SPIDER-EYE AND THE PAPERCLIP CONVERSATION

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

                                                          —Andre Gide

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

                                                        —Logan Pearsall Smith

Spider-Eye  tells me he’s going home soon, that he’s not crazy. He makes an announcement on the day a corrections officer is stabbed in the forehead and ear with an ink-pen. Spider-Eye and his cohorts are laughing. He tries to distance himself. He says, “We got some crrraaazzzy m#@*erf#@*kers in my unit!”

But he’s not crazy. Just ask him. Whenever he has a fresh shiner he claims a spider bit him. Lately the spiders have let him be.

He says, “We got a guy in my unit who shoves paperclips up his penis, that’s craaazy, I’d never do that. Why would anybody do that?” and before he can repeat how close he is to going home, I say, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe he ran out of storage space.”

Spider-Eye takes a deep breath, processes my comment. “Well I’m not crazy, I’m going home soon.”

I continue, “Yeah, you’re first stop is Office Max.”  He’s puzzled. “And then the other office.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“The doctor’s office.”

He’s not getting it, so he repeats himself, “All I know is that I’m going home.”

“… and then to Office Max and then to the doctor’s office to remove the paperclips.”

“Dude, I’m not crazy. Why would someone do that to himself?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably for the same reason a person ties a string around their finger.”

He says I’m crazy. He says it in such a way as if to tell me that once he’s free he’ll remember my comments and not come back at all—or am I reading too much into his expression?