Me? Bi-polar? Diagnosed in 1986 at a place called the Institute for Depression and Manic-depression, I was immediately put on Lithium. Every month I had to go back there to get my blood drawn and placed in a tube. We all huddled in the waiting room of that mainsion on the Upper East Side, reading old magazines, pretending not tonotice each other. What pathetic people,I thought,coming here everymonth to get their blood drawn and check in with the Psychiatrist. It was between somewhere like 61st and 62nd. It had marble floors and a gigantic foyer with a curving staircase you could imagine a bride coming down, a bride from the Fifties, carrying orange-blossoms, in a white gown of peau de soie with cap sleeves and a scoop neck and one of those short veils that brides in the 50s thought would work with a train. How wrong they were. How lovely she is, how worthy of her staircase.

At the summit of the staircase, in an office one could only imagine, was the Psychiatrist who had written the book on Manic-Depression.

I had been seated next to him once at a formal dinner party, and I told him I had found the book fascinating. He seemed pleased, perhaps that he had lucked out on an intelligent dinner partner, particularly one so elegant and articulate. "What is it like to work with them?" I took a sip of water from the fluted glass, and leaned toward him, in the intimate but distanced way that demonstrates passionate interest in a topic that will at least get them through the salad, knowing that any moment they can shift the conversation to something really interesting, like travel.

The world-renowned Psychiatrist touched his lips with the damask napkin, and smiled. They're fascinating people, he began. I once had a patient who went to Brooks Brothers and brought three dozen ties when he was manic. Really, I said, realizing that since I had never been tempted to do something like that, perhaps I was not manic-depressive after all. Then the invisible waiter removed the salad plates.