Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A Flea-Bit Painted Monkey
ANARCHY IN CONFINEMENT
was the Revolution in a nutshell. Young men hung out in university
towns waiting to leave for Canada or Southeast Asia or maybe San Francisco. Meanwhile, we
raised hell, goofed and made a scene. Or we gazed inward and beyond, wondering what and
when. he dream began to end that year. Jimmy Levin failed college because he never went to
class. We got by going to the first day of class, maybe a day or two during the semester and
showing up for the final exam to fill a bluebook with nonsense. Jimmy was radical, ahead of the
curve. Jimmy didn't fuck with any of that first day, last day, bluebook bullshit. Jimmy laughed,
and then everybody laughed.
The cosmic goof in play was that neither the University nor Selective Service had connected
Jimmy's non-dots. He fell through the cracks. Hardly a year or so later people would describe
his life that way, but many thought Jimmy turned into a sunbeam and shined his way out.
Mick Jagger's plaintive song of
Mr. Jimmy
seemed obvious to those of us who knew Jimmy
Levin. That was many, many people around campus and uptown. Oh, Jimmy was known. Why
wouldn't Mick Jagger know him too? Mick's moves seemed to imitate Jimmy Levin in every
way. Mick Jagger even admitted to
standing in line with Mr. Jimmy.
We did not take that as co-
incidence but we also refrained from discussing Mick's further revelation that
he said one word
to me, and that was dead.
A pioneer of the one-way ride, Jimmy was dead when they found him, cold but smiling
serenely, like he knew, or had known. Jimmy seemed supremely indifferent at the end, when
his surly, casual arrogance acquired depth and subtlety into the next phase, his body language
softly saying,
Yeah? So?
Jimmy overdosed on downers, Tuinals, which were yellow but weren't called yellows, not
like Seconals were called reds. Both were trademark names, for what that was worth, which
was millions to the drug companies and maybe had value for us too as a cultural component
of what we'd fled. Or in Jimmy's case, pharmaceutical drugs were something to goof like no to-
morrow. Mick Jagger narrated to a T one more time with
Mother's Little Helper
, a rock ode to
barbiturates and the blessed acceptance they provided to suburbanites everywhere.
Chief among the images of the day was Jimmy Levin's Mick Jagger, with the slink and swag-
ger, hollow cheeks and puffy lips. Jimmy aped Mick down to the hip hugger bell-bottoms with
green and pink stripes and paisley usher ribbons down the legs. After mastering every cut on
Let It Bleed
that spring, Jimmy deferred to stardom with a new pair of pants he wouldn't take
