the OUTSIDE WORLD

On the Ranch, we were well trained to consider ourselves special and chosen. We referred to non-sannyasins with disdain and were simultaneously fearful and curious about the Outside World. Certain things from the Outside World were coveted: candy, pocket video games, meat, the color blue. Others were terrifying: bomb threats, nasty flyers constantly being dropped from airplanes to litter the Ranch, hateful looks and comments about our red clothes and malas.

At 8, I usually wanted to leave and get the candy and movies from the Outside World. I missed my mom, who lived in Berkeley, then Maui, then Laguna Beach, then Venice CA. I visited her first in Berkeley, where she lived with Akul and a group of other sannyasins. She drove a tiny beat-up Datsun and was cleaning houses I think. I was going to visit her for one week. Before I left, I was told that you weren't allowed to swear in the Outside World, it just wasn't accepted the way it was at the Ranch. I decided that I would have to get the swearing out of my system.

I rode a bus to California, all the while gazing out the window first at the high desert, then smalltown America, then cityscapes. I chanted to myself "shit. fuck. piss. goddamnit." If i could get it all out of my system before my arrival there, I wouldn't have to curse any more. The Dalles: Motherfucker. Portland: Shitkicker. Eureka: Tits. And so forth. It didn't work.

I enjoyed my time in Berkeley. My mom spoiled me for a week. Took me out to dinner and let me eat chicken, bought me candy and a new t-shirt with a batik dinosaur on it, got me a new book for the ride home and sent me on my way. The next time I visited her was later that same year on Maui.

I went for a month and she greeted me at the airport with a kiss and a candy lei. On that trip, I was reading "Forever" by Judy Blume. It was one of Judy Blume's forays into writing for adults, or at least older teens and it had a racy sex scene in it that I read over and over again. I didn't want anyone on the plane to know I was reading such a taboo novel, so I actually hid my teeny-bopper book behind the spine of a comic book.

My time in Hawaii was a challenge for my mom and me. I was in between being a boy and being a woman - I still dressed and looked like a boy, but I was just beginning to get interested and excited by sex. I read a lot of Judy Blume and was beginning to get crushes on boys. At the same time, I refused to wear a girl's bathing suit at the beach in Hawaii. We had an enormous fight over that one. I won. I wore trunks and read Judy Blume on the beach. Go figure.

My mom and I spent a lot of time at the beach. She bought me a boogie board which i used to scrape myself silly under the surf. She taught me to play solitaire and peeled my back after i got my first nasty sunburn. I spent a month living with and fighting with her and continuing to despise Akul. I also learned about tsunamis and combined that with my already disturbing preoccupation with death. To this day, I have nightmares about oncoming tidal waves.

After all the chicken and candy I could stand, I couldn't wait to get back to Sarv and the Ranch. I wouldn't visit my mom again until I was nine and would go live with her in Venice.

Fear and loathing in Antelope

There came a time when the kids were still exiled at Antelope that the word came down from on high that the world was ending. We were told to expect nuclear holocaust at some undetermined future date and that we would be chosen to survive and that, of course, we would build caves in which to live. I'm pretty sure several religious cults have had this same notion, but at age 8, this was the first I'd heard of it.

They began to fill our heads with visions of horror. First, I remember them reading a book to us. It was written from the point of view of a young girl who had survived the attacks on Hiroshima, but who now had leukemia and was dying. They told us to prepare. Finally, the thing that pushed this 8-year-old psyche over the edge, was the movie "The Day After". They often showed us movies, bootlegged copies of various VHS tapes that they'd managed to score, but they were usually flicks like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "the Incredible Mr. Limpet". Maybe not all appropriate for children, but none scary and usually funny.

Anyway, we were told to meet at the cafeteria to see a movie. We were told we didn't have a choice, it was required. We had been paired with "big brothers" or "big sisters" and it was their job at this time to make sure their charges sat through this movie. So, we unwittingly piled into the sitting hall at the cafeteria and gathered to watch this movie. As I remember it, it was about World War III and the aftermath of nuclear winter. All I remember is the sight of people's bodies being vaporized into ash. I was terrified. Mouna and I spent most of the movie hiding in fear in the bathroom together. It was awful. After that, I became obsessed with death.

I began to think about death constantly. I worried that Sarv would die. Then I worried that I would die and Sarv wouldn't survive without me. Then I wondered what happened to me when I died. Then I worried that I would never kiss a boy or get my period before I died (I was reading a lot of Judy Blume books at the time). I do think that it was a little weird that I was so constantly obsessed with death at such a young age, but being Jewish by birth anyway, I think it was in my genes.

Soon after the constant end-of-the-world hype, all the talk about it disappeared. It was like they realized, OK maybe the end of the world is coming, maybe it's not, but lets get back to the business of living. In any case. no caves were built and no further plans were made for our survival. I guess they decided that the shit had been sufficiently scared out of us.