The Children of Hamelin

by Norman Spinrad

  She screamed, instantly began rolling her hips in a circle, faster and faster and faster while—

  I pumped up and down up and down up and down like a piston engine galloping towards redline, and—

  We—

  Screamed together squeezed together came together like two healthy young rabbits—

  It had to have been the purest fuck I had ever shared. The Earth had not moved, love had had nothing to do with it, there had been nothing transcendental about it; it had been the pure animal pleasure of fucking strictly for fucking’s sake. And what made a pure animal fuck such a groovy and complete experience in itself was knowing that we were also capable of the other thing together—we had already had the other thing together. Somehow, being able to simply fuck without it having to mean anything was the closest communion of all.

  Afterward, we just lay there on the floor, side by side, only our hands touching, our pants still down by our knees, our shirts still on, panting hard, feeling the moment’s total satisfaction, but neither of us really sated.

  “Mmmm....”

  “Oh man—”

  Our eyes met. We just grinned at each other.

  Robin looked down along my body, saw that the ball didn’t have to be over. She touched a finger to the tip of me—an electric shock brought it the rest of the way up—she laughed, said: “Oh yeah?”

  I laughed back, answered: “Oh yeah!”

  And we started to roll together—

  Knock-knock on the door.

  “Just a minute!” I yelled as we grabbed for our respective pants. Still buckling my belt as I walked through the kitchen, I got a nice silly cheap thrill out of fumbling to the door in this state, kind of hoped Robin would still be tucking her shirt in when I let the guy in. Hmmm... if the Sexual Freedom League ever succeeds in making sex totally pure and clean and open, maybe the world will have lost something after all.

  The guy standing in the doorway was not as tall as he looked because he was thin as a reed. He wore a black raincoat, shades and a satanic beard, had medium-length black hair and an A-head’s pimply complexion. He really had a traditional dealer’s image. “Uh...?” he asked greasily.

  “Yeah,” I told him, “this is the place.”

  I led him through the kitchen and into the living room where Robin, her hair nicely mussed, was standing in front of the couch zipping up her fly. The dealer started to move towards her with his arms open to hug, paused, grunted “Oh yeah,” and brought himself up short. Chalk up another nice cheap thrill.

  I sat down on the couch and Robin sat down next to me. The dealer unbuttoned his coat but did not take it off and sat down on the edge of the table facing us.

  “Terry, Tom Hollander,” Robin said. “Tom, Terry Blackstone.”

  Terry Blackstone and I exchanged nods and grunts, all very supercool.

  “Good shit,” Terry Blackstone said in a constricted voice like someone speaking around a lungful of pot. Man, he was really doing that thing! I’d love to meet a dealer who admitted his grass was grown in an empty lot in Chicago and was cut fifty-fifty with catnip.

  But I suppose even dealers have their ego-trips.

  Terry Blackstone pulled two prerolled joints out of an inside coat pocket in the manner of a French postcard salesman. That struck me as awfully weird—it was the time-honored ploy of disreputable dealers unloading a bad ounce: the pot in the joints would be the Good Stuff but the stuff he was selling would have enough oregano in it to keep a pizza joint going for a month. I didn’t really give a damn—all I wanted was a nickel bag and I wasn’t exactly expecting Acapulco Gold—but why was he doing this silly number on a lousy nickel bag deal?

  Terry Blackstone lit a joint with a monogrammed Zippo, took a drag, and passed it to me. I sucked on the joint—it was strong and hot and harsh, with a slightly bitter aftertaste and I had to fight my cough-reflex as I passed it to Robin. Not exactly subtle stuff.

  By the time it came around to me again, it was more than half gone, and after I took another drag, Robin, with a truly heroic toke, reduced it to a roach. Terry Blackstone ate the roach—I hadn’t seen that for years. A real traditionalist, old Terry.

  The pot was harsh and foul-tasting and probably stale (because it burned so hot) but strong it was: by the time I exhaled my second lungful with a half-stifled cough, I was getting a definite buzz. My flesh felt warm and light and the smoke in the room seemed to roll and flow like liquid lava in the sunset-orange light.

  “Yeah,” said Terry Blackstone. He lit the second joint, took a huge lungful in a long series of little puffs, and passed the joint to me. I dragged. Robin dragged. Terry dragged. I dragged. Robin dragged. Terry reduced the joint to a roach.

  He handed me the roach; according to Emily Post, I was obliged to eat it. Suddenly the whole ritual seemed cosmically silly, I mean eating the roach. Origin of the custom was paranoid desire to dispose of the evidence in case the cops just happened to bust in the next five minutes. Which of course made no sense in the present cycle of the wheel of karma, since Terry was holding. Anyway, nobody who was anybody ate roaches any more—it went out with “a stick of tea.” Poor old Terry—a closet-reactionary!

  At the time-locus, it occurred to me that I was stoned—I mean, such significance hanging on the point of etiquette of to eat the roach or not to eat the roach, that is a question?

  So I popped the roach into my mouth, made elaborate phony chewing motions, and said: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” Fun-ny!

  Mmmm... Apparently not. All I got was a strange look from Robin. Terry Blackstone seemed to have discovered a fascinating picture on the inside surfaces of his shades.

  “Good stuff,” I said. The expected thing to say—but some day, in this situation, I’m gonna say: “Not bad for Lipton’s tea,” or something equally gross. I’ve never quite been able to work up to it—but then how many times have you seen someone in a fancy restaurant take that first trial sip from a bottle of wine and then tell the wine-steward: “Tastes like Chateau Horse-Piss, ‘53, my good man?”

  But now I was on another sticky wicket. It was my pad, and Robin, at least at the moment, was my chick. Therefore, Emily Post (not to mention male ego) demanded that I transact the business. But this was Robin’s connection; I didn’t even know the cat and furthermore, I had no intention of buying more than a nickel bag. And something fishy was going on—who ever heard of a dealer dragging his ass over to a stranger’s pad just to tell a lousy nickel bag, not to mention turning on nickel bag customers with his own dope? But Robin knew the cat and had told me I wouldn’t be expected to buy more than a nickel. Did not add up to me. Hopefully, it did to Robin. Therefore, Emily Post and/or male ego notwithstanding, she should do the thing. But I couldn’t tell her that in front of Terry Blackstone, now could I?

  Fortunately, Terry Blackstone did not seem troubled by such subtleties of etiquette. “You got the bread?” he asked, brilliantly cutting through to the heart of the issue.

  I started to reach for my wallet—then I realized that he was looking at Robin, not at me. And she was fumbling in her hip pocket.

  “Hey, wait a minute—”

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Robin said. “It’s on me.”

  “Oh no it’s not,” I said. “What do you think I—”

  Terry Blackstone viewed this domestic spat with cosmic disdain. He reached into one of those mysterious coat pockets of his and pulled out two baggies filled with pot. Each clear plastic bag held an ounce. Fifty bucks’ worth, all together, at street prices. What the—?

  “Take it easy, man,” Robin said. “It’s free.” And she pulled a wad of bills out of her pocket. What the hell was going on...?

  Robin counted out eight five dollar bills, stuffed the last two fives back into her pocket, and handed the $40 to Terry Blackstone. Terry handed over the two baggies.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Robin shot me a heavy cool-it look that made her seem ten years older. It finally penetrate
d my fucked-up brain that what was happening was a deal, you asshole! Robin was doing a connection number. In my pad, the dope-exchange was meeting. I didn’t care for that, not one little bit.

  But it also penetrated that I had been gibbering like a flaming red asshole for the past couple minutes, a square asshole with angular edges, and I liked that even less. What I wanted now was for Robin to get the thing over with and get Mr. Terry Blackstone’s ass out of here so I could chew her head off in private.

  Therefore I did cool it. Or at least shut up.

  Instead, while Robin inspected the merchandise for twigs or bugs or something, I concentrated on projecting bad vibes at Terry Blackstone. I’m an ax-murderer! I telepathed. I’m a crazed junkie! I’m a narc in a clever plastic disguise! I’m J. Edgar Hoover in drag! Grrr!

  Paranoia being the occupational disease of the professional dealer anyway, it did not take long for Terry Blackstone to get the message.

  He stood up, shuffled his feet, bobbed back and forth, played with the buttons on his raincoat, pulled on his beard, finally wheezed: “Well... uh... look, Robin, it’s okay isn’t it? I... uh... gotta go see a man about maybe scoring a key...”

  “Show you the door,” I offered genially—the perfect gentlemen, natch.

  By the time I had conducted Mr. Terry Blackstone to the egress and secured the police-lock bar behind him (so that’s why they call the thing a “police-lock”: makes it impossible for the fuzz to kick in the door!), Robin had a stack of manila pay envelopes out on the table, had dumped one of the baggies out on a magazine, and had a joint hanging from her mouth like a nineteen-year-old female racetrack tout.

  She handed the joint to me as I stood glowering over the pot. Reflexively, I took a drag.

  “Uh... got any oregano around?” Robin asked.

  “Oregano!” I screamed, blowing pot-smoke into the already-smoggy air like Puff the Magic Dragon.

  “Hey, what’s the matter, man?” she asked, in a little girl tone of voice pure as the driven snow. She began to roll another joint.

  “What’s the matter?” I roared in a fair imitation of Jehovah on a bummer. I pointed the finger of wrath at the pot and the nickel bag envelopes on my very own table. “That’s what’s the matter, is what’s the matter!”

  Robin licked the joint, lit it, took a deep drag, held it a moment savoring it, exhaled. “Come on man,” she said innocently. “This stuff may not be Gold, but it’s not that bad.”

  Something seemed to tell me I wasn’t quite communicating. I took another toke from the joint in my hand. Yeah, this was nowhere near as strong as the stuff he had given to us to taste. Might be the same grass, but if it was, it had already been cut. The old burneroo!

  “This stuff has already been cut,” I said, sitting down next to Robin. “Old Terry has pulled a fast one.”

  Robin shrugged. “That’s Terry,” she said. Then more defensively: “I wasn’t gonna put much oregano in it. No more than a nickel’s worth in each ounce.” She took another toke and began filling the pay envelopes by eye, not even bothering to ask for an honest shot-glass. She exhaled. “The stuff is still strong enough to take it,” she said.

  I took another drag. Something important seemed to be escaping me—I had wanted to bitch about something when I came back from the door, and I was bitching about something, but I had this feeling that I was bitching about something other than what I had started bitching about. Of course, one could argue that bitching itself was really the essence of the thing...

  I exhaled.

  She inhaled, still filling nickel bags. “Look,” I said, “whatsa deal here anyway? Where’d you get all the bread? Why do you want to cut this low-grade shit?” She exhaled. I inhaled.

  “Dig,” she said, “we’ve got two pretty light ounces here. That’s maybe five good nickels an ounce or six light ones, right?”

  I exhaled. “Right.”

  She inhaled, spoke in a wheeze around a lungful of pot: “Got fifty bucks. Ten nickel bag customers. Grass costs forty bucks.”

  She blew out the smoke. “So if I give them all a good count, that leaves me with ten dollars and us with no pot for ourselves. So if I throw in two nickels of oregano, I can take out two nickels of pot, everybody gets a good count and we can keep a dime, dig?”

  I shook my head sadly, and took a long slow drag. By God, that was absolutely immoral, kind of thing that gives Dope a bad name.

  Cut grass with oregano or catnip, cut smack with sugar or powdered milk. Oughta be a law. Pure Food and Drug Administration oughta keep drugs pure, right? Of course, the freaks in Congress could argue with a certain justification that the practice was merely a logical extension of the basic principle of our Sacred American Way of Life—quantity equals quality. I exhaled.

  “Woman,” I said, “lips that touch oregano will never touch mine.”

  “Huh?” She had already filled five envelopes, leaving about a nickel’s worth still sitting on the magazine. She opened the second plastic bag and dumped the pot out on the magazine.

  “Dig,” I said, “you got five light nickels out of the ounce, plus one for the house, right?”

  She filled another nickel bag. “Yeah,” she said, “but I haven’t sealed them yet. I’ll buy some oregano and fill them out before I deliver them.”

  I took a final drag on my joint and roached it into the ashtray. Robin took a last drag too and roached her joint, keeping up nicely. Holding it in, I tried to organize the irrefutable logic of my argument. The room was reeling and it wasn’t easy. I exhaled. Robin exhaled and started rolling another joint.

  “Look,” I said, “You wouldn’t smoke a pure oregano joint, would you?”

  She giggled. “I’ve never been that hard up,” she said.

  “All right. So no one can get high off oregano—if someone could, it’d be the Nobel Prize for sure. So if you stick some oregano in those light nickels, it doesn’t really make the count any better, now does it?”

  Robin lit the joint, took a drag, passed it to me. “But it. Looks like. Better count,” she wheezed.

  “Shit!” I said. “Are you dealing pot or making pizzas? It may look like a better count, but it isn’t, girl.” I took a drag. Robin was filling cheapo nickel bags again.

  “Man,” she said, “you are one righteous cat! What you’re saying makes sense to me, but it won’t make sense to these nickel bag freaks. They get awful uptight if the count looks short.”

  I passed her the joint. “Tell them the truth,” I said.

  “Huh?” she said around a lungful of smoke. She filled the last pay envelope. Now there were ten unsealed nickel bags on the table and about a dime’s worth still on the magazine.

  “Dig,” I said, “what you do is buy one little box of oregano. Then, when you lay a nickel on a customer, you say: ‘Here’s your nickel, baby. It looks like a short count, but it’s an uncut bag.’ Then if he bitches, you whip out the box of oregano and tell him: ‘If you really want to smoke oregano, be my guest.’”

  Robin goggled at me. “Wow,” she said, “are you stoned! That’s a weird idea.... You don’t think it’d really work?”

  I picked up a nickel bag, licked the flap, sealed it and tossed it back on the table with a flourish. “In certain limited circumstances,” I said, “honesty is actually the best policy. Dig the advantages: not only do you get a reputation for honesty, but one box of oregano will last you forever.”

  I sealed another nickel bag to punctuate my sermon. Robin took another drag—perhaps to reinforce her moral fibre—shrugged, and then began sealing nickel bags herself.

  When we had finished sealing up all the nickels, I had—aside from a gluey tongue—a fine feeling of moral accomplishment. I had shown a previously-disreputable connection the error of her ways and guided her firmly to the straight and narrow. I had saved ten poor innocents from the possibly-carcinogenic horrors of excessive oregano inhalation. And I had succeeded in asserting my authority in my own pad. Were I a Boy Scout, surely I would qua
lify for a dealing Merit Badge.

  Still, something I couldn’t put my finger on was still nagging at me: I remembered I had been pissed off at something besides the horrors of oregano before I got sidetracked and now I couldn’t remember what. Ah, I was probably just so stoned I was imagining things. It would not do to give in to paranoia.

  “Man,” Robin said, “you are something else. The more I think about that oregano number the better it sounds. I mean, after all, over the years the cost of oregano does add up....”

  Jeez, the sheer classlessness of the chick! She was so classless that she was the essence of classlessness which gave her classlessness a class of its own—she was the archtypal street-urchin, the pure thing itself. Hmmm... that was probably why she was such a good fuck: no moral, ethical, or esthetic hang-ups at all.

  “You ever been a dealer?” she asked.

  Well now, anyone who’s ever been a junkie has copped smack with other people’s money, one way or another. Lots of times Anne and I had gotten together enough bread from other junkies to buy a few bags in one lump and shave enough off each one to keep a free bag for ourselves. But I had never gone out and bought smack with my own capital and then resold it. An all-important technical point: I had never been anything more than an occasional connection, never had become anything as loathsome as a pusher.

  “Certainly not!” I told her indignantly.

  “You’d sure be a good one,” Robin said.

  And how’s that for a compliment? But she was looking straight at me and her eyes were huge and shining and the world was spinning around them like they were the twin navels of the universe and the fire of total sincerity burned behind them and all for me. She really meant it. And she really meant what she meant by it: I was muy macho, a hip and groovy cat in her book. I felt a surge of affection from my head down to my cock for this totally innocent, totally corrupt chick. Corrupt by conventional values, which maybe I hadn’t quite blown out of my system; but totally innocent by her own standards. She had never sold herself out because from where she stood, there was no way to sell yourself out except by refusing to act out the feral impulse of the moment. Didn’t I really envy her that? And at the same time dig her for it...?