Laura Meets Jeffrey

by Jeffrey Michelson

  Lynne Something or Something Lynne does some of her best work with us. I wake the next morning between them; surprised it wasn’t just a dream.

  (When I die and my life flashes in front of me I hope it slows down for that San Diego night. And I might not even edit out the Laura Bathroom Freak-Out Scene because it added drama in our Second Act.)

  35

  Puritan interview with Timothy Leary

  Summer 1982

  The owners of Puritan magazine like our interview with Norman Mailer so much they commission Laura and me to interview Timothy Leary.

  My fascination with Timothy Leary, both as New Age Avatar and Drug Guru, dated back to the ’60s—when I was in high school in Newton, Massachusetts, and he was at Harvard experimenting with the newly popularized psychedelic, LSD-25.

  In many ways Laura and I are at the confluence of the Mind-Expansion Movement of the ’60s, over which Leary presided, and the Sexual Revolution of the ’70s that gave birth to Puritan. We see Puritan representing the erotic part of that movement. Again, Laura and I spend a lot of time preparing with Puritan editor Stanley Bernstein. We see fertile ground for an interview. We read several dozen of Leary’s old and new interviews. We want to know what the Leary of the ’80s has to say about the ’60s and ’70s, and what’s coming next.

  Dr. Leary suggests we spend some time with him before the interview to get to know one another. Laura and I fly to L.A. and drive to meet him and his fifth wife, Barbara Chase Leary at their house in the hills above West Hollywood. The four of us get on great from moment one. Tim is sixty-three, looks younger and moves with grace and energy. He is humble and unpretentious, maybe on purpose, but very sweet and generous with his private stash.

  “I wouldn’t say Timothy Leary was sexy,” Laura recalls. “No, he was way too into himself, he definitely was very much all about himself; ‘The Great Tim Leary.’ You know, ‘I AM THE SHOW!’ ”

  Hanging out with them for a few days by his pool, enjoying Barbara’s California fresh cooking, going out to his favorite Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and consuming vast quantities of coke, grass and hash puts us all in a relaxed comfortable mood.

  I don’t know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but when we finally get down to the work, we all sit on the floor around a low table and smoke and drink and puff and snort our way through three hours of questions and answers.

  “We did the Tim Leary interview at his house in California,” Laura remembers. “Leary said that he would do the interview if we brought the three Cs: cocaine, champagne and caviar. So we did. That was fun.”

  Here are excerpts from our 1982 Puritan interview:

  LAURA BRADLEY: Is the country ready for a “free sex and drugs” government?

  TIMOTHY LEARY: I think it’s a primitive barbarism that in our country our health departments haven’t had a crash program to develop a drug that is a safe euphoric aphrodisiac that you could come home at night and sip in a glass with or without ice to make you feel wonderful and a thousand times hornier than you ever felt in your life.

  LB: What exactly is sexual about acid, or in what way does acid release this orgasmic energy?

  TL: The first time you take acid, if you’re alone in the desert it’s not going to be an aphrodisiac. It’s when your wonderful lover takes you into his or her perfumed silken boudoir and turns you on to acid that erotic awareness deepens. Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac. If you want to be a better lover or enrich your sex life, you’ve got to increase your intelligence. Acid is basically a philosophic experience. It opens up your brain, makes it think long and deep. You get greater sexual awareness when you turn on and access those circuits in your brain that are performing those wonderful functions. You get tremendous pleasure and bliss and aesthetic kick.

  LB: And more powerful orgasms?

  TL: Of course... You see, we’re just learning now the way that specific drugs become associated with sexuality. It’s as though you were first laid in the back of a Chevrolet, so therefore you always need a Chevrolet. There’s always the trap of tying yourself to one chemical stimulus. There are people who can only fuck well if they think they are on one particular drug.

  LB: How do you react to the numbers of people who have abused or ruined themselves with drugs?

  TL: Do you realize that drugs are safer than any other form of recreation? They’re safer than jogging, safer than skiing, safer than high school football, which ruin, what, 100,000 knees a year permanently? Mountain climbing, swimming, not to mention driving... drugs are the safest recreational opportunity around on a statistical basis.

  JEFFREY MICHELSON: What are your thoughts on the tremendous upswing in popularity of sadomasochism?

  TL: These are phases that people are going through. There’s a phase now of getting off on discipline and bondage, which is obviously childish.

  JM: Do you mean literally childish?

  TL: It goes back to spankings and really infantile sexuality.

  LB: Is that it, are people now getting into that part of their childhood?

  TL: There are circuits in the brain that are physically animalistic, for grabbing and forcing... We all have these circuits. And as kids we are much more into immediate violence, wrestling, being punished. Our species has gone through a reversion to the same stage in the past—take warfare, swords, battlefields, hand-to-hand combat, inflicting of pain. These are phases that people go through. But I think it’s sad for someone to spend their whole life going through the same ritual of being tied up and punished. That has to do with guilt and shame that’s imposed upon us by Judeo-Christian religion. Anything you do to enjoy yourself sexually, you have to be punished for. The first time you were found masturbating, you got spanked. Of course, every time you got spanked you came in your pants.

  LB: I was wondering, have you ever paid for sex, and if so, what have these experiences been like?

  TL: Everyone pays for sex, one way or the other... Yes, before I was married I had experiences with prostitutes.

  LB: Did you enjoy them?

  TL: Oh, of course. I enjoyed and learned from them and every sexual experience. Most prostitution is sordid and power-oriented. But it is possible for any intelligent person to meet any other intelligent person and exchange life experiences at the body level. Money is not an issue—intelligence, goodwill and elegance are the real issues there.

  LB: Have you ever had experiences with group sex? What are your feelings about swinging?

  TL: I’ve been in rooms where I have made love to people when other people were present. But no, I am not a swinger; I am not an orgy person.

  “I don’t know if Leary even looked at me sexually,” Laura muses. “Maybe he did but like I said, he wasn’t particularly sexy. I had a good time because he had a beautiful wife, Barbara. I was turned on by her. Absolutely. And she was much more real and nicer than he was. He was nice enough, but not like her…”

  After the interview Tim gives Laura and me two tabs of Tim Leary-Approved™ Acid. Tim tells us the last time he did acid, a few weeks before, he went out and bought a Mercedes.

  A few weeks after the interview Laura and I drop the acid at my cabin. We have loving hippie psychedelic sex: ultrasensitive, shape-shifting, time-traveling, out of body, Garden of Eden with an exploding synesthesiac rainbow/maple fudge/trumpets orgasm. No whips, no pain, no roles. We just do all the things early Homo sapiens did before other people told them they shouldn’t.

  Then I mow the lawn while Laura plays with the cats and then we do the laundry together. We are the ultimate suburbanization and bourgeoisification of the hallucinogenic experience. Turn On, Tune In, Do The Laundry.

  36

  Alea Iacta Est

  Two days later

  Two days after we interview Timothy Leary we read about a swingers club in the Los Angeles Free Press and decide to go. Laura does about three lines in each nostril before we leave the Hyatt House on Sunset, nicknamed the “Riot House,” because of the rock bands
that stay there and their famous commotions including several Keith Moon incidents that were early warning signs of his demise, and where Moon, Keith Richards and John Bonham each allegedly dropped a TV out of a window at different times for different reasons.

  I say to Laura, “I love you, but you need to stop doing so much coke.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need,” she says with a hard edge.

  The club is on La Brea just south of Hollywood Boulevard in West Hollywood.

  We pay our $50, go to the locker room and come out in standard swing club uniform: Laura in black lace bra and panties and me in bikini briefs and an open shirt. The crowd is sooo very L.A. and definitely the most attractive I’ve ever seen at an on-premise swingers club anywhere. I can see that every guy in the place spends more time in a gym than me.

  We stop at the bar for a vodka and tonic, and then head off to one of the swing rooms. I’m not sure how well I would do in this L.A. babe pool with a lesser being by my side, but with Laura I’m getting some nice eye contact from what I assume are would-be starlets.

  Laura and I lie down next to each other in the far corner of a large, dimly lit room carpeted wall to wall with mattresses. It looks like there are about eight or nine couples and half a dozen extra guys, two in threesomes with couples and the other four playing with themselves while standing in line to fuck one babe who is somewhere in the middle of a gangbang.

  Like many on-premise swingers clubs that are supposed to be couples-only, this one has a small herd of single men who are either friends of the owner or bribers of the bouncer. Guys who want Laura bring over their Vaginal Offerings for me to inspect. Uncharacteristically, in a perversion of my normal depraved preference for steamy sluts, I choose a wholesome surfer babe. Laura selects a guy who could be the fourth runner up in a Teenage Troy Donahue Look-Alike Contest. The couple next to us is another hot guy on his back being ridden by another surfer babe who looks remarkably similar to mine. Both have the same build, medium long bleached blonde hair, natural breasts on the small side of a B-cup and suntans everywhere except where bikini bottoms once resided. They look like they could be cousins. But I’m wrong.

  During a rest stop I ask my Surfer Girl if she knows the other Surfer Girl. She laughs and says of course she does, they’re sisters. Then she leans over to give her sister a slow theatrical two-girl porn kiss and all I can think about is that I’m sorry I didn’t grow up next door to them.

  Sister Two finishes with Hot Guy, joins us and starts playing with my balls as I fuck Sister One. I’m having another of those moments I feared would never happen to me when I lay in bed jerking off as a teenager.

  There are few things more pleasurable than having your balls played with, licked, caressed, kissed or gently sucked at the beginning of an erotic event. The yin/yang of balls, and I don’t know which one is yin and which is yang, is that they provide a man with just about the most pleasure that can be had, or, in different circumstances, just about the most pain.

  Some guys have big balls and some small. Mine are on the large size, the size of jumbo eggs but smaller than goose eggs. It’s great having your balls touched even if you have to do it yourself. Many men, including me, play with their balls with one hand while jerking off with the other. Certainly it’s best when a girl (or preferably two) touches them for you. Balls make great foreplay on the way to an orgasm and long after, having a girl caress or scratch you there can fill hours with joy.

  I was taught that if you are knocked down in a street fight and you’re being kicked by one or more guys, use your arms and hands to protect your eyes and your balls. Everything else will heal faster than those two regions and permanent damage to either place will bring daily lifelong misery.

  The fact that humans have external testicles is just plain wonderful. It’s got something to do with their functioning better as a sperm factory in temperatures lower than the body. It could have gone the other way and instead of being like horses, dogs and cats with the gift of external balls, we could have ended up like other mammals such as elephants, rhinos, sloths, whales and dolphins with internal balls which, now I’m just guessing here, I don’t see being as much fun.

  Balls as a metaphor stand for courage. We say, “He’s got balls,” “You’ve got some stones,” and, “You got to give it to him but that bastard has major cahones” as a tribute, while penis metaphors like: “He’s a prick,” “Don’t be a dick,” and as Elliot called his brother in E.T., “penis breath,” are not compliments.

  Laura as usual now has a group of guys around her, with the bravest ones already in the dance. She is on her hands and knees with one guy behind and one in front. She is right next to me getting a triple dip of Vanilla Nookie to which she adds some Chunky Monkey, Moose Tracks and Rocky Road by pleading, “Spank me,” “Use me hard,” and “Hurt me with it.”

  After I finish with the Surfer Sisters, fucking but not coming in Sister Two, Laura takes a break and we head off to the bar. It’s about ten stools long, kind of like a bar in a social club for Veterans in a small country town. About fifteen people are in the room, some dressed, some completely naked and some in-between. Laura and I are among the naked. She orders two vodka and tonics, which are made with something that tastes a little bit like vodka and something that tastes a little bit like tonic.

  Standing, Laura rests her arms on the bar. A guy next to us, Soap Opera handsome with good manners asks if he can touch her. He starts stroking and rubbing her ass. She loves it and pushes back and jiggles around. Soap Star, also naked, compliments Laura on her lovely bum and then looks at me and asks if he can put his cock in her. I nod yes.

  He does. She never turns around. He finishes and another guy asks me for permission. This goes on for seven more guys who each fill her with his jism. I am so turned on I become her eighth. Once again I’m not crazy about the cold fluid dripping down her thighs but the erotic outweighs the cold viscosity and I get past it.

  She turns around. The guys shower her with “Thank yous,” while she kisses me for a very long time. Then she says she must retrieve her purse from the coat check and “clean up” in the ladies room, which I know means do more coke.

  As she walks away a small flood spills out of her and onto the floor. I watch her and wonder how often they have to shampoo the carpets.

  She comes back annoyed, complaining that she spilled her coke in the bathroom. She licked up what she could but needs more. She walks around the bar trying to hustle some from each guy. I am embarrassed. I call her over, talk to her gently.

  “Let’s go home. We had a great evening. We’ll go home and have some more fun.”

  “Soon. I just need to get a little more coke.”

  This is the first time I hear her say, “Need to get.” It’s Epiphany Time, the first of three I get in the next ten minutes. She’s crossed the Rubicon. As Caesar said. “Alea iacta est,” “the die is cast.”

  “We’ll get some tomorrow. Let’s go home and fuck.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. Get me some coke.”

  “Tomorrow, baby. Let’s get dressed and go.”

  “No,” she says with stern resolve. “If you want me to be your slave, you have to do what I want.” Epiphany Number Two. I know she’s right. I am her slave.

  “Do what I want. Get me coke,” she commands. Epiphany Number Three. This is the first time I see that she can be a total perineum, a complete taint, somewhere between a cunt and an asshole.

  I always said I would do anything for her. I guess helping her feed her drug habit qualifies as “anything.”

  One guy at the bar says he knows a dealer who will trade coke for sex. Laura jumps on it and agrees. I tell the guy to have his dealer buddy come and meet us in the parking lot.

  The guy uses the pay phone (remember them?) then comes back and says his buddy will be outside in ten minutes. We get dressed and exit. Laura is the most jittery I have ever seen her. The Dealer drives up with two other guys in a huge Lincoln. The Dealer offers Laura a
couple of spoonfuls immediately and as she’s powdering her nose through the car window he pulls out one of those ubiquitous tiny brown bottles. He playfully teases her with it, moving it slowly in front of her face, and says she can have it if she’ll blow all three of them. She accepts in the middle of the offer. Laura gets into the back seat and one after another gives each guy a blowjob for the gram. She doesn’t skimp. Each cock is adored, licked up and down. She sucks each one to completion and makes a show of swallowing each load. I stand outside the car. I am excited by her raw sexuality, exceeded only by my distress about her coke habit.

  37

  The cocaine Ponzi scheme

  Coke was everywhere and everybody was doing more and more of it and acting crazier and more paranoid, and no one spoke out against it, other than the anti-drug forces that seasoned dopers were programmed not to believe. Very few members of the hip community saw that the Emperor was naked. Few things are more dangerous than a hard drug with a good reputation.

  It was in more and more places and more overtly displayed. It was one of the biggest fads to hit the baby boomers since the Hula Hoop, the Twist and bell bottoms. It even gave pot a run for the money. And speaking of money, dope dealers loved coke. A shoebox full of grass, which can’t be cut, might be worth in 1981/82 a thousand dollars; a shoe box full of uncut coke, which will definitely get cut, is worth tens and tens of thousands.

  It’s hard to conceive of it now but in the early ’80s, business meetings would often start with lines on the table. And I don’t mean just record and movie business meetings. Lawyers and Wall Street traders were fuelling their overtime-driven careers on it. Most of the players were self-deluding themselves that it was not only safe, it was good for you. Cocaine led to mass hypnosis.