how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 8)

part 1 is here part 2 is here
part 3 is here part 4 is here
part 5 is here part 6 is here
part 7 is here


i stare at the naked eyes
and i hear the hollow, hungry cries
and the streets are full of empty energy
and naked eyes have never seen a dream, without eclipse
and the poet leans to kiss her lips
but his work is just a frozen tear
‘cause shell-shocked ears refuse to hear,
the cry

where do we go from here?
do we catch the wind and fly?
or do we dare to wonder why?
where do we go from here?
do we catch the wind and fly? ~seekingintongues (1984)
 
my red t-bird was beyond cool. i had showered and shaved at the residential facility. i knew where i was headed. i was driving fast, 90 plus, down a long two-lane stretch with hillcrests that make your stomach float. i had both windows all the way down; the wind was everywhere. i slipped in a cassette tape, “quadrophenia,” “the punk and the godfather.” stereo cranked, pete townshend was hammering out angry, distorted power-chords against drummer keith moon’s spastic, explosive attacks and entwistle’s ostinato. roger daltry revolted and raged, spitting lyrics in your face:

“you declared you would be three inches taller
you only became what we made you
thought you were chasing a destiny calling
you only earned what we gave you “

although no one else would know it for some time, i had, that morning, officially quit bob's cult.

it was the morning of the outpatient program's staff meeting and i was flying down the two lane road, heading to tempe to fill out the paperwork. this had been planned prior to my sabbatical, my journey to find my true sociopathic male self. since i would be coming into the office, i didn’t know if they would keep my wife from attending the meeting.

an hour ago, i had flipped the page and made a list.

1.       a gallon of gasoline
2.       two glass mason jars
3.       two rags
4.       pants, shoes, shirt—fished out of a dumpster
5.       a handgun
 
my plan was simple. i would fish some pants a shirt, and shoes out of a dumpster or “good-will” bin. using cash, i would purchase two empty mason jars from a grocery store. i would fill the jars with gasoline, while filling-up my car. then i’d seal the jars and place them in my trunk. later i would hide the jars of gas, shoes, clothes and rags near the elementary school between my house and bob’s. i had a cheap lock-blade pocket knife, the kind they sell out of clear plastic bulk bins on the sporting-goods counters at wal-mart and army surplus stores. i could use it to pierce the jars’ lids. this would allow me to soak the rags in gas and stuff them part way into the mason jars.

as i approached baseline road, i pressed the brake. i took a hard left and dialed down my car stereo.

over the previous year, i had often visited bob’s backyard zen garden late at night. usually afraid, my primary motivation lied in the hope that bob would come outside and sit beside me—that he would give me some words of encouragement, some cue, through his words and countenance, that he still loved me, that i wasn’t in line to be barreled…that i was safe. i lived about a mile from bob. on rollerblades, i could make the trip in just over 5 minutes.

i would wait until my wife was asleep, grab my lock-blade and my cheap unregistered .25 semi-automatic handgun and rollerblade to bob’s house, stopping along the way to pick up the gas-filled mason jars, clothes, and rags.

once i arrived at bob’s, i would enter the backyard through the gate on the side of his house. i would change clothes, prepare the jars and rags, and leave my shorts, t-shirt and rollerblades next to the 55 gallon rubbermaid trash can where he stored white sand for his garden…

the santan mountains were far behind me when i pulled into the outpatient parking lot on price road. i sat in my car as sleepy-eyed, wet-haired, teenage counselors congregated near the glass door, smoking and drinking coffee from styrofoam 7-11 cups. they were just getting started; i had already put in a full day.

i watched as they crushed out their smokes and piled through the door, shepherded by george's wife, muffy. i continued to smoke.

bob's’s rear, sliding-glass door would be unlocked. according to bob, they didn’t need to lock it; they didn’t invite trouble. i would invite myself.

they also slept with a heavy duty, industrial fan in their bedroom. this would serve two purposes. one, it would block out the sound of the sliding glass door. two, it would fan the flames.

i would walk into the their house, light the rags, enter their bedroom and smash the mason jars on the headboards inches above their heads. if either of them awoke, i would use the gun to keep them at bay. of course they would awake when the flames engulfed them, but it would be to late.

i would quickly remove my clothes and shoes. would throw them, along with the bag in which i’d carried my supplies and the generic pocket knife, into the fire. then i would walk out, slip on my shorts and shirt and rollerblade home.
i could be back in bed before the neighbors dialed 911.

i shut off my engine and headed across the parking lot, slamming the door behind me.

when i walked into the office, the staff meeting was in progress. it was the same scene i’d witnessed a hundred times—george sitting at the end of an oval of twenty or so staffers. this time, my wife sat at the opposite end. rachael sat next to her.

i scanned the room as i collected my paperwork.

although the scene was the same, i was watching through different eyes. george wasn’t laughing heartily, but nervously cackling. eyes were on him, not in anticipation of his wise words, but in fear, each pair studying him to determine where they stood. the playful banter among the young male staffers served as a nervous distraction. most of the females sat near george, smiling adoringly, awkwardly. they were stepford staffwives, gathered around 'the power.'--george’s girl’s, hoping to protect themselves by fawning over him, while he slipped-in sappy, self-righteous rhetoric in his faux-southern drawl.

my wife, at the far end, was alone...lost.

i was not to participate in the meeting, so i grabbed the papers. i could tell my wife was afraid. i stopped as i walked past her and leaned down. with my eyes shifted toward george, backing him down, i kissed her on the top of her head and whispered, “i’ll be home soon.” i headed to the back room to fill out the paperwork.

before i headed back to the desert, i stopped at a large grocery store and picked up two mason jars. i put them in my trunk with my journal, half carton of smokes, and bottles of water. i couldn’t shake the feel of the room—the outpatient staff meeting. unafraid, i was able to sense the anxiety of the others, including george.

i jammed down the two lane road toward my base and, eying the little grocery store where i had seen the woman, i hit the brakes and pulled into the parking lot. i needed a lighter.

the store was neatly packed with goods. canned foods, cereal boxes, flour, sugar, and cornmeal lined the shelves. in the rear there were refrigerated and frozen foods behind glass doors. at the end of one of the shelves, facing the entrance was a glass-doored refrigerator filled with bottles of green and orange colored mexican soft drinks, drinks i’d never tasted. just to the right of the entrance was a counter with a cash register, several types of mexican candy and gum, yellow, red and green phone cards with spanish writing on them and various brands of disposable lighters. cigarettes lined the wall behind the counter. the woman sat behind the counter. she was flipping through the arizona republic. joe arpaio’s picture was on the paper.

the woman looked up and smiled. “hello,” she said. “hola,” i responded.

as i moved to the rear of the store toward the refrigerated foods, i could hear bob's voice in my head. he was saying, “this is fvckin’ america; we speak fvckin’ english here.” how many times had i heard him make derogatory remarks about hispanics?

i grabbed an orange and white ½ gallon container of orange juice. i made my way down the aisle closest to the register, grabbed a small jar of instant coffee, and placed the orange juice and coffee on the counter. i thought i’d engage the woman in conversation. i wanted to know more about her. i had already created her back story in my mind, but wanted to see if it was accurate. did she and her family own this store as i had suspected? did she live with or near her family and extended family?

bob would have called her a “wetback” or “spic.” there was just a hint of an hispanic accent when she spoke. i doubted seriously that she was in the u.s. illegally, as bob might have proposed. i had doubted a lot of things bob had said. yet as i stood at the counter purchasing these items—i grabbed 2 childproof, mini bic lighters and laid them next to the juice and coffee—i realized that i had felt uneasy even about simply interacting with this hispanic woman, shopping at a mexican market, responding to her in spanish. how deep does it go? how much of my perception of others, of this world, has been formulated by the cult? where does it end and where do i begin?

she handed me my change. i declined the offer for a bag and, passing up the opportunity to engage the woman in conversation,i grabbed my 2 lighters and coffee with my left hand. with my right hand, i stuffed the carton of juice under my left arm. i headed for the door.

and all the good you've done
will soon get swept away.
you've begun to matter more
than the things you say~judas iscariot (from the broadway musical, jesus christ superstar)

when i arrived at the residential facility near the base of the santan mountains, i placed my orange juice in the refrigerator next to my unopened block of cheese. i put the coffee next to the bananas which, just ripened, had lost the last of their green shading. tonight i would end my fast. strangely, i had no hunger. eating would be an impassionate act of self-preservation…refueling.
 
the stars were overhead and the city lights below, as i sat, once again, on the northern slope. it had been about 24 hours since i had sat in this same spot and had first seriously entertained the thought of killing bob and his wife. after the staff meeting and grocery store, i had written in my journal, raked my zen garden, walked, run, and hiked. i had also done push-ups and sit-ups several times throughout the day. for the rest of my stay this behavior would be my routine. i would spend the bulk of my time exercising…exorcising.

i knew that i needed to return looking my best. i would have to con the conman, the big cheese, the man. i would have to con everyone. i needed to make them believe that i had found my “true sociopathic male self.” maybe i had.

i spent my time preparing physically, but also determining exactly how i would present myself. how will i carry myself? what will i say about my time away? how will i act toward bob…toward the others…my wife? these are the things i was contemplating, planning, on my third night out, as i sat on the northern slope, drifting in and out of awareness of my surroundings, millions of point of light, above and below.

i would love to say that i was steadfast, that once i had determined that i had been in a cult everything fell into place. that is not the case. though i was able to hold onto the truth in some regard, i continued to slip into and out of the cult mindset. this continued throughout the night, the week and the upcoming year, when i would finally rescue my family and leave. after we left phoenix, i would continue to float back into the cult mindset for several years.

in fact, it was the floating, slipping in and out of the cult mindset--the inability at times to determine which thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and ideals belonged to me, and which belonged to the cult--that, months later, caused me to make a critical mistake, which placed my family in immediate danger and caused me to be forced to undergo public humiliation.
 
children play with grown-up’s toys
and a grown-up man is just a boy
and he listens to a neon troubadour
and there are 30 silver pieces scattered, on the ground
and a gun explodes but makes no sound
another dream is dead
but no one turns his head, to hear
the cry

where do we go from here?
do we catch the wind and fly?
or do we dare to wonder why?
where do we go from here?
do we catch the wind and fly? ~seekingintongues (1984)
 
as i stood in the doorway of my daughter’s bedroom i watched her sleep. i was a few hours away from my upcoming meeting at bob’s house. as she slept, embracing kimberly, breathing, i fought off recurring thoughts of my daughter growing up calling some other man “daddy.” i realized it was unlikely that she’d have anything but a vague memory of me. i was heartbroken and afraid. i was also angry.

how could a person play games with someone’s life like this? someone's family? like a child tearing the wings off a bug, bob and his wife were willing and fully able to destroy the lives of others without emotion. my family could forever be destroyed and to bob and and his wifi, it would be just another day. they would eat lunch, shop, watch tv, laugh, sleep, cut coupons, and complain about taxes, while we were thrown onto complete shock, fear, and devastating, debilitating grief. they would not even stop for a moment to consider the impact this would have on my daughter’s future. the destruction they’d done with a few orders and phone calls, never leaving their kitchen table, would never enter their minds.

i walked back to the bedroom my wife and i shared and pushing aside the vertical blinds, stepped through the sliding glass door and into the wind. i let the wind flow over my body and looked up at the stars. these things, the wind and the stars comforted me. they gave me strength.

the next day, sitting at bob's kitchen table, bob started in. “you are completely fvcked up, he said. “and if you can’t see that you’re fvcked up, then you’re even more fvcked up than i thought.” he was seated at the kitchen table. hunched forward, left hand in his lap, with the other hand roughly parallel to his body, fingers slightly curved and his thumb angling back toward his opposite shoulder he was accenting his words by making a chopping motion.

his wife sat across from him. my wife had been strategically placed between the two of them, across from me, but close to bob's wife.

i fired back. “i’ll tell you what’s fvcked up…this whole place. this whole system. no one here is happy. everyone’s afraid of being the next one to get barreled…or shipped off to another city. we’re all afraid of you…”

he cut me off. “oh i get it,” he said. “seekingintongues is gonna stand up to bob… you gonna punk me out, is that what you think?” he went for pure power; didn’t even try to play along. i’ll have you in allentown before the sun goes down you piece-of-sh!t, broke d!ck motherfvcker!” his wife chimed in immediately, “and mrs. seeking will stay here with us, right mrs. seeking?” she gently touched my wife’s arm, reassuring her. i shifted my eyes toward my wife. she was nodding in agreement with bob's wife.

i knew i was beat.

how could i have expected her to hold up? she didn’t even know what i knew. she didn’t know anything about cults nor did she know she was in one. i had given her absolutely no indication of what i had realized during my time in the santan mountains…the change i’d experienced. no one knew that i had quit bob’s cult. i was on my own.

i spent the next couple hours listening to them explain exactly what was wrong with me and to what degree i had harmed them, my coworkers, the program, and my family. they told me that my wife wasn’t going to allow me to take her and my daughter down with me—that she had come too far. she was part of “the family” [their family] now. they would not allow me to harm her and her daughter.

i had lost this round. i wish i could say that i was strong enough to maintain my dignity, but i was not. i was frozen and hunched over, as they continued to tear into me.

they created a plan. i would make amends. my wife would keep an eye on me and report to them.
i’m not sure of all the details. i can’t remember the particulars of my spiritual infractions in this situation. they all, the emotional beatings, tend to run together.

it might have been that i was trying to destroy bob's wife, because i thought that she was interfering in my relationship with bob, the way my mother supposedly interfered in my relationship with my father. apparently, i still hadn’t dealt with all my “parent sh!t.”

the evidence that i was trying to destroy her was that bob, at a banquet, in front of hundreds of young people, parents, and community supporters, had referred to his wife as “the b!tch,” embarrassing her and everyone else in the room. his excuse was that he was “off balance,” because the microphone wasn’t working properly. since i had set up the pa system, it was my fault. i had unconsciously sabotaged the microphone, causing bob to be off balance and refer to his wife as “the bitch.”

i was too beat to point out the fact that bob frequently referred to his wife, his daughter and most other females as “the b!tch” when he was talking about them. i had lost my poise and was unable to remind him that he'd always taught us that we were each responsible for our own actions, that he had repeatedly told us that, “there are no victims, only volunteers.”

of course, none of these things applied to bob. when i had any type of problem; when my house was burglarized; when my coffee shop was burglarized; when my bike was stolen, it was my fault. i had invited these problems into my life. when bob faced adversity, it was our fault. he admitted that he too was a volunteer...in a sense. he had chosen to love us, even though we were weak. therefore, his decision to love had caused him to suffer from our bad karma.

maybe i was being confronted on this occasion because i was trying to overshadow george at the counselor training institute's graduation ceremony. this, of course, was part of a secret subconscious plot to take over the entire program.

bob had come to me minutes before i was to deliver a speech at the graduation. “brother,” he said, placing one hand on my shoulder and looking at the ground, the fingers of his other hand on his lips and curled on his chin. “i don’t know what’s got into george, but i need you to fix it.”

he went on to explain that george was in his hotel room throwing stuff and screaming. “he’s going absolutely crazy,” he said. he told me that george felt as though he wasn’t being properly recognized as the leader of the program. he wanted more public praise. he didn’t like the fact that the kids in the training class had designed t-shirts that said “seekingintongues’s kids,” instead of “george’s kids.”

“i’ll take care of it,” i said.

i made a few notes on the speech i had written. when george arrived and sat down at the head table, i delivered a speech praising him for everything he had done to create this wonderful environment that allowed the trainees to learn and grow. “without george, none of this could have happened,” i said. i invited everyone to applaud george. george was gleaming with pride.

but that wasn’t good enough for bob's wife. she wasn’t about to see her son-in-law share the spotlight with anyone. i had to be dealt with. i had to be put in my place, shown that i was less than george.

maybe it had to do with the time that i had placed the amplifier for the pa system under the table where i was sitting so that i could reach the volume knob in case it needed to be turned up or down. this act, according to bob's wife, who had complained because she felt it was in her way, proved that i “had to be in control of everything.”

it could have been any of these (or a number of my other sins) that brought on this confrontation. it doesn’t really matter. in retrospect, it was just more of the same, with but one important difference.

this confrontation had come when we were approaching a window in which i could talk to my wife openly for the first time in years. it would interrupt my ability to help her see that we were in a cult.
my mistake was in attempting to confront bob. somehow, i had slipped back into the belief that he actually cared about any of us. in my 'floating' episodes, i would often start to believe that bob was a loving messiah who had simply made mistakes. this was the reason i had thought i could confront him. it was the reason i’d told my wife my plan and asked her to back me. and although, standing in the doorway to my daughter’s room on the previous night, i had realized the bob and his wife had no love for me or anyone else. now, face to face with him, i went straight for his throat. my wife, my daughter and i would pay a hefty price.

it was hard to keep my head straight in this environment, the cult that is. it had been months since my time in the santan mountains. i had long since realized i was in a cult—that bob was a cult leader—but i had not fully come to terms with the impact that this organization had had on its members, my family included. i was focused on rescuing my wife and daughter, getting my family out in tact. however, i was still buying it to bob's “enthusiastic sobriety” approach to drug treatment.

as the young trainees came into arizona, i would become excited by their enthusiasm. they were looking forward to an opportunity to act on their commitment to help others. it was a commitment that i understood intimately. i taught the material as best i could. i also knew something wasn’t right.

i had seen the trainees as potential victims of bob’s cult, but did not fully understand the degree to which they had already been indoctrinated. when i taught classes and spoke with trainees individually, i tried to impress upon them the importance of getting out of smoke-filled program offices and meeting rooms and connecting with the world at large.

because of my duties, running the hospital-based programs, licensing, working with insurance companies, negotiating leases, i had been allowed to have some degree of contact with the world outside of the cult. i naively believed that these young trainees would be allowed the same opportunities. i believed that they would, with my input, take time to look at things from a different perspective.

i remember sitting, late at night, on the curb behind our coffee shop, talking with a young man. he was intelligent, creative, and articulate. he had shared with me some poetry and short stories he’d written. i was impressed by his sense of fashion, his style. he dressed in vintage clothing. a lime-colored bowling shirt, baggy flat-front dickies, a vintage straight-cut leather coat and dress shoes. his hair was short. he had an urban look which was true to his hispanic, inner-city roots. he was friendly, outgoing, and a good dancer. he was loved by all the other older-group kids, and always had a smile on his face. for some reason he had asked me to be his sponsor. he was also the only person i had sponsored that george hadn’t instructed to drop me as a sponsor.

i sat with him that night and encouraged him to “consider other avenues,” aside from counselor training. he was not in the current training group, but had felt as though he was in line for the next training cycle. i also knew that, being hispanic, he could only rise so far in bob's organization.

it was one of those times that i had a higher degree of clarity. i remember explaining to him that this, the program, was just a microcosm of our society, our world. i told him that it would be a mistake to believe that everything begins and ends with this organization, with enthusiastic sobriety.

“orlando,” i said. “look at all these people here. how many of them are going to become counselors? how many will be directors? if that is the only meaningful path, then most of these folks’ recovery means nothing. most of the work done by the counselors and directors means nothing. you are clean and sober. you have overcome adversity. you have tremendous talent. don’t let anyone else define success for you.”

i was out on a limb and i knew it. i was so impressed by this young man, i couldn’t let it go. i still believed in enthusiastic sobriety. i still believed that, if it weren’t for bob’s need for ego gratification, the program, as it was, could do great things. i didn’t realize how far gone everyone was, myself included. i knew that one way or the other i wouldn’t be around much longer, but i didn’t know the degree to which enthusiastic sobriety was a path to the abyss.

orlando helped me come to terms with that. even as i was, at least on paper, the director of the counselor training program, i couldn’t stand the idea of seeing his potential squashed. i couldn’t bear the idea of this guy giving up his creativity, his style, to become a cookie-cutter, wanna-be george. the thought of seeing him sitting in a staff meeting, alongside program-molded manboys, in the peanut gallery, mindlessly guffawing at george’s potty jokes; the thought seeing him laugh along with staff as they openly referred to him as “spic” or “wetback,” or seeing him abandon his self-expressive style in favor of round robin t-shirts that say “if you think your heart can take it, come fly with me,” or worse, one’s with confederate flags insensitively posted on the backside--these thoughts made me cringe.

so i continued. “for the last 8 months you’ve existed in an environment where becoming a counselor is equated with success, but let me tell you a secret you may not know…”

it was a secret that i have to believe lots of people knew, but no dared to talk about or even think about. i had thought about though. i had run it over and over in my head as i sat on the northern slope, beneath the starry sky on my third night in the santan mountains.

also, on this third night, i thought about my plot to kill bob. i thought about the staff meeting i’d witnessed earlier in the day day—the fear on the faces of the young men and women (kids really) on staff. would they be relieved or outraged when bob was gone...after i'd killed him?

i thought about my wife. what was she doing right now? was she able to sleep? was she hanging out with bob's wife and the other girls? what ideas were they putting into her head? i could tell when i had seen her earlier that day that she was not doing well. i could tell she was afraid. i wanted to comfort her. i wanted to hold her next to my heart and tell her that she needn’t be afraid, that the source of her fear was not within her, that it was strategically, methodically put there by bob and his wife.

i longed for her that night, as i looked up at the stars overhead, but knew that i couldn’t go to her. tears welled-up in my eyes and i, once again, thought about that night in michigan, years ago, when we’d stood together beside the lake, under the stars—the night i knew for sure that i would spend the rest of my life with her.

with the wind on my face, i could feel the cool, taught trails where the tears had run down my cheeks.

i prayed.

to be continued

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 7)

part 1 is here
part 2 is here
part 3 is here
part 4 is here
part 5 is here
part 6 is here

i found myself standing in a dark hallway. the building was dilapidated; the walls grayish. i could see, but there was no discernible source of light, no color, only shades of gray and black. there were no windows, no light fixtures. the hallway was lined with doors on either side.

at the end of the hall was a darkish wooden door, and beyond that door my daughter was crying out. “daddy.” she was sobbing, the way children do when they are inconsolable. “daddy,” hardly discernible through the tears.

i tried to run to the door, but my legs wouldn’t move. i tried to call out to her, but no sound would come out, as if i was drowning.

“daddy,” the sobbing continued.
 
lightning crashes, a new mother cries
this moment she’s been waiting for
the angel opens her eyes
pale blue colored iris, presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide, hide ~ live

i first learned about powerlessness on the day my oldest daughter was born. her birth was the highlight of my life.

on november 20th, 1992, i was delivering a lecture to a group of 70 parents in houston, texas. in my hand, i held a pager. “only one person in the world knows the number to this pager,” i explained to the parents, “my wife. and when this pager goes off, it means my wife is in labor.”

at that exact moment, the pager beeped and vibrated. i almost dropped it. the room fell silent. for a moment i was frozen. “i gotta go,” i said. leaving midway through the lecture, i walked briskly, almost running, straight-kneed, out the door, down the hallway and through the exterior door. in my car was my cell phone, which, in 1992, was roughly the size of a brick. as i looked toward my car, i could see my wife standing next to it. a friend had driven her to the meeting site. still in denial and shock i ran-walked toward her.

she was in labor and she was hungry.

on the way to the hospital, with friends following, we stopped and ate a quick dinner. i had never seen my wife more collected…confident. she’s a strong woman. i followed her lead.

the hospital waiting room and hallway were filled with long-haired, t-shirt wearing staffers. they were ordering pizza, video taping one another, and throwing nerf footballs in the hallway.

in the delivery room, i stood beside my wife, holding her hand. “c’mon baby, breath,” i counseled her. “shut up!,” she snapped back. i removed my black “metallica” cap and wiped my brow with my forearm. my hair was tied in a ponytail which hung just below my shoulder-blades. she labored through the night.

then it happened. at 6:47 am, on the morning of november 21st, as the sun was rising, the doctor entered the room, snapped on a pair of gloves, turned to my wife, and with one final push, my daughter was delivered into this world and our lives.

things moved fast. someone cut the cord. the doctor passed off my baby girl to a nurse and left the room. as she wailed, the nurse wiped her off, turned around and placed her in my arms. soothed by my touch and my voice, she immediately fell silent and opened her stunning blue eyes. our eyes met for the first time.

tears streamed down my cheeks and around my wide grin, as i held this tiny angel, for the first time. she ignited, deep within me, a passion i’d never known.

after handing her to my wife. the three of us clung to one another. then i walked into the waiting area, which was littered with pizza boxes, pop cans, and crumpled whataburger bags, where our friends, having been up all night, were joking and laughing deliriously. two young guys in round robin t-shirts were sitting at a 4 by 4 table playing paper football. another guy had two balloons stuffed under his shirt like female breasts. he was attempting to get another young guy to 'breastfeed.'

“hey,” i said. they continued their folly. “hey!,” i shouted. everyone stopped and looked. i paused for dramatic effect…

“i’m a dad.”

the room erupted. high fives and hugs for everyone.

in a few short hours the most glorious moment in my life, would lead to the most terrifying.

outside the safety of the texas women’s hospital, houston was under siege. on that very day, november 21st, 1992, a line of severe thunderstorms produced 18 tornadoes across southeast texas. an f-4 tornado ripped through the eastern suburbs of houston, damaging or destroying over 1200 homes. an f-2 tornado touched down in herman park, just off the campus of texas women’s hospital.

inside. my wife, my daughter, and i slept safely, peacefully.

i was snapped out of my blissful state, awakened when the doctor entered our room. he began to speak. with a somber expression and in measured language, he told us that he was “concerned” about the sound of our little girl’s heart. a pediatric cardiologist from texas children’s hospital had been consulted. the cardiologist would come to perform a more thorough assessment later that day.

for hours i knelt beside her bassinet, begging god to make everything okay. i offered to trade my life for hers. every deep-seated fear—“i’m not good enough;” “i don’t deserve to have joy;” “i’m being charged for my transgressions;” “i’m just a worthless dope-fiend”—overtook me. i stood up. my heart was pounding. i was consumed by fear.

i paced across the room, then back again. i grabbed my chest. i wanted to rip it open. tick. tick. tick. jesus christ! could time move any slower? where is this cardiologist?

only minutes had passed. i dropped to my knees again. please god!

i jumped up and headed for the door, toward the nurse's station to demand, “get the cardiologist on the phone! get him over here now!” i turned and went back to our room before ever reaching the nurse's station. i sat on the edge of my bed and dropped my head into my hands, consumed by the full force of knowing i was powerless to protect this vulnerable baby girl.

tick. tick. tick.
 
now i was powerless again. in shades of gray, as my daughter called out to me, my legs were paralyzed. i fell to my knees. then dropping forward to my palms, i dragged my body and lifeless legs down the hallway, toward the door—toward my daughter. as i passed by the doors on either side of the hallway, a door to my left opened. rachael stood in the opening, one hand on the doorknob, partially blocking my view.

bob's wife stood behind her and to her left, looking down at me as i lay on the floor, propped up on my hands. i tried to convey to her, through my facial expression, sorrow, grief. she held her finger vertically against her lips, making a “shush” motion. silent, without moving her head, she shifted her eyes to her left and looked at my wife, as if to say, “see?”

my wife was was wearing baggy denim shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. bob and george were gently guiding her by her elbows, from a black spindle-back chair to a standing position. silent, she looked at me, then down at the tarot card spread on the black-velvet covered table at which she had been seated. like a movie without a soundtrack, there were no sounds with the movement of the chair or the opening of the door. it was an eerie silence.

my wife looked back over her shoulder at me as bob and george began to escort her into the darkness at the far end of the room. she spoke to me, but her lips didn’t move. “i have to…,” she said apologetically.

bob, looking back, smiled both lovingly and mockingly...eerily.

from behind the door at the end of the hall, my daughter cried out for me. i tried to call out to my wife who was now wearing a grayish long-sleeved leotard and tights. she was barefoot. mute and drowning, communicating with my will alone, i pleaded with her. she was emotionless.

just then, my teeth started to crumble and fall out of my mouth and onto the floor which was covered with dust. i reached down with my right hand, still propped up on my left hand, and frantically began collecting the broken pieces and placing them back in my mouth. as i put the pieces back in my mouth they kept falling out, until there were hundreds, thousands, of broken pieces on the floor in front of me.

i looked up at bob's wife, who now had her arms crossed. she was wearing bob’s gold, testicle earring only it was big, about the size of an apple. rachael was now mark williams, another of bob's devotees. smiling, he held out his hand in a “stop” position and slowly closed the door.

i looked down. the broken teeth pieces covered the hallway floor all the way to the door at the end of the hall. when i reached the door and pushed it open, i fell forward, tumbling though the door and into the darkness.

my stomach floated up into my mouth and i struggled, attempting to get myself in an upright position until…snap!

i slammed back into my body and awoke, lying on my back on the ground at the foot of the santan mountains. immediately to my left was my little 4 by 6 zen garden, two rocks lying in it where i’d placed them the previous morning. beyond the zen garden, the sun’s light was majestically peaking over the eastern horizon—brilliant colors, gold, red, orange popped against the eastern blue sky. it was a glorious sunrise.

my heart was racing. i moved my legs, just to be sure. i reached for my mouth—teeth still in place.

i sat up and looking forward beyond the grass and into the dirt field, i saw my spade. driven into the dirt, the shovel’s hardwood handle pointed upward toward the sky. next to the shovel was a hole—a partially-dug grave, in which i had intended to bury my parents.

i jumped up to my feet. i felt strong. i walked to the mock grave, grabbed the shovel and returning to zen garden, threw the shovel down beside a sage colored, shed which stood just south of my garden.
i went for a run.

while running, images of the previous night flashed in my mind’s eye. sitting on the northern slope overlooking the city lights, sitting on the roof of the car. fasting and without sleep, i had come to the stark realization that i had devoted nearly my entire adult life to a cult…a meaningless scam. i had attempted to devise a plan to murder bob and his wife. that plan and the realization of having been duped had been halted when bob’s words entered my mind, crowding out free thought.

for at least an hour, i had sat on the roof of my car, chain smoking, vacillating between truth and truth-tainted lies.

now, running down a hard dirt road, the wind awakening my sense of touch, i felt better than i had in years. my mind was spinning free. thoughts of my previous life, before arizona, passed though me, in and out of my mind.

in the beginning, while working as the director of the st. louis hospital, a 60-bed inpatient treatment program, i had been happy. i continued to run. there was no jolt as my feet hit the hard dirt, no strain on my heart. though i’d been fasting for nearly 72 hours and had only slept a few hours in that time, i felt as though i could run forever.

while working at forum hospital, i would awake each morning with anticipation. i would drive my red renault down manchester road, past the hospital to my girl's apartment. she shared an apartment with, jen, the hospital’s group therapist. i would pick up this young woman each morning and give her a ride to work. i usually rode with my radio off, singing my own made-up songs.

one morning, we were driving back up manchester toward the hospital when a fire truck came barreling out of the fire station straight toward the passenger door of my car. i swerved. the truck barely missed us. it came so close that several firemen came rushing to my car, now stopped diagonally on the road, thinking we’d been hit. when they reached my car, i was laughing hysterically. “what a trip,” i said. “wasn’t expecting that one.”

as we continued toward the hospital, jen asked me a question that she’d asked many times. “what’s the secret?” she asked. “how come you’re always happy?”
 
still running, i came to a pile of rusted, corrugated metal scraps and steel girders. the dented ghost of an evap cooler lay among the wreckage. curious, i climbed to the top of the cooler and looked around at the metal scraps, broken beer bottles, dented cans, played out tires, and battered hubcaps which covered an area roughly 50 feet in diameter.

looking in the direction in which i’d been running, i could see that the dirt road would meet a two lane highway about a quarter mile further down. halfway to the highway, was another dirt road running perpendicular to the one i’d been traveling on. i jumped down from the evap cooler, ran toward the highway and took a hard right onto the new dirt road…my mind spinning free. i was now headed directly toward the santan mountains.

i always answered jen’s question the same way. “i have the best life in the world,” i said. “i have the best job ever, helping other kids (i still saw myself as a kid). i’m in school, making straight a’s. i live in a cool condo, with racquetball courts, a gym, a pool, a steam room, and an indoor hot-tub, with my best friend from high school. i live in the greatest city in the country. i have an awesome family. i play in a crappy, but outrageously fun, rock band. i have a lot of great friends. and…i’m in love.”

she just grinned and shook her head. “you’re crazy,” she said.

in all the time that i’d known her, she never stopped asking that question, as if she was hoping that one day i’d tell her the real secret…or maybe she just liked hearing my answer. it was a question i was happy to answer.

i was still headed south, toward the santan mountains. i had sweat pouring down my face, so i ripped off my shirt sleeves and put one around my head. it served as a sweatband and held my longish hair back. i continued to run, continued spinning free.

images of my past came and went, without effort.

it was christmastime and i had gone shopping with my close friend and coworker, brian. we had cashed our paychecks and had decided to buy christmas presents for the kids at the hospital.

both of us saw it at the same time. it was a framed picture of the sunrise. it said, “god danced the day you were born.” i immediately bought it and gave it to brian—an early christmas present. we hugged unashamedly but held back the tears, trying to maintain some semblance of manhood.

i hadn't spoken to him in years. he had long since been destroyed by bob’s cult—turned to dust. ‘diesel christ,’ i thought as i ran toward the santan mountains. that was my nickname for brian, the tow-truck driver turned loving counselor. he had held the kids, and me, in his heart. at our wedding, he had stood beside my wife, standing in for her father who was deceased. who gives this woman?” asked the minister. “i do,” he replied, with tears streaming down his face.

i hadn’t seen him nor spoken to him since i’d arrived in phoenix years ago.

i thought about the time i had sat on the front porch with my friend, steve. both of us clean and sober, we had been up all night jamming and were watching the early morning joggers go by. laughing like idiots, we had wondered what crazy idea had caused these people to rise before dawn and jog up and down the streets. it was hard to remember a time before steve. we had played and laughed together since jr. high. before sobriety, we sat in his room every day after school listening to zappa or the who, pulling bong hits. i had nursed him through a devastating break-up with his first love. we had been drunk together, gone to class together, dropped acid together, been with the same girls, fought, cried, and taken each other and our friendship for granted. we were briefly separated after high school, when we went to different colleges, but i would often make the late night, high-speed drive down highway 70 to the university of missouri to hang with him.

when he was leaving for to dallas to run an outpatient center, we had stood in the doorway of the condo we had shared. jen was there too. she had tried to get us to embrace. we refused. “this is stupid. we’ll see each other a lot. we’ll meet between st. louis and dallas” we claimed. she nearly begged us, “you never know what will happen,” she said. but we couldn’t even consider the idea of being apart.

“later bro,” i slapped his arm. “later,” he turned and walked away. except for one brief passing encounter that was the last time i’d ever spoken to him. i hadn’t seen steve in nearly a decade.

then there was noah. noah was our favorite waiter at yen ching, our favorite chinese restaurant. before we were married, my wife and i had frequented the place. we always asked to be seated in noah’s section. “number one noah,” i called him. he was a twenty something first generation immigrant from korea.

noah had stood several feet behind me, holding a large bowl of sizzling rice soup, as i knelt before my sweetheart, my best friend, ring in hand. she laughed and i cried while i professed my love for her and asked her to marry me. 10 years had passed.
 
the dirt road ended on the same two lane road that ran along the base of the santan mountains. i walked west along shoulder of the paved road until i reached a dirt road which ran north toward my base, the empty residential center.

at the northeast corner of the intersection of the paved and dirt roads, i saw a rock. it was roughly the size of a football. i picked it up. no scorpion.

i returned to step 2, placed my new rock in my zen garden with the other two rocks, forming a triangle. i then walked across the grass to the other end of the back yard. i opened the trunk of my car and grabbed my journal and a bottle of water.

i sat on the back porch steps, zen garden to my left, and began to write.

my cigarette burned down to the filter beside me as i feverishly scrawled, free association style, with my ultra fine point felt-tip pen. i slapped the journal down beside me and reached into my pocket to find a crumpled pack of cigarettes. using the last match from the matchbook that i’d slipped under the cigarette pack’s cellophane, i lit the smoke. i took a deep drawl and looked down to my right at a full page of disjointed words, phrases, and sentences--automatic writing.


when my cigarette was gone, i wanted another, so i walked back to my car and grabbed another pack of matches from the passenger seat. i lit a smoke and leaned on the car. then i walked the perimeter of the grass. as i walked eastward along the edge of the grass, i stopped midway and stared at the ridiculous “grave” i had dug. i looked up at the santan mountains in the distance beyond the grave and the orchards.

when i got to the zen garden, i stopped. i stared at the three rocks and considered the future of my family.

i walked back to the porch steps, sat down, crushed out my smoke, and picked up my journal. third line: whitley steiber. i am a tree, trees don’t run or walk or eat, smoke or drive. fourth line: i live in the action of… ??? where is my home? robert j. lifton. who is john galt, really? fifth line: a man is encumbered by the slime and the scum that sticks to the bottom of his filthy sixth line: sweatshop-assembled reebok running shoes that stink of sour milk…doesn’t even run, walk, except seventh line: across tile floors covered with black rubber mats with nickel sized octagon eighth line: holes from sink to counter to meat slicer to loading dock, to dumpster. ninth line: robert j lifton, earl grey, duke of earl, mohamed ali…

i pulled the felt pen from the spiral binding of my journal and circled the name, robert j lifton. then i flipped the page and began to write.

milieu control—check
loading of language—check
sacred science—check
demand for purity—check
mystical manipulation—check
confession—check
doctrine over person—check
dispensing of existence—check

dispensing of existence…i thought about my friend brian who had been held up as a leader among those in the program and was now dead to the cult and to me. i thought about steve. again, i thought about all the others who came before dj, larry, paul, dave, craig, jill, jodie.

i looked to my left at the zen garden and the three rocks i’d placed in it. i thought about the woman at the little grocery store. i thought about my wife and daughter, myself.

i knew exactly what i had to do.
i lit a smoke and flipped the page.
i made a list.

“no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” ~heraclitus

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 6)

part 1 is here
part 2 is here
part 3 is here
part 4 is here
part 5 is here


home

when i hold her in my arms.
i can feel her heart
beating.
the faint sound of a distant drum.
calling me
to a faraway place,
she calls
home. ~seekingintongues (1997)
 
it was just past 3 am. i was lying in bed, my wife fast asleep beside me. her tan leg was peaking out from beneath the sheets. i was staring at the ceiling. shadowed bars crossed our bedroom ceiling and wall as the moonlight slipped through the vertical blinds. i couldn’t sleep.

earlier that evening, my wife had told me that bob and his wife wanted to see me the next morning. nothing good could come from this.

i got out of bed and walked to my 5 year old daughter’s room. from the doorway, i could see her, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, wonder seeking angel. her tiny hands and arms were wrapped around kimberly, a fluffy stuffed dog nearly as big as she.

i knew this might be the last time i would ever watch her sleep. i knew it could be the last time i ever shared a bed with my wife.

i should have killed bob when i’d had the chance.

in a few hours i would have to face him. i had gotten my head straight several months ago, when he had sent me to spend a week in isolation at the santan mountains—when he had sent me to find my “true sociopathic male self.” for the first time ever, i would confront him. i had talked to my wife earlier. she said she would back me, but i had my doubts as to whether she could hold up in the face of bob and his wife's head-spinning, confrontational rhetoric. if she folded, they would probably pull her and my daughter out of our house and send them away. this could be the end of my family. it was a risky move.

several months earlier i had created a pretty solid plan to kill bob and his wife. it happened just a couple days into my trip to the santan mountains.

after leaving the little grocery store with my block of cheese, my bananas, and my water, i drove my t-bird to my base at the foot of the santan mountains. i immediately went to work, digging.

since fear was my problem, i had to deal with the source of my fear. like any true believer, i knew my fear was primal. bob had taught us that fear starts at birth. we are torn from the warmth and safety of the womb and launched into a world of bright lights and harsh sounds. this causes us to carry free-floating, primal fear…fear of once again being torn from the womb.

this explanation was consistent with my experiences in recent years. i was carrying a moderate degree of constant fear. when things started to get comfortable, when i felt confident, i feared being “torn from the womb,” so to speak. it had not yet occurred to me that these fears were the direct result of real experiences that had taken place in bob's cult. i didn’t yet realize that my fears were a natural and healthy reaction to the environment in which i had spent most of my adult life.

although from the outside it may seem almost negligent on my part to have been blind to the real source of my fear, i had, for years, existed in an environment where bob’s claims were universally accepted as truth. doubting these “principles” would have been equivalent to doubting the existence of gravity. primal fear was truth.

why had i been unable to conquer my fear, when bob, george and others were able? i had learned the answer to that question as a result of the 1995 purpose/confrontation. it was because of my parents. they were evil. they had abused me as a child. my father was a controlling, corporate big-shot, who like all other corporate big-shots, cheated on my mom and worked long hours rather than take care of his children. my parents didn’t love me.

and although the bob and my peers on staff had loved me unconditionally, standing by me through the destruction, difficulty, and harm i’d brought to them and the program, i still had not let go of my parents. i obviously had been hanging on to some kind of sick and twisted hope that they (my parents)would someday love and accept me. i was a pvssy who still needed his parents’ love.

so, when i say i immediately got to work, i mean i immediately began digging a grave in which i would metaphorically bury my parents, laying to rest, once and for all, the twisted hope of having any kind of loving relationship with them.

i did a lot of digging. i also began to build a zen garden. i began to carve the parts to make a rake for the zen garden as well.

while i was digging and building the zen garden, my thoughts kept returning to the woman from the little grocery store. how could she possibly be happy? how could she be at peace? why wasn’t she consumed with fear? she wasn’t in bob’s program. she hadn’t, at least as far as i knew, cut ties with her family.

as the sun began to set, i decided to hike into the mountains and find some rocks for the zen garden. i walked for several hours. i needed 3 rocks, each about the size of a football. i decided to trust the universe to lead me to the perfect rocks.

deep in the high desert, i found my first rock. when i saw the rock, i had decided that i would know it was the right one if i found a scorpion underneath it. i lifted the rock and there it was, a tiny scorpion poised to strike.

all of this may sound strange, zen gardens, the universal guide, scorpions to mark the “perfect” rocks, but i had been living in an environment where medicine cards and tarot cards were routinely used to make decisions, where past-life regression was the norm, where we believed that we had traveled throughout lifetimes in packs, and where we had chosen our parents prior to birth so we could learn whatever lessons were essential to this lifetime. the scorpion as an indicator for finding the perfect rock was not a stretch.

i didn’t have a light, but i was far from the city and the moon was bright. i could see close objects. looking into the distance however, all i could see was darkness. i had removed my wedding ring and watch as soon as i had arrived at my base. i wanted to be completely unattached to anything or anyone, including time. so i didn’t know what time it was or how long i’d been in the high desert.

shortly after i found my second rock, i realized 2 things. first, the desert floor was covered with scorpions. they were hard to see, but if i took a knee and stared at the ground, i could see their movement, almost as if the desert floor was an ever shifting mosaic. second, i realized i was lost. in my quest for the perfect rocks, two of which i was carrying, i had completely lost touch with what direction i’d been traveling. i guessed it was somewhere between 1 and 3 am. i could probably have tried to figure north by the stars, but that wasn’t a very helpful because the terrain was filled with deep ravines, sharp drops, and sinkholes. there was no way to travel in a single direction, because the terrain demanded that i find passable routes.

also, i had been out for a long time. it had been hot. i didn’t have water. all i had was a pocket knife, a couple of smokes, some matches, and two football sized rocks which had been given to me by the universe.

i sat down, put down my rocks and lit a smoke. what next?

i thought about the woman at the grocery store. i imagined she was sleeping beside her husband. i imagined she had several children asleep in their rooms.

i had had almost no experience in the desert, but i clearly recognized the sound that snapped me out of my thoughts of the grocery store woman. coyotes.

it was hard to tell how far away the coyotes were, but they were close enough to see me. it started with one yap and howl. within a minute there were several howling. i couldn’t see them in the darkness, but i was certain they could see, me. i sat there thinking of what to do next.

would they come after me or was i too big? how do you fight a coyote? should i try to hide? if i run, will it trigger their instinct to hunt…will they chase me? i thought about the discovery channel, a program i’d seen on what to do if you encounter a bear. bob watched the discovery channel. i remember thinking for the first time, “i wonder how much of the stuff that he preaches about evolutionary biology and primal fear is stuff he got from watching the discovery channel. this thought came out of nowhere.

i was in the desert which was crawling with scorpions. i knew that some of these scorpions could deliver a life-threatening sting. i also knew there were black widows holed-up in the rocks and crevices. i assumed there were rattlesnakes on the prowl as well. i was listening to what sounded like a dozen coyotes howling. i had no food or water, no light, and i was lost. but i hadn’t been afraid until i had the thought of bob watching the discovery channel. now i was overcome with anxiety. nearly frozen with fear. i made a mental note, put it out of my mind, and got back to the business of dealing with my current situation…coyotes.

while i was lost in the desert my wife was at home in bed. she was wide awake. we were looking at the same moonlight. when she looked out the sliding glass door in our bedroom, we saw the same stars. we were miles apart, and though i had mentally broken all ties with people and places, we were connected...maybe for the first time in years. she knew i was in trouble. i knew she knew.

somewhere in the night, i had this thought: our love for each other transcends all of this--the “mission,” bob meehan, the “spiritual journey,” my “true sociopathic male self,” meehan’s big stick…fear. before all of these things there was our love. woven throughout the confrontations, the endless hours of work, my jobs at the hospital, bob's residential center, the outpatient program, the counselor training institute, and clean edge productions (coffee shop), was my love for my wife.

bob and his wife called it obsession. they saw it as a threat. they had tried to get me to “report” on her numerous times. they had attempted to convince me to talk about her in a negative light. i never went along. i had seen what they had done to her spirit in the past—how they’d broken her. i had been determined, right or wrong, to protect her from them.

years earlier, before bob, i had stood with her beside a vast beautiful lake in rural michigan, holding hands, staring at the same night sky. i knew then that i would to spend the rest of my life with this woman…that i would always love her.

the coyotes were howling. there were no trees to climb. there was no brush to build a fire. there were only rocks, two of them were my prize possessions, my zen rocks given to me by the universe. there was no way i was giving up those rocks.

i couldn’t hide from the coyotes and couldn’t hope to outrun them. i had a pocket knife, but assumed they would attack en mass, if they attacked at all. i was unafraid.

fifty feet away there was a large rock about the size of a compact car. i figured that if i climbed on top of that rock i could defend myself from the coyotes. i assumed that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to get to the top of the rock. if nothing else, it would force them to come at me one or two at a time. i could brace myself and push them off the rock.

i made my way over to the big rock, moving slowly in order to avoid triggering the coyotes’ instinct to chase. as i made my way to the top of the rock, holding my zen rocks, i realized that i was holding two football sized weapons. i climbed back down, set my zen rocks at the base of my perch, and began collecting smaller softball sized rocks to use as weapons. there were scorpions under nearly every one of them. i briefly made the connection, discounting my idea of being led by the universe to my zen rocks. i pushed it aside. the thought made me afraid. if the universe hadn’t led me to my zen rocks, then… it was too much to consider in my brainwashed state. am i on the wrong path? am i spiritually hopeless?


the fear overwhelmed me, but just for a few seconds. i snapped out of it, reclaimed my status as an individual with no attachments to anyone or anything, and spent the next few minutes carrying softball sized rocks to the top of my perch.
the coyotes, who’d stopped howling while i was moving rocks to the top of my perch, began howling again. i waited.
 
us, and them
and after all we're only ordinary men
me, and you
god only knows it's not what we would choose to do
forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
and the general sat and the lines on the map
moved from side to side ~ roger waters

the program, they say, is simple, but not easy. killing bob and his wife would be both simple and easy. though i had never considered killing anyone before, this seemed to be the only logical option. if i was to save my family, i would have to eliminate the threat. bob and his wife were the threat. without them, my wife would be free of their manipulative coercion and lies.

i had no fear of george. without the bob's protection, i would b!tch slap him up and down the block. with all of his talk of spiritual superiority, living without fear, inviting only “good” into his life, he was nothing—and i knew he was nothing. any power he had was on loan, borrowed from bob and bob's wife.

i decided that i would need to make it look like an accident. i began thinking about ways in which i might cause a gas leak. i knew that bob never locked his house. he claimed that he didn’t need to lock his house because he didn’t invite bad things into his life. he was under the protection of his “higher-self,” his idea of god.

the idea was that if i could cause his house to fill with gas during the night, he would awaken in the morning, light a smoke…boom! no more bob.

it was late at night, early morning to be more specific. i hadn’t slept the previous night, as i’d been perched atop the compact-car sized rock waiting for the coyotes. i hadn’t eaten since the day before i'd arrived in the santan mountains. i had decided to fast.

i was sitting halfway up the northern slope of an arizona mountain looking down at the lights of phoenix, mesa, tempe, and gilbert. there were millions of lights. i was slipping in and out of the cult mindset.

i was thinking about the woman at the little grocery store. there were millions of people in the city below. were they all lost? how could i accept the idea that, since they weren’t with bob, their lives were meaningless? i also began to think about all of bob’s former followers—d.j., larry, dave, liz, jodi, craid, jill, paul, jim, al, pdap, f-way, adap, ihn, the st. louis hospital, b-way. where were these people and programs? if bob was the spiritual fountainhead of the universe, why did his followers always leave? why did they all hate him? people who he had once held up as spiritual giants, were now viewed as pariahs. they were losers whose “hearts couldn’t take it.”

the entire world consisted of us and them. this idea was clear. bob had made it clear that we were justified in deceiving “them.” we had to be honest and loving toward “us.”

or did we? bob had lied to me. he had lied to others in the program. i had seen him mistreat scores of his followers. he lied without hesitation. i had lied on behalf of the program as well. i had hurt a lot of “us.”

awhile back, i had gone with 2 other bob followers to tell an icecap director that we didn’t want him around anymore. he had a wife and 3 kids to support. under bob’s direction, we sat him down, fired him from his job, without warning or severance pay, and told him not to come around anymore. why? because he had been trying to rent a house in bob’s neighborhood. he wanted to move his family closer to the spiritual epicenter, where a select few were allowed to live in the same neighborhood as bob and his wife. he wasn’t welcome. bob was offended by the idea that this man would be so bold as to believe he deserved to live near him.

“i don’t want to go for a walk and have to worry about running into that broke-d!ck and his fvcked-up idiot kids, heckle and jeckle” he’d said. the god of the spiritual lifeboat decided to toss this man and his family overboard. if he really was the spiritual fountainhead, then he’d sent them to hell on a whim, at his own pleasure. if he wasn’t the spiritual fountainhead…he wasn’t. none of this was real. he was simply a conman.

and who are “us”? did it include the kids and parents in the program? was it just the staff? senior staff? where did the layers of deceit end? how many fronts did bob have? how deep did one have to go before the “truth” was revealed?

if bob wasn’t the spiritual fountainhead of the universe, what the hell was i doing sitting on a mountainside in the middle of the desert?

facing the fact that bob was a fraud was terrifying. it was also liberating. in regard to the former it was terrifying to face the fact that i had wasted well over a decade of my life—that i had no direction, that my efforts to help others were meaningless. with the latter, i was free from having to exist in an environment where every move i made was prescribed, or at least examined under a microscope.
fear. it came to me. “many are called, but few are chosen.” bob was right. i was overwhelmed with fear. leaving the program meant choosing to reenter the womb, rather than choosing to face and overcome primal fear.

there were no coyotes, no physical, “real” threat. just my thoughts, and they were terrifying. i was “in my head,” “complicating things,” “too intellectual,” as bob had often told me. “your intellect is your worst enemy,” he had told me. “your mind is a dangerous place; don't go there alone.” “trust,” he'd said. “have faith. stop thinking.”

i hadn’t slept or eaten. i had spent the previous night, in the “here and now,” focused on fending off the coyotes. now i had too much time to think. i needed to pull it together. i needed to get a grip.
as i stared at the smoke spinning and twisting off the burning tip of my cigarette, i thought about the previous night.

the coyotes.

they had continued to howl as i sat perched atop my compact-car sized rock. i had a pile of rocks in front of me with which to defend myself. i lit my last cigarette and dropped my open pocket knife, point first, into a patch of dirt that had settled in divot on the rock. the dirt was too shallow and after repeated attempts, i had been unable to make the knife penetrate deeply enough to stick.

i thought about my wife and daughter. i would return to them a new man, my true sociopathic male self.

i don’t know how long i sat upon that rock before the howling stopped. at some point, i realized i hadn’t heard the coyotes for at least an hour. i figured they were gone. i’m not sure if it’s true, but i was later told that while the coyotes were howling, i was safe. when they were silent, that’s when i should have been worried.

in reality, i was never afraid of the coyotes. they would either come or they wouldn’t. they might injure me, but they would never kill me. why would they risk injury with prey that was fighting back so viciously? as i would later begin to realize, the only times i was afraid, were those when i was thinking about bob and the program.

thirsty and jonesing for a smoke, i climbed down from the big rock, picked up my zen rocks and started walking. i came to a ravine which i estimated ran east and west along at the base of the southern slope of a rock mountain. the ravine was about 20 feet deep. i found a spot with a suitable slope, sat on my butt, and with my arms crossed, rocks held to my chest, i slid to the bottom of the ravine. it was still dark and though i wasn’t completely sure what i would encounter on my way down, i reached the bottom unharmed.

i traveled east until the ravine opened up. then, i made my way around the base of the mountain.

traveling north (or at least what i believed to be north), i came to a dirt road. rocks in tow, i followed the dirt road. i wanted water and smokes, but other than that i was feeling good. for some reason, i was comforted by thoughts of the woman at the little grocery store. i began to entertain the thought that there was life outside the program.

the sky was starting to get lighter as i emerged from the rock and dirt and i found myself entering an area covered with sagebrush. i saw a house (really more of a shack). there was an old pickup truck with no windows and no wheels. then there were other weathered, sun bleached, houses and shanties. i realized i’d made my way onto what appeared to be an indian reservation. though the sky was getting lighter, it was still dark. it was quiet.

i’d heard that a reservation may not be the safest place for a white guy to wander around alone in the dark. on the other hand, if i came across someone, i might get some water and a cigarette. i might even get a ride back to my car, which i’d abandoned the previous day in a dirt turnaround at the northern base of the santan mountains.

i made my way through the reservation. i was startled once by a dog who began barking as i approached a tall wooden fence that surrounded the back yard of one of the shanties. i hit the paved road which ran along the northern base of the mountains and correctly determined that i was a couple miles east of my car. in my car, i had water and cigarettes. in the center console, i had left my watch and wedding ring. i was determined that i would not open my center console until the end of my week-long search for my true sociopathic male self.

i walked 2 or 3 miles to my car while sun rose behind me. i leaned on the hood while i drank some water and smoked the best cigarette i’d ever tasted. i crushed out my cigarette and put the butt in my pocket.

i looked at the mountains to the south and the orchards, horse property, and civilization to the north. one represented freedom the other imprisonment. at that point, i wasn’t quite sure which was which.
 
and so she woke up
woke up from where she was
lying still
said I gotta do something about where we're going
step on a steam train
step out of the driving rain, maybe
run from the darkness in the night
…
you got to cry without weeping
talk without speaking
scream without raising your voice
you know I took the poison from the poison stream
then I floated out of here ~ bono


sitting in the dark desert night, on the north slope, i noticed that my cigarette had burned all the way to the filter, leaving a long, slightly curved ash. i blew the ash and pocketed the butt. i looked again at the city lights. i looked at the stars. i thought about the vastness of the universe as compared to the insignificance of bob's tribe.

my thoughts drifted again to all that had happened in the last 48 hours.

i had completed the policy and procedure manual, been chastised and hit with a stick, begun digging a grave in which i had planned to metaphorically bury my parents, started building a zen garden, gotten lost in the high desert, waited out the coyotes, and walked for miles.
after returning from my coyote watch, having felt rejuvenated from the water. i had spent the day picking pebbles and other impurities out of my zen garden and digging my parents’ grave. i had also walked.

things had changed over the last 2 days. i was now considering the idea of killing bob. i determined that tampering with the gas lines was too risky. first, they were likely to smell the gas, in which case they would simply leave the house and call the gas company. second, it was too easy to get caught. there were fingerprints, fibers, and cutting tools that could provide forensic evidence. i had been in their house many times, but if evidence was found near a break in the gas line, i would be found out.

fire seemed to be the best way to go. guns and bullets could be traced. anything that could possibly cause a struggle would leave forensic evidence. i had been caught up in the idea that it had to look like an accident. but why?

bob had more enemies than anyone i’d ever known. it was this thought that lead me back to the question, “where were all his former followers?”

as a teenager, i had seen the 60 minutes and 20/20 exposés in which he had been accused of being a cult leader. when his california program went down in flames, he was accused of being a cult leader. his current organization was constantly being criticized as “cult-like.”

as i sat on the mountainside looking down at the city lights, it hit me. i’m in a cult! bob is a cult leader. we’re all being duped. it’s not my parents that are standing in the way of overcoming my fear. in fact, the fear is natural and normal given that my boss, my mentor, is a dangerous, deceptive cult leader who likes to play god with peoples’ lives.

sitting there i realized that bob was the source of all my fear. i also realized i wasn’t alone; virtually everyone in the program was living in fear…fear of bob and his wife.

these people had to be stopped. i refused to let them take my family from me. since my wife was enthralled by them, killing bob and his wife was my only option. i needed a better plan. a simple plan.

i had spent over a decade imprisoned in bob’s cult. my marriage had been torn to shreds. i had lived in a constant state of fear and dependency, fighting for his approval, vigilantly searching for my miracle, the miracle that would insure that i never had to go through another confrontation, that i would be inoculated against banishment, that my family would not leave me, that i would not die.

now i would be free. i could get in my car right now and drive off, turning my back on the cult forever. free from coercion. free from bob’s wrath. free from the endless hours of work with little or no pay. free from the threat of spiritual extinction. free from fear.

forget killing anyone. why bother? i would simply drive away. i had a half tank of gas, no money, and no credit cards, but so what… i was resourceful, creative, and smart. later, after i got myself settled, i would return for my family. i would threaten bob, telling him i would expose him if he didn’t release his hold on my wife. i walked down to my car, sat in the driver’s seat and reached to open the console.

stop. i had, on my own accord, committed to avoid opening the console before the week was up. no attachments to anyone or anything.

i got out of the car and closed the door.

for the past few hours i had vacillated between the belief that bob was a scam artist and the belief that he was the messiah—that he was right, that i was being overcome with every fear imaginable.

was he right? if i took off, his could easily hook my wife up with some guy and quickly marry her off. she had done this with other women in the past. maybe they were doing it right now. was this the fear…overtaking me? jesus christ! minutes ago i had been planning to commit a double homicide.
i needed to get a grip.

i thought about the woman at the little grocery store. i jumped on the hood of my red t-bird climbed to the roof and sat cross-legged looking across the valley

i can drive away right now. disappear. my thoughts drifted.

i lit a smoke.

the woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
and miles to go before i sleep
and miles to go before i sleep ~ robert frost

to be continued

on atheism (part 2) from guest author sal paradise

here is part 2 of "on atheism" from my friend, sal paradise. once again, he has stated his case in an articulate and compelling manner.

reason v. faith: that seems to be the issue. i will say that, for me personally, i recognize that there is no rational argument that supports the existence of god. that's why i hope to someday recapture my faith.

there was a time that i was so convinced in the existence of god that, whenever anyone told me they didn't believe in god, i didn't believe them. i believed the non-believer was simply denying god, either because they had been hurt in some way or were angry at god. belief in god was so fundamental to me that i could not accept that anyone could exist without an inner awareness of his presence. now i'm on the other side. hmmm...

btw, i will be happy to devote equal blog space to any writer who would like to submit an article arguing for the existence of god.

anyhoo, read, enjoy, think, respond.

On Atheism: Part II
by Sal Paradise
Daydream Nation

Chapter four of Richard Dawkins' brilliant book the God Delusion is titled "Why There Almost Certainly is No God".

As I stated in the Part One of this essay, what it is that really gets me about that statement by Dawkins is the inclusion of the word "almost".

Atheism is nothing more than a declaration to remain within the boundaries of reason.

There is a vast difference between the statement, "there certainly is no god" and the statement, "there almost certainly is no god".

That single word, "almost", is instrumental in illustrating the ways in which an atheist thinks, and is quite powerful in its context. It represents the line that is drawn between reason and absurdity, in that it is indeed absurd for anyone to claim that there "certainly is no god". It's also absurd to claim that there "certainly is a god".

No one knows with complete certainty whether or not there is any sort of god. Neither the most devout clergyman nor the most ardent atheist could make such a claim within the boundaries of reason.

Reason and absurdity.

Atheism and faith.

There are those that believe completely in the existence of dragons. Though they have never actually seen a dragon, believing in them fulfills some kind of emotional void...they cling to their belief in dragons without blinking, without questioning and without a shadow of a doubt, so help them Smaug.

Why? Well, perhaps as children they were enchanted by the idea of dragons...perhaps they read a book or a heard a story told to them in which dragons were presented as such amazing, fantastic creatures that they were sold one hundred percent on the concept. Perhaps the idea of dragons brought to them such dramatic splendor, such a thrill and wonder that the impact the event had on their susceptible, fragile and easily manipulated little minds was nothing short of tremendous, and therefore the idea that dragons may not exist would to them be devastating and heartbreaking, even into their adulthood.

There are also those that don't necessarily believe in dragons, but consider the jury to be still out on the matter. They, just as the dragon faithful, have seen no evidence one way or the other as to whether or not they actually exist. Maybe these individuals, too, were enchanted by the idea of dragons as children. Maybe they had read the Hobbit or played a role playing game of some kind; but as they grew older, alas! their faith in the existence of dragons was shaken. They consider the existence of dragons to be quite possible, and may think to themselves, "how nice it would be if they were really out there somewhere", but for the most part they reside atop a fence of faith regarding the existence of dragons, waiting for the winds of whatever it may be to cast them onto one side of that fence or the other.

Then there are those that don't really ever consider the existence of dragons at all. While even these individuals may have had an extraordinary experience as children in regard to dragons, they just don't really think about dragons at all anymore. While they, too, just as everyone else, have never seen a shred of actual evidence indicating that dragons may exist, this type of person considers it to be a complete waste of time in general to even consider the matter. They know that in all likelihood, dragons almost certainly do not exist...and the question of the existence of dragons is not ever going to impact their lives in any way. To them, their time is better spent thinking about things that verifiably exist within the observable, living world around them.

Now, those in this latter category, when pressed with the question, "do dragons exist?", what you will likely receive as an answer is the following:

"Dragons almost certainly do not exist."

Let's stay on the topic of dragons, here...

Let's pretend for a moment that someone has given to me their newborn infant to care for for the rest of its life for the sole purpose of conducting an experiment..

Let's pretend that I immediately begin to rear this infant to believe in the existence of dragons. I center it's life around...let's call it "Dragonism"...and bestow upon this infant a structured and dynamic belief system featuring an endless string of dramatic, scary and wonderful stories about "the Great Dragon". The Great Dragon is everywhere. The Great Dragon watches over you. The Great Dragon made all of us and created the world from its fiery breath. The Great Dragon loves you and watches over you. The Great Dragon punishes those that don't believe in the Great Dragon. The Great Dragon will cast you into the Dungeon of Suffering if you have not devoted your life to the service of the Great Dragon.

I think that there's a pretty good chance that said infant is going to reach puberty and early adulthood with a rock solid belief in Dragonism.

This is especially likely if as much as possible I decide to isolate the child in an environment in which he or she is exposed to "non-Dragonists" as little as possible. After all, exposing the child to the unfaithful may influence them to become Dragon-less heathens...which of course would be tragic, right?

Yes, I think my audience gets my point.

There's no difference between god and dragons. There are those that believe faithfully in "god", and there are those that believe faithfully in "the Great Dragon".

Both are equally absurd.

As an atheist, when considering the world around me and how or why it exists, I simply place both the idea of god and dragons, jesus and outer-space teacups, yahweh and jim jones, mohammed and the flying spaghetti monster, ganesh and the magic toaster all on equal footing with regard to the possibility of their actual existence and relevance to the living, observable and verifiable world around me:

Each of them almost certainly do not exist.

Part III to come...

daydream nation is here

how i was spiritually raped and left for dead (part 5)

part 1 is here
part 2 is here
part 3 is here
part 4 is here

and when the band you’re in starts playing different tunes…
i’ll see you on the dark side of the moon ~ roger waters

my study of cults and thought-reform began, in large part, by accident. i had had some exposure to the topic during my second attempt at college where my studies were split between human services (mental health) and journalism. music was pretty much off the table and i had hoped to ultimately become a writer, focusing primarily on mental health, sociology and social-psychology issues.

in sociology, psychology and even political science classes, i was exposed to information related to the use of influence, thought-reform, and cults in general. this area was fascinating to me, but i would not do any follow-up study for some time.

i was happy being back in college. as a teenager, i had hated school. it was boring. after graduating from high school, i immediately started college as a music major. the truth is, i probably never should have been allowed to graduate high school. i was heavily involved in the music programs at my high school and was allowed to “slide by” missing classes and hanging out (usually high)because of my involvement in music. f’s were magically transformed into d’s or c’s by my “normal” teachers. i had learned that i could be excused from missing classes by simply telling teachers that i had “a music thing to take care of.”

the first time around, college wasn’t so easy. i was severely depressed. i never went to class. the level of competition was high. i was high. i was thrown out of school halfway through the second semester with straight f’s.

it would be 2 years before i would go back to college.

after being tossed out of school, clearly sick with major depression and self-medicating with the abuse a variety of drugs, i moved back in with my parents. shortly thereafter, with my dreams of having a career in music gone, i received a call from a high-school friend’s mom. it was may, 29 1983.

she explained that my friend had been out drinking and was passed-out in the basement. she asked me to take him to an aa meeting.

my parents were out, so i took their car. i had secretly made a copy of their car keys..

i sat in the aa meeting, high on pot, and listened to these people tell dramatic stories of desperation and redemption. i began to believe that these folks might have an answer to my problems. perhaps if i “got sober” i could find happiness too. i had made some halfhearted attempts to stop using drugs. i had also tried to cut down.

after the meeting, we were invited to go with the group to have coffee. that felt good as well. i had forgotten about stealing my parents’ car. i had totaled my own car and was forbidden from driving their cars due to my numerous accidents and driving violations.

at coffee, the guys from the aa group devoted a great deal of time and energy to me. they told me that only i could determine if i was an alcoholic/addict, but spoke to me as if they had already determined that i was one. they suggested that i enter an inpatient rehab. i told them i would consider it.

driving home, my friend and i discussed whether or not i was “chemically dependent,” the 1983 buzz word for alcoholic/addict. he told me about his rehab experience and suggested that i admit myself into the same program. it seemed like it might be a good idea. after all, i was unemployable, too unreliable to get a music gig, and had no commitments. i felt constant pressure to be productive, but was unable to motivate myself. my parents were at their wits end.

by the time i dropped off my friend and returned home, my parents had also returned. as i pulled into the driveway, my father came out and was standing outside. arms folded, he was clearly angry. i was busted for taking the car.

i immediately jumped out of the car and said, “ i am chemically dependent and need to go to drug treatment.”

my father is the greatest man i have ever known. he is everything a man should be. he was devoted to his career and worked his way up from shoe-store stock-boy to president of a fortune 500 company. yet he never neglected his family. he never missed one of our games or performances. he has always deeply loved my mother. that love was demonstrated through the respect and affection he showed for her both privately and publicly. though he has been a highly successful businessman, traveling all over the u.s. and abroad, he has never been unfaithful to my mom.

my father is compassionate, empathic, fair, loving, dedicated, spiritual, generous, and honest. i have never heard him speak badly of others. he treated his employees like family. he treats his family like we are his heart.

he has cried, prayed, fought, struggled, counseled, sacrificed, punished, worried, provided, encouraged, strengthened, affirmed, held, and loved me and my sisters in his efforts to help us meet our potentials.

when i told him i needed to go to rehab, he dropped the issue of me taking the car and sat with me at the kitchen table where we had a long talk.

he told me he loved me. he told me he would support me. he asked me where i wanted to go for rehab. i told him. it was late, but he contacted the rehab facility the next morning and made arrangements for me to be admitted. i would enter treatment the following morning.

the night before i was to enter treatment, i took more drugs than i’d ever taken in my life. when i returned home, i had several grams of hash. already wasted, i went into the bathroom and smoked as much as i could; then i ate the rest.

my parents roused me early the next morning and, still high, i showered. we made our way to the rehab facility.



she has a way about her
i don't know what it is,
but i know that i can't live without her ~ billy joel

i'm intense. burdened. serious. she set me free.

for as long as i can remember, i've had difficulty living in the moment. i've always been that way. maybe i was born that way.

as a teenager, i was an outsider. i was involved in the church music program. i played music at school as well. and although i participated, hung around with other teens, i never really felt connected.

on the inside i felt vulnerable. i was too sensitive...easily hurt. but on the outside, i seemed impenetrable. at times, i held others at bay with my serious demeanor. other times i would act out, fighting, pranking, teasing people. adults at the church i attended would sometimes say, “i don't think i've never seen seekingintongues laugh or smile.”

i met her on may 31st 1983.

in 1983, drug treatment centers were generally not beautiful facilities. this one was harsh--painted cinder block walls and large steel doors. each door had a small square window with thick glass reinforced with thin diagonal steel wires which crisscrossed inside the glass making diamond shapes.

the facility was surrounded by razor wire. the steel doors were locked. the patient rooms were bare, with twin beds, cheap, weathered nightstands and flimsy wood-grain veneered dressers. there were no sharp objects. the mirrors in the bathrooms were made of polished steel, rather than glass, so that they could not be broken and used to harm one's self. the place reminded me of the hospital from the movie one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

as a privileged kid, who group up in a beautiful home around other privileged, middle-class families, i did not feel that this was the right place for me. additionally, after the long admission process, i was coming down from the drugs i'd ingested the previous night. i wanted to get high again.

i finally had to say goodbye to my parents and, after hugs and tears, i was escorted back to the nurse's station.

during the long walk to the nurse's station, i began to think that i could probably convince them that i didn’t need to be here. they had yet to take a drug history from me and i assumed that, if i told them i hadn’t really used drugs that much, they would call my parents to pick me up. i didn’t realize that i had probably been diagnosed as an addict before i even hit the door. in drug treatment in 1983, “no one gets here by mistake,” was the mantra. virtually anyone with health insurance who showed up at a drug treatment center would be admitted.

as i stood at the nurses station, staring at the locked steel doors, contemplating my “escape,” she approached me.

she bounced toward me bubbly, blonde and beautiful. she had long tan legs and was wearing short-shorts and tretorns with no socks. outgoing and confident, she came right up to me and, standing a little too close, she tilted her head to one side. she smiled and said, “cool, you have an earring.”

“who is that girl?” i decided to give rehab a shot.

we became fast friends. we hung out all the time. we even had a mock wedding ceremony, officiated by one of the counselors, where we exchanged leather rings that we’d made in art therapy. she was discharged before me and when i had day passes, we attended church together. she was my pal and my girlfriend.

i was in rehab for 7 weeks. i had good insurance and length of stay was directly related to insurance coverage. the rehab did me good. i was drug-free, had reconnected with my religious beliefs, been given hope, and found a really great friend and girlfriend in the suntanned girl who’d approached me at the nurse's station.

after rehab, my family welcomed me back home in a celebratory manner…the prodigal son. they loved me and forgave me. i also, hooked up with the local chapter of palmer drug abuse program, a support group and counseling center for teens and young adults.

pdap provided me with a social outlet. it was a way to have friends while avoiding those people i'd used drugs with in the past. she went to pdap with me. she drew me out of myself.

she was outgoing, open and vulnerable. she got me to talk...long discussions into the late hours, talking about dreams and demons.

she made me laugh. like kids, we'd walk through the grass and trees—blue sky overhead. she would run from me, daring me to catch her. we would poke and tease one another. she would sit on my chest and tickle my ribs. then she would jump to her feet. “you can't make me kiss you back,” she would say. then she would close her lips tightly and open her eyes wide. she would move her head from side to side, holding back laughter, resisting, as i tried to place my mouth on her tightly closed lips.

as my lips touched hers, she tightened them even more in defiance...until she surrendered. we fell into eachother's arms and the world drifted away.

then we would lie together, staring at the soft, airy, cumulus clouds, assigning meaning to the shapes we'd imagined they made.

pdap was a national non-profit organization which had support groups and counseling centers in several cities around the country. up until 1980, it had been run by bob. following two national news stories, one on 60-minutes and one on 20/20, bob was fired. he was exposed for using manipulative, brutal and cultic methods to control staff and clients and for taking money from private, for-profit hospitals fo referring kids from the non-profit program he controlled.

to a large degree, pdap had cleaned-up its act. it had a fantastic counselor training school with a strong multi-disciplinary faculty. however, most of the organization's directors had worked for and were trained by bob. there was still a strong machiavellian component within the program's hierarchy. heavy confrontation was commonplace. and the staff, which consisted almost entirely of former clients, were treated as though we were still clients. we were subjected to the leadership's assessment of the quality of our sobriety and spiritual development. this meant that we had to attend staff purpose meetings (originally implemented by bob) and that the directors generally played the role of counselor and 12-step sponsor to us.

i entered the pdap with 7 weeks sober and got my 30 day monkey-fist--a token recognizing 30 days of continuous sobriety--after attending pdap meetings for 30 days. immediately, upon receiving my monkey’s fist, i was asked to serve on the steering committee, a volunteer service-oriented group made up of members of the support group. at 6 months sober, i became a counselor aide.

she was with me throughout all of this. at times, i would realize how close we'd gotten, how vulnerable i'd become. i would try to push her away. i ignored her. sometimes, i was cruel to her.

she would come out, wearing shorts or a flirty skirt, flitting about. her eyes were bright, either green or blue depending on what she was wearing. she would go about her business, talking to other boys, her blond hair gently touching the soft, tan skin of her bare neck, smiling as though she was unaffected by my indifference to her. she always looked and smelled ethereal. she would walk right past me, subtly switching her hips. she would continue in this manner until youthful jealousy would win out and she would draw me in. she would cause me to expose myself to her once again. it was as if she knew parts of me that were hidden from the rest of the world, hidden from me.

i was not ready to return to college. i knew that music was out of the question due to the prevalence of drug use in the music culture. since i loved helping others, i pursued a career as a counselor. i went to michigan for my first paid job in the drug treatment field. after a few months, the michigan pdap board of directors sent me to texas to attend a counselor training school..

after working as a counselor for pdap, and becoming a bit turned-off by the controlling, confrontational drug treatment culture, i decided to go back to college. also, the director for whom i’d been working was contacted by the pdap national staff while i was in counselor training. they had told him that they did not believe he would be able to keep me. they had fought with him to let them place me in a larger program where they could advance my career. this made him angry. rather than recognizing that a small organization like the michigan program did not have the resources necessary to develop young talent, he saw it as a personal affront to his abilities as a director.

he refused to allow the national staff to place me and insisted that i return to michigan. he took out his anger on me, accusing me of making the national training coordinator think i was a “hot shot.” he also kept a close hold on me. i was frequently confronted for “secretly thinking about leaving michigan,” thereby betraying my him. it seemed as though this was personal to him. if i left, it would mean that the national team was correct, that he wasn't capable of hanging on to me.

i hadn’t thought of leaving michigan, but with the constant suggestion that i was going to leave, i began to consider it. pdap wasn’t fully cultic at that time, but the ghost of bob’s cultic ways was still present. also, my boss was a holdover from the bob days, he tended toward being manipulative and controlling.
in 1986, i returned to st. louis where i worked for st. louis pdap for a short time before going back to school.

i was on the honor roll and dean’s list right out of the gate. i had decided to pursue journalism. i took a lot of writing course and made a’s. i also began to take more psychology, sociology, and human services classes. i did not intend to return to the field of drug and alcohol counseling, but my journalism professor recommended that i load up on classes related to the areas on which i wanted to write.

i was also working as a prep-cook at a local bar and grill, teaching drums at a local music studio, and working, as a volunteer, with young people who were being sent to me by various local ministers. there was no shortage of substance abusers in need of help on the college campus either. i had the opportunity to help some of them as well.

i joined the music society at school and became friends with the music society’s president, a red-hot, professional studio guitarist, who was severely addicted to alcohol. i was able to get him a bed in a treatment program (he had no insurance) and became his sponsor. we started jamming together and got a band going with some sober kids from the program.

i wasn’t very good. i didn’t have the time to devote to practicing. we played a graduation party or 2 and often played for the local pdap group. we were pretty bad, didn’t make any money, but had a lot of fun.

i was in college when i met bob. the st. louis pdap program had been on the verge of closing and he had positioned himself as the man who would save the program. he got me to volunteer at the “new” st. louis pdap (later the program changed its name). the program had broken its affiliation with pdap national and bob had taken control. even though he had been fired years earlier, he was still a legend in pdap.

i became increasingly more involved in bob's st' louis program. bob, jim and al opened an inpatient hospital program and offered me the directorship. i worked full-time as the hospital's director while attending college full-time. i continued with school, completing 2 years, until i was convinced, by jim. and bob, that school was a dead end. they wanted me to quit school and go to atlanta to run a new program they were starting.

while i had been in school, i had begun to learn a bit about cults. but more importantly, i became a voracious reader.

i moved to atlanta and delivered pizza, while working on licensing and opening the atlanta program. it was 1988.

i hated being in atlanta. i wanted to be in my home town. i wanted to be in college.

my girl had moved to atlanta too and in september of '88 we took a trip back to st. louis to get married. the suntanned sweetheart i'd met in rehab became mrs. seekingintongues.

during this time i was reading a lot. m. scott peck was one of my favorite authors. i’m pretty sure that the first book on cults i ever read came from the bibliography of peck’s book, a different drum.

among the cult books i read was steve hassan’s landmark text, combating cult mind control.

this book, combating cult mind control, would ultimately save my family.

it also saved bob bob’s life.
 
 
i remember the girl of my dreams
found my soul
and she placed my heart back
in my "missing-heart hole"
and my child like passion and wonder
and pride
returned, and i started to glow
from inside~seekingtongues (1997)


i had left her when i went to michigan to become a counselor. i was determined to become the greatest drug and alcohol counselor ever. i was going save lives. i didn't intend to allow anything or anyone to become important enough to me to distract me from this goal. this was my excuse for leaving her.

ultimately i couldn't let her go. in the quiet moments, i longed for her. it was as if she was sweetly seducing me from 800 miles away. i finally gave in and called her. i convinced her to come to michigan to be with me.

late one night, we stood on the shore of one of michigan's expansive lakes. there were a billion stars overhead. the stars lit up the lake...a billion wavering points of light. as a challenge, we tried to last an hour without touching each other. laughing, we would move our hands as close as possible to the other's body without making contact.

ultimately, desire won. we embraced. tenderness and passion. tension and release.

the past didn't matter. everything we'd been through, all our experiences, our difficulties, had led to this union. everything had a purpose and that purpose was us. she found me. we found eachother. we would always be together. she would always touch me. i would always touch her.


arizona 1997

i was just about finished getting bob's residential program launched. under rachael's (one of bob's girls) watch, i was, putting the finishing touches on the policy and procedure manual.

my marriage was in shambles. we lived in the same house but not together. our connection had been destroyed. the girl i'd met in rehab, my love, had left her body and and someone else had moved in. her essence had been destroyed by bob and his wife's relentless demand for total allegiance. they had uncovered and destroyed everything we loved until nothing was left...except them.

i hadn't touched her in months.

i knew my wife was reporting my actions to bob and his wife, so i did not feel safe at home. bob's wife had ordered my wife to destroy or sell box-loads of my books, mostly stuff related to synanon, counseling, psychology, sociology, and cults. i had no friends and had not spoken to my parents and siblings since the 1995 confrontation. our contact with my family had been restricted and supervised prior to that.

my father , having not heard from me and having written and called numerous times, had flown to arizona and tried to make contact. he knocked on our door while my wife, my daughter, and i hid in the bathroom. afraid that his spiritual darkness would harm us.

bob was on the phone. i was at rachael’s house, literally an hour away from finishing the policy and procedure manual. i could tell by rachael’s demeanor that it was bob on the phone. i could also tell that he was attempting to find out when we’d be finished and that they had already concocted some kind of plan to “deal with me” once the manual was complete.

rachael hung-up the phone and said, “bob wants you to go to george's house when we’re done. he wants to see you.”

my heart raced with fear. then, i had the strangest experience. one i’d had only once before, in the 1995 confrontation. i was looking down from above my body, detached from myself.

“hey! hey! hey!!” rachael was shouting. i snapped back into my body. “i need you to be a martian right now,” she said. “i need you to focus. let’s finish this.”

i had assumed that while i was working with rachael, bob had moved my wife and daughter out of my house. it was almost impossible to finish. it was excruciating. i’m pretty sure, however, that bob and george didn’t feel a thing. for them it was another day.

after completing the work with rachael, i went straight to george’s house. i had been instructed not to go home before going to there.

george greeted me at the door with a smile and a hug. he guided me to his backyard where bob was smiling and sitting quietly, legs crossed-- a buddah on a garden bench at the edge of the brick walkway that meandered past george’s swimming pool and through his backyard garden. he was holding a big stick.

bob sat silently, stick in hand, staring at me. he looked at my eyes, then slowly down to my feet and back up to my eye’s. he held his gaze, staring directly into my eye’s. i did not dare to break eye contact. after a long pause he stood, pointed at the bench with his stick and said, “sit.”

i sat.

bob remained quiet pacing in front of me, with george watching silently from the background.
he finally broke silence.

“you’re a pussy,” he said. another pause.

“i’m tired of hearing your wife complain about wanting to leave you. she can’t stand the sight of you because you are a fvckin’ broad [meaning woman]. i’m tired of hearing her say she doesn’t love you. what am i supposed to do, send her back to her mother?”

he was right. i was broken. i was afraid to have an opinion, afraid to express an idea or thought. i didn't laugh or smile. my intellect, my sense of humor, my passion, they were gone. i simply did what i was told. i was unaware that they'd been telling my wife that i didn't love her as well.

he was silent again…pacing.

“you are full of fear,” he continued. “you have too many feelings. men don’t have fear. men don’t have feelings. men don’t care about romance.”

“you think i give a sh!t about my wife? she cleans the house and cooks my meals. a couple times a week i bend her over the bathroom counter and get what i need. she has a vibrator. if she wants to get off, she can go crazy with that thing for all i care.”

“do you think i cared when stan [his stepson] died. i cared that my wife was too fvcked up to clean the house and cook my meals…that’s what i cared about. i didn’t cry. i didn’t have feelings. i didn’t even like the fvcker.”

“feelings are bullsh!t! romance is bullsh!t! fear…is bullsh!t!!

“none of it’s real. fear...isn’t...real”

whap! he hit me on the shoulder with the stick. i didn’t flinch. my shoulder was burning, but i didn’t really feel it. i had reverted to floating above my body.

“that’s real,” he said speaking of the pain in my shoulder.

he pulled up a lawn chair, sat across from me and laid the stick across his lap. george pulled up a chair and sat next to him.

i remember thinking, “i was afraid you were going to hit me with that stick. was that real?” i was too terrified to speak.

bob, with george beside him, unfolded the plan he had hatched to keep things in place until the residential center was launched.

“you need to find your true sociopathic male self,” he said. “you need to take all those fears and feelings and stuff them deep down inside…in place where they’ll never again see the light of day.”

george sat beside him nodding and making his best “serious” face. in retrospect, i’m not sure george had the capacity to understand anything bob was saying.

bob explained his plan. i was to go spend a week in isolation, in the desert at the foot of the santan mountains, using the empty residential facility as my base. i was to have no contact with anyone. i was to spend my time fully and finally ridding myself of any and all emotion.

bob, in a classic eriksonian hypnotic approach, began planting suggestions. i was already in an altered state.

he said, “when you get out there you’re going to be overcome with every fear imaginable. you’re going to constantly be afraid that we have somebody at your house, fvcking your wife’s brains out. i can make that happen if i want. you’re going to be afraid we are moving her to another city. when you come back, you’re not gonna care. you’re gonna be a man…with no more feelings. you won’t give a sh!t about anything except whether that b!tch does your laundry.

“go home.” he said. “don’t say anything to your wife except ‘i’ll be back,’ pick up some sh!t and don’t come back for a week.” he handed me a twenty dollar bill. “get some food,” he said.

that was it. i walked out the door, went home, told my wife i’d be back, grabbed a couple shirts and a pocket knife and headed for the santan mountains.

on the way there, i stopped at a little rural grocery store. i grabbed a 1 lb. block of cheese, some water and some bananas. while i was picking up the food and water, i was struck by the woman who was ringing me up. i assumed that the little store was family owned and that she was wife and mother to the family. what caught my attention was that she was smiling. she seemed genuinely happy with her simple life. she was kind and friendly. this was a world i didn’t know.

at this point, i still believed everything bob had said. soon i would be reformed once and for all.

but i couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in the store. she was unencumbered by any mission to save the world…or her soul. my thoughts would continue to return to this woman.

the list
1. a gallon of gasoline
2. two glass mason jars
3. two rags
4. pants, shoes, shirt—fished out of a dumpster
5. a handgun

my plan to kill bob and his wife would come to me shortly.

to be continued...