![]() ![]() Leaving my friends in town, I trudged across the athletic fields, hoping reports of the asylum’s demolition had been overblown. I took the news like the news of a sudden death. Plus the asylum was the inspiration for my first novel, Dysphoria, and I was still basking in the glow of graduating from aspiring writer to published author. After all, my wife married me, so the asylum date must have worked. This summer, I thought I’d go back to pay homage. My wife married me, so the asylum date must have worked. ![]() ![]() I had to impress her so I bought a bottle of cognac and took her drinking in the woods behind the asylum. Plus, she was incalculably rich–in my barely-post-college estimation–that is to say, she had a real job. She was 32, classy, tough, and athletic–a perfect combination. The asylum had been the site of one of my first dates with my wife. Eighteen, Gen X, and goth, this impressed me immensely. What English major and aspiring writer doesn’t want to go to school in the shadow of a Gothic castle in which people were once shocked, water-boarded, and sent into insulin coma? The Smith girls brave enough to enter the asylum said the walls were smeared in blood. One of the things I liked most about attending Smith College in the mid 90′s was the abandoned mental asylum located just beyond the athletic fields. ![]()
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