If none of that’s exactly undeniable proof of non-toadiness on the part of Manx et al, it is, I think, at least compelling evidence. Beyond that, they were decent people. They did right by me even after I’d dropped out: in addition to allowing me to keep Kablankey, they continued to reimburse my treatment, despite my mom’s having previously signed papers which made very explicit that such reimbursement was contingent on my full participation. And, sure, yes, maybe it’s true that having received these kindnesses from Manx et al has forever compromised my ability to imagine Manx et al doing anything nefarious, but what can I say? I just don’t believe that. I think it’s cynical.
In any case, nothing nefarious—nothing even untoward—seemed to me to be happening while I was a subject. Apart from answering our questionnaires, all we really did was hang out and get watched. Hanging out in the rec room entailed talking to each other, engaging with our animals, and playing board-, card-, and table-games. In the stark room—which was basically identical to the rec room except that there were dining- and side-tables there rather than gaming tables and crates—hanging out, though the games were always propless (e.g. I Never, Slap-Slap, Truth or Dare), comprised the same activities it did in the rec room. The researchers passed out the food during lunch, gave to and retrieved from us our questionnaire envelopes during sessions 1 and 7, and chaperoned our animals back and forth between the lab we were in and the adjoining classroom whenever the schedule demanded. Other than that, though, the only times they interfered with our interactions (observer effect aside) were when bouts of intersubject violence broke out.
The degree to which the researchers—never fewer than eight to a lab—left us to our own devices was actually pretty surprising to me. That first day, for example, just a couple minutes after I’d begun the questionnaire, an overweight boy in a Sox cap, Bertrand (he was wearing a HELLO! MY NAME IS sticker on the thigh of his cords—I don’t know why, no one else had one), rushed over to my window, pulled up his shirt, raised his right arm as if hoping to be called on, and barked, “Five in the night makes a happy and healthy twenty-fucken-eight, you cocksucking, cockfucking son of a cunt.” I would, eventually, come to ascertain that reporting on the number of hairs in his armpit was the way that Bertrand, for reasons never clarified, preferred to greet others, but at the time I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, just that he was aggressively cursing in a drill-instructor voice while being twice as big as me, and I’m sure I must have flinched in the wake of his greeting, or at least appeared alarmed, and I definitely hid Kablankey in the pocket of my hoodie, yet none of the researchers—all of whom were watching—even rose from the sofa. “Name, analrectum,” Bertrand went on to say. “Tell me your cumslurping name right now.”
“I’m Belt,” I said.
“You’re Suspendersed,” he said. “You think that sounds dumb, though, don’t you, farmboy? Well I know it sounds dumb, but I didn’t til I said it, and still I want to say it. I really like to say it, and you should say it, too. Suspendersed. Say it. It’s a party on your mustache. Some ass on your chin. A sweet piece of pussy with tits out to here.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Suspendersed,” he insisted.
“Suspendersed,” I said.
Removing his cap and bowing a little, he said, “Suspendersed, Mikeylikey. Mikeylikey meet Suspendersed.” Amidst his wiry curls lay a sleeping baby gecko that, owing to the smiley shape of its mouth, gave the impression of dreaming sweetly. “First,” Bertrand said, “I just called him Mikey, but he looked like he likeyed, so now I call him Mikeylikey, or sometimes Mikey-oo-rikey, like miso hawnyhawny, goosockysocky, right? Rike-oo miso hawnyhawny, aye gi goo sockysocky!”
Mikeylikey opened its eyes and sidestepped, thereby uncovering a glistening dollop of mottled, beige paste that alerted me to other, less-glistening dollops clumping up the tips of Bertrand’s dark kinks. “I think you should go get an envelope,” I told him.
“Why’s that, ass-captain?”
“So you can do a questionnaire.”
“That sounds about as fun as a Chinese-African turd-shitting picnic.”
“Look, though,” I said. “It’s what everyone’s doing.” I pointed a finger toward the overstuffed sofa. A couple kids who’d entered the lab after Bertrand were sitting on the floor, at the researchers’ feet, unpacking their envelopes.
“I didn’t know there’d be girls here,” he said. “How’s my hair?”
“It’s better with your hat on.”
“Too smeary?” he said, and, replacing his cap, he walked off, smiley as Mikeylikey. Approaching the pair of kids on the floor, a girl and a boy, he pulled up his shirt and, raising his arm, boomed at the boy, “At the start of the week, I was down to nineteen from a high of twenty-two, but no worries, homosexual, no cuntfucking worries, you stammering, shit-jizzing, fucked-up abortion, cause the three I lost cleared a path for eleven. That’s twenty-eight strong, now. I bet they’re here to stay. Try and tell me different.”
Again, the gaping researchers stayed calm and quiet.
* * *
—
I don’t want, however, to give the impression that Bertrand’s Sergeant Hartmanesque behavior was in any way typical of Group 2’s subjects—or Group 1’s either. Few voices were raised, fewer fists clenched. Most of us were pliable, shy, sedate—most of us were, in fact, sedated. Bertrand, himself, by the end of session 1, had radically calmed, experiencing, it seemed, the kicking-in of something heavy he’d swallowed with his breakfast. He slackened all over, body and spirit, swore a little less, stopped showing his teeth. He kept his arm inside his shirt and mumbled his stats as he stroked Mikeylikey and yawned and yawned, looking like I’d felt when I was still on the Haldol. Once I noticed, I ceased to be afraid of him.
Nobody else in Group 2 ever scared me. Except for Lisette—the evening-gloved girl I’d seen in the hall the week before with my mom—none of the rest of them really stood out much. They all seemed so tender and dizzy and blank, so browned out and widely open to suggestion. I’d say, “Let’s play Ping-Pong,” and then we’d play Ping-Pong, which wasn’t much fun—all the dampened reflexes, the half-shut eyes—so I’d propose we switch it up and try a game of Sorry!, and we’d play a game of Sorry!, but they were so noncompetitive that sending them home only made me feel petty. When we’d play Truth or Dare, they’d always pick truth, then tell their dull truths without shame or delay, without any drama—“The girl from Who’s the Boss?” they’d say, or “Ally Sheedy,” or “I like to eat scabs,” or “Second base with a boy at my school who’s fourteen.”—and the dares they’d dare me, though uttered, it seemed, with a little more relish than they took in telling truths, were either too silly to feel like real risks, far too dangerous to even consider, or wholly impossible: “Fart really loud while running in place like you’re running from the fart you did and shout how you love it,” or “Jump out the window,” or “Jump out the window and fly,” or “Be a ghost.”