Without a record, which enforces the reality that I haven't done anything very wrong, which is incorrect, I can appear blameless. Sensitive people need to feel blameless. To me, it's worse to have performed harsh acts than minor illegal ones, and it is for those I feel guilty, not infractions of the law that are nowhere indicated or recorded but the improprieties and everyday cruelties of which I am the agent. These ruffle any contentment or peace I might seek or even deserve, though no one deserves anything, good or bad. Leslie Van Houten's acts were illegal, violent, vicious, colloquially heartless, incomprehensible, except that she followed a charismatic leader, people need leaders and are easily led, or enjoy being led, people want leaders, political and spiritual ones, like a Charlie Manson, the way she did, though she was less committed to him than the other girls who were convicted with her. People enjoy devotion to a cause, which makes life seem worthwhile, and for her devotion to Manson's cause, to helter skelter, to the manufacture of a race war that, Manson declared, would proclaim the dark-skinned race victorious, Leslie was imprisoned in California in a women's facility, where she might remain all her life, or until she is very old and will not, upon leaving that institution, have much life ahead of her, or even much of a life to lead, since having been jailed for the great majority of her years, she knows hardly any other life than it, except for the six months that she was on parole in 1977. Leslie might never be forgiven, except by a few, nuns and priests, for instance, who are hell-bent on forgiveness, but not for baby killers, as they prefer to call doctors who perform abortions, and maybe even by the victim's family. She stabbed Mrs. Rosemary LaBianca maybe nineteen of the forty-one times she was stabbed, though Leslie believes she stabbed Mrs. LaBianca only after she died. The coroners can tell which wounds come after death, because the skin doesn't pinken as much, since, after death, less or no blood rushes to the wound. The LaBianca family might forgive her someday, but having been a member of Charles Manson's family, into which Leslie wasn't born, about which membership she had a choice, it is unlikely most people who still remember those events will forgive her, though 1969 is many years ago. When she was nineteen, she wrote her parents that she would be let out of prison in seven years. Leslie Van Houten will most likely never be completely or generally forgiven or even released from jail, or let out only when she is very old, and every day she must suffer the consequences of vicious acts she committed when she was nineteen.
I'm guilty of infractions of the law as well as bad or misguided acts, but I don't want people to know I am guilty, of what infractions of the law, or in what way I may have hurt others, since what I do with my secrets, my past, or what I apply to my skin or where I place my desk in my apartment or what couch or chair I have or what kind of cat sleeps on my bed is no one's business. Most people wouldn't want to listen, most people want to talk, everyone's busy, though my young cat is not busy, he's never busy in the way that people vacuously insist they are busy. My cat likes to sleep on my favorite chair, he sleeps a lot of the time, probably he is bored, and he digs his claws into it, ruining the chair I'm partial to, because he is a little wild, not affectionate and may never he, but if no one enters my apartment, I won't have to worry about his becoming vicious, badly clawing a friend, who might view my cat and me in a chilling light and then exhort me to have my cat killed. In order not to lose the friend, to appease the friend, I might have to kill my beautiful, slightly wild cat, but I won't want to, and I will begrudge the friend this act, because I love my cat, probably more than the friend who'd ask me to have him killed, and while I would like my young cat to sit on my lap as I read the books whose pages I worry about dirtying with face cream and other grease, like chocolate, which I occasionally cat when I read, because it helps me sleep, when finally I decide it is time to fall asleep, I can accept for the time being that he is still a young cat who is not ready to be affectionate or to stop clawing the chair, which I bought to sit on and read, but do not. I love my cat so much I want another, one who would lie contentedly on my lap when I sit in my favorite chair or lie on the bed, reading, though I know it's better for the disposition of the spine to sit in a chair with lower back support when reading.
When the demanding man concluded the recitation of his dream, in which he reported coming under attack from a few characters who might now be at the table, he stared haughtily and aggressively at the relative newcomer-the tall balding man-who responded to the obvious insult. Provoked, he threw down his napkin and rose quickly from the table. At this moment the tall balding man's stature was nearly magnificent, though generally he slumped. Across the room, the disconsolate woman whose psoriasis had again flared, but fortunately not on her face, also rose. Oddly, she was in her pajamas, and they had small blue flowers on them, a cotton flannel, and, now standing, her inappropriate costume was apprehended by all. The two signaled a message that none of us was supposed to receive, but by their secretiveness its romantic content was revealed, and the other disconsolate woman, who was lactose intolerant and had asthma, glanced at her half-eaten scrambled eggs, probably not to acknowledge the palpable intrigue of which we were all informed and that thrust itself upon her, too, in the cozy dining room, where we residents were now drawn into a burgeoning affair. They were involved, a term which carries little of the resonance of love affair or the attenuated drama implied in a relationship, so it's a word used too easily, though involvements don't register neutrally to those involved, even when most will he temporary and insignificant, but even so I shy away here from involvements with others, though the tarot card reader told me that against my will I'd be taken into one-of which kind he couldn't prophe- size-and from which I might not easily be disengaged.
Intrigue at breakfast is a diversion, and I brightened at this unexpected occurrence, whose effect relegated my own adventures and misalliances, to a temporary amnesia. "How we need the comedy of other people," I heard Contesa, whose dark glasses sat on top of her head, say to herself, or maybe to the demanding man, who anyway heaved a fat sigh, as if everything that he'd been prey to or a captive of had escaped. It was his dream. He was aggrieved, since the older woman should have been, but wasn't, tending scrupulously to him as she sometimes did, the way his mother did, who hovered over him, he often asserted, doing everything for him, everything, and then he'd throw his arms out to take in the big world around him. Now, once more the demanding man realized he had lost a potential love partner, this one spirited off by a tall balding, slumpshouldered man, who, the demanding one must have acknowledged, in a flash of terrible knowledge, he now hated resolutely. But he was helpless, affixed to his chair like a crab on its hack, a burden to anyone nearby, because his growing despair was sharp and bitter, he could probably taste it, though I hated to imagine his tongue coated with bitterness over the brown slime of nicotine and sour vodka. Contesa leaned over to me and quoted Langston Hughes, who wrote in a letter to Carl Van Vechtcn of "the weariness of the world moving always in the same circle." Here people talk about being in or out of certain circles.