But after two weeks of plentiful food and lots of sleep, I was suffocating with boredom. I went to the head nurse and explained myself. She thought my self-induced commitment very wise. She said the plan was a clever one, but she didn’t let me go. A few days later, in the warm upholstery of the rear seat of another automobile, I rode to the state hospital, where I was admitted. The ward was crowded and noisy. I had no privacy. I explained and complained. I repudiated and elucidated. It was two months of grinding frustration. One day a social worker brought me into her office for an interview.

“Where will you go? What will you do? What if we could arrange a regular Social Security payment to support you?” she said.

I stared at her. I had assumed I would go out and sling hash in another fast food trough. I had thought of patrolling the parks and bars again, hoping to find some fresh meat to hide against while I slept. But this new idea was appealing.

“You are eligible for a stipend since you were still employed at the DoNut Shop when your breakdown occurred.” She was proud at having read my file, at having all the facts in her grasp. Besides, she was specializing in Social Security payments that week. I signed papers and went back to the ward. Sat picking my lip all that afternoon, trying to think what would happen. Only later, as I was going to sleep, did I remember that she had said “breakdown.” I felt my grin sliding as I fell into sleep. Of course, the blue bedtime pill helped, too.

There was the morning pill and the bedtime pill. There was also the two o’clock in the afternoon pill. Between them, things were easy if not precisely pleasant.

“You will,” said the social worker firmly, “be going back to Oregon.” I promised to take the three pills faithfully and attend a twice-monthly therapy session.

My brother met me in the lobby. He was excited to have flown. He had never ventured onto a plane before. “They refuse to give you a parachute! Not a single one on the entire plane.” His astonishment cheered me. We got drunk in the airport bar.

“What is this business about being crazy?” he asked over Nebraska.

“It was a plan to earn an undeserved vacation. After Jack left, I was in such a mood I knew I’d have gone whoring otherwise.”

“I thought men went whoring,” he muttered.

Instead of getting an apartment in the city, I took this little house in a town so small that it has no diversions. It is far enough from Portland to make going there an all-day project. It doesn’t tempt me often.