As are all persons placed on a seventy-two-hour hold under the 5150 ordinance in Alameda County, I was immediately sent to John George Psychiatric hospital in San Leandro for evaluation. I was transferred in a vehicle that was a cross between a police car and an ambulance. It had ambulance colors, but I was confined in the back behind a metal grate that separated me from the driver and his assistant. The Latino driver and his African-American assistant laughed and joked with me during the entire drive. They went on and on about what big fans of mine they were. At least they didn’t ask me for autographs.
As shocking as it may be, I was not in the mood for joking. I wanted to go home. I wanted to forget that the whole incident had ever happened. As sad, sick, and depressed as I was, I was more concerned about the stigma that accompanies the revelation of mental illness. If it ever got out that I had been sent to a psychiatric hospital, my world would be over. I don’t know why I cared. Had I been successful with my little exhaust fume exercise, it would have all been over anyway—the big difference being that in that case, I wouldn’t have been around to know about it.
My home, which was right off of the freeway, lay directly between Highland and John George hospitals.
“Hey guys,” I said as we approached my exit. “I live right up ahead. How about just dropping me off at home?”
They laughed.
“You are so funny,” the assistant said, slapping his thigh.
I was not kidding.
“Really guys, it’s not even out of the way. Just drop me off here at home. I’ll even pay you for your trouble. Say, a hundred bucks each. Just let me run in the house and get it.”
Again they burst out laughing.
“I love that joke you did when I saw you open for Lionel Richie at the Paramount,” the driver said. “The one about why gay guys should be allowed in the army.”
“I never heard you do that one,” the assistant added.
“Hey,” the driver said, “why don’t you do it for us?”
He was talking about a controversial routine I had performed on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. I posed the question: If nobody’s asking and nobody’s telling, how does the army find out who is gay? Is there a clandestine interview? Some kind of a sneaky, verbal Rorschach test? A covert word association game that the recruit doesn’t even know he’s engaged in? Is there a quiz that they give the new recruits in order to evaluate them for homosexuality? Is it an interview designed to trip them up in order to reveal their “true colors”?
“Your name?”
“John Smith.”
“Your age?”
“Eighteen.”
“What do you think of Bette Midler?”
It was controversial because army vets and those with military ties in the audience sometimes got upset. I liked performing the bit for just that reason. Tom Sawyer, the former owner of Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco and one of my comedy mentors, always told me that unless you’re pissing off 20 percent of your audience, you’re not doing comedy correctly.
“Come on,” the driver said. “Do the joke for us.”
“If I do, will you take me home?” I was desperate. Frantic.
They laughed again.
“Do the routine for us. It’s funny.”
I was willing to do anything and everything to just erase that night. I would do whatever I could to obliterate this horrific moment from my memory forever. I would go home, climb into bed, and go to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it would all have been just a bad dream. What was it Scrooge said in A Christmas Carol when first encountered by the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley? The apparition was “only a bit of undigested potato.” That’s what this nightmare was. Something I ate. If I had to perform for these clowns to go home, fine. I’d dance like a puppet on a string and sing for my supper.
“How many pushups can you do in a minute?” I said in my military voice launching into the bit.
“A hundred.”
“Does a wicker basket belong on the table or on the wall?”
“On the wall.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said, stroking my chin. The driver swerved slightly as he doubled over in laughter. Good, I was winning over the audience. I was going home. I continued.
“What is the motto of the United States Marine Corps?”
“Semper fi, sir.”
“Are the socks I’m holding in my hand green or teal?”
Snot flew out of the assistant’s nose as he snorted and guffawed. We were fast approaching my exit. It was now a little more than a quarter mile away. I kept the jokes coming.
“Who is the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces?”
“The President of the United States, sir.”
“Which movie did Barbra Streisand make first, Funny Girl or Funny Lady?”
“Funny Girl. She only did Funny Lady because she was under studio contract.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said again, stroking my chin as I pantomimed the military interrogator frenetically scribbling in an imaginary notebook.
The driver almost sideswiped a minivan in the next lane as he convulsed in an involuntary surge of hilarity. Tears began to stream down his cheeks.
“Stop,” he managed to cough through his chortle. “You’re killing me.”
I continued.
“If we accept you, what exactly will you be required to protect, preserve, and defend?”
“The constitution of the United States, sir.”
“From whom?”
“All enemies foreign or domestic.”
“What song did Judy Garland introduce in the film Meet Me in St. Louis?”
“That would be ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ Want me to sing a few bars?”
The assistant’s seatbelt unsnapped as he convulsed forward in his seat, laughing wildly out ofcontrol.
“Who were the allies of the United States during the Second World War?”
“Britain and Russia.”
“Which countries comprised the Axis powers?”
“Germany, Italy, and Japan.”
“If assigned to arctic duty, would you be willing to wear an all-white uniform?”
“Not after Labor Day, sir.”
“Stop,” the driver pleaded in hysterics. “Stop. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
“Okay, guys,” I said, “I’m up next. Let’s drop me off, huh? I’ll direct you.”
They laughed again.
“I’m serious now, fellas.”
They continued laughing.
“Teal,” the driver chuckled, losing his composure again. “I love it.”
He zoomed past my exit.
“You’re missing it,” I yelled. My wrought up frustration was boiling to the surface. I felt myself losing control.
“You’re missing it!” I said again. This time I’m screaming. Good, Brian. Scream at them. That’ll show them you’re sane.
“Please. It’s right here, pull over. Please take me home. Please.”
They ignored me.
“I want to go home.” I burst into sobs. “I want to go home.”
Now, the tears were rolling down my cheeks.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please take me home.”
The levity had suddenly evaporated from the vehicle. The driver shook his head and focused his vision intently on the road. The assistant looked at me. His eyes, which had only a moment before been watery from laughter, were now sad and compassionate. I watched out the rear window as my exit faded into the distance.
At John George, I was placed in an office where, after a long wait, a Middle-Eastern man in a white coat entered.
Great, men in white coats. I was fucked.
I thought of straightjackets, which led me to think about Houdini. It appeared that the great escape artist was on my mind a lot that evening. I remembered seeing a picture ofhim once taken in the 1920s in Oakland. In it, Houdini was suspended upside down from the highest peak of the Oakland Tribune Tower in a straightjacket, a throng of onlookers gaping up, slack jawed from the street. If he fell, it would mean certain and sudden death, yet his face didn’t show the slightest bit of concern. There was a cockiness in his eyes. It was as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Here he was, risking death for the entertainment and edification of the great unwashed, folks who hadn’t even paid to watch, and he was nonchalant, cool, and collected. I wasn’t Houdini. I was looking at a straightjacket right here on good old terra firma, and I was scared to death.
The attendant sat down, looked at a file in front of him, and then, without so much as glancing up, asked, “So, what happened?”
I rambled through the same bullshit story I had told the cops. My car was in the driveway. I put it in the garage. I was just listening to music. I forgot to turn off the motor. That’s all. It was simple. It was a very logical explanation.
Finally, as he looked up while I continued to speak, I thought, “Great, he’s really hearing me. I’m going home.”
My hope of freedom was dashed when I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me, but rather past me. I looked over my shoulder at a computer screen with several yellow Post-it notes virtually covering it.
“Now, why are all those notes there and not in the message box?” he said.
“What?”
“Those aren’t supposed to be there,” he said. “They should be in the message box.”
“I’m talking to you!” I screamed.
Here I go again. I was trying to show someone evaluating my psychological condition how sane and harmless I was by screaming. I would be lucky if they didn’t give me electric-shock treatments.
“I’m talking to you and you’re looking at the fucking computer instead of listening to me? If you’re not going to listen to me, then send somebody in here who will.”
He nodded his head, got up and left the room. A few minutes later, I was led back out to the transport vehicle. As I was locked in the back, I heard one of the staffers say to the driver, “Washington Hospital.”
I was really fucked.
Fremont, California, lies approximately fifteen miles south of San Leandro and about halfway between San Leandro and San Jose. Its claim to fame and principal source of employment for many years was the now-defunct General Motors plant. When GM shut down in the 1980s, the plant was reborn as New United Motors under a deal with Japanese car manufacturers. The “Nummie” plant, as locals call it, and Washington Hospital, were all I knew of the city of Fremont.
Washington Hospital sits in the southern part of the city of Fremont. It is a facility dedicated to mental-health issues. “Hospital dedicated to mental-health issues” is a nice way of saying “nut house.” It’s where southern Alameda County’s 5150s are confined for “further evaluation.”
I was familiar with Washington Hospital because of Dana, my first girlfriend. I had met her a few weeks after my high school graduation and fell in love with her almost instantly. Well, at least, what you think is love when you’re eighteen. She was a year younger and about as opposite of me as one could get. She was white, with short red hair and green eyes, and came from a blue-collar Fremont family. Like most laborers living in Fremont at the time, her father worked at the auto plant.
Like most seventeen-year-olds, Dana felt alienated from the world, but her sense of alienation was extreme. So was mine. I think this was what drew us together. What I was soon to find out was that Dana had issues beyond mere societal detachment. She had just been released from Washington Hospital a few weeks before I met her.
At school one beautiful Monday morning, Dana politely excused herself from history class, walked into the girls’ bathroom, entered one of the stalls, sat down on the toilet lid, pulled out a razor blade, and proceeded to slit her wrists. As she watched the blood trickle down her arms, she dipped in her index finger, a macabre fountain pen making use of gruesome ink, to write a scarlet message on the wall. “I Hate Mondays.”
Boy, can I pick them? Because of the severity of her self-inflicted injuries, Dana spent more than the requisite seventy-two hours in the hospital, and was confined for a few weeks. She’d hated Washington and told me horror stories about the place. I was heading into a scene right out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
At Washington, I was again led out of the ambulance/squad car into an office for evaluation. I again cooled my heels for several minutes until another white-coated man (this attendant was white . . . I was really, really fucked) came in to chat with me. Unlike the attendant at John George, this guy actually listened to my bullshit. He looked me in the eyes. Every few seconds he nodded his head sympathetically. In a calm, concerned voice, he asked me a few questions about my story.
“So if you were just listening to music, why did you have the motor running? Why not just turn the ignition key until the battery comes on?”
Hey, he’s using logic. What kind of bullshit is this?
“I . . . uh . . . didn’t want to run down my battery,” I stammered. “I don’t have jumper cables.” Yeah, that sounded good.
“A Miata has a manual transmission, doesn’t it? You don’t need jumper cables if your battery runs down. You can push start it.”
Damn. More logic.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Did you know that breathing in exhaust fumes in a closed garage could kill you?”
“Now you tell me.”
He laughed. Maybe I was getting out ofthere. “You know,” he said, “I’m going to recommend that we keep you here.”
“What? Why? I told you it was an accident.”
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“My friend, there are some things going on with you. Some very serious things. Some things that you are going to have to deal with or there will be a next time. Next time, you might not be so lucky.”
I started to cry again.
“It was an accident.”
“Think about me for a minute,” he said smiling. “How do you think I’d feel if I let you go home and then later you hurt yourself? Permanently hurt yourself?”
I didn’t say anything. I looked at my lap.
“I got kids to feed,” he said. “I don’t want to look for another job. That’s a pain in the ass.” He smiled. It was a warm, friendly smile.
“Stay here. It’ll be okay. Use the time to try and sort some things out. There are people here who can talk to you, people who will help you, if you’ll let them.”
I nodded, resigning myself to my fate.
“It will be okay,” he said before getting up and leaving me in the office.
After giving the admitting nurse the necessary information, I was led to the ward where they keep the 5150s. I had my own room, which was nice, and I could come and go as I pleased. The one thing I couldn’t do was leave the ward. A large locked door prevented me from doing that. I was told that I would be evaluated again in the morning and, if necessary, yet again the following day, until I was no longer deemed a threat to “myself or others.”
What “others”? I hadn’t been a threat to “others” (sisters excepted, of course) in my life. While I found this entire situation embarrassing, frustrating, and demoralizing, I found the implication that I was a “threat to others” downright insulting. Here we go yet again. Even when I quietly slipped away to off myself in the privacy of my own garage, I was still “the threatening black man.” I was still viewed as a danger to somebody else. I can’t win for losing.
I couldn’t sleep. The first twelve hours I spent pacing. I walked an inside track I had created from my room, down the hall, past the nurses’ station and the television room to the big locked door and then back again. My eyes stayed fixed on the hideous, plaid carpet that covered the entire floor. Back and forth I paced, avoiding all eye contact with anyone for fear of being recognized. I had been coming into a quarter of a million Bay Area homes, five days a week for over five years. I didn’t want anybody there to make that connection.
I put myself in a kind of self-hypnosis to block out the screams of a young woman in restraints, the incoherent babbling of a street person, and the sobs of a teenage girl. As I walked, I thought. I thought about the apartment complex. I thought about the humiliations. I thought about the cops and Sylvester and the kids in the car that first day. All of that pain hidden for all of those years finally, relentlessly rising to the surface. Mostly, I thought about Mom. Why did you do this to me, Mom? Why did you fuck me up and then leave before I was mature enough to deal with this stuff?
After a while, one of the nurses finally got a clue that I was struggling and offered me something to help me sleep. I took a pill and headed back to my room. My head hit the pillow and I drifted off, wondering if I were dead. In Catholic school, they taught us that suicides don’t go to heaven or hell but purgatory, to face the same problems that pushed them over the edge in the first place. Again and again, the same shit, in perpetuity. Did I die in the garage and get sent to purgatory? Was I being punished? Would I spend all eternity hassled by cops, called racial epithets by strangers, berated by those who share my complexion, and at the same time shouldering the blame for their transgressions? Would I spend the rest of all time abandoned by those who were supposed to love me and take care of me? Was this my destiny? Was this my Catholic fate?
I found my mom’s diary from the 1970s a few years back. In it she wrote, “I don’t want to die, ever. Leave this white world for the infinity and indignity of a white heaven? No thanks.”
My last thoughts before I drifted off into slumber were: “Was she right? Is heaven white?”
I was released from the hospital about forty-eight hours later. It was a good sign. They didn’t keep me for the whole seventy-two. While I was there I learned some very interesting things. For example, I found out that it’s against the law to commit suicide. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? In the state of California, it’s illegal to commit suicide! What’s the penalty? Death?
It should be against the law to fail at committing suicide.
The cops should come and say, “You can’t even do this shit right. We’re taking you in. You’re dangerous. You’re gonna hurt somebody.”