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.