“Well, just come right on in my little cubicle here, Son, and sit down. So you’re writing a dissertation? Wow, I can’t believe that it’s about us here at Cragenloft.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I really want to focus on special populations in the mental health facilities.”
“Well, don’t that beat all. We’re just up here in Wisconsin. Just our own little place on the hill, and right here where you’re standing is my little cubicle. You can always tell where I am cause I have my bunnies and bears all around me. Cheers up the clients, and me too, to have all these little stuffed lovies near me during my working day. I love animals, don’t you? I never could warm up to objects much but animals are just so cuddly. Cragenloft is only small, you know, hardly bigger than a cow barn, you ask me. It was built for the criminally insane in 1904, but we take all denominations now. That’s my little joke.”
“It seems intimate but impressive.”
“Well, I’m a farm girl, you know, so I know what I’m talking about, you see when it comes to barns. This place is just the size of a large milking shed really.”
“Okay, uh, what is that noise?”
“Well, I can’t say for sure without looking but I have a suspicion it’s Mr. Dubovski again. Just lean a little to the right so’s I can see the double doors behind you. Yes, there he is again. It’s kind of embarrassing, but there he is again as usual.”
“What … what is he doing to the door?”
“Just what it looks like he’s doing, Son. We have some very colorful clients here at Cragenloft.”
“He seems like he’s … well he looks as though he is trying to copulate with the locking mechanism.”
“He’s humping the door as you and I can plainly see. You know, if it weren’t for Mr. Dubovski, that door would still be a virgin.”
“Why does he do that?”
“Near as I can tell, to make the other door jealous.”
“Uh?”
“Yeah, he always goes after the left hand door, you see. Now and then he humps the one on the right, but mostly he just pushes it open so that he can get at the left one. It always seems like the right hand door is kind of watching, you know … sort of embarrassed and maybe just a little pissed off too. But then my sister says I eat too much cheese and it effects my mind.”
“Cheese?”
“Constipation of the thoughts sort of, you know, just can’t seem to get it all out so it gets twisted up in my head. I think it’s these loonies is drivin’ me nuts.
I know, I know we aren’t supposed to call them loonies, but honest to God. Look at that man go, and he surely is beautifully hung too. What a waste! Just fucking a door all day and night. I often wonder what happens when he comes. You’d think it would affect the lock on the door after a while, all that jizz in the works. Not that I really want to know. I’ll leave that sticky little mess to the boys in maintenance. Excuse me a minute.
Mr. Dubovski, can you just stop that for a while please? Please? Goddamnit! I said please. Now pull up your jammies and go have lunch or something. Wash your hands first. Yes, your hands and put that thing away first. You don’t want your medication early today do you? No, you don’t, do you. So be good. Stick your big old dick back in your pants and screw off, will you please! There. Good. I’m getting interviewed here. Damn.”
“So you find the—um—inmates—”
“Clients. We call them clients. We don’t want them to feel marginalized.”
“So you find the clients make you a little cynical?”
“No, no they make me fucking plain wigged-out crazy, and I am not ashamed to admit it. You see out that window? What do you see? Trees and snow with some snow and trees. You got me here? What we have for social interaction is each other, and a lot of us staff have been here for like thirty years. That’s longer than the … the clients… a lot longer in most cases. We sort of ARE the inmates. We don’t exactly wow each other any more if you see what I mean. And why the Hell would we?
Let me show you. Look at this. Look at my ass, will you! That is solid as a rock and as big as Gibraltar. That is one hundred percent daily infusions of Wisconsin processed cheese. Here, let me smack it for you. See? Doesn’t hardly even jiggle, does it? And that’s going some place for an ass that size. My ass could be on the internet I tell you.”
“Well, yes, it’s very impressive.”
“You like it?”
“Well, if you want to know, I have a sort of a passion for abundance in that area.”
“You do? You go for junk in the trunk do you? Well I got a whole pick up full of junk back there, Sweetie, and it swings wide on the curves especially when I take them at speed. You follow me here?”
“Yes, yes I do. I would.”
“You would what?”
“I’d love to follow you frankly just for the view.”
“‘Just for the view’ that’s cute you know. That’s really very cute. I think I should give you a tour.”
“A tour of your—?”
“No, a tour of the area … around here. I think we could start with the dull stuff. I mean like the linen closet. You know we have a hell of a linen closet here on the ward.”
“The linen closet?”
“Yeah, it’s huge. It’s got piles and piles of nice fresh linens. Nice and clean and fresh with the bleach smell all through them. Come on.”
“The linen closet? Really?”
“Yeah, I used to take the inmates in there, but you just never know when one of them might get messy. You won’t get messy, will you?”
“No, no …”
“That’s good, because I don’t like mess and you wouldn’t want me not to like you.”
“No, not at all.”
“No, because you never know, in a place like this, what could happen, but that’s the good part, right?”
© 2009 Cervo. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.
Bio: Cervo lives in Brooklyn with his otterhound, his puli as well as a large and sexy flower garden. His work has been featured in the “Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica” in several editions, “Cream,” and a variety of other venues. He does monthly book reviews for the website, Erotica Revealed, and has worked as a theatre and book critic for over thirty years in New York and on the international scene.