A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  Christian once more regarded the business card. An important item, he concluded. It alone could be worth the price of this visit.

  “What about mistakes I can avoid in the normal course of my work? The most often-made errors?”

  “Greed, for one,” Lance teased him. “Often, a monetary figure can blind you as to where the money’s coming from. If you’re going to drive around with dope in your car, pay your parking tickets. Don’t speed. Stop for red lights, and don’t run yellow lights. Stay off your telephone … think wire tap …”

  Lance continued for the better part of an hour, reminding Christian of the hazards of opulent living, remembering cases, individuals, mistakes, adding thoughts that came to him about warrants, police entry, border problems, packaging. Placing stamps on packages meant the Man had to have a separate search warrant for federal mail. He loosened up, laughing at his own anecdotes, catching the infectious gleam in Christian’s eyes as Christian followed his stories with interest, learning the law.

  “It’s almost time for lunch,” Lance finally said. “Care to join me? Have a couple of drinks? We can continue this in a more relaxed atmosphere.”

  “Thanks, but no. I’m fasting today. I’m working this evening.”

  “Working? You have a job?”

  “Of course. We’ve been talking about it.” Still watching the question in Lance’s face, he added, “I’m testing a product. Acid.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Do you? Have you tripped before?”

  “No,” Lance shook his head, trying to think of an excuse. “I just … never have.”

  “Well,” Christian stood and extended his hand, “when you’re ready to try it, call me.”

  “Tell me something … is Alden your real name?”

  Christian laughed. “That’s what my driver’s license says.”

  Lance felt a moment’s unease. He’d watched the dealers on visits to his office come from nowhere and disappear into nowhere, only the sense of a stoned smile remaining. Where was life going to take this Christian Alden … or whoever he was?

  “Good luck, Mr. Alden,” he said honestly. “Call me in three weeks.”

  Christian left the office in high spirits.

  There’s a friendship in this meeting, he assured himself, a friendship that will prove valuable for both of us. My scene can use Lance’s knowledge, and in return, I’ll give him a sense of spirituality. Next time, I’ll begin to teach him an easy meditation so he can forget the drinks at lunch. Soon, I’ll give him his first dose of acid. A mind like his will love it.

  His old teacher’s face appeared in his memory. Christian held the image while he whispered a small prayer in thanksgiving for those things he had once been taught.

  “I take refuge in Guru. In you, Lama Loden. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings. I take refuge in Sangha, the community, one in the Dharma.”

  He hadn’t told Amy about India. Tonight, when they tripped, perhaps he would tell her the story of his childhood days with Nareesh, explain to her how important Nareesh had been—still was. Brothers.

  Months ago, he had recognized that each time he and Amy tripped, he was the one moving, thinking, sharing, while Amy would listen and follow. Tonight would be no different. She would shadow him, her thoughts and energy following the path he laid out, the teaching of the sacrament clothed in sensuality, mindfulness, and union with all existence.

  KATHY AND MARCIE

  THE HAIGHT-ASHBURY DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  JUNE 1967

  Kathy laid her small suitcase on the sidewalk at the corner of Haight and Masonic and leaned back to the car to thank the driver who had gone out of his way to bring them to the Haight-Ashbury district of town. A great crowd of people milled around that corner, either standing in small groups or waiting to cross the street. Kids in jeans, T-shirts, and new moustaches, short hair growing out, many carrying canvas packs. Others wore fringed leather jackets or velvet coats or wizard’s robes. Women passed in long paisley skirts. Hell’s Angels stood leaning on the side of the corner building in sleeveless leather vests. And everywhere there were headbands, feathers, and necklaces of beads.

  From out of the crowd, a young girl with masses of frizzy hair and narrow, stoned eyes held out her hands, offering a necklace to Kathy. “Welcome,” she said softly, gently. “Welcome to Love Street.”

  Kathy grinned shyly at her, unsure, and followed her with curious eyes as she continued down the street, twirling in a caftan made of an Indian bedspread.

  “Hey,” Marcie brought them back to their needs. “I’m starved. Before we find a place to live, we’ve got to get something to eat.”

  “What about here?” Kathy asked, clasping the beads around her neck. “The Drogstore Cafe.” She peered through the long plateglass windows that covered the upper half of the front walls of the corner restaurant.

  Marcie gave a quick nod, picked up her suitcase and guitar, and took the lead through the door.

  The walls inside were painted bright yellow, with large, colorful flowers. Kathy glanced at the cafeteria-style service, the stack of trays, then at the line of people waiting to order at the counter in the back. Almost every table held a boisterous group of young people. One madman was bouncing from table to table, shoving his painted day-glow face into the center of conversations. In the next moment, he leapt up and ran past them out the front door.

  “Let’s get a table,” Marcie said loudly above the din. “I need to sit down and take all of this in.”

  “How about over there?” Kathy pointed through the crowded room. “By the window. Think that guy would mind if we sat with him?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The pirate.”

  Marcie laughed, because there was no better description. The man looked like a young Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Striped pants, billowing white shirt, a scarf tied carelessly around his long hair, earring, moustache, and several necklaces.

  “I’ll ask him,” Kathy told her. “Why don’t you go order. Get me a cheeseburger and fries. Here. Give me your stuff.”

  As Marcie waited in line and watched Kathy easily make friends with the man, she studied his face. He’d smiled, gesturing with his hand to the chairs at his table. Already, she had begun to put words together to describe him. Funny, this talent of hers. From nowhere, lines of poetry surfaced in her mind. Sometimes a tune went with them. Because he was seated next to the window, his eyes picked up the light—brown, concentrated, too sure. He had a square jaw and high cheekbones and had neglected to shave that morning. When Kathy appeared to struggle for a moment with the suitcases and guitar, he was on his feet, tall, moving smoothly to help, his broad shoulders and long arms easily moving the suitcases to the nearest out-of-the-way corner.

  “So,” Marcie said by way of introduction when she finally set down a tray with burgers on the table, “where’s your sword?”

  He appeared startled. “Sword?”

  “Your pirate sword.”

  The laughter in her eyes prompted a grin, and looking down at his billowing shirt, he decided to play. “My lady, pirate I might be, but a weaponless pirate. Weapons are obsolete.”

  Suddenly, she was almost shy in the face of his confidence. “I’ve always been intrigued by pirates,” she told him, her soft New Orleans accent suddenly stronger. “We grew up with pirate legends. Ever hear of Jean Lafitte? He and his men helped Andrew Jackson defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans. That’s where we’re from—New Orleans. By way of LSU, in Baton Rouge.”

  The pirate looked at both women appraisingly. “What shall I call you?” he asked. “You can pick any name you want.”

  “I’m Marcelle. Marcie, for short,” she told him. “And you’ve already met Kathleen.”

  He regarded the girls—Kathy, small, her hair straight and dark, shoulder-length, eyes almond shaped, her chin a neat point at the bottom of her face; Marcie, taller, her thick, dark-brown hair, wavy and to her
waist, her eyes a deep, serious blue. Even though their suitcases had been settled against the wall a short distance from the table, Marcie reached for her guitar, pulling it close, so that it rested between her legs.

  “Do you play?” he asked, watching the way she guarded the instrument.

  “Yes. And I write my own music. What about you? What’s your name?”

  “I’m Richard. So, how’d you two get out here?”

  “We hitched!” Kathy cried. “We just got here ten minutes ago!”

  “Yeah, and it only took us four days,” Marcie added. “I’m not kidding! We started at the edge of Baton Rouge the day after finals, and even spending one night sleeping on some ranch, we made it here in four days!”

  “If I looked like you ladies, I wouldn’t have any trouble hitching, either. You guys have a place to stay?”

  “Not yet,” Kathy told him. “After lunch we’re going to look around. Isn’t there some sort of community switchboard?”

  “Yeah. The Diggers have one. But I know where you can stay for a few days.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “At my house. If things work out, you may want to be part of our family. If not, when you leave, we’ll offer the space to someone else.”

  Shortly after lunch, Richard ambled leisurely down Haight Street toward Ashbury, Kathy and Marcie at his side. Although it was midsummer and the sky was bright blue and filled with sunshine, the air was cool and crisp and carrying a tang of the sea salt that had come in with last night’s fog.

  Conga drummers set a relaxed rhythm, and the walk toward his flat was slow. Richard stopped often to talk with people he knew. But the slowness didn’t matter. Free of obligations and time, Kathy and Marcie stood dumbstruck while the procession of characters continued. Incense smoke mingled with the sweet smell of burning marijuana leaves. Gaping, they saw that people passed joints in plain view on the street. One man carried a six-foot pipe—openly—decorated in furs and feathers and close strung beads.

  “Acid, speed, lids?” hawkers called, leaning easily against buildings. “Purple Haze?”

  Dazed, they heard snatches of laughter, plans for journeys, road stories, and bits of information about crash pads and free food and clothing. Every few yards, someone held a hand-lettered sign with the name of a city, trying to get out of town with a ride or a hitching partner. Several people with dilated pupils and wide smiles made their way along the sidewalk, hugging strangers.

  Cars of curious tourists moved so slowly up Haight Street that they were practically parked, while cameras clicked out of open windows. Some of the hippies on the street flashed them a peace sign. Others offered joints to the shocked, sometimes amused, occupants of the vehicles. An outrageous dude with a paisley headband and cape had set up a ladder so he could hold up a poster reading Better Living Through Chemistry.

  “Is the street always like this?” Kathy asked. The energy was vibrant, lifting her spirit and tired body. The sidewalks were filled with the young and all their palpable thoughts, with questions and answers, destinations and good times, with color and costume and selfless sharing.

  “Like a happening? Oh, yeah.” Richard nodded to a shirtless man with a long red beard. “See that dude? He’s from Australia. Hitched through India, up into Europe, and met the dude with him in Germany. They hitched out here from New York.

  Hitching through India? Kathy wondered.

  “That couple,” Richard pointed, “they’re from Michigan. And her,” he waved toward a very young-looking girl, “she’s from New York.”

  He turned to smile at them. “I’m from Seattle. And you guys are from the South. The Haight’s a melting pot. People are here from every state in the union and plenty of countries around the world.”

  Then, laughing loud at their amazed faces, he cried, “Follow me. The flat’s this way.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, wanting to stay with the party on the street, Kathy and Marcie followed Richard down Ashbury toward the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. Midway down the block, Richard stopped and pulled a key from his pocket.

  “Here we are,” he said, climbing a set of porch steps. “The lower flat’s ours. Sometimes we have to keep the door locked because we don’t want the Man visiting unannounced.”

  “The Man?”

  “Yeah, you know. Cops.”

  Kathy and Marcie put their suitcases and the guitar in the Victorian alcove of the well-lit front room, wondering at a mattress on the floor against one wall. But they were beginning to catch on about the value of space and having shelter off the street at night.

  “Who’s that?” Marcie pointed to a tacked poster on the wall.

  “Why, that’s Big Brother and the Holding Company. You’ve never heard of Big Brother?” Richard asked incredulously. “Well, you’re in luck. They’re playing tonight at the Fillmore. Wait till you hear their singer, Janis Joplin. She’ll blow your mind! Tickets are two-fifty, but believe me, it’s worth it just to see this chick sing! You want a smoke?”

  “You mean pot?” Marcie tried her most unaffected voice. “That’s just what we need.”

  “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  Stopping at the first bedroom, he pushed open a door. “Greta and Merlin live here. There’s someone staying in the closet too.”

  “The closet?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty large, even has a window. You guys can have the bed in the front room.”

  Richard continued down a hall with storage closets tucked in underneath the stairwell. “We’ve got a few more people living here,” he said, pointing to the closets. And indeed, the two huge closets each held a sleeping bag.

  Opposite the closet doors, someone had painted the floor trim in alternating primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—and on the hall wall itself, a brilliant rainbow.

  At the second bedroom, he stopped at the door without opening it. “This room belongs to Alex. He likes his privacy. And here—the bathroom. Come on, we’re almost done. The kitchen.”

  The girls passed through bright yellow walls painted with great red flowers flowing over the cabinets.

  “Finally, my room—the sanctum sanctorum—all the way in the back.”

  “I see you get a whole room and a whole closet to yourself,” Marcie told him, accentuating her accent. “My, but you are a pirate, after all.”

  He grinned and shrugged. “I found the flat and pay the rent.”

  Well lit by tall Victorian windows, Richard’s bedroom was simple: a mattress on the floor covered by an Indian bedspread and, above the bed, a circular Indian tapestry tacked to the ceiling. The only piece of furniture was a low table made of two boards supported by cinder blocks. On top of the table sat a small record player, incense holders, and incense, and next to it, a wooden crate with stacked records. Two large, colorful pillows covered the edges of an old hooked rug.

  From the top shelf of his closet, Richard pulled down a shoebox. “Did you guys really make it here in four days? Well, sit down. Here comes help.”

  Marcie and Kathy sat cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, both intently watching as he took a seat on the rug and began sifting through the box.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked, moving things around. “Grass? Opium? Hash? What’s this?” he mumbled to himself, opening a piece of tinfoil. “Oh, mescaline. Let’s see, I’ve got some acid. Some of Owsley’s Purple Haze. Some DMT …”

  “How about some hash,” Kathy suggested. “We’ve never smoked hash, only grass.” She didn’t think it would be very cool to admit she didn’t know half the names he’d mentioned.

  “Well, hash it is,” he agreed, putting the box aside to hold a lighter to a small chunk of what looked like black clay. The heat made the resin pliable, and breaking off a piece, he crumbled it in the palm of his hand, finally filling the bowl of a hookah with the tiny grains. A few deep breaths and the hash was finally burning, smoke filling the water pipe’s base.

  He passed the pipe to Marcie, and she toked hard and came awa
y coughing. “I thought the water was supposed to cool the smoke,” she rasped.

  “Try inhaling slowly. Concentrate on the bubbles in the water,” Richard answered offhandedly, looking through some album covers. “Ah, have you heard this?” He held up the cover of Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane. “There’s a song about a hookah-smoking caterpillar that should be just about our speed right now.”

  The record began to turn on the player. Marcie settled into the stone, appreciating the voice she heard and the story of a white rabbit, drifting with the music, finally to float with the dust particles moving lazily in the light from the window. Richard began to sway to the slow music, his body flashing brightly where the sunbeam touched, turning him to a living strobe. A breeze from the window caught the tapestry tacked above the bed, subtly moving already moving colors. On the wall, there was a poster of a naked man and woman sitting together, belly-to-belly, legs entwined. The woman had long hair falling down her back, and covering the entire surface of the picture were paisley patterns in a swirl of blue and red.

  “Yab-yum,” Richard said, watching her eyes. “An exercise from the Kama Sutra.”

  The billowing tapestry on the ceiling waved at Marcie, like ripples gently rocking a boat. She leaned back and within minutes was asleep, the first quiet and peaceful sleep since before finals.

  “Looks like she needs the rest,” Richard whispered to Kathy. “How about you?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said slowly, trying to get used to the stone, the heaviness in her body. “I really want to take another look at Haight Street.”

  “Then why don’t you get your stuff and put it in my room before the hordes come home. It’ll be safe back here.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for the offer to stay. We’re really are on a tight budget.”

  “If you need money, there’s the Print Mint down on Haight Street. Go in and get a stack of newspapers for a nickel apiece, then stand on the street corner and sell them to the tourists for 25¢. There’s the Berkeley Barb, The Haight-Ashbury Maverick, and The Haight-Ashbury Tribune. Most of the tourists won’t get out of their cars, but they’d love to have a psychedelic newspaper to take home. Some of the artwork’s really good. A quarter a paper’s not much, but a lot of people make enough every day to keep eating. Oh, and sometimes someone will want to take a picture with a hippie. Charge 50¢.”