Electroboy (33 page)

Fortunately, I qualify for unemployment and disability through my employer, which covers a significant part of my monthly bills. My parents continue to pay my psychiatric and psychotherapy bills. That week we have a family meeting with Dr. Marks to discuss a strategy for my post-ECT and post-firing situation. She recommends that I see a career counselor named Dr. Valerie Pincus, and I set up an appointment for the following week. Continually hopeful that somebody will have the answer for me, I never turn down a suggestion.

Dr. Pincus’s office is down in the Village, a brand-new part of town for my mental health care! She is in her midforties, a Bohemian type with long graying hair that she wears pulled back. We spend some time testing my skills and discussing the right job situation for me. “What is it that you like to do?” she asks me. “Well,” I say, “I’ve just had four electroshock treatments. I had to stop five or six people on the street to ask for directions just to get here. What I like to do best is counterfeit paintings, so I think I’m the ideal candidate for just about any job.” She laughs. How can anyone imagine that I can return to work now? This is fucking ridiculous. Why didn’t the doctor warn me that processing information would be so difficult? Remembering names, numbers, directions, addresses, and details is utterly impossible. I could hardly mop floors at a McDonald’s. It’s humiliating. What can this woman possibly suggest for me? All I can hear coming from her mouth are terms like “communications,” “language skills,” “media,” “journalism,” “creative”—none of this crap means anything
to me. They’re just words floating in space around her office, around my head, and superimposed across her face. I need to recuperate from this manic-depressive illness. I need bedrest badly. I need to lie underneath my sheets and blankets for weeks. Please just let me sleep this off.

I keep up my doctors’ appointments for the next few months and start making a dent in my 250-hour community-service requirement at St. Clare’s Hospital. I help plant a roof garden for the patients, an extremely gratifying project that also allows me to be outside; run errands to the deli and the newsstand for them; and do office work for the program director. St. Clare’s is a refuge for me, allowing me to escape my home detention for up to eight hours a day. The AIDS ward is very old, and I go from room to room, asking if any patients need any errands done or want any magazines or food from the store. Tanya, a very heavy black woman in her forties with AIDS, with close-cropped bright red hair, is lying on her side in her bed, smiling at me. “Blue eyes, come here,” she says. “Could you get me some Doritos or Cheez Doodles, please, okay?” she asks. She reaches into her wallet and takes out $2. “Do you want anything to drink?” I ask her. “No, thanks,” she says. She is watching the television, which is six inches from her face, and I tell her she is going to go blind looking at the screen. She motions me out the door. At the corner bodega the Doritos are $1.69. I want to buy her the Cheez Doodles, too, so I chip in the rest. When I return Tanya looks surprised. “I bought one and stole the other,” I tell her. Then I sit down in the armchair and tell her I’m a criminal and that’s why I’m doing volunteer work here. “Check out my ankle,” I say, pointing to my bracelet. When she sees this, she starts laughing. She pushes the television back, props herself up in her bed, and says, “Now you’ve got to tell me, honey, what a nice boy like you did to get yourself in such a mess.” “I’m not quite sure,” I say. “C’mon, you can tell Tanya,” she says, munching on the Doritos. I explain that a friend and I made copies of original paintings the artist didn’t even paint himself and sold them to galleries in Japan for full
price. “And can you believe, all he did was sign the paintings?” I say. “Shit, I could do that,” Tanya says, and she laughs like she hasn’t laughed in years.

May 22, 1995
.

This morning I stepped on the scale and was shocked: 245 pounds. I’ve gained sixty-five pounds in two years. I’m lazy about cooking for myself and rely on ordering in takeout food—Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Indian, pizza, and stuff from the local diner across the street. Luckily I can afford it on my disability payments (I have qualified for monthly support) and help from my family. Having my meals delivered to my front door makes me feel like a prisoner having his food pushed through a slot in his cell. But maybe the scale is wrong.

June 2, 1995
.

I’m very comfortable living on the inside and don’t even look forward to the four-hour breaks. In fact, I find myself becoming a bit agoraphobic on the streets, preferring the safety of my apartment.

June 14, 1995
.

Distance and time run my life. I fight depression by aggressively scheduling activities and allow myself to venture as far as Soho for dinner. Coming back, the cab gets stuck in traffic and I’m thirteen minutes late. The phone rings when I get in the door—the ladies in Boulder nail me. Luckily I only get a warning from my P.O., but after this my fear of being late is transformed into neurotic earliness—I’m constantly looking at my watch and leaving places excessively early to get home in time.

June 30, 1995
.

My manic depression rages out of control; I’m staying awake for two or three days straight, having sex with prostitutes (financed by my disability income), drinking heavily, and experiencing paranoid
and suicidal thoughts as well as visual hallucinations—mostly sharp knives and razor blades slicing my tongue but also imagining all types of strange objects in the apartment. I watch a shirt button grow to the size of a tire and roll out of my apartment down Broadway. I see people standing in my bedroom with perforations around their outlines.

I have been cooped up in the apartment all morning until noon, when I have my official four-hour period to spend outside. At twelve on the dot, I rush over to Zabar’s for a bagel and lox, which I wolf down while I stare out and watch the crowd on Broadway, contemplating how I’m going to spend the rest of my time out. Nobody seems to be in a particular rush to get anywhere. I thought I had a million things I wanted to do, but now I can’t think of a single one. I’m convinced I’ve become just as happy being a prisoner indoors. But I take a walk down to Riverside Park, because everybody tells me it’s a good idea to “take a walk down to Riverside Park.” I see all the mothers and nannies playing with their children and their charges, imagining when my day will come to have kids. Then I come home. I’m much happier here. I have my kitchen, my bathroom, my bed, my telephone, my stereo, and my television. And nobody’s watching me. I’ve been under house arrest for almost three months, and it’s getting tedious. I’m lonely. And constantly horny. I just want to be touched and to get off. It’s a pretty compulsive urge. I usually can get away with watching a porn video or looking at a magazine and jerking off, but today I’m in the mood for something live. It’s like being hungry and captive in the jungle, surviving on plants and leaves and knowing that you’ll be dining on a steak dinner when you’re finally rescued. There is the sense that the urge needs to be satisfied immediately; it’s got to happen within a half hour. Most of the pleasure is in the mystery and danger of the experience. I want to hire a masseur/escort to come give me a rubdown. I check the classified sections of
Next
and
HX
, the local gay magazines, and a few ads with photos look pretty good. A few porn stars, but that will cost $300 or so, and with disability as my only income, I’m just looking to spend $150. I see an ad for a guy
named Rex, with a black-and-white photo of a shadowed smooth torso that looks nice and the words “AUSSIE, MASCULINE, HANDSOME, HUNG, BI.” He also includes his measurements, height, and weight (six feet one, 190 pounds), and his phone number. I call the number and start leaving a message on his answering machine when I hear him pick up. “Hello, this is Rex,” he says with a strong Aussie accent. “Rex, I’m calling about your ad. Are you available today for a massage?” I ask him. “At about five. Were you interested in coming here? I’m in midtown on the West Side,” he says. “No, I’d rather you come up here. I’m at 81st and Broadway,” I answer, tugging on my ankle bracelet and hoping he makes house calls. “It’s a full-hour massage for $150,” he says. “I’m very good-looking, well-built, blond, twenty-seven years old, and have been doing massage for five years in Sydney.” “Sounds great,” I say, then I give him my address and wait. My buzzer rings at exactly 5:00
P.M.
, and I wait for Rex to come up. I open the door, and he’s great-looking. He seems a little out of place in New York—he definitely looks Australian. I take his jacket, show him around the apartment, give him the money, then lead him into the bedroom. Then I deal with the issue of the ankle bracelet. “I should show you this,” I say, pointing to the ankle bracelet. “Do you know what it is?” I ask him. “No, can’t say I do,” he responds. “Well, I’m under house arrest, which means I can’t leave this apartment. It’s a step up from being in prison. I just didn’t want to frighten you, okay? And don’t worry, I didn’t kill anybody. So just massage around it.” I strip naked except for this small black box and strap on my left ankle and lie down on my stomach. I can see him from the corner of my eye; he has a solid body. I feel his hands on my neck and shoulders. He’s got a great touch. This is just what I need. “You are my prisoner,” he says as he squeezes my shoulder muscles. I don’t say anything. “You are my prisoner,” he says again. “What are you talking about?” I ask him. “I thought you might want to get into a prisoner fantasy,” he says. “I just want a massage,” I respond. “I definitely don’t want to fantasize about being a prisoner!” I laugh. He goes into the bathroom and comes out wearing a white towel. He is carrying a bottle of baby
oil and looks like he’s been photographed by Bruce Weber. I’m waiting for him to take off his towel. “Not so quickly,” he says. “This is my pool-boy fantasy.” He’s massaging my lower back and then works his way down my butt to my legs and turns me over. “Now take the towel off your pool boy. That’s good,” he says. “Do we have to do this fantasy thing?” I ask. “No, not at all,” he says. He drops his towel, and standing in front of me is a very hot-looking Aussie. He walks around the bed and lies down next to me, and we jerk off in tandem. And then comes that horrible feeling of guilt and shame because I’ve paid for this experience with this man who is a complete stranger and totally wasted my money. Quickly, I escort him to the door making small talk, wishing I had never called him.

I’m hanging out with people from my past and coming up with ridiculous ideas to make money. The medication doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Dr. Wallenstein believes I should start the ECT again on a weekly outpatient basis—he refers to it as “maintenance,” which reminds me of the term “tune-up.” At this point I’m ready to believe ECT will bring some balance back into my life, because it did once for a while. In August I have my first maintenance treatment. It’s no different from the others. My father brings me to Gracie Square, carrying a bag with a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke for me to have after my treatment. The sandwich tastes delicious. That evening I host a tenants’ meeting in my apartment for twenty people as if nothing had happened that morning, and I feel like I seem totally clear-headed to my neighbors, although it’s a struggle to pay attention. I miss a lot of what is said. I have the treatments weekly, on Fridays, for the next four months. After each treatment, it’s always the same routine that puts me at ease: I slowly reacquaint myself with my apartment, eat, try to get in a comfortable position (the surfaces always seem so hard), and take a nap. The goal is simply to get my brain functioning again at a normal speed.

Sometimes I think I’m addicted to the Brevital and the ECT
process. I rearrange my schedule so that a treatment falls on my birthday. It feels like a wonderful gift to myself. I start believing that electric current purifies me. I become addicted to the rituals—fasting the night before, driving across Central Park to the hospital in the early morning, connecting to the machines that monitor my vital signs, closing my eyes and counting backward. It’s an oddly religious experience. It’s my meditation, my yoga, my tai chi.

In the middle of August, a while after Jonathan returned to Lauren and Nicole in Denver after a separation, he calls me and tells me he is leaving Lauren. Can he come stay with me in New York? Without asking too many questions or becoming too involved, I tell him that he is more than welcome. I guess I’ve now officially taken sides, but I will do anything for Jonathan. He’s been such a good friend for years, and he really has no other place to go. As a result, Lauren accuses me of ruining her marriage; it’s many years before she speaks to me again. Soon the two buddies are finally reunited. When he arrives I send him on a mission to pick up a pizza and some beer for us because I’m still under house arrest and can’t go out. Over dinner we both recount what we’ve been through over the last two years and manage to have a couple of laughs. Jonathan tells me about some of the places he’s stayed in and describes the characters he’s met along his way: a beautiful Southern blonde who has gashes on her arms starting from her wrists and ending, rather symmetrically, on each bicep; a guy who looks like a movie star who spends hours at a time lying in the sun and takes 60 milligrams of Prozac a day; a sex addict who is forced to surrender his collection of pornography—“a collection which would, I might add, put yours to shame,” Jonathan says. Most recently, Jonathan has been living in Boston, working for two lesbians in a flower warehouse. I reminisce about Allison and my Kostabi period: jetting around the world, wads of cash in the freezer, spending
recklessly, my trial, and my months at Esmor. On Friday he comes with my father and me to Gracie Square Hospital. After the treatment he covers his mouth with his hand and looks in amazement at my “mummylike” condition. He can barely keep himself from laughing.