Paul writes:
Still A Hippie:
Glad to know you're still alive, and doing so "well". Glad to see you've matured and moved on. I hadn't given your costly self-implosion much thought recently, until some fellow forum members sent your rant my way. I started to write about all the disturbing and innapropriate crap that you did, but erased it, simply because all that nonsense belongs in the past. However, If you want to sling some shit about people you used to call friends, I can oblige.
My Response: Funny, how you say that it is all in the past and not worth anything, yet at the same time your words imply something did happen and what happened was not right.
Paul says:
hope you've managed to get some counseling or some other help since 1986, but it doesn't sound like it. Straight might have had control of you for a while, but what you've done for the past twenty years, well, you own that.
Response:
Well thanks Paul, I appreciate your concern for Hip, (that's sarcarsm for you folks in Rioloanda.) Listen, Chumly, we are all the sum of our experices. That includes Straight. And, yes, Paul, Hip does get counseling, a great deal of it, and I think it would not be necessary would he have not gone to Stoughton. I was one of his newcommers, Paul, and I know. In fact I know the man still. When he had left for Stoughton, I asked him if he was sure about what he was doing. I was one of three newcommers who talked him in to PT. Seeing him before and after, I will regret this forevermore. I ran in to him at Dead concert a few years after, I did not recognice him. His demeanor and appearance had greatly changed. He was full of anger and NOT the same man. I don't get what you guys did to him up there.
Look, Pauly, you make the guy to be a sellout or an ass, but in all honesty, he really wanted to help people. I know he helped me.
Paul says:
guess you must have really been traumatized by that place. First as a phaser, then as a seven-stepper, and eventually as an evil-battling staff member. Thank God for selfless, courageous and principled people like you who fought "the man" by becoming the man. No hipocracy in your story. Let's recap your posts in a more honest light:
Response:
Look Pauly, I don't know you but I know Hip very well and I saw what he did and tried to do for us newcomers. For you to say or even think otherwise is asinine. If Hippie was "The Man", then I thank God he was. I wouldn't have made it out of that pit of hell without his help, seeing as I had been on first phase for 10 months before going to his house. I never would have made it home without him. All the old-comers that I had were utter morons concerned with their own progress within Straight rather than mine.
Paul Says:
You begged to be a staff member! You lacked the courage to ask on your own, so you had your mother kiss Mel Riddle's ass for you. The Springfield folks didn?t want to hire you, so they asked us and we said OK. They told you the only opening available was in Boston. They hoped you'd drop it, seeing as how you'd never actually held a full time job or lived away from home except while in St. Pete, but you took the position, promising to get a haircut and attempt some mimimal level of professional conduct when in the building. Unfortunately, you couldn't do it. Getting up on time, paying your bills, cleaning, laundry and cooking were not skills you had learned while living with your parents through your mid-twenties.
Response:
Look, as far as I know, and I know Hip pretty well, he never "begged" for any such position. At any rate, I wish he would have so that he could help others such as myself. As it was, he was not given such a position as I know, but what I do know, is that he came and checked on me and others--on his own time and dime--and for no other reason. And, Pauly, I wouldn't give a rat's ass as far as your opinion concerning Hip's personal hygene. It REALLY doesn't matter to me and some people who take a shower three times a day stink worse than those who only do it once.
So says the Paulster:
You wanted to be "Straight's hippie messiah". Problem was, in 1986 you were a self important fraud. Once anyone got to know you, they were on to you. You lied so much and so often to so many, that we all stopped believing everything you said. Your post makes it sound like we suddenly all betrayed you. That's a lie. It took months for you to borrow, steal and screw over every person you came in contact with, inside straight, AA or outside. We asked you to move out after two jobless months because you were increasingly erratic and disturbed. You had transitioned from being a loopy, but harmless goof-off to a rightous, ranting exploiter of newly sober young people. You messed with a lot of people's minds, both in Straight and AA. Whining about your unfair firing and rejection by your friends in this forum dishonors you, and the memories of the dead friends whose funerals we have attended since.
Response:
Listen, Chumly, I don't know about "Hippie Messiah", however, Hip was a big part of my salvation from drugs and alcohol and more importantly, from Straight.
And, though I was not there and do admitedly do not know the whole story, were I employed there and fired afer only five weeks, I might suspect others as being a part of it. As far as Hip being a "self-important fraud", I know damn well he is not. This I know more than anything else I have written.
Paularama says:
I don't remember any rebellion when you left. You were only on staff five weeks. How many days did you actually work? Maybe 25? The Stoughton group only had 70-80 people then, and 60% were on higher phases. How many did you say good-bye to just before the "riot"? Couldn't have been more than 35-40 tops. It wasn't the epic saga of selfless hippy counseler vs. evil co-workers you'd like it re-remember it as.
Response:
I know Hip well and I have never heard him claiming some such. And though you seem to think you are a clever fellow, I don't think so. And I simply doubt he was any less honest about this matter than he was with myriad matters with we new-commers. But that's up to you to believe or not. All I know is we new-commers at his place loved him. (And I'm sure the Stoughton group did too.)
Paulboy says:
I can't recall you ever leading a rap session solo, but you might have. We kept pairing you up with someone to keep you from blabbering on for 10 minutes at a time about your "Jerry Garcia connection", or some other "I'm so cool" topic while unimpressed newcomers picked thier fingernails. Your fake hippie transparency was as clear to them as it was to us. I still live here, don't kid yourself.
Response:
Geeze, Paul, get a girlfriend or something. For the love of Mike, is that the best you can come up with about my pal? And I doubt the new-commers were picking their fingernails when he spoke of Jerry, or anything out of the ordinary at Straight.If that had happened while i was on my phases,I would've been on the edge of my seat listening! If he did those kinds of things,then
I believe there was a scuffle or "riot"!I wouldn't have wanted a staff member like that getting fired!
Paul says:
Blame me that you were fired. I spoke to Jim Murray and Sylvia Kolker personally about my concerns. I wanted to help my friend. See, I was cool with you letting your freak flag fly, but I was not cool with you carelessly messing with people's minds. Seriously, you were way more innapropriate around newcomers, especially young girls, than some ?true believers?.
Response:
I know nothing of which you speak, except to say that Hip has been a pal of mine for years and I do not believe a word of what you have written. You seem to have a vendetta agains't him for some reason. Pals don't report pals to ex. staff to get another pal fired. I don't undersand your interpretation of the word "friends" and from my reading of your own words, it seems you did betray him.
Paul says:
I do remember feeling sorry that you were fired. I stopped feeling sorry for you though, the moment you told me you got revenge by urinating in that person's office. I hope you don't work in fast food.
Response:
Better to urinate in someone's office than in their mind. As for me, I would have gone postal.
Paul Says:
Now that I know it was all a well crafted scheme of ultimate revenge, and not a stupid series of incredibly selfish, immature, irresponsible, self-destructive errors, I guess I should be upset all over again, right? Hardly.
Response:
I think you outta start drinking decaf and stop obsessing on Hip. Next you'll be saying he was the shooter on the grassy knoll.
Pauly again opines:
I paid your debts because you used my word and my name to run up those bills and screw those people. It's funny now. We've laughed about it. Mike Kirsch and I were talking about you as we drove the Autobahn in his BMW 7 series. We were on our way to an International Software Conference that the company I own produced in Cologne.
Response:First, again I see you have a rather unhealthy obsession with Hippie, secondly it's nice to see that someone who had a groomed for staff program is doing so well. (Say hi to the micro-chip babes for me) seeing as how the rest of us still struggle every frigging day because of the nonsensense people like you inflicted upon us. You go-alongs with the program will always succeed, just like the higher-up Nazis did.
Herr Paul Writes:
I realized a long time ago that your behavior was not something I needed to understand or justify. When you called to apologize a year after you took off, I told you I forgave you, and the best revenge you could have on Straight was creating a life that is well-lived. I hope you are doing well, and that the badly spelled rant you posted here is not an indication of your current situation.
Response:
You are ever so magnanimous, or apparently so, however, I got a bullshit detector and it is going off the scale. Who are you kidding?
Der Furher Paul says:
It was a messed up place, no question. However, you did little or nothing to make it better. In fact, you made it worse.
Response:
Kinda like being in a concentration camp and instead of starving to death, you do so while playing checkers? I hardly think he made it worse (sorry for the over-used Nazi example), if anything he made it better, at least for me.
Paul Writes:
See, we all did stuff we weren't proud of while we were there. I know I did, and I've said so on these forums. After 20+ years, how dare you keep whining "not me, I'm still a victim, no guilt on me". There's no apology in these forum pages from you. Stop deceiving yourself. It's cowardly and shameful. Stop writing homophobic nonsense like a vengeful skinhead teenager. You're over 40 years old. If you have any long hair left, it?s gray and falling out. It was falling out in ?86, same as me.
Response:
First off, don't project your sexual hang-ups on Hip. He is neither bald nor anything like a skinhead. Quite the oposite, his hair is very long. Hence: Hipie. Apparently, Straight did not take that from him (nor from me, for that matter.)
Pal Paul says:
Over the years I've met staffers, phasers, cop-outs and siblings. I?ve been to weddings, baptisms, and funerals. We share a common experience born of personal tragedy that most of us have overcome. Only a limited few remain defined by that single time of their lives. It's almost like what combat vets share. We have a common language and experiences that outsiders can only imagine. I'm still sober, and don't care whether anyone on these forums is or not. I was over 18 when I signed myself in, so any baggage I carry is mine and I own it. I remember a thousand faces, almost all of them are from 20 years ago. I know what about a dozen people are up to. My nightmares have stopped, and the time for apologies is long over. I hope those of us that made it through continue to use these forums as a way to connect, heal and move on, not like a Beavis and Butt-head revenge rant. But hey, it?s your program.
Paul Meyer
Reply:
Yo Paul, Ever hear of Communist re-education camps? I understand they work pretty well too. Wake up.
Sincerly,
Anonymous
