by Deborah Emin
No matter where I went, he was nearby. I got trapped in a large group of singing and dancing hippies. No matter which way I turned, they did too. They wove themselves around me. I couldn’t get free of them. Healey came to my rescue and spread the crowd away from me so I could move out of their orbit and follow whatever path I needed to be on. I couldn’t stand still.
By walking, constantly walking, I could absorb what was going on around me, listen to the various speakers and not freak myself out by what I had done.
It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
While I was tripping, ecstatic thoughts and images went off in my head. Not one of them remains as rich as it was then. One of those eruptions remains. It fills me every morning with its presence. I don’t care. It can stay or it can go.
I know I behaved stupidly. Wandering around in that state, in the vast crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, wasn’t the best way to take care of myself. At the time, it didn’t seem so stupid. It was, after all, a peace march. We were into non-violence. I felt so safe, that had anyone come at me with a weapon, I would have walked right up to them and kissed them. That’s how powerful the mood inside me was.
As the day progressed, that mood intensified. The drug didn’t wear off for a long time, it kept getting stronger and stronger. The drug opened doors inside me that I hadn’t even known were closed. Colors on that very gray day were so bright and vibrant, that I needed sunglasses. I was able to breathe exactly as Alex instructs us to do.
I had enough stamina to run around the perimeter of the entire demonstration at the Washington Monument. I wanted to carry a banner to help with the cause. I wanted to let all those people know that I loved them and would be their friend forever. That I would do anything they asked of me.
I know it all sounds so silly. Like I’m some stoned out hippy. It was wonderful to have no cares at all and to believe that I could live like that forever. It wasn’t until the drug wore off and I felt the opposite of wonderful—sick to my soul—that I could for a few moments feel sympathy for Charles. Without the drug, I felt so awful, like I lived in a dark hole that had constant earthquakes. It never occurred to me that I was just in the van with its lousy shocks and inside a sick body coming down from a trip.
I didn’t eat the entire way back. I sat in one spot and never moved. Healey sat next to me. His silence helped because sounds hurt my ears. The worst part was that I needed to be re-introduced to myself.
I guess in that Jefferson Airplane tradition, I had only taken the pill that makes you larger.
If I ever was going to take a drug again, I guess that would be it. I liked being 10 feet tall.
I must still be radiating that peace and love vibe from the march because Eileen smiled at me today. I guess we are friends again. I hope so. Though now we aren’t the kind of friends I had wanted us to be. Her world revolves around Philip totally. We’ll never be able to mention that night.
Now I am so concerned about the the war. How incredible, right, for me to write that? It wasn’t that long ago that I never gave it a thought. The news of the war was like some background noise in my parents’ life. It didn’t affect me.
The strange names of cities I had never known about or cared about. The numbers of those killed, wounded. The number of bombs dropped. The people who destroyed themselves to try to stop this war—all of that was as unknown to me as most of the names in the phone book and about as interesting.
Then I met a boy named Charles and that changed. On December 1 there will be a lottery, and depending on when his birthdate is drawn, it will determine whether he will go to war. I know I haven’t written about that yet. I must. I have to understand it or I won’t understand what he is going through.
Right now, the equilibrium is gone. I hope this is due to exhaustion and nothing else. I’m finished for the day.
Date: Wednesday, 11/19/69
I’m not good at keeping promises, even promises I make to myself. I wanted to go into great detail about every aspect of the march. But how do you describe arriving in a new country when you didn’t know you left home?
I wanted to create a photo album of events:
here I am in a panic, hoping no one asks me my name
here I am watching all the couples holding hands and kissing and wondering where is Charles
here I am listening to the music and dancing with people who want to change the world
here I am when I finally realized how much I had been lied to
here I am realizing that what I lived with was built on a set of lies
I don’t know who made them up but I believed them, that’s for sure.
I should have studied tonight but instead I read that Chomsky article Charles gave me a couple of weeks ago. Somethings in life are clearer to me now—It is time to revolt and change the world.
I have been brought to my knees with questions, doubts, anger and fear. I don’t know shit about what goes on in the world. I thought everyone I knew in Skokie wanted to live in that damn plastic bubble and I was different and was going to show them. But I live just like they live. Most of us live like that.
We watch the war on TV while eating our dinner. We sit glued to the tube while the newsreel runs and the bodies get blown up and the bombs fall and the people on the screen go screaming down the roads. They carry out the US dead. We watch and what the hell are we thinking?
What makes us, me so complacent?
You know we walked past the White House carrying signs with the names of the US dead and Nixon sat in front of his TV watching football. He knows we disagree with what he is doing but he doesn’t care.
I want to do something but I don’t know what to do.
Why did I go on this march? Was this some message from God for me to wake up and do something? If so, what?
I heard people preaching Dr. King’s anti-war message. How black people were being unfairly used to fight it. When I heard a voice in the crowd that sounded like the voices of blacks from the South Side of Chicago, images exploded in my head, in black and white, of the riots in Chicago after Dr. King was assassinated. I remembered Julia saying that it served him right. That he deserved to die. I have no idea why she said that. We never talked politics.
I wandered down the streets of DC, the riots in Chicago playing in my head. Everyone was upset—the people who were caught in poverty, the police who had to stop the anarchy, those of us stuck up on the North Side who never knew that kind of poverty.
In that nightmare world, in the darkened night, I saw the yellow and red glows of the fires. I couldn’t run from the chaos because it was happening in my mind. I felt the heat on my cheeks. It burned my eyebrows. The smoke filled my nostrils and went like a flash into my lungs and seared them.
All around me thousands and thousands of people already knew what I was just experiencing. They understood that these things happen and that people starve and are burned out of their homes and that they are killed or jailed and beaten up and robbed and that no one lifts a hand to help them because they are poor and black.
Voices that sounded like the people I knew in Skokie kept calling my name and warning me not to help them because if I gave them anything they would only want more and more.
I tried to scream those voices down. Tell them they are wrong. I reached out because I needed someone to steady me. I reached out and thought I had hold of Odessa and that she would pull me back into the real world. But it was Healey. He held onto me as the crowd marched and sang. I couldn’t get those images out of my mind. The burning smell filled my nose. The heat on my face. He tried to let me go, but I grabbed onto him tighter.
He pulled me away from the crowd that I had pushed myself into, so I could breathe.
Healey’s leather jacket felt cool against my skin. He smelled of cigarettes and coffee. The first normal smells I had smelled that day.
Maybe because I knew he wouldn’t leave me, I finally let the whole experience come crashing into me.
I remember saying to him, “I don’t care about war as much as I care about the South Side of Chicago. Do you know that it has been like a war zone down there too?”
He held me tighter and kept me warm because I think by then I was shivering. But I wasn’t cold so much as angry.
Then, the anger opened a hole in the ground. The force of my newly known anger was so forceful it couldn’t be held back and it opened the earth in front of me. Out of that hole a message for us all bubbled up. I was privileged to receive it.
I stood still at last. I stood in reverence of where the earth opened up and out of the burning hole came a voice and smoke that wasn’t of burned buildings or anything man made—it came from something more awful.
It said, and I’m not making this up at all, I swear, it said—”Follow Jesus’ teaching and love one another or you will all perish.”
I’m sure this sounds like I had the typical hippy dippy acid trip.
I’ve heard Charles tell Tony that—”man you just had a weird trip, don’t get all bent out of shape about it. It’ll pass, wait for the next one—it’ll be better.”
I know how Tony felt when Charles talked to him like that. I know he wasn’t pleased that Charles dismissed him like that. I know too why Charles had to do that. He loves Tony. He doesn’t want to see him in pain. He can’t stand it so every time something bad happens to Tony, Charles is there but he wants to destroy the pain and doesn’t realize he’s hurting Tony as well.
I’m going to repeat what happened to me.
The earth opened up at my feet. I’m certain that my anger caused that hole to open up, that voices came out of the ground with a message and then the earth sealed itself back up as if nothing had happened.
Out of the blue, something inexplicable has happened. It reminds me that I have things to do but what specifically they are, I don’t know.
I have always known things in a rational way and systematically gone about living my life. When I was told I needed a scholarship to get out of Skokie, I worked diligently to get it. I came here and wanted to learn things that weren’t taught in the classroom—like what love is.
Now I am at an impasse. That’s all I see.
I also know that once doors open, there’s no way to close them again.
Date: Thursday, 11/20/69
I took a long walk into Town today, but the long way around. I found a path that cuts through neighborhoods and keeps me off the highway. The dogs aren’t too happy to see me. They don’t frighten me. That is one of the major lessons of long distance running—don’t be afraid of the dogs.
I wanted to see Lauren. Of all the people I know here, she seemed the best one to talk to. I don’t know what to do about Charles. The image of Charles and Tony shooting up between the parked cars in DC haunts me. That scene has entered into the album of memories like when they wheeled Pops out of the house covered in his own blood. He tried to kill himself. I don’t care that no one ever said those precise words; we all knew that was what he did.
Seeing Charles huddled with Tony, their faces waxed over from the drugs, they were like Pops trying to kill himself.
Why does Charles need to do this? Doesn’t he know that he is playing Russian Roulette? This is such crazy behavior.
I talked a bit to Alex today about how things were changing in my body and how the changes affected my running. In his Alex way, he smiled at me and said, “Things don’t stay the same forever, Scags, they change and then become the new normal. Don’t worry. Just keep running. Okay?”
He sees simple answers to every problem.
By the time I got to the Day Care Center, I was so angry I wanted to pick a fight. I’m never like that. I wanted to yell at those kids to go home so I could talk to Lauren.
She must have seen how upset I was because when I walked in the door, she said, “Sit down. Cool off. I’ll make you some tea.”
She walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. She got the kids busy with their project and made us tea.
The steam felt good on my face and in my nose. I took a few deep breaths to slow down my heart which was racing like crazy.
She looked over the top of her cup and said, “I’m glad you’re back.” Then I remembered, I hadn’t seen her since I returned from DC.
I felt like a selfish ass. I had barged in with no warning I was coming and no word from me in a week.
She has become that good friend I wanted. I know I blushed. I felt the redness on my cheeks and neck.
“We missed you. It’s not often that someone from the College makes such a big impression on the kids so quickly. You were an instant success here.”
I didn’t know what to say. I liked feeling special.
She told me how they were using the stick puppets to teach the kids all kinds of things. I felt flattered to have made a contribution already.
After hearing that amount of praise, I didn’t want to burden her with the story I had come to tell her. But having primed the pump, I couldn’t stop myself. No one at the College wonders about what my life is really like, not even Charles, though he knows more than most people do.
With Lauren it all came flowing out like a gusher of information, probably more than she will ever remember. The children playing kept the noise level high enough that I had no fear they would hear what I said. Their chatter was a natural sound barrier. Once I got through the part where my father tried to kill himself, the rest was easier to tell.
She sat still and near me. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. I couldn’t let her reactions to what I was saying influence what was coming out of me.
I almost forgot that I had come to talk to her about Charles and his drug use. That part came out too. Then I could look her in the eye.
“Everyone in Town knows that the students use drugs. Because of their being users, the high school kids here have become involved in drugs too. At least that is what the parents want to believe.”
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“I think it is more complicated than that. I think there isn’t enough for the kids to do here so they need to find something. I hate the drag racing because that kills more of them than the drugs have. Going out in a blaze of glory seems truly stupid and a waste to me.”
“Taking drugs is a waste too, don’t you think?” I couldn’t withhold telling her I had dropped acid.
She looked at me with concern but I assured her that was the first and the last of it. No more drugs for me. I mean it too.
I began crying again. I cried because I want things to work out between Charles and me but I don’t know how to talk to him about that.
I said, “You don’t know Charles but we don’t have these kinds of conversations very well. I love him but can’t be involved with a drug addict.”
She patted my shoulder and stood up. She had to get back to the children and I had to walk over to Charles’ and see if we could work this whole mess out.
That’s where I am now. Waiting for Charles to get home. I hope I do this the right way and don’t mess it up. What I realized while talking to Lauren is that I do love him and want him but not if he is going to do drugs. That seems simple enough, right?
Date: Wednesday, 11/26/69
Drugs and I aren’t compatible. Charles and I don’t see quite eye to eye on this issue but we are willing to talk more. We decided he should go home without me for Thanksgiving.
Some things shouldn’t be messed up if one can help it, as Goldie reminds me. She called me the kid who always wanted to throw the baby out with the bath water. I suppose that’s true.
Charles should go home without me. Then he can spend time thinking this through and choose if he wants to be with me or if he wants to use drugs. For now, I’m willing to wait for
his answer. I mean it’s just a few days and I certainly have enough work to do.
What struck me was that when we work at it, it’s clear how much we love each other. It wasn’t some schmaltzy scene out of the movies but a real talk. He was angry at himself. I was angry at him and at me. I never should have taken the acid.
If only all decisions were that simple. I am exhausted from all the talking and crying. He will leave tonight and I will see him when he returns. The draft lottery is on Monday. He comes back on Sunday. So much to think about too. I’ll go to the Keatings for Thanksgiving. That’s another one of those simple decisions.
Date: Sunday, 11/30/69
My mind is beginning to calm down but this has been one of those weekends I wish I could have a chance to live again. Not because it was so great but because I made too many stupid decisions, enough to last me a life time, I fear.
Guys are the weirdest people. Either they don’t like women at all or they don’t know how to treat the ones they like. Or want to like and don’t really know what to do with that feeling. Then there’s us girls and our sensitivities. I know that what happened is my fault. I say I want one thing and then I do exactly the opposite thing.
I have felt almost from the first time I met him that Prof. Keating had a certain feeling for me. I never responded to him because either I was uncaring or I was involved with Charles.
Then Charles went away this long weekend and left me alone. Alone. And that set off a panic in me. I needed to be with someone and that someone turned out to be Prof. Keating.
I chose the worst possible person to hook up with. The man is maudlin and way too old for me. That’s clear now but it wasn’t clear when I decided to sleep with him.
I know, I know. I can hear it all rumbling through me like some kind of tumbling trio of boulders going off a cliff. I should have known how ill-advised that decision was.