“Oh,” you say. “That’s not right. You can’t allow people to get drugs that easily. It would lead to too much abuse.”
I believe that every man has the right to fuck up his system with any drug—be it tobacco, whisky, tranquilizers, or heroin—as long as he doesn’t fuck me up in order to buy it.
Of course drug abuse is a blind alley. But do you really think there is any way of preventing it other than by education? The anti-drug laws are a fiasco. They don’t work. Any American can buy any drug he wishes just by talking to his high-school or college-aged children, by walking to the nearest ghetto, or by rapping with the local bohos.
The harder we try to stamp out this crime, the more it flourishes. No wonder. Each new law creates more criminals. It is an endless process. Better to have no drug laws for anyone over the age of eighteen.
Not that I expect anyone to take such a simple solution seriously. No. We demand complex solutions to simple problems. We would rather pay the nearly fifty-dollars-a-day costs that it takes to confine one inmate (multiply that by the tens of thousands to account for the gigantic sums spent in our urban centers to “cope” with the crime problem), the staggering costs of employing ever-growing armies of policemen, the tragic costs of being personally assaulted or robbed of the fruits of our labors.
But that’s only half of the problem. The other half occurs after we get these men into our prisons. For over 70 percent of them will return to jail after they are released.
George McGrath, John Lindsay, and the other “progressives” tell us that the problems could be solved if only we had more money. Money to build newer and more modern institutions. Money to hire more guards and mental-health personnel.
Bullshit.
They already fail to make any effective use of the staffs and facilities they have. We don’t need money. We do need to change the thinking of those in charge of our penal institutions to lower the rate of returnees. We need to make them rehabilitation-conscious instead of security-conscious.
The problem simply stated is this: we have an enormous number of men in prison who have no sense of the necessity of social responsibility and order, who have no awareness of men’s interdependence.
The typical convict has grown up in a big-city ghetto where life is permeated by a dog-eat-dog philosophy; you get what you can, keep what you’ve got as long as you can, and keep a watchful eye on the other fellow, who is only looking to grab what you’ve got if you turn your back. Law-breaking in the ghetto isn’t the exception to the rule. It is the rule. It’s the only way most slum kids have learned to play the game. It’s the way of life they were born into and have naturally adopted.
They’ve never considered—never confronted or come to grips with—any other type of social reality. And neither do they confront such a reality in jail.
A social consciousness is difficult to develop in the ghetto. The conflicts that would produce such a conscience never get internalized. Our future convict doesn’t grow up asking himself questions like, “Will my behavior be hurtful or helpful to others? Will it make for a ‘bad me’? Or will it make for a ‘good me’?” (If he did, he would be unlikely ever to come to jail.) He ends up externalizing this conflict—seeing himself as the “victim” and lawful authority as the “persecutor.”
Again, much of this is a result of ghetto-dwelling. A sense of social awareness grows only out of knowing and having some responsibility. And in fact, the ghetto dweller has almost no power, no responsibility. Important social decisions are made not by him but by the middle and upper classes or by the technicians who “know better.” Schools are provided, police are provided, welfare is provided. If he is willing to accept this infantile role, so much the better for him. If, on the other hand, he tries to have a say in the running of his welfare system or his school system or his police department, troubles ensue.
Little wonder, then, that most slum dwellers don’t get involved. The ones who organize boycotts and strikes may cause lots of worrisome headlines, but they don’t wind up in jail. For they are reaching for some power and responsibility, not for a fix of heroin or someone else’s wallet.
From the moment the convict enters the penitentiary, his sense of powerlessness, or lack of responsibility, grows. All important decisions are made from the top and are passed on down—when he should get up, how often and to what extent the cells should be cleaned, who should cook meals and what they should consist of and taste like, what reading materials are allowed in, what activities are available and when they must be engaged in, what infractions consist of, what punishments are to be meted out, who should administer them, when “lights go out.”
All these decisions are made by “professionals” on the assumption that the convicts don’t know what is good for them and/or couldn’t act responsibly enough to make these decisions for themselves.
And while that assumption may be in large measure correct, it is also the chief reason why our rehabilitation projects have not worked. For the convict never is afforded the opportunity to struggle with, internalize, and work out the necessity for rules, social order, and individual responsibility. Instead, he continues to see himself as victim, and continues to rail emptily against the penal system for “not doing more for me.” The actual problem is that the system does not allow him to do more for himself. When the inmate complains about the “stupid rules,” he ought to be given the difficult task of having to set the rules himself in collaboration with his peers.
Instead, he enters and leaves sensing himself a victim. He has not in any real way heightened his sense of social awareness. Only his bitterness over having been “victimized” increases.
For any rehabilitation program to be successful, it must build into the convict a vision and a sense of a different social order. This can’t be done by a program directed from the top down. It can be done only by a program bold enough to allow it to evolve from the convicts themselves.
A good prison, an effective prison, can exist only if it is set up along the lines of a good psychiatric hospital. Inmates would then be entering into a living situation where nearly all rules and regulations would have to be considered and determined by the convicts themselves (from wake-ups to clean-ups to good-nights to infractions, punishments, entertainment, education, activities, and self-policing). The aim would be to set up a system where THEY couldn’t be blamed for the convict’s plight but where HE would have to look into himself. Summer-hill at Rikers Island.
But why go on? It’s not likely to happen. As I said, people don’t give enough of a damn. Our civil authorities are more interested in running trouble-free, headline-free jails than they are in rehabilitation.
Item: The much ballyhooed work-release program that allows inmates to attend jobs during the day and return to prison at night. Of the five thousand inmates at Rikers Island, fewer than a dozen are in such a program. And those in it are the ones who least need it—the ones who have already demonstrated job capability. Why? Because a poorer-risk inmate who might better profit from the experience might escape. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Think of how horrified John Q. Public would be if he read that in the morning paper.
Item: Extensive athletic fields at Rikers Island are essentially unused. Joe Namath and the New York Jets have used these facilities in past years for fall training. But in all the time I’ve worked on the island I’ve never seen the convicts playing football. Touch football would be a great way to have them work off excessive tensions, but again—suppose someone should escape?
Item: No telephones are allowed for inmates’ use. Is your mother sick? Is your girlfriend leaving you? Do you just miss friends and family? Sorry, pal. We can’t let you call anyone just like that. After all, you might be hatching some plot to escape.
And there’s more.
Did you know that Rikers Island has an enormous printing plant that could readily be used to take care of a sizable portion of New York’s printing bills? A considerable savings for the taxpayer. Not only that, but the operatio
n of such a plant could be used to train hundreds of unskilled men. Yet it isn’t used. Why? I’ve been told that the printers’ union would object.
And the same problem exists with the automotive repair and body shops. You can work on useless hulks, but not on any “real” cars.
So our laws and our escape-oriented prison philosophy send our convicts back to us after a two-year stay at fifty dollars a day, only to have them continue on their criminal way.
Better for the courts to sentence these men to Grossinger’s hotel for a six-month vacation. I’m sure the rehabilitation rate would be higher.
“Hey,” Harcout asks. “How are you gonna get in stuff about prisons in this psychedelic book of yours?”
“Easy,” I answer. “I’m going to preach to people. I figure I can slip it in between the fucks and the sucks. You know, it’s all packaging. Put out a paperback edition of the Bible with a naked picture of Adam and Eve on the cover and you increase sales enormously. But when people begin to read it, they get exposed to some pretty serious preaching.”
“You are a crazy motherfucker,” he answers.
* McGrath resigned November 20, 1971, after this was written.
V-Tantric Road (continued)
Monday, July 5
I asked my parents to visit us earlier this summer than they usually do. They will be leaving tonight.
The anticipation of spending a few days with my father was richer than the actuality. For in truth, nothing of any consequence occurred in either speech or deed.
The first night they were here Eivor and I played bridge with the two of them. On the second night they baby-sat while we went to a movie. On the evening of the third day we had a party for twenty people. My dad helped me serve the first drinks while my mother emptied ashtrays.
Each morning, following my usual routine, I drove to the park to play an hour or two of tennis. I would take Marc and Richard—my five- and four-year-olds—with me to play in the park playground. Eivor would stay home with the infant. My mother would compulsively sweep the house while my dad stayed on the deck taking in the morning sun.
Days were spent at the beach some three hundred yards from our home. My kids would be clambering all over “Grampa,” wanting to play “Monster” with him, or “Horsie,” or just to be tickled, tripped, tumbled, swung around, or gently cuffed. And he would oblige them to the limits of his capabilities.
But he was obviously in great pain when he moved. The pain was in his belly, around the large scar from which an intestinal cancer had been removed two winters ago. He was trying not to be alarmist but it was obvious to me that he felt that the malignancy had returned. I feared it, too, which led to my asking him and my mom to pay an earlier visit than usual. For I wanted to share more time with him before he left this life.
So we shared more time. It was uneventful, but the best that I could do.
We have loved one another for the thirty-five years of my life. He always believed in me. He always admired in a major way my minor ingenuity. He was affectionate and physical about it. Yet he bore my need for separateness graciously.
When I was twelve he left my mother for several months to live with another woman. I would see him weekends. I know that one of the reasons he returned home was to spend more time with me, because I missed him and I told him so.
I can talk of anything with my father. There is nothing between the covers of this notebook that I could not share with him, that would surprise him, that would make him think any less of me.
At the age of twenty-three I had been a scant week away from getting married to a most acceptable woman. We had rented and furnished an apartment and purchased an old MG roadster on the strength of wedding gifts. Many people were invited to the reception. I woke up a few days before the wedding realizing that the marriage would be a dreadful mistake; yet I feared, even more, disappointing family and friends who had anticipated the wedding. My dad read my long and silent face one day and rescued me from my pseudo-obligations by volunteering that if I had second thoughts about the marriage, I ought to heed my own heart and not the opinions of others.
I’ve always admired him professionally as an artist. And for telling funny stories. For helping me to fix things that were broken. And for his tolerance and openness to new ideas.
When I was younger, I felt he had one weakness—the weakness of guilt that tied him to my mother when other, more imaginative women interested him more. I now see that tie as the wisdom of knowing that all relationships develop their own absurdities and lack of fulfillments, and that tearing his marriage asunder would have caused much pain to many and really bring no greater happiness.
Last spring I sliced off a fingertip in a lawn mower. His concern for my loss was greater than that for his own cancerous state. And for my part I gave not a whit for my finger, but for his health.
Once I phoned him while tripping on mescaline, simply to tell him that I loved him. He got a contact high, and told me that he loved me, too.
Until I had sons of my own, no one’s passing would have saddened me more than my father’s. The loss of a child would now grieve me far more. When I told my father this he said, “Of course. That’s the way it should be.”
There is no one I love more than my father.
My biggest regret has been that Eivor has stopped fucking me ever since my folks arrived.
Years ago I felt my mother to be an extension of myself, and hence a liability. Her continuous chattering about the price of eggs at the A & P, her trying to rearrange everyone’s routines in “a more orderly way”—a way that only she, because of her virtue and thriftiness and orderliness was privileged to know—gave people she dealt with three choices. They could go mad, cruelly insult her (which turned her talk to guilt-producing tears), or tune her out. As an adolescent I was under the illusion that people had choices—and so I hated her then for willfully being so frustrating.
However, years of my own analysis and being an analyst to others mellowed me greatly. For wouldn’t everyone choose to be an ideal parent or an ideal child if he were truly free to choose? In her own way, she loved me to the limits of her capability. Clearly she was as locked into cleaning and shopping and martyrdom as I am locked into sensuality, unconventionality, and exhibitionism. Both trips through life are authentic and valid. She is she and I am I.
Eivor has borne the brunt of my mother’s presence—her hanging around, giving advice, and doing very little that really needs doing. When she does attempt to help, she asks so many questions that her efforts only cause Eivor more work.
So I became my mother in Eivor’s eyes. My concern with any detail became “just like your mother’s overwhelmingness,” my asking her questions “just like your mother’s stupidity.” And she was certainly not about to ball my mother.
It is unfortunate that those who helped teach me that I am not accountable for my mother failed to relay that same message to my wife.
VI
Ten months have gone by since I wrote that last chapter and six since last I read it. Again, I wait to see whether my father has cancer. That last episode, fortunately, was uneventful.
Ten days ago I phoned him to tell him of my good news—that I had been asked to write my autobiography. He was happy for me. But then, “my urine is dark red. I suppose I ought to call the doctor.”
It is now Saturday night in Bridgehampton—April 24, 1971, to be exact. And I am writing words on paper. Chapter 6, I believe. Marc and Richard have just gone to bed. Yan Alan, my seventeen-month-old, who is with me this weekend, fell asleep in his crib some hours ago. Judy is in the bedroom reading, having just put the tea kettle on. A strong ocean wind blows across the black sky and drives a spring rain harshly against the window panes.
Judy is the woman I have been living with since December, 1970. And she is the woman I expect to spend the rest of my life with. A professional actress turned drama therapist, she works with hospitalized psychiatric patients.
Her reddish-brown hair,
ready smile, blue eyes, freckled face, and sharp features belie her Welsh-Dutch ancestry. She looks more like one of those stereotypical colleens who grace the “See Ireland” travel brochures. Or, perhaps, somewhat like an aging Debbie Reynolds. She has a sassy way of walking—much like Nabokov’s Lolita. Although she is thirty-six, people frequently take her for someone in her early twenties.
Judy’s children are staying with friends in Manhattan this weekend. I had promised not to work late tonight, to spend the time with her. Yet I feel like saying something more about my dad. She will and does understand. One superlovely woman.
My father was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital a week ago Friday. He had bile in his urine. The likely diagnoses, in order of probability, were cancer, gallstones, or hepatitis.
We had been away that weekend to open my Bridgehampton house for another summer. By “we” I refer to Judy, her three children—Aaron, thirteen; Liza, ten; and Caleb, eight—myself, Marc, and Richard.
It was a “heavy” weekend.
Thinking of my father’s illness. Seeing words I had carved into wet concrete when the house was first built: “I LOVE EIVOR—6/3/68.” Thinking of my father, who is once again ill. Returning to the scene of last year’s Tantric summer. Knowing that my father is sick and in the hospital. Worrying about my mother’s ability to survive without him. Seeing Marc as the “outsider” among the five children—high-strung, teasing, loud-voiced, hurting, lonely. Crying for his loneliness. Crying for my father. Crying silently at the chain of events that led to my being only a weekend father.
The Reluctant Exhibitionist Page 3