I knew that I shouldn't have sunk that last ball.

It had just started as what I had thought was a friendly game of pool. Now I was backed into a corner by a skinny psycho Billy Bob with beer breath who was seconds away from beating the living shit of me with a pool cue.

I should have guessed that the evening might come to this when I saw that this guy's concept of suave was holding his smoke in the space where he was missing a front tooth.

"Yew New York Jew boys think yer so damn slick, don't'cha?" He was leaning so close to me that he was spitting on my glasses when he spoke. "Comin' on down here t'smoke that ell-ess-dee with ma sister so's ya knock her up an' go on home t'brag to yer Jew buddies about it, huh?"

I sensed that there was no right answer to his question, so I tried to change the subject. "Actually," I ventured, "you don't smoke LSD, its usually soaked into a little........" The half drunk redneck jabbed me hard in the solar plexus with the fat end of the cue, effectively shutting me up.

Joe jumped up from the bar with an alarmed expression. Another one of the trio of country boys called to him. "Ya better just sit back on down, hippie boy, or we'all might jus' have to be givin' you a haircut!" He guffawed at his own sparkling wit. Joe stayed put. He gave me a look that said it all. He had warned me not to accept when the three had invited me to play.

As I leaned against the wall wheezing, my brain was racing. I was telling myself that there would be no shame in running out on this confrontation. If anyone asked me, I always characterized this sort of thing as a "commitment to nonviolence", but more accurately speaking I was a lover, not a fighter, having neither the physical conditioning nor the temperament to attempt to hold my own against three beer brained bubbas.

"Look, guys", I said in a slightly squeaky voice from my spazzing diaphragm, "you got me all wrong. I just came in to drink a little beer and shoot a little pool. Maybe it was a bad idea. Why don't

you just let me and my friend go our way...."

The redneck stuck his face real close and said, "Why'n't yew shet

1

up!" Another poke in the gut with the cue and I was on the floor.

None of the locals looking on seemed to be anything more than slightly amused, most seemed bored, no one stepped forward to help.

When this sort of thing happened, I always went into a special survival mode. That means do what ever is necessary to survive. If that means a little humiliation, well then so be it.

"O.K.", I thought, "so far these guys are talking beatings and haircuts, and we might still be able to talk our way out of this."

The one with the beer gut and the "CAT" tractor hat grabbed Joe by the arm and hauled him over by me. "Mebby we ought to see if these hippie boys really are queer!"

"Aw, shit." I thought.

"Agin?" said the guy with the cue in a slightly disgusted voice, "Damn Jimmy, why yew always gotta do that stuff? I swear you aint right."

The one called Jimmy got real red in the face. "Ah aint no queer Billy! Ah want t'see if they got more'n jes' hair like a girl. Bet they do th'back door on each other all th'time."

The skinny one looked down at me. "Thet true? Yew boys 'back door buddies'?"

I couldn't help it, I started to panic, this was serious. Me and Joe were about to get butt fucked by these inbred goons.

"Come on guys", I said, "Just let us get out of here, we don't want any trouble. Come on, just let us go."

The guy looked at me like I had crawled out from under a rock.

"Yew aint much of a man, are yew." He sneered. "Well....I sure don't need to see what Jimmy does again."

Finally, they let me and Joe crawl out of the bar on our hands and knees. They drove past us in a beat up pick up truck a half hour later as we walked along the roadside and threw beer bottles at us. That was the last we saw of them.

"So what was the name of that place?", I asked, "Humdinger?"

"Hutsanger." Said Joe, "Hutsanger, West Virginia. May I never pass that way again."

Joe was congratulating us on having gotten out of that one.

"Yeah", I said, "then why do I feel like such a nebbish ?"

"Will ya stop with the Yiddish already?!?" Said Joe. "That's how you get us into trouble in this part of the country!"

"Damn." I said, "Good thing we're not Negroes!"

"It's 'Black' , shit-for-brains, and we might as well be so far as folks around here are concerned."

2

I hunched my shoulders and lit a smoke.

He was right enough. Joe was clean shaven, but I had a full bushy beard. We both had shoulder length hair, mine brown and frizzy, sticking out like the cap of a big mushroom, his blonde and straight and I was wearing multiply patched bell-bottom Levi's. As well I had my right ear pierced four times with gold rings through and Joe had a big pot leaf embroidered on his Levi's jacket. I suppose we might as well have had signs that said 'kick me' stuck on our backs.

We were behind schedule to meet up with our friends in Birmingham. The party at Paul's place had actually already started last night. We had called this morning to let them know we were going to be late, but I was impatient. Joanie was already there.

Me and Joanie had gotten together a week ago and I was eager to repeat the experience. She was so very sweet. Beautiful long wavy chestnut hair, eyes like the deep blue sea, a smile to reach into your very soul, amazing, I mean amazing tits. She was deep too, she knew how to heal with crystals and massage and she like, radiated total love. She grew the best pot by talking to the plants. I really wanted to, needed to, see her again. More importantly, I needed to get there before someone more charming than me got close to her. Joanie was a firm believer in free love. So was I, as long as it was free love with me. Fact was, she was the first woman that I had had an interest in having a steady relationship with in a long time. It was easy enough to find a woman to spend a few pleasant hours with, but Joanie was of a higher quality and I wanted it to continue.

It was almost daylight when we finally got back to the highway. We had left our sign behind in the bar. We were lucky to have gotten out with our packs.

We faced the oncoming stream of vehicles with our thumbs out and our best "certified harmless" smiles on our faces.

Besides a statie pulling over to tell us we had to stay on the entrance ramp, we had to wait for almost an hour before anyone stopped. It was a tractor without a load that finally pulled over. One of the nice ones with a sleeper in back.

The guy at the wheel looked a little crazed, but there was nothing unusual about that. Lots of these truckers would drive straight through for twenty four hours regularly. Very often the drivers would have really great grass and speed which they were always generous with. I could understand that, its easier to talk to someone who is as wasted as you are.

3

He would at least get us to Tennessee, he was heading home and he lived just outside of Nashville.

I sat up front with the driver smoking his pot and talking about science fiction while Joe sat back in the sleeper and strummed the driver's fancy Ovation guitar.

"When we get to know the other alien civilizations, it's all going to be one big mind." I said, "Like, it will be a cosmic joining of all sentient life of the Universe." I was off full steam on my Olaf Stapledon rap. "Its the only way that we can make a mind big enough to understand God." I had recently read "Starmaker" and it had become my religion of the moment. "Ya'see, this creative force has made a succession of universes, man, and each one has gotten closer and closer to comprehending it. Its not even going to be our universe which breaks through, at least not on a really meaningful level. We gotta get to a level where its all vibrations, man."

The trucker was just letting me go with it, but I don't think it was because he was particularly impressed with the intellectual content of what I was saying. He was sort of nodding and commenting as if he were enjoying a jazz horn solo. He never added anything except for "Uh-huh" or "I see" and continued to suck thoughtfully on the joint whenever it came his way.

"Hey", he said, "you guys ever try any 'Thai Stick'?"

He then pulled out some of the most powerful marijuana I had ever had. We were already stoned, but this stuff really had a sort of powerfully psychedelic quality.

The guy finally had to drop us off at route 65 near Woodbine.

We were at a strip mall in a strange place with a serious case of munchies. The supermarket was full of brightly colored packages of food in brands we had never heard of. We were trying hard not to look stoned which was difficult because just about everything was, like, amazingly hilarious.

We finally settled on a loaf of bread and some baloney with a great smiling cartoon farmer pig logo. We also picked up some mustard which looked like yellow paint and some "Johnny Boy" brand cherry soda. I bought myself a carton of Chesterfields.

We sat on the curb in the parking lot and made sandwiches in the sun. while we were stuffing our faces a little black girl with a serious look on her face and a finger jammed up her nose toddled up to us.

"Waffo yew gwine'abe habin' yo foo atcheerfo?" It was no known human language. I laughed and spit my soda. Joe smacked me in the head.

4

"What's that?" I asked.

"Waffo yew gots dat hayuh? Y'all s'kina bums?"

I got just plain scared. This dope was so strong that I had forgotten the English language.

The kid was filthy in the way only a kid could be. She had chocolate smeared around her lips in an whole other shade of brown from her skin. There were spots of God-knows-what all over her white lace trimmed blue "Little Lulu" dress. One of her grimy socks had fallen down and she was clutching an abused looking plastic baby doll. We were saved from having to think of an appropriate response by the kid's mother, one of the fattest human beings I had ever seen, grabbing her by the arm and leading her away while scolding her in the same gibberish that the child had used.

I think it was about ninety degrees, we were in a surreal place and the "Johnny Boy" was making me feel sticky.

"Joe, let's get back on the road."

Joe and I peeled our asses off of the curb and headed back to the highway. On the way , we stopped by the market's dumpster to pull out a piece of a "MO-BO" brand eggplant box and scrawl "BIRMINGHAM" on the blank side in red Magic Marker.

We were on the shoulder for only a few minutes when a rundown but brightly painted VW Minibus pulled up. Emblazoned across the side was a painting of a pipe smoking lizard. From the window oozed the sound of the Grateful Dead, a concert tape, not an album. This looked promising.

The little van was actually kind of crowded inside There were two guys up front who were more or less our counterparts with thick southern accents. They were named Bud and Frank and they had been coming back from an overnight hunting trip. They lived on a small rural commune. About ten permanent residents with lots of folks passing through all the time. They made it sound like they had a pretty nice life. Unfortunately, they were only going about twenty miles down the road, but they seemed like good people. They had a gallon jug of cheap red wine which was passed around to the enjoyment of all.

The van was their home away from home which was arranged with tight efficiency. The rear seats had been pulled out and the rear side windows boarded over. On one of these walls was a rack which held a shotgun and some fishing poles. Hanging from a hook was a small dayglow-pink Plexiglas bong. Against the rear door was a box of shells, a tackle box and an aluminum cooler which

5

contained several dead rabbits.

They explained that they had been sent by their friends to fetch dinner, and invited us to come and join them. We regretfully declined, but invited them to come on down to Paul's. They said they might in a day or so, but they had to take care of family business first.

There was something really compelling about that lifestyle and yet I knew that I would get tired of the "gotta milk the cows and chickens" stuff pretty damn quick. But they were living the ideal or at least what I held as the ideal at the time.

We were left where they turned off onto a dirt road which was right next to a little weed choked pond. There were more mosquitoes than the population of China and they all flocked around us. We decided to walk a ways down the road to the highway entrance before we stood up with the sign.

We stood for two hours in the very hot sun until it clouded over a little bringing some relief, but now the afternoon was wearing on and no ride was in sight. We wanted to make Birmingham tonight and it was still over a hundred miles south.

We were finally rescued from that spot by a guy in a pick up truck who threw us in the bed with a bunch of tools. It was actually pretty uncomfortable, but he got us fifty miles closer to our destination. He never said more than three words to us except to ask us where we were going when he picked us up and to wish us luck when he dropped us off. Without a word of explanation, he gave us each a little copy of the New Testament before he drove off.

The next car we saw was an Alabama State policeman.

State cops come in a few types.

The first type, the most common, is the guy who is mostly concerned with having his job be as easy as possible. They are not all that nuts about hitch-hikers because they are an alien presence on their highway and if an unlucky one gets killed, it stirs up all kinds of trouble. These types will generally insist you get off the main road and stay by the entrance ramp or give you a ride to a truck stop where you could ask around for a ride. These cops always refer to the hitch-hikers as "you guys", "buddy" or even "sonny".

The second type never directly addressed hitch-hikers at all save to issue orders to present ID and then leave the road. I have had a couple of this type take me to the state line if its nearby and order

me to stay off the state highway system. This type is always pissed

6

off that you are in their lives, have no concern that you are a person who has to get somewhere, but they don't view you enough as a human being to take it personally.

The third type is the one who calls you "sir". The extra politeness is the manifestation of a powerfully officious attitude. They are what I call the "Barney Fife" type. For these guys, the badge is a license to do any damn thing they please. For them, any violation of local law, no matter how minor, is a major threat to the foundations of civilization.

We got one of these.

He pulled up directly in front of us bringing the car to a halt less than a yard from our toes. As he stepped from the car we saw that he was tall and muscular with a square jaw. Most of his face was obscured by the shadow from his broad brimmed "smokey" hat. His eyes were hidden behind aviator style mirror shades.

"Good afternoon gentlemen", he said with emphasis, "I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you the state of Alabama."

Now, I had been down this way before, but Joe hadn't so he didn't know how to act. He didn't know that it wasn't his turn to talk until the cop asked a question, so he didn't even think twice about saying, "Why, thank you officer."

The cop froze with a sour curl to his lip which then metamorphosed into a wry and slightly malicious smile. He looked directly at Joe. "Do I detect, sir, that you find something amusing about our tradition of southern hospitality?"

Joe immediately realized that he had made a mistake. Trying to make the best of it he answered, "No officer, its one of the things I truly enjoy about visiting this part of the country!"

The statie pulled himself up to his full height. "And yet, sir, you repay that hospitality by violating our laws against pedestrians on the public highways and the begging of rides. Or was that sign an act of charity on your part to show others the way to Birmingham?"

We both looked uncomfortable. "Well?", asked the trooper, "Was it?"

I spoke up. "No sir. We were hitching rides."

"I had no doubt of that, sir." He rested his hand casually but meaningfully on his sidearm. "Gentlemen", he chirped, "I will need to see some identification and with your permission, I would like to examine the contents of your back packs. You may, of course,

refuse that permission if you so desire."

Joe and I were both well aware that refusal would almost

7

certainly result in our being hauled in.

He minutely examined our licenses. "Mister Joseph Robert Clanton of St. Louis, Missouri and Mister Adam Allen Rosenfeld of Larchmont, New York. I expect, Mister Rosenfeld, that you must have at least one good attorney in your family." He smiled broadly. I idly wondered if he was in the Klan. It hardly mattered. Whether his bigotry was a personal matter or part of an organized movement made little difference to me at this moment. The results could be the same. Long ago, it had stopped surprising me what a stigma being Jewish and from New York was down south. The New York Jew was like the equivalent of the boogie man. In spite of any evidence to the contrary, we were here to throw money around, insult local traditions and be "pushy".

He neatly laid out the contents of first one then the other of our packs on the hood of the cruiser. He was clearly hoping to find pot or acid, but didn't. I actually had about six blotters rolled up in a baggie inside my pack frame. Ninety-nine percent of cops aren't clever enough to look there, so I wasn't even worried about that. Even if he were to put us in the lock up, I was confident that my stash would still be there when they returned our stuff.

He did comment on my twelve pack of Trojans. "Looks like you're planning a big time in Birmingham, sir! I hope you understand that folks there aren't going to take kindly to having their daughters defiled."

"Officer, I have a girlfriend. She's from New Jersey." I don't think that Joanie actually thought of herself as my "girlfriend", but he didn't know that.

"I only hope she's over eighteen, sir."

Oy gevalt. This guy felt perfectly free to comment on every aspect of our lives, knowing full well that he had us totally in his power.

He wasted forty-five minutes of our time before telling us that we had better not be there when he came by an hour from now. He didn't try to fine us, arrest us or even directly order us to leave the roadway. We had just been a diversion for him. A bit of entertainment. As he left us we were filled with impotent anger.

It was good luck that someone stopped almost as soon as the statie finally left us alone.

It was a gleaming white Cadillac with a guy in a polyester suit and a bad rug at the wheel. To our joy, he was going all the way to

Birmingham.

His name was Todd and he sold food service refrigeration

8

equipment. He smelled of cigars and hair tonic. On the middle finger of his right hand was an ugly chunky gold ring with a big diamond in it.

"You boys got it all wrong", he drawled, "you gotta look sharp in this world. People don't respect you if you don't have a nice car and a sharp suit. In the long run, no one's gonna care how you felt about Dick Nixon or Viet Nam. They just want t'know how much money you make."

Joe and I were, of course, morally incensed by this philosophy. The shallow "suit and tie" lifestyle was what our life was, in our view, was the opposite of. When a character like this came along, it was our turn to feel superior.

Todd continued his soliloquy. "If you're in sales, you got to, I'm tellin' you boys, must drive a Caddy. None of them foreign cars. No Rolls Royce. No Mercedes Benz. You want an American car, a big expensive one. It says a lot about a man, lets people know you're a success and lets 'em know that they will be a success if they do business with you. You buy American because that lets 'em know that you have confidence in America."

It was like he lived in a different America from the one we did. The Amerika we saw was an Amerika of the Vietnam war and the Ku Klux Klan. It was an Amerika of runaway profit, pollution and greed. Our parent's definition of success was in fact the enemy in our Amerika.

"Lemme tell you boys something." He lowered his voice as he prepared to reveal a confidence. "I got me a gal in every town around here as well as a wife and kids in Nashville, and I can get nice things for all of 'em. I don't have to work too hard so I got time to get some honey from all of them."

He was like a preacher thumping the Bible of the American dream.

"Oh yeah", he continued, "I know you long hair boys can get the girls now, but time comes for all women that they want to know what you can give 'em. If you want to keep gettin' the good stuff you better have a good job and that's God's own truth. Y'all ought t'fergit about them hippie girls. A woman like that won't get you no where. The woman you want behind you should look good, cook good, be happy with what you give her and keep her mouth shut. You can't put up with none of that 'women's lib' crap, at least a real man won't."

Now generally, I assumed that the women I knew would prefer to take care of themselves, but none of them were here and this guy's

9

rap had gotten under my skin.

"The women I know aren't like that." I said. "They care about their independence. They aren't looking to a man for a meal ticket. They care about love." In my defense... I really believed what I was saying here.

Todd snorted. "Sure they do."

He dropped us off right at the road that led up to Paul's place. He gave us each a fifty dollar bill and told us to buy a suit with it. It was the exclamation point on his missionary rap, saying "I can afford to toss a hundred bucks at a couple of raggy-ass hippies just to make a point" more eloquently than words. It was a gross, offensive gesture, but we still took the money.

I don't know what Joe did with his, but I bought a quarter pound with mine when I got back to New York. What I didn't smoke I sold in little bits for about a hundred bucks all together. Four ounces makes a fair sized pile of twenty dollar "lids".

We walked the mile up the dirt road kicking up a trail of dust as we went. When we came into sight of Paul's big farm, we were elated. Real people at last. It was almost as long a walk to the house from the road as it was up the road itself.

It was a huge house. Paul's family was old southern money and this had been the country vacation home in the twenties. The parents had set themselves up with more modern accommodations in Florida and left Paul to "work out this phase" in the old house.

"The Old House" was on a beautiful tract of land of over sixty acres that included fields, a little piece of forest that a brook ran through and small lake. Or was it a large pond? The place was home to about twenty cats who were half wild. They only got fed enough to ensure they hung around to keep the mice under control.

The house itself was huge. Not exactly a mansion but plenty big. Over twenty rooms in the main building which was a great Victorian pile with gables and porches sticking out seemingly everywhere. There was also two other buildings, one of which was a former stable which was in somewhat run down condition and the other had been a caretaker's cottage.

There were a couple of people on the roof of the big house who spotted us and waved. It was Big John and Daisy from New Hampshire.

Big John had taken to living out in the woods and was convinced that the world was going to end in the next few years. The result of this conviction was that he had built large and completely sealable basement on his cabin which he kept well stocked with

10

water, canned goods and, it was rumored, guns and ammo. I allways figured that if things ever came to that kind of extremity, stuff like that wouldn't do any good. His girlfriend Daisy was learning to be an expert auto mechanic and weaver.

"Damn!", I said, "We could have gotten a ride with them if we had known they were coming."

"What", said Joe, "and miss getting almost sodomized by rednecks?"

I rolled my eyes and we both laughed at the grim humor.

When we stepped through the front door of the house we were greeted by half a dozen friends. There were hugs and handshakes all around. Joanie wasn't with them and I was almost afraid to ask where she was. It turned out that she had gone to town with Will -from-Texas and his girlfriend Liz, to get some more food. They were late. Joe and I were both hoping that dinner would be soon.

The last food we had had was the strange baloney in Tennessee.

We were shown where to toss our packs and where we could

crash. Joe got put in a beautiful gabled room on the third floor of the big house. I got a room in the cottage.

So far there were not too many people there. I guess that me and Joe were not the only ones who had been delayed. This was going to be the biggest gathering of the year and I was looking forward to being with a lot of friends who I hadn't seen in months.

I got plenty of info about what was going on from those who were there.

Toadstool from Connecticut had called. He was only a few hours away. His much repaired Rambler had broken down in Tennessee, but he had been able to find a local garage which had the part he needed. He figured he would make it by midnight.

Howard Flanders had hitched down from Boston a few days before and had taken over the stereo. He had filled the house with mad, horn-honking progressive jazz.

I'll say one thing for this guy, he was a bold individualist. Surrounded by people who were into rock or folk music, he was a passionate champion of the music, which in this crowd, seemed like a throwback to the age of the beatnik.

It was actually pretty brave of Howard to follow this particular muse. In a group of supposed "nonconformists" it was of special importance to adhere to the norms of the group. The culture of music was especially important to group identification. Howard's taste in music was an outright challenge, seen by most as obnoxious noise. "I wonder what your parents say about rock?" He

11

would ask his critics.

Everyone was impatiently waiting for Raymack to show up with his van load of records to oust him.

The two Johns were there although no one had been able to find them when there were dishes to be washed. The veggie girls had sworn that they would wash all of the dishes from the next two meals if they could pin them down.

Wings was up a tree somewhere playing his guitar out of earshot of the stereo. He found Howard's choice of music "unmellow". He still owed me some money because he hired me to paint a pair of wings on the back of his guitar. He was amazingly adept at dodging the issue whenever I brought it up. "You are such a slave of the money trip!" he would say. I would respond that I was also a slave of the food trip and that he had promised me twenty bucks. I didn't really expect to ever see the dough, but I was damned if he was going to get off guilt free.

Paul had told everyone to just make themselves at home. He was deeply involved in setting up the sound for his band which was going to play the following afternoon. He had bought the sound system from a band in California which had stopped touring. It had enough power to be used in a small stadium. I guess when they started to play, the party would really start. It was supposed to be three days, but Paul said people were welcome as long as they cared to stay.

Just as the sun was setting, Will, Liz and Joanie pulled up in Will's pickup truck.

The bed of the truck was replete with big bags of rice and

vegetables and loaves of bread not to mention a huge bag of granola. There were also several cases of beer but no sign of any

meat.

"The veggie girls!", I thought, "They have seized control of the kitchen!" Forgetting about my stomach for a moment, I ran down to the truck to help with the bags and collect a kiss from Joanie.

She was just beautiful even without clothing of any particular style. Actually she was dressed at the moment almost identically to me in a light blue work shirt, Levi's and light tan work boots. The ubiquitous "counter culture Amish" look. Where portions of her jeans had worn through, she had done wonderful embroidery to repair it. I myself had a sample of her work on my left knee. Even in the utilitarian clothing, there was no, I mean zero, chance of anyone mistaking her for anything but very beautiful woman.

"Adam! You're late! I was starting to worry about you. Did

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anything happen?"

"Nah", I said, "the usual shit. We just had to wait a long time for rides in a few places, had to talk with some staties. You know, the usual shit." I might have told her about the incident in the bar if I could have thought of a way to make myself sound like anything but a cowardly schmo, but I couldn't, so I didn't.

"Well, we ought to have a wonderful dinner in an hour or so! Why don't you go take a shower and wash some of the road off of you."

"Hmmm, join me?" I grinned.

She gave me a shy, sexy smile. "I have to cook, plenty of time for love later!" She kissed me again and then pushed me away. "Go wash up! You stink!"

"Love later.." I thought, "all right!"

As I walked down to the guest house, the birds were going to roost and the farm was held in the brief silence of twilight, that moment between the hushing of the day sounds and the start of the night sounds. Even the crickets change their tone and rhythm at this time. Just as I entered the cottage, I saw the first of the fireflies and a bat fluttered overhead on moleskin wings.

In the shower, the water ran brown off of my body and out of my hair until I had gone over myself twice. With a change of clothes I felt like a new man.

The cottage had four rooms, two of which had real beds in them. I had claimed one of these. Camped out in the other bedroom was a couple from Tennessee that I didn't know. I think their names were Billy and Diane. In the living room I counted three sleeping bags. No one had yet set up in the tiny den which contained a small upright piano as well as the only television on the property. There was a half kitchen with an empty refrigerator and the small bathroom which opened to both my bedroom and the den.

The militant vegetarian women who had taken on the job of feeding the masses knew how to set a fine table. There was corn-on -the-cob, hot biscuits, beer, wine, cheese and a lentil curry which I found pretty tasty. Joe looked like he thought we should have stayed for dinner with Bud and Frank, the rabbit hunters.

This table of friends was like a family to me. To some of us, our

only family.

We had come from all over and met under different circumstances but over a few years we had become an almost nationwide network of semi vagabonds. Some of us had never met but had known one another by reputation. The core of the group had

emerged from a Quaker youth group, but I, of course, was not one

13

of those. I had known Joe and Big John and Toadstool before we

called him Toadstool. He had met some of the others and they invited him and all his friends to visit them in upstate New York. That was four years ago. I remembered that it was a week before Kent State. It didn't take us long to figure out that these were the people we belonged with. We didn't have a formal name for ourselves except Friends. Capital "F" in homage to our Quaker core.

Almost monthly, somewhere there was a meeting of the Friends, some large and organized, some small and informal. This big party of Paul's was the second biggest of the year. In two months there was supposed to be a bigger "National" meeting somewhere in Pennsylvania, but I wasn't expecting to make that one.

We thought of ourselves as a new culture, valuing honesty, love and real reverence, not some fake paternalistic religion. Most of us had real world jobs or were students, but a surprising number of us were just travelers working odd jobs here and there and owning nothing more than the contents of a back pack or a motor vehicle of some description.

I guess I was sort of in-between. I more or less lived with my mother, but I was hardly ever home. Since my high school graduation, I had held a succession of part time or day jobs in dozens of places where I might have taken up residence for days, weeks or months. Mom never bothered me about finding a more stable life or getting a real job. I guess she trusted me to work things out for myself in my own time and I, in turn did my best to make sure that she never saw me do anything to make her feel she was wrong to do so. I was a legal adult and technically didn't have to answer to her for my actions, but I, unlike many of my friends, never felt the need to throw things in her face that I knew would just upset her. I'm sure that she was aware that I knew a lot of women and indulged in a vice or two, but we never made it a topic of conversation. The only thing she ever squeaked about was my cigarrette habit, which was, I have to admit, in the long run the most likely to do me in.

Just as dinner was finishing up, Toadstool arrived with his hometown buddy Brad Pitson. Toadstool was a close friend who I had known for a bunch of years. His real name was Tom Grover, and he actually preferred being called Tom rather than Toadstool. He got the nickname when he got stoned at a gathering and sat all evening staring into space. When anyone asked him what he was doing, he replied "....just being a toadstool..". In spite of the fact

14

that he claimed to not recall the incident, the name stuck.

He was a great hairy bear of a man who resembled everyone's vision of a lumberjack. He had a big bushy beard and only slightly longish hair. Already at the age of twenty-four he was pretty bald on top. He wore incongruously tiny round wire frame glasses which seemed so delicate in contrast to his "mountain man" image.

His size belied a shy and thoughtful nature. He was, however prone to frustration due to a learning disability. On occasion he could have major temper tantrums. He never took out his anger on people, he was aware enough of his own strength not to do that, but I had seen him punch a refrigerator hard enough to dent it and a tree hard enough to cause a fall of leaves.

He worked as a carpenter when he had work.

He had invited me to stay with him for a while and pick up some work on a house project he was starting in a couple of weeks. I

would most likely end up hauling buckets of nails around or some shit like that, but it would be work with a roof over my head and his mom's home cooking.

Tom's mom was a great practitioner of basic American cuisine. Anyone who had ever had occasion to visit Toadstool would talk about her fried chicken or her meatloaf or ever her mashed potatoes for a long time after.

Brad was a whole other animal. Unlike most of the guys, he preferred to wear his light brown hair short and combed straight back. A nice enough fellow, but prone to do stupid things like drive drunk or try to pick up biker's girlfriends.

They came inside and told me about their trip while they filled up on the leftovers from dinner. They had apparently broken down just a little south of Nashville, having completely fried some essential part of their engine. In explaining the nature of the problem they both drifted off into total gearhead lingo which I hadn't a clue about, which led them into an argument I couldn't even understand.

A couple of beers later peace and clarity was restored.

I figured that it would be politic of me to go to the kitchen and help out with the dishes, but when I got there I saw that the two Johns had been located and put to work.

These guys were like two peas in a pod. They had been best friends since elementary school. They were hardly ever seen apart and they spent most of their time plotting surrealist pranks. If anything really weird happened at a gathering, there was a good chance that they were at the bottom of it. Because of their

15

humorless feminism and their food obsessions, the "veggie girls" were most frequently the object of their pranksterism. They were the only ones to refer to them as "veggie girls" in their presence. To which they always shrilly responded "veggie women!"

Megan Reilly was the one they counted on mostly to get a rise out of. She had no sense of humor (although, unfortunately, she thought she did) , which to the Johns, was an offense in and of itself, so every chance they got they did something to perturb her little world. That was o.k. in my book. I found Megan a little annoying anyway. She was a shameless gossip and prone to catty remarks which were her substitute for wit.

Joanie was nowhere to be seen but John Whalen said she was looking for me. John Reynolds said she might be on the upstairs balcony.

She was on the upstairs balcony all right. Wings was straddling her butt giving her a back rub with scented oil. He had lit several candles and was burning incense. His portable cassette player was spewing out Grateful Dead space jam.

"Hi!" I said.

Joanie looked up and murmured "Hi yourself!"

Wings frowned and said, "Oh, wow. You know...she's not going

be able to relax if you're here talking to her."

I thought, "And you won't be able to 'mellow' your way into her pants if I stay." I wasn't actually worried about Wings. He was way too transparent. He had chased Joanie for a year or so but had always blown it at the crucial second by doing something uncool.

I remember a time when he had really charmed a beautiful gal from California when he just caught a glance of another guy talking to her. He went up and tried to tell him to back off without knowing he was just her friend. She was utterly turned off by the whole scene and split. He was a walking bundle of repressed hostility.

He worked just a little too hard to cut a romantic figure. He was just enough the perfect hippie to come off as utterly false. The guy actually referred to a necklace he wore as "love beads", but claimed it was a joke when cornered.

Joanie said, "I want you to stay and talk to me. Wings don't worry about Adam."

Wings frowned deeply. "Whoa...I'm sharing my art with you. You need to relax....focus on the sensation. If you can't give it your full attention, maybe we ought to do this later."

He got up, grabbed the oil and his tape recorder and left in a self

16

righteous huff to set off, no doubt, in search of other prey.

Joanie sat up, still shirtless. Amazing tits. "My left shoulder is still a little tight", she said, "Do you think you could work on it some?"

"Sure.", I said as I started to rub her pre-greased back. We chatted a little as my hands wandered farther over her body. In a short time all conversation had ceased.

About a half hour later Big John wandered onto the porch and quickly turned around saying "'Scuse me!", but neither of us really heard him.

Around midnight we wandered hand in hand down to my room in the little house and cuddled up until the next morning.

Not having had any sleep for two days, I slept through till around eleven. When I woke up, Joanie was already gone. I had a vague recollection of her having gotten up around nine and me complaining about her moving around. I hoped I hadn't gotten too surly with her.

I lit up a butt and stepped outside with just a towel around me to see what kind of day it was. Beautiful and sunny.

I saw Raymack's van, a repainted bread truck parked at the end of the drive as well as a few other vehicles. Raymack had painted a beautiful coat of arms on the side that featured R. Crumb's Mister

Natural shaking hands with the Quaker oats guy and the motto on a banner underneath reading nihil melior est pro tu quam me. I think it was Latin, bad Latin, for "nothing is better for thee than me".

Down by the pond a few people were swimming naked like country children. I dropped my towel and ran down to join them.

Fontayne was there having the time of his life swinging off a rope into the center of the pond, splashing everyone else. Gina, who I had had a little fling with last winter was there. I still admired her dark eyed beauty and tiny, but perfect body. She waded over and gave me a hug and a quick little kiss.

Ingrid from south Jersey was sunning herself on the shore. I hadn't seen her in half a year, she was obviously pregnant. I would have to ask her about the details later. Joe was there and a few others as well. We all had a grand time splashing around until the word reached us it was lunch time. I ran back to the cottage to get some clothes and then on to the big house.

Lunch was leftover lentils from the night before with fresh baked cornbread.

The meal was laid out in the large dining room because some fifty more people had shown up overnight and that morning.

I saw Joanie when she brought a big platter of cornbread to the

17

table. She was now wearing a printed ankle length sort of country styled dress which billowed around her like a calico cloud. God, she was beautiful! It was only a matter of time before she figured out she was too good for me.

Sitting next to me was Jason. His real name wasn't Jason, it was Dennis McCarthy, but he liked to call himself Jason and we liked him so we did too. He was a one man circus, all song and wit and fun. A really talented songwriter and an outspoken homosexual. He introduced the word "gay" to my vocabulary. All the homosexuals I had known before I met him had been "queers". He was telling me all about how he had been playing little clubs in northern California and how many pretty boys were there.

We had a cigarette together after lunch and he told me all about it.

"I got invited to this party.", He told me, "It was at the house of the parents of this guy from a band I played with out there. I got dressed up real nice and chatted up all these real straight people all night and sipped wine. I overheard this guy tell his mom I'm gay. She says 'My God! But he seemed so nice!' Can you believe it?!?" He did a wonderful imitation of her horrified expression.

I worried about Jason and frequently told him he ought to keep a

lid on the gay thing. He was always quick to ask when I was going to keep a lid on the straight thing, but I doubted that sort of argument would mean much to the type that me and Joe ran in with in that bar. Superior enlightenment was not in itself much of a shield.

"I also went to LA!" He told me, "God! Hollywood is so much seedier than I thought it would be! All these fake hippies pushing heroin. There are lots of gay people there, but they all seem to be on hard drugs and have bad friends. I have never been offered money for sex before in my life, but it happened, like, three times a day there! All these old guys who thought a few dollars would make me forget about their fat bloated bellies and their painted wives! Where is the love? Where is the glamour? Where is the beauty?" This last, he intoned like a Shakespearean actor with his hand grasping at the insubstantial. "I swear, Hollywood is an empire built on a mountain of shit! I got the hell out of there sweetheart!"

The thing about Jason was that he was just so much more than other folks. He could fill up a room all by himself and (most of the time) didn't even seem ostentatious about it. I suppose that some people might see his flamboyant personality as a symptom of

18

insecurity, and it might well have been, but I still think those people were mostly jealous. Fact is, he really did irritate the living shit out of some people. He was loud and colorful in a low key, mellow culture. That by itself could piss people off.

I had become pretty good friends with Jason's brother Dudley. That wasn't his real name either. It was Roy, and I have no idea why he used Dudley. So go figure. Dudley was the exact opposite of his brother. Heterosexual, most women seemed to think obnoxiously so and more intellectual than emotional. He was a dedicated Marxist who could bend your ear for hours about the coming revolution. Sometime before I met him I heard he had been a Jesus freak, but he had put God aside in favor of dialectical materialism. I suspected that he had been attracted to both movements in order to meet women. For years, this guy made an art form out of unemployment and managed to go for months at a time with no discernible amount of money. In any city in the USA, Dudley would know where to get a free meal, which, I had to admit, was a useful talent.

I could hear that Paul was already tuning up the band out front. They were going to be using the big front porch for their stage. I went into the kitchen to help with the clean up and talk with Joanie.

She was doing something or other with a big pile of tofu. I didn't pay that much attention, I can eat that vegetarian stuff if I don't worry too much about what goes into it.

"Working on dinner already?" I walked over and hugged her from behind. "Are you going to stay in here and be a drudge all day?"

"Uh-uh, I'm just setting up a few things. I'll let the others take care of dinner, I did breakfast almost all by myself."

She was up to her elbows in the squishy bean curd, evidently mixing in spices. She semi-ignored my attentions.

I pulled her tight against me enjoying the feel of her body. There was nothing beneath the thin cotton fabric of her dress and I let my

hands wander up to play with her titties. She giggled, but

threatened to mash raw tofu into my face if I didn't stop.

"You run along and play", she said, "I just need to do about another half hour of work. Gowan! Beat it!" She could let the sharp accent of North Jersey lend authority to her voice when she wanted to.

We shared a quick kiss and I scramed.

Howard Flanders was in the smaller of the two living rooms going through a pile of Raymack's records.

19

"Flan the man!" I greeted

"He does what he can!" he responded. We tried to bear hug each other to death, he was the first to beg for mercy.

Howard pointed to the huge stack of records. "Can you believe this crap? I have never seen such a congregation pseudo-intellectual sputum in one place!"

I was looking through the pile of vinyl. Yes, Pink Floyd, Woodstock soundtrack, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Country Joe and the Fish, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention , the Beatles ..flip...flip..flip. To my mind not a bad collection, I liked all of these records but I still preferred Ragtime and twenties and thirties Jazz.

"What's wrong with this stuff?" I asked.

Howard got that look he gets. "It hasn't got any charge, man, no pulse! They have bled any of the true African roots out of American music! They are trying to kill our Jazz roots, man!"

I rolled my eyes, this was familiar territory for me. I listened anyway.

"Come on, old fellow, do you seriously think that the Beach Boys are on par with Ellington? Do you think that the derivative drivel of Yes has as much interest as the inspired madness of Sun Ra? Well... you may, but not I, I assure you."

Half the fun of hearing this rap from him was that it was always delivered in this uppercrust New England accent which would have sounded more at home calling for tea and crumpets, or whatever the hell those people eat, rather than raving about horn powered sonic abstraction from crazy Negroes.

His pile of records included the Jazz Composer's Orchestra, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, Paul Horn, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker,Duke Ellington, Roland Kirk, Frank Zappa (the sole representitive of the rock genre), Charles Mingus and the dreaded (to my mind) Pharaoh Sanders plus tons of people I had never heard of.

He had cleared a room with a crazy-mad honking Pharaoh Sanders record at a gathering in New Hampshire a couple of months back.

"In ten years", he said pointing to Raymack's stack, "you won't be able to listen to any of that stuff, old man." He then picked up a handful from his pile. "This", he said, "is timeless. This is our true musical heritage."

As if on cue, his last words were washed out by the beginnings of

a folk-rock ballad from the porch.

20

The music of Paul's band was very professional sounding, but wasn't to either me or Howard's taste. We split to check out the

woods. On the way we dropped by the cottage where we each took one of my blotters just to make the afternoon a little more interesting. I figured that Joanie would want to listen to the band and I would be on the downslope of the trip before she was ready to spend any time with me.

The woods were not extensive covering only about ten acres of Paul's property, but they were beautiful and mostly untouched. There was none of the trash that I was used to seeing in more public stands of trees. Not at all like the little woods near my mom's place in suburban New York where there was always the remains of a bum's campsite or a high schooler's beer party.

Paul had lectured everyone about keeping the property clean. He even asked that we "field strip" our cigarette butts so that they would degrade more easily. It also helped to assure us that the stubs were completely extinguished.

These trees had no names carved into their bark and there were no used prophylactics in the fallen leaves. The birds sang a sweet symphony and the wind gently rustled the leaves sounding like a bunch of tiny rattles.

The acid was hitting us really nice. Howard and I spent less and less time talking and more and more time just staring at things. The texture of the tree bark or the glitter of mica in a stone.

I climbed way up to the top of one of the trees and looked out across a landscape of green through which little birds, seemingly made from jewels by some expert hand, jumped and played. Insects with sounds like tiny distant airplanes buzzed around my head telling me little jokes with surreal punchlines.

Howard hollered from below so I made my way back down into the depths. On the way down a squirrel favored me with chattering insults.

Howard waited impatiently for my report from above. His irises were almost nonexistent, his eyes caves of shining blackness. He was a cave man. A primitive who instinctively knew that a spirit dwelt in all things.

"The Gods are happy." I said.

Howard grinned from ear to ear and muttered something that sounded like a combination between a Sumerian prayer and a mathematical equation. In retrospect, I think he might just have

said "Huh?".

The little piece of forest also seemed to be the ocean floor. From

21

the corners of my eyes, I saw fish swimming among the tree trunks. They would streak away in a whirl of bubbles and hide until I again

turned away. They giggled at me in liquid fish voices, but when I finally sat still they would swim up to me and tell me their legends and sing me their songs. Among the fish wandered a great friendly ape rolling in the leaves and laughing. He laughed colored clouds that were shaped like animal crackers.

The fish were explaining how everything had come together and become one and how they could remember an ancient time when things were not so but the ape distracted me with his multitude of happy hijinks and the fish were telling me of a time of discord when monkeys flew like birds and every fish owned a suitcase where they kept their idealism while the ape rolled around and made loud hoot, hoot, hooting noises and my own hands sort of started to float away and turn into fish themselves but they said that was only an illustration, an object lesson, if you will, but they wouldn't tell me of what and they laughed at me again so I playfully swatted at them and they swam away as the ape devolved into some sort of porcupine with a cigarette hanging out of its mouth and said, "Adam..... you are the first man."

And I said "Howard, I am the last fish!" the porcupine became a man who hollered the word "FISH!!!!" at the top of his lungs and then fell into the leaves in laughter.

A couple, hoping to find a bit of privacy for some open air love, no doubt, wandered into the clearing where we frolicked.

Howard looked them over and turned to me. He spoke in a stage whisper. "I can't tell", he confided, "if those are rock people or rubber ball people."

They greeted us cheerfully and wandered off. "Far out." Giggled the girl.

"Perhaps they were feather people......" Mused Howard.

The afternoon dissolved into a miasma of cosmic Christopher Robinism where we found many an adventure. I'm afraid we severely alarmed a cat by trying to speak its language. We made contact with the Tadpole Empire and watched the ants have a war. We attempted, unsuccessfully (and at the cost of a few painful bites), to help them find a diplomatic solution.

It was late afternoon before we found our brains starting to shift gears back to more linear modes of thought.

Howard's watch said it was about five-thirty. We were still tripping but we were ready to deal with other people now. We vaguely remembered the music coming to an end about an hour

22

before. It seemed like a good time to head back to the house.

We came out of the woods near the pond. Nude hippies lay on its bank like basking seals. One of them was Joanie.

By her side crouched Wings who was talking to her.

"Howdy!" I called.

Wings' head snapped up and his face fell at the same moment. Logic told me they should have parted company but somehow his head remained in one piece. Oh well, maybe next time.

Joanie was somewhat happier to see me. She ran up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss. Her skin felt fantastic. Warm and smooth and just the total essence of girlness.

"Where the fuck have you been?" She asked with an only slightly peevish pout.

"Me and Howard took a walk in the woods."

She checked out our maniac grins. She adopted a comic California surfer chick accent "Omygod! You look sooo weird! Are you, like, stoned?"

I took mock umbrage and straightened my posture. "Stoned? Good heavens no!" With a flourish of my index finger I declared "My good woman, I'll have you know we're tripping!"

Joanie rolled her eyes. "Oh, Jesus Christ. Are you peaking?"

"Nope...peaked hours ago. Just a little goofy now. The trails are almost gone. Honest."

"Good, I can't understand a damned thing you say when you're really out there. Its like talking to a cartoon character."

Howard was staring at Joanie's nipples. "Pink......pert.....pointy....pretty....peachy....perky...." He said.

I shot him an evil look and Joanie said "Behave Howard." and smiled sweetly. Howard stood there popping his P-words at Joanie a few more seconds before he collapsed laughing.

Wings tugged at my sleeve like a child trying to be noticed and asked me if I had anymore acid. I told him I would fix him up with a hit or two later, even then knowing that he would think of some way to make me regret it. He thanked me and wandered off to play his guitar.

Joanie dressed and we walked up to the house together leaving Howard to take a dip. When we left he was floating on his back humming some sort of strange jazzy melody just to annoy Wings.

I had a little snack with Joanie up at the big house. Some of the spiced tofu she had been playing with earlier, now fried into tasty

little bite-sized chunks.

23

She wanted to go hang out with Ingrid, who was one of her best friends but she hadn't seen her in a while. She and Ingrid and a few others liked to get together and do improvisational dance.

Joanie told me that Ingrid had gotten pregnant at a gathering several months back by a fellow named Sean who wasn't here or, for that matter, anywhere she knew about. She had decided against an abortion being unable to rationalize it with her vegetarianism, so she had opted to carry the child to full term and then put it up for adoption. I had to admit that I admired her consistancy.

I made a mental note to look in on them. Ingrid ought to be quite a sight dancing with her big belly.

I told her that I would be around if she was looking for me and

then headed back to the cottage for a shower and a fresh shirt.

My skin ended up getting all pruny because I spent too much time letting the water splash against my eyelids making psychedelic phosphenes on my retinae.

I was just putting on my boots when Wings walked in.

"Hey Adam! What's happening?"

"Not much, Wings. Just had a shower." The acid was just a bit of an annoying itch in my brain now. A sensation that one friend of mine had named that "crispy critters" feeling. I know it sounds dumb, but believe me its a perfect description. This stuff was nice, but it gave kind of a short trip. I generally expect a full dose of acid to last eight to twelve hours and the main portion of this trip had lasted a little under six.

"I thought I would come by and get some of that acid. Y'got some for me?"

"Sure, man." I pulled a folded sheet from my glasses case. "I got sheets of ten, half a buck a hit."

"Is it good? I got some last month that had a lot of strychnine in it."

I rolled my eyes. I had heard this goddamed strichnine story too many times. "Look, Wings. Look at the size of a hit of acid. There isn't even a whole lot of LSD in a hit of acid, let alone a lot of anything else. The dose is measured in micrograms, for Christ's sake. Its the acid itself that can give you tight jaws sometimes."

He looked a little confused at the idea that I would reject this bit of drug folklore. "Well", he assured me darkly, "it had a lot of something in it."

"Yeah, yeah.....so, you want some?"

"Sure, can I get a sheet and pay you later?"

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"C'mon, man. You already owe me twenty bucks."

"I thought that painting was a spiritual gift, man."

I resigned myself to writing off that debt. I was going to be more trouble than it was worth to collect and I would make myself look like an asshole in the process.

"O.K., lets say it was a 'spiritual gift' and leave it at that, but I would have to be a real schmuck to do nothing but give you everything."

"Aw, you shouldn't judge yourself so harshly, man."

"Huh?" I said. My patience was fraying.

"Just because you, like, have the cash trip together, you think you can control all the resources. You should help out those of us who won't work. We're living your ideal, man!"

"Have you been hanging out with Dudley?"

"Seriously, man, its your duty to the cause."

"Since when is my cause getting you high?? I'm not rich, you know. I don't even have a part time job any more!" I lit a butt and inhaled deeply hoping for the calming nicotine to reach my brain as quickly as possible.

"Whoa, man, you are so hostile! O.K., man, look. I can sell some

of the acid at a buck and a half a hit and pay for it that way."

"Yeah, that sounds like the spiritual way to do it. Look, do you have five bucks on you?"

He took on the look of a deer nailed by headlights. "Uh.... yeah....."

"So pay me for the acid and then you can get your money back by selling some, right?"

"I need to get smokes, man, and some guitar strings too." Hmmmm... maybe he was more like a skunk on the highway, convinced that his odor alone would let him face down anything.

I had already spent far too much time wrangling with this clown. His was the art of weaseldom. He was good at this, sooner or later he would wear me down.

Eventually, I gave him one hit to try it out and sent him away happy. I still felt like a schmuck.

This whole business was absurd. I only had this stuff because people wanted it and I was selling it at the same price I bought it for. I was never a good drug dealer and gave up selling very shortly after that summer. Leave it for those who are more patient and/or ruthless than me.

There was food up at the house, but no formal sit down type dinner. When I went into the kitchen to get something, I was

25

intercepted by Joe.

He whispered to me as he opened up a small paper bag in his hand. "Take a look in here, man."

The bag contained a small butcher paper wrapped package with a supermarket deli sticker on it reading "$1.34"

"Is that.....?" I asked.

"Lean, sliced, roast beef, my friend."

"Let's find some bread and mustard!"

While we were making sandwiches, Dudley wandered in and we all had one together. It was a nice break from lentils and granola.

Dudley had arrived while Howard and I were talking to the fish. He had hitched all the way from Chicago where he was hanging out with some fellow pinkos. He and Jason were expected at some family function at their parents home in Concord, Mass. Brad and Toadstool were going to give them both a ride up. "That ought to be a car full 'o fun." I thought.

I told Dudley that I knew where he could get some work in Boston if he wanted to hang out for a while. Howard was always passing employment information my way trying to entice me to move up there. I knew more about getting work in Boston than in my home town.

"Nah", he said, "its best if I'm not in the same state as my parents for more than a few days at a time. They have a sick psychic influence over me." He twirled his finger next to his temple.

He had recently gotten little round glasses. Those along with a

new haircut and mustache trim made him look astonishingly like a stoned out Leon Trotsky. The last time I had seen him, the look was more like Groucho Marx.

We sat in jovial company making a feast of roast beef sandwiches and beer from the can. I look back and try to remember what we talked about that afternoon, but no specifics come back. I do remember that it was one of those conversations about nothing and everything at the same time. Books....food...women...movies... philosophy....life...love, the whole schmeer. At some point, Dudley pulled out a joint of weak but tasty homegrown which, in short order, led us to make up another sandwich for each of us from the last of the precious meat.

We heard folky instrumental music from the stereo and stepped out to investigate.

The women were dancing in the big living room. To my bemusement, they were joined by the two Johns who had dressed

themselves in loin cloths and primitive face paint. Their jumping

26

and prancing was an interesting counterpoint to the measured and delicate movement of the women.

Ingrid seemed hardly slowed down by her pregnancy; I only hoped she didn't fall.

Joanie was......beautiful....graceful. She had no training in dance, but it still resonated as pure art. Her style was all soul and energy. It gave me a hardon just to watch her. The dancers were creating something which seemed to transcend nation and history. They easily moved from almost Balinese style flat footed posturing to leaps into the air like those of a Russian ballerina. What looked like a Greek circle dance would evolve effortlessly into an American square dance.

We left them to their gyrations and headed down to the cottage. There was a piano there and Joe wanted to play.

Joe was an eccentric improvisational piano player. He meditated at the keyboard. He once told me that this was how he conversed with his own subconscious.

He was brilliant even with the occasional clinker. He wandered from theme to theme with echoes of rock, classical, funk, jazz, ragtime and something foreign, perhaps religious in nature.I really loved listening to the wild rhythms he would come up with. He never played with a band, even informally. His tangent was way too personal to be able to work with other musicians.

Before long Joe had forgotten that anyone else was in the room with him. Dudley was the first to wander off and after a while I

almost felt I was intruding on Joe's inner mind.

I left him pounding away in the cottage and stepped out to see the sunset.

Paul was up by the house still breaking down the band stuff with Jerry, the drummer. I had never met Jerry before the previous day but he seemed like a real nice guy. He had just gotten out of the army and had cut his military style haircut down to a short mohawk to celebrate. He was quick to show me that he had just gotten his name tattooed on his ass with a picture of a snare and crossed drumsticks.

Paul embraced me firmly. "Adam! Man, I haven't had a chance to say two words to ya since ya got here! How the hell ya been?"

"Working a little...traveling. I've been trying to hit all the gatherings while I can, then I'm going to go work with Tom for a while."

"You a carpenter?"

"Fuck, no! Its a low wage, 'helper' kind of gig, but its something

27

to do, ya'know?"

"That's cool. If you just need something to do you and Toadstool should come down here when it gets cold up north. I want to convert the stable into a real house and I'm inviting people from all over to come and work on it a little at a time. I can't pay too much but you'll definitely be in mellow surroundings."

It sounded great. "Wow, I'll bounce that off Tom and see what he thinks. How cold does it get down here?"

He tossed his head to get some blonde locks out of his eyes. "Gets cold enough I s'pose, but I don't expect to get much snow.....hell of a lot better than New York or Boston or someplace like that."

"I'm gonna really have to think about that. Thanks for the invite, Paul."

"'Taint nothing my friend.", He said, "Y'all would be helping me out a lot."

This was how I lived, traveling from one opportunity to the next, my only concern being three square meals a day, a place to lay my head at night and the company of good friends.

A seeming caravan of vehicles were now parked at the head of the dirt road. It turned out that Frank and Bud had shown up with their friends and wives from the commune who were welcomed by Paul enthusiastically, particularly when he saw that they had brought lots of food and beer. They had also brought about twenty bouncing children who had taken over the yard tossing Frisbees,

laughing and wrestling. As the evening crept over the day the new sport became chasing fireflies in which the kids were joined by many of the adults.

I just watched for a little while, absorbing the scene as one of those perfect summer moments before I went inside.

There were about a dozen people hanging out in the living room chatting and drinking coffee or tea. A layer of cigarette smoke was hanging about a foot from the ceiling.

I cut through into the kitchen hoping to find Joanie. No luck, but Brad was there loading about five cases of beer into the already crowded refrigerator.

There was a woman with him who looked kind of straight. She wore tight jeans and a western style shirt. Her blonde hair was teased up into a great and sticky looking, spray laden confection of flips and curls.

There was something unnatural about the way her breasts thrust forward. It dawned on me that it was because she was wearing a

28

bra, which made her, quite literally, stand out in this group. She appeared to be well over thirty but was somewhat attractive in a white trashy kind of way.

At the table were Toadstool and a girl named Gretchen Winters who I knew only slightly. I had noticed her though. She was only fifteen and a sometime runaway from a good Boston area family. Her father owned a sugar company and was well able to give her anything a girl could want. The problem was that what she didn't want was to be a little rich girl at a private school. She looked like anything but a private school girl now, wearing beat up sandals, torn cut-offs and a Grateful Dead "Europe '72" tour t-shirt, the one with the ice cream cone motif. Her straight black hair was worn loose and reached to her mid back.

The most common physical description of this girl I would hear, at least if it was a guy describing her, would always include adjectives like "ripe", "juicy", "nubile" and even "succulent". Her restrictive early life had built in her a need for sowing some serious wild oats, much to the benefit of several guys I knew. Indeed, she was at that age when some girls were in the greatest danger from predatory males. She knew that but didn't take it to heart and seemingly sought that danger actively. I admit that I was always watching when she walked or smiled or bent over. She knew that men watched and she loved the attention. He maturing body was still a new toy.

Toadstool was trying to teach her some arcane card game. I don't even remember what it was called, but I think it was something pretty exclusive to the area he grew up in.

Brad greeted me and tossed me a beer.

"Hey man! Sit down and have one or two with us!"

"Far out!" I said. I sat down at the table and tried to figure out why Tom and Gretchen were throwing down and picking up various cards. I've never been good at card games and this one looked more complicated than most.

Brad introduced me to his female companion. "This is Sharlene, I met her in town and invited her up."

"Hi hon." She said as I shook her hand. Her nails were about an inch beyond her finger tips and painted a pearly pink color.

She turned to Brad. "Mah God, Bradley! I have nevah seen so many of these long hair boys in one place in mah whole life! My ex- husband swears that hippies are all queer, but I see that doesn't apply to you." She gave a slight smirk.

"Bradley???" I thought.

29

She talked like innumerable truck stop waitresses I had run into. I was only slightly ashamed of wondering if she turned tricks on the side.

Brad looked a little uncomfortable and I said, using my finely honed ironic wit, "Yeah, we're just a gang of damned dirty Godless faggot hippies here to spread anarchy and seduce the daughters of decent people."

Sharlene didn't know how to react. Evidently she had a poorly developed sense of sarcasm.

"He's kidding!" Said Brad. "He's kidding, for Christ's sake." He gave me a look which implored me not to act too weird. I have no idea why he wanted a woman like this. It was an unspoken rule that the straight world belonged to the straights and the freak world belonged to the freaks. You can call it prejudice if you want. I just called it common sense. Bringing someone like this here could end up getting the party busted.

Sharlene said to Brad, "Where's th'dope? You said you could turn me onto some weed." I relaxed a little on the getting busted issue. Perhaps the remains of the acid had made me slightly paranoid.

I found a church key and opened up my beer. It was cold and good. "Hamms" it said on the can. I had never heard of the brand, must have been only distributed in the south. When I had been on the west coast, I remember seeing and drinking brands like "Coors" and "Rainier". In Pennsylvania, "Strohs" and "Rolling Rock". In

Boston, "Narragansett" or "Carling".

Brad said, "Hey 'Toadstool', where's that can o' weed?"

Tom looked up from his cards. "Aw, don't call me that, man. I got it right here." He pulled an aluminum, screw top film can out of his breast pocket and handed it to Brad who dispensed some into a double wide cigarette paper and rolled it up. He tossed the joint to Sharlene and said, "Light it up, sweet thing."

After taking a deep toke she handed the weed to Tom, who sucked hard and turned beet red as he held the smoke. He gripped the edge of the table and prominent veins bulged on his forehead. Gretchen, who sat right next to him looked very alarmed at the transformation. He looked like his head was going to explode.

Finally, he let his breath out and his face returned to more or less its normal color. A broad grin crept across his features.

"Jesus fucking Christ on a crutch, man!" Exclaimed Brad, "You frighten the women when you do that!"

Tom started to giggle. It was sort of high pitched like it was coming from a little girl.

30

"Aw shit," I said, "here we go."

Tom's laughter just kept going and got weirder in pitch ranging across several octaves. This was something that sounded like it ought to be emanating from behind a locked door in a lunatic asylum. Tom's eyes were squeezed shut and tears ran down his cheeks as his body convulsed. It was an unholy, demonic sound.

Brad laughed himself (although in a much more normal fashion) and shook his head as he took a few hits of the weed for himself. Gretchen bit her lower lip in apparent concern and I signaled Brad for the joint.

As I was taking a hit, Tom was finally starting to calm down a little. "Y'know", I said, "If you could harness that power, you could light New York for a week!" I was noticing that this was actually pretty good weed.

With tears still wetting his face, Tom replied with a breathless, "Shit.........I'm sorry.......can't help it...."

Gretchen bummed a cigarette off me and took a deep slug from her beer. I was momentarily transfixed by her prominent nipples pushing against the thin fabric of her t-shirt as she threw her head back. Sharlene caught me looking and winked slyly.

I frowned a little. It bugged me to be caught looking by this woman with the knowing smile. She had no idea what we were about. How dare she make assumptions. Just having someone like her around attached a weird and icky flavor to everything I did or thought or what she thought I thought. We were not like them. She thought that we were, but I knew we weren't. She was, like, interfering with my sense of my own purity. The whole thing just pissed me off. It was a classic case of pot induced paranoia if ever there was one.

"I'm going up to the roof." I said. "I'll be back down later."

"Can I come with you?" Asked Gretchen. "I'm tired of playing cards."

"Sure," I said. "Come ahead."

There was sort of a deck on the roof which was about the size of half a tennis court.

Night had fallen and the sky was full of stars only slightly washed out near the southern horizon by the light of Birmingham. Above was completely black with so many stars that they were beyond counting. I lay on my back and tried to position myself so that nothing but the stars were in my sight.

This was the temple of my religion, the inky dome of night.

I drank in the vision of infinity and felt a great comfort and

31

calm.

Gretchen sat cross legged beside me humming to herself. She was accompanied by the croaking of the frogs in the distant pond and the thrumming of countless crickets. I pointed out celestial features to her. Jupiter was high in the western sky a few degrees to the right of the moon which was three quarters full. Mars was also visible closer to the horizon. Mostly I pointed out stars and constellations.

"Those stars, all the ones you see", I said, "have planets of their own."

"All of them?" She asked.

"Well, most of them. Most astronomers think that planetary systems are a normal consequence of stellar evolution. A small percentage of those planets, maybe only one percent or less will be capable of harboring life. Of those maybe one percent or less of those will harbor sentient life and civilization. It doesn't sound like

much, but that makes over a million civilizations in this galaxy alone and there are as many galaxies as there are stars in this one." I was talking through my hat here. I actually was lousy at math, but it sounded impressive.

"Wow!" Said Gretchen. She laid down beside me to get the same view. "So you believe in aliens ?"

"They would only be 'aliens' if they were here. Out there is their home. If we went to visit them, we would be the aliens. To me it doesn't seem like a fantastic concept. It would be far more amazing if there were no life anywhere but here. Our solar system is to our galaxy as one atom is to a house. Our galaxy is to the universe as that house is to the Earth. How many of those atoms are unique?" Again, my math stunk, but the point was made and she didn't dispute it.

"But what about the flying saucers?"

"I don't know what that's about. All I know is that the Universe is so big that anything might be possible." I hated talk about UFOs. It was like the notion cheapened our view of extra terrestrial life, changed it from a scientific inquiry and a spiritual opportunity into a snickering tabloid story.

"It makes me feel small.....insignificant." Said Gretchen.

"We are small, but we make our own significance."

Gretchen said she was chilly so I put my arm around her and she snuggled up close to me. We watched as meteors streaked across the sky and a few satellites silently crossed from horizon to

horizon.

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I continued lecturing about the heavens but was becoming more and more aware of her body against mine. The evening chill had hardened her nipples and they pressed into my side making them impossible to ignore.

"The two closest galaxies to ours are the Clouds of Magellan which orbit the Milky Way. They aren't visible in the northern hemisphere. They were discovered by the explorer Magellan when he became the first to sail around the world."

Gretchen was gently stroking my stomach. I admit I made no attempt to stop her.

"They are smaller than our galaxy," I continued, "but it still takes light several hundred years to cross from end to end of one of them."

Her hand was now stroking my crotch with immediate and predictable results. She turned her head to mine and kissed my lips to which I eagerly responded. Unbuttoning my shirt, she kissed her way down my body. She undid my belt and then my zipper with surprising expertise. With more specific, gentle, eager and very skillful use of her lips, she soon made me truly one with the cosmos.

The stars whirled overhead as Gretchen pleasured me down below and all else around dissolved. I was at the center of a spinning universe of erotic sensation which erupted into stars within me as well as without as I explosively climaxed.

I heard a muffled grunt and swallowing from Gretchen. That decidedly earthy sound pulled me back from the numinous and

cosmic to the here and now.

Almost immediately upon my physical release, I realized that a mistake had been made, particularly when I heard the applause from Brad and Sharlene who had wandered up to the roof during our "distraction".

I was horrified. I could have stood to have almost anyone witness that except Sharlene. Sharlene of the knowing smirk. Sharlene of the dirty little wink.

Gretchen was grinning widely and gave a mock bow as I scrambled to my feet and arranged my clothing.

"How long have you guys been there?" I asked as casually as I could manage.

"Just long enough to catch the main feature." Said Brad. He loved things like this, a somewhat sadistic portion of his personality.

"For a little bit of jail bait", said Sharlene, "she sure looks like she knows what she's doing! Lordy! Does she ever." She was laughing.

She saw the look on my face and subsided somewhat. "Oh, c'mon,

33

hon, y'all were just actin' natural. 'Taint nothin' to get yourself all

worked up over." Her eyes focused on my poorly hidden erection. "At least not more than necessary!" She started laughing.

What followed was one of those moments that I wished instantly to have been able to undo.

"You're wrong about what you're thinking. I love this girl. We love each other."

Gretchen stopped short and looked at me in wonder. "You do?" she asked.

Time slowed down stretching this tortured moment into a seeming infinity.

"Of course I do." I said. I was all but choking on my own insincerity. I felt like a total and complete schmuck.

I was in a kind of panic trying desperately to save face before a stranger and in the process setting myself up to appear to be a major asshole to my friends. Maybe I should make that just being an asshole. I felt little for this girl. She was nice and could have been a good friend, but there should have been no pretense of a romantic relationship. I could have halted her advances or failing that, merely enjoyed the moment as a passing pleasure and made nothing more of it. Instead, I had chosen the path that would insure the most damage.

The uncomfortable moments that I spent before I found an excuse to leave the roof, I would prefer to forget. The entire previous hour of my life, I would have preferred to eradicate.

The singing crickets mocked me as I headed through the darkness to the cottage.

I heard Joanie singing in the shower.

Thankfully, none of the other five people using the cottage to sleep were around. I rapped on the door of the bathroom.

"Who's there?" Came her voice.

"Adam." I said, "I gotta take a leak."

"C'mon in."

I entered. She was soaping herself in the stall. I used the toilet and then closed the lid and sat down.

I lit up a smoke and took a deep drag, let it out and took another. "I gotta to talk to you." I said. She froze for an instant, sensing the peculiar tone in my voice.

She wrung out her hair and said, "Just let me finish." She rinsed off and stepped out of the stall wrapping a towel around her waist.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"I made a mistake.", I said, "I made a bad mistake."

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"What did you do?" She actually looked alarmed now.

" I was up on the roof with that runaway girl, Gretchen."

"Up on the roof." She repeated.

"We were looking at the stars."

Joanie rolled her eyes. She and I had first made love after an evening of stargazing. It was one of my tried and true "routines".

Her voice took on a chilly tone. "So.....did you screw?"

"No!" I protested and then, as if it would make a difference, "I let her.....I didn't stop her from......" I had no idea how to say it.

"From what?"

"From giving me a blow job."

She made a sour face and obviously wasn't thrilled by the news, but she saw that I was upset. "Its not the world's biggest deal, Adam. We have both slept with other people. We have never been exclusive."

"I want us to be though. I want to be with you and only you."

"Then why are you having little girls suck your cock?!?" Her voice had taken on a justifiably sharp tone. The way she said "little girls" made Gretchen sound like a five year old rather than a fifteen year old who just sweats sex from every pore. Besides, she was only four or five years younger than me.

"I have no idea. I really don't." It was a lie, but the truth was too stupid to tell her. I was stoned and I had let my dick do my thinking for me, that's all. The truth just wouldn't make a very good excuse in this situation.

"Jesus, Adam. You get all bent out of shape when I spend any time with another guy, but you sleep with other women all the time. We

know all the same people, I hear all about it , you know." She paced as she spoke making her breasts bounce back and forth distractingly.

"Hey", I said, "Gretchen was the only other woman I've touched since we were together in Boston!"

"That was only a week ago! You told me you loved me, that you wanted to be with only me, and you couldn't keep your hands off other women for even that long."

"Look, I do love you. I made a mistake. She came on to me. Please..... I didn't have to tell you about this, but I wanted to be honest. I don't have any kind of relationship with her and she has no expectations of me."

She gave me a hard stare. "I don't like it when you assume I'm stupid. You rushed down here to tell me about this before I could here it from someone else. This isn't honesty, this is damage

35

control."

She had it exactly right. I had thought that I could control how this went down by telling her first. Like the pilot of a crippled airplane, I was just striving for a landing I could at least walk away from. There was nothing to do but push myself further into scumbag territory.

I tried to work up a watery eye. "I'm really hurt", I said, "that you believe that that is the way I think." Catching a bit of cigarette smoke in my eye just the right way made and actual tear run down my cheek. "I try to come to you because I realize I was wrong and you think I'm trying to manipulate you."

Her hard look collapsed, she looked truly sorry. My ploy had worked, I had pushed the female "nurture" button.

She knelt down and put her arms around me and said, "I'm sorry..... I'm so sorry Adam, I know you love me and I love you too."

I ran my hand over the soft clean skin of her naked back.

She looked up into my eyes with a slightly playful smile. "So", she asked, "was she as good as me?"

"Nowhere near as good." I said. Actually, at that particular form of oral love, Gretchen was better than anyone I had ever been with, but I would have been a supreme idiot to have said so. In retrospect, I don't think that little bit of restraint did much to save me from being a supreme idiot.

I led Joanie to the bedroom where we made love slowly well into the night. Considering my recent release, it was pretty easy to make sure that she received the maximum pleasure from the experience. We fucked ourselves sore and then some until we had to yield to pure exhaustion.

Of course, the real problem had not gone away.

I woke the next morning before Joanie. She slept like a log beside

me, her body exuding heat and that wonderfully rich yet subtle woman smell. I planted a kiss in the small of her back which elicited an inarticulate mutter.

I got up, took care of business and headed up to the house. I wanted to track down Joe because we had to hitch out of here today.

As I walked through the living room, picking my way through a carpet of occupied sleeping bags, I spotted Brad and Sharlene sharing a bag in the corner. I was slightly amused to see that her elaborate blond hair had been a wig which now sat atop Brad's

back pack. Her own hair was slightly darker and at this moment in

36

a truly amazing tangle. I imagined the energy of the sex which got it that way. I was tempted to kick her in the head.

I went into the kitchen to see if I could find a cup of coffee. Thankfully, Megan was in there and she had already started a pot.

I bid her good morning and begged a cup of the black elixir from her.

As I was taking my second sip, Megan said, "Weren't the stars lovely last night?"

I wasn't even thinking as I started to answer. "Yes.....they were beauti......" An internal alarm went off. She knew. If Megan knew, everyone knew. "Yeah, it was a nice clear night."

"I love to look at the stars on a country night. Of course being a vegetarian, I can't enjoy it the way Gretchen does."

Shit. This is why a lot of people found Megan obnoxious. She was horribly catty and not even very good at it.

"Meg, I hope you don't think that was a clever innuendo because I've heard more subtle quips in a locker room."

She stuck her tongue out at me. "Okay, so I'm not clever. You're not either. How could you do that to Joanie."

"Joanie knows about it...everything's cool. She knows I love her."

"Then how come you told Gretchen you loved her? She was bragging that you were her guy all night."

The human mind is an amazing thing. In ten seconds I plotted how I might rush down to the cottage, grab my pack and be on the road with my thumb out before Joanie was out of bed. It seemed like escape was a reasonable way to deal with the situation. I toyed with and regretfully discarded the idea of murdering Sharlene in cold blood. I wondered how I could extricate myself from my "relationship" with Gretchen and somehow make it sound like just a big misunderstanding or even a joke when I spoke to Joanie. I had a vision of myself sinking into a huge pile of shit without a

shovel in sight.

I had no idea what to say. God smiled upon me though and I didn't have to say anything. Howard barged in with a goofy macho strut, gave Megan a big hug and boomed, "Give me coffee, woman!"

"What the hell am I, your slave?" She demanded.

The ensuing half serious argument made Megan forget, at least for the moment our previous conversation.

I gulped my coffee and slipped out to look for Joe. I was thinking that it would be good to get an early start. with a good ride or two

we might reach Philadelphia tonight.

37

The upstairs was crowded with sleeping bags and the going was slow among them. I saw that Gretchen was in one of them and made a special effort to be quiet. I needed time to think before I could even say "good morning" to her.

Joe was, of course, still asleep. I was among the first up and active.

He, like I was one of the lucky ones who had actually gotten a bed rather than a piece of floor, so my sitting on its edge was enough to shake him awake.

"Uhhhhh......wuthufuck....?"

"Hey man, its eight-thirty. We ought to get on the road."

His puffy eyes opened only slightly."Eight thirty? You outta yer fuckin' mind? Lemme sleep another hour."

He rolled over in a definitive end to the conversation.

I walked out onto the front porch where I ran into Dudley. He instantly bummed a smoke off of me and we sat down together on the steps.

"Hey, man" he said, "I heard you got it on with Gretchen! Boyoboyoboy, I wouldn't mind being in your shoes. I've tried a couple of times to get close to her."

"It wasn't hard, she came on to me."

"Damn! You get all the luck!"

For some reason, I didn't feel all that lucky. This morning, my life was a time bomb waiting to go off.

"Uh-huh."

"What about Joanie, though? She must be pissed."

"Joanie's cool with it."

He stared at me in awe. "You're with Joanie, who is, like, woah.....remarkable....and you can get head from Gretchen, who is just...oh-so-fine...where people can see it, and have Joanie be O.K. with it? You are, like, a GOD man!"

"You heard I got head from her?"

"Yeah, Brad and Sharlene were giving everyone the blow by blow, if ya know what I mean." He smirked. "Sounds like she really has a handle on it."

"Shit! Stop it, I'm a human turd, man! Joanie thinks I'm about this big." I held my hand six inches from the floor. "Its only a matter of time before she puts me out in the cold, one more fuck up ought to do the job. I have to stay away from Gretchen and even more importantly, I need to keep her away from Gretchen."

"Is she mad at Gretchen?"

"No. But if they get a chance to compare notes.......well.....it

38

wouldn't be good. Gretchen thinks I'm in love with her."

"Why does she think that? Hey, you got another smoke?"

I passed him a cigarette and said, "Because I said so."

"Why the fuck did you do that?" He was dumbfounded. "She came on to you! You didn't have to tell her anything."

I couldn't tell him about my paranoid conception of Sharlene driving me into a stupid lie. "I don't know."

"Do you love her?"

"NO!", I said a little too loudly. "I mean, she's nice, and God knows she's good looking and really sexy, too much so for either her or my good, but she's got nothing in common with me. Not like me and Joanie."

"Well then, my friend, I know what your problem is."

"Oh yeah?" I said suspiciously, "What's that?"

"You fucked up!"

I rolled my eyes and grimaced. "You are a real fucking genius, man! Did you figure that out all by yourself, or were you quoting Engels?"

He smiled wryly. "Hey, man, you'll work it out. You were tripping yesterday, your judgment was impaired."

"Its a real leap of faith for you to credit me with any judgment at all. You're a pal." I patted him on the back.

I got up. "I'm going down to the cottage to get my shit."

"Hey! Can you leave me a few weeds?"

I pulled out one cigarette and stuck it behind my ear and threw him the pack with the remaining four smokes in it.

"Thanks, man. Hey, where are you heading?"

"My mom's house for a few days, then Toadstool's place for the rest of the summer. I got a job working on a house up there."

"Hey! I'll come visit you! Tom's mom is a fantastic cook!"

"Yeah, that'd be cool. You ought to come up."

I trotted down to the cottage. Joanie was getting up right when I came in. She looked at me with a contented smile. "G'morning." she said.

I leaned over and kissed her, she had morning breath, but, what the hell.

She said, "You treated me real nice last night." She stretched sensuously. "You're good when you're guilt ridden."

I tried not to look too uncomfortable. "It wouldn't be my first choice as an aphrodisiac if its all the same to you."

Joanie got up and started pulling on her jeans. "Are you leaving early?"

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"As soon as I can get Joe off his ass."

"When are we getting back together?"

"New York City in September, unless you want to come visit me at Toadstool's." There was another big gathering on Staten Island in September. The Invite to Tom's place was half hearted and she knew it. We wouldn't have any time together there. I would have to work hard to generate enough money to get me through the next few months.

I stuffed my crap into my pack without worrying about wrinkles. I would get my mom to iron the shirts.

Joanie was staying another day so she was just relaxing on the bed watching me pack.

The big problem with me and Joanie was her seeming ability to read my mind.

While I continued to maintain a blasé facade, she was able to sense that something was still wrong.

All I had to do was ignore that she saw through me and I wouldn't have to say anything. Of course, that plan went right down the toilet when Gretchen walked into the cottage and called my name.

"Adam! Where are you?"

My eyes bugged out slightly, but I don't think I actually jumped. Joanie looked curious, but not alarmed. I wanted to rush out to intercept her by the door, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without it looking like I was doing just that.

I love all those movies from the thirties which built their comedy based on moments just like this, but I was really wondering at this point what was so damned funny.

She entered the room talking as she came. "What happened to you last night? I was looking all over........." She saw Joanie lying, still

half dressed on the bed. "Hi Joanie." Her voice wavered slightly.

"He was here, Gretchen." Her attitude was neutral and she didn't move at all. It was clear that she was just waiting to see what happened.

The girl stared at us both with huge watery eyes and just turned and left.

I had my back to Joanie, but I had a pretty good idea of what I expected to see when I turned around. When I did, I found her still sitting impassively but with a much colder expression.

Now was the time to call upon my very best communication skills to clarify the situation for Joanie.

"Um..............."

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Her eyes were like cold searchlights illuminating my psyche in crystal clarity. "I think that you had better talk to her." She got up and finished dressing. "You better wait a while before you talk to me though." She left the room and I saw her through the window heading up to the house.

I was thoroughly fucked. There was no good reason to believe that Joanie would have any interest in being with me in the future and I had no one to blame but myself. One thing was for sure, there was no way I could face Gretchen. She was young, she would get over it.

I packed up my shit as quickly as I could. Joe was waking up if he wanted to or not.

An hour later found Joe and I on an entrance ramp with a sign that said "NYC" in big red letters.

I had laid out the entire story for Joe, but I don't think he understood the psychology behind it. He was utterly without guile and was even a little unclear on the concept.

"So I still don't get why you said you loved her."

"Because of the townie chick."

"What the hell do you care what she thinks?"

"I don't know."

"You are never going to see her again."

"I know."

"She probably didn't care in the first place."

"I know."

"And in the meantime, both Joanie and Gretchen think you're an asshole.

"I know."

"I thought you were smart."

"I am, but not about this stuff."

"No, you're a real idiot about that stuff."

"Yes I am."

"I mean a real big idiot."

"I know."

"Really, really stupid."

"Allright already!"

We stood in silence for about twenty minutes as the cars zoomed past.

"Dumb." muttered Joe. I grumbled for him to shut up.

Our first ride took us all the way to Nashville. He was a clean-cut looking college student in a big Lincoln, his parents' he said. The

entire ride he pumped us for information about "hippie chicks".

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"What drugs do you give them that make them want to fuck so much?" He asked us. "I'd like to give some to my girlfriend, Jean, to make her want to fuck even a little."

Our answers left him a little disappointed. He was bemused at the notion that they might want to because they like sex.

He wanted to know if we had any grass. Of course, I had learned long ago to never hitch with pot. It was only because it was so easy to hide that I even had the acid.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he had a sort of screwed up idea of what my life was like. Well, maybe, at least at the moment, he might have had my life pegged, but I was feeling particularly stupid and shallow right then. Most freaks would take offense as I would have at another time. This guy's attitude wasn't that different from Todd, the refrigeration salesman we got a ride from on the way down. Somehow, I was less put off by him than I was by Todd. He only wanted a little more fun in his life. He was working his ass off to get a degree in engineering and was sexually frustrated on top of it. I suspected that he wasn't getting any because she was getting it somewhere else, but I sure didn't want to say that.

I knew from experience that lots of straight girls would get down and have really hot nasty sex after only one beer, just so they could claim to have been drunk when it happened. As long as they could avoid responsibility for it, they would do anything.

They were more dangerous to hang out with than freak chicks because they were more prone to do wild and stupid things at the wrong moments. These were the girls who would flash their tits in a supermarket or use you just to piss off their parents. I had at least two girls stop seeing me just as soon as they had the chance to introduce me to their fathers.

I remembered one in particular who had me to dinner at her

parents' place. At the table she told her father she was pregnant by me. We had never even slept together. I slipped out during the ensuing screaming match.

All in all, I preferred freak women. They didn't pull shit like that, at least not too often.

"I jack off all the time, man! I bet you guys never jack off!"

"Oh, I jack off", said Joe, "How about you Adam, you jack off?"

"Oh yeah, I jack off." Given the situation with Joanie, I suspected it might even be my new hobby.

"Man," said the driver, "if I could get into Jean's pants just once, I'd never jack off again!"

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"Don't say that, man!" Said Joe. "Whacking it is a treat all on its own, without any of the possible complications of making it with a woman, right Adam?"

He was teasing me just a little. I smiled just a little. "Yep, avoids a whole world of complications."

The dude let us off at a well traveled entrance ramp.

I had given him a few hits of acid. I expected that he would be surprised that they were not an aphrodisiac when he took them. In my experience, sex was not enhanced by acid. If anything, it made the whole business hard to concentrate on. Its hard to focus on the whole person when you can get lost in a freckle so easily. I predicted that it might make her more open to the idea of sex, but they might not get around to the deed itself.

There was an overpass almost over our heads which led down to the entrance we were on. We could see lots of trucks coming down it which was a good sign. When we had been there about ten minutes we both saw something which made us doubt our senses.

A fifty foot yacht cruised across the overpass.

"You see that?" Said Joe.

"Even if I had, I wouldn't admit it." I replied.

As it curved down the ramp, we were relieved to see it was being hauled by a tractor and had big "Wide Load" flags hanging off the stern. We were amazed when it pulled over.

The guy at the wheel was about our age and had that crazed speed freak look that was oh-so-common in long distance truckers.

He spoke with a Texas accent.

"Got me a job haulin' this big mama from one ocean to th'other! I ask 'em 'whut about the Panama canal?' and they sez 'can you sail it down there for us?' and I sez 'hell no!' and they sez 'well shut up and drive it then' and I sez 'well all right'!"

Which was really about as succinct an explanation as we could

have hoped for. This guy was hoping to finish his run in only three days and get back to Austin in another two to be on time for the birth of his child. My bet was that he was going to sleep through it if he made it there alive at all.

He did all the talking. I knew this guy's life story before too long.

We had lucked out with this one, he was headed for Atlantic city, and the way he drove, we ought to be there by sundown.

Joe decided he wanted to visit a girl in Philly so the guy put him out on the right road and we took to the Jersey turnpike.

I hung around to watch them put the boat into the water and then, decided to take the train into Manhattan.

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It was midnight by the time I reached Penn Station so I shuttled over to Grand Central and slept in a chair until the first train to Rye left at five thirty.

I called my mom who came out to get me before she had to go to work. She dropped me at the house and said she would see me at dinner.

My mom lived alone with three lazy cats who never left the house. They could usually be seen dozing curled up on a shelf or on the couch looking like little fur pillows.

My parents had been divorced for some fifteen years. My father, a Hollywood screen writer, had run off with a Yugoslavian film producer to live in Zagreb. I guess that the whole story is a little bit more complicated, but that's the meat of it. I didn't have that much contact with him, but that was mostly because of distance. I had met his wife, Danuta, and she seemed like a nice lady. I held some resentment toward him because his leaving fucked up my mom's life so much, but the passage of time had healed a lot of those bad feelings. For me, that is, not so much for my mom.

Years later I found out that he blamed my mother for sabotaging his dream of writing the Great American Novel by letting herself get pregnant with me so he had to keep a high paying job.

My older brother was another story. Dad had left when he was thirteen and very sensitive. He never got over it and ended up taking kind of a bad path in life. I had been only five and a lot more adaptable.

My mom now worked as a personnel director for a small printing company in White Plains. She was an up kind of person who really endeavored to see the best side of all situations.

Recent problems with my brother, narcotics and the law had put a real strain on her optimism. My brother treated my mom like a steel company treats a strip-mine, leaving a wound when he takes what he needs.

Her passion was the life of the mind. Although she hadn't completed college, she pursued her further education almost as a reflex. She had two or three books she was currently reading in

every room and shelves full of many more lined every available wall. She had particularly strong interests in archaeology and science fiction both of which she had passed on to me.

The full refrigerator and the stacks of books were all I needed to keep me busy when I was in town.

I unpacked my pack and started to pull together a load of laundry. when I found the fifty that Todd the salesman had given me.

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Excellent. I hadn't really been around regularly for two years, but I figured I could dig up a connection for some weed.

Among the hundred or so tiny scraps of paper in my wallet, I found Greaser Tony's number.

He still lived in Mamaroneck in his parents' basement and he still had his own phone. He said he could hook me up with a half pound for sixty five, which was all my money, but I was pretty sure that it would be a good investment. In spite of the fact that his "half pounds" usually weighed in at around seven and a half ounces, it was generally good stuff.

In less than an hour he pulled up in front of the house in a beat up Chevy. I'm not sure what year it was, but I think I was in elementary school when it was new.

He eased his way into the house and made himself comfortable on the couch where he was promptly mobbed by the cats. Felines loved Greaser Tony because he always smelled of pot which I think reminded them of catnip.

I found a couple of cans of Gablinger's reduced carbohydrate beer in the 'fridge and tossed one to Tony.

Greaser Tony looked like a skinny biker. His Levi's jacket had the name "Iron Butterfly" painted ornately on the back, a pretty nice job, if I say so myself. I had done it for him a year and a half ago for him in exchange for a dime bag.

My southwestern friends were confused when I referred to guys like Greaser Tony. They had grown up knowing the term "greaser" to apply unflatteringly to Mexicans. I think Tony was Polish.

Around here, when I was going to high school, the social order was determined culturally. The mainstream white kids were the preps and the jocks and what was left over were the blacks, the freaks and the greasers.

The blacks were into their own thing and had their own complex pecking order within the black community. While this was a very integrated area, there still wasn't much cross socialization. When I had been in school, the guy I hung out with most was black, but we

ultimately grew apart due to differing social attitudes.

The freaks were the white, dope smoking, liberal social conscience, peace loving, long hair types. They usually came from upper middle class backgrounds.

The greasers were the beer party, petty criminal, sometimes violent, no social conscience types. They usually came from lower middle class backgrounds. In spite of the differences in outlook, there was a strange brotherhood between the freaks and the

45

greasers. We were united in our social rejection. While freaks and

greasers rarely socialized, they were also careful not to bother one another. Greasers loved to pick on people, but freaks were hardly ever their victims, they didn't represent the establishment which had rejected them. Freaks hated the cops as much as the greasers did and loved it whenever they got away with something.

Greaser Tony probably delt in more than just grass. I had gotten acid from him on occasion and he had hinted that he could get anything I wanted. I didn't ask. Cocaine never did a thing for me and I drew the line at needles and pills. It was as simple as that.

Tony pulled out a large plastic bag full of crunchy green/brown pot. It looked like it was just a big chunk knocked off of a kilo brick. He pulled out a scale and showed me it weighed a full eight ounces. I looked it over and estimated in my head that about an ounce was made up of seeds and stems, which wasn't as bad a ratio as I had seen in some bags.

Tony rolled a fat joint right out of the bag and fired it up. A seed exploded sounding like a capgun as he took the first deep inhale. He held the toke and passed the reefer to me. I liked the flavor of the stuff, sweet and resinous. It gave a mellow, sort of "lifting" high. I was definitely keeping a full ounce of this for myself.

"Very nice!" I said.

"Yeah, got it from some boneheads over in Jersey. It was cheap 'cause they got it outta the car of a pimp what got waxed. Worked out pretty good for everyone 'cept th'pimp." He chuckled.

When Tony said "boneheads", he was referring to blacks. "Pimp" in his book was not necessarily someone who sold the favors of women. It could just mean a flashy, high living black man. "Waxed" was murdered by organized criminals for internal political reasons. Frequently the crime was talking to a rival organization or the cops. If that was the case, all of the shots would be through the mouth of the waxee. They always made a point of leaving victims with a full wallet and all their possessions. If some enterprising scavenger got there before the police, they could do very well indeed, but it was risky because the mob didn't like it.

Thank God that wasn't my world.

It always gave me the creeps to hear Tony talk so casually about

people getting murdered. I have no idea if he really felt like it was no big deal or if he just acted that way to impress people.

I tried not to think about it and handed the cash over to Tony who then tossed me a couple of joints of different pot.

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"I got a little nice Colombian from a spade in White Plains. Not enough to sell though so I been just handing out a joint or two to good customers. Kinda' like a prize in th' Cracker Jack."

"Thanks, man."

I'd hang onto those to bring up to Toadstool's.

After Tony left I pulled out my address book and started calling all the local dopers I knew. In forty minutes I had made enough appointments to move all I had. It wasn't going to be a real high profit transaction for me, but I would double my money and do it in one day.

I took a full ounce of fine shake off the top for myself and then made up four "lid" sized bags, six "dime" sized bags and a handful of nickels and joints from what was left.

My sturdy old Schwinn was still in the basement and, with the help of a patch on the front tire, soon had me on the road. By four p.m., I had moved everything except one of the ounce bags and a couple of joints. I had one hundred thirty five bucks in my pocket and I could sit on that last bag. I put them and my personal bag of shake into my pack inside a "Top" tobacco tin.

If I ended up having to hitch with it, I could go and buy some tobacco to cover it up with and seal the tin. A little risky but not a bad enough bet to make me real nervous.

Those precautions turned out to be unnecessary. I called Toadstool and found out he was coming down to Yonkers the next day to get a set of tires for his Volkswagen. A friend of his was going to just give them to him.

He said I could come back to Norwalk with him which was great. It was a couple of days earlier than I expected to head up there but it would give me some time to relax before they started framing the house next Monday.

Cool. Things were coming together. I ran out to buy some beer to replace what I had drunk of Mom's Gablinger's as well as some Miller High Life for myself.

Around five thirty, my mom came home and we finally got a chance to talk. We hadn't seen each other in three weeks. Although this was more or less my home base, I hadn't spent much time here since I got out of high school.

Mom was a pistol. There were few people more fun to just talk to than her. If there was a single person responsible for shaping me

intellectually, it was Mom. She tolerated, sometimes even celebrated, my gypsy lifestyle. All she ever wanted to know was what I had been reading. She really didn't care to see me become a

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doctor or a businessman and I think she might have been horrified

if I had become a lawyer. She had stressed creativity and had been delighted when I showed a talent for painting. Unlike so many parents, she looked at my long hair and anti-authoritarian attitude as a sign that she had done something right.

She was disappointed to hear I would be leaving the next day, but we had a jolly evening together in which we talked about family, art, politics and books while she beat me twice at Scrabble. Somewhere in there she made a wonderful meatloaf.

She went to bed around ten and I stayed up to watch Johnny and then a great old monster movie. I fell asleep during the movie only to be roused by the national anthem just long enough to turn off the set.

I did nothing of importance the entire next day until Tom showed up around two. At the last minute I decided to take the Schwinn which we had to lash to the roof with clothesline.

On the drive to Norwalk I asked Tom about Brad and Sharlene.

"I don't know what he saw in her." said Tom, "She just seemed rude and vulgar to me. Am I terrible for saying that?"

"Fuck no. She really rubbed me the wrong way."

"Damn. I thought I was the only one. You know, after you and Joe left, her husband showed up looking for her."

"Husband?"

"Yeah. Isn't that something? He wanted to beat up Brad. You should have see Brad! He'll deny it, but he was really scared! She finally just went away with the guy. I bet he beat her up."

"Man....that just figures. Y'know, she made me so antsy that I ended up screwing things up between me and Joanie." I told him the whole story. Tom was the only person I told everything to including my internal motivations. To my surprise, he understood completely.

"You think you're going to be able to fix things up with Joanie?"

"I don't know. I look like a pretty big asshole to her right now. I'm going to wait a few days to call her. Give her a chance to relax about it."

"I'm not sure that's the thing to do."

"What do you mean?"

"Women want you to call even if they don't want to talk to you. If you don't give her the chance to hang up on you at least once, you're not letting her go through the complete cycle of forgiving you."

"That's stupid! Where the hell did you get that?"

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"Some psychology text book from the barn." The "barn" Tom refered to was an big old shed down near the driveway which the family had never used. Tom had filled it with stuff he had scavenged, mostly car parts, but he had bought a huge store of books that the local library had removed from their shelves and were going to become mulch. He got a whole pallet full for ten bucks. Since then he had spent quite a bit of time just reading his way through the pile. Last I checked he was about a fifth of the way through.

"You're going to have to show me the book." It would never happen. the chances of him being able to find the same book twice were exceedingly small. Maybe I would try and call Joanie tonight anyway. I figured I had nothing to lose.

This guy's passion for reading came after the discovery late in his academic career of a learning disability. It wasn't until the middle of his senior year of high school that his problem was identified. His teachers and councilors had more or less given up on him and he had graduated through heroic effort somewhere near the bottom of his class. Since then he had devoted himself to books. He would simply take as much time as it took to get through each one without the pressure of being in school and having to turn in a paper at a given time.

This was the thing about Tom, he was slow, but he wasn't anything like stupid.

Tom's place was at the top of hill at the end of a dirt road. It was actually paved up until about one hundred feet from the house where the blacktop ended suddenly. A tiny sign next to the mailbox announced "Here 'tis".

His mother was working in a little flower garden By the front door and called a greeting to us.

The Grovers were in their early sixties. Tom was their only child who had come to them quite late in the game. They were great and lively folks. I was happy to say that I liked them and they liked me.

Tom's father, who was a master carpenter, had built a little A-frame structure in the back yard to be my temporary quarters while I was here for the job. The walls were made from heavy clear plastic sheeting. Some sort of military surplus no doubt. I had previously thought that I would have it to myself, but Toadstool had decided to stay out there as well just to be out of the house. The plastic was in several layers that rippled and trapped moisture so that the walls were not exactly transparent, they just weren't

exactly not transparent either. My first order of business was to

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hang some Indian patterned cotton cloth I got from Pier-1 on the inside.

We had electricity out there and therefore a stereo and a little hotel room sized 'fridge which we filled with beer, so we were as comfortable as we needed to be.

Tom's folks had a hyperactive whippet named Betty who seemed to be capable of being in two or more places at once. You could see her digging on the other side of the yard and then turn around and trip over her a half second later. It was unnerving at first, but I got used to it. I got into telling people that the dog could teleport from one place to another without having to cross the intervening space. The only way to prove me wrong would be to keep eyes on her every second, because if you blinked, she would be somewhere else.

In the yard next to the house were the three cars and one truck which Tom was currently working on. At the moment, only the Rambler was running but the VW would be fine once he got the new tires on. As soon as he did, he was going to sell it to Brad for a hundred bucks and a pile of parts for a Mustang which he also had.

I called Joanie and got her roommate who didn't know where she was. She told me she had gotten back to town earlier in the day, but was out now. I left a message just to tell her I had called.

Over the weekend, Tom and I worked on the A-frame to make it a little more homey, cut down a couple of trees for Mister Grover and repaired a low brick wall around the back yard garden. We called up Brad on Saturday evening and went out to drink beer and shoot pool.

Tom and Brad knew a great bar down near Danbury which had a big copper topped bar with brass rails and five big pool tables. It was an eclectic place, drawing both businessmen and more working class types. The local motorcycle club also frequented the place but in spite of their menacing appearance, there was never any trouble from them. Actually, these were the guys who we were always giving us the best games and they would frequently be a source of auto parts for Tom and Brad. One thing about this place was that car culture ruled. I'm positive that I was the only regular customer they ever had who, not only didn't own more than one vehicle, but actually didn't drive.

So for Brad and Tom the evening was one of drinking beer and yacking about cars while I spent my time shooting pool with bikers.

Really an altogether pleasant time.

We rolled back into Norwalk around two a.m. only slightly drunk. Tom knew these roads and knew how not to stand out, so I found

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that we never got stopped by the cops once in my entire time in

Connecticut in spite of Tom driving around "half in the bag" as he so poetically put it.

On Monday morning, just as we were getting ready to head out to the job site, Tom got a call from the foreman. The customer had asked the architect to make changes just a day before framing was to begin. The job was postponed for what could easily turn into the rest of the summer.

Tom and I both agreed that the situation sucked. I decided to stick it out for a few weeks to see if the job was going to materialize and would pick up temp work in the meanwhile.

Tom got a full time job at a place which made medals and commemorative coins. Sort of like the Franklin Mint, only less well known.

I went down to the local Manpower office to pick up day labor. Manpower was this place where you would see a bunch of guys, some of them young like me, but most were older guys with "loser" written all over them. We would all hang out sipping bad free coffee and eating not-so-bad