Prologue
Siobhan is big on anti-wrinkle, rejuvenating creams. On a recent shopping trip, she found a batch of new ones. Same night, she slathered them on liberally.
Going to bed, I eyed her warily.
“Don’t I get my goodnight kiss?” she asked.
“I dunnow. Is there anywhere on your body you haven’t put that cream?”
“My ass.”
“Well, turn over then…..”
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
In 1962, before Janis Joplin was a famous blues/rock-n-roll singer, she was a freshman art major at the University of Texas in Austin. She was also the first person I knew to bring up the subject of LSD.
“Killeen, listen to this,” she said, reading from a newspaper. “They’ve got this stuff, lysergic acid, that makes people think they can fly. People are out there jumping off buildings.”
“Sounds pretty scary to me,” I told her. Hell, these were the early days of drugs for most of us. We were still locking ourselves in bathrooms to smoke a joint. Janis, characteristically, would not be deterred.
“Well, I want some!” she declared. “And I want it RIGHT NOW!”
Claudine
My Subterranean Circus partner, Pamme Brewer, was friendly with a funny little fellow named Danny Levine, who visited her frequently in the store. Pamme wanted me to hire Danny, but I was a little hesitant since he was only a few months removed from residency in a commitment facility in San Francisco, sent there because he thought he was Jesus. I thought it was a little unusual that a Jewish guy like Danny would start thinking he was Jesus, but I guess Jesus was Jewish, so what the hell. Anyway, it was just too many drugs in too little time and, he said, he was done with it. Danny actually had sales experience at a straight menswear shop on the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, so we hired him and he was a spectacular success, not only as a salesman but also as a mood elevator for the whole store. And he was good friends with Claudine.
Pamme, Danny and Claudine were all fine arts students. Pamme drew in pencil and charcoal, Danny liked painting and Claudine was a great photographer, learning under UF’s famous Jerry Uelsmann. Danny adored Claudine and, for some reason, thought she and I should be going out together. Each of us regarded the other warily, however, and it took awhile. But Danny was right about most things, so it was inevitable we would give it a shot.
Claudine was very sophisticated, well-read, with a good sense of humor. She was tall, with an imposing body and erotic sensibilities. And she was the person who introduced me to LSD.
We were driving along the beach in Vilano and Claudine brought out a couple of tabs of acid and suggested we take them then. The stuff, according to her, would take almost an hour to take effect and by then we would be back at our motel. But LSD is not always predictable and it operates differently in different people. Suffice to say, getting back to the motel took a lot of concentration driving since your first inclination is to slow down to maybe 35 miles per hour, which has a tendency to block up the highways. And then parking in what became a tiny little parking lot was a challenge. The erotic advantages of LSD cannot be overstated, but when you have finally decided to move on and get some sleep, it’s impossible. For hours. I’m told there’s LSD out there which contains no speed but I never had any of it.
Our next acid session was at St. Pete Beach. This time, we took the stuff in our room and walked across the street to see a movie called “Z” directed by Costa-Gavras. It was about a tyrannical South American government ferreting out conspiracies and wasting the opposition (or perceived opposition) in deadly fashion. I’m sure it was a terrific movie under most circumstances, but I was paranoid for a week. Claudine, on the other hand, was far more concerned with sex longevity, so the movie didn’t bother her a bit.
Stuart and Leslie
Not far from Irana’s house in Gainesville, just a stone’s throw from the Krispy Kreme Donut shop on 13th, was the duplex apartment of Stuart and Leslie. Leslie still has a nice job, so we’re leaving out last names. The apartment was a welcoming place. Stuart had a reel-to-reel tape player containing every song ever written and he could cue them up immediately. There were light food opportunities available. So everybody would sit around, smoke dope and tell stories, just like a thousand other places in Gainesville. One night, Stuart, scared but curious, decided he would try LSD for the first time.
Generally, when several people were taking acid, at least one would abstain in case of a freakout, sort of an electric hall monitor. This was especially wise when a neophyte was involved, as in Stuart’s case. A good thing, too, as with the rushing stream of consciousness foisted on one by LSD, he began to think he was losing his mind.
“I better go to the emergency room now,” Stuart decided. “I think I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy,” Irana the abstainee told him. “And we’re not going to the emergency room.”
“I want it to stop now, can’t we do anything to make it stop?”
“No, short of shooting you,” said Irana. And Stuart went on the rest of night, raving about the horrible images, demanding to go to the emergency room and wondering why, oh why, he couldn’t go to sleep. He improved dramatically the next morning as the acid faded to a sweet afterglow, though he was a little taken aback to see Leslie cavorting around a meadow entirely naked.
The First Electric Western
In 1971, on one of our many journeys to the Giant Boutique Show in New York City, Rick and Lynn Nihlen, Harolyn and I went to a movie called Zachariah (A Head of His Time), which, it was obvious, improved under the influence of LSD. I eventually saw this movie three times, twice having taken acid, and it was dramatically better with than without. There was one of the great all-time chase scenes in the movie featuring a stagecoach and a band of outlaws, which went on for what seemed like decades. As never happens, the stagecoach gradually, inevitably, shockingly pulled away from its exhausted pursuers, giving rise to one of the greatest movie lines ever.
“Dang,” exclaimed the head outlaw, in wonder. “That’s the fastest damn stagecoach I ever saw!”
On the way home from the movie, we got a hip driver who could see what was going on with us. He blasted through Times Square’s blinding array of lights to great applause and was awarded a sizeable chunk of hashish in appreciation. There are tips and there are tips.
Bill Partin Won’t You Please Come Home?
When you have a shop like the Subterranean Circus, most people assume you sell dope in there. We didn’t, of course, or we would have been busted in short order by the hordes of narcs employed by local law enforcement. And if there was one guy who certainly looked the part it was Bill Partin.
Bill just showed up one day. He was about 50, bald, wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. He told us he’d just gotten out of jail in Texas, where he had been the first person to serve time for marijuana possession. Nobody believed him, of course, but we humored him because he was hilarious and we liked him. Bill’s favorite expression, which he advanced often, was “hips, lips and fingertips,” to indicate his all-in predilections. He visited frequently, always discussing drugs, then would disappear for a month or so before returning to take up where he left off. Since we didn’t trust him, we weren’t going to refer him to anyone who would sell him grass. But he found sources on his own and none of them ever got arrested so eventually we decided he was who he said he was. And one night we gave him some LSD.
We went to a movie to let the drug do its work and it was coming on pretty good by the time we got out, although Bill wasn’t feeling it as much as the rest of us. We took him over to the Rathskeller at UF, where a band called Goose Creek Symphony was bouncing loud music off the walls of a modest-sized hall. That got him going, hips, lips and fingertips, loud and happy and a little mushy in thanking his wonderful friends who had availed him of this joyful opportunity. Then, all of a sudden, he said “Well, it’s getting’ late. I’m goin’ back to the hotel.”
We were stunned. Going back to the hotel? He’d never be able to drive. Hell, we couldn’t even drive by now and we were used to this stuff. About a half-hour went by and we got to thinking ol’ Bill might be wrapped around a pole somewhere between UF and the Bambi Motel.
“I’ll try to drive,” I said, hoping somebody else would offer. Nobody did. Rick came with me in case of disaster. I can still remember trying to merge the two steering wheels in my mind, but gave up and decided I’d just have to steer both of them. Rick’s job was to monitor the MPH gauge so I didn’t keep falling under 35 and draw in the cops. We eventually made it to the Bambi Motel. Bill’s curtain was open and there he was in bed, sleeping. We were astounded. We eventually wrote it off to Bill’s size, about 6-2 and at least 250 pounds, and the vagaries of acid, but we never saw a repeat performance by anybody else.
BULLETIN: Calder put up an extra race Sunday for Cosmic Song. It may go, it may not. The race is five-and-one-half furlongs, maiden special weights. The race on the 28th is six furlongs, maybe a little better for us, but the race Sunday is more likely to have a short field—only six or seven horses. If it goes, we’ll post the result Sunday night.
Crimson Streak is working Saturday the 14th and may race by the end of the month, perhaps the 26th.
Old College Magazine Joke (from 1965):
The professor appraised his new class section and his eye fixed on one fellow in the second row.
“Didn’t you have a brother who took my course last semester?” he asked.
“No, sir, that was I. I’m taking the course over again.”
“I see,” said the professor, rubbing his hand over his chin, thoughtfully.
“Extraordinary resemblance, though, extraordinary!”
That’s all, folks.
