Summer not so blissful

The summer of 1968 I was in a Clinical Pastoral Training program at Westboro State Hospital. It was an old style mental hospital. It had residential patients. There was also a Tuberculosis ward. I lived on the grounds of the hospital and went and visited some of the patients. Every morning during the week we started out with group therapy. The whole experience was designed to make us better able to visit and deal with people in hospital environments. Living in a mental Hospital wasn't easy by any means. You see so much that is so hard to deal with. One of the things I witnessed was Electro Shock Therapy. It was awful. The electrodes were place on the patient and the patient was sedated. The shock was then administered by the Psychiatrist. The shock went through the patient until the patient started to go into convulsions. The patient would convulse maybe 30 seconds or so and then they would move on to another patient. I talked with some of the people who had had shock therapy and it was just as bad for them as it looked to me. Afterward they would have memory lapses and disorientation. I know it was a legitimate therapy but it really seemed barbaric to me. There was a man there who looked like a human Gargoyle. He seemed to afix himself to one of the walls in a hallway and just stand there all day. One of the other chaplains in training couldn't take it and left mid summer. That summer was the an election year and the Democratic convention was being held in Chicago. We watched it some until there were riots in the street. The riots weren't from the demonstrators, but from the police. There were anti-Vietnam War protests and the police started bashing the heads of the protesters. The newscasters were shocked and we were shocked and stunned.
To start the Summer I had stayed at school in my room before going to Massachussetts to the Hospital for the program. It was a good thing I stayed because it took me a week to dry out from all the alcohol that year. I hadn't had significant gender problems during that period. I did spend a good deal of the time under the influence though. I am not really sure what that was all about, but the next year was quite different. For all the drinking and being at Yale I got straight A's that year. Theology classes were a real challange. They were designed to scramble or preconceptions by more than a little. They were successful at that. Theology is more about asking questions than knowing answers. We learned how to ask the hard questions.

The next year was much different. We already had had a sort of revolution and more was to come. During the first year we were expected to wear Academic gowns to class and to worship and we were able to remove that requirement. The next to go was a requirement that the male students wear Jacket and tie to dinner in the refectory. Now we had at that time to eat there and we were the only ones eating there at night. We wore such outlandish jackets and ties that the requirement was removed. Eventually I was able to be excused from eating there at all. The food was a real experience. We would be served sandwiches that we called Turkey lung sandwiches. And mystery meat was a common dish. The cook would capitolize on any opportunity to feed us cheeply. A truck carying crushed pineapple turned over on I-95 and he bought it up. We had pineapple in everything. I mean everything.
That year we had the entrance of the first female student. Women students at Yale were very few and far between. If a woman wanted to go and be ordained it just wasn't done then. She was rather frail looking and quite attractive. She wasn't what you would call a beauty, but definately easy on the eye. She was one woman surrounded by a bunch of drooling men. It sure must have been hard for her to adjust at first. As time went on I got to know her. Her name was Diana and we talked occasionally. The seeds of real trouble were being planted. I am the sort of person who is uaually more than willing to help and in this case it got me in real trouble. I don't remember all the details of how it began, but after a class we had together Diana and I started talking. She started to talk about her personal life and the next thing I knew she was crying. I tried to comfort her and then we were kissing. I was hooked and I didn't have a clue. I was totally lost in the experience. I hadn't had any real romantic involvement since Mary and I broke up. We were in bed together before I knew it. She was real screwed up at the time and I apparently was just as screwed up. She couldn't make up her mind whether she wanted me or she wanted her old boyfriend. Then she started to occasionally date a friend of mine. Eventually she actively pursued him, but it was futile. He was Gay. All the while she juggled me and my friend and her old boyfriend with masterful skill. I finally just got the message and backed out. I was real messed up though. I eventually found out that she had tried to involve quite a few of the male students, even some of the married ones. My best friend knew about her the whole time, but didn't clue me in until things were over. She really had me going. I didn't know whther I was coming or going I was so screwed up. I was trying my hardest to be manly and pursue her and it just didn't work. It never dawned on me at the time that it was her problem. My state got so bad and I was so mixed up that I eventually went to the Yale Psychiatric service. I sat in a dark office with a woman therapist opposit me and couldn't put words to what was the matter. As I think back I really believe I didn't know what the matter was. My male identity was very shallow and it's limits had been reached. I didn't really know what to tell her and so I left with no benefit. That was almost a fatal thing. I knew something was wrong with me and I so much wanted to be an assertive male and it didn't work. I was so confused and frustrated with myself I took some pain pills I had for kidney stones. In college I had passed kidney stones. I woke up one day with cramps and thought that I needed to go to the bathroom. The cramps got worse and turned into excruciating pain and I headed to the University Medical center. On the way the pain was so bad that I had to stop and dry heave several times. When I got to the Medical center I found that they were unable to give me anything for the pain until the Dr called. I suffered in the pain for most of the day. I dry heaved and I peed blood. Finally the Dr ordered some pain medication and I passed the stone immediately. My family Dr prescribed pain pills for me to have in case I had another attack. It was those pills I took. I don't remember how many there were but I took them all and then I started drinking whisky. I finished most of a bottle of Seagrams and didn't feel a thing. I wasn't drunk and I wasn't unconscious and I wasn't dead. When I started I really intended to kill myself and put myself out of my misery. My own sense of who I was was all screwed around. I had no sense of who I was and who I was supposed to be I walked the streets of New Haven that night looking to die. It didn't happen. I talked with my best friend at the time and told him what I had done. We talked some and that is when he told me about Diana and the others. Some of the problem was that I was dealing with a very mixed up young woman and I was mixed up myself and I couldn't distinguish one from the other. A lot of guys, and many did, could just was her out of their systems and move on. I was sucked in and crunched and left an almost empty shell. She went to her clinical training in San Francisco the same summer I went to California. I visited her there before I went home. I was over her.
I had another straight A year, who can figure? I almost quit school. I talked with my minister at home and decided to spend the summer traveling. I decided to drive across the country to California and visit my two aunts and my minister's mother. Both aunts have the first name Naomi. One was in San Francisco and she was my father's sister. The other aunt Naomi lived in San Diego and she was my father's sister-in-law. She may still be living. I haven't heard from her in a long while. My minister's mother's name was Billie. She had been an actress in silent pictures in her youth. The base of operation was to be a little garden house at Billie's house. I would pay her rent as long as I was there and I would look for summer work. The plan almost worked. I drove across the country, but my minister's mother moved me into her home and took me under her wing. We became friends ans she wouldn't take rent.
Well I skipped over many things and we need to go back to the trip across the country. I think I was in search of my manhood that whole year and we will see if I found it in the next installment.