The Meaning of Fyfe: The 70's

By John R. Fyfe

Sex, drugs & out of control! Amid the gritty 70s streets of Montreal borough Verdun, John Fyfe walks an observational tightrope, his

sanity at stake. His uncompromising gaze dissects the hypocrisy of society's authorities, teachers, doctors, and bosses while commiserating with the outcasts they've locked away during a spiralling summer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781639455881

John R. Fyfe

John Fyfe was born in Montreal Canada and raised in nearby Verdun. He ran an import business from Asia, is a writer, an esoteric speaker and enjoys a career in Vedic astrology having trained in India. John has spent extended periods in Ireland, England, India and Thailand and currently divides his time between Quebec, Canada and Colorado.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank all the real-life characters who, for better or worse, were in my life journey during the 70s. The path to light comes from being able to walk through the darkness! I learned from the best.

Special thanks to my dear friend Joyce Goldman who gave me fantastic support and encouragement when writing my story. You are greatly missed. I still hear your laughter when I read excerpts from the manuscript.

I appreciate the Branding Writers team and Dakota Jenkins for revamping my book and giving it a new life.

The Meaning of Fyfe Chronicles will continue!

Author’s note

This story takes place in the 1970s. It was an incredible time, and the setting is the city of Verdun, just a few miles from downtown Montreal where my family originated in the early 1900s. But it wasn’t until the mid-1930s that they were finally able to settle there once and for all. My grandmother was born in Verdun in 1900. Twenty years later my grandfather, who grew up in Nova Scotia, came to Montreal looking for work. He moved to Verdun for a short period of time, where he and my grandmother met and got married.

My grandfather, with my grandmother in tow, returned to Nova Scotia to live on my great-grandparents’ farm in the early 1920s. When they came back to Verdun with a young, ever-growing family eight years later, the Depression was soon to hit and when it did, they had no choice but to head East until 1936.

My story is not a tale reminiscing about an ideal family life in a happy, normal environment. Nor does it come with many historical points, although the many anecdotes told to me by my family touch upon different time periods and give a great idea of what it was like back then.

As such, my story may disappoint people wishing to read about history, or who would perhaps like it to be about idyllic family life. That wasn’t the way things were in Verdun in my day. Most of my generation, the late boomers, were ready for something quite different - anything.

We weren’t content with the status quo. Our parents were happy with that. After all, they had come from the Great Depression and a World War. No wonder they seemed to have found contentment in their lives after that; but did they really? My story may shock some when they read what I have to say and how my group of friends and I behaved, but I believe it was our generation trying to figure out how to be happy in a world rooted in discontent, a world we saw as full of lies.

The lunatic is in my head, the lunatic is in my head

You raise the blade, you make the change

You rearrange me ‘til I’m sane

You lock the door, and throw away the key

There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me…

Roger Waters: Brain Damage, 1973

You can climb a mountain, you can swim the sea

You can jump into the fire,

But you’ll never be free…

Harry Nilsson: Jump Into The Fire, 1971

Then I guess she had to crash

Valium would have helped that bash

Said, Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side…

Lou Reed: Take a Walk on the Wild Side, 1972

Chapter 1

THE SHADOW BEGINS

It was the early ‘70s. I had just turned eighteen and been working at my summer job for over a month, employed as a hospital janitor. But this wasn’t any ordinary hospital, it was an institute for the mentally ill, the insane. The job description said I was in charge of maintaining the cleanliness of the first floor ward. I soon found this included mopping up urine and scooping shit from the floors, sometimes scraping it off the walls of the dayrooms and thirty- odd bedrooms I cleaned. Welcome to my life at Samson Hospital.

The ward I worked in had approximately fifty patients, with males and females placed in separate wings. The floor was your typical L-shaped hospital ward. There were two dayrooms in the centre, as well as a television room adjacent to the entrance where the elevators were located.

I worked in the Mears building, which had three floors. Each ward had its own unique kind of insanity, with the first floor winning the prize for profound originality. This was where I worked most of the time, where I came to know and embrace insanity. The pure outrageousness and crazed behaviour on floor one gave me great insights into the defects and dysfunction of the human mind, and discovering this was to become my worst nightmare.

For me, it was like entering a Twilight Zone, where the darkness and madness of the ward brought out my own fears and shadows. Over time, I slowly became part of the general insanity in this ward. The patients installed on the first floor were a wild and zany bunch suffering from mental afflictions that went far beyond whatever the word ‘abnormal’ is thought to mean.

Patients on the second floor suffered from various illnesses that were not as yet life-threatening; the ward consisted of mainly elderly people with some degree of mental illness or senility. The second floor was the intermediate floor, where the patients would either become sicker and be sent up to the third floor to die, or stabilize and be transferred to a better ward in the hospital. Some just remained there in limbo.

Patients on the third floor had life-threatening diseases, such as cancer or pneumonia, and extensive physical deterioration due to strokes. This floor was where they would eventually come to the end of their lives. Most of the patients on the second and third floors had at some time led what our society would call a normal life. They were now labelled insane as their minds caved in. Many of the patients on these floors were bedridden, lying like vegetables, staring at the ceiling mumbling incoherent words to themselves over and over, day and night.

***

The elevator door opened and I walked onto the first floor, the stench of urine hitting me harder than ever on account of the heat and humidity. It was early July and the day promised to be a scorcher. It was seven in the morning and I was ready to work my eight and a half hour shift in the madhouse.

The first patient I always saw upon disembarking from the safe calm of the elevator was a young man in his early twenties, often tied to his wheelchair. Today, his hands were not bound, so I knew that for the moment he was behaving himself. I also knew it was only a matter of time before the young man began his thing, regular as clockwork. I had become familiar with the telltale signs, which were beginning to appear on the patient’s face.

The young fellow had a leering grin on his pale, waxen face, a smile exuding a state of euphoria, even ecstasy. A soft, groaning sound emanated from between his compressed lips, and when I looked his way I saw what excited him. You’d have to be blind not to. Protruding out of the young man’s johnny shirt was a massive erection that would have done a horse proud. His penis was at least sixteen inches in length, and might have been larger than that. I never wanted to get too close for measuring purposes; viewing him and his monster at a distance was quite enough. The Penis Boy, as the staff called him, had just begun fondling his huge erection as his glistening eyes stared vacantly through me, his lustful visage giving me the willies.

Uhm! came a groaning sound. Uhmmm! This time it was longer and louder. The young man’s penis grew still larger, a swollen monument that fascinated and shocked me every time I saw it. Then, moving in slow motion, the patient’s hands worked themselves into fists. He raised them above his shoulders and then, with a high- pitched screech, slammed them into his genitals. The scream of agony that issued from his grimacing face could be heard throughout the ward as again and again he viciously pounded his fists into his groin.

I knew this would continue until one of the nurses came over to tie his hands to the chair. This would take at least half an hour, for the nursing staff were usually quite busy at this time of the morning with the changing of shifts and tending to other patients in the ward. They had to wake the patients, give out their medication and prepare them for breakfast, which would be arriving within the hour. So the Penis Boy’s screams would echo through the ward until at last a nurse, herself no longer able to bear the noise, would come over and put a stop to his mortification.

Thankfully, he took intervals between his vicious shots to the crotch. His usual pattern was to become quite still for about five minutes, recovering from his pain, before once again starting to gently massage his member and arouse himself. The leering smile would reappear with the obvious enjoyment he took from his reborn erection, then it all started over. The crushing blows would erase the pleasure that had been tattooed on his face, which became contorted with excruciating pain. He was punishing himself for his self-gratification and would continue this ritual all day, either until he was tied up or until his heavy medication kicked in, lulling him into a stupor.

I knew the Penis Boy’s screaming indicated a bad start to the day, as it was far too early for this commotion to start. Screams in the ward were always contagious, the patients seeming to urge each other on until the screeching reached a crescendo. They sounded like animals cooped up in cages, waiting to be slaughtered. They’d arouse each other with their wild cries of misery until the echoing din became a shrieking chorus.

Normally, all of this wouldn’t take place until close to midday. With the Penis Boy beginning his foreplay so early, I knew it would affect the other patients like a spreading, infectious disease. Each one would pick up on the disturbed energy then express their own inner hell with screams and howls. It was a chain reaction of noise and bedlam similar to what you’d imagine with inmates ready to riot in a prison.

***

The heat will be a bugger today, I told myself. Shit, what a day this is going to be! I’d developed a habit of talking out loud to myself in the hospital. So far I wasn’t doing it anywhere else.

My morning began with mopping up urine puddled on the dayroom floors. It was yellow and sticky, as it had been there since last night. I had a special bucket used only for mopping urine and vomit. I had a separate bucket and mop for cleaning the bedrooms and corridors.

Rivers of urine accumulated in the dayrooms as patients were placed there after having their breakfast and showers. They were left pretty much on their own until lunchtime, while the nursing staff attended to the ailments of other patients, re-bandaging small wounds, taking temperatures and helping some of them dress. Most of the patients in the dayrooms required some assistance to go to the washroom, so with nobody around when they needed help, they pissed themselves, the urine flowing onto their chairs and down to the floor. Many on my floor were not in wheelchairs and were quite capable of walking to the toilet, but due to lethargy from their medication, or laziness, they simply relieved themselves wherever they were at that particular moment. Bed, floor, chair or toilet; it was all the same.

The urine I wiped up in the morning had accumulated from three-thirty the previous afternoon when I’d completed my shift. The hospital had plans to put in a night shift, but it hadn’t yet happened. There was often a disgusting mess to clean up on Mondays, after we cleaners had the weekend off, leaving only a skeleton crew to look after the various wards.

At the best of times patients on the first floor didn’t function with clear or balanced minds, but that didn’t mean they had no intelligence or wit. They certainly did, but it was hidden, underlying; you probably wouldn’t notice it at all unless you saw them on a daily basis, as I did.

The patients definitely had their own personalities, often very colourful. In many cases I found them more expressive than most people in the outside, ‘normal’ world. I communed daily with the sane and insane, and was slowly becoming aware that there was very little difference between the two. I was beginning to realize that in our society, it was all a matter of walking that fine line - if you didn’t, you could be labelled ‘crazy’ and put away.

At the same time, I knew most of the patients were beyond any place in our reality. They seemed to be in another state of mind, a foggy world where feelings were lost but probably not forgotten. Sometimes I’d see a patient reconnecting with faded emotions; an expression of happiness or sadness would suddenly appear on their face. For a brief moment, that patient would come out of their catatonic trance and suddenly there he was, a human being who could cry or smile at a hidden memory, making him feel alive again. An instant later, the spark vanished and he’d be back looking at the world through vacant eyes, his soul trapped once more in an empty, hollow shell, lost again in his lost world.

I often smoked a joint of hash or grass before starting my day in the madhouse. Back then you could always find a reason to smoke a joint; it was a regular part of life for many of us. It certainly gave me a feeling of freedom and always changed the way I saw things. Getting high anytime and anywhere was the thing to do and there was always an abundance of hash in Montreal, as it was a large port city. As well as smoking up, I’d sometimes do psychedelics, and usually this was combined with beer, wine, or some other liquor. Smoking up on the job seemed to help distance me from the crazy vibes of the patients and the heaviness of the supervisors, like having a protective shield around me. It increased my awareness and basically allowed me to cope in a situation I didn’t care to be in. I was better able to detach myself when I was stoned, or so I thought. I felt I could be there and not be there at the same time.

But at other times, being stoned had the counter-effect of making me pick up too many vibrations from the patients and become paranoid. I found it challenging not to lose my rational mind, my sensible self, when stoned and working with the insane. I enjoyed the test back then.

The first time I smoked a joint on the job was with my cousin Pete, who worked in the hospital kitchen. I didn’t know if I could cope. My mind was racing, while simultaneously an increased awareness made the situation around me almost intolerable, enhancing the reality, or maybe unreality, of this insane asylum. Fear and paranoia always seemed to be waiting, lingering like a hazy cloud, hanging around ready to engulf me if I let them.

It’s quite trippy in here, man, I’d say to my cousin after smoking up. Just trying to keep your reality in this place when it’s filled with crazy people and that especially includes the staff!

He laughed and said, It’s actually the ultimate trip getting stoned in here, John, more intense than anywhere else. It’s a real mind game.

***

As I mopped urine in the dayroom, the radio blasted a song by the Doobie Brothers: Woah, oh, oh, listen to the music... Brilliant sun shone through the large screened windows and for a second I felt the balmy summer breeze against my face. Birds were chirping merrily, flitting amongst the willows. Then came the sound of a familiar voice behind me, murmuring profanities.

You goddamn fucking bastard!

Carol Marshall gently rocked back and forth on the floor, softly repeating her mantra. She wore a flimsy white cotton gown that exposed her full breasts. ‘A nice pair of tomatoes,’ I’d sometimes think when I was stoned.

Carol was in her late twenties with her dark hair cut very short, almost a brush-cut. Heavy medication made her look older. She could almost have been any age – thirty, forty, even fifty years- old; an ageless soul. She was blind but had uncanny instincts. Most of the time she was able to walk about like a person with sight. She always knew where you were, which was unfortunate, for that usually spelled trouble. Carol’s radar guided her into the smacking zone, as I called it, a position from which she could and did launch attacks with dismaying regularity.

At first, I considered Carol one of the most terrifying patients. As I grew less afraid, I found her to be the most interesting and entertaining inmate in the hospital. She was always able to track me when all was quiet and my guard was down. She’d approach from behind and apply the claw, or ‘craw,’ as Pete called it. The craw involved digging her fingernails, vise-like, into the tender skin beneath the biceps. Pete nicknamed it the craw based on an episode of Get Smart he’d seen. A Chinese character who couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘L’ would announce to his foes that he was going to apply his punishing grip, or ‘craw,’ to them.

You’d rarely notice Carol closing in, then suddenly felt a sharp pinching on your inner arm that quickly evolved into agony until her hold was broken. This could take some doing - at times I had to yank a handful of her hair as hard as I could or slap her to get her to let go. She’d shriek in pain and gradually back off, enabling me to squirm free. My arms were constantly bruised and scratched during the time I worked on that ward. Carol rarely approached if I was on the lookout for her. Only when my mind drifted away as I mopped the floors, daydreaming and pondering life in my stoned state of mind would she swoop in, pouncing like a cat. Her sense of timing was amazing.

Carol had three or four favourite expressions, and you could teach her to parrot any phrase including dirty words. You goddamn fucking bastard was her number one, along with Smell my bum! which was a close runner-up. For long periods of the day, Carol would harp on the same sentence, chanting in her singsong voice, Smell my bum! often changing the intonation of each word.

Another expression of hers was, You goddamn fucking nigger! One can imagine how well that went with the over fifty per cent black staff working in the ward. Of course, someone must have taught her that specific line earlier on, someone who wasn’t black. I was amazed at how she could distinguish between white and black staff. Every time a black nurse tended to Carol, she inevitably exclaimed, You goddamn fucking nigger! She rarely used that charming comment on white staff but had other vulgarities saved especially for them. Carol wasn’t a racist - she wouldn’t have known what that meant. You couldn’t accuse her of discrimination; anyone within firing range was fair game.

I tiptoed past Carol as she lay on the floor murmuring her customary litany. I wasn’t quite ready for her that day, but we’d often interact when I first saw her. I’d usually greet her with a barrage of dirty words, arousing her immediately. It became a regular thing after a month of working on the ward, my way of saying hello, which she seemed to enjoy thoroughly. Hey Carol! You dirty whore! How are you? I’d shout to her. You dirty fucking slut!

Carol was usually lying on the floor at that time of morning, trying to pull herself out of her drugged stupor. Sure enough, at the sound of those words, her thin lips curved upward in a slight smile. She’d begin repeating my lewd sentence over and over again, softly at first, then louder each time, until it became a rhythm. With each repetition she changed her inflection as she mouthed the words. Or she’d shout, Say it again! Say, ‘Carol Marshall is a dirty whore!’ Say it again!

And then, just before leaving and getting on to my work I’d whisper the words she loved to hear, You fucking bitch, Carol.

***

That day I wasn’t ready to start such antics. My mood was low, but just as I passed Carol, her hands snapped out for my ankles, which shocked me for a second; her arms were like slithering snakes seeking prey. This time she missed her target. Her medication, combined with the heaviness of the day’s humidity, made her less coordinated than usual. I quickly moved on, feeling a giddy relief in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d made it past some dangerous monster before it awoke.

The job I had was tough enough if indeed I did the work; sometimes I didn’t. I had to mop thirty bedrooms each day, clean the toilets in every room, wipe up urine and any other mess lying around. There was garbage to collect and take outside. If there was any free time after that, I was meant to wax and polish the two long corridors. The dayroom floors and lobby always had to be mopped as well. If there was any more time left in the workday, and I usually made sure there wasn’t, I was also required to polish off those dayrooms. Buffing floors that would be pissed on again later that day was not my top priority.

That morning, after wiping up piss and drinking a coffee in the nursing station, I took the garbage trolley outside and sat on the cement ledge of the small driveway leading to the garage. To be honest, I really did very little from the time I punched in until after the nine o’clock break. I usually sat on the ledge smoking a joint, taking in the beautiful summer morning and listening to the happy twittering of birds, not to mention the screams and screeches that periodically issued from my building. Life couldn’t be better.

***

Sitting there, I spotted my cousin Pete strolling towards me decked out in his kitchen uniform; grey-collared white shirt and light grey-and-white striped pants. On top of his frizzy, short hair, which used to be long and Afro-like until he got the job in the kitchen, was his tiny nylon cap.

If you worked in the kitchen, you cut your hair short because the main boss, Miss Mathews, insisted on it and there were no exceptions. If you did not comply, you did not work there, simple as that.

Miss Mathews was a tyrant and everyone working under that woman was terrified of crossing her. She ran a tight ship, and had to be hard and stern, for she was dealing with a mainly male staff who were a tough bunch of customers. They constantly needed to be kept in line, or they would do anything they felt they could get away with. Too many breaks was one thing, but drinking on the job, slacking off or gambling during breaktime was quite another. Some of these men had been in the war and some had been in jail. Many were hoods and slackers. All of them were afraid of Miss Mathews. She was over fifty years-old, perhaps closer to sixty, but when she barked an order, people jumped. It was something to see, as long as you weren’t in the line of fire.

Her face would puff up, turning red with fury. Her eyes became those of a mad, savage animal, boring into the poor sap who dared oppose her. Then her verbal barrage began. Miss Mathews screamed at foes toe-to-toe, up close and personal, at times the froth from her mouth spraying her victim as she dressed him down. Within moments, you saw rage grow from somewhere inside her, often over a small incident, and you knew it was about to blow like a lava-spewing volcano.

Miss Mathews was known to send grown men home to shave if they had a five o’clock shadow; family men, ex-criminals and former servicemen alike were scolded and sent home like little schoolboys. If one arrived at work late, even if by just a minute, she’d berate that person venomously, always in front of his fellow workers. She’d have a screaming fit if their shirts weren’t tucked into their pants neatly and properly, embarrassing the hell out of these men like young boys being chewed out by the principal.

***

Hey Pete! I yelled. What the hell’s happening? Qué pasa? Nice haircut, man!

Yeah, thanks for the compliment, he answered sarcastically. Look at your hair, down to your shoulders. They don’t make you cut it though, do they? You’re lucky you don’t work in the kitchen, man! Mother Mathews would make you chop it off.

Pete brushed back what was left of his frizzy hair and said, Geez! I couldn’t get up today, I was so tired. I had to race out of the house to get to work on time. I didn’t wash, brush my teeth or nothing. I just jumped out of bed and ran over here. I didn’t want Mathews to catch me coming in late. She would’ve killed me, the old battleaxe. I punched my card with about a minute to spare and Christ, there she was waiting by the time clock. It’s worse than school here! Pete moaned. She still told me off, though.

He imitated her: ‘You know, Peter, it is not the best thing to be just barely on time, because in my eyes that is still running late, and I think it would be in your best interests to be more careful not to fall into bad habits because you know, I won’t stand for it!’ Boy, that old bag scares the hell out of me. She was talking nice to me, but at the end her eyes were beginning to bulge out like a crazy woman, worse than any patient from the psycho ward. All you can do is play sweet and innocent with her. That’s the only way you can answer her without making her go crazy.

What the hell happens when you meet her after smoking a joint?

That really freaks me out. I’d rather be working in your ward than meet up with her when I’m stoned.

I laughed and said, So what’s going on, man? Do you have the same breaktime as me today?

Yeah, I do, so we can meet up. I just got to pick up the food truck on your ward first, then get the others before I return to the main kitchen. By then it’ll be breaktime. How ‘bout you, been up on your ward at all?

Yeah, I’ve been there. I gotta show my face in case that rat, my foreman, checks on me like he usually does. But I try to do fuck-all until after nine o’clock break. That’s why I’m out here now, before busting my balls the rest of the day. I can’t take that ward so early in the morning, especially when it’s so nice outside. And you know my parents have split to the country for six weeks. I got the house to myself for most of the summer. Too bad we can’t just be hanging out every day partying at my house and enjoying the summer, but here we are working away in the loony bin. Hey, Pete! I know you like it up in my ward. Come on, let’s go get that food truck of yours and I’ll give you a quick tour. But wait a sec. I’ll light this spliff of hash first and you can take a quick drag, and then you’ll enjoy my ward even more. I laughed when I saw fear rising in his face.

I’m only taking one toke! I can’t hack your floor straight, never mind stoned. I don’t know how you can work in there.

Practice, Pete, it just takes practice. Anyway, I thought you said it was better to be in my job than in the kitchen with Mother Mathews. C’mon, have a toke. I passed the lit joint to him. As he puffed on it, we suddenly heard a loud, agonizing scream come from one of the windows on my floor. Pete jumped, the involuntary movement of his skinny body making me laugh again.

Don’t worry about that, I said. It sounds like they’re in a torture chamber, but it’s only a patient being doused with a cold shower. Or maybe they don’t like their breakfast!

Pete laughed out the smoke he’d been holding in, then passed the reefer to me. He placed his cap back on his head, covering the dark, wiry hair I used to tease him about because it looked exactly like steel wool when it was longer. I got to get that food truck soon and bring it back to the kitchen.

Okay, let’s get going, I said. Hey, what are those kitchen boys up to today? What time they going to start drinking?

Pretty soon, I’d say, Pete replied. Kenny Lawson has a forty- ouncer of whisky and lots of hash, so I guess they’ll be starting at nine o’clock break.

Ah, here we go again, another glorious day of drinking and smoking in the loony bin, I said with amusement in my voice. I always miss the main action being stuck over here. Maybe I should apply to work in the kitchen and be with you guys, eh? You party every day.

Oh yeah? It seems you, Rick and Fernie do your own partying in this building and you don’t have the heat of a Mother Mathews chasing you around.

The kitchen boys were a notorious lot. Most of them were tough, beyond a doubt, and much older than our gang working at the hospital for the summer. We were just out of high school at our first summer job, still a few years shy of twenty, but felt older because we’d acquired some street smarts. We’d been drinking and experimenting with drugs since we were fifteen years-old and, so far, weren’t all that screwed up. Smoking up, dropping LSD and doing mescaline were old hat to me and my friends. We thought we were experts when it came to drinking and getting high. We weren’t quite ready for graduation in that category though, as we had yet to earn our degrees with the kitchen boys - true professionals in the art of decadence.

That summer was to involve major research into the drinking of alcohol, with training provided by the kitchen boys. Those guys lived to get high and earned their money to spend it on booze and drugs. They drank whisky and beer, smoked hash and grass, and gambled on just about anything. They’d have sex with anyone they could get hold of – anything walking and breathing was good enough.

I bet some of those guys would have considered screwing corpses given the opportunity. They often had sex with the patients, paying them fifty cents for a blow job, a little more for a fuck. For some of the kitchen boys, the blow jobs didn’t require the patient being female. It didn’t matter to them; it was only sex. As long as orgasm is reached every day, boy, that’s all that counts, one of the kitchen crew answered me when I asked about the sexual preferences of some of the guys. Many of them were married, yet having sex outside marriage was a separate and quite acceptable notion. It proved to the world that what a man wants is what a man does. Most of the kitchen boys had this mindset, whether they were in their twenties or fifties. It certainly seemed that only a minority of the workers didn’t participate in the drinking and whoring around.

***

We got into the elevator at ground level, adjacent to the garage area. This week Pete was on truck duty. His job was to transport the trucks to various wards throughout the hospital and then, after the patients had eaten, collect them.

Samson Hospital had about twenty buildings, each housing various types of patients in three wards. There was a building for the heavies, the so-called criminally insane, another was just for the elderly, people who were not physically afflicted but mentally on their way out, and then there were other buildings and wards for adolescents and children. There were also wards for patients who were physically deformed as well as mentally handicapped, like the one I worked in, and others for patients who were borderline crazy, the schizophrenics who danced between realities. We had two specific buildings for new arrivals to Samson; one for the French, another for the English. These patients had, until recently, been one of us, living in our society, but having suffered mental breakdowns, were now no longer free.

Pete had another kitchen employee working with him, as well as a few patients who helped in hopes of earning some cigarette and coffee money. About thirty food trucks had to be pushed through the underground tunnels connecting the buildings. Food was prepared in the main kitchen then placed in containers on the trucks, which had heating devices to keep the food warm. The kitchen boys delivered the trucks to their destined wards where they’d be plugged in until the food, or slop as many called it, was ready to be served. A food truck could supply an entire building.

The kitchen was well-organized by Miss Mathews, with every ward having a kitchen boy and female dietician to serve the food then scrape and wash all the dishes. Each building had well over a hundred patients, so the job of dishwasher was a busy one.

***

The odour hit us as soon as the elevator opened onto my floor. Pungent smells of urine and disinfectant mixed with wafts of toast, coffee and watery scrambled eggs. I was surprised how quiet the ward had become. The Penis Boy was very still, eyes closed and head nodding to one side, no erection in sight or hand; there was no sign of Carol Marshall. The only thing to be heard was the radio blaring in the dayroom, playing a Carole King song: It’s too late baby now, it’s too late, though we really did try to make it...

I peeked into one of the dayrooms and said, Hey, Pete! Come over here. I want to introduce you to somebody. This here is Donny Barr. I think he was a boxer in his other life. Isn’t that right, Donny?

Donny was in a wheelchair although he could walk a little, in his late fifties, of Scottish descent and extremely proud of his heritage. His hair was receding, exposing a large, weather-beaten, punchy-looking face. His nose had obviously been broken many times and was quite enlarged, resembling that of the old-time actor

W.C. Fields. Standing in front of him, he stared us down with fiery defiance in his eyes. Hey, Donny, ya dumb old Irishman, I said. How the heck are ya?

Immediately he rolled up the sleeves of his gown, licked his thumbs and clenched his hands into fists. In a gravelly voice, face red as a tomato, he yelled, I’m Scots as hell, you bastard, and don’t you fucking forget it!

I know, Donny, I know. It was my friend here who said you were a dumb Irishman. He should know better. I gave Pete a shove, moving him within Donny’s reach. He was in fighting stance, though still in his chair, and began throwing wild punches, missing Pete’s face by inches.

Come on, bastard! I’ll beat you to a pulp. You’re nothing to me. Nothing!

Hey, slow down, chief. I ain’t done nothing to you, take it easy, man! Pete was taken aback by the near contact but amused at the same time.

Hey, Donny, I said. Pete here thinks you’re chickenshit and a real dumb Irishman!

I’m Scots as hell, you bastard! You hear me? Put’ em up! (I Oz as more wild haymakers were directed at us. Donny leaned further out of his chair, looking like he was having an apoplectic fit.) I’ll make mincemeat out of you! he shouted at Pete, who must have been glad he’d smoked only a few puffs of hash and was able to regroup from his initial surprise.

Hey, Donny, cool it, he said. I’m your friend, man, and I know you’re one hell of a tough guy and Scottish too. So come on, let’s make peace, okay?

Donny began to back down, just as fast as he’d riled up. The boxing motion of his fists slowed and his face began resuming its normal colour.

Okay then, he answered gruffly. Watch your goddamn step next time.

Pete suddenly let out a tormented scream that could compete with any patient undergoing shock treatment, as he suddenly found himself in the vise-grip of Carol Marshall’s icy fingers clawing into the soft area inside his arm. Got you, fucker, she purred.

Aaah! Let go! Let me go! Pete cried, attempting to pry off her fingers. He and Carol veered very close to Donny, who seized the moment and connected a solid punch to Pete’s jaw. This shot to the face wasn’t his main concern though, it was Carol, hanging on for dear life, screaming with joy, happy as a cat that’s seized its prey.

You goddamn fucking bastard, she said. I got you, you goddamn fucking bastard!

John! Get her off me! Pete wailed. I moved to help him, beside myself with laughter looking at the panic on his face, and tried peeling Carol’s fingers away. She wouldn’t loosen her grip and swatted at me with her free hand. I gave her the craw treatment back, finally grabbing a tuft of her hair and yanking it hard. With a screech of pain, she released Pete’s arm.

What a fucking place this is, he said, while I laughed uncontrollably. I’m getting the hell out of here. He massaged his arm. There were deep scratch marks and he was sure to be left with a great purplish bruise. I knew from experience.

Don’t worry, I said. This is what happens to me all day long.

Well, I wouldn’t work here, that’s for sure, Pete answered. Not for a million dollars! Christ! My face is stinging from that punch and look at my arm! I might need a shot or something. That bitch might have rabies.

Donny still had his fists up, shadow-boxing. Carol, meanwhile, was buzzing like a horsefly. She began singing one of her favourite Beatles songs: Oh-bla-di, oh-bla-da. Life goes on... Unfortunately, she got too close to Donny, and I heard the solid crack of bone on bone. One of his left hooks had connected with her jaw and she went down like she’d been shot, screeching and shouting to anyone in range between sobs, Donny Barr hit me! Nurse! Donny Barr hit Carol Marshall!

I was about to have words with Donny, maybe rough him up a little, then turned and saw Jack Steele, my foreman, standing right behind me.

Well, Fyfe, he said. I see at least you are on your ward, although I don’t see that piss being mopped up in too much of a hurry. He pointed to a puddle in the corridor. Pete shifted towards the elevator where his food truck was; the nursing staff had moved it out of the cafeteria for him. Still rubbing his arm, he waved to me, a signal to meet in the cafeteria at break.

I replied to my foreman. Well, I didn’t see the piss before, so maybe it just happened. I’ll move along and get to it and then I’m going to take my break.

The way my watch reads, Fyfe, your break doesn’t commence for another fifteen minutes, and mopping that area will only take about two. With a nervous expression on his pinkish baby-face, Steele looked over at Carol, who still moaned.

Nurse, Donny Barr hit me! Donny Barr’s bad! Nurse!

Well, Jack, I answered. I’ll just have to find me another pool or two of piss somewhere and that will fill up my time, so don’t you worry about a thing.

Okay, Fyfe, get busy then. Meanwhile, I’m going to check on your pals upstairs to see exactly where they are. Any chance you’ve seen them this morning? Steele referred to my two friends from high school, Rick and Fernie, who worked on floors two and three.

Actually, I haven’t, I replied, surprised, as we usually visited each other early in the morning to smoke a joint and delay working. But I’m sure they’re cleaning up the piss on their floor and waiting for their foreman to come check on them ten minutes before breaktime, as usual.

Before Steele could respond, Carol began crawling towards him, her serpentine arms stretching closer. She’d stopped sobbing. Sensing there was a newcomer in the area, she started speaking in Steele’s direction. Where are you, fucker? Carol threw a wild punch close to his groin.

That was enough for him, who, like most people visiting my ward, was extremely nervous. He quickly made his departure, adding insincerely, Keep up the good work, Fyfe.

Steele, the hypocrite, walked down the hallway towards the stairwell, in the opposite direction from the elevators. The emergency stairwell provided an alternate route for sneak attacks by the foreman, whose fondest hope was finding one of the cleaners sleeping on the job. Takes one to know one, I thought, knowing the foremen had been cleaners themselves at one time. I mopped the pool of urine from the floor.

On my way out of the dayroom, I went over to Donny and said, What do you think you’re doing, smacking Carol in the face? That ain’t being so tough, is it?

That’s none of your fucking business! His spittle just missed me while his thick, sandpaper tongue moved in and out of his mouth, a reaction to his medication.

A black female nurse came into the dayroom, having missed all the action as usual, and said in her Trinidadian accent, What all this commotion going on here, Carol Marshall?

Donny Barr hit me, nurse! Donny Barr hit me, she sobbed, playing it up.

It’s all right now, dear. It’s all right. I briefly explained what had happened and the nurse said, Dat normal between dose two, dey either smacking each other or trying to fornicate. One time we catch dat Donny Barr on top of Carol, humping her like a jackrabbit, both of dem fucking away like no tomorrow. He horny as a toad, aren’t you, Donny? She pinched his cheek and there was no aggressive response from him. He didn’t exactly smile, but he willingly tolerated it.

Carol suddenly yelled emphatically, You goddamn fucking nigger! Goddamn fucking nigger!

Embarrassed by Carol’s comment I left, pushing the piss bucket along as I saw Rick in his light-brown cleaner uniform exit the elevator. Hey, cleaner boy, I called. Did you see Steele checking up on ya?

Sure did, cleaner boy, he answered, flicking his long hair back behind his ears. He did his snoop then ran out of the dayroom when the old ladies started ranting at him. I was a good boy when he came in, though, mopping up a storm waiting for his visit. He was overdue to show up on my floor before break.

Yeah, I said. He’s always trying to catch us slacking, but what the fuck does he expect ten minutes before break? For us to be buffing the floors or washing down the ceilings? Good thing this building freaks him out - you know he won’t be here too much. Where’s Fernie? Still up on the third floor?

No, he’s not in today, Rick replied. "He’s got his four-day weekend just starting.

Yeah, right on! I forgot it’s Thursday - shit, it’s payday! Where the fuck are our cheques? How come Steele didn’t bring them rather than sniffing around trying to catch us goofing off so he could report us? Why didn’t he know Fernie was off today? He doesn’t even know who the hell’s working on his team. What an idiot. Come on, let’s go get our cheques then we can go to the caf for breakfast. Pete’s meeting us there after he hauls his truck back. After that, maybe we’ll think about washing down these stinking rooms.

As we waited for the elevator, Rick walked over to Mario, a patient in his late fifties and incessant complainer. He said to him, Don’t be pissing on this goddamn floor while we go on break. You hear?

What made me laugh was that Rick was more than half-serious. He actually got very annoyed if an area he had washed or cleaned was messed up afterwards. Rick was organized by nature and expected some order to be kept in the wards, never mind that conditions were hopeless for achieving any such thing.

Mario was not a patient to be treated like a fool; he had his wits about him. He was angry at life, especially at being in this hellhole confined to a wheelchair, and I thought, ‘Who wouldn’t be angry being put in here?’ It seemed he’d suffered a few minor strokes, but why he’d been placed in this ward was a puzzling question.

Shut your fucking mouth, you son of a bitch, the dark-haired Mario responded. You think I’m an animal, you bastard?

Don’t you be yelling at me! Rick was getting almost as angry, which amused me to no end, seeing him get so personally involved. Turning towards Mario he, like Pete with Donny Barr, had moved closer - into firing range - and Mario proceeded to spew a glob of green slime that landed on Rick’s face. The elevator arrived at the same time and its doors opened. Rick wasn’t intimidated like Pete was, though. He grabbed Mario by the collar and said, You goddamn fucking wop! Who do you think you’re gobbing on?

Mario was shaking, not with fear, but in laughter. I pulled Rick away and laughed as well, but didn’t want him to be stupid enough to strike a patient. I dragged him into the elevator while he yelled at Mario, I’m going to fix you for this, goddammit. I’ll be back to wipe that monkey grin off your face.

Overjoyed with Rick’s reaction, Mario gave him the finger and did a monkey imitation, his face flushed with amusement. The elevator doors closed and we began descending. The din from the first floor became a distant murmur, then all was still. Rick wiped away the trickles of slime still soiling his cheek, cursing Mario as we exited the elevator and ran smack into the notorious Kenny Lawson.

Kenny was in his mid-thirties, a smooth, fast-talking black dude who was one of the kitchen veterans. A professional slacker, among other things. He gambled, drank and smoked reefer daily, and lived to hustle anybody for anything. Nevertheless, you couldn’t help liking Kenny’s happy-go-lucky nature. He liked our young gang as well. We were able to connect and speak the same language, especially when it was about getting high for the day. Kenny smoked us up often enough during breaks. Most of the kitchen boys preferred boozing, but he always wanted a joint with his drink.

It takes the edge off a man and keeps him from getting too aggressive and behaving stupidly at work, he’d say. Drink and smoke something with it and nobody knows a goddamn thing about what you’re up to. You got to have that balance and keep those bosses guessing.

Kenny constantly chased women, ladies of any age or race. Having sex with patients was fine with him. Whether or not they had teeth in their mouths or whiskers on their faces was not a great concern. Sex was a constant conversation piece with him.

Gotta lay down some pipe, boy, he’d say to me when he hadn’t had sex that day. Gotta find me a woman and lay her some pipe. I need to have that fuck real soon, and after that we get high.

Kenny sold hash and grass around the hospital, as well as anything he could steal out of the kitchen, such as a side of beef or a big slab of ham. Anything a person wanted, all they had to do was mention it to Lawson and usually he’d come through with the item; naturally, at a price.

***

Lawson greeted us as we stepped from the elevator. Hey, John, my man! Rick, what’s shaking? What’s coming down today?

The gobbing game is coming down today, Rick answered. Just had a patient spit green shit all over my goddamn face!

Do tell, my man. Do tell. Lawson smiled, showing pearly white teeth. Took yourself a little shower, did ya? Well, ease up, my man. I have some rye to be drunk today, so you just come over to old Kenny Lawson’s car sometime and wash a bit of that good stuff down your throat. A little puff of hash and soon enough you’ll forget all about that little spray you just had.

Sounds like a good plan, Stan, I said to Lawson. Rick could use a good shot, I would think. Hey, Kenny, where’s Howie? Knowing him, he’s got to be looking for a party.

Yeah, old Howie, he coming out to play, drawled Lawson. Poor guy, he’s back on the old pots and pans, working right under the eyes of Mother Mathews, and that old witch, she sure on the prowl today, that much I can say. Whooee, is she ever. But then again, when is she not? Anyhow, Howie done tell me if I saw you boys, he’s ready to party and will catch up when he can. I got to run, got to fetch that food truck up on floor three. I’m working with that cousin of yours, Mr. Fyfe. We both on truck detail this week. I’ll see you boys outside my car at ten-thirty. If you can’t make it then, we’ll meet at lunch, and John my man, bring some of that fine hash and we’ll mix it with what I have. We’ll have a hash cocktail. Catch you later.

Right on, I replied, and Rick and I walked down the narrow underground tunnel connecting all the buildings on the hospital grounds.

The tunnel covered about a half-mile and had outlets branching off to various buildings and wards. Large water and steam pipes were visible on the upper part of the wall, near the ceiling. Condensation from the thick blue pipes often dripped to the floor, or onto your head if you were walking close to the wall. The heat coming from them was unbearable in some areas and made breathing difficult.

The tunnels were about four feet wide by six feet high and the ceiling was rounded rather than flat. In some wards, patients were locked in with no outside privileges, but others allowed their patients freedom to roam the grounds. One place patients seemed to like gathering was in the dimly-lit gloom of these tunnels. Most of them were harmless, content to hang about puffing on cigarettes. Others seeming more heavily drugged lurked in obscure corners, staring out into space or right through you as you passed by. When I was stoned, I found that walking these tunnels played with my mind; I’d be looking straight ahead and see an endless corridor, silent but for the sound of dripping water. The lights often flickered, and darkness loomed ominously in areas where the fluorescents had burnt out. Many times there was no one about, the deathlike stillness interrupted only by the echo of my footsteps as I trudged the vacant corridors.

But then, quite suddenly, I’d come across a spaced-out patient shadowed in one of the corners where the corridor twisted off towards another ward. I’d feel the paranoia creep in, especially when a patient stared at me, boring holes into my eyes it seemed, not uttering a word. It was a challenge to keep hold of my mind, especially when I was buzzed. The patient would often be mumbling something incoherent to himself, a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, burning down to the butt without his bothering to flick away the ashes.

I’d feel a chill rise from the base of my spine, and wonder where I really was. It occurred to me that this could be what hell is like, and I’d sense bad vibrations, a dark energy engulfing me in evil. Maybe all the tormented souls, ones long dead now, many of whom had undergone shock treatment or been given lobotomies, were screaming out to me. One thing I knew, there was something more than just an eerie feeling in those tunnels, definitely a presence.

At certain times of day there was an abundance of traffic in the tunnels, with maintenance people moving back and forth, nurses and therapists coming and going between the staff cafeteria and their wards. There were administrators walking about minding everyone else’s business, and the kitchen and cleaning staff was a constant flow, skipping out from work and sneaking back. The perpetual movement and energy attracted the patients and was one of the main reasons they hung around in the depths rather than go outside. There was more company for them there, which gave them a sense of belonging and made them less lonely, at least during the day. There was a tiny canteen branched off from the main tunnel where patients or staff could buy coffee, soda pop, potato chips and cigarettes. Cigarettes could be purchased by the pack or individually, which most patients did, as they seldom had much money.

The patients had a weekly allowance of six dollars, and extra cash was available if they helped the kitchen boys bring food trucks to the wards. The going rate was five to ten cents per truck, depending on whose they were pushing. Some kitchen boys were more generous than others, but if they paid too much, say a dollar a day, it amounted to twenty dollars a month. That was a lot of spare cash back in the ‘70s, so they were mindful. The kitchen boys’ motto was, Don’t spoil the patients!

Not many pushed trucks, either because they were plain lazy or their medication made them lethargic. In general, patients didn’t like to work. Why should they push a few trucks for ten cents, which bought five cigarettes, when they could just as easily bum a couple and do nothing? This seemed to be the general philosophy among most. The patients who did work wanted to be occupied, doing something. Some helped out in the main kitchen area, peeling potatoes and onions or helping scrape the pots and pans returning on the trucks. Menial jobs could always be found for them. The staff themselves generally paid the patients small amounts, but if one showed some degree of consistency and regularity in his work, the hospital paid a slim weekly allotment.

This slave-like labour wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Both sides gained. The kitchen boys had extra help, while the patients got some time out from a very boring existence and had a few extra dollars for coffee, soft drinks and cigarettes, if these hadn’t already been handed over as part of their payoff. Cigarettes were like gold to them. Some patients also made friends with the staff, which helped immensely in boosting their morale, giving them a sense of purpose and belonging. They often became very loyal to whomever they worked for. Even the roughest kitchen boys treated their patients fairly and respectfully, at least most of the time.

Lazier patients had to be pushed, so the money or cigarettes were usually handed out only once they’d completed their work. Medication could take away a patient’s zest and initiative; he might lose interest in his work during the course of the day, perhaps leaving a food truck in the middle of the tunnel and walking away.

You had to know your patient and how to motivate him, whether this meant giving out a cigarette or two beforehand, patting him on the back, or threatening to boot him in the ass. Whatever it took, the kitchen boys usually found it.

The patients themselves were generally well looked-after in the hospital; some said they had it made. They had three good meals a day, a room and a bed to sleep in, and their surroundings could not have been more beautiful. The hospital was situated on a gorgeous piece of land featuring lush green lawns. The many mature oaks and maples provided wonderful shade in the summer, with the grounds overlooking the boardwalk and the St. Lawrence River. Most of the patients were free to roam about the hospital grounds or walk out the unlocked gates into the streets of Verdun, and some did. Not many bothered trying to escape from Samson Hospital, as its comforts and security were more than the outside world had to offer. So freedom was an ambiguous concept for the patients, especially with medication in their systems numbing them inside.

They had medication to pick them up when they were down, or medication to slow them when they were hyper and felt too much anxiety. They had no responsibilities with kids or family, nor the constant hassle of bills, taxes or rent to worry about. They didn’t even have to plan their meals. I wondered who was worse off, the sane or the insane.

What the patients had, though, was time - time to live, time to die and time to contemplate their very existence. They had time to watch branches swaying to and fro in the wind, and listen to the leaves rustling in the summer breeze; to think about lost hopes and relationships they’d once had. Time for them could