He wasn’t doing his job. He didn’t give a fuck about those people. For me, I say, well, I can do something about it, but I’ll end up going to prison, and the people that I help would end up pointing the finger at me. So, I mean, there is nothing I can do without me sacrificing my life, and I said, you know, I’ve already done most of my life in prison, why should I go to prison to save somebody’s chastity, you know, getting raped, they can just wipe that off. Sex to me is no big trip, I don’t feel that someone got violated, and it’s a terrible thing, I just thought clean it off, that’s all that is. So, I don’t have any moral convictions in that respect. I do have a thing if a person gets paid to protect somebody from being hurt by somebody else, that’s something they should do. People that turn their backs on somebody that’s being abused, and they don’t help, when it’s their turn to be abused, they ain’t got no bitch coming.
They’re doing wrong and they know they’re wrong and they don’t want it to catch up with them. They know it’s coming for them but they just don’t know how, how to deal with it. That’s why they’re always trying to get me. Like getting me is going to stop it. What it is, is what they put in motion. Do you understand that? People put stuff in motion against themselves and then they turn around and say it’s somebody else that’s making it happen. There’s nobody else that’s making it happen. They’re making it happen to themselves. As long as the law, the people representing the law, as long as they abide by the law they represent, they’re in a safe zone, nobody has any power over them, but when they break the law and they’re representative of the law then they have the outlaw that’s going to get them. If you go to work and you sin against somebody else, like, I’ll give you an example. A guy becomes a correctional officer and he comes in and he reads an inmate’s mail and he finds out that his wife doesn’t like homosexuals. So his wife comes to visit and he’s in the visiting room and he sees the wife and the wife has got a young daughter. He likes the young daughter and the wife so he locks the kid up and when the next visit comes he says, “I’m sorry, your husband was caught in a homosexual activity.”
She gets mad, and he says, “Your husband’s life is at stake, I’ll meet you at the hot dog stand and I’ll explain it to you, but I may lose my job if I get caught doing this because I’m taking a chance.” So the woman goes over to the hot dog stand and the cop picks her up in his car and says her husband was caught sucking on somebody else and he’s been a faggot all down the line. So she cuts him loose and starts going out with the cop and the guy hangs himself in the cell when his wife sends him a Dear John letter… that really happened, that happens every day, you know, it happens all the time. That’s all this is. All you’re hiring these people to do, they come in, they’re not coming in here as fine men upholding the law. They’re doing anything they can get away with; only thing that’s holding them is that they know they’ll get their goddamn throats cut if they fuck around too much, man. If they do it too much then somebody is going to step out from somewhere and stab them to death, that’s what’s going to happen to them. You can’t get away with this shit. You get away with it for so long and it’s going to catch up with you. You’re no better than anybody else, just because you’re highway patrol.
If you’re highway patrol and you’re molesting people on the way to school, one of the parents is going to get upset when their little girls come back with blood all over their dresses. That’s what I learned in Mexico. In Mexico, if you transgress against another man’s family and he comes and he takes your life, they don’t take him to trial. They give him an apology for the behavior of an asshole that didn’t abide by the rules and regulations that he should have abided by. Then if you come up and you won’t snitch, the Mexican cops will beat your motherfuckin ass and make you tell. They’ll hook you up to electronics and bury you in shit, if necessary. You’re gonna get right, or get wrong, so it’s just the same thing. It should be like that everywhere but it’s not. You come across the border; they’re rats on this side of the fucking line, man. It’s one big fucking snitch-out. When I got back from Mexico I was put in prison for white slavery, and smuggling guns, and, uh, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. I was sent to federal prison for ten years, and she filed for divorce. We wasn’t even married, but they granted her the divorce. Remember when Nixon jumped up and said, “Manson is guilty?” Well, that’s because he was standing in that divorce court, because he was riding on my criminal court. A lot of people don’t know the way a court works. See, the civil court and the divorce court run on the criminal court. Different chambers of justice, and honor, run like upside down, and backwards.
III
NOTHING TO LOSE
These days, I’m employed as part of a crisis response team, performing emergency outreach work for the mental health clinic in my city. I do a lot of community assessments and take a lot of phone calls, most of them from people who are overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed. In these cases, it’s my job to reacquaint patients with the present, help them prioritize their lives, and encourage them to work through their troubles. Many people tend to live in anticipation, agonizing over what may happen next in their lives, obsessed with that over which they have no control. In simplest terms, people suffering with anxiety are consumed by thoughts of the future. Those overwhelmed by depression often dwell too much on the past. Of course, some find themselves tossed back and forth between the two, preoccupied with the past, in constant dread of the pending.
The longer you perform crisis work, the less you perceive people’s circumstances to be problematic. It becomes easier to see that everything is the way it is, because that’s the way it is. And you come to recognize a sort of perfection in the way life exists, in the acceptance of the things that can’t be changed. You come to appreciate the power of a simple shift in perception, realize that if only people could see things from a slightly different angle, many dilemmas would cease to exist. You learn to assess problems without regarding them as such, because in naming something a problem, you give it power. Acceptance is the most difficult thing to achieve, but my work has taught me it’s most vital to life.
A few years ago, my life was lined up perfectly. I was in love
with an amazing girl, I had the best friends in the world, and my band, Plastic Bastard, was working on doing a Canadian tour with my hero, Alice Cooper. I remember at the height ofmy happiness driving back from seeing the Groovie Ghoulies in Saskatoon with my friend Brian. The Ghoulies were one of our favorite bands and they even let us write up their set list that night. With Brian fast asleep in the passenger seat, I drove under some low lying fog and felt alive, energized. Through the fog, I witnessed the brightest falling star I’d ever seen. But as I thought about making a wish, I felt a twinge of dread that everything good was going to change.
I have a deep love for everything odd, especially those gems once possessed by my idols. It’s easy to see, then, why eBay has become one of my favorite time killers. I’ve collected artifacts owned and worn by my heroes since I was a kid. When I was nine or ten years old, my Uncle Ernie used to take my friends and me to Stampede Wrestling matches, where we’d try to meet all the wrestlers and ask them to sign our programs. When I got into music, I’d jump at the chance to see the bands that toured through my city, especially those that hosted in-store record signings. I began accumulating autographs scrawled on records, photos, set lists, anything to which you can take a pen. I probably own well over a thousand signatures.
I own clothing worn by Kiss, Alice Cooper, Randy Rhoads, Kurt Cobain, The Ramones, and Hank Williams, and there is a story behind each piece I’ve acquired. I own a lounging robe worn by Marilyn Monroe, a garment she generously gave to a maid who complimented her on how beautiful she looked in it. I own three of the locks Houdini used to train for his elaborate underwater escapes. I’ve amassed quite a few exotic movie props-swords and
shields from great epic Hollywood productions, like Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. My home is a tribute to these legends, a cross between a Ripley’s museum and a Hard Rock Cafe.
While surfing eBay one day, I came across a vendor selling some of the more select celebrity items I’ve discovered on the Internet: a shirt that had supposedly been worn by Elvis Presley, a snip ofJames Dean’s pubic hair, and several letters and postcards from Charles Manson. Even by my standards, these things were pretty fucked up. I couldn’t believe the authenticity of the listings, so I emailed the seller to ask how he’d obtained such unique items. In no time, he wrote back and assured me that he knew all the people whose relics he sold, that he was writing a memoir about his Hollywood relationships. He wanted to pass these artifacts on to someone who would appreciate them. He was also hoping to earn a few extra bucks to buy an urn for the ashes of his beloved terrier, which had recently passed away.
The seller wrote that he had limited Internet access and asked me for my address so he could explain his story more efficiently. Fascinated, I complied, and a week later I received a neatly typed, sixteen-page letter from Donald Taylor, a man who claimed to have had sex with more than five thousand men, among them Elvis Presley,James Dean, Lenny Bruce, Orson Wells, and Charles Manson. In his letter, Donald went into great detail about his escapades; his story was completely over-the-top. Interestingly, he also mentioned he had been friends with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. Donald’s package included his phone number, and the first time I called him, our conversation lasted well over two hours. Of course this was, according to most people’s standards, a strange and somewhat suspicious introduction to a
very strange and suspicious man. Donald was eager to talk to me, perhaps a little too eager. I believe that timing is everything, and so he wrote, and I called, and he met me when he had finished writing his memoir without a clue how to publish it.
I found Donald fascinating; he possessed a wealth of information and told the most amazing stories. During one phone conversation, Donald told me his existence was sort of “serendipitous.” He said he had worked his whole life in the service industry and, thus, met many celebrities. Since he was “a world class slut,” he took whatever opportunities he could to meet and mingle with the stars; he was essentially a groupie. Donald relayed his story in a soft-spoken, southern accent. His facts were consistent and extremely specific. I got the impression that he was pretty lonely, which seemed to make sense for a man who had attempted to associate almost exclusively with famous figures, now all either dead or distanced. Donald loved to talk about his adventures and he seemed thankful I was such a receptive, interested audience. He assured me that he knew his story sounded unbelievable and that he had trouble believing it himself.
I then learned that Donald had found a San Francisco publisher interested in releasing his memoir, minus the material surrounding his relationship with Manson. Donald refused to scrap the Manson story because he believed that Manson was one of the most important and influential people he’d ever met. When we began communicating with each other, Donald promised to send a completed manuscript to me in no time at all. He was counting on my opinion. And three weeks after that conversation, I received a package from him in the mail.
I began reading the enclosed manuscript immediately, but I
could get only about four or five pages in. I was stunned to find that the book was composed almost exclusively of some of the most disturbing, poorly written gay porn anyone could possibly imagine. The author’s voice seemed in stark contrast to the personality I had talked to so extensively on the phone. In the letter he sent me, Donald talked about the general nature of his relationships and the impact they’d had on his life. But his book was geared only toward shock value, filled with tasteless, graphic accounts of incest, coprophagia, and rape that functioned to disturb instead of enlighten.
While Donald’s manuscript was a disappointment, his correspondence with Manson was fascinating. Don sent me several letters, postcards, and photos he’d received from his infamous friend. He hoped that, since I worked in psychiatry, I would find them “interesting.” He’d tried in vain to sell the items together on eBay, hoping to acquire “at least” fifty dollars for everything. But eBay pulled the auction before anyone could bid, citing strict guidelines around selling “murderobilia.”
To hold Manson’s writing in my hands, the paper he’d handled and entrusted with his most personal thoughts, was nothing short of amazing. It felt as if the letters had been lifted from another time and place; Manson had written them from his jail cell, a world contained within a world I could hardly imagine. Atop the stack of letters sat a postcard with a picture of a Gambel’s quail on the front. I carefully turned it over and read the first words:
“Always is always, always and that’s forever in ALL WAYS.”
I let the words resonate in my brain. That line had the qualities of a riddle: tempting, taunting. “Always is always,
always”: a circular arc of thought, which ran like an idea falling onto itself. The subtle word play intrigued me; it seemed more like wisdom than nonsense. I read on:
“Whenever I think of what you think you are, and are not -I could never say more, because you already know why, and never less because you’re on that side of the top, under and around the all of all ways and forever even when I don’t spell it or tell it - it’s in my own words.”
I was struck by the lyricism ofthese lines and the immensity of the ideas they contained, like the thought that one person could read another’s mind. I’ve met mystics who have experienced themselves as everything and perceived life as happening for them instead of to them. I wanted to pass Manson’s ideas off as the products of sheer insanity, but they seemed so thoughtfully, deliberately cryptic that I couldn’t dismiss them.