Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
were the adventure of the times in general and of his times in particular. He didn't remember
me from Adam or the peanut gallery when he pinned my friend, as the cheerleaders for his
school chanted:
Jimmy Levin! Get the pin!
I never asked why he was such an asshole back then but merely mentioned that I'd
wrestled for my high school and saw him wrestle Nick Geiss. He didn't reference his win or
the pin or his progress to the state finals but lit up with a smile. “Oh, man! Nick Geiss! How's
he doing, man?” Jimmy's humility was impressive—and that was a cornerstone of the high-
er times: ditching the ideas our society thrived on, competition being the biggest culprit. If
you didn't know how good Nick Geiss was and how easily Jimmy pinned him, you could just
as easily miss Jimmy's discounting-of-self in passing. His cumulative presence, however, was
formidable. Jimmy didn't just take drugs; Jimmy learned what the drugs could teach him. For
a long time the good things were learned, with a few bad things in time that came with the
territory, if you stayed with it. Jimmy would eventually learn about overdose, maybe.
Sure, it was part of the times to set aside conventional concepts like winner and loser. But
few people mastered it like Jimmy. He was a spirit to reckon and a natural born leader in our
new world at war—scratch that—our new world of goofing like no tomorrow. What could
possibly be a better antidote to war and the military mindset than a big fat goof? With a big
heart and a few fatal addictions, he also delivered humility and friendship. In all the drug-
addled haze, Jimmy Levin knew what to value. Like a rock star in our bumpkin neck of the
woods, he would greet anyone shuffling in from nowhere with a laugh and a welcome to join
the fun.
The high school matrix wove tighter that strange season of our disconnection when Stevie
Getman missed his own college graduation by a few key credits, and college was not for him
a goof. Stevie had family money to take care of, so his degree in accounting would factor sig-
nificantly in family and country club perceptions. Stevie had gone to my high school and did
not wrestle, but Jimmy Levin was an old familiar, because Harold and Jeanette Levin were ta
ta friends with Sylvia and the Wolfman—that would be Mr. and Mrs. Wolf, Stevie's mother
and her new husband. All four parents had occasion to observe and discuss
the children
at
the club, including Heavy Greg Buckstein, whose parents not only waved ta ta from their golf
cart; they actually worked very hard at
reducing
their handicap—even as the club tournament
approached!
What a goof: golf, Republicans, country clubs and parents, with their cocktails, Cadillacs
and pills.
This is not to suggest a Jewish revolution as subset to the greater revolution but that Jews
factored prominently on the front lines of both sides.
As if by coincidence Stevie Getman got a new apartment for three months of summer
school to get his last three accounting credits at the University of Colorado. With summer
upon us, blood stirred. I advised Geoffrey Wendell that I would forego his attic for a pilgrim-
