Rebel Without a Cause

by Robert M. Lindner

  I think I wore glasses when I want to St. A——’s School. I used to catch hitches on trolley cars and trucks and break them. I must have broken fifty pairs that way. I didn’t like to wear them; they were a bother to me; they didn’t do me any good. I’d put them in my pockets and every once in a while I would sit on them and break them that way. I remember I used to like to take a small pair of binoculars with me to school. I’d sit in the back of the room with a friend of mine who was a Boy Scout with me, and when the sister would write something on the board I’d look at it through these glasses and it would be real close, otherwise I’d have a hard time seeing the board.

  I went to the hospital to have my tonsils out once. I was there for about three days or so. When I went home on the bus I got sick and dizzy. I guess it must have been the gasoline, the carbon monoxide, that was making me sick. I always thought it was the ether or the hospital smell or something. I remember when I was getting to smell the ether I saw rings, small rings getting larger and larger all the time, and then disappearing sort of. I told the nurse about it and she said it was my eyes. She didn’t believe things were like that with me but I actually saw those rings get bigger and bigger and bigger. She kept telling me to blow on those rings and I did, but that didn’t make them go away. When I was on the bus I got sick. I figure it was car-sickness. I didn’t go to school for about a week after that. I don’t remember much about that hospital. I was in the ward with three other kids and the kid next to me got a visit every day. I only had two visits there in the three or four days; and I remember I expected a visit and didn’t get any, so I put my head under the covers and cried. This kid next to me felt sorry for me and he gave me some oranges and apples.

  When I ride somewhere in a car I get sick. Riding with my uncle once I got the carbon monoxide right up in the cab, so I kept the window open with my arms hanging outside. My eyes felt funny, as if they were dropping right out of my head and if I pulled my eyelids back they would fall in my lap. I had an earache too.

  My aunt Louise, she always kept after the three of us, Riggs, Tony and me and our sisters, in fact all the kids in the family. She wanted us to go to High School and finish. She said that she would present the first one of us who graduated from High with a wrist watch. I guess I am the only one who will finish, and I have to do it in jail.…

  THE TWENTY-NINTH HOUR

  I was telling you I had some trouble with Perry last week. I haven’t really had trouble with him, we can get along alright. We get into arguments once in a while. He keeps impressing on me that I am stupid, so when we get into an argument he walks away and waves his hands in the air over his head; then he comes back and we start in where we left off.

  One day last week I came up and looked around in my cell for some things then I went to the washroom to take a shower, and when I came back I found a note on my locker that he would never speak to me again. I went down to his cell and tried to find out. I showed him the note and asked him what was the matter but he wouldn’t say anything; so he wouldn’t speak to me for a few days and wouldn’t eat with me or look at me; he just kept away. About two days later I went right up to the cell where he lived and started talking to him. He seemed pretty cheerful and ever since then we are talking together again. He told me why he did that. I guess he thinks that I like him very much but when he gets into one of his sieges he wants to find out what I really think of him, whether when he gives me a note like that I would ever attempt to speak to him again. It seems to me that he doesn’t go with many people, that he doesn’t want their good will or friendship. He can have all the friends he wants, and as far as sex is concerned he can have all of that he wants too. But he just isn’t interested: he wants something finer than that. He told me he doesn’t want friendship and he doesn’t want sex; just love, just love. I don’t know whether or not he thinks I am in love with him. He says he’s in love with me; maybe he is in his way; I don’t know. I like him a lot; like to associate with him. If I wasn’t coming over here to you maybe I’d be in love with him; but while I am coming over here I’d be tempted to tell you everything. I never told him

  Note the accurate gauge to the transference and the progress of the analysis which the homosexual attachment provides. It is a cardinal principle of this type of therapy that extant situations, no matter what the content, be utilized to the full.

  that I am telling you. I guess he has an idea I am. He just doesn’t care about people to be his friends: he just wants someone to love him. He would sacrifice a hundred friendships for just one person who loves him. He says that the trouble with people is they’re too sex-minded. He illustrated that statement with Ruby, saying he isn’t so constructed that he could fall in love with him except for sexual purposes. He says love should not only be sexual but mental too. I guess I keep quiet a lot and when I do talk I talk sort of softly he imagines that I am in love with him. We get along alright. I manage to stall him off and quiet things for a while, then they start again. Someday I’ll hit on a plan that will stop him for a good long time. I guess in his way he is in love with me but it seems rather funny. I guess he really believes I am in love with him or else I wouldn’t hang around. He hasn’t tried to lure me into his cell again. I like him because he gives me ideas and information.

  I don’t believe I was ever in love with anybody. I don’t know what the word means. There was a girl who always said she was in love with me. She’d cry when I’d chase her away. That was Lila. But she was unstable: she went with anyone who wanted her, she didn’t care who. After I came back fom my aunt’s place she was going around with some fellow who had the clap so I didn’t associate with her anymore. She was sort of timid and shy; she didn’t bother anybody. In a way she reminds me of Perry. I don’t see how it could be but here are two entirely different people, a girl and a man, and they are both in love with me and both are feminine. Perry says he is feminine. You know, I figure that if he really should stop talking to me I would have to tell him that—that I’m in love with him, just to keep him around and stall off on any sexual activities. But I guess I would have to tell him that if that is the only thing he’s interested in … There really isn’t anything between us, Doc. If there was I’d be tempted to tell you. One way to stop him might be to tell him to wait until this is over.

  He reads a lot of books and then starts arguing where they are wrong, and he finds mistakes in encyclopedias and atlases and wants me to figure out what they mean. Maybe he’s insinuating I am stupid. All in all, though, I really get along with him better than with my mother or my sister. I always hoped my sister would be something like—tall, well-built, intelligent, quiet—like what Perry is.

  I never had a person like Perry fall in love with me. I know several people in here who are like Perry but he impresses me as one of the finest people I have ever known.

  I don’t remember anything about people being bi-sexual. I didn’t know people were really like that until I was fifteen or sixteen years old. Everything I learned about sex I learned in the crudest manner, on the street corners, in poolrooms. I seldom tried to teach myself things like that. When I was reading a book and I’d come to a word I didn’t know I would skip it. I’d skip a lot of words. I know now how wrong that is. I missed the most important part of everything. Maybe I am missing something about Perry? Maybe I haven’t put myself in a position where I can understand him. He just impresses me as if he was a girl and I think of him just like I think of a girl. There was a fellow talking to me about him and I was using the word ‘she’ in the third person when I was referring to Perry. I wasn’t conscious of myself when I was talking like that but much later I realized what I’d said.

  There is nothing dirty about Perry. Everything about him is fine and clean. I don’t know why he picks on me. Why should he pick on me? tell me that he is in love with me?

  L: ‘Harold, do you think it is possible that, rather than Perry having picked on you, you really picked on him? wanted him to make love to you?’

 
I have always pictured my sister as something dark-haired, quiet, intelligent, like he is; but my sister isn’t like that.

  L: ‘What you want to do then is to find a suitable substitute, an ideal?’

  Yes; yes.

  L: ‘And of all the people you know, whom does this ideal most closely resemble, aside from Perry?’

  Why; my mother is dark-haired: my father has black hair but he is quick-tempered. Maybe my father, but I don’t think so. I never thought of anything like that. I always figured that I would like my sister to be like that, neat, clean, dark-haired.

  L: ‘But she isn’t like that?’

  No. She has brown hair and she’s quick-tempered: she’s like a dizzy chorus girl. My mother is short and a little stout. There was that girl Amy I was telling you about: she has black hair and is almost as big as Perry is.

  L: ‘Can you name anyone else among all the people you know who would come near, would resemble this ideal?’

  My aunt Vanya is most like Perry with the exception that she has a quick temper. When she doesn’t want to speak to anyone she just doesn’t speak. She combs her hair back too. She resembles Perry more than anyone else. I haven’t seen her in a long time. She’s about twenty-eight now. She wasn’t exactly beautiful; her nose is straight, not as flat as Perry’s, and she’s older. Sometimes her husband doesn’t speak to her; he also gets into moods when he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. She works hard. She treated me fine and I know she always treated my sisters fine when they had diphtheria. She bought the first radio for us we ever had. I don’t know why she left my grandmother’s home to come and live with us. She used to sleep with my sisters. But she hit me a lot too. One time she clipped me right in the head: that was the time her sister-in-law said something to me about my eyes and I answered fresh. After she hit me she started thinking about why I said that to her sister-in-law and then she apologized and said I should have told her. But I don’t explain things to people. Why should I make a long story out of something? I’m not afraid of getting hit in the head.

  One time when we lived on S—— Street I went to a Boy Scout meeting and came back late at night, about eleven-thirty. The door was always left open, so she called me into the room where they were sleeping, she and my sister. She told me not to go back to where I was supposed to sleep because there had been an argument with my father about my sleeping there. So I undressed and got in bed with her, and several times during the night I woke up and found her hand on my penis. I didn’t see anything so I made believe I was sleeping and tried to turn over. In the morning she didn’t say anything. I don’t think I ever said anything to her either, and I know I never slept with her again. After that morning I asked my mother what the argument with my father was about. She said it was about my being in the Boy Scouts; just a few words were said, there was nothing to it.

  I didn’t like my aunt Vanya very much. She seemed tough; she wanted to hit people.

  I remember now the only time that I slept in the same bed with my other aunt, Louise. I was about twelve then. This was when my mother and my father and my two sisters went to my cousin’s out at L—— for the week-end. They went away on a Friday night and I was supposed to stay with my grandmother. I know that on Friday night the man who married my aunt came around looking for us and he came into a lot where me and my two cousins and about six other kids were trying to break into a lunch wagon, and he told me my aunt wanted me to come home. It was about eleven-thirty at night (I always used to stay out late at night when my mother and father were away). So I went to my grandmother’s house and my aunt Louise was alone. She wanted me to give water to the canaries—they had about ten or more of them. Then this fellow went home and my aunt started fixing me something to eat, some cake and some milk, and then we went to bed. My aunt was afraid to sleep alone, she was used to sleeping with my other aunt, and I remember I put my pajamas on and went to bed with her. She put her arms around me and kissed me once or twice. When I woke up in the morning my pajamas were all open. I don’t know whether I opened them or not. I slept all night like a log. When I woke up it was about six or seven in the morning. Nobody was with me, my aunt got up early, and my pajamas were all crinkly around me, and when I straightened them out they were open. So I went back to sleep and when I got up my aunt called me in just when I was getting dressed. I don’t recall whether I looked my aunt right in the eye when I came down. She seemed cheerful, nothing was said about it. That afternoon she was in another room taking a nap and she called me. When I came in her dress was about three inches above her knees. I guess I was looking at her thighs and she must have been sensitive because she pulled her dress down. I don’t know what she called me for, what she wanted; I guess it was to fix the shades on the window or something. She was always kind to me, she always told me that if I ever needed money to ask her for it. Even when I was arrested this time she said she would give me the money to get away from this part of the country.…

  I had a dream last night. I guess I took some money from my mother, a five-dollar bill or a ten-dollar bill, and I went out and bought a gun, some kind of a revolver. It seemed like the room in my house was just like a cell here. I dug a hole in the side of the wall of the cell and I had a little box and I wrapped cotton around the gun to keep it from getting rusty, keep it nice and clean. I dug a sort of square hole, about three inches square and I don’t know how deep. Then I hung a mirror over it. The mirror was broken in two places. When I looked at the cell door I could see across the corridor, about two or three cells down, and saw my father shaving. I’ve seen my father shave many times and one time I did have a gun hidden away in a wall. There was a board on the side of the wall in my room and one time I ripped it off and drilled a hole in the wall, about two by six inches, and I had a little box that just fitted in there. I wrapped the gun in cotton and put the gun in the box and the box in the wall. Then I put a stick right against the wall to keep anybody from seeing it and to keep it from falling out. But somebody found it I guess: when I looked for it one time it was gone and I couldn’t find it. I never said anything to anybody but I think my father took it.

  L: ‘Now let’s go back to the dream, Harold. I want you to associate to any of the items or events in it.’

  Well; I remember that over the hole in the wall I hung a mirror to keep people from seeing it. The mirror was about fifteen by twelve and I hung it the long way, leftwise, not up and down. And on top of the mirror in the exact center of it a piece was broken off and the cracked-off pieces were missing and there were two cracks; from the center, one crack ran to one side and the other to the other side.

  L: ‘So that the mirror was divided into three parts?’

  Yes; the two parts broken off on the sides were very small. In the center the piece broken off was about two inches and there was a slight crack to either side.

  L: ‘Yes, I understand. What is a mirror used for, Harold?’

  For looking into.

  L: ‘Yes, of course, but what do you think it signifies?’

  It was just like curtains on a window. You couldn’t see things where two pieces were missing.

  L: ‘If two pieces were missing and you looked into it, what is the answer? What do you see?’

  Yourself. O, O, the broken pieces indicate that they need to be fitted in, replaced.

  L: ‘Now let’s get to the gun.’

  The gun was just like any other ordinary gun. I don’t know if I ever owned one just like it.

  L: ‘What kind of a feeling does the possession of a gun give you?’

  It—it gives me courage: it’s something to—to back me up: I don’t have to fall back on anyone. I get a real feeling of—of manliness.

  L: ‘And what about this gun in the dream?’

  The gun I used to hide in the wall was an automatic: the one in the dream was a revolver.

  L: ‘What’s the difference between the two?’

  Why; an automatic is just straight and flat. This one in the dream had a round cylinder
, right on the end of the barrel.

  L: ‘Harold, what is a gun most like? You know that any instrument, such as a gun may represent an extension of our functions. For instance, when men pick up, let us say, a club or a stone, they extend their functions. Do they not?’

  I give myself a bigger reach: shooting at a distance, it brings the subject nearer to me. And the shape of the gun … It might be called an extension: it might be a—the phallus. And the hole in the wall that I put the gun in, that might be the woman’s vagina. And three doors down I saw my father shaving; when I looked out the door I could see him.

  L: ‘Now, Harold, you said that in the earlier situation when you were at home, you had put the gun in the box and the box in the hole in the wall. When you looked for the gun later it was missing. Now who was most likely to have taken it?’