Look at fatface!
What a fatty!
What a whale!
I did a triathlon once and I was one of the first to cross the finish line in my category. Now I’m fat and sleeping like I did on the day of the triathlon. Constantly sedated, my veins pumped full of meds. All this for a song to invade me; all this to keep a state of order. We’re the minority, but at least I say what I want.
The good thing about the blue dog was that he didn’t grow old or die. The deal was that I’d take care of him, so that he wouldn’t grow old. In the year 2000, I’ll be thirty-five. I’ll be so old it’ll barely register. I used to comb his fur. I liked the blue dog’s company more than anyone else’s. And what if a blue dog really existed? It would be fucking amazing to have one. And if it had a puppy, would it be born blue, too? If it could bark and eat, what would a blue dog eat? Blue food? And if it got ill, would it take blue medicine? A lot of medicines are blue, including Haldol. I take Haldol to be under no illusions that I’ll die mad one day, somewhere dirty, without any food. It’s the way every madman ends. A feebleminded woman in her seventies, in a uniform, appears in front of me and kisses me on the mouth. I see pink stars. Elephants carrying Rimbaud across Africa. Verlaine screwing his wife, but thinking of Rimbaud. I’m thinking of Nastassja Kinski and her tiny budding breasts. I’m on the dark side and can barely move, just enough to masturbate really slowly. I come and my hand goes all white, covered by the semen. My hand turns into a white glove. I wake up at five in the morning with a nurse giving me the rough edge of his tongue. I don’t sleep well. I don’t wake up well. I don’t know which of the nightmares is worse: waking or sleeping. I come out of the cage. I’ve been in the cage for a long time. When will they take me out and let me stay with the others? I join the queue for breakfast. It’s watered-down coffee and a piece of bread with a single swipe of butter. I pay to be in this place, but that only covers the knife’s one-way journey. Today I woke up wanting to say beautiful things. I took advantage of the little time they left me alone outside and picked a flower in the garden. I took the flower to my little room. The nurse made a fuss about the flower. He gave me the rough edge of his tongue again.
Have you gone gay? What the fuck is that? Fat and gay.
I just wanted to see something colourful back here.
I’ll communicate your wish to a psychiatrist and he’ll talk to you. I’m just a nurse here. I look after you, the sick people. My blue dog didn’t have a name. Nothing I like has a name. Everything dangerous has a name. Names aren’t given to differentiate people. If they were, no two names would be alike. Names are given to make people alike or to set you apart from the others. He flies. He travels by aircraft. He is my blue dog. Another good thing compared to fur-and-blood dogs is that he doesn’t poo or pee in the house. All I have is my blue dog. I hadn’t played with him for a long time. Until the time I smashed up everything at home. I hadn’t even looked at him for ages. Not brushed his fur. And what if, instead of being a dog, he were a real, live elephant? Imagine the amount of shit that would pile up in my room. I’d sleep in shit. But at least there’d be a stronger shower than the one back home. His trunk would soak me right through. Like the kids’ song goes, one tame elephant can annoy a lot of people. Two tame elephants can … what if I had two? That would be the best. I’d annoy tons of people. I’d smoke joints inside the elephant and blow smoke out the trunk. Because I’m all those animals. Except for the blue dog. The blue dog is the colour of Haldol. He’s my friend.
Do you want to see something more colourful?
Yes.
What do you want to see?
The sun.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the beach and play football and eat bugs and drown sand crabs. Let’s go to Ibicuí, to some friends’ house. They’ll be friends for life. I had a friend who got AIDS, but the guy was strong and he dealt with it, and I have to deal with all this shit too.
We only do electroshock therapy under sedation. The patient doesn’t feel a thing. Perhaps a few little shocks will make him normal again? Perhaps everything will go back to normal? I live with a ninety-year-old woman. I like her. She craps on everything. She licks fucking everything, too. But I like the old woman. One day she started eating polystyrene and plastic. She got ill and had to go into hospital. Nurse! A piercing scream coming from deep within one of the patients. Why don’t they hospitalise women in the same place as men? Would it lead to complete sexual chaos? I don’t think lunatics have time to think about sex. You can see some of them just standing there, rubbing themselves. But that happens mostly in the street. I’m here without my blue dog, stripped of who I am. In reality, I’m no one. It’s no use shouting for help. Here everyone’s being taken some place worse. And hell isn’t the worst place.
My father shows up on one of the visiting days. He’s the one who put me here, but I don’t have any hate in my heart. I like the man. He gives me a kiss.
How are you, son?
I want to get out of the cage.
He says I’ll get out when I’m better. I move towards him and kiss him on his face. Is it the kiss of Judas? Will I betray my father in my madness? And what if two men came now and crucified me upside down? Could the cross bear the weight of this lard-arse?
I’d been admitted once before this long stretch, and had stayed in solitary that time, too. My mum lied to me, telling me I’d been in that clinic’s better wing. Like hell I had. It was like Carandiru Prison in there. The worst place in the clinic. Where the hopeless cases go. But I thought there was hope. There were only a few people out to get me, and what if those people decided to throw me a party that day? On that day when the rain poured down, the Fearsome Madman was admitted. When the Fearsome Madman was little, he had psychopathic tendencies. He’d already killed a lot of people, so the story went. Fearsome Madman kissed me on the right side of my face and walked around me twice. He said he’d be my friend. That was during my last stay. I don’t know if he remembers me.
It was lunchtime and all the lunatics were queuing up when Fearsome Madman showed up. He spat wherever he wanted, pissed wherever he wanted, crapped wherever he wanted, challenged the nurses to fights; the only reason he wasn’t our leader is because crazy people are wrapped up in their own paranoia. Lunatics aren’t community-minded.
I had one really wild paranoia. A kind of compulsion. Every time they gave me three medicines I had to take a fourth. I’d give them such a hard time about it they’d just hurry up and give me four. If I took three, horrible things might happen.
The Fearsome Madman started to eat everything in sight. He bit off the tip of another lunatic’s finger. The nurses reprimanded him. All the nurses were fat. The ones who weren’t fat were strong.
I would always give a cigarette to the lunatic who spent lunchtimes banging his head against the wall. Imagine if that freak were a footballer. His headers would be unstoppable. After all that banging his head against walls, he’d slam in headers from anywhere. Maybe he’d get called up to play for Brazil.
He takes a cigarette. Smokes the whole cigarette. Let’s see if he stops banging his head against the wall.
I was on so many meds at this point, I’d developed the elastic, bovine drool that writer talks about3.