My Beautiful Hippie (19 page)

“Got it.” She gave me a weak smile. “Joanne? I want to give you something in return.”

“You don't have to.”

“I want to.” She dug around in her purse for a few minutes and then laid in my palm a square of cardboard, smaller than a postage stamp. “Here.”

It was a blotter, which had absorbed a drop of liquid containing LSD. Not knowing the manufacturer or how potent the dose, I didn't want it, but how uncool would it be to reject acid from the most popular girl in school? My fingers closed around it, and I dropped it into my book satchel. “Thanks.”

When I turned to leave, Lisa called after me, “I really do like you, Joanne. I know you don't think so, but I do.”

The night of the dance, I went over to Martin's, where I changed into my jeans and one of his work shirts and tucked my hair under a baseball cap. We rode over to the Fillmore in the van with Roach and all their equipment. Gus was in a foul mood because they were opening for the Dead.

“Just once I'd like it to be the other way around,” he muttered.

I was glad about the arrangement because the Fillmore dances lasted until two and I had to leave at eleven, when high school dances ended, and of course I'd rather see the Purple Cockroach perform than the Grateful Dead.

My roadie disguise worked fine. No one questioned who I was as I carried microphones, cords, and other equipment from the van to the stage. While Martin helped stack the tower of amplifiers and test for sound, I wandered around checking things out.

The Fillmore was a huge ballroom with a balcony running its length. The light-show dudes were setting up screens, projectors, black lights, strobe lights, and thunder machines. When the doors opened, Roach began the first set. The room filled with hot, flailing bodies, and I got thirsty. I went looking for Martin backstage and found a thermos belonging to the band. I opened it and sniffed it, expecting it to be whiskey, but to my delight it was cold, sweet orange juice. I poured myself a cup and screwed the top back on.

I found Martin standing in front of the stage, where the music was deafening.

I nudged his shoulder and shouted, “It's hot in here, and I couldn't find a drinking fountain.”

“There's some juice in the cooler backstage. Just don't drink out of Bread's thermos.”

I stared back at him, rubbing the corner of my mouth. “Uh . . . how come?”

He pointed his chin toward the stage door, through which I had just exited. “You drank from it, didn't you? Damn, you shouldn't go around downing other people's stuff without knowing what's in it.”

“What is in it?” I screamed over the music, at the moment it stopped. But I already knew Bread's reputation as an acid freak. “Oh, God.” I pressed my hand over my mouth.

“Well, Joni, you've been wanting to try acid. Have a good trip.” He gave me a little smirk and a shake of his head. “You can't go home tonight.”

I put my arms around him and spoke in his ear. “I'm afraid.”

“Just go with the flow. I'm here for you, Joni. I won't let anything bad happen to you.”

How could he promise me that? The journey I was about to take was through my own mind. How could Martin control my thoughts? I held him tight. I felt our clothes fuse together. We were wearing the same pants, the same shirt, the same skin. “Will you drop acid, too?” I asked.

“No. I'll be your guide. It's the safest way. Now let's go find a pay phone.”

Martin took my hand, and as he led me across the dance floor, we bumped into Lisa and her new boyfriend.

“Joanne! Isn't this far out? Thanks for the tickets! Did you try that blotter I gave you?”

“Uh, not yet.”

“I've had two!” Lisa's pupils were like saucers.

I stared straight into her face. “You don't have a nose. There's just an empty cavity where your nose should be. Just like a skull.”

Lisa clapped both hands over the center of her face and screamed. Someone laughed. It was a deep “ho, ho, ho” like the laugh of an evil gnome. He was living in the cave of my stomach and using my mouth to get his laughs out.

Martin let go of me. He pulled Lisa's hands away from her face. “You have a nose.”

“I do?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” said her boyfriend. “It's kinda short, but it's there.”

“It's a beautiful nose,” said Martin. He hugged Lisa. I didn't want Martin to fuse with her so I pulled him away and we walked on. “You did not hallucinate that,” he scolded me. “You were just being mean.”

“I don't like her.”

“You can't be mean to anyone tripping. They're as vulnerable as you.”

“Don't be mad at me, Martin. You're scaring me.”

He stopped to hug me. “I love you.”

“I love everybody.”

He laughed. “That's the spirit.”

We found a pay phone, and I called my mom. “Can I sleep over at Lisa's?” I asked.

“Well, Joanne, I don't know. I don't like these spur-of-the-moment plans. You don't even have your pajamas and toothbrush.”

“Please, Mom.”

“What's that racket?”

“It's the band, Mom. I'm at a dance. Lisa and I are having a groovy time.”

“I didn't know you were that friendly with the Girardi girl.”

“Please, Mom.”

She knew what Lisa was, and all mothers want their girls to be popular. “Well, don't stay up talking and giggling all night.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Then Martin and I did what you usually do at dances: we danced. Bright pink, purple, and orange lights swirled around us. Films of people kissing, trees swaying, and waves crashing played on the people between the projector and the walls. Strobe lights made the dancers' movements choppy and slow. Black lights bathed Martin's white T-shirt and teeth in a lavender glow. It was hard to tell the difference between the effects created by the light show and by the LSD. I didn't know where my own mind stopped and others' began. We seemed to all be in this together, of the same consciousness and organism, the pulsing colors our single heart beating to the rhythm of Roach.

Most everyone seemed to be having a good time, except one girl who kept screaming, “Let me out of my mind! Let me out of my mind!” She was bumming me out, and I wished she would shut up or go away. The dancers began to telescope out and crash inward. Chins elongated, then snapped to normal size. Legs and arms lengthened like spaghetti, then withdrew to their natural state. When it felt like my senses were on overload, I looked into Martin's face, which was serene and loving. Other times I closed
my eyes to stop the girl from screaming or stuck my fingers in my ears to see nothing.

I felt no sense of past or future. Everything was in the now, like a piano performance. Time sped by. At two a.m. the hall began to empty out. The cops appeared, turning on the lights, unplugging sound equipment, and escorting people out. The let-me-out-of-my-mind girl was loaded into an ambulance, her hoarse voice still babbling.

Outside on the sidewalk I saw Lisa again. She had gotten separated from her boyfriend and was about to climb into a camper with some people I'd never seen.

“Oh, hi, Joanne.” Her face, arms, and legs had been painted in swirls and paisleys of pink, orange, and purple Day-Glo paint. “We're going to the bridge. Do you want to come?”

The image of the Golden Gate Bridge terrified me. “No, I don't like the bridge.” I took a step back, retreating into the safety of Martin's armpit.

Lisa smiled sweetly. Her best friend, Candy Lambert, had ridiculed me, and her ex-boyfriend, Kent Dougal, had humiliated me, and I suddenly realized I had blamed Lisa by association. She had even tried to be my friend. “Are you sure you don't want to come with us?” she asked. “It will be beautiful.”

“I'm sure.”

She hugged me good-bye, and some of her paint smeared onto my arm. Then she flashed a peace sign and disappeared into the camper.

Gus and the rest of the guys had already loaded their van. Martin and I sat on a pile of amps in the back. I couldn't see where we were going. I wished Lisa hadn't mentioned the bridge. I gripped Martin's arm so hard, he had to pry my fingers off him. “Easy, Joni. What's the matter?”

“Gus is going to drive off the bridge, I can feel it.”

“You know we don't cross the bridge to get home.”

“Stop! I have to get out! Right now!”

“Everything's cool, Joni. Gus! Pull over!”

As soon as we began walking along the marina, I felt better. The gently lapping water and the soft light of the streetlamps had a calming effect. I raised my chin to the sky. “Oh! Look at all those pretty lights!”

“The stars?”

“They look like neon lightbulbs that escaped from the Fillmore marquee and flew away.” I jumped up and flung my arm as if I could catch one. “Do you think they'll ever come together and form one big, bright, blazing star?”

“No, Joni. They'll always stay separate and far away from each other.”

One thing that troubled me about Martin was that I suspected he was not always up-front with me. Like, he was not up-front about who he spent his time with when he wasn't with me. Now he was not being up-front about the stars, so I decided to call him on it. “I know they do,” I said, cautiously opening up a little trapdoor so that my consciousness could seep into his.

“Huh?”

“The stars do come together and make one big light during the day.”

He surprised me by laughing. “That's just one star, Joni, our star, the sun.”

“It's so much bigger because it's so much closer to us and those others are always far away?”

“Yep.”

“You're far away like that, Martin.”

“I'm not. I'm right here close.”

“But you feel far away. You keep a distance. I wish I knew more about you. I wish we were closer.”

He didn't answer.

“It's lonely on this trip. I wish you were tripping, too.”

“It's better this way. Safer.”

“I feel childish, like I can't take care of myself.”

“You can't. That's why I'm here.”

“We're not going near the bridge.”

“Nope.”

Before me was a whole string of stars that rose up, then swooped down and rose up again. I was about to tell Martin he was wrong, that the stars did come down to us, but then I realized why the tiny lights were in such neat, sloping lines. Horrified, I stopped. “You tricked me, Martin! We
are
going to the bridge!”

“You know there's a view of the bridge on the way to my house.”

“Make it disappear.”

“That's easy.” He got on the other side of me to block my view. I felt a little better, but still uneasy. Martin pointed out details on a row of Victorians: the gables, the turrets, the bay windows, distracting me all the way to his house. I felt safer indoors. We climbed the stairs and entered his room.

“Do you think you can sleep?” he asked.

I didn't think so. “I can try.” I lay on his bed, and he lay down next to me. The streetlight filtering in his window cast a thin black shadow that dropped into his back like an arrow. Some of the dance posters on his walls pictured Indians, and I thought of the Indians coming alive and shooting arrows into Martin's back and killing him. They couldn't come alive, though. I was looking at a harmless shadow. I was proud of that realization. I could be rational if I tried.

I stroked Martin's face and kissed him. I had that same sense of fusion; his lips were my lips and there was no boundary between us. It felt wonderful and I never wanted to stop. I was surprised when Martin pulled away. “Stop, Joni. I'm getting too turned on.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“We aren't going to make love, not while you're tripping.”

I ignored him and began kissing him again. I could seduce him with my kisses. He sprang from the bed, and I felt rejected. I sat up, my back against the wall, watching him pace. “Why are you so uptight all of a sudden? You've been wanting me to put out; here's your chance to get laid.”

“Put out? What a horrible expression! If it's not making love, don't do it.”

His words burned me with humiliation, and I found that LSD could be a sort of truth serum. It made me bold, allowing me to ask Martin questions I never would have dared to ask him without it. “I'll bet you've made love to lots of girls.”

“Some.”

On the beach at Angel Island he had said, “There's just you,” but I had never allowed myself to believe him. “You have other girls, don't you?”

“What other girls?”

He seemed angry that I had figured this out. He seemed on the verge of lying to me, and I didn't want to force him into a lie. I held up a finger. “You're so very clever, aren't you, Martin? Acting like I mean something to you when, in fact, we're miles apart. But I do remember the time you first kissed me like you meant it. Do you? It was when we got into a fight about Morning Girl, and I said—”

He leaned over the bed and gently covered my mouth. “You said, ‘Every child has the right to know who his father is.'” He took his hand away and sat beside me. “You were right on, my lady. I wish I knew who my father is.”

“It's not Max?”

He shook his head. “When I was growing up, there was always a distance between him and me that I didn't understand. I always thought I was just an unlovable kid, but on our long drive out to California, Gus told me Max and Vivian weren't getting along when I was conceived. She carried on with a lot of men. Vivian wasn't much of a mom, always busy with her sculpture. Want to know who my real parent is? Gus. He saved me from drowning in a pond near our house when I was just two. Yep, I had an eight-year-old dad. Family life! It's totally fucked. That's why I'm never getting married and having kids.”

“What if you fall in love with someone who wants to have kids with you?”