(part 150) LIKE DOC HOLLIDAY: TROUBLE

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It was a toss-up as to who was more to blame for most of my troubles: Me, for doing what I did, or those who had screwed and twisted me into becoming the way I was. Some of both, I reckoned.

I knew in my gut that I would have been a lot different if someone had been fair with me, but such was not the case, so I'd taken that fact, as I understood it, to the max with my piss-poor reactions to this perceived injustice.

It would've made sense if I could have gotten some real help, or any help for that matter, along the way, but I never did. I just kept living through each crisis, and then added more to the growing pile of sad and humiliating experiences.

In the music business, unless you're making money, or making it for someone else, you're treated like a piece of meat. It's kind of like being a whore; when you're in demand they treat you good, but if demand falls off you're pushed out the back door like yesterday's news.

That was me, yesterday's news, and in the minds of some, no news at all. I hadn't been in demand for a long time, but I had the irritating habit of refusing to go away. In my mind I was still Bobby Jameson, and that meant something, good or bad. I was hard to ignore.

* * *

As a kid I always felt like I was someone. Not just another boy on the block, but someone that something big was going to happen to, and then, I believed, everybody would finally get it. In 1964 that happened, and everybody did get it, including me.

* * *

When you actually live in the sort of environment I had, it's not so easy to walk away from it and go back into obscurity. This was my problem.

I'd been told, in so many words over time, by a lot of arrogant assholes, to go away and become nobody again. My response to this was, I simply refused. Right or wrong, I knew I could not go back to where I'd come from and so I never had plans to try.

When I got out of Camarillo, I learned for the first time that the hospital had tried to get my mother to have me committed, and she'd refused.

The thing that really got to me was how hard these people had tried to rid themselves of Bobby Jameson, no matter what they had to do to accomplish it.

It was one thing to get arrested for acting like an asshole, but a whole other level to be committed to a state hospital for it, and that's what the authorities had tried to do to me.

It scared me in a way I had never had to deal with before, and in the end proved to be yet another deadly piece of my ever accumulating personality puzzle and outrageous attitude.

As I fought to understand myself, I ended up with the same realization which was, "If I hadn't gotten fucked so many times by these pricks, I wouldn't act like this."

It didn't matter to me who agreed with me or not, then or now. This is what I believed, and it was the driving force behind everything I thought and did from then on.

It never seemed to occur to anyone, who owed me money back then, that when a person is as broke, humiliated, and frustrated as I always was, paying them would have helped. It wasn't because I was hungry for as much money as I could get my hands on, it was about paying my rent and being able to eat.

It always pissed me off that those people never gave it a second thought when I was out on the street looking for a bed to sleep in, or a cheap meal. And when I ended up on buildings doing crazy shit, none of them ever stepped forward except to say, "Well look at him. The fuckin' guy's nut's."

It was my history, my look, and so called talent, to whatever degree, that I used to stay alive. I could always find a lady who wanted me around, or someone who thought they could make money off me.

Even though I was broke, and sometimes homeless, there were always those moments when I made it appear I was doing better than I actually was. Some girl's car, some other girl's apartment, and yet another girl's money. I just acted out a part.

When you put them all on the table at the same time, it looks pretty good from the outside, but in reality I was little more than a cheap hustler in a lot of ways. It's survival. It's what I learned on the streets so I could stick around and not get forced out.

I finally made it to the top of a pile of infamous rejects. "He's talented but fucking crazy," they'd say. It was the prevailing sentiment on the streets of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and beyond.

I now made my position and presence known with all the warmth of Doc Holliday on a bad drunk. If you wanted to bad mouth me, as some did, I'd get into it with you right then and there, and wouldn't give a rat's ass about where we were, or who you were; I'd ceased caring about such things.

I'd degenerated into a hair-trigger has-been, with a fancy for, "Let's get down and do some damage to each other," while I smiled at you and looked like I was having a good time, and in a way I was.

I no longer planned on scaling buildings or towers for attention; my new version of "fuck you" was an in-your-face street fighting mentality, which I'd polished and honed into a fine art, through years of misery and my own survival instincts.

It was all as clear to me as the lyrics of the old Presley song "Trouble," "If you're lookin' for trouble, you came to the right place."

(part 149) ONE FLEW OUT OF THE CUCKOO'S NEST

I couldn't get any real help in Camarillo, and that was my problem. The damage done to by my own actions just kept being compounded by comas, broken bones, drug addiction, and alcoholism. It was this unending collective scarring of my mind, body, and emotions that had taken their toll and landed me here.

Each piece of the problem worked in unison against me to create a truly lost and combative human being. In the state hospital, the need to make me pay for my sins, as it were, against society, outweighed any of my rights to receive real help in dealing with the basis for my past behavior.

Now in a mental hospital setting, I perceived, and rightly so, that the staff was not interested in helping me. They were determined, in fact, to commit me, and thereby be done with me, as well as my antics on the streets of Los Angeles and Hollywood.

This may sound irrational or highly unlikely to some readers, but unless you have been in this situation yourself, you really wouldn't understand.

I had pissed off the authorities for the last time, in their opinion, and they were bound and determined to get rid of me. So as good and fair as we like to believe we are, we at times are too eager to be free of some of society's problems.

The answer was not to help me, but to remove the problem by denying it had a rational cause. They hid from it, and locked me up in hell, with plans to keep me there and off their streets.

These kinds of judgement calls, by those in charge, sometimes cross the line into dehumanization, and are defended by clever rhetoric, twisted moral logic, and self justification.

I brought the trouble down on myself for sure, but it was what caused me to to this in the first place that they had no interest in resolving or understanding.

As my thinking continued to fail me in Camarillo, I ruthlessly held to the one clear thought left in my mind: the medication I was forced to take, had to be limited in some way.

I made myself practice at the water fountain, trying to take liquid into my mouth and not swallow it, while making it appear as though I had when examined.

The next time the meds call came around I put this technique to the test, and although I still swallowed a lot of the pink poison, much of it was concealed around my gums, until I could get away and spit it out.

I'd go to the nurse's station, take the medicine and then quickly move to the water fountain, once they'd checked me.

My theory, even in the state I was in, was that if I could cut down the amount of medicine being introduced into my system, I would slow the progressive march into total darkness, and a guaranteed longer term of forced commitment in the state mental hospital.

Legally at this point, they could only hold me for 72 hours, unless I exhibited some form of dangerous or otherwise bizarre behavior, which I had not, other than the interview where I had stopped talking to the psychiatrist and stenographer.

This is why the doctors had insisted I was suicidal at check-in, and why this God-awful medication was forced on me. They were attempting to make me appear a lot sicker than I was, and in turn could then legally hold me for a longer period of time.

Although I was unaware of it at the time, Carol Paulus, had been trying to contact me at the hospital. She'd been unsuccessful, because she was told she wasn't a family member, so the staff wouldn't let her talk to me.

Finally my mother was contacted by Carol and they got together, and the hospital was forced to give into my mother's demand that some form of communication with me be accomplished immediately, because she was a family member.

That was when I was allowed to talk to them on the phone, and they knew immediately that I was different in a way they'd never heard before. I was nearly incoherent, but still clung to that one clear and concise thought, managing to blurt out, "Bad medication, get me out now!"

Even in the worst of times I had never sounded that way to either of them in the past, so they knew something wasn't right. It was an immediate red flag to both Carol and my mother, and signaled to them that something bad had occurred to cause my now deteriorated condition.

Within hours, both my mother and Carol arrived at the hospital demanding answers from the administration. My mother insisted on seeing me, but was thwarted at first by the staff, who attempted to argue that a visit at this time would possibly make the situation worse.

Upon hearing this, my mother rejected their argument vehemently, and continued to insist that they allow her to see me personally. Faced with this turn of events, the staff at Camarillo, began backing down when my mother asserted herself into the situation in this manner.

She had a very clear line of thought that she adhered to no matter what; it was called principle. If she thought that you had taken an unprincipled and illegal position, she would fight you to the death over it, and in this case that is what she believed was happening.

It was now a face to face, eyeball to eyeball showdown, in which my mother demanded that I be released into her custody. She did not believe the hospital had my best interests in mind, and told them so in no uncertain terms... "What have you done to him?" she demanded.

The various doctors and higher ups got together and had an emergency conference, to assess their position in the now volatile matter before them. Whatever the hospital's position had been in the beginning, the situation was now rapidly changing.

They were stuck on the legal aspects of what my mother was threatening them with, which was to get an attorney, and have me legally removed from their care.

In the final analysis they agreed amongst themselves, that her position, if tested, would be victorious. For the administrators, holding on to me now would be pointless.

With that in mind, Camarillo State Hospital was forced to release me into the custody of my mother, which they did.

You may be thinking I was not in Camarillo long enough for it to be as bad as I am saying here, but my response would be this. If I had not been removed immediately from that God awful place when I was, I would have succumbed to the medication's hold on me, and would have given the hospital all the evidence they needed to hold me for an extended period of time.

Camarillo State Hospital has since been closed, because it became known that what had gone on in there was so far removed from anything acceptable that it could only be partially rectified by doing away with the place once and for all.

* * *

Memories of Camarillo State Hospital: Gail Green

Green, 53, was committed there by her parents in 1966, back when adolescents lived among adults with criminal records, and she stayed institutionalized until 1968. She was 5150-ed (deemed a danger to herself and others) by the state in 1977, and spent the next year at Camarillo State Hospital in a catatonic stupor. "I didn't know where I was when I came out of it," she said. She had one friend, an older woman named Mary who used to drag her into the shade when the mixture of Thorazine and 90-degree heat got too heavy. Then Mary died one day. "My family never came to see me," Green said plainly. "It was as if they forgot about me. I became numb. I thought I'd die here."

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Camarillo State Hospital grounds

(part 148) THE MEDICATION

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Anti-psychotic medication, such as Haldol and Mellaril, can cause psychosis in a person who is not psychotic in the first place. In Camarillo, that was what was happening to me.

A doctor, or doctors, had decided, on some basis, that I should be placed on anti-psychotic medication, which was quickly causing me to become psychotic.

The more I was given, the worse I got. When I say worse, I mean paranoid, beginning to hear things, unable to finish sentences, terror, and a growing inability to keep track of my thoughts.

I would start in on an idea and then forget what I'd been thinking in the first place. I knew it was the medication, and attempted to refuse taking it. I struggled with my words saying, "I don't want it." I labored to repeat myself, "No, I don't want it."

I stubbornly held my ground in front of the nurse's station med window and would not take the medication. The nurse called for staff back-up on a hospital intercom.

In less than a minute, two male orderlies showed up and confronted me in front of the medication window. After checking with the nurse inside about the problem, one of the staff moved toward me and said, "You have to take your medication, Mr. Jameson, those are the rules."

"No," I moaned, "I don't want it." "If you don't take it, we'll be forced to put you in restraints and inject you with it," he said coldly.

I stood there in a growing state of fear, staring at his face, knowing he meant what he said. I was in no shape to fight them or continue to refuse, I was going to lose this battle either way.

I reluctantly reached down and picked up the first paper cup and downed the contents, then the next, followed by the last cup of water washing it all down. I turned and opened my mouth wide so the orderly could verify that I'd swallowed the contents of each cup.

When it was over I slinked away, fearing I was in danger of losing myself altogether into some black hole of terror.

As I waited for the drugs to act, I anticipated the worst. I was not disappointed. They hit me like a Mack truck after fifteen or twenty minutes, and I felt myself sliding deeper into psychosis and the darkness beyond.

I sat huddled against a wall, trying to gather my thoughts, but they evaded me. I sensed that someone was standing right next to me, but when I looked, there was no one there.

I couldn't figure out where to go. I stood up and started in one direction and then stopped and went in the opposite direction. I stopped again, then started, thinking I'd better go the other way. Over and over, until I just broke into tears, trying to remember what I was doing.

Psychosis is the term used in explaining, amongst other things, breaking with reality. The worse the psychosis becomes, the greater or deeper the break will be.

A psychotic person will find it increasingly difficult to respond appropriately to the situation they are in, and in time may break completely away, as if they had disappeared.

As I fought the effects of the medication, I knew I was beginning to lose myself. I was then summoned to a small office by staff. I sat on a wooden chair in a room, along with a male psychiatrist and a female stenographer.

After locking the door, the psychiatrist began speaking to me and asking questions, while the stenographer took down every word. I was trying to answer, but kept losing my place and would start again.

I continued to struggle, and the psychiatrist was saying, "What's wrong with you? Why are you so weak? Answer my question, you weakling."

I began to freak out and started crying. I tried to explain that the medication was doing something to my mind. "The psychiatrist interrupted me saying, "Nonsense, you're lying to me, what's really wrong with you?"

This went on for sometime until I suddenly got a single clear thought about what was taking place in that room. It will take longer to explain it than it took me to think it.

I realized the stenographer was there making a record of each of my answers for legal purposes. I also knew that my answers sounded incoherent, because of the effects of the medication.

These answers would ultimately be used against me in a legal hearing, to ascertain my own competency. I immediately clammed up. I would not say another word.

Even in the dim recesses of thought I still possessed, I had correctly figured out the purpose at hand. The medication's effects had been anticipated to do this to me, by whomever had prescribed them for the purpose I just described--to use my own confused words against me.

I knew I had to lessen the amount of drugs getting into my system. I had won this round, but they'd be back again. Everything was based on the medication. If I continued taking it in the amounts given me, I would eventually be lost, and God only knows where I'd end up then.

I was finally let let out of the room. I fought to keep my mind cognizant of the one reality--the medication, find a way to limit the medication, "Find a way, Bobby," I said to myself, "find a way." I kept repeating it, over and over, as I walked through the dim corridor.

"Find a way Bobby, find a way."

(part 147) CAMARILLO STATE HOSPITAL: Locked Ward

This is exactly where I was...Locked ward Camarillo State Hospital

I don't know why I let the police take me into custody. I didn't even think about making a deal before I gave up. I guess it was the exhaustion and pain I was in at the time, and the feeling of just wanting it to end.

Whatever it was, here I am in the sheriff's van, handcuffed and shackled to the seat, as we pull into Camarillo State Hospital. The place is old and massive. It's architecture Spanish, and it stretches out for countless acres in all directions. It's one of those places that you see for the first time and wonder what the hell goes on in here?

The handcuffs and shackles are removed by a sheriff's deputy. I am then taken out of the van by orderlies and escorted to a check-in facility. In a short time, I am being interviewed by a number of staff psychiatrists.

They question me about being suicidal, and no amount of my denying it will convince them otherwise. They have already made up their minds, and tell me in no uncertain terms, that I am definitely trying to kill myself, whether I know it or not.

I insist I am not suicidal. I say I have been suicidal in the past, but no longer feel like taking my own life. No good! They refuse to accept my version, even though it is accurate.

I am moved to another room after the psychiatric interview where I find a newspaper on a table. I am on the front page of the L.A. Times again. On TV I am the lead story of the evening news.

I sit on a couch in a waiting area, eating my first meal in days, and am transfixed on the television screen as it endlessly rattles on about my day's activities. They show each past episode of me, on the tower and Continental Hotel, and the covers of two of my albums, while one of my records plays in the background.

I stare in silence at the massive coverage, finally breaking down in tears, at the shear magnitude of my now televised insanity. I suddenly flash on where I am and what I've done to get to the state mental hospital this day.

What has happened to me? How could I have fallen so far and ended up here? What have I gained? I am now a caricature of my former self, drowning in the demoralizing reality of my own craziness. What have I done to my life? The picture before me is pathetic and bleak, to say the least.

A couple of orderlies come in to take me to a ward somewhere on the extensive grounds of the hospital. I am given no information about where I am being taken or what kind of treatment, if any, I will receive.

The orderlies are closed-mouthed and meticulous, as they guide me about in silence. Soon enough we approach the entrance to my building.

There are open wards, where you can come and go freely, and there are locked wards, where you are not free to do anything except obey the rules. I am put in one of the locked wards. Even though I am a threat to no one, including myself, they put me in here.

Once inside, I am cut off from the rest of humanity. On entering this surreal world, I am struck by the grotesque feeling of desperation and terror that clings to every surface in this building.

The history of the place, and it's past horrors, scream out from the walls, begging for mercy that never comes. It takes no intelligence to recognize that this is purely a part of hell on earth.

The sheer darkness and rabid spirit that nests here would be apparent to a dead man. Bodies wander aimlessly up and down the long dark corridors, until they literally run out of space. They bounce like caroms off the walls and dead-ends, only to return again to their endless wandering.

The staff regards most of these as less than human, and treats them like animals. I watch, as men with large leather belts around their waists and their wrists, chained and buckled to those belts, stumble forward like lost zombies in a perpetual state of slow motion.

Within minutes, the smell begins to turn my stomach, as the stench of urine, feces, and vomit hang in the air. I stand in awe of the wretched scene before me, realizing that I, too, am an inmate in hell.

I am ordered to the nurse's station, and told to give my name and receive my medication. "What medication?" I ask. "Just go there and give them your name," comes the response.

I do as I am told, and hope whatever they give me will make me feel better and put me to sleep. So exhausted am I by now, that I offer no resistance of any kind. I am too tired to fight or try and get answers to my many questions, I am just too tired.

At the window, I give my name, and a hand pushes three small paper cups at me. Pills in one, a pink liquid in another, and water in the third. I am told to take the pills and drink the pink stuff, and then wash it all down with the water, which I do. I am ordered to open my mouth wide to prove I have swallowed it all.

An orderly then takes me to a small room and to my waiting bed, which I long to crawl into. I remember drifting off to the muted sounds of voices, the clanking of keys and doors in the distance, and occasional rambling of lost souls.

I awake with a jolt, to the sound of a loud electric buzzer screeching through the dim gray of morning. I feel lost and afraid, and am quickly engulfed by a murky sense of dread.

"Something is different," I think to myself, "something is terribly wrong." I am not able to collect my thoughts as I normally do. They are jumbled and erratic inside my head. "The drugs," I think, "What did they give me?"

(part 146) THE ART OF FORCE

LA'S FILLED
WITH NAMES AND FACES
DON'T FORGET
I KNOW THOSE PLACES
TIME CAN HEAL
WHEN LEFT ALONE
DON'T WAKE THE MONSTER
IN HIS HOME

I HUNTED ON
THOSE LA STREETS
KNEW THE STRONG
AND KNEW THE WEAK
I TASTED BLOOD
AND LIVED ON PAIN
I DINED ON THOSE
WITH SHIT FOR BRAINS

LOADED WORDS
LIKE LOADED GUNS
ARE SOMETIMES NOT
FOR USE AS FUN
YOU CHALLENGE ME
FROM HIDING PLACE
LET ME GET
INTO YOUR FACE

TELL ME WHERE
YOU'D LIKE TO MEET ME
TOUCH MY SKIN
AND MEET AND GREET ME
NOTHING THAT
YOU'VE EVER KNOWN
WOULD BE LIKE
MEETING ME ALONE

COME MY FRIEND
AND TELL ME WHERE
I PROMISE YOU
I WILL BE THERE
AND WHEN WE SPEAK
AND TELL OUR LIES
I'LL WATCH WHILE FEAR
FILLS UP YOUR EYES

YOU AND SMALLNESS
LIKE YOU MATTER
ONLY WHEN
YOU GLOAT AND CHATTER
HIDING IN
YOUR CLOSET SWEET
LIFE IS DANGEROUS
ON THE STREET

DARKNESS RIDES
A PALE HORSE
IT'S RIDER KNOWS
THE ART OF FORCE
A SKILL UNKNOWN
TO THOSE UNTRAINED
WHO FEAR
THE VERY THOUGHT OF PAIN

Robert Parker Jameson

(part 145) STILL ALIVE

Continental Hyatt House

The street erupted below, as I clung motionless to the bottom of the steel frame. I did not fight the situation by moving unnecessarily, for fear of breaking the awning frame loose from the soft stucco wall, and sending me to my death.

I focused like a laser on what I was doing, knowing full well I had a single opportunity to succeed. Gathering all of my strength, I pulled myself up as far as I could, and hooked my right arm over the the bottom part of the framework at my arm pit.

From this position, I was able to leverage the rest of my body up into the waiting erector-set of steel. I continued eyeing the fasteners, securing the framework to the wall, hoping they would hold just a little longer, while I pulled my body to safety.

The roof of the structure that held the framework I was on, was two to three feet above me now, and I cautiously moved toward it, until my hands reached the top edge. With my heart pounding, I slid on my belly onto the rooftop and safety.

I looked back over the side, and could see the TV cameraman inside the window below, still pointing his camera at me. With one last wave, I disappeared from his view.

Twelve stories down, the crowd was going crazy, wildly cheering my acrobatic antics, and showing their complete appreciation. Relieved I was still alive, I stood up and raised my arms in the air, as a salute to my conquest, and acknowledgment to those below.

I then sat down and laid back on the roof, exhausted, wondering how many more times I would put myself into these insane positions, and for what? I knew if I continued to test the limits, at some point I would end up dead or seriously maimed as a result.

I quickly brushed off the thought and pulled myself back up into a standing position. The pain in my feet and ankle seared through my consciousness, and I knew I couldn't continue this for much longer. I moved to the edge of the roof I was now on, and looked down on the patio and pool area.

It was crammed full of police and fire rescue workers, rushing around looking confused and unsure of where I was at that point. They'd obviously heard the crowd yelling down below in the street, but didn't known why. They had not seen me hanging on the steel frame from where they were.

Smiling, as I now made myself visible to them, I yelled out cheerfully, "How's everybody doin' down there?" Responding to the sound of my voice, most of them shook their heads in disgust, looking at me like I was completely fucking nuts.

With the incident on the Tower still fresh in my mind, I decided I had to be able to get off this building alive, and without doing any further damage to myself.

I'd made my point, whatever it was, and now turned my attention towards devising a plan to gracefully and successfully ending the current crisis.

Where I was standing was only ten or twelve feet above the authorities, gathered below in the pool area. I knew could jump down to where they were without any real damage being done to myself.

I figured that jumping down to their location would give them an opportunity to get their hands on me, and would also appear to onlookers, as if I'd been caught by them, thereby putting an end to the incident, which was now my single goal.

As I continued debating with myself over the way I would end the day's craziness, I drifted back to an earlier time when life still held the bright promise of things to come.

* * *

In 1958, in St. Johns, Arizona, my brother Bill and I were getting ready to go on stage at the high school assembly, and sing to the entire student body for the first time. We were still new to the town, and were basically unknown by anyone there.

Coming from Tucson, we'd found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the white Mormons on one side, and the Indians and Mexicans on the other. There was a deep racial line dividing this place, and Bill and I were standing on it.

As I heard our names being announced to the crowd, I wondered how in the hell I'd gotten us into this mess. We stepped from behind the curtain of the auditorium's stage and up to a microphone.

I looked out on the hostile faces staring up at us, as Bill started playing his guitar. He'd launched into the chords of Little Richard's "Jenny, Jenny, Jenny," which was one of our best songs.

My terror quickly dissipated, as the sound of my own voice came booming out through the school's PA system. I looked out at the now totally surprised and approving faces of the whole student body moving in their seats to the pounding rhythm of Jenny, Jenny, Jenny.

At that moment I knew exactly who I was and what i was supposed to do, and my heart was filled with joy and the power of music. An hour later, Bill and I had become overnight sensations in the little northern Arizona town of St. Johns.

* * *

I smiled to myself, as the thoughts of the high school assembly, so many years before, faded into the electricity of the day, and the current situation. I stood on the edge of the roof sizing up the distance, and then jumped into the waiting crowd of police.

What I didn't know, as the crowd of law enforcement surrounded me, was how fed up the West Hollywood Sheriff's Department had become with my antics and the drain on their resources and time.

Rather than ending the day's giant public happening positively, and without injury, I was being arrested, handcuffed, and transported to Camarillo State Hospital.

I soon found myself in the grip of an angry group of cops, who were determined to have me, not only locked up, but put away, and this would prove to be one of the most frightening experiences I'd yet to encounter.