The Eden Express

“One of the best books about going crazy . . . required reading for those who want to understand insanity from the inside.”—The New York Times Book Review

Mark Vonnegut set out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals. But genetic predisposition and “a whole lot of **** going down” made Mark Vonnegut crazy in a culture that told him “mental illness is a myth” and “schizophrenia is a sane response to an insane society.” Here he tells his story with the eyes that see from the inside out: a moving remembrance of an era and a revealing look at mental illness . . . and getting well again.

Traveling Hopefully
 
It is a better thing to travel hopefully than it is to arrive.
—R. L. STEVENSON
 
June 1969: Swarthmore Graduation. The night before, someone had taken white paint and painted “Commence What?” on the front of the stage. The maintenance crew had dutifully covered it over with red, white, and blue bunting, but we all knew it was there. We sat there more or less straight-faced, listening to how well educated we were, how we were supposed to save the world, etc. Most of us were wearing arm bands to let the world know exactly where we stood on the war. “What a swell bunch of moral people,” thought I. “With us on the loose, corruption and evil don’t stand a chance.”
 
To pass the time, to try to figure out where I was and get some sort of lead on what the hell to do next, I had written my own commencement address.
 
“Members of the class of ’69, parents, faculty, etc., greetings. Here we are on a fine sunny June day to celebrate and commemorate the graduation of 207 fine young men and women from this fine institution of higher learning.
 
“One of the things I’m taken by when I look out on a group like this one is how hard people have tried to do nice things for you. The financial cost of your education alone is staggering, but it doesn’t begin to tell the story. In a process that goes back generation upon generation countless sacrifices have been made in your name. The list is endless. It ranges from World War II to making do with margarine instead of butter. You’ve been given the best of everything from prenatal care to college professors. Your grandparents, parents, teachers, and others have burned a lot of midnight oil trying to figure out how to make life more pleasant for you. One of the things they came up with is a liberal arts education, which is what today is all about.
 
“By and large, you’re not a thankful lot. A lot of you feel terribly cheated and that a liberal arts education is a pile of shit. You feel you’ve been conned into wasting four years of precious time. I don’t find your bitterness entirely misplaced. After all, here you are at the ridiculous age of twenty-one, with virtually no real skills except as conversationalists. Let me remark, in passing, what fantastic conversationalists you are. Most of you have mastered enough superficial information and tricks of the trade to be able to hold conversations with virtually anyone about anything. This is one of the reasons you’re such big hits at your parents’ parties. Being a good conversationalist is really what a liberal arts education is all about.
 
“Well, as I was saying, your bitterness is not entirely out of line. For one thing, no one has the faintest idea about what you should do next. But lest you be too bitter, let me point out that knowing a college education is a pile of shit is no small lesson. There are many people who don’t know it. In fact, probably most people don’t know it. There is surely no better place to learn this lesson than at college. In any event, you can console yourselves by knowing that you won’t waste time and make fools of yourselves later in life thinking how different it all would have been if only you had gone to college. Now that you have your degree, you can say what a pile of shit college is and no one can accuse you of sour grapes.”
 
∗ ∗ ∗
 
My girl friend, Virginia, was in the audience with my parents, watching me and my classmates receive our precious advice and shiny new degrees.
 
“Well, Virge” (which is what I usually called her), “I imagine seeing a moving ceremony like that must have taken care of any silly notion you might have had about dropping out.”
 
She wasn’t thinking that seriously about dropping out. She had only a year to go and had seen too many friends get hung up explaining, justifying, and agonizing over whether or not to go back. Dropping out was too much work. The most efficient thing to do was get it the hell out of the way.
 
Our plans were vague. We had been offered a place to stay in Boston for the summer. We hoped we could find interesting jobs and I’d find some way around the draft. Virginia would go back to finish at Swarthmore and then we’d see what came up.
 
Virginia. There was something about us that fitted together. Tumblers moved and we locked together. There were some dreadfully unhappy times, but we both needed other things more than happiness. It was those other things that we were all about.
 
Virginia, Virginia, Virginia, how did my life get so mixed up with yours? It was spring, my senior, your junior year. I was lonely. So were you. We started walking together and talking together, mostly me talking, babbling on like an utter fool, wishing you’d say more and trying to get up the nerve to kiss you. It wasn’t like it had been with other girls at all. For one thing, you weren’t pretty at all the way other girl friends of mine had been pretty. You were pretty but a weird pretty. Your legs were much too perfect to be quite human.
 
You were very different from other women I had been attracted to. Had I met you earlier I would have thought you were almost ugly, nose much too big and poorly defined, narrow, low forehead, cheekbones high and spread, but you carried it all with such grace and dignity. Most women seemed to be either attractive or unattractive and that was that. I have never before or since met anyone who was as beautiful to me when you were beautiful or as ugly when you were ugly. Your awesome range transfixed me, and always those legs which were too perfect to be quite human.
 
Everything about you seemed like a magnet. The house you rented with five other girls was the spawning of a new spirit. The five guys and I who rented a house a few miles away were all weird, but we were weird in a boisterous individual way that seemed sure to die as soon as school was over. There was a unity to your weirdness that went beyond all eating out of the same refrigerator, vegetarian communal meals, and heavy political raps, which were admittedly all new to me. I and most of my friends agreed with you point by point all down the line, but there was something beyond the points that was very different. In any event, I didn’t waste much time hopping aboard to try to figure out just what this difference was all about.
 
Our first date, if you can call it that, came out of one of my increasingly frequent and doubtless unsubtle wooing visits to your house. We were all having a quiet cup of tea.
 
Everything seemed peaceful and nice. You went into the kitchen and suddenly all hell broke loose. Someone hadn’t washed the dishes. Your voice was short and clipped, your face set, your eyes filled with total disgust. Everyone scurried around meekly, trying to stay out of your way. It was an impressive show.
 
During a brief lull in the storm, while you were just sitting on the couch glowering, I said weakly, without much hope, “How’d you like to go to a movie?”
 
The absurdity of my invitation was compounded by the fact that it was about nine-thirty at night. You just looked at me. Your look seemed to soften a bit, from hate to gentle contempt. I guess the humor of it got to you some. “Shit, I don’t know,” I started again. “I just thought you might want to get out of here for a bit. Maybe there’s an all-night movie in Philly or maybe we could just go out for a hamburger or something.”
 
“Ya,” you said, or words to that effect indicating a bare minimum of acceptance.
 
“Well,” said I, feeling not at all sure you’d accepted or what you’d accepted, “we’ll go to my place and pick up some money.”
 
“OK,” said you, and we went out and got into trusty old Car Car.
 
On the way, Car Car was filled with dead silence. “Do you really want to go to a movie?” I finally ventured.
 
“No,” you said, “not really.”
 
“OK, how about a hamburger?”
 
“That’s all right, I’m really not hungry.”
 
“OK, I’ve got some beer at the house. It’s really a pretty pleasant place to sit around. At least you’ll get out of your house for a while.” Silence.
 
“Well, here we are,” I said, trying to be cheerful. You didn’t say a word. You just got out of the car and walked in with precision and dignity. Well, I thought to myself, feeling more and more like an ass, is she really that pissed off about unwashed dishes? Does she want to be here at all? You gave me so little to go on.
 
“Want a beer?”
 
“No.”
 
“Well, I’m going to have one,” as I opened the fridge. “Some milk? Maybe some tea?”
 
Just a shake of your head. You just sat there looking at me. The contempt had pretty much left your eyes, thank God. But it was replaced with an aloof penetration that was equally if not more disconcerting.
 
With so few clues, I was on my own. Maybe I just imagined it, but I started to see something else in your eyes, a plea: Try to understand why I can’t give you more clues.
 
Then you seemed to be bordering on tears. I put my arm around you and tried to kiss you softly, trying to tell you there was nothing to be afraid of, that you were safe from whatever was haunting you, that I liked you, that I wanted you to relax.
 
You avoided my kiss, half buried your face in my chest, and hugged me softly, not moving, not breathing. I stopped breathing too. We stayed like that for what seemed like forever. I tried again to kiss you. Our mouths just brushed and you buried your head again and hugged me a little tighter. Almost afraid you might break, I gently moved your head back from my chest, stroking your hair. I smiled and you smiled back.
 
In your eyes, I thought I saw a promise that some day, but not now and not to be pushed, you would make it all make sense to me. The same promise was in your hugs. My eyes must have promised something back. You took my head in your hands and kissed me. We became lovers.