Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  ‘Levon’s having breakfast with him tomorrow,’ says Dean.

  ‘He’ll want you for the Fillmore,’ states Pigpen. ‘Word’s getting round about your set at Knowland Park. That was some show.’

  Griff twists his fork into his chow mein. ‘How did Knowland Park festival compare to the Human Be-in?’

  ‘Chalk and cheese,’ says Golden Paul. ‘Knowland Park was to make its organisers money, while pretending not to. The Be-in made nobody jack-shit, but it will make the history books.’

  ‘It was waaay bigger,’ says Marty. ‘Thirty-thousand of us at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park. Haight-Ashbury hippies preaching peace and love. Berkeley radicals preaching revolution. Comedians, poets, gurus. Big Brother with Janis, the Dead, Quicksilver, us. Tibetan chanters to greet the sun.’

  ‘And no violence,’ says Pigpen. ‘No muggings. Owsley Stanley handing out LSD like there’s no tomorrow.’

  ‘Free LSD?’ asks Dean. ‘What ’bout the cops?’

  ‘Acid wasn’t illegal yet,’ says Paul. ‘City Hall hated it, but how could they withhold permission that nobody had asked for?’

  ‘The mayor of Chicago found a way,’ said Elf.

  ‘San Francisco’s not Chicago,’ says Pigpen.

  ‘And just for a while,’ says Jerry, ‘maybe a few months, enough of us believed that a new way of living might be possible. Starting right here. The Diggers gave out free meals. There’s still a free clinic on Haight Street.’

  ‘What changed?’ asks Elf.

  ‘Exposure,’ says Pigpen. ‘Word got out. The media pumped the whole thing up. “Middle America! Your kids too could fall into Satan’s trap of free love, free dope and free music!” Which made damn sure those kids showed up, all wearing flowers in their hair.’

  ‘By the hundreds of thousands,’ says Jerry. ‘Heading right here. Where, it turned out, Diggers didn’t dig up meals, not literally. They needed hard cash from the likes of Bill Graham. Demand was infinite. Supply was not.’

  ‘Drugs dealers saw pay dirt,’ says Paul. ‘Turf wars kicked off. A kid got stabbed to death thirty feet from this house. Then the first acid burn-outs showed up. Owsley gave everyone the same dose. Beefy jocks and skinny chicks. People just ain’t built the same.’

  Dean thinks of the sorry state of Syd Barrett.

  ‘Anti-commercialism got commercialised,’ says Jerry.

  ‘We saw all the head-shops from the taxi,’ says Jasper.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Marty. ‘It’s T-shirts, I Ching sets, pentagrams. Racks of crap. It’s all gotten less “Turn on, tune in, drop out” and more “Roll up, cash in, sell out.”’

  ‘Here’s the difference between then and now.’ Paul dabs sauce off his substantial chin. ‘A friend of mine was flying back to New Mexico in June of last year. He’s a classic hippie who doesn’t wear shoes. At San Francisco Airport, the clerk said the airline wouldn’t let him on board barefoot. So my friend looked around, saw a fellow freak arriving in San Francisco, and asked, “Hey, man, could I borrow your sandals? I’ll miss my flight if I don’t find some shoes right now.” This total stranger said, “Sure”, handed them over, and my friend flew home with no further trouble. Now that exchange could only have happened in a narrow window of a few months between ’sixty-six and ’sixty-seven. ’Sixty-five would’ve been too early. The stranger would’ve said, “Are you nuts? Buy your own frickin’ sandals.” Now, in 1968, it’s too late. The stranger would say, “Sure you can have them – five bucks, plus sales tax.”’

  Jerry Garcia fires off a closing blues-riff.

  ‘Is anything left of that time?’ asks Elf.

  The San Franciscans look at each other.

  ‘I’d say not a lot,’ says Paul Kantner.

  ‘Only a few hollow slogans,’ says Pigpen.

  Jerry strums his guitar. ‘Every third or fourth generation is a generation of radicals, of revolutionaries. We, my friends, are the bottle-smashers. We release the genies. We run riot, get shot, get infiltrated, get bought off. We die, go bust, sell out to the man. Sure as eggs is eggs. But the genies we let loose stay loose. In the ears of the young the genies whisper what was unsayable. “Hey, kids – there’s nothing wrong with being gay.” Or “What if war isn’t a patriotism test, but really fucking dumb?” Or “Why do so few own so goddamn much?” In the short run, not a lot seems to change. Those kids are nowhere near the levers of power. Not yet. But in the long run? Those whispers are the blueprints of the future.’

  ‘Who’s in the mood for acid?’ asks Jerry.

  ‘Me and Paul have an early flight over to Denver,’ says Marty Balin. ‘Bill’s got us on a treadmill.’

  ‘LSD and I do not get along,’ says Elf. ‘I’ll bow out.’

  ‘Same story here, Elf.’ Pigpen pours himself a tumbler of Southern Comfort. ‘My last trip – freakin’ nightmare.’

  ‘I’ll regret turning down an acid trip with Jerry Garcia,’ says Griff, ‘for a date with two kick-boxers, but the flesh is weak.’

  ‘Jasper?’ asks Jerry. ‘You can’t tell me “Sound Mind” and “Darkroom” came from smoking Marlboro.’

  ‘If my mind was one of the three little pigs’ houses,’ replies Jasper, ‘it would not be the house made of bricks.’

  ‘Man,’ Pigpen turns to Elf. ‘Does this dude ever give a straight answer to a straight question?’

  Elf pats Jasper’s hand. ‘His answers are either alarmingly straight or cryptic crossword clues.’

  ‘Schizophrenia is an old friend of mine,’ says Jasper. ‘It was trippy enough for a lifetime. My girlfriend’s going to a cabal of west-coast photographers, so I’ll join her.’

  Jerry looks at Dean. ‘You’re my only hope, Mr Moss.’

  Tonight’s the night. ‘I’m in, Mr Garcia.’

  ‘Ever tripped before?’

  ‘I have not,’ admits Dean. ‘Not properly.’

  ‘Then, as a virgin, I’ll give you a light dose.’

  Elf, Jasper and Griff stand up to go. ‘Look after our Dean,’ Elf tells Jerry. ‘Good bassists are hard to find.’

  ‘If we venture out, I’ll summon up a guardian angel. Dean can crash on our sofa, so he won’t have to get back to your hotel.’

  ‘See yer all at the studio in the morning,’ says Dean.

  ‘Session starts nine sharp,’ says Griff. ‘There or square.’

  Jasper tells him, ‘Bring us back a souvenir.’

  ‘Acid is a box of mystery chocolates.’ Dean and his host sit on the floor of Jerry’s room, on cushions at a low table made of a slab of tree trunk. ‘Ten lines of coke from the same batch’ll give you the same bump. Ten reefers of the same weed will give you the same buzz. Ten trips with LSD of the same potency is ten different trips. A lot depends on where your head’s at, so only do this if you’ve got your shit together. This trip has no ejector seat.’

  Mandy Craddock? Her son? Rod Dempsey? My father? ‘My shit is as together as it can be, right now, right here.’

  ‘Then behind you is a big red book. Jules Verne.’

  Dean turns: ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth?’

  ‘Put it on the table.’ Dean does as asked. Jerry turns to the rear cover and lifts a hidden flap in the thick board. Under the flap is a tiny brown envelope, one-inch by three. Using tweezers, Jerry extracts a square of yellow paper the size of a postage stamp. ‘This is rice-paper, impregnated with a dose of liquid acid. Lick your thumb.’ Jerry puts the yellow paper on the damp patch, and follows suit. ‘Here we go.’

  They put the papers onto their tongues.

  Dean’s dissolves in seconds.

  ‘The magic carpet will arrive shortly. Pick out a record.’ Jerry returns his stash and replaces Jules Verne while Dean pulls out the Band’s Music from Big Pink and puts on side two. Jerry and Dean bongo along until ‘Chest Fever’ ignites with a fiery burst of organ.

  ‘Bloody incredible playing, this,’ says Dean.

  ‘It’s a Lowrey. Garth’s the Band’s secret weapon. Sweetest guy y
ou ever met, too. How’re you feeling now?’

  ‘Like I need a dump.’

  ‘That’s your body saying, “Something celestial’s on its way, I’ll attend to the earthier stuff now.” Bathroom’s thataway.’ Dean goes and Dean goes. He washes his hands. The water feels silky. Gravity is lessening. Back in Jerry’s room, Jerry asks, ‘Is it kicking in?’

  ‘I feel atoms of air bouncing in my lungs, like popcorn.’

  ‘Let’s go out for a walk in the park.’

  The possible Indian’s name turns out to be Chayton. ‘One half Navajo,’ he tells Dean, as they descend to the street, ‘one quarter Sioux, one quarter who the hell knows?’ He follows a step or two behind Dean and Jerry. Jerry talks about the neighbourhood. Chayton walks with a panther’s gait, emanating a forcefield that the hustlers, beggars and sightseers of Haight Street detect and do not test. Jerry’s wearing a vast-brimmed hat and mirror sunglasses, and nobody bothers him. His cigarette smells of sage. The sky is a no man’s land between afternoon and evening. Clouds are few, high and puffy, like dragon-smoke. Three jet-trails make a triangle.

  The high windows of a bowling alley are propped open.

  Dean hears the trundle of balls and the clatter of pins.

  A girl walks by, leaving a trail of herself in her slipstream. Dean is entranced by the impossible sight. A tramp, too, leaves a dozen selves in his wake. Haight Street is filled with visual slipstreams.

  Dean swivels his arm and a fan of forearms opens up.

  ‘You ghosting?’ Jerry is at the front of Comet Jerry.

  ‘Guess I am,’ replies Dean. Ghosting. They cross Stanyan Street and pass under the wrought-iron gate of Golden Gate Park where the colours are doubling, trebling, quadrupling in intensity. Green shrubs glow green, the blue sky sings blue and a band of pink cloud oscillates through all the pinks there are and some there aren’t. ‘Does acid cure you of colour-blindness?’ asks Dean.

  ‘No,’ says Jerry, ‘but it makes you wonder if you’ve actually been living not in the real world but only a description of it.’

  ‘Can I have that line? I want to put it in a song.’

  ‘If you remember it, my friend, it is all yours.’

  Fiery maples snap, crackle and pop scarlets and golds into the air. Up they swirl. ‘Bloody bloody bloody hell …’

  The three sit on a bench. The long grass around them is wriggling. Really? Dean takes a closer look, and it stops. No, it’s just grass. But when Dean looks away, it reverts to its wriggling ways, only to stop again when Dean focuses his attention. Like a schoolboy waiting till the teacher’s back’s turned. ‘So when we look at a thing,’ says Dean, ‘we change what it is.’

  ‘Which is exactly why we never see things as they are,’ says Jerry. ‘Only as we are.’ A big dog tows a girl on roller skates.

  Where Dean and Jerry walk, Chayton follows. They stop to watch tennis players. The soundtrack is slipping out of sync. The whack of the racquet hitting the ball happens only after impact. As the rally progresses, the players grow bigger. Dean turns to tell Jerry, but Jerry’s head, too, has swollen to twice its normal size, though it deflates again when he exhales. The tennis players’ skin turns first albino-milky, then see-through, like cellophane. Their veins, arteries, muscles and fascia are on full display. A greyhound darts by. Dean sees its bones, its heart, its lungs, its cartilage. A gull, by a bin, is a living, meaty fossil of a gull.

  At a burger van, a picture of a cheeseburger is, in fact, not a picture at all, but a real cheeseburger. It drips globules of hot fat. Melting cheese stretches down to the pavement. Ketchup shines like blood at the scene of a fresh accident. The bun is a real, soft, puffy bread bun that breathes in and out and in and out. ‘Your big mistake,’ the bun tells Dean, ‘is to assume your brain generates a bubble of consciousness you call “Me”.’

  ‘Why is that a mistake?’ Dean asks the talking bun.

  ‘The truth is that you’re not your own private “I”. You are to consciousness what the flame of a match is to the Milky Way. Your brain only taps into consciousness. You aren’t a broadcaster. You’re a transceiver.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Dean. ‘So when we die …’

  ‘When a match dies does light cease to exist?’

  The burger-man in a burger-van is shooing at Dean with his fry-slice: ‘Never Never Land’s thataway, kid.’

  Dean looks all the way down the Narrow Road to the Far West and sees Bolívar, the boy he took to the lost kid tent at the festival, in the eye of the setting sun. ‘Hey, Bolívar … are yer real?’

  Bolívar’s voice travels down the light-rays. ‘Are you?’

  Where Dean and Jerry walk, Chayton follows.

  In the shadows of a bandstand, Dean pees diamonds. They vanish into the earth. Nobody will ever know. He hears a brass band approaching. The last diamond gone for ever, he joins Jerry on the bandstand. ‘Can yer hear the brass band?’

  The pink sun is reflected in Jerry’s glasses. ‘I hear the engines of the Earth. It’s a choral roar. What’s the band playing?’

  ‘I’ll tell yer when I work it out. Here they come …’ Under the spreading chestnut tree, a hundred skeletons march in ragged uniforms that hang off their herky-jerky frames. Their instruments are made of human bones. The melody is the forgotten soundtrack of Creation. If we can only get that down on record, thinks Dean, we’ll alter reality … It’s up to you, Moss … Remember …

  Parakeets and herons hang in the dusk, stringlessly.

  Dean lifts his thumb and a heron’s wing moves.

  Dean puffs a puff of air, and a cloud is pushed along.

  Separateness is an illusion, Dean realises. What we do to another, we do to ourselves. ‘How obvious.’ A ghost now asks a ghost-to-be, ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  A small boy brings up the rear in his dressing-gown and slippers. It’s Crispin, Tiffany’s younger son, pointing his index finger at Dean. You’re shagging my mum.

  ‘These things happen,’ Dean calls back. ‘Yer’ll understand, one day.’

  A second finger joins Crispin’s first. They form a gun. He shoots Dean. Bang bang, you’re dead.

  Where Dean and Jerry walk, Chayton follows.

  ‘These are the Polo Fields,’ Jerry tells him, ‘the sacred turf, where Ginsberg led the chanting for the sun moon and stars until the end of time’

  Dean wonders if he’s gone deaf; or if Jerry’s voice is gone; or if God the Father has slid the volume fader of the cosmos down. Before any answer emerges, Dean’s groin is gouged open by an axe-blade of hot pain. His knees fold apart and collapse, He drops backwards onto the grassy bank. The agony is beyond anything Dean has ever felt. He cannot scream; or wonder where his jeans or underpants went; or guess how he could have been so utterly wrong about his gender all his life; or worry about the risks of exposing himself in a public park in San Francisco.

  Dean wonders, Am I dying?

  ‘No,’ replies Chayton. ‘The opposite. Look.’

  Between his legs, Dean sees the gluey bulge of a fontanelle. I’m giving birth. Dean’s mother is with him, smiling like she does in the photograph on Nan Moss’s piano: ‘Push, Dean … Push, love … One more push!’ With the rip of a root uprooted, Dean’s baby slithers out in a gush of fluids. Dean lies back, gasping and whimpering.

  His mother says, ‘It’s a boy,’ and hands him his baby.

  Dean’s baby is a tiny, bloodied, vulnerable Dean.

  Dean is his own baby, peering up at Harry Moffat.

  Eyes shining with love and wonder, Harry Moffat cradles Dean in the crook of his arm. ‘Welcome to the loony-bin, son.’

  Dean wakes on a sofa. He smells cold Chinese food, dope and a kitchen bin that needs emptying. Here are books; a long-necked snakeskin banjo that must be something else; a giant candle from a cathedral; a stereo; a stratum of records. Through an arch, he sees the Grateful Dead’s kitchen at 710 Ashbury. A Playboy bunny clock says it’s 7.41 a.m. A perky American DJ is talking about the weather before
the opening bars of ‘Look Who It Isn’t’, off Stuff of Life, come on. I love this city, thinks Dean. One day, I’m moving here to live. He feels good. Sane. Stable. Bit sticky … I could do with a bath. He sits up. His body parts are where they should be, and what they were: yesterday’s birth canal was only on loan. The shutters of a large bay window slice bright morning light. I’m Dean Moss, I passed the acid test, and I gave birth to myself. If there’s not a song in that, I’ll eat my Fender. His eyes settle on a battered book entitled The Way of Tarot by Dwight Silverwind. He opens it. Each card has its own page. Dean looks up the Eight of Cups. ‘The Eight of Cups’, writes Dwight Silverwind, ‘is a card of change. The pilgrim is turning away from the viewer – the Now – and embarking on a journey across a narrow channel into arid mountains. Belonging to the Minor Arcana, the Eight of Cups symbolises a turning away from old patterns and behaviours to commence a search for deeper meaning. Note the orderliness of the eight cups “left behind”: our pilgrim is moving on, without fuss and drama. Some authorities associate the Eight of Cups with desertion or abandonment, but to my mind the traveller’s decision is an act of self-emancipation.’ Dean closes the book.

  Nobody else is up. He puts on his shoes and socks, uses the bathroom and does not pee diamonds. He drinks a mug of water, takes an apple from a crystal bowl, writes a note on a phone memo saying, Jerry, I leave you not quite the same as you found me. Cheers, Dean – PS I borrowed an apple, and slips it under Jerry’s door. The air on the elevated porch is crisp and cool. The trees across Ashbury Street break Dean’s heart. He can’t say why. Chayton is on his rocking chair, reading the New Yorker. ‘Another beautiful morning,’ says the confirmed Indian. ‘It may rain later.’

  ‘Thanks for minding me yesterday.’

  Chayton makes an it’s-nothing face.

  ‘Where’s that cat o’ yours?’

  ‘That cat is no man’s cat. She comes, she goes.’

  Dean goes down a few steps, then turns. ‘Can yer walk to Turk and Hyde from here?’