Just Dale

The following pages are a true fiction of an imagined life - true because they are my best recollection of events, yet fiction because they were written during a period of hypomania and hallucination lasting approximately two years. Some people were offended by my words. Some people liked them. Most had no opinion at all.

Barry Morrow, author of the Emmy Winning screenplay Bill, and the Oscar Winning screenplay for the movie Rainman had this to say:

 

“A heavy brick of a package arrived…imagine my surprise to discover that it was actually a small, careworn treasure chest filled with rare jewels. Well done, my friend. Thank you for trusting the world enough to want to brighten it.

With love and deep respect, Barry”

 

Chapter 1: HOLLYWOOD MAN

My pen makes pixelated images to calm my brain. I look up as a man wearing sunglasses enters Uptown Bill’s Small Mall, a nonprofit organization for people who have disabilities and people who don’t fit anywhere else. The man in sunglasses introduces himself as Barry Morrow. He tells me he wears sunglasses because his retinas are burned from his many years of working with bright lights. He has just come from being interviewed for a new documentary. Morrow won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie Rain Man. He is in Iowa City now to film scenes for a documentary on the life of Bill Sackter, the local legend for whom Uptown Bill’s Small Mall is named.

Placed in an institution when he was seven years old, Bill spent the next 44 years in the care of the state. The experience would have made most people bitter, but somehow Bill managed to transform his pain into a kind and loving nature — a source of healing for all who met him. Bill first held court at Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop, a project of the School of Social Work in North Hall at the University of Iowa. Ever smiling, he was popular with University students and area residents alike. Bill would listen to their sorrows and send them on their way with a lighter heart.

Until his death in 1983, Bill dispensed love and kindness with every cup of coffee. The high point of his life occurred when his prayers brought Barry’s daughter back from a near-death coma. After this miracle, fame beat a path to Bill’s door and a Mickey Rooney starred in a movie about Bill’s life. Bill did not ask for the notoriety. He did not even recognize it when it came.

Uptown Bill’s Small Mall is an asylum disguised as a collective of shops and small businesses. A direct descendant of Wild Bill's, it offers safe haven for misfits, the abandoned, and those simply seeking a place of quiet. The Mall may serve a higher purpose for the community, but for Susan, Henrietta, Mack, Katherine and the rest of us, it simply is shelter.

I am sitting and drinking coffee. I am insane and have the papers to prove it. Next to me is Susan, who lives on disability from the University because of a brain injury that destroyed her ability to learn new tasks at work. Susan is in constant motion: cleaning tables, serving coffee, and organizing. From 7 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday, Susan rules the combination coffee shop and ice cream parlor that is the hub of Uptown Bill’s Small Mall. She bustles about, chatters with the customers, and brightens the room with her smiles.

At another table sits Henrietta. Some consider her to be mildly senile or slow. I see her as selfless, loving, and remarkably sane. Her silver-haired head is bowed as she focuses on making a list of places to go for the day. She is the Mall’s taxi service. She tells the same jokes every day. We always laugh.

Mack, an alcoholic and furniture repair genius, has just left for his shop. Sometimes sober and sometimes not, Mack lived on the street before he found the Mall. He has been here from the beginning, even before the beginning. He wears the same greasy, tattered baseball cap every day. He has thick, smudged eyeglasses. And despite having blackened, broken, and rotten teeth, his smile warms all who see it. Mack takes bits and pieces of junk furniture and transforms them into works of art to be sold at The Vintage Shoppe, yet another store that operates under the umbrella of Uptown Bill’s Small Mall.

Katherine runs the Vintage Shoppe. Each day, before she opens she comes to the Mall and plops her rotund frame into a chair. Flustered and agitated, she will breathlessly tell us how busy she is or relate some emotional injury she has received. All of us listen. All of us empathize with her trauma - something we all share. All of us joke and tease each other. We find humor and beauty in our shared pain - the dark wine of the Mall’s intoxicating atmosphere.

Tom Walz, the master of ceremonies at this eternal wake for Bill Sackter’s memory, has yet to arrive. Tom welcomes new players to the Mall’s stage every day. He assigns each of us our part in the ongoing theater of the absurd that is the Mall. An athletic 70 year old, he constantly dreams up new ideas for us Mall denizens. Some of his ideas come to fruition. Many do not. All of them come from a kind and caring heart.

Chelsea and Ted, in their electric wheelchairs, enter the room each morning. Chelsea will ask for help putting away her lunch box and removing her coat. Jealously guarding her role as the resident bard of the Bill Sackter story, Chelsea sits and waits for customers and newcomers to the Mall. When one arrives she will regale them with Bill’s story while munching on pastries and sipping water from her “special” blue glass.

Despite being trapped in a body ravaged by muscular dystrophy, Ted is a graphics master who creates the posters and flyers for the Mall and for occasional clients. Understanding his garbled, halting speech takes extensive practice, but he is patient and beams at us whenever we manage to get it right. 

Ted is a ranked chess master. When I look at him I wonder how it feels to have a world-class mind trapped in a broken body. My body is fine. It is my mind that is broken. I sometimes pity Ted for his disability. Does he pity me for mine?

If we are lucky, Ron and Nick will make an appearance. Ron is a savant in the realms of comic books, superheroes, mythology, and military history. Diabetes took his right leg last year. Now he hauls his unshaven, balding frame around on one good leg and a painful prosthesis. His gait is awkward, but his mind is sharp. 

Nick's medications trap him in a world of constant motion. From the moment he enters the shop until he leaves, Nick walks or stands, rocking back and forth. He pauses only to draw a few lines on his latest vision of a new superhero. Superhero worship is something Nick shares with Ron. They are brothers in the arcane knowledge of comic book heroes.

Throughout the day, a varied cast uses the Mall as a spiritual touchstone; it is our “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free” in our daily game of hide-and-go-seek with the real world. “Normal” people wander in as customers or as visitors. Some make purchases; some make donations. Others, unfamiliar with this Mall’s mission, see it as some type of human zoo. I wear my Pharaoh and Drum Major hats for them.

My hats blend in with the Mall’s décor. The walls are living works of schizophrenia - plastered with a happy confusion of outdated calendars, plaques, newspaper articles, bulletin boards and art of every type and quality. I come here every day. It beats the hell out of television.

On one wall is a huge photo of Bill Sackter standing with Barry Morrow and actors Mickey Rooney and Dennis Quaid. Morrow co-wrote the screenplay for the 1981 made-for-television movie, Bill, starring Rooney as Sackter and Quaid as Morrow. The movie won an Emmy for Rooney’s acting, an Emmy for Morrow’s story, two Golden Globe awards, and a Peabody.

Rooney earned another Emmy for his portrayal of Sackter in the 1983 sequel, Bill on His Own, which describes Sackter’s struggles to cope after Morrow, his best friend and guardian, moved away.

And now this award-winning writer and producer sits at my table, staring at me from behind sunglasses, asking me questions.

“Tom tells me you used to be an international business consultant,” Morrow says. “How did you end up at Uptown Bill’s?”

I hesitate. I am manic and know that I will talk too much. My illness makes me wonder if Barry is really here. I have seen and talked to imaginary people many times before.

If Barry is real, I want him to like me. His attention feeds into my clinically diagnosed traits of grandiosity and co-dependent people-pleasing. Maybe he will think I am special. Maybe I will become famous by association.

Despite my fears, I blurt out a Dickensian tale of woe and redemption: cancer; bipolar disorder; loss of career;  a journey through the entire pharmacopoeia of psychotropic medications; multiple hospitalizations; multiple electro-convulsive therapy treatments; an eventful trip to Japan; a near divorce; return to Iowa City; meeting Tom Walz and finding Uptown Bill’s Small Mall; and, at long last, discovery of a way to live — sometimes happily, often not — with my diseased mind. The man from Hollywood patiently listens to my story, calmly absorbing my jumble of facts, dreams, and emotions. I cannot see his eyes, but his lips are smiling.

I finally stop. After a long pause, Morrow says, “Dale, you should write about your experiences and what you have found here in the Mall.”

I stare at the table top. “It is hard to put into words.”

“That’s why someone like you needs to write it. I am sure Tom and the others here would find it helpful. I hope you can take up the challenge.” 

Barry smiles and stands after delivering what many would see as encouragement, but for me is a curse. I cringe. Without knowing it, the man from Hollywood has put his finger into an old wound, dug around, and left me raw and bleeding. Over the past few years, several others have told me to write down my life. Each time it's suggested, I feel a swirl of conflict and indecision. 

Maybe I should write a book. But maybe not: Who am I think of myself as special? Isn't that narcissism? What if my story is just boring, self-serving drivel? Worse yet, what if people like what I write? What if they want to hear more? Won't that pressure send me back to the hospital? No. I definitely cannot write.

Ancient questioning voices in my mind leap to the worst-possible outcome, ignoring any potential for happiness. I practice my breathing to calm myself. I was taught how to breathe by the zen priest, the Reverend Seikan Hasegawa, when I visited Japan. Feel each molecule of air enter my nose. Feel the air gently gently leave my lungs. This practice has helped keep me out of the hospital. It calms me enough to allow me to reconsider writing as a possibility.

Maybe I will be able to write my story. Maybe it willl help others. Maybe it will be therapeutic for me. Besides, if I take long enough, maybe I will die before I face people's reactions. One can only hope.