A cruel joke

My idea of a good joke…my twisted sense of humor…

The first time I was in the nuthouse I was there on a Voluntary basis (this is not including the 6 months I spent in the Naval Hospital’s 4th Floor Psych Ward prior). I didn’t even NEED to be there. I was being kicked out of the house I was staying in and had nowhere to go. Rather than spend who knows how long out on the streets, homeless, I went to the Mental Health service place (whatever it’s called, I don’t know) and I told them that I was obsessed with killing myself and suicide in general. I told them that I had a calender at home where I put a star next to the date on which “famous people” had killed themselves (like Marilyn Monroe, Ian Curtis, Virginia Woolfe, et. al.). It is true that I had made such a calender, but it was more of a morbid hobby than a symptom of suicidal fixation. At that time I didn’t have any real suicidal thoughts. Desperate, yeah. But if I were suicidal I would have just offed myself instead of trying to find a free meal and shelter for the next month.

They didn’t know that, though, and with my track record from the Naval Hospital I was quickly admitted into the Hospital (I think it helped a lot to tell them that I wasn’t taking any medication at the time, too). Those folks get very jittery when they’re in the presence of a manic-depressive who is off of his meds. Not that I’d been on any kind of medication regiment since leaving the Navy, but I had more faith in my ability to “keep it together” than they did.

I was in there for a few days when I noticed a woman with a big crucifix necklace around her neck. Ugly woman, red hair, skinny, very introverted, so it seemed to me. I struck up a conversation with her and learned that she was a devout Catholic. Back then I had very little tolerance for Christians and Catholics in particular. So I decided to mess with her mind a little bit.

I asked her where she was from and she told me. She asked me where I was from and I said, “I come from a planet on the other side of the solar system. I’m here to observe the neuroses of people like you.”

That kind of freaked her out. She thought I was full of shit (she might have been crazy, but she wasn’t too dumb, not quite THAT gullilble).

“I see, from the crucifix you’re sporting, that you are what I’ve come to learn is a ‘Catholic’, am I right?”

She replied in the affirmative.

“That’s odd,” I said. “on my planet, everyone is a Satanist.” Then, as an aside, I put my hand to my chest and reverantly intoned, “Hail Satan, Master of All.”

The point wasn’t to convince her that I was actually a Satanic alien. I wanted her to think that I was the most insane motherfucker there. I wanted her to be frightened of me.

Our conversation continued. I was amused to see the look on her face as I expounded upon life on my planet, the Satanic rituals we performed there regularly, how our mission to earth included converting all human beings to Satanism. She was dumbfounded. I knew that once this discussion was over she would likely avoid me like the plague.

“What do you people eat here, anyway?” I asked. She reeled off a few examples of food items, and I said, “Oh, man, that’s gross. Where I come from we eat nothing but bugs.” She couldn’t believe that, but I insisted that my race was sustained by insects.

Then, a little bit later on in the day, while she was eating lunch in the cafeteria, I went to the vending machines and bought a bag of jelly beans. Next I went outside into the courtyard where patients went to smoke, get a little fresh air, maybe some exercise shooting hoops. There were bushes lining the half circle concrete wall, and I strategically placed jelly beans on the ground next to these bushes, all the way around. Then I went back inside and waited for “the earthling” to return from her meal. The staff were very insistant that we go outside for at least a few minutes every day, so I knew she would be out there soon.

The door to the court was unlocked and she went out and sat on a bench against the wall, by herself (I don’t think many people there associated with her).

Then I came out and made a point to walk in front of her. As I did I muttered, “God damn, I am HUNGRY! I hope there are a lot of bugs out here.”

I walked away from her to the first bush. Her eyes were fixed on me. I bent over an picked up a jelly bean, lifted it up to where she could see that ~something~ was in my hand. No doubt it looked like a bug from her vantage point. I examined it, sniffed at it, and pretended to pull it’s “legs” off. Looking directly at her I popped that jelly bean in my mouth and said, with a sated look on my face, “Oh, yeah. That’s delicious!”

I might as well not have planted those other jelly beans, because when she saw me eat the first one she looked like she was going to scream as she got up and high-tailed it back into the ward. I laughed my ass off.

She really started staying away from me after that. I’d made quite an impression. Every once in awhile I would look across a couple of tables and see her staring at me.

I took a ball point pen and drew a pentagram on my palm. It covered the whole inside of my hand and could easily have been seen from across the room. She wasn’t that far from me, so I knew she would see it. I locked eyes with her, gave her a wicked smile and raised my hand, waving the pentagram at her.

Sure enough, next thing you know she’s up and off away to somewhere as far from me as she could get. As it turned out, she went straight into the nurses’ station and told the doctor what was going on.

Soon afterward they called me into the doctors’ office, sat me down and asked me if I’d really been doing the things she said I was doing. Honesty always being the best policy, I told them I had. The doctor said I had this poor woman believing that I was actually a Satanist from another universe and that I ate bugs.

“Did you really eat bugs in the courtyard?”

“No, they were jelly beans I planted out there by the bushes.”

I still thought that was very funny. I don’t think the doctor thought it was quite as humorous (but you never know, he might have laughed his ass off about it with the nurses after I left). He gave me the obvious spiel about how the people here are already fucked up enough and the last thing they need is another patient messing with their heads even more. That made sense, and I told him I was sorry and that I would’nt do it again.

And I didn’t. But I never apologized to my victim and I never refuted what I’d told her about being a bug-eating alien. To tell the truth, I was surprised that she bought all that shit. As I said before, I would have felt like the joke was successful if she only believed me to be the biggest basket weaver in the funny farm.

Such fun is rarely experienced in state mental institutions. No doubt the fact that I was there voluntarilly (I could have left any time I wanted) and not really suffering from any mental problems made me feel free to screw around like that. I know this…, several years later when I was locked up there on a court order, the circumstances were quite different. In that situation it’s hard enough keeping yourself sane without trying to drive another person closer to the edge.

No, I wouldn’t do it again. Yes, I kinda feel sorry for the gal. I hope she got the treatment she needed. I hope she’s okay today and that she’s completely forgotten my little escapade.

But do I still think it’s funny?

Hell, yeah.