Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (15 page)

Haight residents hoped that the influx of needy newcomers would slacken as the Be-In faded from public memory. That possibility was lost in early April when
Paul McCartney popped into the neighborhood for a quick look at a place whose reputation as a hippie haven had spread all the way to England. McCartney apparently failed to take in the piles of trash and milling herds of ragged misfits. Instead, he pronounced that Haight hippies were collectively “colorful and fun,” and his comments made fresh headlines. A Beatle had endorsed the Haight. That encouraged still more people to come, and among them were hardened dealers sensing limitless profits from a growing mob of consumers who believed it was their social and spiritual obligation to ingest drugs. Owsley still controlled most of the LSD market, and marijuana was smoked in the Haight as often as conventional cigarettes.
But these new pushers offered hard drugs—heroin and Methedrine and other chemicals encouraging harsh hallucinations and physical violence. Haight arrivals, and not a few longtime residents, proved indiscriminate in what they took and how often. Used syringes became commonplace on the Haight’s sidewalks. The hard-line dealers wormed their way into the community and swiftly became as integral as the Diggers.

If dealers were the least welcome arrivals, runaway teenagers were the most heartbreaking. Sixteen or fifteen or even younger, they came from around the country, more runaways than any major city could have comfortably absorbed, let alone a relatively small neighborhood. Some had left home for the thrill of it, and after taking in the Haight’s increasingly unsavory atmosphere, they had the sense and the resources to go back home. But many others, in the words of Joan Didion, were “pathetically unequipped” to deal with their new surroundings. They were misfit kids, the ones with no social skills who had trouble making friends or fitting in back in their hometowns, or else were at critical odds with their parents and wanted someone more understanding to take them in and tell them what to do. The ones least able to fend for themselves were the most likely to stay.

So many defenseless teenage sheep naturally attracted both shepherds
and wolves. Street preachers had always roamed San Francisco, but now the Haight attracted an inordinate number who pontificated on street corners or in the Panhandle, all of them claiming to have the answers that their confused listeners needed. It was possible, within any few Haight blocks, to be exposed to a wide variety of proselytizers: Buddhists, Hindus, fundamentalist Christians, Satanists, socialists, anarchists, pacifists, isolationists, and plenty of poseurs adopting guru guise for the purpose of seducing gullible youngsters. “You can’t emphasize enough the innocence of most of these starry-eyed kids,” recalls Beat and Haight survivor Glenn Todd. “They were ripe to take advantage of, if anybody wanted to. Throw out some talk about peace and love in Golden Gate Park and you could sleep with a dozen naive little girls if that was your intent.” For many, it was.
An April 16 street leaflet described another too typical scene: “
Pretty little sixteen-year-old middle-class chick comes to the Haight to see what it’s all about & gets picked up by a seventeen-year-old street dealer who spends all day shooting her full of speed again & again, then . . . raffles off her temporarily unemployed body for the biggest Haight Street gang bang since the night before last. . . . Rape is as common as bullshit on Haight Street.
”

Things were about to get even worse. All during the spring of 1967, newcomers converged on the Haight. In May and June, when schools around the nation closed for the summer, the number of arrivals was expected to multiply at a staggering rate.
One estimate had 75,000 more descending on a neighborhood with a residential capacity of perhaps a tenth of that number. It was “The Summer of Love.”

By then Charlie Manson lurked in the Haight, and he was eager to greet the newcomers.

C
harlie arrived at the Haight in April 1967 after the Be-In (in January he was still behind bars at Terminal Island) but before high schools let out for the summer and the full tide of would-be hippies washed in. Somebody handed Charlie a flower, he had his initial acid trip and loved it, and he spent a night or two on the soft grass of Golden Gate Park. Decades later he’d also claim that he performed at the Avalon Ballroom with the Grateful Dead, which even for Charlie was an outrageous lie. Nobody took any special notice of him; Charlie appeared to be nothing more than another scruffy pilgrim negotiating the crowded streets. But Charlie was taking in everything around him, looking for an angle, trying to calculate how he could turn some aspect of the Love Generation activity to his own advantage. As was the case in Berkeley, the Haight was no place for pimps because free love eliminated the need to pay for play, and peddling dope was out of the question, too—everyone in the neighborhood had easy access to acid and weed, and Charlie lacked the finances and connections to get into dealing harder drugs.

The Diggers fascinated Charlie. He tagged after them, noting their morally superior attitudes and observing their daily task of scrounging from supermarket dumpsters and turning the cast-off food into nourishing, even tasty, meals. Charlie certainly approved of the Digger women doing most of the work while the men gave orders. Here was a group that everyone looked up to, and Charlie, the shrimp who was constantly picked on in school and in prison, always yearned for respect. But Charlie was never tempted to join the Diggers—intriguing as they were, everything they did was ultimately for the benefit of others, not themselves,
and that ran directly counter to Charlie’s approach to life. Besides, they espoused a philosophy of no individual leaders, and Charlie always wanted to lead.

In the Haight, there was an obvious way to do that, a way that appealed to Charlie’s considerable ego and required exactly the talents that he possessed—imagination, glibness, and an uncanny ability (gleaned in equal parts from pragmatic prison survival and Dale Carnegie classes) to manipulate others by perceiving and then exploiting their ambitions and weaknesses.
Virtually everywhere Charlie looked in the Haight there were street preachers pontificating to one or two or dozens of misfit listeners desperately seeking someone special to tell them what to do, how to live, what to think. Reinventing himself as a Haight guru and gaining a flock of worshipful followers was irresistible. Charlie still expected that someday soon he’d head south to Los Angeles to snag a recording contract. But the guru business clearly had its own charms and, just like music, it required attracting and retaining an audience. All the biggest stars had entourages, followers to stroke their egos, run their errands, indulge their every whim. Charlie set about recruiting his in the Haight.

He began not by preaching, but by listening. For days
Charlie drifted from one street guru to the next, memorizing their best lines and putting together his own street rap. Charlie was in no rush with his research. Unlike most Haight newcomers, he had no immediate financial concerns. Mary Brunner still had her job at the university library back in Berkeley, and most nights Charlie hitched back across the Bay and slept at her place. Mary understood that it was none of her business what Charlie did during the day while she was at work. Her obligation was to pay the rent, cook for him, clean his clothes, make love whenever he felt like it, and tolerate any other girls he brought home. And, as Charlie began to preach his way around the Haight, there were suddenly a lot of them.

The street philosophy Charlie initially spouted was a hybrid, cobbled together from Beatles song lyrics, biblical passages, Scientology, and the Dale Carnegie technique of presenting everything dramatically. Guitar in hand—sometimes he’d sing an original tune or two to warm things up—Charlie would find an open spot on the sidewalk or in the park and begin chatting with whatever waifs were nearby. He’d talk about becoming
free by giving everything up—possessions, individuality, ego. The more you surrendered, the more you had. Death was the same thing as life and nothing was bad. Society insisted some things were wrong, but that was just to hold you down. Breaking away from your inhibitions was important. Love everybody. He offered nothing radically different from hundreds of other would-be Haight gurus with the exception of his presentation. Charlie was a masterful orator, letting his voice fall so his listeners needed to lean in to hear, then roaring so that they had to pull back a little, building a singsong rhythm and smiling and gesturing broadly. He entertained as well as enlightened. The term
charisma
was just coming into wide use and Charlie had it. To an extent he was successful from his first day as a self-anointed guru. People listened. When he wanted drugs, his audiences had plenty to share. Girls agreed that inhibitions were bad and had sex with him. He took some of the girls back across the Bay and enjoyed more time with them at Mary’s apartment. But something was missing.

Charlie wasn’t accomplishing anything more than dozens of other Haight gurus. Every day he was in direct competition with the rest of them. Some kids would listen to Charlie, swear lifelong allegiance, and then desert him the next day for some other pontificator. The ones willing to stay loyal to him on a long-term basis weren’t worth having. Charlie was quickly reminded of what he’d previously learned as a pimp: the best recruits were bruised and needy but not completely broken. On any given day in the Haight, Charlie could call to his side dozens of hapless young souls who needed everything but had nothing to contribute for his own benefit beyond doglike devotion. They were too socially inept to bring in money by panhandling, too clingy to share his attention, and too disoriented to run even the simplest errands. For Charlie, a more effective way of building a useful entourage was to test potential followers one at a time, and to do it away from competing gurus. When he had a few select disciples, then they, in turn, could go out and recruit for him, with Charlie making the final decisions on who was worthy to remain in the group. Jesus had done the same sort of thing, and during some of his LSD trips
Charlie began to believe that he had a lot in common with Jesus, since they both tried to build a following from the dregs of society. Bigger than
the Beatles, equal to or maybe even the reincarnation of Jesus—Charlie didn’t aim low. But when he did select his second follower, she wasn’t from the Haight.

After so many years in prison, Charlie relished the freedom to roam. Every few weeks he left the Haight on directionless two- or three-day rambles up and down the California coast, hitching or else driving a 1948 Chevrolet that someone made available to him. In May 1967 he took the Chevy south toward Los Angeles and ended up in Venice, one of a series of beach towns north of the downtown L.A. sprawl. Venice had a reputation as a bohemian community; lots of artists and musicians lived there. Charlie parked the car and wandered along the sidewalk that ran parallel to the Pacific Ocean. Benches were set all along the sidewalk so people could sit and watch surfers riding the waves.
On one of the benches a small, redheaded girl sat and sobbed. Eighteen-year-old Lynette Fromme had just left home after another fight with her strict, domineering father. Lynne had a history of emotional problems. Though she’d been an outgoing child who was a good enough singer and dancer to appear as part of a professional troupe several times on national television (prophetically, her signature tune was “Doin’ What Comes Naturally” from the Broadway show
Annie Get Your Gun
), as a teenager she’d turned to sex and drugs, in part as a response to tension between her parents. Lynne attempted suicide twice while in high school and was rumored to have had an affair with one of her teachers. She’d recently enrolled in small El Camino College with a vague plan to earn some basic credits and then transfer to the University of California. But then she and her father argued again, and she fled from their home in Redondo Beach to this bench in Venice.

Charlie sensed an opportunity. He walked over and asked, “What’s the problem?” Lynne blinked back tears and glanced up; her first impression was that he seemed like a hobo with class. Charlie told her that he was called the Gardener because he tended to all the flower children back in the Haight. Soon they were sitting together and Lynne told him all about her life, how she was frustrated and wanted to escape from everything. Charlie couldn’t have seemed more sympathetic, yet mysterious. He told her, “The way out of a room is not through the door; just don’t
want out, and you’re free.” Then Charlie spun some tales about his time in prison, how he’d learned to free himself mentally while stuck in solitary confinement. He’d come to Venice that morning because he’d somehow felt compelled to, Charlie told Lynne, intimating that fate must have brought them together. Now he was going to drive back to the Haight—she was welcome to come along. At first Lynne said no, she had to finish the semester at school, but when Charlie turned and walked away she jumped off the bench and ran after him.

Charlie took Lynne home to Mary, and set about indoctrinating her. For a while the three of them simply hung out, and then one day Mary went out and Charlie told Lynne to take off her clothes. Lynne was ambivalent about sex, but Charlie explained how none of it was bad. She’d never felt attractive and he told her that she was beautiful. After one or two false starts on her part they finally made love, and then they had sex with Mary watching, and then Lynne watched Charlie and Mary doing it, and gradually all her inhibitions were gone and the next thing she knew the three of them would go out on drives into the hills where she and Mary would take off all their clothes and pretend to be wood nymphs while Charlie played a flute that he’d found somewhere. Charlie was so wonderful and wise. Lynne wanted to stay with him forever, and he said that she could. He and Mary gave up the place in Berkeley; along with Lynne, they took an apartment in the Haight. It meant that Mary had to commute to work at the Cal-Berkeley library, but it was more convenient for Charlie and that was what mattered. Lynne and Mary got along fine, and Charlie wanted to add another member to the household. He had somebody in mind.