Also there were a few crumbs of tobacco, and a pad of cheap newsprint that said American Eagle on the cover. I took the pad and used it for writing things down.

I WALKED out of my room back onto the ward. I sat in one of the big brown chairs across from the TV and for a while wallowed in the luxury of time. I knew I was going to be in the hospital for three days and during that time I had absolutely nothing to do. The only comparable experience I can remember was when my family was camping out on Cape Hatteras. It was Sunday night and raining and there were no books to read and no radio to listen to and no place to go. Then it was great.

So I sat there in the big brown chair and after a while I looked around and saw a guy in his thirties with short hair sleeping on the sofa, and a guy in his fifties with bristly gray whiskers rocking back and forth in a chair like mine, sort of chanting to himself. Every one else on the ward was in bed. I wondered how long it would take for the luxury of time to turn into the horror of waiting, endlessly. By the third day I had strong hints that it didn't take very long.

The TV was going loud and strong. It always went loud and strong. Television is an immensely important fact for mental hospitals. It provides an automatic something-to-do. If I'm just wandering around the ward or coming back from supper or from the bathroom, I'll have to pass the TV and since it provides constant change and because it's something that is acceptable to sit in front of while doing nothing it is tremendously attractive. You can almost fool yourself into thinking that you're watching TV. But really watching implies participation which means activity. And activity, as opposed to total passivity, is the most difficult thing to achieve in an institution. So you're not really watching TV, you're sitting opposite the live machine and doing nothing, instead of doing nothing in your bed or at the end of the hall. This form of doing nothing is acceptable to yourself, to other patients, and to the nurses. You can in an abstract way maintain self-respect: "I'm not doing nothing, I'm watching TV."

THE NEXT MORNING at about 5:30 or 6:00 a bell sounded from the depths of Boston State Hospital which, I found out, meant get ready for breakfast. Then I heard a huge relay click and all the lights came on. The cheery voice of Mrs. Snowden called out, "O.K., get up, get up right away. Come on, now!"

Breakfast wasn't really too bad because it was so early in the morning that nothing seemed real. Lunch though was a real horror show. On the way down, through the tunnel, I was walking behind an old lady with no shoes or socks who was skipping and singing "Here We Go Loopty-Loo." I followed her to a table and asked her if I could sit down; I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could still speak. She said yes.

As I sat down she was buttering her bread with her right thumb. At the table next to us two ladies were sitting across from one another, eating. A third came along with her tray and started to sit down. Immediately one of the sitting ladies jumped to her feet, grabbed her tray, and walked away. The third lady sat down and began eating. Not one work was spoken.

The loopty-loo lady smiled with half a set of teeth and said that her name was Catherine Glenn; it has fourteen letters in it. A lady sat down next to her, across from me, and Catherine said that she won't eat because she can cook. I looked at my plate of food and understood. That lady had a few long gray whiskers on her chin, a side reaction of the ubiquitous tranquilizer Thoridine. Her dress wasn't buttoned much above the navel, and her right breast was half hanging out. She stared at her food and then put a fork in her coffee.

A nurse eventually came over and with tremendous efficiency shoved forkfulls of food into her mouth, which she swallowed without bothering to chew. It would have been hard for her to chew because she had no teeth, but anyway lunch was so soft and mushy that it really didn't make much difference. After a while the nurse, with a few razor strokes of the fork, scraped the mashed potatoes off the women's chin and left. She remained frozen with something that might have been a smile, and gravy for a beard. When I looked up again she was in a new position, with half of a brownie in her right hand and a piece of gravy-soaked carrot in her left hand. I had to leave the table.

AFTER LUNCH I went outside. With the use of tranquilizers many wards have been unlocked and the patients are free to leave during the day. Hardly any do. I walked over the grounds and brooded over my patienthood. Already the enormous dull routine of back ward life was getting to me. Already I was beginning to feel dead. And lonely, terribly lonely.

Since I'd been on the ward only one person had spoken to me besides Catherine Glenn. A guy in his thirties came up to me and said, "Hi, are you going to be living here?" With great effort I pulled a voice out of myself: "Yes, yes I guess so." He sort of smiled and shook my hand. "My name is Marc." I said "I'm Ken," and walked away, feeling very bad about my lie.

And just as patients rarely communicate, the nurses never talk to you either. They seemed nice but never had time for the patients except to occasionally hand out a cigarette or say "mop the floor." And the doctors were so distant they might have been another species. They strode through the ward on long rubbery legs at ninety miles an hour and the only thing they seemed to have to do with the ward was to use it as a path from where they had been to where they were going. Once a doctor slowed down to thirty as he passed the chair where I sat and bellowed "HI, how are you!" and then zoomed away. I was so overwhelmed with the attention that I nearly fell out of my chair. Of course BSH and all other state hospitals are quite understaffed so the doctors are the way they are at least partly out of necessity.

After a time I couldn't take the huge empty loncliness of the hospital grounds so I went back into O-Building and stood in the corner of the canteen. To the left was the stairway up to O-2 and next to it was the entrance to O-1, a women's ward. Two women patients with gray hair ran the canteen. There was always a buzz of activity around the counter where coffee and cigarettes and doughnuts and candy were sold. It wasn't especially living activity, but it was activity just the same. Patients from other wards on the East Side would walk in, hobble in, drift in with a completely blank face or a frozen ear-to-ear smile, and look at the ladies behind the counter.

Sometimes they'd order coffee or cigarettes and sometimes they'd just stare and the ladies behind the counter would confer and decide what the person wanted. Then the patient would hand over his dime or thirtyfive cents, just like a poor kid in a candy store, and shuffle away with his purchase.

A few social workers were usually around, talking with tremendous enthusiasm to the one or two patients who were in good enough shape to respond to them in the way they expected. Sometimes some volunteers would come in from the B'nai B'rith or some women's club to ease their middle class consciences, and shower the area with synthetic smiles, and say to a patient they knew, "WELL III THERE, HOW ARE YOU TODAY!"