Of MURDER, MAYHEM, AND MELLARIL

OF MURDER, MAYHEM, AND MELLARIL
–The True Story Behind THE CONCEPT OF WHITE PLASTER, an Internet Novel

INTRODUCTION


Of Murder, Mayhem and Mellaril
–The True Story Behind The Concept of White Plaster, an Internet Novel

INTRODUCTION
In 2003, during my last semester at college, I began to write a novel. It is now 2006, and I am still trying to figure out just the right way to tell you everything as a novel. In the novel, I wrote by the name, Tommy Kranz, in the first-person singular. I had much to hide from the other students at the real college on which the fictitious college, Sendby Community College, is based. Likewise the real state hospital I attended for 14 years during my twenties was the basis for the fictional mental hospital, Teller State Hospital. Even the name, Tommy Kranz is a combined name of several special mental patients that I knew and admired at the State Hospital. Why so much hiding and so much obliqueness in a man of 52 upon going back to college? It might help to realize the novel’s original title was Loser Boy. It might really help to know that I feared, and rightly so, telling others just how angry I was even after so many years since I had murdered my sister, Janine, in 1968, when both of us were teenagers. In many ways, my whole life is a story about how I’ve managed my anger since then, and how I’ve finally made sense of the world.

In the novel, I write about a loser who belatedly returns to college, only to realize he is haunted by the same problems of social ostracism that once more elicit thoughts of murder, or at least, profound social hurt and despair, that he once had so long ago when he was young and in high school. For this is a Columbine story, but a more played-out story than “Columbine” could ever be. For I, that type of boy killer of the Columbine type— was allowed to grow up, instead of being killed. I have lived on to tell you a dark thing.

I will continue to use the name, Tommy Kranz. Aside from protecting others still living, this story of social disparagement is too important for it to be my story alone, anyway. When I first started my novel, not only had childhood failed, but adulthood had failed, as well. I almost killed myself at college. Indeed, I began the writing pretty much at the end of my rope and in quite a bit of despair. I began to write as if I, myself, were a write-off. I am still not sure that that is not the case. – “Tom Kranz.” {Writing note: I will later change this to my actual name as the writing progresses. Actually, being kind, I will 'protect others' as needed during the writing. I can easily imagine coming to some harm, myself, over this, if only because my thinking is basically too complex for ruffians to ever understand. This is not a pose or a pretention.}

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CHAPTER ONE.

Here is the basic problem of my life: I know the universe is pointless. And the sense I’ve made of the world? There is no sense to it. But for me to avoid the uncomfortable thoughts I have of suicide, I must stay as much in my own mind as I can. Inside my own thinking is where any hope of even a provisional sense of meaning resides for me. But to do this makes me socially vulnerable. This is the psychoanalytic basis of all my anger, when I am angry, at other people. I figure a good third of the people on this planet are just a little too psychologically invasive. Perhaps, no one but an autistic would realize this. This is particularly bothersome to someone who is talented in mental ways and therefore finds himself continually bothered by the interventions of others. For when I am thinking about my art or about my writing or, as it once was, about my mathematics, I seem to send out social signals that tell predators to come near.

This story is also about my grieving process. For it seems to me that with the more than 30-year addiction to mellaril now over, I have also lost the dance of numbers I had in my head and the happy ideas of mathematics I once used to have. I am angry at the mental health community about this, yet what’s it really matter now? For that is really the question now. Why do any of us live?

Not too long ago, my psychiatrist asked me what my meaning of life was. Why do I not die? She proffered that perhaps it was my sense of morality and duty to others. I admitted to her that I do want to help those that have been hurt by social ostracism, and I do want to give my insight to you about why some kids feel so very hurt because of the problem of bullying and how they outwardly appear. Let this book help and not hurt further. Yes, I have anger and many tears inside. Let the bullies know it. Let me put that hurt in the novel, but here, let me look at the whole affair of my life with a distance that may lend as much light as heat –and ideally more of the former. Still, there will be heat enough.

I was born in a small rural town on March 23, 1951. As I write these words, I am almost 55. I lived mostly in one state until just after I graduated those few years ago from “Sendby Community College” and moved to no greater prospects elsewhere. How am I living now? Well, it’s this. Some people are too unique to find good employment. Add to that a first-degree murder conviction that cannot be pardoned because Janine was under 18. I find myself on SSI, and my psychiatrist finally told me what I have suspected: Many companies will not consider me because they can’t risk that I might go postal. I am a “loser boy,” after all. I live alone and stay away from the world as best I can. But if I am a true loser, I have had a bit of help. All these social stressors have made me quite unusual, socially. I have never married. I consider it an act of violence to have children in a meaningless, uncomfortable, and mean-hearted world --or make the kind of “love” that causes children. In my novel, I put this more outrageously. I have said many embarrassing things in my novel, because I have become very concerned about our theory of the self and about all our matters of honor and dignity. I am more concerned about the truth than my own passing ego in the world.

It is my sincere contention that the State Hospital was wrong in its diagnosis. While that diagnosis saved me from the gas chamber and allowed me to do my life sentence at the State Hospital instead of the Penitentiary, still, their diagnosis was wrong. I believe they were wrong to put me on a drug called mellaril for paranoid schizophrenia. I believe that this story about escalating social disparagement since kindergarten is due to one thing. I believe all along, I have had Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of autism.

Further, my unique brain, an inwardly turned brain, put for more than thirty years on a very unusual antipsychotic chemical, has ironically given me certain insights into society and meaning that few others in this world are capable of seeing. And it may have all begun with yet another chemical.

In the middle part of the just-passed twentieth century, a chemical was added to certain vaccines, thimerosal. Some now argue that this chemical caused a lot of autism then.

Be that as it may, my uncle, unbeknownst to me until I was in my forties, had been secreted away at the State Training School for autism. And my father’s controlling, violent demeanor and raging, which he may have self-medicated with alcohol, may have actually been his way of handling the social pain of autism –not manic depression as some have thought. And it was suggested to me recently to stay on the new lines of atypical antipsychotic medications, myself, rather than derail –by one psychologist. I’ve considered this a prudent thing.

I am a determinist who believes in the materialist view of the brain from my own oblique eye-gaze, as it were, upon the world. Notwithstanding quantum theory, I believe in cause and effect when it comes to human volition. I believe that free will is a seductive illusion. In my novel, my protagonist makes this unusual statement, a thing I fully believe: “In the moment of your anger you believe in free will and this is exactly what is wrong with the world.” I suspect that as long as people believe in free will there will be war. Or, in the absence of war, there will come a twisted police state. Our sense of meaning is tied to free will, and revenge. In our bones we are tied to a theory of the enduring ego. But, like free will, this is an illusion of the brain that allows us to exercise our own capacity for cruelty.

The vast majority of people live with the same delusional “hum” inside their minds that tells them all the same thing. It tells them that society is good and has a reasonable purpose. It tells them that they have meaning as individuals. It tells them that they have free will. It tells them to fit in. It tells them to rear children –to instruct them. But with this it also tells them to teach their enemies a lesson. It tells them to “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Thus, it also justifies the concept of a fair world and “justice.” But this fair world is really a cloak for society’s violence. Yet, this is the true basis for the individual’s joy. It justifies the individual’s capacity for cruelty and adventurism. And it justifies the perpetual warfare that humanity endures on this planet. Because of this deeply held theory of the self inside them, they simply do not understand that free will and meaning are illusions. And they definitely don’t seem to realize how this can turn a bit sexual. Instead, they mask their violence to others and themselves inside the morals of religion.

Looking back, it all makes me a little sad. Does this mean I need medication? Unlike the mental health community, I believe there is a difference between depression and despair. I think my present discomfort is existential despair. I do not think that I need pills for a cosmic problem, even though I take them, anyway, in this brave new world that “Mental Health” has made. I do this rather than become a drunk like my father. I find it ironic that these pills that are based on the materialist view of the brain are used to promote normal social functioning, hope, and social indoctrination. They are used to promote spirituality and “a healthy outlook on life.” The truth of our species is much more grim than that. It is not happy face.

This true thing will not be found in the collective delusional hum inside the brains of normal individuals. Let me tell it to you straight. I see a war coming like no other.

What I need is understanding. I will look in vain I do fear. “It is a luxury to be understood.” If you will, though, allow me tell you of my life and thinking. I will begin with a murder.

~ End of autobiography excerpt. ~

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[Writing note: I need to expand a bit more about how I believe "apologists" have used the new physics as a magic escape hatch around the dreary determinism of Newton's three laws of motion and the logical extension of that by Einstein. "God does not play dice with the universe." But all the bull that most people believe about free will is the very underpinning of our laws and of civilization, itself. The initial "crime" in the Garden of Eden is, in part, that we began to believe we have the ability to choose. We only have the ability to choose once we learn a behavior. This is not free will. I write a lot about this "metaphorically," in my novel.]

End Note: This is currently the only entry that I have "up" for my autobiography. I am seeking a real publisher for this real story. I want to write, not wheel and deal. So if you are a real publisher looking around the Net for a remarkable autobiography and, also, for a novel based on this real story, please contact me. I will keep posting now and then in judicious bits, hoping for your genuine contact. More "up," of course, are excerpts from my novel, THE CONCEPT OF WHITE PLASTER, which is based on this true story. For your reference, I first began my novel under the working title: LOSER BOY. Given how deeply this story is -about social disparagemnent and how young I was "parted-out" - I may eventually return to that title for my novel. I want to get back to this "fiction," as well. I have rough synopsis pieces in my bunch here, too, for the serious reader and the serious editor to consider. I also believe what I am saying here would make a good read for those doing upper division coursework in sociology or psychology, or even criminology.-- Novelvision.