I Came Out for This? (15 page)

At that moment the unit's token mean nurse, a big white mama with frizzy red hair, came in and saw the two of us in bed together. “Mr. Stewart!” she said. “Get out of her bed immediately!”

“I don't want him to get out of my bed!” I sobbed.

“Look, she's having a hard time here,” Nicky said. “I'm just giving her a little comfort.”

“I don't care what you're doing,” the nurse said. “You need to stop doing it.”

“What is wrong with you?” I screamed at her. “Can't you see I'm upset here?”

“I realize you're upset, ma'am, but we can't allow other patients in your bed.”

“Oh, fudge,” I said. And Nicky and I started laughing, and then we were hysterical, and the nurse was furious. She thought we were laughing at her, and not because I'd said “fudge.” “Mr. Stewart, I'm giving you five seconds to get out of that bed,” she said, and we kept laughing, and finally the nurse just stormed out of the room.

I felt much better after Nicky left. Now I've cooked up a good head of steam. I'm not even angry at Terri. I'm angry at that idiotic shrink in the bin who sat there and stared at me while he smoked his pipe. My parents paid him good money to do nothing but irritate me. After a while I just stopped talking to him. And even then he kept taking their money. What a nerve.

They're sending a shrink in here to talk to me tomorrow. You know what his name is? Dr. Robert Bobb. I'm not kidding. Bob Bobb. His mother must have had quite a sense of humor. It might not be the best idea for him to come in here and try to talk to me with a name like that. With the feisty mood I'm in, I'll be very tempted to ask him about his name. I may even ask him about his mother.

Dr. Robert Bobb came today while Nicky was trying to teach me how to play chess. I don't get chess at all. I've gotten stupider because I'm old and my brain has started to decay. When I was in the bin, some of the ladies had a little bridge club and I asked them to teach me and I picked it up in about fifteen minutes. But now if someone tries to teach me anything I keep having to ask them to repeat everything sixteen thousand times. So Dr. Bobb strolled in just at the moment that I had taken this rook and flung it across the room.

“Woa!” called the shrink. “Looks as though someone is angry.” He was a handsome black man with a Jamaican accent.

“She is angry,” Nicky said. “She's very angry.”

“Are you Dr. Bob Bobb?” I asked.

“I am Dr. Robert Bobb,” he replied, in a tone that suggested he was tired of people making jokes about his name.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, you might as well sit down. This chess lesson is totally hopeless.” I said it without a hint of humor. In fact, I was feeling humiliated about the chess lesson.

“Are you her husband?” Dr. Bobb inquired of Nicky, who had taken his usual Buddha-like position on the bed. “No, I'm not,” Nicky said, musically pronouncing the last word in two syllables, which would identify him as a gay man to anyone living in this century. Dr. Bobb may have gotten it because he said, “Oh, a friend, perhaps?”

“Yes, a friend,” Nicky said. And then the strangest thing happened. Nicky and Dr. Bobb proceeded to have a conversation about me practically as though I wasn't there. Nicky started to explain what was wrong with me, that I ran into a fire hydrant because I was distraught over this woman who had rejected me, and Dr. Bobb asked me if I thought I needed medication for my depression, and I said no, and Nicky said, as though I hadn't even spoken, “I think she could definitely benefit from some meds.” And Dr. Bobb said from all appearances (probably referring to the flying rook) he believed I could benefit from medication as well. Nicky said he was taking Prozac and it saved his life.

“Yes, the SSRI medications are highly effective,” Dr. Bobb said. “The only problem is, of course, the sexual side effects.”

“I know,” Nicky said. “That's part of the reason my boyfriend left me. I just didn't care anymore, you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Dr. Bobb said. “I think it's why my wife left me. Although perhaps a psychiatrist should not be revealing such personal information during a consultation.” And he kind of giggled. I was thinking this was the most peculiar conversation I'd ever heard. I was sitting there moving the chess pieces around the board
and Nicky said, “Your moves are completely illogical, honey,” and I said, “I wasn't trying to make any moves.”

“You are just fooling around, am I right?” Dr. Bobb said, smiling, in his lilting accent. I was thinking, Oh my God, I don't even know what planet I'm on. “Seriously, why would your mother name you Robert Bobb?” I asked. “I don't mean to be disrespectful; I'm a journalist and I'm curious about things. Didn't she know that people would call you Bob Bobb?”

“My mother is out of her skull,” Dr. Bobb said. “She did it as a joke, so that I would be tormented for the rest of my life.”

“Which is why you have to take anti-depressants,” Nicky said, and the doctor said “ex-actly,” and giggled again. It occurred to me that I may actually have to pay for this ridiculous “consultation.” Fortunately, Dr. Bobb did not prolong his visit. He said, “I'm going to prescribe some Zoloft for you. It will help you not care about this woman so much. You will be able to function much better.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And you make sure she takes it,” the doctor said to Nicky.

“Oh, I will,” Nicky said. “You can count on it.” The two of them smiled at each other like two lovers. I had never seen two men bond with such quick, unbridled enthusiasm. I thought that perhaps I had missed something, since I've become retarded. Dr. Bobb strolled out with his clipboard, and Nicky and I continued with our chess lesson. I didn't dare say anything derogatory about his new lover, Dr. Bobb, because I figured that he would take umbrage. The funny thing was, I kind of liked him too.

October 2000

Well, Dr. Bobb was right. I'm back home and taking Zoloft and now I can function. The day after I left the hospital, Nicky called to let me know that he was going home also, because the doctors had concluded that his headaches were stress-related, and I was highly relieved that he didn't have a brain tumor because after knowing him for two days he'd become one of my best friends. “I don't want to have to come over there and force-feed you,” he said, and I could picture him doing that very thing, so I assured him that I would take the Zoloft every day. After I hung up with him, I took the first pill and about four hours later it kicked in and I felt pretty good. I'm not kidding. Everyone said it would take six weeks to work, but I'm a fast metabolizer. Everything I put in my system kicks in very quickly.

So now I get up every morning and relax with a cup of herbal tea and take my pill. I've substituted tea for coffee because coffee throws me into a panic. It's not the savage panic that consumed me before I went on the Zoloft; it's a dull panic, but still not pleasant. So now I'm one of those sissies that I used to make fun of, who drink
herbal tea to stay on an even keel and who smile when they're mad.

This Zoloft is great. It makes you not give a shit. If the world ended and you were the only one left, you would look out the window at the smoke and rubble and say to yourself in a flat voice, “How sad. The world is destroyed and I'm the only one left.” You would open a can of beans and pick out some books to read. After about two days, you would say, “Hmm. This is kind of a drag to have nobody to talk to.” And you would go back to your zombie-like reading.

I love not giving a shit. I SO do not give a shit that I wrote Terri an e-mail, telling her she should not have invited me to her birthday party because it was a royal drag to watch her sitting there making goo-goo eyes at Dee and that she clearly did not appreciate my gift—or
me
, for that matter—and I don't know how I could ever have been so enraptured with her and really don't care if I never see her or speak to her again. After I sent it, I felt triumphant. I didn't know I felt triumphant at first, but a couple hours after I sent it I noticed that the soggy weight in my chest, that had been there ever since that awful birthday party, had lifted. I could breathe easier and my ribs didn't even hurt as much. And I said to myself, “Damn, I'm glad I did that.”

Sending that e-mail opened my floodgates. I called Kimba and cried hysterically on the phone for over an hour. I told her how awful it was to realize that I'm a loser and that my life is a big fat nothing and she chastised me for talking that way about myself. She said I wasn't a loser and my life wasn't a big fat nothing, that I'm just going
through a bad time, and everyone goes through bad times, and that I'm fun and compassionate and a wonderful friend and I have more strength than most people because I don't compromise. She said I have a lot of integrity. She was so nice and after I hung up with her I felt even better than after I sent the e-mail. So I called a bunch more people. I called my mother and told her that she ruined my life by teaching me to hide my pain and put everyone else's needs before mine, and then I called Willi, who used to be my therapist and is now my friend and told her she was stupid for not figuring out I was gay, and then I called Tommy and told him that I was sick of his derisive attitude and that he was just projecting his own self-hatred onto me and that he was going to die alone in a little room surrounded by beer bottles. The crowning moment was when I called Terri and as soon as she answered the phone I yelled, “Fuck you!” and hung up.

I wonder what people did before Zoloft? Without it, I would just be lying on my bed like a lump. This shit is making me real peppy. Maybe I'll go apply for a job at the White House.

Well, now that this move to DC has proven a spectacular failure, I have decided to make this Godforsaken city my permanent home. A few days ago Gerald, my landlord, told me that the choicest suite in the house was going to be vacated next month. Because I am his most stable tenant (God help him), he offered it to me first. It's a corner suite with two rooms (one small, dumpy one can only be used for storage) and the main room has bay windows and a little balcony overlooking 13
^th
Street. It's freshly painted a pretty lemon yellow, and it has a new carpet, and it will cost three hundred bucks per month more than the little room, but I've gotten a raise, so I can afford it.

I didn't immediately agree to taking the room, because I moved to this city to be with Terri and that's gone down the tubes. But where am I going to go? I'm too demoralized to move to New York City, where I really belong, and forget about moving back to Cleveland. I would die there. So yesterday I told Gerald I would take the place. I'll have to get my furniture moved here from that storage locker in Cleveland, which is the last thing I want to deal with right now. Thinking about it fills me
with anxiety. It seems so silly to officially
relocate
here. It's all that bitch Terri's fault. I worked so hard to win her, to have this little slice of happiness, and all I end up with is some nutty friends and a yellow room in a madhouse. I guess it's more than what some people have. But still.

Yesterday Gerald gave me the key to my new place and Kimba and the boys and I broke the place in. We climbed out the window and sat on the balcony and drank beer and watched the traffic on 13
^th
Street, and Johnny and Guillermo passed a joint back and forth. (Jerome neither drank beer nor smoked. He's very particular about his vices.) The boys love Kimba and fawn all over her and she responds with pleasant indifference. “Kimba, maybe you should date Joanna,” Guillermo piped up, and Jerome said, “That's what I keep sayin' to Joanna.” I said, “Will you guys shut up! Kimba doesn't want to date me,” and Kimba smiled and said, “Are you putting words in my mouth again?” I thought that was very cute.

“So when are you moving some furniture into this place?” Jerome asked. I told him my furniture was in a storage locker in Cleveland and that I would arrange to have it moved when I went home for Thanksgiving. “I don't know how I'm going to afford it,” I said.

“You can get one of those trucks that moves a lot of people at once,” Johnny said. “It's cheaper.” He said a friend of his in the moving business could give me more
information, and I'm going to call him. But I really didn't want to be talking about the nuts and bolts of my move. I started feeling stressed again.

And then a voice behind us said, “What the hell are you doing out there indulging in vices, you deranged woman?” I looked over my shoulder and there was Nicky in my new room, talking through the open window. I was very excited. I hadn't seen him since I left the hospital. “Get your butt out here and join the party!” I commanded, and he climbed out and I hugged him and introduced him to everyone. He squeezed in between me and Jerome, and I asked him how his headaches were and he said they were a lot better since he stopped thinking so much about “that cad” who left him for another man. But that was as far as our conversation got, because Jerome started whispering little asides into his ear, and soon Nicky was roaring like a schoolboy who'd had too much sugar. Jerome is a genius at seducing highly successful men. He told me he had a lover who was a U.S. Senator and I know it's true. He lies about everything under the sun, but he doesn't lie about stuff like that.

When we all climbed back through the window, Nicky hugged me goodbye, and Jerome left at the same time. I ran to the door and said, “Nicky!” He came back and said, “What is it, sweetie?”