DETERMINOL pjbreheny@hotmail.com
(a novelet in Accounts and Glimpses)
by Patrick Breheny
Things weren’t going great for Cal Jackson when he agreed to the experiment. He’d gone for free counseling at the East Bay University’s Psychiatric Dept in Alameda County, a facility of old military barracks that wasn’t residential currently, just arranged as an out-patient facility with various departments, emphasis on training medical students.
Jackson had suffered lifelong lack of self esteem, and was having current and persistent maudlin thoughts and feelings of worthlessness when he read about an anti low self esteem medication being tested. Our students were hoping to become doctors, and some jumped the gun and introduced themselves as already being such. They were following protocol, and we wanted the patients to detect the deception. They could then feel on an equal or even superior footing with the students, who were also told to insert disarming personal information about themselves. I surmise from his earlier comments that Mr. Jackson thought his shrink a little young, but he had introduced himself as a doctor, so Jackson probably concluded some grown ups were running the program, and the kid wouldn’t operate on his skull..
His intern’s name was Sims Sloan from Laguna Beach, and he did both intake profiles.
The room was medical, functional, basic. There were sphygmomanometer for blood pressure, a digital body thermometer, an EKG machine and a doctor’s desk. At the beginning of the interview, the patient was sitting in a comfortable armchair beside the desk, the sudent/doctor standing off to the side.
For accuracy I have tried to keep this account relevant, and omitted that which seems not to be, though in archives everything recorded is stored Remember they’d met before in a previous session .The conversation from the second interview went as follows:
Sims says So I hope you’re feeling more relaxed with me now that we know each other a little
Jackson replies Okay
Meaning?
Meaning okay. I feel like I can cooperate with you. But you aint my brother
(Sims moves behind Jackson, out of view).
Right. And I’m heavy
(Jackson replies without turning to look at him, I thought dismissively)
I didn’t mean that. Wouldn’t say or imply such..
Okay. Well, it is a professional arrangement, but I do have to ask you personal questions
(Sims goes behind the desk and sits).
Understood.
You grew up in L.A.?
Yeah. Do you know it?
I lived in Westwood for a while.
UCLA?
As an undergrad, but let’s keep this about you
You volunteered that you lived in Westwood
You asked it I knew L.A.
You didn’t have to answer.
Okay, fine. I do know L.A., so tell me, where in L.A. did you live?
Grew up east of Hollywood. E-HO.
Would that be around Vermont Avenue?
East of there.
Virgil Avenue?
More like Sunset at Maltman, Lucile.
That’s Siverlake. Was it tough?
(Jackson laughs)
Yeah, it was tough. The Mexicans, gangs, hippies, gays
The gays were tough?
They got to be.
What about you?
Tough enough to survive, I was never a gang banger.
You’re Caucasian. Were there many of you in Silverlake then?
Enough. My parents were the kind of hippies who actually figured out they could make a living at that long after the whole scene was over.
How?
They had a whole earth health food store connected to a whole earth restaurant. They called it Period Peace. It was popular, but the kids I wet to school with called it the Time Warp.
So your parents stayed together?
Mostly. They broke up a couple of times, but kept getting back together.
What do you think was the problem?
Infidelity and jealousy. Couldn’t live with each other, couldn’t live without.
Was it volatile at home?
You could say that. In a suppressed way.
Did you feel loved?
Only competitively They outbid each other for my affection. I was a prize, a possession. I felt wanted but not loved, expected to demonstrate my love for each of them to the detriment of the other.
Do you believe that the main cause of low self esteem?
It was certainly a factor. For example, when I started school I expected that other people would also barter to get my validation. They didn’t. They saw it as exactly the opposite. I should petition for theirs. And I didn’t want to do that, didn’t do what everybody else did, so I became isolated, an outsider, and picked on as a scapegoat.
I can relate.
(Sims gets up again and moves out of Jackson’s sightline)
What?
Well , my weight. I’ve had experiences like yours
This is about me, Doctor Sloan.
(Sims again returns to the ‘doctor’s’ seat)
. Empathy is important to the patient relationship.
They taught you that?
Yes
Then do it. You shouldn’t tell me.
You challenged me.
Do you want me to help you?
Actually, you all do. But back to you. You didn’t go far in school.
Quit as soon as I was old enough. And that, of course, determined employment.
What did you find?
I like jobs where I could be alone. The box office at a movie theatre. Now I’m a toll collector on the Bay Bridge.
The bridge…?
I never think of jumping.
I wasn’t going there. But don’t you see people all day?
Night. I don’t talk to them. They all say, ‘Hello, how are you this evening’ and I don’t answer. Only so many words in a shift. And its a job that will be automated soon. Meanwhile I’m getting them used to that. I’m as sociable as a computer..
But our bridges--- the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge--- are iconic, U.S. landmarks…
A coincidence. Look, they gave a civil service exam, and I was working as a clerk in an L.A. bookstore for minimum wage, where I did have to talk too much to people.
About?
Bullshit. Books might be okay, but people just chatter, monkeys making unevolved sounds pre-language. Wouldn’t you expect more from people in a bookstore?
My, my. You can see how Jackson was an ideal subject, not too educated but intelligent, candid and angry. As stated, Sims was just following instructions when he included personal issues, and we found Jackson could spar, engage contentiously, and this part of the second interview gives a fair appraisal of his history and mental state.. We placed him on a the trial anti-depressant called Determinol. We knew it was hallucinogenic. It was intended to increase confidence by having the mind present fictional prophecies. The predictions were reinforced in group encounter sessions where we promoted the slogan WHAT YOU THINK YOU CAN BE.YOU CAN BE.. Because the brain had been stimulated to good feelings, or “highs”, the initial visions were of good experiences, but, as with continued use of any intoxicating drug, the effects of the highs could later cause depression, even under the influence of, and the visions become accordingly morose. It was this latter negative effect we were hoping to correct through the testing that included Jackson.
The scenarios, as described by patients, were viewed in sleep like video dreams. He was reinforced by the group encounters to believe that what was revealed would be fulfilled.
Here is Jackson in his words, reminiscing:
I had a vision of education, where I was taking classes at a community college and planning to later transfer to a four year school and get a degree. Again, I was a high school dropout. I had heard of the GED, but it never occurred to me to take the exam and register for classes. There would be people there. Didn’t seem part of my reality. The early dreams were vague, the later ones specific, and this was an early dream without much immediate detail except that I knew I was on a campus and what my intentions were. But it was with the encouragement of my support group, the brothers and sisters like myself taking Determinol, people with whom I could finally talk, that I took the equivalency exam, passed it, and enrolled at a community college. I still worked nights and took classes during the day. WHAT YOU THINK YOU CAN BE YOU CAN BE.
The group sessions he mentions were recorded with high definition sound and visuals.. The subjects were not informed because we didn’t want any acting beyond what people always do with each other. The tapes of the sessions are sealed in archives, but I have seen them often enough to describe. Our reason for the sessions was to monitor, but the groups were told it was a support regimen of trust among fellow Determinol users, where they could comfortably share their visions and enhance subsequent experiences .The guiding authority was the book by the Narrator (eh, yes) titled “SELECTIVE THINKING’ especially the chapter on “BANISHING MORBID MEMORIES.” The reason for all the quotation marks is because those phrases became recited by rote any time referred to. The First Premise, WHAT YOU THINK YOU CAN BE YOU CAN BE, was additionally reinforced by WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU ARE.. I’m proud to state that the groups themselves coined the Second Premise without our prompting, and in time they started reading the Two Premises before every session, again without my direct influence.
The sessions followed a pattern that could be thought of having a three act structure. Act 1 was identification by members, describing how they had been differnet, or if new, still were. Act 2 was an accounting of the misery they felt, left out, bullied, unloved. Act 3 was a testimonial of redemption through Determinol and reports of their visions being fulfilled. All visions had to have been preceded by memories and needs that triggered them, and there was the Reciprocal Link which---when Determinol was administered properly under our supervision with sensors—gave us readings of past patterns or isolated events. Whether long ago or recent, they were always incorporated into “narratives” that we call Glimpses. Yes, you could say we were reading minds.
And here is a Glimpse of Cal Jackson:
Jackson on the community college campus! What an epiphany. Not that he wasn’t still shy reticent Cal who didn’t feel capable of engaging with people unless confrontationally. Yet here he was, walking among the students, sitting in classrooms with them, waiting in line at a vending machine for a quick coffee between his classes, having lunch in the cafeteria. And he was meeting---some. Not one he wished he could meet. Her name from roll call in Psych 1 was Lynn Downing, who, though seats were not assigned, had been thus far sitting two rows over and in front of him, so she didn’t seem to notice he was entranced on her short cut yellow blonde hair and slim shoulders. She was often in his sight line to the teacher, so he hoped most of the time nobody noticed he was staring. Infatuated, he was more hopeless than Romeo who at least had his moment with Juliet. Cal didn’t even know her, anything about her, and believed she didn’t know he existed, invisible as he felt at all times, especially sitting behind her. And if no one noticed Cal was mesmerized, that may have been because those guys she could see did their own eyeballing, and to his dismay she seemed to encourage them with smiles. He didn’t so much feel jealous as entombed.
There was an open air patio outside the cafeteria for nice days, and in September in the East Bay most days were at least nice, often too hot. One lunch time he came out with his rebellious tray of food---burger, fries, coke, no health nut he---and sat alone at one of the institutional type long steel benches and tables He wasn’t alone for long A Latin guy and a couple of young women, one white, one black, soon sat across from him. The females weren’t bad looking, but they weren’t Lynn Downing, and Cal had never learned compromise because there was never anyone to compromise with. The guy was sitting almost directly across from him, which is to say one space over, though he could have sat directly. He had a moustache and long hair, his manner was laid back, and he smiled..
In middle school in L.A. Cal was the only student who wasn’t smiling in the yearbook. The photographer had tried to trick him with “Say shit,” but Cal replied with “Up your ass,” so instead of simply the deadpan don’t-mess-with-me glare he had been aiming for, he is snarling in his graduation photo. It was said by his classmates, not kindly, that his face would break if he smiled.
He was now where he was destined to be, at this school, and that being so, his face did break for the greeting on the patio. And the greeter seemed to know it. He said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Cal realized he was still walking around with the poker face, pretending he had only sent the body to school, the spirit wasn’t present.
There were introductions. He was Juan, his co- conspirators were La Reina and Sally. Juan told him they were going to a La Raza meeting, asked would he like to go. Cal understood only in a marginal way that Juan was talking about something political. He was already sorry he had met people. He said, “I’m just grateful for what I have.” He thought maybe Juan would take that as an assertion of white privilege, but Juan seemed to fathom Cal. He said, “Brother, what are you grateful for? Having what anybody should have? And who are you grateful to?’
Cal was grateful to us, but didn’t say so. He thought for a moment he might say “To God.” just to back Juan off, but Juan wasn’t on him, he was just rhetorical or suggesting reflection. What his question did set off was a memory association to his parents. Contrasts. His mother the chemically independent health connoisseur, and his father who ate and promoted the same cuisine but was a brain dead pot head, Cal in the way of them doing nothing but countering each other and bartering for his validation. .He could find no gratitude there.
Juan and La Reina and Sally left for their meeting with no apparent ill feeling toward him. That they forgave him reinforced for him that he was a zero sum. He rejected people first before they’d have the chance to reject, but were these dismissing him as irrelevant?
I want to interject something here. We have people thriving on Determinol who previously were, no other way to describe them---simply losers. Jackson is a moderate example. We have those who, before we scraped them off the pavement, went from one institution to another, prisons and mental hospitals, other people who sold their blood on skid row and survived by working in casual labor offices. Winos and drug addicts. Like Cal they express gratitude, but they have the rage of needing us, of having to be rescued. Having been in their heads, I know their true feelings, so it is difficult not to have contempt for those who hate you for saving them. I’m just saying. You know, as some of them might phrase it.
Here is a description that was reported by him later in an interview session:
Like I said, I was a loner. I’m not here to please people, and beyond my parents nobody wanted me to, nor wanted to please me. I lacked any confidence in social saturations. That’s not a slip To me a social situation was a saturation. Immersed in overwhelming dynamics. I didn’t have friends. I’d never had a girlfriend. So, you can imagine what shock, and yes, hope I felt when the first interlude had me meeting a very attractive young woman, marrying her, and having a family. Wasn’t in the cards. Literally. Had never been in the tarot cards. I’d never indulged myself with expectations of that kind. I believed such was never going to happen for me.
And I met Lynn, another student on the campus. This is what it was like the day we me, not a vision, just as it happened, but you’ll note the visions’ influence on how I recall precise details. I’m learning to record actual events in the way I see visions, because---well, they’re the same.
I was in the library, had a pile of books pulled for a project, and was skimming through them to see which were worth checking out. I’ll preface by saying I was very aware of Lynn’s existence. I would have liked to know her, but…I’m me.
So I’m at this big table, nose and eyeballs in the books, when I hear a lilting, high, yet firm feminine voice say, “Hey Quiet.” Needless to say, I wasn’t talking. I looked up, said “What?” and it was Lynn’s voice I’d heard,. She was a breeze blown in, wearing jeans and a beige rayon kind of blouse-sweater, and asked with a smile “Somebody meeting you with a limousine?”.
I was confused. I thought she’d mistook me for someone else, knew my face from class but placed it with another entity. Amazing what can go through your mind in a second or two, and how much you can diminish yourself. Though I didn’t want her to be mistaken, I still wasn’t getting her greeting, and unbidden came the phrase “Excuse me?”, A common expression used to indicate not understanding, but still. Excuse me.
“Isn’t your name Quiet?”
“What?”
“I f its not, your in somebody’s seat”.
I got it. It was right beside me on the table, the sign that said QUIET.
She said, “Since we’re breaking the rules already, how about I sit down too and declare as your accomplice?”
She did. And she was giving me confidence. I said “Quiet is me.”
It was nothing, right? A quip. Nothing but the first time in my life I had casually and naturally, without inhibition, joked with a female.
I was afraid I would place too much emotional collateral on any continuation, be too dependent on her reciprocity, set myself up, but I had foreseen this so had faith it would happen. If not with her, with someone. It turned out to be with her.
From a later session with Sims, again with Sims intentionally provoking:
That forwardness she employed with you--- you know she flirts with a lot of guys?
. She’s just outgoing. That’s okay. I saw what I saw in vision. I’ve seen it will work out .In fact she said it was that I didn’t get jealous like other guys that intrigued her most.
You couldn’t be too good with no experience. Maybe she sleeps with some of them.
Hey Sims, when the last time you got laid?
This isn’t about me.
That’s right. You’re just the schmuck I report to.
Would you play around? I mean, if you could
I wouldn’t cheat on Lynn.
Even if she did?
Even if.
No, I guess you wouldn’t. So, how is she?
Fuck you.
Can’t you indulge me a little?
I can’t believe this. The doctor needs a doctor. Buy yourself some porno if you want to get off. I’m about ready to quit this program.
No you’re not. You need the drug.
Report you to the coordinator then.
Ha-ha-ha. He’s crazier than me.
If I am, I’d be the first to admit it. We were hoping Lynn would join the program and take Determinol. And she agreed to an interview. I piloted, and if I engaged in deception, it was a justifiable technique to get collaboration---the kind of thing police interrogators do, pretending to know as fact something they only suspect---and, after all, we weren’t sure anymore if we were really making false promises with Determinol. From the groups came The Diaries, private journals guaranteed confidentiality that the subjects were encouraged to keep, could share or not share,, though the The Diaries were filed as paper documents in archives. Trust, of us and each other, was emphasized as essential to success with the Determinol experience .About that trust and confidentiality, that was then and this is now, and nothing is forever. The only way to understand what Lynn and Sims and Cathy did is to know what they were thinking .Lynn wouldn’t participate in our program, so we have no diary from her. But lets hear from her interview about her and Jackson:
I was aware of Cal sitting behind me in class because the heat almost seared. That I got attention---smiles, comments from guys---seemed to me only what my girlfriends got too. Its not my nature, unless someone is obnoxious, to be unfriendly or rejecting. Cal was different in that he didn’t approach, and since I felt a very strong attraction when I often walked by him to my seat ahead, that was disheartening. I wasn’t getting ‘shy’
and I wasn’t getting ‘not interested’. I thought maybe I was getting ‘coy’, and I don’t like ‘coy’, its strategic, the other has to make the overture, but I wasn’t sure what the dynamic from him was, so I did just initiate.. I can’t explain it, but I was drawn hypnotically to him. The attraction was overwhelming. I didn’t believe in falling in love, that you just see somebody and know they’re for you, but I fell in---something. He was immediately addictive.
About your flirtation, Cal stated he has no objection, based on his faith that what’s revealed will be fulfilled.
I’m aware of his loyalty. And I ’m loyal too.
Maybe he just knows he can’t do any better than you.
What’s that supposed to mean? I’m a consolation prize? I don’t think so.
No, you’d be no such thing. But we have information that you in fact follow through, are not just flirtatious but promiscuous.
NOTE: We did not know any such thing.
You have people following me around?
You’re not denying it.
I really don’t know what you’re referring to .What’s your point?
We want to protect him. He wouldn’t cheat on you.
I didn’t say I cheat. You did.
You’d be a good subject for Determinol.
I don’t think so. Cal is doing this, and it seems it’s restored him, but its not for me.
I’m rich and your boyfriend is a loser. I cold give you things Cal never can.
Hey, I’m not up for being a concubine and I’m not a hooker.
Why are you with Cal?
You’re missing that he fulfills me. And I don’t mean sexually. Or not only. It is ironic this helps him, because I definitely don’t trust you--- any religion or cult, especially yours.
We’re not a cult.
Could fool me.
Do you trust anyone?
Cal.
A hundred percent?
Ninety five.
Only ninety five? .That’s because you can’t be trusted.
This appointment is finished.
And here is a continuation of the interview session when Cal was talking about meeting Lynn.:
Yes, we got married. We do have children. But before the kids, when we first got married and had a small apartment, there was just one small issue I had with Lynn. It was nothing, and I would never have addressed it, until it showed up in a vision. She never took the garbage out. After work, I always came home and did it. I overlooked it, never expected it would be in an interlude, but it was, and prominently. The vision was exactly as the event that followed. One morning when I returned from work I asked Lynn to sit beside me on the sofa, and this, verbatim, was our conversation. I’ve heard it twice, so I’ll never forget a syllable or nuance.
“When I come home, garbage builds up.”
She smiles, and says, “But you come back.”
“Do you ever think about why you don’t take it out?”.
“Why would I think about why I don’t do something? Enough to think of reasons for what we do.”.
“You don’t talk much about your mother”.
“I told you my father raised me. He took the garbage out too, but I don’t think that’s why I was attracted to you.”
“Lynn, I had a vision about you.”.
“Oh shit.”.
“You only told me your mother’s deceased. You never said anything about an auto accident.”.
FOR the first time in our relationship I saw suspicion in her eyes, a flickering of doubt about trusting me.
“Whoa! No, I don’t know why I didn’t tell. I didn’t want to .Didn’t want you to have to share the burden I guess. How did you find out?”
“The vision.”.
No other way?
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You’re sure?”
“Lynn!”.
“Okay. Yes, she got killed in a car crash. I was five and there was a wake, but the coffin was closed so I didn’t see her. If the coffin had been open, I don’t think my father would have let me be there”.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t want to. I saw it. But do you get it?”
“Get what?”
“A connection.”.
“To now?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m waiting for her to come back and take care of me? You want me to take the garbage out?”
“Oh, honey, no. I don’t care if you never take the garbage out. But that’s what I saw. I have to tell you.”
“You knew…in that state…something I never told you about? What did you see exactly?”
“This conversation we’re having now word for word. It’s happening exactly the same. I found out about the accident in an episode that revealed a previous event connected to the present that was then, and to a future which turns out to be now.”
“That’s some shit you’re taking. What you think IS.”
“Maybe. Maybe just some of it happens but not all.”
“Do you know yet?”
“No”.
We had to track subjects over a long period of time. I’ll fast forward now a decade. He got hired as a programmer for an insurance company in L.A, and they moved there, and had three children. By his own account, he went from basket case to Robert Young in “Father Knows Best.” Even wore a sports jacket. Lynn could have been with me. I don’t care so much anymore. Sure, sour grapes, and she’d be all bent out of shape from having those babies now and full of stretch marks, but I guess I’d have liked the bonhomie and the memories. Ah well.
So he was a programmer, chose a profession where he could still mostly avoid people, the way he was programmed. She was a practical nurse, though she quit indefinitely to raise the kids. They weren’t rich folks, they were renters, and during that period in Los Angeles most apartment buildings with rentals vacant also had signs that said ADULTS ONLY, and many of them added to that a sarcastic sounding PETS ALLOWED.
The nature of Los Angeles, on the west side of the city from Hollywood to the beach, was transient. Everybody came from somewhere else. It was a city where landlords could discriminate against people with children and still rent all their apartments. It was also a way to get around the existing anti-discrimination laws. What they did was legal, had not been challenged in the courts, and there was no statute against it, local, state or federal.
Cal and Lynn were living in a willing-to-rent-to people-with-kids ghetto. All the units had kids, so it could be chaotic. And because the landlord was doing the tenants the big favor of renting to them at all, they scrimped on painting, fixing anything broken, keeping halls clean, replacing burned out corridor lights, etc.
Around this time, Cal read in the L.A. Times that there was a hotshot attorney in West Los Angeles who had faced the same problem, and had a pending anti-discrimination suit presented as discrimination against a class of people who are parents. Cal found his phone number listed and called his office. The lawyer was Gregory Budge, and he invited Cal to a meeting at USC where there would be a lot of other people with like attitudes on the issue.
Jackson went to a couple of meetings at USC, and this is his account of one of them:
It was held in a conference room in the USC Law Dept and there were practicing lawyers engaged in various litigations who had an interest in this case, law students, and a City Councilman who had been at the first meeting. The City Council guy was Sam Colsworth, and the meeting was chaired by Greg Budge. I noted the absence again of anybody else actually effected. Yes, Budge had initiated the suit, so he was a renter, but I knew from the Times article that he owned a condo that was rented out---at least to a family. He had rented the apartment in West LA alone, later moved his wife and two year old son Jasper in, then fought his eviction on the same discrimination basis that he filed his suit. He lost the eviction battle because there was no statute on his side and no legal precedent. He claimed to now be homeless because his condo tenant had an unbreakable lease, and his wife and son were with his mother-in-law where there was not enough room for him also. He slept in his office, which was illegal too, and he was facing another eviction.
It was at that second meeting that I began to detect some stalling .Budge had nothing new to say. His suit was sitting in wait for a hearing. Sam Colsworth had promised at the previous meeting that he would bring the issue before the City Council, and had been optimistic they’d be receptive and act on a bill by the time of the current meeting. That month wait had been excruciating for me because I’d expected results. At this meeting, Colsworth spoke about having patience with the legal process, said nothing about the Council meeting, and didn’t even address his promise to force the issue until I asked him what transpired at the Council session. His reply was reluctant and with a sigh of inevitability that indicated he didn’t care to discuss my question: “They’re just not ready yet.”
I know I became visibly angry, trembling, but restrained my feelings as I said, “We elect council members to represent us. Where are the people who are suffering? Why aren’t they here? Where I live, there are a lot of Mexicans, and I know they’re hurting. Where is that community? I know if I went door to door in my building and talked to people, all I’d have to do is find one person willing to go with me. And together we’d convince somebody else.”
There was palpable alarm on the faces of Colsworth and Budge .I wasn’t sure if they weren’t really on the side of the landlords, wanted to commandeer this movement, or if they actually wanted a law passed but just not yet. I knew I wanted to rent one of those desirable apartment denied me right away, today.
. Still against my nature to be gregarious, but I could meet a challenge when necessary, especially one I’d seen as a destiny.
Narrator’s comment: Here, and in following accounts, Jackson began blending the narration of actual events with the recounting of visions, which for him had become the same thing.
.
I did as promised/threatened at the USC meeting. The first night, I began in my apartment building on Lexington Street in east Hollywood. .I knocked on a few doors and people didn’t want to be disturbed. Even though some had previously said hello to me, or at least knew my face, most assumed I was selling something, so didn’t speak English even if they did. Maybe the tenth rejection I went to another building, I knocked on a door that was opened by an outgoing guy who spoke to me with his Chicano accent. It took a moment to realize he was Juan from the Bay Area and he had a couple of small kids beside him... He said, “You’re going to be late for work, dude.” It was 8:00 PM and I went to work at 11:00.. He knew, had seen me around if I hadn’t noticed him..
“Not yet.”
“What’s up?”
“You see all those ADULTS ONLY signs in front of apartment buildings?”
“Oh yeah.”
“How’d you like to see them disappear?”
“How?”
“A city bill. It’s discrimination.”
“How you gonna get that?”
“People power, but the last three doors I knocked on the people said they didn’t speak English.”
“Probably not much.”
“You speak Spanish. Can you come with me.”
“To do what?”
“Put a lot of people together and crash a City Council meeting.”
“Okay if I put my shoes on first?”
Juan went with me and brought his eight year old son. Within a few days, we had twenty people going around my neighborhood in pairs, and I got a call from Sandy, one of the up and coming litigators. She told me she’d seen a clip on a local TV station (already) and said, “You’re a star.”
“We have enough stars in L.A..”
“I’m just saying we admire you, Cal.”
“You have some other reason for calling me, Sandy?”
“We think there’s action imminent on the suit. Can you take one more evening with a pack of lawyers?’
“I gave up on you.”
“And became a player. We’d like to talk to you.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You want this to happen faster, don’t you?”
Well, I did.
She said, “There’s a meeting tomorrow evening at seven. In the hills, off Mulholland. .Can you go?”
“Give me the address. I’ll think about it.”
“You’d never find the house. Could you meet me at Ship’s restaurant at Wilshire and Westwood Boulevard? You can park in Ship’s and we’ll ride up in my car. You won’t get towed. for an jour or so. We do it all the time. You could be eating in the restaurant.”
I parked about 6:30 in Ship’s parking lot, and when I stepped out of the car, she pulled up in a white GM convertible with the top down. The flashy car was incongruous to Sandy, who had short cropped brown hair, pale skin, was wearing black slacks and a grey blouse on her small frame. She looked---practical, competent to represent. I didn’t know what I anticipated but---something---and had a miniature cassette recorder playing in the pocket of my denim jacket..
I said, “Why don’t I take my own car.”
“You won’t find the place. Come on.”
She took Westwood Boulevard north to Sunset Boulevard, then out towards the beach on Sunset. We hadn’t spoken much before heading up a canyon, but when we did she suddenly stopped the car in a pull-out, turned the motor off and said,
“I want to smoke a cigarette. Do you mind? Do you want one?”
I’d stopped smoking on Determinol. We had passed FIRE AREA NO CIGARETTES signs I reminded her of.
“I won’t throw the butt out.”
“Make sure all the smoke goes out the window.”
She had the pack in her hand, but didn’t take out a cigarette.
“This will be a landmark decision and you can be part of it.”
“Why would I want to be?”
“You’ll get interviewed. You can write books.”
“This Council bill is about to happen?”
“You’re in a rush. Let it play out.”
“I want to move now.”
She was crushing her cigarettes in the package in her fist.
“We’ll give you something to tide you over.”
“You’re bribing me?”
“Consulting fees. You’re an activist generating research. We understand you’re at a financial disadvantage. We’ll help you out while you’re waiting. You can always rent somewhere if you have enough money.”
“For the benefit of my kids, what exactly is being offered?”.
She said, “We can start with two thousand dollars right now.”
I thought she might just want to see if I’d accept. Or that the two thousand would be all I’d ever get.
“That is a bribe.”
“It’s a retainer. Your fees can be subtracted from it.”
“You know it’s a bribe, Sandy.”
. “Don’t be so self righteous,”
“Take me back to Ship’s.”
“No.”
“You’re stranding me?”
“You can walk.”
I took the recorder out of my pocket and let her see it.
“Give me that.”
‘Take me back first.”
“Give me the tape first.”
“I’ll give it to you when we get to Ship’s.” I can bullshit too.
“Now.”
“No.”
“Is that on? Recording?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re on my property. Get out.”
“I can hitchhike to Sunset and get a bus.”
“If I take you back, you’ll give me the tape?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Not gullible, that woman.
She took me back. I kept the tape, though I could have given it to her. There was nothing really incriminating on it. I’d brought it thinking you better grow fangs if you run with the hyenas
I kept doing what I was doing in the neighborhood. I left my building alone one weekend morning to go get gas while Lynn was feeding the kids. We were going to the beach. My VW van was in an assigned parking space under the building, and when I arrive at it there was a scruffy street type guy there, Caucasian. Lots of drifters and homeless around Hollywood and you don’t like to see one near your van, but he was grinning in a goofy disconnected manner as I indicated with my hand holding the keys that he should back off a little. I’d at first thought he was just loaded or drunk, but he seemed beyond that, like he’d possibly had a seizure or stroke .I asked if he was okay. The smile grew, and he not longer seemed in any way intoxicated. He said, “You get just one warning” I could think of nothing to say to that but “Oh”, and then he did go, moving without handicap, quite unafflicted.
See, I knew I had a mission. What happened next in relation to this was that one morning after work I stopped at Ralph’s supermarket for a few items. Its funny, even when you have a sensor up for possible trouble, nothing seems to happen, life is usually predictable and rote, and you don’t necessarily make a connection when you should. That’s the advantage anybody who’s conspiring against you has---you’re not in on it.
So doing the same old same old I was almost back in my vehicle, carrying a grocery bag at 8:00 in the morning, when a big guy who seemed to work in the store was collecting store carts came close to me. There was a stray cart behind my vehicle so I barely paid attention to him. He nodded and smiled as he came next to my car. The trajectory path to the abandoned cart led him right next to me, but he let go of the line of carts and they continued rolling along the lot. Before I grasped what was happening, he hit me with two punches high to both sides of the head. I fell to my knees, and he kicked me in the stomach, knocking me flat. He then began kicking my ribs. I don’t know how many kicks, but several. He didn’t knock me out, but he knocked my wind out. How he fled, I don’t know. I was too busy gasping for air, but I did hear his message: “Don’t tell the police who. Stop what you’re doing.”
I thought some ribs were broken, but X-rays showed otherwise, just bruised. They felt like they were broken, and for a long time every breath I took hurt. But I knew I couldn’t stop.
Jackson wasn’t reporting to Sims anymore, because Sims wanted the benefits Jackson got. He became a Deteminol subject himself and. lost eighty pounds the first six months. Like Jackson, Sims also found a wife. Remember that initially the visions were positive. We knew the drug was being effective because that belief in good fortune caused the events to occur. We certainly didn’t think yet it was really prophetic, and we hoped to find a way to deter the maudlin bodings that came later. The group sessions, as stated, were an attempt though peer comradery to offset that. Let’s hear what Sims said early on in groups:
After I lost weight, I was still that overweight kid who’d been bullied and ridiculed. With Determinol I didn’t at first believe I’d seen my fortune. Because I was on the administration as part of the trial program I knew some of it was deceptive, had participated in that…
COMMENT: He was careful there about specifics, speaking as he was to some he’d deceived.
… I thought I could only have imagined my future, and yet YOU ARE WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE, and I had only, like the rest of you, to believe.
We also recruited Sim’s wife Cathy, and this is from one of her interviews that I conducted:
I grew up in Laguna, went to elementary and high school with Sims. From the first grade he was a fat kid and the class clown. For instance, one day in 6th grade he stood up and started shimmying. When the teacher told him to stop, he pulled up his shirt and shimmied blubber at her. It was hilarious and she chased him out of the room, but sadly the laughter was derision and he was the target. As he got older, the jokes were always on him and he pretended to be in on them, but—ah, well. I liked him, and though I’m no homecoming queen myself, I believed I could make a better physical match. Yet he was smart, and almost compensated for all the buffoonery with high grades, especially in the sciences.
When I ran into him again, he’d lost all this weight and is a good looking guy. He was so enthusiastic about life and the treatment he’d found. I went on a couple of dates with him and we got serious.
Did you discuss Determinol?
Yes, and I considered that. Though I didn’t see myself as having any major problems, if it did so much for him, what might it do for me? So here I am.
COMMENT: We were beginning to realize then that our solution could be fitted to anybody. Some are actively in need, others latently.
We penetrated one of Cathy’s dreams. She knew someone was there, asked, “Can you change the music on the radio?” There was no real radio playing. I asked what she’d like. “Soft. Classic rock, but gentle.” “EASY FM sound right?” “Maybe.” She listened. I said, “I forget the name of that group.” She said “It’s the Mammas and the Pappas, California Dreamin’”.
I suggested to her that she is not as plain as she believed, encouraged her to think about her clothes, her hair style. She joked, “Be sexy?” I said, “Yes, exactly. Become the beautiful woman you are. Be sexy.”
Sims crashed quickly after his redemption He was our first verifiable psychotic reaction. His visions became disjointed chaotic glimpses of macabre events.
Sims believed Cathy his wife, the woman he so trusted, was being intimate with me. Well, be believed that. He became---no other way to state it---schizophrenic. We could attribute that to an undiagnosed per-condition, but I knew better. We were prepared back then to say he slipped through screening, and we couldn’t guarantee a happy ending to every destiny.
We did what we could to help him with the usual regimen of shizo medications and we decreased Determinol gradually until we weaned him---unless he was obtaining it without our knowledge. He had experienced the visions, and like any addict he would want that illusive first high back again..
And from Cal Jackson around that time:
I saw that I would be shot and killed. If that’s to be, I have to accept it---my purpose and destiny. I just hope it doesn’t hurt too much or for too long. Despite the admonition not to, I did file a police report after the attack in the Ralph’s Supermarket lot. The cops I talked to believed me that the lawyers set it up, followed with a visit to Budge, but of course he denied all and there was not proof.
Narrator:
Speaking of Greg Budge…Word was out in L.A. about Determinol, this new euphoric
dream high that could simultaneously improve your life. Addiction with a future. We couldn’t sell it legally, yet we could sell it---not on the streets because the riff raff couldn’t afford what we charged---but as this year’s pop psych rage for the hip and affluent…
…speaking of Greg Budge. He bought Determinol from our dealers and even before that believed himself as something like the Martin Luther King of people who couldn’t rent. (We knew as fact Jackson’s account of the incident with Sandy, who was Budge’s lady and dependent like him on Determnol, so we also understood how circumstances lead to the assault on Jackson.).
What didn’t fit was murder. I know---know because Budge told me---they were only trying to scare him off..They wanted him to think they’d kill him. It had nothing to do with morality, but a hit was too risky. Budge wanted fame, and the money from a favorable ruling would pay his overextended credit and gambling debts, and keep him in Determinol. He was bankrupt, but couldn’t declare because as plaintiff he needed the appearance of an injured innocent renter.(He did apply to join the Determinol experiment, but he was, we said,. too late. We of course could have accommodated him, but ---ah---he was too lucrative as a junkie. We let him be a supplicant. Unofficially I saw him for interviews, he kept a diary, but could not go to the groups, the session of such becoming referred to as communion.
I then had this contradiction between Jackson believing he’d be assassinated and Budge telling me they wouldn’t do that. I also questioned Budge about what he saw in visions regarding his future from the rental controversy, but he said, surprising to him, he hadn’t had any insights about it. Surprising to me too, but maybe not that surprising considering he wasn’t under our strict supervision, and without the benefit of group-communion..
I was beginning to envision with Determinol an unforeseen benefit like that boon experienced by the manufacturer of the glass tube that became the crack pipe. Who’d have imagined it? He must have seen it as a gift from God. Of those who suffered as he gained? He didn’t design it for that use. It was their karma. They’d brought it on themselves.
We realized something else was happening to our subjects. Under Determinool, while having visions, a lot sleep walked. Or, more accurately, they weren’t so mush asleep as in a functioning amnesiac state. They performed actions---cooked elaborate meals, drove cars--- that couldn’t be done by someone asleep, and that were unrelated to their personal recorded visions and glimpses. Since we were already “reading minds”, we began planting directions-by-suggestion as I’d done with Cathy, and we succeeded in getting some to do simple chores for us---clean their house, mow a lawn, do laundry.
So, getting now to the purpose of this entire unapologetic report, we are hereby simultaneously submitting our experience to you at the Federal Bureau of Experimental Intelligence and the Central Experimental Intelligence Agency for consideration of purchasing our research and formula for its obvious military and intel potential
. I shall continue: We’d been monitoring and had done background research on one Jones Crawley, an indigent who, when he was not totally disassociated, worked from the “slave market” around Los Angeles Street and 6th Street on skid row. We breached psychiatric hospital records and learned that the major cause in his mental breakdown had been being solely raised by a violent abusive father. That Crawley was a periodic wino was a manifestation of alcoholism camouflaging for psychosis. (That guy’s not crazy, he talks to himself because he’s drunk)
It was a beautiful sunny Southern California day on Los Angeles Street, and the labor agency Crawley was working out of currently was named, in their attempt to place near the beginning of alphabetical listings, A Ace. A nice day on Los Angeles Street meant hues were bought out in the usually grim brick buildings, the cardboard box dwellings showed a grainy tan finish, and the discarded port wine bottles and hypodermic needles twinkled like gems. It was a day that could summon a belief in rebirth.
I was in a taxi parked outside A Ace, wearing a blue pin stripe suit with vest, and right after Jones Crawley went inside and sat near the door I got out of the cab, went to the doorway, and whispered to him, “Hey, you want to work?” He was quickly, obsequiously on his feet, while looking apprehensively at the cage up front where the agency clerks were, because they wouldn’t be getting their commission on a deal like this, and he needed them.
Once we were both on the street he said, “I do paintin’, load, unload trucks, boxcars, move furniture, any labor.” He was a slim, trim but muscular Caucasian man in his mid 50’s I thought he could be in such good shape physically because his addiction was periodic. He was clean and shaven, wearing well worn, washed but unironed blue jeans, and a brown short sleeve shirt over a white T-shirt. On his feet were basketball sneakers with blowouts at the big toes.
I invited him into the taxi. He got in, both of us in the back seat, but immediately stated, “I just don’t do that.”
I laughed and told him not to worry about it, I didn’t either.
He asked, “So what kind of work you have for me?”
“We want to help you.”
My driver turned the engine on.
Crawley objected “I come here to work. Don’t go anywhere till you tell me what you want me to do.”
I told the driver to shut the motor---my driver, my cab, not a public taxi, and I only used that because it was less conspicuous in this neighborhood that our Mercedes.
“We want you to participate in an experiment. We’ll pay you well.”
“What kind of experiment?”
By now we had pamphlets for recruitment and I gave him one to read .It had testimonials from people who’d been where he was.
He read and asked, “You want me to take this stuff?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“We think it will reclaim you. Change you life.”
“And you’ll pay me for that?”
“I will.”
“How much?”
“If you come to my laboratory now, take one dose, and spend eight hours with us---a work shift, right?---I’ll give you one hundred dollars in cash. Fifty now to show I mean it, fifty when you leave.”
I took a fifty from my pocket and handed it to him. “If you’ll go.”
He said, “Let’s go.”
I first administered Determinol to Jones Crawley in my office. We intervened in his visions and got him to dwell on his youth. We were able to plant the belief that Cal Jackson was Crawley’s long missing father, though in fact Jackson is younger than Jones Crawley. We gave him a directive to shoot Jackson, and supplied the gun. We were able to more or less guarantee through vision intervention that he would not kill Jackson, and for good measure made sure he’d be drunk on wine when the shooting occurred. We just wanted to know if we could make him shoot him. This rental issue in L.A. Jackson was involved in was a nothing, but with Jackson believing, without our interfering, that he’d be assassinated, we wanted to see how that would play out prophetically if we left it alone.
There was beautiful synchronicity, serendipity to it, call it what you like. I call it fate, pre-destination. This time it had been raining buckets, a November L.A. monsoon, but stopped for a while and a rainbow was arched in exultation above Cal Jackson’s building on Lexington Street. We had no trouble sousing Crawley up with wine, and when he was truly too drunk to remember how he got a gun or who he got it from, we provided one, a piece of street shit we knew had priors on it. We knew what time Jackson finished his night programming shift, and after he parked his car---he was now using the street, not the parking stall---and went to his building entrance, Crawley was waiting on the front stairs, and shot him, as directed, in the shoulder.
Crawley couldn’t give a rational motive or coherent account of how he got the gun, but with Jackson’s report of the previous assault on record, the police and most everyone else believed the lawyers manipulated the shooter. This time they investigated witnesses and evidence, but still had no probable cause to arrest Greg Budge or Sandy Mason
Further regarding thought transfer and suggestion, I proudly state that I did seduce Sims’ wife Cathy, and many others after her, as I leaned how to maneuver this technique. My mistake with Lynn was asking her. My inexperience. I hadn’t convinced her that, whether she thought she wanted to or not, she would do because it was pre-destined. Or, more accurately, she would just do it. We’re making the world. WHAT YOU THINK IS IS
Greg Budge and Sandy Mason were being questioned as persons of interest. Councilman Sam Colsworth’s connection to them began getting press he didn’t want., and he brought the rental issue up for a vote at the next Council meeting. With the city watching, the Council passed a bill making it illegal to refuse rental to people with children.
They were planning to celebrate Cal Jackson as a hero of the cause, present at the signing of the bill with his right arm in a sling because he’d been shot in the left shoulder, which had been dislocated by the bullet. Present also were to be me, Councilman Colsworth, and the suspects Budge and Mason. Not unexpectedly, Lynn was coming with Jackson, but also Sims and his estranged wife Cathy would be there, though not together.
Cal knew through visions, as he reported to us, that the lawyers were not responsible for the shooting but were for the assault, so he was as he saw it letting justice run its course. Even if he wished to exonerate them for shooting him---and he didn’t particularly---he could present no evidence except what he knew to be so, and no court would accept that kind of testimony, at least not yet. I had no indication if Jackson knew through visions that we were responsible for the shooting--- not from his group sessions, the diaries, or visits to his visions
I guess you could say I became convinced of my own bullshit, because I too began taking Determinol. I can’t compare it to that fabled magic carpet ride of an opium high because I’ve never done that, but I’ve never experienced anything as euphoric as the first Determinol dream. And what my visions revealed? At the ceremony lauding Cal Jackson, Sims is coming with a gun to first point at Jackson as if to fulfill that prophecy, but instead will kill himself. He wants to die at me, discredit us by his suicide and the failure of a manifestation of the Cal Jackson assassination. What motivation could anybody except me have to kill Jackson once the bill is passed?
My brain impulses are allowing me now to stream this thought narrative to a computer. I am on a stage with Jackson, being recognized for my therapy benefits, and beside me are Colsworth, Budge, and Sandy Mason. Sims has come up on the stage, and I know he has a gun in his hand under his sports jacket. Lynn and Cathy have conspired to kill me. They will succeed, but only after I kill Jackson, and Determinol is validated by completion of that prophecy. I will exit this world with the guarantee of legacy.
I see Lynn and Cathy on each side of me. Security has been lax because they are all, except Lynn, my Deteminol patients. This is all ordained. I can’t draw on Jackson until Sims distracts by shooting himself. Sims’ gun is now visible and the guards are reacting.
The gun is pointing at me, but that’s the fake and he won’t shoot me. I can’t draw on Jackson until Sims distracts by shooting himself. Yet Lynn and Cathy aren’t showing guns. They are shouting to security “Don’t shoot.”, and they themselves have pulled Sims’ gun down, trying to hold his arms The uniformed guards are handling everybody roughly, I’ve been turned away from Jackson. Nobody is getting shot. The sons of bitches are living at me.
If I take my own gun out now, the guards will certainly shoot me. I want that. I’ll do it….but too many people on the stage…somebody from behind has put on arm around my throat, choking me, preventing me from drawing. The guards are throwing me and everybody on the floor, the person holding me from behind falling beside me. I glance over. It is Cal Jackson. .Then my face is pressed down on a guard’s shoe. I smell polish, and, under that, rancid soles with the stink of street dirt, dog shit, trampled chewing gum.
Jackson has forced me to stay, to contemplate failure. I who gave him re-birth. The man is without gratitude. Some day, somehow, my sacrifice and genius will be celebrated. . I’ll devote myself to that. We’re making the world.. What you want you can have. WHAT YOU THINK IS IS..