[This is a
short edition of what had been the basis for the last third of this story. I
trimmed this down to what I feel is essential, for blog purposes, at this
point. The first third of my Andy story and the second may be of
use to review. Edits done 3/17/13.]
Intro,
including on “train wrecks” and “sad waifs”
One of the important things that comes
out in my trying to recount things from about 30 years ago is that a lot of the
small stuff—such as passing rude (or not-so-rude) exchanges with fellow
students in the early 1980s, accounts of miserable or mixed party situations,
and other effluvia—is hard to remember, as to certain details, or even when it
happened (i.e., what school year could be significant, and I might have
forgotten that). You remember some
parts—and then as you work to remember, or check an old diary, you say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. I forgot.” And on some of this, it’s just
as well you forgot: for instance, 1983, which was a very productive year for
me, was also quite tough in some ways, especially in the heavy-work-schedule
summer. Some of it makes me wince, in a way, to review. A lot is definitely to
be kept private.
I’ve often thought that there is so much
in American life that you’re glad, or willing, enough to do once, but not
again. College, for me, rather fits that category.
It’s slightly similar to what Woody
Allen said in Annie Hall (1977):
“Everything they said is good for you, is bad for you: eggs, milk, red meat,
college.” I am glad and grateful I went
to college. It was the most important phase of my life in terms of making the
transition from a sad youth to having grounds for a dignified adult life. And I
could not do this otherwise than in the complex and hard way I did it. But
when I look back at the gritty everyday details, such as in a diary account, I
am rather appalled at how grim the everyday flow could be. The whole process
involved a lot of work; there were also rather black melancholy points. Even
things that many kids, then and now, would have found fun, I disliked, and hate more in retrospect:
such as going to bars and getting drunk.
Anyway, the real point here: among the things you remember the most,
even if not to specific little details, are
those where a deep sense of yourself came into play—who you are, perhaps in
relation to another with whom you had a deeply involved interaction—and especially where an ethical dilemma or
steep challenge was involved. It is partly for this reason that my memory
of Andy Cohen is as strong as it is as to essentials (and certainly I recall,
and represent, a lot of the fun that came with him).
Also, troubled people with whom I’ve
been closely involved, I find, come in two kinds: “train wrecks,” those whose troubles are like “one damned thing
after another,” who seem to be forever coming apart at the seams, whom I might
help out a lot but whom I don’t form an especially deep emotional bond with;
and “sad waifs,” those who may be
deeply troubled, but who in some sense “have it together,” at least for a short
term—and it is your strong emotional tie to the person that allows you to
remember him or her as well as you do, even if your memory is integrated with
deeply conflicted emotions about the person. Also, you can remember the same
person in both of the two ways: from one phase of his/her life, in the “train
wreck” or “one damned thing after
another” style; and from another
phase of his/her life, in the “sad waif” or “deeply emotionally invested” style.
In my memoir A College Try, “Betty” (who was close in age to me) was one who fit
more the style of “one damned thing after another”; and “Cheryl” (who was about
eight years younger than I) fit more the “deeply emotionally invested” style.
Similarly, Andy Cohen fits the “deeply emotionally invested” style; and as
another of my GW/MC stories, Fern K., when I get around to her—who, actually,
was a “street person,” homeless, for part of the time I dealt with her—fit the
“one damned thing after another” style.
The warning about suicidality in Andy, from an R.A.
The project of
putting paper-record files into a new computer system for the scheduling
department of the MC’s administrative offices, which went on from, I believe,
late 1984 into 1985—scheduling was the
more mundane side of what Carolyn Jefferson was in charge of—involved a lot of
temporary workers. (I referred to this project toward the end of Part 1 of this series. On C.J., see here.) Some of these came from the
student population (who chose to get involved) and some were from actual temp
agencies. I think it was among the informal student segment of this that one
young woman, who also worked as an R.A. (resident assistant) within the GW dorm
system—and whose fiancé (I think he was) also was on board with the
records-transferring project—had something to tell me about Andy.
One day in the
winter of 1985 (I think it was), she opted to give me an alarm about Andy. She,
as an R.A., presumably had training in watching for signs of trouble like
suicidal gestures, and would not normally have spoken to me in a confidential
way—friendly or not—about someone we both knew, as would have, say, Jeff Barth,
who knew both Andy and me, if he had still been around in early 1985 (which he
had not). This woman, whom I remember as somewhat homely (in manner, you could
say, not just appearance) but earnest and capable in her multiple
endeavors—student, R.A., temp worker—struck me as somewhat self-righteous and
distant in her advising me about Andy’s giving clues about suicidality. I had
this negative reading because, in part, she conveyed some kind of
aloof/doctrinaire approach she had to this sort of thing. I forget how I
answered her initial remark, but she said—slightly impersonally—that she
thought she would tell me this, since I was Andy’s friend.
The mildly
aloof/self-righteous quality to this still bothers me a bit today, almost 30
years later, and reminds me of the coolly self-contained (if not aloof) quality
I found that so many GW students had, which is reflected in how I have been in
touch with so few of them since then—it actually can be part of an explanation
of the moral and emotional “milieu” out of which I left the area, after a fine
educational/work experience there, in later 1985/early 1986. Also, I think it
reflects the rather doctrinaire attitude people can have, even today, about dealing
with momentary suicidality in another, which I don’t go along with, for reasons
that will become clear.
As I believe I
acknowledged to her, or if not, certainly had in mind as a possible answer, I
had been aware of Andy’s hints about suicidal thought. But, as I’ve taken pains
to explain in the naturally limited forum of this blog, he had a fun-black
sense of humor: he was somewhat like Joseph Heller (and Bruce Jay Friedman,
maybe) in his sense of humor. We both rolled along with verbal routines and
jokes in this vein. I can recall that, definitely within the constricted period
of our last months working together (say, about January through about March/April
1985), he would make stray remarks about getting a gun, “shooting himself,” or
such (and this didn’t go on too long): but this was on a par with some of his
other (earlier, and less morbid) black-humorous remarks. It did not set off
alarms in my head when I first heard it. Perhaps more disturbing to me at the
time was his revealing his heroin use, such as talking about shooting up in a
ground-floor bathroom, and one time showing me his needle.
I mean, this
sounds all like “This guy was in trouble” today, and I would agree; that is
part of my point. And it’s easier to “diagnose” a problem here in retrospect. With
regard to how I would handle “suicidal hints” given off by a friend from my
standpoint today, I might have dealt with Andy differently, earlier in the
downward part of our friendship, if I as a 51-year-old went back to him at
26—though of course, I would then strike him as a father figure of exactly the
type he had problems with. Which we’ll see hints of.
The point is
that there is no formula for dealing
with suicidal hints. How serious are they, in concrete instances? It’s very
much a judgment call, and you learn about this over time. In some ways, as you
get older, you may get more “stodgy” and formulaic, but you may thereby err on
the side of nipping a problem in the bud. An example of the kind of problem
here is shown in what I encountered in the support-group context about 10 years
ago: you learned—or you gathered enough “currently available evidence on a
person,” as well as had enough life experience—to try to take an educated risk:
this might mean, say, asking a person whether
her ideas of suicide were “just blowing off steam”—which that person could
readily admit as the case—or a serious
indication of an imminent threat of suicide.
Another,
somewhat opposite example, is of a woman I dealt with richly for about four
months, “Cheryl” from my A College Try
account, who seemed to regard her suicidal ideation as a threat to her, or something she was rather desperate to get control
over. This sort of thing is called “ego-dystonic” thought: it is thought you
have that you regard as in some sense not yours, not reflective of you as you
feel you really are. This area of suicidal ideation and talk, as far as a
listener to it is concerned, is all very much one of judgment calls, of
evanescent phenomena displayed by another person, about which care in how you respond is job number one.
If you really feel there is a danger, you must set up a careful, respectful
means of communication with the person—and it is complex, subtle, and not easy.
Hence my
longstanding sense of annoyance at the R.A. (See End note.)
At some point
not long after her remarks, I met with Andy in the suite of rooms that housed
the Program Board, the student organization that scheduled concerts, movies,
and the like [this is remarked on in Part 1], on the fourth floor of the
MC. The main room, where we sat, was empty at the time. I forget how it was that we ended up there,
with me wanting to talk to him. It’s possible I had said I wanted to talk with
him, and this was where it was to take place. For him, he was just at that
point willing to take a break and eat some food, and maybe in regard to my
request, he set this break aside as the time he would allow me to talk with
him.
It was night,
of course, and at that point a slow time. The food Andy was eating was
something he’d mooched from a function that was going on somewhere in the
building, as we managers so often mooched food to get our nighttime meals (while
in general we were working so that others, partaking in the events, might play).
I think it is safe to say that in my setting about talking to him, I knew he
might regard it as my approaching it “from my viewpoint of different values”—as,
certainly by then, we both knew we each occasionally approached issues from. (I
think he was more apt to frame this matter in these terms than I was.) But I
was especially feeling awkward because of the topic of suicidal talk I wanted
to address.
I explained
how I'd been approached by the R.A. (I think I referred to her with what seemed
diplomatically appropriate “putting her into perspective” with a bit of irony)...and
I said, you know how she was trained, and she could be unwittingly throwing a
false alarm (or some such comment)...and (I said) I wasn’t sure if he, Andy,
was really thinking, you know, of suicide, but....
This was,
without doubt, the most awkward conversation I’d ever had with a friend, and I
would remember it as such for years. He listened passively as he ate; once or
more he, somewhat curiously, rolled his eyes a bit as if in semi-impatience. I
think once, in one of the few comments he made—as it happened, I did most of
the talking—he made a reference to “paternalism,” which was a theme
representing his resentment toward a bugbear of his in recent times as he
wrestled with his school career. (To perhaps oversimplify his view: people,
like me, who were trying to advise him on how to straighten out his act were
engaging in “paternalism.”)
It’s quite
possible to say I was being naïve in seeming one-sided in this conversation,
and I don’t dismiss that years-later, second-guessing criticism outright; but I
think in this situation, the naivete was inevitable for three reasons: I was
new to this kind of conversation; I never would have felt I need address Andy
about this sort of thing before (Andy who, about a year before, could seem so
full of life and fun); and I was young, about age 23, and inevitably would be
awkward in this sort of thing. It was very much a situation where, when it came
to this kind of conversation, “you have to start somewhere.”
Finally, when
I was done with my unilateral, amateur-counselor spiel, having said (I believe)
that if he wanted to talk about things the next time he was suicidal, he could
talk to me, he then made his sole self-expressive utterance—commenting on his
food, which he'd just finished: “F**kin’ slop.” I took this as seeming somewhat
to be a response to my “importunate spiel,” as well as a more obvious
commentary on the food. Yet he somehow seemed not entirely resentful about, or
rejecting of, my counseling. This was a dry, ambiguous show of gratitude and
relief that he might have given.
In a way, in
past years, I traced the beginning of the end of our friendship to this
conversation. In other words, this was the sort of thing that, if we should
come to something like this, it was no wonder our friendship ended within the
next few months, as one could only say in retrospect.
My story about
dealing with a Fern K., which is in the works as a blog entry (and which will be Part 12), also gives an
example of an early instance of my “being a counselor to a person in crisis.” By
the way, my rich and varied education in psychology in the 1980s—encompassing
experimental, humanistic, behavioral, linguistic, abnormal, and other kinds of
psychology—was basically academic, not setting me up right away for practical
work. But I think anyone with an affinity for psychology at the depth at which
I studied it has some talent, if crude when you are young, for some one-on-one
counseling. I would know, many years later, that I was a novice in this sort of
thing in 1985. But what heartens me when I go back to records of this stuff
from then is that my instincts, if not my “every step in my
move-through-a-conversation manner,” were quite on the mark.
From a
different angle, considering Andy over the long term—both in the different
phases he went through from “happier times” in late 1983 or so, through early
1985, and looking at him based on what I’ve known of him through recent years,
including in the sad discovery of his obituary—I would say that as fun as he
could be, there was something closely held, inscrutable, and impervious to some
kind of real amelioration from outsiders in him. So, if I found it a little
tough going talking to him in that Program Board room, it may have been no
surprise. But with talking to a suicidal person, you never know so much about
“what that person is about over the really long term” anyway. You just have a
breathing “person next to you” who needs trust in you built up.
By the way, if
it seems I remember the details and nuances of my talk with him, 28 years ago,
surprisingly well, this is because I’ve been given cause for thought about it
numerous times over the years—because of what kind of talk it was. Whether my
memory has embellished or distorted little aspects of it, I don’t know.
Andy’s blast of “crazy anger”
One last
measure of how things were getting with Andy is the sort of thing that people
who don’t know me well, or who can’t be bothered with really understanding the
stuff I am relating from the 1980s, might have trouble interpreting: how I
looked at some unusual blast of anger he showed, and how I wrote on it very
sketchily in my diary of the time.
One night at
the MC, Andy was working, and I think he was doing a long set of shifts again
(as I’ve hinted in a previous entry, he did double shifts at times in his final
months at GW, like the regular evening shift—about 4 p.m. to 12 midnight—then
the third shift—about 12 to 7 a.m.). This particular night he was high on
heroin, and I think short of sleep. I guess I encountered him at the end of
this double he did. And perhaps because I made a comment to him he didn’t like,
he let out a blast. (It may seem as though I did a lot of provoking remarks to
him in these late days of our friendship, but it wasn’t as if I was routinely malicious
or catty, with him or with anyone else. Some of the reasons he got angry were
not entirely reasonable; and we were all relatively student age anyway, with
the snarky mouths such people did, and still, have.)
Anyway, he let
out a roaring comment that was, as I recall in its manner, rather psychopathic—or
could be said to be reflective of being a bit high and short of sleep, along
with all else. As a direct reaction, I wrote in a brief journal entry dated
March 3, 1985, which turns out to have been the last entry in a journal that I had
kept sporadically (not for a class, and when at GW) for a little over two years
(after which I wouldn't keep any sort of consistent journal until starting
about February 1986, about when I was returning home to New Jersey):
Last
night I watched Andy C display the same kind of broken-down-personality signs I
show (secretly) much oftener than he [I think I was being rather hard on myself
then; I was fairly routinely self-critical in my journals]. I sort of felt
sorry for him ([i.e.,] today I did). He doesn’t take good care of himself
[which is an understatement, seen today]. This [is] maybe narcissistic to say,
but it also made me see how abject my mental habits are; and it also shows me
clearly what kind of healthy/limited person AC is. [This latter clause is the
real point.]
That was how I
wrote on it in one of the relatively sporadic diary entries I did in my last
year or so at the MC. Much more food for thought would come, such as the parking
tickets situation that I discussed in the second third of my series on Andy.
I will defer
talk about the parking tickets story in detail. My bullet points in the second third of my Andy story should suffice. My Andy story for this blog is
done for now; but certainly there is more material “in the vault” from which
this stuff came.
##
End note. The way I
wrote on this about 11 years ago is as follows: “Characteristically, [this
woman] could seem vaguely presumptuous or impersonal anyway, and it was
somewhat in keeping with this that [to me] her understanding of something so
darkly serious as suicidal threats could be represented in the embrace of her
kind of competent-R.A., more-or-less-smug-student understanding[. This was such
that her remark on Andy seemed mainly as if] she could swat me in the face
[rather indiscriminately] with a reminder, as if I didn't already know from
long, dark life—which the others couldn't know about anyway—whether a whiff of
[someone else’s] suicidal thought was serious or not.”
