This was written about 20 years ago (2003). It has many flaws. Despite them, I really like this story. I think it’s one of the few times I articulated what it was I was trying to write about, and what I was trying to write about was Albert.
I Once Knew a Man with a Hole in His Head
I once knew a man with a hole in his head. He put it there himself. He used a hand drill. He got the idea from a story in the news, one that had been picked up by every news outlet in the world. It was offbeat. Good filler. Some news hound had found a story about trepanation, which is the business of putting a hole in your head.
It’s a serious medical procedure. Except for those who think they can achieve a kind of enlightenment or wisdom through it. Someone always wants to fast track stuff like that. Why waste years living and learning when you can just put a hole in your head?
So this guy I knew, Albert Holloway, he latched on to this trepanation idea. Albert was one of those people who got easily swept up by things. Fads. Enthusiasms. Ad campaigns. He was the perfect consumer in that way. But he wasn’t very good at thinking things through. This got worse once he vented his skull.
What Albert failed to understand is that no one lives well, and certainly not for very long, with a hole in the head. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Zen master, a saintly bishop, or the CEO of some absurdly large corporation with its sights set on owning the world. If you gain wisdom, it’s only for a while. Hence the deprecating remark, “Have you got a hole in your head?”, which is generally directed at people guilty of doing breathtakingly stupid things.
But Albert wanted enlightenment. He wanted to be smart.
If you had seen him, you wouldn’t have known Albert had a hole in his head. You would have thought he had a bad gash, maybe from an auto accident. His head was bandaged up like a neck following a tracheotomy. You found out he had a hole in his head by asking him.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ve got a hole in my head.”
“Jesus! How’d that happened?”
“I put it there.”
“You put it there?”
“Yeah. I’m smarter now.”
“I’ll bet. Now you know not to put a hole in your head.”
Albert was smarter with a hole in his head, poor bastard. But he was as fucked up as ever. And maybe I’m smarter now. Having seen Albert. Having learned something about him. If nothing else, a hole in the head ventilates and stuff gets out. There must be a factory full of words in people’s heads that never get spoken. A hole in the head flushes them like geese fleeing for their lives.
*
You’ve got to wonder why Albert was so down on himself for not being smart enough. What was it in his life that was so unsatisfying that he would want to drill his head to “relieve the pressure of the brain blood” (as he somewhat inaccurately put it)?
To be blunt, Albert was the guy no one liked.
Don’t confuse this with dislike. And please don’t think anyone hated him, especially me. It wasn’t like that at all. It’s just that there are some people we simply don’t want to be around (and I know you’ve known at least one of them in your life).
I think it has something to do with need. Or what these people think they need. From you or whoever they’ve zeroed in on.
Maybe Albert and people like him are best explained by the cliché about playing hard to get. When you think of the people you’re attracted to, and think as well about those you’re not attracted to, the ones we seem to focus on are the ones that remain aloof from us. Not in a snobbish way. But they’re somehow apart and disinclined to take us into their life. They’re simply not interested in us, and the more disinterest they show the more obsessed we are with them.
This isn’t restricted to romance either. The cliques at school and work we most want to be part of are those that don’t want us. We may snipe about them behind their backs, gossip in whispers about them, and pretend an aloofness of our own, but the truth is we’re fascinated by them and desperately want to be one of them.
This was Albert. There was a difference, however. The rest of us usually have some friends, even if they’re not the ones we wish we had. Albert, on the other hand, had no one. Literally, nobody liked him. Literally, he was entirely on his own.
I remember when I first met him. We worked for the same company in the East end. Albert had been there a year and a half by the time I started. (God knows how he ever kept a job, though. Albert really was a bonehead and seldom did anything right. The few times he did it was always preceded by countless attempts that went wrong.)
At lunch, that first day, I was at my desk. I had brown-bagged it and was using the time to orient myself with the company, my office, and so on. Albert came up to me, his pleading smile stretched across his face as if mashed by plastic wrap.
“I’m Albert,” he said, extending his hand.
I took it. His palms and fingers were damp with sweat; his blood-warm grip, light and lame.
He was off-putting, so I nodded without saying anything.
“Holloway,” he then said.
My wariness must have been plain, even to Albert, because he began to explain himself hoping, I suppose, to dispel any misgivings I might have about liking him.
“Albert Holloway. It’s my name. Not Al though. I don’t get called Al. I wish people would though. If you want to, you can call me Al. Did you know there was a song about that? About calling someone Al? If you don’t, I could sing it …”
I sensed trouble so I quickly spoke.
“No! No, no need. I’m just … well, I’m just settling in here.”
“You’re going to like it. I know. I do. People are swell.”
Did he really say that? I believe he did. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually say, without a tongue in their cheek, “swell.” But Albert said it. He thought I was swell too.
Retreat and regroup, I thought. Reassess the landscape and the situation. I said, “You know Albert, I’m kind of tied up here. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. You know, getting up to speed? But it’s been great meeting you. I’ll probably see you around the office.”
“Sure you will,” he said. “We’ll see each other every day. We’ll be friends.”
It seemed impossible, but his smile got wider.
“Yes. Sure.”
I smiled back and waited. It was one of those moments generally reserved for calamities. You know, speeding down the highway, something in the middle of the road. You brake and…nothing happens. It’s like the ground falling out from under you.
That’s what this felt like. Albert simply didn’t move. He just stood there, smiling, as if he was waiting for something. But God knew what. I had made it plain I wanted to be alone.
Anyone else would have gone. Some might have been offended; most would have understood, even welcomed the opportunity to leave having fulfilled the social obligation of introducing themselves.
But Albert just stood there. Smiling. Over his shoulder, in the background, I saw two of my new coworkers passing by. They were smiling and talking in low voices as they looked at me with Albert. And I knew what they were saying without hearing them: “Albert’s got the new guy. Poor bastard.”
That’s how it was with Albert. You could kick him, hit him, spit in his face, defecate on his head and still, despite every offense, he would come back with his desperate smile, the one that said, “Please. Please be my friend.” He was the worst sort of stalker—kind and nice and vulnerable as a puppy. And just as stupid.
*
The hurdle Albert was never able to leap, because he was utterly unaware it existed, was his inability to bring anything to the table (if you’ll forgive the boardroom expression).
There was simply no reason to get to know him. No reason to like him. His need to find a friend and companion completely occluded any sort of personality. Need was the whole of him. He had no aspect beyond his craving. He had no discernable interests, no opinions, no passions (beyond wanting). Thus, on his good days, he bored the life out of you. On his bad days, he pissed you off.
In terms of character, he was atrophied. Was he stupid, as he eventually came to believe? As far as intelligence goes, possibly. But I think the perception of idiocy was due less to an absence of smarts than the vacuum where a personality should have been.
When it comes to love, this is barren ground. Poor Sherrie.
Sherrie made the mistake many women make when it comes to men. She had no romantic interest. She had no interest in establishing a friendship with Albert beyond a cordial camaraderie with a fellow worker (which was more than any of the rest of us wanted).
But she showed kindness and to a man who had lived his life excluded from even the flimsiest of human bonds, who had lived outside the human circle from the day he was born, and who had watched the world from beyond meshed fences, seeing but never part of the interplay of people, it was a clear declaration of love.
I mean, think of it. How can anyone who never experiences love know what it is? It’s easy to get it wrong. As Albert did.
The phone calls began in the spring, early March I think. While I never actually heard them, I can easily imagine how they went.
“Hello?”
“Sherrie?”
“Yes?”
“Sherrie.”
“Who is this?”
“Albert.”
A frown creases her brow; she looks left and right as if something she might see will identify the voice. Who’s Albert?
“Albert?”
“Yes. You can call me Al though. I wish you would. No one else does. But you can. Did you know there was a song about calling someone Al?”
Tumblers click into place; archived material rises into upper memory.
“Albert! From work, right?”
“Yes!” An excited affirmation. The thrill of acknowledgement.
“Why are you calling?”
“Just to talk. To see how you are. Are you okay?”
The first inkling of something not quite right. Of something askew, like a floor with a scarcely perceptible incline.
“I’m fine.” The voice hesitant. Wariness. “How are you?” A mistake recognized even as it’s spoken.
“Swell! I’m just swell. I’m watching Jeopardy. You know, you can learn from watching. Did you know that Tokyo wasn’t the first capital of Japan? It was Koto … Koyoto …”
“Kyoto?”
“Yeah! That’s it! Wow! You knew that? I never knew that.”
“Listen. Albert?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got to go. Someone’s coming over …”
“Who?”
“A friend.”
“Is she smart too?”
“Listen, Albert … I have to say goodbye …”
It continues like this a few more moments. Finally, she simply says, “Bye,” and hangs up, bothered by the abruptness, which she feels is cold and discourteous. But Albert doesn’t notice. It is simply how people behave when you’re Albert.
*
Albert wasn’t targeted on Sherrie exclusively. As far as romance was concerned he was, but Albert wanted a complete life: lovers and friends, family and happy acquaintances. His ambition was to have the life we are living now, as I write and you read. So while his calls to Sherrie became more frequent and her fears became more defined, he was also cornering me in hallways at work or, as with Sherrie, calling me at home, as I suspect he called others.
“I’ve been watching Jeopardy. And the Learning Channel too. Did you know a polar bear mother is the only bear that really hibernates? And they swim so good too. I saw that. It was swell.”
“Albert,” I said, on one of the innumerable occasions he called me at home and I foolishly answered (before I got call display), “What’s with the Jeopardy and all these other shows you watch?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like…Well, the Learning Channel. Or that documentary you were telling me about. Why do watch those shows?”
“To be smarter.”
“Why not just go to school?” It suddenly occurred to me that if I convinced him education was the way to go he would leave work and maybe my life. (It was a shot in the dark, I know.)
“I didn’t like school when I went before. I don’t think people liked me very much.” (He wasn’t utterly obtuse. Some hints of the truth had gotten through.)
“But what’s the big thing about being smarter? I’m happy the way I am.”
“But you’re bright. That’s what my mother called it. Bright. Some people are, and some people aren’t. You aren’t, Albert, she said. She was right, too. I’m not. But everyone likes smart people. So if I make myself smarter maybe more people will like me.”
I thought about a woman I had been seeing and how I had recently been catching a look in her eyes, a hesitancy in her manner, and knew from these things we were ending, and I wanted to tell Albert being bright wasn’t always such a good thing. I wanted to tell him how knowing things can hurt. How awareness can keep you awake at night. But I knew telling it to Albert would be a waste of breath. He wouldn’t hear. It was a thing you had to come to know the hard way.
*
Even when we’re dull-witted, truth batters at our doors until it eventually gets in. With Albert, it wasn’t so much a battering as a firm, solid knock. Authoritative. Unequivocal. The police paid him a visit one night.
“Do you know a Sherrie Wolfe?”
“Yes. She’s my friend.”
“Have you been phoning her?”
It was a series of questions to which they already knew the answers. The essence of the visit was simple. A court order. The threat of arrest. The message, unmistakable even for Albert: Get lost. Fuck off. Go away.
Albert, without intending to, had transformed Sherrie’s kindness to anger. And loads of fear. To her, and frankly to anyone, Albert was whacko. But if he was, it wasn’t his choosing. Born into a world with imperatives to join, to belong, to be welcomed, Albert found every back turned against him. And to make it worse, though I’m not sure he clued into this, it was not out of malice.
For lack of a better way of phrasing it, Albert had no utility. He was want without give. Or rather, want without anything apparent to give. His pathetic craving utterly obscured everything else about him, like a sky overwhelmed by cloud. Need denied him the thing needed.
*
He lost his job, of course. This made going to work something to look forward to. No more awkward encounters in the halls. No more smile stretched like gum across his face. And for Sherrie, no more calls—at work or at home.
There was uneasiness to the calm, though. Maybe it was our conditioning from media: movies and newscasts, gossip and seminars. A stalker (which we had labeled him) doesn’t exit that readily. They’re cunning. Devious. Ingeniously inventive.
But, of course, that wasn’t Albert. He was dull. Slow. A one trick pony that performed the one trick badly.
For over a month there was silence. Then he called, which he had to. Companionship, as always, was beyond his grasp. But now its possibility was even beyond his sight. He was alone in whatever box he called a home and saw no one. So he had to call. If only to hear a voice. To be reminded there was a world of limbs and touch and even tenderness from which he was barred, but of which he could fantasize being included.
“Hello?”
“It’s Albert.”
“Albert? How are you?”
“Swell. Really swell.”
A confusion of feeling: the anxiety of reestablishing a connection with him; the guilt over what had happened.
“That’s good Albert. What’s new? What have you been up to?”
“Jeopardy. The Learning Channel. ‘States for three hundred.’ ‘At the time President Lincoln was born, it was called Hardin County.’ ‘What is LaRue County, Kentucky, Alex.’”
“Great. Anything else?”
“I know something now. Something important. And I can fix it.”
“Fix what, Albert?”
“Me.”
“Fix you? What do you mean?”
“I’m not bright. But I can fix it. I heard about it and went to the library. They’ve got computers, just like at work, and I used them and found out. I can fix it so I’m smarter. It’s called trepidation.”
“Trepidation?”
“No. Wait. I wrote it. It’s … it’s called tre-pan-ation. Trepanation.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You’ll see. When I’m bright I’ll tell you all about it. Sherrie’s going to like me then.”
Oh God. Sherrie again. Hearing her name, I felt a tingling move up my body. A sense of bad things in the offing; trouble riding a streetcar to a particular destination. Should I call her? The police? Warn someone? He hadn’t said he was going to do anything. He hadn’t done anything more than call me.
So far. The kicker is always, “so far.”
*
I spent a weekend worrying over what to do. I had decided to casually speak to Sherrie on Monday and tell her about my call from Albert and what he had said. It would be a roundabout warning. It would put the ball in her court. She could decide what, if anything, there was to be done.
Monday morning came but before I had a chance to even speak to Sherrie (she was in meetings till 11), I got a call. The hospital. They had a patient. The only names they found in his belongings were my own and a Sherrie Wolfe. They had no number for her, but there was a number for me. So they had called.
The patient was Albert. All they said was he had a head injury.
I went to the hospital. I had no idea what I could do, or what responsibilities I had, or what they expected of me. But I went.
At the hospital, no one said anything until I met the doctor. He was with someone from the police and my uneasy feeling deepened and darkened. I knew something bad was coming.
They were disconcerted at first. I wasn’t the person they were hoping for. I had no legal connection to Albert. In their eyes, I was simply a friend—had they only known! Albert had no friends. I was just a guy he had glommed onto. But there were no family members they were aware of. Or anyone else was aware of. And I think they would have been closed lipped about the whole thing but for the nature of the situation. Professionals though they were, people who had seen pretty much every form of human discombobulation possible, Albert had rattled them.
They didn’t actually come out and tell me what had happened. It was Albert who told me. They simply muttered words and phrases that hinted and expressed disbelief and shock.
“Himself …”
“His own hand …”
“We can’t imagine the reason …”
“Maybe you could …”
Strictly speaking, it was against the rules to allow me to see him. I wasn’t family. Nor was I a friend (though they didn’t know this). Hoping I might be able to gain some insight into the particulars of the ‘why,’ they allowed me in.
Albert had been found at around midnight. It was now approaching noon. The hospital hadn’t phoned me till 10:30am because it simply took them that long to get around to it. They had been unable to decide whom to call in the absence of any family (which had taken them some time to determine was nonexistent).
So I went in and saw Albert, which is roughly where I began this story. He was awake in a groggy way but perked up when he saw me.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ve got a hole in my head.”
“Jesus! How’d that happened?”
“I put it there.”
“You put it there?”
“Yeah. I’m smarter now.”
“I’ll bet. Now you know not to put a hole in your head.”
He should have been dead. What kept him alive was the fact he passed out before getting to the point of no return. Had he not, he’d have just kept on drilling. The sad thing is, Albert was smarter now. He knew more, which is why what happened later happened.
He was eventually released from the hospital. He had more prescriptions than a Hollywood producer. He had a hole in his head, just below his brow, dead centre. The real horror of it all? The thing that really makes you gasp and wonder…How?
He had used no anaesthetic of any kind. He had simply bored into the bone as if it was a wall and he was hanging a picture.
He must have felt pain. How could a person not? But his conviction was so strong, his belief that he would be smarter and his life would improve was so powerful, it overcame everything, even the pain. What he did not overcome was the awareness that came in the operation’s wake.
Some six months later I received a phone call. It was Albert and I was caught off guard. It had been so long since he had called like this, so long since I had last seen him (which was that day in the hospital), I had forgotten about this part of him—the man who called and called in search of an ear that would listen.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Who is this?”
The voice on the other end: low and guarded. Almost a whisper.
“Albert. I know.”
“Albert? Albert, how are you?”
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“I shouldn’t have done it. I wish I hadn’t.”
“I don’t understand you Albert. What do you know?”
“I’m smarter now. So I know.”
“What do you know?”
A pause. Pacing disrupted.
“No one likes me. I know.”
*
The line went dead. He had hung up. I’m ashamed to say it, but I didn’t call back, though I could have. He had certainly given me his number enough times. But it didn’t even occur to me. I puzzled over the call a few minutes then, as I always did, I forgot about him.
I can tell you, though, what happened after. I heard about it from others; saw it on the news so many times I stopped watching TV.
It was around two in the afternoon. Outside the three story walk-up where Albert lived, beside a major junction of city roads, traffic swished by as usual. Cyclists pedalled to their various destinations: their homes, a better physique, a better cardiovascular system. People waited for buses; pedestrians walked with determined strides.
A man stumbled into the streets, bleeding from the head. He held a drill in a hand that swung limply from his left arm. His right hand cupped a wound on the side of his skull above the ear. He moved drunkenly, eyes skyward, his face etched with a pain that may have come from more than a physical wound.
People stared at him. They backed away; they didn’t like him. He needed help but the need and the wound were so extreme no one wanted to try. He frightened them.
He began crying and yelling at a sky that was so clear and placid and unabashedly confident in its lack of need for anyone or anything it was as if it were a bowl made of the finest china and indifferent, as fine things are, to anything superfluous to it, like Albert. You imagined the sky feeling as you did, simply wanting the man to shut up and go away.
But he was Albert so he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Need drove him.
He staggered across the sidewalk, into the road, staining the day with his blood and his words which, finally, had found a vent. “I know!” he screamed. “I don’t want to know but I know! I don’t want to know anymore!”
What did he know? That he wasn’t liked? That his need scared hell out of all of us? That we didn’t want someone who needs more than we do?
No one would ever need Albert or love him as he craved to love them. So he sobbed like a baby then collapsed and was done. The need was gone. Albert was gone.
I once knew a man with a hole in his head. I wish I hadn’t. As Albert showed, a hole in the head only lets out things we would rather contain, and allows things in it is best not to know.
January 2003