Seeing Bats, Hearing Voices (in Tacoma, at the Rainier Writing Workshop)

During this wonderful time of getting to know people and being fantastically stimulated as a writer, I've been so cautious around all the shared meals. Night before last, finally, something got me. Mid-way through Dinty Moore's hilarious and yet depth-plumbing reading about death and family, I realized that I was in for a night of shakes, hot and cold sweats, frequent trips to the bathroom.

Despite this, I spent some of the evening at the North Pacific Coffee Club, as I have almost every night, talking, appreciating, getting to know people better. It took my mind off the sickness, the bathroom was close by, I wouldn't have missed the conversation. Still, I left early, hoping to sleep it off.

Harstad Hall's corridors are long and bare, with a "T" at each end. When I came in, a bat the size of a starling was flying back and forth down the hall...

...knocking around in one "T" or other for a few moments, then making another lap of the corridor. Anxious. Swooping low, frantic. I opened the end door wide and tried to usher it out, but I banged the door on the wall and it fled to the opposite end. I tried to herd it toward an open window. It ducked out under my outstretched arm. On my fourth lap of the corridor, I listened at doors for voices and found two people in the ladies' room, asked them for help. One of them was horrified at the very thought of a bat; the other was willing to help me try to trap it, but really thought that calling Campus Security would be the thing to do.

So, I went downstairs and called Campus Security. Five minutes later, three kids showed up with walkie talkies dangling from their belts and heavy flashlights in their hands. One also wielded a butterfly net. They came upstairs with me: no sign of the bat. They started opening doors and shining lights in, although I assured them that the bat wouldn't have gone through a closed door.

As soon as they left to check the next floor up, here came the bat again, making its frantic laps of the corridor. I called out to them and went up the next flight of stairs as fast as my nauseated state allowed. As I stepped onto the third floor landing, the bat shot past my right ear and continued up the stairwell. I couldn't find the "Campus Security" folks and I didn't know where the bat was anymore either, so I just gave up and went to bed.

As I tossed between hot sweats and chills, flicking in and out of dreams like a mid-afternoon drunk surfing channels, voices started to intrude, loud, animated, back from the bar after closing time. The next time I had to get up for the bathroom, I determined I'd ask them to tone it down. I stepped out into the corridor. Silence. No one was there at all.

Back in bed, there were the voices again. And then I remembered Mary Blew's craft talk that morning, in which she quoted from "Crazy." The second-person protagonist, in the early stages of a psychotic break, is convinced that the downstairs neighbors, and eventually everyone else, are talking--about her--all the time. I realized that the voices were intensifying with my hot sweats and receding with my chills. I strained to distinguish words: yes, of course they were talking about me! Yes, of course they were all in my head. And what about the bat?

The morning brought some clarity. My guts were no longer in 'repel invaders' mode and the world looked more like itself again. There had indeed been a 'post-bar-closing' gathering in the first-floor lounge, directly beneath my room but not directly beneath the corridor.

And what about the bat? This morning, someone came down saying there was a bat in the third-floor bathroom. And the front desk folks were on the phone to Campus Security once again.