Amateur Insanity

Synchronized Paranoias

 

In Haight-Ashbury, there was no cop more insidious than the undercover narc. You could share your home with them, call them friend, perhaps even love them. Then one day they disappeared, you were busted, and the next and the last time you saw them was at your trial. Ever-present narc-threat fed Tim’s paranoia and was one cause of the only time his paranoia and mine struck simultaneously, disabling us both on a Friday evening with two very sexy chicks at the pad.

I was already agitated when they arrived. I had been alone for hours, sealed inside myself, reading and thinking, studying my psychological condition since the speed crack-up. The chicks were both about late teens. My age. When they came in, I was lying on the floor, a speaker at each ear, listening to Absolutely Free, Frank Zappa’s latest scolding of the hippies. I quickly stood.

“Let me introduce Jan,” Tim said, gesturing with a hint of Southern courtliness toward the prettier.

She had a thin nose and dark blond hair parted in the middle and hanging straight down to her shoulders. We exchanged nods and hi’s and I shot her in her big blue eyes with the Stare.  

“And Jan,” Tim said with a giggle gesturing toward the other.   

“What…Oh, you’re both named Jan?” I ask the second.

That one had ripe zits and bleached hair with dark roots. She nodded, and I saw in her even darker blue eyes that she liked me as much as I liked her friend.  

“May I get you some Mu tea?” Tim asked.  

“Yeah.”   

“Sure.”   

Tim left for the kitchen. The chicks looked over the room and I looked over the chicks. They were Tim’s so he got first choice, which he had clearly signaled was the prettier, Blond-Jan.  It was she who saw the picture window first and walked to it, Roots-Jan following.  

“That’s Berkeley on the left, with the tower,” I said behind them.

I remembered Zappa and went over to turn down the stereo.

The chicks stared in silence a moment and Roots-Jan murmured in awe,
“That’s groovy.”  

“Yeah,” said the other.  

Roots-Jan stepped over and stood against the window so I couldn’t avoid noticing through her translucent paisley blouse her only assets competitive with her near-beautiful but flat-chested friend. She let my stare linger. She too realized we are to be paired. They were swollen and pendulous and just as I got to the nipples she turned her back to the window and scanned the room again, settling on the commie posters. I liked what I saw, including her chipped-tooth mischievous grin. Then she really got my attention by noticing the books and walking over to read the titles.

And then, like a dog lolloping off to play, I felt a sudden leash-yank of panic: I’ll have to make conversation! Since the speed disaster, I could still expound passionately for hours about whether or not existence precedes essence but I was scared speechless of chat.           

Then Roots-Jan noticed the records stacked on edge on the floor and bent over them. Her blouse hung open and she smiled at my blatant stare and stayed bent over, flipping through albums.   

“Oh, Donovan!” she said and stood up with the album.

I pressed the reject button on Zappa and say, “Why don’t you pick the music,” and then I head down the hall to the kitchen.

“Wanna listen to Donovan?” I heard Roots-Jan ask.

“Yeah. . . . Oh, ya know who he always reminded me of ?”   

I didn’t hear anymore except, as I entered the kitchen, conspiratorial giggles. I suddenly remembered the last time I went to Tim for help and catch myself and silently watch him arranging cups and tea bags.   

“Where’re they from?” I asked with forced casualness.

“Montana,” he said, then headed out of the kitchen, adding over his shoulder, “At least, that’s what they claim.”

That took a few moments to register. I heard him ask, against Donovan’s tepid crooning, if they wanted honey in their tea. Then he reentered the kitchen, and as he took the kettle from the stove and poured water into cups, I noted the absence of his usual whinnying giddiness at the prospect of sex.

Tim’s pathological fear of cops was a cop-magnet and his rap sheet spanned from civil rights sit-ins and anti-war demonstrations to pissing in the bushes of a park and lifting cigarettes (they didn’t bust him until he had paid for forty dollars worth of groceries). Nevertheless, he was also capable of fits of reckless abandon, like the time he carried a kilo of grass in a shopping bag the entire length of Haight Street to our Scott Street pad. But there were other times when drugs (likely acid) and circumstances (friends recently busted) ganged up on him and gave him a whopping police paranoia of hallucinatory intensity.

“Listen,” he said, ending an extended preoccupied silence, “don’t let them know how much dope we have, o.k.?”  

“Why?”  

“I just don’t think it would be a good idea to advertise it around.  I mean, we don’t know them. We don’t know who they really are.”   

“O.k.”   

He carried two steaming cups to the living room. A few days before, he and I discussed a rumor we each heard from separate sources about the screams of hippies being beat in isolated cells of the county jail. But it is insane to suspect these chicks. They might not even know the word “narc.” Then it hits me: he’s having an attack of his paranoia while I am having an attack of mine. I relax slightly. He might provide cover. I entered the living room shortly after him. Roots-Jan was sitting on the floor leaning against the couch. I sat beside her, as expected. Tim and Blond-Jan sat on the floor facing us.        

Conspicuous silence.           

Etiquette required Tim and I produce grass, but I am afraid of how he will react. 

Roots-Jan saved me when she took a joint from her purse, held it up, and asked, “Wanna smoke some grass?”  

“Sure,” I said, and looked for Tim’s reaction.

He shot her a quick glance full of hurt, fear, panic, anguished disbelief. I reached under the edge of the couch for a mayonnaise-jar-lid ashtray and took the matches from it and handed them to Roots-Jan. Neither she nor Blond-Jan seemed to have noticed anything in Tim. I wanted to tell him they couldn’t offer the dope and be narcs. That’s entrapment. (Which was naïve. I hadn’t yet been busted. But I would be. Often.) Tim remained sullen. I relaxed more. Now I can mention dope. A well-worn topic with literal meanings and no shadowy ambiguities.

“What’re lids going for in Montana?” I asked Blond-Jan as she handed me the joint.

Tim scowled at me.

“Oh,” she said, looking at Roots-Jan. “Fifteen?”   

“Yeah. . .fifteen,” Roots-Jan said then added, “I’ve even seen ‘em for twenty-five.”

“Are they hard to find?” I asked, and so on, and so on . . . I felt relative safety now.  Though I was alert for evidence that I might be radiating off-putting vibes.

Somehow a half hour passed, with me and occasionally Tim plugging a hole with another routine question. The chicks were tense. Eager but uncertain. This may have been their first sexual experience in Haight Ashbury or anywhere. I was still hoping to find a graceful escape. Though I was also very turned-on to Roots-Jan. And she knew it. I handed her a joint that Tim and I had contributed, and instead of returning my hand to my lap, I laid an arm along the edge of the couch, behind her neck, but not touching it. I knew the timetable called for this.

On the stereo, we had gone through Donovan and were now into Judy Collins. Then, after handing-off the joint, Roots-Jan laid her head back onto my arm and blew smoke at the ceiling. I knew now that, after a suitable pause and the tribute of a deep, fascinated stare, I could get away with a kiss.  But, inspite of the hard-on stretching my jeans, I couldn’t make my move. Her head seemed to have me pinned, held from flight. So instead of kissing her, I dodged the moment with another meaningless question.

“How long have you been in town?”  

“’Bout a week,” she said then turns those enormous blue eyes on me. Highdivers’ pools. I gulped.

“I thought you said two days,” Tim blurted

They still didn’t seem to notice his suspicion. It was too preposterous. I realized the grass was affecting him.

“Uh, letsee,” Roots-Jan said looking at Blond-Jan, “how long have we been here?”

“Five days,” Blond-Jan replied, her arms around her knees.

Tim put his hand to his forehead and sighed. Silence.        

“Uh, did you go to the concert in the Panhandle yesterday?” I asked in a knick of time, “Was it Country Joe and the Fish?”   

“I don’t know,” Roots-Jan said. “I don’t know who they are.”  

Tim moaned, got up and left the room.  

“Uh, why don’t you change the records?” I asked as I stood. “D’ya want some more tea?”

Each shook her head looking up at me: startled, confused. I followed Tim to the kitchen.  

“We’ve gotta get all the dope out of the house,” he urgently whispered.   

“What?”   

“Didn’t you hear her? She said she never heard of Country Joe and the Fish. Everybody’s heard of Country Joe and the Fish..."

“Tim,” I said delicately, “they’re just chicks. They’re not narcs.” He searched my eyes. “Man, this is all in your head,” I said. “I’m positive, I am absolutely positive, those chicks are not narcs. You have to trust me on this. They’re just chicks. Really groovy chicks. And definitely not narcs.”

No, I thought, they’re something much more dangerous: human beings. I caught myself on the brink of asking him to go back into the livingroom.  My desire for Roots-Jan had momentarily caused me to forget my first priority: escape. Tim had presented me with an opportunity.

“Look, uh, we’ve blown it with them,” I said. “Why don’t I tell them you’re not feeling well and ask them to leave?”  

He looked at me and looked away and drifted off.  

“O.k.?” I asked to get him back.

He looked back at me and nodded.