It had been spelled out to me in a lucid dream. P-O-R-T-L-A-N-D. Portland. The morning after I’d surmised that the dream was referring to Portland, Oregon, one of the crown jewel cities of the great northwest section of these United States. An abiding belief in the presence of the omnipresent God and mental illness spurred me toward a fateful choice: I was going to chase my dream.
So I boarded an Amtrak train bound for Portland.
I disembarked from the train in Portland, Oregon, without a solid plan, a deliberate choice as I didn’t want any of my enemies — practically everyone that I knew in my hometown — or family knowing where I was headed. I bounced around assorted hotels and motel complexes in order to throw everyone off the scent, before arriving at the very last motel accommodation.
The next few days and nights were spent holed up in the confines of my motel room, with the intense summer heat and musk from my unwashed body pervading the space for the entirety of the day, creating a haze; the heat persisted beyond the time when the sun dipped beneath the horizon.
At night I’d wait for the light of the moon to spill through the motel window. With my mind on fire, I approached the spot on the wall where the moonlight would eventually land and halt right in its path. I turned to that very spot on the wall. There was the shadow of the person that I was running away from.
I’d close my eyes and think back three years to my boxing lessons with Tony. Tony — an ex-convict — was a very big black man with the big smile. He was in a good mood most of the time, he laughed a whole lot with his body and soul. Standing over six feet tall, weighing over two hundred seventy pounds and sporting gorilla sized arms, Tony was one of those guys you’d rather see jovial than angry. One afternoon he strutted — Tony was confident — into the gym and saw me hitting the heavy bag with my bare fists. I stopped to acknowledge his presence as he approached. “Keep going,” he said in his baritone. “I want to see how you work that heavy bag right there.”
I whacked the bag with all of my might until Tony commanded me to stop. The bag kept swinging through the air until Tony reached for it with his considerable sized hands. “You’re hitting that bag pretty hard,” he said. I knew you had a lot of power in you. You need some form though. How about you let me teach you a few things about the sweet science? I can make you dangerous.”
Hitherto, I’d never been in a physical fight , had never even thought about actually fighting another adult human being. However, I was young — age twenty-three — and curious about the world, and I was always looking to learn something new. “Sure,” I’d said. “Make me dangerous.”
I was three months into my stay in Portland when I arrived at the last motel. I knew that I was going to have to defend myself against an antagonist and I wanted to be ready for the inevitable confrontation. So, I removed my shirt, tucked my chin, bent my knees, and raised my two fists in the air. Tony always said that I had to punch with my whole entire body to get maximum effect. I did as Tony said, put my back, shoulders, and hips into every punch I threw through the air.
The Portland Police Department blasted through the doors the next night, forcibly removing me from my hotel room. They deposited me into a psychiatric ward in the early morning, the second of three.
****
A hospital psychiatric ward is a hospital psychiatric ward. You’re put into one of those places after you’ve been deemed as a danger to others and to yourself. I refer to them as passive aggressive prison houses, meaning that psych wards are not exactly prisons — some even allow you to choose to stay — but once inside, the expectation is that you will remain there until the staff is ready to let you leave.
As a veteran of a New York City psychiatric care system— I’d been confined to a ward for two weeks a few years back — I couldn’t help but to make comparisons after arriving at the Portland, Oregon psych ward. The environment in this particular psychiatric ward was far less intense than the one I’d experienced in New York. Burly cops were not patrolling the corridors, patients were less agitated, and the employees were more comfortable interacting with the patients.
One of the groups I attended was managed by a young male psychologist. He and I bonded a bit over our mutual love for professional basketball, but we disagreed on who should have won the NBA MVP award that year(2005). I was a fan of Shaquille O’Neal, who was playing with the Miami Heat at the time, while he was fixated on Steve Nash, a Canadian point guard with the Phoenix Suns.
There was a washer dryer located in an alcove, where a female resident and I would meet when we needed a break from the mundane. We spoke mostly about what we hated most about being interred in a psychiatric ward: the lack of privacy, the strict routine, the group meetings, and the food. We also talked about entertainment, family, and exchanged views on politics. When I become comfortable enough with her, I showed her some of the artwork I’d been working on.
John, my ward roommate, was far less physically intimidating than my previous roommate — who was close to six and one-half feet tall and weighed more than two hundred fifty pounds — in New York. He was also white, about my height, and enjoyed eating the food. Like me, he was bald and he wasn’t originally from Portland. He said he’d left California a few years back due to money issues. “It’s was getting damn expensive for me to live up there man,” he’d said. “You spend all your money on food and housing. There was nothing left for me to spend on girls at the end of the month.”
John was good natured and often broke into smile, revealing crooked and stained teeth. If I had met him on the streets instead of inside a psych ward, I’d not have guessed that he’d been a veteran of five. I assumed that he was scary when he lost control of his emotions — he’d been diagnosed as schizoaffective. But he never lost control when he was in my presence, a fact for which I was grateful. He became a good friend after just a few days.
Time in the ward went by slowly, although it was mostly easy. After about five days, I’d hoped that I could do the rest of my time without a major incident. I got along with most everyone I came to know, and the clinical staff seemed to think I was getting progressively better with the passage of each day.
There was just this one guy, though. He was extremely tall, had been fitted with long arms and legs by his creator, and he was sick. Really, really, sick. My roommate said he’d introduced himself as Jimmy in a group meeting. I don’t know how long he’d been interred in this particular unit, but I guessed he’d been in there for a long while. John and I would speculate to each other about Jimmy.
Something was pent up inside of Jimmy, and it was ready to burst out, as he was never able to stay still. Every time I walked past his room, he was pacing the strip of the floor that divided the beds. At certain points of the day, he would exit his room, jut his head forward, and pace up and down the hospital corridor. John and I would be milling about just outside the entrance to our room as he approached. He would raise his chin and stare directly at me as he walked by, causing my stress and anxiety levels to spike in the very place where I was supposed to get better.
“What is up with this guy?” I’d said one afternoon.
John shook his head and said, “I don’t know man. I’ve wondered about it a lot. Maybe he’s exercising or something.”
“Nope. I think it has something do with what’s going on in his head,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest. “You know, I don’t like the way he looks at me, though. It like he’s got some sort of issue with me. ”
“Why do you think he has an issue with you?”
When comparing psych wards earlier in this essay, I’d failed to mention one of the major differences between the New York City psychiatric ward and the Portland psychiatric ward: the racial composition of the inpatients. The New York ward had amassed a significant number of black inpatients and other inpatients of color; the staff was also diverse, with black, Asian, and Latino occupying the roles of psychiatrist, cop, and nurse. The patients and staff at the Portland psych ward were more of a homogeneous group of white people, a reflection of the city’s population.
“Maybe it’s because I’m the new guy,” I said.
“He does seems really crazy.”
“He can’t be much crazier than you,” I said nudging him.
“Whatever man.”
The next day, during the afternoon, I stood outside my door, alone, not looking for trouble, albeit holding my ground. Once again, Jimmy fixed me with a stare as he stalked past. Normally, this would have been about the time I’d have turned my head in the opposite direction in order to avoid uncomfortable — at least on my end — eye contact. I held his gaze on this day, and his eyes widened somewhat in surprise. He looked unsure for a second, before ultimately deciding to turn away and continue pacing down the walkway. I kept burrowing holes into the nape of his neck with my eyes as he put more distance between us. I’d hoped that he could feel me staring holes through his pale white skin.
The clock struck six a few hours later, signaling the arrival of dinner. Sandwiches were on the menu tonight, a welcome distraction from everything else that was happening with me. Right after my eye wrestling match with Jimmy, I’d developed a persistent itch and tingling in my arm that got worse with the passage of each hour. I made a mental note to talk to the doctor about the medicine that I was taking.
As soon as I took a step beyond my room, Jimmy was in my face, our noses separated by less than an inch. Jimmy was huffing and puffing breaths like a rabid bull preparing to charge the matador. His hands were balled into fists, his body tensed for battle. “Don’t you ever stare at me ever again!” he bellowed. “I’ll rip your fucking face off!”
Jimmy was a tall, rangy white man, who was threatening me with bodily arm. He was also mentally ill, and I knew that he might have felt somewhat threatened by me staring at him a few hours ago. I’d probably provoked the pacing bear with my stare. But I was still offended by the way he spoke to me, as if I was supposed to cow tow to his demand like I was some little boy or something. This ain’t the 1960’s motherfucker, I thought. Yeah, this is 2005, and black folks were allowed to stare at white folks for no reason too.
With my heart pounding, I took a small step forward and balled my fists. “You’ve been doing the same thing to me since I got here. I don’t know what your problem is with me. But you’re going to have to stop with your nonsense — ”
Boom! Jimmy landed an uppercut to the bottom of my chin, snapping my head backward. Of course I was stunned by the punch, and it made me forget about everything else at the moment. I couldn’t recall the boxing lessons from Tony and forgot about the itch crawling along on my arms.
Jimmy shuffled backwards and put his fists up to taunt. “You going to step up motherfucker?”
That’s when the anger and adrenaline took over. I was blinded by hate, as I just wanted to get my hands on Jimmy. So I rushed forward and started swinging when I got close enough.
Jimmie was a much more experienced fighter than I was. He used his range and quickness to land blows to my face and head area. It’s a good thing that he wasn’t a very powerful man like Tony, because Tony would have knocked me out in a matter of seconds. I kept wailing away though, landing punches on Jimmy’s shoulders, arms, and chest. Jimmy was slippery though, an escape artist. Still, I pursued him until his back was pressed against one the walls. When I had him cornered, I thought about lunging forward to grab him around the waist to throw him to the floor.
Sensing danger, Jimmy instinctively slid from beyond the wall. When he was standing in some free space, he put his fists up again and said, “You’re busted up. You’re busted up! Step up! Step up!”
I turned to face Jimmy, ran my tongue across the bottom of my top lip, and tasted blood. I became more enraged and braced myself to lunge. “You hit like a bitch,” I said. “You hit like a soft little bitch!”
“Eze!” came a voice from my right side.
I turned in the direction of the voice. A blond older woman, one of the ward’s nurses, was approaching. She stopped in front of me, partially occluding my view of the shuffling Jimmy. “Eze. Come on. Just stop. Can you calm down please?”
“Calm down?” I said, pointing in the direction of Jimmie. “Look at him. He’s the one who started all of this. You saw it, right?”
“I know, but I’m here with you right now. I need you to stop.”
“Why aren’t you talking to him?”
“Eze. Come on, I’m a woman.”
“Fine.” I slammed my hands against my thighs.
As the nurse escorted me to my room, my roommate seemed to appear out of nowhere, a smile spread across his face revealing those teeth. His eyes were wide open, brimming with delight and surprise. “Eze, I didn’t know that you were a fighter my man.”
I attempted to wave him away, but he kept pressing for comments and information, as if he was some kind of beat reporter or something. “You had him against the wall, Eze,” said John. You would have had him if the fight had lasted a little bit longer. You know that, right? Just a few more seconds or so and then boom.” He smacked his right fist against the palm of left hand.
Because he was my friend, John went on to offer a way too optimistic assessment of my fight performance. Although I was remained relatively unscathed from the fight, I hadn’t really “won” in the normal sense. I’d absorbed more punishment than I’d been able to dish out. Still, I was able to stand up for myself, which was definitely a huge win for me.
Jimmy stopped staring at me.
***
Fifteen years have passed since the end of that confrontation, my one and only fist fight. So I’ll never forget about Jimmy. I’d thank Jimmy if I were able to see him again, because after years of struggling in my fight against the shadows manifested by my state of mind, Jimmy stood before me, not giving me the option to run or turn away. It’s what I needed at the time, and I’m grateful to Jimmy for giving me the opportunity to fight back.
I hope Jimmy is doing all right.
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