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