Chapter Twelve
I started getting into grass a lot in those days. I liked the high. I never was much for alcohol. I drank but I didn't like the drunkenness that came along with it, or the dullness of it. Or the headaches the next day.
Grass was smoother and more mentally internal. It was fun and relaxing. It enhanced and complimented the senses.
Booze screwed everything up. Most of all the libido, while grass enthusiastically enhanced libidinous activity.
I was doing some freelance writing for ClubAmerica, one of the discount travel and merchandise clubs that proliferated in the '70's.
I met a young man named Chris Evola who was writing sales training manuals for them. He lived with a beautiful Mexican woman named Rosie. They were an interesting pair. Chris was tall and slender and looked like what would come to be known as a computer geek. She was petite with small delicate features that were complimented by her long brown hair and hypnotic eyes.
One time Chris asked if I'd ever done acid. I told him of the near encounter in The Haight when it was still legal but that I'd never done any. He asked if I'd like to and I thought about it before declining.
I'd heard all the horror stories the press reported during Richard Nixon’s reign: it would permanently damage my mind, there would be chromosomal damage to my sperm, my offspring would be mutants or, worse, Republicans or some such.
But I'd also heard it was truly enlightening. That it was the ultimate sense expander. It heightened everything, opened new vistas of awareness, new realities, brought into focus that which was obscured, etc.
In the deep dark recesses of my mind I really wanted to do it and so I decided I trusted Chris enough to go for it.
The evening was set and I went to their apartment, a couple of buildings down the street from mine. We "dropped" the tabs and waited.
Within about 20 minutes we were talking and laughing and having a “far out” time.
Pretty soon we were laughing a lot. Everything had become hilarious. It was so hilarious we couldn't stop laughing. I'd never had so much fun in my life.
As I was letting my eyes wander around the room I noticed the walls undulating. Curtains would sway in the breeze, but there was no breeze in the air conditioned apartment. Then I noticed the walls swayed when the curtains swayed. The waves of existence ebbed and flowed across the world. Colors were becoming intensified. Animation was everywhere. Everything was undulating slowly, sensuously.
Music and the physical world seemed interlocked.
Then, out of the corner of my ear, I heard Rosie come over to Chris and say the fatal words, "Chris, it's not doing like it's supposed to do."
I didn't like the sound of that. It wasn't doing what it was supposed to do? I couldn’t believe all the fun I was having was all wrong. It wasn't supposed to do that? The walls weren't supposed to move? The world wasn't supposed to be as animated as it was appearing to be?
I got very nervous. I knew on the one hand I was having a great time staring at the wall; but a little voice in the back of my head was telling me about how people would, one day in the future, talk about me by saying "You know, they found him staring at a wall. Just sitting there staring at the wall."
What really terrified me was the fear I wouldn’t be able to explain to them that I was fine just staring at it; and that it was alright for me to do that, and I, too, was alright. I was afraid "they" wouldn't understand that I was enjoying what I was doing.
Of course no one came and took any of us away. But I spent a good while imagining the possibilities.
I left Chris and Rosie to themselves. Rosie went and took a bath and Chris tried to soothe her fears. I wanted to peek in on her in the tub: they'd left the bathroom door open. But she kept saying that I shouldn't look at her and I respected her wish.
I guess Chris calmed her down because she never started freaking out.
Later, Chris asked if I'd seen "Women in Love" and wondered if I wanted to get naked and wrestle like Oliver Reed and Alan Bates had done in the film.
I said I'd seen it but I didn't want to wrestle. Kinda gay, I thought when I saw it, and kinda gay still.
I went to my apartment and got my tape recorder, brought it back and began taping myself talking about anything that came into my head. I said my name a lot so that I’d remember it in case anyone did come and take us away and ask for that information.
That tape was in the trunk of my car when it was repossessed in San Francisco a few months later. I never retrieved it. I wonder if it's still out there. If you have it, send it back. I’d love to hear it. I remember it was pretty boring if you weren’t stoned, though.
It was boring if you were stoned, too.
The “trip” lasted about 8 hours: all night long. When we started coming down everything returned to normal. The walls stopped moving. Our minds stopped reeling.
It was exactly like returning from a trip. Reality would never look the same, knowing there was a completely different one just a chemical away.
I prefer real reality, but a visit to fantasia was a pleasant diversion from time to time.
Disney re-released his classic “Fantasia” while I was in San Francisco. I saw it while tripping and it was trippy to a “T”.
In the 60s there were "rules", admonitions, warnings, suggestions about taking LSD:
Always remember you're on acid. No matter what comes along, you're on acid; and it'll be over soon.
If monsters come, remember you're on acid and that monsters aren't real. Everything is colored by the acid.
Always trip with someone you trust. Never trip with someone who'll try to mess with your head.
Never trip alone, although many did. I did.
One night, while on an especially mellow trip, several of us were sitting outside our house in Oak Lawn -an area of Dallas near the hippie hang-out Lee Park.
We were sitting on the steps leading to the street-level sidewalk. I noticed a little wolf spider milling about.
I plucked a blade of grass and casually started petting the spider with it: stroking it's back, delicately. I never would have done it if I hadn’t been on acid.
I hated spiders!
When I was in the 6th grade I'd tried to pour scalding water on a spider while climbing onto the a.m.'s car bumper. I slipped and fell and broke the glass pitcher I was holding in my left hand. The glass handle shattered in my closed fist slicing me mercilessly in three spots. Blood spewed everywhere. A chunk of fat from my ring finger was lying exposed where the skin had peeled out and back.
I screamed my head off and was taken downtown to Dr. Cole’s office. He lived three doors away from us and, since it was night, he drove the a.m. and me there. The a.m. was too shaken to drive.
She was shaken!
He pumped my fingers full of some kind of numb-0-caine and stitched me up.
Those shots nearly killed me. I've never suffered as much pain as when he jammed the needle right into the nerves themselves to deaden them.
They say the worst pain is recovering from deep cuts. I believe it. I've had people tell me they'll run at a gun but they'll run from a knife. Those shots were even worse.
Of course, I know the spider wasn't to blame for my cuts. I’d hated them long before that. In the Jewish faith it's a good thing to kill a spider.
They're not generally liked.
But this little wolf spider I was ministering to while on LSD was enjoying being stroked. He/she/it just stood there and allowed it to happen. I was fascinated it never tried to move away, or escape. I certainly wasn't blocking its retreat.
My point: I was on acid while I was communing with Nature. I don't think I would ever try to pet a spider while in a straight frame of mind. I felt tuned in to the spider's wavelength and that made the difference. The fact that humans and animals could tune to each other's rhythms was revealed to me on an intellectual level, I understood it viscerally. Daniel in the lion's den may have found the right wavelength to stay his becoming dinner.
Though he wasn't on acid at the time, he still had outside help.
Lesson: Whatever happens might happen if you're ready for it to happen even if you didn't know it was going to happen then.
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