BURNOUT IN THE DOG-YUMMY FACTORY My first psychosis afflicted me in first/second grades. Before that I'd been a happy Jung thing, never having known Oedipus, not until the afflictions of Sisyphus were over. Sisyphus killed God for me: Sisyphus is depression--eternal and futile struggle--God is mania, or at least, the Self becoming God, the ultimate ego-trip. Delusions of grandeur, crucifiction in the mind of the Catholic boy. I remember the years before first and second grade, when we lived at what Mother always referred to as "the other house," after the family grew to large and we had to move to Watertower Hill. Like a lot of schizophrenics, I was shy and lonely as a child, with only one friend at a time; sometimes, no friends. Throughout my travail in the Dog-Yummy Factory, Tim Wolf was my best friend. We talked frequently of the great inventions I was gonna invent when I grew up, or traded misinformation on sex on the playground. THE SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SAVAGE ID I didn't need friends. I had a family of five brothers; no sisters--how I came to not-know Oedipus; there were no she-bops to see vaginas with vulvas. When I finally found out the truth from my older brother, I went crying to Mother. She lied to me. MY ENTIRE FAMILY OF SUPER-HEROES And there was Ralph, my older brother, later to become an electronics genius; Gerald or "Ger," my younger brother who was afflicted with terrible childhood phobias--mostly germs and grasshoppers--and extreme neuroticism, Mother kept threatening to send him to Tepid Coils, the State Hospital; Jack, known as "Loco Brains" for his monkey-imitation (Mother always said if he misbehaved, she'd have to spank the monkey); Dick, a/k/a "Biggie the Blanket" from his great height; the final addition being Fred, or "Small Cute Bup," the baby of the family, born after I was already in grade school, spoiled by Ralph, and who would always enliven the proceedings with his baby-routine, which he referred to as "Bupping it up." SF IN INVISIBLE CITY And there were dreams of alien cities, of monstrous mutants and leaks into parallel universes: I discovered science fiction in first grade. I had a sixth-grade reading level then, started my reading of the genre with Clifford Simak's City, an adult book that had somehow wound up in the juvenile library. Frequent were my trips to the Invisible Library to check out Heinlein's juveniles or Lucky Starr. ROSARIES LIKE CHROMOSOMES First grade in St. Sophie's Catholic School, I was totally bored. Came into class first day and opened the book: See Dick. See Dick run. Run, Dick, run. I already knew how to read and write. Mother had been teaching me at home. And I had a high IQ, was reading at a sixth-grade level. So I sat in back and read the sixth grade book. Nearly flunked out for my penmanship. Finally, my nun, Sister Gene (rosaries like chromosomes) called a conference with my parents. Mother, a former schoolteacher in the country schools around Invisible, mostly declaimed their treatment, to which Sister would reply, But he's so immature! Being "immature," I mostly just sat around and tried to climb the pipes. Daddy simply said little. He'd come in late from his Union meeting, was tired and hungry. They'd never get Pops, he was part of the Union. Mother had served up fish, it being Friday. The fish was hot, and tasted of salt. THE EVIL PRINCIPAL Second grade, I was a "troublemaker." There were the "little angels" and the "troublemakers." I was the latter, because I asked a lot of intelligent questions for a kid, like "how can you prove there is a God?" I was never satisfied by the answers of the orthodox, so I was a troublemaker. Always sent to Sister Rose- mary's office. Sister Rosemary, the Evil Principal. Talked funny; I had a speech impediment. Finally got my tongue clipped by Dr. Jestrab, our family doctor since I could remember. AND NOT SNOOP I was out on the playground during recess (Jung, before I knew Oedipus). The other kids were teasing me, calling me "a little puppy dog." Loathing these dread vicissitudes, I ran to Sister Romeo Void, crying: "Sister! Sister! Make them stop calling me a little puppy dog! She looked at me with that stern look that always meant another visit to the Evil Principal, saying, "Oh, but you are a little puppy dog, and from now on, you're going to have to sit in the back of the room and eat dog biscuits." Then, back in class, she asked for volunteers to bring the awful dog-yummies. Tastes like shit. "Anybody got a dog?" Some tykelet raised her hand. The deal was made with Sister Void that clear, bright day, to bring me the fateful food. What am I being punished for? Why are they doing this? I must be a very bad boy. If I'm getting punished by Sister, and I go home and tell Mother about it, she'll punish me, too. What am I being punished for? I've got no idea. To this day, I don't know. But it frightened me of Demons, no matter how delicious they might be. Of penguins bearing rulers. Lunch came, I walked home. Had to climb the hill, take the trails the kids used to cut through to get to school. Wolf-man and I, years later, were to explore these, looking for leprechaun lairs (gopher holes). Leprechauns were even more magic than the Toothpick Fairy, the mystical being who brought wishes to the Kid who found one of the toothpicks in the birthday cakes (Mother still refers to my brothers as "the Kids," to this day). I sat sullenly all through lunch. BIG MACaroni and cheese. Mother wondered why I was so silent; I said nothing. She'll punish me, too. Walked back to that place of demons masquerading as saints. Punished for the sins of individuality and creativity. Drawing the turkey with more than my hands. Someone actually had the dreaded dog biscuits! I'm gonna puke if I actually eat those things. She sent me to the back, to consume mass quantities of gritty red shit. I felt like I was going to puke. I did puke. She made me clean the mess up. Then Father Pretzel came in, to lecture us on religion. Love your neighbor as your dog. Sick on sandy shit. Savage dread. Demon penguins bearing rulers; rap across the knuckles. Thus spake Pretzel-man: "Oh, I see we have another little kid, in the back of the room. Who is he?" Smiling sweetly as I bled from crucifiction within, Sister simply said, "That's our little puppy dog." Years later, I finally told my mother what had happened. She said, If I would've known about that, I would've taken you out of that Catholic school immediately. Instead, I had to spend seven years in the loose palace of exile, being tortured by strange demons with habits. # BURNOUT IN THE GARBAGE CAN A little while later, Sister Romeo Void wanted to punish me again. As with the dog-yummies (what burned me out, cold-soul nightmare, lots of soul-melancholy reflecting from demon-eyes in a woman in black masquerading as an angel), I didn't know who, what, why, what for, what? one of a kind? I only knew that the nun was angry at me again. Penguins with rulers. Slap on the knuckles. Off to the Principal's office, little puppy dog! Another time, I was sent to be with the "troublemakers" during the school play. Everyone else sat around and made trouble, sailing paper airplanes and acting rowdy; I sat in the back and read magazines. Adult magazines. I didn't need to see Dick run into Jane's scrofulous thang. We should tax thang. So now, the troublemaker was being punished again. I felt like a worthless piece of shit. Something the dog chewed up and spat back out. Jesus said: A dog returns to its own vomit. But what do Evil Principals return to? # APPENDIX TO THE DOG-YUMMIES So, for the most part, my childhood schizophrenia went into remission following my release from the tortures of dog-yummies and garbage cans. Feeling the garbage can blues, I moved through a reality that yet showed signs of incipient manic-depression: I was in a sort of funk for the next several years, alternating with periods when I'd become hyperactive. Tim Wolf was still my best--and only--friend, throughout those dog days and beyond. Often I'd go over to his house, and we'd sit around discussing all manner of things; typical childhood fantasies of comix murk monsters, fear and loathing in the bat-mobile (and the Joker got away); Christmas--the excitement of owning a Johnny Seven OMA (as Bill Veeder would say, I know a phallic symbol when I see one); crush on Kathy Kato, first girly-girl to develop tits (humongous ones, at that); confession, penance, extreme unction--I had ever sacrament behind me, as I learned the price of nails, the stigmata of the soul. BURNOUT IN THE APPENDIX FACTORY Then, I got into seventh grade. I was extremely upset: they'd put me in the slow room. I was a boy genius and I knew it (alchemical elaboratory in the basement, going downstairs to chemicalyze)--this, this was an insult! And my gut tied in knots. Pain. Intense, excruciating pain. Knives penetrating my gut. As usual, I walked home for lunch. More BIG MACaroni, Steve MACaroni and Lawrence Welk, the kids who always teased me, forgotten like Wolf in the stabbing intensity in my stomach. Mother saw immediately that something was wrong. It'd always been like this: troublemakers don't get any sympathy from the demon-sisters. When I'd broken two teeth in a playground accident, Mother took me out of school to get stitches and a root canal; the Evil Principal merely put a wet paper towel on my lip, calling me a sissy for the sin of being in excruciating pain. Is it any wonder I turned into a Rootboy in Cleave Tower? And where is Superego when you need a heroine? So she called Dr. Jestrab; called a taxi, took me to his office. Probing my gut with his fingers, he asked, "Does it hurt when I do this?" "Ouch! Yes!" "His appendix needs to be out." Awhile later, I was in the Sacred Heart Hospital, a building that has now been renovated into an apartment complex. It was the hottest day of the year. One hundred degrees in the shade. No air-conditioning. So meanwhile, the doctors and nurses all hunker down in some strange apathy. Then the anesthesia was begun. There was a numbing sensation, followed by-- VOID VOID OF COLORS VOID OF FORMS VOID OF SHADOWS And I woke from dreams of Kathy's Kute Knockers to find myself in a white room, no curtains, with an Indian kid lying in the other bed. At this point I was showing minimal signs of childhood schizophrenia. We talked about comix a lot. He had a whole collection of them. Mother didn't approve of Captain Strange or Doctor Marvel, Superego or the Rootboy; thought comix were a bad influence. So I'd begun drawing my own. After awhile, became extremely pro- ficient with India ink. Then, Mother offered me a choice: go back to Saint Sophie's and face another year facing off with the Evil Principal and being teased by MACaroni-man, or go to Public School. (My Public hairs were already starting to sprout, preparing for strange molest- ations, the strange daze of demon possession which were to crucifixate my brains in the Invisible High.) My answer was immediate: I wanted I should go to the public Junior High. And I got a little high, but not bad. Hypomania, what was later to make me hypersexual: bipolar affective disorder is cycles of recurring pleasure and pain, of God and Sisyphus; of a speed-hi nightmare followed the crushing weight of the Spirit of Gravity, an eater of corpses. "Hypomania" means a milder form of the manic phase. It is a pleasant, natural high like that produced by a submarine. (The new slang term for marijuana is "U-boat." I think the expression originated with Timothy Leary.) I made friends and influenced people, I was popular. I acted in the school play. In first grade, Sister didn't want me to have a speaking role so I wouldn't "ruin things," so she turned me into Wee Willy Winky; all I did was sleep and jump up at the end to put ornaments on the tree. A truly humiliating experience. I started noticing girly-girls for the first time. Until something dreadful happened: molestation by a strange man. And so it goes. #