MY PROBLEM WITH THE MENTALLY ILL

When the woman who bought my chapbook pulled me aside to discuss writing and publishing, another woman threw a verbal jab my way. “Do you have a problem with the mentally ill?” Before I could answer, the woman who bought my chapbook dismissed the verbal jab with a wave of her hand.

I thought I had done fairly well, considering the difficulty I had enunciating words with a mouth full of braces, considering I haven’t read at an open mic in twenty-some years. In my opinion, with the low attendance at the Pointe Java, pissing off one person (out of seven or eight) and selling two chapbooks wasn’t all that bad.

My only regret: I should have answered that question. “Yes,” I’m saying now, “I do have a problem with the mentally ill. They don’t belong in prison. If they were mentally ill prior to committing their crime, then prison is not the place for them. But there’s this huge gray area where prisoners become mentally ill after incarceration. What should society do with them?” If my references to “those mental guys from Huron Valley,”—a place where the Michigan Department of Corrections once housed the mentally ill—offended anyone, then I apologize. Maybe I should stick to reading fiction to avoid further misunderstandings.

On a similar note, I did have one person walk-out during my reading, but I’m willing to bet it had more to do with how he was treated by the same woman who posed that question to me. He had asked her, “So what do your parents think about you coming here on Saturday nights?” She told him not to go there and stormed outside to have a smoke and make a phone call. A retired autoworker, his performance piece included factory noises from a boom-box. Shortly thereafter, during my routine, he split.

I’d like to give a special thanks to the young lady who videotaped all thirty-minutes of my reading. Only two and a half minutes were devoted to a nonfiction story about a mentally unstable student. Enjoy. Or don’t. Your choice. No more apologies.