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Stalking Joan Baez a mental health consumer
Prologue The sobs coming from the gurney next to mine, from which I was separated by a cloth hospital curtain, were heartrending, demanding immediate attention, but I could do nothing to help that poor girl. I was strapped firmly down and couldn¡¯t move. ¡°You¡¯re all right, Essie¡±, I heard a woman¡¯s voice saying over and over again. ¡°You¡¯re all right. You¡¯re all right. You¡¯re all right.¡± I believed the voice as if it were speaking directly to me, as I had
only felt such euphoria 5 times in my life before. This was my sixth and
final electro-shock therapy session, and the grueling depression I had been
living under for close to a year was gone. So was all memory of that year,
and slightly more; I didn¡¯t care. I was cured, and ready to go out and do
what all other 19 year olds do: live my life. My greatest challenge now
was to get away from my repressive family in the tiny Northwestern town I had
always called ¡°home¡±, go to New York City or California, and I would be, for the
first time in my life, free. Free. Free. Free from sordid and
unhappy love affairs and suicide attempts and averted eyes of relatives who were
thinking ¡°It¡¯s a shame about _______ and his nervous condition, just like his
Uncles, Aunts, Cousins etc. He¡¯ll have to go to the huge State Hospital in
Warren to live for the rest of his life. And such a bright lad, too.
Shame. He always did read too much.¡± The Fall I have always loved music. That may be a stupid statement, because everyone loves music of one sort or another. Shakespeare said ¡°The man who hath no music in his soul nor is not moved by the concord of sweet sounds is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus; let no such man be trusted.¡± Or words to that effect. Of course, the whole subject of ¡°music¡± is, if I may say so, ¡°subjective¡±: what I like you hate, and vice versa. While I loathe Country Western Music, viewing it as racist twangy garbage; literally millions of other folks fervently maintain, ¡°If it ain¡¯t country it ain¡¯t music.¡± I¡¯ve even heard there are people who don¡¯t adore Mozart, although I don¡¯t believe I¡¯ve ever met any. At least I hope not. And to me, there is a big difference between what I call ¡°serious¡± or, to the uninitiated, ¡°classical¡± music, and ¡°pop¡± or ¡°popular¡± music. The former requires study and contains a depth and breadth not found in the latter, but both greatly effect the emotions. I love them both, and it would be difficult to say which I enjoyed more. Having been raised in a home where ¡°serious¡± music was appreciated, and having gone the rounds of piano lessons, marching band, chorus, concert band, music camp in the summer in school, and having taken a few voice lessons from a refined and cultured elderly rich lady when I was in my teens, I rather fancy myself as educated when it comes to that ¡°concord of sweet sounds¡±. When The Beatles came along I jumped on that bandwagon and grew up with them; I dabbled in Motown, learned to do the Twist and the Jerk, wept along with The Righteous Brothers. I was probably a bit snobby about my musical tastes because I went to sleep each night listening to Beethoven¡¯s 6th all the way through high school. When Janis Joplin came along she was an instant Goddess; Barbra Streisand was mostly a secret passion because if you listened to here you were weird, and nothing in the world is worse to a teenager than being ¡°weird¡±. But I usually have some sort of music playing inside my head, and this music is very often is ¡°serious¡± music, or what most people call ¡°classical¡± music. I had heard and enjoyed the voice of Joan Baez long before I met her one day on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto California in the early spring if 1969. She lived nearby, and was present to speak and sing and give her support a rally protesting the incarceration of 27 military fellows who were being prosecuted for some sort of civil disobedience. I was there to protest the military establishment. At that point in my youth (I would turn 21 a scant few months later) I was ready to protest anything (a matter of hormones, I suppose) and here was this celebrity with the clearest purest untrained soprano voice in the world talking with me and interacting with me and others and generally behaving as if she and I were peers. Heady stuff for a suicide attempt survivor who had undergone electroshock therapy and probably should have been on medication to treat my bipolar affective disorder. I was also a homeless Hippy, hitch hiking around the country, craving attention, affection, a good meal and a place to sleep, (preferably not alone.) The anti-war movement was a natural ¡°scene¡± towards which I could gravitate, a generally safer place than ghetto streets and the druggies that proliferated ubiquitously. A word about drugs: I had dabbled a bit in alcohol while in High School, but found, after several bouts with intense nausea, that I was allergic to marijuana. Also, knowing and understanding my mental instability, I avoided the hallucinogens like LSD¡ªI needed nothing to ¡°push me over the edge¡±. I once spoke to a group of older folks at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Santa Barbara, and was asked about drugs. I replied that ¡°I like my senses the way they are, and don¡¯t wish to distort them¡±, a statement for which for which I received an ovation. Sometimes I can be easily led, especially by people with charisma, but I think that my marijuana allergy kept me away from falling into the peer-pressure trap of drug abuse. Having spent some time with heroin abusers, which I believe the whole drug scene tends to lead one to be, I¡¯m certain that my marijuana allergy saved my life. I was at an age where I could identify with and be identified as a ¡°Student¡±, spending time in suburbs interacting with middle class folks who were against ¡°The War¡±. And here was Joan Baez herself, allowing me to walk her to the restroom, allowing me to carry her guitar, allowing me to be myself and making me feel charming and valuable. She sang an a capella version of ¡°Swing Low Sweet Chariot¡±, probably the most thrilling aesthetic moment in my life up till then. I became an instant fan, and if it weren¡¯t for a protective entourage of ministers, students, and anti-war workers surrounding her, I probably would have followed her home. I asked someone close to her for her phone number, and the fellow said: ¡°Joanie¡¯s home phone number is the most closely guarded secret in the free world.¡± In other words, ¡°stay away.¡± I can take a hint. Despite the title of this piece, I am not, nor have I ever been, a stalker. Being a stalker requires an arrogance and self- esteem, nay, self-importance, which I have never, even in my craziest states, ever possessed. In order to stalk someone, you must believe that you are the most important person in the world to your victim, and I¡¯d never felt very important to anyone. The sort of stalking I am talking about is almost the reverse: Joan was stalking me, by getting inside my head with the force of her own delightful personality, taking over a large part of my consciousness. Once having met her, I could listen to her recorded music and follow the news about her and truthfully say, ¡°Joanie said this, Joanie did that¡± and make others believe that we actually interacted much more than our one encounter would indicate. And I came to believe, over time, that Joan and I were friends. I wrote to her frequently, and I believed that I was a friend to her, that she would be actually a friend to me if I were worthy of taking time from her busy life. So it wasn¡¯t really a delusion on my part, just a bit of harmless and comforting hyperbole, in which I believed, and which later, when I was gainfully employed for a living, gave my poor hard-working foundry life some meaning that it never previously had. I know that Joan was very aware of me over the next couple of years after the Stanford encounter. And there is one song that she wrote and recorded which I believe is about me, ¡°The Last, Lonely And Wretched¡±, even though I did read later that the song was written about someone who actually visited her home, a visit which I never had the courage nor the audacity to make. But I¡¯m getting ahead of the story, a personal and difficult to tell story, about my own fight with the demons of mental illness and my endless journey along the road to recovery. The Arrest I was sitting at the counter in a coffee shop on U.S. 101 in California in June of 1969 when two policemen came in and arrested me for hitchhiking on the freeway. The stretch of U.S. 101 where the coffee shop was located was not freeway, and I obviously was not hitchhiking if I was sitting inside, but I believe that the officers were justified in picking me up because I probably was displaying bizarre behavior resembling that of someone guilty of illegal drug use. I say ¡°probably¡± because I don¡¯t remember too much about that day other than that it was hot and dry, and I thought I had been magically transferred to the Holy Land (same climate) and that I was to do some type of penance for my sins. I could be realistically described as one of the Homeless Mentally Ill by then, with many delusions (though no hallucinations) and was traveling from Santa Barbara north to Los Altos Hills in the San Francisco Bay area to be with some dear friends, hoping also to hook up with Joan Baez and her followers. I have vague memories of walking off the highway and along a sandy dry streambed, and leaving my backpack, which contained all of my possessions, lying on the ground. I also remember going for a nude swim in a different stream alongside a different road, and the police stopping after I has gotten dressed again and interrogating me, then leaving me alone. I had spent some time on the campus of Stanford University close to Los Altos Hills and marveled at the intellectual superiority of the many students and a few of the faculty I had met. It somewhat resembled the environment around which I had spent much of my youth and adolescence, Allegheny College, a small Liberal Arts School, very old and much venerated, located in my hometown in the hills of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Many of my childhood friends¡¯ parents were on its faculty. I had grown up in that academic environment, and when it came time for me to go to college I assumed that the small inexpensive State school I chose would be much the same. I discovered instead that The State School was actually a step down from my High School advanced placement classes, and didn¡¯t last long there. Stanford was a giant step up from Allegheny, and I loved the liberal atmosphere as well as the generosity of the people, both students and faculty, who shared their minds, their food, their homes (and some), and their beds with me. I ¡°hung out¡± at Stanford for several months, read and wrote in the Undergraduate Library, prayed and meditated in the magnificent chapel, panhandled in the Student Union, slept in dorms and in a fraternity house, and later met an extremely nice intelligent student who took me into his home, a 6 by 9 foot cabin in Los Altos Hills, right in Joan Baez¡¯s neighborhood. In my previous wanderings I had spent some time at NYU and the University of California at Santa Barbara, both arguably better than Allegheny. NYU had everything New York City had to offer, and UCSB was a perfect setting for a ¡°hippy¡±, being right on a beach and close to a large community of students. But at Stanford I found my heaven. I wanted very badly to enroll as a student there, but had neither the money nor the brains to get in. Some professors allowed me to sit in on classes, and I participated in many discussions with them and with students; I felt like I was getting a real education by osmosis, a better education than I could have ever gotten in my old ¡°State School¡± back in Pennsylvania. Leaving Stanford on a whim, and desiring to go back home for a visit, I hitchhiked to my hometown, had a series of awful encounters with various friends and members of my family there due to a manic episode; I then hitchhiked and flew back to the West Coast via San Antonio Texas. There are 1000 stories in that last sentence, very stressful experiences involving being anally raped, going hungry for days, getting caught in a Nevada desert sandstorm, being shot at from a speeding pickup truck in rural Texas and that sort of thing, but these stories are for another time. As I made my slow journey back West, I descended into complete madness. In a frenzied manic state, I visited Isla Vista again, the community adjoining UCSB, frightening friends and strangers alike with wild behavior: shouting, trying to force my way into a movie theater because I didn¡¯t have the price of admission but felt that I had the right to see the film, running madly along the beach. There are off-shore oil drilling and pumping platforms visible from the shore, and I, in my psychosis, believed that these giant rigs miles out in the Santa Barbara Channel were actually huge pumps under my direction, and through a telekinetic link, I could control the waves and the tides. I would walk the streets singing Joan Baez, Barbra Streisand and Janis Joplin songs at full volume, and most people I encountered probably thought I was under the influence of some illegal drug and ignored me. I tried to hitchhike at the airport for a plane ride out, eating and drinking little. I began to thumb rides north on US 101, ending up in the coffee shop in San Luis Obispo County. It was only then, dirty, penniless and possessionless, that two fellows arrested me and took me in their cruiser to the San Luis Obispo County Hospital. I was admitted to the Mental Ward. Lying in the back seat of a cruiser with lights flashing, I toyed with the idea that these policemen were aliens, and that their cruiser was a flying saucer taking me to other planets. Such speculation was popular among many of the folks with whom I¡¯d been spending time over the past two years of the hippy revolution, but I soon dropped that idea as too crazy. I still didn¡¯t understand that I was being committed to a mental hospital against my will. In the admissions process to San Louis Obispo County General Hospital, everyone kept questioning me about my mental health treatment. As my hometown hospital had no mental health unit, and as I didn¡¯t remember much about my own treatment due to electroshock treatments, all of this was very confusing to me. At that time I hadn¡¯t a clue that I was incarcerated; when they asked me about mental hospitals back home, I told them that there was one Warren State Hospital, about sixty miles from where I lived. I was surprised to learn later that it had been recorded that I had been a patient in that hospital, which I had never even seen, but where several of my relatives had been patients. The Treatment I remember little about that particular hospitalization, probably because for the first time in my life I was being pumped full of Thorazine, the catchall psychiatric drug of the day. Thorazine has what I would describe as a nightmarish effect upon the body and mind¡ªI felt tightness in my head, and a slowness of my body that made expressing anything or feeling any meaningful emotion impossible. It is a major tranquilizer that I will admit can have therapeutic benefit, but I think that it mostly makes unruly people very easy to manage, and so is popular where there are groups of mental patients and a minimum of staff to help take care of them. . I was feeling lost without the star sapphire ring which the staff had taken away from me on the first night of my incarceration because I was using it to scratch the walls of my cell, a tiny concrete-block room with a bare plastic mattress on the floor. The ring had been purchased while I was in high school, and the star went well with the Star of David tattooed on the back of my left hand: they both had the same number of points. It was a great part of my identity at the time, and my confusion coupled with the Thorazine made me feel like I was becoming someone else. This was not necessarily a bad prospect, given my low self esteem, but a bit frightening never the less. Later on the second day in the hospital I was moved to a nice clean ward with large windows overlooking mountain scenery, and with a kind staff. In particular there was a social worker that obtained funds somehow from my family to buy an outfit for me at J. C. Penny's so I would not have to go to my Court Commitment hearing in torn blue jeans and an old t -shirt. I also have some vague memories of touchy feely group therapy sessions where we lay around a darkened room on pillows and talked about our inner selves. For the most part I hadn¡¯t a clue as to what was going on all about me, except that I felt I should try to please these pleasant strangers, who would not allow me to go outside so I could hitch-hike away. Running through my mind all of this time was the songs of Joan Baez, that heavenly soprano voice, the folk and protest songs. I felt certain that if I could reach her she would save me and my soul, free me from my self perceived role of Judas, enfold me in the wings of her goodness and kindness and stunning beauty and take me away to peace. I sang along with Joan¡¯s songs playing in my head and hoped for freedom. I also remember little of my Court appearance when I was formally committed to a Mental Hospital, except that it was in a room in the Hospital, there was an American Flag beside a desk, and I was told I was being given a three month commitment to a State Mental Hospital like the one where I¡¯d been treated in Pennsylvania. I could not convince anyone that I¡¯d never been in a State Mental Hospital before; the hospital where I had gotten my shock treatments was a small community hospital with a tiny psychiatric unit. I soon found myself in a Police car being whisked down U.S.101, a major North South Highway running through California, to a huge and beautifully landscaped Camarilla State Hospital between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. The flowers were brilliant and spectacular all over the Hospital grounds, and I was taken to a two-story building with a very busy room: lots of people running around, patients as well as staff, all doing errands as if their very lives depended on it. Everyone was smiling at me and being very friendly, and I soon found myself in a room with an oriental psychiatrist whose English wasn¡¯t very good. During his examination of me he asked if I heard voices, and I responded ¡°yes¡± since I assumed he was asking me about the people in the hallway and the acuity of my hearing. That is how ¡°Audio Hallucinations¡± got into my file. At this point I do not know what medications were being prescribed to me or what my diagnosis was, but I do remember the words ¡°Acute Schizophrenia¡± being bandied about¡ªthat would probably be it. Much later I was finally diagnosed with the more prosaic and more easily treated ¡°Bi-Polar Disorder¡±, or ¡°Manic Depressive¡±, and it should be noted that my mother and 4 of her 5 children would later be treated for this disorder. Camarillo State Hospital grounds were beautifully landscaped, with large green irrigated lawns and many exotic flowers carefully tended by the patients. That¡¯s about all I remember about that place, except that I stayed there for one week, and at least one point I wanted to leave but was not permitted: I was held down by two aids and shot in the buttocks with thorazine, all the while I was screaming ¡°Help! Rape!¡± Much to my surprise, there were no recriminations from that episode, and it was never mentioned to me again. The seventh day there I was given ¡°grounds¡± privileges: that is I was permitted to walk around outside of the locked ward where I was being held. This being the first opportunity I had, I walked out of the gates of the Hospital to a highway and simply hitch hiked away. I really thought at the time, in my psychosis, that it was expected of me, and I didn¡¯t fully understand that I was to stay in this hospital. My escape was easy and simple, not so much an escape, but just walking away from an uncomfortable situation, a practice I¡¯d been following all of my life. Not that I minded being there much, it was just not as much fun as lying on the beach or having sex in an unrestricted setting. I again went to Isla Vista for a short time, and I¡¯m certain that I acted out even more, due to withdrawal symptoms from whatever medication they had me on at the time as well as symptoms of my illness. I had some very wonderful and interesting friends there, a couple with a young child who owned a coffee house just off the UCSB Campus. They were very much involved in the theatre, and were doing an outdoor production of Thornton Wilder¡¯s ¡°Skin Of Our Teeth¡± which I disrupted by telling the wife that her child was crying while she was in the middle of a performance. She was understandably upset, and shouted at me and may have justifiably struck me. I can¡¯t remember too much more of this time, but I recall being out on US 101 hitch-hiking again, going further north to try to find my Stanford friends. I was picked up by a very kind young man driving a fancy Corvette Sting-Ray north in the middle of the night, and he took me miles out of his way and delivered me to the place where I had stayed with some Stanford Students in Los Altos Hills south of San Francisco. I arrived before dawn. The house stood on a washed out road turned into a gully, and you had to walk up a few yards to reach it. Next to it was a commune of anti-Viet Nam War draft resisters who were affiliated with Joan Baez¡¯s husband, David Harris. The Fire This is where things get truly fuzzy in my memory, because by this time I was in a state of full-blown psychosis. I believed that I was ¡°King David¡±, a person chosen by God to cure all evil in the world, and that all I had been through in the past months was a sort of ¡°trial by fire¡± in the selection process of this ¡°messiah-like¡± personage into whom I was being transformed. Radios that I heard (in people¡¯s cars that were kind enough to give me a lift) were speaking directly to me, encouraging me to save the world. The billboards I read along the highways were put up for me to read secret messages meant only for my eyes, and everywhere were hidden movie and television cameras filming my experiences for the historical record. I was very happy, euphoric even, yet very frightened by the isolation that such notoriety was pushing upon me. Joan Baez would understand¡ªshe understood everything. If I could reach her I would be safe. So finally, after hours of hitchhiking and one long ride in the Corvette Sting Ray, I was at the dear friend¡¯s home in Los Altos, arriving, as I said, sometime in the wee small hours of the morning. There were several Stanford students, both graduate and undergraduate, living in an old house, and my special friend lived in a six by nine foot cabin down a path from the house. A fellow I only peripherally knew was the only one at home when I arrived, and he was just leaving to go deliver newspapers. He told me that my best friend there had left to go back to the East Coast for the summer; I could almost taste my disappointment that there was no one close to greet me and take me to Miss Baez, and it was then that I finally broke down. They told me later that I started a fire¡ªI vaguely remember matches, and paper burning on a bulletin board, and a roaring sound with lots of heat, smoke, a dog that would not come to me. I had no fascination with fire, since I had burned the family¡¯s trash from a tender age, and had been drilled as to fire safety. Did I do it? I cannot remember doing it. The trauma of committing such a destructive act was so out of character for me that I guess that I have blocked the memory, if I did commit such a deed. And like so many other bad situations I had been in in the past, I simply walked away. Down the road I found a pay phone, called the Police, and in a rare moment of lucidity, told them I was a patient at Camarillo State Hospital, and would they please take me back there. I felt no anger, no rage, no happiness at vindication for being deserted by my friend, nothing that a myriad of psychologists and psychiatrists told me later that I should have been feeling. The only emotion I recall is relief when the Police arrived, because I assumed that they would take me back to the beautiful flowers and known environment of Camarillo State Hospital 400 miles to the south. I also had a small burn on my right index finger from striking matches, but since I was a smoker, that wasn¡¯t unusual. Burn down a house? No. Impossible. Especially the house of people whom I loved and who had shown me such great kindness. I was ¡°non-violent¡±, as was my heroine, Joan Baez. I would never do such a thing. I was certainly no arsonist. It was also impossible that the Police would not take me back to Camarillo, but they did not. Instead they took me to another State Hospital nearby, Agnew State Hospital in San Jose. It was as beautifully landscaped as Camarillo, but the two-story Mission-style architecture of the individual Wards seemed more like Military barracks than a place where I could become ¡°well¡±. Had I known at the time that I would spend more than a year of my short life there I would have panicked, and probably fought and tried to run away, but I docilely accepted my fate and was admitted. Agnew State Hospital It is only like a hazy dream, the first few weeks of my tenure as a mental patient. I hadn¡¯t taken care of my teeth during my previous wanderings, and so they ached constantly, especially when I ate something sweet. After repeated complaints, I was taken to a large building on the hospital grounds for examination, and later treatment, by a dentist. That was an improvement in my general well being, as was a steady diet of nourishing food and a regular schedule including plenty of safe sleep. I gradually became accustomed to living intimately in a small space with 60 or so other men, and this confined space was gradually transformed into home. I was taking all sorts of medications several times a day; I have no real idea what. At first I was put in a small isolation cell where I could be observed, and after not too long I was allowed to mix with the general population. Drifting in and out of madness, as one drifts in and out of sleep on a lazy Saturday, I alternatively believed that I was in my ¡°palace¡± where I was being prepared by the hospital staff and inmates to step up onto my rightful throne as ¡°King Of The World¡±, and flashes of insight where I understood that I was very sick and was being treated for this illness. I sometimes believed that my incarceration was political, that I was being held prisoner by all of these ¡°conservatives¡± who backed the Viet Nam War and were trying to indoctrinate me into their evil beliefs. And I also remember constantly asking for Joan Baez, believing fervently that she was interested in my life and would come to visit me soon. But mainly, there was tedium, hours and hours of watching television, trying to interact with very sick people, weeks of staring out of windows at no particular view, eating in a large room with dozens of other men, looking foreword to nothing and remembering little of how I had come to be there. Endless boredom, an occasional fight, a less occasional but not unusual masturbatory self- seduction in the shower became my life. Days piled upon days, hours passed slowly; conversely, the weeks flew by. During much of my time at Agnew¡¯s, I suffered crushing depression, and only wanted to sleep the hours away, but this was not permitted. I worked in the hospital kitchen, and later outside on the landscaping crew tending those magnificent flowering plants I had so admired. Most of my fellow patients could be considered ¡°interesting¡±, as the psychotic people tend to be. Many were in denial that they were there because they were sick and needed treatment. Some were there voluntarily to avoid jail or to hide from people or creditors. Others, mostly young men, would claim that they were only there for a ¡°rest¡±, and would thereby refuse to divulge anything pertinent about their lives. Still others would admit that they were sick, and needed help. But no matter how involved I became in the web of other¡¯s lives, there was the tedium, the endless staring at the same four walls most of the day, the same commercials and tired game shows and soap operas. Nothing. No reading material worth anything. Besides, when I am ill, my concentration is such that I cannot read anyway. And of course, during that year I could not listen nor keep up with my Holy Trinity of Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Barbra Streisand. There were some records available to patients, but these three artists weren¡¯t among them. As my ¡°condition¡±, or rather ¡°psychosis¡± subsided, I asked for Joan Baez less and less. I came to realize that she was an artist, and I was an obscure mental patient, and that was that. After I¡¯d been at Agnew for a while, I got a visit from a police arson investigator, who returned some property to me, namely a briefcase I¡¯d carried for several years with an old girlfriend¡¯s pictures in it. Soon thereafter I was served with papers that said that the ¡°People of the State Of California¡± were against me: I was charged with arson, a serious offense, and I faced very serious jail time. I was in a panic, and was told that I probably would be taken to Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane. Surely this was a step down from ¡°King Of The World¡±. I lived in terror. The staff at Agnew didn¡¯t really know what to do with me. The State of California regarded me as someone from ¡°out of State¡±, and would really have rathered to send me back to Pennsylvania for mental health treatment, but then there was this indictment hanging over my head for which I must be held for trial when I was well enough. Meanwhile my stay at Agnew¡¯s was costing them a whole lot of money, but everyone agreed that from a humanitarian standpoint I was better off in the Hospital than in jail. Someone along the hierarchy decided that I was to have intense therapy to get me moved through the system an fast as possible, and so I was granted a private individual therapist, and sent for treatment in psychodrama therapy. The individual therapist was a Nun with a PHD in psychology, a dear sweet woman with whom I became friends after my discharge. She helped my immensely to see the world as it was, and not to try to express myself only through song lyrics, which I had been wont to do. The psychodrama was less conventional, a new treatment plan still in the experimental stage whereby patients acted out scenes in their lives, using other members of the group to play the roles of family, friends, enemies, etc. This was supposed to give one insight into how to deal with difficult situations and people in our lives. Most of the time I felt that it was ¡°silly¡± and not very relevant to my situation. We started each session with Esalen-type ¡°touchy-feely¡± exercises designed to get one in touch with one¡¯s feelings, and to learn to trust other members of the group. Since most of the ¡°touching¡± I had had in my life was sexual in nature, it was difficult for me to relax and follow the rest of the group into the spirit of the exercises. There were several Doctor and Master-level staff members of the group, and the group was fairly large, some sessions with up to 30 people in them. The groups were held on the stage of a large Auditorium on the grounds of the Hospital, and I was disappointed that at no time was I able to ¡°perform¡± some Streisand or Baez or Joplin songs for the group. My individual therapist, the Nun, was a very kindly older woman who had done her Doctorate on homosexuality among collage girls. She always insisted that I should not engage in any extramarital sex at all. This was not surprising to me, as she was a Roman Catholic Nun, but I discovered later, many years later, that she was correct about sex ¡°fragmenting¡± me: I mostly engaged in sex for physical pleasure and allowed many people to touch me because deep down I believed that I did not matter at all, and was not worthy of real love. A public defender finally visited me, but did not seem too interested in my case. He said that we would plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and months went by without my hearing another word from him. Then I was transported, with very little notice, shacked by the legs and hands to other Agnew patients, to the Santa Clara County Courthouse where I was asked how I pled. I became confused, so the Public Defender entered my plea for me, not guilty by reason of insanity, and back I went to Agnew¡¯s. Months went by, nothing was done with my case, until in pure frustration the Doctor I had on my Ward re-contacted the Public Defenders Office, and a new Attorney was sent out to interview me. He, at least, took my case seriously, much more seriously than the previous Public Defender. When it came time for him to enter my plea, it was changed to just ¡°not guilty¡±. Around this time, the Court decided to take me to jail to observe me to see if I were really ¡°crazy¡±. One afternoon, without warning, I was suddenly taken from my familiar surroundings in the hospital and thrust into a tiny glass-enclosed cell in the center of a large room in Santa Clara County Jail where I could be watched 24 hours a day, not only by jail staff but by many inmates as well. Every day was exactly the same. I was constantly observed eating, sleeping, using the toilet, everything I said and did was written down. There was no TV, no radio, and I was not permitted to communicate with the other inmates or even the guards. The lights were only dimmed at night, never turned off. After about 5 days of this, one guard felt sorry for me and gave me a well-worn copy of a Reader¡¯s Digest Magazine, which I devoured rapidly as one who was starving to death might eat a meal. And during the 11 days I spent in this glass cage, only once, on the 7th day, was I permitted to shower. I and another inmate were stripped naked and forced to parade down long cell-blocks past cheering and jeering prison inmates to a small shower where we had about 5 minutes to get clean before given fresh uniforms and marched back. On the 11th day, I was surprised by a visit from my Hospital Psychiatrist and my Nun therapist. They were appalled by the conditions under which I was being kept, and the next thing I knew I was back on my old familiar ward at Agnews State Hospital The Trial Having dreaded it for so very long, and even acted it out in psychodrama with familiar friends playing the roles of Judge, prosecutor, and public defender, my trial date arrived. I was terrified that I was going to be sent to prison, or to a hospital for the criminally insane, two possibilities that were even, perhaps, more probabilities than possibilities. I felt that I was falling down a steep tunnel from a great height, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop the fall. Surely this whole situation was just a long nightmare, and I would soon awaken safe in my bed at my parent¡¯s house surrounded by the green hills of Pennsylvania. But I did not awaken: just kept falling and falling, surrounded by familiar faces of hospital staff and other patients who seemed to be smiling in gratitude that this was not happening to them. Not even my beloved Joan Baez could save me. A sheriff¡¯s car arrived; I was shackled and handcuffed, and again taken from the safe haven of Agnew¡¯s State Hospital to the gray concrete insides of the Santa Clara County Jail. The actual trial was brief. It was before just a Judge, no Jury, and there were no spectators in the courtroom that I could discern. The fellow that I had seen at the house the morning of the fire was there, holding a can of Bugler Tobacco, the kind I smoked because I could not afford ¡°tailor made¡± cigarettes. After the trial got going, he testified that he had seen me at the house on the morning in question, but had not seen me set a fire. The only odd thing about this was that he took his can of tobacco to the witness stand with him and set it in the rail in front of him. I remember wondering if the can was to be a gift to me, but as soon as his testimony was over he left, and I¡¯ve never seen nor heard from him since. I also took the stand, very briefly, and I don¡¯t remember very much about that except every time the DA asked me a question I didn¡¯t want to answer, my Public Defender objected, and the objection was sustained. Suddenly, without warning, or movie music or a drum roll or anything, the Judge said ¡°Not Guilty¡±, banged his gavel, and rapidly left the bench slamming a door behind him. I was stunned, confused, relieved, frightened, happy, apprehensive, all at the same time. My Attorney turned to me and said: ¡°Wow! That¡¯s the first case I ever won.¡± I may have fainted. The next thing I remember is being transported back to Agnews. The Deputy had shackled and handcuffed me again, and as we wheeled out into traffic he asked me how the trial had gone. ¡°I was found ¡®Not Guilty¡¯¡± I replied, and he immediately stopped, took off the chains and handcuffs and invited me to sit in the front seat with him. Ever since that little gesture, I¡¯ve been left with a good feeling about most cops and the job they do serving and protecting the public. My next project was to get myself discharged from the hospital. The psychiatrist was loath to just turn me out into the streets again, as he saw many issues with my psyche that needed to be addressed, but I promised that if he released me I would go back to Pennsylvania, seek help there, and never again return to the State of California. Funds were available for a flight to Pittsburgh because I had been put on Social Security Disability during my Agnews tenure, and so a few weeks later a nice psychiatric technician took me to the San Francisco Airport and put me on a plane home. I was met by my father, mother and younger brother, and they took me home, to the home I¡¯d been dreaming of for so long, the tiny green brick-streeted town where nothing ever happened, where relatives, friends and strangers gossiped, where cable television and movies seemed to be the only escape. My Dad made an appointment with a psychiatrist, the same one who had given me the electro-shock treatments. All he wanted to talk to me about was my ¡°hippy¡± appearance and my long hair, which were normal in the California environment I¡¯d been living in, but to his eyes were a symptom of grave mental illness. I ran away again. I broke my promise to the psychiatrist about never returning to California again, and went to Santa Barbara where the forgiving friends who owned the Coffee House connected me with the Mental Health Establishment there and got me enrolled in an excellent program, a Day Treatment Facility with intensive group and individual therapy. This program did not suck me into the trap of the ¡°professionally disabled¡±, seeking more and more services and entitlements until I was completely dependent upon the system for my living. Rather, these extremely competent staff members taught me the necessary skills to accept myself for what I really was, and to hold to a regular schedule necessary if I were ever to hold down a real job. After more than a year of difficult work in therapy, I was ready to return to my hometown and find a niche that included a good paying job, family, friends, and an appreciation for small town life and for the deep family roots I had there. The job I found was in an iron foundry, dangerous, brutally difficult work making large and small castings out of molten iron. It paid well, and I met and made friends with some wonderful, if mostly uneducated, people, and I found that I could fit in. I worked hard, played harder, traveled extensively during yearly vacations, abused alcohol on a regular basis, got depressed sometimes. I found a very good psychiatrist who, after many tries and several years of trial and error, found a regimen of drugs that kept my serious illness at bay. This is what set me free from the bonds of my sickness. During this time I also had many sexual encounters, dirty, sordid, awful to remember (often drunken) experiences in filth, lying on floors and mattresses, orgies in fields and cars and bedrooms and inside and outside of bars. And Joan Baez? As I mentioned before, I believed we were friends, bought all of her albums, read her autobiography, wrote to her often about any and all of my troubles. I always wrote to her at The Institute For The Study Of Non-Violence, an organization that she had founded. I literally begged her to write back to me, but nothing was forthcoming. I bought an Autoharp, memorized all of Joan¡¯s songs, both the ones she¡¯d written and the ones she recorded, and performed them for anyone who would listen. I had fantasies about going back out to California to visit her, or even getting phone calls from her, but I got nothing, not even a print-out or a flier about concert dates or anything. Nothing. She did give a concert in Erie, Pa, a scant 40 miles from my home, which I attended. It was wonderful, funny, uplifting, sad, thoughtful and thought-provoking, everything a Joan Baez Concert always is. I wisely decided not to go backstage to try to see her. I was sensitive to the real dangers posed to celebrities by serious stalkers, especially celebrities with Joan¡¯s political and social views. I did not wish to make her uncomfortable, or to get myself into trouble. I am, after all, what the media loves to refer to as a ¡°former mental patient¡±. And then one day, God touched me: a letter arrived, a hand written letter on fine onion skin stationery, in a matching envelope with no return address. It had a California postmark, and it said: May 27/ 75 Dear _____: Here we go again. And I¡¯m sorry it¡¯s not Joan¡¯s Very Sincerely Joan Bridge So it was true. Joan Baez had noticed me, and her Mother had felt strongly enough to write back to me. I loved Joan Baez more than ever after that, but in a realistic way, the way a fan loves a performer. (Although Joan has said that she refuses to be just a performer, but rather a sort of crusader raising the consciousness of the public for her causes, be they Non-Violence, Prison Reform, Gay Liberation, or whatever ) I was finally set free from the ¡°friend of Joan Baez¡± fantasy that had imprisoned me. I became active in a church, and later in a Jewish Temple where I studied with three Rabbis. I worked as a Volunteer on the local Mental Health Mental Retardation Board, became friends with a diverse lot of people from Judges to Physicians to developmentally disabled folk and, of course, the persistently and chronically mentally ill. I gained respect in my small town, stopped my habit of regularly abusing alcohol, quit smoking cigarettes, stopped sleeping around, and ever so slowly developed a self esteem which freed me from the need to identify with a celebrity like Joan Baez in order to find worth in myself. I found a partner with whom I could share my life. I was even elected President of the Human Services Board, a body of the movers and shakers in my home County who oversee the Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Children and Youth Services here, and have tirelessly advocated for consumers of these services. I am proud of cleaning up my life. My road continues to be rocky and difficult, however: I lost my good foundry job due to a physical injury, and have been working at various low-paying unskilled labor positions for more than 10 years now. And I must monitor myself carefully, to make certain I do not slip into Mania or Depression, and with the help of my doctor, I titrate my medication dosages appropriately. I cannot help but believe that had I finished my degree at Edinboro, I would be making a great deal more money now, and so mental illness has very much negatively impacted my life. While still in Santa Barbara, back in the early 70¡¯s, I made friends with an authentic Gypsy fortune- teller, who read Tarot Cards and Palms. During a reading, for which he insisted I pay (as that was his policy even though I was a good friend) I asked him if he thought I¡¯d ever go crazy and lose control of myself and of my grip on reality again. His answer was amazingly insightful, and looking back over the past 30 years or so since that reading, it has remained, so far, to be true. He said: ¡° No, David. There will be many times in your future that the pain of living will be so great that you will wish that you could escape back into madness, but it will never happen. You will live a long and productive life, and will die a wealthy man.¡± If you count friends, family, love, and interesting experiences as wealth, as I do, then all of his predictions have come true. And Miss Baez? I am no longer stalking her in my mind. I love the way her voice has matured over the past 30 years, and still am as thrilled to hear her sing as I was that first time on the Stanford University campus so many eons ago. I have heard little about her current political opinions, but I¡¯m certain that she is as sincere an advocate for the non-violent resolution of human conflict that she always was. By the same accounting of wealth that I apply to myself, (friends, family love, experience) if Joan lost every cent she owns tomorrow, she would still be wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of even King Croesus. Or at least of Bill Gates.
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