The U.S. Public Health Service Hospital at Fort Worth

Each patient had his own little thing. There was one guy 
who just walked around making the sign of the cross. He'd bow 
own on one knee as if he was praying and mumble. They had 
a bench that extended all around the dayroom, and one guy 
would sit there and count money all the time; every now and 
then he'd put his fingers to his mouth and wet them as if he was 
counting bills. Then there were catatonics, who would just 
stand in one position and never move, and there were people 
who'd sit or lie on the floor and play with their toes. Now and 
then, there would be one that would look at you, but as soon as 
you looked back, he'd turn away and giggle and hide behind a 
table or something.

We played, and while we played I noticed that almost all of 
them showed some signs of hearing the music, moving their feet 
or some part of their bodies in a semblance of the rhythm we 
were playing in. Some of them would even smile - a silly smile. 
And that showed us that what we were doing was getting 
through to them. I talked to the aides and the nurses and asked 
them if they thought we were doing any good, if there was any 
point to it, and they said that they thought there was because 
on the days we played, they found that the patients were a lot 
more manageable; there were less violent flare-ups. It was as if 
we anaesthetized them with our music.

One day a week, sometimes twice a week, we'd play in the 
women's section. These were the wives and daughters of people 
in the coast guard. A lot of the women, I was told, had syphilis, 
cases that had progressed to the stage where, when they were 
finally aware of the fact that they had it, it was beyond cure. 
The nurses and doctors said that in the end the patients got to 
the point where they would have to be locked in a cell, to die 
there a horrible death, writhing and beating themselves against 
the padded cell, ripping at their bodies.

We'd play for these women and it was sad in actuality, 
when you look back at it, but at the time it seemed very funny. 
There was one woman, about twenty-eight, and I noticed that if 
you looked at her, she'd get excited; she'd really get frantic. So 
I'd be playing and she'd be standing, her left hand grabbing at 
her stomach, bunching up her robe, and I'd stare at her, and the 
longer I looked... She'd start shaking all over; she'd stamp her 
feet; she'd start screaming and calling me names: "You son-of-
a-bitch!" And then I'd stop, but I couldn't help doing it again 
and again. There was another girl. She had long, black hair, 
and I guess at one time she was sort of pretty, but she was really 
wasted. This girl would lie on a couch while we played. Once 
while I was playing I happened to look over at her, and I 
noticed she was staring at me. I looked away. I played. I looked 
back again, and I saw her glance around to see where the nurse 
was. When she saw that the nurse wasn't looking, she took her 
robe and opened it up, and she had nothing on underneath. 
There she was, just lying there with the robe pulled back and 
her legs spread. She was looking at me and I was looking at her 
and then all of a sudden she closed the robe. She'd keep open-
ing it and closing it, and a couple of times the nurse saw her 
and made her stop.
         
I started taking nutmeg. They had tunnel crews that cleaned at 
2, 3, 4 A.M., when all the action stopped. They'd wash down the 
tunnels with big hoses and scrub them because the mental 
patients would urinate against the walls and sometimes shit on
the sides. These guys brought papers of nutmeg and mace smug-
gled in by the guards, and I took it because it was very difficult 
to get anything else.
  
They sold it in penny matchboxes; one box cost four packs 
of cigarettes. You'd put it in a glass with hot water and stir it 
up. It wouldn't dissolve: it would kind of float around. It was 
very hard to drink. I gradually increased the amount I took and 
finally got up to four matchboxes a day. The guy would wake 
me at about four in the morning and give me the nutmeg. I'd get 
up, go to the bathroom, put it in my glass, get it down without 
gagging, and then go back to sleep. I'd wake up again at about 
6:30 or seven, when they rang the bell, and by the time I was 
ready to go to breakfast the nutmeg was hitting me and I'd 
really be sailing. It makes you feel like exceptionally good pot; 
you giggle; you laugh; everything is insanely comical. I'd walk 
down the tunnel with another guy (we'd take it together), and 
we'd pass the mental patients walking with their eyes on the
ground, dragging their feet. We'd pass the one that was praying 
and the other one counting the money, and we'd start laughing. 
Sometimes five or six of us would take it at once. We'd go to the 
mess hall and rush to the table. They'd have coffee on the table 
in a big pot, and it was really delicious. We'd put our trays 
down and sit, and by the time we'd finished one cup of coffee 
we'd be completely out of it, goofing around, acting crazy. 
That's at about seven o'clock in the morning. And I did this 
every day for about six months at one period. It's a wonder I 
didn't kill myself.
         
The nutmeg made you think about sex. The bad thing about
Fort Worth - it was both good and bad - there were a lot of
women there. Every sixty days a different group of student 
nurses came in. They'd be going to different hospitals for their 
training. They'd be seventeen, eighteen years old, walking 
around in short uniforms, walking through the tunnels. There 
were also the women that worked in the administration 
building, office women who dressed real sexy - you could see 
them wandering around; then there were the nurses and the 
Grey Ladies and the Red Cross. So all kinds of intrigue went on. 
People would be hiding, staring at women. I guess a third of the 
addicts were Puerto Ricans. The Puerto Ricans used to stick lit-
tle mirrors on their shoes: a guy would go to the library and 
stand by some chick; he'd have the pockets cut out of his pants, 
you know, and he'd put his foot underneath the girl's dress and 
play with himself.

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	Part of the Library of Bernadette Tavernin - © 1999