Crazy Good

I’d been told in my psychologist’s office that I scored “high” in areas of the MMPI (a psychiatric test used in the seventies to determine where one’s area of mental health needed attention)—translation, “Not good.” Identity and Orientation were the categories I rang the bell on and in a voice worthy of that slug character in Star Wars, my psychologist asked, “Are you aroused by women?” I could never have guessed in my wildest nightmare, what a chain of dominoes she was about to set in motion, or I would’ve run like hell.  As it was, I sat there in stunned silence with that word rolling in my head like a roulette ball waiting to find position.

It was 1978 and I’d never even heard the word gay—though I understood the high school taunts of ‘homo’ and ‘fag’ and was glad they were primarily reserved for boys as it was the ostracizing kiss of death. It had never occurred to me it applied to girls too. I’d been raised a middle-class protestant and though I couldn’t possibly tell you how I reasoned it, I somehow thought we were exempt. So, when the Dr. asked if I was aroused, I gave the answer she wanted (and likely didn’t believe). I said ‘no.’ But it bothered me. A lot.

My mind reeled recollecting our Rambler crunching over the gravel driveway of family friends when I was about eight. My older brother, sister and I all crammed onto the back bench-seat, in a sea of carcinogens from my mother’s lipstick-stained Winston and my father’s cigar. As we rolled to a halt, turning off the AM radio, my mother cautioned us that we were not to mention Percy (the oldest boy in the family we were visiting). He’s gone and that’s that.

“Did he die?” I asked.

“He’s as good as dead and we’re not to mention his name,” my mother snapped definitively.

“Did he move away?” I persisted, much to my older sibling’s discomfort. Unlike me, they’d absorbed and adhered to the “seen and not heard” theory.

My father turned around with a clipped tone in his voice—“Percy went light in the loafers and you are not to mention his name again. Not. Ever. Clear?”

That tiny chunk of conversation floated back like a sour musical note all these years later when I wondered if that’s what the test meant about me. A tight fist in my stomach accompanied me everywhere.  Bathed in shame, I questioned my love for my friends; was it pure or tainted in a way that would offend them and make my family shun me? I agonized for weeks until one weekend at a college party, I tried ‘crank’ and drank a frat-boy’s worth of alcohol. It was the nineteen-year-old go-to for solutions. By morning, it left me prone on a throw-rug hungover and twitching. My best friend said I should tell my therapist.

Had it been a moment in a movie, premonitory cello strings squealing would foreshadow impending doom and audiences would cringe, thinking, “Why would you trust her?” But Dr.’s were authorities not to be questioned. There was no information superhighway to tell me that homosexuality was no longer considered deviant, so I went in unarmed.

I confessed my incident of overindulgence, and the wheels came off like an out-of-control go-cart on a steep downhill grade. It was listed as a suicide attempt, and I was immediately put on heavy doses of Thorazine and Haldol. Commitment papers were signed and I was directed to check into a mental hospital.  The meds were traditionally prescribed for schizophrenia, mania, and Tourette’s; none of which my test results indicated, so little doubt remained that it was due to my scores regarding sexual orientation. Apparently, the good Dr. hadn’t gotten the memo about the DSM no longer identifying homosexuality a mental illness. Or maybe she did and that’s why she used an unintentional bender as a suicide.

Dispirited and drugged, I did as I was told. As fortune would have it, they didn’t have any bed space. Confused and disoriented, I went back to my apartment. Fast forward to my cousin kidnapping me, taking me to her cabin, and getting me off the medications. I harbored a terror that some gay version of the Incredible Hulk would bust loose once I was drug free and able to taint the sane. When my head cleared, I was horrified alright, and incredibly vulnerable. The stunning realization that those papers were still signed hovered over me in chronic threat. It etched a mark deep in my psyche, like ripping open the sky and having all the world’s air leak out. An entombed stain of knowing you can be put away for who you are drawn to, solidified inside me. Domino one had fallen.

I’d dropped out of college by then but assured my parents I’d return. I left ostensibly for a wedding before the new semester started, and instead boarded a Greyhound bus for Massachusetts. Domino two taking me as far as I could get from Oregon. I didn’t know anyone there and slept in dorm lounges pretending I was a resident, until I found work and then started rooming with some roommates.

At my retail job the day after Christmas, I couldn’t subtract mentally fast enough (calculators hadn’t been invented) when store returns flooded in. Long lines, toes tapping, watches being checked, gained momentum while I scratched out numbers, “Carry the one, bring down the eight…” I mumbled, while heat prickles nipped up my neck and a crowd began to take on traits of a mob. I was fired. Domino three came down like a spiraling B-52 with smoke coming out the engine.

I knew that no job, meant my roommates might kick me out and for Boxing Day, they did indeed, give me an eviction notice. Dominoes four and five were merciless; after getting kicked out, I was literally outside, in late December, Massachusetts.  A Siberian wind-front invaded New England that year and I found myself suddenly homeless in heavy snowstorms with minus temperatures. Many moments I wondered if I could withstand even another minute, let alone another night. On one particularly bad night, I kept falling through the top layer of ice crust into the four-foot-deep snow. I got weaker each time I tried to pull out and finally started to fall asleep on one of my falls where I gave in to fatigue and cold. It was as though warm water swirled around me like a wake and I began to drift. Falling snow started turning my clothes white and I was disappearing. Distant lights flickered and I wondered if shelter was close, or the blinking existed only in my mind. Thinking I might be dying, I rallied enough to pull myself back up, wet and icy cold, and kept trudging on to find a cover. I slept in supply sheds, libraries, dorm lounges, bus depots and more. I wouldn’t go to a shelter because they smelled of infection and stale wine. That was my fulcrum point—if I could stay out of a shelter, I wasn’t really homeless and I couldn’t possibly die. But domino six fell, regardless.

I ended up in a hospital with frostbite and malnutrition. This launched desperate measures. Vividly trembling internally, I couldn’t let homelessness happen again, nor did I think I’d live through a round two. Not internalizing pessimism, but in my mind I believed that my reality was I’d run out of chances. I saw a commercial asking if I wanted to get back on my feet and go to college. And so it was (despite pacifist beliefs), that I joined the army. Domino seven.

A bit over a year later, the first great domino—number eight, was that I met a woman who made me fully understand the delicate side of the word aroused. And more importantly, a semantic or phrase I couldn’t pinpoint: I knew down to the marrow of bone that this was no deviant emotion, nor was it mentally ill or negative in any manner. I’d never felt more alive, more right with myself, and more one with the world. Love allowed me to soar. Apology and shame sloughed off like fat from bone. The path to get there was a rocky one that I could’ve done without. But the knowledge gained from it all taught me about using discernment for outside voices and opinions. The girlfriend didn’t last, but the confidence in knowing what was right and trusting myself, etched far deeper than any diagnosis or threat of abandonment. I had arrived at the home of self-respect and love, and it was me.

-Ciel Downing

Ciel Downing's work can be found in Workers Write, The Timberline Review, North Coast Squid, As You Were, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and more. She has a collection of works in her book, To Walk the North Direction. She's won the Academy of American Poets Prize, came in runner-up for the Sally Albiso Award, and received Honorable Mention from the Kay Snow, Elizabeth Lyons, and Neahkahnie Mountain Prize awards.