Nervous Breakdown

I declined to fill in a questionnaire regarding the care at the institution and instead opted to watch the clock. I always marvel at how you could never see the hands of a clock move. One could not see time. One could only pass through it. When I was alone in my apartment looking out at the Pacific Ocean, I tried to translate time into a numeral. It was impossible because even with imaginary numbers there wasn’t an alphabet, English anyway, that had enough letters to cover the 60 number base system. Therefore, I figured, since time could not be represented in even imaginary numbers, time was imaginary. And that’s what it felt like in that moment waiting for 11:00 a.m. to roll around.

I watched the crowd playing Trivial Pursuit outside. I decided I would join them. The grunter came up to me and hooked her arm around mine, and tried to lure me back to her room.

“No time,” I said, pointing to my watch.

“Uh huh,” she replied. She placed her hand on her heart. I did not know how she knew I would be leaving any moment, but she did. I grabbed her hand and kissed it. What would be the grunter’s fate? Would she ever get out? Where did she come from? What was she there for? All these questions would remain unaswered. The inmates in the institutions were true ships passing in the night. Prisoners with no names.

I looked for the blonde Antonio. He was shooting hoops on the court, with his shlong zipping side to side like a hose out of control. He saw me, gazed into my eyes, and froze. I ran to him and jumped on him with my legs straddling his rump. P.C. or no P.C., he gave me the warmest hug. We had never even so much as uttered a word to one another. If only it was like this on the outside--unbridled affection. The kind one only got from pets.

The rest of the crowd gathered around the tall black orderly who slowly, ever so slowly and painstakingly, distributed the cigarettes from the community box. I heard, “Goode!” through the louvered windows, and walked briskly through the door, the room filled with bluish-gray clouds of smoke.