The Colt 45 Chronicle #31

I believe I started this letter but never finished it. It went undeleted because I probably intended to return to it. I never did; or if I did, I did a "Save As" and forgot to delete this file. As I continue to work through these letters that record my first two years in New York City, which were also the last two years of my marriage, I might come across a finalized iteration.

When I returned from California the winter of 1989 I had difficulty finding work right away. I passed the idle days reading Mark Twain, Jack London and Ivan Turgenev novels. This did not please the wife. She suggested that I sign up to be a test subject in one of the many studies being conducted in the university's health sciences complex where our married-student housing was located. I reluctantly agreed. So for $10/hr. I was poked and prodded and queried in multiple day-long torture sessions. It was not worth the small amount of money that I earned. And in one case -- I was a subject in two different studies -- I wasn't paid, despite numerous follow-up phone calls, for many months. This is the study that I refer to below.

The research psychiatrist whose study it was administered my test in two sessions. The first day I was injected with amphetamine, required to complete a variety of cognitive performance evaluations, and injected with either a placebo or Haldol; then I repeated the cognitive evaluation. The idea was to induce schizophrenic effects with the amphetamine and then see what impact the Haldol had. The testing was demanding and lasted all day. But I left still feeling buzzed from the speed, jubilantly stopping off at the deli on my way back to the apartment and picking up several quarts of beer. I really enjoyed watching Vertigo on television that night.

There was a gap of several days or even a week before the next round of testing. I was pretty sure that on the first day that the second injection I had received had been the placebo and not the Haldol. Nothing would prepare for what was to happen in round two. For some reason it was scheduled on a Saturday when the health science complex was abandoned and largely dark in the low light of a winter afternoon. I got my injection of amphetamine, did my cognitive skills testing, and then was returned to a small room for my second injection. Once I received it I knew right away that it was the Haldol. I went from flying high to plummeting instantaneously to earth, crushed and crumpled. At the time I likened it to jumping off a high cliff above rocky ocean breakers, a huge bag of dirty laundry lashed to my back.

For the rest of the day I was truly in the slough of despond. I saw the world for what it was, a filthy riot of selfishness where nothing ever works out and love is always feigned. The clinical term for what I was experiencing is dysphoria. It amazes me that I signed up for another study after what I went through with the Haldol, but that speaks to the power of a brow-beating wife.

Spring 1989

When Ashley and I first moved in together, rather, I should say, when Ashley left her girlhood home on Ashland Street to come to Berkeley (for, truly, that's when our living together began, even though we hadn't yet rented the 2210 Durant #11) we were very young. I was 18 and Ashley was 17. And I can't begin to tell how different the world looked then in my mind's eye. Ashley rode down I-5 on a Greyhound bus the day after her high school graduation; I, in my fully adolescent and automatic happiness, took BART to meet her at the bus station in San Francisco. But anyway, what got me on this particular path of thought is this memory I have in my head (which is more of a picture -- a snapshot -- than a full-blown memory), a memory which was conjured  up during one of the two all-day guinea pig amphetamine/Haldol torture sessions -- Dr. Malaspina taking blood, giving uppers, and administering injections; I, trapped in a small room with an overactive brain and suffering sensitive soul, trying to be as polite as tea and crumpets. At one point, flying on the speed, I stumbled upon this remembrance of me and Ashley, 18 and 17, just moved into 2210, walking back from the Safeway on Adeline. -- We had these huge army duffel bags on our backs, duffel bags we had bought in Ashland, each stuffed with about three grocery-bags worth of groceries. You see, we would  walk down to the Adeline Safeway (the one by the Berkeley Bowl) on Saturdays and buy -- try to buy -- a week's worth of food and supplies. We never really thought of shopping any other place, like the Co-op or Berkeley Bowl; we were too young, too unthinking, like travelers pulling off the interstate only after seeing a sign for the Golden Arches.  Because we would stock up as best we could, by the time we got to the check-out counter the cart was gorged and puking.