Nomitcanbci told-fhe amazi
story of OHO o the great escap oi aUtime!
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Nowitcanbe, told-tlie amazing
story of one of
the great escapes
of all time!
This unbelievable— bnt true- personal account could not have been published before now.
Dr. Timothy Leary, international Pied
Piper of the connter-cnltnre, tells his
own hair-raising story— escape from
an American prison— underground adventures
fleeing the U.S. for sanctuary in
Algeria— imprisonment hy Eldridge Cleaver
and the Panthers— flight from Africa
to temporary safety in Switzerland, only to be caught again.
CONFESSIOIIS OF A HOPS FIEND
reads like a thriller. Here is the fully
authenticated account of what
happened to Timothy Leary,
the headline hero who dared to
gamble with his life.
Editor's Note
If there are two words in the English lan- guage which set the editorial heart throbbing like no other, they are "in confidence." So when the well-known international lawyer Alan U. Schwartz, friend and representative of important authors and publishers alike, came to my door in the summer of 1972 with a manuscript purportedly written by Timothy Leary, the heart did indeed beat faster as the nerve endings began to tingle expectantly.
I read the manuscript and was completely taken by its combination of candor, poetry, adventure, sly humor, political intrigue, sex and jagged turns, twists, gaps and edges. I thought that it was a remarkable literary doc- ument, an exciting escape story and a juicy journalistic account of life with Eldridge Cleaver and crew in Algiers. With some clar- ification of its more mysterious connections and references, some sandpapering of the edges, I thought, the manuscript could be pub- lished to the delight of hundreds of thousands of readers. Two colleagues, one younger, one older, read the manuscript and agreed. Mr. Schwartz and I met again. Time for some questions.
Was this wild tale of escape and escapade genuine? Yes, certainly, and the fugitive could be produced if necessary to bear wit- ness.
How did it come into your hands? Well, now, there is a business acquaintance in London, a PoKsh film producer, Gutowski; he was in touch with Leary and with one Mon- sieur Hauchard, a resident of Lausanne, Switz- erland.
Why is this manuscript in confidence with a paperback publisher? Very simple — the world publication rights should be under one roof — the publication might very well be in paperback originally (there is some topical urgency here). Besides, it would seem obvi- ous that such a headline-making man and flouter of the Law had the world literally waiting for his story every bit as much as the children, fathers and mothers of the Drugged Generation in America.
And so a contract was negotiated and drawn — the "papers" as they are called. A quick trip to Geneva was arranged. The scene shifts.
We gather in the lobby of the hotel Le Richemond, sedate, velvet-upholstered, haunt of nineteenth-century British vacationers. And a strange gathering it is. From London, the stocky young lawyer for Gutowski; from the south of France, Gutowski himself; from Lausanne nearby, Monsieur Hauchard, tall, white-haired and gilded, host and guide for the New York trio; and now the man of the hour, Leary, enthusiastic, slightly Mephisto-
phelian, ready to work, very real The scene shifts again.
A small private dining room, with a large rectangular table covered with green felt. Us and the papers. Talk about clauses, war- ranties, payments, accomphces, editorial changes, yes, no and no maybes. We know what we must have; we have what they want; the machinery purrs on. And overlooking this curious group is a picture postcard painting of Christ all aglow and the Disciples listening intently. What would such an event be with- out a love feast? Monsieur Hauchard has ordered — elaborately — and we are joined by friends of Leary: the famous Brian Barritt of the manuscript and a young woman, Gar- boesque in her beauty. And then the food and wine. Cheerful conversation rippled, ego strings plucked and soothed.
So easy then to finish the editorial part of the job in an afternoon and evening. Timothy Leary, actor, writer, teacher, priest, perched cross-legged on a side chair. Can we say this in the book? Yes. Change that? Yes, but maybe do it this way. All present, actively involved. Timothy Leary, now to settle in Switzerland, to live and write, make movies and records, wait for the signal to greet the press and talk about Confessions of a Hope Fiend. Each and every page of the manu- script was initialed with a flourish. Since that happy August day the tightly woven strands and connections have been stretched, broken, twisted, and here and there repaired. Were agreements broken — and by whom? Will the
grand plan for book and film come to pass? Leary and Switzerland just couldn't last, shall we say. The country does not lend Itself to charismatic figures in search of a lost audi- ence. And as for escape to Asia with an- other beautiful young woman — something snapped. The long, lazy arm of the Law must reach out from sunny Cahfornia, clap on the manacles and bring the man home.
There was swift trial on the escape charge and conviction. Yes, the defendant is guilty of that crime, saith the jury (crime?). And yet the defendant Tim Leary states that he had a fair trial. Case closed.
Now the book is here, with a life of its own. It is still a remarkable literary account. The man opens his mind. It is a wild, wan- dering adventure and a raw, jarring look at the reahty of existence, both in our country and the world around us.
Marc Jaffe April 1973
Confessions
of a Hope Fiend
TIMOTHY LEARY
A NATIONAL OENCRAL COMPANV
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
A Bantam Book/ published July 1973
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1973 by Michel-Gustave Hauchard.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a National General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019,
FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
February 19, 1970
Orange County Superior Court
Just around midnight the jury came in with the verdict. Dehberations had lasted all day. The District Attorney was worried. We were bored. Bonne Chance deals the cards. A pack of fools, lovers, and jugglers. This deck had been shuffled long before this day of judgment. We had gone through the two weeks' proceedings in that som- nambulant courtroom stupor. It had been a year of melodramatic trials and tribulations in Texas, New York, and Cahfornia. Three posses of the United States Law Estabhshment slowly closing in on us. The government had armies of prosecu- tors. We were reheved that the chmax was about to happen. Judicial procedures by this time were boring charades. During the day of waiting comic congeniality had ruled the courtroom. Two weeks' confinement with the court clerks, bailiffs, and sheriff's deputies had produced a cautious accept- ance like shipwrecked survivors, passengers, and crew thrown together on a lifeboat. It was an im- portant case to the District Attorney. He had assembled a jury of hanging men and women, John Birch stereotypes, but the long wait had him
2 r CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
fngntened. When the jury sent out a request for coffee he grabbed the bailiff's jacket, shoved the cocked hat rakishly over his forehead, and tiptoed around the courtroom in waiter pantomime. Big laugh for the DA.
The verdict surprised no one. We were all found guilty of possession, the wizard crime. S^e was C — condemned on two counts : ten years for some morsels of hashish and ten years for a few volts of LSD. The young Jack was guilty of the same. I was condemned for two roaches which had ap- peared in the hand of the policeman who had searched the ashtray of the car I was driving. In both this trial and the federal trial in Laredo, Texas, my lawyers had put up no defense. We hoped to win the case in higher court. The at- torneys assured that I would be immediately re- leased on Appeal Bond. The Constitution of the United States and all legal precedent guaranteed bail. But the magic mantra guilty produced a dramatic change in the Judge. The good-natured handball partner of my lawyers suddenly re- gressed into a grim inquisitor. We were unpre- pared for the vindictiveness. He announced that I would not be released on Appeal Bond but re- manded at once to the custody of the Orange County Sheriff as a danger to society and a menace to the community. The fluorescent lights of the Courtroom shimmered off his shaven head as he waved damning documents upon which he based his convictions. The sheriff's deputies approached.
- We will handcuff you out in the hallway so that your wife and son won't see.
- Come back soon, she said.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 3
They pulled my hands behind my back and slipped on the cuff s. We rode to the Orange County Jail in a squad car. It was very efficient. The receiving gates were opened by remote control. Radio messages crackled back and forth between the cruiser and headquarters. I stood under the hard glare in front of a reception panel. The door of a holding cell clicked open and slipped shut behind me. There was a concrete floor with no benches. The guards gathered around in New Testament style and looked curiously, laughing at the new martyr.
- For you we throw away the key. If we have our way you'll never get out.
My cellmate, dozing, head on knees, was roused to interest.
- How come they teU you that, man. What you done?
- God knows, I said.
Then came those weary, lonesome jailhouse blues. I won't be in her arms tonight.
After a long time the cell doors clicked open and I walked into a large receiving tank. Two cons in green trustee uniforms were behind the counter.
- Strip. Hold up your arms.
A bored con points a squirt gun and sprays my armpits and balls with DDT.
- Bend down and close your eyes.
The hissing spray wets my head. After a shiver- ing shower I dress in green jail clothes and pas- sively cooperate during the long process of finger- printing while the guards beat up a drunk Black man in the comer.
I carried my jailhouse records up the escalator.
4 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Guards watch silently behind armored plate glass. It was a modem Orwelllan jail. A trustee hands me a plastic-covered mattress, sheets, blankets, and a towel. I feU on the soft pile with the other depressed kids.
After a while a metal voice ordered:
- On your feet. Go down to K tank.
Behind the glass a crew-cut khaki guard points down the hall. Control room panels around him flash red and green. I walk down the runway, past several eight-man holding cages. A door slides open.
- Take the upper bunk.
I threw the mattress on the metal slab too tired for sheets, climb up, tune out.
Early morning Ught and noise wakes me. Seven cellmates coughing, shitting, washing, grumbling.
- Whafs happening?
- Breakfast. Sleep if you want to.
I sleep and wake to TV clamor. I sit up on the bunk. My cellmates cluster around. A family re- union of smiling misfits.
- You got lots of friends here.
A trustee passed cigarettes and candy through the bars. A long-haired saint hands me the gospel of the Buddha. There are many illuminated God- intoxicated men in the Orange County Jail. The buzzer sounds for lunch and the door slides open. We march single file to the mess hall. The first jail meal on a tin tray loaded with mucky porridge, a tin cup with chlorinated water. I sit next to a surly hulk with thick low brows and black hair swept back low-ride style. His bulging arms were covered with tattoos. There was a sky-blue nude
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND O
girl, a disney orange devil with pitchfork, a purple etched brunette with her haunting cunt trembling where the vein crossed for accuracy. A needle and spoon with the motto "Junk is Fun/' He flexed his arms and rippled muscles. I said :
- You have everything there but *'Bom to Lose* He laughed.
- That's there on my shoulder. He pulled up his short-sleeved shirt.
- Why the number eight? - Heroin man, eighth letter of the alphabet. - You dig heroin? H2O is my favorite, I replied with an aristocratic smile. - Yeah man I love heroin, it's me, he said.
I would hke to have talked more but the guard flicked his finger ordering us to the garbage cans.
Back in the cell the PA system called my name: - Roll up your gear and hit the beach.
In this Orange County Jail they call the runway in front of the cells "the beach." In the Los Angeles Jail they call it "the freeway."
I roll the plastic-covered mattress round the blankets while my mates cluster round.
- Good luck, man, you're bailed out.
I float happy to the tier end. Barred gates click open. The loudspeaker rasps: Proceed to D tank. TTie invisible eye watches me. -- Walk ten feet and turn right. The metal gates slide apart. I was in a new tier of single cells. - Put your gear in D3. The third cell was empty. Metal bed, metal table, metal toilet, metal washbowl. I threw the mattress on the bed. You have your choice of cell lockup or dayroom. Ten men were sitting around . the dayroom watching TV.
A secret club smile made the circle.
6 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
- You know where you are now? Murderers* row. The elite. This is high-power. Protective custody for killers.
We start the ancient prisoner meeting ritual. Whose case, what case, where case. The loud- speaker rasps again :
- Roll up your gear.
An unseen dial opens the cell and the metal voice directs me down hall to another cell tier.
- Welcome to N tank, protective custody for bad actors, noncooperators, snitches, messianic acid heads. We used to have child molesters, baby robbers, motherfuckers, and assorted sex thieves but theyVe been moved next door.
Here in N tank was a pretty slim boy lover, the little brotherfucker telling tender tales of lusty sucking twelve-year boys, pants down on the sofa, when mother comes and screams "PohceT And here was beautiful junior Jesus, a bearded speed- wired acid head. Another drug martyr, mind etched with acid and then hooked into the inces- sant humming methedrine word tape. He was wired day and night with a crazy smile to some neptunian switchboard chattering authentic ga- lactic vibrations and telepathic computer messages nonstop. And here was "Bully Boy Wendel," pro- tection muscle king of the jail, calling soft threats down the tier at fearful titillated sissy girls who threw him chewing gum, sweet chocolate kisses, sugar-coated hcking sticks, and anal twists.
And the silent Chicano snitch kid trembling in the corner of the cell.
And the silent giant Black who nursed psychotic
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND /
jungle rage in the shadow cave and never left for meals.
And Tom Lynn, a twenty-year-old weak blond Aries. He sits next to me in the TV room telling tales of Vietnam, marijuana, Tokyo opium, acid love rituals in army hospitals, hashish concubines in Bangkok, shooting horse in the ladies' rooms of filling stations where he worked. At night he stands outside my cell pretending to sweep, lean- ing on a broom, babbling me hip tales until the bull bellows him back to his cell. Silence on the tier and then each night the eerie murder voice comes singing through the ventilators from the next cellblock.
~ Fuck you bastard, Lynn, get ready to die, your days are numbered.
Tom Lynn wore the jacket of snitch. He was in protective custody to keep the midnight knife from his back. He told this story about once upon a crime a bad guy, Willie Madden, a low-riding armed robber, smashed down candy-store owners screaming for help. Willie and Tom used to shoot horse together. Now Willie faced three life sen- tences. He is a mean mean dude. He beats his wife, he beats his mother, he beats store owners, he beats his victims. His speciality is asshole-rap- ing weak prisoners. Blood, blood, blood. Willie blames sweet Tom for his troubles.
As I listen to this dark tale I shiver in the cold prison mist.
Twice a week on visiting day we were herded down to a crowded room where we looked through the glass at our visitors janmiing into the hallway.
8 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Each prisoner sat at an open booth and talked by telephone through the glass window to family and friends on the other side.
She was sitting behind the glass surrounded by friends. She had a sad story to tell. The Judge was unrelenting. The lawyers helpless and confused. Newspaper editorials praised the crackdown law- and-order policy. We felt the fear that I would never get out from this glass separation. The danger dials were jumping and enthusiasm low. Her face was pressed to the glass, eyes full.
- ril free y^ujoye^ she said.
After twenty minutes the line clicks off. We act out the silent pantomime of farewell. I return to the metal box four feet wide, twelve feet long, ten feet high, arrange the mattress so that it cushions the metal stool, place a yellow legal pad on the metal shelf, and start writing this book. For nine days in murky pale shadow glow, sharpening the pencil with a razor blade held in a match cover, I wrote this jailhouse story and a detailed plan for overthrowing the government of the United States without violence. I wrote in a careful legible script while eating candy bars and smoking. When my hand cramped I walked to the mirror to peer at my pale face, do yoga, fall in bed. Books to read were contraband. Books to write forbidden. I hid the sheets of this manuscript under my mattress and waited for a lawyer's visit to smuggle them out of prison.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
A few days before my sentencing I was called down for a probation interview.
The PO was an excited tall broad-boned western woman coughing cigarette smoke at me. I was genially dignified, resigned to martydom and clas- sified not an escape risk. She interrogated me about schooling and mihtary record, income, assets, stocks and bonds, criminal record, drug use, marital history. She took notes diligently. She wore a few strands of black hair on the back of her hands. I dug her.
After lunch the loudspeaker squawked:
- On the line with gear rolled up. You're check- ing out to Federal Court in Texas.
Down in the basement clothing room they handed me a plastic bag with my London mod flan- nel suit and soft leather desert boots. I sat waiting for three hours in the holding cell until two burly Blacks shouldered into the room. The Feds. County jail guards crowded around respectfully.
- You from the FBI?
A sharp look of disdain. - Federal Marshals.
They pat me down professionally. As they bend over I see Soviet shoulder holsters with genuine blue-steel guns. I follow them handcuffed into a squad car. At the Los Angeles Airport we drive behind the terminal and switch to a local squad car, drive on the runway dodging jetliners, and park under the wing of a waiting plane. Three guards watch as the handcuffs chp off and I climb
10 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
onto the plane. They keep me isolated in the window seat until we land at Phoenix, Arizona. - We are going to do you a favor and drop you off at the Federal Detention Camp. You won't like it at the Phoenix City Jail.
They stashed me in a Federal cattle cage for two days and nights and returned bleary-eyed with whiskey breath. We flew all night to Houston. Un- shaved and sleepless I was shoved into a Federal Courthouse holding cage. Two Marshals held my arms as we walked into the Courtroom. She^was sitting in the spectators' seat flashing love. My lawyers looked worried. A wooden gavel banged. His Honor, the Judge, black-robed shoulders bent, peered down at a little gray criminal. The Judge had a senile eye and facial twitch. His Texas drawl clipped words like meat cleavers.
- You are a thief, the Judge said to the small man. - And apparently a clever thief. His face ticked.
- I sentence you to fifteen years in the Federal Penitentiary. Twitch. The little thief sat next to me. Our eyes met and we shrugged.
I stood below the Judge. He would not look in my eyes. It was afternoon TV, the frowning Judge, his twitch betraying indictable repressions frozen into law; the Court Clerks doddering old men with crepey faces. The fat Federal attorney covered his three hundred pounds of white baby fat with a dark blue suit and white socks. The veins in his neck throbbed as he described aloud sexual fan- tasies about young girls and bo-ays. Your Honor, being perverted, Your Honor, corrupted, Sir, led
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 11
astray, Sir, debauched, destroyed, if it please the Court.
We were a classic cast of outlaws. One cashiered Harvard Alchemist in chains. One beautiful long- haired wife with trembling dark eyes. Two plucky young lawyers skillfully trapping the enraged Judge into reversible errors.
I was sentenced to ten years in the Federal Penitentiary for being in a car in which someone else possessed less than half an ounce of mari- juana. Like his California colleague the Judge illegally denied normal Appeal Bond as a threat to the social order. The lawyers forced the guards to let me spend exactly two minutes with Hex» She came in my arms; for the first time in weeks we made contact. Then the Marshals moved in to break us up.
My lawyers asked if I could write a short state- ment for the press. They tore off a sheet of note pad and I scribbled quickly. Love cannot be im- prisoned.
Handcuffed, I was bustled out the Courtroom door grinning at the leaping pack of reporters and photographers who tripped over backward into the bushes while cameras whirled through a forest of microphones. I was shouldered in the squad car and we roared away to the airport.
~ You have ten years to think about what a big wave you made in Houston, sajd the Marshal.
I was happy to get back to my friends in the cellblock of the Orange County Jail.
At this time I met Bud Bennett. He was a forty- year-old junkie in for sale of heroin. He had spent
12 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
ten years in various prisons and another ten studying yoga, smoking hash and opium on the banks of the Ganges. He was an adept. He had neatly balanced the Time-Space equation.
~ The prison cell is my home in Space. It's enforced meditation. In Time you will find me in Benares, dirtiest city in the solar system. The smell gets stronger like a monstrous fart stinking of wet earth. It's nice. Pilgrims stream in, pray, wash, meditate, and cut out with added merit, each adding to the aroma of burning flesh and open gutter sewers. Hindus who die in Benares go direct to heaven, a sort of baksheesh from Shiva chuck- ling in the purple throat and pulhng up bunches of Hindus by their tails like mandrakes. India is free like psychedehc drugs.
Bennett offered me enlightenment straight from headquarters, hermetically sealed and sold legally everywhere along the Ganges.
Sitting by a deserted burning Ghat, waters of the swollen river smash the crumbling stone, his trust in reason streamed out of the top of his head and mingled with the smoke of funeral pyre. Logic died. Bennett knew he knew nothing.
— Sitting next to me was this old patriarch, the ninety-nine names of Allah etched in Arab wrinkles
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 13
cross his face. The hookah pipe has curved stems bound at intervals with copper wire and laid with pale blue mosaic. Not the straight type used in religious ceremonies that drag the smoke down into your belly. These are gentle and smoked sitting down. Every now and then one takes a long draw and illuminates the dull red nova of glowing charcoal. The water in the clay bowl gurgles like a happy baby.
Thus Bennett began transmitting Atman Tantra, the yoga of self-love, the secret Sadhana of self-devotion. He said it was an ultimate key, a neurological technique for eroticization and maintaining a state of rapture.
He tau^t the 108 meditations of Atman Tantra. You get off on strong hashish. Then sitting in the lotus position in a silent room you produce an erection thinking of the most salacious fantasy that imagination can conjure. You maintain the flowering stem while recalling one by one the 108 sexual visions. Deprived of external stimulation the prisoner's nervous system grows on memories. At each memory he flips a meditation bead. When he reaches the 108th he screams HREE and ex- plodes into a cosmic orgasm.
B.B. told me this story:
In Benares he met a saintly old man named Yo Henbene. He had been a professor at the Uni- versity but dropped out. The old man said that all one needed in life is a crust of bread and a little hashish every day. His disciple, Tambi, each morn- ing brought him a bit of hashish. He lived in a small room totally unfurnished except for a prayer rug, a shawl, a water jug and hookah. In the next
14 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
room was a cripple with no arms or legs. A very successful beggar. One of the local prostitutes would carry him out to the street in the morning, and carry him back in the evening to feed him. Each evening the girl that he favored would put him in a basket and pick him up to fuck him, jigghng him up and down. He was very virile with a big prick. As a matter of fact that is all he was. Just a head, a trunk, and a prick. The prostitutes conspired to see who would care for him. He was rich and such a weird fuck. To find a guy like that was a treasure for these girls. They had tried everything else. The old professor next door would meditate and dream and listen through the wall to the music from the beggar's room.
B.B. passed on his high solitary version of HINAYANA Buddhism. A summit ASANA which produced an ultimate detachment. He called it the Serpent Circle, songs of praise to the hermaphro- ditic world snake devouring its own tail. The adept, sitting in the lotus position after long hours of muscle stretching, reached that point of relaxa- tion where he could incorporate his own organ of reproduction. At this moment, said B.B., evolution ceases, day merges with night, male with female. The final connection reestablished, one softly rolls off the wheel of external desire. What else is left to a confined nervous system? B.B. lent me his beads, which were alternating, smooth phallic and oval yoni forms pohshed by erotic reminiscence.
After dinner B.B. would squat Hindu fashion by my side in the TV room and transmit his message. During his long prison terms he had turned on
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 15
his entire body by means of a systematic sequence of neural associations.
The first step was to develop total control of erection and orgasm: a simple matter according to him if the adept is provided with hashish and soUtude enough to let the visions emerge.
The second step was to transfer erotic current from one part of the body to another. His instruc- tion for charging the anus was of particular inter- est and aroused buggery flutters. Anal receptivity was maintained by assuming in the mind Her graceful positions. Her moist expectations and Her breathless reactions. Imagine her as a four- teen-year-old, cock-hungry and eager. Imagine the Caribbean beachboy, the lusty airhne pilot. Imag- ine her first fuck, with the high-school football star. Imagine the first time she experienced each sexual position. Become her sexuahty. Do her trick. Stretch and writhe murmuring. Your ass- hole will grow until it becomes cunt of the world, he said.
The goal of this autoerotic Tantra was not, how- ever, to satisfy oneself. It must be dedicated in purity to Her amorous distraction and Her sensual pleasure. Once you have learned exactly how the erotic impulses are hooked up in your own body, then you can think about making love to Her in the style and elegance which She deserves.
And so days passed quickly, reading, writing, lying on the soft couch of memory, listening to the jailhoiise sound tapes, four TV sets blaring different programs, usually cops and robbers guns blazing and western movie shoot-outs. The eternal
16 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
clack of domino ivory on metal tables. Heavy clang reverberations bouncing around the four-story metal building. The iron doors clicking open, slam- ming shut and way down below on freedom street truck engines grind, auto horns bleep. From the neighboring cellblocks continual arguments, curses, and the soft rush of blood through my arteries.
The day of sentencing arrived. I was crowded with fifty men into a small basement holding cell. We changed our jail wraps for street clothes. A strange masquerade party, each man shedding the common uniform and emerging, strange meta- morphosis, in the costume worn at the time of the jail crime. We all sat together on the floor suffocat- ing with the smeU of sweaty feet for two hours before the court bus arrived.
I was escorted to the Courtroom crowded with flowered hippies, flashbulbs, TV cameras, reporters clamoring for statements, ghe came over with a deep kiss. The TV cameras pushed closer.
My lawyer asked postponement of sentence for five days. The Judge sentenced Jack to ninety days observation in the state prison. ^She was given twenty years probated to six months in jail, but is released on Appeal Bond. Perfect. She walks free. '
Tom Lynn had a court appearance too on the fifth day but he didn't answer the 4.00 a.m.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 17
speaker. In the dressing room I talked to Black Panthers about the Chicago trial. In the comer of the room my friend the low-browed tattooed man waved. He was in the center of a group talking about Tom, denouncing him, condemning him to death.
I asked if it was not true that Willie Madden's own father had given him up. My question puzzled the tattooed man.
- Hey. I'm Willie Madden. Do you get sentenced today? Good. Me too. We'll go up to prison together on the Chino chain. You can run with us. We'll protect you. We'll get you one of those nice young bitches to fuck. Willie's face twisted in a perfectly evil smile. You pick a weak kid. Tell him bend over. If he don't you just fire on him. Smash. Make his blood run. WiUie made violent motions with his hands. Knock him down. Kick him around. OK, punk. You ready now? Take your fist like this and push it against his face. OK, little soft punk your tender asshole ready now? Pull his pants down. Run some soap on your prick. Punk him good. Punch him if he struggles. Hear him scream. After that, he's your eager bitch. Runs errands for you. When he sees you coming he's glad he's your bitch 'cause you protect him. Willie was smiling in a friendly way.
The guard came to the cage door. Lynn. Is Thomas Lynn in there? There was an electric silence. No one talked.
- They didn't call him down from N tank, I said.
- He's on the hst for court. I'll get him.
The bull trampled ofP to get Lynn. Tension in
18 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
the room. A horror movie was starting. No one talked. Willie's gang surrounded him.
Then the guard unlocked the gate. Tom Lynn, looking miserable, hesitated, waited, then walked one pace forward. The gate brushed his back as it closed.
I was standing next to Willie facing Tom, who stood hands by his sides. He looked at me beseech- ingly. I left Willie and walked to Tom. We got on the Coxirthouse bus together. The bus drove into the basement of the Courthouse. The Superior Court cases were locked in a large holding room. There were benches around the sides and a bench in the middle. I sat with Tom in the middle. Willie and his gang were behind us. Danger meters flash- ing red. A few moments later it struck. A blurred swift movement in the air. The noise of flesh crunching. Tom was standing arms at his sides, face bloodied, dazed, his glasses smashed on the floor. Willie was dancing, fists moving in to attack, I stood up and moved between the two.
- Wait a minute.
Willie was surprised. Tom swayed. The three of us were poised, waiting for something to happen. I spim out some West Point memory tape.
- Guard!
As the bull approached I said, - Take this man
to the hospital, he's sick. The guard almost saluted.
A wave of muttering moved through the room.
- Man, what did you do that for. Motherfucking snitch should die.
I sat down shook up. The tattooed swastikas might be mad at me. After a long silence the Black Panthers called over to me, waving to join them.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 19
- Got any of that bad acid man? They laughed and we went on talking about drugs and revolu- tion.
After a while I went over to Willie. He talked with jittery speed.
- Man you should never have done that. I al- most fired on you out of instinct. I had to kick ass. That's our way, man, with a snitch.
I was called upstairs to the Courtroom and given a ten-year sentence, jihe cried. The Court was crowded with hippies who were chanting OMMMMM. The Judge shouted that if that humming didn't stop he put them all in jail.
The guards pulled me out of the Court.
Back in the dressing room Willie told me more about Tom.
- He's a weak sniveling punk, man. A bom snitch. He caused me trouble before. We had this place near Palm Springs. Used it for a hideout. It was loaded with guns and heroin. One weekend there was this underaged girl that the heat was looking for and man, they came to the door, man. They were looking for this girl, man, and I said get a warrant. They said they would. So the other dudes covered the side doors, man, and I got a shotgun and two pistols and waited at the end of the hallway. I told my old lady to answer the door but when the heat came the sixteen-year-old girl went to the door and gave herself up.
So we piled the guns in the car, man, and drove back and I was in my kitchen, man, and someone said, Tom Lynn is in the living room. I went in and he said what's happening Willie, I want to talk to
20 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
you. I asked him if he had given the heat our address and he said, yeah, I did it for your own good. I started to move on him man, and he was backing away holding his hands down hke this saying, wait a minute Willie. Lennie said kill the fucker and my old lady said blow the dude away. He backed out the door and I fired on him and he fell off the second-story porch and ran away.
He's weak. He lies about stuff too, pretending to have a heroin habit. Hey man, Fm strung out. Give me a fix. So I gave him a quarter spoon and he fixed and man in five minutes he was dying of an OD. Dying, man. Everyone said throw his body in the car and well dump him, but I said no, and dragged him to the bathtub, and filled it with cold water and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and got ice cubes and put them under his balls and saved the fucking dude's life, man. Ask him about that when you get upstairs.
- You rob to support your habit?
- I gotta have my stuff. Heroin is me, man. That's when Fm myself. I'd rather fix than fuck anytime. He turned to his assistant. Mike, you rather fix or fuck. Mike produced an honest grin.
- Fuck man. Fuck. He pushed his right fist up and down masturbatory over his vein.
- If heroin was legal you'd be out of a job, I said.
- You're right, but we'd stiU need guns against snitches.
- If heroin were legal snitches would be out of a job too.
The morning after sentencing the orders came through transferring me to the State Prison. Emi- gration from short-time County Jail to long-term penitentiary. In the basement holding tank, stripped of county wrappings, I dressed for the final time in mod flannels.
I was stored in a special isolated holding tank until the County Jail bus drove through the smoggy freeways to the Prison Reception Center at Chino, California. The welcoming conmciittee was grim and blunt.
- Strip naked. Throw your personal belongings in the box. Bend over for body inspection. Run your hands through your hair, both your ears. Open your mouth. Wag your tongue. Lift your balls. Turn around spread your buttocks. Left foot. Right foot. Shower.
I dressed in the new prison uniform. A tall Black in blue danced over. He gave me ten hand-rolled cigarettes. The rumor wind was blowing round me. They gonna put you in the hole. The Captain wants to see you. They gonna ship you to the Medical Center at VacaviUe. You're getting bailed out to- morrow.
The sergeant checks us for long hair and orders
22 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
me to the barber. I get a last mirror glimpse at forest hair and moustache. - Leave as much as you can I ask the barber, but he grunts and clips. In the mirror I see a strange high-headed youth.
- Don't complain man you look twenty years younger.
I took sheets and blankets and followed the sergeant to solitary confinement. It's bad-boy lockup for you.
I walk by the cages of the dangerous wild men. They shout in pleasure to see me. A Black shouts : - Hey man we gotta talk to you. We can- not see each other. Just cries from cage to cage. A nasty Brooklyn voice denounces me. - Oh he's that bad man! Hang him. Another Black defended me. Shorty's Brooklyn voice turns friendly.
- Hey Doc, look at these pictures. A hand from the next cell appears holding color snapshots. Sad- eyed blue wife and clear-eyed kids.
- Hey Doc, here's a record of my trial. Read it.
- Hey Doc, you want some cigarettes. - Hey Doc, you need some stamps and envelopes. — Hey Doc, you wanna a Playboy magazine?
Dinner was passed through a slot in the bars of the narrow white counter box. Then began the evening sport. Blacks using mirrors to catch the setting sun, playing sunshine tag, racing reflected birds of light against the waU. Laughing and shouting. At the hour of romance, from Her soli- tary cell a young lady sadly coos a soft message and a Black voice rumbles back; - You Sandy I going to get you ass. What I'm gonna to do to you girl I Hoooeee. I got me twenty inches for you. You my pussy.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 23
- Oh no big boy, Fm my own girl from now on. No more marriage for me.
- Great God almighty, I gotta get me some sweet red meat. I sick to death of my own right hand. Wheeee — here I come Sandy. Ohhhhh what Fm gonna to do to you sister. I gonna to spht your velvet asshole girl. Stuff my tool up your belly, split yo kidneys girl. Gonna penetrate your guts little girl. Gut you baby so you gonna never be able to walk again.
Sandy's voice came softly breathing:
- Oh Mr. Guard let that man out. Oh let him loose. I needs that man. Roaring laughter sweeps the three-story house. Eighty males poke head through ceU bars and dig the action. Like love play always the pulsing action peaks, subsides, and then Shorty's voice shouts ;
- Hey Doc, look out. He cackles laughter. My head through the bars I look down at a fire blazing on the floor below. Flames six feet high leap up burning sheets, blankets, discarded clothes. Wild screams, pleasure, rage echoes through the prison hall. Yeah man burn the motherfucking joint down. Yeah man bum it to the ground. Burn baby, bum.
A momentary reflex, fear of being trapped in a cell holocaust was calmed by the cement steel of maximum security. One angry Black voice pro- tests the fire but he is howled down.* An incendiary quarrel flares up between two African powers.
- Why you shit-faced motherfucking sissy gonna to bum down this estabhshment. You stay out of this you hear.
- Yeah bo. You'se dead you fool. If I get out of
24 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
this cell tomorrow I'se going to whip yo ass so hard you gonna die. Motherfucker. You hear me?
- Yeah bo, you scare me.
- Don*t yeah bo me. Whaf s yo name?
- My name is Shackleforth baby.
- Well you poor fool Shackleforth, you dead,
- Oohhh. Tse frightened.
Next morning I am called to the Captain's office; sit watching trustees run the prison, typing, phon- ing, filing, serious responsible people working proudly. They flash condescension. Fm a new ar- rival. Into the room tottered an old prizefighter, face seamed with veins, warts, and blemishes. He was wearing khaki and silver bars. Captain Brean waved me into his office.
- We've finally got you, huh. You are going to be with us a long time. Ha ha. His little eyes peered out through skin drapes.
- You're smaller than on TV. I guess we cut you down to size, huh. He leaned back in his chair.
- I am going to talk to you man to man. You could cause us a lot of trouble here if you wanted to. I can size up a man. You are a born leader I know. I am too. You could start a rebellion if you wanted to. I know that.
He leaned forward poking his finger at me. — But we know our business here. We are watch- ing these long-haired hippies hanging round out- side. Same hke that Cleaver in Vacaville. A big crowd came around wanting to release him. A thousand hippies could storm this place and get inside the gates. Yeah, I grant you that. But I tell you not one of them would get out of here alive.
I sent gentle thoughts to his head and soothed
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 25
his fevered neurons. This is the moment to suggest that I am a cooperative nonviolent person.
He was smihng to himself as I left the room. I was hoping he would tell them up in Sacramento, - I know how to handle him, he'll cause no trouble.
The next day I am moved to the main line. The prison is crowded. Eighty men sleep in double bunk beds on a tier floor. I share twelve square feet with seven criminals in smooth harmony. Jiggs, a lifelong addict, thin as a needle, spoons up to my bunk. - Answer me one question. How long man? How long is this going to go on?
On Easter Sunday, our sepulchers are rent by a comedian guard who swaggers down the aisle, cop cap rakish shouting:
- Easter egg hunt starts in twenty minutes! After breakfast the guard walks up to me and
smiles. — We're moving you to a cell. You got a new cellmate. I waited at the bars and watched. After a while a rustle of excitement and coming through the gate and carrying his blanket, his beard gone, his long hair cut, young and vulnera- ble comes Jack. His face lit up. We went out into the yard and sat on the grass exchanging notes, happy to be together.
We stayed up all night talking. He was to leave in the morning on the chain to Tracy Prison. After a silence I said : - If I get out first I will do every- thing I can to get you out.
- If I get out first I will do everything I can to get you out, he said.
At 3:00 A.M. a flashlight in the cell. The guard whispered:
26 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
- Roll up you gear for transfer.
I could see Jack's shadow form collecting his prison things. As he left the dark cell he whis- pered:
- Good-bye, I love you.
- Good-bye, I love you.
I haven't seen him since.
New prisoners remained in the Reception Center for an average of six weeks. After psychological testing, observation, and case worker interviews a decision is made as to the long-term prison. Usu- ally the counselors were the deciding voice.
I spent the first week asking questions, listen- ing, and watching. Trying to figure out how this Reception Station worked. The lawyers were still talking optimistically about getting me out on bail, but the jailhouse gurus warned that this Govern- ment would keep me in prison for the next ten years.
They were throwing the book at drug cases.
The prison administration could deal with armed robbers, murderers, and normal criminals but not these defiant guiltless long-haired dopers. The guards said armed robbers and murderers have guts. Drug users are cowardly escapists.
Each inmate had a file called "The Jacket." Every unusual action by the prisoner was entered in The Jacket. But the case worker's recommenda- tion was the key.
I found out about the network of the California
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 27
prison system, listening to sad vacation discus- sions about the selection of prisons continually reviewing the escape possibilities.
Tehachapi Prison is in the mountains. Fresh air, no smog, new buildings. Too remote for visi- tors. They send young cons there.
- Are there gun towers?
- Yeah, it's escape-proof.
The Cahfornia Institute for Men, abbreviated CIM, offered color TV, a golf course, a swimming pool. No wall. They'll never send you there with a ten-year federal hold. CIM is treatment oriented. They call you mister.
San Quentin is the Monte Carlo glamour, sex, dope prison of the system. Near San Francisco. Plenty of action. Gambling, educational courses, and special visitors from San Francisco. They might send you to Quentin, making an example out of you. There is no escape from Quentin.
Then there was Folsom Prison. Lissen man, I put twenty-three years in Californian prisons and I tell you the best joint is Folsom; any experienced con will tell you that. No kids there. You do your time quietly.
Then there was Soledad. Dread pit of solitude for the toughest gunsel muscle benders. They called it the "Gladiators' School." When you check in there they issue you a sword and a garbage can lid. A continual fight to prove how tough you are. Homosexual rape of soft kids. Soledad. The name itself sent a chiU through every spine.
CMC East — California Men's Colony, San Luis Obispo is the new science-fiction prison. Four sep- arate quads, TV monitors. Big brother eyes watch
28 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
every move. It was called medium security, but don't believe it. Huey Newton is there. Gun towers with sharpshooter guards can kill at a mile range. No one escapes. CMC West — California Men's Colony, San Luis Obispo is the old man's home. They send professional long-term prisoners there. It's a country club for elite cons. The best prison in the world. It's an easy escape.
No wall. The highway runs nearby. They send only nonviolent prisoners there. They will never send you there not v^dth two dimes hanging round your neck. There is a rule that with a federal hold they cannot send you to minimum security. The State of California owes the Feds ten years of your life.
The Vacaville main line is a mental hospital for violent maniacs. They might send you there to use your psychological training. It is maximum se- curity. No one escapes from there.
Then there are the Forestry Camps. That's ideal, man. You work up in the healthy mountains. There's plenty of dope, no fences, you work along the highway. It's simple to run away. Cons jump Forestry Camp aU the time but they get caught. They always run back home. They get a Dear John letter from their wives or suspect their wives fool- ing around, they flip, take off, and hitchhike home. They walk in the door and bang the State Police are waiting. The first thing they do if you escape is stake out your home. There is no chance they'll send you to a Forestry Camp, not with all the time you brought here. They wall take no chances with you.
Lying in my bunk at night creating realities.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 29
Transfer to a Forestry Camp or to San Luis Obispo. I am a nonviolent person with no risk of escape. After dinner, just before the night lockup I am leaning over the third-tier railings and looking through dirty windows to the sunset lawn below. The cabin class deck of a slow liner going no- where.
- Here we are again man.
He is waiting for the Vacaville chain and pumps me for information about the sissies there. He dreams of Vacaville Prison as a bawdy sexual paradise. The beautiful queens of Vacaville dig the cells with mirrors.
- Oh mercy me, he bellows. I can't wait to meet those luscious young ladies at Vacaville. Tm going to walk up there with mah dick in mah hand.
A comedian guard tramples by our cells, his shoulders hunched.
- Timothy, do you want me to help you get out of here?
- Sure.
- OK. I gotta a great lawyer.
He walked past my cell then reappears going down the stairs.
- Except I gotta get him out first ha ha ha.
I am a temporary process case : one who comes and goes every six weeks. There is a permanent work crew, abbreviated PWC. Thes^ men are seri- ous bureaucrats who sleep in a special honor dorm and strut through the prison like junior guards. Among them are five men who run the five key offices in the prison. The PWC runs the show. For the first two weeks I am watching them and
30 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
they are watching me across the gulf of mutual surveillance. I need their help to plan my escape. They are checking me out of curiosity.
By this time all the smart hustling new process cases have managed jobs in the prison offices.
The apparent power center of the prison is the Receiving and Release Section. The action is there. The coming and the going. The center of trade and commerce. I spend my free time doing yoga in the sun and playing handball.
A trustee named Talbot called me iijto his office. He ran a small records office. He was the most influential man in the prison : intelligent, affable, and a born rebel. He was the jailhouse lawyer. He spent much of his time using the prison mimeograph machine to prepare briefs for other prisoners. He was cool about payoff. No heavy ransoms. Perhaps a carton or two of cigarettes. Everyone knew he was writing briefs for kicks. One out of every twenty briefs he wrote resulted in some action, llie prison administration tolerated him as a good dealer all round. His briefs kept a thread of hope alive in the permanent work crew and if the trustees were happy the prison ran smoothly.
Talbot expressed interest in my appeal briefs. After a few explanatory legal conversations he offered me a job as his assistant. It was a plum. An office of my own, larger than the Captain's. I would spend twenty minutes a day typing out a few file cards. I move to the honor dorm, have the day free to write my own briefs or read in the serenity of my private office. I would be considered as a candidate for the Permanent Work Crew.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 31
- Do you think the Captain would approve of me getting an inside job?
Talbot smiled. - We tell the Captain what he is supposed to think. The Captain is coming round to see that it would be a great feather in his cap if he could keep you quiet in the prison system.
In two days I was transferred to the honor dorm. The top cons began treating me with solic- itude. Our dining room was the officers' mess. The barbershop in our cellblock offered face massages and special shampoos. Prohibited mag- azines appeared in my cell. Free from cell lockup both day and night. At the Friday night movie I could sit suicidally depressed in the front row eating trustee popcorn. And there was dope. The lunch pail express, sidehne of bribed guards who kept the flow of illegal contraband moving in and out.
I had a single cell with all its implications. The quest for the serpent who swallows his own tail. It is just a matter of connecting neural wires he told me.
A friendly Chicano ran the psychological test- ing room. I was tested individually and not in the routine group. The Chicano was smiUng and made me coffee. It's a joke for us to be testing you he said. You designed some of the tests we use.
The test of intelUgence is to get the highest possible score. The test of personality is to appear normal and to avoid manic-aggressive manifesta- tions. Vocational tests revealed aptitude in fores- try; nature, farming, and incompetence in clerical tasks.
I spent every free moment on the prison yard
32 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
either at handball, yoga, or lifting metal weights to the point of pain-strain.
Prisoners here talk about their case, their arrest, their trial, and the next destination. Everyone has a hope habit of one kind or another.
I am getting to know the permanent work crew trustees. For the most part they are older white- collar criminals with potbellies. My two protectors were sincere libertarians. We had long discussions about my appeal for bail, and failing that which long-term prison would be my next home. They were hoping to keep me with them at Chino but I asked them to help me get the no-escape-risk ticket so that I could be sent to Forestry Camp.
In one of the offices the trustees have posted a big red calendar on the wall. Each day a number was removed. I noticed the big red arrow always pointed to tomorrow. There was no number for today. I asked the trustee about it. He said that in con terminology when you wake up in the morning that day is as good as over,
I was interested in the composition of the prison population. Half of the prisoners, the younger half, were dopers, guiltless spirits. Black and White, totally detached from the system, certain of their alchemical beliefs.
The alchemical magic spread swiftly. After ten years there were millions who chose the super- stitious perspective, seeking to stay high.
The prison guards are retired enlisted men. They act like motel clerks opening the dining room, locking and unlocking doors for us. They walk the tiers at night while we sleep; fatigued
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 33
men with flashlights slipping mail under our cell doors. Their work centers around keys.
The lawyers say that any day the California Supreme Court will grant me bail. My advisers shrug skeptically.
An older guard suddenly gets down on my case. He orders me to the barbershop, searches my cell and finds dust, orders me back to the barbershop for a closer trim, writes me up for petty misde- meanors.
He stops me as I swing high and happy down the cavernous hall of the main line and orders me to remove the red handkerchief tied around my throat.
We stand in the prison corridor looking at each other separated, his eyes dull with tired hatred. — Watch yourself, he muttered.
Talbot the trustee watched the interaction through the glass window of his office.
- Well, there you have it, he said, the basic confrontation of politics. The guard and the prisoner. Two men are looking into each other's eyes defiantly across the abyss of slavery. Every- one in the world is on the side of the guard or on the side of the prisoner. Pohce, lawyers, judges, prison guards. Criminals are the opposing militia. The forces are exactly even. Law-and-order people control the press and the media of communication and education but they fool no onq. At any mo- ment at least half of the world population is in open conscious opposition to government. Most cops accept that it's a war on crime. So do most prisoners.
34 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
The prison dope supply became irregular and during periods of neurological famine, waves of nervousness would overcome me. I was waiting for the verdict of the California Supreme Court, waiting for the call to the sergeant's office to re- ceive the telegram.
I was waiting for the Counselor's interview. I learned all I could about her. She was a Black social worker, nicknamed "San Quentin Sally," famous for hard custody-oriented maximum se- curity recommendations. She was cynical and suspicious of being conned. She respected convicts who told the truth, so I did. I had heard details about her domestic problems, her marital history, her previous employment, her emotional charac- teristics, and her neurotic symptomatology. I walked into her office smiling politely.
The same guard continued to ride me. When I asked Talbot about it he tried to explain.
- You see, that particular guard has a teen-aged daughter. He knows she smokes pot and low-rides with a kid who deals reds. In his mind he can see the nipples of his daughter Penny trembling under the hypnotic passes of dope pushers, her thin white legs contorted in yoga positions, offering her flower cunt for the demon drug. His daughter Penny, with fingers of limp hair be- draggled with cannabis smoke and the expression of total rapture on her innocent face. Man, he can see the pusher in his mod suit with satin
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 35
cuffs propped up among the pillows on a fur- coated bed resting ermine boots on the antique coffee table, running the palm of his evil hands across the hard sharp nipples of Penny's breasts. He sees her kneeling unzipping his pants. And you wonder why he hates you? He's not the only one. They say you don't deserve equal treatment. Can you dig that? Equal treatment.
After breakfast a sturdy executive elite con named Milton, the sergeant's clerk, came over to my table. ~ Were you expecting some sort of Court action?
- Yes, it should be here today.
- Well, I just heard on the radio that they shot you down. The California Appeals Court denied your appeal, you and Huey Newton. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you might as well know about it.
- It is up to Justice Douglas now, I said.
I spent the day inside of gloom. My legal life now depended upon William O. Douglas, natural- ist, rebel, friend of youth, solace of the persecuted, outspoken libertarian, hope of the friendless, the husband of the girl, protector of wild flowers and clear streams. But, he is old. It all depends on whether his young wife smokes it or not.
During the next few days I reclined in the monastic peace of single cell reading newspaper stories about the pending impeachment of Justice Douglas. My case comes before h^m at a crucial time in his life. Freeing me on bail will bring down on his head more angry outcries. It's a soap opera.
The lawyers assure me I'll be freed by Justice Douglas in five days. I am still working on the escape plan while the trustees gather around to
36 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
share the fruits of prison grapevine. The admin- istration is meeting this week to decide where I am going to be transferred.
I will be out on bail soon so it doesn't matter really, but what are the possibilities?
The espionage system reported that Custody was easier on me than Treatment. The psychol- ogist wanted to send me to Quentin to make an example of me. - Captain Brean here thinks they should keep you here.
- I can't stay here, I said. I want to get to Forestry Camp or San Luis Obispo where they let prisoners have gardens.
Talbot smiled.
-- What you are asking me to do with the Captain is to do nothing, right? I can dig it, he said.
It was Monday morning in the office. I've been in prison for nine weeks. Friday night is the worst time.
I visit the next-door neighbor to hit his coffeepot. He tore off three numbers — Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Something good is going to happen this week. During the morning we make arrangements for writing each other when I leave.
Late in the afternoon a clerk leaned in the door. — Well, you are going. He was waving a mimeo- graphed sheet.
- Shipping out to CMC West.
The trustees came crowding round. — CMC
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 37
West is a country club, man, the best prison in the world. They have a golf course. No lockup. It's three bunk counts a day. There's a bowling alley. They are all long-term cons just living quietly. There are no young cons there burning sheets. Picnic visits on the yard. Visitors can buy lunch at the visiting room. Fried chicken. You eat like a king.
Some cons love it there so much they hate to leave. When they get paroled they violate so that they can get sent back. You have private radios there. No smog. Near the ocean. You can plant your own garden. Contact visits! Conspiracy of breath. Touch. Change. New scene. I'm thinking about that fence near Highway 1.
Spent the rest of the day collecting my personal gear to ship out. Two ball-point pens, some rubber shower shoes given to me by an old murderer, two packages of rolling tobacco. We travel light.
~ No gun towers or walls there?
— Just low fence. Minimimi security.
Dying on the prison mattress my mind peers at itself through the window of a luxurious beach house in Santa Monica.
, She^ is lying naked in front of the fire. Janis Joplin sings from a portable tape deck on a low womb-shaped table almost buried amongst the furs. The breath of the fire moistens the room.
- All I want is to feel good, ,ghe^ says and falls back amongst the cushions.
He is nervous. ~ I haven't fucked in a month, baby.
- Just keep me high,,ghejnurmurs. Guilt is an abstraction, pleasure is real.
^he lay unmoving, evidently under the effect of some narcotic. He raised her leg, showing the words "Made in_StJ^ouis,'' walked to the window and pressed his face against the glass.
§he^stood naked in front of the fire, weeping.
It was three o'clock in the morning. A flashhght whispering yellow. Get up I You're on the list for transfer. Roll up all gear. Report below. Your cell's unlocked.
I leave the rodent cage, run right down the molecular runway, left down lattice stairs turn right.
40 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Forty-eight men in blue waiting in a dark tunnel of the maximum security prison, rolHng weed, coughing smoke, reciting their sorrows. Career cons. The impenitent nobility. Gallant slaves.
As the world of an empress is decked with pen- nants, Hers was decorated with desire. Wherever she went She was invested with this cloud of male vitality.
I walk the length of the Release Room of the State Prison, a naked captive, carrying shoes to the exit cage counter. Gentlemen, Fm checking out. Could you have my bill ready? The guard frowns down at levity. Yeah, you owe us ten long years. Forty-eight men dressed in white jump suits, from a gray line waiting for the bus to long- term. All aboard for CMC East, CMC West, grim Soledad, San Quentin, Folsom, and Forestry Camps north.
Each man walks shivering in the morning fog to the loading platform. Searched, handcuffed. After pat-down, I hold hands up for bracelets. The Lieutenant grumbles.
- Skip the cuffs for him. He's minimum secu- rity. You pass out matches and rolling smokes.
I walk down the bus aisle. Fasten seat belts gentlemen and ladies. Select your weed. Inside dope. Acapulco Gold. Tehachapi Red. Quentin Green. Metal-clad hands reach up beseeching nico- tine.
As the mobile prison rumbles along the polluted L.A. freeways, we look down at commuters dron- ing to work.
Around Ventura the bus bursts out of the L.A.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 41
fog to wide blue Pacific seascapes, sparkling vi- sions for prison eyes.
Slender girls twisting long sunny hair on the Ventura streets. Our shackled slave wagon climbs the hill to a white-marbled courthouse. Picking up long-haired parole violators. In the rear-cage com- partment the armed guard pushes brown-paper food sacks through a metal slot. I serve lunch and as a good trustee get a double helping. I give it to a young Black carrying a hfe sentence.
Bouncing along Highway 101. A scenic tour. Gulls circling wind-swept beaches. A boy and girl walk hand in hand. At Santa Barbara rainbow oil sHcks gleam in the noon sun.
The old Black junkie next to me offers a filter cigarette, lights a Pall Mall for himself.
I doze dreaming that she and I ran away from Mobile Alabama in September. We escaped by jumping over the fence. We had never been to Algeria before and were very anxious to meet famous, sexy people like Jane Fonda and Huey Newton. Our fantasies did not include the calcu- lated ogle of the pimp's talent scout. We expected to find a friendly community of East Village freaks and comrade revolutionaries.
On our second day in Algiers a friendly middle- aged Jewish social worker told us we could stay with her cousin who lived in an apartment near Muhammad Cinq. We said no. She was a true believer of some sort. She took us to meet a long- hair Yippie who convinced us it was all right.
We taxied to the apartment where we were locked up with another runaway, a beautiful black-
42 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
haired Algerian girl our age who explained what was expected. We were to call and write our friends to come visit us. The first day the friend arrived it would cost him a hundred dollars. If he stayed longer it would cost fifty dollars a day. We would get ten dollars or more a day depending on how long we could keep him.
For the first month, two out of every six visitors would be working for the Boss. If we tried to use any of our Johns to escape, our cheeks, our fore- heads, or the back of our necks would be cut, and the boss psychiatrist would pronounce us insane for wanting to escape. If we tried to escape a second time, our faces would be cut from above our left eyes, across our noses, to below the right side of our jaw. And acid would be thrown on our heads. That final punishment was intended to destroy our credibility. The assumption was that our credibihty meant more to us than our freedom.
We told everyone, friends, family, lawyers, po- litical leaders, that we were being held against our wiU. Of the first ten visitors, two turned us in. The eight friends promised help, but were too scared to do anything.
Sometimes we felt guilty for wanting to escape and for not cooperating. We wondered if we could learn to like it. After all he did want us, wanted to keep us, saw us as having a certain value; whereas, our friends seemed to think that it was our fault for running away. Sometimes it seemed to us that the world was just a series of prisons and all we could do was to choose the jail that allowed us to be together.
- Hey man. There's your new home.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 43
California Men's Colony West. San Luis Obispo. Minimum Security. Just what I wanted.
The bus turns off the coastway and groans up the winding road past army barracks. Fm glued to the window looking for the fence. It's metal hnk chain. Twelve feet high. Plus three strands of barbed wire.
Guards open the gate. Enter here the city of desolation. Sorrowtown. The instinct to imprison is genetic. Segregate the mutant seed. Peniten- tiaries filled with virile Blacks. Lost creation. Spilled sperm on the prison sheets. Wooden bar- racks. Flower lawns. Blue denim inmates watch us. Justice is the architect. Chuckles on the bus.
- Hey man. This is the end of the hne. Old cons come here. It's the criminal retirement vil- lage. The Department of Correction sent you here to die.
I'm the only one dropped off here. Crinkled convict faces. Dead eyes watering the gardens, watching, incurious. I wave farewell to my shackled bus friends and walk into the Receiving Room. The guards stare. It's like checking into a paid vacation retirement village. I radiate docihty. Lay down all hope you that go with me.
An old, long-time bail boy takes me to my cell- block with tender dignity. Musty smell of caged bodies. Beloved husband. We left San Francisco! Airport four hours late.
Clothing distribution. I draw three sets of new stiff blue denims. Jobie swept us up at the airport^ in a limousine: My number stenciled on the clothes, A crowd of inmates round my bunk. I go to the prison library to see what old friends have written.
44 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Alan Watts. William James. Lucretius. Epicurus. Pythagoras. Time-Traveler post office. We stopped
[for papaya juice on 86th Street. It was delicious.
Dinner call. Stooped men in blue scrambling to
the mess hall like hungry children. Roses green
^nd red in prison windows. I thought to visit the
l^illbrook estate while Ym east. Sensual impres- sions are a form of food. On metal trays.
A guard shakes his head. - You don't belong here, he said.
Leaving the mess hall a friendly fellow shows me the prison grounds. The totally institutionalized are sent here. Professional prisoners. It must be
(lovely there this month my love. This is a graduate school of crime.
- Library. Spits. Music room. Education build- ing. Laundry. Spits. Barbershop. Spits. Lemme give you some a-vise. Doan truss no one here. Spits. This place is filled with snakes and lyres. Sons of snitches. Spits. Break your spirit. Spits. Old cons are cranky. Spits. Man, they're dying like it's going outa style. Spits. Doan be a fool. Sure it looks nice here. Flowers and trees. But it's a dismal place. Spits. People come around to give you a-vise. Spits* Listen! Don't listen to them. Spits.
^ Return to my bunk. It's dawn now in Manhattan.
IJThe sky gray over the East River. There's a visiting lawn with picnic tables. You are not yet asleep
\back there. Where we can visit weekends. I am
with you. The old Black on the next bunk, wise
reptile, neck craned, watches fellow swamp crea-
C*tures. 7 kiss your mouth with my hands on your
\cheeks. He is sewing leather bags. He chuckles.
Every buddy come look for you. They ask where
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 45
that man that sleep here. He laughs. This is myj perfume. This is not life. And yet it is not death. I love you, husband.
When she comes gleeful fucking she smiles like a little girl and her eyes shine in pure joy.
- Lookit man. They coming now to talk to you. A tense shrew sly pornographer. Bzzzzz. Fm
like you. I fight the system. Bzzzzz. They hate me here. The parole board won't give me a date. Bzzzz. I used to be a member of the estabhshment. Fm bitter now. Bzzzz. What Fve seen! Filthy rotten bastards. Now I am a revolutionary like you. Pigsl Bzzzzz. You have no idea how much money I made outside. Let me give you piece of advice. Lissen seriously. It's a jungle! Do not, I repeat, do not trust anyone I Do not listen to any piece of advice. Beware! Fm telling you these people are sick! Bzzzzzz. Neurotic, psychotic, psychopathic. Do not believe anyone. Only one out of twenty here has his marbles. Bzzzzzzz. Sex perverts, child mo- lesters, snitches, robbers, murderers, psychopaths. Do not trust anyone.
A sullen thug calls me aside. Grrrrrr. Listen, Doc. Fm your follower. On your side. Grrrrr. Listen to a piece of advice. Cocksuckers. Grrrrrr. Need anything, Doc? Cigarettes? Envelopes? This cock- sucking place. Grrrrr. Don't trust these cocksuck- ers. Grrrrr. See that fellow on your bed. Grrrrrr. Cocksucker. Doan truss him. I killed a man. Now the cocksucking parole board think Fm violent. Grrrrrr. I don't take no shit from them. Cocksuck- ers. Why do they think Fm violent? Grrrrrr. I'll get get you cigarettes, Doc. Remember I told you.
- Bzzzzzz. See that fellow there who claims he's
46 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
your follower. He's an old murderer. Don't trust him I
- Hello! I gotta question to ask you. Do people bother you asking questions alia time? I been here three years. A bum rap, I told the board, listen, a guy in 347 killed four people and they give him a three months date, I bin here five years, they shot me down two years. HE KILL FOUR PEOPLE I What kinda justice is that?
- Hello! Lemme ask you a question. Doan trust anyone. If you gotta do time, this is the best place. Don't trust anyone. I tell you what to do. I give you one piece of advice. Don't hsten to these mother- fuckers. They keep an eye on you. Everything you do. They gotta give me a date this time. All they can keep here is your body. You'll hke it here, it's the best place to do time.
I slide legs down the cool sheets, lay my head on the pillow, and slide directly into sleep.
Report to custody. The Captain wants to see you.
Captain Koffman is a brisk no-nonsense correc- tion veteran. He quelled Quentin. He mastered dread Soledad. He ran the slave caravans from Folsom down to Tehachapi. He manned the gun towers of Chino. He fired gas guns at weeping prisoners. A tough, clipped gray-haired jaunty com- mander.
- I won't waste words with you. We took a big risk in accepting you here. This is minimum secu- rity. If you have to do time this is the best joint in country. But minimum security means minimum trouble. Any bullshit from a troublemaker and I'll have his ass on the bus for Folsom in twenty-four hours. If you act like a horse's ass here, we'll treat
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 47
you like a horse's ass. If you act like a scholar and a gentleman, we'll treat you that way. We know how to handle political cases. I was at Quentin when Chessman was there. And we've got your friend, Huey, the Negro agitator next door. You'll be watched carefully. You can do hard time or easy time. It's up to you. Starting tomorrow morning you report to work in the custody office. We want to keep an eye on you.
Sitting at a desk in the Custody Headquarters, nerve center of the prison. Professional cons run the joint with cynical efficiency. They control all records. See all, hear all. I am freaking out holding wet palms waiting for the phone to ring with news of freedom. Take a walk, keep moving.
Standing by the fence looking down at the cars on the highway I notice a prison maintenance truck drive up. The driver, about thirty-five, dressed in mechanic's clothes. He motioned me over.
- Bonne Chance, he said. His face and his voice reflected a cool, humorous detachment. Almost insolence. I picked up heroin vibes.
- Who are you? I asked.
- I'm called Brian Barritt. You should call me Whisper. I work here. It's an interesting job. I'd like to tell you about it.
Another friendly social worker type, I thought. He'll probably confess that he thinks marijuana should be legal. Barritt was leaning out of the truck window looking at me quizzically.
- Dealing current. That's my specialty. If you need any juice, just ask me. Wattage, voltage, amps, generators, transformers, resisters, ampli- fiers. I know the circuits and the wiring. Listen,
48 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
would you give me a hand for a moment. It will give us a chance to talk.
He leaped out of the truck and gracefully moved to the rear. He had a dancer's build, sUght. The skin on his arms was smooth and covered with tattoos. He unbolted the rear panel and handed me a coiled wire, while he busied himself with the tool kit.
- How are you planning to get out of here, he asked.
- Tm getting bailed out this week according to the lawyers.
- No one gets bailed out of state prison. The government can't let you out. It would be the ass of any judge or politician. To get out of here you're going to go over the fence. Inside dope man, do you want some?
He spoke with assurance and a discernible laugh in his voice.
~ What do you mean? I remembered all the warnings.
- I see that you're confused by the nature of my game. Look. I'm a dealer of enthusiasm. I've been a dope pusher for fifteen years. I've done time my- self. I work here now to bring a little freedom, to help prisoners escape one way or another. For me it's a buzz. I've got a key to the side gate. I'll loan it to you. You just unlock the gate, run to the high- way in ninety seconds; your wife picks you up and you're free.
~ Why are you doing this?
- Oh, if you can give me some bread I'd take it. But I'd do it for just the charge, the flash that your escape would cause. Can you dig the flash?
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 49
Whisper glanced up.
- It's dangerous to be seen talking to you. Think over what I said. You are suspicious. That's wise, rd Hke to leave something with you to read. It's some script I wrote about prison. Maybe you'll accept it.
He handed me a sheet of white paper, leaped into the cab, smiled, started the engine, and drove off. I walked to the office and read his "Whisper" script.
THE EARTH HAS ORBITED HALFW^AY ROUND THE SUN SINCE I WAS FIRST ARRESTED AND MY CHEM- ISTRY IS WORKING AT SPEEDS CONDITIONED BY BEING LOCKED ALONE IN A CELL FOR OVER SIX MONTHS. DEPRIVED OF EXTERNAL STIMULI, THE PRISONER TURNS HIS SENSES INWARD AND LIVES OFF MEMORIES INTERLACED WITH LUST. HIS MEDI- TATIONS, PROGRAMMED BY THE PROBABILITY THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG AT HOME, ROOT IN CON- TAMINATED SOIL AND GROW MONSTER DEFORMI- TIES INVOLVING HIS MOST VULNERABLE ATTACH- MENTS. THE MORE HE BROODS THE STRONGER HIS DELUSIONS GROW UNTIL IT BECOMES A RACE TO SEE WHICH IS RELEASED FIRST, BUT WHICHEVER WAY, HIS PARANOIAS BECOME HARD FACTS.
SHE JOKED WITH HER LOVER ABOUT YOU WANK- ING OVER HER PICTURE; A PALE STRANGER OFFERS SM ARTIES TO YOUR CHILDREN; WATERY EYES AND LONG THIN FINGERS TITILLATE THE SACRED SHRINE. THINK ABOUT IT, YOUR BEST FRIEND SATISFYING YOUR WIFE. FEEL IT, ITCHING INSIDE YOUR THIGHS. THAT MELTING DEEP DOWN INSIDE? THAT'S THE PRISON SEX KINK. WITH A MAD LITTLE GIGGLE A ONE-ARMED BANDIT PULLS HIS OWN CONTINUUM AND WINKS AT HIS TORMENTORS.
AND THE DEEPER HE DELVES INTO HIS ABOMINA- TIONS THE STRONGER HIS SEXUAL URGE BECOMES.
50 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
THE WORST THINGS HE CAN THINK OF ARE THE EASIEST TO CONJURE AND ARE NOT ONLY POS- SIBLE, PROBABLE, BUT HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
I read the script once, read it twice, and the third time caught the formula and said aloud, - He's a fucking genius.
The chief clerk filing cards on a wheel across the room looked up.
- Who's a fucking what?
— The electrical man is a fucking genius, I said. At 10 : GO P.M. a steam whistle summons us back
to bunk count.
At 10:30 the whistle flicks lights off. The sixty- man sleepship slowly settles, bedsprings squeak- ing. Coughing barks ripple the quiet sea. Here and there a flare of match lights a cigarette. A tired, shuffling parade of men back and forth to the shitter. Slowly, the trampship sinks in night sea. The bullfrog chorus restlessly snores. A few last lung-wrench coughs clear the decks for night thoughts.
Weaving plans to climb the fence. Pickup cars. Wild police chase. Hideouts. Roadblocks. Now the guard comes, flashlight dancing overhead, jerking his head, right, left, lips silently counting. Next come the creeping lovers. Tiptoeing down to hobby- room rendezvous. Usually au pair. Sometimes a third man stands in the hall as point lookout. The air is redolent of furtive sex. Alarm clocks.
In the bunk next to the toilets the sleepless chief snitch listens to his earphones, watching, watching whom who's fucking. There are no secrets in prison.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 51
I am making a dream movie without a script. If s a recurrent megalomaniac habit. The Carnival at Rio was background this time. There was a German producer with a four-man crew, an under- ground magazine editor from Buenos Aires and his girl,' a Swedish model. Five Brazilian friends protecting me. And a Brazilian movie crew making a movie of the German movie.
She was a jet-set love addict who hated drugs, dancing with a sleek South American rhythm. She was always there. I'll love for two she said. When the long conferences got boring, she'd play a Bossa Nova record very loud and dance. We spoke French and Spanish and never got hung up in head games.
I was accelerated, uplevehng each structure as fast as it formed. (People often get disturbed by this. ) The Brazilian director dug the movement and kept flashing smiles. The German director was magnificent under the circumstances. He had been sent over to get a serious talk-interview. He kept agreeing to let the action tell the tale. Vapor trail design is a valid art form.
We spent every night whirling through carnival streets in masks. She moved with us. The first two nights she'd murmur around three o'clock and we would return to the hotel. She would toss her black hair back and forth on the piUow and murmur, si, si, oui, oui, si, plus, encore plus, 6 cherie, f ais- moi Tamour.
52 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
The last night of Carnival she said she'd wait for me. I stayed out until sunrise and the last drumbeat.
Then I missed her and raced back to the hotel.
I was relieved to find her sleeping in our bed. Her bare arms embraced the pillow. Lying on her stomach was a book. The Anatomy of Man, a medical book in German. With diagrams. She was far out.
I began to whisper lovingly. I turned out the light and touched her. She moved away. To make room for me? I smelled of debauch. She stirred. I pulled off the fooFs costume. Drunken husband fucks sleeping wife. She turned into an Indian girl, submissive, raped by the European conqueror, going through the motions.
She sat up in bed. Her eyes kept straying to the door, to the window. She rattled in fast Spanish that she had called Albert in Sao Paulo and he had forgiven her for being away from work. She began reproaching me gently for my stupidity.
She lay back on the pillow. Her eyes kept mov- ing to the bedtable. She reached over for a small tube and unscrewed the top. She delicately in- serted the plastic phallus in her left nostril and inhaled luxuriously drifting off in reverie. I called to her. She reluctantly opened her eyes and moved the tube to the right nostril.
- Qu'est-ce que c'est?
- C'est bon. II me fait sentir si bonne. Tu veux unpen?
The tube had a hole in the end. I put it in my nose. The odor was medicinal, sweet familiar. It
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 53
put my head into a soft warm infant place. Breath- ing gently I could hear gas flowing from the tube. It was the ultimate narcosis. I started to drift into gaseous bliss. It didn't matter if I ever got back. Just before I blanked out some survival reflex screamed a warning. I moralistically pulled the tube out of my nose and screwed back the top.
She was lying back smiling. - Es bueno, eh? Paradise, eh ch^ri?
She reached for the tube and moved erotically. Then she inhaled.
- What is it? I asked prudishly.
She opened her eyes. - C'est centre le froid. Parf ait, non?
She clutched in her hand a small tube that took you to instant heaven. If the world becomes dull, unpleasant, she can just take a sniff and float. I examined the tube with disapproval. The end was white. The body green with red lines. Large white letters speUed VICKS INHALER. The smaU-print instructions were in German.
Her eyes followed as I put the tube on the far edge of the bedside table. I told her that there was another alternative to anesthesia. She frowned and said : - Dis-moi, quoi. Quelle est la meiUeure alternative. Her eyes kept moving to the table.
- Love, I said. She listened with interest.
54 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH FORM CALIFORNIA MEN'S COLONY WEST SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE DOUGLAS COPPED OUT. YOUR BAIL DENIED. TERRIBLY SORRY. SEE YOU THIS WEEKEND. PEACE AND LOVE.
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
Ifs election year after all. And so ended my contract with the Constitution of the United States. Justice Douglas freed me. Fm now forced to go outlaw, underground, exile. This little experiment is getting complicated. Professor.
The count-clear whistle pulls me from my bunk. I shove the manuscript Whisper gave me under the mattress. It is a warm May night. I smoke a cigarette watching Spica in Virgo. I need an inside guide. I walk to the north cellblock to Burroughs's cell. Two beds, two lockers — trim, tidy, military. He is precisely rolling cigarettes, one-third Bugler, one-third Top, one-sixth mentholated Kite, dash of Prince Albert, pinch of 602.
- That's the best tailor-made custom-built Rolls Royce of a motherfucking cigarette in the world. So the Supreme Court shot you down, huh?
- No, thaf s just the first round.
- Better keep singing that loud 'cause They watch us carefully here. Anytime a prisoner get bad news they put him on hot file to watch him close in case he kill himself or escape or get in
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 55
fights. Sometimes they transfer a cat out of here to maximum security if he gets bad news like that.
- What do I do now?
- I expected this. No one bails out of here, man. YouVe got to con your way out. Just takes time and youVe got plenty of that. Hibernate man. Sleep through the bad times. Ain't no animal taught you that yet? Weave a soft heroin cocoon around you.
He's a fussy, junkie alchemist, briskly rolling cigarettes, adjusting his false teeth, carefully tuck- ing in his blue shirt preparatory to an evening stroll.
- Dig man. I waited three years here working as a patient slave until the coffee-runner job opened up. You gotta tailor your reactions perfectly to theirs. After a while you know just how they think. It's not hard. Two years after I got the job - ShazamI I got my date. Quick and easy. I just push my coffee cart into every one of their office minds. Assistant Superintendent, Captain, every counselor in Building 310. Even the parole board. They're always hung over in the morning and their glazed eyes light up when they see me. You can have my job when I leave.
- What about just going over the fence?
He looked over my shoulder in warning. He jerked head toward door. - Let's take a walk.
Out into the yard, a brisk evening stroll. We are always alert to approaching cons or guards. Keep voice soft, eyes moving.
- You shouldn't have said that about escape.
- I was joking.
- No matter man. This place is crawling with
56 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
snitches. The walls are paper, man. Anyone hear you mention escape you be transferred to Folsom in a second. This is a good prison. Dig the grass and the flowers and the blue sky. And all the dope you need. Freedom to move around this way after evening chow. This prison is paradise. In Folsom you don't relate to sun for weeks at a time. Escape's a desperate fix. Look at that gun truck.
At each corner of the compound from six eve- ning until six morning park the gun trucks. Armed guards watching five hundred feet of roadway leading up to fence.
- Those gun-truck guards are killers. They always put the meanest bulls out to the gun trucks. Those mothers stir up trouble with cons so they sit out here all night with their fingers on the trigger. There's no way of getting over that fence without your being seen. By time you at the road, there's an alarm that puts a hundred squad cars on the highway looking for you, Dad. At night the fence is lit up every six foot. During day, they deal snitches to watch each section of fence. Check it out tomorrow. You see those cats sitting with transistor radios just watching the fence. They see someone go over, in thirty seconds they're on the phone screaming to Control.
- Why do they do it?
- That's their trip for getting out. Bootlicking. They get httle favors. Canteen ducats. Most of these cats here have no family or friends outside that give a fuck for them. To hustle that five or ten dollars a month for cigarettes they do the snitch trick. There's another thing. In the custody building there's this Escape Room. I been there.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 57
Dig. They gotta map of California and the western states, with a series of rings centering on San Luis Obispo. When the escape whistle blows automatic plans go into action. They gotta phone hookup to local, county, and state police and FBI. They estimate the time of arrival of the escapee at different distances from here. Sheet man, it's simple. They just call out roadblocks. At plus ten minutes they seal off all roads within a fifteen-mile radius. At plus thirty minutes they start blocking state highways. This prison is stra- tegically located. It's out here in nowhere halfway between L.A. and Frisco. Just two highways north and south. Escape is the million-to-one shot. Use your time here to learn what you don't know. Stick a needle in your arm. It do some good, it do no harm. Heroin is the best way to escape. Want some?
I wanted to be with Her heavenly body, so I thought of the electrician's offer instead. For the past few days I had looked, but his truck was no- where to be found. I asked Burroughs about him.
- Barritt? He laughed. How did you get hooked up with him? You don't waste time, do you? He's the connection. Barritt is OK. You can trust him. He's a turned-on cat. But don't be seen hanging out with him. That would get you both in trouble.
Prison leads to thoughts of violence. Should I use force to escape death?
Huey Newton's presence in the next prison courtyard was tangible. Is self-defense against, the lethal machine an act of violence? Millbrookj was lovely. I went with Jobie and Gabriel and June. } Two thousand years of Christian dogma? Pohtics keeps Christ on the cross? Hummingbirds spin by ripping off insects. At Lunacy Hill we dug up) sassafras roots. Cycles of eating and being eaten.
Spanish conquistadores and Norman crusaders and Southern Baptists. On Ecstasy Hill I loved you7> Didn't go to the Meditation House but drove pasjj happy to see Tibetan paintings. Should we resist? I miss you so beloved. If a Black defends against the slave master is he violent? I wish I could] sleep until your return.
The time is growing very long. Passive sub-/ mission to slavery? Personal suicide? Racial geno- cide? Socrates in the hemlocked death cell? Would I kill to be free?
I found a magazine under my pillow. A white sheet was folded inside. Another ^Whisper" script from Barritt. My bunk-neighbor bank-robber mur-
60 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
derer, kidnapper of state police kindly bespectacled potbellied Digest reader watching me.
- Did you notice who put this magazine under my pillow?
- No. Maybe a guard.
- A guard?
- I seen a screw other day putting something or taking something away from your pillow. Be careful. They watch you.
Is this an elaborate trap? Like the Berrigans? Or maybe Uncle Sam wants me to escape. Shoot me fleeing? Or let me go, good riddance? I lay on the bimk and opened the magazine.
INHERE
IS A LITTLE HELL
AFTER MY OWN HEART
NOT TOO CRUEL
WITH A FEW NICE DAMNED TO FOIST MY GROANS ON
IT IS IN THE TRANQUILLITY OF DECOMPOSITION
THAT I REMEMBER THE LONG CONFUSED EMOTION
WHICH WAS MY LIFE
AND THAT IT JUDGE IT
AS IT IS SAID THAT GOD WILL JUDGE ME
AND WITH NO LESS IMPERTINENCE
The Thirty-fourth Degree Mason, advanced adept of Rosicrucians, savant of Egyptian lore, White Knight of the Mystic Temple of Oriental Oc- cultism waved his plump hand. He was dressed all in purrs from his bald to his heel and his face it was twinkhng with wheel and with deal. When what to my wondering ears should declaim but a copy of Gurdjieff , a bag full of names. On Krishna. On Bailey. On Manson and Crowley. So crumpled his
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 61
togas, SO shallow his yogas, this merry old bawd, I laughed when I saw him in spite of his fraud.
- Let's take a walk, he said.
We strolled down the prison halls him holding my arm spinning pink clouds of cotton platitudes. He was doing a long term for real-estate fraud. MiHions, my dear. Two Rolls-Royces in the garage. Would you believe it?
- I shut you up last night when you talked about helping me escape from here. Take it easy man. Fm getting out on bail and I don't want to get transferred to Folsom.
Shrewd glance.
- Sure you're getting out on bail. We all are. But don't worry about my escape plan. It's not criminal. It's occult. Powers of consciousness. Leave the physical plane entirely. What are we doing down here in these ugly bodies anway? We beautiful souls.
I'm a sleek leopard padding by his side.
- What's the plan?
- Simple. Focusing of consciousness. There are ten men here who meet regularly in Mr. Bray's theosophical course. Some night, when the astro- logical situation is perfect (I'll write away for a reading) we form a circle with you in the middle, and we center cosmic consciousness and with us as your launching pad you ascend into the astral plane. From whence Blessed One, you will in your mercy and compassion send down aid to us.
I laughed at the thought of ten middle-aged men in prison garb under a full moon chanting me over the fence.
62 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
At noontime the call came: YOU HAVE A VISITOR. Slickly cleaned and dressed I walk down to the mail room. Yes, ^[ourwife is here now with special dispensation. You can see her today, but she must obtain authorization for future visits. Now stand there arms up, check no wristwatch, pat arms, pat shoulder, pat down sides, two swift motions up crotch down pants legs. Your wife can purchase items from machines. Inmates are not allowed to touch money. You can receive five packs of cigarettes, five candy bars or peanuts. You may kiss or embrace upon meeting and upon departure. No lascivious touch or caress. OK. You may go in visiting room now.
Swinging doors into third-class salon of a Polish ocean liner. Prim-grim rows of wicker chairs and sofas chastely confronting wooden tables. Wall paintings. Inspirational prayers from Alcoholics Anonymous leading down to a cluster of coin- operated dispensing machines and the purser's counter. Your wife^ is on her way over from the waiting room. From the window I watch the grace- ful dark-haired beauty, walking across the ramp through open doors into our arms at long last.
We kissed, for the first time in eight weeks. Then the Pavlovian ritual. Dropping quarters in robot slots, pushing levers hke well- trained labora- tory animals rewarded with cigs and candy.
— How was New York?
r^ - We lost three thousand dollars in the Bail Benefit. That fence isn't electrified, is it? , - No. And I got a key. I'm ready to leave as / soon as you . . . I'm whispering in her ear. / I've already talked about that with Irene in New
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 63
York. She says she knows how to do it. She's mak- ing inquiries now about other countries. She says she needs four weeks and ten thousand dollars.
- Which we don't have.
- It's a simple trick to get the money She said. Too soon the lights flick signal for leaving. The guards watch carefully as we kiss.
Back to my cellblock. I sit on the stoop facing the western sun burning scarlet holes in my optic tapestries. Listening lazily to the lapping hquid of endocrine tides. The section runner taps my shoulder.
Custody wants you on the phone.
I walked to the section office and picked up the phone. Soft persistent whisper.
- Can anyone hear you talking?
- No. The runner's in the hall.
- Your wife was here today.
- How do you know?
- Did you tell her that I'll help you escape?
- She said it sounded crazy. Who are you and why?
- Tell her that I am an addict of experience — good or bad, with a bias for intensity. She doesn't trust me. She's right. You shouldn't either. That's why I'm sending you the scripts. Are they worth your freedom. If you want to use them to get out of here have yourjvife line up a getaway car and a fake passport. I'll keep sending you notes. I'm trying to get over to your side of the prison so we can talk in person.
- What about you? What do you get in ex- change?
- All I want is a buzz.
64 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
A wheeler-dealer con approaches, his face solemn with conspiracy. He is the mail-room trustee and a prison politician. We walk out the cellblock to the ramp.
- Listen, you get a lot of letters here that you never get to see. Did you know that?
I nodded. He is a twenty-year top whose main hope for freedom is to snitch somebody off. The administration here reads your letters. Every day we send your mail to the warden and they get kicks from the letters you get. He handed me an en- velope from his pocket.
- Here's a letter you might want to read. Be sure and destroy it. I could get in trouble.
I looked at the blue envelope. Without knowing why, I suddenly thought of fucking. The snitch was wiggling his nose.
- Funny smell. Does it come from that enve- lope?
I could smell it too.
- It smells like cunt to me. The snitch laughed.
- You been locked up too long.
Back at my bunk I put the envelope to my nose. No doubt about it.
Dear Prisoner:
I am writing this letter in hopes of connecting with you. I always wanted to meet you and then I heard that you were in prison. Can I write you? Can you write me?
My life goes like this. I am living alone in a
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 65
small stone house in Italy. I am free of children, husbands, lovers, jobs, parents, America. It's hard to be alone. I want people. Am learning that there is no right or wrong. Think I should dig the aloneness, even when I don't. Now I think I'm cool.
Sometimes I can't beheve how stupid I am. I smell like cunt all the time. (Do the prison authorities read these letters? I hope not.) Well, anyway my desires cannot reflect unfavorably on you. This is an unsolicited letter from a lust- ful groupie. Do I smell like cunt more than most women? My own smell drives me mad with wanting. Does that make you feel good to lie in prison and think of me lying in the sun naked in southern Italy dripping wet thinking of fucking you?
So here I am lying in the courtyard of my stone house, with a thin layer of sweat covering me; thighs sticking together and opening to the cool breeze; a shght salty smell coming off my armpits. I rest relaxed and warm, thinking las- civious thoughts of your tongue curling into my mouth and cunt and here I am alone penetrated by sun and wind, nearly satisfied, letting my mind take my body through pleasures. It isn't a bad way to spend a day.
When I get very intense rapping to people they seem to understand the concepts I am into. My desire is so great to talk it out, be understood. It fucks me, this hunger. No orgasm. I'm always out there somehow, very intent and intense and dangling. It's no good for my body. It's lonely. I don't want to be alone. I want to be with some- one on the trip. I wish I were in your cell with you. Maximum security.
66 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
You might not want to be bothered reading this.
Mary Jane
The call from Whisper came at lunch break.
- I keep rereading your notes. It's as good as anything Beckett has written.
- You make me want to write more, jfour wif e?
- ^She's still hnin^ up a car and ID.
- Tell her not to delay. Every day adds to the chance that you might be transferred. I've been thinking a lot about it. You are as good as free.
Cheers from TV room. Shouting joy. Huey New- ton is going to be free! The Supreme Court re- versed his case. They're freeing Huey. Hell get bail in two months.
Many souls are happy tonight. The prison air is clearer.
I shave and shower, waiting for her visit. A shy starched embrace. Smoking cigarettes, drinking ^coffee ,jffl:£^plot the flight. Connie and Blyde.
- Well the dealing brothers won't be able to break you out. They're scattered. Mexico. Hawaii. Pakistan. Boats from Lebanon. On' the run. And John Griggs is gone. He would have loved to drive the geta;way carl Now let me teU you about Aries. I'd seen him several times at the Berkeley house. Hanging out. When he asked to speak to me in private I thought he meant to offer us money for
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 67
the appeal. We went to the edge of the sun deck. I didn't think we'd be talking about anything too illegal so I didn't suggest walking to the park where I usually go to get away from bugs and taps.
- I deal acid to a group of tumed-on revolution- aries who want to free Timothy.
- Great, I said. We could use money for the lawyers. Maybe they could put some energy be- hind the Jimi Hendrix benej&t.
- Oh, no, he said. They want to bust him out and help get the two of you out of the country. Or go underground.
- Let's walk in the park, I said.
So we sat under a tree in the botanical garden smoking grass, my paranoia button depressed. - Who are you, Aries?
- I'm a chemist. Graduate school dropout. I've been making DNT, MDA, and I perfected a for- mula for acid.
- You make your own?
- Small quantities. I give it away to people I know who will use it righteously.
- Who is this group that wants to do it? I must have looked dubious.
- You want a reference?
- I nodded.
- Call Pat. Check me put with her. I'll be by tomorrow to follow up on it.
- When I got back to the house I phoned Pat and told her I had to see her at once. She seemed to know what was happening and told me Aries was OK. We'll know next week.
68 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Black brothers lounging around stoops in sun laughing rapping wave power fists. Burroughs gets up and joins me.
- Saw you on the visiting lawn. Whew 1
- How'dllook?
- The bulls were watching you. Be careful. Don't look so high.
- How?
I walk the yard alone thinking about escape. I need inside help from a stir-wise con who knows this terrain. Details about patrol cars and fences and timing and traps. Is Whisper a setup? Could this dull-minded system invent an ambush with mystery and elegant prose? Could that poetry be faked?
Today another anonymous letter from Italy.
Dear Captive One ...
With a joint in my left hand and this pen in my right, I write you a letter. It doesn't have to be to that group of molecules forming flesh structure, brain structure called you. It could be any goddamn human form on this earth. Am I too much to handle? I am so full of myself and life that I have to hold another conversation of flesh and neuron to expand. Fm lonely and sad because it's so stupidly alone in this world. Everyone is so fucking scared.
Whiz baby, it's so fucking hot here it's like a jungle. The vegetation is up to my waist. Out- side the bedroom window are millions of red poppies. Sitting naked, covered with oil. I wiU write awhile in here and then go back to the sun. A Dutch boy walked up to my cottage
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 69
yesterday. Without a word we took off our clothes and sat in a golden Yab Yum. Not a word was said. We sat for a while looking into eyes and then I moved onto his lap and he lifted me up to some cloud floating I swear to you that we levitated. Whew! Can you dig how that blew my mind? I figured I knew about sexual energy . . . men, women, boys, tender, mean, love, lust, belly hanging over lacy bikini pants and silky shirts . . . beautiful people climbing in-and-out- of-bed, making love, pissing, eating, singing, maybe coming. Oh yeah, I saw it all from the beginning and in the beginning, I ate the apple (orgasms a bonus with a ten-shekel purchase or more) and then, whiz baby, sat on his lap and got whirled up to some new fantastic place. Whew! Explain it! I was left so confused. He was so cool and matter-of-fact. How often does " this happen?
Do you mind my asking these questions now? After all, we've never met.
Galaxies of new energies centered on my cunt and suddenly I became his cock and he was hold- ing me like a tree growing out of his pelvis. What are we going to do with me now?
Mary Jane
Every day I wander the compound looking for Whisper's truck. He spends most of his time on the east side. He has become a magnetized center for my hopes.
Looking out the window of the custody office I see his wagon flash by. I run down the stairs
70 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
across the lawn and down the road to the tobacco factory. Cons glance at me curiously. I slow down and look casual. My heart is pounding.
- No letter from Aries? He smiled tenderly.
- You're wired up, aren't you. Maybe I should give you some heroin to turn off your red-alarm system. No, Fve been checking the post office every morning. I guess Aries is scared.
- You look a little worried yourself, I said.
- Fve been seen talking to you. Maybe reported. I gotta be careful. There's another problem. I can't unlock the gate for you. No matter. That plan was too risky. There are other ways out of here.
- How?
- Just climb the fence. I'll tell you when and where.
Climb the fence is a scary idea. It sounded so easy just to stroll out.
- There's the right time and the right place to do it. I'm not going to tell you now. You'd end up staring at the fence and get snitched off. There's another way too. I'll check it out.
- But in any case I have to do it myself?
- Yeah. You're going to have to be in the best physical shape of your life. Do you push iron?
- Not much. Handball and yoga.
- Not good enough. Start tomorrow and spend an hour each day building up your arms and shoulders. You gotta run like a deer and climb like a monkey. See you.
Burroughs drops by my bunk and hands me a magazine.
- Run these through your video. Porny shots in color of the Frisson queens. Oh yes, I remember you, Mother Opium, Womb Queen. Pink golden boobs ripening, hquid smile, legs inviting. Sprawled, soft papaya cunt tasseled slender finger opening smooth hps. Oh, do come chmb inside my soft cocoon, she murmurs.
And Mistress Alcoholia, the Stupor Queen, wan- ton bending forward saucy face turned over Her shoulder. Oh please fuck me rearly. Her round buttocks wiggling, velvet slit whispering, oh now, oh now, honey, you're going to honey fuck my honey ass. Cha cha cha.
And Princess Cocaine, the Go-Go Queen, danc- ing naked on the shiny crystal tabletop. Her plat- inum hair swinging, her high heels clacking. Do it to me! Oh do it! Do it to me. Do iti Do it! Do it!
And Mademoiselle Aphrodisia, * the Orgasm Queen, her big saucer black eyes smiling, mini- skirt pulled up, black stockings, cream thighs curled black cunt hair spread open murmuring pussy mouth pouting, come, kiss me, come kiss me, make me come, come, come.
Burroughs is grinning. The nervous system feels
72 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
no pain. With the right dope and good pictures in your head you don't need nothing more. Want some heroin?
The mail desk brings another letter from Italy.
Poor Enslaved One . . .
What a cruelty to lie in the sun alone. Do you get horny when you feel the sun hcking your skin and moisture forms? And you with all those men! I could dig it. I imagine your body firm and brown and virginal now. Do you have secret occult ways of dealing with sexual energy in prison? I hope the terrible hassles you've been through haven't marked your face with sorrow wrinkles and bitter lines.
I have just eaten artichoke with ai'oli, that's Midi mayonnaise with garlic, rice; tamari sauce, concoction of honey and apple pancake, finishing off with coffee and a cigarette. Was propositioned by Juho, a neighbor peasant. He's the only local I'd fuck but I won't fuck him either. He came over the other night to tell me there was no vineyard work on Tuesday and he'd hke to make love. I tried to tell him it wouldn't work. He hstened happily while I expended energy explain- ing and then he grabbed me and kissed me hard. I had to fight loose, angry because he was being so heavy. All ended friendly. I wish you were working in the garden with me. So cool going down the rows with you in the hot sun, talking or not.
What did you think of my meeting with the Dutch boy. Afterward we walked and drank wine and climbed into bed. It was all so routine. He just moved on top of me and in with one motion.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 73
Again, no word was said, and Fm the most verbal person alive. It was so fucking domestic. He moved slowly like some craftsman to that place of fear in me and past it. Crushing my breasts, my legs, clinging to his back, my body hanging onto his body past the pain place and my body told him fuck as hard as he wanted. I remember getting scared and crying. My strong mind and egocentric will gone, man. I wept to be enslaved, juice oiling our legs. He was like some relentless pressure searching every comer of my cunt and I knew he would never stop. Wine on his breath. He was worried about the noises I made. We sHd into sleep.
Is this interesting? How strange to think of you reading this in your prison ceU.
His body was so delicious stretched the length of me. Later I curled into his back, wanting him some more but timid; waiting for him to move first but I couldn't keep my hands from moving along his chest and belly and down to his cock. Then he asked so shyly in Dutch can I fuck you in my cunt he was soothing and caressing. Orgasms seems old-fashioned and histrionic, a lower level of consciousness. You know he never came in all the times we connected. I thought a lot about that.
In the morning without a word he told me that it was time to leave.
, Mary Jane
Burroughs is high, lecturing me on pimps and whores :
- Fm working three girls on the main line in Frisco see that arm (thin-chicken limb extended) I put seventy-five thousand dollars pure coke in
74 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
that vein in one year on the bus from Memphis she was about fifteen I said well baby youVe met just the manll show you around the big city. I had two at that time, Ethel and Peaches working houses along Pine Street when she'd go to the bathroom she'd shout **Whistle Chinatown Daddy^ he was my best friend but when he got back in town and found out I'd turned out both of his sisters. I was riding the main line on the hairy oyster you know so I couldn't hear her tinkle turning tricks up and down the coast with fifty thousand workmen on the Alaska highway girls and dope said he'd shoot me on sight the golden clam man the oval cash register shot up twenty-five bills in a month she'd come home at three in the morning and throw the bread on the bureau every cent of it man she made me fifty thousand and I never had to spend a cent on her found this sixteen-year-old Eurasian and threw her out only two kinds of men in the world tricks and junkies not like the good old days only two kinds of women in the world hustlers and madams only two kinds of men in the world Johns and pimps. The sexiest chicks love skinny junkies cause we fix them the ultimate fuck in the main line.
I am standing by the handball court keeping tally, pushing the score peg down the number slots, waiting to play the winner. The sun is hot and my brown Mexican skin gleams with sweat. I am in the best physical condition. In the corner of my optical screen moves a flash of brown. Whisper is standing by the corner of the cellblock. When he catches my eye he disappears.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 75
- Manuel, take tally will you? Til be back in five minutes.
He was bent over examining an electrical box. A letter was on the ground beside him. I sat down, ripped it and read quickly.
- What does Aries's letter say?
- His group will spring me for twenty-five thousand dollars. They are up in the desert now getting the overview and planning the caper. They want to know if it's all right to carry guns. To use if necessary. His people are on the run too and don't want to get captured helplessly.
- That's irrelevant, said Barritt. Do you agree?
- I'll run it through my head, I said. There's another problem though. Aries doesn't like the idea of you being involved. He thinks it's a setup.
- I can dig it.
- He doesn't see any reason why we need you. He says, string you along, get all the information from you. Tell you that I'm going to wait for the appeal. Then, when the time comes, hit the fence.
He smiled.
- I think the same way. I don't think we need Aries and his big operation. It's bad security to have a large bunch of freaks in on the plan. Some- one is bound to talk. I think that I should drive the pickup car. You'U save your twenty-five thou- sand. All I'd need is bread for the« car and for a fake ID for myself in case I have to split.
- If only Aries could meet you.
- No, that's out. That's not good for him or me.
- Well, if he could only read your "Whisper" script he'd be convinced. Will you mail some of your writing to him?
76 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
- No. That's too dangerous.
I wrote another note to Aries telling him to con- tact league members to get the twenty-five thou- sand. And telling him to trust me and my trust of Whisper.
Standing starchy waiting Jler^ visit, ghe said she'd hitchhike. For thirty minutes I lean out the window watching. Mountain maiden, she comes
^in colors.
/ - I walked three miles down the mountain fog.
/ It's hard hitchhiking that early. Finally a middle-
! aged couple from Topeka took me as far as Hearst's castle. There was another hiker in the back seat. A white kid from Mississippi. James Dean type. I started walking down the highway to get away from him. Walking through the morning mists. He followed saying things like If you weren't married Yd ask you to hitchhike around the world with me and What's marijuana really like? Finally we were picked up by two long-hairs. They said, Who are you visiting in San Luis? I said my husband. They said, Oh your cousin! When the sign came California Men's Colony West V2 Mile I said let me off in half a mile. Getting out I said. Do you want some grass? The kid driving said. Oh, no, we've got enough gas. The other one said. Wait a minute, did you say grass? They said. Give our love to your cousin. Do you like my dress? It's from Pakistan. The week is a long slow road to Sunday.
- What news of the escape?
- Good news from Irene in the East. The po-
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 77
litical people approve. They'll get us out of the country.
- Where?
- I don't know yet. Maybe Cuba. Or Algeria. Or Chile. It all seems like a faraway dream to me.
Whisper asked: - What did^ygur^fe say?
- Aries is pressing for details. Like which night? And what time? And how much time before they know Tm gone?
- The best time is a foggy Saturday night. Around 8:30. Most everyone is at the movie or TV rooms. That gives you hour and half if you aren't seen leaving.
- Suppose I'm seen?
- It will take ten minutes for the alarm to be called in and for them to get cars out on the road. It's a breathless chase that way but they can't stop you getting to the road.
- You can be seen by the gun trucks. The key plan is definitely out. They've chained all the side gates and I don't have the new keys. You have to go over the fence. Have you been working out with iron like I told you? There's a secret way out of here! I heard about it from an old Quentin veteran. Every time he got shot down by the board he'd tell his wife to meet him on the road next weekend. She talked him into waiting five months for the next board. He finally got a date and passed the secret to me. Down by the visiting room a wire cable crosses the road high above the fence. It's above the lights so it can't be seen. You sneak into the yard, go up the pole, grab the cable, and
78 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
pull yourself across. The cable is thick and strong. About twenty feet high. Way above the fence. The pole has metal foot spikes like that one. My eyes walked up a nearby light pole.
- You mean I dangle hand over hand?
- No man. You wrap your legs around the cable and shimmy across. You're wiry. Scamper across like a monkey. The only problem is : Who will drive you away? You should scratch Aries.
- He feels the same way about you. He was silent for a minute.
- The heat is coming down. I'd rather not spend the rest of my life in Folsom to get you free.
- Do you want to spht the country?
- More and more.
- OK. Let's work on that. You need a passport and some money.
Lying on my bunk rereading Whisper's scripts. This man has to be trusted. The whistle snuffs the lights. I lie in bed measuring the panels on the ceil- ing. The wire across the road is forty feet. Each reach of hands is two feet. Twenty pulls. I count. One pull, two pull. Three pull. Twenty seconds to cross the wire like a rapid raccoon. Reach up for the pole. Swing around. Shde down. Run free.
I spend the long night reviewing the plan. Run to the road. Pick up a car. Drive fast to helicopter. Fly south. Refuel at Joshua Tree in the desert. Fly to Mexico. Rendezvous on highway near Hermo- sillo. Drive to Veracruz. Rent a small boat to Cuba. I
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 79
sit up and fumble in my locker for the Bugler can and roller. Dump in the tobacco. Lick the paper. Roll it. I sit on bunk edge red tip glowing.
The continuous escape discussions with Whis- per.
- I was drawn compulsively to the cable. I located it. It runs over Building 324.
- Tm sorry you know. You've got to stay away from there.
- You should meet Aries so hell know you can be trusted. Or at least, as a start, Aries should read your script. Won't you mail it?
- No. I don't put Aries down for distrusting me. You're the one that's out of phase. Lives are at stake. I don't want to meet him or to know his plan. He feels the same. The scripts I write are for your eyes only.
- Suppose I smuggle some of your script for them to read.
- I gave the script to you.
How can I smuggle out some pages of Whisper's manuscript. I start typing on thin onionskin paper in top upper left corner. Single sp^ce. No para- graphs. Telex escape message.
An unexpected visit. I shower quickly, and stick the folded message in my shoe. An old friend has
80 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
dropped by to pay a call. I duck into the men's room. Snatch off shoe and palm the missive. Re- turning, I slide it into his coat pocket.
- This letter is of crucial importance. Will you airmail it to Hertonight?
Shehitchhiked down on visiting day.
- There's a new development with Whisper. He's under suspicion. He'll have to split when I do. He gets blamed if I leave.
- Can't you just agree to avoid each other? Let him go his way and we'll go ours. Aries is more and more uptight about him. He says his work is done. Pay him off and split. Aries is willing to give him five thousand dollars. But he can't be told when or where.
- But Whisper has risked himself. You and I and Whisper are the known suspects. No one knows that Aries is involved.
- And that's the way he wants to keep it. No- body knows that he knows either you or me. The money for Whisper is OK. I'll see if they'll go for the ID.
At three in the afternoon she takes a taxi to the San Luis Airport. Then a small plane to L.A. Then a plane to San Francisco and a helicopter to Berkeley. Then she hitchhikes home. She never missed a visit, f aiffiTul woman.
Monday SLO time. I wake unrested. Powdered coffee, powdered sugar, powdered cream, scald- ing hot sink steam. Make bunk sweep floor. I tenderly watch the wake-up rituals of thirty strange deadfeUows. Old bald toad sits up in long Johns
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 81
solemnly stretching new white socks. Each morn- ing at 7: 17 A.M. he rips the tons of two new socks. He works in Clothing Distribution and has an un- limited supply of factory-fresh socks. Old gray mouse sitting in shorts on bunk unwrapping brown bag stale sandwich. He works in the kitchen and has unlimited supply of brown-paper sandwiches. The Lovers, sitting on adjacent bunks smoking together a quiet domestic breakfast cigarette. He is a thin, white, cocky redhead. She is a tall, shapely Black, who piles their lockers with floral arrangements. Their love labored long to reach the bUss of side-by-side twin beds. It took him two months to get moved to the same dorm. For the last five weeks we've watched the slow process of their union. After five days he moved four beds down. A trade for two cartons. Next week he slipped five down and across the aisle to reach her side. (She never moved. Just sat weaving flowers. )
Eight o'clock in the office. Coffee. News of last night's events. The fights, ODs, busts, freak- outs. I type a ducat list for twenty minutes. SLO time. Five hours till mall call. Wander to the library. Check back at office. Smuggle blue shirt and pants into the laundry. My handball com- padres sweating shirtless at the pressing tables. Starch for Sunday Pepe? Four anc^ a half hours till mail call. Six days till §be; comes. SLO time. I sit at my office desk studying the sex life of insects, working on Utopian blueprints, drawing double helixes.
Eleven ten. SLO time. Early-line lunch for the prison elite with special passes. Eleven thirty. Outcount in the custody office. Thirteen blue
82 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
robots sitting on a hall bench while the bull counts bodies pointing an inventory finger at each one two three twelve thirteen nods pleased.
One o'clock in the afternoon. SLO time. Three hours till mail call. Yoga on the lawn. Waiting for Chicanes. Handball speeds time. At four o'clock the section bull enters the cellblock holding letters. MAIL CALL: Cluster roimd looking for the orange envelope. Early line for dinner four fifteen. Read the morning paper. Walk the grounds with Bur- roughs. From ten till two tossing on the lumpy mattress thinking. SLO time. Drift into a five-hour restless sleep. That's Monday. That's Tuesday. That's Wednesday.
That's Thursday. Slow time. Past halfway. The week slides toward Sunday. SLO time.
One hundred and sixty-nine hours of SLO time before She comes.
And Burroughs keeps telling me - Turn off, man. You're keeping yourself uptight like a zoo animal pacing the cage. Hibernate. Time-travel. Sleep through this bad time in the cunt of Mother Poppy. I know he is right, but I'm afraid of heroin.
ITie problem. Whisper is wrong. There are no spikes to climb the pole to reach the cable. There is a tree growing on the fence side of 356 from which I could swing onto the roof. But how to reach the tree? Jump out the corridor window? Risky. And the room next to the tree must be empty or the con lying in bed looks up and sees me. Crawl under building to reach the tree?
I wander down to the west side just before the
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 83
8:00 count. The handball court Is deserted. I pre- tend to be picking up handballs in a bucket. I lean down, peer under building. It's a shaded love nest. A convict on his knees dog-style his blue jeans pulled down, white buttocks gleaming. He is rocking slowly forward and back, his eyes closed, his head turned to the side thoughtfully. Mounted behind him a denim mastiff pumps slowly, his head hidden behind the wooden floor beam. There is not a soimd but the heavy breathing and shoes shding for traction.
\
Beloved —
Kerosene lamp again. Firelight. Wonderful wood, madrona, light-colored dry bums into soft ash like manzanita only tree-sized. I've half a cord and more promised. Use leaves as kindling it ignites so easily. About ten now. The moon is glowing on the sea. Jupiter is sitting behind the mountains. A lonely lazy day yearning for you. Frogs very vocal while sunbathing today. Tree above me full of hummingbirds and humming bees. Watch insects more closely now after your stories. Dragonfiies landed near me observing me curiously. Sent Susan $100. Joe will give Jack $200. He sent you fifty. All from Richard Alpert's check. Will write him from the house here he was alleged to have inhabited.
Today's horoscope: Catch up on correspon- dence to faraway friends. The star map is mean- ingless without you. I miss you so my beloved. Meditation house stillness sounds of energy. Fve developed a nervous tic. Have to keep clearing my ears by yawning, adjusting atmospheric pres- sure. Tarquin says it's because I have a vertebra out. I do have a stiff neck.
\
84 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
j Determined and bored. Oh dear. I've let the
j pregnant cat in. She wants to be between me
I and the letter. Washed the skyUght today. Ill
/ have to do another spate of work. Feehng guilty
/ about being lazy. I'll get on the phone organize
' arrange. Apply for welfare to get a driver's
hcense. Ease M. and J.'s passage. Raise bail
money. Bail money how glorious to have to think
about bail money. Oh my love perhaps in a
month. I feel so hopeful. I wish our telepathy
were perfected.
It's almost too bright to sleep outside. I've arranged a sleeping place on the roof outside the study in Berkeley. It's been too foggy to use it. Ill be so happy when the house is empty and quiet and I can work with the archivists. I yet dream of making the study a serene and unclut- tered place. My beloved I sit with you and watch the sky. You shield the fiashHght with your hand and look at the map and say it must be a space- ship there's not supposed to be a star there. I V^ love you. Come back soon.
Your Wife
The prisons are filled with heroin vibrations. Junkies involved in the ancient cult devotion to Mother Opium.
I came to prison with certain naive, liberal hypo- critical prejudices against self-defense. Insulated from the threat of violence, starvation, disease, brute force, I was nonviolent, seeped in middle- class serenity not shared by the majority of the world population. Now I had to figure out what I would do when armed violence threatened my life and my freedom. The needle or the gun?
I entered prison with a fear of heroin. Logically
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 85
I knew that anyone had the right to put anything in his body. But I maintained a moral superiority^ about junkies. Now I listen to the thoughtful words of men who understand and truly love heroin.
Burroughs says:
- I was making a heroin tantra with this singer, the most elegant user I ever fixed, a heroin with a mind like a looking glass, Lady H herself. We were fixing each other with such gentleness and love man (H in the arm and physeptone in the ass). Identification becomes complete. I can no longer separate the woman from the drug. All was SHE, every cell in my body whispers Her name. You just got to have respect for Lady H. Like any other woman she's a goddess when loved but a whore when abused. She's the Sphinx woman, the foxy chick that turns you on so much that you flip so crazy for her that you throw everything away just to be with her.
Chicano, a handball partner, calls me aside.
- Don't tell anyone but I gotta transfer out of here to forestry camp. I won't see you for a while. I want to leave you a present. I tell you how to escape from here.
- I'd rather not go out illegally.
- OK. But if you ever need to escape I tell you two ways. The east gun truck goes off at midnight. Also there's a cable wire over the west fence near the visiting room. If you have to split the country go to Tijuana. Hacienda Bar. Tell the bartender there you know me. He'll get you papers and hide you out. Bring some money though. Adios.
86 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
FOLLOWING NAMED MEN REPORT AT ONCE TO CUSTODY: PRESTON, KELLY, LEARY.
Walking back to Custody a dozen men call:
— Hey what they want you for?
Flanagan is serious in the Captain's office.
- There's been an escape. Some Mexican who works outside in National Guard just jumped in a jeep and drove off. Chicano. You know him. He plays handball. Man I wish they'd clear me for outside work. Just drive away in their machines.
- Why did they call us here?
- The photography office is printing 1,500 wanted cards. We have to stuff them in envelopes.
The Officer of the Day swaggers in:
- I hate to call you men out on Saturday night. We got envelopes here addressed to every police chief in western states. Have to stuff these wanted flyers.
Wallet-size cards. Escape: Rogelio Chicano, age 33, Mexican, 5' 8", 157 lbs. Crime: rape, posses- sion of narcotics. Wearing blue denim trousers and shirt. If apprehended notify Superintendent Cali- fornia Men's Colony West, San Luis Obispo, Cal- ifornia. I pray for his safety.
- Don't worry about him said Flanagan. He's got relatives just down the coast. He'll change his clothes. Hell, by now he's cross the border to T.J. That's his hometown. They'll never see him again unless he's dumb enough to come back.
Flanagan will laugh when he stuffs my picture in the brown envelope.
She^fioats on a lysergic cloud Her hair scented wim&esmoke.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 87
- Was the money wired to Whisper?
- He's doing it today.
- If it comes tomorrow I can split in two weeks.
- There's been such confusion. Some of the lawyers promise bail in two weeks, but the brief hasn't even been filed. Two months have been lost. It will be four months before bail. The lawyers say wait. There's 80 percent chance you'll be out legally by November 1 .
~ I'm going over the wall in two weeks.
- I agree. There's a big debate on whether guns should be used if necessary. The lives of the rescuers will be at stake. The pigs will be armed and shooting to kill.
HE: - You don't have to flee with me. Ill split. You stay here like Kathleen Cleaver. I'll find an exile home. You come when you are ready. Or you fly to Mexico with Ga- briel. Be free. SHE: - I have to go with you. They'd bust me the the day after your escape.
HE: - You could prepare solid legal protection. Disassociate yourself from my escape. Maybe divorce me publicly. SHE: - No. I couldn't do that.
HE: - OK. Then you go to New York this week to ask Irene to get a secret apartment there. Whisper will drive the car. We don't need militant Aries.
88 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
Handball in the hot sun. I am learning the back court. Fragile timing. Shoulder-arm whirls the ball high away from forecourt. An ancient sweating, healthy game. While waiting my turn I notice a telephone repairman's canvas tent hung from cable. Reassuring. It must be strong. Two repair- men cons are stringing wire.
- What's that doing here?
- We're stringing telephone wire from the sup- port cable.
- Is that cable really strong enough to hold a repairman?
- You better believe it. It'll hold eight hundred pounds.
- Hey Teem, you got next game tally?
- I need a partner. How about Pepe? Everyone looks at the bench where Pepe lies motionless sunning and they shake heads smiling.
- Pepe, he don't feel like playing today. I walk by the bench. Pepe's face is relaxed. He's gone in heroin dreams. He's a trembling stamen floating in the petals while his body rests in a state prison. The guard just walked past my bunk. Someone begins sending me midnight telepathic recep- tion tapes . . .
listen . . . tomorrow NIGHT YOU HELP ME
. . . you're the one I'm talking to ... I
LIFT HEAD LOOK AROUND BARRACKS . . . WHO'S SENDING THE MESSAGE . . . TOMORROW AFTER-
confessions of a hope fiend 89
noon borrow a hoe from the landscape shack . . . take it behind the tobacco factory and break the handle about a foot from the blade . . . hide it in your commissary bag in your locker . . . when bull comes down dorm at midnight after he passes your bunk walk down to the shitter carrying the blade . . . w^hen he returns step out in hall and clobber him in head . . . one slice split his skull like watermelon . stuff his body in the laundry closet . walk down to the next section office . wait behind door until section bull ar- rives . . . clobber him the same way . in five minutes you have knocked out four section offices . . . they're all dozing . . . I'll do same on other side . . . with those eight bulls out . . . the entire prison is unguarded . . . except for con- trol and custody . . . control is locked in . . . leave it alone . . . custody is no prob- blem . . . you move into watch lieuten- ant's office and slice down sergeant . . . i run upstairs flick start pa system on
baker's desk . . . TURN IT UP TO HIGHEST VOL- UME . . . FEEDBACK SCREECH BLASTS EVERYONE AWAKE . . . THEN WE MAKE THE ANNOUNCE- MENT . . . WAKE up! . . . YOU ARE FREE . . . THE GUARDS ARE OFFED . . . CLIMB THE FENCE . . . ESCAPE ... GO HOME . . . (i'm TRYING TO THINK OF SOFT FLOWERS ... ) AS YOU RUN DOWNSTAIRS TIP OVER CAN OF PAINT CLEANER . . . THROW MATCH ON IT . . . WHILE I'm AN- NOUNCING THE ESCAPE YOU START FIRES IN 310 AND THE WEST AREA . . . WE RUN TO THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF FENCE UNGUARDED BY GUN TRUCK AFTER MIDNIGHT . , . NINETY SEC-
90 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
ONDS LATER WE'RE PICKED UP ON THE HIGHWAY ... IN TEN MINUTES WE HAVE SLAIN TEN GUARDS, FREED THE PRISON, BURNED DOWN THE JOINT ... AN EXEMPLARY ACTION . . . KILL US ON THE RUN ROBOT MONSTERS FOR WE WILL NOT LIVE AS CAGED ANIMALS WE WILL NOT LIVE AS DOCILE CAPTIVES WE CANNOT LIVE IMPRISONED WE CHOSE TO DIE FREE RATHER THAN LIVE EN- SLAVED (end tape).
I burst through the swinging doors of the visit- ing room. She waits in the most private corner, table arranged with Coffee, Rolls, Cigarettes.^ She has a Persian beaded bag. She is beautiful. She has strange news.
- The Whisper manuscript finally arrived and I really dug it. It justified all your claims. Aries was eager to see it. He's not a literary person, so he gave it to Michael Horowitz and Bob Barker, archivists of the Fitzhugh Ludlow Memorial Li- brary in San Francisco. They immediately identi- fied Whisper's writing as plagiarism. Some of it from Samuel Beckett. Most of it stolen from a young English writer named Brian Barritt who wrote a book called Whisper a collage of words smuggled out of Her Majesty's prison between November 15, 1966, and September 19, 1969.
- Now I know what he meant when he said he wasn't an author. He's not even Brian BarrittI
- Aries's suspicions were right all along. This mystery of Whisper and his influence over our lives! The whole thing is counterfeit. Read this.
jhefflves me Xerox pages from Samuel Beckett's hook The Unnamable.
- I smuggled out the most poetic parts. But
92 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
there are many prosaic pages that come from his own experience.
- They discussed that. Whisper is part plagiarist and part paraphrast. If that's any comfort.
- I told everyone it was the finest prose of the twentieth century.
- Everyone admires your literary taste.
- But he is wise. He's consciously counterfeit- ing. He's copying verbal formulas to produce the desired solution. He kept saying, I've got a copy- right. He's a good plagiarist.
- Not good enough.
~ What does Aries suggest?
- He's amused. And amazed. He's ready to go in two or three weeks.
•- What about Whisper?
- Aries says pay him and get him off the scene.
I gotta talk to Whisper.
- ^She says that your book is plagiarized from an Enghshman named Brian Barritt.
- What did you say tocher?
- What could I say? Who are you, anyway?
- I'm a script writer. A prescription forger.
- I had you touted as the greatest writer of the century. We were getting you a job with Grove Press. To edit your own writing.
- I'd like that. How much does it pay?
- What about plagiarism?
- I told you plagiarism is the only honest literary form. I write script. If it's done accurately, I get it filled.
- Aries says to pay you off and hope you'll be quiet.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 9b
Whisper is irritated.
- Still hanging on to labels? I'm not interested in their single information level. I push enthusiasm and its side effects. If that script is accurate it will get you free. If I can help you by splitting, Til do it. If you want me to drive the escape car or hide you out, 111 do that or if you want me to just go away and leave you alone, tell me. Just don't blow my cover and leave me here. I've got no money for bail and no way to free myself. Whisper is just prison script. If I were a better engraver I'd print the three thousand dollars and the ID. I told you it was risky to smuggle that script out. To decompose is to live too.
Waiting in the corridor outside the visit room, looking out the window I see Her arrive in a taxi. She said that Aries was ready to do it. We talked of Jonathan Jackson, seventeen, walking into the Marin County Courthouse armed with love for a convict. All free men in prison have dreamed of a Jonathan Jackson. The enthusiasm level mounted.
- There's still my promise to Whisper. You'U have to meet him. Give him the^getavyay money. Get diagrams and details on breakout from him.
- That's no problem. Have him come to Berkeley.
- Monda/s his day off. Wait for him tomorrow. Work out with him the details on when and where I get picked up Saturday night.
I put the question to Whisper. - Can you leave tonight or tomorrow to meet Her in Berkeley?
- Why so soon?
94 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
- Because I want to go over the wall Saturday. ~ OK. Ill go.
I give Whisper the numbers, codes.
— ril be back here Tuesday with the word.
Whisper comes Wednesday a long day late.
- What happened?
- Fuck-up all around, man. Couldn't make it to Berkeley. Started driving to Monterey Airport Monday morning. A terrible drive along a deserted burning twat with the daughters of the swollen manges splashing the crumbling stone. I got think- ing about the danger of my being seen taking a plane to San Francisco. I saw the whitewalled wheels of life hanging in the sky. A smeD of burn- ing rubber, incense. God was praying to his God, flicking the vehicles along their asphalt rosary beads. "Holy Mother of Jesus don't let me be late" says an accident statistic racing toward the rendezvous. I decided to drive to Berkeley past cars dragging black bellies on metallic highways, copulating with beetles at central junctions, ex- creting cogs and black oil. Cellulose orgasms snapped passers-by with big iron cunts, shattered eye lamps, and mindless mechanical screams. Then my car broke down, seduced by a huge red bus. I was spread-eagled over a traffic light and brutally assaulted. Cheering passengers mastur- bate with torn-off arms, ejaculating over NO SPIT- TING signs, shaving genitals with broken glass
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 95
^and vomiting black oil. Missed a day of work wait- ing.
- Why didn't you go on Tuesday?
- Because I went up on Monday. By bus? It didn't feel right. It's a mistake for me to go to your house. You told me the place is staked out, man. It's too dangerous. I'll go up Monday and meet
j^our wife in some neutral place.
- Where?
- Tell her_ straight on until she reaches the cerebral cortex, reverse past the thalamus at Lahore by the Badshi Mosque, then follow the sunshine until she reaches the heart, India. Or better yet, I'll meet her here in San Luis Obispo next Sunday night after Jier visit. Don't be im- patient. You gotta learn the prison lesson man. Patience. Your impatience had me hurrying all around the state exposed to amphibious slug crea- tures evolved from recessive mutations and me- chanical rape. We'll work it out down here.
- I'll write her to bring the money.
- There's no hurry. Your written words jump about like stranded fish, fusing into fantastic mov- ing sculptures, rearranging themselves in pahn- dromes that read the same from any angle. If she doesn't get the message we'll meet the next week.
- But I am in a hurry. The Poughkeepsie sheriffs may come this week. Most hkely they'll come Monday the thirty-first. I'm due in court there on Tuesday after Labor Day. You phone her tonight and tell her to bring the money so that the whole thing can be worked out this week.
- Keep cool. Labor Day is September 7. That's
96 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
all these pigs are talking about these days. A three- day holiday for the yags^ — hairless khaki-colored baboons with bunches of yellow fingers and enor- mous permanent erections that weave back and forth like cobras and strike at any aperture within reach. We'll work something out next Sunday the thirtieth. And you split the following Saturday. September 5. TTiat's the perfect weekend to do it. Yag force will be cut in half. They even pull in some of the gun trucks on holiday weekends. Only new inexperienced yags on duty. They'll be snowed with work, lead, and boiling piss. Septem- ber 5 is ideal.
- rd like you to phone JtJ^ tonight.
— No. Your phone is tapped. The sound system is operated by spider men, coil-headed pink lizards who weave the mercurial plasma along which the sound is carried. A tapped call from San Luis arranging for escape money and a meeting? Cool it man. Be patient and youll be free.
/ She is a slim brown soft-eyed girl waiting for / me in the visiting room. She had a busy week.
Aries came by Tuesday morning. He was pleased about Whisper's call. Said it was time to move. Ready for the escape this week.
Aries told me to pack my bag and get ready for a sudden trip. It was to meet my contact person in a restaurant.
Monday evening I jumped every time the phone rang, expecting a call from Whisper or my con-
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 97
tact. At last it came. A girl's voice. Hello. This is.Pam. Haven't seen you for a long time. Let's get together tonight. Usual place? Nine o'clock. I left J. to wait for Whisper's call. Dressed in dark colors and started walking down the hill. It was a soft night and as far as I could tell no one following. I stuck out my thumb when I saw a sister in a car and she drove within a couple of blocks. I chose an inconspicuous table and a glass ^ of wine. A beautiful electric-green-eyed girl walked up to the table . . . and said how good to see you. I looked into her warm laughing eyes and stood up and we embraced and I knew I had met a sister. She told me to get a car for tomorrow and be ready to leave the house for a three-day trip. Super Jay managed to borrow a car.
Tuesday morning he drove me down Telegraph Avenue until I told him to stop a block from Pam's motel. He didn't know what was happen- ing but he didn't ask any questions. He gave me the keys said the gas tank was full and asked if there was anything else he could do. I knocked on Pam's door. She was ready to go. San Jose was unfamiliar territory but we quickly found the wig shop and photographers in the phone book. We had a heavy schedule. Wig makeup, photographs, license bureau, library, social secu- rity card.
Getting a new head took the most time. I never knew there could be so many kinds of wigs. Every plastic lady on the street must own one. I eyed the long luxurious darkfalls and the high proud Afro scalps arranged around the mirrored room. Blondie was bad. Blond and curly was worse./
98 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
But Pam said that's what it had to be. The Keith Richard's Venusian birds plumage was out. Too stylish. Looking at myself in the mirror I saw the faces of my midwestern cousins. Oh lord must I look this way? Fresh from the beauty shop plastic lady. The longer I looked the less I liked her. But have a little sympathy. What's her story? Twenty-eight. Single. She needs makeup her skin is too sallow. What's her name? Margaret Ann McCreedy. CathoUc. Lived with her parents until last month got her own apartment in Berkeley. Supersecretary for an insurance firm. Not quite a virgin. Mi^t be having a httle affair with a married junior executive. Wears sturdy white underwear. Must I buy a bra? Just gave up wearing girdles.
Let's see what emerges after some makeup. Department store cosmetics. Orange-pink lipstick. Dark brown eyebrow pencil. False eyelashes. Need help there. The salesgirl was obliging.
OK Pam. Behold Margaret Ann McCreedy. I felt weird. What a change! Young people didn't see me. I got eyed by military types and middle- aged lusters aU over town, but kids looked right thru me.
We arrived in New York late the next day. I was nervous checking with the desk clerk. I'd used so many fake names I'd forgotten which one I planned to use. I had no ID for that name. I felt illegal.
Next morning to the passport office in the cold- j steel federal building. I filled out forms using national holidays for my parents;' birthdays. My
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 99
occupation is student. I'm the only grandchild. My grandmother was bom in London. Blah. Blah.
I was worried about the driver's license so I held up my right hand and pledged allegiance smiUng and thanking him. He told me I could come back and pick it up that afternoon. Leaving I checked out the elevators and stair exits in case I had to split fasti
Went to a health-food store and drank carrot juice. I felt paranoid about the youngish crew cut at the next table. Back to the hotel and re- turned to the passport office at four. It was almost empty. Heavy men's voices from inner rooms. A fat woman clerk was talking on the phone with an index file in front of her. A long wait and she asked me my name. I couldn't remember itl I flushed and dropped my bag. I prayed. I stood up and said Margaret Ann McCreedy. I took the/ passport and fled back to hotel. That night we' flew back to San Francisco. I wish you could see my passport picture. It's so funny. I've got the passport buried under the bamboo on the sun deck at Berkeley. I hope it doesn't rain.
Then I waited for Whisper. When he didn't show that blew it for this week. I was furious. Waiting is frustrating and dangerous.
- Whisper is coming to Berkeley tomorrow, Hell come this time because he's planning not to come back. Hell take the money and the ID and spht.
100 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
It was a slow week until the next visit.
- I thought we'd never meet here again. What happened?
- Well, Monday Whisper didn't show. Once again I was glued to the phone all day. All night. Aries kept calling. 'Cause the moment Whisper would show the word would go out that the escape was on. You didn't know any of this of course and I wouldn't write you. Tuesday same thing. All day and night. Aries calling. His entire apparatus was poised. His people have come down from the mountains or somewhere. Dozens of them waiting around so they could free you last night. It was torture. Same thing Wednesday. By this time I'm confused and depressed. Wednesday around seven Aries calls for a final check. He's with aU his people. When I said Whisper hadn't showed he was very disappointed and said he'd have to send them all back and that we'd have to postpone the escape. For several weeks. Until after your Poughkeepsie trial. The gloom was thick. Then fifteen minutes later Whisper showed up. Wasted. He could hardly stand. I immediately called Aries. But it was ten minutes too late. His people had just left.
- Next week?
- Maybe. If the Poughkeepsie police don't take i you and if Aries can get his people together again. \lt's costing them time and energy and money to \sit around week after week. I gave Whisper the
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 101
money and the ID and asked him for the diagrams. He jiist smiled and mumbled something about wanting you to go over the fence in broad day- light. He keptJaughlBg^nd saying 'Ibroad day- light."(Tie Jcept mumbUng^about tne Book of Job, iron maidens, abortion gorgers, drug traffic, hail Mary, lone-time, cannabis, wars, time-space, sub- lunia. He had a written list of wog cars and kept mumbling about laser danger, electron watch, and the torture barracks outside the fence. He was scared and spaced out.
ft was our last talk in prison. I told her that I couldn't let myself be captured passively and live the rest of my Ufe in a metal cage. Tell them they can carry guns in the escape.
- I've gone through the same changes. Telep- athy.
- The Marin County shoot-out Jonathan Jack- son?
- Me too.
- I'm going to write a political escape message. For Aries. Shoot to live. Aim for life.
Then She told me to make my words ring solid like the clang of a steel chisel on stone. The escape manifesto. I wrote in code.
There is the day of laughing Krishna and the day of grim Shiva. The conflict which we have sought to avoid is upon us.
It is a comfortable, self-indulgent cop-out to look for conventional economic-political solutions.
This is a war for survival Like Huey and An- gela. They dig it.
102 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
There is no choice left but to defend life against the genocidal machine.
There are no neutrals in genetic warfare.
Do not be deceived. It is a classic stratagem of genocide to camouflage their wars as law-and- order police actions.
Remember the Sioux and the pogroms and the black slaves and the indignation over airline hi- jackings!
If you fail to see that we are the victims of genocidal war you will not understand the rage of the blacks, the fierceness of the Weathermen, and the pervasive resentment of the young.
Our government is a lethal instrument.
Remember the buffalo and the Iroquois!
In this life struggle we use the ancient holy strategies of organic life:
ESCAPE 1) in the loyalty of underground sister- hoods and brotherhoods. ESCAPE 2) passively, break lockstep . . . drop
out. ESCAPE 3) actively, sabotage, jam the computer
... trash every lethal machine in
the land. ESCAPE 4) publicly, announce life . . . denounce
death. ESCAPE 5) privately, guerrilla invisibility. ESCAPE 6) beautifully, create organic art, music. ESCAPE 7) biologically, conspire with seed. ESCAPE 8) spiritually, stay high . . . blow the
mechanical mind . . . dose them . . . ESCAPE 9) physically. Aim for life and shoot to
live.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 103
WARNING: I am armed and should be con- sidered dangerous to anyone who threatens my life or my freedom.
Tuesday, September 8, 1970, is the 203d day of my captivity. I am waiting for the decision if the escape will be in four days . . . slow time ... I miss talking to Whisper. No one to write to because ^She^s, en route to our next meeting. I check the sky. The weather reports predict blue and cloudless. The moon is approaching full . . . the wind is from the west. Tonight there's an ominous clear lunar glow. . . . Aries won't do it if there's a full moon. . . . He's cautious. , . % Everyone said wait until a foggy winter night . . , I'm the one who is impatient , . . it's my life,
Wednesday, September 9, 1970, 204th day of captivity. Strange hush calm . . . waiting. . . . I am called into the legal office. The pigs tell me that I leave in handcuffs for New York on Tues- day, September 15. The chief con clerk walks into office. - Hey man do you want to move to a two-man cell . . . you're eligible for a move. We'll pick you out a good cellmate. ... - Where is it? ... — Just where you want to move to . . . 324 . . . down by the handball court. . . . It's a miracle to be moved next to the escape wire ... So perfect I'm suspicious . . . who is the roommate? Angelo ... he works in Receiving. ... I spend all my spare time with Burroughs asking him questions about escape. He wonders why. The weatherman sees clear skies . . . every-
104 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
one knows Fm leaving for Poughkeepsie. . . « - Hey man, when you leaving. ... - I may leave Saturday ... or Tuesday ... I may not come back . . . Angelo my cellmate is a tense good man ... He shows me pictures of his Cad- illac agency . . . he's in for receiving stolen prop- erty . . . cars . . . his wife comes every week. . . . There are only five cons in the prison whose wives come every week. . . . Angelo spends four hours every night writing his wife letters with in- structions about car repairs ... he is a kind devoted citizen with normal larceny. . . . He's worried about the weather too ... if it's sunny we can be with our wives on the lawn. ... He tells me to pray for sunny day. . . . The weather forecast for Thursday. Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo . . . early morning and late evening fog. Ootherwise clear and sunny. . . .
Thursday, September 10, 1970, the 205th day of my captivity ... no lav^er visit ... no word . . . there's less privacy in a two-person cell than in the large open dorm. . . . Angelo my cellmate is popular ... all the business cons and Italians come to visit and the cell crams wdth vibrations ... he tenderly drives his friends away . . . we'll keep it private and quiet here he says. . . . He's pleased to hve v^th me. I'm glad to look out the John and study the escape wire. . . . After lunch I change into shorts and start doing yoga on the lavm SIX FEET AWAY FROM CABLE POLE. Looking at the cable with half-open Hds while standing on my head. A pig rumbles up. It's a violation doing exercises here.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 105
A woman might drive by the outside gate and see you in shorts. I wash my blue socks and hang them on the guy wire supporting the cable pool. . . . Good luck to touch tihe pole. Walk around it.
Friday, September 11, 1970, the 206th day of my captivity. At 7:00 a.m. the prison whistle wakes me. Eye flash to window: Ice-blue sky. The soft gray furry fog of morning has vanished. A perfect rifle target is a body under full moon silhouetted in the glare of the guardhouse lights. The ritual of powdered steaming sink-water cof- fee. Shave, make bunk, three hours until the law- yer's visit, if he's coming. Venus is parallel Sat- urn. . . .
At 8:00 A.M. I walk to custody ofiice past the 6ld cons sitting arthropods on the law. Blue denim tombstones sunning on the steps and benches staring, sitting spitting talking strolling nowhere on a sunny prison morning. Broken robots pushing shuffleboard disks at nowhere with molasses mo- tions. Watering lawns. Tossing coins at a hole in the ground. Fourteen hundred men doing nothing going no place being no one. I want to build an hourglass fifty feet high for watching grains of time slowly drain down the terminal sewer of American jurisprudence.
At 8:45 I sit at the desk waiting FOR THE WIRE ANNOUNCING THE ESCAPE. THE TICKET TO FREEDOM IS A YELLOW SLIP OF PAPER.
It is now 8 : 50. Fm studying the clock counting seconds. I split Custody and move quietly down the hallway past old Henry sweeping the floor.
106 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
He has twenty years in straight and talks to him- self.
Reviewing the escape blueprints. The guard- house lights are in a direct line of sight from the gun trucks. Anyone on that cable is a pigeon. If and when you make a break you'll be in a brand- new situation. There's no help you can call on. Your New York lawyers can't do shit for you then. There's no appeal from a .30 caliber sum- mons. You'll be hunted down by sharpshooters. They don't hke escapes. You should wait until December to make your break.
Get transferred to the east end of the compound and some foggy winter night just climb the fence and disappear into the mist.
Fog, man. Fog. Or you'll go out of here on a stretcher.
You haven't learned that the first lesson of a convict is patience. You'll be home by Christmas.
By the time I returned to Custody it was 9:40. Drank another coffee, palms sweating. At 10:20 a monotone voice squawked over the speaker.
I am wanted in Legal Office, Building 310.
I walked down the corridor of the administra- tive building. Two counselors were leaning against the door of Legal Office. The room was filled with smirking policemen. One big fat smile stepped forward to shake my hand. Sergeant Mervers him- self from Poughkeepsie.
- How are you, Tim? He laughed.
It was a big moment for Sergeant Mervers. Next to him sat an old deputy and two local San Luis sheriffs.
- We came early to find out if you're willing to
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 107
fly back. If you won't fly then we leave today by car.
They were taking no chances on last-minute legal maneuvers. It also gave them a free trip to L.A. They looked relieved when I said Fd fly.
Fm too restless for the oflice. Too restless for the library. I sit on lawn in lotus position listening to my ears beating and the whisper of inhale-exhale. I won't leave this spot until the word comes. Sweat- ing in the hot sun. Waiting. I hear the faint click of the PA system and the soft hum of feedback.
- Wanted in the control office.
The Sergeant's face was sympathetic. I auto- graphed the receipt and held the yellow sheet.
TELEGRAPH FORM
BELOVED OPERATION TOMORROW^ DOCTORS FEEL BEST NOT TO WAIT TOTALLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT SUCCESS AND NEW LIFE DON'T WORRY fLL BE BRAVE won't be DOWN TO VISIT SUNDAY BUT we'll be together SOON I AWAIT YOU I LOVE YOU CONTACT ME AT THREE TREE RECOVERY CENTER.
YOUR MATE
I walked into the prison yard and looked west to the sea where the weather came from. Three small dime-sized clouds were drifting in. First friendly weather in weeks. Venus conjoins Jupiter at 4°. Scorpio for tremendous benefits. Either ma- terial or emotional or both.
I ponder the timing of the flight. At 9:00 p.m. television programs change and hallways fill with moving cons. Should I leave five minutes before
108 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
or five minutes after nine? Precise timing. Hit tree and over roof. Two minutes. One minute to cross the wire. Quarter mile to highway figure four minutes. Half a mile to three trees. That's eight more. Fifteen minutes from trees to getaway. There's a fifty-fifty chance Til be seen and will have to make a fast break in the dark for the high- way hoping to intercept the pickup car.
- We ain't gonna be out on the lawn Sunday with our wives, Angelo complained. I hope it clears up.
If I cHmb the tree at 9:05, 111 meet the car at 9 : 20, or better yet run out onto highway and flag it down. But no time for delay. One person stand- ing in the hallway could keep me from going out the door. If I spht at 8 : 55 Yd have a ten-minute cushion. But if the alarm sounds it's dangerous waiting along the highway.
Walking to the gymnasium for the Friday night movie I saw a cloud bank moving in from the west. The moon was rising almost full in the east.
When the movie ended at 9:00 p.m. the clouds were thicker. If this weather holds I'll be free tomorrow.
Back in the cell I started clearing out my locker. I gave Angelo all my food and supplies. Menzies, a sly runner from Control, came by and flagged me out. We stood at the end of the hall. He watched behind me and I watched behind him.
- Moore and the goon squad were checking your property list. They were hot about your books. Superintendent Field from East Facility called over. If you have anything fishy going on with books you better cover your tracks. Maybe it has something
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 109
to do with that Black mihtant they just shipped out to Folsom. Have you been loaning books to Blacks? Don't let on you were tipped off. They could trace it back to me.
I drove over to Burroughs's cell.
- Hey man, where's that Bobby Scale book. Seize the Time?
- I passed it on to one of the Brothers.
- I got to have it back.
- I can dig it. Come with me.
We drove to the next cellblock. I stood by the door while Burroughs reached under the mattress and pulled out the book.
Lying in bed I reviewed tomorrow's schedule. The guard's heavy boots trampled along the cor- ridor, his voyeur flashlight fingering the dark privacy. Tomorrow night at this time youll have a buzz, my friend.
Angelo woke me up. Eye sprang to the window. Soft gray misty clouds. Security blanket. Good weather for a night flight. Angelo was complaining.
- Fucking clouds. We won't be able to see our wives on the lawn tomorrow.
Angelo brought me steaming coffee. I lay in bed reviewing the twenty-two tarot cards. One wait for moonless night. Two wait for fog. Three on a Saturday night wait until the patrol car returns from CMC East with the snack-bar trustees, around 9:00. Four just before flight paint white trim on*sneakers black. Five write farewell note and leave in locker. Six exit must be made before or after the TV break when prisoners flood hall- ways. Seven wait until the central corridor is empty or when all prisoners walking have their backs to side door. Eight shp out side door and walk to the tree five seconds. Nine climb tree five seconds. Ten leap to roof silently. Eleven remove sneakers. Twelve lie on roof checking security location of guards and patrol cars. Thirteen if seen be prepared to make visible desperate break, counting on five-minute delay to notify control tower. Fourteen crawl along the roof of corridor
112 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
to Building 324 sixty seconds. Fifteen silently creep along roof of 324, avoiding TV antenna wires sixty seconds. Sixteen put on sneakers and handball gloves. Seventeen hang from wire by hands and feet and pull self across ninety seconds. Eighteen slide down pole on other side of fence five seconds. Nineteen chmb down bank and cross through outer prison compound avoiding barracks, alert for the fire watch. Reach highway in four minutes. Twenty turn right on Highway 1 and run half mile to turnoff with three trees four minutes. Twenty- one wait for pickup car with right blinker flashing. Twenty-two my contact is Kelly. My name is TINO, and the Soker's wild Angelo brought me back.
- Hey man. What are you thinking about? See- ing your wife Sunday, right?
- Making plans.
- I'm going to miss you when you go Tuesday. Youll never come back here. I've heard them talking in the Release Office. They expect you to get bailed out. But if you pick up another convic- tion and a third sentence in New York you'll be carrying too much time for a minimum security prison. Once you leave you better not come back to California or you'll be in a dungeon at Folsom. Pack all your stuff in a box, your radio and type- writer. The cons in R and R will keep it for you and have it mailed out wherever you end up.
Two in the afternoon. The sun breaks through. But friendly clouds are waiting ofip the coast.
Counting, I pace the yard. Four minutes to the road. Five minutes to the three trees. I join the line for early chow. The last supper on metal plates. I drive back to the cellblock and sit in a
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 113
darkened TV room watching the Stanford-Arkan- sas football game.
Lying on bunk for four o'clock count. The sec- onds moving fast now. The four thirty count clear whistle loosened. Tramping feet to chow. Angelo was combing his hair.
- Coming to dinner?
— I ate on the early line.
Waiting for the cellblock to clear. Now. Move to locker. Rip white laces from sneakers and rethread brown. I sit crouched facing the locker, a news- paper in my lap. Unscrew Flanagan's black print tube. Slash pigment over white stripping on sneakers. Hasty daubing. Hear steps. Jangle of guard keys. Shove shoes in locker. Wait. The guard goes. Sweaty hands are black from smearing pigment on smooth rubber. I shove the shoes in the locker to dry. Put on handball gloves. Brush black on backs. The paint leaks onto hands. Toss in locker and shut door.
I scrub hands with coarse bristle brush. Mop paint off floor with a towel. Shove under my mat- tress.
When the eight thirty count clear whistle is sounded Angelo sphts. I whisper ommmmmm as gears chck in motion. Bending over to lace black sneakers. Put on dark blue denim jacket. Eye- glasses. Shove Hej^ letters, prison IDs, meditation beads in pocket.
It's about time. 8:53. I drive to tl^e end of cell- block out to the corridor. Walking down corridor to the intersection praying the coast's clear. Two cons watch me drive by. A patrol pig approaches.
114 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
- Are you still here? We're tired of seeing you around.
- Fm on my way. Wish me luck.
- Good luck, said the guard.
Drive up hallway and U-turn back. They're still there watching me roll past.
Turn the corner and make a pass through neigh- bor cellblock.
I stand indecisive. Trapped, feehng the clock moving. Gotta hurry. Ill miss the highway pickup. Suspicious standing. I slowly head down the hall again. Praying. Look left. The two cons are stiU there. Keep moving on the side corridor to end. Circle back. Time wasting. Gotta hurry. Hit corner. They're gone. Moving surely toward exit door. Look right. Inside door of cellblock three cons talking. They feel my hesitation and look up. I drive past next two cellblocks. U-turn. Have to bluff it through. If I move smoothly to door 111 be invisible. At the last second before reaching for the door handle I flick a glance to the cellblock. Three heads turn to look. I walk past. Blew it. Should have slipped through. Gotta move. At the inter- section I turn north. Past Metcalf the snitch. New plan. There's another door to the exercise yard down the corridor. Have to walk across the yard. At night? Strictly off hmits. K seen they sound alarm. No choice. I opened the door and walked out onto the hard lit by floodUghts. I moved silently across yard. Fifty windowpanes watched my des- perate path. No one walks the yard in dead of night Not even the pigs. I stood in front of the tree. The tree stood directly in front of window. Inside the corridor facing the window stood Met-
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 115
calf braying at two cons. I can't climb a tree two feet in front of the snitch I
I sat down on the steps leading to the hallway. Trapped in the spotlight, wandering in verboten yard with paint-blacked sneakers. If I sit in the glare for the guards to see, 111 get busted with blackened handball gloves in my pocket and the farewell notes in locker? Time froze. I watched the leaves of the tree glistening and the muffled sound of Metcalf 's voice. Now or never. Now, 1 got up and walked to the tree. I'll have to climb in front of Metcalf. It will take him five minutes to sound the alarm and another five minutes to get the two-man gun trucks on the road. Make or break. As I approached the tree as in a dream I heard MetcalFs voice booming good night and saw him turn away from window. In escape, as in impregnation, cellular intersection, and tantric union the margin of hfe-death is seven seconds. My neurology shifts into some ancient, primate, dreamy survival pattern, I grabbed a branch, wrapped foot around tree limb, swung upward foot-hand-foot-hand balanced on a slender branch leaned across the void and dropped softly f ourfoot on the roof of the corridor.
I sat breathing quietly on the tar-paper slant listening to voices trampUng in the hallway below. I could look down over the entire prison camp. The empty yards floodlit. Across to the custody ofl&ce where I could see lounging brownshirt pigs. Guards in squad rooms. I was hidden in shadows above the searchUghts. I was a forest creature scanning the camp of humans.
Sitting on the jailhouse roof I stripped off the
116 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
sneakers and holding them in left hand crept silently along the roof to the end of the corridor, climbed up the ridge slant and down to the roof of 324. The rough roofing rasped, my feet creak- ing, snapping, popping. BE QUIET, REMEMBER THERE ARE 100 SNITCHES BELOW WHOXL HEAR YOU AND RUN TO PHONE GUARD. A sudden start. I bumped into the TV antenna wires. I could look down on either side into the neigh- boring cellblocks. My silhouette was exposed against the sky. I laughed. By this time I realized all was out of rational control. On autopilot. Every detail of the plan gone wrong. It was all pro- grammed by some higher computer.
Slowly picked my way to the roof end looking down over road, fence, compound, and way below car lights on the highway. I sat down and laced the right sneaker.
The socks in my pocket. I put on the left sock and tied the sneaker. Pulled on handbaU gloves. I lay down on the angled roof just under the cable. Grabbed it with hands and hooked ankles. I reached my hands above my head and pulled out on the wire.
It was hard going. The cable had wire looped every ten inches holding a telephone cord below. My legs bumped and tangled in the wire. There were no smooth easy sweeping pulls. Reach hands. Pull body ten inches. Pull leg. Hands up. Pull body. Haul legs. The cable bouncing and swinging. A strain to hang on. Wrenched my hands. Strain legs. Weird wrestling motions, my body clinging to the swaying wire. Sweating. Heaving awk- wardly. After fifty pulls — a pause. Horrid discov-
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 117
ery. Completely exhausted. Lungs gasping. Arms drained of energy. Body limp and weak. Can't go another foot. Only one-third across the wire. Hadn't even reached the road. The wire was longer than expected. Two-thirds to go. Exhausted. My hands can't hold the weight of my body. With desperate sexual writhing I embraced the cable with elbows and knees. Rested. The cable was slowly swinging. Nightmare thoughts. What are you doing this time? Inefficient wizard danghng from a cable twenty feet high escaping from life imprisonment in full view of two gun trucks? Once again the little experiment has gotten out of hand, Professor. Turned my head horizontal to- ward the gun truck. The interior hght snapped on. He's seen me. Put on hght to sound alarm. The word is flashing. I'm pendant waiting for patrol cars to scream up. WiU they poke me down like a wild raccoon with sticks? Danghng, I had to laugh. Dangling from a swinging wire I start squirm- ing toward life. Five more wrenching feet. Stop. Wrists and arms exhausted. Panting. I should have quit smoking. I should have pushed more iron. It seemed so easy. Now I know why no cons have escaped this way. Oljmipic gymnastics on a high wire in the gunsights. I should have waited until the winter fog. Maybe they leave the cable strung over the fence as a trap? They're hunters waiting in trucks, rifles cradled on knees, waiting for wild animals to blunder into the ambush? The slaughter hole. My hands trembling could hold no more. With desperate lunge I hooked elbows over the wire, with clumsy crabhke grabs pulled body along by elbows. Stop to rest. Look
118 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
down at macadam road sixteen feet below and over into TV rooms where cons watch the shadow tube.
A sudden glare of light. Forty feet away a patrol car slowly turns from the compound road toward me. Tm captured. The auto rolls closer, a soft crunch of tires on gravel. My blue denim arms turned yellow in the headlight. I looked down di- rectly at the guard leaning over to crush his ciga- rette in the ashtray. Car roUed by to the corner and disappeared.
Now tumble into some delirious trance. Arms crossed, elbows hooked to wire inching caterpillar crawl. All hope of escape given up. My only goal to reach the fence so Td faU to freedom outside the perimeter. I must remember when I fall to let feet go first. My hand kept getting tangled in the phone wire loop. A compulsive wrench to free my hand sets the cable bouncing wildly. Mouth gasp- ing, face bulging, glasses twisted, sweat dripping, face grimacing. Another skin of the teeth. I wanted Errol Flynn and out came Harold Lloyd. I felt very alone. Forty-nine years and 325 days of this life built up to this moment of ordeal. My life hung on a needle point. In trance of Sun Dance initiates whirl suspended by hooked burn- ing pain in the chest muscles. There was no fear only a nagging embarrassment. Such an undigni- fied way to die, nailed like a sloth on a branch! Other men and women in prison would be pained by my failed escape. My fall would please the guards. See we told you. You can't escape. There is no escape.
No more thoughts. From some inner reservoir
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 119
of LIVE! LIVE! LIVE I SURVIVE I came an energy flow and a curious erotic lightness. Hands reached up in easy strong pulls, legs kicking, body wig- gHng, arms flailing, shoulders pushing propelled by uterine squeeze. My glasses feU but my arms smoothly reeled cable. Thus I butted head first dripping wet into this New Life.
Hand over hand till fingers hit the pole. Hang- ing by my legs (Fd practiced it a thousand times in my bunk) I reached right hand over head, grabbed metal spike, dropped legs, twisted body, wrapped legs around splintery wood, slid down. Exultant feet hit liberated ground I FREE I
8
SHE : I was packed and ready for Salt Lake early. Called my favorite freak cabdriver. I met Pam at the bus terminal and we headed for the airport. At Salt Lake we dropped off at one hotel, walked through the lobby with our bags, split out the side door, and cabbed to another hotel.
We ate at a Steak House near the hotel. Pam checked the number of the pay phone on the parking lot next door.
We got back to the hotel around 8 : 00 and I sat on the bed and started to center myself. I threw the I Ching, consulted the tarot, took the beads and prayed with all my might. OM MAN! PADMA HUM
I was fully alert from 8:25 to 9: 15. Poised. Some far-out electronic music came over the radio around 8:30 like someone running, rushing en- ergy up and up and a voice kept chanting FAR, FAR, FAR. At 9: 15 came a great feeling of relief and the tension disappeared. I felt calpi and peace- ful. We listened to the radio until 11:00. I said, Tm going to go to sleep, everything is all right. I slept soundly.
122 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
I was swaying sweating panting. I- saw the glasses lying on ground outside of fence. I adjusted them on my nose, funny professor gesture. I looked around. All silent. Electric lights shining on the steel fence and the green grass. Cellblocks forty feet away shining still in the night. No motion.
I staggered to the wall, shd down, lay head against the stone, drained, deeply breathing, Usten- ing. Alert fox hiding from hunters, waiting for pursuit cars to scream down road. Silence. I started down the bank. The barracks of the open- prison compound lay scattered below. Lights were on. Watch for fire patrol. Steep decline. My first steps dislodged a rock avalanche. I slipped and slid, stones ratthng around me. Hit the hill bottom and started loping carefully, probing, wary like a kickoff return.
THERE'S A DRY CREEK BED CUTTING ACROSS THE FIELD. KEEP TO THE LEFT. WATCH FOR BOULDERS. BE CAREFUL NOT TO MAKE NOISE. THE FIRE WATCH MAKES ROUNDS. A BIRD-DOG SNITCH. WHAT WILL I DO IF I MEET HIM? YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO. ONCE YOU CLIMB THAT FENCE YOU ARE A HUNTED ANIMAL. KILLERS ARE AFTER YOU. IF THE FIRE WATCH GETS IN YOUR WAY YOU'LL DEAL WITH HIM OR YOU'LL NEVER DRAW ANOTHER FREE BREATH.
I watched myself on the projection room screen. B movie fugitive in blue denims skulking past
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 123
guardhouse. Halfway across the field I saw them coming. From behind building shadows fifty yards ahead two dark pig figures moving slowly beating the dark bushes. The alarm is out! I had been seen I The area swarming with pursuers! Guards with guns a-hunting! I stopped. Senses alert. It was all mammalian, shadow men moving up the hill toward me. I fell down on my back, still heaving breaths, nerve endings twitching, waiting. My glasses steam from sweat. I wiped the lenses on my sweater and peered down into shadows. Black trees silhouetted in the yellow glow from the barracks. The road ahead lit by street lights. The men now hidden in shadows were moving slowly. Hallucinations Doctor? Can't lie here helpless. Gotta go. I walked slowly at full moon toward freedom. The coast was clear. A thousand prison windows watched me run across the field, feet leaping, heart singing. It was all go now. I galloped by the barracks, jumped down into a ravine, scrambled up to the main prison gate along the brilliantly lit road past the prison entrance sign CALIFORNIA MEN'S COLONY WEST FACILITY in fuU view waving adios under street light to the railroad tracks loping north parallel to Highway 1. It was dreamlike simple. There were no actors on the set that didn't belong.
Car lights approached from the rear. I dove down on the tracks my face against cool steel, hands in gravel. A middle-aged couple driving north. Dangerous running, hiding along the tracks, I picked a way down to the ravine bordering the tracks.
Breathing hard legs exultant. My first free wild
124 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
run in seven months. Leaping joyful. Car lights approaching. Dove into tall grass. Lie panting, watching. If the right bUnker flashes Til run to the road. I was regretting every Italian resistance movie I had seen. Ridiculous sweating heroics. Memo to central casting: No more adventure flicks, please. Make the next one a South Sea island porny.
Cars roared past. Get up running. Lights com- ing. Hit dirt. Car lights coming. Hit dirt. How far is half a mile?
Up ahead I saw the dim outline of trees next to the highway. Chmbed out of the culvert and ran to the first tree. Standing five feet from highway at the base of the second tree, I saw three trees joined at the root trunk. Well, they have the symbols right.
A long wait for the pickup. Scanning the cars roaring by. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten min- utes. Suppose they don't come? Maybe they got busted? Accident? Fuck-up in plans? Hitchhiking north on Highway 1 in prison garb?
A car is coming. Right blinker flashing. It pulled up in front of the tree. I ran from the shadows. The car door swung open. A girl with long dark hair leaped out. Code words swapped.
- KeUyl
- Tinol
We embraced. I ducked into the back seat grab- bing the hand of the blond girl behind the wheel. Kelly jumped in slamming the door. Motor gunned we roared off.
~ Fm Maru, said the driver.
- Where is She?
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 125
~ In Denver waiting for you. Youll see Jger Monday.
I had mixed feelings. I hoped ghe^was out of the country safe but exultant we'd meet in two days.
Kelly was talking fast.
- Brother, we're glad to see you! We made two passes by the pickup spot. We were worried. You were late. I was going to start walking back the tracks to look for you. In case you were hurt.
- How old are you?
- Eighteen.
- How old is Maru?
- She's nineteen.
Kelly pointed to the back seat. - There's a new set of clothes. Change. I started stripping off prison denim.
- Give them to me, said Kelly.
- rd like to save them. For Barker and Horo- witz the archivists.
- No. We're going to transfer your clothes to another car. They'll drive south near L.A. and leave them in a gas station restroom. To make the pigs think we're heading south.
- How many cars do you have operating to- night?
- Four. You'll only be in this car for five min- utes. We have a camper in Morro Bay to take you to Oakland. A third car goes south. And the fourth has the shortwave set to monitor poKce calls. How much of a lead do we have?
- I don't think I was seen leaving. So we have two hours before they discover I'm gone.
126 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
I passed over my prison ID, farewell note, Her letters.
- Save these for the archivists.
- There's a wallet and set of IDs in the pocket. Your name is William McMillan. Your birthday is November 14, 1929. Your address is 2925 Northridge Road, Salt Lake City.
The car slowed down in the Morro Bay. Satur- day night traffic. A quiet town. We turned right.
- What happens here?
We have a lookout posted. The car slowed by the service station. The attendant, young, long hair waved. Our car picked up speed.
- We flashed the message that we had you and he flashed us that there is no police alarm yet. So far so good.
Maru was driving smooth and easy. In four minutes we reached a road by the beach. Car stopped. Maru turned back grinning. - OK brother. You get out now. I'll see you in Oak- land.
I puUed the knit ski cap over my head and followed Kelly out of the car over the sand dunes down the beach. It was still a B movie, spy thriller. World War II.
After a hundred yards Kelly turned away from the sea, over dunes to a parked camper. A beauti- ful woman waited. We kissed. A sturdy gray-haired man came around the side of the camper and we shook hands.
- Welcome.
KeUy motioned me in back of trailer.
- I'm going to dye your hair now. A strange trailer just pulled up. They look suspicious. We
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 127
don't want to pull out suddenly. We'll hang around here for a few minutes and then hit it.
I sat on the edge of the bunk bed. Kelly standing at the sink filhng a pail of water. She squirted spray-can hair dye on my scalp and began massag- ing. After a while she stopped and smiled.
- Kelly is my code name, not my real name. Fm not always a beautician. My father is Senator and the name of our tribe is the Weather- men Underground.
I began to laugh. It all figured. The manic reckless guerrilla tribe. Scourge of the FBI.
- We had to keep it secret. We hope it's all right with you.
I suddenly flashed on the meshing of under- ground energy systems. Dogejd^alers^a^aJasenty- five thousand dollars to finance thelSreakout. And the bread goes to the manic guerrillas.
- The twenty-five thousand went to buy dyna- mite? Kelly laughed.
- Dynamite, hair dye, and fast cars.
I was sitting on the floor of the camper, head in the bucket, Kelly splashing water, when the door opened. Frank poked his head in, cool, calm fisherman.
- Reckon it's about time to spHt.
The truck engine revved up, I was standing by the sink towehng my hair when we pulled away. Kelly was laying out the plan.
- We drive to intersection on Highway 101. Ill drop off there and switch to another car. You'll drive north to Oakland. Well follow you with a radio car. If the pigs start throwing up roadblocks we'U stop you and pull off to a stash pad and wait
128 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
it out. If the coast is clear well drive to Oakland and then tomorrow to Salt Lake City. Bernadine, Jeff, Tom, and Mark are waiting for you there. YouTl work out the next phase with them. They would have come down tonight but they are fugitives.
The camper stopped. Frank was at the door.
~ We're in the parking lot near the gas station. This is the intersection of 101, said Kelly. Fm dropping off here. Well be behind you all the way. See you in Oakland.
Frank was tugging at the license plate with a wrench. He pulled off California exposing Utah plates. The bumper sticker said: AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.
- Do you want me to ride in the back.
- You can ride in front with Martha and me and the girl if you'd prefer.
I climbed in the cab. A ten-year-old girl with shoulder-length brown hair was sitting next to Martha. Frank started the truck. I was sitting with Heather on my lap with my right arm holding her and my left hand was in Martha's. Frank was an American Legion hunting-fishing guy and Martha was soft Mrs. Middle America and Heather was everyone's TV girl — a Holy Family.
Martha ran it down. Heather had known about the escape for six weeks. They explained how it would help if she came along. And what the risks were. - Will I go to jail she had asked. Heather decided to do it. She said: - Jonathan Jackson was only nineteen and look what he did. The hardest thing for Heather was that she couldn't tell her older brother.
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 129
- This memory will be one of my most proud. Rescued from prison by an eleven-year-old girl.
- Tm ten, said Heather.
I started telling Martha about the escape. For the first time the whole seven-month charade became a comedy. The complicated double game. I thought of all the surprised people who would be rerunning memory tapes and began to laugh.
Frank leaned over and asked me to run down the options.
- When will they find out you are gone?
- At midnight.
He checked his watch.
- Well be in Salinas by then. Figure it takes the State Police half an hour to be mobilized. The danger of a roadblock will come between Sahnas and San Jose. If we can make it to San Jose we'll be in heavy traffic and they can't run a roadblock.
It was magic. The prison walls of Mordor. The darkened moon. The three trees. The perfection of the casting. Maru and Kelly as mythic heroines. The pigs conscientiously practicing to act like pigs, trimming their hair, rattling keys, dutifully fatten- ing their asses, sticking out bellies. And the Holy Family elegance of Frank and Martha and Heather.
Frank told me when it was midnight. I started thinking aloud, laughing at the drama back in prison. Right now they've discovered me missing and phone messages are flashing back and forth to Control and Custody and over to the east side. And my ceUmate Angelo, excited, amused, puz- zled, and a little scared wondering (as every con wonders when anything happens) will this affect my parole? They are calling for a recount now
130 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
and checking the grounds and when I'm still missing the big whistle will blow its stack for long minutes and everyone in the east and west facil- ities will know there's been an escape. There are going to be a hundred unhappy guards and three thousand laughing inmates.
Frank checked the rear-view mirror.
- The follow-up car is with us. They'll let us know if the alarm flashes. Pretty soon Martha asked Heather if she wanted to sleep in the back and Frank said that maybe I should hide out there too so Heather and I moved back.
There was chilled wine in the refrigerator and I fell out listening to San Francisco rock and roll- ing north to freedom. I could feel Heather thinking so I called to her.
- Are you asleep?
~ No. I'm too excited. When will we reach San Jose?
- Soon. I want to thank you for helping free me.
- Oh that's OK. It was fun.
I stood leaning my arms on her bunk; she lay her head on the pillow and we had a long adult rap. She explained how they had made two week- end trips to San Luis for dry runs. She handed me a round thin beveled sand-dollar disk with five leaves.
- Would you like this for a souvenir?
-- Thanks; I'll take it to^nywife. Do you know what the five leaves mean?
- Yes.
Heather was looking out the front window:
- What do you see?
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 131
- I see a sign saying SOLEDAD PRISON NEXT EXIT.
After a while Heather whistled.
- What do you see?
- The sign said San Jose. We're beyond road- blocks now.
We shook hands smiling.
- This was more exciting than any TV show. Soon we're roUing along the freeway past the
San Francisco Airport like any homecoming past Candlestick Park, up the ramps to the Bay Bridge across to Oakland.
It was three o'clock in the morning when the camper pulled up to a duplex in the slums of North Oakland. TTie pad glittered with psychedelic lights, the Stones were rolling on tape. Kelly and Maru grinning. First thing was a hot bath. My elbows and knees were starting to ache and my body was stiff, exhaustion coming on. Maru dumped bath oil in a steaming tub and sat on the bowl laughing while I soaked and told her the story of the high wire. Next came the kitchen. Scrambled eggs and bacon and cheeses, milk, juices. For first time in seven months my stomach opened up to free food. My legs and arms were throbbing sore when I lay down on the mattress and fell into free sleep.
Maru opened the curtains at nine thirty, flood- ing the room with light. How good to see a beauti- ful woman in the morning. Time to move. My suitcase with straight McMillan clothes was packed. Kelly started pasting a trim moustache over my lip.
- For security weVe parked the trailer two blocks away. Frank will be waiting for you. Kelly and I will catch up with you by sundown when we rendezvous with Bemadine,
We embraced. Suitcase in hand, I stepped out in the bright California morning sunshine. It felt strange bouncing along public streets on limpy legs.
My heart sang and moustache flapped merrily loose in the breeze. Kids playing hopscotch watched curious as I stopped to press the stubble tape against my right lip. I turned the comer and saw Frank leaning against the camper. A man washing his car grinned as I stopped to press back the flapping left moustache. Frank tossed my suit- case in the rear. We both climbed in the cab and rolled out east on Highway 40. Frank watched me struggling with the moustache, smiling.
- Now that we're out of the traffic you can rip thatoflf.
134 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
It was all normal. Two fishermen heading out for the high Rockies. Beyond Richmond the high- way rolled down into the Sacramento Valley past a sign California Medical Facility Vacaville, I looked over the green fields to the metal wire fence and gray dungeon cellblocks.
I shuddered seeing the guard in the gun tower.
- In the center of that prison there is a cell- block for the most violent men in the State. They are kept in cages with walkways above so it is pos- sible for guards to stroll around and look down into the pits. There is no furniture in those cells except a drain-hole toilet. When the men go out guards carrying clubs surround them.
After Sacramento, I drove.
- Pig patrol car coming up on rear, said Frank. The rear mirror's full of high-antenna-waving
dome hght, black and white. CALIFORNIA STATE HIGHWAY PATROL. As it passed the pigs looked us over and sped away on rubber wheels.
Easy routine developed. For food-fuel stops I rested safe behind the camper's curtains, leaning against the sink in the middle of a Reno, Nevada, shopping center parking lot, sipping tea from a ceramic mug, reading Rap Brown. Frank was tell- ing me the history of the Weathermen roller skat- ing through the convention halls of radical debates their burnt flower eyes scraping dust from Trots- kied rhetorical molds and the marbled busts of revolutionary piety. No student of American poli- tics could fail to see the inevitable uprising of this revolutionary tribe of young psychedelic activists, political mutants of the first television-Einstein- multidimensional-simultaneous-immediate-energy
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 135
generation. All the power dials were turned on. Jet streams across eyes of blue acid, crackling transistorized erotic charges sweeping through the high-school corridors turning on fourteen-year- olds (whose information input is greater in one week than Grandfather's in a lifetime). Wise ancient children, the smartest, best endowed, healthiest. Time's sweet pollen laughing answer to the lethal pressure of computerized machines. Blow up the wire-tapped, red-hne, wire-tentacled computer. "The pump won't work 'cause the Van- dals took the handles."
Frank described Bemadine Dohm the Weather- woman driving her motorcyple up the marble steps, her graduation gown cut mini to receive her law diploma. The flashy-leg child witch of the Revolution.
Was it days or nights we drove alternating? It was dawn when we crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis tired but smiling, drinking beer and dancing all night at the truck-stop cafe. At sunset Frank found the sign to Rendezvous National Forest and pulled the truck up a dirt road to some picnic tables. Two girls were sitting on a log playing a flute and guitar. Smoking grass.
Kelly and Maru. We smoked and laughed. One of those perfect moments under the pine trees in the hidden forest. Frank came out of the camper with a whiskey bottle after a big slug said Whew! Since Saturday night he had carried the load of escape. He had delivered the fugitive to the ap- pointed spot where we awaited Bernadine Dohm and the leaders of the Weathermen Underground. He went into the camper to fry a steak.
136 CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND
A pickup truck came along the road and pulled into the clearing. Two men walked toward us like Robert Redford and JefF Hunter, turret- jawed heroes selected on the basis of keen living habits to play the Che Guevaras in Hollywood. With them was a beautiful girl. She had a long tidy pageboy. She dressed like no one else in the out crowd. Cashmere sweaters, black Capezio flats. She dated the conventional types, trashers, bomb- ers, dope-smoking poets.
There was great joy among us as we smoked and talked. We discussed the plan. We were to spend the night in a mountain camp. But first Bernadine, Bob, and Jeff had to visit the Indians for permission. They would return by ten and climb the mountain.
The three Graces drove off taking the high energy with them leaving the forest glade cold, damp, fearful.
\^nio was the girl, I asked, so staringly attractive. But even then there was something sensual about her. Something older, more womanly. Kelly and Maru laughed delightedly.
- You mean you didn't recognize her? Berna- dine Dohrn herself? High-school treasurer of the modern dance class to say nothing of Tumbhng, Pep Club, Quill and Scroll Journalism Society, Prom Court, Youth Council, Tower Club. She's the rah-rah leader of the crazy motherfuckers from the Girls Athletic Association running down the aisles of American Airlines borrowing food from people's plates. Worst of all there's her unforget- table sex appeal. She has the most amazing legs. Penny a cocker spaniel completes the family. The
CONFESSIONS OF A HOPE FIEND 137
FBI posters will give you her height (5' 5")> weight (125), build (provocateur), and breathless details about her social security number. But that is all they can tell you. I can tell you Bemadine took the Sunshine with Her when She left me in the dark car Ustening to radio rock.
My prison clothes had been found in a service station near L.A. suggesting that the fugitive was heading for Mexico. The FBI had been called in on the case. We listened to a tape of Prison Cap- tain Koffman's voice glum and bureaucrat play- ing down the escape. He just strolled out of the minimum security prison he did. Just hopped the fence hke missing bed check at summer camp.
I was nervous. Should I hide in the woods? Kelly was tapping her hands to the Grateful Dead. Their confidence in the power of good vibrations warmed the air. Trust the young.
Bernadine, Bob, and Jeff returned with good news. The Indians had given permission to use the mountain camp. They knew I was a fugitive from the paleface law.
I climbed into the pickup truck and we bumped happy up the mountain road. Who are these Weathermen who move so freely in and out of every youth