Paris: The Memoir(48)

“Obs. Twelve hours.”

“You can’t force me to take—”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Fuck you!”

When I turned to walk away, she picked up a phone and said, “Dial 9 to Investment.” Within seconds, heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. I started to panic, because if a counselor did a Dial 9, you were immediately swarmed by orderlies. I’ve heard that a lot of these guys were red shirts recruited from the BYU football team. Some 250-pound running back would get injured and not be able to play, but he could still dominate a 98-pound kid with ease, and he needed money to replace his scholarship. If you resisted, one of them yanked your pants down, and Pigface jammed a syringe of “booty juice” into your butt cheek. I don’t know what was in it, but I saw kids immediately go slack when it hit them. Within moments of the injection, they melted like cotton candy in the rain.

I tried to backpedal. “No, no! It’s okay. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s fine. I’ll be good. I don’t need Obs.”

“Take one two seven to Obs,” Pigface told them.

“I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I don’t need Obs!”

“Don’t make it worse,” she said.

I held up my hands to show the orderlies I wasn’t going to struggle.

“You don’t have to do this. I swear. I’ll be good.”

“Clothes off,” said Pigface.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!”

Obs was an oddly shaped cinder-block chamber, not square, not circular—a hexagon maybe—about the size of a public restroom stall. There was nothing in there except a bucket and a roll of toilet paper on the cement floor near a drain hole. In the light of the open door, I saw blood and feces smeared on the wall. When the door slammed shut, the only light filtered through a small window with wire mesh inside the glass.

It was freezing cold. I read somewhere recently that they keep it between fifty-five and sixty degrees, but it felt as raw and frigid as a meat locker. They took your underwear and bra when you went to Obs so you couldn’t use them to kill yourself. Sometimes they gave girls shorts and a tank shirt made of a sort of gauzy muslin. Other times not. I don’t remember having anything on that first time.

I paced, rubbing my arms, trying to warm up, staying close to the little light of the window. A girl in another room screamed and screamed for what seemed like a long time. She screamed herself hoarse and then fell into a rhythmic moaning that rose and fell like the sound of the ocean. I was reluctant to sit on the floor. It felt like ice under my feet, and a sickly crap smell lingered around the drain hole.

When I couldn’t pace anymore, I scrunched down in a corner and put my arms around my folded knees, rubbing my legs. My hands and feet were numb. My core clenched in a hard knot. I couldn’t even cry. I just meeped like a baby bird who fell out of the nest. Stunned. Featherless.

And that’s how you make someone want to kill herself with her own bra.

Shutting any kid into a cell like this is child abuse. For a kid with ADHD, it is straight up torture. And I’m positive most of the kids in these places are there because of ADHD behavior issues.

Eventually I was on the floor in a fetal position, my teeth chattering, my muscles screaming, my mind stuck in an endless loop: This is so fucked up. This is so fucked up. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to die of hypothermia and my soul would be trapped in this shit-infested cinder-block tomb forever.

Time slipped out of joint, like a dislocated shoulder.

Silence.

The darkness was so all-consuming, the only way I could stay alive was to find a source of light inside myself. I don’t know how else to explain it.

I fell inward, and I found a beautiful world.

I built a beautiful home.

I created a beautiful life.

This wasn’t a nebulous daydream; it was a mechanically specific vision. I plotted logistics, built a Rolodex of possible allies, inventoried assets, and weighed liabilities. I made conscious decisions about playlists, puppy care, the boning of a corset, the citrus note in a floral fragrance. The minutiae took me in. The details comforted me. This architecture of love, music, roses, and all good things was as real to me as the Waldorf-Astoria was to my great-grandfather.

I didn’t lose my grip on reality—I found it.

My nightmare life at Provo Canyon School was based on lies and mind games. My beautiful world was organic and sustainable because it flowed from the real me. My real life had nothing to do with the twisted existence these strangers manufactured for me.

Here’s what I believe: Your reality is totally up for grabs; if you don’t create your own life, someone else will create something based on their own agenda and project that on you. Don’t let them do it, my loves. Don’t let them tell you that their something is bigger than your everything.

Think about that famous René Magritte painting that shows a pipe with the words Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (“This is not a pipe.”) Back in 1929, people looked at it and said, “Erm, I know what a pipe is, mate, and that’s a pipe.”

But it isn’t a pipe. It’s a painting of a pipe.

Magritte wasn’t asking us to pretend that the painting is a real pipe; he was daring us to accept the smoking-hot realness of art.

The name of this painting, BTW, is The Treachery of Images, which is a perfect description of social media, isn’t it? I love creating and consuming content, but it’s possible to lose yourself if you forget that life and images of life are two very different things.