The John Merrick Free-Associative Piece
by Timber Masterson & Christina Whyte-Earnshaw
John Merrick is a newly found out relative. It all makes sense now. Every time I see his image, I long for that kind of attention: the keen focused energy of
a downtrodden, halfway in the bag, crinkly rat-faced carnie, sticking his wooden cane in my cage, prodding me to do my tricks as onlookers wince
and guffaw at my alarming deformities. The show has honesty. It has guts. I have nothing to hide.
Entirely appealing to me is the not rising early thing: no more having to run out into
the callous, treacherous world of hurtful dingbats and lamebrains in order to sell my soul at some sub-basement telemarketing scam just to pay the
rent on some ridiculously overpriced dugout suburban dwelling—a hot plates, brown bar fridge and Murphy bed concern. No, I'm special. To them. They tell me I
am. Also attractive and salivatory, those dreamy and kaleidoscopic notions of cushiony Cornish scullery maids on roller skates sliding plates of gruel serendipitously
under my very own private hospital doorway.
Visiting well-wishers would need special designer name tags to gain entrance. I
would ask, "What news of the gaming tables?" expecting to be told, well, just what the news was over at the gaming tables. My roped-off private
corridor would be complete with sheets of only the highest thread count, handmade by pirate-shirt-wearing maidens with dispositions responsive to my needy
nature. There's my picture painted on the wall, like Mao, 20 feet by 40. I've arrived.
Professor: I first came across Jerry in a locked ward in Raleigh, North Carolina. He'd been there approximately four years and had shown little change.
Something about his flights of fancy, his slipping free of the heaviest dosages of psychotropic medications, caught my attention. In a form of
manic defense, and in contrast to those patients who catastrophise, what we see here is what we might call spectacularizing, a form of omnipotent grandiosity.
His self-diagnosis of Delusional-Off-the-Scale-Ego-Attention-Dire-Need-of-Validation-and-Security-Psycho-somnia, a manifold diagnosis which, he adds, is rare in
straight white male only-children in their 30's, in fact captures some truths about what troubles this man. It will be noted that the needs being served here
are of the very earliest and infantile kind—the need to be recognized; to be fed; to be made physically comfortable, thus to be made safe, secure
and contained, both mentally and physically.
A chorus line of chefs and cuisinart-protein-virtuosos from Finland would be carriaged in to work on the meal schedule: a delectable custom-made menu designed
to cater to my special dietary needs. The gentlemen
in white hats, aprons and hairnets are cutting up exotic and delectable roadkill, rendering it palette-ready for my elephantiasic appetite.
I would limp, but only when out on my nightly strolls, and this so old ladies would offer
to lend a hand, and hopefully offer me some yummy Turtle chocolates whilst crossing the rain-soaked London streets. It's always been my strategy to have
one leg up when the other foot drops. It's a good way to meet people, and have them set me straight on my cinematic misconceptions.
There's the grand fondness for my backside propped up by multiple pillows, in the
single-malt bachelor bed constructed especially for me, and being read to by pontificating Oxford scholars in need of community service credits. The dimensions
of my sleepytime apparatus are suited to the alarming curvature of the perplexingly distorted sense of self I so wholeheartedly embrace, my massive inflated
afflictions riding shotgun, along for the ride since birth.
Professor: Experienced clinicians will recognize the obvious zonal confusion, but perhaps less obvious is the anthropomorphizing of symptoms, which
then become experienced as companionable. Defensive isolation is maintained through a dangerously addictive, solipsistic fantasy system, which provides the
comforts of relationship without the real associated risks: loss, frustration, misunderstanding.
I would look forward with earnest zest to Observation Test Time, being wheeled down to the auditorium where the gawking strangers would sit with Mead
notebooks eagerly awaiting the results of my many tests. Society's elite pay top dollar to view me, make feverish observations, report on my every irregular
breath and slurpy inhalation. The massive distortion of my head assimilates into the core of my being, what I've become—a not very funny blind date. Here's
the downside: Her taking no pleasure in my screaming whilst at the eatery. "He's the greatest freak in the world." I'm preoccupied with the vast
trays of meats and horns of goodies and plenties. "Are there no olives at this buffet?" I find little comfort.
Professor: The need to be seen as special at whatever cost to mental health underlies an identification of this type with such an unlikely literary
character. Though it should be noted that the core of this identification, however far beyond the reach of conscience, is with the deep and profound suffering
of the character. To tap into this is where the real work of therapy would lie. The opportunity for healing, growth and change rests here.
I've always found attics (addicts?) terribly charming in that rustic and romantic kind of way. The sloped ceilings, a descending scale of depravity,
slip-sliding into Paul Simon melodic minor nines, segues of blind affection, a cowardly reproach.
Professor: This image of the attic is of interest. The wish to hide oneself is paired, as Freud taught us, with its opposite—exhibitionistic
inclinations. This was the child who may have run about the home dressed in mittens, hat, rubber boots and a mask, but minus pants. Adult intimacies can be
expected to be similarly complex. The conflict between characteristically teenage narcissistic preoccupations with self-showing and the infantile need for affirmation
of identity through recognition are paired with a compelling shame at being seen, touched or known. Shame and guilt over a fundamental flaw, deficiency or
deformity are the central unconscious affects.
My monsterly somnambulant sloth-shuffle, at times entirely endearing, my little claim to fame: these original quick jerky movements are based in a cornucopia of
creativity I know to be revered. They make me a grand-spectacled hit at parties, the center of attention, though too often sticking around absurdly late. When the
hosts are cleaning up, saying, "Boy, we ought to be heading off to bed," I'm like, just settling in to share secrets of how I felt being used by Camilla,
an all too boisterous guest from Staten Island. Also how I was told to act like a piñata by partygoers with miniature baseball bats, that as it turns out weren't that miniature. There are untold sweets in me.
Professor: Here we gain some clarity regarding the anxiety underlying the pathological preservation of the isolating grandiosity—the fear of
being damaged, harmed, ultimately emptied by others. Thus it is better to look pretty, and move fast, and to hold your arms tightly across your chest.
The huge hairy mitt-type fin-thing for an appendage where a human hand should be, advantageous more often then you'd think, the feeling of being chosen
first to play outfield: this brought a high-watt smile, though fewer friends ask me to assist them in typing their metaphysics essays. I like being different.
Professor: Often, as we see here, the individual tells himself he relishes how different he is from his fellow man. This, of course, is a lie, as internally
he is, to quote this patient, "a cartwheeling trauma moat, empty, blind and drowning." Such patients may be attractive on the outside, yet the
turmoil of ugliness, the scars of hatred turned inward make for such a muddled composition of self that there is no true vision, and no secure concept of self.
The search for a stable identity and the nature of the internal fantasy leads to identification with this recognizably malformed creature and what we
might call this Elephant Man Complex.
Note to self: Call a specialist in Zurich and make a note to name all my children Connie, if I can find a willing and suitable female companion.
Professor: He will often, to make himself feel more important, create emergency concerns, and may try to enlist the aid of imaginary European
doctors. He does this by pressing a good thirty or forty numbers in a row into the telephone pad, believing (again fooling himself) that he knows how to call
clinics where they will tend to his needs with proper nurses, high-thread-counted billowing pillow products and meals brought to his private attic
in some private hospital. Once he comes down from such a manic mood and realizes that no such outfit/organization exists, that he lacks even
the train fare to negotiate such passage, then he will mope about and more often than not visit Swiss Chalet three times a day to order the
repulsive dark meat chicken dinner with coleslaw, delivered by balding and sweaty thick-wristed hairy Polish waiter-types in heavy brown stockings—the whole scene reminiscent
of some cold, dark and snowy Kafkaesque nightmare, thus going against his core inner sense, destroying all. This is known in the biz as throwing in the towel.
I have mixed feelings of the day. I take a stroll, a break from all this crippling self-analysis, and come across my old schoolyard ...
Children at recess toss acorns
and half-finished apples my way, and casually ask just why it is I have another chap's ass stapled to my forehead. "Why is that repugnant and spiraling
hooded figure looming near the kids?" The hosing down portion of my acceptance to the schoolyard suits me fine—nice to be reintroduced to familiar-looking
teachers and janitors who charge outside to take time from their busy schedule and make sure I'm spiffy, fresh, squeaky clean and supple.
My confidence is now bolstered to that of a diseased millipede sandwich.
Later, I would get my act together and join a Seattle heroin musical outfit called The
Incurables. Onstage we all wear heavy burlap sacks and play wind and string instruments with sweaty woolen mittens, the better to protest the persecution of
people who lie and tell you that, yes, those are group showers they are marching you off to, in order to cut down on the city's water supply.
I lumber off my stage thinking of priests hired to work gay weddings and giggling
uncontrollably throughout the ceremony. This momentarily makes me feel better, though returning to such a scornful sullen unhopeful place has never done me
that much good.
Timber has completed his first book, TimFoolery: Tales of a Third-Rate Junkie,
and often contributes jazzy heartfelt epistles to a number of places. With his wife, Christina, he produces and hosts an interactive literary gathering
in Toronto called Word Substance Spatula.
