INSTITUTIONAL WALLET
Do you get botox
before you kill yourself?
If you're thinking about killing yourself
seatbelt or no
seatbelt? Manicure? Moisturizer? Sunblock?
Brocolli? Vitamins?
Getting into the
rhythm of the mental institution is figuring out when people
are joking. M & A discuss Malthus and the geometric
increase in population growth versus the arithmetic growth
of food supplies with great earnestness.
A & T discuss girls and language and whether
shoes make adequate transmitters. T likes to explain things in language
no one speaks but him.
He writes things down for everyone in Chinese.
He is not Chinese.
The Staff gives us projects to do.
H takes our blood pressure in the evening.
She is a black midget.
Everyone is politically correct and fails to comment. She has a tattoo of an eye crudely done
behind her right ear, and I wonder what E thinks, who worries
about everyone looking at her.
E & I are
the only women on the ward.
I get frequent and effusive compliments, the belle
of Unit 23. A
lifelong goal, naturally.
T spent twenty
minutes staring at my feet, then told me that the perfectly
polished pink toenails were driving him wild.
We couldn't continue to talk until I tucked my feet
out of sight. His
talk immediately turned to the Mahabharata.
R and I watched
Barbara Walters interview Angelina Jolie. (Born in November,)
I was then informed I was a true scorpion, not one of those
other kinds.
M, blinded recently
in a head-on collision, cannot actually see me.
After a morning of conversation, however, he wanted
to confirm that I was married.
If only I'd been
this popular in high school.
I am wearing no
makeup. When I tried to kill myself I decided
to vomit the pills but woozy fell down the stairs and hit
my head, so I have a large purple bruise on my forehead.
Until today my hair wasn't clean.
Alas, I think all this love isn't sincere. A tells me how beautiful I am every few hours, but lacks credibility
- he's in his pajamas.
I'm not sure you've
really been institutionalized until you've made a wallet.