Joe came everyday in the afternoon to visit me. He rarely missed a day. Thanksgiving and there was a day I was refused visitation because I overslept. The doctor saw my regular visits and used them as ‘motivation’. If I wasn’t up and showered and dressed by ten a.m. I had lost visitation for the day. That only happened once and Joe was refused at the door that afternoon. But once he found out where I was he came often. Nearly every afternoon. More than my family came.
  He brought me all the gossip of our mutual friends and lots I didn’t know. All the news of Short Vine, the neighborhood area we hung out. He was very upset with all the people there. And he complained to me about them. Told me all the things they were doing and what he felt they should be doing. One of our friends had been beaten up by her boyfriend Walter, beat up bad, put in the hospital even, and he didn’t think they were upset enough. Angry (violent?) enough. He wanted to return the favor and wanted everyone else to, as well. That was the main complaint on most days. He hung out with the S.H.A.R.P. skinheads (skin heads against racial prejudice) and he was just starting to resent them. Thinking they were letting Walter off because he was black. Joe started to pull away from them, and so he would visit me everyday, telling me all the things they should be doing to Walter for what he did. Joe was angry. And hurt. What Walter did hurt more than just his girlfriend. And as long as I knew him Joe never got completely over it. Though he did get better in time.
  When he wasn’t complaining to me about what S.H.A.R.P. was or wasn’t doing he was giving me all the details about who was or wasn’t doing whom. Very juicy stuff. And who was doing it behind who’s back. Even better. Who got caught and who was clueless, pretty much like a soap opera, except most of the people I barely knew. But I loved hearing about it anyway. And one day knowing all these people better was my hope, getting out of the psych ward and hanging out with them.
  One day Joe came in while I was napping. He didn’t wake me up though. Instead I woke up to quiet laughing. Well, not quiet enough, I woke up anyway. Apparently Zanex makes me drool in my sleep. A lot. The whole pillow was wet. Hahahahaha. Very funny. And Joe just stood there and laughed. Quietly. At least he was trying to let me sleep?
  Another day he brought me a big bag of t-shirt. T-shirt and a trench coat. Olive with orange and green striped inner lining. I didn’t have any where to wear the trench coat but I did wear it a few times on the unit anyway. The t-shirts I wore everyday. I still had to wear my hospital pants and rope and slippers, but the t-shirts made my look complete. They were band t-shirts. Punk bands. C.O.C. Exploited. Circle Jerks. Black Flag. There were probably eight or nine in there.
  Joe liked G.G. Allen. If you don’t know who that is a good google session is in order. I thought GG Allen was disgusting. I think Joe probably thought so too. Maybe he was more fascinated with him than actually liking him. Or maybe it was just the shock factor and the shock factor of telling people that you liked GG Allen. (hint* look up gg Allen on jerry springer) I don’t believe Joe ever went to one of his concerts, although he threatened to go quite often. Any discussion of Allen, and it always turned to GG Allen, always, ended with the same “what would you do if you woke up in bed next to him one morning?” The only acceptable answer was, of course, suicide. The real question was ‘how did I get there?’ After all, I would not be going to one of his shows, whereas Joe would and could be drugged.  This was a conversation we had almost every day when he would visit. It was the appropriate setting for such a conversation. Maybe that’s why we were compelled to have it so many times. It was almost always interrupted by staff or other patients or something else. One time it was a page over the intercom for a “Dr. Slaughter”. That broke us up. We didn’t stop laughing for the rest of the visit. But I don’t ever remember coming to a conclusion about how I ended up in bed beside GG Allen. It had to be a believable scenario. What I would do about it didn’t even matter if I wouldn’t believe how I got there in the first place. And so the debate raged on. And still there is not a satisfactory answer. I just don’t know. Fortunately the man is dead and I don’t have to contemplate that particular question anymore.