The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (30 page)

While most of my close friends were committed stoners, they weren’t disengaged from school activities. Clint, for instance, was active in band and sports and won a state wrestling championship that year. Others were in the debate and drama societies, which is where I ended up. My experience in Paonia under Mack’s tutelage had given me a taste for drama, and I seemed to have a talent for it. I was delighted when I found that my new school had an active drama program, and found myself in the leading role in the senior class play, Agatha Christie’s
Witness for the Prosecution
. I played the Queen’s Consul, Sir Wilfred Robarts, opposite a guy named Rory as the solicitor, Mayhew, and we were both well cast. Rory was totally straight, another high achiever and a nice guy. And yet I found him boring precisely because, unlike Clint, he seemed to lack a dark side, which is to say, a complete personality. Academically, we were all high achievers. The idea that smoking dope means one will have poor grades is simply a lie. I smoked dope several times a week, along with my friends, and we had no problem keeping up with our work. One effect it did have, though, was that it made much of school seem pointless—just mere busy work to keep us off the streets as much as anything.

In our last semester, however, I persuaded our teachers to try out a Tussman-style program like the one that led Terence into so many obscure byways of Western and Eastern thought, helping him learn to think in the process. By then my friends and I had already completed our graduation requirements, so the faculty let a small group of us spend the spring reading and discussing various works, all toward the supposed end of writing a massive paper. Because I had suggested the idea (and been blessed to have Terence’s library at my disposal while he was traveling) I heavily influenced the reading list. We spent our final semester sampling Jung, Eliade, and McLuhan, leavened by the occasional piece by Aldous Huxley or William Burroughs, and a little black magic thrown in. It was actually a very productive way to use our time, and I learned quite a bit. Clint and I were the only ones who actually wrote a final paper, but it didn’t really matter. The others got exposed to a lot of heretical ideas they would not have otherwise have known, which was my point.

Despite my misadventure with datura the previous year, I had another encounter with the nightshades that spring, courtesy of John Parker. John, you’ll recall, was a scholar and keeper of esoteric knowledge, from alchemy and black magic to herbal lore and altered states. He was also one of the most influential of my early mentors, and we’d been corresponding since we’d gotten to know each other in Berkeley in the summer of 1967. Among the topics we’d been exchanging thoughts on that spring were witches’ flying unguents. These were topical concoctions that usually contained extracts of belladonna or henbane, sometimes with very toxic plants like monkshood (
Aconitum
spp.) or even hashish and opium. Such ointments were allegedly the secret to how witches could fly to their rituals on a broomstick. They didn’t actually fly; they used the broom as an applicator, to apply the unguent to their labia where these substances could be readily absorbed. The resulting state of delirium and disorientation produced by the tropane alkaloids, combined with the cardiac arrhythmias induced by the monkshood, would induce a feeling of rising and falling, and rushing headlong through the air—hence, of flying. The participation in the eldritch and orgiastic rites of the witches’ Sabbath was, under this model, a pure confabulation, as the witches fell into a dreamlike stupor.

John had stumbled across a formulation he attempted to duplicate, though for the baby’s fat and bat’s blood in the original formula he substituted lanolin. When he sent me a sample my friends and I were just crazy enough to give it a shot. We set out one moonlit night into the high desert of the Uncompahgre Plateau just out of town. The plateau’s name is a Ute word meaning “dirty water.” The area has many gulches and arroyos, rocks, and caves, and lots of solitude. Carlos Castaneda’s first book,
The Teachings of Don Juan
, had come out a few months earlier, and we’d all read it, priming us for some serious shamanic action.

There were four of us, if I recall. We reached a place that had the right feel, with a low overhang of rock to shelter us, and proceeded to strip down and smear the god-awful green slime all over our bodies. Then we sat down to wait. An hour passed. Nothing. Another hour. Still nothing. Finally we decided that we needed to dance or something to facilitate the absorption, so we jumped around chanting and hooting—four gangly teenagers covered in green goo, comporting themselves under the desert moon like demented apes. Fortunately, we had chosen our secluded spot well. Had any of our classmates come upon us we would have had some serious explaining to do. After perhaps another hour we realized the unguent had failed to produce the desired effects. I guess it needed the baby fat and bat’s blood, but that was a bit too authentic even for John. Reluctantly, we wiped off the goo as best we could and packed it in.

The rest of the semester passed uneventfully. Like high school seniors everywhere, my peers and I were burnt out. We lost no time in scattering to whatever destinies were in store for us: summer jobs, further schooling, military service, or exile to Canada; the Vietnam War was at its peak. I was more than ready to leave home and get on to the next big thing, whatever that would be. Accepted at CU, I knew I’d see many of my new friends in Boulder at summer’s end; but by late May all I wanted was freedom. I had a job lined up for the summer in Aspen, working on the grounds maintenance crew at the Aspen Music School. This was a step up compared to my lowly status as a dishwasher at Cyrano’s the previous summer. Skipping the graduation ceremony, I left Grand Junction the day after classes ended, my diploma eventually reaching me by mail. Aspen and unknown adventures beckoned.

Chapter 25 - Busted Again: 1969

My mother and I returned to Paonia, but my stay was brief. My father had a ’59 Chevy Impala with enormous fins, a beater he’d been keeping at the airport in Montrose so he could fly in and cover his territory without having to rent a car. He generously gave it to me for the summer and flew me over to Montrose to pick it up. The wheels were a kind of graduation present, and just what I needed. I packed up the Chevy with a few basic necessities and headed to Aspen to start my job.

I found a tiny apartment in a condo-like building on a side street in a residential part of town. Every day, my fellow workers and I would catch a bus that took us a few miles up Castle Creek to the campus. There we’d do whatever chores we were assigned—mowing, trimming shrubs, sweeping out the practice rooms and generally tidying up. It was easy enough to slip into one of those rooms on a break and blast a joint. Supervision was minimal and the work was good exercise. There were a lot of pretty music students around, though as a lowly maintenance grunt I was too timid to try to befriend them.

Into this scene came Lisa. I’ve already mentioned how I first met Lisa, or at least saw her, on my visit to Berkeley in 1967. Two years later, there she was in Aspen, seeking a place to study Pure Land Buddhism, inspired by
Secrets of Chinese Meditation,
a book by Charles Luk. Lisa had a friend in town I’ll call Erin, a willowy blonde who had fallen in with my friend Richard. Encouraged by Erin, Lisa and I got together and soon were sharing my apartment. According to Lisa (I remember none of this), the landlord was spying on us and we were promptly evicted. We moved to a studio apartment in the back of a house, a distinct step up as it had a private entrance and a primitive kitchen. We lived there for much of that summer until events brought our short idyll to an end.

Our intimacy was a breakthrough for me, a chance to continue my sexual education, and Lisa proved a gentle and wise instructor. I had not had any sexual encounters (or no successful ones, and not for lack of trying) since my furtive episode with Fay two years earlier. Lisa was an angel of mercy who came into my life just when I needed to be rescued. She was very delicate; she had many allergies and was prone to getting sick, but she had a good soul. Wise in the ways of herbs and astrology, she was a good guitar player and singer, a good cook, a good lover. She taught me many things, but I was too inexperienced to give back in kind. I’ve since apologized for being so inept; I had thought she must have taken pity on me to put up with such awkwardness. I was pleased to hear she’d never felt that way, and that the mutual passion we felt made up for my lack of experience.

Nevertheless, I didn’t return her affection in the way she might have wanted. The crucial reason was that I was still hung up on Peggy, and still clinging to hopes we’d get together in Boulder that fall. During those years, it was a pattern of my erotic life that I spent much of it longing for someone out of reach, someone I couldn’t have for one reason or another, to the neglect of the person I was actually with. It wasn’t fair to that person, or to myself, because it kept me from fully committing to the relationship. And so it was with Lisa. Ultimately, however, that wouldn’t be what pulled us apart.

During that summer, Terence, then rambling through India, had been sending back hashish shipments from Mumbai, still known then as Bombay. Aspen, he thought, was the perfect out-of-the-way spot for these shipments to arrive, and a friend of his, Brett, was there to receive them. For Terence, this was a ramped-up version of what he’d been doing the previous summer when we picked up the smashed Buddha statue at the post office. At least then he’d made an effort to conceal the goods, however inadequately. At some point, however, he seemed to have thrown caution to the wind and started sending his shipments barely concealed in locked tin boxes. That seemed rather reckless to me, and my misgivings proved correct.

Several packages arrived without incident, picked up at any number of rented P.O. boxes up and down the valley. Most of the product was then taken to Denver and turned over to Tom, who had plenty of hash-starved customers ready to purchase whatever he had for sale. Brett, impatient and a little greedy, was quite happy to sell ounces locally, and in fact out the door of his cottage. I knew because he was living in the same cluster of cottages as Lisa and I. I thought he should show some restraint, but he didn’t listen; soon, half the hippies in town were beating a path to his door. His place quickly became widely known as the go-to source for the best hash to hit Aspen in months, maybe ever. As it turned out, his actions didn’t make much difference. When the end arrived, it came from a completely unexpected direction.

Most people with counterculture ties back then remember where they were on Woodstock weekend, August 16-17, 1969. I certainly do, but the famous music festival was not the reason why. I spent that weekend in the county jail in Glenwood Springs, awaiting transfer to a federal detention facility in Denver, where my companions and I were to be arraigned on hashish smuggling charges the following Monday. It went down like this:

I worked at the Aspen Music School until the end of July and then began getting ready to move to Boulder for the start of classes. Brett had temporarily moved in with Lisa and me, a cramped but tolerable situation, given that we’d only be sharing the space for a couple of weeks. But Lisa wanted nothing to do with a smuggling conspiracy. Deciding to bail early, we arrived in Boulder in the first week of August and found an apartment. Luckily, she stayed there when I headed back to Aspen to finish packing up.

In the course of moving out, we’d stored some dishes and linens at a house in Glenwood Springs, about forty-five miles north of Aspen. On the day I left Aspen, I wanted to pick up those boxes before continuing over McClure Pass for a brief visit in Paonia. It was a sunny Thursday, August 14, when I pulled out in the old Chevy. As best I can recall, Erin and Richard had plans to spend the weekend at the house in Glenwood, and Brett decided to drive his own car over to see them. He also wanted to check the post offices in Snowmass and Basalt, because one of Terence’s shipments had been delayed. Two packages had already come through, but not the third, so he was concerned there might be a glitch. We drove separately to the post office in Basalt, and I waited in my car while he went inside to check. When he emerged carrying a large muslin-wrapped package and a big smile I realized the Good Shit had arrived. We continued on to the house in Glenwood in our separate cars.

In the parking area in front of the house, Brett locked his car but didn’t bring anything in. I remember Erin being there, but not Richard. I went down to the basement to get my boxes, and when I came up Brett was looking worriedly out through the drawn curtains of the living-room window. There were two or three cars visible from the house with two men sitting in each. Not a welcome sight: it looked like the place was staked out. Brett decided to leave and take the package back to Aspen or try to ditch it somewhere, but by then it was too late. Both cars converged on his, blocking his exit, while four men emerged from the car, guns ready, and forced Brett out of the car. He stood there, helpless, arms outstretched, while two of the men came up to the house and called us out. I’m sure we all looked shocked and confused, and more than a little scruffy, as we emerged. Before long we were in handcuffs being booked at the county jail.

We were sequestered in separate cells, and left to chill for a couple of hours, pondering our grim fates. I was despairing and traumatized. I wasn’t a “bad kid,” let alone a criminal, despite that little session back in Paonia two years earlier. I was just a hippie who liked to smoke a little hash and groove on psychedelics. Now here I was in the slammer. But this was worse. This was serious shit. This was a federal bust of an international smuggling ring.

By the time I was collected from my cell and ushered into an interrogation room, I’d had plenty of time to reflect on the error of my ways and to conjure up some dreary scenarios of where I was headed as a result. Agent Grissom, as I’ll call him, a narcotics enforcement officer with U.S. Customs, was tall, elegant, and soft-spoken; his colleague was short and squat, had a fat face, and looked like he was a bit too fond of those jelly donuts that cops are supposed to like. In this case, it was the fat jolly one who played the good cop. He was friendly enough as he explained to me that this was not about whether I liked to smoke grass or not; this was a felony conspiracy to import a dangerous drug, and they expected me to tell them everything I knew. Meanwhile, Grissom, playing the bad cop, kept his silence and just looked at me with pity and loathing, as if to say, “You poor sap, you are so fucked.” Well, I was fucked. I don’t recall any recitation of my rights, or anyone advising me that I didn’t have to talk to these guys. But I resisted. I insisted that I wasn’t part of the conspiracy, that I was just a friend of the others, and that I had no part in the smuggling operation. I had not received shipments nor had I sold any hash or facilitated any sales.