by Grace Slick
After about a month and a half, I noticed that Torn Back's oozing scratches and Sorefoot's seemingly dead rear feet were starting to heal. Eventually, thick soft fur covered the mother's scars and the baby began to run and play with the other young raccoons as if nothing had happened. Did they know about some herbal healing root? Did they just wait it out, dealing with what is, rather than succumbing, as humans often do, to what should be? Maybe mom rubbed his hind legs, or baby licked his own wounds and hers—I'll never know. But I'll always honor the courage and compassion these raccoons had for each other, and their inner knowledge of how to exist, no matter what the circumstances. Torn Back and Sorefoot—teachers come in all shapes, sizes, and strange given names.
May they all continue to ravage your garbage cans. And mine.
After I wrote to the panda people, my name was added to the universal master list of “Suckers for Animal Causes.” The mail poured in. From PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) I received, among other distressing photos, an image of a white rabbit torn open to his ribs for the purpose of cosmetic testing. That one really hit home, and I began to seriously investigate the phenomenon of animal testing and biomedical research (fraud).
After several years (1987 to 1992) of reading American Medical Association “white papers,” along with hundreds of books and reports on the practice of vivisection, I started to get offers from radio stations, TV programs, and magazines to give my views on the subject of biomedical research. I even found myself on the same side of a debate once with G. Gordon Liddy (the mind boggles), who from a scientific rather than an ethical stance was objecting to extrapolating from animal studies. In the end, our strange combination of personalities probably did more to undermine our point than prove it. After all, if Grace Slick and G. Gordon Liddy, coming from extreme left and right politics, actually agree on something, isn't that a demonstration of solidarity that both sides ought to stay away from? But it also demonstrated that, when it was necessary, political adversaries could drop their differences for a universal interest.
Since the rest of this chapter has nothing to do with prurient sex in the sixties, you may decide to skip over it, but for what it's worth, here are three solid reasons to be wary of pharmaceutical drugs (yeah, the ones that are endorsed by “the suits”):
1. More people experience incapacities or death from pharmaceuticals than from all street drugs combined.
2. Pharmaceuticals are all tested on animals.
3. We have more illnesses now than before the advent of mass animal testing.
What part of the above don't you understand?
If you want scientific (not ethical) information on the subject, my esteemed editor, Rick Horgan, will not supply you with further instruction because he doesn't have either an M.D. or the paperwork. But there are some medical professionals (not “animal rights” groups but people with a great deal of impressive initials in front of and behind their names) who do have relevant facts about the matter, won't blow smoke up your ass, won't try to sell you gut-wrenching chemicals, and will send informative material. Specifically:
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
5100 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, D.C. 20016
or
P.O. Box 6322
Washington, D.C. 20015
Medical Research Modernization Committee
P.O. Box 6036 Grand Central Station
New York, NY 10163-6018
A final word on this extensive topic:
I'm selling out on this one, because what I'd really like is for half of this book to focus on my life and music, and the other half to be about biomedical research fraud. But when I submitted twenty pages of views on the latter, I was told they were too preachy. In deference to the people who're paying me for this tome (here comes the selling-out part), I edited the stuff down, going from twenty pages of preachiness, which even at that length is too condensed, to three pages of being overbearingly adamant.
46
The Political Pie
I came away from the sixties with a presumptive trust in the ability of people in general to act in a way that makes sense. But by the eighties, my disenchantment with political individuals had reached an all-time high. What with cowboy/actor presidents and Bush wars, I figured the whole thing was turning into a farce. On a good day, it was funny, but most of the time, it looked like a slow disintegration into some kind of mindless corporate board game.
The political system I'm in favor of has no name. It's based—not in a lip-service way but in a real way—on the concept of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Remember that old slogan? In my perfect world, the government would send each of us a book filled with all the possible things that can be facilitated by our tax dollars and we'd choose our favorites.
Here's a theoretical list:
1. Anything military
2. Anything peaceful
3. Eco-manipulation
4. Shoe lifts for short senators
5. National parks
6. Free medical attention for carnivorous plants
7. Antibiotics for giraffe feed
8. Free education
9. Free Dr Pepper for hundred-year-old athletes
10. I. M. Pei–designed slum areas
And so forth.
Then the government would give us a list of funding needs for each, and we'd come up with an equitable distribution of tax money. In other words, after deciding what's most important to us as individuals, we'd prioritize allocations using a simple pie format.
“Political Pie” (Grace Slick)
Once the computer finished its number crunching, we'd know exactly what the majority wanted. In the above figure, representing the current political setup, shoe lifts get top priority while old people get the shaft. My suggestion is, why not simplify the tax forms and find out what U.S. citizens really want? Surely we've learned by now that the democratic process is thwarted by representatives' questionable motives and by a lack of trust on the part of citizens themselves.
Now you may ask: Has any large-scale “government”— U.S.A. or other—ever given this much autonomy to its constituents? No. Which is why this pie-in-the-face routine would need the overwhelming support of the people to be implemented.
Whether or not Washington types decide to adopt my particular suggestion for a new form of taxation, I still think the existing system needs an overhaul. Voting now boils down to do-you-want-a-punch-in-the-arm-or-a-kick-in-the-leg? There just isn't much choice between the parties anymore and not enough access to the “fine print” of a given issue to vote with conviction. So why bother? On the other hand, if Texas's Ann Richards runs for president, I'll be right out there with a red-white-and-blue table, sitting in front of a supermarket, begging people to register.
After I'd come up with my pie drawing while writing this book, I saw a Newsweek cover story (October 3, 1997) titled “Inside the IRS. Lawless, Abusive and Out of Control.”
What a fucking surprise! Tell us all something we don't already know. Then I read journalist Hunter S. Thompson's book Better Than Sex, his marvelously skewed look at addiction to politics and the decline and fall of our “nation of dreams.” I agree with him that nothing seems to change, the costumes just get sillier as time goes on. And since the average citizen doesn't have a clue what's happening, the test of a given administration becomes the fullness of our pocketbooks. When the U.S. of A. is through strutting, Japan (or some other country with the cash and arrogance) will crown itself, and we'll take our place beside Italy, Spain, and the U.K. among the other old warriors who've been out-muscled in the world power game.
Benjamin Disraeli once said, “In politics, there is no honor,” but that didn't keep him from helping Queen Victoria annex most of the known world for the glory of the British Empire. I don't have anything against cutthroat capitalism—after basic medical, educational, and housing benefits for all citizens have been secured. Then eve
ryone gets a shot at playing Donald Trump if they choose to invest their energy in that particular crapshoot.
The sad part is that we do have the resources to give the basics to our citizens, but the lobbyists tend to swat down high-minded funding proposals with their special-interest baseball bats. More often than not, the trade-offs they concoct turn into banana peels beneath their feet.
Whether it's a simple marriage or the merger of international conglomerates, successful human interaction depends on how separate the participants choose to view themselves in the evolutionary process. Too often it becomes us and them. How about just WE?
That's a question I asked in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. And in the nineties I'm still asking it.
47
The Cold Shoulder
By 1987, I'd rejected most political concerns, and my life was divided between my interest in biomedical research and recording with Starship. As it turned out, though, my career was about to come to an abrupt close.
It happened like this: one of the songs on the last Grace-included Starship album was scheduled to be a duet between Mickey Thomas and myself. At least, we'd practiced it that way in rehearsal. But when I went to the studio to put down my harmony part, Mickey had already done it as a solo piece. He felt that because his wife was having a baby and the lyrics alluded to children, he had a personal connection to the song. Seemed reasonable. It also seemed like a convenient way to skirt the duet process.
I didn't resist. Understanding both Mickey's desire to be sovereign and feeling a growing urge to get more involved in protecting the rights of my four-footed—and feathered—friends, I'd already decided to leave the group when the contract was finished. Then, unfortunately, a case of bilateral capsulitis, better known as frozen shoulder, stopped me one job short of my final scheduled gig with Starship. The concert was to be in Southern California, but several weeks before the date, while we were still in Marin, my left shoulder had begun to give me trouble. Over a period of a couple of weeks, I'd lost so much movement, I only had a ten-inch range of motion. Since I didn't have maids, hairdressers, wardrobe people, or any other cosmetic assistance, it would have been impossible for me to pack, do my hair, lift suitcases, etc. So once again (this time for “legitimate” reasons), I pulled out before the completion of a tour.
I underwent six months of physical therapy, which involved having my arm shoved around in painful positions. It was unnecessary torture; it turns out they could have used the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine to pinpoint the problem at the onset. When I finally had the MRI done, it became clear that I needed a serious shoulder manipulation. “Put her under anesthesia and jam the damn arm up over her head to break the adhesions” was more or less what the does said.
It worked.
For a period of several months I was stationary, healing my shoulder, making dolls out of clay, reading biomedical reports, and staying home in our Mill Valley house. Skip was often on the road with various bands, doing lights or production. When he came home, we went to alcohol-abuse counseling together.
When I picked him up at the airport after he'd completed his rock-and-roll tours, we usually hugged and greeted each other in the normal friendly way, but this one particular day, he held on to me longer and harder than ever before. I dismissed it, thinking he was just especially delighted to be home this time, but I was wrong. It was the clinging of sadness because he had a secret. A friend had told him that to confess would bring a kick in the head from Yours Truly, but Skip felt he should tell me the truth and accept the consequences.
The “other woman” was twenty-three years old and looked like a prom-queen poster child. I remembered that when I'd first met her some time before, I figured she was going to be trouble for some poor woman whose man had tired of his existing relationship. I just didn't know that woman would be me.
Skip confessed he'd been “seeing” her off and on for about six months, but that it was over now and he wanted to try to make our union work. Our circle of friends was almost exclusively made up of people in the twelve-step programs, and since this young woman was also a part of AA, I figured everybody knew about the affair but me. Shit, here comes the inner AA drama routine of people taking sides, sponsors shooting advice all over the place, and unctuous sympathy games for poor old Grace. I felt hurt and defeated, but I had to nip the melodramatic gossip show in the bud.
As soon as Skip had finished his confession, I went to a very large AA meeting where I knew I'd find her. I also knew I could address her there, in a scene that I could use to my advantage. Accustomed to being in front of large crowds, I placed myself in a standing position below the podium and beckoned her to join me there, in front of the four hundred or so seated individuals who were waiting for the meeting to start. She looked dubious as she walked to the front of the room; Skip hadn't filled her in that he was going to tell me about their trysts.
I gave her a short embrace to let everyone know there'd be no fireworks display and calmly told her I didn't want any animosity. After all, I'd done the same thing to Paul. The rock-and-roll lifestyle was full of interchanging couples, I conceded, and even though it made me sad, I understood the predicament. The lack of hair-pulling excitement was exactly what I wanted—no fun for the “audience.” They now knew that I knew, and that I wasn't going to lose it all over the “other woman” and she wasn't going to go off into the sunset with Prince Not-So-Charming.
Skip suggested couple's therapy, to which I agreed, but it only served to reveal he'd had several other one-nighters on the road. Then, one afternoon in L.A., when I was having some coffee in a hotel room, reading magazines and feeling pretty peaceful, my heart started beating as if I'd just run a four-minute mile. I generally don't sit around and freak out for no reason. I knew it was out of character, so I was paralyzed with fear. I just couldn't figure out what was going on or what to do about it.
“Grace,” I said, “get yourself into the car and go to Cedars Sinai ER. It's only a mile away, you can do it, just get up out of the chair.” I was absolutely terrified, but I made it to the hospital and asked them what was wrong.
“You're having a panic attack,” they told me.
Panic? Over what?
“Maybe you should see a psychiatrist.”
Sometimes I do what I'm told.
After several visits at $250 an hour, the shrink said, “You have a broken heart.”
Aww.
He was referring to the Skip/mistress thing. So tell me something I don't already know. The doctor was speaking figuratively, but I wasn't figuratively sick. I thought the actual heart might be a cause for concern, and after getting an echocardiogram, I confirmed that, indeed, I had a problem—a common enough condition called mitral valve prolapse, which manifests itself in symptoms similar to a panic attack. So the shrink got a thousand bucks for his melodramatic call on something that was, in fact, a physical impairment the doctors could literally see on a monitor.
“Careful of the stimulants,” was the admonition from the cardiac specialist. Like the coffee I'd been drinking in the hotel. So it wasn't all Skip's fault. From a childhood diagnosis that I had a heart murmur, I'd simply graduated to mitral valve prolapse. Pomp and circumstance.
Skip and I continued to live together in a brother-sister configuration for another six years; it was hard for me to let go of a basically good man even if it was obvious we'd eventually separate. And I knew we'd separate as soon as I admitted to myself that the passion had disappeared. I've always been attached to the initial feelings of passion in a relationship. It's an energy that I still find so captivating, I can't imagine living without it. In fact, at the onset of a romance, I think about sex so much, it's surprising I can get my socks on. But as soon as my partner shows too much interest in a hardware store or a computer game, I turn off.
Unfortunately, when I'm without the absolute focus of passion that drives the human spirit, I'm pretty much just a bunch of functioning body parts. Without a particular man to occ
upy my attention, I can channel romantic energy into other areas, and I do channel it—into things as various as drawing, music, sewing, talking, writing, or studying biomedical research.
The idea that a relationship can survive based solely on respect and common interests is still beyond me. I can get respect from a Saint Bernard and common interest from a museum curator, so without passion, I'd rather live alone and be able to come and go whenever I feel like it.
Some people never grow up.
Just when I'm close to believing I'm a determined and focused type, I have to remind myself that most of the direction-shifting events in my life have come about when I was shuffling along without a road map.
I didn't grow up with an intense dream of being a singer; I just happened to see Jefferson Airplane at a night-club and it looked like a good way to make a living and goof off at the same time.
I didn't take political science in college and think, “I'm going to work for liberal agendas.” The liberal view of social organization just happened to coincide with my own sensibilities.
I didn't think, “Okay, now is the right time to write an autobiography.” A friend of mine, Brian Rohan, and my agent, Maureen Regan, almost bodily forced me to talk to publishers, and I just happened to enjoy the process once I got started.
So many things have seemed to crawl into my lap at the right (and sometimes wrong) time, I get the impression that predetermination and an implacable genetic scorecard are running the puppet show. I'm enjoying the performance, but I often wonder how much control we do have over the seemingly open banquet of choices. Sometimes the best strategy seems to be to keep shuffling and hope for the best. Surprises —both bad and good—turn up in the most unlikely places.