The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [112]
—I can conceive of certain circumstances when a person who does not have feelings of manliness feels like Dung and that’s his name; but when a man feels his manliness, what should he do?—
“Dung is a distinguished, truthful, humble name.”
—How do you go up to a woman and say “My name is Dung”?—
“It so happens that my foster woman wife doesn’t feel hurt at all. ‘Dung, give me some more!’ so I give her some more.”
—Some more what?—
“Sexual intercourse.”
—A women doesn’t have sexual intercourse with dung; she has it with a man.—
But Leon continues to stand his ground on the issue of his name. “I’m glad about the fact that you mentioned concerning manliness, but concerning my name, I’m satisfied.”
Leon had reacted to my remark about his manliness with transparent eagerness and gratitude, and as the interview ends he does something he has never done before. He spontaneously offers his hand to me to shake. As I take it, I feel a warmth between us—a warmth I have never experienced before.
October 19. As the group meeting opens, Leon hands Miss Anderson a long letter, and after its adjournment, he asks: “Do you have a moment, G. M. Anderson?” She stays on and Leon talks to her privately from notes he has prepared in advance. He does not really say anything new. It is clear that he just wants to be alone with her.
This post-meeting pattern will be repeated for several months. Leon becomes increasingly uncommunicative during the daily group sessions and saves up whatever he wants to say for his private sessions with Miss Anderson. At first I am included in these post-meeting conferences, but soon I am left out at Leon’s explicit request.
In a private interview with Leon I try to follow up and reinforce my previous attempt to reassure him about his manliness. Leon claims that he is only male, in contrast to what he says about all the women in his life, and in contrast to what he had said about himself in Cause and Evolution. I mention that we had recently interviewed a Catholic priest who talked of his mother, Mary Gabor. Leon looks interested, and asks what he had said about her—referring to his mother as God Gabor.
—He said that Mary Gabor was a very sick woman, that she didn’t take good care of you, not because she didn’t want to but because she was mentally sick, that the house was disorderly …—
“That’s true. I can see why he’d say that.”
—In real life you were raised as a young boy in a home where the lady of the house was, as the Father said, sick in the head.—
“Because of negativism. That’s true, sir.”
At this point Leon changes the subject to “morphies” and I interrupt him. I tell him that he knows, somewhere inside him, that “morphies” don’t exist, just as Madame Yeti Woman doesn’t exist, and that Madame Yeti Woman could not help him because she doesn’t exist. I also mention that there had indeed been an aide at Ypsilanti a few years back by the name of George Bernard Brown, but that he was not a god, or the reincarnation of the Archangel Michael, as Leon claimed. He was simply a decent man who cared about the welfare of the patients.
“He was an instrumental god,” Leon insisted. “I respect you as an instrumental god.”
—I don’t respect you as an instrumental god. I have a much bigger respect for you. I respect you as a man.—
“I still have to consider myself an instrumental god.”
—It’s only when a man doesn’t feel that he’s a man that he has to be a god.—
“Sir, if I don’t respect you as an instrumental god, I’m taking away something that belongs to you.”
—All you have to do is respect me as a man.—
“Sir, to me a man is an instrumental god. I have to see the relationship to infinity. If I can see that, I’m satisfied.”
October 24. Apparently Leon has been brooding all weekend over the idea that