Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
al, albeit amused with such a witty, feisty little guy. For all we knew, she had his best interests
at heart. But probably not. Charles was way too crazy. He looked crazy, his yellow orange hair
sticking out like he had his finger in a socket, his woolly eyebrows and bulging eyes and shit-
eating grin made him look crazy and hungry for more. Well, she showed him a crazy thing or
two.
Charles wore his love on his sleeve as he freely told of the crazy times they shared and
the shit she pulled in the craziest places. Rod Stewart sang a song about Maggie May, which
was unreal, because it was late September, and Charles really should have been back at school.
Charles was a medical student at Stanford and knew the guy in the lab who mixed up the lys-
ergic acid diethylamide. Talk about a fur piece from Ray Haney's baggy full of purple powder;
this stuff had lift-off smooth as comet dust on a clear night and leveled at sixty thousand feet
above the earth like an orbit in an overstuffed chair. Oh, we saved the Stanford clinical for
special occasions or Saturday.
We fairly envied Charles, what with a full grown, full blown, no holds barred woman to
have his way with and better yet to yield in every way to her way. What a marvel is the human
mind, and a more insistent marvel is what a young man takes to be his mind. We assumed
everything, including the wrecked bed and difficult mornings, when she did kick him in the
head.
That Stanford clinical acid introduced us to acid potential—and, as they said in mid-Mis-
souri, it “plumb ruint us” on the regular stuff for ever more. High quality was a standard that
would not be met again, but doors appeared to open.
Three weeks after returning from Europe I got a call from Betty Boop. We were friends.
She was engaged, untouchable and way too beautiful to blemish with sexual abandon but she
needed a study date. I felt lucky; we had big tests coming up in American Realist Literature,
requiring insight and analysis of Mark Twain and Henry James. We also had Shakespeare, the
comedies. Betty sighed:
at least
we didn't have the tragedies. Boy, they were
really
tough. I
knew she could walk me through to the C that would avoid the jungle war.
A few study dates later, Betty sighed again, recalling the process of choosing the right
study partner. Youthful lovers like to remember the formative phase. She said it was my style,
the boots and jacket and honesty, however brusque. She wanted to tap into it. I did not rep-
rimand her inverted imagery. I was too grateful tapping in.
So the weeks passed, studying into the nights. Who doesn't remember that first blessed
visit to the candy shop? Betty stood apart in afterglow, introducing a dynamic aspect to the
sexual component of the greater revolution. Good friends could get it on if they wanted to,
and it was okay and then some. It was an extension of everything being everything. And they
wanted to.
Was that a simplification of sex without love? No, because I did love her—valued and cher-
ished her. Twenty and beautiful she was easy for a guy to cherish, on fragile footing in the real
