Amateur Insanity

Speed

 

Before the summer of ’67 began, and through its whole bacchanal, Tim and I suffered from recurring episodes of drug-induced psychosis.Tim’s were always triggered by police paranoia. Though the main cause was drugs, mainly LSD, its obvious connection to his experiences in the South gave Tim’s psychosis at least an aspect of the heroic. I had no fear of police and considered any authority figure a stooge to be manipulated. My unheroic phobia was of others’ secret opinion of me.

My psychosis was triggered by methedrine (methamphetamine) and started a couple of weeks after we moved into Scott Street in the kitchen of the next door apartment which was occupied by friends of Tim’s, a loose commune of sorts.

In one of the bedrooms was Cookie, wry and buxom with a corona of curly dark hair, and her stringy, obtuse ol’ man, Don-Ed, the only one who didn’t know she had other lovers. The second bedroom could belong to any of Cookie’s three nephews, all of whom were older than her. They were merchant seamen using the room in rotation between ships.

The third bedroom belonged to Christine: long-necked and willowy with fine straight brown hair that slanted across her forehead and hung in silky folds down her back and was often flung over a shoulder then tucked behind an ear. She also had a radiant, infectious smile, and when she laughed, her brown eyes and long lashes squinted deliciously into crescents. I had never enjoyed a chick’s laugh more. When she wasn’t laughing, she sometimes seemed distracted, bruised, melancholy, even mournful. I would discover later that she had recently given up for adoption an out-of-wedlock baby.

Our apartment became an annex to theirs with the doors to both kept open most of the time. The two chicks would occasionally come over to listen to Tim’s stereo and dance on our hardwood floors or savor the view, while he and I used their phone.

So it was routine for me to wander into their kitchen that morning. Occasionally a stranger would be there, picked up by Christine the night before at the Fillmore or the Avalon ballrooms. Few were seen more than once. This morning, he was tall with a dark Beatle-cut and handlebar mustache and, as I entered, he was sitting at the table eating and rapping with Cookie’s youngest nephew, Danny, and her ol’ man, Don Ed.

I exchanged nods and “hi man”s with those two and a nod with the chewing stranger. Groggy and bedraggled, Christine entered and went around me, radiating bed-warmth, wearing only a guy’s t-shirt. I read her guest’s fate in her resentful over-the-shoulder offer while reaching into an overhead cupboard, “You want some coffee…uh…Brad?”

He shook his head and turned back to his cereal bowl. He’d caught her tone and wasn’t bothered. Christine reached deeper and her shirttail rose on an electric glimpse of pubic hair. I was in the kitchen to check-in and see if anyone had plans for the day more interesting than my own, such as a drive in the country or to the beach or walking to a free concert in the Panhandle or taking acid in the park.

“What’re you guys doin’ today?” I asked, half-sitting on a padded bar-stool, leaning against the wall.

“I gotta go down to the hiring hall,” Danny said then finished rolling a joint with a-lick-and-a-twist-of-the-tip. He was short and wiry with a reddish handlebar mustache and a buoyant, infectious grin.

Don Ed, a sprig of goatee at the end of an equine chin, shrugged and said “Nothin’,” and then took Danny’s joint and lit it.

“I’ve gotta go to work,” Christine said glumly as she poured coffee. She worked at the Post Office. The only one with a regular job, her name was on the lease. “I don’t have any sick leave left and I’m losin’ money when I call in now,” she added.  

“What about you?” Don Ed asked me, holding in a toke, handing the joint back to Danny.

“I don’t have anything planned,” I said. “Guess I’ll head up to Haight Street.” (The last resort.)

“What’s Tim doin’?” Danny asked.  

“I’ll go with ya,” Brad said to me and shoveled in the last of the cereal.   

“Uh, he just got to sleep,” I said, sliding off the stool. “He took acid last night with Gail.”

“Who’zat?” Danny asked, holding-in his toke, handing me the joint.

I took it and paused to say, “Remember those two chicks at our place night before last? She was the dark haired one.”

Brad put the spoon beside the bowl and got up. I handed the joint to Don-Ed and started out the door holding in my toke. As Brad approached, Christine raised a steaming coffee cup to her mouth blocking a kiss. He touched her shoulder instead and raised a hand and said, “Later,” to the room then followed me out.

Our conversation as we walked the six blocks to Haight and Masonic confirmed a first impression that he was a loudmouth blowhard.  But I was always a good listener and this cat, though an egomaniacal speed freak, was an excellent raconteur. Also, where I might otherwise have left him at Masonic, I stuck with him because a couple times sexy chicks came up to him and enthusiastically hugged and kissed him. Then after each passed on, he described in graphic detail his sexual adventures with her.

At the end of Haight Street, I continued with him into the park, and he made it a tour of locations where he had had sex.  We were approaching a nearly-deserted Hippie Hill when I finally pried myself loose. He rewarded my patience with a folded paper containing a spoonful of methedrine.