.  Pictures of rappers, dead and alive, underneath bridges and inside tunnels.  These are all Sheldon.  All done with a spray can and sometimes a small brush.  His work has been documented in various films, some even calling him the greatest graffiti artist ever to have lived, but nobody knew him, or where he was.  Some suspected he died, killed himself after Ebony’s death.  Some suspected seclusion.  Some even suspected he just moved on, broken hearted.  On the fifteenth street bypass you can see Ebony.  The black queen dancing her dance, writhing her hips to the beat.



         Ebony persuaded him to put his work to canvas.  He would draw and paint, struggles of the life he was living, rappers and actors he so dearly loved.  And just like the fledgling rappers of the inner city, he’d sell his work from the trunk of his car.  On the corner, at barbecues, family reunions, anywhere he might sell at least one.  He told me all of this one night when the spiders were gone and he wasn’t shaking, taking long sips of vodka between stories, sometimes bringing himself to tears.   

         After a particularly successful day of begging, I bought a notebook and a pencil, asked if he’d draw something for me, but he just politely smiled and said ’naw’.  That notebook still sits underneath my mattress, waiting for Sheldon to put pencil to paper. 

         Sheldon has said that the money he collected from his work he’d put into a fund, a fund designated for the baby they wanted to have.  He said he gave up weed and drinking in favor of a child.  Ebony was ecstatic when he told her this news. 

         A baby girl they wanted.  Ella.  Named after the famed musician Ella Fitzgerald, Ebony’s favorite.  They would play Ella’s music for baby Ella, he’d tell me.  Rock her to sleep at night listening to Ella croon.  She would have been loved and cared for unlike any other baby on this Earth, he’d say.  But it never came to be.  Only two weeks after the pregnancy test showed that pink line did Ebony die.  Mother and child gone, taken away from a then young Sheldon.  He was unsure of what hurt more, losing Ebony or Ella, and though he’ll never know the sex of the child, she’ll always be baby Ella to him.  Sometimes, after two or three pints of vodka, he’d cry out for Ebony or Ella and sometimes in his sleep I could hear him singing Ms. Fitzgerald.  It was nights like that that I’d usually go for a walk, thinking of my own life.  Thinking of what once was, and what will never be.

         An artists life is never normal.  Rocked with addictions, psychosis, mental illnesses, etc… they channel their abnormalities into art.  Painting, writing, music. 

         Sheldon’s abnormality was the streets.  Ghetto life.  Watching drug dealers sell crack and heroin, losing friends in drive-bys, witnessing his mother die from breast cancer.  He channeled his anger and resentment onto concrete walls, looking for a better way out, trying to make clean money from his work.  He knew too many making dirty money, too many locked up or dead.  This was his life and he was able to paint it so eloquently, literally.  He’d say he was from the wrong side of the tracks, that I was from the right side and sometimes he’d curse me for the life I was living, but he didn’t know.  How could he?

         Within a month Ella’s small fund was spent on drink.  With nowhere to go, inspiration lost, he took to the streets panhandling and begging.  He couldn’t bear to paint another painting for fear of only being able to paint Ebony.  I suspected he didn’t want to unlock Pandora’s Box, set him off into further neurosis. 

         When I met Sheldon, he was twenty-nine, disheveled and rotten with life.  For some reason he took to me, though.  I’ll never know why, and I don’t dare to ask.  He’s saved me on these streets, kept me company, and became my only friend. 

2.

Adam

“I know where it is”, Adam tells me, “I can find it.”

“Where is it, Adam?”, I ask, even though I know it, (whatever ‘it’ is), could be in several different states.  Today, I’m guessing Arizona.

“Nebraska.  It’s in Omaha.”, he says.  Pupils large he stares at something just over my left shoulder.

“What is it Adam?  What do you see?”, I ask, looking slightly behind me.

“Omaha.  Omaha, sir.  Take me.”, he says to the wall.  “I must go.  Our lives are in grave danger here.”  He looks at me, wild eyed, scared, serious and with one quick, jerky motion sits up straight, bound to the chair with straps and screams, “GRAVE DANGER!”

I think it’s time to up the dosage of Risperdal.

         Schizophrenia.  Abnormalities in the perception of reality.  Too much dopamine in the brain causes auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions.  The guy on the corner yelling about the end times, he’s probably schizo.  That crazy lady talking jibberish, yeah, she’s probably suffering too.  And Adam.  He’s utterly convinced that we are all in grave danger.  We have to find ‘it’, and it has been located in Arizona, South and North Dakota, and now in Nebraska.

         I am Michael and I am Adam’s psychologist.

         

         I took Adam on as my only patient one year ago.  Handling a schizophrenic can be a twenty four hour a day babysitting job. My job does not end. 

         At home I pour over notes, leaf through psychological textbooks.  I look up the definitions to big medical words like catecholamine neurotransmitters, phenethylamine and catechol-O-methyl transferase.  I know everything there is to know about cognition, motivation, punishment, reward.  I know that Dopaminergic neurons are present in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain, substantia nigra pars compacta, and the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus. I know all of this because I received a PhD in psychology from The University of Michigan.

          I also know that the Mesocortical pathway connects the ventral tegmental area to the frontal lobe of the pre-frontal cortex.

         Because of that little paper hanging on my wall I’m able to tell you that neurones with somas in the ventral tegmental area project axons into the pre-frontal cortex.  Also, that the mesolimbic pathway carries dopamine from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens via the amygdala and hippocampus.          

         Close to $80,000 taught me that the somas of the projecting neurons are in the ventral tegmental area.  And that the nigrostriata pathway runs from the substantia nigra to the neostriatum.

         Did you know that somas in the substantia nigra projects axons into the caudate nucleus and putamen? Or that the pathway is involved in the basal ganglia motor loop?

No?  Well, me either until Professor so and so told me. He said, ’and don’t forget that the Tuberoinfundibular pathway is from the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland, because it will be on the quiz.’ 

         Hebe, in Greek mythology, is the Goddess of youth.  Daughter of Zeus and Hera she was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus.  The figure of Hebe was popularized in the 19th century by garden statues.  Hebe comes from the Greek word meaning youth or prime of life.  Hebephrenia, or disorganized schizophrenia,  is named as such because it’s onset is during the time around puberty.  Adam is eighteen.  At twelve he began displaying signs of classic Hebephrenia.

         The following day I meet Adam at our usual time in our usual drab room, me seated behind a desk with a notebook and voice recorder and him in his usual wheelchair and straps.  His eyes, sunk and red, are distant, somewhere else.  I notice a small cut on his arm.

         “Tell me what happened last night, Adam.”, I say.  The notes tell me he tried to cut himself with a plastic knife.

         “I lost.”, he says.

         “You lost?”

         “Number 72 said I couldn’t cut off my, um, arm.”

         “Number 72 said this?”, I ask, jotting this down in the notebook.

         “Yes.”, then, “Who are you?”, he asks.

         “I’m Michael.  I’m your doctor.  I’m here to help.”, answering back.

         “Oh.”, he says with non-chalance that for some reason grates me.

         “So, tell me about number 72.”  Number 72 is an imaginary friend.  So far I’ve documented eighty three friends, most friendly, a few not so much.  Number 72 falls into the latter category.

         “He bet me I couldn’t cut my arm off.  See?”, he shows me the wound, long and jagged, not very deep. 

         “Why did he want you to cut your arm off?”, I ask.

         “Because God told him to tell me.”, he says.

         “Have you ever spoken with God?”

         “NO!”, he screams.  The mention of God always gets a negative reaction.  This I have yet to figure out.

         “Ok.  I’m sorry Adam.”  I stop for a minute and watch him.  He scratches his head, digging his nails deep into his scalp.  His movements are jerky like he’s possessed.  He mumbles to himself, a conversation with someone.  I let the recorder do it’s job.

         “Uh huh”, he answers the air, “I know Annie.  Yes, I will.  But you’re not here…”, he stops and focuses on the recorder.  The veins in his arms bulge as his muscles tense, the skin of the jaw tightens around his teeth, his eyes go wide, dilating with sheer horror.  He stays tauten for almost five minutes.  I say nothing.  Neither does he.

         Finally relaxing, he looks at me and says, “34 told me to kill you.  She wants me to gut you.”, he says, looking ashamed.  Then, “Rokitansky.”

         “Rokitansky?”, I ask.

         “Yes”, he says, “it’s the Rokitansky method.  34 told me about it.”, still ashamed.

         “And what about this method?”, I ask, not sure that I want to know.

         “Well…”, he trails off.

         Later, in my office, I look up the Rokitansky Method.  This is what I find:

A cut is  made above the larynx, detaching the larynxand esophagus from the pharynx. The larynx and trachea are then pulled downward, and the scalpel is used to free up the remainder of the chest organs from their attachment at the spine. The diaphragm is cut away from the body wall, and the abdominal organs are pulled out and down. Finally, all of the organs are attached to the body only by the pelvic ligaments, bladder, and rectum. A single slash with the scalpel divides this connection, and all of the organs are

now free in one block.

April 26th  2:00 am

I don’t know.  I am a scientist.  Nuclear reactors and bombs.  There was a small mouse in my room earlier.  I named him Ralph.  Raplh told me not to eat the food, its poison.  They are trying to kill me.  Electrocution.  Fire.  Kill me.  EHH!

4:09 am

The drugs are not helping.  I still see things and hear things.  Number 17 came to visit today.  So did Annie.  I like annie.  She is pretty.  She lets me brush her hair and she tells me stories.  17 said I should start a conglomerate.  I need to see Donald Trump. 

The walls are bleeding blue.  A blue gel is forming on the floor, its coming closer to me.  GO AWAY!  GO AWAY BLUE GEL!  The nurse just stuck her head in, just her head.  There was a yellow mist around her head.  I need sleeep.

6:42 am

They brought me breakfast.  Eggs and toast with OJ.  It’s tainted.  Poison.  Ralph told me not to eat it.  They gave me drugs.  Ralph told me not to take them.  They forced me.  Ehh.  Ahh.  Ehh.  The voices are loud this morning.



         “Tell me about Ralph.”, I say, reading from Adam’s journal.

         “He’s my friend.”, he says.

         “He’s your friend?”

         “Yes”

         “What does he tell you?”

         “To not eat the food.  It’s poison.  They are trying to kill me.”

         “Who’s they, Adam?”

         “Everybody.”  He’s twisting his hair like a nervous little girl .  Pulling it up, twisting it, anxiously.  It stays, this Alfalfa hairdo.  I fight back laughter.

         “And did you eat?”, I ask.

         “Nope.”, he says, satisfied.

         “I think you should eat.  You’ll feel better, you know.”  He just looks at me, smiling a big toothy smile, still fingering his hair.

         “What do you think?  Will you eat?”, I ask.  He keeps staring, almost catatonic.

         “Adam?”, I ask.  No answer.  Lost.

         “Adam?”, again.

         “Yeeeesssss”, he says.  This I find quite disturbing. 

         “Will you eat?”, I ask a second time.

         “I want to go to Arizona.”, he says.

         “Will you eat first?”

         “ARIZONA!”, he yells.  He tightens, ripping a lock of hair out of his head, blood dripping from his fingers. He yells again, “ARI-FUCKIN-ZONA! NOW!”  Ripping out more hair.  More blood.  His fists clenched tight pound on the arm of the wheelchair.  “ARIZONA!  ARIZONA!  ARIZONA!”, he goes on.  I call for a nurse. 

Michael

         I cut the meeting short after the hair, blood and screaming and go to my office.  I funnel through more books, look up more long words, and try to figure out the new dosage of meds I need to give Adam.  I think upping the Risperdal from .05mg to 1mg may help.  Seroquel up to 600mg in the evening for sleep.  And a shower, at least twice a week.  After three hours of research, analysis and scrutiny I decide to finally leave.  It is, after all, the weekend.

         When I get home, my wife is not there.  No note.  No message.  Just not there.  A long day, Adam and Ralph and Number 17 and Number 32.  It’s beginning to be too hard to keep track. 

         I make myself dinner, settle into bed and watch David Letterman to get my mind off things when the phone rings.

“Hello?”, I ask the receiver.

“Hey baby.”, the voice says.

“Hello Jennifer.  Where are you?”, I ask.

“At  Naomi’s.  I’m going to stay here tonight.  Too much wine, but I miss you.”  I can hear her smiling.

“I miss you too babes.  You’ll be home in the morning?”, I ask.

“You betcha!  We’ve got a long day.”, she says.

“I know.  I know.  I can hardly wait.”, I say absent-mindedly.

“Silly.  Don’t be like that, my parents love you.  You know that.”

“No they don’t.  Don’t you be silly.”

“I know.  You’ll get through it.  You always do.  Anyway, I gotta go.  Beauty rest calls, you know.  I love you.”

“I love you more.”, I say and we both hang up.

         That night I have a dream.  I’m alone in a room.  A poorly lit room, white walls like the hospital.  I’m strapped to a chair, a large plate of food in front of me.  To my left is a black man.  He’s holding a paint brush, and on the wall next to him is written something.  I can’t make out what it says.  I can see what looks like a large S, maybe an L.  Suddenly the man is gone and I’m left with this plate of food, still strapped in.  Then Adam’s there.  He’s saying the tongue twister, “Sandy sells seashells down by the seashore.” over and over again.  I wake up.

         I take the picture of my wife off the nightstand, run my fingers across the frame and cry. 

         Monday Adam tells me he made a new friend.  He says he’s an artist.  Number 84 he calls him. 

         “Tell me about 84.”, I say.

         “He’s black.”, Adam says, “And an artist.  A very good artist.”

         “Oh?  What kind of artist?”, I ask.

         “Painter.  He paints things.  Cool things.”

         “Like what?”

         “Mainly on walls, concrete.  In the city.”

         “Like a graffiti artist?”, I ask.

         “Yep.”, he smiles when he says this.  There’s something mischievous about his grin.  He shifts in his seat, uncontrollably, and fingers his hair.  This time careful not pull any of it out.  He smiles again and says, “He wants to meet you.”

         “He wants to meet me?”, I ask.

         “Yep.”

         “When can I meet him?”, I ask, only humoring poor Adam.

         “Soon enough.  Soon enough.”, he says, smiling that unsettling toothy smile.  Something catches his eye, this time behind my right shoulder, he nods, looks at me and begins to laugh maniacally.  And just as fast as he started he stops, looks at me wide eyed and catatonic, staring through me, lost again.  I try for his attention, but it’s all for nothing.  He’s gone now, engrossed in his own little world that I’ll never understand.

         As I stand up to leave Adam snaps up, says, “Sandy sells seashells down by the seashore.” , and for some reason it sounds vaguely familiar.

         Home.  No Jennifer, again.  I call her number.  Nothing.  She’ll call, I tell myself.  I read over the notes I took today.  Number 84.  Black.  Artist.  Graffiti.  Sandy sells seashells down by the seashore.  An unease creeps it’s way through my guts, into my stomach, sending a dizziness into my head.  Number 84.  Graffiti.  Sandy sells sea - I vomit down the front of my shirt, my dinner now a pile of sick on my lap.  Number 84.