Sonja at 18

Sonja at 18

     Our healing village is down by the levee in New Orleans. I am deep in Psyche hospital funk. I am curled in a ball on the couch in a fetal pose. My mind is afloat in a Sargasso Sea of drugged peace.
      The mind doctors take me off all my meds. I am alert and sitting for a change. Sarah and Pamela, who are counselors, walk by me. Sarah looks at me.  “Paul did you know Pamela poses nude for artists in the French Quarter? You should come to a showing of her at the gallery after discharge.”
    “That sounds like my cup of tea,” I reply, moon-eyed.
    One afternoon Pamela sits next to me on the couch. She is whittling on a stick. I speak and she listens. I get worked up. I say “While strolling through the French Quarter one evening a Babushka with a Russian accent offered me a cup of hemlock. That sent me into a downward spiral of paranoia believing that a secret sisterhood of witches was plotting my demise. That’s what landed
me in this hacienda.”
     Pamela looks up at me and says, “Well the only brew I offer strange men is green tea with ginseng because my designs are aligned with Aphrodite not the grim reaper.”
      I am at a loss for words. She holds her carved stick up to my face. She asks, “Does this look like a human face to you?” I nod yes.
     Pamela’s girlfriend Sarah walks up. Pamela rises like Bathsheba from her bath. I sit quiet as a monk deep in prayer.
     We are refugees ensconced in this sea shell world of our village for the divinely touched.     The nights and days turn like a merry go round in the madhouse where I reside. Then a cappuccino hued girl with raven hair walks into my life. She is a patient named Sonja. I approach her timidly as a fawn ready to eat out of a human hand.      
     From the moment she comes in I am entranced by her. She is an eighteen-year-old girl of Honduran descent who enchants me. She has a lyrical way of talking. Her talk is sheer poetry in words. She sits next to me. The sun of her smile melts my walls. “Can I sit with you? My name’s Sonja.”
     She smiles like a mother of pearl. “Mine is Paul. I’m not a great conversationalist.” I answer.
     “That’s ok. I just need someone to talk to. Just be yourself. Hey when I first saw you on curled on the couch, I thought you were a vegetable who they put here because there was no other place they could find for you.”
     I grin and inquire, “What kind of vegetable? A rutabaga? An artichoke? I aspire to the Zen peace of a zucchini.”
    “So, you are a joker. Make me laugh, you crazy fool.”
     I sit facing her. Her eyes gleam like gems from a Persian mosaic.
     When I first meet Sonja I think she is unapproachable. She seems like a yuppie who won’t be interested in a dotty guy who talks books all day.
     Over the days to follow I see deeper into her. I see beyond the illusion of her airs, and into the heart of a very vulnerable and beautiful person. She confides to me her fears and anxieties.
     We couch sit close enough to feel each other’s body heat. She curls in fetal ache. “My ovaries are hurting like hell” she exclaims. She says her ovaries are hurting because of birth control pills. I want to reach out and hug her but hospital rules forbid physical contact between patients.
     We nestle like hungry birds in our autumn nest. We are inches apart. I feel her breath like a tropic breeze scented with bougainvillea tree. In the winter of my solitude, I cuddle her with eiderdown words.  
     She tells me how she went crazy. “My boyfriend gave me LSD while we were in the French Quarter. I laid my head in his lap. He turned into a laughing clown with a black crow stare before my madhouse eyes. He changed from being my lover to the Joker from Batman. God, it felt real. That is why they put me in here.”
     I say, “That would have scared me. You will get better.”
     She rolls on the couch. “Thank you, Paul. I needed to hear that.”
     She hugs her knees. Her lipstick is a darker shade of midnight. She looks vulnerable as a winter sparrow. Her eyelashes flutter like dove’s wings. Her outward display of calm assurance belies a deeper angst.
     One night I plant myself beside her as she lies on her stomach in her bed. John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” pipes from her boom box.
     She looks up at me with her streetwise gaze and asks, “How does this song make you feel?”
     I look into the abyss of her eyes and say “Moved.”
     Sonja counters, “The first time I heard ‘Under
the Bridge’ by ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I cried and cried. Being alone on the streets with the city as my only friend is a feeling I know all too well. I am too young to be so old.”
     I continue, “Music can be a religious experience. One night I was listening to a woman singing a medieval song on the radio. It was probably in archaic Spanish. However, it sounded like she was saying, ‘Follow me to the end.’ At that moment I knew that if I ever fell in love, it would be for life. No matter where my lover’s path took her, I would always love her.”
      Sonja says, “Is that how you feel about me?”
     A shepherd of our flock bursts in. “PC, PC, physical contact” he jokes.
     Sonja looks up at him with her sleepy eyes. “Yea I remember that from the adolescent ward. But Paul and me weren’t touching.”
     He decrees, “I know. But no men and women in the bedroom together.”
     Sonja wiles her way with the warden. “Nicholas you are the best. Can I kiss Paul one time?”
     He says, “That is a no, no, Sonja.”
     Pleading for crumbs, Sonja says, “I know Nicholas, but you don’t know how much it hurts not to have a parting kiss with Paul. Please have mercy on me, just one.”
     Nicholas says, “This is a no smooching zone, sorry Sonja.”
     Sonja turns her back to me. She says, “I’ll behave myself. I’ll go to bed now, alone.” I watch Sonja pull the blanket over her as tears cloud the luster of her eyes.
     Me and Sonja sit in the empty cafeteria after hours. “Paul, let’s split this joint” she says.
     I reply, “I feel like a bird in a gilded cage here. Time to fly free.”
     Sonja says, “Then we’re in this together. Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a run for it holding hands. My girlfriend will be parked in the getaway car in the parking lot. She has a safe house we can stay in.”
     I smile softly and say, “Sounds like a prison escape movie.”
     The next night we sit with her girlfriend, Goldie in the empty dining area. “Paul, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. However, the hospital staff informed me that if we take you along, they’ll call the police” Sonja laments.
     I reply, “You know I must be crazy to be in here.”
     Sonja asks, “Paul, are you insinuating that I am nuts since we both bunk here?”    
     Goldie replies, “Oh sweethearts we can’t get the cops involved. But I’ve never met saner people than you Paul and my Sonja. This place would be the perfect vacation and retreat spot for me. Folks like you all make refreshing company. There is too much stodginess in this world.”
     Sonja pouts, “Goldie, you wouldn’t like it here. Even a hug is forbidden, much less a kiss. Any physical affection has to fly under the radar due to their rules.”
    I reply, “It is for our own good.”
    Sonja says, “Hush you little boy, I need me some man loving.”
     I say, “You can get plenty after discharge. Delayed gratification isn’t so bad.”
     “It is an eternity at my age. But I hope we can steal a kiss or two in the shadows.”
     “Blow me a kiss. That doesn’t involve physical contact,” I reply.
     “That is like saccharine. I need me some real sugar from a man.”
     “Oh please. I’m going to join a monastic order once I’m discharged. Romance isn’t in my language and I’m not talking Latin tongues” I protest.
     Sonja says, “There is no monastery in your future. Everyone in this loony bin sees how you play the innocent while flirting with me. You aren’t fooling anyone. None of your fakeries will pass muster in the boot camp of love. Even Plato won’t save you from loneliness.”
     I rap back, “Sock it to me Sistah.”
     “Even hearts as cushioned as yours can be broken.”
     I say, “Men like me are lone wolves. We don’t run with the pack.”
     “You’re more like a lone teddy bear.”
     “Hey don’t knock my lupine kinship.”
     “Well then, howl at the moon by yourself if you must.”
     I say, “Are you, implying that I am antisocial?”
     “Please forgive my slip of the tongue that lacked even being Freudian as an excuse. Introverts are easily mistaken for misanthropes. Compulsory socialization doesn’t come naturally to me either. The nights here are strange and it is all I can do to keep from punching out the windows of this dormitory for the divinely touched.”
     “I think it’s great to be dark, mad, and free. No disrespect intended.”
     “No disrespect perceived. That’s “dark, mad, ‘liberated’, and free” to you, bucko; a woman to be reckoned with, invincible in stiletto heels, feminist in spandex, heretic in a world of pop icon worshippers, born-again Wiccan, Gnostic oatmeal lover, not to mention my um... dark side,” she says.
     “On that note I am off to bed. Sleep well.”
     “Alone as always,” Sonja laments.
     One of my most endearing memories of Sonja is playing touch football in the quadrangle with her wearing a knee length pleated skirt. She plays center with me as her quarterback. She crouches like a tiger. When she snaps the football to me, the caress of her skirt upon my fingertips is like touching the petals of a spring rose that is like the mythical robe of Jesus. Touching her silk is a miracle cure for my desolation blues. I watch her every move as she darts like a falconess across the grass.
     Once Sonja tells me, “If I fell in a pond or something, you wouldn’t come in and save me, would you?”
     I reply, “Of course I would.”
     She insists, “No you wouldn’t.” Like an ice berg I catch glimpses of her mysteries, but so much remains below the surface.
     One evening Sonja and I are inside the aerobics studio. “Fight me, Paul. Fight me” lilts Missy the dance therapist. She waves me into her with her hands. Lights flash red. I side kick at her pulling just before contact. She smiles and urges me on. My karate thrust of foot toward her pumps to the beat of the music.
     The class ends and the sweaty people disperse. My sweetheart Sonja and I linger in the room. We face Missy who stands resolute.
     A strange sensation erupts in me. I tell Missy that my legs are pulling apart. She wants to go with this phenomenon.  I let my legs split while Missy holds my thighs. My primal moan grows with the widening spread of my legs. Missy grips my upper hind limbs. Energy surges from my schism. Sonja watches and says “Oh my God!” The crack in my being finally closes in exquisite pleasure.
     Afterward Sonja and I sit on the floor with Missy. We word paint impressions of each other. I think Sonja is a yuppie. Sonja jokes “well I can be.”  This moment of sharing, helps coax me to rejoin the human family. The room hums with the healing vibrations of an earthquake receding into oceanic quiet.
     But what is to come will test Sonja and my friendship to the limit. One dreary winter afternoon Sonja and I take a walk outside. She is quiet.
     I ask her, “Are you ok, Sonja?”
     She says, “I feel like killing someone.”
     I ask, “who?”
     She says, “myself.”
     We sit outside. She begs me, “Please don’t tell the staff what I said. I’m going on an outing with my parents tonight.”
     I say, “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”
     She pleads with me, “I promise I won’t injure myself.”      
     That night I meet with the administrator and a nurse to support Sonja when she gives them the scoop on someone in the adolescent ward giving illegal drugs to the patients. Sonja tells the admin, Roger, “I came here to tell you that.”
     And I tell them, “And I am here to back her up.” Roger and the nurse laugh.
     I stop Roger as he is leaving. The nurse with him says, “He is tired.  Can it wait?”
     I say, “Sonja made a suicidal comment today.”
     The next night at the Cafeteria, I tell Sonja, “I jumped in the pond for you.”
     “You mean you told Roger about my suicide comment” she nonchalantly replies.
     Later in the community room, Sonja tells me, “When I am released from this gilded cage I want to become an actress.”
     “I could see you playing Beatrice in Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.”
     “I am sure I could win the Tony award if I were a theater actress. Everything from my smile to my laugh is original. No one can even impersonate my cry. It is an indescribable cross between a widow grieving and a bride whose groom got the flu so bad the wedding had to be postponed.  Not so shrill as a banshee in the night but not as soft as a girl whose last memory of her mother was seeing her through a window behind which her Mom was too contagious even for a goodbye hug.”
     “With such thespian qualities, you surely should be on the stage.”
     “I am thrilled that you have such faith in me. Sometimes I doubt my talents.”
     “You will one day have your name up in lights on a marquee. I am as sure of that as I am that dawn will come tomorrow.”
     “My dream is to be in an Off-Broadway musical. They called me the nightingale of the drama club in high school.”
     “Then you are already on your way, my darling.”
     “I don’t want to end up being an old lady still living in the past with dreams that never came true, yet hoping that one day my ship will come in.”
     “How could a lovely young lady in the prime of her youth with the world as her oyster think such things?”
     “Yet I do contemplate such a fate even though I am a rose in full bloom.”
     “Banish such thoughts from your mind. If I were a talent scout, I would be recruiting you even in this place.”
     “I trust the opinion of a cultured young man such as you. So it shall be.”
     We fly under the radar of the staff’s prying eyes for a last private meeting in her room. Sonja asks, “What do you see when you look at me?”
     “I see my wife from a previous lifetime in Indonesia on a lazy afternoon in 1883 just before Krakatoa erupted, lying on our bed about to make love to me.”
     “Wherever your soul migrates let’s meet somewhere other than a place like this.”
     I say, “Remember, this hospital has a rule that upon discharge the patients are never to have contact with one another again.”
     “Hospital stipulations don’t overrule divine providence. We followed the same exit sign on the
road of rebirth.” Sonja swanks up to me and plants a wet, sticky kiss on my fresh young lips.
     Her eyes are downcast but when I say, “I’ll miss you,” she turns ecstatic with her rainbow smile.    
     “Oh, I’ll miss you too.” She sings some lines from, “Don’t cry for me Argentina.”
     “Who are you singing that to?”
     “You, it seemed to fit the moment.”
     “Do I seem like a foreign country to you?”
     “I meant it affectionately. What is wrong with being a foreigner anyhow? We are all foreigners until we get to know each other. God, all this farewell talk has me sweating bullets. I need a hot shower.”
     I listen to her sing in the shower but her mournful melody sounds like our swan song.  
    Finally, she asks the question I had been dreading. “Hey, I never asked, but what landed you in this laughing academy?”
     “I got paranoid after a strange encounter in the French Quarter. Things got a little topsy turvy for a while. But they have returned to their usual state of weirdness.”
     “My synapses are often bridges across the river of normality too.”
     “If not for that experience, I wouldn’t have met you. Kind of a blessing in disguise.”
     “Meeting you was like cracking open my first book of Shakespeare. Knowing you was like reading it,” she says.
     “Meeting you was like opening my first book of Pablo Neruda. Knowing you was like reading his poems in the solitude of my bedroom with the scent of Japanese Magnolias blowing through the open window.”
     “One day our paths may cross again in Audubon Park and we’ll stroll along the moonlit lagoons catching up for lost time.”
     “Yes, and we can go to my place and listen to my 8-track of Hendrix,” I say.
     “Listening to you is like hearing Jimi play the electric guitar with all that distortion until your words all blur together into the buzz I get from you.”
     Discharge is the only time patients are allowed to touch. She embraces me and her hands rub my back stones like a nymph caressing a fawn. I watch her silhouette vanish into the blinding light of day.