Gentle Reader, here is another one of my short stories that touches on the theme of mental illness. Please forward this and my other stories to as many people as you can think of and with a message that our elected idiots in Ottawa must think twice before including on their euthanasia hit list people who suffer from mental health disorders.
Para cantar flamenco hay que tener duende. (One must possess the magic in order to sing flamenco)
Buying the pills was easy. So was swallowing them. He sat on the front steps of the welfare office, waiting for oblivion. This would make Derek a media event. He wasn't thinking of media. He had already had his fifteen minutes, many times over, as front man for a punk band, then as a slam poet, then as a community activist for the homeless. He was already famous. His lack of post-secondary schooling made it
difficult for him to secure decent employment. His parents divorced and frittered away on legal fees the money that should have supported him in university and when he finished high school there was no longer a family home. His father had gone off with his mistress with whom he lived happily ever after between time-shares in Grand Cayman and the Mayan Riviera. His mother, always prone to depression, took an overdose of pills just before he graduated from high school. He was on his own. Throughout his twenties he lived in shared apartments and houses with band mates and drinking partners. In his thirties he lived with Vanessa, his only real girl friend. For five years he enjoyed his only stable employment working in the post office. Soon depression and bouts of alcoholism made it impossible for him to hold a job. Then Vanessa revealed she was a lesbian and left him for a woman. Ten years later, both his parents now dead and no other family remaining to care about him Derek had come to rely on a shrinking circle of friends. Out of work and broke he was evicted from his apartment with no one to offer him a couch to sleep on. The shelters were full and for two nights he slept outside on his own sofa where it adorned the back alley next to the pale blue dumpster. Then the rain came. No one at the welfare office was willing to hear him much less help him. With his remaining few dollars he bought a mickey of scotch and extra strength painkillers.
Just as he downed the last pill and the final remaining mouthful of harsh liquor the security guard tried to get him to leave as he was talking to a reporter from one of the local weeklies, struggling to maintain consciousness while answering questions about systemic economic injustice and the hidden agenda of neo-liberal governments to starve the poor out of existence. She arrived just after he'd swallowed the pills and had no idea that he was in the process of killing himself. Word had leaked out that he would be performing an "action" on the front steps of the welfare office. The last thing he felt was the guard's hand on his shoulder. A week later, he woke in a hospital bed.
There remained the possibility of slight brain damage, but so far Derek was showing excellent rehab prospects. After two months in hospital he was transferred to a care facility for people with mental health disorders. He was diagnosed with severe episodic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. They still hadn't found him a place to live. Journalists were still pestering him for interviews, unaware or unconcerned that he might be too ill to talk to anyone. He lost his capacity for saying no, and they became as regular and annoying to him as fruit flies on a mound of putrefying mangoes. Having nothing to say, he let them ask the questions, and so the reporters all asked and assumed whatever they wanted. He was so drugged and medicated that he no longer cared. He also enjoyed the attention. He had become something of a folk hero to anti-homelessness and anti-poverty activists everywhere. When it was suggested that keeping his name in print could also help pressure governments to start acting on providing housing and other services to the homeless he complied and continued to grant interviews. He was glad to feel useful.
He soon picked up the guitar again. Then he met Rene.
Rene was Spanish, from Madrid, an accomplished singer of flamenco. He had immigrated from Spain by way of the British Isles where he lived for twenty years as a professor of philosophy and Spanish history. His family was persecuted by the Franco regime. He was older than Derek, a lean vital man bristling with manic energy. He taught Derek flamenco. Soon staff and clients and visitors were sitting in on their concerts. Derek moved into his new subsidized apartment and they continued to perform and practice together.
In a popular cafe they soon became a fixture in the shadow of the swaying arms of women dancing the duende in long floral dresses. It all got to be too much for Derek. Not even his meds could cushion him. Rene became his only friend, and visited him daily at Balsam House, where they continued to practice together. Then Rene was readmitted.
For a while the music died for them. To cope with their depression they were heavily medicated. They could hardly function. Balsam House was pleasant, more like a boutique hotel than a hospital. The professional staff were kind and attentive. When Maritza came they knew it was Tuesday.
Phil was there Fridays. The two peer support workers never came on the same day and they seemed unaware of each other's existence. Derek found Maritza unprofessional and deplorable but she made Rene's heart beat faster. She was from Spain. She was Andalusian, from the heart of the land of Flamenco. Rene had found his muse. They had both lived under El Generalisimo. Maritsa confessed to hating flamenco while loving Franco. She was the only person from Spain born after the Second world War, to Rene's knowledge, who had anything good to say about the deceased dictator. In the dining room of Balsam House she was heard complaining loudly about the moral state of post-Franco Spain, the social disorder, women no longer knowing their place in society, and the rampant homosexuality. "It's impossible to find a man or a husband in that country anymore", she was heard yelling--she always yelled--"All the men are turning gay!" One of the clients, a young gay man, ratted on her and Maritza was soon fired.
Maritza was short and broadly built, with enormous breasts, and wild frizzy hair that framed an unremarkable face but for the enormous hooked nose and black-frame glasses. Her brown eyes were small and narrowly set in her face, eyes that suggested nothing but a medicated blank. Derek thought of her as a fat ugly Aphrodite, a Venus of Willendorf with chronic bad hair. She had an affinity for gold chains and cheap gaudy costume jewelry. The only makeup she wore was lipstick, and it made her mouth into a bloody red gash that adorned like a single brushstroke her pale indifferent face.
They sat at a table in the dining room, waiting for the Friday peer support worker to invite them out for coffee. But Rene would only reluctantly follow along as Phil led Derek and one or two others to the cafe down the street. He said he found him boring, flaccid and passionless with his slightly worn and chronicly tired look. For Maritza Rene would sit by the front door every Tuesday waiting for his weekly trip to the Dairy Queen with her. Derek never joined them, knowing that this was for Rene alone. Maritza always tried to hug him. Derek hated being hugged.
A year later Derek and Rene were back in Balsam House. Their synchronized periods of illness had become between them a shared joke. It was Tuesday and Maritsa wasn't there. Questions were asked and they were merely informed that she was no longer at Balsam House. Phil said he knew nothing. Maritza, despite her avowed dislike of flamenco, had been their most appreciative fan. Once she even got up to dance, staggering and tottering on her three inch heels, just balancing her swaying bulk while she awkwardly swayed her fat arms, waving them like the stubby branches of a fat denuded oak tree in a winter gale, her gold chains jingling like cheap garland and tinsel over her heaving and swaying breasts, her bracelets and bangles tinkling like dollar store Christmas tree ornaments.
Two years passed. They had both succeeded in staying out of Balsam House. Derek had found himself a girlfriend, a maternal woman in her fifties. It didn't last and Derek found that he both missed and had no time for passion.
One day, late in the afternoon, they were in the cafe nursing a beer together. There was a bus stop in front where Phil was standing,
slightly rumpled, balding with greying hair and a carriage of silent and tired dignity. Once, Rene looked at Derek and a sinister smile twisted his thin lips and distorted the odd symmetry of his narrow face. "I'll bet he's queer," he said. Derek didn't reply at first, but stared quietly at his friend with cold detachment. "Better be careful, Rene," he said after a while. "I might be queer." Phil returned to the table before Rene could answer and in less than a minute they got up and went for a walk together in the cold November rain. Renee never mentioned it again.
Just before Derek could signal to Rene, Maritza appeared at the same stop, next to Phil. The door of the cafe was open and they could hear her yelling at him.
"What's the idea of not talking to me. What? Am I a leper?"
"Excuse me?" Phil replied.
"And you call yourself a peer support worker!" she screamed, wagging in his face a red taloned forefinger.
"All I want to do is get on the bus and get the fuck out of here."
"Don't you swear at me like that! You're not even fit for your job. And to think that you stole my job."
As the bus pulled up she was shouting, "You stole my job! You stole my job! You stole my
job! You stole my job! You stole my job!" she boarded the bus, still shouting, "You stole my job! You stole my job! You stole my job!" Derek and Rene both watched, transfixed like two young campesinos attending a cockfight, as the bus drove away, then looked at each other. Each drank a little more beer then resumed looking out the window at the empty space left by the departing bus. It was a cool afternoon in May. It had rained during the morning and now the sun sparkled across the newly cleansed earth.
Phil came in. He didn't appear to see Derek or Rene as he went to the bar.
He carried a glass of beer towards a table at the other side of the empty cafe.
"What! Are we invisible! shouted Rene, suddenly. Phil saw them and carried his beer over.
They mentioned neither Maritza, or Balsam House. Together the three single men drank their beer in silence. They were the only patrons inside the cafe and the sun shone outside promising hours yet of blessed daylight. Phil quaffed his beer and got up.
"What! You're not going now?" protested Rene.
"Gotta. Man I am so bagged."
"What have you got to be tired about? You're still young."
"Today is Friday and I have to get home and rest."
"You're not coming down with something?"
"After five days at work I need my rest. You know I never go out any more? I'm too tired from work."
"Did I tell you I'm taking the peer support training soon?" Derek said.
Phil replied, "Just do it part time, dude."
The two men sat quietly with their beer. The sun shining through the window was almost blinding and they changed tables to settle in the safe comfort of the shadows. They were on their fourth beer and tonight they would be performing just a little bit drunk. They talked a bit about the music they'd be performing, but otherwise said nothing. A young woman came in, wearing jeans and a black pullover sweater, her flamenco dress concealed in the green carry-all she had with her. She was tall, slender and very beautiful. Her black hair was gathered in a perfectly round knot worn just at her nape. For Derek, at that moment, she represented the perfection of young womanhood. He had never seen her dance, and longed already to see her move to his playing, to see her arms sway like a willow on a windy spring day, and to feel the angry passion of her heels pounding defiantly into the wood. She smiled at them, and stood patiently as Rene got up, cradled his arms around her slender neck and planted a kiss on her cheek, then sent her on her way, like a fond grandfather dispatching his little granddaughter to go play with her friends. She went into the back to change into her dancing dress and the two aging men picked up their guitars to begin to rehearse for the evening's show.
This music of resistance had become their healing. Flamenco had become their nectar and divine ambrosia. The Duende was their liberator and the Flamenco their liberation. The dancing, the subtle then violent swirling of ruffled skirts, the waving of pale gleaming arms and the violent swoops of defiance, the machine gun fire of staccato heels pounding like jackhammers on the wooden stage. Rene's sensuous voice would descend to a lion's growl then burst out like an explosion of multi-coloured flames into a sweet and sonorous shriek, angels and demons dancing together in celebration of the Duende to the Belgian lace accompaniment of Derek's guitar and the rhythmic clapping of hands. The Duende had healed them and the Duende empowered and made them strong again, as now for the first time today they smiled and laughed and sneered in the face of the death that awaited them.
Someone had turned the music off. Derek took his guitar out of its case and Rene as though preparing to utter a public prayer began to clear his throat.
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