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Authors: Peter Kocan
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acting out the Child part of ourselves, the part that we subconsciously remember from the time when we really were small and vulnerable. And when we feel stern and intolerant and disapproving of ourselves it’s because we are acting the Parent role. The best thing, Sam says, is try to let the Adult part be in control, the part that’s sensible and insightful. The Adult part is in the middle and balances the unhappy extremes of the other two. Sam talks a lot about Inner Balance, which he says is the secret of life.
“Tell me about your life,” Sam says to you. You are sitting with him on the verandah in the bright morning sun, feeling the cramp of the cell and the long night being warmed out of you.
So you start telling him about everything in your past and how and why you did the thing that you got the Life Sentence for. After a while, the nervousness vanishes and you find you enjoy telling Sam about yourself. He’s such a good listener. Soon you and Sam are spending most of your free time together and your life story is drawing out longer and longer, like a serial. Every so often, though, you get a bit afraid again that it’s too uninteresting to bother with.
“I told you it would bore you,” you say.
“Don’t start that again.”
“Sorry.”
Whenever we have free time together and Sam wants to hear more of your life story, he’ll say, “Back to the couch!”
“The couch” is our joke, as though Sam is my psychiatrist or something. Now we are lying on the grass near the pool. The other men are splashing and yelling, but we’d rather talk. We’re lying full length with our faces near each other. Sam is chewing a stem of grass. It’s lovely, lying there in the sun with Sam, talking about things which you want to try to understand about your life, but which would be too painful to even think about if you were just by yourself. Even the embarrassing things, like never having had a girlfriend. Even those things are easy to talk to Sam about. The swimming time is over and the screws are ready to take us back into the ward.
“Is there hope for me, doctor?” you say to Sam.
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to hear more. I may be able to save you from the asylum.”
“Oh good!”
“Twenty guineas please.”
You reach for an imaginary wallet.
“Pay my secretary.”
“Your secretary?”
“Yes, Miss Fifi LaRue. An interesting case of nymphomania.”
“Are you curing her?”
“Are you mad?”
A children’s charity has sent bits of broken toys to be repaired and Arthur has made a workshop in an old shed near the sports field, just behind the trees you like so much. Each day seven men and two screws go across to paint tricycles, patch dolls’ dresses, put stuffing into teddy bears and reassemble tiny tea sets.
The first day we went to clean up the shed. It hadn’t been used for years and it had cobwebs and dust and piles of rubbish. In a corner were boxes of old files, dating back to the nineteen-thirties. We read some of them when the screws weren’t watching. There were ward reports on inmates of the time and told how so-and-so was eating shit and someone else had cut his own throat. It must have been very bad in those days before effective medication, when men just stayed raging mad and violent for years, trussed in straightjackets and locked in cells all day and night. It makes you wonder about medication nowadays, whether it’s better to be made into a zombie, like now, or be left to shriek and scream and eat shit like in the old days. But you can’t believe the old files totally. They were written by screws and screws always make the inmates sound very bad. It makes the screws feel like tough men. Lion tamers or something. A lot of screws are touchy about being male nurses. Sometimes they get picked on in the pub when they’re off duty, because of being male nurses. So they like to pretend they’re lion tamers, holding beasts away from the women and children. And when they’ve
“Tell me about your life,” Sam says to you. You are sitting with him on the verandah in the bright morning sun, feeling the cramp of the cell and the long night being warmed out of you.
So you start telling him about everything in your past and how and why you did the thing that you got the Life Sentence for. After a while, the nervousness vanishes and you find you enjoy telling Sam about yourself. He’s such a good listener. Soon you and Sam are spending most of your free time together and your life story is drawing out longer and longer, like a serial. Every so often, though, you get a bit afraid again that it’s too uninteresting to bother with.
“I told you it would bore you,” you say.
“Don’t start that again.”
“Sorry.”
Whenever we have free time together and Sam wants to hear more of your life story, he’ll say, “Back to the couch!”
“The couch” is our joke, as though Sam is my psychiatrist or something. Now we are lying on the grass near the pool. The other men are splashing and yelling, but we’d rather talk. We’re lying full length with our faces near each other. Sam is chewing a stem of grass. It’s lovely, lying there in the sun with Sam, talking about things which you want to try to understand about your life, but which would be too painful to even think about if you were just by yourself. Even the embarrassing things, like never having had a girlfriend. Even those things are easy to talk to Sam about. The swimming time is over and the screws are ready to take us back into the ward.
“Is there hope for me, doctor?” you say to Sam.
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to hear more. I may be able to save you from the asylum.”
“Oh good!”
“Twenty guineas please.”
You reach for an imaginary wallet.
“Pay my secretary.”
“Your secretary?”
“Yes, Miss Fifi LaRue. An interesting case of nymphomania.”
“Are you curing her?”
“Are you mad?”
A children’s charity has sent bits of broken toys to be repaired and Arthur has made a workshop in an old shed near the sports field, just behind the trees you like so much. Each day seven men and two screws go across to paint tricycles, patch dolls’ dresses, put stuffing into teddy bears and reassemble tiny tea sets.
The first day we went to clean up the shed. It hadn’t been used for years and it had cobwebs and dust and piles of rubbish. In a corner were boxes of old files, dating back to the nineteen-thirties. We read some of them when the screws weren’t watching. There were ward reports on inmates of the time and told how so-and-so was eating shit and someone else had cut his own throat. It must have been very bad in those days before effective medication, when men just stayed raging mad and violent for years, trussed in straightjackets and locked in cells all day and night. It makes you wonder about medication nowadays, whether it’s better to be made into a zombie, like now, or be left to shriek and scream and eat shit like in the old days. But you can’t believe the old files totally. They were written by screws and screws always make the inmates sound very bad. It makes the screws feel like tough men. Lion tamers or something. A lot of screws are touchy about being male nurses. Sometimes they get picked on in the pub when they’re off duty, because of being male nurses. So they like to pretend they’re lion tamers, holding beasts away from the women and children. And when they’ve
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