By now it was late August in the Milton Roy Building. Following my voicing of my opinion in an afternoon rap and catching a load of shit for it, I spent my last night in that building secluded in the small room that had been used for intake strip searchs. (for the record, we only had to strip down to underwear back then, while our clothes and shoes were thoroughly searched) All that weekend, I must have been stood up by 25 girls at least who begged me to change my mind and stop being so disruptive and hateful towards the Tampa people. I refused and was taken out of group for "bringing everyone down" and as a last ditch effort, they brought my first and second oldcomers to relieve the guy watching me. Big mistake!
My second oldcomer was one of the first to be put on a refresher. His "buddies" ratted on him anonymously that he had sex with a girl he worked with at Busch Gardens and he let me know this when the other guy went to get a drink of water. We had a long talk and he let me know that he really respected me for standing up for my beliefs, but that it was a no-win situation and I should just forget it and play along and he would do everything he could to help me out once we
were in the new building.
The storm of it all hit full force the first week we were in the 'new' Morgan Yacht Building thanks in part to Senior Staffer Liz Cassidy. It happened on a Tuesday I believe, about an hour or two after lunch. For some reason, she went with her gut, stood up the main ring leader named Logan, and proceeded to badger the hell out of him.
After screaming "What did you do Logan?" repeatedly about 5 times, he finally hollered back "Miller in the bottle!" "Ya fuckin' happy now?" "Reefer too, and there were girls........" Then he was cut short as one of his buddys surged across a couple of rows and nailed the side of his face before anyone could stop him. Logan was taken out of group laughing defiantly and it was pandemonium for several minutes. Staff members flew out the hallway door like their hair was on fire and their ass was catching into the group trying frantically to restore order. The 3rd and 4th phasers from all over were just starting to file in from school. Back then you had to have your butt in the building by 5 o'clock. Since they came in from the outside, they had no idea what was going on, but with all the guys that had been taken out of group and into intake rooms, they caught on real fast. The sense of betrayal and the loss of the dream blew quite a few young minds that day. The girls were the worst. They would stand up with tears flowing and just scream like goddamn air-raid sirens loud enough to strip the paint from the walls. Over the next few days fights broke out in group and chairs flew and I remember one of my first 'responsabilities' I ever did was to help break chairs and load them in a truck because they were no longer going to use rental chairs. Instead, we got these tired ass wooden benches that were connected 5 to a bench and let me tell you they sucked big-time. They would become useless piles of splinters from the constant abuse of 'motivating' and these splinters provided
the 'psychos' a valuable tool for self mutilation. This was wear body carving got it's start as far as I know. I'll wrap up this episode by saying that shortly after came a period of mass disappearances and mass pulloffs. I was on first phase about to reach second when all this went down. As a first phaser we were not given much information, and I knew what I did from being a jerk for 85 days. I simply observed,
I mean, what the hell else was there to do?
The next installment will pretty much wrap it up, and I want to thank Chris Tyler, Mike Sherman, and Marnie Sykes for their helping me to remember parts of this I would have overlooked by myself. End of Part Five
