Nowhere

Rose wrote a column for an online magazine. It made her sweat to write it. She wrote it as a favor for someone she had gone to school with.

The editor was not only hip, he was sweet. He had been her boyfriend for a while in college. They had broken up after she found Playboy magazines all over his studio (“I use them for life drawing, I swear” ). Now he was an art professor who invited graduate students to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. Rose was surprised when she learned he was also an editor. But the online arts magazine recruited him after someone showed the advertising department one of his department newsletters. The short articles were funny: “Ten Things We Love about Nowhere University.” “Ten Cartoon People We’d Like to Know” (with illustrations of Dilbert, Zonker, Cathy, etc.). “The Celebrity Wedding We Care Least about (1. Princess Di’s, 2. Tom Cruise’s, Elton John’s, etc.)

So her friend was editing this arts magazine, getting paid nothing.

Please write about architecture. We have nothing on architecture, he begged .

Please not.

It bored Rose so much to criticize architecture that she almost fell asleep writing the column.

Can’t I just draw the buildings?

Well, maybe.

For a while she drew cartoons critiquing architecture and he wrote captions. It was a collaboration.

But then she did this weird thing. She started writing about her daily life.

Daily life in ancient Rome. She remembered the papers she’d had to write in school.

She wrote about canning tomatoes. Where she shopped. What she thought of work.

The editor published it.

There was no call for Rose’s life. But Rose wrote it anyway.

The mail was weird.

“You’re obvious a serious person, but you hang around with so many losers. Lose Dorrie. Seriously. She annoys us.”

“Who are you, you pretentious bitch? Why should we care what you do? You, you, you.”

The mail depressed Rose, but the editor laughed and said it meant people were reading. You’re the person they love to hate.

Rose wrote quietly under a pseudonym. No one in her office knew she wrote the column. And she shut up for a while about Dorrie.

But one day Dorrie popped over to the house cautiously when Ben was out. Rose and Megan let her in, defying Ben’s orders. She was bruised and part of her head had been shaved so she could have stitches.

What happened?

Dorrie started to cry.

It had only been five o’clock, only beginning to be dark. She had left the church, where she had been helping a nun file some papers in the shelter’s office. She had noticed someone, but thought he was going into the church to pray. The man had slapped her head, knocked her down, and stolen her bookbag. No, no money. Just a library card and a couple of poetry books. She had also lost her copy of RICHARD III. The thing was she wondered if she could borrow a copy. She couldn’t check anything out of the library. Well, yes, the guy had gotten away with her I.D. The librarians required I.D. before they gave her a new card.

Rose took Dorrie to get a new I.D. and gave them hell at the library for denying her a new library card.

She comes here almost every day. You have to know her by now.

It’s our policy.

Dorrie got a new card.

Rose went home and wrote her column on her palm pilot. About Dorrie.

You could be Dorrie. You could be the woman who develops a mental illness. You could be the one who gets beaten up outside a church and loses a backpack.

Now that the Democrats have been elected (with the help of my ballot: just call me the Good Citizen), what are they going to do to help Dorrie? Find her housing in a decent neighborhood? Invest money in research for cures for mental illness? Set up a free taxi service after dark?

Do you have any idea how little money is spent on research for medicines for mental illness? Do you ever wonder why the same medications are prescribed for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, agoraphobia, etc.?

A Republican wrote back, I resent the implication that Republicans aren't involved.

This column upset more people than usual. Just tell us about your personal life, they wrote.