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The Manson Obsession: An Anthology

I’ve written a ridiculous number of posts about Charles Manson. What can I say? I’m a guy given to obsessions, and the Manson case is a big one. Today — the 46th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders — seems like as good a time as any to share an anthology…

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/5fvJEpdq8a8

“Vincent Bugliosi Inspired My Work in Journalism, InfoSec“: Vincent Bugliosi, the man who prosecuted Charles Manson and his family and then detailed the case in his book Helter Skelter, has died at age 80. Indirectly, I owe some of my career trajectory to him.

“The Beatles’ White Album and Charles Manson“: A post about the album Charlie made such a big deal about.

“Dennis Wilson and the Manson Family“: The sad tale of Dennis Wilson, drummer of The Beach Boys and one-time friend of Charles Manson.

“I Regret Wearing That Charles Manson T-Shirt“: In the early 1990s, Patti Tate, sister of Sharon Tate, was on a public tirade against Guns ‘N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose for going on stage every night wearing a Charles Manson T-Shirt. Around the same time, I had my own Manson shirt, worn regularly to freak people out.

“Slaying Old Fears in the Hollywood Hills“: This one is about the week I went to Los Angeles on business and killed some old demons while there.

“Telling the Tate-LaBianca Story: Truth and Embellishment“: A while back I had written a post about how, in my opinion, Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice by Alisa Statmen and Brie Tate, was the most important book ever written about the Manson murders (see below). Then the book’s accuracy was thrown into question. Here I talk about that accuracy.

“Tate-LaBianca, 43 Years Later: A Strange Society of Manson Watchers“: I’ve met some interesting people as a result of this Manson obsession.

“The Most Important Book Ever Written About Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders“: Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice, written by Tate family friend Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, niece of Sharon Tate, may well be the most important book written on the Manson case.

“Helter Skelter“: Wherein the author first admits his OCD behavior includes an obsession with the Manson Case.

Hleter Skelter text over LA night skyline

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Heavy Metal Saved Me

I am your main man, if you’re looking for trouble. I’ll take no lip, no one’s tougher than me. I kicked your face you’d soon be seeing double. Hey little girl, keep your hands off of me…I’m a rocker.

“The Rocker,” by Thin Lizzy

A lot of people are amused to learn about my musical tastes. My work space at home and the office is cluttered with political and history-based trinkets, which would leave one to believe I listened to country or folk or maybe even some 1970s rock.

Heavy Metal music? It just doesn’t fit my image.

And yet, some 30 years ago, that music saved my life. And to this day, I listen to it faithfully. In fact, it’s become one of the main tools of my recovery from a life of mental disorder.

Let’s start from the beginning.

1984

This is the year my older brother died. But even without that, life was pretty miserable. I wasn’t exactly popular in school. I was overweight and the subject of ridicule. Emotions were understandably raw at home.

But that was also the year I began listening to heavy metal music.

It allowed me to escape the pain around me. The aggressiveness of the music gave me an outlet to process all the rage I was feeling. Without it, drugs and violence toward others might have been next.

My closest friend at the time, who lived two doors down, got me into the music — introducing me to the likes of Motley Crue and Thin Lizzy. When that friend died 12 years later, the music would again help me process my rage and keep me steady.

I’d be angry, hurt or scared, and I needed something to absorb my aggression. Heavy metal was the punching bag.

One of my favorite songs in 1984 was “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” from Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” album. The lyrics go something like this:

Heard a star-spangled fight/A steel-belted scream

Now I’m black/I’m black/I’m black

Another sidewalk’s bloody dream

I heard the sirens wine/My blood turned to freeze

You’ll see the red in my eyes/as you take my disease

For me, it was excellent therapy.

Around 2003, as I was going through a rough patch at work (my own shortcomings at the time more than anything else), that therapy took the form of Metallica’s “St. Anger” album. The album itself is far from their best, but the opening song, “Frantic,” tore a path straight into my soul.

The song came out a year before I started to come to grips with the OCD, and the guy in the video WAS me. The lyrics were me. I was frantic. I just didn’t realize it at that point.

Today, I listen to the music more for simple enjoyment than as an anger-management device. The anger went away some time ago.

The nostalgia is a big attraction for me, too. It takes me back to a time when I was in pieces; to a time when the music literally saved me. It has become something of a security blanket.

A lot of it makes me laugh as well — no small thing when you’re struggling not to take life too seriously.

How can you not find a live Motley Crue clip funny? Vince Neil sings every fifth word of most songs live. It’s amusing to watch.

The spikes-and-leather dress code make me laugh, too.

It reminds me not to take myself too seriously. And once I’m brought down to Earth like that, sanity prevails.

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Laughing off the Emotionally Scarring Back Stories

When I first opened up about events that scarred me for life, I worried about how it would be perceived. Would I be seen as a whiny, attention-seeking weakling? The reaction was almost entirely the opposite, which has helped me look at my own challenges with better humor.

In all the conversations with people that followed the launch of The OCD Diaries, it’s become plain that most of us have an emotionally scarring back story. Hearing your stories makes me feel a lot more normal. I’ve learned that because everyone has dark episodes in their lives, I’m really not unique. I don’t stick out like a bloody, wart-riddled thumb, after all.

Some of you have been scarred by war, some of you by years of drug and alcohol abuse. Some of you lost one or both parents at a young age, and some of you had stepparents you hated as teenagers. My scars were forged by childhood illness, my parent’s bitter divorce and the premature death of a sibling and two best friends (one by suicide). My addictions and mental illnesses were the byproducts, helped along by chemical imbalances in the brain.

It’s not what I’ve been through that defines me. It’s what I’ve learned from the experiences and how I’ve used the lessons to be a better person. It’s the same for everyone.

Some lose the game, committing suicide or crimes that lead to a life behind bars. Those of us who don’t end up that way aren’t better. We just had a better combination of luck, faith and support systems. And a better sense of humor.

I love when the humor part is done well on TV, in books and online. A favorite example is Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, a favorite TV show of my kids.

Doofenshmirtz is an evil genius who can never get his act together. He hates just about everything and wants to take over the “tri-state area” to feel better about himself. He makes sinister devices with –inator as the suffix, and they fail every time. His nemesis is Perry the Platypus, a secret agent whose cover is being the pet of Phineas and Ferb.

Doofenshmirtz is always motivated by emotionally scarring back stories. His was a mentally abusive childhood in Gimmelshtump, Drusselstein. His parents overlook him in favor his brother, Roger, he’s shunned socially, and it’s hilarious. It helps a guy like me laugh off my own back stories — or at least put them in a better perspective.

I leave you with one of my favorite snippets:

Doof

 

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Is the Point of Pines of My Generation Cursed?

A friend from my old neighborhood opined a couple years ago that our generation of Revere kids lived under a curse. “The more time moves on, I think we may be lucky for just getting out of the city,” he told me in an email. “Revere was just eating people up back then. It’s like we lost a generation.”

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/QPNqojbyIDk

The death tally boggles the mind:

  • Stefanie Santarpio died last week at age 36 from pneumonia complications. Her mom died a couple days later.
  • TJ Leduc died in early October in an apparent suicide. His father died a few hours later.
  • Jay Nickerson died from cancer in 2006.
  • Sean Marley ended his life in 1996.
  • Zane Mead was the first of the three people on this list to die of suicide, in 1988.
  • Michael Brenner, my brother, died in 1984 from a severe asthma attack.
  • Michael McDonald was a name I remember from the neighborhood, though I didn’t really know him. He died several years ago.
  • Kenny Page was also a name I remember but someone I didn’t know, who died several years ago.
  • Scott James also died several years ago. He’s the one I know the least about.

A sad legacy, for sure. A curse? You be the judge.

I keep all these people in my prayers, and I’m thankful for those I was blessed to know.

Point of Pines

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Another Point of Pines Tragedy

For the second time since October 1, something terrible has happened to people that were part of my childhood orbit.

Last month, my old friend TJ committed suicide, hours before his father died of leukemia. This past week, the sister and mother of another childhood friend both died within a couple days of each other: The sister died from complications with pneumonia. and then the mother suffered a fatal aneurysm.

Mood music:

The latter case is particularly sad. Mark Hedgecock, my friend and classmate from grades 1 through 12, is a registered sex offender. There’s no glossing over it. His records are all over the Internet. I talked to him a few years ago but broke off communications shortly after that. Earlier this week, I got word that his sister, Stefanie Santarpio, had passed away, leaving behind a young son.

Then a couple days later I heard about his mother Betty’s death.

As a kid, I was in their home constantly, from first grade straight through high school. His parents treated me like part of the family. I never knew Stefanie in adulthood, but I remember her as the baby sister. My most recent memory of their father, Victor, is from around 1986, when he scolded me for speeding around our Point of Pines neighborhood in my father’s 1985 Lincoln. I deserved the scolding. I was a 16 year old with a new driver’s license and an attitude.

Last time I was sick from Crohn’s Disease was that same year. Mark came over to check on me almost daily. As angry as I was — and still am — to learn the nature of his criminal record, that’s an act of friendship I can’t forget. I also know what it’s like to lose a sibling, and I remember how Mark was there for me when my brother died in 1984.

I sometimes wonder if Mark’s life would have turned out differently had I been a better friend after high school. I tend to doubt it, because I was damaged and couldn’t get out of my own way back then.

I feel terribly for the family and hold them in my prayers.

Roosevelt School's 1983 Grade 6
The 1983 grade 6 class picture from the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines, Revere, Massachusetts. Mark Hedgecock is at the top left. I’m below him at the bottom left.

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Perception or Reality?

A couple friends who were at the 1992 Lollapalooza show I recently wrote about agreed with my general retelling of events but experienced something much different than I did.

Said one: “I guess it’s true: Perception is reality.”

Mood music:

I couldn’t agree more. It reflects a point I’ve repeatedly tried to drive home: The events I describe in this blog are based on my own personal truths, the most accurate retellings I can offer. But I know my perception of things isn’t exactly the whole picture.

I’ve heard from family and friends over the years who have suggested that my take on particular events was different from how they remembered them. One family member whose privacy I’ll respect here told me that most of my childhood memories are fabrications.

Many people tend to see the world in black and white. Something is either the truth or a lie. Nothing in between. I’m not one of those people.

From my perspective, we all see things our brains try to interpret as honestly as possible, but there’s no objectivity. We have built-in biases and perceptions of the world around us. The result is that if you put 10 people in a room and something eventful happens — a fight or medical emergency, perhaps — two people will tell you what they saw and it’ll differ from what three other people saw. The rest of the room will add different perspectives to the story. This is especially the case if you ask those people to describe the event a year or more later.

In the case of that Lollapalooza show, what I saw was filtered through a brain that was off-balance and sick, which made my memory one of terror. Others will tell you that they were there and were not afraid. They just had a good old time reveling in rock and roll. Some will have seen events through brains that were also unbalanced at the time, but in different ways. I suffered from heightened fear, but someone else could have been prone to death wishes and such.

To really get at the truth, you have to get multiple perspectives from multiple people. The real truth will usually be something in between the opposing perspectives.

This case is no different.

Lollapalooza II

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Human Tourniquets And Freaks Who Love Them

I originally wrote this three years ago. Looking at it again, it’s an important post describing a time when not even best friends were safe from my insanity. I’ve updated it for the present. 

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2YGwSRjcY4Hjz6fktW9619]

You know the type. They hang  out with people who act more like abusive spouses than friends. They are human tourniquets. They absorb the pain of their tormentor daily and without complaint.

This is the story of the man who used to be my tourniquet.

I met Aaron Lewis in 1985, my freshman year of high school. He was the kid with really bad acne. But nothing ever seemed to bother him. I’m sure a lot of things bothered him, but he was very good at hiding his feelings.

That made him the perfect target for a creep like me.

Don’t get me wrong. He was a true friend. One of my best friends. We shared a love of heavy metal. We both got picked on, though unlike me, he didn’t take it out on other, weaker classmates.

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver.

Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor, drunk myself, writing in my journal. I wrote about how drunk Aaron was and prayed to God that he wouldn’t die. Man, would I love to find that journal.

We saw a lot of movies together. We watched a lot of MTV.

He was the perfect counterweight to Sean Marley. Marley was essentially my older brother and I spent a lot of time trying to earn his approval. I didn’t have to do that with Aaron. He didn’t criticize. He didn’t judge. He just took all my mood swings on the chin.

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it.

I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it.

I was evil. And he took it.

That’s a true friend.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life. I cleaned up from my compulsive binge eating, found my Faith and untangled the coarse, jagged wiring in my brain that eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

If he’s reading this, I apologize for all the times I was an asshole. I hope somewhere in there, I was a good friend, too.

Buddies
Left: Aaron Lewis. Right: His asshole friend
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We’re All Lousy Parents. The Trick Is To Not Suck Too Much

I’ve had conversations with other parents recently that highlight a fear we all share: Despite our best efforts, we’ll scar our children anyway.

Most of us can point to examples of things our parents did to scar us for life, and we’re horrified to find ourselves doing the same things.

My father could be a brutal teaser and taskmaster when it came to things like yard work and working in the family warehouse. It always seemed like my best was never good enough. Even as a grownup, I would tell him about promotions and raises at work, and when I told him what I was earning, he’d deliver these stinging words: “That’s it?”

Dad also doesn’t have a verbal filter. If you put on weight, he’ll look at you, smile, and tell you you’re getting fat.

Yet here I am, teasing my kids all the time. And though I’ve historically been the parent most likely to let them get away with stuff, I’ve hardened my stance of late. I feel like I have to, because Sean is a tween with all the infuriating attributes. So I get on him about taking out the trash, picking his clothes off the floor and being a leader in his Boy Scout troop. Meanwhile, Duncan needs a lot of guidance and patience as a kid with ADHD. I often fall short because my OCD robs me of all patience.

See our resources section for sites parents and children will find helpful.

These things used to distress me. Like most moms and dads, I always swore I’d do better than my parents did. But the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t been entirely fair to my mom and dad.

They made their share of mistakes, but they did a lot right, too. With the help of excellent doctors, they kept me from dying of childhood illnesses. They got me through school and made my college education possible. My father has helped me out of more than a few financial jams. Yeah, bad things happened when I was a kid, but they were often things beyond my parents’ control. They tried to keep my older brother healthy, but he died anyway. They tried to keep their marriage together, but it wasn’t meant to be. The fighting around that divorce was vicious, but that’s what happens when a relationship decays. Some manage a divorce better than others, but there’s no instruction manual to help things along.

Some parents vow to quit drinking and smoking when a child comes along and often fail. But addiction is a powerful slave keeper. We vow not to cuss, but if I’m a fair example of the majority, the profanity creeps back before you know what hit you.

There are plenty of cases of parents carrying on like saints or demons, but most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We adore our children and drive ourselves to the brink of exhaustion providing for them. We show them a lot of love. But we have bad days, saying and doing things that end up in their mental time capsules, which are dug up in adulthood and analyzed for signs of trauma. Most of us have emotionally scarring back stories from childhood. The trick is to keep our shitty parenting to a minimum and get it right more often than not. Sadly, we have to wait until they grow up to see how it all worked out.

How to Traumatize Your Child book

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Two-Alarm Fire at My High School

There was a two-alarm fire last night at Northeast Metro Tech, the place where I attended high school. Back in my day, it was called Northeast Regional Vocational High School or, as most of us called it, the Voke.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0oO29Ht2H9AiENqRsq3zIT]

I have good and bad memories of the place. It’s where I:

  • Grew my hair long and cemented my love affair with metal music.
  • Truly started to understand, for the first time, that I could be capable of doing meaningful things in life if I would just fill in the deep chips on my shoulders.
  • Studied drafting and design. I didn’t become an architect, but I use the skills I learned there every day in my writing.
  • Swallowed a worm in the courtyard for a pack of cigarettes. Not surprisingly, you can’t smoke there any more.
  • Tortured and later befriended a kid everyone called Stiffy. I still shudder when I think of how mean I was to that kid.
  • Cut classes and smoked weed in the woods of Breakheart, the reservation that school sits at the edge of.

My time in the Voke included my last serious bout with Crohn’s Disease in 1986, during my sophomore year. I wasn’t hospitalized that time, but I pretty much lived on the living room couch. On that couch, I read “Helter Skelter” twice. I also got daily visits from a childhood friend who went on to become a thrice-convicted child molester.

I remember the teachers putting down the kids all the time. The jocks and nerds were embraced and nurtured. Everyone else was pretty much written off as damaged goods. This was especially the case in my shop.

A couple of years ago, my friend Kevin Littlefield coaxed me into a field trip to the Voke. It was my first time back in about 20 years, and it gave me more than a little hope for the future. The kids in our old shop that day were polite and appeared to work well together — nothing like the way we carried on in the 1980s. The big drafting boards had long since been replaced by flat-screen computers.

We also met some kids we graduated with who now teach there. One former classmate is the dean of students. Another, John Spagnola, is a teacher. Seeing him as a teacher was a trip. The kids really seem to connect with him. and his humor is as sharp as ever.

Back in our day it seemed like most teachers were always complaining that Generation X would never make it, that we were far to self-absorbed, spoiled and weak to carry the future. The teachers were right that we were a generation unprepared for the big challenges ahead. But many of us grew up. We got stronger. We learned to love people other than ourselves.

Now some of our children are going to that school, and they seem to be doing great. Generation X turned out fine, and our kids are going to do even better.

A few flames and a damaged building won’t prevent that.

Northeast_Metro_Regional_Vocational_School,_Wakefield_MA

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MomDay Monday – School Daze

Every school has its issues.

Issues with teachers. Issues with other parents. Miscommunication. Problems with other students.

Every school.

There’s no getting around it. We’re all human. We all have failings. And a school is, after all, made up of us imperfect humans.

But at what point does a school have so many issues it becomes dysfunctional?

Is it when the faculty talks out of turn to your child about their parents’ divorce?

Or perhaps it’s when other parents refuse to accept that their child is the school bully & consistently puts the blame for their child’s behavior on the very kids he’s bullying.

Is it when there are arbitrary punishments meted out at whim? One day a behavior is punishable by making the child sit out of recess. The next day, the same behavior is overlooked. One day, uniform infractions are barely mentioned. The next day, a student loses privileges for wearing the wrong uniform piece.

Perhaps….

But I believe it’s when a school & its principal are so afraid of criticism that they close off lines of communication to keep others from hearing it.

I believe it’s when a principal is more concerned with who saw a comment on the school Facebook page than she is with addressing the issues brought to her attention.

I believe it is when a student receives retaliation for the actions of their parent.

And I believe it is when anti-bullying rallies are held for the students but parents & staff are seemingly the biggest offenders.

The Kids attend a private, Catholic school. They have been there since they were each 3 years old, starting in the youngest Pre-K group. They have known their classmates for most of their lives & we have made good friends with some of the families of these kids. When The Ex & I decided to divorce, we quietly told The Kids’ teachers so they were aware of the situation at home & on the lookout for any kind of behavioral issues that might occur because of it. This school had an opportunity to show The Kids an example of what it means to be a Christian & support my children during a particularly tough time.

They failed.

Within weeks, it seemed as if everyone knew what was happening in our family. The rumor mill was in full force until people I hardly knew & rarely spoke to had an opinion on my divorce & The Kids’ reaction to it. I had been blind to the dysfunction in the past, believing my kids were in the best possible place for the best possible education. There were two things I hoped to keep consistent throughout the divorce as the kids lives were being uprooted. Their school & their house. I was determined to keep them in that school & in the house they had been in for the past 4 years even if it meant having to ask my dad for money. But little by little, my eyes were opened & I saw that there were issues with this school far beyond anything I ever realized. There certainly have been people on the faculty as well as other parents who have been more than supportive & I can’t thank those people enough for the kindness & support they’ve shown, especially to The Kids. But they have unfortunately been too few & too far between. It is school dysfunction at its best. Or worst.

I’ve stopped my insistence that The Kids stay in that school. It’s part of my letting go. And it’s okay. I am aware that any school will have issues, dysfunction, intolerant people & parents who violate the school drop off & pick up rules. At this point, I’m willing to take my chances.

But I’m keeping the house.