REHAB AS SKINNER BOX, BOYS TOWN AND HOGAN'S HEROES - - Attempts to Turn Burnouts, Gangstas and Misfits into Dale Carnegie Through Scrubbing Floors, Wearing Diapers, and Sitting Motionless on a Bench for a Month (A Memoir, sigh)

 

Everyday we had to recite The House Philosophy (Rise from the ashes of our defeat and take our rightful place in society...) in unison.

Then residents were required to stand up in front of the family.

"Morning Family."

(in unison): "Morning."

"My name is Jan G. I'm 17 and I’m from Money Makin' Manhattan.”

(the whites in sotto voce): "Monkey Makin' Manhattan.”

Or it was Crooklyn before the film, the Boogie Down Bronx, the Burnt out Bronx.

"My concept for the day is, 'When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on...it all comes out in the wash...teach a man to fish...' "

Applause.

"My color for today is blue..."

Applause.

"My word for today is 'behooves...'"

Applause.

"And I got a little song for you..."

Applause.

"Can I get some of these ?" (finger snapping)

Singing:

Good Morning Heartache (a young black girl, Kelly, would sing this every morning in Induction. She split and they announced one morning that she was found dead on a rooftop from a heroin overdose).

Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man (the mostly city population would call out yee-haw mockingly at goofy Chuck from upstate who got busted for holding peyote at a legalize marijuana gathering in D.C.).

Welcome to the Hotel California (two white girls from Connecticut. We’d decode the lyrics insisting it was about a TC -- nightman, courtyard, programmed to receive, check out anytime you want but you can never leave).

 

 

The Game

Two or three times a week staff would announce Encounters This was done to take care of hostile feelings that otherwise might spill out onto the floors.

Eight to ten people sit in a circle, and the leader (the high hat) announces, “This game is open.” All the members compete with one another to scream at their prey. Whoever screams loudest wins. The high hat then tells all others to back off and remain quiet. The winner announces to his prey: "X, you got this motherfucken game."

X must sit silently while he is “indicted” by his original attacker and whomever else in the group has “feelings for him”. He is screamed at, cursed, insulted, mocked, hurt, psychologically toyed with. You are encouraged to be as brutal, as confrontational, as nasty, scream as maniacally as you can. The only rule was you couldn’t attack someone’s “inborn dignity.

Ideally, when the indictment is over the prey is in tears. Then it is his turn to dump.

"Come for real or don't come at all," he is admonished if he seems to be being insincere. Then he is supposed to be “patched up by the group.” At the completion of this process he has the option of giving the game to someone and it continues. The most respected were those who were particularly vicious and clever at humiliating a person. The game was often used to keep each other in check, to show off.

If you disrespected a female they could sit you in the middle of an all female Encounter circle on a spinning chair. 

 

Education

In Yorktown I got back into school, got into the sharing and valuing of myself and my education through the peer tutoring program the teachers set-up, and started working obsessively on independent packages to complete school. On night checks the resident on duty would open the door to my room, peer his flashlight in and see me working. Instead of enforcing the lights out rule or reporting me he’d say, “ I hear you, Kev, get that piece of paper,” and he’d shut the door. Eventually I got my diploma.

Four of us stole away to an off limits part of the facility that had been burned out (previous residents torched part of the facility) -- we had a coffee pot and ran our own little SAT study group. Snuck away because my counselor, she wanted me mopping floors not studying. I took the SAT with a dictionary hidden in a restroom trash can to consult on bathroom breaks (by this time everything was a hustle and I had to get out of this place).

I had been in Phoenix House almost a year already. School was over and there wasn’t anything to do except play cards for cigarettes and pull night duty. 

I was done, very ready to be clean cut. My plan was to go directly to college in September, about five months away, start living my life.

The teachers there were agreeable and supportive, staff was not -- success in school wasn’t success in treatment. Today, a Phoenix House official tells me, education is viewed more as a part of treatment rather than a reward, as it was back then. I’d have to stay at least two years like everybody else, then maybe move into another facility for what was called the Re-entry phase, with a menial job on the outside (And besides, didn’t you get caught smoking weed – rolled in toilet paper --  in the shower here in the facility not too long ago? my counselor said). Yeah, I did. I don't know why - - I hated weed; you just rebel all over the place like a caged animal or like a caged teenager.

My first counselor was supportive and liked me, my second counselor pretty obviously didn’t and seemed to view my college plans as haughtiness. I was also starting to feel pride, feel good about myself which is always a tricky thing in these kind of places -- Whoa, mister, you’re here for a reason.

After some incident with her I ended up sitting on a tree stump (!)in the lobby (their version of The Chair) while various residents tried to convince me to stay or hugged me good-bye and gave me their phone numbers and addresses on scraps of paper (scraps I still have today). Timothy's hug is the only one I remember.  

Eventually staff dropped me off in Penn Station with two garbage bags filled with my possessions and I found myself on a pay phone begging my mother to let me come home. I said I love you for the first time in my life (it wasn’t true but I was desperate, had to get out). I’m gonna’ change, I want to get a job, go to college, please.

She was supposed to say no way, the program or the streets, as she had been saying for two years, but she relented.

The next day I got a job working in Toys 'R Us. It didn’t last. I’d come home from jogging with my eyes red from the wind and there’d be screams and accusations that I was high. She eventually found some beer cans in my room and I was about to be thrown out again -- “Maybe you need to go back to the institutions.” I thought this would never end. I got high on some of the Valium she had in her medicine cabinet for my own private going away bash and I asked for just one favor -- a ride to a military recruiting office (years later she told me she agreed because she was sure they wouldn’t accept me, I couldn’t even walk straight). My Army recruiter told me not to mention anything about drugs or drug treatment and I joined the army and got my life.

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