another psychiatrist story
kurt nimmo
I can’t stay away from the shrinks.
One night I’d accidentally banged my knee and suddenly things began to come apart. I had this idea that the universe was put together with cheap glue and this cheap, unreliable glue had somehow lost its adhesive properties and now everything was flying right at me. It was admittedly a fantastic, somewhat cracked idea. But I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Next morning I called the shrink.
So there I was in his office. It was a nice office with a big clean plate glass window that looked out on everything. Out there everybody calmly moved around like they hadn’t noticed that the glue of the universe had failed on them.
This particular shrink happened to be an Arab. He is from some Arab country and so it stands to reason that his office was decorated in the Arab style--tapestries, goat skin furniture, even a jewel encrusted dagger or two nailed to the white American wall. I especially liked the daggers. Even though it seemed dangerous what with all the potential psychopaths and suicides that shuffle in and out of a shrink’s office.
When he asked about my problem I told him about the universe and its faulty glue. It was, I said, like a metaphor, a simple way to describe all the chaos and anxiety I was experiencing. But the shrink took me literally. He said, “So the universe is held, um, together with this, ah, glue and the glue has come apart?” He sat there behind his Arabesque desk doodling on a pad of paper. Probably notating my loss of reality. “Not exactly,” I said. “It’s just that the glue of my universe has come unstuck. It’s like a figure of speech. Where a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of thing is used in place of another thing to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.”
“Oh,” said the shrink. “Continue.”
“Last night I banged my knee and that’s when it occurred to me that everything is all mixed up, an irretrievable mess, and that nothing I do will put it back together again. I call it the ‘Humpty Dumpty Syndrome.”’
“Humpty Dum--”
“Like in the fairy tale,” I explained.
“I see. Like in the fairy, um, tale?”
“Yes. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again.”’
“So you feel that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, things will remain, uh--”
“Broken. Unstuck. Irrevocable.”
“I see,” said the shrink. He scribbled something across the face of his pad. “Have you any other problems? Lack of sleep, loss of appetite, impotence?”
“Sleep is often difficult,” I answered.
“Is there anything else bothering you?”
“Yes. Work.”
“Work?”
“You see, I cannot understand why everybody has to work. Oh, I understand that people have to work at something to make society run and all. But I’d rather lay around and enjoy sunlight, fresh air, the animal kingdom, naked lovers. But it’s unheard of, even considered sinful. You have to be employed. It’s the only way. If you’re not employed you’re expected to spend every waking minute pouring over the want ads, being interviewed and probed, or going to school to learn a trade. If you waste one day, or even a few hours, you’re looked upon as a sluggard, scum of the earth, a parasite, an unproductive member of society. Best to go out and off yourself posthaste. I don’t get it. Life is cruel and meaningless at seven o’clock in the morning. Life is the zoo of rush-hour traffic, depraved bosses, moronic and cowardly coworkers, income taxes, senility in retirement, and a pile of debts beyond the grave. I can’t accept it.” “I see,” said the shrink. “Do you have any friends?” “Some. A few. But they’re from another planet.” “I don’t understand.” “They think so much differently than me that it wouldn’t surprise me if they were from another planet.” “How are they different from you?” “They believe in things.” “Such as?” “Government. Love. Religion. Hope.” “And your family?” “I don’t see them.” “Why is that?” “Same reasons. Only they look something like me and that makes it all the more painful.” “Are you married? Or have a girlfriend?” “No. Women run away from me screaming.” “Why?”
“Pyrrhonism.”
“I’ve never heard of it. Is it, uh, a physiological condition?”
“Not exactly. It’s entirely mental. Or, more accurately, it’s a philosophical state of mind.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Pyrrhonism is the doctrine where you suspend judgement on everything. It’s intense skepticism. Named after Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher out of the 4th century B.C.”
“Hmm. Do you read many books?”
“I read everything. I read the ingredient list on frozen dinners, the warning labels on aspirin bottles, every centimeter of newspaper type. I’m the only person I know who actually reads the small type on a car insurance policy. When I’m bored I read the dictionary, the phonebook, old TV guides from three years ago.”
“Are you bored very often?”
“Always. Constantly.”
“Are you bothered by morbid thoughts?”
“As in abnormally susceptible to or characterized by gloomy or unwholesome feelings?”
“Precisely.”
“Only when I watch television. Or fall in love.”
“Do you feel a hostility toward women?”
“Yes. But only as members of the human race.”
“So you mistrust mankind?”
“History and personal experience has radically narrowed the field. Anything good that has come out of humanity has been far overshadowed by the bad, evil,
pernicious things--like war, religion, genocide, greed! starvation, torture, saturation bombing, endless and inexhaustible malfeasance, sadism, politics, malice, ignominy--”
“I get the picture,” said the shrink.
“That’s only a small part of the picture,” I said.
I wanted to mention slavery, crib robbery, medical experimentation under socialism, lobotomy, pollution, murder, the rat race, forced sterilization, communism, the two party system, Mormonism, all of the isms, the bottom line, recession, financial speculation, gentrification, situation comedies, exhumation, the erosion of the Ozone Layer, cronyism, celibacy, landlords, attack dogs, summit meetings, baptism, institutional racism, assassination, presidential speeches, SWAT teams, the veneration of saints, Yahweh, transubstantiation of ordinary bread and wine, drug laws, the prison system, homosexual rape, revisionism, pantheism, patriotism, all the goddamn isms, Richard Nixon, cops, wiretaps, multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, mob rule, coterminous states, secret Sicilian criminal societies, bacteriological warfare, national flags, toxic waste and medical refuse, telephone solicitation, taxes, pornography laws, the 40 hour work week, the abortion debate, illiteracy, willful stupidity, and everything on television, not to mention a few dozen other things... but there was no time.
“I’m writing a prescription,” said the shrink.
“Drugs, then? Drugs will help me?”
“This drug is to help you sleep.”
“Ah, yes. Maybe a little Thorazine too?”
“Thorazine is for the suppression of more flagrant symptoms,” said my Arab shrink. “I have not detected any schizophrenia.”
No, I hadn’t yet loss contact with the environment. If anything I was far too aware of it. Drugs would help numb the frenzied input. I’d banged my knee and a fantastic and eccentric notion came to me--the universe is unhinged, unhitched, and nothing can put it back together again. We are adrift in a vortex of primordial chaos and confusion. Most people, like a horse with two flaps on its bridle, cannot see the disordered mess all around.
But hell. What’d I know?
Maybe there was a unity, a simple cohesion of things, something like molecular attraction, which I was too stupid and mule-headed to understand. Who knows? Most people don’t think about this kind of shit.
So there I was. With my script for a few capsules of some especially strong sleeping formula. I wanted to get one in me forthwith.
Naturally, I walked right over to the pharmacy and had that mother filled pronto. At least, if I banged my knee again, I wouldn’t care because I’d be incuriously sedated.
Or fast asleep.
