but didn't the manson thing happen in 1969? i remember i was a child when
sharon tate was murdered. why would charles manson come back in the same
situation, a song that's so personal. a person is praying and she finds that
heaven is not what it used to be -- even god's days are counted.
in any case, i've always been obsessed with charles manson; it's just that i
had forgotten. the tate crime had enormous repercussion here when i was a
kid. yes, i'm sure it was 1969 because that was also the year that we prayed
rosaries at school for god to kill chilean president salvador alende, a
leftist. you see, my teachers were the kind of roman catholics that were not
unlike manson himself. i was 8. i would hear stories about kids that had
been raped or mutilated by the communists because they were praying in their
catholic schools. all this while i was PRAYING AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL. so i
felt like i would become a catholic martyr any moment, and my parents would
put a plate with my name on it on one of the pews at church. then the manson
crimes happened. it was winter here. i remember now. the man on the moon,
some war in the middle east [the 7-day war?], the manson crimes, alende in
chile. the communists around the corner, ready to stick things into your
body if you didn't abjure the pope. the swastika on manson's forehead, i
remember that too.
and a few years later, i joined the communist party and my little sister,
who was 11 at the time, was kidnapped and tortured by the secret police.
when my father found her, my sister was a zombie. they must have raped her
too, my parents never told me. my sister became a thief, a slut, then she
became bulimic, and finally psychotic. both my parents are bipolar, so there
we were. my sister left home one april afternoon, some ten years ago. she
had about $3 and a sweater. she turned up a year later. she was living with
a guy and breeding beagles. and you know what helped my sister? the beagles.
she has been breeding dogs for ten years and she has come to terms with many
things. i love my sister more than anybody else in the world. i taught her
how to talk and to walk and how to read and write before she went to school.
when we were really little, one of our favorite games was to make believe
that we were in canada, go figure. in the winter of 1969, when the manson
crimes and that war and all the rest happened, my sister hit me in the head
with one of my mom's stilettos and they had to give me 3 stitches.
wallyK
