Bipolarland, Texas part 5

 

3

After we eat, or rather, I eat and she asks for a to-go box, I take Sarah back to my odd but creative apartment. She’s so open-minded that she doesn’t bat an eyelash at the wierd symbols from the obscure computer games painted on my walls by my ‘90s-gamer friend Jules, the Sani-Flo toilets and sinks in every room (from when I was planning on turning my apartment into a fancy group home), the kitchen wall covered in newspaper clippings, the small pharmacy taking up the whole linen closet.

The autopsy table Jules and I stole from an abandoned morgue we broke into is now the island counter in my kitchen, spick and span except for some lettuce shreds, a blob of tsatziki sauce, and dried stuffing from our recent turkey stuck to the inside of one corner. I grab the hose from the kitchen sink and hose it down, washing about half the grossness down the hole in the end and into a bucket on the floor. Geoffrey was going to hook up plumbing to it to make it work, but I don’t know when he will do it. Still, it’s great to have the autopsy table. The stainless steel is so easy to clean, even if it gets scratched up, because all you need to do is plug up the hole, dump bleach in it (its raised, framelike edge will prevent bleach from slopping all over the floor), leave it overnight (and it will even get into the scratches), then wash it away well with water.

I wonder how many poor people get to say they have a stainless steel counter or an island in their kitchen.

We also have a chemical burn shower in one of our makeshift bathrooms; it was as good as anything and goes with the morgue décor. We just need a fridge with morgue drawers for our food now!

I realize, looking around at my apartment, that our landlord is going to kill us. Just hopefully not in the creepy morgue-like kitchen-- haha!

“Do you need help?” Sarah asks, picking up a sponge and trying to get the stuffing remains out of the corner of the table.

“If you want to, go ahead.” Then I start telling her about our adventure in the morgue, how it took all six of us—me, Geoffrey, Jules, Zygmunt, Filip, and Don—to carry that autopsy slab back out to our truck, dodging from building to building in the abandoned medical complex to avoid being seen until we found a grove of trees we could hide in until Jules came back with the truck, right up into the trees, and we loaded it on and covered it with blankets we’d stolen from the laundry room in the building that had the kitchen and the sterilization room and the janitors’ main room. We were sure to lay it down so that it wouldn’t fly off on the highway. If it had it would have made a great headline, though.

I yammer on and on, enjoying myself more and more. It’s good to talk and have someone listen to you. I tell her about how I’m going to decorate my kitchen. I’m thinking about a morgue theme but then I’d have to take down all my newspaper clippings that I just glued to the wall, or just tile over them. I wonder where I can get clear glass tiles. I wonder where I can get cheap porcelain tiles for the counter. I wonder what color enamel I should use to fill the spaces between the tiles. I wonder whether I should tile over the wooden cupboard doors and drawers, or just replace the whole counter/cupboards/drawers thing with glass or stainless steel ones. Maybe tiles are unhygienic, but I like retro. It would also be fantastic if we could have one of those flushable sinks and install an Insinkerator in the drain. Could come in handy for cleaning dishes BEFORE washing them, and cleaning the insides of chickens and turkeys, as well as disposing of anything rotten.

I tell Sarah about my friend Don, who’s going to move in with us. I tell her she can have the small bedroom, Jakub and I can have the big bedroom, and Don and the others can sleep in the living room. I tell her about my novel and the UN meeting and my boyfriend Jakub and how I’m going to write an article about her and the song I was writing with Don about his experience in a group home and forced medication, about the band we’re all going to start that sings about life as a mentally ill person (and will hopefully raise awareness), about the bipolar and depression and schizophrenia and schizoaffective support groups we’re going to start, the mental health clinic we’re going to start, the special school for emotionally disturbed students we’re going to start, how our mental health clinic will have an inpatient unit for people in crisis that doesn’t force anything on the patients. I tell her we’re going to have a huge opening party and regular social clubs and dinners and dances and parties for the staff and patients.

Then reality sets in.

I realize that nothing I plan will happen, that I’ll die a loser and never be a household name. I remember that I’m just a charity case who, like Sarah, can’t work and doesn’t have the constant, neverending concentration to go back to school. I remember that it’s mania— part of a mental illness—that makes me think I can do things that are just flat-out beyond my capacity.

I tell Sarah that I’m tired and that I’m going to bed.