New Roommate Jeffry’s last night on the unit, I couldn’t sleep. Not because of him, or anything. They’d served us each a paper plateful of baked beans for dinner. Beans that Carol’s decrepit intestines weren’t too friendly with. Her ass gas was so thick and onioney, that night, not even burrowing my face deep into the thin, white sheet could mask it. Nancy was so doped up, she slept through it, as usual.
So, I sat in the dayroom. Alone. Arms folded over my gown. I hung my head and stared at my arms. The bright tattoos of flowers and bugs and stars, and the pink stripes of scars running highways between them reminded me of how just a week ago I had the freedom and right to plunge needles and knives into my own skin. And why shouldn’t I, damn it? I grew this skin. I fed my mouth and slept and drank water so I would grow and live. I worked so hard to be alive for what? To be a checkmark on some psych nurse’s clipboard?
“Pssst!” I heard from a doorway across from me. I looked up. It was Jeffry. He was wearing a coat. They’d given it back to him since he’s leaving tomorrow.
“Psst! Com’ere!” Jeffry said and unbuttoned his coat to reveal a smooth, brown chest with thick pectoral mounds and a rippled stomach. He nodded slowly and raised his eyebrows up and down as he circled his nipples with one finger.
I shook my head quickly no. Jeffry’s discharge order was written already. It would take a court trial to commit him and make him stay longer. So he could do what the fuck he pleased.
As for me, I knew that each transgression, my every insubordinate move equaled more time in these jaundice colored walls. I had stopped hallucinating. I had no urge to fuck this man across the dayroom, offering himself to me. Yeah, he’s sort of old and bald, and the smell of fart and institution laundry isn’t exactly arousing. But he’s got a nice body and a working cock. Which is usually enough for me. Maybe the medicines have kicked in. Fuck! I bet that’s it.
“Hey! Psst! Hey!” Jeffry reached down for the elastic waist of his paper pajamas and pulled the front low to expose his thick, dark cock. Nope. I’m still not horny. There’s definitely something wrong here. I’m a little scared. What if when I go home to my master and he binds me in ropes and chains, then pushes me onto my knees and spreads my asscheeks and tries to slide his luscious tool in me and finds I'm dry as a kitten’s tongue. Would he be hurt? Think I no longer love him and want to deprive him?

Bandana is on duty tonight. The very unfriendly night nurse who always wears a bandana over her braids. I see her behind the counter, now, staring down hard at a magazine, gulping from a large, glass bottle of something clear, Vodka or liquid Haldol, maybe and eating mealy bananas. Fuck you, bitch. Those were probably our breakfast.
Bandana doesn’t see Jeffry. I almost wish she would so he’d stop. Each time he grinds that fist up and down his cock, I’m reminded of my new impotence. Bandana doesn’t see me either, though. If she did, she’d give me a shot.
Elena stomps into the dayroom with her blanket thrown across her shoulders like a cape. She winks one almond eye at me and sinks into a chair in front of Jeffry’s door. I don’t think she saw him.
“I am sooooo sleepy!” she swoons and drapes the blanket over her lap. She begins to snore exaggerately.
“Oh Queen Elena,” Bandana croaks, “You best be takin’ yo Chinese ass to bed.”
Elena “snores” more. In a wispy, sleeptalk tone says, “but I’m Thaiiiii.”
“Yo Thai ass gettin’ a shot.” Bandana puts down the banana she’d been chewing. Jeffry sees Bandana get up, blows me a kiss, and slips back into the dark of the room he shares with Fergus. I sort of wonder what Jesus freak Fergus would have done if he’d have woke to me and Jeffry bouncing up and down in the bed beside him.

“Ooh! That tickles! Mmm…I love needles!” Elena giggled as Nurse Bandana jabbed the shot of Thorazine into her bicep. “I’m already starting to feel all zonkty!”
Elena skipped off to her and Mona’s room and I was alone again.
“Hey, you. Little white girl.” Bandana noticed me.
I blinked and with a big scoop of my neck looked around the dayroom, as if it was a pep rally back at my high school in the suburbs, crowded with little white girls, cheering and shaking their pom-poms in between twirls of their long, blonde hair.
“Uh. Me?”
“You wanna shot, too?” Bandana threatened.
“Have you smelled it in there.” I said and pointed behind me at the room where Carol and Nancy slept.
Bandana bit her lip as not to smile. “Yeah, it do stink pretty bad.”
“I’ll go right to sleep if I can have a different room.”
“Your on frequent ob. I'm sposta watch you. Doctor said he’d take you off it, though. There’s room with the new girl. Go sleep in there.” She pointed to Leesha’s door.
  ¶ 1:54 PM