White.
It's all white. The walls are white. The floor is white. The doors, the lights, the sofas and chairs. They're all white.
Walk down the white hallways and look through the windows with mesh wire inside to keep them from breaking on the white doors. Everyone is wearing white. Everyone is white.
The nurses wear white.
White stockings under white shoes. White T's under white shirts. White faces under...who cares?
Keep walking down the hallways and you'll see white face masks on the spermophobes. To be nice, the white nurses ask us to call them "germophobes". I don't care.
Down my hallway, almost to the end, turn right and you'll see my favorite case. She's a Hadephobe. The fear of hell.
Crosses are carved all over her body, Bible verses are burned in her skin and her room is coated with a layer of olive oil. She says the oil keeps the demons out.
I ask her, "What's the oil going to do? Make them slip and fall?"
She says the demons rape her every night.
I wanted to say maybe they think the olive oil is lube. But I'm sure she'd say she used "extra virgin" oil. So instead I just say the demons are probably trying to do her a favor because they know no real person would ever do her.
Across the hall from me is my favorite iatrophobe. That's the fear of doctors.
I think it's ironic that his phobia has brought him to this asylum where doctors watch him even in his sleep.
I guess he has some sort of disease that requires frequent surgeries. One time the doctors didn't jack him up on enough morphine, and when they made that first incision... Damn.
At least that's what the psychiatrists tell his parents when they ask where this fear came from.
His parents can't deal with him.
I can't deal with him. He screams.
He screams all night because every ten minutes some one with a red cross on their shirt walks passed his window and he doesn't know how to keep his emotions inside of him.
I guess that's what everyone's problem here is. They don't know how to deal with whats going on inside of them. Their emotions, their thoughts, and feeling.
I don't even think the doctors are what I would guess the people outside this institute's walls would call normal. They walk down the halls and don't blink when people scream and cry. They step over vomit and blood and piss without even looking up from their clipboards.
**
Here, the spermophobes... I mean germophobes are afraid of everyone, especially the inmates. It's like they are afraid they might catch a phobia or eating disorder.
Those damn germophobes are afraid they might catch a phobia. They look at every one like we're an envelope full of anthrax or a septic tank with swim shorts by the opening.
Phobophobic. The fear of phobias.
Nobody here really deserves a name. These people who lock themselves away in their rooms. I call them by what ever ails them. The place for name tags on the doors should say: Agateophobic (fear of insanity), Algophobic (fear of pain), Cacophobic (fear of ugliness... she's a bitch), Hypsiphobic (fear of heights. She even has to sleep on the floor because her bed is too high up)... the list goes on and on, it'd take forever to name all these useless people whose families abandoned them.
I almost feel like a doctor walking down the white hallways in my white clothes, muttering to myself "Bulimic looks pretty today" or "Phycophobic tried to hang himself from the rafters again" or "I wonder what Rupophic is up to today?"
Bulimic turned out to be my best friend. Her name is Candice.
My friends deserve names. Don't judge me.
One time Urophobic called her "Cut-Wrist Candy".
That night I drank all the water from the cooler behind the nurses desk when they weren't looking. I snuck into Urophobic's room while he was sleeping and emptied myself all around his bed.
Urophobic. The fear of urine.
It was worth the two weeks they locked me in my room. Seeing the white doctors run into his room when Urophobic screamed his crooked head off, hearing them slip and fall, and come out swearing and wet and yellow.
Then there's...well I don't know his real name. I call him Grit. He got that name because on one of our "experience" days, a wood shop teacher came in and taught us how to make little wooden spoons, but as soon as the wood shop teacher left, the nurses quickly took our little wooden spoons away. Our hard work; they took it away. Apparently we could choke ourselves with them or tear them apart and use the little slivers to "damage" our "surroundings".
By "surroundings" they mean them. And our other inmates and ourselves. Mainly them.
You only have to be locked in here three hours before you start trying to get out; you don't care what it takes or who you hurt.
They counted and recounted the spoons to make sure they got them all.
Too bad they only thought about counting spoons.
***
That night, I looked out my wire-meshed window and over to Grit's room. His window was dripping red. I yelled. I screamed. I yelled some more. Boo Boo, the nightshift caretaker hears me and runs down my hall, I point to Grit's room.
Boo Boo doesn't waste time, he gets to the room and puts his key in the slot, but when he unlocks and opens the door, a naked body falls out. Grit's naked body falls out. Grit looks like he has road rash all over. His face and arms, even his dick is bloody. Clutched in his hand was a piece of 32-grit sandpaper.
Grit is a cutter. Well, not just a cutter, he uses what ever he can get. Even sandpaper.
He can't even have books anymore because paper cuts will suffice.
He told me later, that he decided to look in a mirror for the first time in 3 years.
He said he didn't like what he saw. His nose was too big, his stomach stuck out too much, his ass was too flabby.
He said it started out as him just trying to "sand them down". He was just trying to make them smaller.
But he couldn't stop there. No, everything had to go, he hated everything about how he looked. He thought maybe if he got rid off all his skin, when it grew back, maybe, just maybe, he'd be beautiful.
He made me promise not to tell any one. He didn't want the doctors to think there was something more wrong with him. He said that all they had to know was that his wrists were his canvas, and the blades were his brushes.
I guess that makes his blood the paint.
Makes sense, because every time he pulls a stunt like that he tries to paint the walls with his blood, but he always runs out of it before the job is done.
I suggested to Boo Boo that maybe Grit needs a smaller room.
***
So that's my life. Well, the people in my life. Candice and Grit. And Boo Boo.
I call him Boo Boo because he's the only person that will ever see me cry. Boo Boo will keep my secret. Boo Boo is the closest thing I have to a dad. I think maybe he's better than a dad. Sometimes he forgets to lock the drug cabinet...
One time I asked Boo Boo why I was here. What did I do?
Boo Boo said my parents sent me here.
I asked, why?
He said, "to fix you up."
I said, I'm broken?
He cupped his big brown hands around my pale face, and he looked me in the eye, I swear he's the only person who will look me in the eye anymore, and he said, "Nothing's wrong with you, Jay, not a damn thing you can't fix yourself. Don't you ever let anyone say that you're broken." Boo Boo took a breath, spilled the next words "you're just here because we have to save you."
I looked up Boo Boo's big brown arms to he round face. He's the only thing in this place that isn't pale. Maybe that's why I like him so much. But I doubt it.
I say, save me from what?
Boo Boo blinked a little too fast and a tear left a dark spot on his white sleeve.
He said that they have to save me from myself.
