Memoirs of a Flower Child - George S Geisinger (the best books to read txt) 📗

loud, like a dog barks and their long arm reaches out and rips out our guts. But this two-legged doesn't seem to be like that. I don't understand this two-legged anymore than you do,” Bambi said to the trees.
I would wander off again, looking for something else, but there was nothing else to be seen for the longest time. There were only the natural things, and I worshiped them. The good Lord's creation. There was no day or night there. There was only time.
Then there was a time the two-legged had to be dealt with. I could no longer get away from them. I had stopped looking for them because I had no use for them.
But they found me.
The two-legged took me to the State Laughing Academy pretty quick. It was all a long time ago now, but I question, even though I've stopped doing all that sort of thing long since: Did I ever come down off that acid trip? Am I still tripping? I think so.
The two-legged locked me up very quietly, very nice and tidy and neat, instead of causing a big scene. Very neat. Not messy. If it were Hollywood, they would have had some kind of showdown. They'd have shot me dead in the street. But it wasn't out West. It was down South. I was a young Yankee with hair half way down my back, the hippie flower child that I was. I wore a leather pouch from my belt, with a butterfly patch sewn to it. Butterflies are free, man.
There were tombstones in my eyes. The 60's had just ended. So had my sanity. I was diagnosed with acute toxic psychosis, resulting in chronic schizophrenia, which happened to be the two most prominent diagnoses from Haight-Asbury and Woodstock, besides advanced malnutrition.
The two psychologists brought a couple of cops with them. They were very friendly, as though they were talking to a lost child, rather than a Yankee hippie. The five of us quietly left campus in the cop's suicide machine. The cop that was driving disobeyed all the traffic laws, and when I said something about it, he simply said he was doing his own thing.
“So am I supposed to be a dope smelling dog for you guys now, or what?” I heard myself say.
The cop in the shotgun seat turned around and stared at me. He got a real good look at me. I thought I'd just been busted, but I never did get a trial. They just put me in state clothing when we got to the hospital, after I'd finished flirting with the pretty little girl at the typewriter in admissions. They took me over to X Ward in the cop car. There were some of the goofiest looking people in that place that I'd ever laid eyes on.
The first thing I did after I got a load of all those goofballs was to practically knock down some poor lady who was coming through the door she'd just unlocked to come in. I almost knocked her down getting past her, and I was out of there almost as quickly as they'd put me in.
I had had just enough time, before I decided to split, to flirt with the only half decent looking girl on the ward. I suggested we go into the little room on the ward with the mattress in it.
“We could go in there and make out,” I suggested.
“No,” she said, “When you go in that room, they lock the door. It's called 'seclusion'.” Her name was Rosemary. She had casts on her forearms and hands, almost up to her elbows.
“I tried to kill myself,” she'd said. That did it. I was leaving.
When I got out the door, I ran across the road, running for my life, almost getting hit by the suicide machines the two-legged ride around in. I guess you'd say I had a little more fun playing like I was a four-legged, until they caught up to me again.
I ran into the woods, got all cut up on the Jagger bushes, made all the dogs bark, walked on water. Busy day. I walked on water to lose the dogs that were tracking me. I was real important in the eyes of the world. If my hands were all cut up from the Jaggers, but my feet weren't, they'd kill me when they caught me. Made perfect sense to me. So I took my boots off, ran around barefoot, being certain to cut up my feet, so I'd be be safe when they caught me. If I was well enough wounded, I'd be safe.
Then I forgot the two-legged were looking for me. My memory was like that in those days, along with everything else about my ability to think and remember things.
Later, I jumped into some old redneck's pickup truck at a stop sign. He was really glad to see me, dressed so dapper in my state clothes. Soon he stopped right in the middle of the road, explaining that he was just going to talk to a friend of his for a minute. I was so terrified I didn't even turn around to see who he was talking to.
He got back in the driver's seat about the same time some orderly from X Ward piled in the front seat on the shotgun side. I was trapped again. So I did the most logical thing, of course. I took off my wristwatch and shattered the crystal against the man's dashboard.
“This is happening to me because of all my time,” I wailed over and over, as the orderly tried to restrain me.
“Stop! Stop!” the orderly was wrestling with me.
“Why should I?” I cried as the pitch of my voice grew higher and higher. I fought frantically to destroy my watch.
“It's my watch!” I said, significantly.
“You'll damage the man's truck,” the orderly reasoned.
But it was a short drive, and X Ward had already been accomplished. Two other orderlies appeared, and I was spirited into the seclusion room, where I was stripped up to my waste of the wet, torn state pants, screaming about being raped. Soon, they gave me a needle in my butt, in spite of my fighting, and I was locked in by myself. I was scared out of my wits. I simply did not understand what was happening to me. I would fight them every time they opened the door, too. They came with a whole squad of goons to deal with me, for a long time.
Real nice stuff, LSD, mescaline, whatever it was. It really brings out the adult in anyone who takes it. Try it sometime. I recommend it.
So, I spent time in seclusion. Nobody seemed to care, except one person. There was a real nice lady who came and opened the door one night or one day, or whatever it was. Honestly, I didn't know the difference between night and day anyway.
“There's someone here to see you,” she said. She was real sweet.
She showed me into what I later learned they call 'the day room,' and there was a woman sitting in there that looked sort of familiar. I didn't know who she was, and she was a lot older than me, but when she talked about taking me home, I was interested, though I wasn't sure I wanted to go home with her, not knowing who she was. She was nice enough though. She was OK, really.
Anyway, I was starting to get the hang of the language of the two-legged a little bit by then. The woman left without telling me who she was, and the other nice lady told me I needed to go back into the small room again. By that time, I was done fighting. I just went.
So, the days and nights went by in that little room. I was locked in. There was no bathroom to go to, but, believe me, it was not an issue. Society calls seclusion, “a rubber room,” or a “padded cell,” but the only padding I had was a single bed mattress on the floor. I've never seen the other kind, having been in a lot of them over the years. I'll take the other guys' word for it. Why do I need to know first hand, anyway? I've been through enough already. It's also call a “side room,” or “ the quiet room,” but who cares?
I think it was the first or second night, I saw colored lights coming through the cracks around the solid door of the seclusion room, which only had the one-way peephole looking in at me. I asked the nice lady, the nurse, later. She said they didn't have anything like that. I know I saw the lights, though. I remember it plain as day. I guess that's what they call hallucinations. I don't know. I've done a lot of acid over the years, but I don't really know what hallucinations are, exactly, or how to tell if I'm having one. If I experience something, how am I supposed to know whether it's real or not? It's just another part of my perceptions. Right? Go figure.
They started giving me pills after a while, instead of poking me with needles in the butt. I would save two paper cups after they locked the door, for my little alter to God. After a while, I would forget and ball up the cups after I took my meds, so they'd take them and throw them away. Believe you me, taking that medicine made my head feel like I was driving a truck.

One day the seclusion room door opened again. By this time, I was done jumping up when I heard the bolt throw. I just sat there, in the far corner of the room, trembling. The same sweet nurse was at the door. This time I knew it was daytime.
“Are you ready to come out with the other people now?”
She gave me a choice.
I was trembling violently and could hardly stand. I was still only 20 years old. She headed toward the day room, as I struggled to keep up. I could hardly walk, too.
“Would you like something to eat? You must be starved.”
“Well, OK,” I said.
I was shaking violently and could not pick up the tablespoon. She fed me like a small child. She had to. There was no other way I could get fed. The closest thing I could do, in the way of feeding myself, in the whole process of getting fed that morning, was to pick up a dinner roll with both hands – I do mean both hands. I couldn't keep hold of it otherwise, I was trembling so badly. I tried to pick up the milk cup, but it spilled all over the place. But, between me and the nurse, I got fed breakfast. I really was hungry, too, just like she'd said.
I hung around the day room some.
The characters on the TV were all devils. Everything about the TV was evil. I couldn't stand to be in the same room