Ofélia Hass:
When I got here the doctor, Harvey Carcass, MD, said I had to do this as a condition of my release, like to make public how I came to be another “girl interrupted.”
I’m epileptic. I’ve always had visions as a result, starting from when I was a teenager. That’s where my art comes from. But my family is a very traditional Catholic alemán-mexicano family (grandma never learned English even though her parents moved here in 1934, when she was 10 years old, and my mom always had to interpret everything on T.V. for her) and my affliction was always hidden. It would have been a disgrace to reveal the condition to anyone outside the family.
I tried to study up on epilepsy and its stigma, how to manage it. I found conflicting viewpoints, especially when it came to sex. I adopted the ancient Roman perspective that engaging in sexual activity could relieve the seizures. But social anxiety made my interactions with boys and girls I was interested in difficult. So I turned to a solitary kink.
I don’t know what initially “triggered” it, but I began to dress as a boy. I assumed a second identity —called Billy Hapsburg— and started shoplifting compulsively. I developed a shoplifting fetish. It was all that could get me off at that point.
Before I knew what was happening, I had these two dolt detectives after me, the so-called Reverse Sherlocks: Trigger Lee and Junior Batson. They eventually tracked me down and turned me in to the police, which is how I came to be committed at St. Quiteria’s.
But then here at St. Quiteria’s I learned that there are no Trigger or Junior, that in fact Junior is really just another alter-ego of Billy Hapsburg, my alter-ego. And Trigger, his partner and lead detective, was actually just Junior’s imaginary friend.
I can’t say in this essay that I think Doctor Carcass is gas-lighting me. That won’t help me get out of here any faster. So I’m going along with this whole trip. I’ve even agreed to draw some comic strips about the whole thing.