Fear

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

  me do pushups.” Chris threw a furtive look over his shoulder. “When I couldn’t do any more, they’d punch me in the stomach or kick me. There are older kids who want to escape, but we’re all trapped here. Did you know that the entrances to the properties are manned by some of the Imperial Marines, with guns?” “They said it was to keep us safe from outsiders that want to hurt us.” Even as I spoke, I knew that it wasn’t the truth. Chris shook his head. “That’s only part of it. It’s also to keep people from running away.” His words churned sickeningly in my mind as I scanned the hills around us. “They could come for any one of us,” he continued, “and throw us into the slug camp. No one tells you anything. You don’t know you’re going to camp, and just like that you disappear.” Slug camp was a place for people Synanon members deemed worthless: parasitic, lazy slugs who needed to be taught a lesson. In slug camp people worked long, grueling days exposed to the elements. At day’s end they slept outside in flimsy tents. They were shunned by the rest of community until they proved themselves to be one hundred percent on board with whatever Synanon happened to be dishing out. I had always thought slug camp was for adults. I didn’t know that kids in my peer group also went there. Chris watched me, and when I looked up at his face, I realized that the boy he had been was no more. We were not far apart in age, but he seemed much older now. “They’re all bastards. You can’t trust them,” he said softly. He walked on. I didn’t follow him. Some weeks later Theresa arrived on the property with Gwyn. When we had some time to ourselves, I mentioned leaving the community. Chris’s story gnawed at me. Almost two years earlier the members of a community called The People’s Temple had committed mass suicide in

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Robby felt the bonds with which he gripped what he knew as real begin to loosen. “Bull,” and he had remembered their description of the lawman. They were searching for him: And the man with the gun who searched for him thought him innocent! He thrilled with unresolvable terror. Turning left, turning right, he ran the labyrinthine alleys, turning again, and turning, now recognizing houses he had passed before, now passing strange porches, fences, windows. At the cafe, he ducked into the alley, keeping near the wall. Something caught his ankle. He staggered. As he turned to see, it jerked him again; he fell, scraping his palms on brick. A hand, from between the bars, had grasped his leg, was hauling him back. He grabbed the window edge to push himself away. A second hand came out and caught his wrist. He kicked, jerked, with his throat constricted so that the sound trying to push out was a gurgle. “Let me . . . let me out,” rasped from the window. “They forgot to let me out! Proctor needs me!” He kicked his leg free, tore scabby fingers from his wrist; then he was running. Slapped at a wall to keep from banging into it, and ran again. The small street dumped him out on the square. He came up short, thirty feet before the dark stones. There was no wind. Shadowed carvings took his eyes upward to the steeple, to lose his vision on crazed, moon-lined clouds, uncurling. There was no wind at all in the street. Something moved on the church steps. He looked. Uncurling, the black shape rose to its feet; barked. The dog cantered down the steps, paused at the bottom, barked again. Robby ran. The paws clicked after him; whatever was solid in him melted and flowed, lost edges and became terror. On a strange street, he turned, grabbed the side of a doorway to keep from falling. It stood on the corner. Its eye was red glass. Its tongue was foamy meat, shaking over barbs. The tail whipped the night. He closed his eyes, shook his head. Looked back. It still stared. Then it took three steps. His stomach and thighs jerked him to a crouch. His palms stung. The dog (it is a big dog) trotted into the street. It closed its mouth for a swallow he could hear. The tongue shook out again, shook, shook. He thought about walking away, just turning and— The dog barked, sagged back to spring, rushed forward. He fell in the doorway, rolled over and clambered up the gritty steps. There was another door at the top. He dove through; curled up and rolled. Claws scrabbled on the steps. His teeth were clenched too tight to scream. Shoulder, arm and hip were bruised. He waited and didn’t breathe. He realized he was waiting. And realized there was only silence to wait through. Opened his eyes. Beams ran the ceiling. Shadows pulsed on the white plaster between.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  θήρ, θηρός, Ep. dat. pl. θήρεσσι, 6: later also 7, Ael. N. A. 6. 24, etc. : (v. sub fin.). A wild beast, a beast of prey, esp. a lion, Il. 15. 586, etc. ; ὁ Νέμειος θ. Eur. H. F. 153; joined with λέων, Ib. 465, Epimen. ap. Ael. N. A. 12. 7; with λέαινα, Anth. P. 14. 63; also of the wild boar, ᾿Ἐρυμάνθιος θ. Soph. Tr. 1096; of Cerberus, Id. O. C. 1569; 6 θήρ, of a hind, Id. El. 572 :—in pl. beasts, as opp. to birds and fishes, ἠέ που ἐν πόντῳ φάγον ἰχθύες, ἢ ἐπὶ χέρσου θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖσιν ἕλωρ γένετ᾽ Od. 24. 291; ἰχθύσι μὲν καὶ θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖς πετεηνοῖς Hes. Op. 275, etc.; ἐν θηρσίν, ἐν βροτοῖσιν, ἐν θεοῖς ἄνω Soph. Fr. 678. 12; ἐν ἄγρῃ θηρῶν Hdt. 3. 129; ἄφοβοι θῆρες (v. sub ἄφοβος) Soph. Aj. 266 :—metaph., θῆρες ξιφήρεις, of Orestes and Pylades, Eur. Or. 12723; ἡ σφοδρότης.. θηρός (sc.”Epwros) Alex, Φαιδρ. 1. 12: proverb., ἔγνω θὴρ θῆρα Arist. ἘΠΠΘΕ ΟῚ Τα} 26: 2. of any animal, πλωτοὶ θῆρες, i.e. dolphins, Arion in Bgk. Lyr. p. 566; of birds, Ar. Av. 1064 (lyr.); of gnats, Anth. ἘΠΡΌΤΙς 3. any fabulous monster, as the sphinx, Aesch. Theb. 558; esp. of a centaur, Soph. Tr. 556, 568, 662, al. (cf. Φήρ) ; also of a satyr, Eur. Cycl. 624; and so perhaps in Aesch. Eum. 70, οὐ θεῶν τις οὐδ᾽ ἄνθρωπος οὐδὲ Ojp.—In Prose the form θηρίον prevailed, though θήρ is found in Hdt. l.c., Xen. Cyr. 4. 6, 4, Plat. Rep. 559 D, Soph. 235 B, Ael., etc. (From θήρ (Acol. pnp, Lat. fera) come θηρίον, θήρα, θηράω: cf. Goth. dius, O. Norse dyr, A. 8. dedr (deer); O. H. G. tior (thier): but Curt. raises questions as to these affinities.)

• 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

  Although their heads were shaved, we knew immediately that they were not from our community. They had a casual demeanor and exuded a kind of foreign vibe that all non-Synanon people exhibited. The passenger rolled down his window, and the driver leaned over to talk with us. “Hey, aren’t you Synanon kids?” “Yes,” Melissa said. “What are you doing out here in the Tenderloin? Are you lost?” “No,” I said. We didn’t know these men, and I thought it was stupid to confide in them. Although we had never had any training in Synanon about the possible dangers of interacting with strangers, my feelings and response rose from instinct. “We are lost,” Lacy corrected, glaring at me. “Well, hop in,” the driver said. “I know where the Synanon house is. I’ll drop you kids off there.” Melissa and Lacy headed to the car, but I caught hold of Melissa’s arm. “We don’t know them.” I tried to keep my voice low so the men couldn’t hear us. “He might be lying.” “Just a minute,” Melissa said to the driver. She gestured to Lacy to come over to where we stood and we huddled together. “They seem nice,” Melissa said. We glanced at the men, who were watching us. “We’ve been lost for hours! Let’s just we go with them,” Lacy said. She gave me a hard look. “If they kidnap us, we won’t be able to get away,” I argued, wondering how Melissa and Lacy could jump in a car with strangers just because they said they knew we were from Synanon. All three of us turned to look at the men again. The driver’s smile grew wider and he waved us over. “I promise I’ll take you kids right to your home.” “I’m going with them,” Lacy said and went to the car. Melissa followed seconds behind her. “No!” I called out. Lacy came back to me, her irritation exploding into full anger. “If you don’t come with us, then you can just stay here by yourself and find your own way back!” I watched them get in the car. Night had crept up on us, and there was no one on the street, just the cars whizzing by on the road. The men in the car could kill us and no one would ever know, but if they all left, I’d be by myself on the street in the area the driver had called the Tenderloin. “It’s okay,” the driver coaxed. “We won’t hurt you. I’ll take you right to your doorstep.” Being left alone seemed even worse than getting into the car, and so after a minute of indecision, I climbed into the vehicle, squeezing in with everyone else. As we pulled away from the curb, I gripped the arm of the door. It was not a long ride. Within ten minutes the driver had pulled up alongside a massive, but very familiar building. “That’s you, right?” he said, pointing at our San Francisco headquarters.

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

  Then the soft whisper—yes, they can —would stir up the panic I was trying to keep in check. I’ll write to my dad, I thought. What can he do? I asked myself. I’ll find that farmer that helps runaways. To the forefront of my mind appeared Chris Water’s face: that strange pinched look he’d had, his eyes full of a seriousness that had never been part of his personality. There were older kids who wanted to escape, but we were all trapped here. “Did you know that the entrances to the properties are manned by some of the Imperial Marines with guns?” My skin felt icy numb as I remembered our conversation. I shifted my pillow one way, moved it another. They could come for any one of us and throw us into the slug camps. “No one tells you anything. You don’t know you’re going to camp, and just like that you disappear.” My mind wouldn’t shut off. I couldn’t sleep, so I stared at the slanted ceiling. I’d doze off a few hours before morning and wake up tired, moving through my routine like a zombie to get ready for inspection. Ten days after the news that we were leaving had been broadcast, the dining hall’s outdoor speakers crackled to life as another announcement came through the Wire: “Sara and Celena no longer belong to Theresa and Ray. They think they’re going to take our kids. They’ve got another thing coming. Synanon will fight for them and they will lose. Don’t fuck with us. You want to leave, leave. The kids stay.” The announcement played over and over. I went to Sara’s room and we held hands, listening to the final decision yet again. She walked over to one of her boxes and kicked it hard. I went back to my dorm and unpacked the rest of my things. We were staying after all. While Sara received sympathy for her plight from her peers, I found myself even more estranged from mine than I had been before. Over the years I’d accepted that I wasn’t well liked, but now the bristling hostility that emanated from the other kids became especially hurtful in light of the situation. When it had appeared that I might be leaving Synanon, no party had been planned for my departure, and no one had seemed to care. The incident made me aware of how despised I really was. I also didn’t know where Theresa and Ray were. They were suddenly nowhere to be found on the property. Had they already left? I ignored the teasing about my moving debacle. Days went by, and I thought about how close I’d come to moving away from Synanon, to finally living with my mother again. I imagined what our life could have been like had we gotten the chance to live in our own home like normal people.

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

  Eight or nine children and two women sat on the floor with their legs crossed. Like identical paper cutouts, each of the children and the women were as bald as the next and dressed exactly the same, in overalls. Expectation seemed to crackle in the air, settling in gazes that became attentive and slumping shoulders that straightened as we came in. One of the children stood, walked over to me and without a word reached out a hand to touch my hair. I pulled back, but my mother gently prodded me forward. I remained still, allowing the child to stroke my hair. The others rose up, one by one. Crowding around me, they reached out their hands to touch and pet my head. Someone grabbed tightly at my hair, yanking my head back. I tried to pull away, feeling fear for the first time. An adult, one of the children’s supervisors, came to my rescue, pushing through the cluster of small bodies, separating them and swatting down their small hands. “Behave,” she said. “If you want to touch Celena’s hair, you must stand in line. Everyone will get a chance.” I didn’t want a group of strange kids stroking my head, but no one asked me or seemed to care what I thought. The odd-looking children, some of them sulking at the new arrangement, obediently formed a line.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὄσσε, Tw, neut. dual, tke two eyes, nom. and acc. often in Hom., who however adds the Adj. in the pl., ὄσσε φαεινά, αἱματόεντα 1]. 13. 435, 616 ; and the Verb in the sing., πυρὶ δ᾽ ὄσσε δεδήει 12. 466; ὀξύτατον κεφαλῆς ἐκδέρκεται ὄσσε 23. 4773 ἐν δέ of ὄσσε δαίεται Od. 6. 131:— from the time of Hes., we find a gen. pl. ὄσσων, as if of second decl., Hes. Th. 826, Aesch. Pr. 400; and a dat. ὄσσοις, ὄσσοισι, Hes. Sc. 145, 426, 430, Sappho Fr. 18, Aesch. Pr. 144,679, Ag. 470, Soph. Ant. 1231, etc. ; —Eust. 58. 28, cites also a dat. ὄσσει, and Hesych. a gen. pl. ὀσσέων ; but neither ὄσσος, τό, nor ὄσσος, 6, occur in usage, Spitzn. Vers. Her. 75. (Hence ὄσσομαι, ὄψομαι.) ὀσσεία, ὀσσεύομαι, ν. sub ὀττ--. δσσίχος [1], 7, ov, (or ὅσσιχος, acc, to Meineke Theocr. 4. 55), the only used form of ὁσίμκος, Dim. of ὅσος, ὅσσος, as little, how little, Lat. quantulus, Theocr. 1. ο. ; cf. ὁσαχῆ. ὄσσομαι, (from ὄσσε), Epic Dep., only used in pres. and impf. without augm.,—older form of 4/OIIT, ὄψομαι (v. oy), as πέσσω of πέπτω, cf. Buttm. Lexil. s. v. Properly, ¢o see, as in Ap. Rh. 4. 318, and in the compd. προτιόσσομαι (q. v.): but mostly, II. to see in spirit, ὀσσόμενος πατέρ᾽ ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσίν (‘in my mind’s eye, Horatio’), Od. Ὑς ΤἼΡ, Ch 20107. 2. to presage, have foreboding of, κακὰ δ᾽ ὄσσετο θυμός το. 374, cf. 18.154; ὄσσοντο γὰρ ἄλγεα θυμῷ 1]. 18. 224, cf. Od. 5. 389. 3. by imparting such presages to others, to foretoken, fore- bode, ὧς ὅτε πορφύρῃ πέλαγος μέγα κύματι κωφῷ ὀσσόμενον λιγέων ἀνέμων λαιψηρὰ κέλευθα 1]. 14. 17; esp. by look or mien, κάκ᾽ ὀσσόμε: vos boding evil by his looks, 1. 105: so two eagles ὄσσοντο ὄλεθρον, boded death, Od. 2. 152 ; οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἐγὼ κακὸν ὀσσομένη τόδ᾽ ἱκάνω Il. 24. 172, cf. Hes. Th. 551 ;—but apparently, like our ominous, used only of evil; cf. ὀττεύομαι. ὅσσος, 7, ov, Ep. and Ion. for ὅσος. ὀστ-άγρα, 7, (ὀστέον) a forceps for extracting splinters of bone, Ga- len. 11. -- ὀστεοκόπος 1, Theophr. Fr. 7. 2. ὄστἄκος, 6,=doTAaKos, a crab, Aristom. Ténr. 2. ὀστάριον, τό, Dim. of ὀστέον, a little bone, Anth. P. 11. 96, Tzetz. ὀστᾶἄφίς, v. sub ἀσταφίς.

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

  Out from their ejected insides would come stringy, wormy, black things that took on a life of their own, growing in size before my eyes. For some reason there always seemed to be plenty of massacred potato bugs oozing their guts before the entryway to our dining area. The sight of them never failed to ruin my appetite. Wildlife abounded in the surrounding hills. Deer, squirrels, raccoons and opossums were the creatures we most commonly saw. One evening as I walked from the dining area back to my bunkhouse, I had a prickly sense of a presence near me that made my body hair stand on end. Several feet ahead of me in the inky darkness I barely made out the shape of something big, its eyes reflecting the faint light of the stars above. I stopped and stood still, straining to make out what was before me. The animal had not moved, and as my eyes began to adjust, I realized I was gazing at an enormous predatory cat. Terrified, I remained frozen, holding my breath as I gazed into those penetrating, glowing orbs for what felt like long slow minutes. When the creature moved, terror streaked hot through my body, but swiftly and silently the cat turned and disappeared into the shadows of the trees, the cloak of night rendering it invisible. I ran so fast and hard to my dorm that it seemed my heart might burst, and my lungs collapse. I didn’t confide in anyone about my encounter that night. Over a period of days I wondered if I’d imagined it. Then I decided to ask some of the other kids if they knew anything about large cats on the property. “Yeah,” someone told me. “There’s mountain lions.” Unsettled, I asked someone else about the possibility of mountain lions. “Yes,” came the answer, “but they’re rare to see. Usually they stay farther up in the hills.” So I hadn’t imagined it. Yet I told no one. I found the ginger-colored kittens while I was trekking through a field on my way to yet another abandoned building on the property where we kids sometimes played. This building had busted-out windows because some of the boys used the space as target practice, stoning bullfrogs they had captured. Often they missed their mark and broke the windowpanes instead, leaving large shards of glass intact within the frames. Likewise, some of the walls were splattered with frog guts from successful shots, the dismembered amphibian body parts and pieces of glass littering the floor under the windows. Old furniture stacked in a disorganized fashion throughout the building made it hazardous to walk through. Once, when I’d been hanging out there with several girls, a giant velvety black moth flew in through one of the windows and attached itself to the neck of one of the girls. She beat at the thing with frantic hands, but it clung to her, unmoving with its enormous furry legs curled against her skin.

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

  someone walking, all of you will start again! Understand?” “Yes, Buddy!” I heard the hollow smacking sound of something like a watermelon hitting the ground hard. It wasn’t a watermelon, but Tim’s skull. In a fit of epilepsy, he had fallen straight back from his military stance. We broke ranks and ran over to him. He was out cold, his body stiff. We stood, watching him. No one, including Buddy, seemed to know what to do. After some moments, Tim’s eyes fluttered. His face scrunched up as he came to and registered the pain. “Uh, ungh,” he cried. Tim’s epilepsy was one reason we kids were required to divide up our time with him. He needed to always have someone watching him. Yet no one had trained us on what to do when he had an epileptic episode. This major detail escaped the demonstrators in charge of his welfare. Tim opened his eyes. “You all right?” Buddy asked, a nervous smile flitting across his face. Tim said nothing. Buddy reached down to the boy, who stared silently up at all of us, tears sliding down his face. Buddy pulled him to his feet, guiding him to a shady place to sit. The rest of us set off on our run. From that day forward Tim did not participate in physical education. Then one day he vanished just as suddenly as he had arrived. It may have been weeks before we kids even noticed he was gone. IN THE SPRING of 1980 Buddy Jones put together our first basketball team to play against schools outside Synanon. I signed up immediately, excited to learn the sport and get the chance to skip some of the game- playing that usually took place after physical education and before dinner.

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

  classmates. I never closed my eyes and never did a teacher halt this regular, repugnant routine. An innocent game of cops and robbers in the schoolyard turned into a brutal reenactment of gang rape. Two of the boys wrestled my friend to the ground and yanked her legs open while a third mounted her, pumping away. I can still see the whites of her eyes as her head thrashed from side to side while the little rapist tried to kiss her. I pounded the boy’s head and back with my fists, trying to pull him off of her until he turned around and punched me in the face. No teacher came to our rescue. On one of my last days at the preschool, a girl was whisked away in an ambulance, her eye punctured by a needle driven in by another girl who sat sulkily on a blue plastic chair, swinging her legs and waiting for her parents to pick her up. Alice’s nephews were affiliated with the Crips gang. Ranging in age from twelve to sixteen, they sported enormous afros and carried giant hair picks in their back pockets. The boys liked to roughhouse with me and their little sister, Danielle, throwing us about in the front room of their home. We’d bounce off the plastic-covered furniture and barely miss colliding with a shelf full of family photos and figurines or the big wooden TV set, which sat decoratively on the muddied green spongy carpet. With a wink or grin, they’d say, “Y’all Crips. Crip or die. Don’t be talkin’ Bloods ’roun’ here. Who y’all?” “Crips,” Danielle and I mimicked. At that, they’d hold out their hands and say, “Hey, giv’ me five, giv’ me five,” and we’d all slap each other’s palms. Satisfied that we knew our place, the brothers took us to the corner store for ice cream. They preened and strutted before older girls, who gave them sassy looks and made sucking noises through their teeth to let them know they weren’t all that. If a girl was interested, she’d swing her hips slowly from side to side when she walked away. I stayed with Alice until she and my father began to argue over my

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

  trouble for herself. She was usually beginning or finishing some punishment, amongst them an afternoon scrubbing pots in the kitchen or several days of the silent treatment. A latent rage bubbled just below the surface of her temperament. Her mother, who had left the commune when she was small, never came to see her. She’d been told that was because her mother didn’t want her. At one point Sara and some of her friends had started a gang, calling themselves The Baldies after a movie we had seen called The Wanderers, about an Italian gang in the Bronx during the 1960s. The imitation Baldies were mostly girls and a few boys who put Vaseline in their very short hair and slicked it back. They roamed as a pack during free time, practicing being surly and giving all of us “murder-ones,” as we kids called their mean, slit-eyed look. They talked back to demonstrators and roughed up a few of the kids to engender fear. The Baldies gang lasted a week or two until they were squashed by the real masters of intimidation, the Imperial Marines, a fascist Synanon youth group that was being trained as a kind of mafia-like entity, a burgeoning army for the holy war Chuck was threatening to wage against outsiders who caused problems for Synanon. In any case, The Baldies was a flash-in-the-pan manifestation of delinquent behavior. As we approached the Shed, I noticed quite a few adults also making their way to the building. After depositing our shoes in the vestibule, we continued into the main part of the mammoth dining hall, squinting in the glare of fluorescent lights. The demonstrators circulated among us. “Sit down,” they hissed. There was nowhere to sit other than on the floor, and kids who did not obey fast enough were shoved down. A frisson of hostility bristled from the older children, commingling with the swift, panicky submission of the younger ones. All of us wondered what we’d done wrong. Why were we being punished? The adults sat around and above us in the chairs used at the dining tables. There must have been a hundred of them, and at that moment

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

  the adults that grew louder and louder, followed by shrill whistles and whoops of approval that emanated from every corner. The man dropped Sara’s hand, and her arm flopped to her side as, leering down at her, he joined in the boisterous celebration. “Long live Synanon!” the applause seemed to say. It died out as quickly as it had come. “Let this be a warning,” the man said. “Any of you thinking of running away, it will be worse the next time. This is nothing.” It was over. We got up and filed out of the building. The adults, having made their point, allowed Sara to join the rest of us. She would be put on contract for a week at the very least. No one would be allowed to talk to her, and she would probably have to wear a sign that said “I’m an Ungrateful Asshole” while spending her time at the sink, washing pots all day. She walked as if in a daze, tears falling uncontrollably down her face. It was her own father who had punished her. Even more disturbing to me, Ray had recently love-matched Theresa. At some point my mother and Andrew had separated, and Ray had stepped in as her new husband. I first became aware of Sara’s dad when he began popping in now and then at the school. He was a short man who always wore high-water overalls, the cuffs riding several inches above his sneakers. He liked to joke around with the kids, giving the boys wedgies and performing complicated handshakes that lasted as long as a minute, requiring turning in circles, blowing an imaginary substance off your palm and exclaiming “Pow!” at the end. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his strange high laugh, a jet of sound that shot from his lips like that of the animated Woody Woodpecker, punctuated by a sucking in of air. I didn’t like the way his head swiveled all the way to the side of his body, his chin resting on his shoulder when he laughed or that his nose was so long he could shoot out his tongue and lick the tip of it. His beating Sara further soured my opinion of Ray. I learned from gossip in the coming days (and years later from Sara

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  When Dove pushed back onto his knees, Nig shoved her side with his foot. He buttoned one fly button. “It takes you a while, boy. But you get the idea.” Dove stood up, his face glistening. He stepped from one foot to the other with a happy, nervous movement. “Come on, Dove!” “Sure you don’t want to tear off another piece?” Nig grinned and scratched his crotch. “Wipe your mouth, boy! Come on, get out your fish-knife!” Reaching into his pocket, the one without the hole, Dove grinned back. When Robby turned the corner, she was still crawling. When he reached her, she had stopped, curled up in the gutter, head and one arm on the sidewalk. And there was a lot of blood behind her. Under her open blouse her bra was pulled down around her stomach. One foot was bare. Astonishment grew as he neared, repulsion and fascination battling to replace it. The fascination astonished him as well. He kneeled by her, his knee soaking through in the puddle where she lay. Three of the yellow bruises were going blackish. He picked up the hair from her face, limp and puffy. It suddenly scored with lines of pain as she surfaced to consciousness. He whispered, “Hey, are you . . . ?” and stopped, astounded at the absurdity of that, too. He caught her shoulder, to get his arm around her. His heart was beating loud and slow, and the night felt very cold. Except where she lay in the cradle of his arm. Her hand swung up at his face. Reflexively, thinking somehow she might hurt herself, he caught it. Her hand twisted about on its very small wrist. Her lips snarled back. She made a high, screeching sound that finally broke, and broke again, till she shook with rasping sobs. And she kept hitting at his chest and head. He tried to duck and at the same time not drop her. She hit him above the eye, so he raised his head—her movements were all despair and no strength—and saw the church door open. A tall priest (white collar, tweed jacket), stepped out— She clawed at Robby’s face. He grunted and pushed her hand away, terribly relieved by the advent of someone official. “What the . . . Peggy-Ann! Boy, what are you doing to—” The father came quickly down the steps into the street lamp glare. Robby saw his expression and wondered. “Get away from that girl!” Realization struck him the same time as the priest’s foot. It hit his shoulder, glanced his ear. Robby fell back, scraping the heels of his palms on the wet cement. He scrambled, trying to hold the side of his head. The priest stood over the girl.

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

  Sara’s lack of tears or cries encouraged her father to strike harder. Thwack! Her body flew forward with each hit of the paddle, forcing her to dance in place. When she still refused to make a sound, the blows came harder and faster. Finally, after what seemed like a full minute, she let out a small whimper. Ray gave one more final strike, and a guttural sound of anguish shot from her mouth as he let go of her arm and she fell to her knees. Ray stood hunched, his chest heaving, his anger spent, the paddle hanging limply at his side. He scanned the faces around him, looking lost. One of the younger girls who sat next to me leaned in closer, her shoulder pressing mine as if I could protect her. The original announcer came forward and took the paddle from Ray’s hand, patting his back before motioning for him to sit down. “Stand up,” he said to Sara. She rose to her feet, her face absent of color, gaze darting about the room. The man smiled and lifted Sara’s arm high as a statement for all of us to witness this official conquering of her spirit. A thunderous applause arose from the empty pit of silence, triumphant applause from the adults that grew louder and louder, followed by shrill whistles and whoops of approval that emanated from every corner. The man dropped Sara’s hand, and her arm flopped to her side as, leering down at her, he joined in the boisterous celebration. “Long live Synanon!” the applause seemed to say. It died out as quickly as it had come. “Let this be a warning,” the man said. “Any of you thinking of running away, it will be worse the next time. This is nothing.” It was over. We got up and filed out of the building. The adults, having made their point, allowed Sara to join the rest of us. She would be put on contract for a week at the very least. No one would be allowed to talk to her, and she would probably have to wear a sign that said “I’m an Ungrateful Asshole” while spending her time at the sink, washing pots all day. She walked as if in a daze, tears falling uncontrollably down her face. It was her own father who had punished her. Even more disturbing to me, Ray had recently love-matched Theresa. At some point my mother and Andrew had separated, and Ray had stepped in as her new husband. I first became aware of Sara’s dad when he began popping in now and then at the school. He was a short man who always wore high-water overalls, the cuffs riding several inches above his sneakers. He liked to joke around with the kids, giving the boys wedgies and performing complicated handshakes that lasted as long as a minute, requiring turning in circles, blowing an imaginary substance off your palm and exclaiming “Pow!” at the end.

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

  It would not bode well for them if they didn’t finish. “Line up!” Buddy instructed us. “You know what to do. I don’t want to see a single movement. You hear me?” Within seconds we were standing in our usual formation: five rows, six to a row, shortest to tallest. We stood erect, arms straight at our sides, eyes forward, unblinking, barely breathing. The sun seared the tops of our heads. I could feel a dampness spreading along my hairline. “All right, give me ten!” I groaned inwardly, wondering who had moved. I shot down with everyone else, hands spread shoulder-width apart, legs close together for the first round of ten pushups. The dark asphalt gave off the smell of warm tar. The pushups were easy for me, but some of the kids struggled. We all had to rise and fall at the same time. “One! Get those asses down. Two! Hold it together. You want to go for twenty? Three! We’re going for twenty!” Next to me, one of the girls whose arms were too thin and underdeveloped for such grueling exercise, struggled with trembling muscles to keep herself balanced. “ Five! Hold! When I tell you not to move, you don’t move! Is that understood?” “Yes, Buddy!” we all cried in unison. “What?” “Yes, Buddy!” My gaze snaked to the trembling mass next to me. It seemed as if all the blood in her body had traveled to her face. She stared miserably at the ground, mouth agape as if she could suck up strength through the air. “You!” Buddy stood over us. I could glimpse only his lower legs, knots of thick, ropy muscles. “Get up!” The girl almost collapsed before she rose slowly to her feet. “Go to the front,” Buddy said. “I want fifteen more pushups from the rest of you.” I powered through and jumped to my feet, followed by the others, and took up my rigid soldier stance. My previous companion stood before us, rumpled and wan, a red splotch on each white cheek. Buddy was a massive black man who stood six feet or taller. His muscles looked like lumps of sleek dark steel. His bald head shone under the penetrating afternoon sun. He marched up to the girl, hulking over her. The dark eyes in her thin face darted up to assess her situation. Just as quickly she looked back at the asphalt, her chest visibly rising and falling. “You think you can just cop out here?” His voice was soft. She shook her head. “What?” “No, Buddy.” “All right. Down. Give me twenty.” “I can’t.” The words were just a hiss of breath. She didn’t see it coming, but we did. His large hand connected hard with her thin chest. She flew back, landing on her bottom, the wind knocked out of her. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. “You want to play games?” Buddy said. She shook her head, eyes watering.

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

  “Is this a game?” Buddy called out to us. “No!” we yelled in unison. “Give me twenty!” She rose to all fours, shaking, and managed to get into the pushup position, her middle sagging. “Pull yourself up.” She did, her spaghetti arms trembling harder now as she attempted to make her first pushup. Creaking down, she collapsed, her body convulsing in sobs. Buddy stood, his hands on his hips, eyes hooded. “Up!” With an act of supreme will, she pushed herself back up. “Down! That’s two!” Again she collapsed. My neck felt stiff. My eyes strained from looking straight ahead. Giving up on the girl, Buddy began to pace among our ranks. “This is Synanon. You are Synanon kids, and I’m going to whip your asses into shape. You hear me?” “Yes, Buddy!” “After our exercises, we will be running. There is no stopping. I catch someone walking, all of you will start again! Understand?” “Yes, Buddy!” I heard the hollow smacking sound of something like a watermelon hitting the ground hard. It wasn’t a watermelon, but Tim’s skull. In a fit of epilepsy, he had fallen straight back from his military stance. We broke ranks and ran over to him. He was out cold, his body stiff. We stood, watching him. No one, including Buddy, seemed to know what to do. After some moments, Tim’s eyes fluttered. His face scrunched up as he came to and registered the pain. “Uh, ungh,” he cried. Tim’s epilepsy was one reason we kids were required to divide up our time with him. He needed to always have someone watching him. Yet no one had trained us on what to do when he had an epileptic episode. This major detail escaped the demonstrators in charge of his welfare. Tim opened his eyes. “You all right?” Buddy asked, a nervous smile flitting across his face. Tim said nothing. Buddy reached down to the boy, who stared silently up at all of us, tears sliding down his face. Buddy pulled him to his feet, guiding him to a shady place to sit. The rest of us set off on our run. From that day forward Tim did not participate in physical education. Then one day he vanished just as suddenly as he had arrived. It may have been weeks before we kids even noticed he was gone. In the spring of 1980 Buddy Jones put together our first basketball team to play against schools outside Synanon. I signed up immediately, excited to learn the sport and get the chance to skip some of the game-playing that usually took place after physical education and before dinner. I was one of two girls who registered for the team, and after a week, the second girl dropped out. Almost from the beginning I became obsessed with the sport, practicing whenever I had spare time.

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

  We woke at five on a Saturday morning and had a quick breakfast before we went to the tack room next to the horse stalls and collected a saddle, bit and straps. This equipment was for me. Spike rode bareback. Into the hills we hiked with the gear and a small bucket of oats. “They sometimes hang around this area,” Spike said after we’d walked for close to an hour. “This area” was a vast stretch of land that appeared similar in every direction. Another hour would pass before we saw a band of horses off in the distance. As we arrived, the creatures stood watching us, and I felt more and more uncomfortable with the prospect of Spike and me trying to persuade eight giant, muscular animals to return to the corral. Spike gave a low whistle, and one of the horses snorted, shaking its head and backing up. “That’s the leader,” she said. “Come on, boy. I’ve got some oats for you.” The horse pulled its lips back from its thick, wide teeth and answered her with a high whinny. Spike stepped forward. The horse stepped back. Spike set down the oats and grinned at me. “He wants them, but he knows it means he’s going to the corral.” I wanted to go back to the property and forget the whole project. Spike picked up the bucket. “We’ll walk away a little and they’ll follow.” Follow, they did. It was unnerving to have a herd of horses walking behind me and to have one of them nudging at my back. Spike stopped and held out the bucket. When the lead horse stretched his neck and nibbled at the air, my friend reached out her hand and grazed his nose with her fingers. His head shot back and he snorted, showering my face with a fine spray of snot. Spike laughed, unfazed by the fact that the whole lot of them could trample us to death if they didn’t feel like coming back to the corral. “They know there’s a lot more of these oats down below; they just don’t want to be locked up to get them,” she said. Overcome by the temptation of the sweet-smelling oats, the lead horse took a few steps forward and dipped its head into the bucket, the force of its movement pushing Spike’s small frame back. She petted his head while she attempted to remain standing. “Here,” she said to me. “You hold the bucket and I’ll saddle him.” Before I could say no, she pushed the oat bucket into my hands. Now I had to try to remain standing while the horse roughly satisfied his hunger. Spike saddled him while a few other horses vied for the grain in my hand. Without fear, she pushed the other horses away, wrestled the grain bucket away from the lead, then coaxed him into accepting a bit and helped hoist me onto his back.

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

  A bowl of sprouts left on the table for me to eat, my mother and her friend behind his closed bedroom door. Alone in the hum of silence, I watched faint dust funnels swirl in the fading light. When the door opened and her friend emerged, his long, dusky brown hair spilling over pale naked shoulders, I ran to the futon bed where my mother lay curled under blankets. She lifted them for me and I wiggled myself into the curve of her body. Later we sat cross-legged on the bed, accepting her friend’s offerings of little white boxes, neat and compact like birthday presents, with the flaps open, long thin sticks thrusting out of them. Inside one of the boxes was something slick and gelatinous. The other held rice mixed with bits of carrots and pink, crescent-shaped things. I poked my finger into the slimy stuff. “Chinese food,” he said, also sitting cross-legged, his penis, shrunken and limp, tucked away under a thick cloud of pubic hair. At the house of a different friend, my mother washed dishes, completely at home in his kitchen. I wandered into the yard: a jumble of unattended shrubbery, dead grass and dirt patches. On the inside crease of my left arm is a pale little wrinkle, a scar where his dog bit me. I remember nothing of the attack, only the man shaking me so hard afterward that I was too shocked to cry. “What did I tell you, huh? Huh?” he demanded. “You were teasing him. That’s why he bit you. I told you not to tease my dog.” Beyond him my mother watched, her eyes mirroring my fear. When she stepped forward to reach for me, he yanked me out of her grasp. “I’ll take care of it.” She said nothing, the color gone from her face. Instead she stood very still while he whisked me down the hallway to the bathroom and poked his finger into the jagged bits of my torn flesh, blood spooling up from the wound. I held myself rigid as he lifted me up to thrust my arm under the faucet, turning on the water and washing the bite with a white sludge of melted soap. “Little brat,” he hissed, and he dried the wound, slapping on a bandage before prodding me toward his bedroom, where he sat me on the bed, rough as a sack of rocks. “You stay here until it’s time for you to go.” I shuddered and tried not to breathe as I watched him walk away and close the door. Long minutes ticked by. I didn’t dare move. When the door creaked open, I held my breath and focused on the carpet, but the person who entered was my mother, smiling, with an apology tucked into the corners of her lips. “Hi,” she whispered. I remained silent; the thought of her friend rushing in to yell at us kept me mute.

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

  I had not seen her in more than two years; yet within the last twenty-four hours, she and Mary Ann had whisked me away in the night from my uncle’s home, where I’d been visiting. The three of us had spent the night in a rundown hotel in Santa Monica, California. In the early morning, we’d boarded a Greyhound-style bus called a Synacruiser bound for Marin, California, and the place called Synanon of which my mother had spoken. As we rounded a bend in the country road, a two-story building with a metal roof came into view. I tightened my grip on my mother’s hand. The building was still under construction. A new section had been added, though it was still just a hollow frame of wood. Other, similar structures fanned out, creating a cluster of dwellings. Without knocking, we went into one and walked along a short hallway to a living room, unfurnished except for a few good-sized beanbag chairs. Eight or nine children and two women sat on the floor with their legs crossed. Like identical paper cutouts, each of the children and the women were as bald as the next and dressed exactly the same, in overalls. Expectation seemed to crackle in the air, settling in gazes that became attentive and slumping shoulders that straightened as we came in. One of the children stood, walked over to me and without a word reached out a hand to touch my hair. I pulled back, but my mother gently prodded me forward. I remained still, allowing the child to stroke my hair. The others rose up, one by one. Crowding around me, they reached out their hands to touch and pet my head. Someone grabbed tightly at my hair, yanking my head back. I tried to pull away, feeling fear for the first time. An adult, one of the children’s supervisors, came to my rescue, pushing through the cluster of small bodies, separating them and swatting down their small hands. “Behave,” she said. “If you want to touch Celena’s hair, you must stand in line. Everyone will get a chance.” I didn’t want a group of strange kids stroking my head, but no one asked me or seemed to care what I thought. The odd-looking children, some of them sulking at the new arrangement, obediently formed a line. My mother handed a hairbrush to the child nearest to me, the brush ready in her purse, though she was as bald as the others. Wielding the prized tool, the child raked the bristles through my tresses, not at all like the soft motions of my mother’s hand. On the bus ride to Marin, she had unbraided and combed through my hair several times while I ate endless slices of carrot-raisin bread. I braced myself for some seconds until the brushing abruptly halted in mid-stroke as the supervisor put an end to the activity by taking hold of the child’s arm. “That’s enough.