Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity: A Memoir

Zendik Farm has long been both mysterious and intriguing. Helen Zuman has given us her wrenchingly personal and deeply insightful story of her time in this most unusual of communes. Others might see the group and their own experience differently, but few will provide a better-written or more probing account of Zendik.

T IMOTHY M ILLER , The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond

How timely, how telling this story of an inexperienced young woman who fell prey to a cult because of the abuse to which shed been subjected by male strangers. Only within the fold, where there were rules protecting the women, did she feel safe enough to explore her sexuality and learn to love. So she surrendered her possessions, her will, her youth. Read Mating in Captivity as a cautionary tale, one I hope will spark a desire to create a better world for our daughters.

L EAH L AX , Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home

Helen Zuman was a believer. She believed in the perfectibility of community, in the ability of young dreamers to transform traditional sexual norms by getting back to the land. That Zendik Farm was ultimately exposed as a tyranny built on lies does not destroy the idealism of Zumans original impulses; she holds up her youthful self alongside her wiser older self, without useless moralizing, and thereby shows respect for the young people drawn to this cult, while shedding light on the long history of American pastoral communal experiments. She does all this with restraint and wit, and a deft instinct for entertaining incident and character. A page-turner, with purpose!

P HILIP W EISS , American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps

Like Animal Farm and 1984, Mating in Captivity shows how shared delusion feeds creeping oppression. A keen study of tyranny in microcosm, and the costs of acquiescence.

R YAN G RIM , This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America

Zuman... retains her sense of agency (and humor) as she weighs Zendiks weird creed and power plays against the sense of righteousness and belonging that drew her in. Her whip-smart prose... conveys the squalid exuberance of Zendiks blend of idealism and fraud [in this] engrossing and offbeat story of ideological bonds that chafeand sometimes liberate.

K IRKUS R EVIEWS (starred review)

Copyright 2018 by Helen Zuman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-337-3
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-338-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955354

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

For Gregg. For all who lived at Zendik.

IVE SEWN THIS TEXT FROM the frayed cloth of memory, striving, per Tristine Rainers advice, to tell the whole truth with love.

The following are pseudonyms: Eile, Zylem, Karma, Estero, Rebel, Dymion, Prophet, Lyrik, Toba, Eave, Cayta, Zeta, Shure, Loria, Swan, Kro, Owen, Teal, Rayel, Luya, Jayd, Zar, Donna, Taridon, Riven, Blayz, Vera, Rave, Mar, Rook, Amory, Tarrow, Eric, Lysis, Noi, Dylan, Elfdancer, Mason, Ethik, Leah, Adam, and Hunter.

I SPENT MOST OF MY twenties trapped in a story. Here it is:

Youall of youbelong to the Deathculture. You wake up, paste on fake smiles, scurry off to work for your corporate masters, raping the earth. You hate this, but youre stuck. You need the cash. For what? McMansions, gadgets, drugssubstitutes for love.

I belong to Zendik. Were starting a revolution. We live on a farm and do lots of art. We work together, support each other. Tell the truth. Youve gotta follow our leadif were gonna save the earth.

I knowits hard. Out there you dont dare get straight, even with your mate. You might lose your shield. Your one ally in your fight to survive. Real love takes a tribeled by the first couple in history to do away with lies.

Ill never leave Zendik. If I did, Id diein soul, if not in body. And Id despise myself, for betraying all life.

In other words, I joined a cult. The year was 1999; I was twenty-two. But I didnt say, I joined a cult till 2005more than six years later.

No one knowingly joins a cult, and no one in a cult would call it that. We join, we commit to communes, new religions, personal-growth programs, temples, revolutions. Saying, I joined a cult comes later, if ever. It means releasing stories we doubt we can live without. Stories that give us purpose. Stories we cant see as stories, so long as they absorb us.

When I left Zendik, in 2004, I took its trap with me; I was doomed, I thought, unless I returned. What finally freed me was the only thing that ever frees anyone from mythocaptivity: a more compelling story.

I BEGAN SPINNING A FANTASY about Zendik mating the night I arrived.

Cross-legged on the living room floor, a metal bowl nestled in my lap, I watched a short, round woman with buoyant ringlets burst in from the kitchen, bowl in hand. Another woman called to her, across the room, Are you having a date tonight?

Between them lay a sea of Zendiks; maybe two-thirds of the Farms sixty-plus members filled every chair, couch, and patch of rug. The lemon scent of Murphys Oil fused with the glow of standing lamps to bathe us in resinous incandescence.

Forks clanged against stainless steel. Chatter rolled past me like delicate thunder.

The short woman nodded, her face erupting in a joyous grin. I felt a prick of envy. It must be so lovely, I thought, to go out for dinner and a movie with a guy you like, then return, in cricket-quiet, to this cozy old farmhouse. Never mind that none of the handful of dates Id been onall as a teenager in New York Cityhad involved dinner and a movie. This was Polk County, North Carolina. The sticks. People here must mimic the mating behavior of characters in Sweet Valley High books and Archie comics. I wondered why the woman going on the date had gotten food for herself. Wouldnt she be eating out, with her boyfriend?

I took another bite of brown rice and pinto beans, topped with fresh salsa. I snapped off the sweet white stem of a leaf of romaine. I was eating the same food as the others. But the bowl I ate from, the fork I ate with, set me apart. They warned that Zendik warmed as you pushed toward the center. I was at the outer rim. I would have to earn my way in.

Minutes earlier, a graceful young woman named Eile had shown me to the shelves where bowls, plates, mugs, spoons, forks, and knives were stored. I was to pick one of each and mark it with my name, in felt-tip pen on masking tape. Youll be on quarantine for ten days, she said, which means you cant cook or wash dishes or eat from the same dishes we eat from.