At Rockefeller Center we noticed a lot of people smoking marijuana right out in the open. Suddenly I was inspired with the idea of getting Hank turned on. Just as I was looking around to find someone I might score a couple of joints from, Hank said, “You want marijuana? I got a pocketful.”
“You’re putting me on!”
“Look here.” He pulled open the side pocket of his jacket.
“Wow! Shall we smoke one?”
“Here?”
“Sure.”
“And go to jail?”
“Everybody’s smoking,” I said. “They can’t arrest us all.”
He shrugged. There’s no real point in my writing “He shrugged” over and over again. My father shrugs almost every time he speaks. I don’t know if it means that nothing matters to him—or that everything does, terribly, and he wishes it didn’t.
So he took out a joint and lit it. I could tell the way he was trying to be super-casual, handling it like a regular cigarette, that he didn’t know what he was doing. Heads can always spot an amateur.
I said, “I didn’t know you smoked pot.”
(Shrug.) “I thought I give it a try.”
“This is good. Where’d you get it?”
“Some kid in the park sold me a handful. Ten dollars. What the hell, why not?”
I knew he wouldn’t get a high from it unless he held the smoke longer, but I didn’t want to tell him what to do. I always have the feeling his ego’s about ready to fall apart anyway, so I tried to give a clear demonstration without saying anything, and on the next toke, he copied the way I did it.
“Do you smoke a lot?” I asked him.
“Once before. But nothing happened. What about you? You take a lot of dope, huh?”
“I’ve had a lot of acid. Maybe thirty or forty trips, but I’m not taking any more for a while.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t liked where my head is lately.” I could see from his face that more explanation was needed, so I said, “If a person’s not really together up here”—I tapped my head—“acid can backfire on you. Unless you’re with somebody who really knows where it’s at.”
“You haven’t got a good head?”
“Not as good as I used to think it was.”
“Something happened?”
“Not really. But I’ve been sort of confused lately. I do things and I don’t know why I’m doing them.” The conversation was beginning to make me uncomfortable. So I said, “No big deals. I haven’t killed anybody or freaked out or anything. I’m just playing it cool for a while.”
“You ever try to jump off the roof?” He was dead serious.
“No.”
“I read a little about it,” he said. “People jump out of windows sometimes, huh?”
“Nobody I know ever has. But I guess it’s happened. How’s your head?”
“My head?” (Shrug.) “It’s just a head.”
“No, I mean right now. Does it feel high?”
“Nah. This stuff doesn’t do anything to me.”
“To me it does. I feel great! You want to smoke another one?”
(Shrug.) He took out another joint and lit it. Then he offered it to me, but I said I’d had enough.
A man in dark glasses and a big bushy beard came up and asked Hank for a toke. Hank looked at me for guidance, but this time I did the shrugging. I didn’t much like the man’s looks. He seemed to be a kind of freeloader type who asks for things too easily. I suppose if it’d been my joint, I’d have given it to him anyway. But Hank said, “Sorry, sir. I don’t know you.”
The stranger said, “Man, don’t you know we’re having a revolution?”
“I still don’t know you.” Hank took my arm and as we walked away, the man shouted peace after us. I turned around and shot him a peace sign, and it was okay. He was smiling. Hank hadn’t bummed him.
“Revolution!” Hank started grumbling and he kept it up for several blocks. “What’s a revolution? Is it getting diseases from strangers? Revolution. A lot of crap. This country doesn’t know what revolution means. Smoke marijuana. Wear an armband. Grow a beard. Make peace signs. Some revolution!”
I kept quiet. Hank said, “That guy’s a bum. I know bums. You think I’m wrong?”
“He might be a bum,” I said. “I just don’t know if he is or not.”
“You let a stranger puff on your cigarette?”
“Sometimes I do.”
“What about diseases?”
“It is taking a chance.”
“And the nerve! What about the nerve he’s got?”
“Oh well, it’s all over now. It doesn’t really matter.”
“It doesn’t matter! I’m disagreeable, huh? You think I should have . . . ” His voice trailed off. “Where are we going?” he said.
“I guess we’re just walking.”
Then he stopped and looked back. “What’s happening here?”
I said, “I think you’re beginning to feel the marijuana.”
“Oh yeah?” He stood still for a minute. “Maybe.” Then he added begrudgingly, “A little. Maybe.”
We walked for another half a block, and he said, “What were we talking about?”
“It wasn’t anything important.”
A few steps later: “Are you sure?”
“Mm. We were talking about smoking after strangers.”
“Ah! I remember.”
“But it wasn’t important. Shall we go to Bryant Park?”
“Too many people. Too many bums.”
“Would you like to go to Canal Street then? You could meet my friends and we could all have dinner.”
“What were we talking about?”
“Hank, listen, would you? I want to explain something to you. Okay?”
“Explain. Go ahead.”
“Well, it’s just that, when you’re smoking pot—you know, marijuana—you sometimes forget what you’re saying. And it never really matters at all. You just let go of the thought, whatever it was. And if it was important, it’ll come back again. I just thought I should explain that to you.”
“It makes you forget what you’re doing?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well! That’s a hell of a thing!”
“But it can be very nice!”
“Nice? To forget?”
“Yes. Very.”
“I don’t see how that’s so nice!”
“Just think about it a minute, will you? For instance, we were just talking about that man, right? The guy who asked you for a toke from your cigarette?”
“Yeah, I remember that bum.”
“Yes, but the thing is, he wasn’t really important. So if we’ve forgotten him, that’s good. Isn’t it?”
“But suppose I don’t want to forget something.” He raised a finger, teacher-style. “You see? You forget. Some things are important to remember!”
“Well then, those things you can think about some other time! When you’re not smoking marijuana. Marijuana isn’t for remembering. It’s for pleasure.”
“Aah! Yeah! I see! Pleasure! Mm-hm! Yeah! Sure!” He shook his head. “You kids. You think a revolution is for pleasure! You got something to learn, I can tell you that much!”
“Hank.” I stopped walking again. “We’re not talking about revolution. We’re talking about smoking marijuana!”
“It’s the same thing! Listen to me, I know what I’m telling you.”
“Really? Well then, would you tell me again?”
He looked at me with completely blank eyes, and I knew he didn’t have a thought in his entire head. Obviously the pot was trying to quiet his mind down and let him have a little peace, but my poor father was struggling against it for all he was worth.
I did a terrible thing. I laughed. And I couldn’t stop myself.
“I’m funny!” he said. “You think I’m funny!”
I said, “Hank, it’s not you. It’s the marijuana that’s funny. Why don’t you just laugh!”
“Th
is is very serious!” he said. And he was so stern and convincing I tried to be serious.
“What is?”
Then he drew another blank, and at first he seemed so concerned about it I got really worried. I’d never seen anyone actually freak out from first-high paranoia, but it looked like it was happening to Hank. And then, thank God, he saw the humor of it, and we both laughed together. We stood in the entranceway at Brentano’s and laughed for at least five minutes. I wasn’t really that amused. I was forcing it a little, to keep him company. Because you could tell how badly he needed that laughing. I could imagine all kinds of busy little fingers working away in his guts trying to untie all the knots in there. And it made me happy. The sight of my father laughing for all he was worth doubled my high.
Later, maybe as much as ten minutes later, as we were waiting for the subway train to come, he was still thinking about it.
“Laughing doesn’t hurt,” he said.
In common with my mother, I have the makings of a third-rate manipulator of people. I should give up. My big unspoken motive in taking Hank Glyczwycz to Canal Street was to get him tuned in by Peter Friedman. It didn’t really work in quite the way I’d hoped. Maybe it would have if Hank hadn’t stopped at a liquor store on the way home to buy a gallon of wine. His contribution to the dinner, he said, but by the time we sat down at the table he’d drunk several glasses of it. And with each gulp his politeness toward Peter increased until it was almost insulting. Right from the start, he looked at Peter in a narrow-eyed half-smiling way that said, So you’re the old nut who runs this asylum. And I kept expecting Peter to grab the bait. His head, by his own admission, is half old warlike Piscean, and half young peaceful Aquarian, you can never be sure which half’s going to show itself. So we had this mini-tension all through dinner.
Also there was a cop at the table. Sally and Roy found him in front of the Library. He was wandering around completely spaced out on acid—his first trip—when Sally and Roy came along and decided to take charge of him. Not that he was having any difficulty. In fact, he seemed as happy as could be, but Roy was afraid all that psychedelic smiling, in full uniform, might cause him to lose his job. Sally agreed, so they brought him home.
In all, there were fourteen at the table. Nyoom brought Mary home with him, and Cary Colorado came in with old friends from Boulder, three beautiful heads who looked like they’d just stepped down from a covered wagon. Joshua, with a long craggy frontiersman’s face shining out of a bushel of cornsilk hair and beard. Lu, half redskin and half black, with a smile that started in his feet. And a tiny little blond called Motherlove Ford. Motherlove did the cooking. Watercress salad and a great casserole made of rice and beans and sesame seeds and peanuts.
Hank’s paranoia let up slightly at the dinner table. He was a little self-conscious about the pre-meal Zap, and probably would have resisted if he hadn’t felt outnumbered. Sally was the only one at the table who realized he was my father, but she didn’t let on. When I had a chance, I whispered the fact to Roy. He was fascinated and kept studying Hank every chance he got.
In spite of Hank’s presence, Peter had a pretty good high going for him. He likes it when the table’s so full we have to bring in nail kegs and orange crates to seat the extra people. I think it makes him feel like the patriarch of some enormous tribe. And of course he is. There must be hundreds of people who love and trust him, and he really digs the feeling it gives him. I heard him tell Jeanette he felt like a king. And she said, “You are a king, baby.” He thought about it a minute, his face glowing like mad, then he said, “Okay. But that means everybody else at the table is at least a prince or a princess.” Then she took a look around and said, “I believe you’re right.” Hank picked up on this little exchange, too. He didn’t say anything, but he made sure Peter caught the comment his nasty smile was making.
For a while everyone was talking at once. We all had stories to tell about things that had happened through the day. Peter started giving Joshua and Motherlove his Golden Age rap. I’d never heard it firsthand before, so I started listening, too, and pretty soon everyone else at the table stopped talking to tune in on it.
“Someday, and you’ll all live to see it,” he said, “all the world will be at peace, and there’ll be a great international coming together of man. Every man, woman, and child on the planet holding hands around the world. It’ll happen, I swear it will. Each tribe, each town, each city neighborhood, every nation on earth will form its own chain of hands. Just as we do here at the table each night. This thing’ll be coordinated by television and Telstar, you see, because that’s what they’re for. That’s their real function. In fact, I’ll go farther, I’ll say this: The ultimate use of all technology is to bring men together. Anyway, when that day comes, listen to me now, I’m telling you, there’ll be such a Zap! this entire planet will shimmer! Everyone alive will enter into a new day. And what will the new day be like? All you have to do is imagine. Think about it. What will happen on this earth when the people who inhabit it become fully human? When we all realize that this is the kingdom of heaven. In other words, when we all learn to love. Because love is man’s destiny. We know that, don’t we? It’s not just a dream, or the invention of some hippie stoked out on acid. It’s man’s thing. Man’s great potential is as a lover. In the past we didn’t have much time or energy to concentrate on getting this thing together. We were too busy. We had to hustle for food and shelter and fuel. But now we’ve done all that. The hustling for survival is over. We’ve got our knowledge now, we’ve got our technology. We’re learning at last, after eons of struggle, we’re learning how to be free of purely animal concerns. What a fantastic stroke of luck to be alive now, at this moment, of all moments in history. You and I, every one of us alive, are taking part in an event we’ve been growing toward for thousands of centuries—the flowering of the human person. We’re it. It’s here. It’s happening. The hour is upon us. Love’s magic can go to work now. And it is! It is! It’s working! All the hell and horror in the world at this second is nothing but a death rattle, the last terrible sigh of a poor fucked-up savage who was forced for a million years to subsist through greed and violence. It’s true. Man has arrived at the great moment of his destiny. Man, the old monster, is in a profound state of change. Man, super-terror of the Milky Way, is in metamorphosis. Man, the animal who dreamed that one day he might become a lover, is about to get his wish. The only real problem we’ve got now is we’re not digging our success enough, our fabulous success as a species. We’re all in danger of getting sucked into this big transition-blues bullshit—and missing out on the miracle. No wonder of course. It’s so big! It may take a few minutes to get it through our heads. Meanwhile, our poor leaders go on hustling for us day and night, just as they did in the day of the monster. They still lie and grab and defend and kill for us—not realizing the necessity for it has passed. We don’t need our greed any more. We don’t need our violence. We don’t need to hoard any more. There’s enough now. For the first time in all human history, think of it, there’s enough! No, I should put it this way, there’s the means of producing enough. Buckminster Fuller tells us the entire present population of the world can be housed comfortably in the British Isles, or compactly in Haiti. Or have I got that turned around? Never mind, the point is that overpopulation is only a threat when people don’t dig each other, when we don’t dedicate our resources to taking care of one another. But when caring has been learned—and it’s happening now, it’s happening fast—when caring arrives, comes into its fullness, we’ll think there aren’t enough people! Woodstock taught us a little something, didn’t it? Isn’t it interesting, by the way, that Woodstock and the moon landing took place in the same summer? I’m in danger of losing my point here, but I think it’s worth the risk. Let me make a point about Woodstock and the moon landing. This hashish and all your beautiful faces are giving me a red hot flash of insight into these two mind-blowing events. Now look! That rocket to the moon was man’s greatest exp
loration of outer space. And Woodstock was his greatest demonstration of the possibilities of inner space. The moon landing, technology’s greatest day. Woodstock, brotherhood’s greatest day. And they happened simultaneously. Don’t you all agree that this is the most astounding sort of accident imaginable? The timing, think of it, the timing is staggering! I can hardly believe it! And yet I do. I believe it because I witnessed them both on that extraordinary machine upstairs. And I believe it because we all knew 1969 would be the Big Year. We all felt it. And so many of the prophets and astrologers foresaw it too, didn’t they? We knew 1969 had something earthshaking to deliver and we all wondered what it would be. And now it’s happened! The past is the past. The future is the future. And these two birds don’t look so much alike any more, have you noticed? It used to be they were so similar you could hardly tell them apart from year to year. But now the past is really and truly over with, in some radical new way. It’s so over with, in fact, it’s irrelevant. We’ve lived out our history. It’s done. All of its lessons are still available to us of course, but fuck ‘em, we don’t really need them any more. All we need’s the lesson of 1969. We need to know that we’re not just poor put-upon little earthlings any more. We’re not doomed forever to be creatures of violence and greed and misery, not any more. Because by our own efforts, our own genius, we’ve become spacelings. We’ve learned, because our young have demonstrated it to us, that we’re lovers. Creatures of joy. Jesus Murphy! this is big, folks, this is big! We don’t have to see ourselves as lowly earthbound killers ever again. Think of it. After this glorious summer we’re all spacelings and lovers. Amen and hallelujah!”
Doris and I served the tea and dessert—a carrot cake she’d made in the afternoon. When I came in with the mugs, I heard Hank saying to Peter, “Excuse me, I missed perhaps something important. Would you help me? I don’t understand. Exactly for what do we celebrate? The war is over? The dead walk? Widows and orphans are not widows and orphans any more? The races are united? Hungry people are eating?”
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