Confusion

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  We were in the room Sophie and I shared, where I’d spent the last two nights lying beneath a thin gray blanket on a hard narrow bed, with Sophie chattering incessantly. For the last few days I had scarcely been able to do anything without her shadowing me. “Will I see my mom?” I asked. “You mean Theresa?” Linda waited for me to say my mother’s name, but I stood before her, silent and sad. She squatted so we were at eye level. “Here in Synanon, all adults are your parents. You don’t need a mom and dad. Whenever you want something, you can come and get me or another demonstrator.” I was beyond bewildered and couldn’t seem to make sense of anything. Before I’d been brought to Synanon, my father had driven me to my Uncle Danny’s home in Riverside to spend the weekend. We’d arrived in the afternoon, and my father and uncle had spent an hour or so talking and drinking coffee while I’d played with my cousins. Before my father left, he hugged and kissed me and shook my uncle’s hand, thanking him and my aunt for their hospitality. Later that night my mom and Mary Ann had stopped by and taken me with them when they left. I’d thought she had told me we were to visit Synanon. Had she said we would live here? After the party celebrating my Synanon birthday, my mother had vanished. I couldn’t remember her saying goodbye or telling me when she might come back. I went over the events again and again like a connect-the-dots picture, searching for something I’d missed. How long would I be in Synanon and why hadn’t my father called to see how I was? The second night I inevitably began to cry as the enormity of the situation weighed on me, and try as I might to contain my sobs in my pillow, Sophie eventually woke up and tiptoed across the floor. Her weight sank into the mattress as she sat down and leaned over to stroke my brow. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I want to see my mom.” “Don’t worry. Theresa will come back.” Sophie’s words did not console me. My limited possessions that I’d brought to Synanon, not only my clothes, but also my most treasured baby doll, had been confiscated. In place of my own things, I’d received a stack of clothing that matched that of the other children. Linda pulled out one of the drawers in Sophie’s dresser. All of her white t-shirts were rolled tightly into tubular forms and stacked neatly end-to-end. “This is how we keep our clothes,” Linda said. “Sophie will show you how to roll them.” Linda pulled out another drawer, which held all of Sophie’s pants, rolled the same way. Before she closed the drawers, Linda glanced at me. Then she said, “Sophie, I would like you to show Celena how to roll her clothes.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  The main dining hall, reserved for dancing, was decked out with multiple strobe lights that flashed in rapid succession to long techno-disco songs, like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” Our movements appeared as hallucinatory projections of patterns, shooting out every millisecond from the darkness to the machine-like beat and creating an ultra-hyped-up sensual feeling. At some point we’d form the block formation for the communal dance, the hoopla. Maybe a hundred people or more would perform the same movements in unison, a giant wave of bodies dancing as if one entity. With the sugar ban lifted, these parties were supplied with vats of doughnuts, sodas and candy. In a mere three or four weeks, we began to realize we were eating ourselves sick. New rules were made to curb the abuse that we were doing to our bodies. Before long we were subject to spending limits on sugar: two dollars per week for the children. Sure, we balked some at the new rules. I must admit, though, that deep down I knew that the sugar limitation and its enforcement were for our own good. Chapter Twenty-SixT he Case of the Rattlesnake “A couple of our members have run into some problems with the law. They’ve been set up.” I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to get comfortable in the impromptu meeting led by a man I didn’t recognize. Some months shy of nine, I was mostly unaware of Synanon politics, as were most of the children my age, yet our ignorance hadn’t stopped one of the demonstrators from plucking a handful of us out of our play, where we were herded into a smaller side room of the Shed. Inside, a few adults milled about with crossed arms and stern faces. I wondered if we were in some kind of trouble. As usual, I had no idea what I’d been dragged into until it started. “Now, we can’t stand for this,” the man said. “There are journalists and newspapers printing all kinds of lies about who we are and what we do here. They’re saying we’re nothing but a kooky cult, and now there’s this crazy lawyer telling the media that Synanon tried to kill him by placing a rattlesnake in his mailbox. Can you believe that?” The speaker didn’t wait for an answer. “We would never do that,” he went on. “This lawyer put that snake in his own box and after he was bitten he yelled, ‘Synanon got me!’ How ridiculous! It was a complete setup.” The man paused, scanning the room. “Who here likes being in Synanon?” All hands shot up, including mine, although I still longed to leave. The man’s expression changed to grim satisfaction. “Joe Musico and Lance Kenton were accused. They’ve been set up and we’ve gotta fight to get them out of this mess.” My ears perked up. Joe and Lance? They were two of the nicest men I had ever known. Neither would ever do something like that!

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Space had to be something, but what? I’d get choked up again. Sometimes it was hard for me to swallow, just thinking about it all. “When I look up at the sky, I think, what’s past the sky? There’s space,” I tried to explain. “How far does the space go? Where does it come from?” Waiting for an answer, I shot Theresa a look, but she didn’t say anything. “What if there is just space, Theresa?” Her expression appeared thoughtful. “Sometimes, in order to know God, we have to strike up a conversation with Him. You can tell God your thoughts. Maybe ask Him for a sign. He’s good at giving signs.” “A sign?” “Yes. A sign could be something that happens that has special meaning only for you. That would be God communicating with you. You could pray to God or write a letter; either way, if you really want proof, you’ll get it.” Again, I noticed how sure of herself my mother seemed to be on this matter. She went back to dressing her paper doll. In Synanon, at dinner, we would recite a prayer from St. Francis of Assisi: Please let me first and always examine myself. Let me be honest and truthful. Let me seek and assume responsibility. Let me understand rather than be understood. Let me trust and have faith in myself and my fellow man. Let me love rather than be loved. Let me give rather than receive. After that prayer, we would recite from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”: There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. For the length of my time in Synanon, I would know these words by heart, but not their meaning. Chuck Dederich referred to Synanon as a religion, but other than the prayer at dinner, we didn’t have any apparent rituals or religious ceremonies. With the paper doll completely dressed, Theresa held it up for me to look at. “Isn’t she cute? This is her traveling outfit. She’s going on a long trip.” When I didn’t respond, she set aside the cut-out paper girl and pulled me into her arms. “God does exist, Celena. We’ll talk about this later, okay? It’s probably best not to talk about God to people here.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Having lost the leather mittens Daddy had bought me at GI surplus—stiff leather with Korean script on the inside tag—I’d taken to wearing footwear. He said, This another fashion trend I’ve let slide by? Chronic mitten loser, I told him. My department collects strays, he said. Stop by my office tonight. We’ll see what we can find. But during the day, the prospect slid back and forth in my skull like a BB. Why did he want to see me at night? Leaving my library job, I faced sparse snow on the ground, scraped at by winds like straight razors. It was cold, you betcha. So I loped over to the science building, where the gleaming labs with black counters and curvy gas jets creeped me out.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Maybe that time is so blurry to me—more even than my drinking time—because we remember through a filter of self, and of self I had little, having been flattened like a cartoon coyote by an inner anvil. With no self, experience streams past. Time lags until it’s sponged up. What I’ve forgotten from those sober months astonishes me. I can’t even dredge up how Warren and I decide to separate for the summer. I pushed for it, I think, or did I only find the sublet? The marriage is an airless box. Outside it, I’ll spring into being—or so I believe. I do recall confessing the decision to Joan. I’ve dreaded telling her because I think she might stop taking my calls. On the phone, I blurt out, Warren and I got the separate apartment. We’re gonna try it for a few months this summer. Dev will stay at home. We’ll go back and forth. I don’t recommend— —I know, that I make any changes before I’ve been sober awhile. At least a year, Joan says. Before you make any major decision, take a year for a cold look at all you’ve done wrong in it. Just chronicle the resentments that are really chewing you up. Get it down on paper. I’ve been looking at myself in therapy off and on since age nineteen, I say. A lot of therapy is looking through a child’s eyes, she says. This is looking through an adult’s. You have some nutty ongoing resentments about loads of people. Like about my writing group? I say, for I’d told her at some point I feared my writing group looked at me like I was stupid. Any chance that’s from your head alone? Joan asks. Maybe, I say, but it’s terrifying to think I might not be able to trust my instincts. Joan sighs over the receiver. I can relieve your mind right now: You can’t trust your instincts. What makes you think they think you’re dumb? Just how they look at me. Aren’t these, like, the smartest people—in literary terms—on the planet? They are. Doctors of this and that, translators from many languages. Joan says, Let’s just assume, then, that you’re the dumbest person in the room— Ouch, I inwardly say, for her sentence sang with truth, reverberating like the bronze of a bell. —all things considered, that’s not so dumb. I mean, in terms of the general population. Which is true. I actually feel relief at that. If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There’s an initial uprush of relief at first, then—for me, anyway—a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren’t yet operational. There’s been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible. You don’t have to be Christian for the metaphor to make sense, psychologically speaking.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I felt dubious about this information and pondered it like I’d pondered the thrusting business. Late that night, the workshop finally ended. We girls went to bed quietly, no doubt mentally numb from our strange seminar, exhausted from working and hungry from the diet. “Snip, snip,” Chris said, cutting the air with his fingers. “All the men have vasectomies.” He grinned sharply. “What’s a visectomy?” I asked, mispronouncing the word. We were shoveling loose dirt from a hole into a wheelbarrow. It was the weekend again, and I had been assigned to a team led by one of the men of the community. We were to dig long, narrow trenches for pipe installation. “It’s vasectomy, stupid. You know, it’s something in the balls.” “What are you talking about?” I said. The image of a plastic container of tennis balls came to my mind. “Balls.” Chris raised his eyebrows and struck the earth forcefully with his shovel, grimacing while he pressed down on the blade with his foot for a deeper gouge. “Balls, the baby-making part.” I suddenly understood. Was this something that he had learned in the sex workshop we were all forced to attend? I did not remember hearing it, but maybe the vasectomy information was only for the boys. “Their balls are cut off?” I asked. “No, it’s the part inside. It’s just the men, though. You have to be eighteen.” He grinned at me again, the kind of grin a boy gives when he’s trying to be brave. Although I later heard snatches of conversation between men and in the games on the Wire regarding vasectomies, I did not give it further thought. Later still, I learned the vasectomies were related to a program that also included forced abortions, another new word in my vocabulary. When I learned the meaning of the word “abortion,” I felt some sadness, but again there was also indifference on my part. I found it hard enough trying to figure out my own predicament, let alone the opaque and bizarre world of the adults. A year before I arrived to live in Synanon, Chuck Dederich had decided that he did not want any more children born into the commune; however, his analogy that childbirth was like a person crapping a football did little to quell the remorse and intense grief that women felt when they were forced to terminate pregnancies, some already advanced into midterm. “We’re not in the business of making babies here,” Chuck said. “Fuck, we bring in children. There are too many goddamned children in this world.” That was Chuck’s response to parents who begged for their unborn children’s lives. In a speech, “Childbirth Unmasked: Teachings,” Chuck ranted about the ills of having children and hoped to convince his members that birth was more ludicrous than miraculous. “Why does a woman want to have a baby?” he said. “Do you really know? Does a child mean value? Or is it just kind of a lark?

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  were being sent to work outside of the commune. All the money they earned was to be rolled back into the community as payment for letting them stay. Theresa, surprised to find herself on the list, as it mostly pertained to old-timers, wondered about her job caring for Gwyn. Nobody wanted the job, and Theresa thought her position granted her immunity from working on the outside. Theresa and Ray also had been gamed aggressively for corrupting Melissa and me with their unacceptable and weird spiritual ideas when we spent an hour visiting with them in their bedroom. In the commune, an adult’s bedroom was akin to one’s own small home. In Ray and Theresa’s room, a low table stood in the corner as an altar. It displayed a small golden bell with intricate patterns, a book of prayers and chants arranged by color, and a wooden incense burner. The last held a burning stick of incense, the thin wisp of smoke filling the room with a musky, sweet fragrance. A framed drawing of a man with long blond hair and a smudge of red on his forehead decorated the wall above the altar. Ray served Melissa and me piping cups of hot Mu tea, a sweet herbal therapeutic Japanese tea with high notes of licorice and cinnamon. “Who’s that?” Melissa asked, pointing at the picture of the blond man. Ray scratched his beard and pulled his feet over his thighs, unwinding the cross-legged position in which he sat on a hard round pillow. Melissa, Theresa and I sat on similar pillows. “Maitreya,” Ray said. “He is a being of light who carries the Christ energy. Actually, Maitreya was Jesus’ guide.” Melissa shot me a snide smile, but Ray didn’t notice. Warming to the topic, he said, “We’re entering a new age, and soon Maitreya will appear to all of us to spread the message of love and light.” I listened politely, studying the picture. Maitreya looked exactly like Jesus, except for the red mark on his forehead, which reminded me of the Hindu pictures of enlightened beings in the Bhagavad Gita. At ten years

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  didn’t have physical education. There were fewer seminars and school life became a loose assortment of academic activities. Often we filled out worksheets in the playroom and then lay about watching cultural and historical documentaries. These programs were all hosted by the same dreary man, who, in a voice little more stimulating than a speech synthesizer, stood in a suit and tie and spoke of long-ago dynasties and ancient artifacts. Lulled to sleep, I found myself startled awake by dramatic music as the camera zoomed in on what the producer obviously considered riveting imagery and then pulled back to the gray-faced man, who never so much as cracked a smile. We watched many of these programs, which frequently substituted for classroom learning. Later, math lessons, taught by a new teacher, were added to the curriculum. Short and stocky, Alan sported an afternoon shadow of heavy stubble every day. He had a thick accent and for most of the class period we studied a map tacked to the wall. Our sole focus was two countries: Iran and Iraq. Colored bits of paper were thumbtacked to locales within those countries. The papers represented national flags and signified where the bulk of the fighting was taking place. Each day Alan explained with careful detail the present situation of the Iran-Iraq war. Whenever one country gained an advantage, he moved a few flags from the other country’s map to the map of the temporary victor. “This is very important, very important,” he always added. As usual, I was confused. Apart from what seemed to be an endless war, I knew little about the history or culture of either country or how their war related to us. Our math teacher never offered us this information. In the last twenty minutes of each class, we were given basic math problems—addition, subtraction, long division and multiplication —to work on with calculators. Chuck had at some point denounced an education in math. Instead, he wanted us to learn how to use calculators because, as he liked to say, “that is the wave of the future.” Why waste time solving problems with our minds when we had the advanced convenience of modern technology at hand to help us get things done

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Sara and I opted out. We watched our parents follow the old man down the hallway. Left alone in the foyer, which now that it was coming into focus seemed to have the air of a funeral parlor, we studied several enlarged portraits of Elizabeth Clare Prophet and various solemn- looking ascended masters bathed in pastel-colored backdrops. In every picture of Elizabeth, she was dressed either in a suit or a gauzy blouse, the neckline plunging into feminine ruffles. She stared back, haloed in soft lighting with a look of contemplative benevolence. Sara walked away after a bit, and I trailed after her. Unsure what to do next, we opened one of the closed doors along the expansive hallway and peeked into an empty classroom. There were wooden desks and a blackboard with sweeping erasure strokes, the powdery chalk residue all that was left of the last lesson. We stepped into the room and closed the door quietly behind us. I examined a shelf of books, an eclectic assortment of academic texts and spiritual New Age readers. Examples of the children’s schoolwork hung on the walls, short essays, science papers, and artwork. One essay explored the benefits of meditation. I read it with bland interest. Ray meditated twice a day, and once a day, he and Theresa chanted. The book they chanted from was sectioned into colors, each color representing the energy of a particular chakra. The words of the chants were meant to be said in quick succession one word flowing into the next, until their voices just became one long babbling, incoherent rush, as if they were auctioning off prayers, punctuated now and then by clear affirmations, “And so he said!” or “And in the name of the light!” Prayer beads were picked up, jingled, and laid back down. This sometimes went on for a good hour. Meditation time meant that Sara and I had to be really quiet. Typically, Ray flung open the door of his room during the meditation, his narrow face twisted in rage to scream that we were making too much noise. Too much noise meant the scratching sounds that my pencil made while writing in my notebook, breathing, or just basically being alive. For

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I looked up at the curve of expansive blue sky and imagined the yawn of darkness beyond it. What was beyond outer space? And where did the space come from? If, say, God put that space there, where did God come from? My thoughts, mild at first, curled through my mind like wisps of smoke. Where did God come from? Where did all the space come from? What if the space was always here? What if there was never a time when it wasn’t? What if there is no time, if time doesn’t exist? “Are you cold?” Theresa asked. I was shuddering. I hated these types of thoughts. They snuck up on me sometimes, twisting my mind into a tunnel of confusion. How could something always have existed? I mentally pushed it all away and leaned into Theresa, forcing myself to think of the fairies. “I don’t think God is real,” I said. I’d been visiting with Theresa in her room, the two of us playing with paper dolls in a small corner by her record player. The bed took up much of the space. Theresa glanced up at me from the cardboard figure of a smiling girl with shoulder length brown hair divided into two ponytails. She had been busy fixing a tiny wedge of green paper, a hat, to the girl’s head, folding down the white tabs. “God exists,” she said, her slim eyebrows rising. “I don’t think so,” I said. “God is all around.” Theresa waved her arms. “God is in us. God is nature.” She pointed to a potted plant, then touched one of the new unfurling leaves. She was so sure of a greater celestial being. Her comments furrowed into my young consciousness, trying to dislodge my skepticism, but it had already taken root. My Catholic education, hardly started and abruptly interrupted with my move to Synanon, faded in my mind like a drawing left out too long in the sun. I did not have a close relationship with any of the demonstrators and as a result I had to sort out my own thoughts about the world around me, without guidance. Often I went around for months or years believing wrong conclusions about things. Trying to understand how radio worked, I thought live bands stood in line and took turns playing music. My ideas about the Bible were similarly haphazard. The Bible, I’d decided, must be a book of fairytales, but for grown-ups—stories written to interest adults, like Grimms’ Fairy Tales for children. Nobody in Synanon bothered with the Bible or Santa Claus, for that matter. Heaven, Adam and Eve, Santa Claus—all of it must be made up. The more I thought about what was beyond Earth, the more I felt that God had nothing to do with it. Possibly, God did not exist. This idea troubled me. If God didn’t exist and God hadn’t created the world, where did the world come from? The world had to have come from somewhere, but where?

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “This is a special game. Here, you can say anything. Any words you like. You can say shit and fuck if you want. Try it. Say those words.” Linda waited. I waited. “Try it,” she urged, as if she were asking me to recite a nursery rhyme. I shook my head. “You must be very angry with your mother for leaving you for such a long time.” I folded my hands tightly in my lap, squeezing my fingers as if I could wring out my confusion and frustration. “We all know that you are angry.” Linda’s brows drew together, creating a deep crease in her forehead. “We don’t keep anger bottled up here.” I decided it was best to stay quiet. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “All right, I’ll have a turn,” Linda said. She turned to my mother. “Theresa, look at what you’ve done to your daughter. Do you know how much you’ve fucked her up?” My mother flinched as if someone had flicked water in her face. Then she recovered, her mouth quivering back into a smile. I bit my lip, tasting blood. Little girls didn’t say words like that. When I’d heard cuss words in the past, my first reaction had been to throw my hands over my mouth. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know that cuss words were nasty. This woman, Linda, demanded that I say things that back home would have earned me a mouth washing with soap. When I remained silent, one of the other children said, “Last night there wasn’t enough fucking popcorn. I hardly got any.” This remark set off a litany of complaints from the other kids, who then turned on each other, remembering old slights and recalling incidents that brought them to a pitch of boiling fury. The high-pitched sound of someone yelling “Shit, shit, shit, shit” caught my attention. Across from me, the chanter’s eyes widened, boring into mine, the bald head tilting crazily from side to side. I didn’t know whether it was a boy or girl. “Shit, shit, shit.” I shrank back in my chair. Linda leaned forward. “Quiet!” The screaming continued. “I said quiet!” The arguing and yelling tapered off. Turning to me, Linda motioned with an open hand toward my mother. “What would you like to say to Theresa, Celena? Do you want to let her know how you feel about her leaving you for so long? You can say anything you want. Tell her, ‘Fuck you.’ Speak freely.” I shook my head, grimacing, and closed my eyes, trying to make it all disappear. But it didn’t.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  wasn’t paying attention to how we got here.” I shook my head, and we both turned to Melissa, whose green eyes clouded in thought. When we’d left the San Francisco house, we’d had no bus schedule or phone number. We hadn’t bothered to check the name of the street, and no one had taken the time to make sure that we possessed this information. Like our weekends at home, our time was our own, and we could go where we liked with no supervision. “No one remembers?” Lacy said. “We’ll head back to the downtown area and catch one of the buses. It should take us back to where we came from,” Melissa said. We walked briskly back to the street where all the shops were. It didn’t seem as if we’d gone that far, but the bustling street on which we found ourselves wasn’t the same street we’d strolled along earlier. As we looked for something familiar, it dawned on us that we didn’t know the name of the street we’d been on before. We turned around and went back to the piers. Throngs of people milled about. A group of Japanese tourists in brightly colored clothing held cameras and talked among themselves. When a red cable car pulled up in front of them, Melissa, Lacy and I ran to catch up and board the public transport with the tourists. Hanging on to the railings we scanned the seaside attractions, but again saw nothing familiar. When the cable car stopped, we got off. “I don’t think we came from this direction,” Melissa said. Two men brushed past us, holding hands. Lacy frowned, staring as they went by. We circled for a minute or two, not sure what to do. Then, down the street, I noticed a couple from the San Francisco house. They walked arm in arm, smiling and talking with each other. The three of us ran to catch up with them. “Hey!” we yelled, waving our arms. The couple stopped and waited. “Man, are we glad to run into you,” Melissa said. “We’re lost and we don’t know our way back to the house.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Her voice throbbed too much in the resonant chambers of undelved experience. Robby was dying of suffocation; and could not die. All the terminal points of existence glowed and ran and fused and— “What the hell do you think you’re . . .” —and stopped. “. . . doing here?” He shot over the cliff of reality. And fell miles. Someone shook his shoulder. “Now . . . what are you doing in here, boy?” He breathed in. And when it came out it was sobbing. He brought his hands to his face and cried into them. A woman said, “Proctor, maybe you better . . .” “It’ll be all right.” Robby spread his fingers, opened his eyes. Behind the white-haired man’s shoulder a candle guttered in the coils of a cast, black dragon. The dark-haired woman beside him said, “He seems to be awake now.” Proctor stood. “Are you all right, boy?” Before Robby could answer, Proctor turned to the woman: “Perhaps you should go now, Kim.” “I will.” She looked around the room. “Can you tell me when you will be able to have the painting restored?” Against the wall was another panel. On a dark ground, the woman, in leather, was lit by a single unfrosted bulb overhead. The highlights were harsh. The surfaces had been built of the thinnest glazes. Proctor put his thumb on the paint. “I suppose I shall always be doomed to restoring old work with the energy I want to put toward new.” He turned his finger around. “It won’t take very long. I can have it for you Monday.” “Fine.” She leaned against the table’s edge to look at the painting herself. “You’ll bring it up to the Hill, then? We’ll have lunch when you come.” Proctor nodded, still regarding the portrait. “I don’t think it really suffered that much damage when it fell.” The woman said, “Perhaps when you come we can talk about financing this new mural you are so enthusiastic about?” “I hope so.” She laughed. “You have seen Nazi in the alley by the Hall mash his toes in dog shit, then stick his foot through the bars of the cellar window, to draw it out a minute later, clean?” Proctor looked back at her, surprised. He nodded. “I think as you put your brush in your pigments, then let the canvas lick them from the bristles, you indulge the same process.” Now Proctor laughed. “Go away,” he said. “I will see you up at your home late Monday afternoon.” And her laughter, terribly musical and winning, threaded his. “What about . . . ?” She glanced at Robby. Proctor nodded her to silence. “He’ll be all right.” “Then I’ll go.” Her hand came from beneath her cloak. “I must thank you for the spectacular entertainment you staged this evening.” He took her hand. “I must congratulate you on your spectacular performance.”

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “We are going to play a game,” said the woman who had shaved my head. “We don’t use the titles “mom” and “dad” or “mister” and “missus” here. We use our first names only. I’m Linda, and this is Theresa.” She waved toward my mother, who sat waiting expectantly. “Understand?” I did not understand, so I said nothing. “This is a special game. Here, you can say anything. Any words you like. You can say shit and fuck if you want. Try it. Say those words.” Linda waited. I waited. “Try it,” she urged, as if she were asking me to recite a nursery rhyme. I shook my head. “You must be very angry with your mother for leaving you for such a long time.” I folded my hands tightly in my lap, squeezing my fingers as if I could wring out my confusion and frustration. “We all know that you are angry.” Linda’s brows drew together, creating a deep crease in her forehead. “We don’t keep anger bottled up here.” I decided it was best to stay quiet. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “All right, I’ll have a turn,” Linda said. She turned to my mother. “Theresa, look at what you’ve done to your daughter. Do you know how much you’ve fucked her up?” My mother flinched as if someone had flicked water in her face. Then she recovered, her mouth quivering back into a smile. I bit my lip, tasting blood. Little girls didn’t say words like that. When I’d heard cuss words in the past, my first reaction had been to throw my hands over my mouth. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know that cuss words were nasty. This woman, Linda, demanded that I say things that back home would have earned me a mouth washing with soap. When I remained silent, one of the other children said, “Last night there wasn’t enough fucking popcorn. I hardly got any.” This remark set off a litany of complaints from the other kids, who then turned on each other, remembering old slights and recalling incidents that brought them to a pitch of boiling fury. “You poop-head!” one of them screamed. “I know you are, but what am I!” “You stole my money!” “I told you, for the last time, I never took your stinking money, you stupid asshole!” The children began to scream, fighting to be heard. A few of them rocked manically in their chairs. One boy balled his hand into a fist and hit it against his palm while he yelled. Another snarled, baring tiny milk teeth. The high-pitched sound of someone yelling “Shit, shit, shit, shit” caught my attention. Across from me, the chanter’s eyes widened, boring into mine, the bald head tilting crazily from side to side. I didn’t know whether it was a boy or girl. “Shit, shit, shit.” I shrank back in my chair. Linda leaned forward. “Quiet!” The screaming continued.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  All the money they earned was to be rolled back into the community as payment for letting them stay. Theresa, surprised to find herself on the list, as it mostly pertained to old-timers, wondered about her job caring for Gwyn. Nobody wanted the job, and Theresa thought her position granted her immunity from working on the outside. Theresa and Ray also had been gamed aggressively for corrupting Melissa and me with their unacceptable and weird spiritual ideas when we spent an hour visiting with them in their bedroom. In the commune, an adult’s bedroom was akin to one’s own small home. In Ray and Theresa’s room, a low table stood in the corner as an altar. It displayed a small golden bell with intricate patterns, a book of prayers and chants arranged by color, and a wooden incense burner. The last held a burning stick of incense, the thin wisp of smoke filling the room with a musky, sweet fragrance. A framed drawing of a man with long blond hair and a smudge of red on his forehead decorated the wall above the altar. Ray served Melissa and me piping cups of hot Mu tea, a sweet herbal therapeutic Japanese tea with high notes of licorice and cinnamon. “Who’s that?” Melissa asked, pointing at the picture of the blond man. Ray scratched his beard and pulled his feet over his thighs, unwinding the cross-legged position in which he sat on a hard round pillow. Melissa, Theresa and I sat on similar pillows. “Maitreya,” Ray said. “He is a being of light who carries the Christ energy. Actually, Maitreya was Jesus’ guide.” Melissa shot me a snide smile, but Ray didn’t notice. Warming to the topic, he said, “We’re entering a new age, and soon Maitreya will appear to all of us to spread the message of love and light.” I listened politely, studying the picture. Maitreya looked exactly like Jesus, except for the red mark on his forehead, which reminded me of the Hindu pictures of enlightened beings in the Bhagavad Gita . At ten years old I reasoned to myself that Ray’s story of Maitreya coming to enlighten humanity was unlikely. “Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, he will appear before you to bring his message,” Ray continued. “If you are watching TV, he will come through the channel to talk to you.” “Isn’t that far out?” Theresa said. I nodded while Melissa smirked at her tea. “They’re crazy,” she said once we were outside their dorm. Because I admired Melissa, her words were cutting, and I felt a flash of shame. Later, she complained to one of the demonstrators about Theresa and Ray, saying that they were trying to push religion on us. Synanon did not tolerate religiosity. The only devotion Synanon members were allowed was devotion to Chuck.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Apart from what seemed to be an endless war, I knew little about the history or culture of either country or how their war related to us. Our math teacher never offered us this information. In the last twenty minutes of each class, we were given basic math problems—addition, subtraction, long division and multiplication—to work on with calculators. Chuck had at some point denounced an education in math. Instead, he wanted us to learn how to use calculators because, as he liked to say, “that is the wave of the future.” Why waste time solving problems with our minds when we had the advanced convenience of modern technology at hand to help us get things done faster and more accurately? At another point there was a brief fascination with the abacus among the school administrators. A Chinese woman who’d been brought in as a guest to demonstrate how to use one stood with her beaded contraption opposite another adult with a calculator. A problem of long addition was written on the board and a timer set for a competition between the two. The young woman’s slim fingers flew over the beads, moving them up and down the wooden rods attached to the wooden frame. She called out her answer before the timer buzzed and while the other contender was still entering numbers into his calculator. Moments later he called out the same answer. We students gave them a round of obligatory applause. The Chinese woman grinned, gripping the abacus to her chest. Though I was amazed that she could compute so quickly with just some beads, I was even more fascinated with her figure. She was so thin that she looked like she had been modeled from a Gumby cutout. From every dimension she appeared alarmingly flat and her eyes stretched into such extreme slits that I wondered whether she could see at all. Although Synanon had been ahead of its time in integrating blacks and whites, there were few, if any, Asian people in the commune. I had come to acquaint Japanese and Chinese people with martial arts films and B-rated Godzilla movies. The latter had dialogue dubbed into English and also featured other giant dinosaur-like creatures from the Triassic period that suddenly came to life, with their only apparent desire being to trample people and rip up high-rises while shrieking their fury. The young woman with the abacus had a heavy accent, her words seemed swallowed back into her throat, consonants evaporating every so often, vowels blunt. Certain simple words were missing altogether. Although I had just watched her solve long division on an abacus so quickly she’d beaten someone with a calculator, I concluded she must be somewhat slow simply because she couldn’t speak English properly. My lack of contact with the outside world fostered other ignorant assumptions.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Never, however, had I seen what would have been, in actuality, a three-foot-long penis. “I don’t think a man’s thing is going to stretch that far,” I said. I reached under the doll and measured with my fingers. “His dick won’t make it. She would have to squat down.” Melissa paused, frowning at me, her thick bushy eyebrows squeezing together almost into a unibrow. “So,” she declared. “It’s pretend. He can have a giant penis.” “Won’t her pussy be too small for a giant penis?” I said. “I don’t think she would like it.” “Would you shut up? It’s just a stupid fantasy. It doesn’t have to make sense.” I shrugged, and Melissa returned to her moaning. Melissa was several years older than me, and recently we had become friends. A tall girl with a strong lean build and vivid imagination, Melissa had the ability to gather a crowd by telling her own made-up stories or recounting the thrilling points of a book she’d read or movie she’d seen. She had only one parent in Synanon, her father, one of the commune’s physicians. Zissel, a Kibbutz kid from Israel who visited Synanon every year with her two brothers, reached out for the doll. “Can I try?” Zissel’s pupils dilated, eclipsing most of the normal brown of her eyes. Melissa’s fantasy had excited her. Just a few days before, Zissel and some of the other girls and I had been playing house. For almost ten minutes, Zissel and Janet disappeared under one of the blankets. Having grown increasingly curious, I finally lifted the blanket’s edge to find the two of them tongue kissing, their bodies entwined. Sex play was common, at least among us girls. We slipped into each other’s beds at night and rubbed our bodies together, simulating the future sex we were told we’d be having one day. Just the same, this behavior wasn’t cool. Girls often made out, then accused each other of being “a lesbo.” There was something thrilling yet icky about it all. Like the other girls, I was curious and turned on, but my feelings confused me. I’d met another older girl, Michelle, in the back of a pickup truck, where we listened to Donna Summer’s “On the Radio” while the driver did a run through the property and we helped with odds and ends. Michelle wore a knitted cap, the rim pulled low over her face. Her style seemed to fit the slick silky sound of Summer’s voice as we sped through the dappled afternoon light. For the first time I felt the angst of youth, that bubble of coolness where there is no room for adults. Michelle and I didn’t move in the same circles, but after that truck ride I was aware of her noticing me. She had a strange habit of compulsively pulling out her eyelashes, several at a time. Her lids were bald from plucking. With no fringe of lashes, her dark eyes appeared hawkish.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  more attention than Peter Mayle’s books, which seemed tame in comparison. The photos were artistic-looking black-and-white pictures of naked children as young as five up to thirteen, with an adult or two included as well. One picture showed two young girls, perhaps twelve years old, with budding breasts, curled against each other in soft lighting, looking innocently up at the camera. Another picture showed a man laughing while holding a giggling young girl upside down, his limp penis drooped over her vagina. Another page displayed two naked girls, one spread-eagle under the other. The girl on top held a doll that she pretended to deliver from between the other girl’s legs. These pictures were riveting and mildly alarming, giving a sense that something was about to happen that shouldn’t. When I wasn’t marveling over Peter Mayle’s rollicking, boisterous guides to puberty and sex or the erotic photography book, I was deeply involved in the timeless nursery rhymes and beautiful illustrations of Mother Goose or enthralled by the giant Walt Disney book of fairy tale stories complete with colorful pictures from the beloved animated movies. I frequently checked out the same stack of picture books from the Petaluma Public Library. At the age of seven, my favorite book was Horton Hatches an Egg, a story about a friendly elephant that’s duped by a bird named Mazie into sitting on her nest all year long. Mazie tells Horton she will not be gone long, but instead she flies away to the tropics for a vacation, leaving poor Horton sitting indefinitely. Throughout this ordeal Horton is teased by a variety of animals and finally is kidnapped from his beloved home in Africa to brave a perilous ocean journey to the Americas, all while seated loyally on the nest, itself still cradled in a tree. All manner of questions were raised in my youthful imagination as I read this story over and over. Why, for instance, did Horton never need to go to the bathroom or eat food? How did the men who found him manage to dig up the tree and transport Horton over a tall skinny hill that had a vertical incline of a

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Organ music starts in the sanctuary, and we drift into a barnlike structure with tall stained glass windows where saints I don’t know are doing saintly things I can’t figure out. We stand and sit and pray for over an hour. People take turns talking at the granite altar. Dev belts out hymns in his brassy alto while I flip pages. Afterward, people eat pastries in the foyer. Kids streak around. A few parents from Dev’s school say hey. Somebody brings me coffee like I like. This uninvited niceness seems like a trap. I keep waiting for them to ask me for money. In the car, I ask Dev whether God was there, expecting him to be as cynical as I am. Instead, he cocks his head and squints, as if saying, Where were you? We stop going to the Episcopal church after a few weeks because I find it too cold—not emotionally but physically. To heat that vaulted space would cost a fortune, I guess. Still, the scalding baths I take to get blood back into my feet after service feel like penance. Dev nudges me to take him to various places of worship. It’s still a social exercise for me, another maternal duty I hadn’t foreseen. Most places get just one visit. The Hebrew that mesmerizes me at the conservative temple frustrates Dev, who likes the Reform service, though it sometimes sounds to me— with its talk of Middle East strife—more political than spiritual. While I adore the hand-clapping gospel music of the Baptists, the anti-gay diatribe is tough to swallow, ditto the long service. By summer, I figure my half-baked sense of a higher power might resonate with the super-liberal Protestant parishes that shun dogma, but they actually put me off. Church X has the sterile feel of an operating theater. Since the well-off parishioners send their kids to fancy camps, it’s almost totally child-free. The sermon—on justice to one’s fellows—has so squeezed out any mention of God or Jesus, maybe to sound modern, there’s no sense of history. The pastor asks for peace and gives thanks for plenty, but the homily might come from Reader’s Digest. Looking for something to say to the pastor, I ask him how he deals with the problem of evil, and he says, We don’t believe in it—a phrase so obviously untrue, I wonder how they sell it. It’s like a Rotary Club meeting where everybody’s agreed on the agenda in advance and is only waiting for the danish to come out. Lots of professors go to Church Y, so again, I think maybe they’ll rook me in. But where Church X avoids God altogether, Church Y sees gods everywhere, each more or less interchangeable. These gods sound no more potent than the rabbit’s foot Dev carries into the batter’s box on a belt loop. The zendo wants people to sit in silence then chant for five minutes, which Dev could never do.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Nig stopped his brother with an elbow, nodded toward a doorway. Dove frowned; they exchanged looks, went over. Dove: “Hey, you all right?” Robby lifted his head and blinked away the last of a dream about . . . and blinked again. Nig: “What you doin’ there?” Robby looked between them: big bones, scrawny bellies. He shook his head and grinned. “Guess I went to sleep while I was sittin’ down.” He got his feet under him, looked about the dark street. The boys were grinning. “Say,” he went on, “you guys know where to get some pussy? I been here a whole day, but I ain’t hardly seen none.” “Shit.” The black boy grinned more broadly. “You gotta beat it off with a stick in this town.” “If you can’t get none right away,” the white boy said, “there’s a dozen little nigger boys runnin’ around the boats who’ll suck your dick for a nickel.” “I don’t got no nickel,” Robby said. “Besides, I don’t go for that shit.” The black was still grinning. “All the pussy running around this town, I don’t have to spend no more ’n’ twenty-five cents ever’ year or so. I get it two, three, four times a day.” Robby shook his head again. “I guess I just don’t have that nigger luck.” “Look,” the white one told him, “you better not sleep in the doorway. You gonna have a run in with a man named Bull. You won’t see him comin’. Everybody knows him so he don’t wear a uniform.” “Big bald-headed mother.” “You don’t see him, but then he got his gun in your neck, and there you’re all locked up.” “You go under the docks,” the black one said. “That’s where you can get some sleep.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Say, what’s your name, if you’re gonna be hangin’ around for a few days?” “Robby,” Robby said, and stuck up his hand. “I’m Dove.” They shook. “This is Nig.” Nig took his hands out of his pockets, shook. Then he squatted by the door, black toes splayed in his pool of shadow. “You fellows work the boats?” Nig nodded and Dove said, “Sometimes.” “I guess there ain’t too much more to do in this town.” Robby hugged his knees. His eyes roamed the street. “Sometimes finish was something else. I mean, I’d like to get some work that just wasn’t the easiest thing to find right off. I’d maybe even like to go to school. I know guys who go to school and they got good jobs. What I think I’d really like would be something where I could move around. That would be better than school, you know?” Nig scratched the faded part of his pants groin, bagged with the weight inside. “We got ourselves a good job, Dove and me. Make more money than on the boats.” “What you do?” Dove squatted and threw back his hair. “Rape artists.”