Victor

Because of his fierce gaze, his short, stocky but powerful build, his large Germanic nose, and the long tan overcoat with its two pointed tails that he always wore, my siblings and I nicknamed him “The Penguin,” after the famous Batman villain. It was said he often beat his large, white, wolf-like dog with a cane, and that he had once beat his mother with his fists during an argument in the house they lived in down the street from us. Once, we had asked him the name of his dog as he walked by on the sidewalk across the street. “Socrates,” he said. We began skipping along the sidewalk, repeating in a singsong voice: “Soc-ra-tes! Soc-ra-tes!” He simply barreled onward, eyes to the ground, letting his head lead him along. One could sense from this man that he had been inflicted with a great psychological strain, and that he now used his overly developed intellect to compensate for that strain. Actually, as I learned from a neighbor of mine, he was a retired college philosophy professor, and his name was Victor—appropriate, I thought, comparing him to the famous scientist from literature of the same name.

            My family and I often talked of him when I was young, as he seemed to be ubiquitous in our neighborhood and was always engaging in the strangest behaviors. Often, he stood near the movie theatre, casting furtive glances at the passers-by. Sometimes, he had outrageous outbursts that clearly displayed his antagonism towards his fellow man. Once, he spit on the ground derisively as my father walked past him. Another time, as I was leaving the theatre with my parents, he yelled at a group of patrons: “Bourgeois Nazis!” And, another time, as he was crossing in front of my car as I was driving down my street, he stopped, held up his arm toward me like a crossing guard, and proceeded to remain standing there, glaring at me, so that I had to drive around him.

            It wasn’t until my family had moved to a new neighborhood when I was in my early to mid twenties that I had the chance to meet him. I was visiting the old neighborhood, walking past the theater and I noticed that he was glaring at me. Perhaps on any other day I would have let this go, but today I was especially irritable. I glared back at him as I passed. “Insidious torturer!” I cried out to him. “I’ve got my eye on you!”

            “It’s good that you have your eye on something,” he said in a calm voice. “That’s more than most people can say.”

            I stopped, and turned around, amazed. “Perhaps you’re right,” I said. “And what, pray tell, do you have your eye on?”

            “Currently,” he said, “I have an eye on a curious and obviously intellectually vibrant young man, who is just a bit confused.”

            “Confused?” I said. “What am I confused about?”

            “For one, mostly everything. And secondarily, you are confused as to why your insult didn’t spur a more pugnacious response from me.”

            I smiled. He had set my mind at ease.

            “You sound like a philosopher,” I said. “There’s a richness to your voice.”

            “I am a philosopher,” he said, “But that has nothing to do with the richness in my voice. That comes from experience, or, perhaps I should say, difficult experience.”

            I thought to myself, for a man who acts so irrationally, it’s strange that his words should be so rational. But it occurred to me that perhaps he saw something of himself in me—perhaps it was my intellect, perhaps my sensitive nature—and that this was what was causing him to let his guard down.

            “You are also a poet, perhaps?” I asked him.

            “I am, particularly when the moon is full.”

            I laughed, but his face remained stolid and expressionless.

            “I’m a poet myself,” I told him. “Do you ever share your work?”

            “I’ve found that sharing my poetry only causes distress, both in myself and the one I’m sharing it with. The world can only accept what they are prepared to accept, and when one is living a step ahead, the world can never accept him. Or perhaps I should say, a half step ahead.”

            “I don’t see that there’s much of a difference,” I said.

            “A person living a step ahead has no relationship whatsoever with his contemporaries. A person a half-step ahead, though on the verge of breaking away completely, does have a relationship with his contemporaries, but, either because he is struggling for whatever reason to break away completely but can’t, or, because his natural disposition is to move beyond them but is somewhat afraid to break away completely, remains partially in line with his contemporaries, communicating with them, being educated and pushed by them.”

            “So which type are you?”

            “It is my fear of being forgotten that keeps me in line. So, the latter.”

            I laughed. “I wouldn’t say you are in line—not by the way I have seen you behave.”

            “Behavior is incidental. Thought is not.”

            Again, I laughed. “You certainly are rather queer. Maybe in fact you are a full step ahead.”

            He sighed. “Perhaps when I am dead they will say so.”

            I nodded my head. I too had often wondered what people would say about me when I was dead. Perhaps it was only people like me and this strange man that thought about such things. Had we turned our back on life? And if so, for what? Merely posterity? Or was there something more mystical at work here?

            “If you’d ever be willing,” I said, “I’d like you to at least read some of my work, if you wouldn’t be willing to share any of your own.”

            “Perhaps,” he said. “But don’t expect any great insight from me. Or even any interest, for that matter.”

            I left, bidding him a good day. That night, I told my father about our meeting. I told him that he seemed to be a very intelligent man. “Why?” my father protested. “Because he takes himself seriously? In my experience, those are the people who are most lacking in any real, meaningful intelligence.” This statement angered me, but I did not argue with my father.

            The next time I saw Victor, he was again in front of the theatre, but he was obviously distressed. He was pacing back and forth, and pulling at his long, thinning, cherry blonde hair. “Victor,” I said, “Are you OK?”

            He looked at me with wild, bloodshot eyes. “I’m fine. It’s the world that is a mess.”

            I looked at him, thinking of what my father had said, trying to reach some sort of conclusion about this man that was not a shallow dismissal.

            “It’s people, you see. They...try my nerves. At least, institutionalized people do.” He kept looking around, as if he suspected someone nearby was mocking him maliciously.

            “Institutionalized people?” I asked. “But doesn’t that include everyone?”

            “No,” he said. “Some people’s specific purpose in life is to propagate the institution. It’s only the rare few that work to change it.”

            “What institution are we talking about?”

            “Particularly?”

            “Yes, particularly.”

            “Well, I can see that your curiosity hasn’t been completely blunted, not like most of these cogs.” He smiled slightly as he said this. It felt like he was rationalizing things to himself. It was unsettling to witness it. “If you must know,” he said, “It’s the psychiatric institution.”     

            As he said this, it was as if he was completing my thought. I could have guessed it.

            “What do you have against psychiatry?”

            “They are propagating lies,” he said, vindictively, as if this were a very personal grudge. “They say that psychiatric disorders, as they call them, are caused by abnormal brain chemistry. But many recent studies prove that this is not true. You see,” he said, after a brief pause, “I have this...problem. People, they make me...nervous. I get anxious, you see.”

            “I understand. That’s not uncommon.”

            “Of course it’s not uncommon. People have a right to be nervous of other people. They’re mostly savages.” He said this so passionately, with such assurance, I got a new sense of just how bitter and lonely this man must have been. “Anyway,” he continued, “these psychiatrists say I should take these anti-anxiety pills. What were they called...Lorazepam! But I know,” he said, raising his voice, “I know the damage that can be done with these pills. Many studies have proven that the only real problems with brain chemistry begin once someone has started taking pills. It’s all a matter of propagating the institution, feeding the money making machine that is the American healthcare system. But I won’t feed into it. I won’t be made a guinea pig!”

            “You know,” I said, “I take pills. Not for anxiety, for psychosis.”

            “Psychosis?” He seemed stunned. “Really? That is very interesting. And you don’t feel that there are other ways that you could cure this problem? Through therapy? Through creative expression?”
            “Madness is a bottomless pit,” I said. “I don’t think any amount of therapy or creative channeling could assuage it. Sometimes, drugs are the only option.”

            He looked at me, scrutinizing me with his wide, dark, pulsating eyes. “So you, too, are part of the institution!”

            “Yes, I’d say I am. But then, really, if you look at things honestly, you are just as much a part of an institution.”

            He looked incredulous.

            “Wouldn’t you say you are an academic?” I asked.

            “No,” he said. “I left academia years ago, for much the same reason that I refuse to take prescription pills.”

            “Yes, but, you were trained to become a philosopher through academia.”

            “Yes, but...”

            “So...you are a product of an institution, which makes you part of it.”

            “No, no, you’re wrong! You don’t understand, an institution...”

            “Is merely a part of society, a society which we ourselves are a part of, whether we like it or not.”

            He was silent for a moment. He turned his head and looked down the street, which was currently thronged. It was a Friday night. People had been passing us by—young people, old people, beautiful people, ugly people, people of all shapes and sizes, people with their own philosophies and values and agendas. And here we were, Victor and I, on the precipice, searching for a reason to stay a part of it all.

            “You might be right about that,” said Victor, “but I have a responsibility to myself and to others to continue fighting, to continue suffering for the sake of progress. And you do, too.”
            I held out my hand. “I wish you all the luck,” I said. He grasped my hand and shook it. His hand was large and his grip was powerful.

            He looked at me from under his wide, furrowed brow. “I wish the same for you,” he said, turned, and walked down the street. I watched him till the gathering darkness consumed him, and he disappeared. We never spoke again.