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Late in the morning of the fourth day of Tim’s search for Shob, John Groupie dropped by. “. . .—Up-on-Haight-Street-and-I-told-‘im-I-haven’t-seen-Shob-since-I-saw-‘im-on-Waller-and-Masonic-talkin’-to-Beast-and-this-cat-named-Fropo-or-Frodo-who-just-came-out-from-Kansas-with-a-pickup-full-o’-grass--. . .” He was standing in the middle of the sunlit livingroom. I went about my business trusting him to keep me informed. As I was about to leave the room he stopped me mid-stride. “. . . White-really-pure-white-like-this-crystal-Amy-laid-on-me-right?” He tugged a paper packet from a jeans pocket and unfolded it. Methedrine. I hadn’t seen any since that last time, the effects of which were behind me now. I was sure of it.… I couldn’t have explained why I was taking methedrine again even while I was doing it. Was it that I didn’t like the idea of a human experience that was forbidden to me? In any case, I had to get over my speed problem, and I was confident that if there was any trouble this time, I could handle it, ride it into submission. Also, I wanted to know if the monster was still behind the door. So I took the same amount as before, a spoonful, and as I stood over the sink gagging and washing down the aftertaste, it occurred to me that, actually, I didn’t like methedrine. The monster was still there. I first noticed it in suspicious eye contact, masculine ego-grappling, with John. I was sitting on the couch, my head in my hands. He was jabbering in front of me. It was familiar territory, except something was magnified that was muted last time: imminent violence. The air was charged with it, overloading my receiver. I was a bomb that could be detonated by a glance. Every time I looked up at the human being in front of me, he shifted to a counterattack pose, and behind the babble, I caught in his eyes a glint of wild alarm. The hand facing me was a rigid fist. What the fuck was it? I wasn’t mad at John, so why should I be hostile to him? And where was the hostility? I couldn’t hear it in my voice or find it anywhere in my demeanor. This time I knew what to do though. I got rid of John by telling him I didn’t feel well and needed to be alone. I walked him to the door, opened it, and waited for him. He was babbling as I shut and locked it. I decided to ride out the speed hidden in the apartment. Throughout the afternoon the usual traffic of friends and customers wended its way by our door. I sat in a catatonic daze, afraid of breathing too loud, while one after another knocked once, waited, knocked again, waited, and, after a quick, tentative third knock and a slight pause, headed down the stairs. Late that afternoon I heard Tim’s key in the lock and leapt up and waited in front of the door. He came in with a worried expression. “Oh hi,” he said, surprised with me suddenly in front of him, then he continued, “I didn’t think you were here. Cookie said you were gone. I couldn’t find Shob. I’ve asked everywhere. . .” He sighed and tossed his jacket and a Village Voice onto a chair. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Yeah, yeah. . . I . . . I . . . Everthing is. . . I’m locked in this. . . this. . .” “Okay. What is it?” “It’s, it’s. . . I dunno. . . Okay. It’s like. . . behind everything I say or do is. . .” my eyes pleaded, “. . . violence.” “That’s just your self-consciousness again.” Groceries in hand, he started down the hall to the kitchen. “I told you, there’s nothing there. It’s all in your head. Forget it.” “I know it’s in my head. I know that.” I started after him. “I keep telling myself that, over and over, but it doesn’t do any good.” While he set the bag on the table and took a crusted pan from the stove to the sink, I continued, “It’s like I’m offended or angry or something all the time. I can’t. . . I mean. . . I feel so. . .” He concentrated on the pan under the faucet. “It’s infected my vibes and other people see it and react to it and I can’t stop it!” “It’s all in your head, okay? It’s not out here.” He took the pan back to the stove and turned on a burner. I looked down at the floor and made my decision and then headed down the hall and out the door and onto the street, on my way to a mental hospital. Langley Porter Neuro-Psychiatric Institute is embedded in a eucalyptus forest, on top of a steep hill, overlooking a football stadium, and when I hit the sidewalk headed for it, the sun is almost down and the wind has the bite of evening, reminding me that I’m wearing only a tee-shirt and sandals. Then I notice, thirty yards down Scott Street, coming from Haight Street, another freak. He has dark bangs and an Abe Lincoln beard. I study him hard for any sign he is the least receptive to my vibes. When he notices me, he almost stops in his tracks. Then he does a double-take. Assured now, he leans forward, hardened and ready, continuing toward me. I ready myself in turn: lower my head, square my shoulders, but force my gaze away from him. When we are abreast, I growl as if to hawk phlegm. Then immediately I wonder if I have actually done it or imagined it. We’ve passed and I look over my shoulder. He is looking over his shoulder at me, bug-eyed with fear and bewilderment. I continue toward Haight Street, but even before I reach it, I know I can’t use it because of the crowds. So I cross it, and a block further, turn left onto Page Street, heading west for the hospital, parallel to Haight Street, a block over. But on Page Street there is still foot traffic. The instant anyone comes into sight, I track their least gesture, glance, turn of the head, for signs they are receptive to my vibes. Anything said anywhere around me, every cough, scraped heel, slammed door, I take for granted is really a coded comment, a response to my odd, hostile vibes. If the other pedestrians are males around my age, alone or in a group, there is added tension. My intense stare is a dominance challenge. As the sidewalk diminishes between us, I bend my gaze down, stiffen, afraid of what brushed shoulders might detonate. In the climactic moment, as we pass, invariably they cough and I can hardly keep my balance, as if bumped by the cough. Each time it is a variation on the freak with Lincoln beard and bangs. I can’t believe this is happening again. I feel like a rat tortured by electric shocks, frantic to surrender, if only he knew how. Whatever I’ve been doing wrong, I’ll stop. I’m sorry. But there is no appeal, no relief, no retreat, no shelter. Is this the ultimate, snarling, gristly, lacerated nub of myself? My only goal now: encountering as few people as possible while getting to the hospital as quickly as possible. The speed gives me tremendous energy, fuel for a full-heat walk up the hills, my gaze always bent down. Each step on the concrete is a blow to the bottom of my feet. Tim said there was no taint and it was all my projection. Suppose the hospital staff doesn’t see anything wrong with me either, then what? Am I certifiably nuts? Paranoia. What’s that? I know the meaning of the word (though in 1967 the man-in-the-street doesn’t) but I can’t name a single great artist, mystic, or philosopher who has suffered from paranoia. This is an intrusion, a meteor crash, into my script. There is no glory in this at all. It seems an aberration even from the aberration of madness. God, Enlightenment, the Divine Light are still lightning strikes in the next county. My problem is no more than a personality kink in a working-class adolescent. I look again at the hospital. Committing myself now seems like a melodramatic gesture. Now I feel isolated and exposed and just want to get back to my bedroom. An eastbound bus approaches. I find a quarter in my jeans but don’t take it out. Can I survive a bus ride? The least time with the least people, that’s all I care about. The 6 Masonic pulls out of a stop a block away. An icy wind-lash sends me sprinting across the street between honking cars to the bus’s next stop. If I’m wrong, I get off. The paranoia seems to have ebbed a little with the speed. Maybe I can make it. The coin counter crunches my fare, the bus pulls into traffic, and, while we’re slung forward and back, I thread the crowd. Rush-hour has ebbed and I’m able to make it, without a brushing anyone, to a standing space by a pole at the backdoor. I chance looking up and scan the bus for another freak. Reflexive whenever in public. None. The leaden public silence is scratched by coughs and sniffs, tooth-suckings and throat-clearings. Below my left elbow, an intern in green surgical garb hawks phlegm. A young Asian nurse in the front sniffles and wipes her nose with tissue paper. Behind me, there is a short, sharp cough from a middle-aged suit with a briefcase shielding his chest. Then three passengers get on and are greeted with a cough from a seated old Slavic lady in a thick coat. Almost simultaneously one of the new passengers, a chubby young Mexican with a glossy spit-curl, coughs a reply. I gulp. Three coughs answer. Patterns of unconscious call and response crisscross the bus, as between caged animals. And logically, what else would they talk about but the freak at the back, the foreign body? I’m holding in a murder or a suicide. No difference. I am poised to destroy the single perpetrator of all my pain, whoever that is. Finally, I can’t make it even one more stop and jump out two before my own.
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