Charles Manson Now (32 page)

They didn’t have any real concern for anyone but themselves and I had to recognize that inside myself too, as well too, you know. Because we’re all looking out for number one. That’s the only thing that really makes any sense. Your eternity is inside of you. Just like my eternity is inside of you. Because there is no me unless you’re me and then, ifyou were me, that would be my me and then I would have tricked you. You would be possessed by the devil.

I mean, like seriously, seriously speaking there’s only one in my world. There’s only one I mean, you know. I get up in the morning with that and if someone wants to play-act like something, I’ll play with them, you know. But basically I just live in a lonely kind of trip, man. I’ve been alone all my life. I was born alone. I’ve been alone forever, man. I mean the ranch was filled with people but they were all with themselves. I’m not, like I’d help them and do whatever I could for them, but like there was nobody there, man. Not even me. The only thing that I really worried about or thought about was the weather. The weather had changed so much since I was out last time. Every time I get out everything’s changed. I get out and creeks are gone, the lakes are gone, it’s all cement. There’s hotels and motels and pancake houses and hamburger stands just covered with cement and concrete.

The beet farm is gone. The birds don’t live there no more, this is gone, that’s gone. Wow, man. Pretty soon it’s going to be all cement. At one time I thought we could save the world, that’s the joke. I don’t think you can save anything because I don’t think anything’s lost. There’s not going to be anymore. The universe don’t need this little pile of dirt. And when you raise something, you learn to love it, you grew it, you take care of it, and then you cut it down. What kind of silly shit is that? I mean, what kind do you call that compassion or love or understanding? You know, then they give you a Bible to read and everything happened thousands of years ago and nothing’s happening now.

ATWA

That’s what I was thinking, man, that’s why my message to all those people was ATWA. Without that you don’t have nothing else. And they say, well order. What order, they want to bring back Hitler for an order. That’s not order. Disorder you know, Hitler wasn’t an order. He was a step towards order but that was only a step. And see, they tell so many lies and people get caught up in the lies. What does the word national mean to you? Well, yeah, national socialism. There isn’t international socialism. I don’t think that Hitler had the world in his mind. I think he had the state in his mind. I met some of his youth movement guys in prison.

And they weren’t all that, they were on the chess board good, but off the chess board I don’t think they were into parks and trees and animals and stuff like that. And you know, like, you got to be a pretty heavy dude to be in with that kind of stuff, because another animal is just like another world. You know, you get a rhinoceros, man, you got a whole existing being and a life form there that has wants and needs. Like dragonflies, I love those characters. I dance with them, you know. Yeah, when I’m out in the yard there, I dance right with them, man. And I love them, man. I tried to get one to land on my hand and this is how strict he is. He waited until my hand was on the other side of the fence, in between the fences, and….couldnt move in the direction towards him, and then he landed on my hand. That’s how smart he is. Okay, something else, those crows are smart too. I had birds show me really intelligent stuff, man, stuff I cant even put in words.

XIV
A JOURNEY’S END

It had taken me almost thirty-five years to get here, seated across from the man who once gave me nightmares.

For a while, we just looked at each other. It was difficult to process and fully appreciate where I was and with whom I was visiting. Because it had been extremely difficult to have a visit approved, the clearance process and the walk to this room seemed extremely fast. I was tired, and so our introduction felt like a dream. We sat in two of four plastic chairs surrounding a circular table that was situated next to a series of vending machines. I asked Charlie if I could get us a couple of drinks because inmates are not allowed to handle money. I had a Coke and he had an orange juice.

It didn’t take long for Charlie to get into character. In no time, he became animated and his hands flailed around as he made faces and tapped the table with his fingertips. I remembered what William Harding told me about going into the visiting room completely hung over. I smiled to myself at the thought; I had no idea how he could handle that. Charlie seemed to have more energy than he could manage. Even though we spoke on the phone a lot over the past two years, we were really still getting to know each other. I thought about Matthew Roberts, and I could see the resemblance to Charlie. It wasn’t so much that they looked alike. It was deeper than that. They share a quality that is difficult to define, something beyond words. Matthew had told me he hated that people were scared of him. His likeness to Charlie frightens people so much that they can’t contain their reactions.
As I thought about how difficult it was for Matthew to
look
like Charles Manson, I couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult it was to
be
Charles Manson.

Charlie sat with his back to the wall and he seemed divided between his visit with me and his surveillance of the room. At times, he would stop speaking mid-sentence and sit still, silent, completely alert. He did this every time he sensed something was a little off. Charlie was rarely completely at ease. He was very observant and aware of his surroundings, almost as though he were constantly on edge. Yet he managed to exude the confidence that comes with his extraordinary kind of charisma. Even though he has almost nothing, Charlie carries himself with dignity and commands respect. At some point Charlie caught me staring at the swastika on his forehead. It’s not carved into his head, as is so often reported. It’s actually a dark green tattoo. Charlie told me that, when he was arrested, he was the most hated man in the world. And so, he came to identify with the swastika, the most hated symbol in the world. Charlie said he picked it up and made it his own. He went on to explain the swastika as an esoteric symbol used throughout the world to indicate different concepts. He told me the North American Indians used the swastika to represent a spinning wheel. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I think it’s the number fifty in Japanese.”

I asked Charlie about the Manson Family girls and what it was like to have them following him around. He laughed and said, “You got that all wrong, man; I was following them. I had no idea what I was doing out there.” I asked him if he was really a pimp. Immediately his mood changed, and I regretted asking such a sensitive question. Charlie looked at me with complete
sincerity and explained that his mother didn’t have any money and sometimes she had to hustle to make enough to buy him milk. He paused for a few seconds before he said, “So, yeah; I’m a pimp.” Charlie rarely gave me the answers I expected.

I asked him if the story, the legend that his mother had once traded him for a pitcher of beer, was true. “Yeah, that’s true,” he said. He told me that, back then, there were no accessible abortions and his mother had never wanted a child; she was still a kid herself. A waitress had said how cute Charlie was, so his mother said, “Take him,” and the waitress did. A few days later, Charlie’s uncle tracked him down and returned him to his mother. Sometimes, when I ask what Charlie perceives to be a stupid question, I get back what he feels are equally stupid answers. I asked, “Do you have any idea why you’re so famous?” Charlie snickered, sarcastic. “Because,” he said, “I have a really big dick.”

I learned that, for Charlie, getting to the visiting room is a bit of an ordeal. He has to walk almost two blocks, pass through several security points, and, depending on the guards on duty that day, submit to a strip search. Because he is such a high profile inmate, and because he is often met with such great degrees of worship and disdain, each of his trips to the visiting room, Charlie assured me, is a production. There were reasons why he’d refused to go down to the room for a year.

At one point, Charlie leaned across the table, so that he was maybe eight inches from my face and, through clenched teeth, he strained to speak in a menacing voice, “Do you know why I’m so intimidating?” I could smell his breath and I was silent. He fell back in his chair and awaited my response. “No,” I admitted. I had no idea. Charlie relaxed and seemed to release the tension
he’d been full of just seconds before. He sighed, “Because I’ve been intimidated my whole life.” I couldn’t help but wonder what Charlie could have become under different circumstances. From everything he’d told me about his life, it seemed he never really stood a chance. That seemed like a tragedy.

I remember Charlie drumming on the table with both hands, trying to compose a question he wanted to ask me: “So, how in the hell did you get in here?” I reminded him that he had sent me a visiting form and that I’d filled it out, sent it back, and it was approved. Charlie took a few seconds to gather his thoughts and looked over to the corner, where Kenny was sitting with his family. Kenny smiled the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen and began laughing and waving. He knew exactly what Charlie was thinking. Charlie asked, “So, what you’re telling me is, Kenny did all of this?” With that, he started laughing, and I laughed as well. I got the joke.

This was Charles Manson, the most vilified, hated man in America. It would be easy to believe he was some “hippie cult leader,” that he could threaten to kill me by ripping my heart from my chest and eating it, that his presence could induce in me a fear of facing death every second. None of this is true. Instead, the man I met had much in common with the people I work with. It would be easy to call him crazy, insane even, as if that label were somehow the answer to the questions posed by such a complex being. Instead, that label is a limitation most people struggling with mental illness have to overcome every day. Because the people around them don’t want to delve underneath the label to see a person as he or she really is. Reaching past the way the world has labeled Charles Manson might require a man to risk
his own sanity. Sometimes it felt as though I were doing just that. If it weren’t for the history and the madness, Charlie could have been like the many people I’ve met who are simply trying to find their way through a world that seems completely alien, a reality they never fully understood. In some ways, he reminds me a lot of The Captain, one of my favorite patients. I can just imagine Charlie trying to control the world from his prison cell. In other ways, Charlie reminds me of Dwayne, who had such a unique view of the world and who truly inspired me. To a degree, Charlie even possesses some of The Claw’s reckless abandonment.

When I asked Charlie what his psychiatric diagnosis was, he told me he has been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic with an antisocial personality disorder. He then proceeded to add every mental illness, every disorder he could think of, to his diagnosis. When he was finished, he told me calmly and with control, “I’m whatever you want me to be.” Manson is a guy who defies definition; it’s as difficult to say what he is not as it is to say what he is. And if you could diagnose Charlie, it would be beyond difficult to trace the origin of the illness. Most people in prisons are antisocial and some of them have good reason to be paranoid. It would be easy to call Charlie psychotic or delusional, but his character clearly has more depth than that.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that is characterized by abnormal perceptions and expressions of reality. Three of my favorite musicians [Roky Erickson; Peter Green, founder of Fleetwood Mac; and Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd] are schizophrenic. They are also some of the most influential voices in rock ‘n’ roll and, sadly, three of rock ‘n’ roll’s most tragic figures. Mental disorders are commonly treated with medications. But,
because the side effects of these medications are so horrendous, many patients would rather deal with the symptoms of their illnesses than take the drugs that are supposed to help them. Charlie told me that three psychiatrists at Vacaville labeled him category “K,” which, according to Charlie, is “as crazy as it gets.” Charlie shared his experience with being heavily medicated, the five years during which his mind was hazy and his body was hardly able to function. In a lot of cases, medications are used as chemical restraints. I would suspect the guards at Vacaville determined Charlie to be an unruly and disruptive inmate. For a patient to be forced to take medication, he must be a risk to himself or others. But Charlie is neither. He is fully aware of his surroundings and he is in control of his behavior. I’m confident that he knows right from wrong.

Our first visit lasted five hours. During that time, four other inmates shared the room to spend time with friends and family. Kenny once told me people try to befriend other PHU inmates, just so they can get a glimpse of Charlie in the visiting room. I’d hoped to meet David Hooker, but he wasn’t there.

As our visit came to an end, it became clear that we were both completely wiped. It takes a lot of mental energy to keep up with Charlie, and I was exhausted. Charlie was tired too; he hadn’t been down to the visiting room in almost a year. As we said our goodbyes, I was still shocked that the stars had aligned and we’d been able to meet at all. Charlie said he would call me while I stayed at Graywolf’s if he felt up for another visit that Sunday. I was very surprised, by the time I made it back to Graywolf’s, to find that Charlie had already called to say he’d had a great visit and wanted to see me the next day. I would go back to Corcoran again.

The drive back to Regina from Los Angeles is a long one. Over the few days that brought me closer and closer to home, I thought about my adventure and everyone I’d met. I tried to makes sense of everything, but putting things into perspective was difficult. The trip hadn’t brought closure. Instead, the world felt wide open, and things had a momentum of their own. I was just along for the ride. I began to welcome the uncertainty.