Paranoia

26.

I got my job back in San Francisco, teaching 4 year olds at Laguna Golden Gate Children’s Center in the Western Addition. I fell back in love with 4 year olds, and with teaching. I had a wonderful team of people I was working with, Loretta, Deborah, and Gladys. Gladys was old school, an aide who brooked no nonsense with the children, whose style complemented my laid back ways. I spent much of the spring of 1985 writing and rehearsing a play called “The Rosa Parks Story,” which recounted the tale in short bursts of verse that even a 4 year old could remember. It started with the “Wheels on the Bus” song – children get busses.

On December first, 1955
A great day to be alive.
The wheels on the bus went round and round
And Rosa Parks turned the world upside down

The stress I’d been laboring under in Oakland was replaced by a giddiness, a balloon being filled by helium. That decision to quit was so easy and so liberating, I began to consider quitting my marriage. We had made a fairly strenuous effort to stay together. We saw a marriage counselor. The counselor had us assume the physical positions we felt represented our positions in the relationship. I sat in a chair, Earldean sprawled at my feet. This was uncomfortable, but probably accurate. Maybe what happened is that Earldean felt me pulling away from her and decided the best strategy would be to become more submissive to me – isn’t that what men want? The strategy backfired, because what I wanted was someone to stand up to my patterns of arrogance and superiority. That would have been asking a lot of Earldean.

At the end of the session, the counselor said, “You have some problems, but, if you’re both committed, I don’t see why you can’t work them out.” If you’re both committed. The phrase echoed in my mind over the next few weeks: if you’re both committed….. The fact was, I was simply no longer committed.

The arrival of spring gave me options, at least of where to live: Deer Creek is dismal, nearly uninhabitable during the rainy winter, with the dirt road subject to washouts. But one could live there in the spring, and my job was such – 2-6 PM that I could even commute.

So, on Sunday, April 21, 1985, I told her. “Earldean, I’m sorry. I have to go.” She looked as though I had kicked her in the stomach. But she didn’t try to stop me. I loaded my camper with supplies and left for the Santa Cruz mountains. For what happened next, I will revert to primary sources. What follows is my account of the subsequent events, written days after they occurred. It was a terrifying time, but also the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me, so far.

PARANOIA IN THE ANTI-APARTMEID MOVEMENT: But Whose?
By the Rapid Eye Movement (REM)

This is a true story. Since it is also highly improbable, please bear in mind the old sixties axiom: Just because you are paranoid does not mean someone isn’t following you.

The story concerns my strange experiences in the current anti—Apartheid movement at UC Berkeley and how those experiences may or may not have lead me break with “reality.” This is political drama into psychodrama —— or is it?

The story begins on Sunday, April 21, 1985. On this evening, I leave my wife. We have been married 9 years (together 10). We have spent the last two years exhausting every conceivable alternative to the break—up, including $3600 in psychotherapy, couples counseling, increased freedom, exploring each others’ sexual fantasies. You name it, we did it. The marriage died anyway, as marriages sometimes do.

I drive that night down to a cabin we own with friends in the Santa Cruz mountains to go through the psychological “crash” which I fully expect to follow our break—up. I have taken a day off work (teaching nursery school) so that I could fully experience, “feel,” “own” the pain and grief of the thing, as I have learned I will need to do in therapy and from my previous marriage.

At Deer Creek (what we call the cabin) I feel sad, poignant, but also free. The “crash” never comes. I feel self—accepting, confidant that in spite of everything, I have made the right decision. I come to understand that although my wife is still quite unhappy over the break—up, she would eventually see that it is for the best.
I go back to work that Tuesday, April 23rd, in San Francisco, my regular shift, 2-6 PM. After work, I decide to check out the sit-in at Biko (Sproul) Plaza at UC Berkeley, my alma mater, which had been continuing for some 12 days by this time. It is a sentimental journey. I was arrested in Sproul Hall in the 1964 Free Speech Movement, my political initiation, which was followed by a 16 year “career” of often heavy political activism. This career includes 5 strange years in the Progressive Labor Party in the early seventies, a major split from that dogmatic sect, some 200 demonstrations, organizing in the teachers’ union, leading an post Prop. 13 occupation of a “closed” childcare center in the Black community lasting 18 months. My “career” culminated in a losing but respectable run for school board in 1980, after which I finally burned out and turned my talents to writing and teaching. In the last 4 years, the extent of my political involvement has been attending the semi—annual mobilizations (marches), like a Christian who attends churh on Christmas and Easter. That is, until that fateful Tuesday.

I begin to make friends at the sit—in (I know no one) right away. I like the energy. I sense “resurgence” in the air. The issue, opposition to South African Apartheid through support of university disvestment, I consider critical.

My essential, eclectic, politics are these: political struggle is the cutting edge of human evolution, the object of which is the survival of the species. The greatest threat to this survival is the threat of nuclear war. The way to prevent nuclear war is to struggle for world—wide unity. The way to achieve worldwide unity is to struggle against world—wide inequality. The most glaring example of inequality in the world today is South African Apartheid. So am I thinking, trying to sleep on the concrete mattress of Biko Plaza, the fires of political struggle reigniting in my breast. (To be continued).