Still A Hippie:
Glad to know you're still alive, and doing so "well". Glad to see you've matured and moved on. I hadn't given your costly self-implosion much thought recently, until some fellow forum members sent your rant my way. I started to write about all the disturbing and innapropriate crap that you did, but erased it, simply because all that nonsense belongs in the past. However, If you want to sling some shit about people you used to call friends, I can oblige.
I hope you've managed to get some counseling or some other help since 1986, but it doesn't sound like it. Straight might have had control of you for a while, but what you've done for the past twenty years, well, you own that.
I guess you must have really been traumatized by that place. First as a phaser, then as a seven-stepper, and eventually as an evil-battling staff member. Thank God for selfless, courageous and principled people like you who fought "the man" by becoming the man. No hipocracy in your story. Let's recap your posts in a more honest light:
You begged to be a staff member! You lacked the courage to ask on your own, so you had your mother kiss Mel Riddle's ass for you. The Springfield folks didn?t want to hire you, so they asked us and we said OK. They told you the only opening available was in Boston. They hoped you'd drop it, seeing as how you'd never actually held a full time job or lived away from home except while in St. Pete, but you took the position, promising to get a haircut and attempt some mimimal level of professional conduct when in the building. Unfortunately, you couldn't do it. Getting up on time, paying your bills, cleaning, laundry and cooking were not skills you had learned while living with your parents through your mid-twenties.
If you remember something I did, or someone else did that still bothers you, strap on your courage and look them up. Or maybe you should have your mom call.
You wanted to be "Straight's hippie messiah". Problem was, in 1986 you were a self important fraud. Once anyone got to know you, they were on to you. You lied so much and so often to so many, that we all stopped believing everything you said. Your post makes it sound like we suddenly all betrayed you. That's a lie. It took months for you to borrow, steal and screw over every person you came in contact with, inside straight, AA or outside. We asked you to move out after two jobless months because you were increasingly erratic and disturbed. You had transitioned from being a loopy, but harmless goof-off to a rightous, ranting exploiter of newly sober young people. You messed with a lot of people's minds, both in Straight and AA. Whining about your unfair firing and rejection by your friends in this forum dishonors you, and the memories of the dead friends whose funerals we have attended since.
I don't remember any rebellion when you left. You were only on staff five weeks. How many days did you actually work? Maybe 25? The Stoughton group only had 70-80 people then, and 60% were on higher phases. How many did you say good-bye to just before the "riot"? Couldn't have been more than 35-40 tops. It wasn't the epic saga of selfless hippy counseler vs. evil co-workers you'd like it re-remember it as.
I can't recall you ever leading a rap session solo, but you might have. We kept pairing you up with someone to keep you from blabbering on for 10 minutes at a time about your "Jerry Garcia connection", or some other "I'm so cool" topic while unimpressed newcomers picked thier fingernails. Your fake hippie transparency was as clear to them as it was to us. I still live here, don't kid yourself.
Blame me that you were fired. I spoke to Jim Murray and Sylvia Kolker personally about my concerns. I wanted to help my friend. See, I was cool with you letting your freak flag fly, but I was not cool with you carelessly messing with people's minds. Seriously, you were way more innapropriate around newcomers, especially young girls, than some ?true believers?.
I do remember feeling sorry that you were fired. I stopped feeling sorry for you though, the moment you told me you got revenge by urinating in that person's office. I hope you don't work in fast food.
I didn't believe you were using your bong for tobacco. I thought you were getting high. In my apartment, that you were living in, rent free. While you went to AA meetings and worked in a drug rehab with young kids.
Now that I know it was all a well crafted scheme of ultimate revenge, and not a stupid series of incredibly selfish, immature, irresponsible, self-destructive errors, I guess I should be upset all over again, right? Hardly.
I paid your debts because you used my word and my name to run up those bills and screw those people. It's funny now. We've laughed about it. Mike Kirsch and I were talking about you as we drove the Autobahn in his BMW 7 series. We were on our way to an International Software Conference that the company I own produced in Cologne.
I realized a long time ago that your behavior was not something I needed to understand or justify. When you called to apologize a year after you took off, I told you I forgave you, and the best revenge you could have on Straight was creating a life that is well-lived. I hope you are doing well, and that the badly spelled rant you posted here is not an indication of your current situation.
It was a messed up place, no question. However, you did little or nothing to make it better. In fact, you made it worse.
See, we all did stuff we weren't proud of while we were there. I know I did, and I've said so on these forums. After 20+ years, how dare you keep whining "not me, I'm still a victim, no guilt on me". There's no apology in these forum pages from you. Stop deceiving yourself. It's cowardly and shameful. Stop writing homophobic nonsense like a vengeful skinhead teenager. You're over 40 years old. If you have any long hair left, it?s gray and falling out. It was falling out in ?86, same as me.
Over the years I've met staffers, phasers, cop-outs and siblings. I?ve been to weddings, baptisms, and funerals. We share a common experience born of personal tragedy that most of us have overcome. Only a limited few remain defined by that single time of their lives. It's almost like what combat vets share. We have a common language and experiences that outsiders can only imagine. I'm still sober, and don't care whether anyone on these forums is or not. I was over 18 when I signed myself in, so any baggage I carry is mine and I own it. I remember a thousand faces, almost all of them are from 20 years ago. I know what about a dozen people are up to. My nightmares have stopped, and the time for apologies is long over. I hope those of us that made it through continue to use these forums as a way to connect, heal and move on, not like a Beavis and Butt-head revenge rant. But hey, it?s your program.
Regards,
Paul Meyer
