Straight Life - Art Pepper [220]
I hung up, and my mother said, "Ohhhh, couldn't he come tonight? Oh, I wish he could have come tonight." She said that three or four times. I said, "Boy, you're too fuckin' much. You're my mother and you don't even want me to stay here and I can't even walk!" She said, "You're just hopeless. We can't get along. Especially when you're in that condition. I thought you were going to Synanon. What happened there?" I got into an argument with her and started cussing her out. She kept on and on. I got madder and madder until I couldn't stand the thought of spending the night at her house. I couldn't imagine it. It became an obsessison to get out of there right then. I got on the phone and called Synanon, and they put me through to Greg Dykes. I told him what had happened. He kept talking me into it. Anything to get away from my mother. I said, "Is there any way that you could come get me?" He said, "No, it's against the rules. You have to get here yourself." I hit on my mother andanything to get me out of there-she got hold of Merle, her husband. He was working at a gas station. She asked him if he would drive me to Synanon. I told her to please call my dad. I realized it wasn't her fault. She was just afraid. She'd had such bad experiences with me.
I never thought that I would ever really go there. Merle agreed to drive me. He borrowed an old truck from the station, I grabbed my junk, and away we went. It was evening. I had a little bit of the juice left and on the way to Santa Monica I finished it and took the rest of the tranquilizers they'd given me at the VA. Merle didn't know where the place was. We stopped at a gas station and somebody told him, "Just go down Pico till you get to the ocean. Just go all the way as far as you can go." Finally I saw the big sign that said Synanon but one of the letters was gone-SYN NON-and I remember thinking of sin. It was a foreboding, old building made of brick. It looked like a gigantic YMCA or one of the old billets the army used to take over. We parked across the street. I'm looking at the place and I'm talking to Merle: "Jesus, I don't know, man. I don't think I can make this."
Merle was younger than me by about eight or nine years. He was tall, an oafish guy, but a nice guy. We'd always gotten along. He was kind of dumb, and one eye was messed up. He's one of those guys that bumps into walls and doors and things. But you couldn't blame Merle for anything. He'd had a terrible life. He used to sleep in people's garages. That's how my mother met him. He came and asked if he could mow the lawn and sleep in her lawn swing. She started feeding him and giving him little odd jobs. She felt sorry for him. Finally they got married.
Merle said, "You gotta do something, junior. It's useless with Moham. You can't stay there. You gotta do something. Maybe this'll be good for you." After being locked up for all those years, to put myself in a position like that voluntarily! Merle helped me. He opened the doors-big, glass, swinging doors-helped me inside up the little flight of stairs. There were people standing around and all kinds of activity going on. I heard people going upstairs and I -think Iheard music.
Merle went to the desk. Evidently the guy on the desk remembered me from before and the doctor at the VA had sent his OK. I saw them looking at me and whispering. Everybody was staring at me as if I was some wild animal that had wandered in. Merle talked, and I looked at the people. It was all I could do to stand without falling down. A couple of guys that looked like house detectives came over and said, "Sit down right here. It's okay. Just sit down. Everything'll be alright." I sat on the little bench, and I looked to my right. You could see an area going into an enormous room where there were lots of people walking back and forth. I noticed a blackboard