Straight Life - Art Pepper [222]
Bob talked to some people and came back and said, "You're still not well enough to go to one of our dorms because then you'd be required to carry on like everybody else does-with a job and the games. It would be too hard. But since you are in such bad shape I'm going to get you into the infirmary." The infirmary was in a building in a place they called the Clump, an apartment complex. I took a ride on the Synanon bus and checked in. Bob even left word that I was to have no visitors, so no one could bother me except the people that were in the infirmary. Fortunately, a couple of them were sick.
The next morning I looked around and saw that the infirmary was filled with Puerto Ricans. I was in prison in Fort Worth with Puerto Ricans. They acted the same in prison as they did here. They were clannish, and they never spoke English even when they could. I don't know if you've ever heard Puerto Rican, but it's fast and high-pitched, and they would talk and talk and loud. Here, just like in prison, they were as obnoxious as the blacks, getting together in groups and chattering when you were trying to rest or relax. The white guys talked softly. And if they walked into a cell where someone was sleeping, they would say, "Hey, your cellie's asleep. Let's go out there and talk." They'd leave quietly and go someplace where they wouldn't disturb anyone. But not the Puerto Ricans. They'd get right next to where you're trying to sleep and talk, talk, talk this machine gun language, all of them at once.
So I'm in this little infirmary in Synanon, and I hear these voices talking Puerto Rican just like lightning, and I think, "Oh, my God, am I going to have to go through this again?" Synanon was filled with Puerto Ricans, blacks, and people from New York-who of all the white people have the least regard or respect for anyone. There were maybe one or two Mexicans in the whole place. There were maybe five or six people that I called real dopefiends that were from the coast. Righteous people. Regulars.
They moved me to a bedroom where my new roommate was a young guy, the son of a doctor. He was a nice kid. Later on I heard he'd started a revolt and tried to get the kids to overthrow the government of Synanon. I asked him, "What are you doing here? I know you're not a dopefiend." This kid, Peter Kuhn, was about sixteen. He was very tall with black hair, wore glasses. He was very intelligent. The more I talked to him, the more I liked him. I realized that there were a lot of things I didn't know about Synanon, and I figured that maybe for my own sanity' I should try to squelch my hatreds for a while and find out what was happening. Maybe there was something going on that I didn't know about, so I started asking him, "Well, what are these people here? That isn't a dopefiend there. Who is that? What are all these children doing here?" And he gave me a little rundown.
Synanon had gone to Puerto Rico and recruited dope fiends. They got so much money from the government and a tax-free stamp for recruiting people. They went to Puerto Rico and New York and got these guys, who were now so far from home they couldn't leave. Synanon couldn't get people from California to come and stay. I found out that the, young kids were put in Synanon by their parents or by the courts. Some had dabbled in pot and some had actually messed around a bit with dope. And then people brought little children in with them-little, teeny children and babies. Sometimes women gave birth to children there. And sometimes people left and left their children