Another time, last spring, a couple of the Dregs, Bill Swayzack and Hank “the Hammer” Hotaling, decided that one of the sophomores needed to ‘ride the wild surf.’ They were drunk, and this kid came through, Matt Lincoln, who was kind of small and quiet and had been known to have a toke or two with the Heads. The way the Main House bathroom was set up, it had two toilets sitting next to each other without any kind of a barrier between them. To ride the wild surf, two guys grabbed the victim and lifted him up off the floor, and then dangled his feet in the toilets. A third guy would stand next to the toilets, and on the signal, would flush them simultaneously. For extra insult, you made the victim give the signal — “Surf’s up!”
When Bill and the Hammer saw Matt, they started yakking about riding the surf. Matt didn’t know what they were up to, and he sat down in the living room to watch television. By the time he figured it out, they were already heading towards him. I moved in between them. “The surf is not up,” I told them.
“Fuck you, Buckman, the surf is up,” answered the Hammer.
“Nobody’s riding the surf today.”
“Maybe you’d like to ride the surf?” asked Bill.
I just smiled. “If you think you can make me, feel free to try.” I could see Matt trying to slip out to the side, and I shifted a little more. “Get lost,” I told him. He scooted out through the arch and went upstairs. He roomed diagonally across from Joe and me. Bill tried to move and intercept him, but I just stayed between them.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded.
“The surf is out,” I repeated. At that point a few other guys came in the room and told us to knock it off. I just gave a gracious smile and went into the kitchen, and Bill and the Hammer grumbled and went over to Grogans’.
The Dregs were as numerous as ever, and without me or Kevin in the Heads, they outnumbered the Heads almost 2:1. Most of the Dregs were actually crones, grad students hanging around a fifth year, and a couple were actually guys who flunked out and stuck around anyway, rooming with us while their buddies finished school. The only Dreg in our class was Bruno, and he was running for Chancellor, too. Previously he had won the election and become Chancellor, but had been a weak leader.
Bruno got a fair number of votes, but with me running as an Independent, he didn’t get enough. My platform was simple. We had problems, the house needed a leader, and it needed a leader not in any particular group. That was me, not Bruno. Vote Buckman, for a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage! I won. I immediately threw my support behind Bruno for Minister, the Vice-Chancellor so to speak, and he was voted in unanimously.
His slogan as Minister was “Only a heartbeat away!”
In general, being Chancellor wasn’t that big a deal. You ran the house meetings, mediated squabbles, and prayed that the important positions had brothers who knew what the fuck they were doing and had some people to back them up. Nobody cared a whole lot if the Social Committee Chairman got drunk and passed out. If the House Manager was away for the weekend in January and the furnace died, everybody cared!
So far, it hadn’t been a problem. I just hoped we’d get through the year without the Heads and Dregs fucking things up. By next year they would all have graduated anyway.
Otherwise the year went along nicely. During Work Week we had the vote for Master Chef and I won. This was a purely honorary title, and was given to one of the designated Sunday cooks, usually a senior, but not always. Ricky Holloway had held it for the last two years. You got to kibbitz with the regular cook and the Steward, but otherwise it meant nothing. You were not allowed to nominate yourself, and weren’t present for the voting. Still, it was nice to be noticed.
My doctoral studies had moved along nicely, and I had a framework for the calculations which had meshed together neatly. With any luck at all, I would be writing the dissertation by the Christmas break and be able to graduate with my PhD on schedule. Marilyn and I continued seeing each other every few weeks, although we started a new technique; she would drive south and I would drive north and we would meet up in Lake George and spend the weekend there.
I found myself a shrink in the fall. Dad mailed me the report from Hamilton’s shrink. I got it when I made it back to Kegs. It was about a dozen pages long and made absolutely no sense to me. It only made sense to another shrink. I couldn’t even look it up on the Internet, since nobody had gotten around to inventing it yet. Eventually I just tucked it in my drawer and went about my business.
Midway through the semester I got to thinking about it again. RPI didn’t have any sort of medical or pre-medical program, so I couldn’t find a friendly teacher to quiz. Maybe Professor Rhineburg knew somebody I could ask, or at least know where to start. I hit him up one day in his office when he was alone.
“Excuse me, Professor, got a moment?”
“Sure, Carl, what’s up?”
I sat down across from him. “Do you know any psychiatrists?”
“Why? Finally starting to go crazy around here?” he joked.
“No, sir, it’s not about me.”
He sat upright at that and looked across his desk. “Wait, you’re serious? What in the world do you need a psychiatrist for?”
I shrugged and gave him some background. “It’s not me, sir, it’s my brother. He’s seeing a shrink, and my father sent me his preliminary report, and it might as well be written in Greek for all the good it’s doing me.” It was actually worse than that. Most mathematicians and physicists can actually read Greek, at least the alphabet, since we use it in math so much.
He nodded. “Yeah, that I know. Well, I don’t know any psychiatrists, but Janet is a psychologist. She might be able to help you.”
I looked surprised at that. “Your wife is a psychologist? I thought she taught over at Albany State?”
“She does. She teaches psychology.”
“Oh.” You learn something every day, I suppose. “Do you think she would see me?”
“Probably. I’ll ask her tonight. At the minimum, I’ll have her call you,” he offered.
“Thanks, thanks a lot!”
I talked to Janet Rhineburg that evening, and she agreed to meet me on Monday after her classes, in her office over at Albany State. I was to bring the psychiatrist’s report with me. I made sure I was there early. She brought me into her office, we chatted briefly, and then I gave her the report. She read it twice, once just skimming through, and then a second time, much more thoroughly.
Then she set it down and sighed. “I’m very sorry to hear this, Carl. What would you like to know?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, not really. I don’t even know exactly what it all means. There are words in there I swear aren’t in the dictionary!”
Janet laughed at that. “We’re doctors. We never use three syllables when four are available. Let’s take it from the top. Your brother suffers from a form of mental illness called schizophrenia. I assume you’ve heard of it before.”
“Sure. It’s like he doesn’t believe in reality or something, right.”
“No, that’s not really it. It’s more that the sufferer is detached from reality, and in his own individual reality. His thought patterns are confused and disordered, he can be delusional and hallucinate, maybe see and hear things that aren’t there, and exhibit signs of social dysfunction.”
“Huh. Well, I’ve never heard of Hamilton hallucinating, but he has delusions, at least about me, and he isn’t very social.”
She nodded and continued, “Your brother has a type of schizophrenia known as paranoid schizophrenia. Now, forget about everything you have ever seen on television. They toss that diagnosis around like candy. Almost nothing that they show is true.”