Tower: 12b.Euripedes

When Euripedes left, years ago, he “flipped out” and wrote an exposing letter that he sent to all of the ashrams. But it was caught really quickly. All of the heads of the houses were called and told to turn the letters in to Angelo without reading them. Most did so before the other members of their house even got home from work. My house wasn’t sent a letter but I did read someone else’s copy (the beauty of having friends on the fringe.) I remember it as being allegations, written in a childish way. Accusing Angelo of being mortal basically. Seeing him acting in a human way… like screaming and running from a bee flying around him. Nothing harsh really. Just calling him human. Only damaging because Angelo was always portrayed as if he were NOT human. I remember that the letter actually went into a pretty good psychological evaluation of Angelo as having Narcissist Personality Disorder (NPD). There was a copy of that section of the DSM III, about the identifying traits of someone with NPD and went over, point by point, about how Angelo fit that diagnosis. I think his letter was referred to in class – vaguely. But most people didn’t even know there had been a letter and the content was only discussed dismissively. I think it was just referred to as a “hate letter.” I remember being amused at why they were taking such pains to hide the contents of the letter, because it was really not that harsh. Except if you thought Angelo was perfect and had no human traits. Which, it turns out, was EXACTLY why he was scared of the contents. I still don’t really get how anyone could NOT see all the flaws in Angelo’s personality. But it seemed like every time there was an indication that he had a personality, people were floored by that. Some people were floored by the idea that he might actually be having sex. Some people were offended if someone said he was gay. It was odd. He was so obviously gay. But so what? I mean, I did detect a homophobic bent from some of the women in the group. But I think it was because they felt threatened. They would always claim that all the guys in the group were gay. I was sort of offended at that so I counted. And it was NEVER more than 30% of the group. Even when we were in West Hollywood. But maybe it was “women’s intuition” about what was going on behind closed doors. I don’t know. But even though the Euripedes letter brought up some of these things, it was just attributed to Euripedes’ mental condition. He was portrayed as border-line retarded, having narrowly escaped being confined to a mental institution and was rapidly devolving since leaving the buddha field. No idea if any of that has any validity. But that was the way he was portrayed at the time.