Audio Interview, Mike, 1974

MIKE: Well, I like to combine both my great loves, say,

the ability I guess I seem to have of pushing myself

and consistently moving and doing all the different things

I like to do.

Ride the ride, I keep on the move and order everything

and straighten everything out like that in the plant

like I'm doing now like that.

I do a lot more than I have to do there.

That's why I got to where I am so fast because I just

did it naturally.

You know?

INTERVIEWER 2: You mean when you first got the job,

you were doing more than what you had to do?

MIKE: Yeah, that's why I am where I am now.

I was three months on production line.

Then I joined the management and worked in the lab.

And I took their lab and I put it

in the best shape it was ever in.

It's no bullshit.

That's what I did.

Everything was at my fingertips.

So all I was doing all day was sitting there.

Four hours, I would just sit there in the chair.

INTERVIEWER 2: You mean before it was disordered,

and you put it in order so that you could just sit down.

MIKE: So I could just sit there like that.

And they really ate that up.

I just did it naturally.

And so they just put me in charge of all these people

to do the same thing.

And I know what's going to happen eventually

is that I'm going to be sitting there like four hours

a day again doing nothing.

And I really enjoy doing that.

And the prestige and everything that comes along with it.

And what I want to do is take that with my art

and do that with my art.

So I mean, instead of working with two separate things, put

the time in on the art and then, what, you've

got four hours to do that.

And then put the four hours to combine them both.

And have them move like that together,

like taking the urge to--

I can't put a name on it and put my finger

on exactly what it is that makes me do those, that thing.

I don't know if it's prestige.

I think it's got to go deeper than that though.

And that's got to be inside some kind of feeling.

I don't know.

I haven't pinpointed it yet.

I don't know if it's prestige.

Maybe it's just joy that people come to you

when they want something done.

They like something like that.

Or doing it myself because I know the better way.

I really enjoy that, I do.

And I like to combine those two with poetry and writing.

I think if I do that, I'm really going to be satisfied.

And that's why I like to get a (unintelligible).

See, there's one thing, there's another thing.

(Mike laughs)

I make a lot of dollars right now,

more than I can use right now.

And it's laying around doing nothing.

What I'd like to do in the future,

this is, you know, one of those--

I'd like to build a center.

Not a center, I don't know what you'd call it.

Just a gallery, an art gallery with a stage, with a stage

show for plays and things like that.

And with movies and everything like that for all these artists

who don't have a place to show their stuff.

Just like to bring it there for nothing and just have it there.

I'd like to get some land for my own house

and actually to live on it, but I'd

like to put shacks out in back so young writers

if they wanted to and have no money, they just come there

and live.

They won't be charged anything.

They just could come there and write their art, right?

Do their art.

And they wouldn't be under any pressure

like they can get drunk any time they wanted to

and have a good time.

And just do that.

You know?

See, if I got this need to work and make dollars,

I might as well do like I said, combine both of it

again and do that.

Because that would really give me a lot of pleasure.

INTERVIEWER 1: Make money writing rather than?

MIKE: Well, if I can't do it that way, at least

maybe I could help someone else who can do it that way.

Progress and not have all that shit

there to have to go through to make dollars to live.

They could just come there and do it.

Put out stuff like that.

And I'd really like to do that.

It would really make me feel good to know

all those people are out there creating

and I'm able to let them do that, cut the stress off.

I really I felt like I was under a lot of pressure, possibly.

Which isn't actually true because I was never

forced into working like that.

But I feel like since, I'd like to do that for a couple people

like that.

I like that.

Have the big thing, everybody come over

and a guy shows films to just people

because he wanted to make them like that.

Like what he gets.

It's really hard for artists to get serious, really serious

artists to show their work.

Who sees it?

Where do you go to be discussed, let's say.

But if something like that would happen,

I feel like maybe people would come and listen and look.

Especially if it was on a larger scale

than say the galleries in Buffalo are.

For a writer, where are you going to go?

Like who wants to know you if you don't have six books out?

(Mike laughs)

You could be saying a lot more than everybody else,

but what are you going to do?

It's really hard to show your work like that.

So I'd like to give someone, give people

that chance to do that.

And that would really make me feel good.

INTERVIEWER 2: Thanks (unintelligible).

I want to get back to (unintelligible) in Vincent

and stuff like that.

How you feel about trying to--

or how do you go about trying to get a relationship now?

I mean, you talked about before going into bars.

We were talking about how we go into bars

and try to say hello to someone, get a relationship going.

How do you feel that you go about it now?

Is it any different than it was really before?

MIKE: See, before I would come off as the image,

you know, as a loud, clown, asshole, the fool,

devil may care.

I'd come off like that.

And that would turn a lot of people off.

They think that's cool, but who wants to know this guy?

(Mike laughs)

Right?

I know who he is, that's him there,

but I don't want to know him really like that.

So I just try right now is just to,

if I feel like asking some woman something, I'll just ask her.

And then you pick up the stuff back and forth.

I haven't been able to put it in real practice yet.

I've had opportunity yet being that I'm

doing all these other things, yet to go out with new people

and try it out like that.

INTERVIEWER 2: What do you mean?

What do you want to try out again?

MIKE: I mean, let's say being more myself.

See I haven't gone out to places like--

we used to go to Gilligan's, it's Uncle Sam's now.

INTERVIEWER 1: I see.

MIKE: I haven't gone out to places like that

and see how I'll react.

If I'll fall back in the same trap or what.

So this is one thing I'd like to do, is just to go out there

and see how I react.

Because then that's the only way I will be able to measure it.

But I feel like I'm more myself than I ever was probably

in my whole life now.

And I don't feel like I'm totally there yet.

INTERVIEWER 2: Do you feel that even though-- what

we were talking about before, at the bar

you really set out to meet someone even though that you

are more yourself, that it might even

be more frustrating because now it's

like a different role or a different game

that you have to play.

MIKE: No.

Because you see before, I would have to go in there

and fool around.

And then you always find a friend, right,

who's got a friend who's got a friend.

And like I've said before, this is my friend Sally.

Holy fuck, you cocksucker.

[Mike laughs] No, I don't want to do that.

No.

I just say, "How you been?"

You know, "Hi."

Instead of sitting there--

just saying hi is a lot different than screaming out.

That's that asshole over there who's making all the noise,

wasn't it?

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER 1: Did you really say obnoxious things to people

that you just met?

MIKE: Oh yeah.

Me and Denny were really obnoxious. (Mike laughs)

It's Paul, you know, we were really

obnoxious towards everybody.

I don't know why.

We were afraid of all the people.

I don't know.

It's so strange though.

We were obnoxious, outward.

We just went out of our way to be nasty,

obnoxious, to old women and things like that.

Oh, it really tore them up.

And just things that you don't have to do just to like,

here I am.

Look at me, I'm over here in the line.

INTERVIEWER 2: Well, I remember-- but in high school

though, it was a lot of stuff was outside.

But in high school it was pretty chaotic.

MIKE: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER 2: And so how did you

feel about the relationships between--

I mean (unintelligible) it seemed

like no one tried to get too many relationships going

in school for some reason.

I'm just curious about why you didn't, what

were your reasons for not?

Because Jay and I or any of those

people really didn't go out with too many people

who were in our school.

MIKE: No.

Me neither.

You mean like with women or with men?

Or with the whole thing?

INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah, just what were your relationships?

MIKE: I think in high school, our group

was like neighborhood, first of all.

It was a neighborhood group.

The guys you hung around with in the neighborhood,

the guys you rode the bus home with, the guys

you snuck a smoke on the bus with and like that.

So those are the guys you hang around with.

And since you know these guys, like hung around with them,

naturally the peer group has their own ideas of what's what.

And everybody else is wrong.

And that's what our group was really like,

was really into that.

It was really nice too because when I got to know Denny,

we both came out together at one point into beginning to write.

You know?

We both came about it about the same time,

beginning to write like that.

So that made it really nice for me and Denny like that.

And I can remember in lunch that we had starving poets club.

And we'd write there in study hall,

we'd come to lunch like that.

And so we really got to be really close friends like that.

And then when we started hanging around and getting drunk

all the time and sniffing glue like that.

Like I said, we'd sit there at our lunch table.

Our big joke was to say it was the Richmond gang was like,

I could just see them.

They go out, ten guys in a car, buy a pack of beer

and all get drunk. (Mike laughs) Then

they'd go shoot pool, play pea-knuckle.

What jerks those guys are, man.

And that's when I would say-- we don't

want to associate with them and they don't hang around

on the street.

You come up to them, the first thing we'd do is act bizarre,

do something off the wall.

That's the way it was.

Scream or insult somebody.

We wanted to be there I guess at that time.

Then we had the big chorus in school.

We'd sing out, we'd knock out everybody like that.

INTERVIEWER 2: How did you feel, though,

when Gabriel and all those guys?

Those were like the hard dudes.

MIKE: The jocks?

INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah.

MIKE: We laughed at them.

Man, we couldn't--

INTERVIEWER 2: But, like, in a way,

they were the image that you were trying to put out,

but in a different way.

They just didn't come out in clothes.

Right?

MIKE: That's true, yeah.

Very true.

I don't know.

Well, we all had the body for sports at that time.

It was really nice.

I was a really good runner at that time.

And somehow for some reason, I don't know.

I just never got into the sports thing.

And it seemed like those-- say the jocks were into the sports

thing.

And since they were into it, it was even more of a thing

to stay out of it like that.

And I really enjoyed running at that time.

I really liked to run.

Then hanging around with everybody

and I started smoking and drinking.

And all of a sudden, why do that when you

can hang around and look cool?

Why put that work in like that?

So we didn't show it.

And plus, I had the feeling they didn't like us

because we went around maybe.

I don't know, maybe it was mutual fear.

When you come down to think of it,

they were afraid to get near us and we were also afraid

of going near them.

Now I think of it, I think that's

what it really must have been, something like that.

Weirdos, we were over there, look at them weirdos.

What a bunch of assholes.

And they were over probably doing the same thing,

saying look at those assholes there.

So it must have been some kind of mutual fear like that.

As far as women in our high school, I'd say my high school.

No one in our group had girlfriends in our high school.

Or not really.

Not say a boy and girlfriend were hand

in hand in the hall like that.

INTERVIEWER 2: There's only a few Jacobians or something.

MIKE: But that was in your group though.

With my friends, it was totally alien like that.

Mostly, for a great part like that.

I don't know why that happened like that.

We had other women outside of our school

who were in other high schools.

So I don't know why we didn't strike up or really get down

into talking outside of our groups like that.

Maybe it's because we were so much into ourselves,

into our images.

I think everybody has that.

I think we, our group had it like that.

Our neighborhood guys and Denny hanging around with us.

We were really into the--

we had it programmed, me and Tootsky.

He had big brother and big brother was Walden bums.

So we were going to be like that too because that's what we saw.

So that's what we wanted to be too.

And since anybody who wasn't there wasn't there, why would

you want to know them guys and clowns, assholes, whatever.

So yeah.

That's why I think a lot of things fell apart over there.

There were so many little groups.

Everybody had their own little group and was it.

Anybody coming into the group was an alien.

And the first thing you did to an alien

was cut the alien down one way or the other.

Insult him, beat him up, drive him out.

No idea why.

We might be wrong. (Mike laughs) And I could handle that.

Our group was really--

it was an interesting thing, an interesting experience

like that.

Because we were supposed to be all really

hard guys like that (pause) and hang around like that.

And most everybody-- there weren't really rough people

there.

In our group, we didn't seem tough.

We didn't seem bizarre or anything like that.

We were just doing what was natural.

But it wasn't natural, because it was all this put

on stuff like that.

I don't know why we never had interactions with the peer

groups like that.

INTERVIEWER 1: Why don't you talk about this group

that we've had here?

How do you feel about this group?

Like some of the exercises we went through.

Why don't you talk about how you felt when we had that hugging

situation between everybody?

Because I remember you had a long thing about that right

after we got done doing it.

MIKE: Well, after we had the--

what I wanted to do is--

I came into this group I still had a lot of these pressures

on me.

I didn't know were interacting on me.

I was falling away.

I may have reached this point that I

am at now in another year without the group.

Maybe even longer than that, or shorter, I can't say.

But this was like a slap in the face in school for me.

Especially in the first meeting when

Pete Sloan said, "I read the TA book,

I knew what everything meant."

And here Pete just explained it to everybody.

And Pete Sloan comes up and says,

"Mike acts out of his child a lot."

Boom!

I got slapped in the face.

I felt myself almost going red with embarrassment

that I actually was doing that.

And that's what it was continuously

for our first several meetings like that.

People keep showing me things that I was doing.

I keep getting slapped in the face like that

and feel really dumb for doing these things.

INTERVIEWER 2: Why don't you explain

what were the things that were being slapped in your face?

MIKE: Well, like I said that first meeting really shocked me

when people said Mike acts like coming out

of this child state a lot.

I knew what I was doing when I was doing that.

But I didn't realize, somehow I never

realized that I was coming off that way to other people.

When someone said that to me, this

was in the group seriously, and otherwise--

INTERVIEWER 2: These are the guys you hung around with.

They were forced to keep up the image

and they were telling you.

MIKE: These were like that.

And he was saying, look at what you're doing.

And then from there, I started really thinking

about that kind of stuff.

And I've come a long way.

And I know I've come a long way.

I'm the only one who can feel that, but I know.

It's one of those things you can't say,

I've come like two feet.

I know.

In a lot of ways I hadn't moved yet,

but some things have gone so far that it

would've taken another year, maybe two years, maybe never.

I could see myself going on, living the same way,

living the same half dream, like Annubis.

Not the total-- not with the black t-shirt

and the skull and that, but having that in the head.

And trying to live that thing out.

And I can see myself doing that.

And I'm glad.

That's one reason I'm really for this.

Because it did so much for me, just making me

see these things that I never saw before.

And with this group at the same time, I talked to that preacher

and he's turned me onto a lot of things.

He saying the same thing we're saying.

But he's saying it with different words.

INTERVIEWER 2: What do you think that we're saying?

Or think that we did say?

MIKE: Well, we're saying get to know yourself.

Just be yourself.

No matter what that is, be yourself, what all.

If you don't want to do something, don't do it.

If you want to do something, do it.

Be in harmony with everything like that.

What the preacher said is he started

talking about God to me.

And I'm getting this from him and faith and everything

like that.

And all he was saying was know yourself and be in harmony

with yourself.

To me, God is nature.

Tree is God.

And he's saying the same thing.

He was saying the same thing like that.

So all these things coming together

like that have helped me see what I actually am

and trying to put myself back on track of just being myself,

or trying to be myself as best as I can.

Just not let little silly things that

really aren't true-- things that aren't true,

believing them for the truth.

And not say, I think it's really bad

to have dirty books laying around the house.

That's filthy and garbage and shit like that.

And it really isn't filthy and garbage.

Everybody wants to know what that looks like.

Right?

So you're fourteen-years-old, you get the book out.

(Mike laughs) Yeah, yeah.

It's really a shame that people have to hide that kind of shit.

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you go through raw stages of really

being frustrated with things because you hadn't met--

or you were masturbating?

Are those things-- I mean--

MIKE: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER 2: --did your mom like really put a lot of guilt

on that?

MIKE: Yes.

The whole thing like that was, the whole sexual thing

was, it was alien.

You don't fuck women.

You don't fuck.

You don't masturbate.

You don't touch your cock.

You don't put your finger in your ass. (Mike laughs)

You don't do nothing like that.

That's unheard of.

So I had a lot of guilt feelings about that.

I remember one time abstaining for six months

because I felt it was a habit.

And it was a bad habit.

So I just abstained from any orgasm outside

of an occasional wet dream.

And I didn't touch it.

(Mike laughs) Had a wet dream last night.

Yeah, I'll remember this one for about three nights.

I can remember like, doing that.

And that's even more frustrating to have to not masturbate

when you want to, man.

And I said, I can't remember.

I finally said, "Oh, fuck it, man.

I must be crazy, but I don't give a shit."

(laughter)

It was just too much pressure.

INTERVIEWER 2: Right.

Right.

MIKE: Who cares, really?

And those things were just put in my head.

And they weren't true.

And it's so fucked up, the shitty job that she did.

And that I really have to say, she did a lousy job

as far as that goes.

But what I'm trying to do is find out now if I feel like--

I talk to her a lot now more where I never did before.

You know?

That's one thing that I've been able to do

more of that I can tell.

I'm able to talk more with people

about what really is instead of the how's the weather line

today.

What do you think of the weather line?

So really get down in there.

And I really enjoy that.

What I'm trying to do now is figure out why--

she had a reason for telling me these things like that.

I would like to know why, what made her think that--

apparently she must think sex is bad too.

You see, my mother and father, I was four-years-old

and my mother left my father with me.

Then I was thirteen or so when they lived together for nine

months and then he left again.

And all this time I had grandma and grandpa there.

And my aunt was consistently there all the time.

Somehow I get the feeling that looking over

my mother's sisters and brothers like that,

that somehow my grandmother must have drilled into them somehow

that that's bad.

Or is there something wrong with that if you enjoy sex.

That's all I can figure out, is it must

be something along that line.

Because all her sisters have fucked up relationships

with their husbands.

And it's true.

INTERVIEWER 1: It shows something.

MIKE: It shows something.

And I said, this ain't by mistake.

Something's gone there.

And it is not going to happen to me.

I'm not going to fall into the same trap.

So that's what I'm trying to figure out, is why.

And she's starting to open up a lot now.

When I talk to her now, she says, "Yeah, there's

a lot of things I wish I hadn't done."

But she hasn't yet come to say specific yet.

And when I feel she says, yeah.

It's like hard to think that your mother might have had sex

and not been married like that.

I'm waiting for something to come out.

Because I feel like eventually it will.

And it's really going to be a breakthrough for her.

I feel like she learns a lot through me like that,

just by being more open with it.

And I found out a lot of things.

Just by talking to her, I found out

that she saw me going through these changes

and abusing my body with alcohol and she never said anything.

She says, "Yeah, I was so worried and I was sick."

She actually said that she was sick seeing me come home

every night and falling all over the place.

And it really amazed me.

How could my mother care?

That's another thing, nobody cares about me.

I might as well not care about myself too.

In actuality she never said to me, I give a shit.

Why are you doing this?

Anything like that.

There was some big communication breakdown there.

It was just due to myself, totally.

Because she was always open there.

But I was the one who backed away for some reason.

I don't know.

INTERVIEWER 1: Well, you said before when you were real young

she put you in bad positions.

MIKE: Yeah, that's right.

She put me in bad positions there too.

She was willing to maybe try to help me out

of these bad positions, but I never wanted it.

It's like a running parallel.

Unconsciously, she would put me in these things

and she couldn't understand why I wouldn't come to her

and ask her these things.

I remember when we were talking just a little while ago,

she says "Yeah, I was I was really worried.

I was wondering what was going on every night."

Falling through the door and climbing up the stairs

and running down to the john, throwing up.

And out behind the garage, finding me in the yard.

And she was really worried about that.

But she never said anything.

I never knew.

And I never talked to her before.

Now it's coming around.

I'm ready just to tell everything, say everything

to her.

And I think she knows that.

But she hasn't come across yet with her own self,

and that's what I want to know about.

INTERVIEWER 1: (unintelligible) back, you

were starting to tell a lot about the group,

what the group did, how you felt about the group.

MIKE: Well, this is related to the group.

I'm able to do these things now.

INTERVIEWER 1: Yeah I knew that, but I

meant you were going to start getting

into specific times in the group.

MIKE: Like the first day, or when

the hugging thing happened?

INTERVIEWER 1: Right.

And a couple other of the other instances.

MIKE: Yeah.

Well, first the hugging thing that I tried,

really tried to be as loose and as close

as I could at that time.

I felt like I didn't want to come--

maybe I didn't want to come to the group.

I was afraid.

I think I was being confronted with too much of myself

at that time.

And I really was worried that maybe I shouldn't be here,

maybe I shouldn't come.

Maybe I'd skip out or something like that,

or find some reason not to come.

So I decided to myself since everybody's

pointing these things out to me and they're true,

and I was afraid of it because it was true,

that's why I had thoughts of not wanting to come anymore.

That I had to really get out there and put everything

I had into seeing what other people are actually

seeing of me.

So when we went around hugging that time,

I tried to hug as best as I knew how,

come in contact with the other people

and show them what I meant.

I don't know.

Came off with a shitty grin on my face most of the times

I went around in the circle.

INTERVIEWER 3: I guess most of people in the group knew you.

I don't know how you guys met each other or anything,

how long different people have known each other,

but I didn't know anybody.

And I thought you came across very sincere.

Sometimes to your friends, if you change,

they still expect you to be like you were.

MIKE: Yeah, that's a hassle.

That's really a hassle.

When I meet people I haven't seen for a while.

INTERVIEWER 3: But you seem like you really were trying

to give out with feelings.

MIKE: I hope it came off that way because I was really

trying that day.

INTERVIEWER 3: And in fact, I was very surprised when

people said the opposite thing.

They didn't think you were into it

and they thought it was put on or something.

MIKE: Yeah.

Say, if I would've gone out there the way

that would have been safe for me to go on out there,

I think it would have been safe.

It would be me to jokingly go out

there and fool around and laugh the whole thing off like that.

That would have been like my other self.

I don't want to say that.

My other self, what I thought I was, my image.

Old self?

I don't know.

Whatever word you want to use for it.

So that's what I felt. I really wanted

to get rid of some of this hang up.

And it's going along.

I mean I still get frustrated and tired.

But now when I get frustrated like that

and I feel mean and nasty, as soon as I realize

I got to laugh.

I said wow, do you see what you're really doing then?

You're becoming frustrated over something

that isn't frustrating, that you can do if you want to do it.

It's only you.

All right, so for instance, I was home one Sunday.

It was about two weeks ago.

Maybe three weeks ago, I don't know.

I was fooling around the yard.

And I said, Jesus Christ.

I ain't got no place to go, man.

Fuck.

I'm always laying around.

I feel like I'm chained here.

And then I realized, I said, I have two places to go today

if I want to go.

I'm not chained here.

I'm exiling myself from going out.

Then I started thinking.

I said, I don't really want to go to these two places.

I actually want to be here fooling around in the garden.

But that's the kind of things that went through my head.

Jesus Christ, I got no place to go.

I'm tied here in the house.

I'm tied here.

I'm tied to my home.

And I really wasn't.

And that's the little things like that I've been noticing

over the last few months.

There's little things like that that I tell myself long enough

and I start believing it.

And I found myself talking like that.

And saying Jesus Christ, I got no place to go.

And I said, got a thousand places to go if I wanted to.

I really wanted to be there that day.

And fool around with that.

I didn't get the chance to plant my sunflowers this year.

I got to do that.

Maybe this week.

But those are little things that the group's helped me do.

And those little things, a lot of little things

make one big thing.

And after I got over fearing the group--

we have it every day. (Mike laughs)

I was so pleased with all these things I was seeing.

Like I was waiting to get hit again.

A new thing.

INTERVIEWER 2: More wrenches.

MIKE: More wrenches thrown in the system.

More things that were unconsciously plaguing me,

brought to the surface.

INTERVIEWER 2: Let's talk about some of those things, because I

never really heard your side.

We'd always supposedly throw the wrenches in,

ask you about different things.

Remember when we brought up the one day?

MIKE: The marriage thing.

We were talking about being intense with say, two people.

Two different women.

Being intense with one and then when she was gone,

you could be intense with the other woman like that.

And you could see where that's all

that marriage is, is say the intensity between two people

with a piece of paper or something

along that line like that.

And it seemed to me that that's what marriage was,

was the two people together.

And you come along, but if what about this other woman?

And then I think that could be possible.

There goes my-- there comes the buildings go flying apart.

Everything was so nicely structured to go that way.

And it kind of shocks you that when

you come to say yeah, that's right,

that could happen that way.

See?

I don't know if I'm getting across the right way.

But like that.

The influx of really two ideas like real truth.

I don't know.

I guess I have pretty ordered--

I try to order things without really thinking about them.

Like I'll say, marriage and work and just religion

and everything like that.

I accepted-- and I do.

I know myself.

I realized that way long time ago,

when people say something to me, I believe them.

I don't question it.

So when someone says, buy this kind of wine

it gets you higher than everything else,

I believe that.

Even if I never even tried it or anything like this.

And I never questioned anything.

It just seemed meaningless to question because I believe them

like that.

And I can remember when I was a little boy,

my uncle told me that if a butterfly flies and hits you

between the eyes, you go blind.

If it hits you in the bridge of the nose like that.

And I believed that like for so long.

And then all of a sudden one day I said, shit.

(laughter)

It was just things like that that I believed.

INTERVIEWER 1: That's a good example.

MIKE: I found myself at times telling other people

that if a butterfly-- and I really

believed that if a butterfly hits

you right between the nose, you could go blind.

And I believed that for so long and things like that.

It was so orderly and I never thought about so many things.

Say, two lovers, two intense relationships like that.

It was like,

the brain is clicking away over there and I'm falling apart.

That can't be right.

I thought that was stable.

This is nice over here.

INTERVIEWER 2: That you would just

fall in love with one person.

MIKE: Yeah, and that would be it.

That's the way it is.

I never thought about there could be two people.

INTERVIEWER 2: Or more.

MIKE: Or more.

Maybe five people, ten people, whatever.

And all of a sudden someone says hey,

there goes the little bit that I was saving is gone.

And that's really nice too.

That way I feel--

if you never even thought about that, then even

it could go that way too with one person, one man one

woman, or whatever.

But if you never knew about the other thing,

or never thought about it, you could you

could end up being fucked up.

That's what I like a lot about this group too,

is people say different things.

Say, for that it gives you something to bounce or look

a different way.

INTERVIEWER 1: You have more alternatives.

MIKE: More alternatives.

You don't have to do it this way and you don't have to go crazy

doing it even if you don't want to.

You don't have to be-- like if you're at the office

and you're married and your wife's home, and your

at the office and you look at this woman

and you're falling in love with her and you know it,

you know you don't have to go crazy

saying your girlfriend is home.

Like an example you said, I can really

have a nice friend that (unintelligible) for her.

I remember you saying your friend said

the one woman down the hall could have a really

nice relationship with her.

But Linda back in Buffalo ain't going to like it like that,

so he didn't bother.

Things like that.

I don't know.

I'm looking for a word that I can't find.

INTERVIEWER 2: Words like be here now.

MIKE: Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Something to measure against, because you go

crazy believing all that shit.

I'm losing words.

Questions?

Answers?

I don't know.

I don't know.

INTERVIEWER 1: There's a lot of things

that the group brought up.

I was just thinking about what you were

saying about some other stuff.

If you can think of some stuff we did in the group,

and how do you feel about them now?

INTERVIEWER 2: Well, I remember you were really into--

I don't know, when I first came in you were really into TA.

And sometimes-- well, mostly Satch or I. Most of the time

I was bringing up political stuff

that a lot of people in the group

didn't want to get into it because it wasn't a concern.

We felt that it was a concern.

Like how do you feel about it now since we all

have gone through more talking.

MIKE: I'm going to say yeah, when Peter first

said that I was all for it.

Apparently I was right at the right time

to start thinking about all these things

and changing or taking on other views and stuff like that.

So when he first gave me TA it was

like this is what I was looking for, somehow to find out.

And I was frustrated, I had all these frustrations.