Straight Life - Art Pepper [227]
I've never had any special schooling, but as a kid I was good at arithmetic and was always very neat, had an orderly mind, so I automatically fell into my job in the bookkeeping department and at first it wasn't so bad. I had a desk of my own. I liked that. I got into a routine, just as I had in San Quentin. I got hold of some pictures and put them under the glass on the desk. I got a good stapler and a whole bunch of pins. I've always been a hoarder, so whenever I could find anything or steal anything I'd take it. They had a little supply room. I'd walk by it and sneak in and grab cards, different colored cards, and notebooks and pins. I had my desk filled with brand-new stuff. They were always talking about saving and using things over; I just threw things away. If a pen just for an instant didn't make a perfect line, I'd throw it in the trash. When I opened a new box of staples I'd throw all the loose staples away, or if the box got wrinkled I'd toss the whole thing out. I didn't care about saving or conserving or the program they were trying to conduct. I wasn't trying to help anything along. I felt that they were hustlers and that they were conning people out of money.
Everyone around me was brainwashed into this Synanon system of brotherly love and helping each other. And everybody had a built-in guilt. If you did something wrong, you'd cop out on yourself. If you saw any of your fellow communers doing anything wrong, you'd immediately rat on them. That was being a good Synanon person and living the Synanon life-style. A group of rats. I've never been a bad person or a criminal type, but the naivete of these people was ridiculous. If Chuck Dederich or Jack Hurst were to tell them to jump out of the sixth-story window of the club they'd all jump because they'd think that that's the "Synanon Thing," the "Synanon Position," to jump out the sixth-floor window. These people talked about how they were dopefiends and hustlers and robbers and whores, and then they'd go along with this kind of program? There's no way in the world it could be so. But all these people were brainwashed. Innumerable people were brainwashed like this.
We had office games in addition to the three games a week we had in our tribes. In the office games they'd rank people for using too many pens or for having a bad attitude, for wasting coffee. Nonsensical things. I found that I could drive them crazy by speaking my mind. You're not supposed to bad-rap "on the floor," outside the games, say bad things about Synanon policies or Synanon people. I would just call it like I saw it. If somebody was an asshole he 'was an asshole, and I would tell him he was an asshole in a game or out of a game. If there was a rule and it was a ridiculous rule, I'd tell them it was ridiculous and I'd ignore the rule. In games they called me "sour." I'd talk about dope and getting loaded, and they'd say that that was "bad" and I was "evil." I called them names: "You fat, old, double-ugly bitch! I don't believe you ever used any dope in your life! Somebody as ugly as you never got anything given to them, and I know nobody would fuck you and give you money, and you're too dumb to steal." They said you shouldn't be prejudiced. You weren't supposed to have those feelings. Most white men fear the black man with the white woman. They're afraid he is really as superior sexually as he says he is. If I found out that some white broad was married to a black guy I'd rave at her in games and call her tramp, slut, whore. Most people tried to act like they weren't prejudiced, which is ridiculous. Everybody is filled with prejudice, and every now