Is Pauly a cult leader? January 16, 1885
Is Pauly the leader of a cult?
If so, what does that make us who follow him? Are we so weak-minded
we need to be led?
Are we like rock groupies, or mall rats, or even more legitimately,
members of some more formally organized society such as the Boy Scouts or
church groups?
Is Pauly capable of being someone like Charlie Manson, leading
us into some kind of Jonestown, passing subliminal messages in order to control
us?
I heard this kind of talk when I fire met Pauly in Little
Falls back in 1968.
Parents shuddered at the very mention of his name and warned
their children to stay away from him.
Carol Q’s family even moved out of town to get their
daughter to stay away from him.
Putting that in perspective, we might blame the whole 1960s
thing, with changing children rebelling against their parents, looking to find
some personal space and sense of dignity.
Pauly served as a conduit for such feelings, a lightning rod
that drew their wrath.
He used to sit in the park in the center of Little Falls,
like a pot-smoking buddha, talking about his great plans, getting rides from
place to place, scratching on Alf’s screen to wake him when he could find nobody
better.
Garrick often complains about how Pauly never returned the
Hardy Boys books he borrowed when they lived near each other in West Paterson.
But Pauly never made himself out to be any kind of leader
(although he joked about it in a mocking sort of way.)
I met him for the first time in a dry cleaner ship across
from Passaic Valley High Schools on Main Street, Little Falls. I sat in the
phone book, he yanked open the door the way a priest might have the panel in a
confessional.
“I’m Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m here to hear your
confession.”
I must have seemed like a very Catholic child at age 17,
maybe even in need of a hero the way Hank was.
Pauly seemed to predict the rise of false prophets like
Charlie Manson, and even wrote a mock satire of the Bible called Bibble.
Hank took Pauly more seriously than any of the rest of us
did, often comparing himself to this charismatic character, wanting to look
like Pauly, talk like Pauly, sing like Pauly. Hank frequently claimed he was
Pauly’s brother in some other life.
Pauly didn’t inspire this, in fact, he despised the
comparisons, although sometimes used Hank’s infatuation to get what he wanted,
rides to various place, drugs, even sometimes mere company, feeding into some
desperate need Hank had to find some place in the hip community. I recall him
finding a Pauly-look-alike in The Village and had someone take a picture of the
two of them side by side, a real hippie, he could aspire to become.
Hank showed me the picture and asked me who I thought this
hippie looked like. He wanted me to say it looked like Pauly, but I really didn’t
see it so kept mum.
When it became clear Pauly had no intention of serving as
Hank’s guru, Hank went elsewhere, hanging out on Washington Square with David
Peal, later finding a woman to live with in the East Village, who introduced
him to other “real” hippies.
Then everything changed. The movement ended. Hank came back
to Pauly, hounding him at his Parsippany apartment until Pauly often pretended
not to be home when he saw Hank’s Dodge Dart pull up in the driveway.
Hank once chased Pauly and his girlfriend, Jane from Parsippany
to Little Falls – and would have dragged me along had I not gotten out of the
Dodge when I spotted Jane’s blue VW bug parked around the side of the Parsippany
apartment building. Hank charged on without me.
All this with Pauly made me wonder about cult leaders, and
how they might not actually want to be anybody’s leader, somehow getting sucked
up into the role by desperate followers who needed someone to follow.
Clearly, Pauly did not desire the role.
A bitter Hank began to criticize Pauly, though continued to
hang out with him, and could not quite resist Pauly’s manipulation, doing Pauly’s
bidding for the most part, complaining the whole time. Hank later became a kind
of class clown, the butt of many of Pauly’s meaner jokes.
Even Garrick could not avoid getting caught up in Pauly’s
little tricks, letting Pauly live with him for free, giving the job-less Pauly
money for cigarettes, coffee and food.
Pauly did have visions of his own Jonestown Hank called “Garleyville,”
which had us traveling places deep into New York State where we hoped to buy
land (using the insurance money Hank was to get from an accident in April
1972.)
The summer before last, Pauly targeted me, talking me into
letting him move into my spare room after he got thrown out of Jane’s mother’s
house in Towaco. Although he agreed to a portion of the rent, he manipulated me
into paying a greater share of groceries, utilities and other expenses.
When my girlfriend, Fran, asked me to take in her brother until
her brother found a place of his own to stay, Pauly plotted against him – just as
he had plotted once against me when he, Garrick and I briefly thought we might
temporarily live together back in 1975.
Pauly wanted Fran’s brother out, the same way he’d wanted me
to leave a decade ago.
After that, Pauly plotted against my cats.
Eventually, he succeeded, but I moved out with them, back
into the apartment next door where my uncle had been living, yet not before I arranged
for him to get my job across the river at the Fotomat booth – to which he could
easily walk.
Perhaps all things come around to where they started, when
some woman accused Pauly of being a cult leader and trying to influence her
through secret messages.
No doubt, Pauly tried to manipulate her – the way he does
everybody else. But a cult leader?
Pauly only wants simple things: a home, money, even success
in a lazy way.
Despite all that we – Hank Garrick even me to some degree –
wanted from Pauly over the years, he never wanted what we wanted, and still
doesn’t.
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