“I’d never do heroin,” said Frog. “And I can’t afford cocaine.”
“But it’s good to know we’ve all been around this dilemma before,” said DJ.
Frog was speechless.
James broke the silence. “How are you with the Hard Times, DJ?”
“Well, since their drug bust last spring, they’ve asked me not to deal on the premises. I deal here on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, so going to Trower tonight will cut into some of that revenue.”
“No way, man,” said James. “There will be lots of customers at Trower tonight.”
“You think so?” said DJ. “I hate to sell in unfamiliar territory.”
“Bring a few sacks and just check it out,” said Frog. “You don’t have to market them if you don’t feel comfortable.”
“Yeah,” said DJ, “I could at that.”
CHAPTER TWO
…the material isolated from the bloodstream was given the name “serotonin,” while that from the intestinal tract was called “enteramine.” Subsequently, both materials were purified, crystallized, and shown to be 5-hydroxy tryptamine (5-HT), which could then be prepared synthetically and shown to possess all the biological features of the natural substance. The indole nature of this molecule bore many resemblances to the psychedelic drug LSD, with which it could be shown to interact on smooth muscle preparations in vitro. 5-HT is also structurally related to other psychotropic agents…
Frog looked out of the window of DJ’s Cadillac as suburban industrial buildings passed by at 65 miles per hour. “Out here rent is a thousand dollars a month,” he said. “You’d need two grand a month just to pay off your car and apartment. What a wasteland. Four hundred thousand for a four-bedroom house.”
“It’s suburbia. Populated by management and software engineers,” said DJ.
“I might end up out here after I graduate, “said James. “Get myself a nice trophy wife, two-point-five kids, two cars, and a dog,”
“Don’t forget the hot tub and sauna,” DJ said.
“Too chic,” said James. “A nice conventional swimming pool for the kids to play in.”
“What do you do when they get to be teenagers and start to smoke dope and steal from the liquor cabinet?” said DJ.
“Smoke with them maybe,” said James. “Out here teenagers have the best grass.”
“Mind if I throw in a tape?” said Frog.
“What of?” said DJ.
“Trower, For Earth Below.”
“Go ahead.”
James leaned forward from the back seat and said, “That’ll make a nice break from all that Grateful Dead you keep listening to.”
“But I love the Dead,” said Frog, slightly wounded. “Jerry’s been dead twenty years now. Thankfully enough, we have thousands of hours of bootleg recordings.”
James shook his head slowly and sighed. “Billy Brag said the Deadheads would record Garcia’s farts if they could,” said DJ as she chuckled to herself softly.
“I think our turnoff is coming soon,” said James.
“Right up here,” said DJ, commanding the huge 1965 black Cadillac and gently moving the “four-door from Mordor” into the turnoff lane, and gazed at the gas stations, restaurants, and strip malls in passing. A lot more open spaces than in hard-core suburbia. Trees and green grass were abundant. The Medina Bar performance space soon came into view. They turned into the nearly empty parking lot and had their choice of parking spaces. DJ parked about three car lengths from the front door. She reached into her red corduroy satchel and began filling a bowl full of herb. She torched it and inhaled, and then she passed it to Frog, who filled his lungs and passed it to James.
James sat back in the soft, gently aged comfort of the Cadillac’s back seat. He took out a lighter and torched the bowl while inhaling. It was good smoke, he thought. A good creative buzz. Not the kind of weed that just turns you to a stone. He sought out the good herbs and stockpiled them in small stashes hidden in tiny crevices and cracks in his apartment and belongings. He had a model airplane that carried a load of grass in its bomb bay. That plane hung from the ceiling of his bedroom. Other stashes were inside a TV and inside a light fixture.
After DJ put away her pipe, they realized that the moment of decision had come. It was time to “drop acid” and “dose.” After some small talk, each procured from his or her stashes a single hit of lysergic acid diethylamide. All three looked at each other for a moment. This would be the last moment any of the three could make claims on sanity. At least for the next few hours.
James whistled in clear mimic of a bomb dropping. “The smoking crater of my mind,” he said.
Each displayed one small square of the blotter paper on the tip of a forefinger. “On the count of three, then,” said DJ. “One, two, three.” They simultaneously popped the paper squares onto their tongues. DJ raised a finger, calling for silence from the other two. “We gotta suck on these hits for about ten minutes, and then we go in for a nice dinner and swallow the hits just before the meals arrive. Buy our tickets before we go to the restaurant. C’mon, let’s go,” she said while opening the driver’s car door.
A few quiet giggles erupted on the way inside. James opened the door for the others and scanned for a ticket counter. The caged booth was ahead, restaurant to the right, and doors to the bar on the left. They ambled up to the ticket booth and James spoke first.
“One, please, for Trower.”
“That’ll be twenty-one dollars, please,” the young woman said through the bars.
James dug in his wallet, came up with two paper bills, a twenty and a one, and handed them to the worker. “Here’s your ticket, thank you,” as she slid one ticket to James. He stepped aside and let the others get their tickets.
At the restaurant they were met by a hostess and escorted to a round table with a white linen tablecloth, a candle in a red glass pot, and four place settings. They sat down, still sucking on the little pieces of blotter paper. The waiter arrived with glasses of ice water.
“Bottoms up, kids,” said DJ. She washed the acid tab down with a gulp of water. The others followed suit.
“I’ve heard that you can do a test for LSD with a spinal tap,” Frog said.
“No way,” said DJ. “LSD is a really small chemical. It’s measured in micrograms, not milligrams. The first acid trip in history was done by Doctor Albert Hoffman in Switzerland in 1943. He spilled some on his hand and it went through his skin. He was so intrigued that he tried a small dose a while later. He took one whole milligram. That’s a thousand micrograms. That’s three times the dose we’re doing. He found out pretty quick he’d made a big mistake. LSD is so small it can’t be detected at all by any test. Not even a blood test.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” said James. “We can’t get busted if we get pulled over for DWI.”
“Unless they find your stash,” said DJ. “Lots of folk tales about LSD. Most of ’em are bunk. You should read Doctor Hoffman’s own words in his book, LSD: My Problem Child.”
“It’s out of print. I’ve looked for it,” said James.
They settled in for a respectable dinner and paid, left and headed over to the show. Little black square tables greeted them as they went in. There were about a hundred people crowding around the stage. Another 300 were scattered throughout the cavernous dark space.
“We dropped at eight, so we should be peaking at about ten,” said DJ.
James looked at the people crowded around the stage. Long hair was in fashion there. Shiny leather jackets, tie-dye, and bright clothes were all in abundance.
He had felt the acid coming on while he was still in the restaurant. Blocks of color, like walls or the tablecloth, grew moving patterns on them, geometric complexities akin to finer Islamic art. The women and men both looked sexier and more colorful. The colored lights beamed in front of the stage in intricate rods of splashing reds, blues, yellows, and greens.
The main lights went out, the stage lights all went out, and a stout m
an with a Stratocaster guitar stepped into the one remaining spotlight. A second spotlight opened up on a taller, middle-aged man. They looked at each other as if to ask “ready” and began to make sound. Tough, gritty, pounding sound. The guitar wailed and ripped and popped in one rhythmic sonic onslaught. The singer came in and put words to the rhythms. The concert had finally begun.
* * *
Sean leaned back from the kitchen table. He had printed out James’ postings and was going over them with a highlighter pen and scribbling notes with a ballpoint pen. “Where should I begin?” he said and breathed out a soulful sigh. Here was a case for a higher power and a spiritual rebirth. That, of course, would be the easy path. Under his breath he said, “No, this one will take some time. Still, there is tremendous vitality in my long-lost friend. I may be a Buddhist Christian, but I still know that less is less and more is more. That ‘less is more’ junk is just that. James would spot that in an instant. We will work through this together.”
* * *
Trower had finished his last encore. Frog, DJ, and James had watched and heard through their altered perspectives. They slowly moved to the door and their car. Now was the time for DJ to go into business. She asked select concert-goers if they wanted any acid or marijuana. Within ten minutes, she had sold eight sacks of grass and 50 hits of acid. A profitable venture, she thought as she unlocked the Cadillac and slid in. She reached over to the opposite doors and unlocked them. Frog got in the front, James the back. DJ turned the key and the monstrous V-8 engine sprang to life.
The moonlit nightscape was beautiful. The residual hallucinations from the acid enhanced the cool quiet of car engines and motorcycles speeding on in the night air. Stars, moon, headlights, and the lighted signs of businesses passed by at a mile a minute.
DJ turned on the heat while Frog hung out the open passenger window of the car. James leaned forward from the back seat and moved his face into the heated air pouring out of the dashboard.
“A fine evening,” said James.
“I hope you budgeted yourself, James. We each spent about forty dollars. Can your SSI handle a dent like that?”
“It can if I sell some trips. Five dollars a hit to the college kids. I have capital. Frog found me a job as a guinea pig. Pays six hundred a month.”
“Really? What are you going to be testing?” queried DJ.
“Some new mental illness drug. Monthly dose.”
“Be careful. You don’t want to end up back in the pen.” DJ reminded James about the state hospital he had been in years before.
“If I start having a relapse, I’ll just quit the test,” James said.
The next morning James loaded his three blog postings for his friend Sean. He chose the “select all” icon and went to “copy.” He loaded it all onto the blog’s blank page and hit the “paste” button on his computer screen and then hit “publish.” The three linked blog posts were on their way to Sean.
Blog Post Five
Alternatively Socialized
Our people come from an alternative socialization. Schooled on liberal Minnesota values from a post Vietnam war experience, we move forward and reinvent ourselves with the same frequency as we invest in a new computer. Lawyers stay lawyers and cooks keep on cooking, but both know it will be a new frontier when marijuana is legalized. We turn to our Native American cousins for guidance on some of these issues. They seemed to be ahead of our hippy hordes when it came to living in synch with a forest full of herbs and a buffalo full of food, clothing, and shelter, and many other useful things. We all saw our native friends get to use peyote, and we were stunned and amazed when the government actually acquiesced and declined to interfere.
There was more to fill that void than we could have guessed. Those same natives faced a tremendous problem in the form of those same drug-addled European Americans who wanted to also consume peyote. For want of a better word, these “hippies” threatened to ruin the benefit to the native peoples that peyote could deliver.
The local natives were recruits to the peyote faith. For the most part the hippies in Minnesota were merely looking to the native population as it pertained to drugs like LSD and cocaine and marijuana. Our whites looked to the natives and saw a ‘way’ of doing drugs and not any one drug like peyote to focus on. The natives danced and sang and hunted and lived as well as a life could be lived.
The urban ‘tribes’ clung to such connections. People subdivided into Hippies, Communists, Punks, Anarchists, Feminists, Peace Protesters, and other fringe groups and activists defined by affinities and tastes.
We were leftists who viewed mainstream liberal culture as being way too mild and bland. We were more inclined to take drugs than to drink alcohol, but ultimately all the grander trappings of native, or leftist, or alternatively spiritual ideals fell by the wayside of the highway of life. Eventually it became a thing of paying bills and a decision to find a job rather than the older cottage industries of food service and dealing short-order drugs. We dreaded growing up but eventually even an entry-level job in corporate America became a desirable thing and an unavoidable evil. The corporate reality surrounded us and we were swallowed whole.
It became an afterthought of modern business that had people like Abbie Hoffman taking a job as an investments counselor for a stockbrokers firm on Wall Street. Abbie could market himself as a friendly ear to investors coming into the markets after years of corporate distrust. We all began to move into the corporate sector and bring our values with us. We scanned the frontier and found investments of an ethical nature and hawkish businesses too. We made our peace and put our funds where they would do the most good, and the ensuing growth would be the most rewarding experience.
The mortgage-backed securities imploded. They crashed and in spite of the fact that many Wall Street professionals refused to call it a crash, we felt it was clearly that. The gambling culture of dealing in high-risk investments backfired, and the major banking and investment houses collapsed.
This is nothing new. We did, however, start to rebuild. Many lost jobs and houses. It became a lean world to live in. Underwater mortgages and entry-level paychecks became the new norm. Winning the war on marijuana was a victory for sure, but for most it was a promise and not a product delivered to your door just yet. A goal on the horizon. A light at the end of a dark tunnel, but still a long tunnel to get to that light. For all of the Cheyenne prayers, it was still a long, cold road.
Blog Post Six
Codebreaker
From the moment I wake till the hour I go to sleep, I see codes inside of nuances and ciphers, key phrases, passwords to back doors, and trap doors complete with viruses and diseases.
My books are code manuals, and they are read by people inside of the system. It becomes a grand collection of secrecy and paranoia. All social contacts are part of this base.
Years ago I lost a girlfriend to cocaine. The drug won out and she floated away on a cloud of crack coca vapor. Her name was Patty Fitzgerald. An odd character, to say the least. Her drug of choice was the coca that comes from the richer suburbs of Hennepin County, and our relationship suffered from the combination of coca and mental illness.
Usually the greatest stigma of mental illness comes from the state itself, so I really don’t believe that the state’s other hand in treating mental illness really believes the complaints about stigma. So it is for me and Ms. Fitzgerald. She has several important friends in the music industry and many friends in suburban rich country-club coca networks. I tend to take on dually paranoid ideas about the paranoia that comes from trafficking drugs to the other paranoia that comes from mental illness. One is fear of the law. The other is a disease-based fear of hallucinations. I have both but Ms. Fitzgerald has only the fear of getting caught at crime.
Ms. Fitzgerald was key to the structure of my illness. Our mutual use of drugs and the black market gave a beginning to my criticism of her coca use. Since then I have always criticized the coca nets while using my books as a kind of code man
ual.
The whole of the drug networks plot against the release of a new book for fear that I might reveal an identity or let loose a dealer’s residence… The paranoid fear is that the whole of Twin Cities arts and entertainment will feel compelled to read my book to see not what is in it but what is not in it. My delusion is that I am so invested in the drug networks that my books only make total sense to somebody inside that machine.
All songs on the radio have points of value similar to a politician’s polls of popularity. Fitzgerald was in truth a user, but in all likelihood the greatest reason we parted was a different path in each life.
My symptoms are to believe that every daily motion has a value as part of a vast criminal enterprise that only the folks who are “Turned On” can see. The old tome of Timothy Leary is to say “Tune in, turn on, drop out.” My own drug use and that of Fitzgerald have come to be fuel of delusion. That’s where it all started. When I publish a book, I release a new code manual. When I advertise, the goal is in part to communicate with the same people I ran drugs with. Nothing goes untouched by the fire of madness.
My books have had several people featured in them as characters who take starring roles in my hallucinations. The Fitzgerald gal and others like her are found in my books. I see and write about secret agents, secret black marketers, purveyors in strange goods, and other oddities of the galaxy who are fashioned after odd characters in my very Earthly experience.
My books are code manuals, keys, and ciphers that show the true reasons behind the goal of trafficking all manner of goods. I see these issues being debated in TV and all other media… Like John Nash, I see codes within codes within politics and slogans,
As John Nash said when asking if he could teach again at Princeton, his friend said, “John, you are an awful teacher,” and Dr. Nash says back, “I’m a bit of an acquired taste.”
So it will go for me at MCTC…speaking frankly about my symptoms. I tend to practice pharmacy to the drug addicts of the streets. When I do so, I delude myself into believing I am to illegal drugs what the Mayo brothers are to medical doctoring.