In the Clubhouse

Back when I first entered the clubhouse, I didn’t think I’d ever be a published writer. I thought any chance of a career was over for me. On my first day in the clubhouse, a bunch of us were sitting around a large table. After we exchanged names, and I’m not good with names, one of the other members, Todd, asked me what my diagnosis was.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” I answered. The truth was that I knew I was being treated for schizophrenia, but it was probably the most stigmatized of diagnosis.

Todd asked, “How could you not know?”

I shrugged. “Easy. I was in the hospital. I took whatever medicine I was supposed to take. Eventually they said I was well enough to get out of the hospital, but I needed follow up and daily structure, so I chose this clubhouse.”

A woman walked in. Todd said to her, “Hey sweetie, how are you today?”

She made a face.

I extended my hand to her. “Hi, my name is Matthew.”

She shook my hand. “Hi. My name is Karla.”

Todd said, “You seem more comfortable talking to him than me.”

One of the hired counselors, Lisa, was walking by. “That’s because you’re a pain in the neck, Todd. Karla, you have to stand up for yourself. Make fun of him back.”

Karla didn’t say anything but sat down at a computer and started inputting data from sign-in slips for the clubhouse to keep track of attendance. It seemed like busywork to me, and I wasn’t about to do it myself.

Todd said, “Karla, you know you are beautiful.”

Karla ignored Todd.

Another member, Jason, who was dressed in a new pair of jeans, a Patagonia jacket and Timberland boots, walked up to Karla and asked her for change to buy a coffee in the cafeteria. She said no.

I wondered what that was all about. Nobody else seemed to notice. Donna, a woman in worn out clothes sitting at the table was reading the previous day’s edition of a tabloid. I twiddled my thumbs and thought it would be good to have something to read. Several people were nodding off. Karla left at about noon. She was in a distance learning program and went to the library to study in the afternoons.

“What is it about Karla?” I asked.

Todd said, “She’s beautiful. Have you seen or heard of the movie A Beautiful Mind? About a genius with schizophrenia? Well, she’s beautiful like that.”

Jason said, “And she goes to Starbucks instead of the cheap cafeteria for coffee. She’s too puffed up”

I nodded, glad that I didn’t say what my diagnosis was. I stepped out at about one in the afternoon. There was a used book store a few blocks away. There, I found a book on creative writing for a dollar. I stopped at a drugstore and bought a notebook and some pens. From then on, when I was in the clubhouse, I sat in an armchair in a room where several other members had nodded off. It was quiet there. The book had a lot of exercises, and I just spent the days writing furiously in my notebook.

A few weeks later, one of the counselors, Bill, noticed me writing in my notebook. He said, “The clubhouse has a newsletter. You could write essays for it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to do journalistic writing or be published in the newsletter.”

He nodded. “There’s a job placement available at Clay and Hunter Financial Services you may be interested in. It would be for a few months, and it pays well.”

I shook my head again. “No, thank you.”

I didn’t say it, but before I went into the hospital, I had temporary assignments at Clay and Hunter, and I didn’t want to go back as someone with serious mental illness. I’d be embarrassed at the placement.

I wanted to write fiction, so I went back to the used bookstore a few weeks later and found a book on writing for children. Around that time, Donna, who read the day-old newspapers, invited me to have coffee in the cafeteria with several other members who had coffee together daily. They turned out to be nice people, but there was a depressing air among them.

There was a man, Arnold, who turned out to have been formerly a Franciscan monk. He said they knew when he was going in that he was diagnosed with a serious mental illness. After he was there for a couple of years, they asked him to leave.

Donna said she retrieved her newspapers from the recycle bin in her building. She lived with her father and sister, but didn’t have much spending money.

One young man, Collin, was an artist. There was a postcard representing the gallery of the clubhouse that showed one of his paintings. It was a beautiful oil painting of a lake shore at sunrise. Collin seemed more cheerful than the others in the group, but soon after I met him, he reportedly jumped onto the rafters in a multi-story shopping mall and fell to his death.

Except when having coffee with the friendly group, I still sat in a room where others were sleeping, writing as fast as I could. I wrote a story for children aged four to six. The book I was learning from gave directions on how to submit to agents. At home, I searched the Internet for appropriate agents and sent my story to several of them. Some of the listed agents specified no simultaneous submissions, so I figured it was alright for the ones who didn’t specify that.

After submitting my children’s story, I went back to working with the creative writing book. I tried my hand at writing poetry.

Bill, the counselor, asked, “What are you writing now?”

I looked up at him. “Poetry. Free verse.”

Bill raised his eyebrows. “Really? That’s great. The clubhouse newsletter accepts poetry.”

This time I went to the area where the newsletter was planned and talked to the counselor in charge, Pedro. He liked one of my poems and it was printed in the next issue.

Sometime later, my children’s story manuscript was accepted by an agent. Two weeks after that, I was offered a publishing contract. I still went to the clubhouse and scribbled creative writing exercises, and occasionally submitted poems for the newsletter.

I made some other friends in the clubhouse, outside of the section I had been assigned to. There was a nice young woman, Amanda, who seemed self-possessed, but had a guardian with whom she had lunch every week. There was a man, Jim, who was writing a history of the clubhouse.

A year later, my book was published with colorful illustrations. It became popular, and I was off of disability. I still had to go to the clubhouse, but I didn’t tell anyone there about my publication.