The Girl at the Inn

He was the oldest person at the inn. My father had told me that he had been a soldier and then a doctor. He had told me in an exact manner that was meant to inform rather than illicit conversation. I knew no other way my father talked. So, when he told me, I kept quiet.

But I thought it odd that a person could live long enough to be two things. All the people I knew were only one thing. My father was a businessman. My mother was depressed. And I was mad. I had always been mad and likely always would be.

I doubted that I would ever take a vacation in my twilight years, but if I ever did, I imagined that some nineteen-year old's father might point me out by saying-'Oh there's old Mad Mary, she was mad and then mad'. Except he would probably use a more politically correct term and call me by whatever name screams 'old person' in fifty years.

After all, when I first met the old man, I had called him Ernest and snapped at him for using the word 'oriental'. But, in truth, I liked the name 'Ernest' and had only wanted to assert myself somewhere. He knew that he was old which meant that he might be truthful. However, he was also a doctor, which meant that he might not.

But that day, he was neither. He was just an adult. And he did the thing that all adults do when they decide that you're too young and ignored me.

And I walked away because I knew that he had won. I wasn't a child, but I was mad. And, if your mad, you are most silent whenever you're loud. The screams of madness are always without reason. This meant that it was my best interest not to cry even if somebody hit me with a bat.

I knew because it had happened at least a dozen times and the problem was always my screams and not the weapon.

I wanted to ask the old man if soldiers' had to hide their screams. I didn't think that they did because it's easier to recognize evil when it carries a gun. But, I asked him the next day anyway, to remind him that I wasn't a child.

That time, he answered honestly-which excited me because it meant that he was more old than doctor. And it meant that he would call me what I was-mad. Not 'bipolar' or 'schizophrenic' or 'special needs'. Just mad.

I asked him to say it and he did. No promises that I would get better. No recurrences that I still might have a future. No lies that he told himself to make his job worth what my parents might pay him.

If he had ever been a doctor, he clearly hadn't the sort that ever dealt with mad people. I decided that he might have been a plastic surgeon instead. A story which I liked too much to ask for the truth.

He didn't ask questions about me either. He didn't need to. That's the thing about being mad, you never get to have the first words that you speak to people. They are already taken by some well-meaning individual who told everybody to watch out for you the day before. And then that's it. That's all you can ever be. Mad.

That's all I was to the old man when I told him that I wanted to fuck him. But he agreed anyway because he was old and he was honest. His reason might have only been because I was young. But I didn't care. At least he had a reason. I was entirely unsure what mine might was. But I was mad, so I didn't need one.

He was decent enough, although I had no comparison point. It was quick like I wanted and he didn't promise any more than he could deliver. I had thought that I either I might make him mad or that he might make my sane. But neither of those things happened. We both still wanted what the other had. I supposed because new loneliness feels less unhappy than old.

And there was no point in explaining to an old man that there are some things even time cannot change. So, instead, I tried to explain to him that my hair wasn't really red. It just looked that way because he couldn't see so well anymore. But he just played with my brown curls and muttered something about an old television show. And I knew that it was time to be quiet again.