Paranoiawilldestroya

November 10, 2006

It's still unclear how Deborah's friend ended up in the psych ward on the eighth floor of Beth Israel Hospital, but judging from the message she left on Deborah's voicemail, it's where she needed to be.

Paranoid whispers laid out in Picasso-esque sentence structure, interrupted by passages that could have, under different circumstances, made sense: "I fell and hit my head. I slipped in some water and I might have a concussion, but no one is doing anything to help me. Things have been happening. You've probably already heard about some of it."

Deborah hadn't spoken to her friend in weeks and had no idea what she was talking about.

"Paranoiawilldestroya," her friend whispered.

"She got that part right," I said, as Deborah held the phone up to my ear.

"Call my friend John," the message continued. "Tell him where I am and explain it to him. Tell him to get a list of lawyers."

After listening to the message a few times and trying to distill what little truth might exist within it, Deborah called John.

"Oh yeah, I know where she is," he said. But he was little help in explaining how she got there other than to say, "She's been communicating telepathically with her teacher."

Her teacher is a woman she became obsessed with while enrolled in a program at the Center for Non-Traditional Employment for Women. A tall, strong, Nordic woman, divorced with two kids, who taught carpentry. Deborah's friend convinced herself that she and the teacher had a special connection and was desperate to ask the woman for a date. When she finished the program and the woman was no longer officially her teacher, she decided it was now or never—time to make a move. The teacher graciously declined the invitation and made it clear she wasn't interested. That was over a year ago.

Deborah's friend works as a bartender and has plenty of opportunities to meet other people, but she feels like she'd be cheating on the teacher if she ever went out with anyone else.

After meeting her for dinner a few weeks ago and listening to her obsess over a relationship that never existed for an hour, I told Deborah, "Your friend is obsessed. She needs to let go.

Easier said than done.

Deborah and I planned to visit her in the hospital last night, but she called to say she'd been released. Deborah said she sounded much more coherent. Not totally coherent, mind you, but who is? Deborah offered to visit her anyway, but the girl said she was tired.

Instead, Deborah went to her old neighborhood in Park Slope and visited Elaine, another friend of hers.

"So how's Elaine doing?" I asked when Deborah returned.

"She told me she'd been making out with a guy for about a week or so."

"Making out?"

"Yeah, you know, just meeting up and making out. Anyway, she had to break it off because things were getting too physical, too fast. She felt he was disrespecting her. 'Maybe twenty-five is too young for me,' she said."

"Where'd she meet this guy?"

"Where else? At a bar. She goes out drinking with him every night, stays out until three in the morning, goes home with him, and then complains that things are too physical. The guy is twenty-five! What does she expect?"

"Has she slept with him yet?"

"No! She hasn't slept with anyone since she got her virginity back."

"What?"

"You know, she's one of those born-again virgins who reclaim their virginity. She's saving herself for marriage."

"Wait a second, which of your friends are we talking about again? Elaine, or the crazy one?"

"They're all crazy."