God’S Dogs

By Armando Fernández Vargas

Gods Dogs is the story of Jacinto Collado, a politically conscious man, who suffers from Tourettes syndrome. People around him do not understand his medical condition. As a result of his peculiar behavior, the authorities decide to place him in a madhouse.
The story takes place in an imaginary country that seems to be a hybrid of United States and a Third World country. Jacinto tries to explain to his psychiatrists that he is not crazy, but they do not listen to him. Jacinto complains about the primitive health system of that country and their primitive skills in medicine. Any medical condition that these crazy keepers do not understand they say is craziness.
Jacintos misfortune unfolded when his girlfriend, a twenty-one-year-old beauty named Irene, leaves him and moves to Norway to become a prostitute. As if his condition is already not bad enough, right after he is admitted in the hospital, several mentally ill patients attack and sodomize him.
The story is narrated by Jacinto, who is extremely unhappy with his reality and with the moronic attitude of his people. Jacinto has two main goals in life. The first one is to escape from that madhouse. The second one is to go to Norway and find Irene. Luckily for Jacinto (if you can call that luck), in the hospital, he finds an ally. His name is Dr. Duran, a psychiatrist who becomes Jacintos best friend. That friendship gives Jacinto a reason to keep dreaming with the possibility of one day getting Irene back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palibrio
• Release date: Sep 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781506520964

Armando Fernández Vargas

Armando Fernández-Vargas, emigrante dominicano residente en Los Estados Unidos desde 1984. Graduado de Hunter College, y de la Universidad de Long Island en sicología, y del colegio de Saint Rose en administración escolar. Es autor de las novelas Crónica de Un Caníbal, (2014), y Los Perros De Dios (2017). Desde 1996 trabaja para el departamento de educación de la ciudad de Nueva York. Es actualmente supervisor del departamento de educación especial de los distritos escolares 24, y 30 de Queens. Reside en Long Island con su esposa y sus tres hijas. [e-mail]

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Copyright © 2017 by Armando Fernández Vargas.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2017945638

ISBN:         Softcover      978-1-5065-2094-0

                   eBook           978-1-5065-2096-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Rev. date: 27/09/2017

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CONTENTS

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

GOD’S DOGS

And then they came.

I was pushed out of my house

and locked inside these four white walls,

where my friends come to visit me

month by month, by twos and from six to seven …

Serrat

PART ONE

I do not belong here. I should have been born and grown up in a place, and at a time far away from here. I should have been born at least three hundred years later in the future, in a neutral place, like Canada the Canary Islands or Belize. I should have been born when the political boundaries, the ideological prejudices, the social discrimination, and the persecution as a result of sexual preferences, are gone. I should have been born in a time, where people do not have the bad habit of being humble to these authorities knowing that they are nothing more than a group of inept madmen whose only task is to force us to accept nonsense laws. I should have been born in the time of the reed; the prodigious time predicted by our grandparents, in which men will have to run to take refuge in the trees to escape crowds of enraged hot women. I should had been born in a time and a place where coming down from the trees, one must be on the lookout because thousands of women would fight to be the first to be pacified. But here I am, at the end of the twentieth century, not far from the cave times, in a society that is simply not mine. Others more conformist than me would say that life is a carnival, that the world offers us a great delicacy, and that we are all equal. That is either a biblical nonsense, or those who control the threads of this puppet play, have eaten the best part of the meal. By the time I arrived to this great fiesta, only a miserable salad with rancid dressing was left to me. You only can offer what you have, so I invite you to eat with me: Happy indigestion!

My name is Jacinto Collado, a frustrated patient in the Dr. Villani Psychiatric Hospital. I am considered a danger to myself and to society. I am accused of being a subversive as well. The secret service, according to them, found in my possession very dangerous materials: a shirt of El Che, and a CD by Silvio Rodriguez. If my neurological condition allows me, I would like to tell the depressing story of my life.

I will start this story by stating that this is a shitty country. This, I knew long ago, even before they started calling me crazy shit. I understood it perfectly, even before they called me a little shit boy. By then, I doubted my physical composition, and had the desire to sniff myself, to verify if in fact I really was made out of excrement.

The nurses are determined to make me wear this mandatory hospital uniform. They fear that I can get naked in front of the students of the Saint Lazarus School that are visiting us this afternoon. Of course, because it is stronger! I tell them, while I continue throwing kicks and punches left and right. I prefer to wear this nightgown that I found in a closet in recent days. Under it, I get as naked as a plantain, and I feel free as and loose as Saint Clare. The nurses try to convince me to get dressed. They tell me that with this nightgown I look like a fag. They fear that I could do something stupid in front of the children. They think that I am capable of showing these children my small hanging garden. Who do they think I am? Do they think I am a pedophile? Are they nuts? Do they think I am a pervert? It is obvious they don’t know me well.

So, this is my life, since they locked me up in this madhouse. I do what I feel like doing, and they try to force me to do things. I’m not sure who is winning this contest. I suspect that they are.

It would be logical to think that the patients of a mental hospital have to comply with the essential requisite of being completely crazy in order to be admitted in a madhouse. Not here. Nearly two centuries ago, George Gilles de la Tourette described my medical condition as a syndrome, often associated with the coprolalia: an urgent need to express obscene or socially inappropriate and derogatory comments. Any student of psychiatry anywhere in the world, would know that I am not crazy. My medical condition is called Tourette’s syndrome. Here, however, when these mediocre doctors do not understand a mental condition they say: this guy has a couple of screws loose, or his cable got crossed, and to the madhouse you go. These people pretend to fix their illnesses by ignoring them. As a result, we have broken all records of the variations of the crazy. To name just a few, I will mention: the damn crazy, the devil crazy, the stupid crazy, the shit crazy (that is the one they assigned to me) the humble crazy, the sad crazy, the confused crazy, the loquacious crazy, the revolutionary crazy and the intellectual crazy. Any neurological disorder that the mental hygiene workers in this country do not know how to call, they diagnose it: craziness. The truth is, that they are the only morons in this game of barbarians.

Imagine a large banana plantation, at the end of the fourteen hundreds. After centuries of exploitation, the owners abandon everything, leaving the slaves at the mercy of the foremen, who at the same time have no more qualification than to be pimps of the masters. Now imagine the same banana plantation, five hundred years later, in the midst of total disorder. The descendants of laborers and slaves are in a bloody dispute to show who is who. This is a country that rejoices in the sludge of ignorance, mimics the nonsense that come from outside, and strives to build a colossal monument to mediocrity. This country believes that we were all created in the image and likeness of an idiot. They believe that we are all morons. These people believe that science and lack of conscience, education and adulation, honesty and firearms are synonymous.

I am not crazy. A doctor with the most rudimentary knowledge of psychiatry would give me a less demeaning diagnostic. If you knew my condition, you would know that we do not link any relation between our expressions and our intentions. In short, what affects me is nothing more than an uncontrollable desire to curse and scream vulgarities. Others with neurotic tics have uncontrollable desires to cough, and they cough as long as they want. Others may feel something bothering their eyes, or feel an annoyance in their shoulders, and they can satisfy those desires without any problem. I have the need to curse, and that’s all. I feel better when I say things like: shit! Or: damn it! Or: hell swallow me! Or I shit on your mother! Or God damn it!" That last word is the one that satisfies me the most. The secret must be in the combination of the m and the n. When I say these things, I feel so much better. And what is wrong with that? Nothing, right? Well, for the simple fact of wanting to relieve myself, this society accuses me of the worst. It is true that I say other atrocities which vary according to the emotional state that affects me at that given time. On occasions I remember excerpts of advertisements or expressions of pleasure (almost always of erotic origins). For no reason, they stick in my mind, and I have to shout them. They cling to my poor brain and go out of me. Those are things that I cannot control, but neither hurt anyone. I can swear to you I’m not as bad as these doctors say.

I remember as a young boy, an advertisement about detergent. One of the actors said: look, the clothes washed with this detergent became impeccably clean and a second actor answered: of course, because it is stronger. That last sentence has taken hold of me as a vine takes over an old trunk. Since then, I repeat it day and night, the same way an obsessive believer repeats a prayer again and again.

At times I dream of fighting dragons, cyclops, and all sorts of formidable monsters, and I defeat all of them, always, at the end of each victory, I hear a triumphant voice exclaiming: Jacinto defeated them because he is stronger! That expression sometimes comes to me in parts. Without thinking about it, suddenly I exclaim: of course! Or, it is stronger!. When that happens, it is a challenge to stop myself. It is as if that stupid expression has its own life and escapes from my lips when it wants. You would understand me fully if I tell you that the phrase goes out of me the same way a surprise blow makes you say an uncontrollable shit! or the same way an extremely beautiful woman that passes by