Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde

                                          The Strange Case of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson , who supposedly wrote this novella under the influence of cocaine, strikes me as a perfect metaphor for the states I became under the influence of my magic potion, crack cocaine; except that  my Hyde was not male, but female. Carlotta appeared when ever I smoked the substance, and she prowled the streets of San Francisco looking for evil and to quench her lust, just like Mr. Hyde.

 Loaded on crack I would dress up in drag in an outfit all black becoming Carlotta Hyde; her costume symbolizing her search for sex and violence. She loved a black leather corset worn outside a black silk blouse, a pleated black shirt, black nylons with the seam up the back, and black five inch heals. She was a big woman six foot six in the high heels. Her jewelry was cheap silver and leather, studded choker and cuffs, dangling silver discs for earrings, and a chain for a belt.  The accessories were gothic and like a dominatrix. Her hair was orange red like the fire that burned within her. The make-up matched the hair; red bleeding to white eye shadow below arched black brows and above eyes surrounded with black liner with long black lashes; cheeks red rouged, and lips painted bright red. All dolled up Carlotta visited the gay bars and roamed the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles looking for action.

 She carried in her silvery sequined purse an eight inch steel ice pick. Carlotta would say the pick was for protection, but the reality of the weapon was that she wished to use on some interfering lout. On dark side streets, just like Mr. Hyde, this latter day Mrs. Hyde went looking for trouble. Occasionally she found it, and got to flash her pick, but never got the chance to actually use it. The mere fact of walking the streets in full costume armed was trill enough. The adrenaline was running full tilt. Each encounter, each dark corner a blast of energy.

  But what was Carlotta doing? Was she trying to kill Carl? Carl, who didn’t want to live, was sad, and without energy, was sometimes a willing victim, at others he fought against the plan. I, Carl, would try to stop taking my transformative potion. I would struggle to say no. I failed because I was depressed when not loaded. Getting loaded lifted me out of the deep whole of disalusion and gave me the energy I didn’t have in that lethargic state.  I had to take more and the more I took the more I wanted to be Mrs. Hyde, until I wanted to be Mrs. Hyde all the time. Just like Dr. Jekyll I could not control Hyde. I could not stop being my Hyde, or prevent the actions when Hyde.

  I would hide away in my private lodgings to be this person, who was a more dynamic personality. Like Jekyll said before his suicide I, Carl, felt like a charlatan, while Mrs. Hyde was, to partly quote Stevenson, “a genuine being years younger and far more energetic than his more sociable self.” This was my mental illness fully manifest. Two being were warring in one body, fighting with bipolar disorder. I have always felt like two beings: one male, left handed, given to fits of depression, and known to the outside world and one female, right handed, given to fits of mania, and unknown to the outside world. Without drugs, this was a private and silent duality.

 There was an arch to these circumstances. The more I became Mrs. Carlotta Hyde, the less it worked. At some point in the history of my addiction, the penalty in health I was paying to smoke crack got so bad, that it to triggered depression.  My joints would ache. I had terrible sweats all the time. I coughed up a gray black mucus. I could never sleep. I was racked with guilt. My body was becoming as worn out as my mind. Becoming Carlotta became a pain worse than the pain of being Carl. This was bad in that it lead me to a final suicide attempt to kill Carl, not Carlotta. Carlotta wanted to live. As bad a girl as she was, She loved life. It was her voice I listened too on the bridge when I was going to jump off. She convinced me to live that there was still something out there for me worth taking another day’s breath. She gave me hope.  Curious circumstance it was the self who lead the dangerous life, saved the self who hated life.

 After my aborted suicide attempt, I checked into the mental hospital. I got help. I ended my addiction to crack cocaine and my cross-dressing adventures. Carlotta Hyde no longer comes out. Carlotta is internalized again and has become my muse. She is a gentile lady, who likes to contemplate and talk to me when I drive my vehicle or ruminate on life’s meaning. I ask for her advice. She gives me wise counsel like one who has experimented in all things good and bad. Unlike Jekyll my Hyde is not evil incarnate, but an alternate feminine sensibility to my male reality. I no longer operate as it is said in Romans 7:20 “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”  I function as one. My sins are as one, but I have a counselor and friend as advisor, Carlotta, who I now think of as the vehicle to God.   I can rejoice in the insights she gives to me a happily married heterosexual man.