Tag Archives: C.A. Wittman

Perspectives on Film

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On the way to Winchell’s I thought of my father’s and Theresa’s different reactions to horror stories. My father was secure in the fact that horror films were made up Hollywood productions created for spine-tingling entertainment, and Theresa’s take on the genre couldn’t have been more different. She believed that the cast and production team put themselves psychically in harm’s way when they created scenes about evil spirits and ghosts. The making of a horror movie, she had told me, attracted dark entities and put everyone at risk of possession or unfortunate accidents for participating; furthermore, she said that the essence of fear that the films provoked in an audience created a weakness in people’s auras, allowing entities of the lower realm to invade. She had warned that it was best to stay away from unenlightened films.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

The Kid with the Backpack and the Books

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There were the skinheads and the punks, boys and girls sporting brightly colored Mohawks, nose rings, tattoos, and clothing held together by safety pins, with giant crosses dangling from their earlobes and from around their necks. Then, of course, the prevalent surf culture, one and the same with the skateboarding culture, made up the foundation of Santa Cruz youth. The heavy metal crowd mostly inhabited the logging towns of Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond, and Felton. Heavy smokers and dedicated tobacco chewers, the boys sported long hair, short and spiky on top, and wore t-shirts that advertised their favorite bands, while many of the girls with their heavy makeup, big hair, skin-tight clothes, and black pumps looked more like they were setting off for work in a strip club than going to school. There were the preppies, including many of the Scotts Valley kids, and the mods with their dark clothes and brooding looks. And there was me, usually sitting off to the side, reading a book or writing a story. I carried a backpack with me everywhere, even when I wasn’t in school, packed with notebooks full of my creative writings and novels. I rarely did homework, but I read and wrote every day.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Independence

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This was one thing I agreed with my father about: independence. After spending my childhood in Synanon, I had no trust in any organization to take care of me, and that meant the government and the crooked corporations that Ray and Theresa spoke of, although, at that time, I still had no understanding of what a corporation was. In my mind, I saw corporations as massive cement buildings where the production of vague things were assembled and unleashed onto unsuspecting American citizens. Once, when I’d listened to Allison rant on and on about the promise made by General William Sherman in 1865 of “forty acres and a mule” to displaced freed slaves and how that promise had never been delivered, I’d snapped, “Don’t hold your breath.” She’d had a good laugh over my dry, sarcastic comment, but I was serious.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Parched Intellectualism

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I noticed that Raven and Carole both challenged and pushed Pete to cite where he got his information from when he made a claim about something or related a piece of news, whether political, cultural, or health related. I saw another side to the boy I had been dating. He had a keen, sharp mind and could easily hold his own when his mother threw a question at him that contradicted some statement he’d made, forcing him to think about the subject from another angle. It was like a verbal sort of Ping Pong. Swifter and faster, arguments flew back and forth between them, sometimes the strain of the conversation snapping into laughter. I could not participate, but I watched and listened, soaking up their intellectualism like a thirsty plant. Here was a way of thinking and speaking that I had not been exposed to, but which was something I knew I wanted in my life. It seemed that the three of them had arrived at their liberal views of the world through educating themselves, analyzing ideas, investigating, and researching further what they had learned.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Childbirth with a Midwife

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“Oh.” My grandma smiled at the question, thinking of happier times. “My mama had us all at home in the same bed with the same midwife. There were ten of us and I was the last baby. We knew that midwife all our lives. She was a great big lady and she had a good sense a humor, always laughin’. When I got married, she told your grandpa, ‘You treat my girl right. Gladys is my baby too, and if I hear a you mistreatin’ my baby, I’m gonna come afta you.’” My grandma laughed aloud at this memory, her wrinkled face beaming. “My mama nursed us all, too, for a long time. My oldest brother, Louis, the one who died of rheumatic fever at nineteen, I heard she nursed him all the way to five years old. He would go to school and when he came home, mama would nurse him.” My grandmother laughed some more and so did I, thinking of a boy that age still on the tit. I added home birth to my ideal of what sort of mother I wanted to be.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Childbirth can be Cruel

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The next time Grandmother Gladys came for a visit I asked her about her birth experiences. She said she didn’t remember. She had entered the hospital and been drugged, giving birth unconsciously. With her third child she went into labor two months early. One of the nurses had roughly pushed her onto the birthing bed, pinched her arm, and said in a callous, irritated voice, “You just couldn’t wait, could you?” It was the last thing anyone had uttered to her before she went under.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Childbirth Can be Terrifying

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After the film I asked Theresa about her own birth experience with me and learned that she had entered the hospital alone and frightened, whereupon she’d been whisked away to a room neighboring other birthing rooms, a harried nurse running back and forth between Theresa and two other women, all of them afraid and calling for the nurse’s attention. Theresa recalled the intense pain of labor, having little understanding as to what was happening with her body, with no one to explain anything or provide any comfort, all the while begging the nurse not to leave her alone as, through the walls, the terrified screams of her neighbors penetrated. I came into this world after some hours of the torture she described to me, pulled out with forceps, silent, possibly stillborn, Theresa had thought. The doctor held me by my feet and slapped my bottom a few times until I let out a small weak whimper. Theresa’s story shocked me.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Monsters Stealing Sleep

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Sara’s encounter with Curtis cast a shadow of uncertainty over my world. In Synanon I had not worried about rapists in the night or child molesters hanging around churches, luring young girls like Sara and me to their homes to do sleazy things under the guise of an interest in our hobbies. Curtis had seemed harmless, but he wasn’t. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Fearful thoughts clamored through my mind, a parade of every possible thing that could happen. I finally got up and went into the kitchen, opening the drawer where Theresa kept the spatulas, serving spoons, and kitchen knives. I took the biggest knife I could find and went back to my room, where I shoved it under my pillow, climbed under the covers, and finally drifted off to sleep.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman

Sing With Feeling

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On mornings when Theresa didn’t have to work, I’d wake to hear her singing loudly to Carole King’s album Tapestry. She’d have the lyrics laid out before her, coming in always a second or two behind. “You’ve got a friend…a friend, oh baby.” Bent on her knees, her body rocking back and forth, the depths of her heartfelt emotion would pour from her mouth in an ear-splitting, eye-wincing, out-of-tune, soulful ballad.

–Synanon Kid Grows Up by C.A. Wittman