Gollum is my patient

I recently saw a new patient, a Special Management Unit Resident Felon. That’s right, he’s a SMURF. These are inmates who often have more than their share of psychological problems, and they’re kept there for their own safety, and to keep them from being preyed on by the ‘normal’ prison population. It’s an odd place, to say the least. Combine the denizens of Oz, the Shire, and certain sections of San Francisco (Haight-Ashbury and Castro street come to mind), and you’ve got a rough approximation of our Special Management Unit.

This unfortunate gent was definitely dealt a few jokers in the genetic poker game that is reproduction. Cranio-facial anomalies which required extensive surgeries and left him with sibilant speech, a small yet barrel-shaped chest, and arms and legs thinner and longer than would be proportionate.

Add to this a strong tendency towards socially inappropriate behavior such as a tendency to fawn one moment and spit at you the next, muttering about what he’d like to do to the people responsible for putting him in prison, and incredibly inappropriate conversational gambits (“Hi. I eat bugs”) have indelibly burned him into my mind forever as Gollum.

Now I am truly doing my best for him in a professional sense, giving him the dignity and quality of medical care I give to all, but I have to say that he really does creep me out! I look at him, and I get a bit of a chill up my spine, and in my mind I hear “Nasty little sneak!”

And this bothers me. I don’t like feeling that way about human beings. But on a visceral level I loath how he looks and acts and sounds. I know how petty and judgemental that sounds, and I don’t like to write it. I’ve been less creeped out by serial sex murderers. I’ve also treated other people who were far more horribly deformed, and felt only pity, not loathing. I’ve treated nastier people, and only thought, “gee, what an excretory orifice he is”. But this guy pushes my buttons, apparently without even trying to. He pushes buttons I didn’t think I even had!

I’m just no Frodo Baggins, that’s for sure!

QtM

My little precious!

It’s okay, Samwise, your subconscious is just encouraging you to keep your guard up. Don’t take any naps while the guy is around.

[Steve Martin voice]

Not Mother?

[/Steve Martin voice]

Wow, SMURF is actually an official designation?

No, Ferrous. SMURF is the widely bandied unofficial acronym for the resident felons of the SMU. SMU is an official term, however. Applies to Resident Frat-boys at Southerm Methodist University too, I imagine.

He wouldn’t be in for jewelry theft, would he?

More seriously, I don’t think you can really help how you feel in this case. I certainly can’t fault you for it–some perfectly ordinary people creep me out, and there’s nothing I can do about it but avoid them. Just keep doing your best to treat him like any other patient, and otherwise try not to think about him.

Oh yeah, the whole thing was intensified, because the night before I met him, I watched the trailer for “The Two Towers” on my computer over and over, marvelling at how well they seemed to manage to characterize Smeagol.

Not sure what the dude’s in for, not sure I want to know.

Qadgop, just for you*:
Your patients personal diary.
*[sub]And the several million others who have looked at it.[/sub]

snork Actually, the jewel theives are the nassssty little hobbitsessssss, yessssssss. . .

Is it tasty? Is it crunchable?

I have nothing to add here, Qadgop, except I totally enjoy reading about the new job. Keep the stories coming!

**
Don’t you think your being just a bit precious about this?

Seriously though, you’re being silly. No one can control their feelings. You don’t show any moral character when you do what you feel like doing. You show moral character when you do what you know to be the right thing despite what you feel like doing. So kudos to you for confronting your not-unreasonable loathing.

BTW, I’m with flyboy88. I can hardly wait for the book. I’m anticipating a sort of cross between All Creatures Great and Small and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Of course I only know you from your posts, but let me tell you about me.

I love pretty much everyone. I take people at face value until they prove me wrong. I trust people until proven otherwise. I know, I am an idiot. That is whole 'nother thread, so 'nuff said about that. However…

Every once in awhile, I meet someone who just gives me the creeps. It hasn’t happened often, but it HAS happened. From the get go, I mean. I meet them, I feel icked out. I don’t LIKE feeling like that way about someone when I have no logical reason to feel that way. I feel like a bad person for feeling that way. I fight with myself to figure out why I am being so “gut feeling” negative about someone I have no reason to feel that way about. I feel like I am being judgemental. I don’t think being judgemental is right. In fact, I think it is a sin.

So far, I have felt this way about five people that I can bring to mind at this moment. I will list three of them for you, with the events that occurred after I met them. Some of these events happened soon after I met them, some happened years later.

#1…Mr. Gorgeous. Physically beautiful man. Boyfriend of a very good friend of mine. Rich, handsome, charming. He made my skin crawl. I couldn’t figure out why. Some years later, he was featured in our local paper by virtue of the fact that he was using that rape drug…rufin? I can’t remember what it was called…anyway, he was slipping that into women’s drinks in bars and then asking his friends if they wanted to have a good time and taking them all home to his million dollar house and “having their way” with the woman. Then he took her back to the bar he met her in and put her in her car. It was impossible for the authorities to tell how often he had done this, as this drug apparently wipes your memory out? But finally one of the women he did this with had a friend with her in the bar that he didn’t know about. He left with the woman…her friend saw them leaving… and her friend was frantic because she knew her friend wouldn’t have left without telling her. She knew who he was, she called the police and they went to his house to check on what was going on. Rape, that is what was going on. He is a guest of the state of WA as we speak.

#2) I was at a BBQ, and one of my friends brought this guy they knew…he was a friend of an out of state friend who had asked them to introduce him around since he didn’t know anyone here. He creeped me out…he seemed fine, looked fine, but…I don’t know…he just creeped me out.

Lots of drinking going on at the party…not my thing, so I left early. But I forgot my prescription sunglasses, so I went back. When I got there, the police were there. One of my friends (the people hosting the party) had gone into the bedroom to check on her sleeping child and found this man standing over her two year old daughter. He had removed all the child’s clothing, the baby was cowering in the corner and the man had his pants unzipped. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what THAT was all about.

#3) A new patient came into the office. Nice looking man, seemed very nice. Made my skin crawl. No logical reason that I could see why I felt that way.

A few years later, I saw his picture in the paper. He had moved to Seattle by then. He had gotten upset because his girlfriend’s son didn’t take the trash out right away when he told him to. So he hit the boy with a baseball bat, put the body in a trash bag and dumped the boy in a dumpster. He apparently thought the boy was dead. Unfortunately for him, the child was still alive when he dumped him, and lived to tell what happened. Someone went to dump some trash in the dumpster and saw the bag moving. His defence? “He defied me. He deliberately sat there playing with his video game and ignored a direct order.” Right. That is a good reason to take a baseball bat to the head of a six year old child.

Well, you are probably wondering why I am blathering on like this. My point is…YOU have good instincts. Even I have good instincts. When you meet someone who gives you the creeps, you almost certainly have good reason for feeling that way.

Oh, I know. You are treating people in prison. But…I think that good people end up in prison too. And even criminals are sometimes good people. Sometimes they are just people who made really REALLY bad choices. Sometimes they aren’t really even GOOD people, but they aren’t scum. Sometimes they ARE scum. Sometimes they are SUCH scum that they are going to give you the creeps.

Okay, I am done.

But I still think you are a saint. Don’t argue with me, I can think it if I want to.

And the title of the book will be In the belly of the belly of the beast. I don’t know why, but it sounds cool. It’ll have it all. Sex, drugs, pain, punishment, vengeance, faith, hope, redemption. Krispy Kreme donuts. Just gotta write it now.