Go Ask Alice (9 page)

January 15

Dear knowing Mother! Lane called twice last night and insisted that he had to talk to me, but Mother sensed that something was wrong and told him I was ill and absolutely could not be disturbed. She’s even encouraged me to stay home from school today — imagine HER encouraging
me
to miss school when she’s always had such a big hang up about it. Anyway I do appreciate that she cares and I just wish I could confide in her. I wonder how much Lane really knows about Rich and me? ? ? ? ?

January 17

George took me to the dance at school but it was all ruined because Joe and Lane were on my head all night. George wanted to know what was going on, so I told him that Lane was jealous because he had asked me out and I turned him down. Thank heavens the music was loud and we weren’t able to do much talking. I wish they would leave me alone!

January 20

Dad will be all tied up next weekend so we won’t be able to get away, but at least we can keep busy. Mom said she would help me make a new vinyl, leather-looking suit.

January 21

Gloria and Babs met me after school and walked part of the way home with me. I didn’t know how to get rid of them without being completely hostile, but I wish they’d all get off my back. Mom drove by just as we got to the corner of Elm and I waved her down. It was too much! The entire drive home she kept saying what nice girls Gloria and Babs are and how good it would be for me to have many friends instead of just concentrating on Chris. Oh if she only knew, if she only knew!

January 24

Oh damn, damn, damn, it’s happened again. I don’t know whether to scream with glory or cover myself with ashes and sackcloth, whatever that means. Anyone who says pot and acid are not addicting is a damn, stupid, raving idiot, unenlightened fool! I’ve been on them since July 10, and when I’ve been off I’ve been scared to death to even think of anything that even looks or seems like dope. All the time pretending to myself that I could take it or leave it!

All the dumb, idiot kids who think they are only chipping are in reality just existing from one experience to the other, After you’ve had it, there isn’t even life without drugs. It’s a prodding, colorless, dissonant bare existence. It stinks. And I’m glad I’m back. Glad! Glad! Glad! I’ve
never had it better than I had it last night. Each new time is the best time and Chris feels the same way. Last night when she called and asked me to come over, I knew something terrible had happened. She sounded like she didn’t know what to do, But when I got there and smelled that incredible smell, I just sat down on the floor of her room with her and cried and smoked. It was beautiful and wonderful and we’d been without it for so long. I’ll never be able to express how really great it is.

Later I called Mother and told her I was spending the night with Chris because she felt a little depressed. Depressed? No one in the world but a doper could know the true opposite of depressed.

January 26

Chris feels a little guilty but I’m delighted that we’re turned on again, we belong to the world! The world belongs to us! Poor old George is going to have to go the way of all squares. He drove by to pick me up for school and I couldn’t have been less interested. I don’t even need him for a chauffeur anymore.

January 30

I talked to Lane today and he’s really amazing. He’s got a new connection and he can get me anything I want. So I told him I like uppers best. Who needs to go down when you can go up? Right?

February 6

Life is really unbelievable now. Time seems so endless yet everything goes so fast. I love it!

P.S.
Mother’s really glad that I’m “in” again. She likes to hear the telephone ringing for me. Isn’t that too much!

Februrary 13

Lane was hit last night. I don’t know how they found out about him but I guess he was pushing too much too fast to those little teeny boppers of his. I’m just grateful I wasn’t there. Being so sweet and innocent and naive, my parents don’t let my stay out late on week nights. They are trying to protect me from the big bad bogie man. I’m not really too worried about Lane. He’s barely sixteen so they probably won’t give him too much of a problem — probably slap his hands.

February 18

Our supply has dried up somewhat with Lane on good behavior, but Chris and I are very resourceful. Anyway we’re managing.

I think I’m going to start taking the pill. It’s a lot easier than worrying. I bet the pill is harder to get than drugs — which shows you how screwed up this world really is!

February 23

Dear Diary,

Oh, wow! They raided Chris’s house last night while her folks and her aunt were out, but Chris and I played the game. The big blue badge just stood shaking his head while Chris and I swore to our parents it was our very first time and that nothing had really happened. Thank God they
arrived while we still had our brains together. I wonder how they knew we were there? ? ? ?

February 24

This is the funniest thing I have ever heard: Mom is worried and hinting that something might have happened to her little baby in those words she can’t bring herself to use. She wants me to go see Doctor Langley for a checkup, isn’t that a laugh?

It took me a while to plead ignorance and innocence with my eyes opened as wide as they would go. I pretended I didn’t even know what she was talking about, and do you know, she finally wound up actually feeling guilty for ever even suspecting such a thing.

(?)

We’re all on probation, and are not supposed to see each other and Mom and Dad are sending me to a headshrinker beginning next Monday. I guess that was all part of the bargain to keep me out of court, The rumor is that Lane has been sent away someplace, to a lock-in, dry-out school I think. Actually this was his third bust. I didn’t know that. Well, at least he can’t think I had anything to do with it since I too got caught up in the drag. At least this is my first charge. I guess actually I’m pretty lucky.

February 27

You’d think I was six years old the way Mom and Dad are watching me. I have to come straight home from school
as if I were a baby. This morning when I left Mom’s parting words were, “Come straight home after school.” Wow! Like I’m going to get stoned at 3:30—it doesn’t sound so bad at that.

Later

After dinner I was going to walk down to the drugstore to get some colored pencils to finish my map and as I started out the door Mom called to Tim and told him to go with me. That is really too much! Having my little brother watching me! He didn’t like the idea any better than I did. I almost felt like telling him why she wanted him to go with me! It would serve him right. It would serve them all right. I know what I ought to do, I ought to turn him on! Maybe I will! Maybe I’ll surprise him with a trip on a piece of candy. Wow! I just wish I could be sure it would be a bummer.

March 1

I’m about to blow. This whole set-up is beginning to bug me until my nerves are all crawling. I can hardly even go to the bathroom by myself.

March 2

Today I went to the headshrinker’s, a fat ugly little man who doesn’t even have enough balls to lose weight. Man, I almost recommended some amphetamines — they’d cut his appetite and give him a blast at the same time. That’s probably what he needs, sitting there peering over his glasses waiting for me to tell him some gory details. He’s almost worse than anything else that’s happened to me.

March 5

Jackie slipped me a couple of co-pilots in English when she passed out the test papers. Tonight after everyone goes to bed I’ll get high all by myself. I can hardly wait!

(?)
¹

Like here I am in Denver. When I was high I just walked out and hitch-hiked here, but now it seems crazy quiet and unreal, maybe that’s because it’s still early. I hope so, I’ve only got the twenty dollars that I took from Dad’s pants, but no source.

(?)

I’m sharing a place with a couple of kids I met, but they think it’s kind of dull here so we’re going to go to Oregon and see what’s happening in Coos Bay. We’ve got enough acid to keep us all stoned for the next two weeks or forever, and that’s all that counts.

March . . .

I haven’t any clothes except these I had on when I left home and I’m getting so damned dirty I think they’ve grown on me. It was snowing in Denver, but it’s so penetratingly damp here in Oregon it’s a hell of a sight worse. I’ve got a fucking head cold and I feel miserable, and my
period has started and I don’t have any Tampax. Hell, I wish I had a shot,

(?)

Last night I slept in the park curled under a shrub and today it’s drizzling and I can’t find any of the kids I came from Denver with. Finally I went into a church and asked the janitor or whatever he was what I should do. He told me to sit here till it stopped raining, then go down to some kind of Salvation Army type place. I guess I have no choice since I know I’ve got a fever and I’m dripping wet and so filthy and smelly I can hardly stand myself. I’m trying to use some paper towels from the wash room for Kotex, and man that is some damned inconvenience. Oh, if I only had an upper.

This is a nice church. It’s small and quiet and clean. I feel dreadfully out of place here, and I’m beginning to feel so damned lonely I’ve got to get out of here. Guess I’ll try finding the mission or whatever the hell it is in the rain. I just hope I don’t lose the bloody goddamned paper towels in the center of some street.

Later

This is really a great place! It really is! They let me have a shower and gave me some clean old square clothes and some Kotex and fed me even though I told them I wouldn’t go by their hard stooled rules. They wanted me to stay here a few days and let them contact my parents to work out something so that we could bridge our differences. But my parents aren’t about to let me use acid and pot and I’m not about to give them up! This guy was really nice. He is even driving me up to a health clinic to get something for my cold. I really feel lousy, maybe the good doctor will
give me something to make me feel better, like wow! Anything! I wish the other old jerk would hurry up doing whatever he is doing so we could go.

It’s still the . . . whatever it is. I met a girl, Doris, in the doctor’s waiting room who said I could come share her pad since the couple she lived with and her boyfriend split during the night. Then the doc gave me a shot and a bottle of vitamins, imagine vitamins! He said my body is run down and malnourished, like that of most of the other kids he sees. He really was nice though. He just acted like he cared and told me to come back in a few days. I told him I didn’t have any bread and he just laughed and said he’d have been surprised if I had.

(?)

At last the bitchin’ rain has quit. Doris and I walked all through Coos Bay. They’ve really got some shops! I told her about the place Chris and I had opened and Doris wants to get a place when we get a few crumbs, but somehow it doesn’t really seem very important anymore. Doris has a whole can of pot so we’ll have joints for a long time. We were kind of stoned and everything seemed up even though my ass is still dragging.

(?)

It’s good enough to just be alive. I love Coos Bay, and I love acid! The people here, at least here in our section of town, are beautiful. They understand life and they understand me. I can talk like I want and dress like I want and nobody cares. Looking at the posters in the store windows, and even walking around past the Greyhound bus station
to watch who is coming in is groovie. We went by a place where they make posters and I’m going to help Doris cover the walls when we get a few crumbs together. We stopped at a Coffee House and the Digger Free Store and the Psychedelic Shop. Tomorrow we’re going to see the rest of the sights. Doris has been here a couple of months and she knows everything and everybody. I was amazed when I found out that she was only fourteen. I thought she was a very small and immature eighteen or nineteen.

(?)

Last night Doris was really low. We’ve run out of pot and money and we’re both hungry and the damnable rain has started puking up again. This little one room has only the one burner stove which doesn’t seem to give out any heat at all. My ears and sinus cavaties (see, I know, I watch TV, or used to) all feel like they’ve been poured full of concrete, and my chest must surely be bound with a steel band. We’d walk someplace and try to get a free meal or thug something but it’s hardly worth the effort in the rain, so I guess we’ll just eat noodles and dry cereal again. We’ve talked about how we hated the tourists and the phonies and the beggars here, but I think I’ll go join the ranks tomorrow and try to beg enough bread for a little food and a fix. Doris and I really need both.

(?)

Oh, to be stoned, to have someone tie me off and give me a shot of anything. I’ve heard paregoric is great. Oh
hell, I wish I had enough anything to end the whole shitty mess.

I’ve been asleep and I don’t know if it’s the same day or week or year, but who the hell cares anyway?

The goddamned rain is even worse than yesterday. It’s like the whole sky is pissing on us. I tried to go out once, but my cold is so bad I was chilled to my ass before I’d even gotten to the goddamned corner, so I came back and went to bed with my clothes on, trying to curl up enough so my body heat would at least keep me from dying. I guess I’ve got a high fever, because I keep drifting off — that’s the only beJesus thing that keeps me from croaking. Oh, I need a fix
so
bad! I want to scream and pound my head against the wall and climb the damned dusty, faded stringy curtains. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get the hell out of here before I really blow my cool all the way. I’m scared and lonely and I’m sick. I’m as sick as I’ve ever been in my life.

I tried not to let myself think of home till Doris got started on her screwing life’s history, and now I’m really falling apart at the seams. God, if I had enough money I would go back where I came from or at least call. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the church and ask them to call my folks. I don’t know why I’ve acted like such an ass when I’ve always had it so good. Poor Doris has had nothing but shit since she was ten years old. Her mother was married four times by the time Doris was ten and had humped with who knows how many men in between. And when Doris had just turned eleven her current stepfather started having sex with her but good, and the poor little stupid bastard didn’t even know what to do about it because he threatened to kill her if she ever told her mother or anyone else, So she put up with the sonofabitch balling her till she was twelve, Then one day when he had hurt her pretty bad she
told her gym teacher why she couldn’t do the exercises. The teacher had her taken away and put into a juvenile home till they could find a foster home. But even that wasn’t much better, because both the teenage brothers gave it to her and later on an older teenage girl tuned her in and turned her on drugs, then took her the homo route. Since then she’s pulled down her pants and hopped into bed with anyone who would turn down the covers, or part the bushes. Oh Father, I’ve got to get out of the cesspool! It’s sucking me down and drowning me! I’ve got to get the hell out of here while I still can. Tomorrow! Tomorrow for sure! After the goddamned rain stops!