Chapter 13
“Yeah, she could probably beat the crap out of Dr. King Kong in the brains department!”
Shut up, you! I gotta think. Second day at home and I’m lying in bed, not only relishing the temporary stay of insanity, but ruminating about my dehumanizing experiences with the asshat doctor in the ER. I’m comparing him to the kindly Dr. Verylongname. And Ima thinkin’ . . . I’ll never go to the hospital ever again. Best to die with dignity.
I sit up in bed, feeling rather hung over, notwithstanding the fact my drinking days have long since been over—22 years to be exact. Hadn’t been hard to quit either. I think it was my third keg party that did me in, because I wound up on the floor puking my guts out, while raucously being serenaded. Losing control in this manner scared the crap out of me.
So I turned to cigarettes, until, after a month or so I couldn’t stand the taste or smell anymore. Several months later, it was on to my next bright move; smoking Mary Effing Jane. That worked out real well . . . until one day, cops came pounding on my brother’s apartment door while we were all engaged in a smoke fest! Instant chaos. My brother and his friends frantically hurried, (well, frantic in the sense they all resembled a herd of elephants stampeding in slow motion), to flush the freshly harvested dime bag down the toilet while I took a bottle of ammonia and spilled it around the front door and other select places.
The ammonia worked exceptionally well. As the cops stood on the threshold questioning me, I could tell their twitchy noses begged for a clothespin. Consequently, we had a cordial, but very short conversation. Something along the lines of, “Ma’am, there’s an escaped convict in the area, and we’d like to know if you’ve seen or heard anything unusual.” They then craned their heads around my stoned body looking for, I suspect now, evidence of criminal activity. Sly dogs them coppers. Fortunately, I can beat their sly and raise it by a cajillion dollars.
“No.” The most powerful word in the English language. Why do people constantly abuse it by adding a bunch of other words—yea verily, entire sentences to it? But I digress. The important thing is that my close brush with the law cured me of smoking pot. Ah well, it hadn’t been working for me anyway. Losing control of one’s faculties is not my idea of fun.
Yet here I am at the age of 40, hanging on to the bedpost, (faculties, what faculties?) crazy as a bedbug hiding in a bottle of bleach. Tentatively, I put my feet to the floor. I begin to rock back and forth again. That’s a bad sign. The panic builds, my heart nearly erupts with agonizing fear, and before I know it, the voices are out en masse and I’m crawling all over the room, unable to stay still for one second.
I go from moaning to whimpering, “Make it stop, God, please make it stop.” I leave the bedroom and cruise the entire house again. At one point, I’m telling somebody to shut up. Must be my husband. Poor guy’s following me around again. Eventually I collapse from exhaustion on the bedroom floor, and fall right to sleep.
“Well . . . there goes Sleeping Beauty again. Where’s Prince Charming when you really need him?”
