The Search for Philip K. Dick

by Dick, Anne R.

  After searching for a year I finally located Cindy D. (not her real name). She was warm and cordial over the telephone and took great interest in my project. We made an appointment to meet. On a peaceful, sunny afternoon, in a pleasant new subdivision in Petaluma, I walked by a Trans Am parked in the driveway and azaleas blooming along the walkway, and as I rang the bell, I noticed that the mailbox had been hand-painted in a floral design.

  A robust, tall woman with long black curly hair answered the door. Cindy, now thirty-one years old, wore tight jeans, had a rich, bold voice, and was an animated talker. She wasn’t afraid of saying anything. She introduced me to her Latino husband, George, and her seven-year-old boy. Cindy and George owned the 7-Eleven store a mile away from their house and Cindy also worked nights at Safeway to supplement the family income. Cindy told me her story and helped me get in touch with some of the other “kids” (now young adults) who were part of Phil’s Scanner Darkly world.

  Cindy and George, Sheila, Craig, Don, and I met one night at Cindy’s house and sat drinking vodka and orange juice until 2 a.m. Each of them told me his or her story. Phil’s novel, A Scanner Darkly gave a picture of their world back then, they all agreed, except things were much worse than the novel described. The story that follows is not an exact account of what they told me. I made it less complicated and less disturbing.

  CINDY’S STORY

  In 1970, Cindy, a seventeen-year-old high school girl, rode to Phil’s house on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle. John, a member of the Hell’s Angels, was Phil’s methedrine supplier. Cindy showed me a picture of her boyfriend on his Harley. He had on a black leather vest that showed his huge naked shoulders; there was a biceps cuff around his muscled upper arm. He had a large bushy beard and wore jeans and motorcycle boots. Cindy became friendly with Phil and came over to visit him more and more frequently. When she felt misunderstood by her parents, Phil listened with paternal sympathy. When she had an abortion in her junior year of high school, Phil drove her to the abortionist. She said that she, herself, never took money from Phil but she noticed that the other people who were hanging around his house were “ripping him off” all the time. Cindy worked at a local fish-and-chips restaurant. Someone living at Phil’s house stole her key, entered the restaurant late at night, and stole all the money in the cash register. When Cindy met Phil, he was just finishing Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

  Phil describes Cindy as a heroin addict in his letters but she told me that she “only smoked a little pot.” Cindy and Sheila—who stayed at Phil’s house later on—became the models for two female characters in A Scanner Darkly. One day, Cindy stole several cases of Coca-Cola from the back of a delivery truck and later on turned in the empty bottles for the deposit. Phil was intrigued and put this event in his novel.

  Cindy told me, “He was taking a lot of speed. He would take a hundred ‘beans’ and then another hundred ‘beans’ an hour later. He would take a thousand ‘beans’ a week and write. Then he would crash and sleep for a week. He was grouchy, depressed, and irritable when he wasn’t high. His doctor prescribed amphetamines for him when he couldn’t buy them. Phil wouldn’t touch pot, he hated it. He liked how he felt on speed—powerful—he could do anything. One time when Phil saw a police car drive by outside, he flushed a thousand ‘beans’ down the toilet. I was stunned, since they cost $100 a jar.” Cindy remembered Phil hiding his “stash” under the plants outside the house because he thought the police might come. Later, when he’d decided they weren’t going to, he would have to tear up the half the yard to find where he had buried it.

  The Santa Venetia house was a “sort of paradise” for the unhappy, runaway kids that hung around there. There was “lots of pot, free drugs, beer, wine, imported Player’s cigarettes, aqua filters, and little cans of different flavored snuff all over the house.” The house was filled with rock music: Janis Joplin, the Sons of Champlin, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Grace Slick, Hank Williams, and the Beatles, as well as Phil’s classical music, which he played at such high volume that the walls shook. Phil bought a potter’s wheel and made some pottery. Cindy and fifteen-year-old Craig worked on the wheel, too. There were several dogs and cats. Phil would fix Mr. Sims, a Yorkie that Nancy had owned, Alpo with chocolate sauce over it. There was a black Lab, and Mary Lou’s black and white puppy. One day Phil gave one of the cats a “bean” and the cat cried for hours under the coffee table.

  Phil had a couple of girlfriends who came over occasionally and spent the night. One was Carla, who had met Phil when he gave a lecture at the College of Marin. James, a relative, lived with Phil for a while. Once he almost died of a drug reaction like Jerry in A Scanner Darkly. After James moved out, Clint and Sean, who had just been released from the state mental hospital, moved in. Both are dead now. Each lived in the Santa Venetia house with a girlfriend. Clint’s first girlfriend was Karen, whom he later replaced with Sheila.

  A musician named Jim played the bass guitar and sang while living in Phil’s house with his girlfriend, Mary Lou, who went to San Rafael High. Jim rode a motorcycle and shot heroin. At times, he and Mary Lou had violent fights. Both Jim and Phil had guns and were always playing around with them; once Phil shot a hole in the window. Several times Phil became angry with Mary Lou and threw her bodily out the door and her things after her. The next day, he would phone, begging her to return.

  A few years later Phil told his Los Angeles friends about a girl of Japanese origin suddenly pulling out a jackknife, leaping on a man who was lying on the couch, and knifing him in the chest. The knife went all the way in to the hilt, but didn’t hit anything vital.

  Other hangers-on included eleven-year-old Sam (Ratty), Craig’s brother; another Clint, a drug addict, ex-thief, and Jesus freak; Shirley and Jimmy, who lived in a parked car in front of the house; and Vic, a guy from the Haight-Ashbury, with wild, blond curly hair and no shoes, who, at times, slept on one of the beaches. He did acid or whatever was around and told the other kids that he had seen God.

  DON

  It was well after midnight and we had almost finished all the potato chips and the vodka when Don made his entrance. He was a nice-looking, blond man of about thirty. His eyes glittered. He told me he was a carpenter now. Not long after we were introduced he pulled up his shirt and showed me a beautifully done eagle tattoo that covered most of his upper back. Like Sheila, an attractive blonde woman of about the same age, he had the aura of a survivor of some long-ago cataclysm.

  In 1971, Don was known as “the kid.” He was a fifteen-year-old runaway with long, long hair, who had just come out of juvenile hall. “I felt like a little ragamuffin and hid when Phil’s science fiction and literary friends came over with their ties on.”

  Phil told Don, “The more company I have, the safer I feel.” The most amazing thing to Don was how Phil would change when his science fiction friends came by: “He acted totally straight.”

  Don remembered long, heavy political discussions, Phil telling the kids that he didn’t like most of what went on in the country: “He put things into words so that we young kids could understand. Then sometimes he would speak in other languages. When the book Helter Skelter came out, we all had a big discussion about Manson and his ‘family.’ Phil wanted this sort of relationship but without the crime.”

  When Don first moved into the house, Phil’s office was immaculate. Phil would lock himself in to write. Later Don saw Phil flying into fits of rage, taking books off the shelves, and throwing them, picking up plants, and knocking over the speakers. Don hid behind the couch or a chair. He couldn’t understand what Phil was saying, Phil was talking so fast. In the middle of one topic, he would switch to another. Don thought that Phil would let his emotions build up and then they would explode.

  Don liked and admired Clint. Clint was handsome, with blue-black hair and dark eyes and skin. He was an excellent mechanic and repaired Phil’s car for him. But he began to tinker and “do weird things” with the car. He fixed the brakes
before a trip to Mount Tam. The brakes failed and the whole crowd almost got killed as they came down the mountain. Clint was a genius at electronics. He played the guitar, the harmonica, drums, and “did vocals.” He took a lot of speed, so much that he thought spiders were crawling on him and asked Don to spray Raid on him. At times, Clint picked imaginary bugs off the carpet. He thought a shoe box in the hall closet was full of bugs. Phil and Clint were close. But one day Phil put sand in the rug and sprayed Clint with hair spray. The sand stuck to the hair spray and Clint freaked out about the bugs crawling on him. Don couldn’t understand why Phil had done this, because Phil knew that Clint was terrified of insects. Once Clint took a hundred hits, and, barefooted and shirtless, drove his car down the freeway. His lips began to crack and bleed from the drug overdose. Phil and Clint were both “doing so much methedrine they were hallucinating.”

  Don noticed that some days Phil was normal; some days he was in a dream; some days he was flipped out. Don bought one hundred methedrine pills from Phil. “How much should I pay you?” he asked. Phil told Don, “$2.” Don gave him $4. The next day Phil burned the money. Clint went back home to live with his parents. A few days later Richard, his brother, found him in the bathroom with his wrists slashed, lying in a pool of blood but still alive. He had become involved in an unhappy love affair with a girl named Laura May, who had been sent to a drug-rehabilitation home. After this terrible event, Clint still hung around Phil’s house but didn’t live there anymore. Don read in the papers a few years later that Clint had killed himself in the Civic Center parking lot, running a hose from the exhaust pipe into his car at 3 a.m. one morning.

  SEAN

  Sean had scary, wild eyes, an aquiline nose, was about five feet nine inches tall and very thin. He was a speed freak, too. Sean shot invisible bugs at Clint and Clint put them in a box. Cindy thought that Sean was crazy but not violent. His parents had kicked him out of their house when he began taking drugs. Sean was in his mid-thirties and had never been married. He fidgeted a lot. Phil would send him away for a couple of days and then allow him to come back. His parents owned a large amount of land in Ignacio, and, after visiting them he’d come back with wads of money.

  When Sean moved in, he brought fifteen rifles, all loaded and cocked, and hid them under his bed. Secretly, Phil and Don took all the ammunition out of the guns. Sean bought more, so Phil and Don took out the firing pins. Sean and Phil were in agreement that the FBI and the CIA were observing the house.

  SHEILA

  Sheila was the last person to tell her story that evening. She had run away from home and at San Rafael High another student had told her, “Oh, you can live at Phil’s house.” At that time Clint was just breaking up with Karen. Sheila fell in love with Clint and soon was sharing his room. Sheila noted that everyone at that house was moody. Often Phil and Clint would be angry and in a “leave me alone” mood.

  Sheila watched Phil consult the I Ching every morning. Phil went on and on about how he hated the IRS because it had attached his bank account: “Phil did a lot of talking—sometimes incoherent talking—a lot of the time I didn’t listen.” One day, a science fiction writer from Finland came to see Phil, and Phil pulled himself together and had an intelligent conversation with this fellow.

  Phil worried all the time about money. He would wait and wait for a check from his agent, and then, when it came, splurge and spend it all in a week. He would give money away and then be worried sick about making the house payments. Then he would get angry at his roommates, call the cops, and send them away. At other times, he bought food and clothes for everyone. He bought Cindy, Sam, and Clint leather jackets. He bought Sheila and Mary Lou clothes in Northgate, a nice Marin County shopping area. Phil himself had hardly any clothes. He wore a paisley Nehru tunic most of the time. One day while he was driving along Fourth Street in San Rafael, he saw a powder-blue Pontiac Catalina ragtop in beautiful condition at a used car lot. He stopped and bought it, paying cash.

  Sheila noticed that Phil was afraid of his roommates. He thought someone was going to steal his Hugo Award and took it off the wall, where it had been prominently displayed, and hid it.

  One Friday Nancy brought Isa to visit for the weekend. The next day over the phone, Nancy and Phil had a fight, and Nancy came and picked up Isa early. Phil cried after they left. Phil told Sheila that he was still in love with Nancy and hoped that she would return. Phil worried about Isa. Would she forget him? Then Phil told Nancy he was going to sue for custody of Isa. After he had threatened to do this, he became afraid that Nancy’s boyfriend was going to kill him. Phil called three guys who he claimed were contract killers. They came over to the house with shotguns and sat in the house ready to shoot anything that moved.

  Sheila got a black Labrador puppy from the pound while the contract killers sat in Phil’s house with their guns ready. Sheila and Phil didn’t sleep for the next three days. Then, exhausted, Sheila slept for eighteen hours. Phil was still up and tried to wake Sheila up so she could feed the dog. She was difficult to awaken. Then Phil told Sheila that he was going to kill the dog with a hatchet. She began crying and carrying on. She became so upset that Phil took her to see his psychiatrist. After she had told the psychiatrist her story, he said, “I’ve known Phil for a long time. You should get out of there as soon as possible.” But she had no place to go.

  Neil Hudner, Phil’s stepbrother, visited Phil, who showed Neil the plaster dust that was all that remained of one of Joe Hudner’s sculptures. Neil loved his father and was proud of his work. The sculpture had been wedged in the door, Phil told Neil, when his house had been raided by pushers who wanted money for drugs they had sold to Phil and his roommates. Shots were fired through the windows. Phil showed Neil a bullet hole. Phil and his roommates barricaded the door with Joe’s plaster sculpture and called the police. When the police arrived they pretended that the problem was in the house and broke down the door, destroying the sculpture. Phil told Neil that he had to talk fast to the police to keep himself out of jail. His friends were taken to jail because drugs were found in the house. Before Neil left, Phil showed him a letter he had received from the Pentagon, thanking him for an idea for an automated battlefield. From the way Neil told me all this I gathered that he believed this entire story.

  Sheila stayed after Clint moved out. She had no money, nowhere to go, and it was out of the question for her to return to her parents. Phil told her that he wanted to marry her, live happily ever after, and have babies with her, but Sheila wasn’t interested. Phil was old enough to be her father. She arranged to be rescued by a fellow she knew, but Phil prevented her from taking her clothes and she ended up coming back to the Santa Venetia house.

  When he was at home, Phil generally ate chocolate, cookies, and junk food, but frequently he and Sheila went out to eat at a nice restaurant close by, Le Chalet Basque. They also often went to Lyons, a chain restaurant on the freeway, for breakfast. One night after going to Chalet Basque for dinner, Sheila, Phil, and another young man, Rick, brought a bottle of Beaujolais back to the house. During the evening, Rick asked Sheila to come away with him. Phil threw the bottle, the remains of the Beaujolais, two glasses, and the coffee table against the wall and then picked up a metal chair and threatened Sheila.

  In the summer of 1971, Phil suddenly arrived at my house one afternoon accompanied by a teenage girl whom he introduced as Sheila. (That evening my second daughter, Jayne, told me that the girl was a classmate of hers at San Rafael High.) I hadn’t seen Phil for five years. Both he and this girl looked terrible. His skin was sallow and sagging; his clothes looked as if they hadn’t been washed for weeks. They were both shabby. I assumed the girl was Phil’s girlfriend and was disturbed to see him with such a young girl. Phil’s manner was as pleasant as ever. I made a pot of tea and gave them each a cup and we sat and chatted for a while—they didn’t stay long. I formed an even worse impression of Phil’s life than earlier but still didn’t really get the picture. I still had in my mind the
image of the man I had loved. It was confusing but by then I wasn’t as involved with Phil and so I didn’t dwell on all this very long. I was very busy with all my activities, including a new one, a dressage group that came to my house for three days every month to take lessons with a famous dressage maestro.

  Strange things began happening at Phil’s house. Someone cut all the wires in the Bogen amplifier. Everyone wondered who it was? Was it Clint? Was it Phil himself? Phil told everyone the postman had done it. Clint put the amplifier back together. Next all the doorknobs were stolen. These events made Sheila very nervous; she thought, “Boy, I better get out of here.”

  In August 1971, Phil went to see Dr. A, who saw that Phil was in terrible shape. Phil told Dr. A that he believed that the FBI and the CIA were tapping his phone, breaking into his house, and stealing his papers. He told Dr. A he wanted to go to the hospital for protection. Dr. A told Phil he should get rid of all the young unstable people hanging around his house. Phil told him, “I know I should, but they need me.”

  Dr. A arranged for Phil to enter the Marin Mental Health Clinic. Although Phil kept telling Dr. A he was a drug addict, Dr. A believed Phil was just being hypochondriacal. He observed Phil in the hospital and noted that Phil had no withdrawal symptoms. This verified his conclusion. When I told Cindy this she said emphatically, “Phil carried his ‘beans’ with him wherever he went.”

  Phil charmed the staff, advised them how they should run the facility and tried to help the other patients. William Wolfson, Phil’s old friend and lawyer, visited him in the hospital and held his hand. He saw that Phil’s manner was tremendously rational and cogent, but at the same time Phil told stories about people who were trying to kill him. Phil acquired a new lady friend, a nice-looking blonde lady who was a patient, too. She lived in Ross, an expensive part of Marin County, and had a swimming pool painted the color of Lake Tahoe. After they both got out of the hospital she came over to Phil’s house every day. Sheila thought she was in love with Phil but she was also very nervous.