It's Kind of a Funny Story Read online

  The opposite of the Tentacles are the Anchors. The Anchors are things that occupy my mind and make me feel good temporarily. Riding my bike is an Anchor. Doing flash cards is an Anchor. Watching people play video games at Aaron’s is an Anchor. The answers are simple and sequential. There aren’t any decisions. There aren’t any Tentacles. There’s just a stack of tasks that you tackle. You don’t have to deal with other people.

  “There are a lot of Tentacles,” I admit. “But I should be able to handle them. The problem is that I’m so lazy.”

  “How are you lazy, Craig?”

  “I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I’m afraid I’ll stutter.”

  “Do you have a problem with stuttering?”

  “When I’m depressed, it won’t come out right. I’ll trail off in midsentence.”

  “I see.” She writes something down on her legal pad. Craig, this will go on your permanent record.

  “I don’t—” I shake my head. “The bike thing.”

  “What? What were you going to say?” This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying. The party line is that some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle, but I think they do it to make us feel important. One thing’s for sure: no one else in life says to me, “Wait, Craig, what were you going to say?”

  “I was going to say that I don’t think the stuttering is like, a real problem. I just think it’s one of my symptoms.”

  “Like sweating.”

  “Right.” The sweating is awful. It’s not as bad as the not eating, but it’s weird—cold sweat, all over my forehead, having to be wiped off every two minutes, smelling like skin concentrate. People notice. It’s one of the few things people notice.

  “You’re not stuttering now.”

  “This is being paid for. I don’t want to waste time.”

  Pause. Now we have one of our silent battles; I look at Dr. Minerva and she looks at me. It’s a contest as to who will crack first. She puts on her poker face; I don’t have any extra faces to put on, just the normal Craig face.

  We lock eyes. I’m waiting for her to say something profound—I always am, even though it’ll never happen. I’m waiting for her to say “Craig, what you need to do is X” and for the Shift to occur. I want there to be a Shift so bad. I want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, and witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise, and I had incredible promise, and I spoke up in class because I was excited and smart about the world. I want the Shift so bad. I’m waiting for the phrase that will invoke it. It’ll be like a miracle within my life. But is Dr. Minerva a miracle worker? No. She’s a thin, tan lady from Greece with red lipstick.

  She breaks first.

  “About your bike riding, you said you wanted to be a messenger.”

  “Yes.”

  “You already have a bike, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you ride it a lot?”

  “Not that much. Mom won’t let me ride it to school. But I ride around Brooklyn on weekends.”

  “What does it feel like when you ride your bike, Craig?”

  I pause. “. . . Geometric.”

  “Geometric.”

  “Yeah. Like, You have to avoid this truck. Don’t get hit in the head by these metal pipes. Make a right. The rules are defined and you follow them.”

  “Like a video game.”

  “Sure. I love video games. Even just to watch. Since I was a kid.”

  “Which you often refer to as ‘back when you were happy.’“

  “Right.” I smooth my shirt out. I get dressed up for these little meetings too. Good khakis and a white dress shirt. We’re dressing up for each other. We should really go get some coffee and make a scandal—the Greek therapist and her high school boyfriend. We could be famous. That would get me money. That might make me happy.

  “Do you remember some of the things that made you happy?”

  “The video games.” I laugh.

  “What’s funny?”

  “1 was walking down my block the other day, and behind me was a mother with her kid, and the mother was saying, ‘Now, Timmy, I don’t want you to complain about it. You can’t play video games twenty-four hours a day.’And Timmy goes, ‘But I want to!’And I turned around and told him, ‘Me too.’”

  “You want to play video games twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Or watch. I just want to not be me. Whether it’s sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That’s what’s important.”

  “You’re very clear about what you want.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you want when you were a kid? Back when you were happy? What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  Dr. Minerva is a good shrink, I think. That isn’t the answer. But it is a damn good question. What did I want to be when I grew up?

  three

  When I was four, this is how things were:

  Our family lived in a crappy apartment in Manhattan. I didn’t know it was crappy at the time, because I didn’t have our better apartment to compare it to yet. But there was exposed piping. That’s no good. You don’t want to raise your child in a house with exposed piping. I remember there was a green pipe and a red pipe and a white pipe, gathered near the corner of the hallway just before the bathroom, and as soon as I could walk I investigated them all, walked up to them and put my palm about two millimeters away from each one to test if it was hot or cold. One was cold, one was hot, and the red one was really hot. Two millimeters wasn’t enough. I burned myself on it and Dad, who hadn’t realized ("It must only get hot in the afternoon"), encased it in dark gray foam with duct tape, but duct tape never stopped me and I thought the foam was fun to pick at and chew so I picked it off and chewed it and then when other kids came over to my house I dared them to touch the re-exposed pipe; I told them anyone who came in had to touch it, otherwise they were a pussy, which was a word I learned from Dad watching TV, which I thought was great because it was a word with two meanings: the cat that girls liked and the thing you called people to make them do stuff. Just like chicken had two meanings: the bird that walked around and the white stuff you ate. Some people touched the hot pipe if you called them chicken as well.

  I had my own room but I didn’t like to be alone in it; the only room I liked to be in was the living room, under the table that held all the encyclopedias. I made it my little fort; I put a blanket over me and worked in there, with a light that Dad rigged up. I worked on maps. I loved maps. I knew that we lived in Manhattan and I had a map of it, a Hagstrom Five Borough Atlas with all the streets laid out. I knew exactly where we lived, on the comer of 53rd Street and 3rd Avenue. Third Avenue was a yellow street because it was an avenue, big and long and important. Fifty-third Street was a little white street that went across Manhattan. The streets went sideways and the avenues went up-and-down; that was all you had to remember. (Dad helped me remember, too, when we went out for pancakes. He would ask, “Do you want them cut in streets and avenues, Craig?” And I’d go “Yes!” and he’d cut the stack of pancakes in a grid, and we’d name each street and avenue as we went along, making sure to get 3rd Ave. and 53rd Street.) It was so simple. If you were really advanced (like I was, duh), you knew that traffic on the even streets went east (East for Even) and the odd streets went west (West is Odd). Then, every bunch of streets, there were fat yellow streets, like the avenues, that went both ways. These were the famous streets: 42nd St., 34th St. The complete list from the bottom up was Chambers St., Canal St., Houston St., 14th St., 23rd St., 34th St., 42nd St., 57th St., 72nd St. (there wasn’t any big street in the 60s; they got shafted), 79th St., 86th St., 96th St.,
and then you were in Harlem, where Manhattan effectively ended for little white boys who made forts under encyclopedias and studied maps.

  As soon as I saw the Manhattan map, I wanted to draw it. I should be able to draw the place where I lived. So I asked Mom for tracing paper and she got it for me and I brought it into my fort and I pointed the light right down on the first map in the Hagstrom Atlas—downtown, where Wall Street was and the stock market worked. The streets were crazy down there; they didn’t have any kind of streets and avenues; they just had names and they looked like a game of Pick-Up Sticks. But before I could even worry about the streets, I had to get the land right. Manhattan was actually built on land. Sometimes when they were digging up the streets you saw it down there—real dirt! And the land had a certain curve to it at the bottom of the island, like a dinosaur head, bumpy on the right and straight on the left, a swooping majestic bottom.

  I held my tracing paper down and tried to trace the line of lower Manhattan.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I mean, it was ridiculous. My line didn’t have anything to do with the real one. I didn’t understand—I was holding the tracing paper steady. I looked at my small hand. “Stay still,” I told it. I crumpled up the paper and tried again.

  The line wasn’t right again. It didn’t have the swoop.

  I crumpled up the paper and tried again.

  This line was even worse than before. Manhattan looked square.

  I tried again.

  Oh boy, now it looked like a duck.

  Crumple.

  Now it looked like a turd, another word I picked up from Dad.

  Crumple.

  Now it looked like a piece of fruit.

  It looked like everything but what it was supposed to look like: Manhattan. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t realize then that when you trace stuff you’re supposed to have a tracing table, lighted from below, and clamps to hold the paper straight, not a trembling four-year-old hand, so I just thought I was a failure. They always said on TV you could do anything you wanted, but here I was trying to do something and it wasn’t working. I would never be able to do it. I crumpled up the last piece of tracing paper and started sobbing, my head in my hands in my fort.

  Mom heard me.

  “Craig?”

  “What? Go away.”

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Don’t open the curtain! Don’t open it! I have things in here.”

  “Why are you crying? What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Tell Mommy, c’mon. I’m going to open the blanket—”

  “No!”

  I jumped at her face as she pulled the blanket aside, bringing it taut under the encyclopedias. Mom threw her hands up and held the books in place, saving both of us from getting clobbered. (A week later, she’d have Dad move the encyclopedias.) With her occupied, I ran across the room, streaking tears, wanting to get to the bathroom, to sit down on the toilet with the light off and splash hot water on my face. But Mom was too quick. She shoved the encyclopedias back and loped across the room, swooping me up in her thin arms with the elbow skin that you could pull down. I beat my palms against her.

  “Craig! We do not hit Mommy!”

  “I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it!” I hit her.

  “What?” She hugged me tight so I had no room to hit. “What can’t you do?”

  “I can’t draw Manhattan! “

  “Huh?” Mom drew her face up and away from me, looked me in the eyes. “Is that what you were trying to do down there?”

  I nodded, sniffled.

  “You were trying to trace Manhattan with the tracing paper I bought you?”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Craig, no one can.” She laughed. “You can’t just trace freehand. It’s impossible!”

  “Then how do they make the maps?”

  Mom paused.

  “See? See? Someone can do it!”

  “They have equipment, Craig. They’re grown-ups and they have special tools that they use.”

  “Well I need those tools.”

  “Craig.”

  “Let’s buy them.”

  “Honey.”

  “Do they cost a lot of money?”

  “Honey.”

  Mom put me down on the sofa, which turned into a bed for her and Dad at night, and sat next to me. I wasn’t crying anymore. I wasn’t hitting anymore. My brain was all right back then; it didn’t get stuck in ruts.

  “Craig,” she sighed, looked at me. “I have an idea. Instead of spending your time trying to trace maps of Manhattan, why don’t you make your own maps of imaginary places?”

  And that was the closest I’ve ever come to an epiphany.

  I could make up my own city. I could use my own streets. I could put a river where I wanted. I could put the ocean where I wanted. I could put the bridges where I wanted and I could put a big highway right across the middle of town, like Manhattan should have but didn’t. I could make my own sub- way system. I could make my own street names. I could have my own grid stretching off to the edges of the map. I smiled and hugged Mom.

  She got me some thick paper—white construction paper. Later on I grew to prefer straight com-puter paper. I went back under my fort and turned the light on and started on my first map. And I did that for the next five years—whenever I was in class, I didn’t doodle, I drew maps. Hundreds of them. When I finished, I crumpled them; it was making them that was important. I did cities on the ocean, cities with two rivers meeting in the middle, cities with one big river that bent, cities with bridges, crazy interchanges, circles and boulevards. I made cities. That made me happy. That was my Anchor. And until I turned nine and turned to video games, that was what I wanted to be when I grew up: a mapmaker.

  four

  “I wanted to make maps,” I tell Dr. Minerva.

  “Maps of what?”

  “Cities.”

  “On the computer?”

  “No, by hand.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think there’s much of a market for that.” I smile.

  “Maybe not, maybe so.”

  What a shrink answer.

  “I can’t take maybes. I have to make money.”

  “We’re going to talk more about money next time. We have to stop now.”

  I look at the clock. 7:03. She always gives an extra three minutes.

  “What are you going to do when you leave, Craig?”

  She always asks that. What am I always going to do? I’m going to go home and freak out. I’m going to sit with my family and try not to talk about myself and what’s wrong. I’m going to try and eat. Then I’m going to try and sleep. I dread it. I can’t eat and I can’t sleep. I’m not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?

  Hey, soldier, what’s the matter?

  I can’t sleep and I can’t eat, sir!

  How about I pump you full of lead, soldier, would that get you motivated?

  Can’t say, sir! I’d probably still be unable to sleep or eat, just a little bit heavier from the lead.

  Get up there and fight, soldier! The enemy is there!

  The enemy is too strong. I can’t fight them. They’re too smart.

  You’re smart too, soldier.

  Not smart enough.

  So you’re just going to give up?

  That’s the plan.

  “I’m going to just keep at it,” I tell Dr. Minerva. “That’s all I can do. I’ll keep at it and hope it gets better.”

  “Are you taking your medicine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you seeing Dr. Barney?”

  Dr. Barney is the psychopharmacologist. He’s the one who prescribes me meds and sends me to peo-pie like Dr. Minerva. He’s a trip in his own way, a little fat Santa with rings embedded in his fingers.

  “Yes, later in the week.”

  “You kn
ow to do what he says.”

  Yes, Doctor. I’ll do what you say. I’ll do what you all say.

  “Here,” I hand Dr. Minerva the check from my mom.

  five

  My family shouldn’t have to put up with me. They’re good people, solid, happy. Sometimes when I’m with them I think I’m on television.

  We live in an apartment—a much better one than the Manhattan one, but still not good enough, not something to be proud of—in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a big fat blob with its own ugly shape across from Manhattan; it looks like Jabba the Hutt counting his money. Its bridges connect to Manhattan and it’s split up by canals and creeks—filthy green streaks of water that remind you that it used to be a swamp. There are brownstones—limestone and maroon houses that stand like fence posts and always have Indian men refurbishing them—and everybody goes crazy for those, pays millions of dollars to live in them. But other than that, it’s a pretty statusless place. It’s a shame we moved out of Manhattan, where all the real people with power live.

  The walk from Dr. Minerva’s office to our apartment is a short one, but loaded with mocking stores. Food stores. The absolute worst part of being depressed is the food. A person’s relationship with food is one of their most important relationships. I don’t think your relationship with your parents is that important. Some people never know their parents. I don’t think your relationships with your friends are important. But your relationship with air—that’s key. You can’t break up with air. You’re kind of stuck together. Only slightly less crucial is water. And then food. You can’t be dropping food to hang with someone else. You need to strike up an agreement with it.