Almost Lost (7 page)

“It's a strange thing about my mom. I always knew she loved me even when she didn't like me, or couldn't stand me, or was hurt to her guts by my mouth and my actions and my 'tudes. I'm beginning to really see how important pos 'tudes are.”

“You're right on there. Many studies have shown conclusively and empirically that a positive mind-set not only can reduce stress levels and blood pressure, but improve work performance
and even slow the effects of aging in the body
.

“Wow! Like awesome. Tell me more.”

“Okay, sponge brain, the army is doing studies on meditation to help soldiers' performance. Mental health and physical health are becoming one in Western civilization as they always have been in ancient cultures. Meditation, hypnotherapy, massage, exer
cise, diet, etcetera, are all becoming part of the complete package of holistic medicine.”

“And?”

“It's an exciting time. Body functions are being assisted by proper positive mind functions in all kinds of healing processes.”

“You mean a person with a pos attitude heals faster than a person with a neg one?”

“Absolutely, even in work with cancer patients.”

“I used to wonder why people were sometimes in therapy for years. Now I wanna learn about all the out-there things that I didn't know about that can put me back together in a better, stronger way. I just might become a shrink addict like people I've read about.”

“Not with me you won't. I believe in brief therapy, which means introducing people to the tools they need to work with, then letting them listen to their own tapes and build their own cathedrals. You'd be surprised at the staggering number of people who come to psychotherapists or even medical doctors simply for a friend, someone to talk to who is knowledgeable and not condemning, and who will keep things confidential.
Most
people just need a good, honest, caring, empathetic friend to vent with when they're angry, cry with when they're sad, commiserate with when they're hurt, be built up by when they're feeling insecure, and most of all, laugh and play with them when they're happy.”

“You're really getting me pumped up! I can't wait to get all the bad stuff unloaded so we can start packing more good stuff into my brain and all my other hidden inside areas that have been completely clogged up with neg gook for such a long time. I've decided I want to learn everything there is good
about everything there is good. I've thought a lot about that the last few nights, and as I've tried to get my gonzos together in your Listening Room.”

“Good for you! Lawrence LeShan, who was been pioneering in the mind-body discipline for years, says ‘Meditation is a tool for your mind and personality, like the Nautilus machine is a tool for your body. Different meditations do different things, just as different machines do.”

“Man, that hits a harmonious chord in my dissonance-filled brain. Did you know I used to be really into music? I mean real music.”

“I know and I'm proud of you!”

“My dad had a band when he was in high school. They played all over. In his senior year they even played on a cruise ship. That's what I always wanted to do as far back as I can remember. Actually I was fooling with the piano and drums and stuff before I even started school. Later Dad played with me and sometimes even let me sit in with the guys he used to play with in college.”

Sammy's face fell, and I watched pain grip him like a huge vise. He still had a whole lot of imprisoning tension to release. For a long while he sat clenching his fists tightly and biting his bottom lip. His suffering was beyond tears. At last he asked in a dry, cracking voice, “Will I
ever
get over this…this…there are no words to describe it?”

“Yes, Sammy, you will. And at the rate you're progressing it shouldn't be too long.”

“Where were we when I got sidetracked? That seems to be one of the biggest negs in my life now. I don't seem to be able to have a short-term and long-term goal focus, like I was taught I should have and did have when I was little!”

“We'll get back to that later. Okay?”

He tried to smile, but it came out all wrinkled and sad. “Okay, on with the show! But first throw me a life jacket of some kind. All the goodness has been squeezed out of my body. Please toss me the tiniest good thing before I go on with my self-torture.”

“I'll do better than that; I'll toss you a humongously good thing—YOU. I haven't known you very long, but I see talents and possibilities and comprehension and kindness and compassion and gentleness and sensitivity in you that astounds me.
You will
get past this dark, dismal valley in your life. Don't give up. Never, never give up!”

“I won't. I just need you to help me exorcize a couple of hellish pieces out of my life.”

“Do you feel now is the time to talk about that?”

“Uhhhh…no.”

“Don't push. Soon you'll be able to see that part of your life realistically without the debilitating pain.”

“You really think I can?”

“Yes, and I don't think it's going to be that hard once we get all the pieces surrounding the situation laid out side by side.”

“Well…maybe I better go back to the gang thing and this time really stay on it.”

“You don't have to if you don't want to.”

“I want to! It's kind of like when you become a gang member you, of your own free will, give up your self-identity and become committed to being a part of the whole. Gang guys don't pledge their allegiance to their country, their religion, or their family—their only and supreme allegiance is to the gang—loyalty to it is first, foremost, and supreme.

“After I got a graffiti tattoo and started wearing
grungies and other ripped-off stuff, Mom stomped on my neck continually until I couldn't handle it anymore. She was always mad at me. My self-righteous, better-than-me sisters said every bad thing they could think of about my oversize clothes. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore and went on the streets with my bros.

“My biological family no longer seemed important to me, and I sure as hell didn't seem important to them. School and my part-time job, which had once seemed important to my overall future, didn't seem important, either. At that point only drugs and action upped me. The gang gave me the sense of belonging, security, importance, and pride that I so badly needed. Without question or hurtful comment, they gave me everything: food, clothes, drugs, alcohol, and even money. I felt they made me belong to a
real
, not dysfunctional, hypocritical family. They gave me pride and status. It was fun, action, mysterious adventure. I made a few deliveries for Slice, and that was all that was expected of me.

“I hardly noticed my transition from a middle-class, right side of the road, good student guy, whose English teacher had signed in his yearbook, ‘SAMMY: One of my most gifted, likely to succeed students. Nothing but the top of the ladder for Sam the ham.' Now I was climbing the gang ladder. How much do you know about gangs?”

“Not much. In fact I've never worked with a kid before who was more than a weekend wannabe.”

“Well, actually, the whole gang experience was much more scary now that I look back on it. I can't believe that
I
got so involved. But I was so depressed, so beaten. I felt like I was a ‘throwaway kid' incarcerated in a deep, dark hole with no one
caring, no one wanting to get me out. I was more lonely and desolate than you can ever imagine, suicidal to the degree that some days the only reason I didn't do it was because I didn't have the energy to take down Mom's gun, find the bullets, and pull the trigger.

“Actually I guess in a way I've gotta be thankful to the gang because they literally saved me from that. They aren't all bad like some people think. They took me in when I had no one else. They shared everything they had without question. They were my family, my bros and my sisters. I liked their motto,
por vida
, which means for life. I felt safe, having the assurance they would always be there to protect me. But I guess I better go back to the beginning and not ramble so much.

“Well, when Slice first said they'd jump me in I felt like a human being again for the first time in I don't know how long. I know that sounds crazy to you, but I think kids often rationalize that it's better to have a bad friend than not to have a friend at all. Do you think that's possible?”

“It's not wise, but I suspect it happens a lot more than most people realize.”

“You wouldn't believe some of the kids on the streets in L.A. They aren't dumb-asses like I was, who ran away
from
everything positive
to
everything negative. Lots of them ran away from violence and abuse, filth and vulgarity. Little Spider reminded me of Dorie in many ways, yet her mom was a crack-head hooker and her real dad was a pusher who abused her in every way that it's possible to abuse a child. She lived all her life with drive-by shootings and rapes and muggings happening on every corner.”

“I'm proud of you, Sammy, for being so sensitive
and having compassion for the kids you met who might have done better if they had known better.”

“A lot of them had kind, understanding hearts beneath the hard, cold protective walls they had to build around themselves to survive. Some were even elementary school kids.”

“I, with you, hope someday we'll find a way to get to the kids who are taught
that abnormal behavior is normal
. How can they possibly have any realistic concept of right and wrong?”

“I think I want to become a psychologist, so maybe I can help them.”

“Then I hope you do, Sammy.”

“It's so dark and dreary out there.
Always
so dark and dreary.”

“You mention darkness a lot. When did it start taking over your life?”

“I dunno.”

“Do you think the concept of darkness affects most kids?”

“Yeah, they talk about it a lot. Our music is filled with it and vampire books and other kinds of books like that are really popular.”

“Have you ever heard of light therapy?”

“Ummm, no.”

“I think it is one of the greatest tools therapists have. What do you think it means, and how do you think it's used?”

“Well…I guess darkness is the absence of light, so maybe light is the absence of darkness.”

“Oh, Samuel Gordon, you're so bright. I want to screw off the top of your head and pat your brains!”

“You're embarrassing me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…but it makes me feel good, too. Do it some more.”

“Did you notice the lamp I have on a swivel in the corner of the Listening Room?”

“Ahhhh, yeah.”

“You'd be absolutely amazed how, when you pull that strong light over the La-Z-Boy chair and turn it on, all the darkness in the room is pushed away, and try as hard as you can, even with your eyes closed, you can't bring the darkness back.”

“This I've got to see.”

“Studies have shown that people react to light like flowers react to sunshine. We need it. In areas where there is little sunshine there is a higher rate of depression. When the depressed people are taught to sit under a two-hundred-watt light for twenty or thirty minutes a day, it relieves much of their dark, locked-in feelings of despair. I advise all my clients, including you, to buy an inexpensive metal clip-on lamp to use in their bedroom or wherever. When the night bogies start stealing in, it helps drive them away in a hurry.”

“It sounds almost too good to be true…but I guess it makes sense.”

“After we finish our session, why don't you try it for a few minutes?”

“I've been practically living in your Listening Room since I started coming here. I've used one of your little notebooks to write down the super stuff you've told me, and I'm trying to memorize and put all of it into my life. But you're really dumping on me…good dumping though.”

“That's the way I work. I offer ideas to you, and you choose to use them in your life or not.”

“I'm using them! I'm using them! And I can't
wait to try the light. I want to know more about that.”

“Another day. For now you're so bright and radiant that you're hurting my eyes.”

Sammy got up and gave me a high five. “You're just trying to get rid of me. But I vill be back,” he said with an Arnold Schwartzenegger accent. Then his accent changed to Frankenstein. “After I recharge my battery in your light la-
bor
-atory.”

SUMMARY OF SESSION

Worked at putting Sammy's past behind him. Showed him methods for not being a
host
to darkness.

His personality and attitudinal set are blossoming. He is now an open-to-change-and-growth kid.

Material covered: “Pos 'Tudes” and their helping, healing power, also light therapy.

Samuel Gordon Chart

Wednesday, August 10, 4
P.M.

Fifth Visit
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old

 

“Hi, Friend Sammy Gordon.”

“Hi, Friend Dr. B.”

“Do you know it makes me feel good to be around you?”

“You're just trying to rattle my cage.”

“Uh-huh, I'm trying to release you from your cage.”

“I think you're getting the dumb door open a little.”

“I think
you
are getting the dumb door opened a
lot!
”

“I tried the light bit last week. I even showed it to my mom and Dorie and Dana.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, they liked it as much as I do. In fact, Mom and I even hung a bright light permanently in a corner of the laundry room, and we put a beanbag chair under it. And you know what else?”

“No, what?”

“I'm ready to take my tapes home to relisten and relisten to them right there in my very own light therapy corner.” He thought for a few seconds. “Maybe the one I'm going to make today I won't. I didn't think I'd ever tell anybody in the world about
that
descent into Hell that I
chose
to take. No one
made
me! I thought about it all night long…a miserable night…I'm soo ashamed. I hope you won't hate my guts when I tell you.”

“I may hate what you did, dear Sammy, but I promise you I won't hate your guts or anything else about you. You're my true friend, remember? As well as my client.”

“Well, like I told you, or maybe didn't tell you, one night when it was cold and wet on the street, Blunt (blunt is also a street term for a marijuana cigar), decided to hop in his old mobile and go to California. He'd lived in East Los Angeles originally and thought we'd be better off there. He'd ripped off a runner's small stash, so he thought we'd have enough stuff and money to get us there.

“Anyway, when we got about halfway to L.A. we had some car trouble. Before we got to the garage, he stopped a well-dressed man just coming out of a building. Blunt looked at the guy with the dead-eyed
stare he had perfected. It was the gang leader's stare that most of us could never quite get. Blunt held out his hand, and the guy just reached in his pocket and took out his wallet. Blunt took out the stack of bills in it and handed the empty wallet back. It was almost a polite encounter between the two of them. Me! It had been a while since I'd had a mota (marijuana cigarette) and I was so scared I about messed my pants. Some hardened gang member, right?”

“You were just a scared, hurting, lost kid.”

“I wanted out of there. Man, I wanted out of there so bad I could taste it, but after the garage guy fixed the water pump or whatever pump it was and we were driving down the road smoking some killer bud, (strong marijuana) it all seemed kind of funny, not wrong or anything…funny.”

“Do you think you would have done the bad things you did up to that point without drugs?”

Sammy was quiet for at least a minute. “Noooo, no way. I not only wouldn't have, I couldn't have!”

“What does that mean?”

Sammy spoke as slowly as if he were weighing each word. “I think drugs kind of change the balance between right and wrong, yours and mine, good and bad, kind and unkind, darkness and light.” He stopped for a long time. “I hope you never know how dark it is in there, and you know what?”

“No, what?”

“You don't even realize it's dark until you come back up into the light.”

“That's beautiful, Sammy. It's almost poetic.”

“Not to me it's not. To me it's ugly and dark and evil, and I'm glad as anything that it's in my past.

“Anyway…we pulled into the black, dark, scary-movie-like streets of East Los Angeles and
even mj (marijuana) couldn't cover the danger and squalor and evil I could sense and smell.”

Sammy's voice became soft and feeble, and his eyes appeared so dull that for a moment I thought maybe I should stop him. “Sammy…” He didn't seem to hear me.

“I guess I stayed totally twisted (stoned) for the next century. I don't know how long. Dimly, darkly I can see drive-by shootings, graffiti paintings on warring soldiers' turf, a young boy hit on the head with an ax, a girl so cut-up in a fight even her mother wouldn't have recognized her. No one seemed to have any hope, not even me, maybe especially not me, at that time. We were all like a bunch of crabs in a bucket.” Sammy seemed to come out of his trance a little. “I read once that gang members are like crabs in a bucket. Have you ever seen crabs in a bucket? If one tries to climb out, the others pull him back down again and again and again until he finally gives up.

“Suk was the eighteen-year-old gang leader Blunt knew. Three of his guys had fine buggies (nice cars) and plenty of money. The rest of us just ran errands to fulfill our needs. Everything seemed to center around a matter of respect. Respect for
what
I don't quite understand.

“To make a place for myself I pretended to be a Tijuana Mexican. My mom's mother was a Tijuana Mexican. She died when Mom was six. Then Mom was adopted by an childless older Anglo couple in San Diego. They were killed in an automobile accident when she was two weeks past her eighteenth birthday. She took what little money they'd left and went to nursing school.

“I don't think Mom was ever ashamed of being
Mexican, part-Mexican, I suspect, but she never seemed to feel comfortable talking about her past. Still she taught us to be bilingual from the beginning. In East Los (East Los Angeles) I hung with the Latinos, including Suk, and felt they might have been part of my primeval past.

“One evening as I stumbled past a very pregnant, very young girl, who had been bad cut (knifed) by either her husband or her lover or her pimp or her john, I almost threw up. Life had no meaning, no worth, there. People were all either too calloused or too afraid to do anything. They were like flies on the wall or cockroaches in the corners.

“One Sunday I graduated to crack. I know it was Sunday because I could hear the Catholic church bells ringing. Crack made me feel so good and euphoric that it frightened me. After a couple of days, I gave it up because the smallest pinpoint of something good in me said crack was the biggest liar of all. Whiningly I went back to spinning out on tabs and reds and bud.

“While on drugs, I could still semi-function, being a runner when necessary or, once, going with my
carnelitos
to rip off the wetbacks who were crossing the border. Most of them had with them everything of value in their lives, which wasn't much. They put up little resistance. I remember I felt so bitter and hostile, I almost wished they would, so I'd have a reason to act out my brutal feelings. Action was the only thing then that could bring me out of my lethargy. I hate to admit this, even to myself, to say nothing of you, but in some crazy, insane, demented way the evil little embryo of a satanic idea was beginning to form in my mind. I wanted to do a drive
by. I can't believe I said that! It was bad enough to have thought it.

“Promise me on the lives of your children that you'll never tell anyone what I've just said.”

“Oh, Sammy, you know I don't have to promise on the lives of my children or anything else. I simply need to reassure you again that anything you say will forever be a solemn and sacred confidential disclosure.”

“I can't believe that it could have been, but there were times when I wanted to feel the gun in my hand, feel the feeling that comes with…snuffing someone. It seemed to give the others the greatest high of all…”

Sammy began to cry pitifully. His body wrenched and shook. His eyes and nose streamed. A tiny childlike whimpering squeezed out from somewhere deep inside his tortured soul. After a while he whispered flatly, “Now you know why I wonder if even God can ever forgive me.”

I grabbed his hands tightly. “As I told you once before, it will be a lot easier for God to forgive you than for you to forgive yourself. How are you coming along on that?”

“Not very well. If I could just rub out, wash out, scrub out, hypnotize out, meditate out, therapize out…the evil gook. Have you ever had a client who had been
in
so unforgivably deep?”

“Maybe not in the
same kind
of gook, but gook, nonetheless. Gook that made them want to blow out their candles, too. It isn't a matter of which direction the pain comes from; it's a matter of when the pain gets so horrendous that it seems completely unbearable.”

“Oh yeah, and at this time, PCP (an animal tran
quilizer) was sometimes mixed with mj and
it
can really make people go crazy. Please tell me that is what made me feel…you know.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don't know. I hope it was PCP, though.”

“Do you think you'd have felt that way and had those thoughts without it?”

“Oh, dear God in Heaven, I hope not.”

“You're basically quite a religious boy, aren't you, Sammy?”

“I don't think so. At least I've never thought of myself as being that way.”

“If you don't think so…”

“But then again, maybe I am. Maybe that's why I feel such guilt and pain. I hadn't always thought
wrong was right
, like some of my
carnelitos
(Mexican gang friends), so maybe…I don't know.”

“Do you want to talk about that for a minute?”

“What?”

“The difference in thinking and feeling between someone who knows wrong from right and someone who doesn't?”

“Maybe there isn't any difference. Yeah, there is. Some guys seemed to think that shooting on drive-bys was like shooting at bottles in a carnival.”

“How did you feel?”

“Actually, I only went on two…I think…and even though the adrenaline was racing through my body like strings of firecrackers and no one really got hurt, I…”

“You what?”

“Part of me really wanted to…be the one that
got
popped.”

“You mean, you didn't really want to do it to someone else? You wanted it to happen to you?”

“Yeah, I think that was it. Because my life held no meaning, how could anyone else's have any meaning or use or…Oh, I was soooo screwed up, so doped up and screwed up I wasn't hardly even me.”

“Who or what, at that time, controlled your life?”

“My good, God-given sense sure didn't.”

“So?”

“I guess the dope did…and the anger…and the fear…and the pain…”

“And
who
gave permission to the dope and the anger and the fear and the pain to control your life?”

“I guess
I
did.”

“Could anyone else have given them that permission?”

“I guess not.”

“You guess not?”

“No! I know not! No one but me could have given permission to anyone or anything to control me, EXCEPT ME! I got so mad at Mom eons and eons ago when I thought
she
was trying to control me, even though she was trying to do it in a positive way. Then I stupidly and rebelliously
allowed
every sense and action and thinking process I had to be
controlled
by all the
negative
and
vile things
in the world! Actually, not only allowed it, but encouraged it!”

“Do you want to explore that?”

“Well, I was pretty put-together mentally till…you know…No, I guess you don't know…
yet!
Anyway, in those olden days, so far back I can hardly remember them, I had friends and sports and music and my job. It was just a gofer thing in a medical clinic, but I liked it, and I had Mo…”

“Mo?”

“Harmony.” Sammy winced and bit his bottom
lip. “She was like the most wonderful thing that ever happened in my life. I…I loved her. She carbonated every red blood corpuscle in my bloodstream.” He winced again, so strongly it was almost like a small seizure. “We were tight as anything till…I blew it…like I blew everything else in my life.”

“Why do you suppose you did that?”

His forehead wrinkled and his body tied itself into a hard knot. “I don't know. I had had
little
problems before…you know…but they had never clobbered me so completely or even hardly at all. Then suddenly and in one black whirlwind swoop it was like the whole world came crashing down upon me, covering everything, maiming everything, and a dark sulfur cloud squeezed me out of my existence into an imprisoned unrealness of fermenting hostility and pain.”

“What do you mean, ‘fermenting'?”

“Growing, taking over, souring. My life became foreign to me! I was part of the unwashed, the unwanted, the hated—a troublesome alien—and I seemed to be forever cloning myself into more unacceptable, unworthy, unhappy mes because the misery was too much for one young, stupid, helpless kid to bear. I know that seems crazy enough to have me locked in a rubber room in a loony bin…”

“No, it doesn't, Sammy. It just means that the beautiful, warm, belonging, protective, brightly colored balloon you had lived in all your life, up to that point, had been suddenly popped,
deflated completely
, leaving you flat and empty. You had to, then, in some sense,
reinvent your life
and your place in it. It's too bad you weren't able to get help right then.”

“Yeah, before things got so out of hand that we
may never be able to get my Humpty Dumpty self put back together again.”

“Oh, we'll get Sammy Humpty Dumpty put back together again good as new, maybe even better. Never you fear.”

“We've
got
to do something soon! I can't stand this pain and confusion and fragmentation much longer. I feel like I'm two people, the good person I want to be and the bad person
I am!
Actually I know this sounds completely out of orbit, but sometimes…in fact more and more often now…I feel like maybe I'm many different people.” He started crying softly. “Lately, I've even started thinking of names for some of the evil entities within me.”