Girl, Writer's Blocked

It was in the summer of 1984 that I was suddenly afflicted with Writer's Block. The disease—and it is a disease—is misunderstood by virtually all insensitive non-writer people, as evidenced by their tendency to spell it without capital letters.

That's when I checked myself into Blowmee State Hospital. Blowmee is a quaint, upstate-New York residence that caters to writers with the affliction. Several famous writers I could mention were residents there before and after and during my stay, and I only fail to mention them by name because I don't know how to spell them. It's another confidence-shaking trait of Writer's Block: Lack of spelling confidence.

When I was in Blowmee, I met several young female writers in the PMS ward: There was Sooni Moon, the Korean author who speaks vague English and yet writes wonderful haikus, at least I'd probably think highly of them if I read Korean; there was Mitzi Kappellaberg, the Jewish princess who wrote in her highly neurotic style about her life growing up in Jewania; and of course Carrie, the firestarter, who only talked about her dog Cujo and never mentioned anything else about her hometown of Castle Rock.

But I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Nancy DeBitch. Nancy was the highly volatile, highly talented queen of manic depression. Most of the time she wasn't depressed, more manic, but they don't really have a classification for manics so they call them all manic-depressed. Nancy knew she had no depression and her classification only served to make her more manic.

Under Nancy's leadership we would yell and curse out the helpful nursing staff and throw riots that ended up just being wet T-shirt contests. We were all fighting back against something, whether it was the male-dominated world of authorshipping or the male-dominated world of male-on-top sex; if it was male-dominated, we were against it, and would throw riots to prove it. Sometimes they brought in tear gas to stun us, sometimes they had the tear gas already and used it. Most of the time, though, they just tricked us into eating take-out Chinese food full of sedatives.

Nancy grew more and more dangerous during my early days at Blowmee. She would break into the nurses office and medicate herself, then medicate the rest of us, then pursue a degree as a professional medicator at a university only to be turned away—because she was a woman—with the flimsy excuse of there being no such field as medicator. It seemed even when we wanted to better ourselves and overcome our Writer's Block the male-dominated system would only let us be dominated—by males.

We would be strapped into our beds often at night, and when we weren't we accidentally strapped ourselves in as part of the bed-strapping game. In the darkness, I would hear Nancy's frightened voice talking to me.

"Do you think we'll ever really change the world, Macy?"

"Nancy? Is that you?" I would ask her.

"God, you're a dipshit sometimes."

"Rrrrowr, someone's catty."

"It's me, dumbass, of course it's me—who else would slip into the room and quietly strap themselves into my bed? Are you some kind of retard?"

"I don't know," I would say quietly, almost to myself. "Maybe we will change the world."

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