It feels magical to me, this gift I never thought I would have, a family. To simply be a husband to a wife, a father to a son.
Our wedding day was a beautiful promise but I think I became a husband not by wearing a tuxedo and reciting the breathless lines I recited that day but later, when I was able, finally, to add new features to the landscape: a quiet stream of patience and acceptance, a shady grove for tolerating the fear I felt that once prompted me to run, a big open valley of forgiveness, loyalty, belief in her, and above all else a warm field we try to visit every day, joy. I love my wife with a deep passion but even after a short time it’s clear to me that the heart of marriage is an epic friendship.
When my son reached six months old, the age at which Synanon children were taken from their parents, the thought occurred to me how monstrous it would be to give him to strangers. How devastatingly hard on him, on us. It seems so much clearer to me as a father than it did as a child. This was abuse. It was wrong. It was violent and destructive. Crippling. It left every single child this happened to a lifetime of extreme emotional difficulty. Countless stories of abuse have emerged, told by the children of Synanon who’ve become adults: molestations and beatings, ritualistic shaming and endless neglect, children pinned down and shaved to the scalp for minor infractions, the teenagers constantly trying to run away, parents disappearing for years on end, leaving their kids in a dog-eat-dog world, competing with other children for basic needs of comfort, love, security, leaving a hole too big to fill and a lifetime of insecurity, a fear of closeness. These are the precise kinds of stories one hears about orphanages. I don’t blame my mother or father and I know they did not realize what a grievous mistake it was to put us in that place. And I’m eternally grateful Bonnie was there because it made it easier, at least for me. But it was a cult. Cults make people do bad things. Chuck was the Leader and he decided one day that we wouldn’t have parents. And we didn’t. It was that simple. I think of my grandfather Nat, who lost a family in the Holocaust to that idea, who used to remind us all, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Of all the stories Synanon tells about itself in those dusty books and online discussion boards for the people who left, there is a massive hole when it comes to the children, who were made to live like orphans. It’s no one’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, only that we understand ourselves now, we orphaned children of the universe, so we can find a path back from all that pain.
I can hardly stand the thought of not seeing my son each morning. That little face, the way he looks at me from across the table and we both crack a smile like we share a joke, our silly games running breathless through the house, bath time, bedtime, the lazy mornings in bed with him and my wife, feeling quiet and whole. There is nothing more precious to me. None of it was what I imagined, which is that it would be like a feeling that always warmed me or made me aware of how much I am loved. But it is not like this. It’s more a fierce sense that I am not important, that I would instantly give my life for theirs. My nightmares are no longer about things that might happen to me but about the horrible things that could happen to them. If I got sick, who would read to him before bedtime? And if I died, who would take care of him? Who would be his father? Her husband? So I must stay healthy because he deserves a father. I must stay humble and continue to add features to the landscape because she deserves a good husband. We are a family and that means we need each other. It’s not that I’ve disappeared. It’s that this simple and impossible thing has given my life a purpose.
* * *
WE DRIVE TO South Salem to pick up Tony’s son. We have a day planned at a swimming hole on the Willamette, not far from where Paul used to take us fishing. I can feel Tony’s anxiety as we drive through the streets of Salem. He keeps checking my face, then his phone, then the window, then my face again, bouncing his knee in anticipation. The city seems charming to me. Even though I can’t think of any good memories in the house on Breys Avenue, I have countless good memories of the YMCA, the Boys Club, the Little League games at Parrish Field, the races at Bush Park.
His son meets us at the door of a small ground-floor apartment. He’s got a little blond girl in his heavily tattooed arms. He gives us a toothy smile and puts his daughter down to hug his dad, then throws an arm around my neck. It’s so good to see him, to feel that old sensation like we are connected as if by a string that can only stretch so far. We sit in the living room playing games with the little girl, talking about child care, weight lifting, his new job working construction. He says he’s just trying to work now, to support his daughter and his girlfriend.
I wish I could tell him that I know how hard he’s had it, that I can see how hard he’s working now, that there are mysteries at work and I hope he will unravel them in his own time and his own way, that I love him and we are connected and we always will be.
We drive to the river and park the car, carrying our things down to the shore. Towels, a cooler with sandwiches and sodas, a deck of cards. We set up a picnic spot and take off our shoes to wade into the river. There is a soft babble of water over rocks, the white ripple of a current shaded by trees and moss-covered boulders. There’s a warm sun on our faces, a bramble of blackberry bushes along the highway where we parked, a faraway wind whistling through the pines in the distance.
Tony lets out a whoop and jumps off a rock, pulling his knees to his chest to do a cannonball; the splash soaks us and we follow suit, wading out to the big rock and jumping into the swimming hole. We walk up the hill to pick sun-warmed blackberries to eat with our salami sandwiches.
Dad would’ve loved this. He always loved a day in the sun. The buzzing of the grass and the sound of the water, the break of waves against the shore, a sun-warmed peach and salty chips eaten in wet trunks in the sand. He was good with quiet.
I wish Dad could’ve known our son. He reminds me of him, the same eyes that look right at you to share a laugh, like that’s the best thing there is in the world. I know I wouldn’t have my own family now if it weren’t for my father. I think of how much he was like a beacon in a fog, an unlikely source of light guiding me back to a place where I would find wholeness, family, acceptance, quiet.
I fall asleep in the sand and wake up to hear Tony and his son talking about fatherhood, something about changing diaper sizes too late. It occurs to me that we are all of us both fathers and sons now. I don’t know if they had a Big Talk or if they just sat in the sand with their feet in the water. There is so much to unravel. But I can’t ignore how good it feels to be here, skipping stones and splashing in the water, sharing a laugh with a brother who is a son who is also a father now, the sense of belonging we have when we are together, we three children of the universe.
CHAPTER 47
THE END OF EVERYTHING
They tore down the grandstand at Hollywood Park three weeks after my father died. The land was purchased by a midwestern real estate baron who bought it to make room for a new NFL stadium, a mixed-use performance/retail space that will soon become the largest sports complex in the world. The explosions could be heard for miles, an awful creaking sound followed by a cloud of dust that rose hundreds of feet in the air like a tear in the sky. The rows of yellow excavators devoured the rest, their buckets digging through the rubble of metal railings and concrete stairs, clearing the way for the future on real estate deemed too valuable for the rusting dreams of dying men.
I know there’s a profit motive at work but there’s a simpler logic to me: that it just could not exist without him. That the track, the horses, the dirt oval and our seats in the stands where we ate and talked are inseparable from him in my mind, a place we dreamed up so we would have somewhere to go, somewhere I was safe, somewhere to be together, a place I could visit in my memory.
So many things seem that way to me now: intricate, wondrous structures that disappear and over time become intricate, wondrous memories. Like there are these waking dreams to visit when I need to hear a voice or
ask advice; I can find it in a bright room crowded with people, all waiting for the chance to speak to me.
When I visit the room beneath the racetrack, when I stand in the confusion my father’s death created looking for an answer, I wonder which moment this is, the future or the past, how I found the tunnel, that place burned into my imagination, and followed it a thousand feet down through the dirt and soil, rocks and bones and ash to that room. After a lifetime of searching for the fractured pieces, it’s the only place my family feels whole.
The room is bright and clear and I can see everyone’s face. The young man with the spit curl and the little girl with the Dutch cheeks. A handsome man with piercing blue eyes reading with a pretty young woman on his lap, telling an off-color joke in his ear, their four daughters around them. The kind Italian woman worried for the children, the svelte man doing tai chi, laughing with the boy with the spit curl in cowboy boots, the bright blond teenage girl singing a song. It’s warm, the light like heat on my skin, a comforting stillness to be among my F-A-M-I-L-Y again.
A short man approaches me. He has strong hands and a little blond mustache, my grandpa Frank, who fought for two armies.
He asks me what I’m doing in this room a thousand feet beneath a racetrack that does not exist anymore.
Well, my father died and nothing made sense so I had to write it down so it could make sense again.
I see. Does it?
A little. More than it did, anyway. And now I have a place I can go to visit him and all of you.
But this place isn’t real. It’ll be gone when you are.
That’s why I wrote it down.
He scratches his chin. There’s a lot of sadness in this story.
I guess so. Happy things too and, yeah, sad.
None of us wanted that for you, not even her. He points to the little girl with Dutch cheeks standing in a crater.
Yes, I know that. Anyway, it was like a gift, or at least it’s easier to think of it that way. You know, you make your pain useful. That’s how you make art.
Like your story?
I guess so.
He stares at the blank white walls that rise up to the echo of imaginary hooves.
How about now? You’re a father so that means someday you will live in another room in another mind just like this one.
That’s true. It doesn’t seem so bad. Is it?
Well, it’s hard not having a future anymore, to just live here at the end of everything. But at least it’s not the DMV!
He slaps me on the back. Jokes! It’s important to laugh. But tell me, is it still so painful? The place in your chest?
No, not really. There’s something new there instead. It took a long, long time, but I guess it’s, it’s, love? Right in the place where the pain used to be.
Wonderful. That’s all we ever wanted for you.
He places a small, strong hand on my shoulder, squeezes me, whispers: Now go make that useful too.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude to our dear friends who helped with feedback on early drafts of the book: Lyle and Limor Zimskind, Andrew Spitser, Steven Chen, Steven Leckart, and Amy Westervelt. To my brilliant agent, Susan Golomb, who is a force of nature. To my wonderful publisher, Jamie Raab, who loves books and believes in them. To my peers from Synanon whose stories, insights, and friendship were invaluable: Guy Endore-Kaiser, Noah Kaiser, Dmitri Fagel. To Judy Muller and Phil Ritter, who always loved the children. To my uncle Wes, my uncle Donny, my aunt Pam, and my uncle Jon, who I thank for their knowledge and wisdom on the family and its stories. To my brother, Tony, who is as generous a soul as exists in the world. To my mother, Bonnie. Thank God for you. And to my best friend in the world, my wife, Lizette, without whom this book would not exist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mikel Jollett is the front man of the indie band The Airborne Toxic Event. Prior to forming the band, Jollett graduated with honors from Stanford University. He was an on-air columnist for NPR’s All Things Considered, an editor-at-large for Men’s Health, and an editor at Filter magazine. His fiction has been published in McSweeney’s. You can sign up for ebook updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Escape
Chapter 1. Ancient Cities to the East
Chapter 2. The Big Road
Chapter 3. C-U-L-T
Chapter 4. Blood on the Driveway
Oregon
Chapter 5. He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
Chapter 6. The Cowboys Who Left
Chapter 7. Walking Through Yankee Stadium with Babe Ruth
Chapter 8. Father Figures
Chapter 9. The Rabbits
Chapter 10. Suuuuuun
Chapter 11. Binge
Chapter 12. F-A-M-I-L-Y
Chapter 13. How to Escape a Mexican Prison
Chapter 14. Play Boy
Chapter 15. The Scapegoat and the Superchild
Chapter 16. The Way of All Great Drunks
Chapter 17. Brothers
Chapter 18. Bullets
Chapter 19. Favorites Usually Lose
Chapter 20. Robert Smith Is a Fucking God
Chapter 21. The Ghosts That Crowd Your Castle in the Sky
Chapter 22. The Men Who Leave
California
Chapter 23. This Land Is Your Land
Chapter 24. “Normal”
Chapter 25. Goth
Chapter 26. Big Talk
Chapter 27. Motorcycles Will Kill You
Chapter 28. Is There Life on Mars?
Chapter 29. The Place We Meet a Thousand Feet Beneath the Racetrack
Chapter 30. Children of the Universe
Chapter 31. More Horse Than Jockey
Chapter 32. Can You Hear Me, Major Tom?
Chapter 33. The Biggest Lie Ever Told
Chapter 34. My Dad, The Ex-Con
Chapter 35. The Lucky One
Hollywood Park
Chapter 36. The Dream
Chapter 37. The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Chapter 38. We Can Be Heroes
Chapter 39. Wishing Well
Chapter 40. Breaking
Chapter 41. “Good Evening. This Is All I Have”
Chapter 42. Broken
Chapter 43. A Forest, a River, a Mountain, A Swamp
Chapter 44. Greek
Chapter 45. The Men and Their Dreams
Chapter 46. Salem, Oregon
Chapter 47. The End of Everything
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of nonfiction. In a few cases with minor characters, several different people have been combined into one individual. Also, some names and/or identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.
HOLLYWOOD PARK. Copyright © 2020 by Mikel Jollett. All rights reserved. For information, address Celadon Books, a Division of Macmillan Publishers, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.celadonbooks.com
Cover design by Clay Smith
Cover photography courtesy of the author
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Jollett, Mikel, author.
Title: Hollywood Park: a memoir / Mikel Jollett.
Description: First edition. | New York: Celadon Books, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002685 | ISBN 9781250621566 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250621542 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jollett, Mikel—Childhood and youth. | Rock musicians—United States—Biography. | Synanon (Foundation)
Classification: LCC ML420.J7394 A3 2020 | DDC 782.42166092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002685
eISBN 9781250621542
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension
5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: May 2020
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