Bob’s take on Charlie Manson
January 10, 1970
Bob likes to see himself as an entrepreneur, and as the man in charge of the Hollywood office of the Los Angeles Free Press, he sees himself as a world-changer, too.
His selling of pot, fake identification and seduction of runaway girls made him seem a little slimy at first.
But I liked him when I got to know him by which time he learned to hate me.
Bob is perhaps the most hip man in Hollywood because so many people needed him.
In a city already over populated with hippies, he supplies them with places to crash and other small items that makes life bearable, although perhaps his most important commodity are the newspapers.
Many of us sell his papers so we can get at least one meal a day from the profits.
Of course, Hollywood as a hip scene is evaporating, and overcrowding is only part of the reason.
Tales of Jim Morrison’s weirdness don’t even stack up to the crap we hear about Charlie Manson.
Bob keeps rereading the story of Manson’s arrest, and keeps mumbling that something’s missing.
Too many people are trying to make Manson a hero like they did Huey Newton.
Bob thinks that’s a mistake, but won’t say exactly why.
All he says is that Manson and Morrison have more in common than meets the eye and that we all better watch out.
He’s got the jitters so bad he even claims he might give up LSD for a while, although anybody that knows him even remotely knows he never will.
For all Bob’s embracing of hip culture, he’s pretty conservative in some ways.
He might like free love and all that, but he wants his love in private, and seems to think all this squirming around in public is bad news.
Some claim he likes men as much as women, but who can say.
Everybody comes to him for help, and he always makes them pay in some way when they can’t pay in cash or dope.
Some of the characters in L.A. scare him, too.
Bob is a small man. I could break his wrist like a twig.
Sometimes, he looks downright intimidated when big hairy men like the Hell’s Angels come into his office on Argyle.
That’s why Bob keeps a gun within reach.
He knows he isn’t strong enough to settle disputes on his own, and would rather go to jail for killing someone that getting killed himself.
Cynthia, his old lady – more mother than lover – haunt him about it, saying she hates any life that makes him resort to owning a gun.
She keeps harping on about how guns kill, and wants him to go off to school where he might make something of himself. She tells him the hip life won’t last forever, and he tells her he knows.
She keeps talking about the old days of peace marshes and civil rights.
We still have the war, but not the same attitude, she says, shaking her heads over campus riots as if the whole world has gone nuts.
She and Bob argue all the time, no matter who is in the office at the time. But she’s not always around, giving Bob his chance to find another partner for the night.
People come to the office constantly, each looking for something, usually papers.
Sometimes Bob tells them he’s closed. He makes up his own hours. I think he likes to keep people guessing.
While he has regulars like us, most of those he sees each day never come back – sometimes ripping him off for the papers he’s fronted them. The deal is, they take papers, sell them for a quarter and give him ten cents. He almost always fronts the first 25 papers to people, but always makes them leave something of value behind. Sometimes people leave their ID. Sometimes other things. If they don’t come back, Bob sells the stuff, most often for much more than the papers were worth.
But Manson has shaken Bob, and for the first time, I hear him talking about retiring, maybe moving up state to the redwoods or maybe back East.
I’ve even heard him mumble something about school.
I’m shaken, too. Maybe because I got fooled by the summer of love thing and find this place is just as bad as any other place, perhaps worse, perhaps we’re all killing each other for kicks.
Bob moves his gun a few inches closer to where he’s sitting just as someone else comes through the door.