Acid Head

My unspoken thoughts felt surreptitious. I was innocent but conscious of guilt and ever fearful of discovery when I was that age.

I would hear about her second hand, and listen intently, bi-polar, with hope and a sense of dream-like helplessness. I remember overhearing she would arrive with three other women from Dutch Elm, and then later seeing the car coming down the gravel park road and, when she wasn't inside, waiting for someone else to make a remark, or ask about her.
_ _ _

On campus I liked to rest with a book open, upside down on my chest. "Being And Nothingness", "Finegan's Wake", "Language, Truth, And Logic". Any lofty tome, transparently and outrageously pretentious.

Mary Lee was the only woman to actually step up and give me the business. She crossed her arms, jutted her hips and smiled, waiting.

"What?"

She asked if my library book wasn't over-due. I looked down and then feigned surprise and embarrassment.

She was tickled and I got to say something about learning this one backwards and forwards and standing on my head. I remember then, a second of quiet she spent, looking at me then, with her very young, slightly blemished but attractive round face. She seemed pleased with me (or pleased with herself). She kept her arms crossed and kicked my leg with the side of her foot and said "see you later, crocodile".

"In awhile, alligator." She looked back and laughed, "That's right, JohnJackson."

Maybe we'd have had an actual conversation if either of us had read any of those titles. It was a one minute encounter, an Impressionist's minute that made me smile for days just before going to sleep each night.

Simple as that, I was in love then and thought about her every quarter hour of every waking day that semester. Once, seeing her coming down one of the looping , clover-leaf paths toward me I startled and had just enough time to plausibly miss her. You'd think I'd have had something to say, but no. At that age I didn't comprehend the possibility of her, or any woman, being flattered by my admiration.
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Down, and paranoid-down, these terms of surrender I imposed on myself were almost too much to bear. I spent most of my time in my apartment, drinking, reading and writing.

I imagined myself horribly disfigured, incidentally. Not long before, acid-stoned, I'd got a bad look in the mirror and my face was like I'd never seen it before. Also a friend had recently confided to me that a certain girl everyone was sharing considered me unbelievably ugly. (He added, "I don't know what she means, John! I don't think you're ugly at all!" But that didn't help.) I knew she was right, and lamented that I couldn't make up for my unattractiveness with a theatrical, magnetic personality.
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That May, the newly extant "Yippies" (meaning "Youth International Party") in New York got my phone number from The Worker House and called late one night about a "Rock Against Reagan" music tour that would be arriving in our university town. They wanted an organizer and I was excited in earnest to say yeah.

I applied for and got a city park permit, designed artless flyers ("rock against republicans, religion, REO Speedwagon, revolvers, royalty " ---you name it if it started with an "R") and posted them to the downtown telephone poles with all the other academic/ musical advertisements.

I anticipated some positive attention, primarily from Mary Lee, who by the way was the sister of a friend of mine I didn't like, Russell. She had won a student council seat. We pronounced her name "Merrily", and it fit. She was a joy and, I imagined, popular.
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It was a disappointing show with at most 50 people gathered. I was pleasantly drunk and stoned, and discovered I enjoyed speaking into a live microphone. I got one laugh and warmed up and got a second and didn't push it, but introduced the first band.

There were ten bands playing for six hours on this Spring weekend afternoon. Sixties-style outrage was hard to conjure as of course there was little to protest (what about, Grenada?)
The names of the bands answered any question: this day's rage was against "apathy" and all that was trivial but had raised itself to a level of English-Major contempt.

It had rained the night before, so there was a little pond formed in front of the stage, unfortunately. The audience stood back in a way that seemed apropos.

Then the screeching, talentless punk rockers opened with a song that made me hope for an accidental electric guitar electrocution. I left. I knew there had to be some relief in leaving and of course I was correct.
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There was a picnic for some labor union across the Frisbee way, and one of these dopes started shouting insults at the older folks (with their children) there.

But I heard about this later, since I spent most of the day up the hill in my apartment with a couple of friends. I felt like a producer whose show had flopped. Or , was flopping indefinitely. It seemed a disaster from the start.

We made frequent trips back and forth. I still hoped she would be there. We'd get out of the car and be spotted and there was a lot of contentious talk over the in-your-face yippie music.

Don't we celebrate unions? I asked no one in particular.

No, we're for One Big Union, man. "They're not politically correct", someone actually said of the labor people. It was the first time I ever heard that expression.

Merrily showed up around 4, while I was up in my room receiving reports. I was three, four or five times removed by acid or mushrooms, and liquor, and the people in my same condition.

The young men and women of the RAR tour were their own audience now, except for a very few locals. There was a far left student group called "The New Wave" but even most of them had called it quits.
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It was just a matter of coasting down the hill in my yellow VW bug to get there. I spotted her with one of the hippie wood-winds, and I sensed right away their conversation was off to a good long start.

They'd be together the whole time. We had a keg and a fire, the drummers drummed but soon sensed to quit. For sometime I mixed in with a part of the group she'd joined. Her brother said do you remember Jackson and she said "hi John-Jackson" and looked down and took a short puff from a cigarette, like it was her first smoke.

The equipment was packed up, and she helped where she could, taking directions mostly from her very flower-childish, new friend. The Yippies would spend the night parked there, and I didn't know if that was stipulated in the city permit or not. I didn't know if the beer was legal. I went back home with two of my friends, who were from the Worker Farm about 40 miles away, and Russell, who told one of them that Mary Lee was staying.

I was drunk and quiet, disappointed. But at that age I'd already stopped thinking that anything but a miracle would hook me up with a girl like 'Merrily'.

Such a sham, I said.

"what?"

A sham. And a shame, I thought. Lucky that wasn't a family reunion nearby, they'd probably have shouted pro-abortion slogans at 'em.

The next morning we went down to find everyone groggy and still resentful about the "lake". As if there would have been a large audience if not for the water sitting about eight feet out in front of the stage in this large city park.

Merrily was sitting on the ground against a stone wall, and had covered herself with a grey blanket. She pulled it over her head as the flutist was sitting very close, not touching but talking and gesturing with starts and stops.

I got close enough to realize she was crying and he was apologizing for something.

"It shouldn't have happened. I'm sorry."

She was unresponsive, then shook her head, not angrily but slowly and philosophically. I caught sight of eyes, which were finished crying. She was out of his reach now. He didn't dare reach out and comfort.

I couldn't think, but for suddenly knowing something, and I couldn't feel, except I felt I should feel something.

Someone from the show came out of nowhere and put it to me directly: "Are you the guy who was supposed to set this up, man?"

What with the acid and my morning brew I was detached, but deep down I imagined a part of me was collapsing. Some part of myself I'd remember not to visit, was all. Not my center.

One of my soft-spoken friends answered for me, in his most diplomatic, obliquely humorous way, so the fellow just shook his head and walked off. I did have one or two cool friends, thank goodness.

I couldn't take my eyes off of her, but got some walking distance.

"It shouldn't have happened." Like something fell on them during the night. Not, "I shouldn't have done that."
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Russell went over and stood over her, asking something. He came back and said, "I think she's going with them." But I knew she wasn't.

Somehow part of my dream came true, and she joined us in the car and we went to breakfast, four of five of us for biscuits and sausage gravy. Russell was a motor mouth and I didn't like him but I was glad he was talking now. I sat across the table from her and found myself surprisingly relaxed, speechless now when, what else could I be?

Everyone was talking but her and me. She was in her world, alone, only looking up from her plate to drink from her water glass and let her eyes glide across us, always giving me sufficient time to look away from her. I didn't want our eyes to meet.

I was in my world, with her actually present. But still solely in my imagination.

Every thought was an off-beat guess, a glum, useless calculation, what was what. It seemed good for her that she was with her brother and that we were her circle of friends for the moment, but I felt like I'd done something wrong. The drugs I took in those days fractured my perception, but this time I was aware of what distance this mirror to mirror maze would actually comprise if it were straightened out.
It crossed my mind, what if I accidentally spilled a glass of water, would that change everything? Because then she might have laughed and said something that would somehow let me off my imaginary hook. Maybe then we'd somehow have a conversation and get to know one another.
***
Eight years passed , and certain convictions I'd held since school, lifted, or just skipped my mind.

My mind was the right size again, and my eyes were uncrossed. I hadn't used "psychedelics" in all that time, and hadn't wished to.

I found myself in a sort of theatre troupe, all friendly , extroverted but bookish people, not in any competition with one another, but older, sharing laughs about their foolish younger days.

On warm spring days my co-workers and I would loiter at the top of the company's parking garage, which was built so high you could barely hear the traffic. My name was called upon more often, still "john-jackson". I had a moment then, I realized I'd matured just with the years gone by. I breathed in the air and knew I was still young, and this was the same world as ever before but now without menace.