I felt better on the whole, prudent and wise, practical in the near term. Friends agreed: I played it for the best. They also saw Betty as a fun-loving coed but iffy candidate for spaghetti and acid. Flighty, skittish and vulnerable, unlike us veterans, she would fare better in Boston. I set thoughts aside with marginal success.
That New Year’s Eve felt difficult but momentous, such good friends, good times, a good place and great fun. The gray, dim dusk dipped to freezing, as we welcomed the night, gathered in a soulful old house for a feast of our making. In blithe spirit, we would cruise the cosmos like the moon men a few months prior. Their ship took years of planning. Our spaghetti, wine and reefer took a few hours. When ground control told Major Tom to take his protein pills and put his helmet on, we did. David Bowie ran our launch through dinner to ignition and liftoff. Gaining altitude at orbital speed, the journey began for most in sixty minutes or ninety.
I waited, sated, stoned, stuck at the gantry on spaghetti. Icy granules clicked the windows in code of no deciphering.
In two hours, I thought I’d drawn a dud.
Marcia suggested another hit, eyes bright, viewing other dimensions, tripping.
I declined. “What if the second hit comes on with the first?”
She giggled, “So? You took two hits.”
But no. I wouldn’t risk Mach V. I’d seen the effect of multiple hits. Some people handled them.
In three hours, I got up to go home. My travel rig began with a wool overcoat and top hat from Goodwill. Old Mom had knitted a seven-foot muffler, doubting the need for seven feet on every few stitches. I encouraged, sharing my need to dress for success. Wanting to get it, she knitted onward, three wraps around the neck, four feet more for flourish. Under the coat: bell-bottom jeans, tuxedo shirt under brown vest with keyhole piping on buttonholes in gold brocade to match the epaulet fringe and needlepoint arabesques. I bought most of it at Goodwill, where the avant-funk went to shop. The vest came from a London flea market the prior summer. Boots from Amsterdam rounded in front, not like Dingos. Rounded toes looked European. Boots helped identify a wayfaring youth walking the earth.
The door opened. Icy granules had fluffed to snowflakes. Massive minions fell on the yard, the street and trees, little paratroopers zigzagging, metronomic as new time, fresh time, time for a break to rethink The Fox, where D.H. Lawrence used snow as a death presence. Literary recall felt raw in snowfall, and a State U known for ag felt like another presence, self-evident: a place to transcend and discard for life.
1969 & Then Some, in hardcover, paperback, ebook & audible: https://a.co/d/3UM19YN