The Scissors
by Gretchen Turner
Preface:
I chose to examine addiction (and options for recovery), in a creative way. I wrote this short story which dramatizes the dangerous distortions that occur in the mind of an adolescent toying with drugs in an increasingly threatening way. The story is purposefully hyperbolic: it symbolizes the insidious harm being done to a budding addict, a kid who thinks it’s just fun and games, and depicts a horrifying outcome the adolescent was not prepared for but now has no choice but to cope with. (Akin to the devastation – psychologically, socially, physically – an individual who becomes chemically addicted must eventually confront.) Addiction is characterized by acting with a sense of being immune or exempt from consequences. Addicts frequently have an egocentric view of themselves in the world and their behavior often is from a place of entitlement, or self-serving, devoid of a sense of being accountable for those actions. A key to recovering from addiction begins with admitting that we are responsible for our actions and anticipating the ramifications of our choices, should we decide to act on them. With forethought comes the power to judge the relative benefit or detriment, the good or harm, that might emerge if we act on one of the possible courses of actions we always have. The quality of discernment, of discrimination, or evaluating the usefulness of our potential conduct, is a significant tool of recovery for addicts, for people habituated into acting without thinking of the consequences. This story is theatrical and exaggerated but, I think, an apt metaphor for the twisted imbroglio life can become when we swap rational, age and stage appropriate thinking and behavior for those impulsive and childlike patterns of relating to the world characteristic of chemically altered states of consciousness.
Characters:
Mr. Schlesinger – a sixty two year old high school math professor, with long white hair, completely bald on top, a significant paunch, dresses like he fell asleep in 1977 and no one told him thirty years had elapsed when he woke up, and has significant delusions that he is the hippest teacher in the world. Fighting the onset of old age by learning how to play the electric guitar, taking yoga classes and refusing to wear an age-appropriate hairstyle. His signature and personal feature for which he prides himself is his long pony tail that spills like a whip down his back, pulled together in a rubber band that he never deviates from wearing. He believes the pony tail is a chic, youthful accessory, making him feel less removed socially from the 16 and 17 year old students he teaches. To him, the students find him “just one of the guys,” in touch and stylish. To the students, he is a bit pathetic and they feel sorry for him – his wife left him years ago, he hasn’t dated since (they know this because he has mentioned in class how once you find true love – which he had with this wife – there’s no substitute), he lives alone, with his saltwater aquarium, collectible Corvette model cars and his electric guitar.
Danny – a sixteen year old student of Mr. Schlesinger’s, tries to be a “tough guy,” always getting in trouble and cutting classes, but suffers from low self-esteem. His bravado is a pretense for lack of confidence and he is always getting into mischief to gain the favor of the “in-crowd.” He has become a pothead and smokes up every day before school. In fact, he is high all the time, utilizing his frees and cutting classes to feed his “habit.” Despite the controversy surrounding whether marijuana is biologically or psychologically addictive, Danny’s world revolves around the stuff (as well as psychedelics like acid and mushrooms on weekends and club drugs, like ecstasy and methamphetamine) and has for the past almost two years. He is a senior now. Growing up he was gawky, unpopular and ostracized. He also has no left hand, severed at the wrist due to an accident with the paper-cutter when he was in first grade. He evolved into a bully to get back at the harms and taunting inflicted on him as a youngster.
Ned – friend of Danny’s yet more superficially than genuinely. Danny doesn’t really have any real friends, only some acquaintances who sort of treat him kind enough because they feel sorry for him. Pot truly is his best friend and he smokescreens the sadness he constantly feels by getting high and pretending he doesn’t feel as alienated and isolated as he actually does.
Nancy- another “friend” of Danny’s. She too only gives him the time of day out of pity.
The Janitor – female, minor character.
Narrator
***
SCENE I
On the bus going to PS 420 High School, in New York City. Danny, per usual, has smoked a joint in the little clearing within the chrysanthemum bush surrounding the bronze statue of some war hero (Danny has no clue which one – come to think of it, no one does unless they actually stop to bend down and minutely read the etched plaque underneath) set in the park. From his little nook, while puffing away, he has a clear view down the end of the block and once he spots the bus coming, he stubs his roach, carefully places it in the mini-ziplock bag with the rest of his stash, and bolts up to the curb in time to hop aboard the yellow school bus each morning. As he climbs aboard, he never fails to insert a Certs (he likes this brand because he thinks Retsin actually gives this household breath freshener an edge over others- even though no one actually knows what the hell Retsin is) to mask his potsweet breath.
Danny: as he takes a seat across from Ned and Nancy sitting in the same booth-seat on bus, “Hey guys, what’s happenin’? That party on Friday was rad wasn’t it?”
Ned: “Yeah, really cool. Um, but it was Saturday.”
Danny: “Yeah Saturday, did I say Friday? No…uh, on Friday, I was hooking up with this hot chick from Paris, said she was a nanny and living in the States for a year to make money and…well, yeah anyway, that party was a blast on Saturday.”
Nancy: “Yup, Oliver’s parents ought to go away more often. Too bad vomit that’s mainly red wine and, like, bile doesn’t come out of velvet curtains. Ollie’s gonna be grounded for like a year when his parents come back from the French Riviera. So I didn’t see you there Danny, you must’ve been holed up in one of the bedrooms making out with some other hottie, huh?!”
Ned and Nancy snicker jeeringly at Danny.
Danny doesn’t catch the gibe and picks up the lead with over-extended enthusiasm, “Yeah, you said it!” and raises his good arm, with hand attached, in a motion to slap high fives with Ned, who has made no motion to meet Danny’s hand in midair.
Danny brushes off the dis and, with a gesture at couth, attempts to segue his now raised arm into a search on the rack above him for some unnameable object in his backpack. He mutters to himself, “Hmm, must’ve left it at home…” and promptly returns the hand to his jacket pocket.
Danny: “Yeah, well, that party sure was better than all those damn algebra equations Mr. Schlesinger assigned! I swear man, who does he think he is, giving us like ten pages from the book over the weekend?!”
Ned and Nancy actually do side with him on this comment and Ned chimes in, “Dude you’re totally right, it’s bad enough he assigns mounds of homework on school nights but does he think we have no social life (?!) giving us like triple the amount on weekends.”
Danny: “I hear ya dude, my mom made me stay inside on Friday to do- (stops mid sentence, catching his slip) I mean, I had to push the date with my French babe on Friday back by three hours because I was, like, chained to my desk! I swear, it’s just gotta stop. Mr. Schlesinger needs a dose of his own medicine. We need to show him that we won’t take it anymore. And I’ve got just the solution.”
Ned and Nancy have tuned Danny out, having more fun playing that thumb game where two people interlace fingers and struggle to arrest the thumb of the other for more than three seconds.
Nancy passively offers: “Uh, yeah, you tell ‘em Danny boy!” And she giggles as Ned has just locked her thumb while she wriggles unsuccessfully out of the thumb-pin.
Danny- oblivious to their dismissal of him, continues on his cause: “I’ve got just the things to show Mr. Schl- Schlesh-, Christ you can’t even pronounce his damn name – SchleSSSinger, that we’re not going to take his homework oppression lying down!”
Ned: looks up upon hearing the words “homework oppression” and is caught off guard by Danny’s uncharacteristic eloquence: “Homework oppressions eh?”
Danny: “Yeah that’s right. I’m gonna get back at him for making us slaves to his Pyrennes!”
Ned and Nancy look up with quizzical expressions.
Nancy: “Did you just say, ‘Slaves to his Pyrennes?”
Danny: “Yeah” He’s a tired-ant! He rules us like a dictator – just heaping out work and we have no choice but to do it if we wanna pass the class.”
Nancy: “Um, Pyrennes are mountains in France … I think you mean ‘tyranny’ and ‘tyrant.’ She makes conspiratorial eyes at Ned and repeats “tired ant” with derisive inflection.
Danny is lost in his own diatribe now and doesn’t even notice Ned and Nancy’s mocking him: “Yeah I’ve got just the ticket to get back at ol’ pony-tailed Mr Schlessie….” He trails off with a wild and pleased look of justice-being-served in his eyes, while conspicuously fingering something poking a type of horned protrusion against the material of his jacket pocket.
Danny continues: “Hey check it out guys,” and he unveils, from his pocket, a staunch pair of metal scissors, the classic kind with long dual blades that create a type of dagger when closed and flexes open and shut with painted black thumb-and-finger loops.
Nancy: “Gee that’s nice, Danny … some scissors. Um, what’re you planning to do, ask Mr. Schlesinger to let us cut paper dolls instead of graph parabolas?” she finishes the sentence with a smug giggle.
Danny: not picking up on the sarcasm answers with seriousness, “Well, no, not quite, I’ve got something else planned that’ll teach Mr. S that we’re sick of all his homework, um, tyrrany.”
Ned: “Danny, It’s not so bad, he’s only, like, doing his job.”
Danny: “Yeah but it doesn’t have to be done so, well, so (can’t think of a clever retort and thuds out) it doesn’t have to be done so, um, much.”
Nancy: “Whatever you say Danny. Just be careful with those scissors. You could poke someone’s eye out.” She launches with Ned into the camaraderie of a refrain from “A Christmas Story,” “You’ll shoot your eye out…”
Ned chimes in, “Raaalphie, wait uuuup!”
Danny: “Yeah I’ll be careful all right, I’ll get it just right” and he sip-snips the scissors in the air for menacing effect.
Ned- seeing a distorted sort of look of urgency in Danny’s eyes: “Dude, chill out … Seriously, why the heck are you carrying those scissors?”
Danny: “You’ll see man.”
SCENE II
3:30pm, in Mr. Schlesinger’s office during his 3-5pm office hours.
Danny knocks on the door, Mr. Schlesinger is alone, snacking on Lay’s potato chips and Coca-Cola, correcting homework. Danny, per usual, has just finished his “Yay!-the-school-day-is-over” joint way out on the outskirts of the soccer field. No one can really see him there as there is a patch of overgrown crabgrass and other hugely neglected weeds behind which the forest takes off in miles of camouflaging shadows and gnarled terracotta natural bunker. Knowing Danny plans to see Mr. Schlesinger today, he finishes the joint with a Marlboro Red cigarette; he doesn’t actually inhale (and always giggles as he compares himself to Bill Clinton’s infamous line that he learned in class when it came time to the unit on government); he just sucks the smoke into and out of his mouth and waves the lit rod around his body so the tobacco odor usurps the marijuana one both in his clothes and mouth.
Mr. Schlesinger, hearing the knock-knock on his door, walks across the floor covered in overly abundant profusion of textile making up the burgundy shag-carpet. The carpet reminds one of a wooly mammoth’s fur. It, the dense shag carpet, is one of the several 70’s throw backs that characterize the office. Other defining retro emblems include the lava lamp on top of the mini-fridge in the corner (though the waxy globules that typically undulate in fluid amoeba-like movements, have all congealed at the top, reminding one of that ghastly frozen glop of lard, discarded from last months’ rack of lamb, you find in the freezer when shoving things around as you look for Ben and Jerry’s), a poster of Jimmy Hendrix performing at his Purple Haze concert in ’68, Jimmy with that ardent, mid-solo grimace on his face that simultaneously bespeaks legendary virtuosity and advanced constipation) and also a typewriter where a computer would be for other professors who realize the times they are a’changing.
Mr. Schlesinger- greets Danny with typical overly effortful shtick at coming off forty years younger than he actually is: “Hiya Danny boy, how’s it hanging?”
Danny- looks both ways down the empty school corridors to be sure no one notices him enter Mr. Schlesinger’s office, then he enters, hiding something behind his back. Danny, in a low tone replies: “Things’re fine Mr. S. How’s it going for you? You correcting our homework?”
Mr. Schlesinger: “Yupperie, never a dull moment around here,” and he lets out a lighthearted chuckle. “You kids sure do make me earn my keep,” he picks up a paper from the top of his pile on the desk and, referring to it, begins, “Pythogoras was not a type of python!…and, pie is not just something you order with extra cheese and pepperoni…” he rubs his eyes and shakes his head, wonderstruck by the students’ lack of grasp on math yet at the same time getting a kick out if it as he knows it’s hard stuff at first…And he gets an additional rise out of kids’ cleverly creative answers.
Danny: “Well, Mr. Schlesinger,” gesturing at the stack of homework on the desk, “Um, this stuff is kinda hard … and giving us so much of it only, well, makes it worse. If we don’t get it after three problems, assigning like 23 of the same equations only makes us feel even more stupid! If we can’t get it once, or twice, or three times, then getting it wrong like 20 more times just sucks!”
Mr. Schlesinger: ‘Danny, Danny. Danny… I admire your zeal but it’s a little thing called practice that makes you better. Now I’m not saying practice’ll make perfect, but with enough effort, and coming to me like you are today for after-hours help, you will definitely improve. Which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to take up with you for a while now. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you taking the initiative to come to me today because I know how you’ve been struggling lately in class. I have noticed your performance slipping and your more disheveled appearance, and, as a teacher, it’s my job to intervene when I think you might be involved in some activities that might not be in your best interest. But of course, there is a fine line between a teacher appropriately stepping in when he senses a student not living up to his potential or headed down a troubling path and driving the student into a more wayward rejection of authority and those folks the student might already be trying to rebel against.”
Danny: “Ummm…” Danny wasn’t prepared for Mr S. to launch into a Public Service Message and it was beginning to be a buzz kill. Danny just wanted to run in and do his preconceived deed of rebellion. He didn’t want a lecture. But it’s now a lecture he was being given. Danny was too lost in his mode of revolt to pick up on Mr. Schlesinger’s warm and compassionate intentions. This is the tension teachers often confront: the students who need intervention the most tend to be least receptive because the lure of drugs has already taken over and the student needs to have his run with it before being ready or willing to address the damage occurring in unseen levels within. Still, it behooves a teacher to at least show signs of caring for the student’s welfare and presenting facts and resources available to the student, even if the drug-addled adolescent isn’t amenable to these suggestions currently. The gesture at embracing the student will and does implant into the student’s currently distorted consciousness and later the message latent in this constructive intervention will bud in a fruitful way and the student who has become a full fledged addict may come to realize the hot water he is in and eventually surrender, knowing it’s time for help. At this point, he will remember, thankfully and favorably, this intervention by school administrators, presently just cramping his style and a thorn in his side.
Mr. Schlesinger: “It’s ok, Danny, you don’t have to say anything. I know how hard it is to be a teenager and I know I was young once, too. Sometimes, we resort to methods of getting by that we think are helping when really, they are not. And it’s not until it’s too late, or nearly, when this realization comes. So I just want to tell you some things out of a sense of genuine care for you, Danny. You’re a good boy and I see how some of the other kids treat you. I know it’s not easy to be picked on and sort of shut out from some of the circles that certain kids run with. I know you try so hard to fit in and some of the students are mean and judgmental. But, you’ll see that when you’re older, all this won’t mean anything and you’ll have that much stronger of an identity and especially, a sense of compassion because you will know how not to treat others, having had first hand experience of how rotten it feels. So I don’t blame you for running to maybe some drugs or alcohol now to escape the turmoil you’re subjected to. It’s an understandable response when you feel so disempowered and rejected to sort of fake a sense of control and inclusion. I know the draw to chemically be the king of your own kingdom to just get by now. It’s ok. But it’s not something you’ll want to come to rely on. Because eventually there will be no more real you and you will not know how to even trust your own voice. You will depend on the drug or alcohol to facilitate your sense of being in the world and without it, you will not be able to put one foot in front of the other. Right now, it’s understandable that you are running from something, you feel you need a barrier between you and the hell you’re going through trying to fit in, to be popular, to endure the ostracism … and hell, besides that, you’re a teenager where experimentation is natural and titillating! But we can’t just run from something or “experiment” our whole lives. Eventually we need to head towards something concrete, some goal that means something to us. And adolescence is the stage to be practicing and discovering what this might be.”
Danny- hems and haws but some silent place way deep down is actually listening and he feels his eyes welling up. Mr. S has touched on so many things Danny has been experiencing but never had a name for and Danny feels simultaneously comforted yet terrified and desperate … He also feels a stab of bravado and does not want Mr. Schlesinger to see him crying so he bucks up and overcompensates back into a rough, gruff, exterior.
Mr. Schlesinger- is aware of Danny’s taking in his message and the swirl of emotion it sets off. He reassures Danny that he doesn’t have to respond; just know that Mr. S cares for him and believes in his potential to accomplish anything he wants. This “Public Service Announcement” is serving to just lay a foundation of information that Danny does not need to acknowledge now but to comfort him because the information will always be here for if and whenever Danny might feel ready to approach it.
So Mr Schlesinger continues: “Please try to always remember that there is no fear or shame in the dignity of your own experience, language, knowledge and passions. I know it seems like everywhere you turn, you’re being told what to do. ‘Wake up, brush your teeth, iron that shirt, you shouldn’t eat that, it’s fattening, no, that’s not the right answer: two plus two equals four not three, go do your homework, go to church, don’t pick on your sister, time for bed …’ and on and on like an endless prison of commands. And it’s true, to be in a teenager’s shoes is hard and does require a lot of obedience to forces that make you wonder what you owe to any of them. Parents/caretakers just seem to nag, nag, nag, teachers pile mounds of work you have no interest in, and priests, rabbis, and other heads of religious traditions, among other commands, just tell you that you’re not allowed to pursue the kinds of desires that are flooding your hormonal systems!
I don’t blame kids for acting out and taking measures that seem to stick a big middle finger up at all of us adults peering down magisterially from what seems like a mountain of thou shall nots! You come to wonder, well, what can I do? The list of things you want to do gets squelched under the repressive weight of things you’re supposed to be occupying yourself with instead. I totally understand why you’d prefer to escape from all the pressures dumped on you. By altering the state of consciousness subjected to all those demands and instead showing up to the world as a type of visitor from another psychedelic planet, it’s a way to cope with what seems overwhelming to manage. It’s a way to please the people “forcing” you to follow the rules, while seeming to get one over on them since its not the real you robotically doing what you’re told, but this distorted version of you. The real you has taken a type of flight out of town. You don’t want to perform all the responsibilities imposed on you but you know that you’re either not able to take care of yourself independently or resent the fact that you have to if you’re put to work as such a early age due to economic conditions that mandate it for survival. So you feel boxed in and like you have no alternatives but to “do what you’re told.” Or you have contempt for be forced to be a grown up and obliterating the childhood you deserve. You don’t see the long-term benefit of many of these expectations; they just seem like constant hounding and burdens that get in the way of what you’d rather be doing. So you sort of half-step through the mechanics of what the authority figures expect from you. You obey, but in a rebellious way because the you showing up for life has been replaced by someone constantly high and not genuinely connected to these obligations. Authority figures see you there, so in effect you’re satisfying the code of agreements set between youth and adults, yet, the true you had vanished into an altered universe of perceptions. In effect you’re saying to us, ‘See, here I am, like a good little boy,’ but the silent subtext is, ‘but you don’t know the half of it; because here I am getting my own way by doing just what you wouldn’t want me to be doing!’
You think that by getting high, you’re taking back control of a life that seems already decided by forces outside your own decision-making processes. Not to mention the romanticized portrayal of drugs saturating the media. It’s hard to see how altered states of consciousness can be harmful when people you admire are glorifying it. And there may in fact be a role for substances that take you out of usual perceptions. I’m not some fuddy-duddy condemning any and all forms of chemical “escape.” I and many of my friends have walked in your shoes. I was 16 once, too, experimental and yearning to explore beyond the door to the “third eye,” a dimension some call mystical and replete with the freedom and lack of limitations seemingly impossible to find in the “real world.”
But there is a critical difference between escaping from something and moving intentionally to a pre-determined goal. The damage you can’t see now is that, through no fault of your own, you are currently only escaping from the life seemingly imposed on you. You don’t have foresight, a clear direction towards which you wish to strive, you simply feel you must immediately get out from under the weight of current obligations and pressure. The problem is that by not intentionally exploring concrete alternatives of activity and resorting only to drugs to blot out a sense of presence in the life you’re being “forced” to live, you’re wearing away at your mind’s trust in itself to establish other courses of possibility that might be fulfilling if you were to give them a chance. Eventually, after you’re ready to become more than just a professional drug addict, and realize you want to be a substantial force to be reckoned with in the world, you’ll notice, with horror, that you never tried anything that actually interested you and you only know how to be addicted to the escaping from things. In constantly revolting against something, through drugs, you’re simultaneously sabotaging your chance to be developing and cultivating skills that do appeal to you, which later can be applied usefully in the world. You’re sense of “I am a drug addict” will have indelibly etched itself on your identity and your faith in becoming an adult who achieves and is self-reliantly successful, will have taken a tremendous blow.
Walt Whitman, a famous transcendentalist and realist poet, once said something that I think you’d appreciate: Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul. He is endorsing the message behind your actions; he is encouraging you to question us authority figures and obey only what pleases your soul, or innermost sense of who you are. But there is one difference. He doesn’t say to use drugs to chemically scramble your mind, already strong and independent enough to determine what feels right for your own life. He simply says re-examine and dismiss.
What is impossible for you to understand now is that by using drugs to “dismiss what insults your soul” – to say “no, I won’t be exactly who you expect me to be” to adults – you’re disabling your mind’s ability to think for itself. Neurologists tell us that each thought we send through our system lays a kind of pathway in our minds. It’s like sending a stream of water down a hill. The more we send the same thoughts through our minds, it creates a groove along which our thoughts will automatically continue to follow. If the path from the top of a hill to the bottom contains a carved out groove the flow of water will naturally spill into the groove to be carried to the bottom.
The more you use any chemical substance to carry you through life, the more you mind depends on this groove, this message-delivery system, to get you from point a to point b and the more your mind isn’t free to choose a different track to reach a goal. Those other tracks actually get disconnected because they think, ‘Well I’m not being used so no sense in my sticking around.’ Basically, the avenues in your brain associated with normal consciousness lose their power because a groove is steadily being carved along the drug pathway in you brain. All thoughts that used to be able to think outside the influence of drugs get swallowed up into the channel being dug by drug’s shovel. Even if you try to think on your own, it no longer works because the bricks along these pathways have been dug up and repositioned into the drugs-only path of decision-making.
When bringing in materials from outside yourself to construct a path to follow, one can’t rely on the supply of these materials. Anything outside yourself, whether it be drugs, alcohol, sex, buying flashy clothes (shopping compulsion, addiction to materialism) or eating food for reasons other than hunger, any type of crutch we use to just get through the day, will eventually fail us because there isn’t an infinite supply of any of these external means of satisfaction. Our bodies eventually win out and want to reclaim their equilibrium. Bodies and minds are interconnected and there is an original balance to them set my nature. When we constantly try to oust nature and instead force a certain method of getting by on them, we are trying to override a force much larger than ourselves … and in time, we cannot win out. The force that created us, Nature with a big N, will reassert itself and we will no longer be able to sustain the over-reliance on objects outside our natural systems to establish balance and control in our lives. Basically, what seemed like a good idea at the time – in this case, using drugs/alcohol to float through your life now – will soon not come with that same type of thrill. And by the time this catches up, you’ll have become so used to letting drugs do the thinking for you, that when they betray you (as addiction to anything will), you won’t have a true sense of yourself to fall back on. You won’t trust the original you … and you will have to essentially start, developmentally, from the age you are now, to construct an adult life. It might be years that drugs are your best friend, but eventually, they won’t provide you the comfort they do now, and when you let go of them, it will be a child’s mind that you have to work with, asked to start thinking like a responsible adult. One who can make constructive, creative decisions, and not the destructive, escapist ones that are all you are familiar with.
I don’t say this to scare you! I am merely urging you to talk to me, or anyone you may trust and who is a bit older, about what it is you truly like doing, other than doing drugs. It will be important to cultivate a sense of what means something to you, organically, so that you can spend time celebrating this piece of you, every day. It will be like an anchor, that will remain rooted and strong, underneath all the other things that, for now, seem to knock and sway you like tumultuous winds from which you would like to get out of the way of. For now, you might have to just trust some of the forces that are trying to instill good habits in you, but stay true to whatever anchor gets you naturally in touch with who you are at a deep level. No one can uproot the anchor if you start now to trust it. This way, when you have grown old enough to start living the life you want, Danny, you will no longer simply be escaping from life, but you will be ready to merely lift anchor and set sail in this pre-determined direction of your choice.”
Mr. Schlesinger knows he is being a talkaholic and dumping a ton of information on a boy to whom it will sound like preaching but Mr. S. also remembers when he was in college, slightly older than Danny, but not by much, when his Professor of Eastern Mysticism had a similar talk with him when Mr. S. went to submit a very late midterm exam and had to meet the professor in her office. The professor was not stupid and knew Mr. Schlesinger was addicted to some drug or another, evidenced by the glazed and remote bloodshot dilated look in his eyes for every class, even though Mr. S. was a brilliant student and continued to get amazing grades on each assignment. Professor Miller, that day when Mr. Schlesinger, then an 18 year old freshman at Brown University, came to submit his late assignment, took the opportunity to engage a dialogue almost identical to what Mr. Schlesinger is performing with Danny now. Mr. S. said little to Professor Miller but Prof. Miller spoke at length and with data and compassion identical to that pouring from Mr. Schlesinger’s lips now to Danny. Back then, Mr. S. was feigning paying attention to Professor Miller and could think of little else but bolting from her office to re-rig his arm and perform his beloved ritual with the spoon and lighter. But, like Mr. S. could detect in Danny now, Mr. S. knew, back then as a freshman in college, he was miserable, addicted to heroin and silently sinking, but wasn’t ready to approach recovery, so the words Prof. Miller cascaded forth, were digested stealthily in Mr. Schlesinger’s databank and Mr. S. attributes his eventual recovery, after dropping out of Brown two years later, to the heartfelt, data-rich and genuine intervention that day in Professor Miller’s office.
So Mr. Schlesinger, today, with Danny seemingly tuned out and gazing at the woodpecker making a techo song out of the colossal oak just outside of Ms. S.’s office, feels the rush of life-saving reminiscence and useful rhetoric even though he knows his speech means little to Danny right now.
Mr. Schlesinger continues, this time offering up various outside resources for Danny, in case he wants to take it upon himself to explore options for reclaiming his own voice and life, if he’s too embarrassed or ashamed to involve a teacher at this stage: “So, Danny, you don’t have to do anything with this little pamphlet now, but here is a packet with a list of lots of different centers and resources, here in New York City, so you know you are not alone and there are tons of youngsters going through exactly what I think you might be now. And, after you take a look through it, I would be happy to be with you if and when you’d like to reach out to any one of them. We can call or write to one of the centers together.” He takes a packet from among a row of books and binders on his bookshelf and hands it to Danny.
Here is what was printed on the pages:
TeenCentral.Net
A unique, personalized, anonymous and safe internet resource to help
kids face and overcome crisis and life’s daily challenges. This web
site is for teens and by teens. Excellent multi-faceted resource for
virtually any teenage need, question, curiosity and a tool for social interaction.
Child-Help USA
1-800-422-4453 (24 hour toll free)
Assists teens with any problem.
Youth Crisis Number
1-800-499-9130
Youth Mental Health Line
1-888-568-1112
Addiction Resource Guide
http://www.addictionresourceguide.com
A directory of addiction treatment facilities.
www.checkyourself.org
A site for teens to see where they stand with drug and alcohol abuse.
Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator from SAMHSA
http://www.findtreatment.samhsa.gov/facilitylocatordoc.htm
This searchable directory of drug and alcohol treatment programs will
show the location of facilities around the country that treat
alcoholism, alcohol abuse and drug abuse problems.
Addiction Recovery Guide
http://www.addictionrecoveryguide.org
The Addiction Recovery Guide assists individuals struggling with drug
addiction and alcoholism find help that best suits their needs.
Women for Sobriety
http://www.womenforsobriety.org
Women For Sobriety, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to
helping women overcome alcoholism and other addictions.
Hazelden (Chelsea, Manhattan location)
Alcohol and drug treatment center, with branches targeting teen alcohol and drug
addiction.
322 8th Ave. 12th Floor
New York City, NY 10001-6779
Phone: 212-420-9522 or
Toll Free: 800-257-7810
Tobacco Free Quitline
1-877-724-1090
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK The only federally funded hotline for suicide
prevention and intervention. People who are in emotional distress or
suicidal crisis can call the Lifeline at any time.
Drug and Alcohol Rehab Services
1-800-515-DARS (confidential)
http://www.drugandalcoholrehab.net/Assessment.html
(confidential online assessment generates a call from an addiction specialist)
http://www.drugabuse.gov/drugpages.html
National Institute on Drug Abuse compiled this easy online reference
of information about various substances (particularly those most
popular with teenagers) and related topics. Includes toll free number
and website for treatment referral: 1-800-622-HELP or
findtreatment.samhsa.gov
CASA
633 Third Avenue, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10017-6706
Tel: 212-841-5200
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at
Columbia University is the only nation-wide organization that brings
together all the professional disciplines needed to study and combat
abuse of all substances – alcohol, nicotine as well as illegal,
prescription and performance enhancing drugs – in all sectors of
society.
Partnership for a Drug-Free America
www.drugfreeamerica.org
Students for a Drug Free America: 615-210-6562
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/teens/Teens_and_Substance_Abuse.htm
Extensive online resource for virtually all matters concerning teenage addiction.
Danny snaps out of his woodpecker-engrossed reverie when the entrance of the pamphlet interrupts his vision. He is feeling such an intense onrush of feelings now because even though he copped a stance of rigid disaffection, so much of what Mr. S. was saying hit nerves in Danny and vulnerabilities he tried so hard to pretend weren’t there. Danny feels simultaneously relieved that someone, an adult who is smart and mature – even though Danny hates the amount of homework he gives – is aware of how much he is hurting, yet Danny also feels ashamed to be caught in his act, to be discovered and his jig is up. Without thinking, Danny resorts to his cocksure, trés cool, overmasculine image and re-erects his guard of resistance. He recollects what his original plan was upon visiting Mr. Schlesinger and positions this centermost in his mind’s eye once again. As much as Mr. Schlesinger’s message has sunk in and made an impact, Danny is still two parts obnoxious rebel and only one part willing volunteer to shuck his image of overly affected kid trying his mightiest to win the favor of the in crowd. So Danny returns the conversation to his resentment for the mounds of algebra homework Mr. Schlesinger assigns to his senior math class.
Danny: “Mr. S., um (doing his best to seem “too cool for school” and not swayed by Mr. Schlesinger’s attempt at intervention, despite it making a decisively saving grace-like effect on Danny’s psyche), about all the homework you give us; all it does is take up my weekends and like 90% of the time I spend on my weeknight homework. You know, I do have homework in other classes. I’ve got a little lesson of my own to give you.”
Mr. Schlesinger: “Is that right?” Amused and intrigued, gestures for Danny to come follow him back to his desk, as the two are still standing only a few paces within the open door. Mr. Schlesinger turns around and takes a few paces in the direction of the desk which is located close to the wall opposite the door.
Danny: “That’s right…” And, after Mr. Schlesinger has turned his back to Danny and approaches the desk, Danny whips the scissors from behind his back, swipes them upwards in one fell swoop at Mr. Schlesinger’s signature rope-like white pony tail and snips the thing off. In doing so, the heave of frenzied energy has also taken a rather deep slice out of the nape of the teacher’s neck. Mr. Schlesinger, in a wave of shock and horror, whips his hand up to the place on his neck where the injury has occurred and turns to face his perpetrator, but Danny has wheeled around to hightail out of the room. Just as Danny nears the door, he throws the scissors to the floor in that film-like, terrified, drop-the-weapon movement enacted by someone who doesn’t want anything to do with the crime anymore. The scissors, being whipped so forcefully, have lodged themselves, like a sinister iris, into the grass-like wadding of the carpet, blade-side-up. Danny sprints through the door and through the still-vacant halls towards the exit of the building.
Mr. Schlesinger is getting a hold of himself but is in pain and still too dumbfounded and horrified to process what has just happened. Though he is aware that his neck is bleeding and has just noticed the bizarre image of his ponytail lying on the shag carpet not far from the spire of scissors jutting from the long thick burgundy pile underfoot.
Mr. Schlesinger bends over to retrieve his severed length of pony tail, so closely shorn that the rubber band still encircles the stringy whip of hair. As he does so, arm stretching outward before him about to scoop up the mane, he suddenly seizes the arm back and instead clutches his heart, “Dannyyyyyy!” he yells in an angonizing wail, “Please- Don’t-…” His arm is gripping at chest, just left of his sternum. He drops to his knees, alongside the ponytail and with the scissors before him a foot or two up. “DAAANNNNNNNYYYYY” he pleads again in anguish, but Danny has made himself perfectly scarce. However, the wail from Mr. Schlesinger is picked up by the janitor, mopping the floor around the corner. The janitor drops the mop in a flash and speeds as fast as she can in the direction of the scream.
Mr. Schlesinger’s heart attack is of the most serious variety and in another 1.2 seconds his kneeling position has given way and, like a felled tree, he timbers, headfirst, to the floor. As if this isn’t bad enough, on the way down, in some Poe-like twist of gothic irony and horror, the spike of scissors has ever so misfortunately impaled the flesh directly between two bones of his left ribcage. As if the grim reaper couldn’t trust the gruesome heart attack alone to do the job he sent a back up measure to seal the fate with a stabbing to the heart.
Seven seconds later, when the janitor arrives at the door, a shriek of grisly horror emits from her lips. She instinctively crouches down to turn over Mr. Schlesinger to see if he is still breathing and, in doing so, a carcass, oozing blood and with two black loops of steel protruding from his belly, turns up to face her. All she can hear is the echo of “Danny!” ringing in her ears from a teacher calling out for his life.
© 2008 Gretchen Turner
