I went TDY to
and had a nervous breakdown
because I knew I was losing my job
when I went back, and I had a new baby,
and Brenda was at home, nursing him, and minding
his older brother. I rented a cabin and bought a bunch of
Penthouse magazines, secondhand, with sticky pictures.
I lived on whiskey and bean dip. I went on a three-week
running drunk. I went to a bar where they had a live polka band.
I had chest pains and presented myself to a VA mental hospital
and was admitted to the medical wing for observation. I had
essential hypertension. That is, there was no somatic cause.
It was all in my head. When I quit drinking, it went away.
They put me on a water pill that made my breasts tender.
Gynecomastia. A side-effect. Doctors are the children of
rich parents who want to be rich themselves. Sometimes,
they’re stupid. They are in thrall to the pharmaceutical industry.
The VA hospital wasn’t like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
so much as Off
I used to drink in a bar in
the Old Soldiers Home. Low bars and mean companions, as John
Berryman says. Arthur Miller says the theater is in the hands of triflers
who need the towering rebuke of O’Neill’s life and work and agony
to refresh and renew it periodically. The Iceman Cometh.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night. My work here is nearly done.