There is very little I or anyone else knows about the life—or even whereabouts—of Dr. H today. I can only speak about what happened ten years ago. And very little information, even from back then, explains how Dr. H became so involved in my circle of friends and family, academic life, and ultimate demise. I met Dr. H in a class called Voices of Foucault, a graduate seminar in philosophy, interpretation, and culture I was taking through the PIC department. I was banned from taking any graduate classes in the English department, so I looked elsewhere for courses, and I had found the perfect class in Voices of Foucault.
For this seminar on interpretation, I was asked to write down on a piece of scrap paper three things I cannot live without . At that time, I was floridly psychotic, self-referential, tangential, and totally detached from what was happening to me, around me, and despite me. On the paper, I wrote down three things: (1) Ensure, (2) Education, and (3) Language.
I choose Ensure—and the other two words—for their complex and profound importance in my life, as well as for their multiplicity of meanings. Because of my symptoms, I was in basic survival mode. My body was crying out that I needed to focus on my most basic needs if I wanted to survive and continue to follow my dreams. That is where the Ensure drink comes into play, and my familiarity with basic, artificial nutrition has a rich past.
My grandmother passed away years ago. Yet I still remember the various life-sustaining and life-preserving measures our family took to keep her alive and ensure her health and vitality. My family ordered cartons and trays of Ensure for her. For over a decade, they arrived at my grandmother’s apartment.
I am no stranger to artificial nutrition—whether in the oncology unit or nursing homes—and how to keep the body alive through any means necessary. This is something I have been exposed to and seen as a profound ethical dilemma. I continue to question it for my own personal end-of-life plans, including capacity issues, my own situation, and my history with losing the ability to care for myself legally.
Knowing how I have lost capacity once before and how I was told I might not ever get it back, the associated thoughts and feelings of being totally powerless to make decisions on my own behalf were as devastating as they were frightening. The feeling of not being in control was something that I have always feared. Many people fear this as well but are never put in a place where, physiologically, they are not able to control themselves.
The class was taught by Dr. Russ, a distinguished professor of philosophy. The course was a survey of all of Foucault’s books, lectures, and writings. After the restriction was placed on my registration file, I made my decision to go ahead and register for this class anyway. The very first day, I arrived early, and inside the classroom was one woman with a “Think New London” pin on her lapel.
By the time classes began in the spring semester, when Voices of Foucault started, I was already hearing voices and was extremely paranoid. When I met Dr. H for the very first time, she introduced herself to me as a student sitting in on one of Dr. Russ’ classes. I asked her if she meant “auditing,” a method where students could review coursework before a dissertation defense or to avoid academic probation in other circumstances.
I introduced myself to Dr. H as a non-matriculated graduate student, and those words were enough to spark our conversation and set the trajectory for a series of bizarre circumstances that took place for the rest of the semester and my undergraduate experience in college. The first bizarre occurrence was that very day at the conclusion of the first day of class with Dr. Russ. Dr. H and I went outside during break to smoke and began to launch into the real reasons we were in the class.
I confessed to Dr. H that I was restricted from taking graduate courses in English, so I wanted to take a course with a familiar professor in another department. I explained to her about the staff and key players from the English department and how I wasn’t on good terms with many of them, including the graduate school director and Dr. Harris. During the same conversation, after dropping so many names and allegiances, Dr. H confessed to me she was vaguely familiar with my story because she had mutual friends with some of the faculty members of the English department. I was intrigued by this: with my restriction, I couldn’t even physically come near the same faculty members Dr. H was friendly with outside the context of the university.
The confession went deeper, though. Dr. H was not a student. She was a terminated faculty member of the school of management. Later that night, I talked on the phone with some friends about my experience. It seemed as if my friends were very familiar with this terminated faculty member, and they warned me point blank about her, using not so subtle language to stay away. But I wasn’t listening to anyone’s advice at this point in my illness—not my friends and certainly not the English department and faculty.
Something made Dr. H’s advice so different than what I had heard from everyone I had known previously. I was under the delusion that Dr. H was a liaison from the university, and I fully believed that just by the attention Dr. H gave by listening to my situation that she was somehow in my life to help negotiate a peaceful solution and resolution to either the loitering charge I had gotten from the department or overturning the admission decision altogether.
Dr. H witnessed firsthand my descent. To this day, her interventions and the bizarre circumstances I would find myself in later on in the semester are puzzling. Before long, I found myself spending more and more time with Dr. H.
Dinners, theatre, events on campus, and local activism projects absorbed most of our time together. Indeed, when the situation in my apartment required me to make a quick exit and get out, I moved in with Dr. H. Together, we lived in a large Victorian house on the other side of the city. I remember observing how much additional police activity there was on this new side of town, and she remarked, “How exciting!” Although I wasn’t as initially agitated in this new house as the old one, I only managed to slow down the progression of the psychosis by moving into this calmer environment.
One night, we went to a fine arts movie in a theater downtown. I had only a few dollars left to my name, and no plan was in place to gain more funds to continue the lifestyle I had been accustomed to for so long. There was a tip jar in the theater and a sign to tip generously because it would go to a raffle where one person would gain special housing or some sort of benefit. I put all my money in the jar and wrote down my name, email, and what was required to enter—that turned out to be the night that I drained all of my remaining funds. I only tipped such a large amount because I thought the theater was creating a special fund for my problem matriculating into the graduate program. I was deeply wrong and was flamboyant with manic energy when I stepped inside to watch the movie. I was bowing up and down and waving to the audience to thank them for helping me with my problems on campus.
Another night, Dr. H took me for a walk around the block after I had screamed about how Dr. Harris should be in jail and my ongoing issues with the department. Dr. H took me to a closed store. She knew the owner, so we went inside to commensurate. The odd thing was that Dr. H spent most of the conversation tearful and crying. I was too disoriented to get a good read of the conversation—I was so distracted and unable to focus that, without putting too much thought into it, I was sure that the crying was her feeling sad about my situation and there being no clear resolution.
To this day, I don’t know why she was crying. All I know is that it was one bizarre situation after another until I found myself at a restaurant where Dr. H had a free voucher for a meal because the restaurant hadn’t had its grand opening yet and was training its staff that evening. But given I didn’t have any money, I thought the restaurant had to be owned by the federal government, CIA, or FBI, who were supplying me with a means to pay for food because I couldn’t get any more student loans given my status with the university.
Toward the end of the semester when I had to find a job to survive without loans, Dr. H connected me with a medical doctor who was experiencing some physical issues. The doctor needed yard work done outside her home and cleaning done inside. The doctor didn’t believe me when I said I took the bus to her because I didn’t have gas money.
By the time I was working for the doctor, I was already talking the bus, had no money for gas, and was under the supervision of a medical doctor, a doctor of strategy, my own clinical staff, and my primary care physicians. When m y friends tried to tell me there was an issue with my mental health, I laughed because I was being supervised by so many professionals who couldn’t detect anything wrong with me. The only thing wrong was everything else in my life: my environment, the people around me, and the unfortunate—not to mention bizarre—circumstances I kept getting myself into.
In the end, the paper Dr. H coached me to write, Contesting Admission, was the biggest legacy of her bad advice given throughout that spring semester. Dr. H watched me stay up day and night and write that paper ad infinitum for a purpose that was irrational and for a reason that wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things.
Indeed, the spotlight was already on me, and the paper did little to organize my thoughts or come up with a more rational and valid plan for pursuing graduate school. The paper’s legacy, while not wholly responsible for my loitering and arrest on campus, did play a self-soothing role, allowing me to process the loitering charge through research, distraction, and artistic expression. This was her strategy. Dr. H, after all, was a professor of strategic management.
Ultimately, she managed my friendships, my relationships with my family, and all other aspects of my personal life when I was in the hospital. My mail, while I was still living somewhat independently, was written “care of- or- C/O” Dr. H. As my relationships, ability to care for myself, and behavior all unraveled, Dr. H was at the forefront of my psychotic episode.
After almost knifing her tires with her own cutlery a few moments before I was taken to the hospital by the police, I hid her laptop in a van. In the end, I was frightened, too, of Dr. H, my strategist. There came a time when I believed she was a spy from Belgium working with the CIA and FBI to make sure I was registered for the witness protection program to escape from the abusive English department.
To this day, I still haven’t put all the pieces together on how Dr. H became such a major player in my life, going from a total stranger to becoming a total stranger again. I hear, though, that she is residing in a new city these days. I wonder how much has really changed, if I knew anything at all about her, and what she is really like without cognitive distortions to make things even more confusing.
Life was becoming more and more confusing. And yet, sometimes, it all seemed to make perfect sense. Dr. H asked me one morning if I was interested in helping the local community. Pine Street was located on what most of the population of Liberty would consider to be “the other side of the tracks.” In plain English, it was the resource-deprived sector of Liberty.
The community needed help, and I wanted to assist. After all, I was in the midst of an ethical and moral battle of wills with the university, and this fight extended to all areas of my life. I told Dr. H that I wanted to help, and she handed me a basket of plant bulbs. After giving me this large basket of bulbs, she walked me down Pine Street.
We waved at people on their porches, smiling at them as we passed by—I am assuming—to signal our positive intentions to the local community. We arrived at a small patch of land that was riddled with some rocks and dirt—it looked nothing like a garden. She said to me, “This will need some work, but you, Jacques, are just the person to do it.” I agreed, and in my downtime, or whenever I could spare a moment from writing, I would head to the community garden to plant bulbs.
I believed then I was building a community. Every so often, when I would become upset or forlorn, Dr. H would ask if I had been to the garden to plant bulbs. This was a healthy practice for a while, until, eventually, I lost sight of its importance for my health and why I was planting seeds in a garden.
One morning, after a long night of writing, I placed the latest version of Contesting Admission on Dr. H’s placemat on the dinner table. On top of it, I put a bulb to signal I had finally discovered the root of power and had made progress in my paper that evening. After this display, the garden, it’s worth, and the community became a very strange and unforgiving place.
The climate in Liberty was getting more and more extreme, otherworldly, and ripe for change. I really needed things to change at this point. I knew eventually the tide of politics would turn against me on campus, so I had to act quickly. My work on Contesting Admission went into high gear. I worked endlessly and relentlessly on the manuscript. The paper was my last hope to overturn the admission decision and move forward with my education.
I was running out of money, supplies, gasoline, and everything needed to carry on affairs independently and living as a non matriculated graduate student with no funding or plan. I knew if I didn’t mobilize everything I had left, for one last fulcrum to launch my education forward, I would be in serious distress. It was time to rally everyone left in my corner, the doctoral guard, and whatever family or friends still believed in me to carry on as a student in New London.
I began sending the manuscript out to friends, family, and anyone who would read it. Most people didn’t respond to my emails and inquiries about the paper. This was my bill. This was my own modern day regency bill for the English department at BU. Once published, the bill would provide and justify my admission to the graduate program. Throughout the paper, meta-power, the word I dispensed to alter and change the course of events at the college would enter into language itself at the university and change the course of meaning making in the academy forever.
The bill was circulated far and wide. I sent the bill out in emails, with a subject line” PASS the BILL”, with the paper attached to everyone in my network. Convinced I was at the precipice of a new era, I was generally excited and happy to experience the momentum and shift from deployment of my new word into university affairs, specifically, the English department. Not getting anywhere with the bill’s passage, or confirmation of its acceptance into a literary journal, I looked for answers elsewhere.
Lying back in the bathtub, smiling, giggling, and feeling moments of extreme happiness followed by extreme paranoia, the chair of the English department began to discuss the meaning of language with me, and I began to speak out loud, talking at the ceiling and debating every point. The graduate director chimed in just to thank me for my work in the department and for being the inspiration to create this television show. I felt vindicated. The English department was working with me again, and I was working with my college friend on a fascinating project. My friend told me that our ratings were higher than Columbia had anticipated and that we would be going national very soon. I was thrilled, relieved that my work on Contesting Admission had produced something significant in the academic world.
I got out of the shower and walked back into my room, continuing the dialogue until the end of the program. When the show ended for the night, Cynthia wished me goodnight, and like a recording coming to an end, her voice dissipated, repeating the words goodnight until there was no noise at all. But the typewriter continued to click away.
Obviously, it was Dr. H writing new material for her next program, but I was preoccupied with it. In fact, I listened to the typewriter so intently that I began to hear another recording play. This time, the recording came from the bedroom directly on top of mine, and it was my neighbor speaking. My neighbor gave another explanation of the noises I was hearing upstairs, and his explanation was completely different and more convincing: I was living in a CIA owned and operated house.
I soon learned that Dr. H was working for the witness protection program and that I had been taken into the household because I was being abused by my family, my friends, and the English department. In fact, the CIA said that I was not really speaking to Cynthia before in the bathroom. No, instead, I was listening to a CIA training exercise that would prepare me for life in the witness protection program—I was merely becoming acquainted with their equipment.
The recording coming from upstairs told me that if I continued to speak to my friends, my family, or anyone else, I would continue to have tremors. In fact, the tremors were punishment for continuing to be in contact with anyone I knew. The recording went on and off all night. Sometimes, I would call out for my mother or Cynthia or Dr. H, but for doing so, I would just receive an extremely painful barrage of tremors.
This went on all night into the morning hours when the vent in my room began to vibrate and the tremors became so overwhelming that I broke into tears. At daybreak, the recordings stopped. I put on a fresh set of clothing and moved my bed back into my room. However, I was not surprised when the recordings began again.
This time, however, the recordings from the CIA were talking to my friend. The witness protection program told her that I was going into the CIA and that she could be my wife if she left everyone behind and moved with me. The CIA then told me to get ready for my wife and prepare my room for the marriage ceremony.
I was so relieved that this seemingly never-ending conspiracy was coming to an end that I raced upstairs and pressed my ear against the door, listening into the bedroom that was over mine. I heard the CIA tell my friend that she had to leave everyone, and she began crying, saying that she didn’t want to. They continued to fight on, and every so often, the government operative would call my friend stupid and unwilling to cooperate.
I became irritated by both my friend’s unwillingness to leave her world behind and join the witness protection program and by the CIA for calling her stupid and childish. I went back downstairs to my room. That was when a new recording played. This time it was the CIA explaining that I had listened to another training video. Now, Sarah was in jail for victimizing me, along with my family and all of my friends. The witness protection program then began to punish me with more tremors, which became so overpowering that I had to strip down naked.
At that moment, my friend began to speak to me through the vent. She told me there was a bomb in the house and that she was going to detonate it, and when she did, all of the recordings would end, along with the show. Before I could take in the gravity of what she was saying, I heard a countdown timer. I quickly covered myself in a blanket and, naked, ran outside. When the timer finally reached zero, there was no explosion, no noise. Except, the tremors reemerged—those wouldn’t end. I walked back into the house and got dressed.
I summoned the strength to go on my computer and tried to go about my day as usual. I thought about how it was quite the television being produced here in New London. But before I could believe that I was truly making television history, I was asked by the CIA to go outside the house and start walking down my street. The tremors began again, as I was told that for believing a training recording and speaking to my friend, the CIA had begun to tune me into a live trial where all of my friends, family, and fellow colleagues in the English department were being judged. After each individual was questioned on the witness stand, I heard a summary verdict and the slam of the jail cell doors. I believed that if I listened to the CIA and joined their program that I could move on with my life. So I got into my car and began driving around.
The CIA told me that if I flashed my hazards on and off, I would be giving the federal government acknowledgment of my safety in the witness protection program. So I drove all around town, flashing oncoming cars with my lights until finally running out of gas a few houses away from my home. When I arrived back home, yet another recording played. Apparently, Dr. H was a double agent in the CIA and was from Belgium—it was my duty to the federal government to banish her from the witness protection program safe haven.
Going inside the house, I asked Dr. H for her phone and dialed 911. The phone did not dial the emergency number. Instead, the screen read, “Dr. Cloud.” The recordings told me that this was the code word for the transfer of power from one witness protection house commander to another and meant she would soon be expelled from the house. After I dialed the number, she looked at the phone and said, “Okay Jacques.”
According to the recording, this meant that I would now have possession over all her things, including the phone she had given me, everything in her room, and all of her food, which I needed because of my dwindling supplies. Immediately after she handed me the phone, she left the house and drove off. I sauntered about the house triumphantly and heard megaphones outside proclaiming that I now had full authority over the household.
I went to the refrigerator and began eating Dr. H’s food, afterwards leaving the containers outside on the porch to signal to the community that I was in control and healthy. Going into my room , I set up my command post. I knew that the community needed subtle signals that enabled a peaceful transition of power— if not, Dr. H’s return might be in the cards.
Thus, I took a queen from the chess set and put it in the window to show the need for an heir to the throne. I also positioned two limes, a symbol for ovaries, showing the need to birth a child to rule as my successor. Then, the recording began. However, this time, they were the screams of Dr. H, telling me how she would return to her command.
I quickly took out the batteries to her laptop and her phone so that she would not be able to contact the house. At that point, more megaphones blasted outside, telling me to let the professor back into her home or else the City of Liberty would use force. The voices were those of the police. I panicked and lit a cigarette and sat in a chair in the living room where I could monitor each entrance and exit. To my surprise, I heard the back door open with the jingle of keys and Dr. H walked into the house. She stood close to me, putting her hand on her bag, indicating she had a weapon.
I watched her closely and finally took her laptop outside and hid it in a moving van. But before leaving the house, I put a knife in my pocket. More recordings announced that the home had once again changed powers, and the voice encouraged me to demobilize her vehicle with my knife. I instead walked to my car and put the weapon on my windshield. Next, I walked over to the neighbors who were using the moving van, which now hid Dr. H’s laptop, and asked them to hide the body, which was me referring to getting Dr. H out of the house in a non-violent manner. With no response besides confusion and no safe passage in my home, I needed to relax.
So I went over to my car, where I had stashed my pills and tried to open the doors but couldn’t. I had locked myself out of my car. All of the sudden, I heard instructions from the CIA to pick up a large rock and smash the windows to my car. After breaking into my car, I climbed in and swallowed a few pills and lit a cigarette. More instructions encouraged me to show everyone I was normal, so I took the rock and smashed the other front window to give the impression of continuity. Sitting in the car, I began to hear more police activity but this time I could see police lights.
I got out of the car and walked over to the police officer who was speaking with my neighbor, the one who I had asked to hide the body. The police officer questioned if the car with broken windows was mine and why they had been broken. I told the officer on duty that I could not get in contact with a locksmith. The officer gave a disappointed look and asked me to put my hands behind my back before proceeding to cuff me. In handcuffs, the officer gently assisted me into her vehicle and drove away from the CIA house where Dr. H was casually sweeping up the broken glass from my vehicle.
Ultimately, despite having all three items on my list—(1) Ensure, (2) Education, and (3) Language—I was unable to survive without intervention from the authorities. Moments after I lost all control of my body, I heard voices that resembled a bomb’s timer ticking away. A countdown came, and I was sure it would result in an explosion. Running out of my house, naked and totally paralyzed with fear, I ran into the local police who were investigating the broken windows in my car.
It seemed that in my confusion, I had thrown a giant rock through my car window. According to a retelling of the story and written documentation of my alleged description of the events, I had crawled through the broken window before taking the same rock and throwing it through the window on the other side of the car. All this was done, apparently, to make the glass appear even.
Anything for the semblance of normality. Anything to ensure education and the pursuit of my dream: to be a language expert. In the end, the very language that I believed would help me survive turned against me.
Author Info:
J. Peters
Book Author.
