Straight Life (60 page)

What a drag. I started thinking maybe it was my stomach that had turned her off. I was really wiped out, and I didn't feel I was handsome anymore. But I felt that I had to have her. I couldn't give up. If I didn't make it, it wouldn't be because I didn't try.

The next day I went to the beach hoping she'd be there. I put on a bathing suit. I was worried about my stomach, but I wanted to show off my tattoos so I didn't want to wear a shirt. I got a towel and folded it over my arm like a waiter. I looked ridiculous. I had a long beach towel, so I put that around my neck and it hung right in front of my stomach. I held it with my left hand. It looked very natural. I could even leave my hands go. I figured if I laid down I'd lay on my back or on my stomach so the bulge wouldn't be noticeable.

The Synanon beach is right behind the club, and it has a fence around it with two little openings down by the water. I walked out the gate and toward the water and saw her. In a purple bathing suit. As soon as I saw purple-there was that beautiful little body. She looked like a little girl. In fact I almost felt guilty wanting her. I felt I was some lecherous old man wanting to ball a sweet little child.

She was lying on her back reading a book, one arm out to the side, holding the book in her other hand, blocking the sun. I walked by her as if I was going to the water. As I walked I stared at her, and I could see the little, curly, black hairs coming out of the sides of the little purple mound at her crotch. Beautiful legs and little, teeny toes. I walked toward the water and stood there for a minute. I was hoping she hadn't seen me, and I got scared. "What's going to happen when she sees my stomach?" I was going to go back and put a shirt on. I decided against it. I was hoping my tattoos, especially the skull, might impress her, and I've always been pretty muscular. I pretended I was looking at the water, and then I kind of yawned and walked back and stood right over her, waiting for her to say something or look at me. She just kept reading her book. I'm standing there and standing there. I said, "Hello." She said, "Hello."

By this time I had asked some people about her. I asked a friend, Paul Rainbolt, and he told me she'd been going with this Jewish cat. I'd looked at him: he wore glasses; he looked like an intellectual type cat. So I decided she was an intellectual and kind of a snob and thought she was too good for most guys.

I sat down. I talked to her, forced myself on her, forced the conversation. Finally she put down the book. I said, "It sure is lonesome here, isn't it?" She said, "Is it?" I said, "What's anybody do here anyway?" She said, "Well, it all depends on what you want to do. Probably the things you want to do you can't do here." She was "running me data." I kept pursuing the lonesome thing. Finally she came out and said, "Are you hitting on me?" I said, "Yeah." I could see that when I said that at least I drew a kind of response from her. She was flattered. But the more I talked to her the more it seemed to me she didn't really want to get into another relationship. And I could tell she was very wired up in what she was doing in Synanon. She started talking about the school. She worked with the kids. When someone is involved with children they're really involved. The whole situation suddenly seemed very frustrating, and I thought for a minute that maybe I should just forget it and look for somebody else, but I kept looking at her lying there in that bathing suit. She had small breasts, but they were nicely shaped. At one point she turned and for a second I caught sight of a nipple, and it was hard, and that immediately turned me on. I thought, "I've got to have her."

I asked her what she had done on the outside, and she told me she'd been a photographer doing album covers and publicity pictures. I said, "Jazz groups?" "No, rock groups." And so from the little bit she told me and from what I'd seen of her I realized she'd been into that phony Hollywood trip. Maybe she thought I was the same kind of people. I leveled with her: I told her I'd really come to the end of the line, that if I left Synanon I would die. I told her about the things that were wrong with me physically. I wanted to prepare her for my scar. I told her that the only way I could make it was to have someone to care for, that all my life I'd been looking for a woman to love me. I don't know if she really trusted or believed me, but I think she started to think I was alright.

I enjoyed talking to her. I got a warm feeling from it, and I told her so. I told her how I felt about Synanon. I said I felt I was being held prisoner. I couldn't even go for a walk. She said, "Why don't you ask one of the guys in your tribe to go for a walk with you?" I said, "I don't like the guys in my tribe. I don't like guys." She said, "Well, I don't think you'd have any trouble getting some of these young girls to walk with you." She was about twenty-five. There was a bunch of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old girls who would giggle and flirt with me. A lot of the older guys had young chicks like these who admired them and were impressed by their reputations as big dopefiends. I said, "I don't want any young girls." I told her that she could take me for a walk if she would. I told her again, "I am hitting on you." She said, "Well, I don't think you can just go with someone without getting to know them. You've got to be friends first." I said, "Well, let's be friends!" She looked at me and smiled for the first time, smiling with me instead of at me. At first, when I'd thought of having a girl, it had been purely for sex. Now I realized it was much more than that, and the prospect really became exhilarating. I said, "When can we go for a walk?" She said, "I'm busy today." I said, "How about tomorrow?" She said, "Okay, I'll take you for a walk tomorrow." I said, "What time?" She started reciting all the things she had to do. Oh, my God! I said, "When do you ever have time for yourself?" She said, "Well, you have to stay involved. That's the trouble with you. You just sit around thinking about what you'd be doing if you were on the street and mope and feel sorry for yourself. You can't make it that way. You've got to be involved and do things for other people. The kids are such a gas. It's a lot of responsibility taking care of them, and then there's the newcomers in my tribe-I'm a dorm head-and ... " Oh, Jesus!

That night as I went home I saw Synanon in a new light. The people on the bus nodded and said hello. The bus driver said hello. I got off the bus and walked into the Clump, and people I passed on the walkway said hello. I went into the coffee shop. Usually, if I couldn't find a place to sit alone, I'd get my cup and walk and stand as if I was looking for somebody outside, you know. Everyone else just sat anywhere. I always resented that. If someone sat down next to me I'd say, "What's the matter, you got nose trouble?" This time I got my coffee and was standing there and some people said, "Want to sit down?" I started to say no and then I thought, "Well, what the hell." I sat down and everyone was friendly, and I found myself talking with them. And I began to realize how much my thinking had been shaped by my prison experiences and how my hatred and anger had been consuming me. I went back to my pad, and instead of hating the people in the front room for being in the front room, I realized that they were there, just like me, trying to get some help.

We met in the club, in the living room. I said, "Oh, great! I was afraid you wouldn't be here." She said, "You'll have to get permission to go out." I looked around and found an elder of my tribe. I signed out and wrote down the name of the guy who'd given me permission and under "who with" I wrote Laurie's name. We got out of the club. I said, "Which way should we go?" There were really only three places we could walk to. We could walk toward Venice, past the Pacific Ocean Park pier, which had been closed down and then had caught fire several times. It was a strange fairyland that was all black and destroyed. There were twisted tracks where the rollercoaster had been, stands and old tin cans, and a diving bell, where people used to go down and look at sea monsters. There were fences all around, but you could walk along the water and look up and see parts of it. Beyond that there was a walkway that went along the sand past the city of Venice. There were old storefronts on it; a fruit stand; centers for elderly Jewish people, where they would go dance; and then there were the beat shops, where the kids, the hippies, sold jewelry and candles. Besides them there were the winos and the dope culture, which encompassed a lot of people, young and old. You had all these people wandering around, sitting on benches, and there was always some excitement. Every now and then you'd run into a group playing bongos and conga drums or somebody playing a flute, and a couple of these freaky, half-naked girls would dance. We could go to Venice, or we could walk into Santa Monica, to the shopping mall, or else we could walk north up the walkway and go to the Santa Monica pier.

We walked toward the Santa Monica pier. It was a beautiful day. Laurie was wearing a short, green dress, suede, like velvet, and she looked very cute. We walked to the pier and down to the end. On the way back we stopped at the merry-go-round. They have an old, old one there, still working. This old-time organ music was playing.

I felt wonderful. It seemed everything was working out fine. Laurie was very friendly and sweet and she really turned me on. We sat down on a bench and watched the merry-go-round. We made small talk, and I reached over and put my hand on her knee. She seemed to stiffen a bit, but she didn't say anything. I left my hand on her knee, and it really turned me on. I started moving my hand up her thigh under her dress. She let out a roar and jumped up. She said, "I think we'd better go back." We started walking back. I kept trying to put my arm around her, put my hand down her dress. She wouldn't let me. I said, "Look what you do to me." And I looked down to my front, and her eyes followed mine. I was wearing bathing trunks, and my pants were standing all out. I had a hard-on. She said, "Oh!" She really got embarrassed. I said, "Boy, I sure feel comfortable with you. I really feel relaxed." She looked at me and said "You feel relaxed? I don't feel relaxed. I feel like I'm with some wild animal."

We walked back to the club. I got angry then. I couldn't understand how she could say that. I thought it would be flattering to show someone they turned you on. It hurt my feelings. She said, "I'll see you later." I said, "Thanks for the walk. Thanks for being my jailer and taking me out of this rotten place." - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -

I figured I had goofed the whole thing. That night I walked over to the coffee shop and found this friend of mine there, Paul Rainbolt. He was a tall, skinny guy, a nice guy; I'd known him in jail. He was a real dopefiend and a criminal, so I respected his opinion. He'd been in Synanon for about four years. He said, "Oh, Art, I was looking for you. I want to talk to you." We walked out by the pool. He said, "I don't know how to say this. This girl was talking to me today. She knew I was a friend of yours. Laurie." Paul said, "She wanted me to explain things to you. She doesn't ... She's a nice girl. They come in here, and they don't want to be treated ... They want you to act like a gentleman and not come on coarse. You've got to cool it. You've got to go through the formalities. That's the routine here. To make it different from the streets. She wanted me to talk to you. You can't move so fast." I said, "It doesn't matter. I blew that anyway." He said, "Do you like her?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, I don't think you blew it. Just act like a gentleman." I said, "Well, I thought that was a gentleman. It always was a gentleman where I come from."

After I talked to Paul I got some insight as to what was happening in Synanon. A lot of the girls that were into the dope thing-they weren't treated as ladies. Some cat just took 'em out, and if he wanted to ball he'd say, "Let's make it." And so the idea was to change that and to treat them as nice girls and also for the man to do something he'd maybe never done. To make it as much like the American way as possible, courting and getting used to living in society. I saw Laurie and apologized and asked her if she would forgive me. I said, "I still really have eyes for you and I'd like to get to know you. Is that okay?" She said, "We'll get to know each other and see what happens."

I would meet her after games and at different times when she was free, and we'd go into the club and have coffee and peanut butter sandwiches. I got to the point where all I thought about was her. During this period of time you weren't allowed to touch. There's no contact. Finally I asked my tribe leader, "What's supposed to happen now? What am I supposed to do? I want to keep everything on the up-and-up so it'll work out right." He said, "Well, I don't have anything against her. She's a lot more together, Synanon-wise, than you are. Now you get in a courtship. I give you my permission." I said, "Great! That's it then!" He said, "No, that isn't it. You have to go to her tribe leader and tell her you'd like to be in a courtship with Laurie."

Her tribe leader was Betty "Greek." Betty had been around a long time and was married to a guy named Jimmy the Greek, Jimmy Georgelos, who'd been around longer than anyone just about, ten years at least, and was really a legend around Synanon. He was a wild character. He was around sixty. Betty was a very together chick in her mid-thirties, very attractive. I said to Bob, "Wow, it's really going to be embarrassing going to her and asking her something like that." He said, "No, man, she's a great chick. It's just something you have to do, a formality. You'll grow behind it."

We were now on the "cubic day." We worked ten hours a day every day for fourteen straight days, no time off, and we really worked-two coffee breaks and a meal-but at the end of that time you had fourteen days off. The cubic day had a lot of good qualities because when you worked you really got into it. You excluded all else and were so tired by the time you finished your day's work and played a game you just fell out on your bed. If you didn't have a game you had to do your laundry, your dorm assignment. I found that I worked well on this system, and when I was off it was really great. "Motion" was your working period. I was in my "vacuum." It was still summertime so I could just go lay on the beach.