I don’t know why I felt so far removed from my mother. She grieved like I did for my father and, worse, she nearly buried a son, but the urge to leave again was overwhelming. She’d take us to lunch and she’d tell her stories and I know, I know, he only used one napkin.
She said I should reacquaint myself with my little sister, but I didn’t know her at all. Hadley and I took her to the beach and to the Tastee-Freez and to Disneyland. She was so lovely to be around; her face so sweet and gentle. We played this game with the radio in the car. They’d play a song and the first to guess got a point. She knew them all. She liked “Lady Madonna” and “Ruby Tuesday” and The BeeGees’ “Holiday.” She sang with Hadley: “Dee, de, dede, de, dee – de de dee, deet dee, dee dee,” and she tried to make her voice like Maurice Gibbs’.
Days turned into weeks and a feeling of restlessness set in. We started to hang out at Hippie’s. Don the Hippie had been a friend since high school. His parents had gobs more money than anyone else’s; his father some kind of pyro-technician for the movies. If it exploded on film, Hippie’s father was in on it.
In their basement, his father had a train set like Gomez Addams’. There was a car wreck at an intersection. A mangled HO-scale station wagon was upside down on a turntable, spinning slowly, as if the accident had only just happened. There were thugs in front of a liquor store with knives and tiny little drunkards on Skid Row, but just down the block was a family Bar-B-Q with kids on a swing, and a man walking his dog, and a woman coming out of a shop with pink packages. Coolest train set ever.
Hippie was the product of that crazy affluence. He’d never had to work and never did. A talented artist, his drawings would sit half undone, and you’d ring the bell and he wouldn’t answer. You’d hear the music and open the door and he’d be there, fully immersed in side-three of the White Album or Tommy or “Whole Lotta Love.”
Never startled, he’d open his eyes and say, “Hey, can I get you something?” He took a shine to Farmgirl and she liked his big orange chair by the window. There was something about the geometry of L.A. at night, and the vistas and the lights, that struck her as magic.
The first night we were there he served us lemonade in jelly glasses with the Flintstones on them and he asked about the trip and about Woodstock. I told him the story, about Hendrix and meeting Farmgirl and what Lori Upton had done for me. “She gave you a kidney?”
“I know.”
“Sensational.” It was an odd response, but it was Hippie all the way through.
“I was at Led Zeppelin, at a venue like a circus, and I sat on the stage in front of a wall of amplifiers and I could feel it, it was so loud, and that was it. Next thing I knew I was in the hospital, my mother holding my hand.”
Hadley said, “You never told me this.”
“Why, of course, I have.”
“You never did.”
“Are you mad?”
“Of course, I’m not mad. You coulda told me.” We were there a lot after that, high off Hippie’s generosity. We did a lot of acid, Purple Microdot and Orange Sunshine; little stamps of blotter or tabs, and we’d watch old movies: Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling or Pat Boone singing “April Love.”
But it was like the Days of Wine and Roses. It started out so cool, an idea, like psychedelics were “a blueprint to a harmonious life.” Farmgirl said that from the orange chair. We were listening to Surrealistic Pillow. There are those two pretty songs in a row by Marty Balin, “Today” and “Coming Back to Me.”
And she was right. We sat in Hippie’s digs and the colors were brighter and the guitars were crisp and clean and the smell of orange blossoms on the air was intoxicating, but then the news came on the color TV, which was always on; hippies were rioting in Hollywood. “You see, you see,” she said. “They seek to undermine us, to destroy us, to belittle us and beat us down.” A policeman was on the screen with a Billy club.
Then there was a commercial for Noxema shaving cream, and then Grace Slick was singing about Alice. We watched the sunset (on acid). We drove through the canyons (on acid). We went to the Van Nuys drive-in to see Alice’s Restaurant (on acid). Then one night we went to a gig: The Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart. Hippie said, take these. It was STP. “What’s this?” I asked.
“STP.”
“Like for your car? Like ‘the Racer’s Edge?’”
“Like for ‘Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace.”
They didn’t do anything. We were high on hashish and Captain Beefheart was dissonant and nothing made any sense, and then Hippie handed us each another tab. When somebody handed you something, you took it; it was just polite. Softly the discordance lightened and Beefheart performed a new song. They said it wasn’t on an album. They said it was a love song. It was called “My Head is My Only House Unless It Rains.” It was beautiful, and then the STP kicked in and it was powerful and none of us, Hippie even, knew that the drug was like time-released. Then we were too high.
I began to experience this overwhelming feeling of joy and completeness; I felt the universe was mine, and mine alone. I was the greatest I would ever be. I could hardly bear the happiness. And Zappa was jamming in a plaid suit like someone in a bank and we had hamburgers, delicious, delicious. I had only friends, no enemies. God was with me. I was alpha and omega.
I sat on the shag carpeting. It was soft; the softest thing I ever touched. The color of the rug indescribable. Like a rainbow. I saw the Moaning Lisa and a giraffe, his legs spread, drinking from a swimming pool. The Mutual of Omaha. Applause, applause.
Farmgirl tapped my shoulder and said, “I think I’m going to throw up.”
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