On July 18, 1986 I visited Congressman Mel Levine’s local office in Los Angeles. I had dropped by about a month before and signed up to volunteer. The office called me and asked me to come in.
I walked through the front door and made eye contact with a woman who looked eerily familiar. She immediately dropped unconscious behind her desk. Others came to her aid as I was whisked off to a large conference room.
I took a seat at a table and looked up at the faces around me. They also felt familiar for some reason I could not explain.
I realized that I and others were stuffing papers into envelopes. One of them asked me to read what I was stuffing.
It was a narrative about the Congressman and how he knew Robert F. Kennedy. I read how Mel Levine had advocated investigation of a possible shooter besides Sirhan Sirhan in the 1968 shooting.
1968.
The year of my birth.
Los Angeles.
Where I was sitting.
That strange double name.
The woman behind the desk that I felt some connection to.
The “Woman in the Polka Dot Dress” I had read about in regard to Sirhan’s possible accomplice?
Without thinking, I said, “That old second gunman theory.”
A man smiled.
I started saying a phrase over and over.
A woman asked me took into the eyes of another man.
Brown eyes.
“He hates the Dodgers.”
I lost sense of time.
Nothing made sense and yet everything did.
At some point they led me to the parking lot and I saw everyone just scatter.
I remember the phrase in case I see them again.
I still remember it forty years later.
I lost my mind that day and every day since then a piece comes back to me.
I walked through the front door and made eye contact with a woman who looked eerily familiar. She immediately dropped unconscious behind her desk. Others came to her aid as I was whisked off to a large conference room.
I took a seat at a table and looked up at the faces around me. They also felt familiar for some reason I could not explain.
I realized that I and others were stuffing papers into envelopes. One of them asked me to read what I was stuffing.
It was a narrative about the Congressman and how he knew Robert F. Kennedy. I read how Mel Levine had advocated investigation of a possible shooter besides Sirhan Sirhan in the 1968 shooting.
1968.
The year of my birth.
Los Angeles.
Where I was sitting.
That strange double name.
The woman behind the desk that I felt some connection to.
The “Woman in the Polka Dot Dress” I had read about in regard to Sirhan’s possible accomplice?
Without thinking, I said, “That old second gunman theory.”
A man smiled.
I started saying a phrase over and over.
A woman asked me took into the eyes of another man.
Brown eyes.
“He hates the Dodgers.”
I lost sense of time.
Nothing made sense and yet everything did.
At some point they led me to the parking lot and I saw everyone just scatter.
I remember the phrase in case I see them again.
I still remember it forty years later.
I lost my mind that day and every day since then a piece comes back to me.
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