The Eden Express Read Online Free PDF Page B

people were so screwed up. The mystery was why everyone else wasn’t nuts too. But somehow I never figured it could ever happen to me, that I could some day be shuffling around in slippers and pajamas, bumming cigarettes and mumbling to myself. There were too many people who loved me, who would never commit me to an institution, whose love would keep me from getting that spaced out.
    Another theory I had about the patients was that they had taken their very justified frustration and rage and turned it inward, thinking that it was they who were screwy instead of their society. My clear vision of what was wrong would keep me out of places like Boston State.
    If all else failed my vanity would pull me through. I could never degrade myself that much. Maybe being crazy was being honest or right or enlightened even, but I could never stand to have people look at me the way they look at mental patients.
    Szasz, Laing, and Jung were my favorites at this point. These people weren’t really sick (Szasz). If they were acting a little strange it was a reasonable reaction to an unreasonable society (Laing). If they wanted to do something about it their best bet was a Jungian journey back to their individual and cultural roots. Most of the doctors at Boston State seemed to have similar notions.
     
    Some of my special state police hated my guts so much they probably would have killed me if they’d thought they could get away with it.
Most of them were sullen, devious, and small-minded. It was a bitch to get any work out of them, though all I ever asked was that they go out now and then and walk or drive around a little. Their union demanded my resignation because my job hadn’t been properly posted. Most of them had seniority so there wasn’t much I could threaten them with. But even if I had been able to fire them, had been able to offer decent salaries and attract better people, what would I have accomplished? Giving Boston State Hospital a crackerjack security force didn’t seem like much in the face of the corruption and collapse of Western civilization. Some of my friends thought what I was doing was more harmful than good. I was humanizing and giving life to institutions that had to be utterly destroyed before the world could be set right.
    But more than hassles with my men or ambivalence about what I was trying to do, the city—the noise, the cars, the rush-rush of unhappy, unfriendly people—was getting to me.
    The draft board had denied my application for C.O. status and ordered me to take my physical. I went to it so hyped and furious about the war and everything else that I saw everyone there, including others taking the physical who for a moment talked lightly or smiled, as mass murderers. I wasn’t terribly cooperative. Things got jumbled. I was given a psychiatric 4F, without even the usual letter from a shrink. My friends said I should get an Academy Award for my act. I knew it wasn’t an act and thought some about what that might mean, but I was so glad to have beaten the draft that I didn’t worry about it much. My victory also meant I could quit my job whenever I felt like it.
    Virginia had gone back to Swarthmore about a month after I became chief of police. She came up for weekends now and then, but most of the time I was lonely and horny. I was living in a run-down house with Vincent, a couple of other Swarthmore people, and assorted passers-through. Everyone I lived with, everyone I saw on the street, everyone everywhere seemed depressed. People didn’t like what
they were doing or have any idea about what they should do next. It was all just killing time till the sun went out.
    Things were especially bad on the subways. There I was more and more desperately unhappy and self-conscious, sure the people could see how upset I was. Everyone except the occasional drunk was so lifeless. I started feeling that anyone who wasn’t as upset as I was by the subways was guilty of not paying attention.
    Sometimes I