Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 35

At the same time that Ira was creating his public role as a counterculture hero freeing mankind from the oppression of the establishment which didn't want to allow them unlimited drug induced and sex induced spiritual ascent, he met a student at Penn named Judy Lewis and became obsessed with her. Judy was seven years younger than Ira, and was, according to her own report, experiencing some emotional stress. Ira's friend, Michael Hoffman said:

Ira was so intense that when you got involved with him, he would get inside your head. You would have that kind of relationship - inside of one another's heads. He was particularly that way with women because he needed to dominate. [Regarding Judy], it was not a placid relationship, it was obviously a very passionate one, and at a certain point I think she wanted out. Because I think like a lot of other people, she finally felt mind-fucked by the guy. [Quoted by Levy]

Said another observer of the relationship, a friend of Judy's:

She was very interested in him, because of his mind, basically. And he got more and more possessive. […] She was not allowed to do anything except be with him, and I think that she wasn't the kind of dependent female that he was used to or that he needed. I remember she used to talk about how he would insist on staying up all night long and talking, and if you wanted to go to sleep that was disloyal. She began to get a sense of his intensity, and his emotional violence. He was grasping and tenacious and nuts. [Quoted by Levy]

Again, Ira had created a fantasy that he projected onto a woman. He completely ignored the fact that the longer the relationship continued, the less interested the other party was in continuing in it. Ira produced reams of writing about Judy's beauty, her depth, and her selfish refusal to give everything to him.

Joy would erupt if Judy could only learn the simple acceptance of the magic which flows between us.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. Ira wrote in his journals that Judy could, if she could be persuaded to be willing, provide Ira with:

The absolute trust my mother's strong relationship imposed on my psyche. Do I wish to master a woman sufficiently so that she will take care of me as my mother did?

And, at this point in time, Ira was suffering from excruciating headaches. (Possibly symptomatic of Dopamine deficiency) Something was definitely going on. Ira wrote:

I have a strange lightness about the head which is beginning to frighten me. There seems to be a strong possibility that I may eventually be permanently psychotic!

Just as Rita Siegal had, Judy became terrified of Ira. She also discovered, as Rita had, that leaving Ira was not a simple matter. You didn't just walk away from Ira. It was months before Ira finally "got it" that Judy wanted to end their relationship. He disregarded her words and constructed fantasies where her wish to not see him were just "vacillation." He would create scenarios in which he perceived her wishes as evidence that she really wanted to continue and expand the relationship. He also created the scenarios of what would happen if that turned out to not be true. In November of 1965 Ira wrote in his journals:

The violence that flowed through my being tonight … still awaits that further dark confirmation of it existence which could result in the murder of that which I seem to love so deeply. The repressed is returning to a form that is almost impossible to control… There is a good chance that I will attempt to kill Judy tomorrow - the rational awareness of this fact brings stark terror into my heart but it must be faced if I wish to go on - I must not allow myself to deviated from the self-knowledge which is in the process of being uncovered! [Quoted by Levy]

There was no violence the following day, but a week later, Judy again tried to become free of Ira. Ira seemed to KNOW that he was "deviant." He made a note in his journals to ask his mother about his behavior as an infant, with the comment:

So much of my deviancy could be explained in terms of an impotent, uncompleted rage. [Quoted by Levy]

Meanwhile, of course, in public, Ira was marching on to fame and glory as THE manifestation of the benefits of drug and sex expanded awareness and spiritual superiority. He wrote in his journal in March of 1966:

I feel as if things are about to culminate in the creation of an involvement that will allow me to do the work that will enable me to become more of what I am or as a result of this partial madness I will bring my world crashing down about me. [Quoted by Levy]

The struggle to deal rationally with what he clearly understood was a "game plan" that was not to his advantage does nothing to suggest that there was any real emotion involved. To Ira, it was simply "moves" in a game. He was essentially attempting to impose cerebral and strategic rationality on his fundamentally predatory nature. On March 14 he wrote:

How ridiculous the thought of killing Judy appears, yet I held it in my mind just four short hours ago - this particular ability of man is both his horror and his joy.

Violence creeps over my body as I reach toward the destruction of Judy, a hopeless victim in this infernal entanglement which seems to be draining the life's blood of both of us… the foolish ambivalence of our desires still tosses us beyond the recall of reason to a point of suspension on which we hang in perilous balance threatening to destroy or be destroyed in an instant or reckless action - we must come together or die. [Quoted by Levy]

To that I say: what do you mean WE?

In any event, three days later, Ira's predatory nature overwhelmed his "rational" thinking and the "event" occurred that was recounted by Judy to Detective Michael Chitwood thirteen years later. The situation, as she described it, centered around the fact that Ira had insisted on a meeting. She agreed as long as he just came by for coffee and nothing else. Ira, of course, arrived full of confidence that he could mesmerize Judy with his ideas and words about why the relationship should go on. Their discussion was interrupted when Judy went out briefly to get milk for the coffee and donuts. Ira himself recorded the event in a poem entitled An Act of Violence. The poem describes Judy returning with the items, serving the coffee, and as she does so, Ira is mustering up the wherewithal to commit some, as yet, unnamed act. He discards the idea and writes that, as he is putting on his jacket to leave:

Suddenly it happens.

Judy's back is turned and Ira moves toward her with a coke bottle in hand.

Bottle in hand I strike
Away at the head…

The bottle broke, however, and Judy began to bleed. Ira wrestled her down to the floor, holding her by the neck. She hit her head against the table as she fell, and Ira was strangling her. Like Rita Siegal before her, she went limp and lost consciousness. Ira wrote:

In such violence there may be freedom.

Judy recounts that the neighbors had heard the uproar and had come into the room. She told them to call the campus police. By this time, of course, Ira had disappeared. He went home to write in his journal:

Where am I now after having hit Judy over the head with a coke bottle, blood on my jacket and pants - then making some feeble attempts to choke her. She wanted to live that has been established… I'll be able, if she does not have me arrested, to go back to living a normal life. Violence always marks the end of a relationship. It is the final barrier over or through which no communication is possible. [Quoted by Levy]

As was the case with Rita Siegal, and so many other women who seek only to forget such violence perpetrated against them, Judy did not press charges against Ira. Ira was, however, informed that if the assault were repeated, he would face serious legal action.

Ira admitted that his action was "ridiculous." However, instead of a single instant of remorse, he seemed to think that his action was a "liberating response" to a woman who was "too selfish" to agree to indulge his perversions. He saw his violence as something that contributed to his growth, that it freed him from depression and moping about Judy's wish to leave him. Effectively, the reality that he had again almost killed a woman who simply wished not to associate with him, was completely lost on Ira.

Ira's friend, Michael Hoffman, was again in his confidence. By this time, however, he was appalled and tried to gain some understanding about it from his friend by questioning him at length about the event.

He would sort of disengage himself from himself when he talked about these things. He didn't take responsibility. He didn't have the same kind of guilt that you or I would have, in that he didn't say 'Jesus Christ, how could I have done that terrible thing?' He would talk about how it had grown out of the nature of the relationship. How it's not really possible to have that kind of full, rich, sharing relationship that a man and a woman needed to have. And somehow that would be part of the explanation. He probably had the most elaborate defense structure I've ever seen in anybody. He would literally walk in after doing something like that and want to discuss the reasons for its having been done from a psychoanalytic point of view, a sociological point of view, its place in history … so that he immediately had a very elaborate structure to put it in. [Quoted by Levy]

You see, Ira didn't think that he needed help. He thought of his violence as evidence that he was some sort of romantic hero. He knew he was "deviant," but he saw it as just who and what he was, and that his way was RIGHT. He wrote to Hoffman from California a few months later:

Rita and Judy practically destroyed, Peckham unable to go any father! I need the confrontation of my monsters lodged in some external being - to meet and see what haunts me - to face it and fight it every day without it disappearing… I live quietly and calmly with real joy on the edge of a volcano that might explode into nova-like being at any moment… when it happens, beware! [Quoted by Levy]

Ira despaired of finding a woman who could satisfy his lusts in the terms of violence and pain he desired. He wrote:

I'm slowly beginning to realize the enormity of the problem which my development has created in respect to women. The interaction with Rita is just an example of how difficult, even at that age and with such a magnificent partner, any final linking is to be. Judy provided in her striking beauty a repository for always wandering projections, and the strength of our deathlike struggle is a good indication of how impossible my quest is to be. I refuse to admit the inevitable - that I can live without a woman (my mother). Until I accept this my productivity will be intense, like my countless infatuations, but sporadic. I'm faced with a hell that is somewhat relieved by my incredible energy which is so capable of constantly creating that joy which is deeper than sorrow. [Quoted by Levy]

And what, exactly, did Ira mean by the above? What kind of "hell" was he living in? A "hell" that denied his impulses. And what kind of joy was he desirous of "creating" by indulging those impulses? A joy that was "deeper than sorrow?" Take note of his reference to Rita and the fact that she was unable to complete the "final linking." Earlier, about Rita and this desired "linking" Ira had written:

Sadism - sounds nice - run it over your tongue - contemplate with joy the pains of others as you expire with an excruciating satisfaction. Project outward the vision of inward darkness. Let no cesspool of inner meaning be concealed. Reveal the filth that you are. Know the animal is always there… Beauty and innocence must be violated for they can't be possessed. The sacred mystery of another must be preserved - only death can do that.

[…] My dreams are realizable and will not be snuffed out by the fear of anyone - I too have a right to a life of my own and to that I will dedicate myself. […] The progress of my soul must not be crushed by the failings of a selfish young woman. […]

We so carefully hide the blackness of our soul from all those around us (even ourselves) we forget so easily the impulses of power which unconsciously control so many of our actions! […]we are - blackness and light. To beat a woman - what joy - to bite her breasts and ass - how delightful - to have her return the favor in our sensitive areas. How is life to be lived? […] You are one of the rare free spirits do not be saddled by one who isn't. Life to be lived at its full must be lived freely. Let nothing stand in your way to getting what you can not even the illusion of love which you know to be so transitory. [Quoted by Levy]

I hope that the reader has noticed the references to his mother in Ira's comments. This is, as noted, a clue - the crux of the matter - as we will eventually see when we examine more closely the Negative Macrocosmic reality that seeks to overtake and dominate our own via the machinations of the psychopath. And, interestingly, it appears in the "breakdown" of John Nash as we will cover in the next chapter.

Continue to Chapter 36

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