Storytime Sunday: The Red Light District

Rachel apparently has threesomes all the time.

This is not a happy memory, you guys. It's humiliating and degrading and full of bad feels and I wish it never happened. However, I hope this doesn't detract from the humor in its absurdity.

It was 2003. I was 20. I was perpetually miserable what with the constant pain and hopelessness and all. Dad thought a trip to Europe would be fun and might cheer me up. So it was just me and him, father and *retch*, well, you know.

First stop was Paris. My legs were fucking killing me from all the walking and I was burning through 3-4 battery packs a day for my spinal cord stimulator. At least the Louvre was pretty awesome and Moulin Rouge was entertaining. And the food was good. Dad was cringeworthy, though. Try as he might, he can't shake certain "ugly American" stereotypes like JUST TALKING LOUDER and being atrocious with pronunciation to the point of no one being able to understand him (even in London, natch).

I guess it was alright. I can see how it could have been a lot of fun if I wasn't in constant pain (and away from my as needed medical weed).

Next stop: Amsterdam! No more need to worry about a weed shortage there. One of the first things we did once we got checked into the hotel was go to a coffee shop. I got a couple grams of this crystalline white widow type shit. My dad got a couple of grams of just about the weakest brown bammer I've smoked, because apparently that was marijuana to him (poor bastard). It certainly eased my leg pain and made me generally happy.

The next morning I got all stoned and we went to the Anne Frank house. That was... far out. I mostly spent my day with relaxed legs and a pleasant buzz while we checked out various attractions, only in moderate pain.

That night, well, we were in Amsterdam. So dad was going to take me to the red light district. If I wanted to, but I didn't see saying no as an option. He might think there's something wrong with me, I thought. I was supposed to want that. I even convinced myself I wanted that. "Okay."

We almost got mugged on the way there. That was fun.

Window shopping was interesting. There was a very wide assortment of... goods on display. A lot didn't conform to mainstream standards of beauty but seemed to be doing plenty good business. #BodyPositiveProstitution But window shopping was hard. I felt ashamed and embarrassed looking at these girls. Still, I liked them and kept looking.

I saw two beautiful women standing in one window. I thought maybe a threesome might cure my inability to perform. They were both smokin' hot, after all.

So I went inside and got my pants off, still clutching my SCS controller. One girl laid down on her back and the other pressed against me from behind. I set the controller down on the bed, about at the limit of its reach from the cord attaching it to my ass. I slipped on a condom and in I went.

It was meh. And stressful - a lot of pressure to perform. But it just wasn't doing it for me. I didn't want to be inside a vagina, I wanted a strap-on to be inside my vagina. I wanted to go down on these girls. These were the only things I knew to get off on. But I tried. I pumped and thrust with my SCS controller flopping around on the bed, tugged by my ass. It started to peel off and the stimulation sensation started to pulsate and waver, further distracting me.

They started to get impatient. How fucking long was this going to take, they wondered. So... I pretended to orgasm. Yes, it's sad and pathetic and they clearly talked about and mocked me in another language (Dutch?) as I took the condom off and put my pants back on, rubbing the adhesive strip on my ass to stick the controller wire back down.

I stepped outside. I had to put on a smile and pretend to be delighted. "How was it?" "Awesome!" Meanwhile, inside I was curled into a ball of shame.

We went back to the hotel room and I smoked pot. I then lay there in bed, numb. I wanted to cry. But I couldn't. Eventually, after a couple hours, I finally slept.

Years later, in college, this threesome would become "a thing." Like, in Never Have I Ever, people would call me out for "never have I ever had a threesome in Europe." Because I would brag about it. Because I was supposed to brag about something like that. I'd smile and laugh, but inside I was hurting.

In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Of course I don't like PIV. I want my vag fucked by a strap-on, not my penis inside someone. I only ever got off to fantasies of being a woman. I eventually, a decade later, came once from PIV, imagining myself as a futanari. I felt guilty about that.

So that's your bloghostess' story about her first threesome.

Operational Exhaustion

You've seen pictures of the most beautiful glacial lake in the most beautiful valley you can imagine. No, more beautiful than your imagination was capable of. You've talked to people who have been there and they've said the experience changed them forever. So you decide to go. You make the choice to buy and gather up supplies, pack it all up, and strap it to your back. And you go.

The hike is easy enough at first and you're excited to go. There are minor annoyances - you get a rock in your shoe, you get some mosquito bites - but you know it's oh so worth it. Your excitement builds as you climb into the crisp mountain air. You see stunning waterfalls that take your breath away.

But the annoyances keep coming. You get blisters on your feet and every step starts to hurt. You get more and more mosquito bites. Then you encounter a rattlesnake. You get past it, but it reminds you that people warned you about dangers along the way - mountain lions and spiders and bears. You knew about those, but it didn't really register. Now you worry that every step into the unknown could be your last.

Your backpack seems to get heavier and heavier. The sights and smells are incredible, but it's getting harder and harder to take each step. You have to stop and take a break. You have to tend to your blisters and put on bug spray. You have to catch your breath and eat a good meal. You can't keep hiking non-stop.

That's where I feel I am right now. I need to take a breather. Not a long one, just this weekend, but I'm exhausted. All the little irritations have accumulated, all the exertion has gotten to be too much.

So fuck it. I'm not bothering with makeup, I'm not bothering to look good, I'm not trying to pass, and I'm not interacting with people in real life, I'm not practicing my voice. I need to sit by the side of the trail and catch my breath.

I can still see the beautiful sights where I sit, smell the smells, hear the sounds. I can still play with my boobs. I still got called ma'am while wearing a T-shirt, shorts, no bra, and no makeup. But I need a breather from time to time.

The "sir"s, the looks, the goddamn shaving, the straining my voice, the personal care, they're all little things, but they build up. I just need time to de-stress.

At times like this, I wonder why I inflicted the journey on myself. I wonder why I decided to strap that backpack on and do this climb. And here's where the analogy fails. I was miserable and despairing before I took this journey. As much work as it is, it's less terrible than sitting stagnant, denying who I am, and dying with terrible regret. I have to take this journey. That lake is where I belong and I can't be whole until I reach it.

I just get exhausted sometimes.

In Defense of Slurs

Nigger. Faggot. Tranny. Kike. Gook. Slant. Chink. Jap. Wog. Sand nigger.

These words have power, terrible power. That power needs to be respected and appreciated for what it is. Sanitizing it with censorship (viz. "The N-word") downplays the impact they have. Saying "someone called me a t****y" lightens the experience and denies the full power it has over me. No, if that happened, you bet your ass I'd say "someone called me a tranny," because that's what they fucking called me. That accurately conveys the experience of being called that.

Racist-ass teabaggers don't call Obama "an N-word," they call him a nigger. Sanitizing it lets them off the hook. It denies the full force of it. A lot of people think of my friend as "a gay man," but some consider him a faggot - not "a f****t." Again, sanitizing lets them off the hook. You don't feel the impact when you read that. It becomes dry and detached and loses all emotion. If I say "someone called my friend a nigger," you'd better feel the emotional impact of that word. It had better make you mad. If it doesn't, I'm not accurately communicating the experience.

Think of it like this. I could dance around it and be like, "you know that word, that slur, that's used against people like me? Someone used that word." You'll figure it out. But it's purely logical. You go through your vocabulary and look it up in your internal dictionary. You don't have the jarring effect of actually reading the word. When it's thrust on you like that, you can't help but be affected. Which you should be. The slurs have real effect; removing that denies their seriousness.

I'm not endorsing using these words against people. What I am saying is that mentioning these words, and quoting them, should not be off-limits. Policing discourse like that treats us all like children who don't understand how language works and must be insulated from others' experiences. It cuts off the ability to convey the experience of hearing them, reducing it to a dry, emotionless denotation. It negates the seriousness of people thinking in those terms. I don't think people consider me "a t****y," I think they consider me a dirty fucking tranny. See the difference?

The obvious objection would be that a censored word is still identifiable, so it should make no difference. But if it makes no difference, why are you censoring it in the first place? By censoring it you acknowledge that it has power, you just don't want that to be able to be communicated. You're shutting down discourse, not protecting people from having slurs hurled at them.

So, slurs. Let's have them. Let's not use them against people, but when they are used against people, let's not sanitize it. When people think that way, let's not sanitize their scumminess. Let's be honest.

Mommy Issues

A question came up recently, about something I considered a moot point. But maybe it isn't so moot. The answer seems fairly obvious, at least to my rational mind, but my feels taunt me with doubts. 

This is the question: Do I come out to my mother?

This would be through a proxy, naturally. Either my father or brother. My rational thinking and all my feels are on the same page about doing it directly: I'm never speaking to her again. Well, there is a tiny part of me that wants to directly tell her off about how she interfered with my discovery of myself. Tell her off about a lot of things, actually.

I have a lot of history with my mother. Most people do, but by history I mean history. She has many guises, she's had many more, and I have dramatic history with all of them.

Sex Drive, Orgasms, and Playing on Nightmare Difficulty

Everyone loves the Orgasm Game. You win, you get an orgasm. Usually it's one or two player, though it can be however damn many you can cram into a bed. It's a great game, but there are two snags: not everyone plays on the same difficulty, and not everyone gets the same prize.

My Whole Goddamn Life Story (or: What the Fuck is Your Damage, Sis?), Part 4

I've told anecdotes, but never really explained me: who am I, what's my context, what's my damage? So here's my whole goddamn life story. I've broken it into four parts, about 1,500 words each, for ease of reading and referencing. Part 4: ages 30-32. (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

Though I stabilized, and with medication the night terrors went away and my startle reflex subsided (something that had been overactive since high school), I still had an abundance of existential despair. It became most of what I talked about with my doctor. She had me draw up a list: "What I Want In Life." What would satisfy me? I broke it up into parts, realistic and impossible, desires and wishlists. Under the "totally unrealistic desires" section, it read: "I want to be a lesbian." My doctor picked that one out, she could see how it pained me when I talked about it. We spent months discussing it. I slowly began to admit to myself that I had "transsexual ideation." as I called it. But I wouldn't say I was trans, nuh-uh, it was just ideation.

My Whole Goddamn Life Story (or: What the Fuck is Your Damage, Sis?), Part 3

I've told anecdotes, but never really explained me: who am I, what's my context, what's my damage? So here's my whole goddamn life story. I've broken it into four parts, about 1,500 words each, for ease of reading and referencing. Part 3: ages 23-29. (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 4)

I was able to resume my life. Well, except I couldn't ever fly a plane now. So I reverted to astrophysics. I got into a place called Whitman College and started there that January, at age 23. I was a model student at first, except my C++ class (fuck that class). I made friends, more friends than I'd ever had in my entire life. I had jobs for once, as a physics tutor and astronomy lab assistant. It was wonderful.

My Whole Goddamn Life Story (or: What the Fuck is Your Damage, Sis?), Part 2

I've told anecdotes, but never really explained me: who am I, what's my context, what's my damage? So here's my whole goddamn life story. I've broken it into four parts, about 1,500 words each, for ease of reading and referencing. Part 2: ages 14-22. (Part 1) (Part 3) (Part 4)

I moved to public school in 8th grade and just plain didn't make friends there. Not until high school, and even then not many. Over the summer between 7th and 8th grade, my dad sent me to Aviation Challenge, like the Air Force-oriented Space Camp. I got a chance to be at the controls of a plane for a minute and I was instantly hooked. I knew what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to fly planes.

My Whole Goddamn Life Story (or: What the Fuck is Your Damage, Sis?), Part 1

I've told anecdotes, but never really explained me: who am I, what's my context, what's my damage? So here's my whole goddamn life story. I've broken it into four parts, about 1,500 words each, for ease of reading and referencing. Part 1: ages 0-13. (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

I was born in San Francisco in December 1982. My early life was spent in Marin, doing Marin things. My little brother was born in 1986. I went to Hebrew school for kindergarten and first grade, which was alright I guess. One good thing my mom did was introduce me to the Carl Sagan Cosmos series. I watched the whole thing intently, then rented it on video to watch it again. I was hooked. When people asked me in kindergarten what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said an astrophysicist.

The Metaphysics of Sex

Not really about metaphysics. I just wanted a pretentious title that would get your attention. Did it work? Good.

tl;dr: Defining sex is actually a really thorny topic, and there is no single definition of it you can use that will exclude transsexuals from their sex without excluding some cisgender individuals.

What makes a man a man? What makes a woman a woman? As a species we seem geared toward this kind of essentialist categorization. Brushing it aside won't work then. Instead, it has to be addressed head on.

This isn't purely theoretical for me. As a transsexual woman, questions of the validity of my gender (at this point) and my sex (in the future) directly impact my life. It's something cisgender people can take for granted. They never have to justify themselves. But I do and that makes this acutely relevant.

So what makes someone a particular sex? It's often simplistically thought of as chromosomal: XX is female and XY is male. But this is mistaken. What's relevant isn't chromosomes but genes, primarily the SRY (Sex-determining Region Y-chromosome) gene. This can be turned off sometimes, resulting in cisgender women with XY karyotype. It can be erroneously transcribed to an X chromosome. And this isn't even getting into deviations from the simple XX and XY, such as X and XXY. So we can't use chromosomes as the basis or we'd insist that fertile women are really men.

What about genotype, then? Well, this gets fuzzy. The actual expression of the gene (phenotype) can change over time. Additionally, not all cells may have the same gene expression or even the same chromosomes. Some people are chimerical, meaning some cells have one set of genes and other cells have a different set of genes. A chimera may be both SRY+ and SRY-; they can also be a blend of, e.g., XX and XY. Furthermore, SRY and other genes aren't strictly binary - they can be expressed more or less strongly. This is one of many reasons Gerald Callahan says "we're all intersex" - no one absolutely, 100% expresses one sex's characteristics, even on the molecular level. There is always some variation from the ideal expression and forms of male and female. Defining sex in these terms requires some arbitrary cutoffs. Finally, there can be XY women, even fertile XY women, with normal male coding of all known sex-linked genes. So let's toss out genes because they're a muddled mess full of exceptions that's subject to change.

Well, what about hormones, then? (Incidentally, this is what determines the type of orgasms you have.) It turns out there are all manner of hormonal disorders that can cause high testosterone and/or low estrogen in women, or high estrogen and/or low testosterone in men. There are also adrenal disorders that affect sex expression. These are people you would likely identify as women or men, respectively, due to other factors. Like, where do the hormones come from?

Okay, so we have gonads to tell us. Or not. There are people born with no gonads or with both varieties. You can have men with an ovary on one side and a testicle on the other. You can have women who have no ovaries whatsoever. The sexual development of these people is going to be different, but do we just declare them to have no sex despite primary sex characteristics, i.e., genitals? And there are medical interventions, such as hormonal pills or injections, or in some cases surgery, that match their primary sex characteristics. (But is making this match primary sex characteristics any more 'corrective' than the same interventions to match neurological sex? See below.)

Genitals - that's the one everyone focuses on. It's what's used to assign sex at birth, without any regard for the other criteria. Well, to exclude transsexuals from consideration as their actual (target) sex requires a questionable assumption: that all that matters is the primary sex characteristics at birth, not currently. If you go with this assumption, you're in a very strange place ontologically, where nothing is dynamic, nothing changes - the categories are fixed and rigid and you're going full-on Plato. You're one step from arguing that everyone is still a newborn, since no change is allowed from whatever category it's been pigeonholed into. This isn't even getting into people whose genitals don't fit the binary dichotomy of male and female - they're both, in between or something else. (And boy howdy have those people been fucked over by simplistic, slipshod reasoning on this topic.)

There are other factors that can be used to identify sex. Secondary sex characteristics, like breasts or facial hair, or facial structure, are the markers we use in day to day life to identify the sex of the people we see. We also use social cues like hair and clothing, but those are ephemeral. But even these secondary characteristics run into problems, such as women with facial hair or men with gynecomastia. (Your bloghostess takes an antipsychotic that can cause men to grow milk-producing breasts as a side effect.)

Finally, there is neurological sex. Certain brain structures have different neuron densities in men and women. In some clusters of white matter, this difference is drastic. So you could, if you wanted to, define sex based on the brain, not the gonads or genitals. And what is more fundamentally "you" than your neurology? This is what determines your thoughts and feelings. It is who you are to you. As you might expect, then, in autopsy studies, transgender people have been found to neurologically be their identified sex, not their sex assigned at birth.

Basically, defining sex is a muddled mess of at least a half dozen factors. It's complicated. (Some would even argue it can't be reduced to a binary, that there are at least 5 sexes and possibly more.) And without some weird assumptions, no criteria listed above can exclude transsexuals without excluding plenty of cisgender people from their sex. Invalidating our sex requires you to invalidate the sex of people who you'd never think to do that to.

To review: Chromosomes can go either way (e.g., XY can be male or female). Genes can go either way. Hormones can go every which way. Gonads need not match genitals, or even exist. Secondary sex characteristics need not always agree. Genitals are the standard and can be surgically changed from one to another. And neurology need not agree with birth genitals.

None of this touches on gender, which is how people perceive themselves and how we actually interact with them in the world - how we address them, how we treat them, how we perceive them. It's the psycho-social counterpart to sex. And whatever the "psycho" is, one should strive to make the "social" match up. There's a reason the AP and most other style books dictate that a person is to be identified by their self-identified name and gender (e.g., her and she for someone who identifies as female, like Chelsea Manning). But defining and delineating gender is even messier than doing so with sex - for starters, you have to grapple with non-binary genders, while here I only briefly touched on non-binary sexes (intersexed people).

Now I am Going to Get Into That Weird Ambivalence

I'm referring, of course, to "the weird interplay between physical stimulation, gender dysphoria, intrusive thoughts, and intoxication" referenced in Public Indecency. Because it was weird.

One thing that's critical to know about this is that my genitals have always felt somewhat alien to me. Either dissociated or like they had to be something they weren't. So I never fapped imagining something happening with my dick; I fapped imagining it was a vagina and the stroking was the feeling of being penetrated.

I'd tried sex with prostitutes twice, and I failed miserably both times. The feeling of penetrating felt wrong, just wrong. And it didn't do anything for me. I knew these women were beautiful. I wanted to kiss them and play with their nipples and go down on them, but penetrating... I just couldn't do it.

So this is what I was going into the blowjob with in terms of relationship with my dick. 

On top of that, I had terrible intrusive sexual thoughts at the time. Violent, horrific stuff. My faplife revolved around these. It was downright compulsive. And it created a dynamic where that's all I was used to getting off to. But I couldn't think that about a real person other than myself - the very notion of that repulsed and disgusted me. 

So on top of the dysphoria, I had this hangup about arousal being coupled to revulsion.

However, physical stimulation goes a long way, especially with male arousal. (It's a bit trickier now that my arousal and orgasms are estrogen-based.) The kissing and the nipples put my mind at ease, but it was the physical stimulation that got the actual it's-40-degrees-out boner going. It didn't matter how I felt about my dick or what I was thinking, that physical touch got it going on its own.

So a little dick licking woke it up regardless of anything else.

Finally, there was the booze. Normally, booze inhibits performance by making erections more difficult. This was far outweighed by making it too hard to think any of the intrusive thoughts. And it was outweighed even further by numbing my dysphoria. I was crosseyed and painless, so I managed to become dissociated from the dissociation of my dysphoria, if that makes any sense. It's like I was too out of it to feel the wrongness anymore.

So I was numb to most of those bad feels.

Ultimately, it was a pleasant experience in the moment, although an anxiety-wracked one. But that pleasure was mostly the kissing and nipple play in the end. The raw physical pleasure was like a base reptilian reflex - I reacted to it with pleasure, but it was on the level of tapping my knee with one of those doctor's mallets. 

But afterward, I felt... off. I couldn't get the feeling of the sucking off and it was... not completely wrong, but certainly not right. The shaft was all wrong but the head was pretty good I guess (big surprise there - the head is what becomes the clit in SRS), But still, the overall feeling - things felt extra alien.

In the end, I wanted - wished for - more, since the kissing and nipple sucking was so good. But I really didn't want to have to use by dick for anything real and an orgasm with someone else was a terrifying prospect, and probably would have required just as much booze at that point in my life.

Harassment

This is what online harassment looks like. Based on the choice of photo to spuriously report for "graphic violence," I suspect I'm being harassed for being trans.

Facebook actively encourages this kind of harassment. Someone can report the same image over, and over, and over, ad infinitum, in the hopes that eventually, just once, the censors will ban it. There is no accountability for bogus reports. You can make a dozen bogus reports and there is no consequence - they don't even give a time-out from reporting, apparently. You are not permitted to comment on the report, such as to point out that the image has already passed muster (something they could easily check automatically), or to report the reporter for obvious harassment, as above.

I have tried, and failed, to find some way of contacting Facebook directly - they appear to make that deliberately impossible.

So there is nothing I can do. At this point I can only assume that I will be harassed until my harasser gets bored, which may be quite a while. And as I said above, Facebook encourages this sort of behavior with their reckless reporting policies.

I think this relates in a non-trivial way to the harassment transgender people and drag performers face over the name policy. Like I said, the fact that my ancient picture of hormone pills, and not the more recent mountain of pills, was reported for graphic violence tells me they have something against teh trans. And they have nothing better to do than to be a pain in my ass for it.

I guess achievement unlocked, guys. bleep-bloop Face Trans Hate 75G

Tits and GTFO

In at least five cases, these very nipples have been deemed safe for work by Facebook's censors. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the decisions. My nipples at 2 months of HRT, when they were clearly masculine (and, in fact, I was legally male) were removed for nudity. Male nipples. Conversely, my nipples at 8 months of HRT, barely 2 months ago, were allowed to stay. Apparently the A cup boobs of someone legally female are okay, but only in some arbitrary cases. Other times the same nipples have gotten me outright banned.

Is it the lighting? Just a different boob inspector examining with comparison photos? What is it, Facebook?

It's incoherent nonsense meant to enforce a societal double standard. Men's nips? Even moobs? Even pinching it and making a sexy face? A-OK. Completely tasteful display or rendition of feminine beauty? A documentary about experiencing female puberty late in life? Breastfeeding? Naughty, naughty.

So let me ask you: does this picture turn you on so much you just *have* to fap? Will it scar children for life if they see it? Is there a single offensive thing about this picture (other than the fact that I appear in it)? Is there anything not PG in this entire post?

Or is it just a picture of me, honestly showing myself as I am?

Facebook doesn't care what it is. They have their muddled policies. But it makes absolutely zero sense for the same nipples to both be offensive and inoffensive. This double standard has to end.

#FreeTheNipple

Storytime Sunday: Bear Country

This took place in a mystical time before Rachel had a metric buttload of medical and psychiatric problems. Back when I was in shape. When I was 5'6", 120 lbs. of pure lean muscle mass, ascended ropes for fun, ran a 5 minute mile at 7,000 feet, could carry an 80 lb. backpack 20 miles a day... I was ripped. I was also mostly sober, only smoking pot on weekends and breaks and never drinking (this was before my brief coke phase, though admittedly after I tried acid the first time). (And god, if I could have transitioned with that body...)

Anyway, it was August before my junior year of high school, i.e. the August before my life as I knew it ended. I was all into backpacking and so was my mom's boyfriend (the guy who thought he was an amoeba), so us four (me, bro, mom, mom's bf) went on a little camping trip. We went to Mammoth in California. We had a lake picked out to go to, above the treeline and near some glaciers to hike to.

It was only something like 10-15 miles to hike in, but it was also gaining over 2,000 feet in altitude, so it was a respectable hike. We got most of our gear brought in by pack mule, but I was still carrying more than 60% of my weight on my back. This included a lawn chair strapped to the pack, because priorities! Other critical provisions included Nalgenes full of vodka and blue peppermint schnapps.

It was late in the day when we finally arrived and found our delivered gear. We scoped out a campsite and moved the gear to it in 3 or 4 trips.

Something about this spot: I mentioned it was above the treeline. I don't know if you've ever been to that altitude, but real trees suddenly vanish above a certain point. All that was there was scraggly things that could just as well be shrubs. One problem with this is that you have no way to keep your food away from bears. No worries, we had bearproof containers for like half 10% of the food. Good enough.

The first few days went well enough. We ate all the MREs we brought - heavy, but tasty by camping standards. We caught some trout in the lake, which still had ice floating in it in August. They made for a nice break from the freeze-dried food. One thing we learned quickly: do not eat the chili macaroni. That shit was foul. One day me and mom's bf hiked up on one of the glaciers, so you can add "never have I ever walked on a glacier" to options you can use against me.

It was getting close to the end of the trip. Just two more nights and we'd be hiking out. We made Bisquick with schnapps in it for breakfast - green, minty pancakes. Yum!

We met a group of women hiking past our campsite. The Women's Sierra Club, or as I now call them, "Dykes on Hikes." They opted to camp a bit uphill so we wouldn't all be up in each other's shit. We did the nightly routine of piling all the food and stuff up and throwing the lawn chairs on top because, I dunno, a bear would look at it and think it was a solid wall or something.

In the middle of the night I woke up to a clanging and mom's bf shouting for me to wake up. I lept out of my sleeping bag into the freezing air and unzipped the tent. "Huh? What?" Clang.

"There's a bear."

I shrank back into the tent. "Uhm... a bear?" Clang.

"We need to chase it off."

"Chase it off? How?"

He shrugged. "Lights. Noise." Clang.

"But what if it attacks?"

"It won't attack. Come on." He strode off toward the clanging, shining his flashlight. I grabbed mine and headed after. I thought I saw something move and almost shat myself.

Then I remembered hearing somewhere that bears are scared of dogs. So I started barking. "WOOF WOOF WOOF ARF ARF WOOF!" I followed the clanging, barking the whole way. The clanging stopped, but I kept going. I seemed to reach the end of the trail of debris and finally stopped. It was too dark to try any cleanup, so we went back to bed to deal with it in the morning.

We took an inventory of what was missing. Basically all the food except the little bit in the bearproof container. Ripped bags. And one lawn chair. Who the hell took the lawn chair? Of course - the Women's Sierra Club. They must have taken it, then the bear came and ate all the food.

The trail of debris had to be a quarter mile long. Food pack after food pack ripped to shreds. Except the chili macaroni. One of those packs was partly nibbled through and the rest left completely untouched. Jesus, even the bear didn't want that shit.

And then we found the lawn chair, at the end of the trail of debris. It was slightly bent and a little dinged and scuffed, just fallen over on a rock. That's when we realized what happened: the bear stuck its head through the lawn chair to get at the food and got it stuck. The clanging was the bear trying to knock it off.

Anyway, apparently my mom chatted with a couple of the women uphill about the bear situation and they should be careful about it. They thought we had an actual dog to deal with that. Don't call me a dog - that's cold, girl.

Packing up and leaving was completely uneventful, and with the lighter packs and downhill grade it was a much faster, easier hike back. We were good about leave no trace protocols. We left only footprints and took only memories of lawn chair stealing bears.

Storytime Sunday: Road Trippin' Balls

Or: Doc Hofmann is My Co-pilot

Note to children (those under 25) reading: Don't be like me, mmkay?

Have I mentioned my days of drug experimentation? Well, this was one of those days. One spring break a bunch of us did a long multi-part road trip down the west coast. We started in Walla Walla, Washington and went west to a cabin in the woods. We spent a few days there being shitshows, then it was time to drive down to San Francisco. We rolled out and headed down.

But wait! I had an appointment at Evergreen to keep along the way. When I experiment with something, I don't fuck around. So here I picked up a small pharmacy including mescaline, mushrooms, mescaline blended with MDMA (because why not?), and of course, LSD. Unlike everything else, the acid wasn't good to go - it had to be dosed out first. That meant dropping the liquid on sugar cubes and wrapping those in foil as our doses. Transaction done, weed smoked, I was on my way.

My two passengers dosed themselves when we left and started to come up around dusk. We were crossing into Oregon a little after sunset and I kept getting startled by headlights in my rear view mirror. I'd see the lights rushing up to me, then actually look at them in the mirror and they'd be keeping their distance. I can't be that high, can I? Damn, I did not mean to get that high if I'm driving.

Bright objects started getting a bit of bloom and trailers, and the shape of the roadway was really... far out, man. Oh shit. Then I remembered handling the freshly-dosed sugar cubes, still dripping acid solution, when we bought them. See, one of the fun things about acid is that it can be absorbed through your skin. Or my skin, as was the case.

So, driving into the night of this 16 hour drive, I was coming up on an unknown number of hits of acid. This left me in a predicament. I was already tripping and I didn't know how much higher I'd be flying soon, so I had to let someone else take over. But the two other people in my car were both on two hits and riding the snake. Simply getting a motel wasn't an option because that would fuck up the road trip schedule, and that would be terrible. I considered that, though. I also considered telling my passengers what was up.

I kept considering as I chain smoked and assessed all the way to Springfield. "Hey, guys! It's Springfield. The Springfield."

"Let's find the statue of Jebediah Springfield!"

So I pulled off the freeway and on to the deserted, 2 AM streets of Springfield, Oregon. The few street lights were very pretty and glowy and it felt a bit like being on a movie set. Alas, there was no statue at what seemed to be the town center. The place was begging for one - I could see the incorporeal pedestal it belonged on right there. But along the road leading away, we spotted something. There it was, the comic book store and, right next to it, the Kwik-E-Mart. We came for Simpsons, we got the Simpsons.

We kept going and pressed on through the trip. Er, night.

Around 5:30 AM we reached Grant's Pass and stopped for gas. Oregon has this stupid law where it's illegal to pump your own gas, so we had to deal with the attendants. And we were all saucer-eyed and tripping to varying degrees. The guy in my back seat was clinging to the ceiling hand grip and rocking back and forth with a deranged grin on his face. The guy in the front seat was maintaining his composure like a pro and avoiding any interaction. Me? I was fighting against permasmile and trying not to focus on any trippy things I saw. After that stress, we continued on our way.

Down Highway 199, going straight for the coast. We'd been periodically smoking weed along the way; we smoked more once we got outside Grant's Pass. Dawn was starting to creep up and as it started to get light out here was... snow? It was snowing, and driving through that was unbelievably trippy. I was most definitely still tripping and here was this drifting star field I was floating through. There might have been the car engine, but I could still 'hear' the silence of the snow over it. We danced around corners, we rocketed up hills, we entered another world when we passed through a tunnel.

It was around 7 AM when we came down out of the snow. The snow turned to drizzle turned to nothing as we crossed into California. As we came down out of the mountains, I finally felt like I might be coming down myself. Mostly. We crested a hill near the coast and it opened up into an utterly surreal sight of fields of sunflowers catching the morning rays. Just as the world opened up into that, the shuffle on the stereo pulled up "No Rain," and I knew everything would be just fine. Good thing, too - I was spent.

Problem: who was going to take over for me? Guy in the back seat volunteers. "I've come down enough." Well, if you say so. We pull over and swap positions. I gobble 2 hits of acid and curl up in the back seat as though to sleep. And we carry on.

I spent hours in awe of the sights - the glistening ocean, the alien trees, the twisted road. For a while I had my face pressed to the window in full perma-smile mode. It was glorious going down Highway 1 with a sleep-deprived, residually-tripping madman at the wheel, but that could only go on so long. He started getting swervy and jerky, and we can't have that with blind turns and 200' cliffs.

So he pulled over. Guy in the front seat? "I can't fit in your driver's seat!" He had a point. This guy was like 6-foot-20 and not going to squeeze under my steering wheel.

So this is how it's gonna be, guys? Really? I drive us more than 12 hours from bumfuck backwoods Washington to Crescent City, California, mostly on acid, and my only replacement driver is done for before we reach Mendocino. I'm supposed to take over again? Don't you guys remember when I ate all that acid this morning? Fine! Fine, someone's gotta do it.

So I took over driving again, and let me tell you, Highway 1 is an... interesting drive when you're tripping. I fortunately learned quickly: don't get engrossed by the pretty images, if they suck you in you're dead. Cars coming the other direction were heart attack inducing when they actually passed, but for the most part, while stressful, it was also oddly zen. I was connected to the car and fully open to the magnificent natural beauty around me. The smooth g-forces of each turn, the almost rhythmic rising from and falling toward the ocean along the roller coaster roadway. The sea spray and the spring foliage enveloped me in a blanket of smells. And it was such a beautiful day, with swarms of itty bitty UFOs on the ocean surface, all flickering in the sunlight.

But I couldn't keep it up. The only thing keeping me awake at this point was the fact that I was tripping. So we pulled into a market in (I think) Stewarts Point - it was somewhere not too far north of Jenner is all I know for certain. I didn't think I could go on. Big guy was going to have to squeeze in there. He wasn't so sure about that - said he'd think about it while I bought energy drinks. So I went in, I purchased a Monster and two Red Bulls, and I walked out with the receipt... for $6.66. That was a trip. Though it was more of a trip for the big guy. He saw the 666 was was like, "alright, it's a sign. Let's do this!"

Big guy took off driving and I pounded my energy drink, again starting to come down. This situation lasted all the way to... Inverness. Maybe - probably not even that far, though my memory is kind of fuzzy (can't imagine why). His knee was killing him and someone else had to take over. Other guy was curled up like a baby in the back seat. Alright, all on me again. As always.

So I'm still tripping a little and now kept awake by energy drinks, at least, and we're in the home stretch. We just have to make it to Foster City and we can pass out. I drive us through rural Marin County and we trip out on the farms and cows. Remembering how close I used to live to the cows, I tripped out harder.

I was so strung out. Soooo strung out. I was shaky and weak and twitchy, but dammit, we were going to make it. We slipped down onto the 101 and I was almost overwhelmed by all the cars and traffic and buildings and oh my god so busy! But that was just the start. We stopped for more energy drinks (in Greenbrae, I think), and I pounded one on the drive down through Marin.

I wasn't properly tripping at this point, I don't think, but distances, proportions, and perspective were still all weird. And so it was that I got on the Golden Gate Bridge, with its 2-feet-more-narrow-than-standard lanes and no median. The lanes looked like they got narrower and narrower and all the other cars seemed huge and smothering. I was gripping the steering wheel for dear life and biting down on my cigarette.

I barely remember the rest of the drive, just floating through San Francisco and riding the current down 101. We pulled into the Residence Inn parking lot, and thus ended that leg of the journey, nearly 24 hours after leaving.

To be continued...

Storytime Sunday: Grand Theft Golf Cart

In which Rachel comes within 15 feet of being arrested as an accessory to grand theft.

Boredom and insulation from consequences breeds a certain kind of adventurous nihilism. There are no consequences, so clearly nothing matters. But that just invites pushing the boundaries, seeing how far you can go until there actually are consequences.

Getting caught smoking weed on campus 3 times and ignored smoking at least as many? No consequences. Going to work drunk, and even drinking at work? Nothing. Stealing benches from the school and proudly displaying them outside my house? Pfft. Smoking cigarettes inside the computer lab in front of the publicly-accessible webcam? Please. I don't remember if this was before or after I biked through the library naked.

Whitman was a game preserve, where we were protected from responsibility. And we were going to (incrementally) take that as far as possible.

So it was one fateful... I honestly don't know what night - Tuesday and Saturday were about the same then. Some night a bunch of us were getting drunk. Anyway, this one guy, let's call him C., proposed stealing a golf cart from the school. He said he'd stolen it before, it's really easy. He just needs to stick his Leatherman in the key slot and turn. However, he's already in trouble with the school (somehow, I don't remember how he pulled that off), so he needed someone else to take the fall if they got caught. Nothing matters, so K. volunteers as driver/fall guy.

The plan we didn't realize we made was to all go on a joyride. Or at least, I didn't realize until it was happening.

I heard a putt-putt going down the dark street, then a "heeeyyyy~~". The golf cart was ours.

Seven of us (if I'm not mistaken) piled onto that one golf cart. It was one of those maintenance golf carts, so it had a flat bed in back; four of us piled on there. Another three crammed into the front seat. And we were off.

Off where? WHO CARES? Past Hunter Conservatory, up the street, back between the buildings. "WOOOOOOOOO!" Zigging and zagging all over the damn place. Where to next? How about we buzz Prentiss (the girls' dorms)? Yeah! Not that we voted on any of it, we just rationalized it after K. drunkenly swerved in that direction.

So we swerved between the dorms, down the path, through the sprinklers - don't touch the brakes! - almost into a bench, past the music building... We were about to go back out onto the street, off to who knows where.

"Police!" Fuck. K. brought the cart to a halt just at the (far) edge of the sidewalk.

"Step out of the vehicle." 4 drunk college students proceeded to fall off the back.

"Have you all been drinking?" Eeyup. Very drinking.

"Which one of you was driving?" Okay, K., now's the time to be the fall guy.

"I'm going to ask again, which one of you was driving?" Any minute here, K.

K. was not going to be the fall guy.

Another cop arrived. A sergeant. He surveyed the scene, turned to the cop next to him and said "I was expecting a drunk Bill Murray."

K. eventually did confess in a manner so anticlimactic I don't even remember it happening. Or maybe I would have remembered if I wasn't freaking out because, oh yeah, cops.

"Are you all Whitman students?" Sighs of relief all around. Yep, yep, yep, "kinda." Goddammit, C., they don't need to get into full time vs. part time vs. no time.

We were all Whitman students, so what did that mean? "We'll call security and..." The cop could barely keep a straight face here, "see if they want to do anything."

There was one hard-ass among the cops, always going on about C.'s "weapon" (his Leatherman) and being generally annoyed and bitchy. Then there were the rest of the cops arrayed at this scene. Shaking their heads, resisting laughter, cracking jokes between each other. I guess there are worse things they could get called to.

One of the cops reminded us how lucky we were which side of the sidewalk we were on when they caught us. This side of the sidewalk, Whitman security gets us, that side of the sidewalk the po-po gets us. Po-po gets us for theft in excess of $1,000 - i.e., Grand Theft Golf Cart. (Not that Whitman would ultimately press charges, but still - they don't have beer in those jail cells.) But we were on this side so...

Finally security arrived to tell us to go home and sleep it off. Well, okay, he did ask for all our names and student ID numbers first. He was very official about it and everything. And then he sent us home, said we'd be hearing about disciplinary action later. Uh-huh. So can we go now?

We could go, and that could only mean one thing: go back home and drink and party more. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

P.S.: There never was any disciplinary action. No one even heard a peep from admin except for K., who was summoned for a Talking To. No consequences. Nothing matters.

Storytime Sunday: This Ceiling Sure Looks Inviting

Tequila has a tendency of convincing you certain things are good ideas. None of them are actually good ideas.

My last year at Whitman, I lived in a party house. Like, had a giant living room / foyer where we held bumpin' concerts regularly. Rosaacs, it was called (because it was on the corner of Rose and Isaacs streets). We had a lot of adventures. One night the guy who would become my roommate there called me up and asked "wanna go commit some federal crimes?" But that's another story.

There were four of us. There was me, obviously. There was J., a hilarious manly man astronomy major who tried (unsuccessfully) to switch to archaeology; he basically ran the house, he ran the concerts and loves Old Granddad, Pink Floyd, and dirty blues. There was S., a Swazi astronomy-math combined major who smoked whole trees of pot and drank cheap beer constantly (along with stealing my and Jake's booze); when he got deported, we found his room even messier than mine, with bottles of piss accumulated among the beer cans knee deep in places. And there was I., the diabetic sophomore who always got blacked out and lost his insulin pump; it's a miracle he survived.

We were hanging out drinking one winter night with friends mostly from the FUSH (Fucked Up Shit House). We = me and J.; I. and S. were off getting fucked up elsewhere. So all of we were hanging out in the kitchen taking bong rips and shots (except J. - he'd never touch weed). One of the FUSH people noticed a hatch in the ceiling. "What's up there," he asked.

J. shrugged. "I dunno!"

I took my shot of tequila. "Only one way to find out." See, at that point I'd been in the habit of crawling into tiny spaces for some reason. Crawling into walls, you know, like this. So I figured, fuck it, let's check this out. Tequila said it was a good idea, at least.

J. grabbed a ladder and set it up underneath. I wrestled my way to the top and pushed the square up, then slid it to the side. "Whoooaaaaa..." There were pipes in there. And a crawlspace big enough to hang out in. And... what's that against the wall there? I pulled myself up, sticking to the 2x4s and keeping my weight off the drywall ceiling.

"Hey, someone pass me the tequila," I called down. One of my friends dutifully handed it up.

Just drinking tequila in the ceiling. WCGW?

I was enjoying my ceiling tequila, but there was something missing. There's something about confined spaces that just screams "hotbox me!" So I drank a little more tequila and asked for the pipe and a lighter. You know what happened next.

I was getting comfortable up there. As I drank more tequila people started to wonder if I ever planned to come down. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I had my Hornitos and I was happy. But all good things must come to an end. Eventually I was summoned to climb down. Easy enough. Just shuffle backwards along the 2x4s same way I came in. What could possibly go wrong?

I was going along all right, laughing like an idiot the whole way, when something fell out from under me.

You see those pipes there? Yeah, they're actually important.

As you can see, I couldn't stop laughing at my fail, face-arming myself because my palms were occupied holding me up. Once I calmed down enough, I shuffled over and climbed back down through the opening that was actually supposed to be there.

Repairing it was an adventure. J. took charge - it wasn't the first time he'd had to replace drywall in that house. We went to Home Depot, got a sheet, took it home, drank some bourbon, cut it, replaced the old sheet, drank some beer, spackled, painted, good as new.

Then we drank more. The end.

Don't forget to vote in this week's special poll all about this story --->

Storytime Sunday: The Cat's Stuck in the Wall

Note: This is an abridged telling of the story on account of not getting my poop in a group to write the story in a timely manner. This is what you get.

"Mew! Mew!" Almost rhythmic mews, distant and muffled. Edie's missing, and now there's muffled kitten meowing no one can pinpoint. We listen from the basement - she's at the front of the house and somewhere above. We listen in the front room - she's near the front of the house and somewhere below. We can hear her meowing beneath us.

"Mew! Mew!"

Hours of searching have passed to no avail. She's going to die of dehydration in there, we have to get her out! I can hear where she is, under the front door. I tear up the flooring in front of the door only to find hardwood underneath. I grab a claw hammer and maniacally attack the hardwood with it, ripping up chunks.

That goes nowhere, it just spews shredded wood all over the carpet and takes a divot out of the floor. Someone eventually gets the idea to look inside the walls. We only find a couple ways in, through the upstairs balcony. The openings are tight and the roof inside looks cramped. But we can hear the cat clearly inside. Yep, the cat's definitely stuck in the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

Someone needs to climb in there and look. This looks like a job for Stuporman! (That was my inebriated alter-ego at the time. Stuporman - fighter of sobriety, defender of awesome.) I dive in head first and wriggle through the opening. I climb onto a half inch layer of soft dust and sediment and turn around, coating myself in it. With a flashlight, squeezing my head under the floor, and eventually a mirror, I solidly confirm Edie's location: at the bottom of a shaft.

So here's what we knew: Edie got into the wall through a vent opening. She wandered around exploring until she came to a shaft, like a hollow column. Then she fell down it and got trapped. This didn't get us any closer to getting her out.

I tried lowering a shoebox wrapped in a sheet, tied to another sheet, with food in it down the shaft. It just landed on her, if it even made it all the way down. We looked and looked with mirrors. I started chain smoking inside the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

Someone gave us the brilliant suggestion to call the fire department. They laughed at us. We called the humane society. They don't do that. Someone posted a frantic message to the all-campus listserv, asking for any help.

Two guys came by to help. They tried various approaches. I continued to lay in the wall, smoking. Dust was sticking to my finger and caking to my lips. Someone passed me a pipe. I hit it and resumed smoking. Still in the wall.

"Mew! Mew!"

I noticed the open space between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling. The notion of rats running through there entered my head. Is there rat shit in here? Wait... oh fuck. Someone pointed out to me: the dust. I was laying in rat shit and probably eating hanta virus as I smoked. I spat gritty bits of dust out of my mouth. Then I shrugged and pulled out another cigarette.

I spent late into the night inside this wall, increasingly tired, high, and, later on, drunk. I eventually crashed and came back the next day to climb inside the wall and chain smoke for a few hours, listening to the cat's mews to make sure she was still alive.

"Mew! Mew!"

Four hours in the wall today got me through a half pack of cigarettes and not much else. Still laying in rat shit, but I don't care, this is my spot! By this point I kinda feel like just lounging inside the wall from now on.

It all just kind of runs together at this point. I spent literally all the time I was at that house inside the wall chain smoking. There was no point to being in the wall, I didn't even pretend to be there for the cat other than to 'listen to make sure it's still alive'. Why did I want to lay there in rat shit regolith and chain smoke without a view of anything or any TV/computer/whatever? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The next day, while I was gone, Clark arrived. With a jigsaw and a bottle of whiskey in hand. "Where's the cat," I imagine he asked with a cackle after kicking open the door. He cut a square out of the balcony floor directly above the shaft. As soon as it was open and the cat could see it was a way out, she climbed out on her own. Just stuck her claws out and parkoured up the sides of the shaft. Stupid cat. 

Storytime Sunday: Goddammit to Me

Have you ever really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? I have. This is the story of when I was.

It was 2003. RSD was my life at this point. It seemed to stretch back forever and it would surely continue forever. Mom had set me up in a little rented back house in a simulacrum of independence at least. The pain had gotten a little better with my spinal cord stimulator implant, and with new medications, but it was still pretty bad.

We'd fired the doctors at Stanford after being frustrated for too long with their inflexibility and purely "do as I say" authoritarian way of doing business. We found a new anesthesiologist/neurosurgeon who had RSD himself and was an all-around cool guy. And we found a pharmacologist who specialized in pain management to handle my medication.

Now, one weird thing that happens with RSD is that your opioid receptors - the ones that hydrocodone, oxycontin, morphine, etc. bind to - stop working right and those drugs are minimally effective for the pain. So you have to try other things. My new pharmacologist switched me from Neurontin to Gabitril (that's its own story), put me on methadone (it partly gets around the receptor problem) and some other things. But you have to be innovative with this. You have to think outside the box.

He had an outside the box option: ketamine. It's an anesthetic that works directly on pathways the RSD acts on (specifically, NMDA). It was a perfect option. And he had an outside the box delivery mechanism for it: a topical cream. I was a little sketched out by ketamine, but I went with it. We ordered the cream from a compounding pharmacy and I soon got it.

One tablespoon applied to the affected area once per day. Easy enough. Well, maybe a heaping tablespoon - my legs are big. Hey, this stuff works great. I want this to cover my whole legs. A couple tablespoons - it's a cream, it can't be dangerous. 

I started to get extremely sleepy. Head bobble all the time sleepy. After I fell from briefly losing consciousness mid-stride, mom took me back to her place. I slept a lot. But damn if my legs weren't feeling good.

"Moouumm..?" I shambled down the hallway to her room. "Moouumm..?" My brother was staring at me, I think. Mom walked to the front of her room and saw me, pupils blown, bruise forming on my head. "Are you okay," she demanded to know. I just continued shambling toward her bathroom. She probably asked again if I was okay, but I don't really know.

I managed to shamble past her into the shit-'n'-shower, as we called it (the closet-like room with a shower and a toilet right up against it). I saw her holding the external power supply to my SCS; it had apparently been dangling from my ass the whole time.

I reached out my hand. "Goddammit to me," I demanded.

"What?"

"Goddammit to me," a little softer this time.

"Goddamn what?"

"Goddammit to me."

She looked down at the power supply in her hand, and back at me. "Give it to you?"

I nodded. "Goddammit to me."

"No."

"Goddammit to me," I pleaded.

"You're gonna drop it in the toilet."

"Goddammit to me," more politely.

"You're gonna drop it in the toilet."

"Goddammit to me," super politely this time.

"Fine, fine." She handed it to me. I immediately dropped it in the toilet. It cost $8,000 to replace.

I don't remember what happened next, but apparently she called 911. She thought I had a head injury, but no, I just fell out of bed.

Next thing I knew, I was nowhere and formless. There was something sudden and awful, disembodied pain. I imploded, my muscles all spasming shut in an instant. My eyes flew open. I saw things, as in I got the raw sensory input, but nothing made sense. Though in hindsight I know what I saw, at the time, I couldn't identify shapes or colors, let alone objects. It was just raw, terrifying sensory overload.

What I didn't realize was that I was on the nice-living-room (not the one we normally used), on the couch, getting an IV stuck in my arm. This disorienting assault on my senses and my beings may very well have been the most terrifying experience of my life. It was like I had just been born and hadn't yet formed a concept or understanding of anything - not even my body or my senses.

I woke up in the hospital hours later to learn that I'd OD'd on ketamine. Apparently the extra I was applying had built up in my system and I was just on K the whole time until it crossed that threshold.

As a bonus, I found out from my pharmacologist that even with my stupidity, that shouldn't have been nearly enough to OD, only to have a bad time. Turned out my NMDA receptors must have been shot - likely excitotoxicity damage from so much continuous pain for so long literally killing the receptors. Joy.

I tried ketamine in another form after that. Pills. It became my only "as needed" pain relief other than pot. I was scared shitless of it, but when I needed it, it was a godsend. When I was really hurting, goddammit to me.

The Nuthouse

Gather 'round, boys and girls, and listen to the story of Rachel's trip to the nuthouse. The loony bin. The insane asylum. Whatever derogatory name you prefer for "psychiatric inpatient." 

It was 2001: not a space odyssey. The previous year, I'd been diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD, also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type I), first in one leg but rapidly spreading to both. It's a shitty disease. Really shitty. The pain - burning, crushing agony - never stops. The nerves get crossed, so normal sensations like a light touch can feel like a red-hot belt sander. I was still in Stage I of the disease, though rapidly on my way to Stage II, so fortunately it wasn't that bad. It was just miserable. The best parts are that the doctors gave me about a 5-10% chance of total remission (you're never "cured" of CRPS), it spreads in more than 90% of cases, and more than a third of patients eventually have symptoms throughout their whole body. So it was utterly hopeless.

I was depressed, naturally. In pain, can't do anything, dreams shattered, no hope, miserable side effects from the medications. But I went through the motions. I let myself be carried along by the currents because I didn't know what else to do. Some parts of the ride were even pleasant - the weekly spinal anesthetic injections I got in the OR felt sooo good. It was also, strangely, a respite from my bouts of intense emotional hurt and rage shortly before. In hindsight I was (hypo)manic for much of high school, and even younger (I first experienced psychosis in elementary school), but at the time I was just "impossible." (That description has a lot of meaning rolled into it that I don't feel like unpacking. I'll just say that if someone calls me "impossible," they will generally trigger either a flashback or an intense fight-or-flight - usually flight - response.) And now that I was depressed, that had settled down.

But my depression needed treatment, the doctors decided. To their credit, they first tried an antidepressant with proven efficacy for alleviating nerve pain. But that made me completely dissociated, so no go on that one. They tried a couple others with minimal effect. Then they tried Paxil.

Now, normally if a story involves putting a 18 year old on Paxil, it's not going to end well. When it's a 18 year old with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and miscoded 5-HT-2A receptors, it ends like this.

My energy started to come back. I was more alert. I also got even more grumpy than usual, but that didn't register until it was too late - I had reason to be grumpy after all. I was snippy and implacable. And I started to realize some things. I started to really grasp how hopeless and miserable things were. I started to realize there really was something I could do about it. I could force them to make me better. They didn't want me to die, but that was my ultimate way out. So I could force them to make me better or watch me die, and I'd win either way.

Now, this wasn't arrived at by any kind of rational thought process, or even coherent chain of thinking. It was more a subconscious emotional realization that came into the conscious when the time was right.

I wanted more Norco (hydrocodone). I'd taken the max dose, but I was in pain and I wanted more. I got very, very angry that mom wouldn't give me more. I don't remember things all too well, but at some point while screaming at her, I picked up a nearby pair of scissors and slashed at my arm with them. I think I was wrestled to the ground, but trying to cut my arm open with the scissors is the last thing I remember.

I don't know how I was transported to Stanford University Hospital, but I was taken there under a 5150 order: "danger to self." Basically, I was involuntarily committed by the State of California.

My memory picks up again inside the psych ward doors. I was assigned a room near the entrance on the lockdown side of the ward. At least one of my parents walked me in, I don't remember who, of if it was maybe both. All I could do was cry and scream. The more I did, the more they disregarded me. I gathered enough control to stop and be silent. They left me alone. This was what I needed.

They clearly weren't going to help me, they just wanted to keep me from escaping my misery. Well, if they weren't going to make things better, I still had a way out.

I pulled the pillowcase off my bed. Making sure they didn't see, I tied it to the doorknob. I tied a slipknot in it and slid my head through. Then I squatted, kicked my legs out, and dangled with my butt off the ground. Things were going dim, but they caught me. I know they got me down and restrained me. Next thing I know they're shoving a pill down my throat. Zyprexa, a powerful antipsychotic.

I passed out and awoke in a dissociated fugue, unable to move. The rage was gone, but all the hurt, both physical and mental, was still there. I couldn't cry. I could barely whisper. Lifting a hand was difficult. They administered my morning medications, plus more Zyprexa.

They dragged me down the hall (not literally - I was stumbling as they held me up) to bathe me. I don't really remember it. I had a visitor whom I won't name. They wanted to give me a massage to make me feel better. The orderlies helped lay me face down on a... something, I don't remember if it was a bed or a gurney or what... in a room with privacy.

It started with my back. I didn't like it. It felt like they were using soap, not lotion. They didn't go far down, though, only about halfway down my back. Then they started on my legs. That outright hurt. Remember the non-painful sensations feeling painful? This is someone who knew about that symptom and inflicted this on me anyway. It hurt. "No," I muttered as loud as I could manage, "stop." They didn't hear me, apparently. "Hurts," I tried again. More massaging my calves, tearing at my flesh. The massaging moved upward. Knees. Lower thighs. Upper thighs. It just hurt before, but this was starting to feel violating. Starting to brush up to my butt and around to the inside of my upper thigh. "No," I tried to scream, but only a mumble emerged. I reached up with all my might to stop them, but my arm barely moved. But they did stop - to shush me and push my arm back down before resuming. I tried to crane my head to make them hear me. "Please, no." More shushing. "It's okay." My neck lost strength and my head fell back down. I quietly whimpered as they massaged my butt and inner thigh.

I passed out from the emotional exhaustion. I woke up in my room and dragged myself to a corner where no one could be behind me. I curled into the fetal position and let my head droop back and forth, sometimes hitting the wall. It wasn't forceful - I couldn't have managed force even if I wanted to.

I was already on a drug called Neurontin for my nerve pain. It dulled the pain, sure. It also dulled my mind, made me lethargic, slowed my metabolism, ballooned my weight, made speaking difficult (I couldn't word good), and wreaked havoc on my ability to form new memories. I was on 1500 mg three times a day when I entered the psych ward. Since it allegedly worked as a mood stabilizer (funny story, it totally doesn't based on all the best research), they increased that, first to 1800 then to 2000 for a total of 6000 mg/day. My pharmacologist would later call this borderline malpractice - it loses efficacy at such high doses and basically all you're doing is adding to side effects. Which may have been the purpose. It helped the Zyprexa with incapacitating me.

There was actually a plausibly legitimate reason for this. They needed to keep me from hurting myself while the Paxil left my system and I stabilized, and incapacitating me was a good way to do that. But it was miserable and it made me easy prey, as you saw.

I didn't really eat those first few days. I had to pick at it a little while they watched - had to be a good little psycho. But I didn't want to. I may have been too out of it for much of the pain to register anymore, but I still wanted nothing more than to die.

The 72 hours on my 5150 order expired and it was renewed with a 5250 order, a 2 week extension.

What finally drew me out of the room was the need for human contact, any human contact. I shambled out there, still weighed down by the Neurontin and Zyprexa (though building some tolerance at least), and I think talked to one of the nurses. It kind of went from there. The nurses were all very nice and respectful, even to a psychotic 18 year old, and I thank them for that.

Social contact got me in a different mode. It distracted me from my misery and made me forget I wanted to kill myself. But only while I was talking. Back in my room, in my thoughts, I still wanted to die. Still, I could be good and behave. It was the only way to get transferred to the normal ward, where they promised me better painkillers and a lidocaine IV.

So I behaved. And so I was rewarded a few days later. They took me out of lockdown and gave me a new, much nicer room in the nicer, bigger non-lockdown side of the ward. They also almost immediately gave me the IV anesthetic, as promised.

The people on the locked ward were all recluses in really bad places, so I didn't really interact with any of them. The unlocked ward had a crazy cast of characters. Old, young, middle-aged; mental illness, dysmorphia, addiction. Addiction was a pretty common thing for people to be there for. 

There was one girl there who still haunts me. She was so anorexic - like horrifying anorexic, Auschwitz-anorexic - she was in a wheelchair with a feeding tube up her nose. She was too weak to speak above a whisper. I'm not sure why, but seeing her like that really got to me. She made me feel sad, and not the kind of sad I was already feeling.

There was a lounge on the ward and access to movies. I distinctly remember watching True Romance with some roadie in there for rehab.

There were the silly arts and crafts activities. I got nothing out of them, naturally. No, less than nothing. They just gave me anxiety about how awful it would be if I drew/whatever anything and vicarious embarrassment when people would explain what they made.

At some point I think they might have told my parents I was bipolar. I don't really remember. They seemed to figure the Neurontin was plenty and there was no need to pursue other treatment. Just keep me off SSRIs, that's all.

I slowly picked back up to "normal" and even a little happy - other people's happiness, and their obvious hopes for me, was infectious.

After another 5250 and close to 3 weeks total involuntarily committed, I was released from the ward into my (IIRC) mother's custody. I did kind of miss it at first - there was no lidocaine IV at home.

Postscript: Being in the psych ward was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's also something I'm glad happened, considering the alternative is that I'd be fucking dead. People can be shitty, doctors can be dumb, others take advantage, but at least I'm still here.