The Doors To The Insane Asylum Open - And A Former Inmate Finds A Political Home In Washington

Harlan Banks had been interned for nearly a decade at the State Psychiatric Hospital.  His case for release had come before the Board of Supervisors a number of times, but since the necessary unanimous decision was never reached, he remained in the hospital. 

Harlan's illness began early, but the symptoms were too generalized in the population of young boys to be noticed as anything special or warranting attention - dismembering insects until they died on a skewer, electrocuting frogs with the transformer of his Lionel train set, crushing robins' eggs and writing 'shit' on Mrs. Helander's front door. 

A matter of discipline was all it was, nothing more serious; and although his erratic behavior had been noticed by the nuns at St. Maurice, the teachers at his elementary school, the bus driver, and the local patrolman, Mr. and Mrs. Banks sought no counsel.  A behavioral issue, a matter of early adolescent rebellion, the sign of a curious mind, they agreed. 

When in a PTA meeting his parents were advised that their son's behavior went beyond a reasonable doubt, and they might consider professional guidance, they had to face facts.  Their son was not normal, a hard pill to swallow for a family which prided itself on right behavior, prudence, and sociability.  

Perhaps most importantly, neither Mr. or Mrs. Banks had any disturbing behavior in their family history - if you discounted Uncle Harry, as nutty as a fruitcake but genteel, telling off-color jokes at Christmas dinner, wearing fright wigs at the weddings of people he never cared for, and wandering around Corbin Square in the middle of the night. 

No, Harlan's parents agreed, old Uncle Harry might be batty, but genes don't travel that way.  He was his own, lovable fool who had nothing to do with their boy.  Yet, the mystery of their son's increasingly mental behavior was always on their mind, and they finally decided to seek professional advice. 

After the personal interview with Harlan, the child psychologist frowned, and told the nervous parents that there was nothing serious to worry about, just a mild 'dissociative dissonance'.  In layman's terms, the boy was having trouble 'processing' and was circling about in his own world, trying to make sense of things most people had already figured out.  Watch and see, he said, and come back in three months. 

This was in the days before overdiagnosis and over-prescription, so the Banks did not leave the office with any medical conclusion or drugs to address the problem. The situation only got worse.  The boy was given to strange out-of-body experiences, claiming astral projection, whirling like a dervish in the rose garden, and howling at the moon in the middle of the night. 

His schoolwork suffered and his parents were told that he was too disruptive to remain.  It was time, they realized, for serious professional care.  Fortunately they lived near a major teaching hospital, one renowned for its psychiatric service. Dr. Fein, the Chief Attending Physician in the Department of Child Psychiatry, agreed to take the case, and Harlan began intensive counselling almost immediately. 

Dr. Fein and his staff were able to corral and tether most of the boy's aberrant behavior, so much so that he was able to complete an online high school program and be admitted to the county's junior college.  

He managed reasonable well there except for the occasional fugues where he bolted loose of the emotional restraints which bound him, and go amok - not in any way dangerous to himself or to others, but still concerning.  He had read a book on the ancient Aztecs who incorporated the spirit of wild animals and fought as panthers, cheetahs, and wolves in their battles with enemy tribes, and felt that he too could become the animals of the wild.  Whooping and hollering, hopping and jumping, crawling on all fours, he was found by the County police on a number of occasions lapping water out of the catchment basin of the Patriots' Fountain. 

Psychiatry and drugs having no effect on the young man, his parents had no choice but to agree to commit him to the state hospital where, as mentioned, he spent a number of years.  Thanks to progressive policies which had their birth in Washington, but were adopted statewide, most patients of the hospital were released, ready or not, and the community at large was asked to welcome them. 

Now, Harlan's 'aberrations' had quieted during his stay at the hospital - his animal ravings were few and far between, he ate from a plate with knife and fork, and could make sense like a normal human being; and so his elision into society was easier than for others.  The hospital out-patient services helped find him employment, and he managed to make a go of a normal life. 

It was then that he was contacted by a member of his Congressman's social welfare committee.  The Congressman was one of a group of progressives who insisted that the mentally 'other-abled' were as worthy of inclusion in the party's DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity) policy as black men or transgenders, and he needed a poster boy for his efforts.  The hospital recommended Harlan - a young man of reasonable intelligence who was still significantly disturbed but quite manageable.  He might do the trick. 

And so it was that Harlan was invited to Washington to serve as an intern in the Congressman's office, to help translate his mental experiences into legislative terms, and even to speak on certain occasions.  He would be an advocate for inclusion into the mainstream, an example of how the mentally ill should not be pariahs but members in good standing of society. 

Now, despite Harlan's outward composure, he was still as batty as could be.  He had visions, often fantastical ones of harpies and ghouls and others of Turkish harems in which he was a pasha in a sultan's palace, and he often painted himself with great mustaches and beards and marched around his room holding an elm branch as a royal scepter.  He was no more competent to serve in any official capacity as the man in the moon but such was the ethos of the progressive party - anything goes in a world of infinite diversity. 

At first his female colleagues kept him at arms length, fearful that he might lose his marbles and go after them in some fantasy of the Rape of the Sabine Women, but then he became not only accepted but a valued partner. His observations were regarded as unique, particularly insightful, and relevant - something that 'normal' people were incapable of.  There was something about the untethered mind that allowed for special perception and understanding. 

His ramblings about the natural world - the law of tooth and claw in particular - were considered metaphorically accurate.  Conservatives in their eagerness for battle had reverted to the law of the jungle and were no better than wolves.  His vivid descriptions of the savagery of the plains, the evisceration of the kill, the aggressiveness of the beasts were clearly about Israel's own inhumanity in Gaza and Donald Trump's massacre of thousands in Iran. 

Somehow Harlan's peculiar mental disability gave him unusual clarity - not logic by any means, but a sharp vision.  He could actually see lions ripping organs out of wildebeests or eagles ripping the hearts out of their prey.

When he looked out over an audience gathered to hear the Congressman talk about diversity, the superior, natural, tribal energy of the black man, the new age of sexuality ushered in by the transgender, he could see a primeval scene of flying pterodactyls, thundering triceratops, and hundred foot long snakes. 

When the Congressman addressed a group of black people he could only see them naked whooping and hollering around a fire, shaking their spears and raising their arms to an animist god.  If it was to a group of gay men and lesbian women, he saw an orgy of sucking, buggering, scissoring, and muff-diving as vivid as scenes from a Fellini movie. 

He didn't just imagine these scenes, they became real. The audience had been transformed by his power. 

Again, who is to say what mechanisms control the addled brain, and as soon as the Congressman ended his plea, the audience in Harlan's eyes returned to normal, and in the few words that he was expected to say, he offered encouragement, counsel, and good will. 

He was welcomed by all divergent groups as one of their own, and for that the Congressman received warm praise.  He had done his job and then some. 

When the mechanisms that were keeping his insanity in check began to falter, and he was given to tics, shakes, and Tourette's outbursts, nothing was thought of it.  If they, good progressives, had included him in their community, then it was unconscionable to criticize him for his diversity. Even when his meanderings became incomprehensible - no intimation of metaphor was possible - and his behavior became side show erratic, they said nothing.  This deranged, unhinged, wild man was just as welcome as a ghetto queen, pimp, or San Francisco bathhouse male whore.  

When word got around the Congressman's constituency that he had a wacko on his staff who had become one of his closest advisors, and this word got back to him, he realized that perhaps he had gone too far, and Harlan was progressively deleted from the program and finally cashiered.  Progressivism is one thing, but electoral victory is another. 

Harlan hardly knew the difference, so completely around the bend that he was after leaving Washington.  He couldn't tell heads from tails, shit from Shinola and the world was just one jumble of outlandish visions.  He finally was scooped up by the mental dog catchers - the nasty name for the outreach service of the state hospital - and interned once again.  There really was no other place for him, but for him it was no different than Congress, so he was as happy as a clam.