The investigator from the department of mental health, Mr. D., called yesterday to tell me that the woman who seduced me after my stay on the K-4 unit a dozen years ago has been suspended from work for six days. This is the maximum punishment possible for someone found guilty of “ethical” — not “sexual” — misconduct.
Never mind that I was sent to the unit after a messy suicide attempt on the statehouse lawn, my arms hacked to pieces with a razor blade. Never mind that page after page of my chart indicated that I was sexually confused, immature, that I had never had a girlfriend, never dated. Never mind that I was still a virgin then, afraid to remove my clothes, afraid of every touch, afraid of the gay man in his bathrobe who handed me a copy of Naked Lunch, afraid of the hairy-legged woman faking retardation who tried to lure me into her room, afraid of all the staff because of their propensity to pin down an excited patient one person to a limb, strip off his clothes, and strap him to a bed in an empty room so that all the poor lunatic could do was scream.
