My father never touched me.  Those who say he did are trying to make my allegiance to Charlie Manson seem like the illness of a victim.  I was no more a victim than are all human prisoners of money and the work that poisons our air and water.  My father, with his cruel words and workaholic commitment to engineering, compelled me to accept he was ill, our family doomed, and society in a free fall to hell.  Confronting that at age fifteen, I tried to soothe and expand my mind with alcohol and pot and LSD but my father could not understand and cared only about my plummeting grades, which he said reflected badly on him.  So for him, perhaps, or more likely to escape, it’s still unclear to me, I graduated from high school in 1966 and suffered a couple of months college before demanding freedom forever.

One special 1967 day on Venice Beach, not far from the Redondo Beach of my old life, I met Manson and suddenly it no longer mattered I was hungry, hungover, and depressed.  I was with the greatest genius on earth.  But never did he ask me or anyone else to call him God.  He was a humble little man and a giant who showed me how to connect with animals and birds and trees and took me into his arms and bed and his life.  He loved me as he loved all the many women in our family.  We had a real father who understood us and didn’t preach like old fathers but showed us by example, like the way he danced, or by scaring the shit out of us one second then rushing back to show us he cared.  We were all poised and happy and safe together.  And we were committed to saving the earth.

The earth was Charlie’s first woman and many people wanted to follow him and that terrified the judge and jury who framed Charlie for the seven deaths of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her friends and another couple.  Charlie wasn’t there.  Several of my family members were responsible and ready to die to save the land and air and water.  But Charlie should not have been convicted.  He committed no crime.

After the judicial lynching, I was in charge of the family, and on me weighed the responsibility to protect our environment.  In Sacramento, on September fifth, 1975 I tried to wake everyone up by pointing a pistol at President Gerald Ford.  I had not wanted to kill him or he would’ve been dead.  There was no bullet in the chamber of the pistol, just four bullets in the magazine.  I’d intentionally ejected the magic bullet in my downtown residence before putting on a long red velvet dress and heading to the state Capitol.

I didn’t mind being in prison.  Living without Charlie was prison anyway.  I was considered a pleasant and cooperative prisoner.  I had good reason to attack another prisoner with a claw hammer in 1979.  And in 1987, after hearing Charlie was ill, I had to escape and go help him.  Two days later they got me.  Fine.  They could keep me.  I hadn’t applied for parole when first eligible in 1985 and didn’t apply for decades.  I think I only applied because they were going to kick me out and make me look like a loony, and I could not allow that since all members of our family are bright and articulate and unapologetic champions of clean air and water and trees that live thousands of years.