ahunter3

Jeremy signals the sense of a question mark, turning those big hands palms upward and then outward. “So what do you think is causing this, this difficulty in communicating? You make the effort. And you don't think people are deliberately tuning you out.” He's expressive with his long gangly arms; definitely a good communicator himself.

“I don't know”, I reply, “that's part of the frustration. Dr. Barnes and some of the counselors are always telling me I'm intellectualizing. But they do it too, I mean concepts like alcoholism and being in denial, those are all intellectual concepts, it's just that people are already familiar with them. Whoever explained those concepts for the first time had to lay out what they meant by those terms, they're abstractions. Well, when I try to do that, it's really difficult to get people to listen long enough to see if I'm making sense.”

“I've got an idea”, Marie tells me. “Let’s set up a scenario...”

Jeremy and Marie script a new drama setup, assigning Noelle to play me and a handful of others to represent the people I try to speak to. Jeremy gives instructions to Joe and Jake and Valerie: “Joe, you start off complaining... I know, complain that your children won’t do their chores around the house. You other folks try to give him advice. Then Noelle, as Derek, will have something to say.”

Meanwhile, Marie is whispering to Noelle, and the two confer conspiratorially, glancing over at me, scheming, Marie's sandy-honey hair bobbing next to Noelle's short brown cropped head.

Lights, camera, action. Marie wields the VHS recorder.

“These kids”, Joe states, “I love them but they’re driving me nuts! They won’t lift a hand around the place, they’re lazy and irresponsible!”

“Well, are they getting an allowance?”, Jake asks. “Cut them off until they pitch in!”

Valerie suggests, “Have you sat down with them and tried to talk with them about it when you aren’t mad at them?”

“I talk, but it goes in one ear and out the other!”, Joe replies.

“I have some important wisdom to offer you”, states Noelle-as-Derek, walking in with an arrogant strut. “Children and chores both appear in front of us but we can’t project the synthesis. Illusions can create that for us in our thoughts, and we invent theories but never analyze the intellectuals because we’re too busy in concrete. There are concepts! Chores have meaning. But only on Fridays! Do you understand why? Have you considered the cognitive? You can be a discrepancy!”

Joe, Valerie, and Jake look at each other in cartoon confusion, putting on bewildered faces and shrugging. Then Valerie shakes her head and turns her back to Noelle-Derek and continues what she was previously saying to Joe, “Maybe if you made a chore list and posted it on the wall.”

I feel a strong hot flash of anger. I’ve opened myself up to these people! I get mocked and ridiculed often enough without it coming from people I’ve let in. And I most certainly do not go around pretending I have something to say just to spout incoherent word soup at people! Then, amazingly, I find myself giggling. Yes, that’s exactly how people act, like I’d just said something that made no sense at all!

“That was beautiful”, Jake pronounces. “She’s got you nailed.”

“Derek”, Jeremy says, “I’d like you to reflect back what you’re feeling after watching that.”

“Well...”, I begin, “I do have an ego stake in thinking I have something important to say. One thing that’s a bit of a hot button for me, I guess, is when people think I’m just trying to sound smart and impress people. Like that poster that people used to have, ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit’. I’m not playing that game, I’m not doing this to look smart. Promise. I don’t speak up unless I think I actually have something to say. But I admit that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to be regarded as smart. Or wise.”

“That may be”, Valerie says, “but sometimes you say stuff that sounds like what Noelle just said. You ever stop to think it might make other people feel dumb? It’s like ‘What’d he just say? Did you get that? No, me either, I guess we’re too stoooopid to understand him’. So maybe it feels like that’s something you do on purpose. Even if it’s not.”

“Yeah, man”, Jake agrees, “we got one of them there ego stakes in this too, you know”, he says, making quotation marks with his fingers. “You could maybe work on saying what you want to say without using the most college level words you can come up with.”

“Well, I don’t do that on purpose either. A lot of time I’m trying to be precise. Words and phrases that don’t get used by people as often can sometimes be very exact in what they mean. Like latching onto an idea with a set of surgical clamps, you got a really precise hold. Everyday words get stretched to mean a wider range of things, because they get so much use. And they also, a lot of the time, they take on additional implications, a sort of package deal, and if you don’t want to include stuff that’s associated, especially if you’re trying to call those assumptions into question, you want a clinically detached kind of word. And I think in those words. I don’t have to rummage around in my head for them. To say it in simpler language, that would require searching for the right words.”

Noelle nods and says, “Yeah, but if your problem is you’re not getting through to people, maybe that’s what you’ve got to do. Take time to find the right simpler words and bring it down to earth.”

* * *

I end up sitting across from Valerie in the cafeteria after psychodrama lets out. “I’ve noticed something about you”, she tells me. “You don’t get all upset and bent out of shape when somebody tells you something right to your face that’s not quite what you want to hear. But you act like nobody’s done that very often. Are you like an only child and your friends don’t set you straight and shit?”

“I’ve got a younger sister”, I answer. “But it’s like you said about your own sister the other day, we weren’t very close growing up either. When I was a kid, I wanted to be her older brother and I guess I wanted her to look up to me and let me take care of her, but she never wanted that...she probably wouldn’t have put up with it from anyone else if they’d been her older sister or brother, either, though, she was always ‘No, I can do it myself, I don’t need help’, but yeah, anyway, I felt pretty pushed away from early on”.

“That’s kinda unusual, I think it’s more often the younger kid who gets pushed away.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right about that. So for once in my life I’m an exception.”

Valerie grins.

Anyway, once she was old enough to go to school, she had more friends than I did. I was the weird brainy one, she was the more popular one that people liked. We didn’t really have the kind of relationship where either of us could tell the other one something and not have them on edge like this was maybe an attack. I think it’s fair to say we cared about each other but... we didn’t trust each other entirely.”

Valerie nods. “Me and my sister got to be like that. Not so much originally, it was more like we were always trying to outdo each other, but when I was in high school was when things really went sour. She knew the stuff I was doing before anyone else, and she started thinking of me as a fuckup.”

We eat for a while in silence. I think about all those long years in elementary school and junior high and high school.

“I’m tired of always being an outsider”, I say to Valerie. “I think I’m getting better at being with people and not thinking they’re out to get me, but it’s always kind of hovering there, in the background, that they could be trying to hurt me, because people did, a lot, and maybe that’s never going to completely go away.”

Valerie tightens her lip and nods slowly. “Trust is hard.”

* * *

"Can you push up your sleeve a bit more...", the nurse says to Joe. She’s not one of the nurses who were on shift when I came back from the Harrisons, but I think I might have met her on that first long evening when I came in. She has red hair with a tinge of brown in it, a scattering of freckles, and she’s small and moves rapidly. I watch as she pumps the blood pressure cuff and records Joe’s numbers. It's Sunday. Routine vital signs for our unit. "Okay, that's good”, she tells him. “Hey, so how're you doing? I haven’t seen you in about a week."

Joe nods and smiles. "I think things are working out pretty good, I guess. They don't always tell me, but I get the feeling."

She jots down some more notes in her chart and Joe stands up; I’m in line behind him, so it will be my turn next.

Joe continues, "You really got to be all in on the program if you wanna get something out of being here, I’ve always been onboard with that... but lately I’ve been kind of thinking you can't be going around all worried and wondering about how well you're doing because that's like not believing in the program. I'm really into positivity at the moment. Like sooner or later you gotta go out that door."

I'm momentarily thinking he means the door we found and opened yesterday afternoon. Joe had been there with me, along with several others, but I was the only one who actually went out.

Then I reinterpret Joe’s statement — Oh, I bet he means he's expecting to be discharged soon and be on his way. He’s been all-in on Elk Meadow since I first met him, total cheerleader for the place, even more than Ronald and Ellen, but yeah, once he’s out of here he can’t exactly be glancing at them for some kinds of thumbs-up approval.

Gary Stevens comes around the corner, his shoes making a little squeak on the linoleum tiles, and he slips a resident’s file into the file rack on the counter. The animated nurse gives me a little nod and gestures to the chair, then glances back over her shoulder at Gary. “You getting off-shift?”, she says. “You might want to stay off the Sam Houston, there was some kind of pileup in the outbound lane.”

“Yeah, thanks Penny. Long day. Be glad to put my feet up.” He heads down the hallway.

Penny the nurse turns to me where I’m now seated. “Welcome back. Umm, don’t tell anyone, but I endorse playing hookey now and then. I think I’m due for making a run for it myself!”, she adds with a wink and a grin. Co-conspirators, she and I. I guess word has gotten around about my little outing.

She wraps the Prestige Sphygmomanometer (same model of blood pressure cuff we used in Athens Hospital) around my upper arm, pulls the outer layer velcro down smoothly to the matching inner section, thumbs the release wheel closed, and pumps with fast squeezes. “How’re you feeling? Any leftover itches and sneezes from being outdoors? You said before that you’ve got respiratory allergies, right? That must suck in the summer with the jimson weed everywhere. And you came in from out of state, didn’t you?” She shakes her head. “So you’re not used to it. That stuff’s bad. I get red eyes from it myself.”

I’m impressed with how she can be casual and friendly with everyone and so totally efficient taking down these routine measurements and herding everyone through the process without being pushy about it. And she remembers people.

I think I could be good at some of this stuff myself. I realize as I sit there watching her scribble down my results that I’m not entirely ready to let go of the notion that I could be a nurse. Although I couldn’t do what she’s doing now. I’d have to learn how to recognize people by appearance. But Ms. O’Neil said I had a good rapport with my patients, that they reported that I was kind and listened to them. And I understand the biology and I’m good with words, so I can follow complex instructions and my charting is clear and has good details. As my Dad says, I’ve got to do something. I have to think on this some more.

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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

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