Читать книгу Manson in His Own Words - Nuel Emmons - Страница 10

I HAD LEARNED my lesson. Thanks to the memory of my own mother rejecting me and turning me in, my philosophy was trust no one and depend on no one. As for a place to run to, I felt my chances of staying lost and out of sight of the police would be better in a big city rather than a small town. Indianapolis was my choice.

Terre Haute and the Gibault School for Boys are about a hundred and sixty miles from Indianapolis. Once safely away from the school, I knew better than to try reaching my destination by way of the roads and highways. I trudged through fields and over hills, staying out of sight. I walked the railroad tracks some and hopped a freight train for a short way. I slept in the woods and under bridges. I met bums, winos and hobos, who shared their meals with me. Most people place all those derelicts in the same category, but I found there is a definite distinction between them. A bum is a guy who is down and out, maybe one who is too lazy to work and survives by begging. A wino has become so hooked on his booze that he is a social outcast, he cares for nothing but the lush and how to acquire it. A hobo is on the road because that is his chosen lifestyle. Some are honest and survive by their wits, also doing a little work here and there. Others are into doing anything that will provide for the day’s needs, and stealing and lying are as natural as breathing to them. I lived and ate with these guys until reaching Indianapolis, and through them I learned an awful lot about survival without the luxuries of a house and modern conveniences.

When I got to Indy I slept in the alleys and old sheds until the night I got a bonus while burglarizing a grocery store for something to eat. The cash register change for the next morning was in a cigar box under the counter. When I opened the box and saw the money I thought I was rich and didn’t even bother to cart out any of the groceries I was stealing. It was a little over a hundred dollars, more money than I’d ever had in my hands before. I rented a room in skid row, bought me some clothes, ate as much as I liked and spent the money like there was no tomorrow. A few days later I was broke and hungry. I started making my way on the streets any way I could. I’d sweep store fronts, wash windows, clean garbage cans, anything that might earn me a few cents. I’d also steal whatever I could get my hands on, and sell the goods to anybody for any kind of price. I doubt if I averaged a penny on the dollar for the value of what I sold, but for a snot-nosed kid, I was feeling pretty chesty and thought I was getting up in the world. I was getting by without starving, had my own room and was my own boss.

I had accumulated a wealth of experience and I thought I really knew what the world was all about, but my run-away from Gibault only lasted a few weeks. I had stolen a bike for the joy of having one, as well as for transportation. It was that bike that got me caught. When the police arrested me, the juvenile authorities couldn’t believe that a twelve-year-old kid could be living by himself. It took them a few days to discover that I was a runaway from a home for boys. Once they knew that, they located my mom. She appeared in juvenile court with me, but she was still unable to tell the judge that she could take me back to a good home.

The judge was a sympathetic guy who really didn’t want to send me to a reform school. He arranged for Father Flanagan’s Boys Town to accept me. I didn’t stick around long enough for the results they got with Mickey Rooney in the film Boys Town. No fault of the school’s; I just wasn’t into the discipline, and running away had become as much a part of my nature as stealing. Four days after being checked in at Boys Town, me and another guy split. We stole a car, wrecked it, pulled a couple of armed robberies and finally made it back to Indianapolis. At Indianapolis, we went to my new partner’s uncle’s house. The uncle was a World War II vet who was living on disability. He was also a thief, and his nephew and I fit right into his program. He was as glad we showed up as we were to have a place to stay. In no time at all he had lined up places for us to burglarize. It was kind of a one-way street, since my partner and I did all the dirty work but the uncle took the big end of the money.

We got caught going through the skylight of the third place he had cased for us. When the cops arrested us they took me to the Indianapolis City Juvenile Home. I spent a day and part of a night there. As fate would have it, the same day I was put in juvie hall, a maintenance man was doing some work around the place. He turned his back on his toolbox and I stole a pair of wire cutters. That night, after we were counted and the lights were out, I got busy with the wire cutters. In about twenty minutes’ time, some thirty to thirty-five juvenile delinquents were loose on the streets of Indianapolis.

Some of the guys may have stayed on the loose for a lengthy period of time, but for me it was wasted effort. I was picked up less than two hours later driving a stolen car—I hardly knew how to shift it and could barely see over the dashboard. I was back in custody by the time the morning paper hit the newsstands with a front page spread, complete with photo, that wrote me up as the “ringleader.” Instead of keeping me in juvenile hall, they booked me in the county jail. The youngest offender ever, they told me.

That was in 1948; I was thirteen years old and almost a year had passed since the day I entered the Gibault School for Boys, the beginning of my life in institutions. I had been a frightened little boy when I went there, and I had resented it with an indescribable passion, but I have to admit the administration at Gibault had the boys’ interest and future as their top priority. That is more than I can say for the place I spent the next three years of my life.

The escapes from Gibault and Boys Town and my escapades on the run left the judge very little to do but sentence me to a bona fide reform school: the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield, Indiana. And let me say, Plainfield was a real beauty! It has to have changed since I was there; too many human rights groups and concerned citizens have appeared for a place like that to continue to operate in the manner it did then. I know the school is still in operation, but I hope all the warped, sadistic bastards I met there are now dead.

While most who get sentenced to those places do need to be separated from the honest element of society, Plainfield has turned out more hard-core criminals than honest citizens. That’s because of the type of person who seeks employment in prisons. For every person whose heart is in the right place, for every person who is dedicated to constructive rehabilitation, there are ten status-seekers out to prove something to themselves. Some are frustrated policemen who, couldn’t qualify for the police force. Others are without the ambition or skills to maintain a job in a competitive trade. Believe it or not, a great many of them are there to obtain an outlet for their own perversion. Confinement and punishment are necessary in the present society, but having sadistic, perverted assholes working in an institution that is supposed to rehabilitate is the biggest bunch of bullshit going. You can’t expect to straighten out an offender’s life when the people in charge of him have worse hang-ups than he does.

At Plainfield I was in trouble from the very beginning. The probation officer who took me there left me standing in the hallway while he went to the administrator’s office to sign me in. I had already noticed there were no fences, so while waiting I checked the front door. It wasn’t locked—I was gone! My escape attempt lasted about fifteen minutes; I didn’t even get off the grounds. Thirty minutes after arriving at Plainfield I had been registered, assigned to a housing unit and a work detail and charged with an escape attempt. Cottage eleven was my home and the dairy was my work assignment.

That evening, like every evening and morning, the whole institution assembled for “count,” as in the military. When the count was completed and cleared, a supervisor, A.B. Clark was his name, shouted out that cottage eleven was to report to the plumbing shop. As we marched, I was thinking the whole detail was going to do some extra work. We got there, halted, and stood like soldiers on parade. Clark called out, “Charles Manson and his four best friends step forward.” Hell, I didn’t know what was happening but I stepped forward as commanded. Naturally “four best friends” didn’t step forward. I didn’t have any! I’d only been there for three hours. When no one else moved, old Clark had four detail boys from the cottage step out, then motioned us inside the plumbing shop. Tension was beginning to mount and I started to realize that I was in for something other than just extra work. Once inside, Clark grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me toward the center of the room, saying, “Okay, Manson, drop your strides!” I asked what for. “Just get those fucking pants down, you little bastard,” shouted Clark. The shop had regular work benches around the walls, but in the middle of the room was a bench that was espefcially designed for what was to come next. It was about waist-high on the average man. Bare ass, I was told to lay across the bench. I hesitated and Clark planted a boot in my ass and told the detail boys to anchor me down. Each of the detail boys grabbed an arm or leg and spread me out ass up on the bench. I was in proper position for one of two things, a fucking or a beating. When Clark picked up a leather strap, I remember feeling relieved; at least I wasn’t going to get fucked in my ass.

Clark wasn’t too tall, about five-foot-seven, but he was built like a fireplug and strong as a bull. The strap was made of leather, about three feet long, a quarter of an inch thick, and four inches wide, with holes drilled in the leather and a strong wooden handle. He hit the bench next to my head a couple of times to loosen himself up. I about pissed just out of fear. “Stretch him out,” Clark said, and they all tightened their grip. (I found out later that if any of them let go during the lashing, they would get the same beating I was about to take.) Clark knew how to use that strap. I wanted to shout the first time he laid it across my ass, but gritted my teeth and waited for the next blow. After three more swats, the detail boy holding my right arm whispered, “Groan or cry, don’t try to be tough with this motherfucker—he don’t come until you cry.” Clark hit me twice more on that side and, whether I wanted to or not, I screamed and the tears burst loose. He backed off and I was relieved because I thought he was through. No luck, he was just changing sides. I got an equal number on the other cheek. When Clark was finished and the boys let go of my arms and legs, I didn’t have strength enough to lift myself off the bench. I just slid to the floor and lay there like a quivering puppy. When I was able to stand I noticed that none of the detail boys would look at me. But Clark had a grin on his face, and with the strap still in his hand, said, “Manson, we’ve been told you are a rotten little bastard, and I’m here to tell you, your ass is going to be full of scars before you leave here.” It was. In fact, it still is.

I pulled my pants on. Blood was surfacing from where the strap had broken the skin and I was sobbing for breath, trying to get enough air in my lungs to control my body and erase the fear and pain. Back outside, I got in line and as a unit we marched back to the cottage. The others went to the mess hall. I was too sick to think about eating and wanted to see a doctor. But after a “fanning,” as they called it, you weren’t allowed any medical attention until the next day. Welcome to the Indiana School for Boys!

The next morning I went to the infirmary. They put some salve on the open welts and sent me to the dairy to work. A Mr. Fields was in charge of the boys on that detail. Fields had been told about the ass-whipping, so, nice guy that he was, he assigned me a wheelbarrow and a shovel. My job was to load all the manure in the wheelbarrow, push it up a steel ramp and dump it in a bin. With the strain of shoveling and the exertion needed to push the loaded wheelbarrow up the ramp, the cuts on my ass started seeping pus and bleeding. Fields was so sympathetic that he cracked me across the ass with a stick he always carried, and encouraged some of the inmates to take shots at me as I struggled up the ramp.

About a week later four of the bigger and older inmates cornered me in one of the feed bins. Right away I knew what they were up to. I made a dash for the door, but two of the guys grabbed me and the other two stripped my pants off. I fought like a wild man, struggling frantically. I screamed and hollered, but they gagged me so that my screams were muffled. Two of the guys held me while one tried to force his dick in my ass. The fourth guy was standing point at the door, watching for the man. I broke loose, but all four of them wrestled me to the floor and beat on me some more. Two of them had time to rape me before the guy at the door shouted, “The man is coming!” They tried to get away from the scene before Fields arrived, but they didn’t quite make it. I was crying and trying to get my pants back on. All Fields said was, “You know I don’t allow any wrestling. You guys get the hell out of here. And you, Manson, go wash your face and stop all your crying.”

After that, Fields himself started playing games with me like I was some joint punk, available to anyone. On numerous occasions, depending on his mood, he would tell me, “Pull your pants down, Manson, I want to see if you’ve been getting fucked.” The first time I thought he was just kidding and I walked right on by him, but he grabbed me and yanked my pants down around my ankles and made me bend over while he looked at my ass. He always did this in the presence of several other inmates. To add insult, he would pick up a handful of raw silage from the dairy floor, spit tobacco juice on it and shove it up my ass. “I got him lubed,” he’d tell his pets, “so fuck him if you get a chance.” The tobacco juice and silage burned and I got an infection from it, but the humiliation was worse. Yeah, Fields was a real beauty, he really knew how to care for the wards of the state and earn his state paycheck. I worked in the dairy for five months and every day was some kind of unimaginable experience.

I never was able to even things up with Fields, but I did take some of the desire out of the first guy who put his dick in my ass. That was about the only thing I ever got away with at Plainfield. One night after the lights were out and everyone was asleep, I took one of the iron handles used for cranking the windows open or closed off a window. The crank was about twelve inches long and weighed two or three pounds. It wasn’t as large or as heavy as I would have liked, but it did the job. I crept down to where Mr. Stiff Dick was sleeping, eased his blanket up over his head and clubbed him several times as hard as I could. I left him there unconscious, and on the way back to my bed I slipped the crank under the covers of one of the other guys who had been in on the rape. The beaten inmate might have died, but he was lucky; security came through the cottage for a late-night count a few minutes later. In routinely lifting the blanket to make sure there was someone under the covers, the security man saw the blood and realized the guy was unconscious. He was taken to the hospital and treated for a severe concussion. Shaking down the cottage for the weapon, the guards found it in the other guy’s bed. All of us were questioned. No one was charged with the assault, although the other rapist was the prime suspect.

When his partner returned from the hospital, the two of them didn’t have much to do with each other. It was whispered that I had done the clubbing, and no matter how small I was, no one else at Plainfield tried to put his dick in my ass again.

I ran away constantly, not because I was such a rebel but because it was always me who was punished when someone had to be punished to illustrate a point. I didn’t have anyone on the outside to tell my troubles to. No one was visiting me and I got very little mail. I was just there, and nobody gave a fuck. The fear of getting caught wasn’t any worse than the fear of what the next breath might bring, so my head was looking toward the road every minute.

One of my escapes was planned so skillfully that I was sure I’d make it. About six guys were on early wake-up crew so that they could go out in the pastures, round up the milk cows, put them in the barn and feed them during milking time. Bed tags were used to identify them to the night attendant, who would wake them up around four-thirty. These inmates were trusted to work without supervision until Fields showed up at six o’clock. One night I stole a tag from a crew member’s bed and put it on my own. The night man woke me up and out I went with the others. One of the fellows on the crew was a friend and the two of us went to the far pasture to get the cows. I kept right on going and my friend herded the cows by himself to cover for me. I wasn’t missed until after Fields showed up. I had gotten off the institution grounds fast enough, but I wasted a lot of time sneaking around town trying to find a car that I could steal. Not finding one, I decided to hoof it and stay off the roads until I made it to the next town.

Plainfield is a small town bordered by a river on one side. Thinking I might be seen if I used the bridge, I decided to swim the river. When I was about halfway across, I could see people on the bank. I turned around and started swimming the other way, only to see more people on the other bank. They were guards and inmates from the school (trusted inmates helped catch other inmate runaways). My heart sunk—I didn’t know what to do. It seemed senseless at that point, but I turned downstream and tried to out-swim all the people on the riverbank. Finally a couple of them dove in the river and dragged me ashore. Grinning with his tobacco-stained teeth, Mr. Fields was there to pull me up the bank.

Back at the school, a guard gave me thirty lashes with the escape strap. The escape strap was longer and thinner than the strap used by Clark. It cut a lot more and brought blood instantly. That lashing put me in bed for several days, and it was a couple of weeks before I could walk without wanting to lie down and cry.

That escape attempt got me out of the dairy cottage and away from Fields. But, fuck, I’d already been pegged as a guy to watch and the move was almost like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I was put in a cottage that was run by a Mr. Carr. Carr was an ex-marine, a big son-of-a-bitch whose favorite thing was to run a “jaw-line.” He had a couple different versions of his jaw-line. One was to make two lines out of all the inmates in the cottage. The lines were about four feet apart, good swinging distance. The sucker being punished ran between the lines, while the others swung at him with closed fists. If one of the blows knocked him off his feet, he had to get up and try to get through again. If Carr thought someone wasn’t putting enough force into his punches, that guy would have to run the line.

Carr’s other “jaw-line” held more personal satisfaction for him. He’d place you about twenty or twenty-five feet from him, double up his fist, hold his arm at your jaw level, and then say “run.” You had to charge into that fist. If he felt you hadn’t charged at full speed, he would make you do it again and again until he was satisfied. If the blows were severe enough to require medical attention—broken nose, cut lip or damaged eye—he would give you a pass to the infirmary listing the cause of injury as “slipped in the shower” or “fell while horse-playing.” Carr was another guy like Fields. He’d turn his back while some of his snitching pets would try to fuck someone.

I was at the Indiana School for Boys for over three years and the only good thing I can say about it is that it had an impressive front lawn. From town it looked like a small university. But while proud parents bragged of their child’s good behavior and scholastic accomplishments, I was busy watching my back and taking the shit those guards dished out. At an age when most kids are going to nice schools, living with their parents and learning all about the better things in life, I was cleaning silage and tobacco juice out of my ass, recuperating from the wounds of a leather strap and learning to hate the world and everyone in it.

When I was sixteen, I finally made a successful escape with two other inmates. The day we left, I had no more promise of going home through proper channels than I’d had three years earlier on the day I arrived. Release was obtained through merit or a court order. Mom never sought a court order, and my escape attempts and other infractions put me on the minus side of the merit system.

When my escape partners and I got away from the institution, we stole a car and headed toward California. Along the way we stole other vehicles and abandoned them, as we needed. For gas and food money, we burglarized grocery stores and service stations. We made it as far as Utah where we were arrested for being in a stolen car. Since the car had been driven across state lines, we were turned over to the federal authorities and prosecuted under the Dyer Act. In March 1951 I was sentenced to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, DC. I’d had two weeks of freedom. I knew the new offenses meant a lot more time in jail but I didn’t care. I was out of the Indiana School for Boys.

The difference between a federal reformatory and a state reformatory is about like the difference between night and day. On a federal level, there seems to be more concern about how you got there and what it will take to straighten out your life. At the state level—at least during my confinement—the idea was to punish the shit out of you and make you sorry you were ever born.

Even the federal inmates are of a higher caliber, a “class” group instead of the derelicts found in state joints. But guys being guys, immature, trying to prove their manhood, they still create problems for themselves. In retrospect, I have to say I have always been guiltier than most in trying to prove myself. I wanted to be one of the “in crowd” at any cost. The “in crowd” in a youth-filled institution is mostly based on physical strength—the tough guy has all the respect in the joint.

Not being a big guy, I could never impress anyone with a display of physical strength. But at sixteen, with almost five years of jail time behind me, I had all the cunning and knowledge needed to maneuver myself around any situation I didn’t want to be involved in. Trouble was, I always wanted to be part of the power. So what I lacked in size, I made up for in daring. I was game for anything and saw everything that went on. I knew where all the knives were, how to score contraband, who the under-cover punks were, who to trust and who not to trust. I was smart enough not to step on the toes of anyone who might bite me.

It was important to me to hang around with the guys who had been successful and enjoyed luxuries on the outside. Their conversation was like a school for me. I was a good listener. I realized a lot of their talk was filled with exaggeration or fantasy, but they were still talking about a world I had never known. Cars, girls, school dances, parties, nice clothes and being able to come and go as they pleased. I built an imaginary world of my own from their conversations. I envied every guy who had had a pleasant experience on the outside, and tried in my imagination to substitute myself for them when they talked about it. I envied their letters and pictures from wives and girlfriends. I enjoyed sharing their plans for release and the promises of good things from their parents and friends when they got home. At the same time, I was aware that I could not relate a single moment of similar joys and dreams, unless of course I counted that day when I was eight years old and my mother took me in her arms—the day she returned home from prison.

Those were my smothered feelings. On the outside I projected arrogance and disdain for rules and regulations. I strove to prove myself to the others to be a person who had experienced everything, was afraid of nothing and could get by with anything. For a while I would actually believe I really didn’t care about all that I’d missed. But then in a moment of reality, I’d be aware of never having kissed a girl. I was in reform school before I’d reached puberty. The only climax I’d ever had was from jacking-off or sticking some punk in the butt. Having a wet dream wasn’t even possible for me; I’d never had the real thing so I had to finish any dream I started by hand. Still, between the stories of others and my own imagination, I had strong sexual urges, urges that got me in trouble several times. A prison psychiatrist labeled me as having homosexual tendencies. So I was supposed to be some kind of a freak. But, hey, I just went for sex the only way it had ever been taught to me. I didn’t have any respect for a joint punk then and I don’t now.

A lot of stories go around about forced sodomy and oral copulation in prisons and reform schools. There is some of it happening; I mean, out-and-out rape. I experienced it and I’m still ashamed to cop to it. Most of the sex is by mutual agreement, but however it comes down, those things are printed in a convict’s prison record and are with him for the rest of his life. I lost a possible parole date once by getting involved with a punk. I was accused of holding a razor blade to the kid’s throat while I screwed him in the ass. Truth was, the guy was an undercover queer and wanted a dick in his ass, and I didn’t mind doing it to him. We both agreed that if we got caught, he could say I forced him. We got caught. I was not only listed as a homosexual, but one with assaultive tendencies. That kid knew I didn’t force him, and I knew it, but I got the reputation and before long I did put a razor to a kid’s throat. If you keep pushing something off on a person, pretty soon that person stops fighting the reputation and becomes everything he is accused of being. It has proven itself out over the years. You start to think, “Fuck them. If that’s what they think I am, and I have to bear that cross, I got nothin’ to lose in being all they think I am.”

On a car-theft beef, an average kid with the average things—family, home, school, job—is usually cut loose by the parole board in a year or eighteen months. I did three years and two months in four different institutions: The National Training School for Boys in Washington, DC, Natural Bridge Honor Camp, the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia and the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. It seems none of the good of these places rubbed off on me, only the bad. My heroes weren’t the movie stars or the headline-making sports figures, but the guys who got away with the biggest bank heist; the Al Capones, the Mickey Cohens, all the mobsters who defied the system that was keeping me locked up.

When I was at Chillicothe I met Frank Costello. When I walked down the halls with him or sat at the same table for meals, I probably experienced the same sensation an honest kid would get out of being with Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle: admiration bordering on worship. To me, if Costello did something, right or wrong, that was the way it was supposed to be. One morning Costello and I were seated at the same table for breakfast. He was reading the morning newspaper and a new guard walked over to him and started to take the paper, saying, “You read in your cell or the library.” Costello removed the guard’s hand from his paper and replied, “Sonny, when I’m at home it’s my habit to read the newspaper while eating my breakfast. The government has made this place my home for a while. You’re here to see that I stay, not to tell me where and when I can’t read.” The guard hesitated for an instant, then looked around the dining room, left our table and started hassling one of the younger guys on some infraction. Anyone without the status of Costello would have been on his way to the hole after confronting a guard that way. Yeah, I admired Frank Costello, and I listened to and believed everything he said.

In May of 1954 I was finally paroled. I was nineteen, and it was the first time I was legitimately on the streets since I was twelve years old.

The parole stipulated that I return to McMechen and live with the same aunt and uncle who had taken care of me while my mother was in prison. I loved them for giving me my chance on the outside. It was through their efforts, not Mom’s, that I ever got released at all.

I doubt that the average person could ever relate to the sense of freedom I felt. It was more like a dream than something good really happening to me. Each morning—no, not just each morning, but each breath was like being born again. I wanted to sing, dance and shout, “Hey, I’m free, I’m out, I’m one of you!” Hell, I didn’t want to ever go to sleep. Being awake, so as not to miss a single thing that was going on in my new world, was too important. When I did go to sleep, waking up and being able to lie in bed was a treat. The smell of breakfast being cooked by my aunt, with my choice of anything I wanted, instead of powdered eggs or soggy pancakes, was as rewarding as being a millionaire. One of my biggest pleasures was just walking—in the city, in the country, going anywhere or going nowhere. Just appreciating that there were no fences, no boundaries. Being able to watch people and hear them laugh, seeing children playing in the park, looking at pretty girls in short skirts and tight sweaters. Above all, no one was demanding that I do this or that. I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder to see if “the man” was coming, or if a bunch of inmates were up to something that I ought to check out. I was my own person. The feeling was so pure, and it was so wonderful to be free, that if someone had said to me then, “You’ll be back in jail one of these days,” I’d have bet my life the person didn’t know what he was talking about.

Still, with all the joys of being free, it wasn’t long before I realized that there is more to life in the free world than just walking around taking in the sights, especially when seven of perhaps the most important years in a person’s lifetime have been spent in reform schools. In jail I was glib and aggressive and knew everything that happened from the hole to the chapel, but out on the streets I couldn’t even hold a decent conversation with my aunt and uncle, let alone a stranger. All I knew was jail. I couldn’t talk about what school I’d graduated from, or even gone to. There weren’t any yesterdays or last months that I could refer to without exposing my past. For employment, I had to look for jobs no one else wanted. I did janitor and busboy work, weeded gardens and worked in a service station or two. I even shoveled shit and fed the horses oats at Wheeling Downs.

When it came to girls, my heart throbbed and I ached with desire but I couldn’t think of the proper things to say. I didn’t know the first thing about finesse, so I’d revert to some of the bullshit I had heard laid down by some of the older guys in reform school. It didn’t work for me; in most cases that kind of conversation sent the girls packing instead of impressing them.

The first girl I ever made it with I ended up marrying. I’d worked all day at the race track and had stopped by a card room in Steubenville to see if I could run my day’s wages into a small fortune. After a couple of hours at the poker table, I had a pretty healthy pile of money in front of me. The cocktail waitress and some of the other girls were giving me and my roll some attention. Across from me, looking over the shoulder of a coal miner, was this pretty girl who gave me an occasional smile but wasn’t putting on the hustle like some of the other girls were. When I cashed in I was a big winner. I would have shared my winnings with any of those girls for a night in the sack, but a certain pride in not wanting to be some whore’s trick helped me walk right by the obvious advances and single out the pretty girl I’d noticed on the other side of the table.

She had come into the place with her coal-miner father. Since he was still wrapped up in the poker game, I had no problem getting a few words in with her. She told me she worked as a waitress in a cafeteria at McMechen. We didn’t make it together that night, but after visiting her at her job and dating a couple of times, we were in love.

She may not have been the most beautiful girl in the world but to me she was Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor and Lana Turner all rolled up in one. She was a healthy, smooth-skinned Irish girl who stirred things in me I’d never experienced. I didn’t get her cherry, but she damn sure got mine. The first time we made it together, I couldn’t believe it was happening. Beyond concentrating on the sex act, all I could think of was, “Wow, it’s happening, I’m really making it witji a girl.” I trembled with excitement and anticipation; so much so, I came before my prick touched her box. But that didn’t kill anything for me, and when I got inside her—our arms around each other, her smooth soft body in contact with mine—I really didn’t care if I ever took another breath. I was in heaven and I wanted to stay. She whispered, “I love you,” and goose bumps tingled all over my body. I was loving someone and she was returning my love. A huge void was being filled. For the first time in my life, I felt I could conquer the world.

We were married in January of 1955. It was a good life and I enjoyed the role of going off to work every morning and coming home to my wife. She was a super girl who didn’t make any demands but we were both just a couple of kids. We didn’t know how to budget our income. We were constantly broke and neither of us had the maturity to sit down and make plans based on what we were earning. Being broke and wanting things can build up a lot of pressure. That pressure grows even greater when you haven’t got the money to pay routine bills, like rent, gas, lights and transportation. Sometimes we couldn’t even buy groceries. It’s too bad I didn’t know how to handle it. Trouble was, all I knew was reform schools, stealing and not trusting anyone. The patience, the willingness to struggle and earn that normal life demands wasn’t part of my make up.

I started looking for ways to get things in a hurry. With all my jail-house connections, getting back into crime was no problem. My wife also had a little bit of the outlaw tendency in her nature, so she didn’t try to restrain me—not that she could have.

The larceny consisted of small time burglaries and several stolen cars. One theft was at the request of an older gangster friend: the deal was for me to steal a late model Cadillac and deliver it to an acquaintance of his in Florida. My friend put enough dollars in my hand to pay the expenses and the other guy would pay me five hundred when I got there. I stole the car and drove it to Florida. The guy at the other end took it all right, gave me a hundred, and told me to get fucked. Naturally I was pissed, but took the hundred and left. I lay low for a few hours and then doubled back and restole the Cadillac. Not to drive it, just to keep the guy from feeling too chesty about burning me. After a while I abandoned the car and returned home. By the time I got back word was out the gangster was looking for me. So far the law wasn’t on my back, but I didn’t want to come face to face with either of the two guys involved in the car deal.

My wife had been wanting to head to California even before we were married. My promise to take her there might have been the only reason she married me. No, that isn’t true, but now that someone was out there waiting to even things up with me, we both wanted to leave town. I stole a ’51 Mercury and we loaded in all our worldly possessions, but we still had plenty of room in the car when we headed for the land of opportunity. The trip west was a leisurely one. We’d stop in some town or city that interested us and I’d hustle for anything I could, or case a place to burglarize. If I got money, great. If not, we’d load whatever I had taken into the Mercury and sell the goods along the way.

By the time we got to Los Angeles we had a few dollars and a few items to set up housekeeping. We rented an inexpensive place to live. My wife was in the early months of pregnancy, so I went looking for honest employment and the next few weeks saw me with a variety of jobs. With the jobs, and some thievery, we weren’t enjoying great luxury but things weren’t too bad for us. I had gotten used to the Mercury and felt like I was the legal owner. So much so that when they arrested me in it for car theft, I gave the arresting officer a lot of shit. Because the car had been stolen in another state, the FBI took over the case. They gave me that old song and dance about coming clean on everything to clear up the books and said they would show leniency. I’m no longer sure if I voluntarily told them about the car in Florida or if they tricked me into telling them. Anyway, I did get a hell of a break when I went to court for the stolen Mercury. Mostly because of my wife’s pregnancy, the judge put me on the streets with five years’ probation. I still had the other charge in Florida to face. If I’d had the guts to show up in court on that charge I might have gotten another break, but I was afraid to be too trusting of the courts. Instead I hit the road as a fugitive.

I put my wife through a lot of shit for the next four months. Why she stuck with me, I don’t know. We traveled a lot of miles, and we stole a lot of things to keep from being hungry or for travel money. She was getting close to having the baby and I didn’t know how that could be handled on the run, so I shipped her back to Los Angeles where my mom was now living and could look after her.

Not long after sending my wife to Los Angeles I was arrested in Indianapolis. You would think I’d had enough of that city, but there I was again in the same county jail where I had started. It was easier and less expensive for the court to revoke the five years’ probation than to prosecute me on the other theft, so I was returned to California and sentenced to the Federal Penitentiary at Terminal Island, San Pedro. I was twenty-one years old—no longer a juvenile delinquent. But looking back, I was never a juvenile anything, only an inmate in some reformatory. Now that I was twenty-one, it seemed only appropriate that I start my adult life in a prison with the big guys.

Terminal Island was a paradise compared to the institutions I had been in as a youth offender. The guards were there strictly for security and weren’t continually hassling the convicts. And the cons themselves did their own time, without trying to run anybody else’s life. It was a whole lot easier doing time with men instead of a bunch of kids who were always trying to play macho. It was so good, I didn’t create any problems. Escape wasn’t even on my mind. It was my intention to do my time like a saint and earn an early release. I sincerely thought that when I got on the streets again I would never do anything to put myself back in jail. I thought of those months with my wife, the thrills and warmth her body had given me, the new baby and all the pleasures the free world afforded me, and I realized what a goddamn fool I was for wasting my life being locked up.

Those first few months I went about doing my time with a positive attitude toward becoming a straight person. My wife wrote to me almost daily and came to visit as often as she could. I marveled at our new son during our visits and knew that I would break my ass to give him a better childhood than I had gone through.

But!—and it seems like in my life there has always been a “but”—before the baby was a year old, she stopped visiting. Her letters ceased without even a “Dear John.” My mother brought the news. “Your wife has moved out of the house and is living with some truck driver.” I flipped! The whole fucking world caved in on me. I wrote to her pleading for her to reconsider, begging her to come and see me. I needed her, loved her, and wanted to see little Charlie. Though the letters were never answered, for a few weeks I held on to the hope that her affair with the truck driver was just temporary and that she would eventually come back to me. All hope ended when Mom reported, “Your wife, your son, and her truck driver friend have moved out of the state.” To this day I have never seen or heard from her or the son that came from our marriage. When I gave up on her, my attitude of wanting to be Mr. Straight left me.

My work assignment was outside the prison walls, and I decided if my wife wasn’t going to come and see me any more, I was going to try and locate her. I attempted an escape. However, like so many of my escape attempts while in reform school, I was caught before I was out of sight of the prison, in the prison parking lot trying to hot wire a car.

For my attempt, I was taken off the minimum custody work assignment, which meant I was no longer allowed outside the prison walls, and given an additional five-year probation period to begin after I completed my existing sentence. It was a break from the court, but I wasn’t in an appreciative mood. My marriage, the new baby and a good clean work record inside the prison had been my ace in the hole toward an early parole date. And now that was gone.

I went back to being bitter and hating everyone. I had been bitter when my mom turned me over to the court when I was twelve years old. I hated her when she refused to let me stay with her after my first escape from Gibault. The bitterness I had learned at Plainfield never left me. And though I don’t blame her or feel bitter toward her now, my wife had the full brunt of my hate then.

Even if she had stuck by me and had been waiting when I got out of Terminal Island, I don’t know what the results would have been, because it’s obvious there is something lacking in my make up. It could have started with being a bastard son and my life with and without my mother. Maybe it was the years at Plainfield, or maybe the insanity of my uncle Jess and grandfather. I do know that until my wife left me I was filled with honest thoughts for our future together. I also know that the letdown I experienced when I realized I had lost her was a turning point in my life. I figured, screw all that honest-john bullshit, I’m a thief, I don’t know anything else. I made up my mind to perfect myself in the life I had been leaning toward since I stole all those toys and burned them when I was seven years old. And what better place to begin the perfection of an outlaw than in a penitentiary, a place that was loaded with every anti-establishment offender imaginable?

I was into learning ways to beat the law besides robbing or stealing. I was already pretty adept in those areas even though I had never made any big scores and I never doubted my ability to pull off a job if I needed to go that route. What interested me now was status. Among criminals in the joint, a thief or a gunman is kind of like a blue-collar worker, whereas a pimp or a top-grade con man is comparable to a bank president on the outside, kind of a high-roller, envied by other convicts. Pretty girls and sex provide the most interesting conversation for a guy doing time, and girls and their bodies are also big business in the free world. As long as I had decided to continue a life of crime, why not pursue what appealed to me most? What could be better than having all the girls you want and letting them supply the money and lifestyle an ex-convict dreams of on the outside?

To simplify my quest to become a pimp, right there in Terminal Island was one of the nation’s best known procurers—I’ll call him Vic. At one time Vic had his fingers in every whorehouse in Nevada and controlled call girls in numerous other states. He was a regular godfather of prostitution. The Feds hadn’t been able to bust him on any illegal activities other than income-tax evasion so I figured he really knew the score. Another thing that drew me to him was the fact that he wasn’t a big guy. Though I was never consciously insecure about being small, at times I did give up on pursuing roles in life I might have challenged if I were a bigger person. Here was a guy who, like myself, would really have to stretch to reach five-foot-six in height. He was older and uglier than me, and definitely not the person one might imagine as a king-pin in a state full of whorehouses. I figured if he could make it big through broads, so could I.

Without being too obvious, I began to seek out Vic’s company. I would hang around and rap to him and the guys he lined up with, the majority of them also pretty successful pimps. In most cases I didn’t have to initiate any conversations; they all talked about their ups and downs as well as the procedures they applied to different girls and situations. The stories I heard about big cars, pretty girls, luxurious apartments, fine clothes and plenty of money had me thoroughly convinced: there wasn’t anything better in life than having control over several women and letting them provide your every need.

One day I asked Vic point blank how he went about turning a girl out. He laughed at me and said, “Charlie, it’s been over twenty years since I’ve had to work on a girl for her to hustle for me. All the girls that come my way are already hustlers. But Charlie, there really isn’t anything to it. Almost every broad alive, at one time or other in her life, has had the desire to be a whore. A lot of girls are wrapped up in moral ethics and would never turn out, but any woman would be lying to you if she were to deny that she didn’t often wonder what a whore’s life was like. For those who are reluctant, a good pimp knows how to eliminate the barriers and convince the girl that his love will be deeper than ever for her if she is willing to go all the way for him.”

On my release from Terminal Island in September 1958 after serving two years of the three-year sentence, I immediately began trying to put together the life that so infatuated me while in prison. The area of my conditional release put me in the very best location possible to carry out my dreams—Hollywood, California.

What can I say about Hollywood that hasn’t already been said? I saw it as the most artificial, most pretentious city in existence. I suppose that line of thinking can be attributed to the movie and TV industry since everyone in it is looking for recognition and stardom. To me it seemed as if everyone I came in contact with was greedy, narcissistic and lacking in morals. They all existed in a dog-eat-dog, no-holds-barred world. I was in my element! I was twenty-three years old and my jail-house tutoring was going to go to work for me. All I had to do was come up with that string of pretty girls and I could begin living my dream. Life should be so simple! It was all bogus bullshit, another jail-house fantasy that isn’t real on the streets—but I tried to make it real.

My first problem was that I had trouble scoring with the kind of broad whose moral ethics I was capable of “eliminating.” The ones who were already hustlers were with guys who had been in operation for a long time. Those guys had the class and the connections that Vic had forgotten to tell me were so important. When I finally found a girl who would go the whole route for me, I was so much in love with her that I couldn’t stand the thought of some trick sticking his dick in the girl I loved. Some pimp I was.

She and I had set up housekeeping together in an apartment in Hollywood, and every day I went out hustling and stealing to bring the bread home to her. One day one of my joint partners who was now on the streets and enjoying pretty good success as a pimp along Sunset Strip, told me, “Charlie, you’re that broad’s trick! What the fuck is your story? Turn that girl out!” I gave him some feeble answer like, “Yeah, I’m working on it,” but knew in my mind the guy was right. The girl had me wrapped around her finger. So I fought my jealousy and possessiveness, saying to myself, “Didn’t I plan on being the big-time hustler and pimp? Never mind all that love shit—Do it! Put that girl on the streets!”

That evening as my girl and I sat in our apartment, too broke to go anywhere, I made my move, telling her, “Sandy, baby, it’s time for us to sit down and do some talking.” “Sure, Charlie,” she replied, “what’s on your mind?” I went on, “We been together for weeks. You know I’m out stealing and breaking my ass to keep us in this apartment and some food in our mouths. Here we are living in an area that is loaded with all the finer things in life. Those things are passing us by. We both dig making the scene down on Sunset. You like nice things and I enjoy seeing you with nice things. Why don’t the two of us really put our heads together and make us a good life in this town? It’s a player’s town and players only stay in an area where there is a lot of money and action. You are one of the prettiest girls I have ever seen, and I’m not the only one that thinks so. Every time you walk down the street, guys start undressing you with their eyes. Now, why don’t we start taking advantage of all those rich, hungry bastards? You know I love you and want the best for you. Question is, how much do you love me? And how far are you willing to go for both of us to get on top?”

“Charlie, I’ll do anything in the world for you!”

“You mean it?”

“Certainly I mean it. Tell me your plans and you can count on me.”

“Would you fuck for me? Will you turn tricks and hustle your ass for me?”

“If that’s what you want me to do, Charlie!”

Hell, I was geared to spend days trying to convince her to turn out. Twenty minutes after we started our conversation, Sandy was willing—almost eager.

The first trick she turned just about broke my heart. I remember waiting in the parking lot of the apartment house where it was happening. I was going through all kinds of head trips—telling myself what a dirty bastard I was. I wanted to charge into the apartment, break the door down and beat the hell of the guy whose money she was taking. I wanted to apologize to Sandy and tell her I loved her too much to ever think of her having sex with someone else. I wanted to tell her I’d keep bringing home the money for us to live on, that she was mine and mine alone. I hated myself, and most of all I hated all the guys I had ever been in jail with. I didn’t blame myself as much as I blamed all those guys I had listened to while doing time in reform schools and prisons.

When Sandy came hurrying back to the car, I couldn’t look at her. I could tell she was in a big hurry and I thought it was a desire to get away from the place where she had just performed—for me. When she got in the car I finally looked into her face, expecting to see tears and perhaps some of the shame I had been experiencing. Instead, she was flushed with excitement, all smiles and proud as she thrust three twenty-dollar bills in my hand. “All right, Charlie,” she said, “we’re on our way! It was fun—there ain’t nothing to it. The john wants to see me again next week, same time, same place.” I didn’t tell Sandy what had been going through my mind and to this day, I don’t believe she understands why I didn’t enjoy her handing me the money.

That night as we had sex together, I found myself wondering if I was making it as good for her as the john had. I was a victim of the same feeling every time she turned a trick, and it was a long time before that feeling left me. But what the hell, wasn’t it my choice? And after all, isn’t feeling sorry, ashamed or inadequate just a frame of mind?

So okay, now I’ve got a girl working for me. A young inexperienced broad that don’t know any more about milking a trick than a choir girl. Yet I’m on Sunset Strip playing the part with all the other pimps. Though I’m acting like I know it all, I’m listening to everything said. I learn that just the bed money isn’t anything. I mean, the mark knows he’s paying to get his nuts off and has agreed on the price. If the girl just screws him, the price mentioned is all she is going to get. Listening to the seasoned pimps, I found the girl has to have more talent than just fucking or sucking. She has to learn her trick and know how to reach him emotionally, get him involved so that he feels he isn’t just a trick, but a special person. It’s also important that the girl isn’t into the business because she wants to be. The john can be made to feel like the girl is forced into prostitution by obligations, like an emergency operation for one of her children, a dying mother, or other things to make him sympathetic. Pretty soon the trick isn’t fucking the girl but feeling sorry for her. Out of a sympathetic heart and a desire to show what a wonderful fellow he is, he pays more.