by Laurel Brett
On June 5 everything went to shit again. Now it was Bobby Kennedy who was dead, shot in the kitchen of an LA hotel where his supporters in the adjacent ballroom were celebrating his California Democratic primary win. Just hours before his death I had been so hopeful; he seemed unstoppable, and soon he would have been in New York campaigning, bringing his brand of optimism back home, where another primary win would pretty much have clinched the nomination for him. Instead, his body was brought east by train in a funeral cortege that recalled the journey of Lincoln’s coffin. All along the route people flocked to the tracks to wave at the train, citizens hoping to end the war, black people who were stirred by his words, people already so bruised by King’s assassination. What was America doing? Who were we killing? I needed to talk to Jerry. I needed to lay my head in Caroline’s lap. I needed to see Daphne.
I pored over all the artifacts in my study and stared at the Daphne time line for aimless hours. I would have driven to the city or hopped on the train to talk to my pal, but I knew Jerry would tell me in no uncertain terms to move on. He was struggling with his own demons and had no patience with mine. We had been comrades together in buttoned-down silence. Now addiction, obsession, and history had intruded on our friendship, and we were left on our own to struggle out of the shells we had constructed during the Eisenhower fifties. We had turned to Watson and Freud for safety, after the brutalities of World War II that had cost me a father and Jerry all the family he had left in Europe, and we had buried our deepest feelings. Now the sixties were making our strategies obsolete, and Daphne had become my only guide.
What was she telling me? Here everything was, the time line that had grown into a complex chart, with branches like a tree, and the snapshot, the books, the records, and the little Russian box Stony Brook Daphne had given me.
On Saturday, June 8, the day of RFK’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, I thought of going to stand with the thousands who’d be on the street paying tribute, but the idea of being there without Caroline saddened me too much. I stared at the beautiful little Russian box and worked at opening the top. I applied elbow grease and patience, and finally it revealed its secret—two perfect scraps of paper, liquid LSD dropped by eyedropper onto pieces of a pale-blue blotter nestled against the brick-red interior of the enameled receptacle. I caught my breath.
Here was my Rubicon. My drug experience was limited to the joint I’d smoked with Jane and Daphne on the day of Jane’s art show. Getting stoned had brought me mostly silliness and a great appreciation for brownies. Although the experience had been pleasant, I had felt no urge to seek it out. I knew that acid would be different. Popular wisdom said that acid devastated lives, like Jerry’s alcohol or Daphne’s opium, Nembutal, and whatever else she had gotten her hands on. She had done acid too, and had told me to discard it, but the nihilism I felt just then drew me to the idea of tripping.
Before I made a final decision, my body, one step ahead of me, was already ingesting one of the tiny pieces of blotter paper. I suspected that it wasn’t necessary to actually eat the paper, but since there wasn’t anyone there to advise me, I swallowed the little scrap of paper. Nothing happened. Of course nothing would happen immediately.
I selected and arranged a stack of records, Magical Mystery Tour the most prominent with pride of place on the top of the pile. “There’s a fog upon LA, and my friends have lost their way, we’ll be over soon they said, now they’ve lost themselves instead,” sang the Beatles as the June light streamed into my living room. I had a glass of water, my records, and a small snack on my living room coffee table. After I put on the record, I sat with my feet up waiting for the acid to kick in.
“Please don’t be long, please don’t you be very long,” I heard as I began to feel thirsty in an odd way and the edges of objects began to appear wavy with halos of refracted color around their edges. A prominent purple ring formed at the boundary of the water in the glass, so I raised it and tilted it so the ring went sideways, and then it was level, and then I made it go sideways again. I set off the toy I always I had on the table, weighted metal balls suspended from a wooden beam, so the spheres hit each other and clicked in a percussion symphony while they made ominous shadows on the walls. I could see rays streaming in from the windows as the visual world crowded out sadness about the funeral and all the other miseries I’d been carrying. I was suspended in a world of purple and green; the ceiling had begun to turn paisley.
I heard a noise that startled me. Perhaps it was an animal, but suddenly I was on high alert, because it sure sounded like someone was walking up the path onto the stoop, and then there was a small rap at the door. I heard the knocking, but I was rooted to the chair in apprehension. I didn’t want to telegraph that I was tripping, and I thought if I just sat there on the couch they’d go away. But then the rapping returned. I held my breath and watched the door open a crack. I am being invaded. And then the crack widened. Sunlight streamed into the room in chunks of yellow, and a large, tall shape occupied the doorframe.
Something was definitely off in this acid universe, because I thought I saw Caroline’s Tom peering in.
“Tom?”
“Yeah. Hi, Garrett.”
“Hi, Garrett? Didn’t you just open the door without being asked in? What’s going on?”
“You didn’t answer, and I saw the car,” he explained with contrition. He stayed in the doorway. “May I come in?” he asked in a strained voice. He was doing a mediocre job of acting like someone uncomfortable. I was amazed the guy got any acting parts at all. I wasn’t sure what part I should be acting right now myself.
“Um, sure, yeah, come in,” I heard myself say.
“Caroline sent me. She said she has some things in the spare bedroom. I had to be up here anyway to negotiate a part. Summer stock. I have a rental car just outside.”
Poor guy. He was really embarrassed. Caroline shouldn’t have made him do this.
“Oh, okay. Why didn’t she call me and let me know? This is weird.”
“I have no idea, buddy. Yeah, she should have. Kind of shitty for both of us. You know women.”
“Do I?”
“It’s the room upstairs? Do you mind if I go get her stuff?”
“Is she taking the quilt?”
“What quilt? I don’t think so.”
“Is she mad at me?” I asked. I sounded five years old, and he stopped and studied me, furrowing his brow a bit.
“Is something wrong? I don’t know you well, but you don’t seem like the guy I met on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“I dropped acid,” I announced. I could feel a wide smile of pride on my face, so big that my cheeks actually hurt.
“Shit. Jeez, man, you did?”
I energetically nodded my head up and down, making my newly long hair bounce around my face.
“Well, I can’t leave you alone like this.”
“Oh sure you can. I was going to be alone before you came.”
“Yeah, I understand that, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.” His voice betrayed weariness and just a hint of resentment. He was clearly trying to do the right thing.
“Have you ever done acid?” I asked.
“Mescaline. Not acid. Same difference, I guess. Just maybe milder. Have you gotten off yet?”
“Your face is purple. You are really handsome, you know.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I have a second piece of blotter paper for you if you want,” I offered generously.
“I’ll pass.”
I was staring at the folds of a blanket I’d left over the arm of one of the brown velvet chairs. The space inside the folds was bright magenta. I’d never noticed how prominent creases are. The ceiling continued roiling with kaleidoscope designs. Magical Mystery Tour kept playing. I’d already replayed it several times. “I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus. Goo goo g’joob.” The words made perfect sense.
“I’m thirsty,” I said, “but I don’t r
emember how to drink.”
“Just pick up the glass. You’ll remember.”
The glass was filled with clear liquid that shone bright fuchsia at its surface. As I drank I thought about what Salinger said in his story “Teddy” about pouring God into God when someone drinks. He was right.
A series of oh wows came out of my mouth, like tiny bubbles.
“How are you feeling?” Tom asked. His voice sounded as if it was echoing through a long tunnel.
“Fine. Except my face hurts.”
“That’s just because you’re smiling so much and so broadly. Let’s go for a ride.”
We drove around until he found a public garden. The day was so beautiful I thought of Bobby Kennedy and how right it was that he would be eulogized by his brother Ted. It was like the water—God into God. He was being poured back into God, and suddenly for just that moment his death felt okay. I wished he were there with me so I could tell him. When I told Tom this he said, “He already knows.”
The flowers, poppies shining orange, peonies bursting open, roses singing, had Day-Glo halos. I was seeing like a butterfly or like one of the bees diving deep for nectar. I buried my nose in the flowers too. When a cloud passed over the garden I became somber, my mood volatile and impacted by that tiny happenstance. “I’m scared,” I said. But then the cloud passed, and the day was sunny and bright.
I had no idea how long we were there, but Tom took us for ice cream, though I didn’t think I was hungry. I was getting deeper into the trip.
Outside the ice cream shop new flowers bloomed pink white red purple, mixing together, swirling, the colors bleeding onto their containers. The ice cream cold, yummy vanilla chocolate sweet more melting cone crunchy more! More flowers fragrant, buzz, buzz bees, circling, drinking, whispering, Garrett, and white, white puffy clouds blue azure glass sky turning magenta purple paisley green.
“Tom!” I called out insistently.
“What is it?”
“I forgot to be sad. It’s Bobby Kennedy’s funeral. I forgot to be sad.”
“It’s okay. You’ll be sad later.”
We went back to the house and listened to music: Revolver. “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream, it is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thought, surrender to the void, it is shining, it is shining . . .” Suddenly I knew exactly what Lennon meant. Reality was shining, glowing, changing shape, but perfect as it was.
Chapter Twenty-Four
* * *
I was high for about eight hours. Tom and I listened to my whole Beatles collection and then Dylan and finally the Airplane singing the same song I had listened to with Daphne and Jane when we had all smoked a joint, “White Rabbit,” but by that time I was starting to come down. We both drank a can of Ballantine as we watched something mindless on television. Tom made sandwiches with whatever he could find in the refrigerator, but I didn’t want to eat anything.
When I was finally cogent I asked if he had missed his appointment. “I guess you don’t remember me calling them. Yeah, I did miss it, but they rescheduled for tomorrow after I explained that I was with a friend high on acid. Nothing to worry about there. I can stay here tonight, right?”
“Sure. Of course. I really don’t know how to thank you.” I hoped my voice didn’t show how embarrassed I felt. He must have read my mind because he said, “It’s so embarrassing now, to get Caroline’s things. Should I call her and say I can’t?”
I thought about it as I walked him upstairs to show him the room. “Wait here a minute,” I said, “I’ll be right back.” He sat down on the bed covered by the handmade quilt Caroline had carefully chosen. I went out to the garage and returned with a small cardboard carton. “I’ll help you pack up.”
Things were less mortifying for both of us that way. I wanted to ask him about their relationship, but I refrained from making things even more difficult between us. We gathered up makeup, toiletries, some underwear, a nightgown, two or three casual shirts, and a few paperbacks, and packed them in the box. We walked downstairs, and he took the box out to the car while I started on another beer. While I was in the bathroom he must have hurriedly called Caroline to tell her what was going on because he said a quick “Bye now” when he saw me come back into the room, and he hung up. My heart actually skipped a beat at the thought that I might really have lost her for good.
We watched the late-night news with clips of RFK’s funeral. When I put my hand up to my cheek I could feel that it was damp with tears. Tom’s eyes were misting over too. “Damn shame,” he said.
The next morning I made pancakes, and we ate them in companionable silence. We shook hands when he left, and I thanked him again. “I’m sorry I upset your plans,” I managed to articulate. “You went above and beyond.”
“It’s all good, man,” he said.
“And you’re sure you don’t want the other scrap of blotter?”
“No. I’m fine.”
I walked out onto the driveway and watched him drive away. Everything in the world was the same as it had been before; the flowers no longer burst out with Day-Glo insistence, and bees were no longer special emissaries from a secret realm. I no longer felt as if the sunshine was pouring God into me. I lived in a secular world again. And yet, although I didn’t feel all those things any longer, I could superimpose my memories of those feelings onto this quotidian day. For the first time in my life I could glimpse the spiritual possibilities lurking in the most mundane things. I thought about dropping the other dose of acid but decided to give myself a break. The last thing I wanted was to bury myself in drugs and end up in rehab. The sadness of so many losses was something I was going to have to learn to carry on my own. I had been avoiding sadness for a long time now, since my father died, really, and then after Amy’s death.
* * *
I waited for a week to trip again. My second trip was darker. I had a patch of absolute terror when I thought that everything would be all right if I was home in my own bed, until I realized that I was home in my own bed. But I also had moments of sheer elation. I watched the trees on the Oriental rug in my living room blossom and drop their petals, then bud, bloom, and go through the same cycle a hundred times before my eyes.
I hadn’t felt that I could go to my wall and study the Daphne time line in front of Tom, but on my second trip there was no one watching to see me spend hours studying its strands of information. Poring over my graphs, I saw the Schrödinger girls, each in her own perfect, iridescent-transparent bubble, separate in her own world. The bubbles floated and crossed, like the bubbles from a kid’s bubble wand. They drifted to the ceiling and came back to the desk. I saw so clearly that together they were Daphne, and separately they were each a Schrödinger girl. Reality splintered and joined and splintered and joined like the blossoms of the tree on the rug that bloomed and died in an infinite cycle. I saw Daphne at my desk, sitting in a chair, drinking tea. I saw her portrait hanging on the wall. I saw her photograph coming to life in front of the swan boats in Boston. I saw the cobalt, green, red, and purple lines merge and separate, each into its own trajectory, a parabola, a hyperbola, a straight line, a circle, reality unreeling before me like a four-projector movie. Each Daphne was whole. Each Daphne was a part of a whole. There was no contradiction.
I pulled out the Traffic album so I could hear Steve Winwood sing. “If for just one moment you could step outside your mind, and float across the ceiling, I don’t think the folks would mind.” Winwood was right. We are not like all the rest, Daphne and I. And I didn’t want to be. We had found each other at Bookmasters and bonded over Schrödinger’s cats, and now I knew that reality is a phantasmagoria of which we glimpse only the smallest fraction. Tiny microscopic organisms and large cosmic events exist completely outside of our awareness. Colors hide in folds of fabric; designs decorate the inside of our eyelids. Girls appear and disappear, facsimiles of themselves. So much is real that we know nothing of.
When I was straight again I had to struggle to remember thes
e insights; they had burst, just as any bubble would. I went to the library and got out a book that would help me understand the brain on acid. Timothy Leary, a Harvard researcher, had published The Psychedelic Experience in 1964. I’d never been interested before and had avoided any challenge posed to Watson and Skinner, but something was happening, and Skinner and Watson couldn’t lead me where Leary could. He explained that the drug did not create the experience; it was merely the key to expanded consciousness and permission to opt out of the game of prescribed social roles. Aldous Huxley’s 1954 memoir of a mescaline trip, The Doors of Perception, explained what the mind experienced in terms of intensity of experience. He was taking me inside the music of Dylan and inside the Beatles. Now there were so many other troubadours and guides in my record stack, like Donovan. “For standin’ in your heart is where I want to be and long to be. Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.”
That’s what I wanted to do—catch the wind, weave a net for Daphne. I spent the summer of 1968 tripping once a week; I kept a routine. I spent the other six days reading psychedelic literature, writing about experiences, and daydreaming about the Schrödinger girls and the new universe they’d brought me to.
The urge to go talk to Daphne was overwhelming. I had a standing appointment with her. I’d go into my study and steep myself in my notes and artifacts, drop acid, and hope she’d make an appearance in my consciousness. Sometimes she did. Mostly she didn’t, but I was living for the times that she did. I was traveling farther and farther away from Jerry and Caroline, and even from the Schrödinger girls as I knew them in life. They were becoming an idea I couldn’t live without.
In the middle of August, when I was completely straight, I got a call. On an airless day of over ninety degrees I heard Jerry say, “It’s so beautiful out!” and I knew something was up. “Well, kid, I did it. I’m in California. I’m in Big Sur in the wilderness. There’s a hillside just covered with wind chimes, a thousand of them maybe. We wait for wind.”