The Cool School (35 page)

S
INCE
MARIJUANA
is not a deterrent, no more than cigarettes, it seems inhumane that they
schlep
people and put them in jail with it.

“Well, maybe marijuana’s not
bad
for you, but it’s a stepping stone. It leads to heavier drugs—heroin, etc.”

Well, that syllogism has to work out this way, though: The heroin
addict, the bust-out junkie that started out smoking pot, says to his cell-mate:

“I’m a bust-out junkie. Started out smoking pot, look at me now. By the way, cell-mate, what happened to you? There’s blood on your hands. How’d you get to murder those kids in that crap game? Where did it all start?”

“Started with bingo in the Catholic Church.”

“I see.”

N
OW
LEMME
tell you something about pot. Pot will be legal in ten years. Why? Because in this audience probably every other one of you knows a law student who smokes pot, who will become a senator, who will legalize it to protect himself.

But then no one will smoke it anymore. You’ll see.

D
O
ME
a favor. I don’t want to take a bust. The code reads that
I
talk,
you
smoke,
I
get busted. So don’t smoke—drop a few pills, but don’t smoke.

D
ID
YOU
see the
Post
reviews? It said that

“His regulars consist of mainlining musicians, call girls and their business managers.”

Isn’t that a little bit libelous?

I
KNOW
that Californians are very concerned with the modern. Seven years ago there was a narcotics problem in New York, fifteen years ago in Los Angeles. Now in L.A. it’s been like this:

They have a rehabilitation center, and they got this group to attack these narcotic drug addicts. Now, this group is attacking, and getting good at attacking. They mobilize. They get good at it, and better and better and better. First they learn the orthodox way to attack. Then, by hanging out with these deterrents, these felons, they learn
un
orthodox ways. They become bitchy-good attackers—unorthodox, orthodox—and they’re wailing their ass off.

Suddenly:

CALIFORNIA LOSING ITS WAR AGAINST DRUG ADDICTS

There are eighteen hundred empty beds at the rehabilitation center.

“
Schmuck
, you’re winning!”

“No, we’re
losing.
We gotta fill up the beds!”

“You didn’t make one win? In fifteen years?”

“No. We’re losing, we’re losing!”

Well, I assume there’s only one junkie left.

N
ARCOTICS
? Now they’ve finished with heroin—I think in 1951 there were probably about fifty narcotic officers and seven thousand dope fiends in this state. Today, probably, there are about fifteen thousand narcotics officers and four dope fiends. Fifteen thousand Nalline testing stations, loop-o meters, and they got four dopey junkies left, old-time 1945 hippies.

O.K. One guy works for the county, undercover; the other guy works for the federal heat. O.K. So, finally, finally they went on strike:

JUNKIE
: Look, we don
wanna
use dope any more. We’re
tired
!

AGENT
: Come on, now, we’re just after the guys who sell it.

JUNKIE
:
Schnook,
don’tya remembuh me? Ya arrested me last week. I’m the undercover guy for the federals.

It’s like Sambo, running around the tree.
He
works for the federals,
he
works for the county.

AGENT
: Look, we’re after the guys who sold it to you. O.K.?

JUNKIE
: But
nobody
sold it to me. I bought it from
him,
I told you that . . .

AGENT
: Well, will ya just point out one of the guys?

JUNKIE
: Don’t you
know
him? There’s four of us! I told ya that.

AGENT
: Just tell us the names of the guys. Cooperate now. Tell us everybody.

JUNKIE
[
gives up
]: O.K. He was a Puerto Rican. Drove a green Buick. Hangs out in Forster’s.

AGENT
: We’ll wait for him.

JUNKIE
: O.K.

Three days with the investigation:

AGENT
: Is that him?

JUNKIE
: No, I think it’s, hm, ah, I think he was Hawaiian, anyway.

AGENT
: O.K. Don’t forget. If you hear from him—

JUNKIE
: O.K. I’ll call ya the first thing.

AGENT
: O.K.

So now they’ve finished up that nonsense, and the guy says:

“You mean to tell me that you guys are gonna screw up our rehabilitation program? If
you’re
not using any dope, you certainly
know
some people that need help.”

JUNKIE
: We don’t know anybody. We don’t know
anybody. Please. I can’t use any more dope.
I don’t
like
it any more.

AGENT
: Well, you really are selfish. You don’t care about anybody but yourself. Do you know we have a center to rehabilitate people with fifteen hundred empty beds?

JUNKIE
: I know, I’m shitty that way. I’ll try.

I
LOVED
that when he got arrested. He was a dope fiend—Bela Lugosi. It was the worst advertisement for rehabilitation: he was a dope fiend for seven years; he cleaned up; and dropped dead.

T
HERE
’
RE
NO
more narcotic drug addicts, so we’re moving now to dangerous drugs. Dangerous drugs—no opiates, nothing to send you to that lethal mania, but the mood elevators, the amphetamines.

The big connections of the dangerous drugs are Squibb and Park-Lilly, Olin Mathison and Merc and Wyeth. Do they know that? Does the legislature know that? I wonder why they’re not apprised of that situation. Dangerous drugs—that’s the legal phrase—relates to all these medications that are mood elevators, not made for sores or boils. They are made not in Guatemala, but in factories and for a purpose.

Then I said, “These senators, they come from the South. Southerners don’t take pills. Nor do Southern doctors prescribe pills.” I’ll bet you that when all those people were dying of spinal meningitis at Moffitt Field—and heretofore sulpha drugs had worked—you wondered what happened. Guys are dying there:

“They’re spitting out the pills!”

“They’re
what
? Whatsa matter with you guys? You’re
dying
and you’re spitting out the sulpha drugs!”

“Look. I’m a Lockheed worker, and I read all about it in the
Herald Express,
about those dangerous drugs. I’m not filling my body fulla those poisons! I got spinal meningitis, I’ll get rid of it the natural way—take an enema, I’ll sweat and I’ll run around. Not gonna take none of that horseshit.”

O.K.
NOW
, dangerous drugs. Now, the insanity in that area is that the reason that heroin is
verboten
is that it’s no good for people. It destroys the ego, and the only reason we get anything done in this country is that you want to be proud of it and build up to the neighbors. And if the opiate
schleps
all that away, then the guy goes up to the guy who builds a new building and he’ll say,

DETACHED
HIPPY
VOICE
:
Hey, that’s cool.

And that’s it. So it’s no good. And that’s why it’s out.

Y
OU
KNOW
what I’d like to investigate? Zig-zag cigarette papers. Yeah. Bring the company up:

DEEP
AGGRESSIVE
VOICE
:
Now we have this report, Mr. Zig-zag . . . Certainly it must have seemed unusual to you, that Zigzag papers have been in business for sixteen years, and Bugler tobacco has been out of business for five years! . . .

This committee comes to the conclusion . . . that the people are using your Zig-zag cigarette papers, to . . . roll marijuana tobacco in it.

“Oh, shit.”

“That’s right. Lots of it—rolling it and smoking it.”

D
IG
. T
HE
beautiful part about it is that so many neighborhood grocery stores have been kept in business for years—the
schmucks
don’t know that, right?

YOUNG
VOICE
[
trying to sound nonchalant
]: O.K. I’ll have Delsey toilet tissues, and, ah, another six cans of soup, and a broom, and, ah . . . some cigarette papers.

OLD
JEWISH
VOICE
: I dunno, ve stay in business so long, it’s terrific. All the markets—but ve screw em, we chahge top prices, and the people come in here anyway. They
like
me.

O.K. Where does this go on? At a place called Alfie’s. Alfy’s. Open 24 Hours. Cigarettes, cigars, old Jewish man behind the counter:

YOUNG
WISE
GUY
: Pa?

ANCIENT
JEW
: Yuh?

WISE
GUY
: Pa, do you sell many cigarette papers here?

OLD
JEW
: Uh.

WISE
GUY
: What do you assume that people are doing with the cigarette papers they’re buying?

OLD
JEW
: De’re rollink cigarettes.

WISE
GUY
: They’re rolling cigarettes? In these flamboyant times you assume people are
rolling
cigarettes?

OLD
JEW
: Uhhh, so vut are you doink mit cigarette papuhs?

WISE
GUY
: You don’t know?

OLD
JEW
: No.

WISE
GUY
: They’re rolling
pot
!

OLD
JEW
: Vus?

WISE
GUY
: Pot.

OLD
JEW
:
Vus machts du
pop?

WISE
GUY
: Marijuana,
schmuck
!

OLD
JEW
: Marijuana? Hey! Uh, agh,
vus
? Hey—

Always talking to some
schmuck
in the back who’s not there.

—you heard dot? Marijuana. All dese years I never knew dot. Marijuana. Sig-sag papuhs, marijuana, roll the marijuana,
meschugenah,
marijuana.

Next an eighty-year-old pensioner walks to the stand:

OLD
PENSIONER
: “Hullo? Hullo? Solly, in the bek? Hullo? Ding-alingalingalinga?”

OLD
JEW
: Hullo.

PENSIONER
: Listen, gimme a peckege Bugler’s and some Sigsag papuhs.

OLD
JEW
:
Vus
? Sig-sag papuhs? Justa momunt . . . [
Aside
] Hullo, policeman? Is gecamein a junkie!

All right. The kid, six years old, played by George McCready:

“Well, let’s see now. I’m all alone in my room, and it’s Saturday, and Mother’s off in Sausalito freaking off with Juanita, so I’ll make an airplane. Yes. What’ll I do . . . I’ll make, ah, an Me-110, that’s a good structure. I’ll get the balsa wood . . . cut it out there . . . there we go . . . rub it up . . . Now, I’ll get a little airplane glue, rub it on the rag, and, uh, uh, . . . hmmmmmm, I’m getting loaded! . . . Is this possible? Loaded on airplane glue? Maybe it’s stuffy in here. I’ll call my dog over.

“Felika! Felika, come here, darling, and smell this rag. Smell it! You freaky little doggy . . . smell the rag Felika . . . Felika! Felika! IT WORKED! I’M THE LOUIS PASTEUR OF JUNKIEDOM! I’m out of my skull for a dime!

“Well, there’s much work to be done now . . . horse’s hooves to melt down, noses to get ready . . .”

CUT TO, the toy store. The owner, Albert Wasserman. The kid walks in:

tinglelingleling!

KID
[
affected innocent voice
]: Hello Mr. Shindler. It’s a lovely store you’ve got here . . . Ah, why don’t you let me have a nickel’s worth of pencils, and a big boy tablet, hm? A Big-Little Book? Some nail polish remover, and, ah, [
voice changes to a driven madness
]
two thousand tubes of airplane glue!

OWNER
[
old Jew
]: Dot’s very unusual! Ve haff nefer sold so much airplane glue before. I’m an old man—don’t bring me no heat on the place! And save me a taste, you know? I vouldn’t burn you for no bread, you know?

Cut to Paul Cotes, Confidential File:

“This is Paul Cotes, Confidential File, and next to me, ladies and gentlemen of the viewing audience on television, is a young boy who’s been sniffing airplane glue. Could be your kid, anybody’s kid, whose life has been destroyed by the glue. I hope you can sleep tonight, Mr. LePage. Pretty rotten, a young kid like this. What’s your name, sonny?”

“I’m Sharkey, from Palo Alto.”

“Well, it’s obvious that Sharkey feels a lot of hostility for the adult world. Sharkey, how did it all start, kid? How did you start on this road to ruin? With airplane glue.”

“Well, I foist started chippying round wit small stuff—like smellin’ sneakuhs, doity lawndry, Mallowmar boxes . . .”

“A little Kraft-Ebbing in there . . . That’s very interesting, Sharkey. You’ve been sniffing it for six months?”

“At’sright.”

“Are you hooked?”

“No. I’m stuck.”