One morning in early May, 1948, Michel Foucault woke up and found himself in a room he had never seen before. Through the miasma of his hangover, he noticed several things simultaneously. A floral patterned armchair sat in the corner, a vase of flowers stood on the nightstand, and out the window was a green, manicured lawn. But Michel was not taken in for a minute by the unassuming objects that surrounded him. The floral patterns on the chair were all too perfect to be unintentional. The flowers in the vase were too cautiously muted not to have been calculated. Their sweet smell almost covered the institutional stench, but not quite; the smell of lysol wafted through the crack under the door, lodging itself at the back of his tongue and refusing to leave. Michel knew where he was; he knew the feel of it too well to be fooled by the floral upholstery. He was in the psychiatric ward again.
He got up from his bed with some effort, noticing as he did so that his benefactors had taken the care to put him to bed in his own nightclothes. Stacked in a neat pile on the end of his nightstand were his university books. He turned to the middle of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, but he found that he could not concentrate on it. His throat was sore, his stomach hurt, and there was a throbbing pain behind his left eye as if he'd been socked in the face. He wanted a glass of water, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the door to his room was locked. Sure enough, when he tried it, it would not budge. The bastards. He kicked at it savagely, the only effect of which was to send a sharp pain throbbing in his big toe. He paced the room, back and forth, then sat down again on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.
What had happened last night? The images came back to him in bits and pieces, unfocused as if the person photographing them had been drunk (which, indeed, he had been). The alcohol, the drugs, the boys-the air last night had been thick with the scent of sin. Michel remembered the strong arms of one of the men from the brothel. He remembered searing pain, in his head and in his soul. Then nothing. A terrifying numbness, as if nothing mattered anymore.
He sat in this position, his scattered memories echoing in the cavern of his mind, for several minutes, before a knock on the door interrupted his brooding. "Monsieur Foucault? This is Doctor Poulenc. May I come in?"
"Come in," he called, straightening himself up.
There was a clicking sound as the man undid the lock and let himself into the little room. Michel noticed immediately how well-formed this doctor was-his thick, dark eyebrows, his jaunty smile. For some reason, this above all infuriated Michel. What a wicked sense of humor fate had, that in the depths of Michel's struggle with his homosexuality, this man had come to taunt him with his beauty!
Doctor Poulenc smiled amiably, took a seat in the chair, and took out a notebook and a pen. Michel looked at him suspiciously from his seat on the bed and did not say anything.
"How are you feeling?" the man asked.
"Fine," said Michel through gritted teeth.
"If I were you I'd be pretty shaken up by what happened last night." The doctor was still smiling. What was behind that smile, Michel wondered? What was he trying to hide? "The fight at the nightclub, the suicide threat, the drug overdose..."
"Suicide?"
"My notes say you called your father in the middle of the night and told him you were going to take your own life."
Guilt churned in Michel's stomach. Had he really done that, in the depths of his anger and hopelessness? He wanted to ask the doctor more about it, but he stopped himself. He did not want to let Doctor Poulenc see any sign of weakness. "Why do you care?" He lashed out.
"I get paid to care," was Doctor Poulenc's curt response. Michel was surprised by his honesty. It made his ears perk up, in spite of himself. Still, he doubted his own instincts. Is this just a ploy, he wondered, to get me to trust him? "But I do want to help you," Poulenc continued. "I don't know how I can convince you of that, but I do."
"What can you tell me that I don't already know, Doctor Poulenc?" Michel's voice was dripping with bitter irony. "You think you're smart because you read some Freud in grad school? Well guess what? So have I. I already know what's wrong with me."
Doctor Poulenc simply looked at him, his smile impossible to see through. "In that case, why don't you tell me what you think your diagnosis should be?"
Michel looked at the doctor with narrowed eyes. "Existential hopelessness," he offered, then waited for the doctor to ask him to explain.
On cue, Doctor Poulenc asked, "Can you elaborate on that?"
Michel smirked. "My very being condemns me," he began. "I am one of the doomed men. Lusting after forbidden flesh. You understand, doctor? Homosexuality is not my vice, it's not my addiction, it is the identity that sums me up, that categorizes me mercilessly as one of society's Others."
To Michel's surprise, Doctor Poulenc's first response was laughter, a wheezing, hearty laugh that echoed around the walls of the little room. "Quite the speech, Monsieur Foucault. How many times have you rehearsed it?"
"Shut up," Michel shot back at him.
"Do you seriously expect me to believe that you fall for that bullshit? You think you're smarter than everybody else around you, right?"
"I know I'm smarter than everyone else around me," Michel responded.
"Top of your class at university, reads philosophy for fun? Then you tell me, do you really believe your homosexuality predestines you for some kind of existential hell? That's not Sartre, that's Calvin."
He was right, of course. Michel was loath to disagree with a well-argued claim. But he did not feel like giving in just yet. "You're a very smooth talker," he observed.
"I've been told."
"All your words-do they usually work for you? Do they usually get your patients to do what you want them to do?"
"I'm not trying to control you-" the doctor began, but Michel cut him off, getting steamed.
