Roy smiled. “I wouldn’t say we lie a lot. And when we do, it’s only to the Establishment.” He looked at me. “Wouldn’t you say that was true?”
“Definitely.”
Roy wondered what Sally thought about that. She said, “It must be okay for you, because otherwise how could you be so beautiful?”
“No, but really,” he said, “don’t you think a person has to?”
“Look,” she said, “if you live as if the revolution’s already over, then there isn’t any Establishment, is there? In post-revolutionary society, everybody’s just a person.”
Roy said, “Yes, but what about banks and insurance companies and parents and armies and things like that?”
Roy loves hypothetical discussions. One of his favorite subjects is morality.
“That’s very tough,” Sally said. “I suppose if you were in the Army and had to lie to get out of killing someone, then you’d just have to go ahead and lie. But of course that’s an exceptional situation, because there it’s like you’re dealing with real maniacs.”
“The Army?”
“Sure! Oh, I don’t mean every soldier is a maniac, far from it. But the ones that go around ordering the men to kill against their will—what’s that? Isn’t that what maniacs are supposed to do?”
“Right,” Roy said. “So there’s a situation where it’s justifiable to lie.”
“That’s silly, though, isn’t it?” Sally said. “Because what would we be doing in the Army? We know better.”
“Yeah.” Roy glanced at me. “We do know better.” Then he said to Sally, “What would you do if you were a man? Would you lie to stay out?”
“If I were a man,” Sally said, “I’d tell the truth to stay out.”
“And go to prison?”
“Hm-mm, not me. I’d go to Canada and marry the Prime Minister. Isn’t he heaven? No, seriously, I think it’d be easier to get used to the cold than go to prison. So I’d go to Canada.”
“And give up your citizenship?”
Sally shrugged and smiled. “Sure. What about you?”
“Well,” he said, “I guess I’d go underground.”
I said, “Tell her, Roy.”
Roy looked around the Western Union office. There was no one there but the clerk, but he wanted to be sure. Then he said, “Sally, listen, we’re underground.”
Sally breathed a long, deeply impressed ooooooh! Then she said, “Now everything is beginning to fall into place. I’d planned to come down here in the morning, but I came tonight instead. Now I know why. Oh, this is so spooky! Did you notice me looking at you when you came in here tonight?”
We said we had.
“Well,” she said, “that’s because I picked up on both of you before you even walked in the door. Truly. I got distinct angel vibes just seeing you through the window.”
“Fantastic,” I said.
“Far out!” Roy said.
Sally’s very persuasive. We both ended up agreeing with her. Without much struggle either. Let’s face it, it’s true. Roy and I are angels. If we happen to fuck up once in a while, what does that prove?
Sally was shimmering and glittering and twinkling from head to toe. “Give me your hands,” she said.
Roy and I each took one of her hands in ours, and we formed a little circle.
When Sally noticed the Western Union man leaning on the counter watching us, she said, “Do you want to join the circle, too?”
He hesitated. You could tell he dug the idea. But he said no, thanks, he guessed he better not, and he went back to work.
Then Sally said, “Okay, let’s close our eyes together.”
We closed our eyes and sat in silence for a minute.
“I see this fabulous light, don’t you?” she said.
I hadn’t, but I began to, and it seemed to grow stronger. Roy said he saw it, too.
Sally said, “You know what that light is?”
Roy said, “I’m not sure. What is it?”
“That’s us. And it’s especially strong because there’s three of us. And we’re together.”
We said wow.
Sally said, “Think how it will be when the whole world’s together!”
Then the light in our heads went Zap! and multiplied about a hundred times, exploding in all sorts of forms and colors.
And while our eyes were still closed and our inner eyes were still getting this real acid-style light show, Sally Sunflower said, “I hope you’ll come home with me and join our family.”
That did it.
I fell apart. Tears. The works. It wasn’t just me either. They had wet eyes, too.
The clerk came over to the counter at about this point to tell us my money order had come—$150 and a message.
DEAR GLORIA BUSES ARE NASTY TAKE A PLANE ALL IS FORGIVEN WE LOVE YOU MOTHER AND DAD
I started to have a big guilt flash, but I decided to put it off till later. So I composed a message for her.
DEAR MOTHER THANKS FOR MONEY PLANS CHANGED LETTER FOLLOWS
It sounded pretty naked but I couldn’t think of any way to dress it up, so I just added LOVE AND PEACE GLORIA and sent it.
The Canal Street neighborhood is spooky at night. You have to walk through a couple of miles of dark warehousey streets to get to it.
We talked all the way. Sally filled us in on the family. The head of it, even though she said there wasn’t one, was obviously Peter Friedman, this guru she’d mentioned. He used to be a psychoanalyst (Sagittarius) but he dropped out (Super-Sagittarius) in 1967. One of his lady patients, a fancy Hollywood talent agent named Doris, dropped out at the same time and came east to live with him. They took the top three floors of this four-story building about a block from the river. He wasn’t rich but he still had some money left. So did Doris. Besides, the place was old and run down and not very expensive.
For a while it was just Peter and Doris. Then one day their Yoga teacher got evicted from his loft and moved in with them. And while the three of them were marching on Washington that fall, they met a cab driver. The four of them more or less fell in love, so he moved in, too. And that’s the way it happened, and kept happening until pretty soon there were nine.
All the way over to Canal Street, Roy and I were stopping to pinch ourselves. I’d say, Do you believe what is happening to us? And he’d say, No, do you? I’d say, No, and we’d both say, Wow. The prospect of having a place to live, Sally Sunflower for a friend, and a super-high guru like Peter Friedman thrown in on top of it all was almost more than either of us could handle.
As we climbed the stairs we heard “Hare Krishna” playing on the stereo, the same Swami Bhaktivedanta recording Roy and I used to groove on in Belle Woods. Even though everything else was strange to us, this chanting gave us a feeling of coming home. And the minute we walked in the door, we knew we were home. We were greeted by four people we’d never seen before, three guys and a chick, but each one of them was as familiar to us as our own faces. Sally introduced us as new members of the family and the next thing we knew we were sitting in a circle holding hands with our new brothers and sisters, being accepted without a word of questioning.
Then they told Sally what had happened that evening. Peter had received a call from California telling him his father was dying. So he and Doris were on their way to California.
I was too lost in wonder and amazement to listen very carefully to all that was said. I remember looking around the room a lot. The place itself was ordinary, but the overall effect was magical. There was an altar on one wall—just a little table, really, with a wooden Buddha on it, a candle and some incense. Around Buddha’s neck someone had hung a big gold cross. The only other detail that hooked my mind was a long narrow table at one end of the room. It reminded me of the last supper.
I guess for Roy and me it was the highest night of our lives to date. Even after the angel shit wore off, the night got higher and higher and higher!
Roy was in a state of utter flabbergastation. Mouth open,
eyes blinking. He looked as if he’d just wandered into paradise and found it even finer than its reputation. All the while the others were talking, the two of us kept looking at their beautiful faces, and then we’d look at each other and say wow over and over again.
Midnight
The previous entry was written in about a dozen different sittings. I haven’t yet found a quiet place to work around here. Tomorrow I want to write brief sketches of every member of the family, but I think I’m in real danger of becoming a writing freak. It’s so hard to decide what to include and what to eliminate. Everything that happens around here seems interesting and important.
For instance, mealtime is a real gas. (Not because of my cooking either. Everyone said it was good, but I’m not so sure. I think the rice was too soggy and Sally’s the one who actually baked the fish. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll learn.) When we sit down to eat, we hold hands around the table, close our eyes, and send Zaps to faraway brothers. We start with Will, the one in Pennsylvania who’s serving out his sentence for draft refusal. Then, if you want to Zap someone else, all you have to do is say his name and everyone in the family chips in his voltage to help you do it.
But that’s enough, goddam it. I’m tired!
1.10 a.m.
I can’t sleep. I’m wondering where my father is.
2:30 a.m.
Still can’t sleep. Neither can Roy. We’re in our cave under the attic stairs. He’s lying next to me with his eyes closed, and I’ve got one leg thrown across his stomach to keep us feeling connected. We’ve just had a very realistic talk and decided we’ve both been flying a little too high in certain ways, and had better be careful of crashing.
I don’t know how either of us could be so naïve as to think we could move into a perfect stranger’s house while he’s away and actually expect him to come back and be delighted about our being here. Obviously he’s in the habit of taking people in, because there are all these others here. But did they move in while he was away? Didn’t he have some say in the matter?
Earlier, I asked Sally Sunflower if she didn’t think there was some chance Peter would be annoyed about our moving in on him like this. Her answer, even though I love her to pieces, made me feel she might be just a tiny bit manic. She said, “Peter trusts me. He knows I have good judgment.” Smiling like mad, of course, the darling.
I said, “Okay, but what about Doris?”
“Doris trusts me, too.”
“But Sally, they’ve never even seen us. And we’ve moved into their house, bag and baggage.”
“I know,” she said. “Isn’t it groovy?” Then she hugged me and went off to some meeting. (Theosophy, I think.)
Roy said he never had believed our good luck was necessarily permanent.
I asked him what gave him his first inkling of doubt. He said it was that first night on the street when Sally mentioned Peter had been an analyst. Because of his father, all these alarms started ringing in his head. Then for a while he got carried away meeting all these new people. But before we went to bed, when I suggested he put up the Desiderata poster, he only went along with the idea because he didn’t want to bring me down. But he didn’t push the tacks all the way in.
He asked me what gave me my first clue. I said I guessed it was Sally. She sounded a little bit fanatical on the subject of Peter, and that made me feel he must have some really fabulous flaws that she’d failed to pick up on.
Anyway, I feel better now, because Roy and I are back to earth. We both realize our fates are far from sealed. We’ve got ourselves set up now so we can pack our things and be out of here in 60 seconds flat. The $150 from Mother is a nice cushion, but we’ve decided to put part of it in the Grocery Pig.
The Grocery Pig is part of the post-revolutionary economy. The family has this ceramic gravy boat in the shape of a pig, and everybody chips in for household expenses.
Tomorrow we’re going to do something about getting jobs.
CANAL STREET, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1969
I’m sitting on an upside-down bucket in the most wonderful office in the world. It’s a greenhouse on the roof. Will built it before he went to prison. He’s not only a carpenter but a plant freak. According to family legend, his thumb is so green all he has to do is lean on an old man’s cane and it takes root right before your eyes. He even grows things you’re not supposed to be able to grow at all, except in the tropics. For instance, at this very second I am looking at a hibiscus plant, a live one. Nobody else can get it to bloom, but Will can—even in winter! All the plants have tags on them. Dracaenea. Dieffenbachia. Schefalerea. Andonidea. Banana. (Banana!)
I’m learning to call each of them by name. Will told Cary Colorado (he’s our Yoga teacher) this can be an enormous help when you’re trying to get blooms from them. Talking to them by name lets them know your interest in them is more than just casual and they turn themselves inside out trying to please you.
Everything I’ve heard about Will makes me like him. There’s a photograph of him on Peter’s bulletin board. The face is all in shadow, but you can see he’s fantastically tall and his shoulders are just enormous. One of these days I’ll write to him and thank him for the use of this groovy office. Also, I just discovered that the alcove where Roy and I sleep used to be Will’s, too. I wonder what his birth sign is? I hope he’s an Aries.
Today I found out classes begin at City College on the 15th. When I hung up the phone I started trembling. Why?
I’ve been dreaming about my father for the last two nights. In one dream we were married and living in a foreign country. But it didn’t seem foreign, it just was. Everything pure white and mysterious, and then the whole thing turned inside out and became murky. I think I changed into my mother or something.
Sally says she’ll show me how to get to City College on the subway.
Mrs. Gretzinger in Senior English told me I’d probably write a book someday, but I shouldn’t do it until I could do it with authority. I have a fantastic idea for a novel and I could really do it, too. There’s this young girl in Elmhurst, Illinois, or Wild Earth, Kansas, or wherever I decide to put her. She knows Where It’s At because she reads constantly. Time, Look, Playboy, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, EVO, Screw, everything she can get her hands on. But she hasn’t had a chance yet to try her hip little wings in a real center of action. So the book starts with her arrival in New York. I’ll use some of my own actual experiences. Roy’s too. I’ll have her get robbed and beaten up, put in beaucoups sex, plus I’ll have her fall in with a gang of smackheads who try to turn her on to heroin, etc. A thing like this could really sell like acid at a festival and I could make a fortune. The girl ought to be a virgin, though. Or at least a virgin head, so if she doesn’t have her first big sex thing in the book at least she’ll have her first acid trip. Then in the movie version there can be all these psychedelic effects. Better yet, why don’t I give her a virgin body and head and she can lose both cherries at once in a fantastic climactic scene?
I hate it. I really do. I really hate it. I’m so sick of all this virginity bullshit. I’ve never been a virgin and I don’t know anyone who ever was. I think virginity must have been invented by dirty old men so they’d have something to defile. What else is it good for? Anyway, women have been hassled enough about it, and I’m certainly not going to write an entire book that’ll do nothing but foster a lot of phoniness. Only why is it every time I come up with a really sensational idea for a novel, it’s always got to be so disgusting I can’t write it?
Okay. Back to the journal.
When we got here Friday night there were four members of the Canal Street family missing. Peter and Doris—and Will, of course. The fourth was away somewhere for the weekend, but I met him this morning. Archie Fiesta. My stupid hand lingers over the letters as I write his name. I loathe being in love. (Loving is great. Being in love sucks.) Archie’s a Virgo with a moon in Leo and Aquarius rising, which means I’ve had it. Poor Roy, being Pisces like me, is having the same problem. Exc
ept that he seems to be digging it and I’m not. I suppose that’s because he’s got Virgo rising and Virgo men seem to love trouble. For instance, Archie took him out this afternoon to show him the town, and Roy floated off like a bubble.
Archie Fiesta is the first . . .
I don’t want to think about Archie now. If I do, I won’t feel like writing, and I want to do little sketches of the others.
Neyeurme is a cab driver. He’s probably about 30, but he looks like a big schoolboy. His skin is very dark and he has Afro hair. He’s always reading and I get the impression he’s a heavy thinker. His answers to even the most casual questions are pondered so carefully that after a while you begin to wonder if it was cool to place such a burden on his head. He has a big troubled forehead with a few hickeys on it, and I keep imagining there’s some connection between the hickeys and all this heavy thinking. He’s a double Gemini, which can’t be too much fun. His name is a bitch to pronounce. The ghost of some archbishop appeared to him while he was tripping one night and laid it on him. This ghost is the only other person besides Neyeurme who can say it correctly because it has all these diphthongy tongue-strangling nuances to it. But it’s his soul’s name, so all his friends try terribly hard for a while and then give up and call him Nyoom.
Cary Colorado comes from Boulder. He used to be part of a very high commune there, before it got squeezed out by the local Establishment. His mother named him Cary because she was hung up on Cary Grant. But he doesn’t look like a movie star. He looks like an ape. In fact, he’s any girl’s dream of what an ape would be if apes were really groovy and not too covered up with body hair. He has this compact little jungle-style body, too, probably from doing Yoga. He’s known in the family as the Meditator, because his thing is putting out these blockbuster vibes. He’s an Aquarius with Aries rising, and when you sit in a circle with him, it’s sort of like being electrocuted with love. He’s 22 and he’s spent the last three years learning secrets for getting high without dope. He teaches Yoga for a living and he’s happy all the time! But what delights me most of all about Cary Colorado is that he’s a perfect ape. Everything about him, from his pie-face smile right down to his longer than normal arms, strikes me as simian-groovy.
Season of the Witch Page 8