People Like You, Page 3

was about 24 I had become more and more excited about women and stressed that I might be gay. So I did the reasonable thing, I got married on short notice to a New Orleans drunk and we boozed our way to a divorce. I was in a rage one night and I told my husband that I wanted to be with women he laughed and said OK. But he changed his mind and became jealous and tried to control me. We got a divorce.

  After the divorce I began calling myself Mrs. Marty Mann and go to gay bars. At first I just parked near a bar and watched to see what kind of people went in. Then I got up my nerve and went in and had a drink. That made the magic happens. I could dance and talk to new people. I felt like I belonged.

  That was when my drinking really began in earnest both in the United States and Europe. I can truthfully say that I have been soused in the best saloons and worst saloons in North America and Europe. I really began to pursue women in earnest. After a few years I moved to Europe where I could pursue my interest in women and also write on my book. I did pursue women but I did not get the book done. But mostly I drank, as much as I could, all of the time.

  I was in a drunken rage when I jumped off a balcony in England. I did not want to die; I just wanted some relief from my misery. After that I came home to America and was so drunk when I arrived that I had to be carried off the boat on a stretcher. After six months in a hospital I got six jobs in six months but could not stay sober so I got fired. I was in the hospital when I finally met Willie Seabrook and he told me about Blythewood Sanitarium. Here I am, I have not had a drink in 9 months and I am real thirsty. Willie knows about being a drunk.

  Nobody understands the drunk except another drunk. I watch the crazy people come in here and start in the crazy house and move to the middle house and then to the graduate house and then go home. That is easy for them. The doctors know what is wrong with them and they can fix it.

  But nobody knows what is wrong with a drunk that makes them drink. The Doctors here at Blythewood tell us that we can learn to drink like normal people. That is all good but I just cannot stop. That is the unkindest cut of all, to be really sick and not know what to call it. I am very tired of that life and want to be different.

  I go to the city to see a play or a movie or my sister and suddenly it makes sense that I have a drink to take the edge off my nerves. Then before I know it I am on a bender and cannot stop till I am so sick I cannot move.

  Other people come here, stop in the violent house, move to the middle house, then to the graduate house and then they go home. But not me, I am stuck here in this nut house.

  Martha

  Thank you Mrs. Mann. I am glad to learn about you but you know when you talk about yourself, you talk like you would about someone who is dead. Why is that? I did not know that you call a woman who wants a woman a lesbian. I have known lots of lesbians in my life. I just did not have a label for them.

  M.M.

  I don’t know. It is like I have been gone a long long time.

  Nona

  I feel the same way. Like I am someone else and not me. I have also known many lesbians in my life.

  Anna

  I am sure Dr. T. will be very interested in hearing all about this when he returns to work.

  Lights Fade

  Scene II

  Blythewood

  Two years pass. M.M. and Dr. T. in his psychiatric hospital office. M.M. lying on a psyche couch, Dr. T. sitting at the side behind her so she cannot see him write.

  Dr. T.

  I am afraid I have some bad news for you. Mrs. M. I know how hard you have worked at getting sober and staying that way. However, in two years here you have gotten drunk 20 times that I know about, not counting all of the times that the staff has snuck you in the back door and covered up for you while you got over your hangover. I have tried everything I know to help you but just as I told you before you came here, we doctors do not know what to do with people like you and I am not talking about you being a Lesbian. I have been told by Blythewood Owners that you will have to leave if you get drunk one more time.

  Also, you know you talk entirely too much about being a lesbian. You don’t hear heterosexuals talking about being straight as much as you talk about being a lesbian, do you?

  But you know that drunks are the heart breakers for us medical folks. We know that you have an illness that is killing you but we cannot put our finger on what it is or where it is situated in your physical self. I am a skeptic but it may be a spiritual malady that normal people do not have. I am afraid that if you continue drinking as you drink now, you will die drunk, go alcoholically insane or die in a drunken episode.

  Lights fade

  Scene III Blythewood

  Same set up as before but reverse positions. Dr. T. is on the couch and M.M. is in the chair.

  Dr. T.

  I have been really under the weather. Could not get out of bed. Thank you so much for coming to visit me Mrs. M. I have something very important for you and it cannot wait.

  M.M.

  Thank you for asking me. I was afraid that you asked me here to tell me to pack up and get out. I hope I am wrong but you know how crazy I am. Any little thing is very big and big things are very little in my world.

  Dr. T.

  I have a book that was written by a bunch of people like you from New York and Ohio. It tells a lot of stories of people who could not stop drinking but they have found a way to stay sober for a few years now. I have read it and I want you to read it.

  He hands her a large book with red covers and no title.

  Dr. T.

  The pages are mimeographed. They were going to print it like it is but decided to get some informed opinions about it from Medicine and Clergy. It might help you if you read it and by all means, tell me what you think.

  M.M.

  I will do anything you say. Of course I will read it. And you know I will tell you what I think.

  Lights Fade

  Same Setting

  DR. T

  I see that you have been reading. Tell me what you have found, please.

  M.M.

  Well #&?%*, it was written by a bunch of drunks like me. They sure know what they are talking about when it comes to drunks and hangovers. I could hardly believe the story of one of them lying on a concrete floor where it is cool to help get over a hangover. They remind me of my friend Willie Seabrook, but he is not one of them. They are all men and do not know anything about women. There is one lame story of a woman in the book.

  It is so poorly written I can hardly get past the clichés. And that part about God is really more than I can handle. Let Go and Let God!!, There but for the grace of God go I, Live and let live, Think, Think, Think!!, First things First. All drivel.

  Dr. T.

  Really !! I would like to hear more about that.

  M.M.

  Well Dr T, you know that I am an intellectual. I am a thinker. They want me to turn my life and my will over to something they call a higher power but I am not fooled. It is just the same old religious pollution in a different package. If I have to do that, I am afraid that I will be like the hole in the doughnut, a nobody, dull boring and glum. I just can’t make myself do it.

  Besides, I have trouble believing in God. I may not be atheists because I am not sure there is no God. Certainly I am not agnostic I was devout when I was a girl but for several years the conviction has been coming over me that I don’t really believe the things I was taught as a child. At first I was frightened by this realization; it seemed wicked and I thought God would punish me. Now I seem to have grown hardened to the idea. I cannot believe what seems to me unreasonable, even if I am damned for it. The spiritual stuff really baffles me. I am bewildered by the whole idea. If there is a higher power and he/she/it gave us reasoning power, no doubt we are intended to use it.

  Dr. T.

  We are not made so we can see God. For us, this is an act of faith, a venture of belief, to realize the Unseen Power. Yet we have much evidence of God’s existence in the strength that other people ha
ve received from this act of faith, the venture of belief. We are in a box of space and time and we can see neither our souls nor God. God and the human spirit are both outside the limitations of space and time. Yet our unseen help is effective here and now. That has been proved in thousands of changed lives. I do not believe that you have read enough yet. Please read some more and come back tomorrow.

  Know this Mrs.. Mann. For an intellectual like you, the ultimate proof of the omnipotence of God is the fact that He does not even have to exist in order to save us.

  Lights Fade Out

  Same setting next day.

  Dr. T.

  Well, you look dapper today. What have you been reading?

  M.M.

  There was a bunch of people in England, I think called the Oxford Groups that talked a lot about living a spiritual life of love and service. I never bought into it because they did not like me being a lesbian. They spent a lot of time talking about sex and seem to think that their basic problem was too much sex. These guys call themselves Alcoholics and believe that the problem is mental and physical. They say that I am addicted to alcohol physically and obsessed with it mentally. Also that I am allergic to alcohol and anytime I take one drink I can’t stop taking the second drink and the third and on and on.

  Lights Fade

  Scene IV

  Blythewood

  Northern England Tudor like Townhouse, two stories with balconies overlooking courtyard. Courtyard lined with bright colored flowers. Everything is wet, it has been raining. There are benches around the perimeter of the courtyard and four or five street lamps