My Second Death Read Online Free
Author: Lydia Cooper
loveable, Glaucon. Do you not agree? Therefore right love has nothing mad or licentious about it.
So: What is the proper thing to do?
The civically responsible individual would call in the cops, who would investigate. The cops would inevitably question that civically responsible individual. But any investigation into my past will uncover my unfortunate encounter with a man that ended in his falling down a flight of steps in my parents’ basement and cracking his neck. The judge said that the murder was self-defense. The shove down the stairs wasn’t what got me the rapt attention of psychiatrists. Mutilating the corpse did that.
I spent a couple weeks in a juvenile psychiatric unit under observation. Lots of valium. I have watery memories of crosshatched pink patterns on the backs of my thighs from sitting on hard plastic chairs. The first diagnosis was schizophrenia. It was accompanied by little pills that went by exotic names like Haldol and Prolixin. They made me sleepy and my mouth dry. After I got out of the psych unit my parents took me to a shrink who asked me questions like, “Do you hear voices?” And, “Does it make you angry when people ask you questions?” The shrink was a large woman with a chest the size of a coastal shelf and smile-crinkles by her eyes. The Mrs. Claus of prescription drugs. She dropped the schizophrenia diagnosis, downgraded me to “borderline personality disorder,” and gave me anti-anxiety meds. My older brother called the diagnosis “crazy lite.” The new meds were supposed to stabilize my moods but they made me scratch the skin on the backs of my hands and bang my head against the wall. So I got a new shrink and a couple of Rainbow Bright Band-Aids. The next psychiatrist, a man who stroked his fingers slowly across his mouth while he talked, gave me the MMPI and an IQ test and announced that I was too bright for school so I was bored, and that was why I had killed and mutilated a man. The following morning my parents deposited me at a different therapist’s office.
By the time I was twelve the collectors’ set of psychologists and psychiatrists in the greater Akron area had ruled out emotional neuroses and decided that all that was wrong with me was that I lacked the capacity to experience guilt or love or compassion. In short, I was a highly intelligent borderline sociopath. Dave said that was shrink-speak for “evil.” There are no pills for evil so, at the recommendation of a couple of child therapists and a psychologist, my parents pulled me out of school. My dad gave me exams in analytic geometry and the history of Western civilization each week. My mom listened to me play Chopin etudes on the Steinway while she breastfed baby Stephen upstairs. When I was fourteen Dave moved to New York to study Marxist poetry at New York University. I would go days without speaking to other people. It was the closest I’ve ever come to being content.
When I was sixteen I got one last shrink who downgraded me for the final time, said I had “antisocial personality disorder” and that he’d send my parents a bill. I’ve been drug- and shrink-free for the last twelve years.
But even after so many years of legal purity, I can’t imagine that claiming to have “discovered” a corpse in a condemned house on whose premises I had no reason to be would go over well with Akron’s finest. If I decide to play the civically responsible individual, in all likelihood what freedom I now have would end with my being abruptly returned to closely monitored living quarters and mandated psychotherapy.
Finding a corpse and not calling the cops is wrong. I know that.
But. Finding
that
corpse …
I think of my hands wandering over the wallpaper, the stair railing, the doorknobs, at 411 Allyn Street. My hair falling across the corpse’s naked vertebrae. In addition to the inevitably uncomfortable questions I would face if I, with my preadolescent psychiatric record, reported finding the corpse,
So: What is the proper thing to do?
The civically responsible individual would call in the cops, who would investigate. The cops would inevitably question that civically responsible individual. But any investigation into my past will uncover my unfortunate encounter with a man that ended in his falling down a flight of steps in my parents’ basement and cracking his neck. The judge said that the murder was self-defense. The shove down the stairs wasn’t what got me the rapt attention of psychiatrists. Mutilating the corpse did that.
I spent a couple weeks in a juvenile psychiatric unit under observation. Lots of valium. I have watery memories of crosshatched pink patterns on the backs of my thighs from sitting on hard plastic chairs. The first diagnosis was schizophrenia. It was accompanied by little pills that went by exotic names like Haldol and Prolixin. They made me sleepy and my mouth dry. After I got out of the psych unit my parents took me to a shrink who asked me questions like, “Do you hear voices?” And, “Does it make you angry when people ask you questions?” The shrink was a large woman with a chest the size of a coastal shelf and smile-crinkles by her eyes. The Mrs. Claus of prescription drugs. She dropped the schizophrenia diagnosis, downgraded me to “borderline personality disorder,” and gave me anti-anxiety meds. My older brother called the diagnosis “crazy lite.” The new meds were supposed to stabilize my moods but they made me scratch the skin on the backs of my hands and bang my head against the wall. So I got a new shrink and a couple of Rainbow Bright Band-Aids. The next psychiatrist, a man who stroked his fingers slowly across his mouth while he talked, gave me the MMPI and an IQ test and announced that I was too bright for school so I was bored, and that was why I had killed and mutilated a man. The following morning my parents deposited me at a different therapist’s office.
By the time I was twelve the collectors’ set of psychologists and psychiatrists in the greater Akron area had ruled out emotional neuroses and decided that all that was wrong with me was that I lacked the capacity to experience guilt or love or compassion. In short, I was a highly intelligent borderline sociopath. Dave said that was shrink-speak for “evil.” There are no pills for evil so, at the recommendation of a couple of child therapists and a psychologist, my parents pulled me out of school. My dad gave me exams in analytic geometry and the history of Western civilization each week. My mom listened to me play Chopin etudes on the Steinway while she breastfed baby Stephen upstairs. When I was fourteen Dave moved to New York to study Marxist poetry at New York University. I would go days without speaking to other people. It was the closest I’ve ever come to being content.
When I was sixteen I got one last shrink who downgraded me for the final time, said I had “antisocial personality disorder” and that he’d send my parents a bill. I’ve been drug- and shrink-free for the last twelve years.
But even after so many years of legal purity, I can’t imagine that claiming to have “discovered” a corpse in a condemned house on whose premises I had no reason to be would go over well with Akron’s finest. If I decide to play the civically responsible individual, in all likelihood what freedom I now have would end with my being abruptly returned to closely monitored living quarters and mandated psychotherapy.
Finding a corpse and not calling the cops is wrong. I know that.
But. Finding
that
corpse …
I think of my hands wandering over the wallpaper, the stair railing, the doorknobs, at 411 Allyn Street. My hair falling across the corpse’s naked vertebrae. In addition to the inevitably uncomfortable questions I would face if I, with my preadolescent psychiatric record, reported finding the corpse,
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