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By Root 1489 0

a stint in the Stew every month or so, which lasted up to seventytwo hours with two short breaks for sleep. Downstairs there was a stew schedule listing who was going to be in the Stew when. If you saw the name of someone you wanted to talk to in a game setting you could go up and join the stew for a little while. Everybody looked into the stew at least once a day. That was the center of the house. You picked up all the information about whatever was happening there, and it was the major entertainment of the place. Jack Hurst, the director and one of the sharpest, funniest game players, would drop into the Stew a lot to play, and you could pick up a lot of pointers from him. I began to get hooked on the game, and I started studying it, but I wanted to be original and have my own style, which I gradually developed. And then I started noticing that when I was scheduled into the Stew all the kids would come up to watch me and laugh. I was like an actor. It was beautiful. And I'll have to admit that nothing I've ever done has been more beneficial to me than the game playing.

By the time I got to Synanon I'd reached the point where I no longer enjoyed playing music, and because of my physical con dition I was afraid I wouldn't be able to play again. I was thinking when I left I'd find something else to do. I really enjoyed the office work. But people kept after me all the time asking me to play, and so when Christine contacted Synanon after I'd been there for three months, I left word asking her to drop off my tenor.

I started woodshedding down in the basement of the club. It felt good to play again. I decided to blow just for my own enjoyment and to play hooplas when I felt like it. They had hooplas after games, sometimes two or three in an evening. We'd play "Ode to Billy Joe," "Watermelon Man." And there were some excellent professional musicians in Synanon. We had Wendell, a black tenor player, really played well; Marty Meade, "the Troll," a crazy little guy who played good piano and wrote music; Lew Malin, a very exciting drummer; and Lou Loranger, who played bass. We had a Puerto Rican, Jaime Camberlin, who played congas; other people sat in and played the shakers, the maracas. Later on we got Frank Rehak on trombone; he was on some of Miles's albums. And the people got the same thing out of dancing to our hoopla's as we got out of playing them, a complete release. It was very e -.citing.

I found myself getting stronger and stronger. My tone developed. My mind cleared. I was sober and playing better than ever. I ran into Stymie again in Synanon. He had organized a choral group. I started writing arrangements for it and playing with them, and someone got a rock group together to play upstairs for the kids, so I was playing with them, too. Then Tom Reeves, an old-timer in Synanon, began organizing the musicians and even instituted musical games.

We had our first musical game in the Stew. Instead of talking we blew our horns at each other. It was recorded and sounded very far-out. Then we decided to have another game alternating words with the blowing. We went down to the weight room in the gym and set up the instruments. There were about eight of us. We played for a while and then stopped, and things just naturally took their course. From the playing someone would emerge that we wanted to talk to. We were supposed to be playing together, but Wendell played longer and louder than anybody. We couldn't shut him up. I told him, "Boy, you sound just like you are-ugly and brutal and full of hate." Everyone jumped on him, and he wigged out: "Fuck you assholes, fuckin' Uncle Toms and honkies! Fuck you, Art Pepper, fuckin' Colonel!" He ran out of the game while we hollered, "Yeah, yeah, baby! Cry, cry, baby!" Then all of a sudden he was back, "Fuck you honkies!" And he ran out again carrying his horn. Then we put the game on this chick, Karolyn, a lesbian. She played the flute. She was a great whipping post for me. I called her a double-ugly old whore and told her, "I wouldn't touch you with Wendell's dick!" She flipped out and