Tower:20. Reflections-3

I feel Angelo betrayed himself by falling for his own PR. He started believing it. And it was a betrayal of his true self to have to live as this mask rather than who he really is. As far as the people in the group goes. I knew early-on that the people in the group did not hold any relationship of obligation sacrosanct that wasn’t with Angelo. So I didn’t have an expectation otherwise. If I had, I would have felt betrayed. But I EXPECTED most of the people to betray anything and everything if they saw that it might curry favor with him. For some people anyway and it was pretty easy to recognize. But I was very aware that, for a lot of people, Angelo provided them with the love they were looking for and sometimes people in that position think that if they can do or say something that casts someone else in an unfavorable light, there might be more love for them. A lot of people would attack Xena because she served as his assistant for a while. They danced together a lot and many of the girls were jealous of that. So I think they tried to cast aspersions on her thinking that if Angelo wasn’t doing that with her, maybe he would do it with them. It ultimately worked because she is among “The Severed” as well. Now they have their chance.

People used to tell me about their roommates “narking” on them for things. I always thought it was odd, to see a bunch of 30 or 40 year olds hiding things that, by all rights, are their own choices to make. They would hide from you in the supermarket because they’d have popcorn or diet coke in their shopping cart. It was weird. But everyone was hiding the choices that they knew Angelo would not approve of – hiding it from each other because of the policy of narking on each other. Oh, it was never blatant. Someone would see someone eating wheat and have to take it to cleansing because it “confused” them. Yeah, right it did. What was fascinating to me was how long it took for some people to put it together that, if he had YOU reporting on your roommates, then he had SOMEBODY reporting on YOU in the same way. For some reason, that NEVER clicked with some people. But even if it had… what were they going to do? I mean, it was said over and over, “there’s the door.” People had such a fear of being asked to leave though. He threatened to ask me to leave once over something (I forget what) but I simply said, “OK, if that’s what you see needs to happen.” And it was never brought up or threatened again. But I have to admit, for many years, that fear was very real for me.

I didn’t really know about many of Angelo’s special needs… only what I saw in our group meetings. I was told that he had a very sensitive body and had constant pain that we just can’t understand (as mere mortals). He told us he took on our karma into his body to work on it and that was why he had so many body problems. But, from what I heard, he was that way when Ryker first met him. Still, his body issues made bodyworking a big thing in the group. For a while it was chiropractic. Then that went out of favor and it was massage and something-fascia but you’d have to ask one of his many bodyworkers about that stuff. I know that he thought airplane seats were comfortable for his body, so we had to buy some airplane seats and MAKE him some chairs out of them. There was one that could be folded up into a very large backpack and taken on outings or to the theater. When we would go to the theater, they would say it was a handicapped chair and set it up in the handicapped section. But I do know that great pains had to be taken that the chair was perfectly level. They had to use a level and make sure it was completely level (as well as the ground in front of his chair so his feet would not be “thrown out”) and the cushions had to be exactly right so they brought Kleenex that could be added one at a time until it was just right. So very sensitive in those certain situations. I would say it was like the Princess and the Pea except many times the “pea” would be completely imagined. It used to be only him that sat in that chair on the outings, but when we started being more discreet, others started bringing lawn chairs to sit in. The stories surrounding outings could be a topic all by themselves. Angelo in the center and all of us surrounding him. Sunning in silence, or singing in celebration. And Angelo had this little kitchen sponge, that they had cut so that it sort of looked like a coffin. He would put that over his privates. He never really addressed it so I don’t know if it was supposed to be for comfort or what. Maybe he had tan-through thongs and that was to keep the sun off his junk. I know you’re not supposed to get sun on you if you have herpes. Someone told me he does… but I have no idea if that’s true. Interesting if he does though since he’s supposed to be this great healer.