Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (42 page)

Consider too that Phil later confided to friend Doris Sauter that he emphasized the government break-in theory in order to fend off the IRS-after all, his checks and financial records had been stolen. Phil told Doris he'd deny this if she told it to anyone else.

6. Drug-crazed rip-off artists. To Williams, Phil speculated: "There were so many feuds going on in my circle that my friends who looked at it thought it was other friends of mine who had done it."

7. The police theory that Phil did it himself. Phil vehemently denied this on many occasions: He had no insurance, why rip himself offP One possible motive: to destroy financial records of use to the IRS. To fifth wife Tessa, Phil conceded that he might have done it himself, either in a fit of craziness or as a result of Manchurian Candidate-style hypnotic suggestion. In A Scanner Darkly, Fred the narc unknowingly narcs on himself.

8. Military intelligence. Had certain ideas in his SF come too close to the truth, eliciting interest in his files? Also, a disorientation drug (code name "mello jello") had been stolen from the army, which was looking for leads to recover it. Peter (see theory 3) might have been an intelligence agent.

Granted, the who and why of the break-in remain a mystery. But certain of the above theories do suffer from serious gaps in credibility and logic. The CIA and/or the FBI and/or right-wingers and/or military intelligence would all have been willing and capable of committing the burglary if they believed that they would find something of value. Phil's failure to ever pose a reasonable conjecture (traces of "mello jello"? believe it if you will) as to what this might have been casts serious doubt on all of these theories. As for religious fanatics hoping to learn of Bishop Pike's researches, their motive is somewhat more credible, but why would they carry off Phil's canceled checks? The black militants theory seems dubious, given Phil's false attribution of Black Panther status to his neighbor Honor Jackson. One might wonder if there were any black militants in the vicinity who knew or cared about Phil's existence. If they wished to drive him out of the neighborhood, why focus on the particular destruction of his files?

The theory that Phil did it himself is hands down the most intriguing, but Phil certainly never knew it if he did-his letters and journals, as well as the very private Exegesis, are filled with fearful speculations as to who it might have been, and he was not one of his own prime suspects. Phil was many things, but very seldom a hypocrite, especially not to himself. Readers of A Scanner Darkly (see Chapter 9) can find, in the Fred/Bob mind split, a dramatic exploration of this theory. At one point, Fred/Bob reasons: "One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven. [. . . ] the person begins to assume he's paranoid and has no enemy; he doubts himself."

By this tally, the "local police" and "drug-crazed rip-off artist" theories are the most plausible (and, alas, the most mundane). Police have been known to search for drugs-or tips leading to drug dealers-without warrants, and drug users have been known to ransack without reason. Then again, the FBI and the CIA have been known to search for "incriminating" or "dangerous" materials that do not really exist.

Or perhaps the true solution is "none of the above."

In any event, a bare recitation of these theories does little justice to the fervor with which Phil recounted them. Tim Powers, who met Phil in 1972, writes that "Phil had recently bought the Stones' album Sticky Fingers [... ] and I still can't hear 'Sister Morphine' or 'Moonlight Mile' without instantly being back in that living room, me pouched in an old brown-vinyl beanbag chair and Phil on the couch, the bottle on the table between us, Phil frowning as he decided how much of some awful story he dared reveal to me ('and if I told you the rest of it, Powers, you'd go crazy')."

Whatever high drama the break-in provided in years to come, life was grim enough in the days and weeks after it. In his journals, Phil managed to find one silver lining: "The No[vember] 17 hit didn't cause me to think someone was after me. It confirmed it: I thought when I saw it, `At least I'm not paranoid.' " But overall, the journal traces a chronology of woe.

Shortly after the event, Sheila came back to visit. Phil pleaded with her to sleep with him; he wanted only to be hugged. After their one night together, she left. The next day was: "Entropy day. Disorientation. End of world." Later: "Day after day, alone, I know someone, at night, is going to get me. Isolation. No one comes by or calls." Sandy, Donna, Sheila ... none was there for Phil in the aftermath. But he continued to love them, despite their refusal to play mother:

When you lose someone you love, like when a mother animal, a cat, loses her kittens, she runs out into the forest & grabs some first small other living helpless dependent thing to give her milk to-that's what I was doing after Nancy & Isa left. But I craved it for myself, with growing intensity. I had lost my love-I wanted to give, & hug something else to me & protect it. [Donna and Sheila and Sandy) felt this, & got this from me. But a reversal of the roles was intolerable, totally threatening, to all three [.)

Fate, at once cruel and kind, intervened. Phil was invited to attend the Vancouver SF Con in February 1972 as guest of honor. Normally travel wouldn't have held much appeal. But with nights filled with fear, a get-the-hell-out all-expenses-paid trip to Vancouver had its charms. Phil bought a ticket for Donna, who promised to accompany him. He then set to work on a speech, "The Android and the Human"-his first sustained writing since Nancy had left. He dedicated it to Donna, and planned to kiss her upon delivering it to the Con audience. But at the last minute Donna traded in her ticket for cash; she hadn't traveled much, and she was afraid.

Just before the trip, there was a brief respite, all the more welcome for being unexpected. Phil paid a visit to Anne at Point Reyes Station for the purpose of seeing Laura and his three stepdaughters. During the visit Phil broke down into tears and Anne comforted him. For the first time since 1964, kind feelings passed between them. This was, in truth, an isolated instance; Phil could never bring himself to forgive Anne for the failings he saw in her. But her kindness at this point was a balm for which he was intensely grateful.

Phil flew up to Canada alone, carrying a battered suitcase, a rumpled trench coat, and a Bible. The Santa Venetia house with broken back windows for easy illicit entry went into foreclosure. Soon after, Phil's remaining possessions were ripped off.

Hard, strange times. And no Donna to set reality straight. In Canada, alone, Phil tried his hardest to die.

9

Contemplating Suicide In A Foreign Land, Phil Decides Instead To
Commence A New We From The Bottom Up, Kicks The Amphetamine Urge,
Finds A New Wife In Orange County, Writes A Tragic Classic On The Drug
Culture, And Concludes ThatRealityls "Amazingly Simple" Just As His Life
Is Turned Upside Down Once More (1972-1974)

They think I'm weird, Carol. That probably surprises you. Weird sexy Phil, they call me. There are no psychiatrists here, so I can't go see anybody; I just bop around getting weirder all the time. Gradually everybody is beginning to realize that despite my fame and my great books I am a distinct liability to know or have anything at all to do with.

PHIL, in black humor mode, in March 1972 letter from Vancouver to Carol Carr

I live a straight life now; no one here /in Orange County) knows that I was once a hippie doper (as they would put it) . . . and yet I grieve for the loss of my former wife and the child of that marriage, whom I would very much like to see but can't. Anyhow Tessa and I will soon have a new baby I...] and it is my hope that the solution to the death of the old life-pattern and elements (if there is one) lies mainly in the forming of new.

PHIL, July 1973 letter

I have already said a great deal about him, and can only add that we had a mad, romantic love affair that nearly killed us both. Phil was no saint, and he could be very cruel at times, but he loved me more than Dante loved Beatrice, and I fear that is something I will never find again.

TESSA DICK, letter to the author

PHIL arrived in Vancouver on February 16, 1972, and found himself, to his evident delight, a feted Con guest of honor.

Within two hours of his arrival, Phil had settled into his hotel room and gone out to visit a cabaret. The next day, the University of British Columbia held a posh Faculty Club luncheon in his honor, at which his speech "The Android and the Human" was received enthusiasticallyas it would be by the Con audience two days later. Mike Bailey, the Con organizer who accompanied Phil on his rounds, was surprised by Phil's energy, as Phil had confided to him, during a low moment the first night in, that he didn't expect to live long or ever to write another book.

At the Con the next day, Phil mingled madly, focusing on the women. All vied to make the acquaintance of the SF legend of whom strange tales were told. By the end of day one, Phil was telling folks that he'd decided to stay on. The Vancouver Provence ran this proud headline: "Canada Gains a Noted Science Fiction Writer."

"Android," Phil's full-house speech, was his conscious effort "to sum up an entire life-time of developing thought." At the time he thought it was his most important work; then again, he said the same of Flow, Scanner, and Valis just after completing them. "Android" evokes the sixties' impatient transformative Zeitgeist, and it's a vital document for anyone seeking to understand Phil. But "Android" is also a roller coaster taking the reader from brilliant heights of insight to vertiginous depths of naivete.

The speech began with a fine turnabout of the basic cybernetics premise that useful comparisons can be made between human and machine behavior: "[S]uppose a study of ourselves, our own nature, enables us to gain insight into the now extraordinary complex functioning and malfunctioning of mechanical and electronic constructs?" This brought Phil to a question always at the heart of his fiction: "what is it, in our behavior, that we can call specifically human?" Distinguishing the "android" and the "human" was difficult because "inauthentic human activity has become a science of government and such-like agencies, now." In opposition to such Orwellian manipulation, Phil set his hope in the youth. He even prophesied Scanner: "These kids, that I have known, lived with, still know, in California, are my science fiction stories of tomorrow [... ]" What Phil valued in them was not the street protest of the sixties: "[P]olitically active youth, those who organize into distinct societies with banners and slogans-to me, that is a reduction into the past, however revolutionary these slogans may be. I refer to the intrinsic entities, the kids each of whom is on his own, doing what we call `his thing.' " They rebelled "out of what might be called pure selfishness."

If androidization meant predictability and obedience, the "sheer perverse malice" of youth was the paradoxical guarantor of ultimate values. "If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society [... ] the ethics most important for the survival of the true, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that'll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities." Phil conceded that his faith in youth might be wishful thinking, and he spoke out against the menace of street drugs; while he hadn't yet given up amphetamines (inhaling, during Con rounds, speed mixed into menthol nose drops), he had abandoned all romanticism as to drug explorations.

But the speech concluded with the story of how Donna stole cases of Coke from a truck, drank them down with her friends, then returned the empties for deposit refunds. Phil allowed that this was "ethically questionable," but defended it as "truly human: in that it shows, to me, a spirit of merry defiance, of spirited, although not spiritual, bravery and uniqueness." This was less political oratory than it was an impassioned love letter to Donna. And, like most love letters, it translates badly into sound general advice. One person's righteous rip-off is another person's tragic loss, and Coke trucks are driven by people with families and bills to pay.

On the final day of the Con, Phil met "Andrea," a college student in her early twenties who was the same physical type as Nancy and Donna. An account of Phil's falling in love with Andrea is included in The Dark-Haired Girl, a manuscript he assembled in late 1972 and described, on its title page, as "A collection of personal letters and dreams which undertake the worthy artistic task of depicting what is fine and noble in humanity, found sometimes in the worst possible places, but still real, still shining." The Dark-Haired Girl (p. 1988) includes breathtaking love letters, the sentiments of sonnets rendered in onrushing prose as Phil falls in and out of love with Donna, Andrea, and others. Years later, upon rereading the manuscript, Phil observed in the Exegesis: "In 'TDHG' it is evident that I am desperately trying to find a center (omphalos) for/to my life, but that I was failing; I was still 'stateless.' "