Dec 22
Housemates
We send the cops in first. Any caller who gives our call handlers grief gets police onscene with us. Mako, the two cops and I ride the lift up the eighth floor. I step to the side and let them enter first.
One constable shuffles himself to the back of the car.
“So you’re by the doors if he’s standing there with a chainsaw…”
I flick his vest with a finger.
“Isnt that why you’re here?”
Joking aside, they take the lead on the landing. The front door is open, Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime” screaming from a stereo somewhere in the house.
There’s a golf club in the hall and he lifts it, I assume to put it somewhere safely out of radge’s reach, but he cunningky uses it to swing the doors open as we stalk through the corridor.
“Hello! Police! Paramedics!”
No reply, save the stereo
“…we got some groceries, some peanut butter…”
The flat is a classic 70s high rise, a central lift and stair shaft with six flats bomb-bursting away. They’re long and thin, passageways with rooms down one side and a toilet at the end, this one glowering at us through the open door with it’s ripped lino and espresso dribbles down the bowl’s outside.
The cop pushes the last door open, a mattress with a bulging duvet on it occupies the middle of the living room floor. Beyond a door in the corner, a dog howls along with the music.
Pushing the head of the golf club out in front of him, the police officer lifts one corner of the duvet. Nothing underneath but pillows. We all exhale and turn to the final door. Club in hand he flicks the door open to reveal a man standing in his pants in the kitchen, phone in one hand, a black and white collie sat at his feet, howling at his face. He’s babbling into the phone.
“Oh God! Oh God! It’s the police! There’s a policeman in my house and he’s got a big stick and he’s going to kill me!”
“Calm down, mate. It’s your golf club.”
“Oh…it’s ok, it’s not a stick. It’s my golf club. Bye.”
He hangs up and begins to pour out his heart to Mako, he tells him of schizophrenia, of voices in his head, of swinging bipolar episodes. Overcrowded in the kitchen, I step back into the lounge and play with the dog. It wags its tail at me, barks a number of times and tries to have sex with my right knee.
The younger cop laughs at us and I tempt the furry Lothario out into the corridor with a promise of “Biscuits, boy! Biscuits!”
Stupid fluffy rapist prances out into the corridor where I shut the door on him. He howls again.
While Mako talks to the patient - “…the voices tell me to kill fucking Scottish people…with an AK47…just blow them all away…”I survey the living room. Where it’s tidy, it’s obsessively so. The ornaments are arranged in perfect meter along the sideboard, the two chairs at the table are perfectly opposite each other. Aspects of the house are orderly and calm.
But on the flip side, the walls have cuttings from newspapers pinned up at random, a flag on the wall is smeared with blood. The stained duvet on the floor is surrounded by empty plastic bottles and cigarette ends.
Schizophrenia’s a fucker…only one man occupies this house.
But two people live here.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
So - Being beaten to death with your OWN golf club is ok, but if he’d brought a different stick to inflict damage with it would be a different story?
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 pm
We’ll have to give you some lessons in “Merkan English” so as to keep you safe from guys who want to kill Scotsmen maybe?
Repeat after me: Hey - Youse guys wanna go bowling?
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 am
How great a discription of a terrible diease. Two men in one.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 am
Sorry. Disease.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Kal, your narratives are compelling and almost always spot on — I enjoy reading them for both the entertainment and information. But I think you have this one a bit muddled. Schizophrenia is a schism (split) of the mind (phren) from *reality*. This results in odd perceptions such as auditory/visual hallucinations, paranoia/delusions, or disorganized thinking. I think you’re getting it jumbled with dissociative identity disorder (better known by its former name, multiple personality disorder), which is a split in *personality*, forming at least two distinct personalities.
I think your poor patient has had a recent psychotic break, such that most of the living room is still well-kept while some of his more personal items/spaces have fallen to his delusions and disorganization. Or, he’s been able to keep himself together enough to keep up some of his spaces, while allowing himself to focus on his new obsession at other times. I suppose it is sort of like two men in one, in that when it’s in remission the guy’s probably an ordinary sort of person with a few quirks, but when the psychosis is upon him he becomes very disorganized. But only one is there at any given time, thus not “housemates.”
December 24th, 2009 at 8:50 am
@ Sharon King Schizophrenia is NOT a disease, its not contagious and you can not catch it, it is a mental health illness,
December 24th, 2009 at 9:49 am
In reply to J:
I don’t think he is exactly saying the guy has multiple personalities.
I’ve been in clinical situations with schizophrenics as well as bipolars and they can be incredibly fastidious in a certain part of their life and a complete mess in others.
The auditory hallucinations and paranoia certainly sound like schizophrenia and someone experiencing a manic episode might release some of their energy by obsessively organizing a part of their apartment.
Also keep in mind the diagnoses are being reported by the caller… so it may not all be exactly 100% true.
Either way, I think it is a good way to describe mental illness to put it the way Kal did.
December 24th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Also, Man I wish I had kept notes of all the things I heard and saw in the mental ward. Some were hilarious, some disgusting, and many heartbreaking.
While I’m wishing, I wish I had Kal’s gift with words!
December 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Happy Xmas Kal! Ave a good one, All the best for 2010, and keep up with great blog
Joan & family xx
December 25th, 2009 at 8:36 am
At least that collie was well behaved, he just wanted to hump your leg not chew your limbs off.
Have a great Christmas Kal and all the best for the new year.
December 26th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Just to use this thread as a vehicle to say
NADOLIG LLAWEN, Kal!
December 30th, 2009 at 4:13 am
What observation presented in vintage Kal style. Thanks for the last breath-holding 5 mins!