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The hospital again. Seems wherever I go I always end up in the same damn place. It’s just how those novels put it. White walls, white floors. White darn curtains and sheets. It’s not like I can put anything unique in here, ‘specially not about this place. There's gotta be at least a thousand books about hospitals. More often than not written by lads just as loony as I am. Maybe that’s why they're so damn good. Something about how being insane makes you creative. I know I said I don’t read too much, but sometimes you just gotta get outta here, yaknow? Getting outta here is just about all I can think about at the moment anyways.
Phoebe came to visit earlier today. Poor kid didn’t know why I’m here. She wanted to go outside. The nurses said I can go out with my family, but my dear old Mother didn’t get around to filling out the paperwork. She brought me my hat. That red hunting hat I picked up from NYC before they kicked me outta Pencey. When I lost the fencing crap. I’m not even that good at fencing, I guess I was there to hold the bag. Shoulda got bloody Ackley on the team, unless I really was there just to look pretty. Dear old Ackley wasn’t too good at that.
When Phoebe came over I was in my room, reading and all that. I don’t like going out to the main room, there’s people there. A lot of ‘em are violent, and older than me by a while. Though the worst ones are the ones that are friendly. They try ‘n strike up a conversation, despite how directly you tell ‘em to buzz off. The worst icebreaker is when they ask you why you’re there.
Phoebe asked me why I’m here today. Mom spoke first, said I was sick and needed lookin’ after by the nurses n that. The way she said it shut her down pretty quick.
I put the hat on my bed frame. The room isn’t too nice. They try to spruce it up I think, just for the sake of the poor dimwits like me who find themselves stuck here. I guess they can’t really put a pot or a painting up. Still, the red from my hat gives the room a nice pop. I’m using it as a bit of a pillow while I write this, it’s a nice damn hat. One buck, too.
I’m getting off track.
What I meant to say was Phoebe came to visit today. She told me about school, she said she was learning about the Vikings. She told me that they didn’t actually have those big horns on their helmets, and the pictures made it up to make them all scary. I told her I reckon she should put together an exhibit for the museum so I can see it next time we visit. With those little plastic soldiers and all that. You could heat ‘em up in front of the fireplace and twist them around so they’re all Viking-like. She said she’d bring ‘em in and we could paint them together. Reds and browns and that. I’ve never done too much painting, never been an arty guy. Then again we never did painting at school, so I don’t know when else I’d get around to it. I could start now, if I wanted. I wonder if they have paints here.
If I could paint right now, I think I'd paint a tree. One of those smashing big ones, like the ones around the courtyard at Pencey. I’d make it orange though, so the leaves look like they’re about to fall. I bet someone would ask about the symbolism of it all, like what it means. I’d tell ‘em it means I like to paint trees. I hate when people draw a picture of a building at night or something and go on a huge phony rant about how it means they’re so smart and philosophical. It’s a damn painting. It looks fine.
Phoebe does drawing more than I do. If you draw at all then you draw more than me. She brought me a drawing she did at school. It was of a flower. She didn’t go on some big phony rant about how it represents her fragile sense of self, or how the blue sky means there’s hope on the horizon. She said it was a flower, like the one she picked at school today. That’s what I love about talking to kids. They don’t lie to make themselves look all high and mighty. They’re honest, down to earth, and real. Knowing they’ll grow up to be just as phony as all the other grown-ups. It depresses the hell outta me, it really does.
I’ve basically given up trying to write about Phoebe's visit. If you’re reading this you’re sure to have noticed I can’t stick on one topic for the life of me. You’d think with all these doctors around it’d be easy to get one to write you up a note saying you’re all buggered in the head or something. Maybe then they’d send me off to work instead of school, so I can do something productive with my life rather than sit still all day hearing about the darn war.
If good teachers exist out there, i’m still yet to meet one. I hate it, how they stand up at the front of the room with their damn notebooks and ties. Talking down to a bunch of smelly kids; like they give a crap about what they’ve got to say anyways. Yes, I did just use a semicolon, did you even notice? Useless, this crap. I swear to God it’s useless. It probably isn’t even in the right place.
I remember back when Mrs Morris taught us about punctuation and that. Periods and commas and semicolons. Some ugly ass brown haired kid raised his hand and asked when we’d use this crap. Not those same words, obviously, but I can't even remember Mrs Morris’ answer. Meaning it was either phony or ass. Most likely both. The answer to ‘when the hell will we use a semicolon’ is that you’ll use it when the damn doctors at the loony bin tell you to keep a diary, after this bullshit in your brain gets too much for your little head.
My head is so full of crap all the darn time. I think too much. From where the ducks go, to what I'm doing with my life, all the time there's crap bouncing off the walls up there. It’s never just quiet, never time to think about nothing at all. Like when the tanks get full in the winter and the water keeps running down the side of the building, making all ice on the sidewalk, so everyone falls over. That’s me, always slipping over my own darn ice.
It’s not even dark out yet, early evening at best. My room does have a window, but I can’t see out of it properly. It’s got bars like a jail cell, stopping me from jumping out or something. I complain about them getting in the way, but if they weren’t there I would have jumped out already. Then again it’s not too far up. I’m on about the 4th floor, though I doubt I’d survive it. I wonder how far you can fall before you just explode on impact. Like when old James Castle- a watermelon falls off the kitchen bench, splat.
Thinking again, I reckon I’d end up feeling bad. It’s not pretty when someone falls that far. I wouldn’t want to scare any kids or anything.
Anyway, I want to get out of here as soon as I can, so best not talk about too much depressing crap. It’s so bland up here, I doubt anyone ever comes out feeling too much better. Yaknow, I don’t even know if they’ll ask to read this. It really is a lose-lose situation. If they read it, they’ll probably talk about good old loony Caulfield up in room 12 over their lunch, and if they don’t I’ve included all those funny, witty bits for nothing.
I can be a bit of a goof at times, but I focus on the times it’s funny. I hate those darn sunnovabitches who say they’re above fooling around at times. They’re not above crap but their ugly ass high horses. The ones I hate the most are the fathers who won’t play around with their own darn kids. They always spin up their excuses about having to work hard all day, or being the proper head of the house, but I know they really don’t actually give a crap. My father was like that, still is for Phoebe I guess. If your masculinity is so threatened by sitting down with your own darn daughter and entertaining her for half an hour, then I don’t think you’re fit to be a father at all. I sit and talk with Phoebe all the time, and I guarantee I’m twice the man my phony father could ever be.
Now I hope they don’t ask to read this.
I almost started ranting about going on tangents again, but I caught myself this time. Tangents on tangents on tangents. I have trouble sticking on one topi
I’ve already written that word for word, haven’t I? Goddamnit.
I’ll just keep writing whatever crap comes to my mind. It’s not like there's anything else to do in this darn prison. Like how my life is just a series of tangents I wonder down, or how I wish I could cook proper in case I don’t ever get married, or how sometimes I get that real gross flitty feeling when I’m watching the men in the pictures.
I’ve been dancing around why I’m here like a darn ballerina, I really have. I’ve already written in detail about my phony father and my head being full of crap, so may as well go into this.
They don’t ever talk about lads who kill themselves. It’s different to someone dying. When someone dies they get all that phony fake attention. A proper bit in the paper, all those old people saying they were a right old lad, or they were gone too soon, no matter how old they are. When someone kills themselves, you see how much everyone actually cares. Not one bit. No speeches, no old ladies sobbing over them. If they’re lucky they might get included in a rumour about a scandalous case of adultery that resulted in biting the damn bullet.
I’ve been thinking about that for a while, how no one pretends to care when someone kills themselves. I was thinking all, how when I die, I don’t want anyone there who comes to make themselves feel better. No 3rd grade teachers and no goddamn Stradlaters. I saw it at Allie’s funeral, all these people there, most of them I didn’t even know. One man (who I think was Allie’s piano tutor) walked up to me and asked me how I’d been. What a crummy thing to ask someone at a funeral. Of course my hands were still all bound up at the time, so I pretended I didn’t hear him. How buggered hands cause hearing loss I can’t tell ya, but he got the message.
Anyways, I didn’t want my funeral to be like Allie’s, with all that phony celebration of life crap with strangers showing up for their own damn closure.
I’ve been here five days now, so this whole thing went down on Tuesday. It’s still Christmas break, you see, so I was out walking around and kicking rocks down the street. DB wasn’t coming home for break last I heard, and Phoebe was talking with all the kids from her class, so I just wanted to go walking.
I was walking around the block, the snow was all building up already. Then I was all depressed again. I was just walking, and then I was depressed. God how I wished it’d go away as quick as it comes on. But I’m walking down the street, and I’m depressed, and I remember my old hunting knife that DB got me when I turned 13, and that I had it in my pocket. Then I remembered when we learnt to take a pulse in health class, and how that one vein is really close to the outside of your skin. After that, I remembered that DB wasn’t coming home for Christmas, and Phoebe was always busy with her little friends, and that my father is a big darn phony. Then thinking about phonies made me think about all the phonies at Allie’s funeral. I was all remembering things, all while being depressed and walking down the street. And I went into the bathrooms at the park. The bathrooms at the park smell. They smell like piss. Now when I think about them, they smell like blood.
You know what’s the saddest bit about this whole darn situation is it’s not even that serious. I pushed real hard with the knife and all, but it just didn’t work. Maybe I didn’t actually push as hard as I thought. It’s a weird feeling, trying to get at that little vein. I actually think it’s an artery. All the crap around it seems to move away so easy, but as soon as you put pressure down on that little purple bit. That’s the bit that hurts. It makes you shiver, like when you see a dead bird and it’s all full of darn maggots. I was shaking like a leaf from the start, but when you press down. It’s a different kind of feeling. It hurts and it feels like you’re gonna throw up all over the place. I did throw up, actually. For a couple minutes I just kept going over and over and over the same area. Wimping out, trying to go deeper, wimping out, repeat. After a while I just gave up. It just wasn’t working. I just felt disappointed. I was hiding in the stall while all that was happening, and when I came out some guy at the urinal looked at me. I must have been pretty bloody, cause he all froze and gasped and that.
Now I’m in the hospital. I think I passed out, I've never been good with gorey crap. The doctor said I don’t need stitches, and he bandaged me up in only about 10 minutes. You know what really killed me the most out of all of this? How the doctor laughed. He laughed when he’d cleaned me up. Said something about it not being deep enough to bother. That’s what killed me. I just started thinking about going and doing it right in front of him. Cutting deeper, that is. Maybe then I’d be worth a crummy second of his all important time. Doctors seem to think they’re the third coming of Christ a lot of the time, just cause they went to school longer than every other sonuvabitch. I noticed the same when I got my hands all wrapped. I still can’t make a fist properly, which is probably the darn doctor's fault. So busy with his head up his ass he can’t find the time to take a proper look.
My arm still hurts like hell. Whenever I move it in some way I swear I can feel some bit pop open. It probably did need stitches, knowing how much of a damn my doctor gives.
While I was thinking of what to write next I did a drawing of that tree I said I was gonna get around to. I scribbled it down on my bandage, though you can't see it too well. It’s not got enough leaves for the trunk, so it looks all crummy. I could probably make a witty comment about that, if I really tried.
I don’t know if I have too much more to say today, but I’m still blabbering on, ‘cause I don’t know what else there is for me to do after I finish my writing. I’ve already seen out the window well enough I could probably explain it all in detail without even looking up. Don’t get too excited though, I really can't be bothered. It’s not even mid afternoon yet.
I think I’ll have a nap now. I’ve been having a whole heap of crummy nightmares ‘bout old Stradlater. I haven’t seen him since that darn fight, and my nose starts aching when I think too much. Maybe I’ll write about my nightmares tomorrow, just for something to do.