I NEVER PROMISED YOU A CUCKOO'S NEST After the meeting Big Nurse cornered me in my room to talk. Judy Snowy had the nickname because of her great height, not because she promised people rose gardens. She was 6 foot tall and 10 lbs. overweight; she was a basketball player turning into an angel: She'd been the star center of the University of Montana's women's basketball team; would've played professionally had there been such a thing as lady vorklers. I was in love with her even though I knew that if I made a pass at her she'd turn me down because of professional ethics. In Warm Springs there was no touchie feelie, not between patients, not with the nurses--but if you wanted to make out with your visitors, that was fine: Those hypocrite collectors were walking antiques. But Judy's knockers were as big as she was so I was determined to try. Big as grapefruits; meaty, beaty, large and bouncy. She wanted to talk to me about the "realism" of my plans to become a professional science fiction author--like Uncle Tim, she was after me to suspend your lonely quest to save the world; get a job; pay the rent...even though I had the degrees, a Bachelors in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and a Masters from the University of Montana, one of the top schools in the nation in Creative Writing. This is the strangest life I've ever known. Judy said, "You've told me that you do most of your writing while stoned; you think it helps your creativity....Drugs don't make you creative; they only make you think you are being creative! You think you're being creative but actually you're writing garbage!" "Then how come Bill Farmer gave me an A+ for it? It was a Special Honors paper! I wrote this sex scene, see, which described love as mystical Union using metaphors from the Gnostic Scriptures and Farmer is a Freudian so he freaked." The cowgirl drawled, looking like she needed mascara and a chartreuse velour shirt more than a white nurse's uniform, "You're making this up!" "No lie; I got an A+ for a story I wrote about Gnosticism while thoroughly descoobied on Bill Gorilla's stash of Milwaukan. The weed that made Milwaukee famous! It really gives you insights into the Gnostic religion, boy howdy--like you can see the dance of Hyle--Maya--as karma and dharma--Illusion and Death. Did you know that Gnosticism was influenced by Mahayana Buddhism?" Big Nurse cried, "But I've heard about the Gnostics; Sally Simpson's Father's a minister, and he delivered a sermon on them once: They taught that the Creator is evil and that there is another God above Him. How are you going to convince people that God is evil? All the order you see around you--this must've come from some Divine Intelligence...!" Her face was a book even as I tried to explain the story, "I don't believe that the Creator is Evil. Instead I believe that modern science has eliminated the need for a Creator--as Nietzsche said, God is dead. As Hans Jonas says, The God of the Cosmos is dead. Or perhaps, is Death....There is no longer any need of a Cosmic God in science; if She exists at all it is as an Intelligence which is totally removed from the World!" Judy was shocked: "You called God She. God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Spirit...God is a Man!" I replied, as patiently as I could to someone like her, "The earliest conceptions of the Holy Spirit were of a woman. But consider the impact of evolution on religion from another angle: thoughts show heritability, mutation, and selection, the properties of any evolutionary system: Cognitive heuristics are adaptive heuristics: Because of this identity hypothesis all evolution is cybernetic; speciation 'thinks' the same way a computer thinks--so entification proceeds along patterns that look as though they have been made by a creative intelligence." Judith said, "I can't accept that. I believe in evolution...but only that evolution happened until Adam and Eve came along...." At that moment I stood, moved to her chair, put my arms around her, and planted a big kiss smack on her lips. The Vast Active Destructive Intelligence System was probably going to disrupt every cell in my brain for this, but I was unable to control myself. Her big bazooms were too much and I was a bus-age wonder as my hand toyed with braless marvels. Even better than my collection of Comics. I wished she was in purple nylons. I wished she was wearing twilight shadow on her eyes and lipstick the color of dawn.... She turned from me with an angry look in her eye, drew back from me violently, shouted for the orderlies, crying, "Put him in Isolation!" The nail, the Grail, and crucifiction (sic)....Dr. Walters came in carrying a little cup full of gall, some liquid haldol mixed with orange juice even as the leather straps bit deep into my flesh as I wrestled for freedom, release, ten true summers, fighting against the orderlies with all the untamed fury of the Savage Id. I was a Reptile covered with slime. I spat the mixture back out as Dr. Walters held it to my lips, yelling, "I refuse to take this! Do you hear? People like us don't want freedom, justice--just someone to love!" They injected me. Big Nurse came at me with a needle while I wildly screamed that I refused to take any medicine: "Bitch, if you shoot me up I'm going to vorkling sue! I hate you...I love you...I loved you but you did this to me; now I hate you. Look out baby, one more time...." She smiled a coy little dominatrix smile, said, "You've got no witnesses and who is the judge going to believe? A psychiatric nurse or a mental patient?" The needle bit into my flesh. It was like a vampire kiss. Now I'm dead and I'm going on to meet my reward. I slid through a world of blue ice and dry ice and suddenly Big Nurse's big bazoombas didn't matter any more. Sex is just another word for nothing left to lose.... MORNING MANIC-DEPRESSIVE MUSIC IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT I couldn't sleep that night; the building, only one of many in the huge compound, didn't have air-conditioning. Thunder rumbled in the mountains; I walked through the Valley of Shadows and feared an evil God. I could hear Roxy Music filtering through the walls of the isolation room, slow and gentle, sentimental: The rest of the patients were having a party, boy meets girl where the beat goes on--the broken down little stereo that Carol always commanded had been enlisted for a gay party. They were playing my tune as the pale moon filtered in through the bars on the windows; I wanted to be out there doing the Strand with Sophie Rosencruetz, but I was a crucified rose in a glittering orchard of diamond-hard blue apples of the moon. Big Nurse came in after endless ages to check up on me, holding a little cup full of liquid haldol. I hated haldol because it made my eyes convulse. When this first started happening I became so scared that I started having panic attacks every time it recurred. Innocence raped with napalm fire. My psychiatrist didn't diagnose the panic; he kept pumping me full of more haldol--when Virginia rejected me I was totally consumed with anxiety, eclipsed reality, and despair--now I was getting more of the poison. Tastes even worse than the glycerin you have to drink for glaucoma when U-boat fails you. But the injection had done its work. As Big Nurse held the cup of liquid death to my lips I swallowed, saying, "Judy, I really must apologize for making that pass at you. I must've been the Bozo King. Will you please forgive me?" It was an empty promise in a desolate city of dreams. A city of Death-seed. Blind God's greed. Starving poets bleed. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.