by Dreams End » Sat Aug 06, 2005 1:17 pm
Okay, I don't even know what to call this topic so it may just die but I just remembered an aspect to a story I've told here.<br><br>I mentioned in another post that when I was in high school I worked to help start a youth activist group. It was a formative experience in my life and many involved in that effort went on to do wonderful things.<br><br>What I didn't know until later is that the adult advisors to that group were part of the "Communist Workers Party" and were doing this as part of an overall plan to "take center stage' (i.e. become more visible and mainstream...that's another story as it got a little weird.) Anyway, these adults were, first and foremost, concerned about youth development and never pushed their agenda on us, which is how I didn't find out about it until much later. The youth group was "activist" but not even really leftist...more concerned with youth rights, drunk driving, etc.<br><br>My senior year in high school a new student started. His name is rather generic, so I'll just use it: John. John was smart but not very adept socially. He was a rather devout catholic, but seemed actually to enjoy talking about atheism vs Christianity. <br><br>For some reason, I got along with John okay. We even worked on a project on the crusades together for a world history class. He actually had (or maybe his parents?) just about all the Will and Ariel Durant history books and we used those as source material.<br><br>John, however, took an odd turn. He started getting annoying, to the point that my girlfriend and I began acting pretty rudely toward him to get him to go away. Once, my mom overheard such an interaction and was very upset at me for my rudeness to him. However, after he came to my house (uninvited) one time to watch that miniseries on life after nuclear war called "the Day After" (anyone remember that?)and kept whining about why there was no portrayal of the church in that movie and generally being his annoying self, my mom said to me later, "I don't want him in this house ever again."<br><br>As I think about it, it's actually a little odd she reacted THAT strongly, and it goes to my point that he somehow provoked a stronger reaction than his annoying behaviors would seem to on their own merits.<br><br>Okay, I don't have the chronology of this down at all, but anyway, he had some obsession with me. He tried to get my girlfriend's sister to go out with him, for example. The creepiest thing in this regard was the following:<br><br>John was telling me about some psychological issues he was having (I'm going to save the specifics till the end...just for fun). I suggested he see our school counselor. He did so, and I asked how it went. Fine, he said, only when she asked him what he'd been doodling over and over again as they talked, he looked down and discovered it had been my name, written repeatedly.<br><br>Okay, that's weird on its own, but when I mentioned it to the counselor, she said, "That never happened...I don't know what he's talking about." <br><br>Well...okay...still...this could so far be explained by maybe a gay crush he couldn't deal with. I guess.<br><br>At some point that year John started talking about Marxism and communism. He even gave me the first book I ever had by Karl Marx (a collection of letters, I think.) I didn't know anything about Marx at all, and my views of communism were the usual stereotypes. I didn't know why he was giving me this book.<br><br>He then started spreading rumors about me. I was kinda high profile as student council president so people knew me and this behavior seemed deliberate. He told people I'd been drunk at a party for example. I was a pretty big anti-drug and alcohol advocate at the time, so this was kinda damning. It also wasn't true. When I confronted him about it, he simply said, "Oh, I didn't say I saw you "messed up" at a party...I said I saw you at a party and your "tie was messed up."<br><br>Hmmm....<br><br>Are you putting this together yet? He follows me around anytime he can, tries to date my girlfriend's sister, spreads disinformation about me and gives me books on marx before I had any idea that I was, in fact, working with communists. <br><br>After I got to college, I'd learned about the communist ideology of our youth group leaders and I actually joined the CWP. However, no one, except my girlfriend, knew about this.<br><br>Not long after that, my mom called me at college to say that John had called her. I hadn't spoken to him since high school. He had told her I'd joined the communist party and he was worried about me. My mom said that if that made me happy, that was fine but she thought the call was weird. I denied the communist party claim to her on a technicality (it was the communist workers' party, after all!) but immediately called my girlfriend (ex, by then.) She swore she hadn't said anything, but maybe she had.<br><br>I've always assumed that John was simply working for the local police...maybe a family member or friend was a cop and connected with John to help monitor me. He may have thought he was actually helping me on some level. <br><br>However, I had forgotten one element of the story until just now. This story would be far more interesting if I could remember the details, but when John told me, I dismissed it as simply John being his weird self.<br><br>The psychological problems he was having that led to the counseling sessions had to do with repeated (I think) visitations by glowing, gold entities. I think he actually saw them in his back yard, but I really don't remember. I think he may have interpreted them as angels, but I don't think he really had a pat explanation for it and he was rather confused. Though maybe he was just testing my reaction...who knows. <br><br>It could simply be that he was helping out the local "red squad" and the psychological issues were a side issue and unrelated. Or maybe he had gotten roped into some hypnotic MKULTRA thing and didn't even know he was working for them...I don't know. I just know that he had really weird energy...parasitic...you know..the kind that bring you down just by being near? <br><br>And, of coure, the irony is that the person who may have been tasked with monitoring the "communist" actually gave me the first book I had ever read that started me on that path. Or maybe he was SUPPOSED to push me that way. Who the hell knows. <p></p><i></i>
