Mystic by Default

 

CHAPTER 1

 

 

THE DISEASE OF IGNORANCE

 

 

          I was working late, doctoring the books, when the phone rang.

          “How much?” I shouted.  I could not believe she was still holding out.

           ”Look Charlie,” I said sucking in my rage like a fat man his gut in the presence of a babe.  “This won’t do.  That...”  I was about to say ‘bitch’ proceeded by a string of unflattering adjectives but thought better of it for fear of offending him.  Everything was going wrong and I needed more trouble like England needs more rain.  Furthermore, I did not want him to know how deeply involved I was.  Five years of damn hard work was about to go sloshing down the drain. 

          On the other hand, since I had no friends who would listen to me whine I did not want to miss the opportunity, so I let my wrath escape in constipated little dabs.  

          “She’s been jerking my chain for the last six months.  I’ve had it up to here!” I said, gesticulating wildly, my voice rising again.

          “Please be reasonable, James,” he answered.

           I hated that calm lawyeresque voice.  It reminded me of mother, the judge.  And the shrink they sent me to when the university gave me the boot.  What was his name?  Paton, Payton, Penton, something like that.  I will never forget him.  After six months poking around in my childhood, like a proctologist checking the prostate, constantly asking how I felt about things...Puddy!  Walt Puddy.  That’s it!  What a name; we made some typically sophomoric jokes about that one.  In case you do not know, in those days the ‘pud’ was one of a thousand names for you know what.  I am sure the language has moved on; I have no idea what they call it now.

          Anyhow, I was tired of the long drives - Spokane was a hundred and ten miles.  Come to think of it, it was not all that bad.  Dad, God rest his soul, gave me a fifty-seven Lincoln he had picked up off a doctor’s widow, the kind with the gas cap inside the tail light; you pushed a little round red reflective button outlined in chrome and the tail light popped up!  We did not worry about gas; it was the Fifties and he got it wholesale for twelve cents a gallon - he was a great finagler - even put a tank under the driveway so we could pump it ourselves.

          Monstrous sharky fins shooting out the back and tons of chrome.  Custom colored yellow and black.  I bet his wife never forgave the good doctor those colors.  What a machine! A work of art.  Especially the big back seat.  I would be hard pressed to remember the names of all the eager young ladies who felt compelled to do the old in-and-out in it.  The cops never bothered it either.  They must have thought it belonged to some rich stiff.  It ruined me for what was to come: the soulless tight-assed computer-controlled environmentally sensitive Japanese rigs with plastic bumpers you see these days zipping all over the highways like water spiders.  

          The doctor had it special-ordered, paid ten grand dad said, a bundle in those days, and then went off and died.  It had power seats, power steering, power antenna, power radio dialing, power everything.  I could make it from Lewiston to Spokane in an hour and a half.  That may not seem like much, but you have to know that the figure includes the Lewiston hill, a seven-percent grade with ten miles of hairpin switchbacks which in an ordinary rig took a good thirty, forty minutes.  That sucker was heavy, hugged the road liked a baby monkey its mom and whipped around those tight curves at fifty like nobody’s business.  When I hit the prairie I let it rip, tearing through the quaint little farm towns in the Palouse like a demon, raising a cloud of dust you could see for miles. 

          Actually the bi-weekly visits to the shrink actually were not so bad.  After my fifty minutes I would saunter down to skid row, quaff a few brews, play pool and rub elbows with some pretty seedy characters. 

          Anyhow, I was getting fed up with the endless chit-chat.  I felt one of my impulses coming on.  The impulses landed me on that silly couch in the first place.  The present one was about to get me off.

          I was trying to be on my best behavior at least until they shipped me off to the next Waspy institution.  I was in disgrace, getting kicked out of a very prestigious school for reasons we will not mention.

“You have all the gifts, James,” mom who had character and ambition used to say, making me guilty as hell, “with the right opportunities you’ll be somebody.  And we’re here to see you have the opportunities.” 

          I asked him point blank what was wrong with me. 

          He did a double take, regained his composure, packed in a nice tidy little pinch of sweet tobacco, fired up his beloved Meerschaum, which he fondled obscenely when he was not smoking, and swiveled the armchair around to gaze profoundly out the window at Spokane’s skyline which was dominated by the Ridpath Hotel, a Thirties fantasy of Moorish opulence.  I thought he was just being dramatic, carrying his donnish avuncular Ivy League persona to the max, but I was wrong; he was actually getting ready to be real after all those months.  He sat lost in thought for eternal minutes, swiveled back, took a tasty little drag, looked me right in the eye and in a brand new voice, one which I have since come to recognize as truth, said, “Well, James, at worst you are slightly maladjusted.”  Another long pause.  Then, “But, considering the times, I would say it is a good sign.”

          That blew me away.

          All along I was thinking that maybe everybody, Mom and the attenuated cue of officialdom that seemed to have been sent to earth primarily to torment me since day one were right; maybe there was something seriously wrong with me.  But the good doctor did not seem to think so.  I heartily concurred.  He probably did not realize it, but he had just given me license to continue my long slide into the pit. 

          Seriously though, something was wrong; he just did not know what it was.  Or if he knew he could not say.  He was a well-meaning liberal intellectual like mom who thought the world of Dr. Spock and could not very well say I was a nasty little devil and lay on a few well-deserved whacks; it would not have been scientific and may have permanently damaged my tender psyche. You would think a guy getting fifty bucks an hour, a lot of money in those days, would have been able to figure out that my morals were shot because I did not know who I was.  But even if he had, how would he have gone about clueing me in?

          I had to keep falling.

          Sorry, I am getting off track, wandering around in antiquity.  It is like that when you look back; the thoughts branch uncontrollably as the mind hunts the kernel, the event meant to burst radiantly out the gloom of the past and illumine the present. 

          Where was I?  Oh yes, grousing about the way so-called professionals speak.  I did not need a lawyer because I was in hot water, at least not yet, but because I could not talk to Magdalena about money.  We did OK with the small talk: sales, designs, inventory, all the nuts and bolts stuff; but when it came to the subject of money, and especially how much I was worth, the conversation invariably turned nasty.   

          Anyway, I stuffed my anger because I needed him and because he was not a bad guy.  He took his bi-weekly trouncing on the courts like a champ and I often thought that if I was not who I was, maybe in a more perfect world we might even be buddies, slop some suds, chase a little tail, something like that.  Not that I am into that sort of stuff these days.

          I apologized and took my side of the conversation to the level of a righteous whine, “But Christ Charlie!  It’s worth twice that.  I busted ass to build it up to this level.” 

          “That may be true, but it’s only worth what she’s willing to pay.  She’s got you by the short hairs.  We’ve been through this before.   She controls the Board.  This is as good as you’re going to get.”

          That pissed me off and I decided to play my ace.

“Wrong, Charlie.  The price is two hundred fifty thou.” 

          “Christ, James, are you nuts?  Here’s a solid offer.  She thinks she’s being taken to the cleaners as it is and you want another fifty grand.  You should take it.  You know how long it would take me to get together that kind of money?”

          “You’re a lawyer, I own forty nine percent of a successful corporation.  But that’s another issue.  She’ll go for it.”

          “You sound pretty cocky, James.  Is there something I don’t know?”

          “That’s right, Charlie.  Tell her this isn’t going to court.” 

          We’ve been through that too.  If you don’t go for this offer it will end up in court.  What you got?”

          “I haven’t been completely straight with you, Charlie.”

          “Wait a minute, James.  Think twice about this.  If it’s seriously illegal you’re putting me in a bind.  I can’t represent you if you’re into something heavy.” 

          “How’d you like an expenses paid two week vacation for you and Pam in, say, Tahiti?  Golf, scuba diving, breakfast in bed, the works.”

          “Is this a bribe, James?”

          “Let’s say you’re a stand-up guy, a great lawyer, and a buddy.  I’d just like to show my appreciation.”

          “This must be bad.  I’m not sure I want to hear it,” he replied without conviction. 

          “You want to hear it, Charlie.  If you don’t like it, tell me to take a hike.  I’ll dig up someone else.”

          “Jesus, James, take it easy.  OK, why will she go for a quarter of a million when she’s screaming bloody murder about two hundred thou?”

          “Because I’ve got the second set of books.”

          “You mean...”

          “That’s right.  After you guys get through with us and the IRS shows up and I have a word with a few key people there won’t be much of a corporation to run.  The books are worth an extra fifty grand.  That’s the deal.”

          “God, James, not only are you bribing me, you’re blackmailing her, not to mention cheating the government.  I don’t like it.  It’s wrong.”

          But I could tell by his tone that he was intrigued, which confirmed my hypothesis that most people are bored to death and are constantly hoping for a titillating off-color little something to come along and brighten up their shallow virtuous lives.

          “Wrong or not, it’s what’s happening.  She broke her promise and this the only way to fix it.” 

          “We’ve got a fighting chance of getting the court to see it our way.  I told you that.”

          “A fighting chance with five years of my life!  That’s not good enough.  I’ve got insurance and it’s time to file the claim.”

I could sense him getting upset so I tried to appeal to his higher side. 

“Don’t think I wouldn’t like to handle it honorably, Charlie, sit down on the patio and discuss it politely over tea.  I come from a good family.  I’m no crook.  But this is the only way.  I don’t have it in writing and there’s just too much water under the bridge.”

          “In fact blackmail is eminently reasonable,” I thought to myself.  “I should just push her off a North Shore cliff after one of our famous champagne picnics.  Just a little closer, sweetheart.  Beautiful, isn’t it?  Can you see the bottom down where the surf’s crashing into the shore, squirting up out of that rock like a big whale’s spout?  Yes, it is a long drop.  Here, take my hand.  Go ahead, lean out, I’ve got you.”

That would have been a ‘civilized,’ as mom used to say, response to her perfidy.

          “She’ll go for it,” I continued.  Face is important to Asians.  We’ve a great reputation and if the word gets out we’re scamming Uncle Sam a lot of those big accounts would head south.  Plus the business is on fire.  You’ve seen the figures.  She’ll have it all back in no time.”

          “You’ve sure got chutzpah,” he said.

          “I didn’t get where I am being faint of heart, but if it makes you feel better I don’t enjoy this any more than you.”

          I think that did it.  I meant it.  I was sick and tired of the whole mess.  It was eating up every minute of my time and I was not sleeping well.  My gut was hanging over my belt; I was smoking a couple packs of non-filter Camels a day and socking away a lot of booze.  Success was not working.

“OK, James, I’ll tell her,” he said,

I felt like kissing him.

Remember, first class.  You coming to the club Saturday?  I got a new racquet.  I’ll cream you.”

          “I don’t know,” Charlie.  “Depends on how I feel then.  I don’t feel like socializing that much.  We’re down to the short strokes on this one and I’m almost out of a job.”

          I sounded confident but hung up wondering if I had done the right thing, involving him.  If things headed south he might spill the beans.

          Until this point nobody knew what was going on, the corporation just one big happy family.  I wanted to tell her myself.  We were still on speaking terms, but as I said, everything went wrong when the money issue came up in her presence - which it did almost as frequently as my Willie. 

        I nearly ran down a pedestrian on the way out of the parking garage when my mind flipped into fantasy mode and I saw her shapely nude brown body, which I had loved to distraction for the last five years, splayed out on the Sahara, a rough wooden stake driven violently through the heart, a small erotic rivulet of blood tricking from the wound, gumming up the sand – an unpleasant image, no doubt, but it did make me feel better.

        Driving up the strip I felt like crying.  I know, men do not cry.  At least in those days they didn’t.  Now, I am told, it is all the rage; shows you are sensitive, have feelings.  Women are meant to love it.  I hate self pity.  But I had made a royal mess of things, and life seemed ever-so much more important then than it does now, so I found myself choking back a string of aching dry sobs trying to work to the surface like rotten farts oozing through a plugged and putrefying colon.  Though I tried, not thinking about her was impossible, like the fellow who went to the guru for a secret mantra.  After the instructions had been given, the guru said, “Oh, by the way, the mantra won’t work if you think of pink elephants before you chant.”  She was stuck in my mind and the only way to obliterate her was to get high. 

        I parked near Diamond Head, shut off the engine, and reached for a joint.  I did not include dope on the list of poisons above because at the time I thought it was the heaven-sent remedy for my problems.  Before long I would figure out I did not have problems.

        I was the problem.

        I remember feeling grateful as I rolled the joint, wondering how I had survived without it so long.

        The first time flashed. 

        I had just come back to Manila from Zamboanga after a buying trip, island-hopping in dilapidated DC-10's left over from the war, landing on potholed runways so skimpy the wings narrowly missed coconut palms lining the sides, occasionally swerving to avoid the hulking black shapes of water buffaloes wandering lethargically across the pocked tarmac.

        What a fop I was, sporting a Panama Hat, Barong Tagalog, and silk slacks, swaggering through fetid tropical towns spreading greenbacks around local markets like a whore the clap at a convention of traveling salesmen, twirling an inlaid baton purchased from an antique shop in Rangoon, probably scavenged from a British officer who made the supreme sacrifice in the Burmese campaign.  Ridiculous as I was I do not regret one day spent sitting on those screened verandahs in the heat of the day, drinking San Miguel and nibbling balut, hard-boiled embryonic duck with tiny bones and fledgling feathers, making deals with Chinese traders.

        I unpacked, went for a swim, and was lounging by the pool drinking gin and tonic and reading Conrad when Emy appeared, setting the old hormones vibrating.  She was so deliciously Filipina, a marvelous combination of compliant Malay inscrutability and Spanish passion.  She made me ache all over, but putting the moves on her was verboten because she was the daughter of Ninoy, our number one supplier.  Sex was sex and business was business, although I certainly had not followed that rule with Magdalena.

         “Hi James!" she said, enthusiastically dragging a chaise lounge across the tiles, indifferently depositing her luscious form.  "Where you been?  I haven't seen you for a couple of weeks."

        “Buying trip.  Mindanao.  I didn't know you were keeping track,” I replied, wondering what she wanted.

        "Of course I keep track.  Dad talks about you all the time.  He thinks you're great."

        I was too vain not to be flattered.  And I was not sure how much of my bullshit Ninoy had swallowed.

        "What about you?  What do you think?"

        "Oh, you're OK.  You think you're pretty hot, but you're not a bad guy.  You must be smart to have so much money at twenty five."

        In spite of her statement I got the impression she did not think much of money.  Still, I liked her sassy style, her command of English.

        "Just luck," I said.  "What's in the bag?"

        She leaned over and reached for a large raffia bag, decorated with straw flowers, her generous breasts nearly falling from a rumpled partially unbuttoned blouse.  She had the right stuff but her hair was a mess and her bikini mismatched, which takes some doing.  What did she have against bras and tight skirts, lipstick, perfume and parloured hair?  Magdalena would have never left so much unprotected in public.

        Emy made me feel like a veritable dinosaur at twenty-six.  I was imprisoned in the Fifties and here it was sixty-seven.  How much like dad I had become, hopelessly straight and out of it.

      She must have picked up her style at Berkeley where she went to school.  Things had changed since I dropped out in sixty-two and ran off with Magdalena.  I was so crazy in love and ready for adventure that when she gave me the ticket and a huge wad of hundred dollar bills six months before graduation I went straight to my apartment, picked up a couple of novels and a change of clothes and walked out without closing the door.  I was never coming back.  People were crazy in those days and I was one of them.  I wasn’t psychedelic crazy, at least not yet, but I was crazy.  Something was in the air.

      Ironically, I recall wondering if Emy believed in free love, was part of the developing drug subculture that was giving the readers of Time such a start.

      She took a record from the bag and handed it to me.

      "The who?" I said, unable to make out the weird wavy lettering on the cover.

      "Not the Who," she said, "The Beatles, a group from England.”

      I wondered why these popular groups took such strange names.  I hated popular music.  Yes, I had been a big fan when I was a teenager growing up in Idaho, kept up with the Top Forty, danced to Fats Domino and Elvis at the YAC, but lost interest and got into classical music as I got more intellectual.

      “They're very psychedelic," Emy continued.

      "Very psychedelic?  What do you mean?"

      "Turned on man.  Out there.  You get high and everything’s different." she replied smiling enigmatically.

       Undoubtedly amused I was so out of it, she was anticipating turning me on, wondering how it would turn out.  Perhaps she was thinking I would have a bummer and freak out, or worse, not feel a thing.  I must have seemed pretty dead.  On the other hand she might have been visualizing me morphing into a wild-eyed hippie, tearing off my clothes, streaking around the pool, fucking her silly.

      “What’s it like?” I said. 

      She did not answer but got up and walked through the sliding glass door to the apartment.

      "How do you turn this on?" she called.

      I got up and went in, miffed she had presumed to enter uninvited.  I was used to manners, being able to predict what was happening.

      Nonetheless, I stuffed my feelings as usual and helped her with the stereo.  The sparks flew when our bodies brushed as I fiddled with the knobs a second before the treacly strains of Strawberry Fields, a far cry from my beloved Mozart, suddenly oozed from the large black speakers.

      She flopped down on the couch, one shapely leg thrown casually over the armrest, the other on the coffee table.  I could see the peach fuzz on her inner thigh.

      "You have to be high," she said, picking up where we’d left off outside.

      I did not get it.

      "Psychedelic, man!  High!  When you're high you'll know what out there is,” she replied, taking a small bottle of dark brown liquid and a couple of strange little cigarettes from her bag.

      I did not like being put on hold and called ‘man,’ but sat down next to her anyway.  I was capable of serious repression and mind-boggling hypocrisy when it seemed I was about to get laid.

      "What's that?"

      "Codeine," she replied. 

      “And those?"

      "Dope, man, marijuana, the nasty killer weed.  You want to get high?" she said, snuggling up against me.

      A wave of tingly energy swept over me, the thrill of the forbidden.

      “What about Ninoy?” I said.

      “What about Ninoy?”

      “If he finds us sitting here like this it will mess up the whole business thing.”

      “Sitting here like what?”

      She must have known what I meant.  There we were lounging around on the couch half naked in the most compromising position about to do you know what and she is pretending everything is very normal.

      “Like, well, ... I mean... like... here we are sitting around in our swimsuits on the couch about to do something illegal.  What if Ninoy came looking for you?”

      “This will be good for you.  Think of it as medicine.”

      “Medicine? Are you nuts!  What’s medicine have to do with it?”

      “You’re uptight.  This will cure you.”

      My desire to punch her did not seem appropriate.  There she was: totally unconcerned, sexy as hell, her pert nipples quivering with excitement.  I felt I could act out any fantasy.  

      “What do you mean, “uptight?”  It was the first time I’d heard the word.  

      “Worried, man.  Worried.  Angry.  You’re like an old man, like Ninoy.  What’s to worry about?  You’ve got it made, hanging around over here, taking it easy, making scads of money, messing around with the local girls.”

      “I’m not messing around,” I lied.  “I have a girlfriend in Hawaii.”

       “You mean, Magdalena?” she said laughing dismissively.

      I felt a strange mixture of incredulity and rage.  How did she know Magdalena?  Still, I kept my cool.  I could almost taste her full pouty lips, feel the warmth of her body.

      “You know, Magdalena?”

      “Of course.  They’re one of the richest families here.  Everyone knows everything: her mad brother, Manuel, Imelda the ice queen, Juan Ponce who made all the money off the Americans.  They’re famous.  I even heard about your accident, sneaking out of the hospital.”

      I felt totally embarrassed.  How did anyone know about the accident?  There were so many thoughts buzzing in my mind I did not know where to start so I decided to concentrate on Ninoy.

      “Does Ninoy know you take that stuff?”

      "You think I'm stupid?  You know how they are here.  I don't tell them anything.

      “Aren’t you worried they’ll find out?”

      “What are they going to do, put me in jail?  Come on, James, take it easy.  It’s only dope. ”

      “You must think I’m pretty screwed up.”

      “Let’s not get into it, James.  What do you say?  You want to get high?"

      "What's it like?"

      “That’s not the right answer, man.”

      “I just want to know what to expect, that’s all.”

      "Take it easy,” she said, caressing my neck with her delicate fingers.  It's no big deal.  You want to go to the movies?"

      "I just want to know what to expect, that's all."

      "You think it's life-threatening?" she asked, a mischievous grin appearing on her pretty face.  "It's fun.  You’ll love it.  I'll be there too."

      I was about to ask where “there” was but realized I would have to take the plunge.

      “You’ll dig it, believe me.  You’re ready. ”

      She handed me the joint and I took a couple of deep drags.  They burned hotter than my Camels.

      Then the bottle of codeine.

      “That’s cough syrup.”

      “So?”

      “So, I don’t have a cold.”

      “I know you don’t have a cold, James.” 

      “So what’s it for?”

      “It’s a narcotic, works great with the dope and cools the throat.  It’s your medicine, what the doctor ordered.  Take a big swig.  It will make you better.”

      “You’re having a very nice time teasing me, aren’t you.  Am I really that bad?”  

      “You’re fine, James.  Absolutely fine.  But there’s something important you don’t know, something you can’t buy.”

      She leaned over and kissed me on the neck.  I wanted to respond but the thought of Magdalena stuck in my mind.  I seemed paralyzed from the waist down. 

      “What’s the matter, James?  Don’t you want to kiss me?”

      “It’s Magdalena, Emy.  I can’t stop thinking of her.”

       "Do you love her?"

      “I thought I did, but if it's love why does it hurt so much?"

       I could not believe I said that.  It just flowed out on its own.  I always made things out to be copasetic, even when they stunk.

      She snuggled closer and handed me the joint.   I took a couple serious drags and handed it back.  I cannot be sure because my mind was starting to change but think I heard her say, “It’s only love if you know its love.   I’m not looking for a boyfriend.  I just like you.  Don’t worry about Ninoy.  It’s OK.”  Something like that.

      It seemed as if she were speaking in an underwater dream but it did not matter because I could hear the sweetness in her voice oozing through time and space, ringing crystal clear in my mind.   It seemed terribly real, more important than anything I had heard for a long time. 

      Somewhere along the line I seemed to have forgotten about love.

      The thought of Magdalena disappeared and Manila, which was starting to grate after all those months, seemed like home.  I could not remember why I had come and it did not matter.  Everything in the room: the table and chairs, the carpet, and my books were glowing and changing, radiating an unearthly light, her words, ‘far out,’ came floating back, making perfect sense.  The music, which I had not liked straight, seemed terribly appropriate stoned, the lyric, "Sergeant Pepper's lonely hearts club band," irresistibly funny, ironic.  I felt giddy, silly, and oddly happy.

      We kissed, her tongue delicately, eagerly exploring my mouth sending waves of pleasure southward, relaxing the paralysis in my lower extremities. 

      “Well, what’s this?” she said, lightly groping my crotch.

      “That’s the Willie,” I replied, hungrily kissing her breasts.

      “It seems pretty uptight.  Perhaps it needs to smoke some dope, drink some codeine, learn to take it easy.”

      “I don’t think it’s ready.  Maybe later.  Let’s just let it be.” 

      From that point on I cannot remember what we said because we were well out of the world of words.  I do recall sliding, tumbling, freefalling down a long dark comforting tunnel, Alice on her way to Wonderland, all my unforgiving thoughts and feelings slipping away, the years of pain, my life with Magdalena, disappearing into nothingness.  Floating in an endless sea of warm intoxicating bliss, vaguely conscious of two bodies rubbing lovingly above in an outside world, the explosion came as a complete surprise literally blowing me away, a cloud dissolving in a clear sky.

 

***

 

      “So tell me about the broken leg,” said Emy, after we came down a bit and were tired of making love.

      “I thought you’d heard it all on the grapevine.  Besides, I don’t come out looking very good.”

      “I don’t care how you look.  I’m only interested in who you are.”

      “Who I am?  I’m me, James.”

      “I know that James, but who’s that?”

      “I don’t get it.  It’s me.”

      “Let’s not get into it now, OK?  Tell me about the accident.”

      “But what are you saying, who I really am?  

      “It’s not important, James.”

      “But I want to know.”

      “OK, James.  The truth.  I want to know the truth.

      “The truth?”  I replied.

       It seemed a novel concept. 

      “How it really is with you.  How you see it.”

      “See what?”

      “See what happened.  See yourself.  See the world, other people.”

      “I don’t get it?  What are you saying?”

      “Tell you what, James,” she said, kissing my neck.  Let’s have another smoke and make love and forget this conversation, the whole broken leg story.  You turn me on.”

      “An offer I can’t refuse,” I replied, still wondering what she meant about who I was.  So we toked up and went at it again.  And as we lay there spooning, sweaty and exhausted, the story just spilled out.

      “It was a big money day at the shops and I was feeling fantastic.  I collected the receipts which filled a couple of shopping bags, mostly tens and twenties, and showed up at her place about eight with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates.  Charles was working late as usual and the kids were tucked in for the night.  She was lounging around sexy lingerie reading.”

      “So how did you feel screwing a married woman?” Emy asked.

      “How did I feel?  OK, I guess.  Well, not good, actually.  I had to skulk around a bit.  But you have to see it from her point of view.  She gets the kids to school and has the whole day off till after four.  And she is not into cleaning, decorating, and fussing with the yard.  In fact, she could use a few housekeeping lessons.  Anyway, he comes home for dinner at six and is back at the lab by seven, seven thirty, every day, like a robot.  What kind of a life is that? 

      To top it off she claimed he was not a qualified operator.  His idea was once a week between eight and nine on Saturday morning.  At exactly nine he’d get up, or a little before if the plumbing worked sooner, put on his running shoes, and go out for a long jog.  That was it.  No foreplay, no afterplay, nothing but the in and out and then off to the races.  The first day we met we made love nine times.

      So Charles was supposed to come home about eleven, eleven thirty.  We had been carrying on like that for three years and he evidently did not suspect a thing, or did not want to, even though there were a few close calls, like the night I spent two hours lying on top of twenty pairs of high heel shoes in the closet until he quit reading and fell asleep.  Anyhow, we were in bed having a very nice time when I heard the tires of his Porsche squeal into the drive.  That gave me less than two minutes to grab my clothes and jump out the window. 

      I was really bombed.  Without thinking, I hopped on one of the kid’s bikes and pedaled madly into the street and into the path of an oncoming car.  Before I knew it I was flying through the air upside down, watching the taillights recede into the night.  Another car squealed to a stop within inches and in a matter of minutes a crowd of neighbors gathered.  Someone went off to call the ambulance.  I could not see anyone’s face, must have been shock, but I heard Charles’ voice clear as a bell above the hushed mumbling of the onlookers.

      “Serves the fucker right!” 

      “So you couldn’t stay any more and came over here.”

      “It’s not forever.   It will all go back to normal before long.”

       “How can you be sure?”

      “Magdalena’s arranging for me to marry her aunt who wants a Green Card.  In a couple of months we’ll tie the knot and go back to Honolulu.  The aunt gets a job and Charles forgives me and everything will be just fine.”

      “You’re incredible,” she said.

      “Why?”

      “You didn’t learn anything out of all this.”

      “What’s to learn?  It was just a bit of bad luck.  Things will go back to normal in no time.”

      “That’s what I mean.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “That’s normal?  You think Magdalena loves you?”

      “Sure, she’s fixing up this thing with Corazon so we can be together.”

      “God, James, you are thick.  The way for her to fix things up is to either dump you or Charles.  A phony marriage is no fix.  It’s just more lies.  She doesn’t care about you.  She cares about having her cake and eating it too.  You think you know people, but you don’t.  She’ll dump you when she’s finished with you. ”

      “No way.  She needs me.”

      “Needs are not love, James.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Needs are needs, love’s love.   If she loved you, you wouldn’t be holing up here.”

      I was starting to get her drift. 

      I do not remember how that conversation came out.  The point is that Emy introduced me to dope and got me thinking in another direction.  When it was time to go back to our lives I made a fool of myself.  I asked her to marry me. 

      “God, James, you’re serious, aren’t you!”

      “Of course, I love you, Emy.”

      “I love you too, but that doesn’t mean we have to get married.  I don’t want to get married, to you or anyone else.”

      “But Emy, we’d be great together.  When you love someone it makes sense to get married.”

      “Not any more, James.  That’s the straight world.  There’s a whole new thing going on.  Love is free.  You’ve been stuck in that relationship with Magdalena, doing business for the last five years.  There’s a revolution going on.  People are trying to figure things out.  I’m going back and finish my Masters and you’re going back to Hawaii.  Falling in love and getting married isn’t where it’s at.”

      And that was that.

       Magdalena said the deal with the aunt was straightforward: I would marry her, there would be a generous deposit in my account, we would get another slave to work in the factory or the shops and Charles would relax.  So we went through the ceremony with all the relatives gathered around followed by an extravagant dinner in a fancy hotel.  Imelda, her mom, who was now my sister in law, seemed to think we needed a honeymoon just for show and sent us off in a chauffeured Mercedes to Baguio, a beautiful mountain resort in Northern Luzon.  I figured they were showing gratitude for sneaking another Filipino into the US.  They put us up in a first-class hotel and on the wedding night the bride, who was in her mid-thirties and very well endowed appeared in a sheer negligee expecting me to consummate the marriage.

      “But I can’t,” I said.  “We don’t love each other.”

      “I love you,” she said. 

      “How can you love me?  We don’t even know each other.”

      “But you are very nice when we meet and now we are married I love you.”

       “A unique view,” I thought.

      “But I love Magdalena.  You know that.”

      “Magdalena’s married.  She loves Charles.”

      “Magdalena loves me.  She’s arranging this marriage to fool Charles, so we can be together.  You know that.”

      She looked as if her first-born had just been run over by a truck.  Someone had neglected to tell the poor woman the whole thing was a sham. Or tell me it was not.  Maybe they figured I would go for her and that would get me out of their hair.  She figured she had just landed a young rich American.

      It was pretty dicey for a few minutes.  Visions of her running out into the night and hurling herself off a cliff played.

      I do not know where it came from, it certainly was not typical, but I felt genuinely sorry for her.  After a long heart-to-heart talk I had a friend for life.  I fell asleep about four and awoke an hour later, first light streaming in, to find her snuggled close.

      “James,” she whispered, make love with me.

      “But Corazon...”

      “Please, James.  I won’t say a word.  Let’s pretend we are really married, just for tonight.”

      The way she said it... the childlike purity in her voice... the idea so romantic it drove me wild... I could not resist.  As I lay there afterwards I remember thinking that I loved the wrong kind of woman, that even if she did spill the beans it would serve Magdalena and her mother right.  A couple of days later we returned to Manila.  I called Magdalena who said the coast was clear. 

      I should have been overjoyed, but Emy had pricked my fantasy love balloon and a small hole had opened in my mind through which thought after thought drained down into a dark and vast cavern of self-loathing. 

      Oddly, I had the sense that I was only returning to see her face.   Since I left, almost a year before, whenever I thought of her I would have a perfect picture of everything: her lovely long hair, her shapely limbs, her sweet breasts.  But the face was missing!   No matter how hard I tried to conjure it up I could not get a picture, not even an eye, a lip, an ear or a nose. It was profoundly troubling.

      You need the face.  

      I wanted her in the story as a real person but, like the missing face, I can not remember one thing she said that would give me a hint how she really thought or felt about things, not even enough to come up with a decent inference.  Either she was nothing more than her lies or I was in complete denial.

      So I came back stateside, a crack of self-awareness opening up within, to witness the last gasps of the dying animal that was our love.  That’s where this whole story started, wasn’t it?   I was in the Porsche fumbling through the jockey box looking for a match to fire up a joint and get over the rage that surfaced when Charlie informed me of her insulting offer. 

      I could not find one, further pissed me off, so I got out and walked through the park to the beach, turning toward Diamond Head, away from the bright lights of the strip. 

      I had not gone a hundred yards when I came across a figure covered by a shawl sitting cross-legged beneath a tree.  The small feet, which is all I could see, made me think it was a woman, but it had to be a pretty crazy or self-confident woman what with all the weird people, sex perverts and the like, hanging around Waikiki.

      It was a strange phenomenon, a shrouded human pyramid sitting there still as death.  I wanted to go over, lift the shawl and have a peek, but that would have been intrusive so I wandered up the beach into the night, trying to cap my rage and keep the thoughts from falling into the black hole.

        I walked a little more and sat down on the cool sand, looking out into the ocean, reassured by the rhythmic pounding of the breakers, charmed by the profound tranquility of the night, observing the unforgiving thoughts dissolve in the silence.  A mile away, the strip, cranking itself up for another fun-filled evening, moments before so real and immediate, seemed far away, lost in darkness, like the stars.  And Diamond Head, which all these years was nothing more to me than an image on post card even though I lived on its slopes on the Kahala side, suddenly came alive, looming majestically behind, a reassuring sacred presence.  The feeling that I was supposed to be there flickered through my consciousness.

        Then, just when I seemed to have calmed down I was overcome with great convulsive sobs of grief, as if I had drunk too much of life’s toxic poison and was having a hearty well-deserved puke.  At the very peak, when I honestly wished I had never been born, I noticed a woman, her figure silhouetted against the city lights, coming my way.  I tried to get a handle on my grief, but it was no use.  As she passed she turned and looked, breaking her stride just a bit, as if she were thinking of coming over and offering me something.  I strained through the tears to see her face but it was impossible.

        And then she was gone.

        Wave upon wave of grief washed over the beaches of my soul, obliterating the past, wiping away all traces of resentment and rancor, transforming five year's passion, excitement, and turmoil into a pointless fantasy, seemingly dreamt by a stranger.  The sobbing subsided as mysteriously as it had begun and I felt purified by an inner tropical rain, like the day about six months before when I nearly ran into a little old man at the Post Office, just before the relationship with Magdalena really hit the skids.

        I’m getting ahead of myself as usual.

        As I was clearing customs I looked through the windows to see them both on the other side!  Since his angry last words were still fresh in my mind I had no idea how to react, yet there he was smiling with Magdalena dressed to the nines draped on his arm like a bolt of expensive silk fabric in a display window.  Maybe he was saying, “See, the best man finally won.”

        I decided to act as if nothing had happened.  We shook hands and started right in with the small talk.  I had them laughing in a matter of minutes, but it was all nerves since I had no idea what was happening.  In the car, Charles, sounding suspiciously as if he had been coached, invited me to live in the mother-in-law apartment in the basement of their new home on Black Point road, a “nice little love nest for you and Corazon,” he’d said.  I could see Magdalena had been hard at work spinning our next big lie, felt a twinge of guilt, and wished I had not given in on my wedding night, such as it was. 

        “Well, that might not be a bad idea,” I replied.  Why don’t I have a look and see if it’s suitable.” 

         Charles went upstairs to fix drinks and Magdalena led me to the apartment.  I could not wait to get my hands on her. 

        “Not now, James,” she said furtively as I embraced her.  “You’ll mess up my makeup.”  She was one of Elizabeth Arden’s best accounts. 

        “So what’s this all about?” 

        “I want you here.”

        “But what about Charles?  What’s going on?”

        “Don’t worry about Charles.  It was his idea.”

        “So what did you have to do to bring him around?” I said.

        “You sound positively jealous.”

        I could see she loved it.

        “Oh, I get it.  He thinks he can keep an eye on me if I’m here, right?”

        “Something like that.  He wasn’t as upset as you think.  Tell him you’ll take it.”

        “OK, but what about Corazon?  I can’t live here with her.”

        “Why not?  It would be perfect.”

        I was hoping for irony but she meant it.  We were obviously burdened with conflicting views on the meaning of the word ‘perfect.’

        At that moment I saw that if she continued to call the shots we would end up in a huge mansion with dozens of relatives clustered like drones around MAGDALENA, the queen bee.  She would bring in third and forth cousins and in-laws of all ilk.  The place would stink of fish sauce and green mangoes; there would be scads of little brown babies puking and whining and sentimental pop music playing full time.  The business would go broke, felled by nepotism.  It was time to plot an escape. 

        “Perfect?  But what about us?”

        “Don’t worry, everything will work out.”

        I was not convinced, especially when she did not respond to my second kiss.  Emy’s words, “She’ll dump you when she finished with you,” popped into my mind.

        After dinner we sat on the lanai and had a couple of drinks.  She disappeared for a few minutes and when she returned in a low-cut cotton shift I realized she’d gone from a 32B to a 36C in a since I left!  She looked absolutely fabulous but why had she not told me?  Was it meant to be a surprise or did she do it for Charles?  Or, even more likely, someone else?  

        Tortured with lust and jet lag I managed to sleep just before sunrise.  I awoke in the middle of a dream in which a voracious Magdalena with monstrous breasts was coming down on me only to discover it was not a dream. 

        “How do you like them?” she said once she finished.

        “Where’s Charles?”

        “At the lab, where else?  Don’t worry.  Everything’s fine.  What do you think?”

        “Great!”

         I lied.  They were stunning from a distance with clothing on, but they did not fit the form of her slim body.  They looked exactly like add-ons and they did not feel right either although I gave them the attention they demanded.  One should not be overly concerned with aesthetics in moments of passion. 

        I seemed to have recently been endowed with precognitive powers because I also saw that within ten years she would undoubtedly become one of those tummy-tucked, nose-jobbed, well-to-do middle-aged middle-brow mavens one sees on the society page at gala benefit concerts clutching a champagne glass, mugging a horsy smile for the camera.  Everything was right except the color of her skin.  Evidently they can even manage that nowadays - bleaching, peeling, whatever.

        “So what did you tell Charles?  He’s been pretty decent, considering.”

        “I told him nothing happened.  He didn’t see anything.  I told him you came over drunk with the money and walked out the back door just as he arrived.”

        “So why let me think he knew?”

        “He was suspicious.  I thought it best if you were gone till he calmed down.  We went through this before with William.”

        “Don’t you think its time you left him?”

        “I have to wait until the kids are older.”

        “Sure, but this isn’t doing them any good, is it?”

        “What are you saying?”

        “I’m saying that seeing us together can’t be building a very good image of holy matrimony in their impressionable young minds, can it?

        “They don’t know what’s going on and they love their father.”

        “Sure, but what kind of a father is he?  I’m more a father than he is.  I spend time with them, trundle them around.  The guy is never here.  He spends a couple of hours with them Sunday afternoons.  What kind of a father is that?”

        “He’s a good father.  He loves them.”

        “Fathers who love their kids spend time with their kids.  He’s more interested in the life cycles of nematodes than human being, including you.”

        “I find this subject very tedious, James.  We’ve been through it many times.  I’m not getting divorced.  Catholics take marriage seriously.”

        “So this is a serious marriage?  What about me?  How do I fit in?”

        “Will you stop, James?  You’re not here one day and we’re arguing.”

        “Jesus, Magdalena, you sent me off for nine months to that Godforsaken island and when I come back nothing’s changed.  It was hell over there without you.”

        “Oh, I imagine you had a good time.  There are many willing young girls.  What did you do with your time?”

        “Worked my butt off, read, went to the movies.  You think I’d touch one of those girls?  I love you, Magdalena.  I can’t get you out of my mind.  I thought of you all day, every day, longed to be with you.  I can’t believe you’d think I’d do such a thing.  I’ve never touched another woman since the day we met!  I’m amazed you even had the thought.”

        “What about Corazon?”  Mother said you had a honeymoon at Baguio.”

        “That’s bullshit!”

        “Stop shouting,” James.  “I find profanity very upsetting.”

        “OK.  But you know what that was all about.  That was to save face with the relatives.  They had to think it was the real thing, didn’t they?  We were only there one day.”

        “You mean you didn’t touch her?”

        “And one more thing, Magdalena...one small detail” I said switching the topic.  “Somebody forgot to tell her it wasn’t the real thing.  I wonder who that was.”

        “Well, I couldn’t very well tell Mama, could I, since I’m a married woman.”

        “She knows what’s going on.  We’ve stayed with her several times.  How could she not know?  Every servant in the house knew, which means the whole Phillipines knows.”

        “This is all very unpleasant, James.  I have these new breasts just for you and the moment you get back you’re suggesting I lied.  It’s a very complicated situation and I didn’t know what to say. ”

        About two the tennis instructor called.  

        “What’s that about?  You, playing tennis?”

        “I’m working out these days, have to stay in shape,” she said in her most businesslike tone. 

        I laughed.  “Stay in shape?  The only exercise you get is the old in-and-out.  God, you even hate the walk to the mailbox.  Who is this bozo?”

        “Nobody, James, just my tennis coach.” 

        Truly, the woman had a pathological aversion to exercise.  To reduce her hips, which were absolutely perfect, but which she found grossly overweight, she spent hours in bed reading the literary magazines connected to an electronic briefcase outfitted with wires and lubricated flat rubber pads strapped to the offending flesh and allowed to vibrate at any of a dozen settings.

        “I’ll play with you.  I’m good, state runner-up champ in 1958.”

        “He’s a pro, James.”

        “At what?”

        “You have nothing to worry about, James, it’s all very legitimate.”

        I wanted to believe her so I let it slide but the thought that she was up to something would not go away so a couple of days before Corazon showed up with her Green Card I surreptitiously followed her to the country club.

        The ‘instructor,’ a tall good-looking tanned preppy type, with thinning hair and a snazzy tennis outfit furtively stroked her hand, nudged her shapely brown legs with his hairy muscular calves, gazed love-struck into her eyes, and, like a heathen, snapped his fingers at the waiter to refill her glass as they sat on the patio under a blue and white striped umbrella drinking what appeared to be gin and tonic.  And, wonder of wonders, no vertical tennis got played that day.  Instead, her white convertible followed his restored red Morgan to a classy apartment near the beach.  I am certain nothing happened.  They just went up to see his etchings.  She was an ardent art lover and, by her own admission, a good Catholic.

        OK, I was jealous, a detestable emotion.  But I could not enjoy it since I had more or less lost the moral high ground, such as it was, what with Emy and Corazon and a small army of bar girls.

        Admittedly I am a slow learner, but seeing her enthusiastically disappear through the chrome and glass doors of that luxury apartment building permanently altered my view of adultery as a viable lifestyle.  Perhaps I am vain, but I suddenly felt marginally superior.  That I was a skunk was undeniable, but at least I was having doubts.  The juvenile way she sucked up his seductions and eagerly bird-dogged him to the rendezvous made me realize she was never going to wake up. 

        The entry of the tennis coach into my tawdry little drama meant events were reaching critical mass.  When Corazon arrived they achieved meltdown.

        To keep Charles calm Cory had to stay with me, which naturally caused Magdalena to think twice about the ‘perfect’ arrangement.

         In the best of all possible worlds the aunt is a gawky, homely, graying spinster, the ideal baby-sitter, but Corazon, who was scarcely five years Magdalena’s senior, was a babe.  What Magdalena owed to science and silicone, Corazon owed directly to God.  And, unfortunately, a Spaniard must have scaled the family tree a few generations back because Corazon’s features were a tad finer and her skin marginally lighter than Magdalena’s.  A Westerner would not have noticed but Filipinos, who calculate shades in minute fractions, would.  And finally, even though she did not know I had had my way with Cory…on some level she knew. 

        It started with an argument over business late one evening.

        “We’re expanding to the Mainland,” she said, “I bought a five year lease on a storefront on Telegraph.  I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

        I did mind.

        “You what?  Berkeley?  My God, I can’t imagine anything worse.  If you’d said Palm Springs, sure, but Berkeley?  Who’s going to buy this stuff there?  It’s all hippies, druggies, and revolutionaries, a useless lot.  Look what’s going on there.  You read the papers.  Christ, Magdalena, why didn’t you ask me? “

        “You were in the Philippines.  I don’t like your tone of voice.  Please don’t talk to me like that!”

        “We talked on the phone, why didn’t you tell me?”

        “It’s nothing, just another store.”

        “Nothing?  What do you mean, just another store?  You’ve got to think these things out.  What do you think is going on?  You think it’s magic?  We put a lot of research into the other stores and even then we made mistakes.  What are you thinking?”

        “I want a store in Berkeley.”

        I stormed out before I said anything I would regret just as Charles turned in the drive.

        Corazon was sitting on the couch in her dressing gown with her hair down watching a rerun of “Have Gun Will Travel.”  I found her simple enjoyment of the corny serial very appealing and joined her for the finale where the hero, a renegade bounty hunter, says good-bye to a good-hearted lady of the night.  When they kissed tenderly she started to cry so I put my arm around her and gave her a not-altogether-disinterested hug.  She turned toward me, her dressing gown fell open, and the rest is history.

        About two, still carrying on like mink in heat, I lost concentration when I thought I heard someone on the stairway, but Corazon, whose mind was fully absorbed, managed to get it back on track.  However, as the big moment approached I found myself thinking increasingly about Magdalena and, to put it indelicately, noticed the Willie loose interest in direct proportion to an increased suspicion that someone was in the room. 

        I unhooked, rolled over, and switched on the light which illumined a wild-eyed Magdalena next to the bed in her nightgown, her new boobs standing woodenly at attention hard as the tips of two nuclear warheads, a bone-handled carving knife in her upraised hand.  Cory screamed, I leapt up, grabbed her arm, wrenched the knife loose, and flung her across the room. 

        She threw herself on me screaming “I’ll kill you!  I’ll kill you!” just as Charles came hurtling into the room.

        “You fucked her!  You fucked her!  You said you didn’t touch her!”

        A horrified look appeared on Charles’ face when the truth finally penetrated his thick skull.  All her lies and adulteries must have come flooding back as he sprung forward, seized her, and pulled her away.

        Oddly, in spite of all the emotion I felt extremely calm, as if I were watching from a different planet.  In fact, it was all I could do to keep from laughing.

        “How dare you!” she screamed, clearly out of her mind. “How dare you fuck her!” 

        I decided to bring her back to reality. 

        “She’s my wife, now, isn’t she?”

“She’s no wife!  How dare you!  You belong to me!  You’re mine!”

        Charles, still holding her firmly from behind, put his hand over her mouth but she bit him and wiggled loose.

        “And who do you belong to?” I said, playing to Charles.

She glanced around, uncertain where the conversation was heading.       

“To that tennis instructor you spent Thursday afternoon with in that fancy apartment at Waikiki?  Just what sort of tennis were you playing?”

        She let out a scream, as if she had just received news she was HIV positive, and collapsed in a heap on the floor sobbing, a mass of shame.

        “Well,” I said, putting on my shorts and instructing Cory not to move the knife, “I have to report this to the police.”

        Cory, God bless her, comforted Magdalena as I strode into the front room, Charles close on my heels.

        As I lifted the receiver he begged me to stop and I suddenly saw light at the end of my long dark tunnel.

        “If this gets out I’m finished,” he said.

        “Finished?”

        “As you know I’m up for a big promotion.  If this gets out I’m finished.  Not just that, the humiliation; it’s too much.  And what’s going to happen to the business?  I’d like to ask you not to go to the police.”

        I put down the receiver. 

        “What can I do?” I said.  “This is attempted murder.  She’s out of control.”

        “But there must be some other way, something we can work out.”

        I pretended to think about it for a minute.

        “OK, Charles,” I’ll make you a deal.”

        He relaxed visibly.

        “What do you want?”

        “I want out.”

        “Why not sell to Magdalena?”

        “Because she’s holding your two percent over my head.  You heard her in there, she thinks I’m her property.  As long as she can count on your vote she’ll be out to get me, especially after what just happened.  I want a quarter of a million for my stock.  I want you to help her decide to sell for that price.  And I want your word that if it does come down to a vote, you’ll vote with me.  If it works out, I’ll leave town and you’ll never see me again.  If not, I go to the cops with this assault and give the IRS the second set of books.”

        “The IRS?”

        “Yes, we’ve been doing business Philippine style.  We owe Uncle Sam a bundle. If anyone finds out, you’re in a lot of hot water.”

        “My God, what’s going on here?  I can’t believe it,” he said, recoiling as if he had just fired a high-powered rifle. 

        “Look, Charles, I’ve always liked you.  And I’m very sorry for carrying on with Magdalena behind your back.  But you’ve got to take charge of your life.  You can’t hide out at work and expect things to take care of themselves.  You’ve got to stand up to her, refuse to be manipulated.  It’s the only way.  She’s out of control.”

        I could see he was terrified, afraid of confronting her, as if she were the aggrieved party.  And, in keeping with recent flashes of insight, I saw that he was really terrified of himself, his inability to love. 

        “It’ll probably never come down to a vote.  I’m sure she’ll be eager to get me out of her hair.”

        “OK,” he said.  “I’ll do it.”

 

***

 

        So I moved out and Cory stayed.  Magdalena dumped the tennis pro and nobody referred to that night again.  The negotiations, as mentioned above, were proving difficult because Magdalena did not want me out of her hair at all it seemed, at least not until she had properly avenged her night of humiliation. 

        In the meantime, faced with the loss of a successful business and the woman who had been the center of my life, I struggled to find the real me hidden beneath layers of lies.

        It wasn’t easy.

        Sex and booze were, so I drank and sought love wherever I could and sank deeper and deeper into despair.  One night on the way home after a night of heavy drinking I staggered into a new nightclub where I was amazed to find dozens of gorgeous women lounging around socializing with the patrons.  Spying an unattended blonde in a tight silver lame evening dress sitting at the bar sipping a martini, I moved in, bought the obligatory drinks, and convinced her to come home for the night, pulling over in a nearby park on the way to get things started.  However, a few exploratory gropes revealed my she to be a he!  I am told that sort of thing is commonplace nowadays, but it pushed me over the edge.  I am lucky no one was around because I pulled the poor fellow out of the car and beat him to a pulp.  The deceit.  I could not handle the deceit.

        Any armchair psychologist could see I was really assaulting myself.

       

***

 

        Since I am not an accomplished writer and cannot describe my feeling of self-loathing well, you will have to take it on faith that I finally hit bottom, my consciousness peppered with thoughts of suicide.  Then, on a lovely tropical morning, after a drunken and debauched night with a woman whose husband was out of town, I was sluggishly lumbering through the International Market Place on my way to the Post Office, the pavement glistening from a light morning shower, the sun playing hide and seek with big billowy clouds, plumerias spraying their erotic fragrance as gentle trade winds rattled the palm fronds, when I noticed a jaunty old man, a vacationer or pensioner come to idly pass the sunset years, appropriately attired in Bermuda shorts, aloha shirt, tennies, and a straw hat, perusing his mail as he ambled my way.  As he got closer I realized we were on a collision course and sent a message to my feet to move left, but nothing happened!  Panic stricken, I tried to move out of the way a second time but the body would not respond!

        I had completely lost control.

        A couple of seconds before impact the bodies stopped face to face and I heard a sweet voice, which was not my own, speaking through me.

        "Excuse me, sir, may I ask you a question?" it said.

        Someone else had taken over!

        Since I had no idea what the voice was about to say, I tried to apologize but the words would not come. 

        I was not connected at the mouth either!

        The old man looked up, unaware of my distress, a kind smile on his wrinkled face. "Yeah, sure, sonny, shoot."

        Then the voice, flowing like nectar from a deep place within, resumed, "Out of curiosity, sir, how old do you think I am?"

        Since I already knew the answer and had not the slightest interest in the opinion of the doddering old codger, I was completely flabbergasted.

        Certain I was going mad, I ran frantically around inside my mind looking for the control panel but reality, a mind of its own, was completely uninterested.

        The old man stepped back, pulled on his pipe, gave me the once-over, and judiciously replied, "Well, sonny, I'd say you're forty-three."

      A long history of untruth meant I could spot a lie a mile away; he was deliberately underestimating his age to spare my feelings. 

      "Well, yes, thank you very much," the voice said sweetly.

      "Don't mention it, sonny," he said, proceeding on his way.

      I seriously considered the possibility I was losing my mind, but the experience was permeated with such a sense of clarity, I did not indulge my fear.  And then I regained control and proceed toward my mailbox, the mind settling on the concerns of the day.

      But as I entered the foyer I lost it again!  Instead of proceeding into the Post Office proper as programmed, the body confidently turned left, entered the men's room, and parked itself in front of a big mirror over the wash basins, the eyes glued straight ahead, feet welded to the floor.

      "Oh shit, not again!  Am I flipping out?" I thought anxiously.

      But I was not going mad.  I was having a good look, courtesy of God, at what I had become.  I do not know how long I stood there, unable to move a muscle - perhaps a full five minutes - aware but unaware of the stares of the men coming and going, the flushing toilets, the irritating flicker of the neon over the mirror.  But it did not matter because a brand new world had miraculously opened up, a inner world illumined by a powerful Light in whose presence I saw it all... every last bit of the sin and corruption that I was.

***

      The moment of truth in the Post Office lifted a monstrous weight, Saul on the road to Damascus.  Though I still looked a wreck, overweight and run-down, my face etched with deep pain lines, I felt young again, inspired by the conviction that I might find an exit from my dark labyrinth.

      And for the first time in my twenty-six years I realized there was a compassionate God.

      No longer a proper University town crowded with frat rats and cutsy coeds in pleated skirts and bobby socks who would eventually end up in suburbia with two point two bratty kids named Bill and Pete, Berkeley was inundated with long-haired flower children who would eventually end up in suburbia with two point two bratty kids named Shanti and Moonblossom.  Psychedelia was in full swing: Haight Ashbury, flower power, the Black and White Panthers, the Beatles, free love, and free speech.  The town even had a new moniker - The People’s Republic of Berserkley.

      I deplaned at San Francisco International, rented a car and pulled into a Denny's at Daly City for a burger and a coffee to go.  On the way up the on-ramp to the Bayshore I spied a hippie sporting waist-length hair, torn bell-bottoms and a day-glow orange shirt, with his thumb out.  I hated hippies and I never picked up hitchhikers so I was surprised when the car, like the body two weeks before in the post office, unilaterally pulled over and stopped.

      "Where you headed?" I said rolling down the window.

       "Berkeley, man," he replied.

      "Get in, I’ll take you, I said.

      "Out of sight, man!  Far out!"

      "So what do you do?" I said as we entered the stream of traffic.

      "Do man?”  He seemed confused.  “What do I do?" he repeated, apparently finding himself.  "I get high man.  What do you do?"

      I missed the irony and eagerly launched into an embellished thumbnail sketch of my life, expecting him to be suitably impressed.

      But when I asked what he thought he said, "Not much."

       "I tell my life's story and you say, ‘Not much.’  How many guys my age have what I've got?  Shit, I make more in a day than you make in a year."

      "So?  You may have a lot of stuff but you're still one uptight bozo."

      There was that word again. 

      "Uptight!  What do you mean, uptight!"  I shouted.

      "Take it easy man," he replied.

      My rage inexplicably drained.  The whole improbable scene, fat businessman and scruffy hippie, suddenly seemed cartoon-like and far away as if it were happening to a stranger.

      The Voice from the Post Office, speaking through me said, “Sorry man. "I don't know what got into me.  Go ahead, tell me what you really think."

      In one of those moments when life plays the shrink better than any one-hundred dollar an hour Ph.D., he turned, looked me in the eye and said, "Well, man, I'd say you were one of the most fucked up human beings I've ever met."

      A wave of anger arose and miraculously subsided before I could utter a word.  A powerful silence filled the car and I realized my companion was seeing what I had seen in the restroom two weeks before.  Was I so obviously messed up?

      The thought that I had made a terrible mistake a long time ago, maybe before I was born, came.  But what was it?  Where had I gone wrong?  What kind of punishment was in store?  I felt a panic coming on but it was vacuumed by the silence before it could take root.  Then the Voice, whose presence filled the car, as if it already knew the answer, replied, "Well, all right, then what do you think I should do about it?"

      The hippie, who seemed to be in league with the Voice, shrugged, glanced sideways, reached in his pocket, extracted and uncapped a vial, handing me two round orange pills.

       "Try these.  They might help."

      "What are they?" I asked, examining the small tablets nestling in my palm as the car sped past Candlestick Park.

      Holding them gave me a wild, sexual feeling.  They seemed alive, perhaps radioactive, with short wavy lines emanating from them.  For a moment the car seemed stationary, the skyline speeding past.

      When he said "Orange Sunshine" my whole body tingled and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if I had heard a sublime piece of music.

      "What's that?" I said.

      "Acid, man.  LSD.  Good stuff."

      "What's it feel like?" I said.  Since my affair with Emy and the experiment with pot I had read a number of articles about the dangers of psychedelics.  That it was forbidden was not a problem; I had pushed against the grain all my life.

      "Out of sight, man!” he replied.

       I had a vague idea what he meant.

      "I did pot in the Philippines," I said.  "Is it like that?"

      "Pot's OK, man, but it's kid stuff.  "This will blow your mind.  And it needs to be blown, believe me."

      "But isn't it dangerous?" I asked. "They say you can freak out…whatever that means.  I read about this girl that stepped off the tenth floor of an apartment building, thinking she could walk on air.  They scraped her off the pavement. 

      "If you're scared, don't take it.  I've had a couple of bummers, but it's no big deal.  It's only the mind.  The stuff wears off in a few hours and everything is back to normal.”

      I did not know exactly what he meant, but felt reassured.  I was excited, powerfully attracted.  The perfumed excitement and glamour of the high life could no longer mask the unmistakable stench of suffering.

      I opened my hand and looked at the inviting little pills again.  "What the hell," I thought.  "Probably nothing will happen ... a couple of stupid pills."  Uncapping the warm watery coffee sitting on the dash, I washed them down on the spot.

      "Far out!" the hippie said enthusiastically.

      Within minutes I was overcome with unexplained euphoria.  As the car exited the Treasure Island tunnel, I started to change.  My companion, all smiles, got off somewhere in Berkeley.

      "Happy trails," he said, giving the peace sign.

      The car, driving itself, headed for the hills, an animal sprung from a trap.  The road and the world, including my body and the automobile, now perfectly synchronized, were expanding and contracting in unison, a giant lung breathing in and out, shrinking and swelling, irresistibly, awesomely alive.  My body shaking with pure joy, I heard myself laughing uncontrollably, not the polished business laugh, but a hearty cascading of uncontrollable mirth.

      The hippie was not kidding!  Pot was kid stuff.

      Thought lines, like puppet strings, running from my crystal palace merged into the nervous system, instructing the body to move!  Thinking across the ever-expanding body/mind gulf I directed the machine toward an unknown destiny.  Before long, however, I realized I would soon be incapable of driving.  Noticing a gravel turnout near the crest of the hills, I reigned in the beast, over-running the perimeter and landing in a field.  So much was going on I could not remember how to put it in reverse so I left it where it was, up to the bumper in thick grass, and deplaned, a traveler from a distant galaxy stepping for the first time onto the surface of an ecstatic vibrating earth.

      Oaks and madrones danced, their branches swaying, striving to touch the sky like the tentacles of gigantic sea anemones.  Earth and sky melted erotically into each other, lovers tenderly sharing an erotic moment.  Transfixed by the ineffable beauty of a world endlessly creating and destroying itself before my inner eye, I wandered down a small gully and sat on a rock under an ancient oak whose wrinkled, gnarly, hieroglyphic skin like a cosmic slate, seemed to form and dissolve the rune ‘seek within.’  I looked through the body’s translucent shell and saw an infinitely expanding self-generating radiant Light of indescribable purity pouring the sweet ecstasy of life into each and every cell.

      For the first time I noticed that everything here had a purpose, objects nestling into one another like pieces in a puzzle.  I saw that total was greater than the sum of its parts, a living whole vibrating to a wondrous all-pervading sound spontaneously arising from the emptiness between the atoms.  Though inseparable from this indefinable Sound, every blade of grass and humble pebble, containing universes within itself, unselfconsciously displayed its uniqueness.  My fractured and lonely life suddenly seemed meaningful, fitting as it did snugly into the total, a guileless child nestled in its mother's arms.

        Gulping fresh air with the relish my former self had guzzled champagne, the healing draughts flooded my worn and damaged body, shocking it to life, I ran down the grassy gully and gracefully leapt over a barbed wire fence.

        Until that leap, which seemed a symbol of something profound, the trip was ordered and purposeful, an ever-expanding spiral of unbelievable experiences strung one after another, lustrous pearls on a string, way stations at which my soul briefly stopped, took instruction, and then moved on.  But as I approached the brow of the hills, the warm summer sun, a ripe golden fruit slowly dropping into the graceful mouth of the Golden Gate, the Bay Area spread before me, everything ceased to move and the bundle of ignorance that I was dissolved into Light.

        Not that I did not exist.  But I ceased to exist as a fat, rich, unhappy businessman.  That person, a sort of distorting and concretizing lens, had somehow fallen from the camera and shattered into bits, left behind on the other side of the fence.  And the I, the real I, a limitless vision hidden within the body, apparently asleep for centuries, began seeing things as they actually were.

        Transfixed, frail and delicate as a spring flower, stunned by the intricate beauty of the creation, I realized there were two parallel realities: the eternally living reality of God and the frozen world of conditioned perceptions, LSD just one of many possible tunnels between the two.  These strange little orange pills were not creating their own reality.  They were showing me Reality, sprucing up the view with a bit of wavy chemical weirdness.

        Meanwhile back in the trip, its rays pulsating atoms of light, the sun raced toward an ocean swelling to receive it as gulls labored through the supercharged evening sky leaving trails, feathery footprints in the air.  I looked into the body and saw the whole nervous system, circulating an unbroken carousel of light, the synapses, microcosmic exploding stars, glowing bright as the energy leaped from terminal to terminal.

        Journeying into finer and finer worlds, I experienced a tremendous rush, which I would later recognize as Love, when I came upon the place within where God dwells, giving and taking life.  Overcome with a feeling of deep sanctity, tears of repentance dripping from the sides of my eyes, I fell to my knees to thank the Great Spirit as day turned to night in an awesome and unforgettable display of transcendental beauty.

        Consciousness of my former life returned and for a moment I wondered how I could reclaim it but something told me not to worry.  Sure enough, when the time was right, the body, marvelously wise, turned and walked up the hill, every sense heightened, taking in and processing stimuli, driven by a precise impersonal memory.  The car was as I left it, one door hanging carelessly open.  

        The attaché on the back seat, cigarettes and the Denny's hamburger still sitting on the dash seemed like archaeological objects which I examined with interest.  I reached for a cigarette and lit up.  As the fire seared the lungs and the toxic sludge dumped into the blood stream the mind slowed, the high began to fade, and I was unceremoniously sucked into the meat tube.  A wave of nausea, which seemed to symbolize my whole life, overcame me and I hurled the cigarette out the window, the end of an eight year habit.  In a few minutes the smoke purified and the high returned. 

      I started the engine and pulled out onto the road which was shrinking up into a constipated little mass and spronging out again.  A muscle car came into view snorting and pawing its way up the hill, vibing like an angry buffalo.  X-raying the occupants, teenagers chock full of testosterone on the way to the woods to guzzle brew and rub genitals, I vibed pure power and the beast shrank meekly away giving me a wide berth.  I whipped down the road enjoying life in microseconds, the machine an extension of the mind, thought taking form.

      It happened to park itself on Telegraph about a block from my old haunt, the Mediterraneum, and before I realized what was happening I found myself sitting at my old table, wondering if anyone could tell I was stoned. 

      Ordering had gone off without a hitch.  When asked what I wanted ‘cappuccino,’ my usual, came out as usual.  When I opened my wallet the bills were alive, glowing and changing like radium.  Wading through the patron’s mind stuff was a bit of a chore, but I acquitted myself well, arriving at the table, island in a storm, without incident.  I felt protected by an invisible energy bubble, an exotic plant growing in a hermetically sealed vessel.

      My wild eyes reflected from the window and I noticed my tie was missing.  That seemed right.  I straightened the collar of my sport jacket and ran a comb through electric hair floating two inches above my skull.

      No one seemed to be paying the slightest attention, yet a persistent feeling of transparency, as if anyone could tune in, kept arising as the cafe filled with a motley crew of featherless bipeds.

      At some point I realized I was sharing a table with a glowing hippie.

      "Tom.  Tom Williams," he said nonchalantly.  "Sappeningbro?"

      I tried to interpret the lingo.  How could I know "Sappeningbro?" was a contraction for "What's happening, brother?"

      "Oh, too high to talk, eh?  What you on?" he said conspiratorially, making me a little paranoid.

      "Getting a little paranoid, eh?" Tom said.  "First trip?"

      I nodded.

      "First trip and a bit freaked out, eh?  Know the feeling.  Don't worry about me.  It's no biggie.  Just thought you might like to score some purple Owls."

      "Purple owls?  Score?" I asked.

      "Owlsley's man.  Acid, man.  What you on?"

      "I don't know...Orange, Orange something, I think."

      "Sunshine, man.  Sunshine.  Not bad stuff, but you need some for next time."

      In my state there did not seem to be a ‘next time.’  Things came when needed and were not needed till they came.  And oddly, a vague feeling the trip was going to last forever kept passing through my mind.

      What you thinking about man?  We're only talking two bucks.  Two lousy bucks a hit."

      He went into his spiel.

      "Purple Owsleys, the finest acid ever made.  Great dope, man,  Great dope.  Pure.  Really Pure.  Better than Sandoz.  Since this is your first time, three for five bucks.  Judging from that watch, five is peanuts to you."

      I reached for my wallet.

      "Hey, man, be cool!  Not here.  Come on up the block and we'll do business.  I go out first and you come on in a couple of minutes.  Meet you down the block.

      We met down the block.

      "Hey, man, you don't know nothing, do you?" he said in a kind voice.   "Here, gimme the five.  Here's your stuff.  Sit down man," he said motioning to a nearby stoop.  "Let's toke up.  I got to tell you some things."

      We sat down and Tom fumbled through his pockets looking for his Rizla papers.

      "Hey man, why don't you run over to that liquor store and pick up a bottle of Ripple while I fix up this here doobie.  It sure puts a nice head on you."

      Grimacing at the thought of Ripple, I walked to the liquor store, and returned with a bottle of Mumm’s Extra Dry.

      "Hey, man, what's this stuff?  This looks like bullshit, man.  Wow, twelve bucks!  What we got here liquid gold?"

      "Beats the hell out of Ripple," I said mimicking his style. 

      "Hey, man I like you.  You got class.  Who are you anyway?"

      "Nobody, just a fat businessman," I replied.  “I can’t stand bad wine.”

      "I'm just like you only dopewise.  Can't stand bad dope.  Think I'm turning you onto some ragweed, some cheap homegrown shit, eh?" he asked rhetorically.  "No way, man.  No way.  I got class too.  Know what this is," he says flourishing a fat joint.

      "Nope.  What?"

      "Acapulco Gold, man, best fucking grass they make. 'Cept maybe Panama Red."

      He fired up, took a deep drag, his eyes bugging out, and passed it to me.”

      I took a couple of drags.

      "No way, man" he said.  "No way.  You're wasting that shit.  Got to smoke it like this."

      He demonstrated.

      I could not have cared less.  My mind suddenly went into a wild tailspin, a riot of lights and colors blowing off in the brain, so beautiful it took my breath away, my own private Fourth of July.

      "Here, man, take a swig of this," said Tom who seemed to know just what was happening, handing me the bottle.  "Kind of mellows things out a bit."

      I followed instructions.  The lights were on, no doubt, but the champagne strung them out, softened them up a bit, making them eminently viewable.

      "Wow!" I said. "Unbelievable!"

      "Far out, man, "said the dealer, picking up on my excitement!  “You look like a real jerk but you're a real head, ain't you now."

      I heard myself laughing from a million miles away.

***

      I woke up the following morning in a motel somewhere in the flats on a sunny warm California day.  Though the universe was not expanding and contracting with the cosmic breath, and the riot of color that had gone off in my head had played out, I noticed that this morning after was not vaguely like my usual mornings after.  Every object in the room exhibited profound integrity, an isness difficult to describe.  The most insignificant things, like the tooth brush, door hinge, or my fingernails seemed ever so real, lights unto themselves.

      A bright young man instead of a debauched, cynical, geriatric adult appeared when I looked in the mirror.  I smiled and noticed I liked myself for a change.  When I turned on the radio the lyrics "Be who you are," accompanied by a saccharine psychedelic instrumental, played over and over, etching the mantra in my brain.  Emerging from the shower I seemed lighter, as if I had washed off a bit of my cruddy old self.  I opened the suitcase but the clothing seemed to belong to a stranger.  Significantly, I could not find my watch, a five hundred dollar Omega, but it did not matter.  I managed to force it all on, but was unable to don the tie, which seemed vaguely sinister, more dog collar than adornment, a perfect symbol of my enslavement, the jewel in the crown of the capitalist uniform.

      I walked up the block to a mom and pop cafe and ordered a hearty breakfast.  When it arrived I took one look and nearly vomited, leaving it untouched.  For the life of me I could not figure out why for twenty some years I had enjoyed consuming dead pig bodies and slimy eggs from chicken rectums.  And when I finally found my latest stock at the bottom of a long column, its two-point drop did not faze me in the slightest.

      As the cafe filled I studied the patrons.  The middle-aged woman at the corner table by the window, surgically slicing her sausage, her napkin neatly folded in her lap, seemed interesting.  I wondered what she did and why she was eating alone.  She was not bad looking, still had her shape and seemed intelligent.  I thought of mother and wondered if I should tell her about the trip just to wind her up.  I could just imagine her face when I said, "Oh, by the way, Mom, I've been doing a bit of LSD lately."  Of course it would not fly because I was already in the dog house; she was still mortified I had lied about leaving school and running off with a married woman.  I did not know how to fix it.  The acid must have done something to my feelings because she seemed more like a real person than a mom.  For a moment I experienced something akin to remorse.  How I had disappointed her and messed everything up.

      My attention wandered back to the paper and I noticed an article about the Haight-Ashbury informing the concerned reader that Psychedelia was a dangerous ‘movement’ threatening ‘life as we know it.’

      "Sounds promising," I thought.  Life as I knew it had been hell for a long time…since the accident really…and before.

        Mecca was only twenty minutes away so I decided to skip work.  I paid the bill, drove across the Bay Bridge, took Fell Street exit and parked along the Park Panhandle behind a rundown riotously painted school bus, home of a band of itinerant flower children.  Entering the Haight, a foreign country, I was serenaded by heretofore incomprehensible, now hauntingly familiar, psychedelic tunes blaring from multicolored Victorian flats.

        Suddenly everything turned weird and wavy and I was back on a scaled down version of the trip.  The smell of pot oozed from windows adorned with Indian tie dies, peace signs, pictures of the nasty killer weed, and psychedelic posters advertising a plethora of acid rock bands.  Nearly everyone I passed was loaded.

        Haight street was alive with funky humanity.  The shops, most of which catered to freaks, were filled with lava lamps, multi-faceted mirrored balls, beads, tie-dies, strobe lights, glow lights, grow lights, day-glo posters, and scads of paraphernalia: rolling papers, roach clips, hash pipes, and hubbly-bubblies.  The stoops were packed with bearded peace-signed stoned hippies openly peddling acid, grass, peyote, mescaline, magic mushrooms.  Scantily-clad, glassy-eyed, disheveled, malodorous, hirsute teenage runaways shamelessly fondled each other in broad daylight.  A snappy Beatles lyric pounded from an oversize speaker wired to the back of a beat up multi-colored day-glo Volkswagen, "No one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road?"

        For a moment I feared becoming one of them, but the way they looked at me, glancing contemptuously at my narky black shoes, short hair, and tailored suit told me I was ‘straight,’ an uptight, capitalistic, plastic person.

        In short, the enemy.

 

Madame Zora

 

        Until that defining moment in the Post Office and the first trip, which was really part of the same change, life had been so painfully full of me and my impulses I had no idea of the vast inner world of the mind and the limitless Spirit beyond.  And even though most of my thoughts were still angry and unforgiving, storm troopers goose-stepping through my consciousness, others, a growing minority, were ironic and detached, floating lazily by like puffy summer clouds.  Some hidden part of me was coming forward, a spring crocus breaking through earth’s crust, lighting up winter's bleak leavings with freshness and color.

        Anyhow, I wished I had seen the face of the mystery woman who had just passed but she was to remain an inviting presence, like the mountain, on which to project hidden desire.  I thought of running down the beach to find her but it was useless. 

        I should have headed home, but the apartment reminded me of Magdalena and my lousy life.  I was tired of thinking about her so I stopped off at Forbidden City, a strip club on the downtown end of Kalakaua, the main drag.  It was almost empty except for a few boozy business types lounging around smoking and nursing their drinks, disinterestedly studying the strippers while the waitresses gossiped in the back.  I toked up in the men’s room and when the Mai Tai went to work things started looking up. 

        The first stripper was a young willowy blonde with vacant eyes, long legs and pendulous breasts which she mechanically fondled as she haphazardly roamed the stage shedding her costume to a slow Fifties tune, ‘The Great Pretender.’  I remembered dancing slow to it at the Youth Activities Center with Isabel Thompson whose luscious breasts featured prominently in many young men's wet dreams, including my own.  I wondered what the stripper, who resembled Isabel, saw in stripping.  I wanted to talk with her even though we would have nothing in common.  Still I wanted to know her story; I was sick and tired of clever women.

        The next dancer, a redhead, was about the same age but shorter and marginally cuter than the blonde.  Her routine was equally lame, a cowgirl act.  She pranced around the stage like a high-stepping quarter horse letting out "whoopees" and "yip-ee-ii-aays," as she divested herself of chaps embroidered with penis-shaped sequined cacti, a fringed white leather vest, and ten gallon hat.  The grand finale involved cliché intercourse with a six-gun.

        By this time, well into my second Mai Tai, it was happy trails; the memories had stopped.

        The third dancer was a humorous Filipina whose gymnastic act involved a number of extremely vulgar and erotic poses.  Orientals did not seem to have the same sense of shame as Occidentals.  At the end she front-loaded her vagina with a hard-boiled egg and sent it rocketing directly at me with a wild gyration of the pelvis.

        The lights dimmed for the first act of the final set.  Expecting either the horsy girl or the Filipina I was blown away when a classy statuesque woman in her thirties, regal and self-contained, appeared dressed like a belly dancer wearing a white turban decorated with a huge diamond.  Her elegantly designed costume conjured up images of gypsies, crystal balls and oriental harems.  She was in a class by herself, regal and self-contained.  Though the club was nearly deserted, she performed earnestly, as if her set was a sacred ritual, feeding her soul.  Her skin and features made me think she was a mulatto, but her race was hard to determine.   I watched with complete attention; she seemed familiar.  I wondered if I had seen her before but was too stoned to remember.  The moment before she left the stage she turned and looked directly at me.  It was the woman from the beach!

        I hurried out, jumped in the Porsche, drove around the block and parked about fifty feet from the entrance, thinking she’d probably go out for a bite before going home.  I figured I would follow her and accidentally bump into her at the restaurant.  I sat for half an hour, my heart racing, practicing my lines, but she did not show.  Suddenly I realized what a silly fantasy I had concocted.  She would have thought I was a john, anyway.  In fact, when I came down I was not even sure it was the same woman, so I turned the key and drove home; it was well past three and I had a meeting with the accountant at nine.

        Magdalena was dragging her feet on the sale and I did not want to trip in Waikiki for obvious reasons so I flew to Kuai weekends.  LSD was a distinct improvement on alcohol, a thick blanket of self-obscuring chemistry, revealing what alcohol concealed.  To sort myself I had to touch that place where I dissolved and the Self began.  The Sandoz blotter I purchased from Bob, a charismatic Acid guru and head honcho of a Berkeley commune, insured five or six hours of ecstatic tripping and produced none of alcohol’s toxic side-effects. Yes, I often felt tired the morning after, no more than after a night of love and a lot less than a hangover, but with so much to process the downtime was welcome.  I thought deeply about my experiences, gleaning insights about myself and the world. 

        On one trip I got a reasonably clear picture of where I was going.  I checked in at the Coco Palms and walked up the beach wondering what the trip had to offer.  I came upon a deserted cove ringed with palms, sat on the warm sand, removed my shirt, and opened my daypack, extracting a small jade box with an intricately-carved lotus on the top, a souvenir from Hong Kong.  I removed and unfolded a square packet of aluminum foil wrapped in yellow silk, revealing several small blue squares of blotter paper in the center of which were printed the Hindu symbol of Spirit, OM.  Bob said it meant, Truth. 

        I religiously, took a square from the packet, closed it in the palm of my hand, bowed my head and put my fist to my chest.  Immediately an electric current sent a chill wave of excitement through the body.  I asked Great Spirit for guidance, carefully chewed the blotter and waited.

        Time, radiating from the center of the mind, rearranged itself, spreading out in ever-expanding concentric rings, merging into the horizon.  The thoughts of Magdalena and the business dribbled off the rim of my consciousness and dropped like ballast into the electric void opening up within.  I felt myself lift off, a shuttle straining into space.  A gull appeared high up soaring on an invisible stream.  I became the gull and then an eagle, alert and far-seeing, weaving and winding though the fine residue of thought and feeling hanging like mist, shrouding the mysterious center toward which I felt myself, a spirit body, traveling.

        Suddenly the fog lifted, my vehicle dissolved, and I melted into a radiance greater than scores of suns, a place I would soon come to call the Crystal Palace.  Bodiless, deathless, I rested there, observing an endless display of exquisite kaleidoscopic multi-colored mandalas forming and unforming against a background of cosmic sound, the OM, gauzy light refracting in every direction from a silent emptiness.

        The thought "who am I" filled my consciousness.  In answer I saw myself sitting in full lotus, a fully awakened infinitely blissful supremely wise being with all virtues: purity, forbearance, fearlessness, compassion, wisdom, discrimination, straightforwardness, peace, patience, and truth.

        Hours later I returned to earth and walked slowly down the beach toward the hotel and my messy life, wondering how to close the chasm between who I really was and my present self.  For a moment I dismissed the vision as a drug-induced hallucination, a perverse divine taunt, and lost heart.  When the depression lifted I realized I had been blessed with an unshakable conviction of my divinity and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I could not stop until I made it real.

        What I did not know, however, was that the sinner could not become the saint; the self I saw could not be created by wanting it or through any therapy.  Had I been able to accept the disgusting, dishonest parts I would have saved a lot of time, but I believed I had to pay for all the suffering I had inflicted on myself and others. 

        The following Monday there was still no word from Magdalena.  I went to bed late and dreamed I was walking through the dark heart of Africa, stalked by heavily-armed black bandits who leapt out from behind trees and rocks to do battle.  I fought them off but lost energy with every encounter.  When I was at my wit’s end I took an inviting path leading into the mountains and arrived at a pristine lake.  Looking into the water I saw the exotic dancer from the Forbidden City dressed in silky white with a marvelous headdress made of luxurious gems and feathers.  With one hand she seemed to be offering a benediction and the long elegant fingers of the other clasped a large book whose cover bore several ancient hieroglyphic-like letters fixed in a circle and glowing like emerald radium.  I tried to decipher the meaning but the more I tried, the more indistinct the letters seemed.  The dancer watched compassionately and held out the book so I could see it better.

        I woke up late to Charlie’s call. 

        “Got to hand it to you, James,” he said enthusiastically.  "She went for it.  You're out of business!  Remember, a trip for two to Tahiti!  She’s going to sign at one on Friday."

        Thursday evening, with less than twenty four hours to go, I took a walk on the beach to calm my nerves.  I was about to turn around near the rocks at the foot of Diamond Head when I came upon Madame Zora, the gypsy stripper from Forbidden City.  

        Monday’s dream flashed and she invited me to sit.

        “Aren’t you worried, sitting here alone at night?” I said.

        “No.”

        “What about me?”

        “You wouldn’t hurt a fly.  What do you want? ”

        “You were in my dream Monday night.”

        “In my business all the men have dreams."

        "Not like that.  Would you like to hear it?"

        "OK."

        I described the dream and asked what she thought.

        "Africa’s your dark side and the black men are parts of you that are unhealthy, parts that you don't love and understand.  You've been in conflict for a long time.  It's making you weary.  You want out.  So a path opens up.  It goes into the mountains.  Mountains means away from the world, looking into yourself.  On this path you see a lake.  This lake is your spirit, your soul.  And when you look in you see a Goddess figure holding a book.  This book is the book of knowledge?"

        "What knowledge are you talking about?" I interrupted.

        "Knowledge of yourself."

        I felt a thrill, wild excitement.

        "What self are you talking about?" I asked.  I wanted to talk to her forever.

        "It's a long story and time for my next set," she replied getting up.

        "You're leaving?  We just got started.  I want to know more about this business."

        "Think about what I said," she replied, as I followed her to the parking lot. "We'll meet again."

        "How about phoning in sick?  Get one of the girls to cover for you.  I'll give you a hundred bucks if you'll talk to me."

        "Take it easy, man." she said.  "I want to go.  I have my job.  It's my duty.  I'm not interested in your money."

        "When will we meet?  How about after your set?"

        "After my set I go home and go to bed.  I'm tired.  It's been a

long day."

        “Thanks for talking with me.  I needed that.”

        "OK, Bye," she replied unsentimentally.  “See you around."

 

***

 

        Magdalena and her lawyer were already seated when I arrived.  I expected a raft of bad vibes but she seemed composed, even peaceful.   In fact she was absolutely beautiful.  Her words, uttered in a moment of spite, "You'll always love me," came flooding back.

        "Mrs. Taylor would like to ask you a question,” Charlie said, pulling me out of my thoughts.  I nodded.

        "What guarantee do I have you won't contact the IRS?"

        "I’m sick and tired of the whole thing,” I replied.  “I just want to get on with my life.  Very good things are happening for me and I don't want to think about the past.  I'm sure you realize that if the Feds are involved they'll come after me too."

        She nodded at the lawyer who said, "Mrs. Taylor is satisfied.  Let's sign the papers."

        On the way out I saw her standing on the curb, waiting for a ride.

        "I'm sorry I had to do it that way," I said. "It really wasn't personal."

        "It's OK, James," she said. "I'm glad it's over."

        "Can I ask you a question?" I said.

        "Why not?" she replied in her inscrutable way.

        "Why did you believe me?"

        "It sounded like the truth." she said as her Mercedes pulled up and she got in.  "Good-bye James."

        I stood expressionless as she drove off, thinking what might have been.

 

***

      When I showed up at the club for the last set the horsy girl was down to her g-string, getting ready for a little fun with her six gun.  Madame Zora came on a few minutes later and went through her artistic routine.  Her subtle, suggestive, movements were tastefully erotic, not blatantly sexual, like the others.  I noticed a satirical slant to her last act, a subtle spoof of the whole sex business. 

      I went backstage and invited her for a drink.

      “I just want to ask you about what you said last time," I said when she sat down.

      "What did I say?  I can't remember," she replied.

      "You said I was searching Self-Knowledge.  I want to know what you mean by that.  And the dream.  How did you get in my dream?  Something's going on.  First I saw God in the Post Office, then I got turned on to acid, have this dream and meet you.  This is not how I had it figured.  What's going on?"

        "I told you.  You're waking up."

        "From what?"

        "From your sleep."

        "You're not making this easy," I said, "Please trust me.  I just want to know.  I'm not after you.  I can get plenty of women, believe me."

      "OK, I'll meet you tomorrow."

      "What's the matter with now?  I'll take you out for breakfast. "

        "I told you I'm a working girl, not a rich playboy.  I have my routine.  I go home after my set and sleep.  I don't go out with the customers after work.  Here's my number, call me tomorrow about noon."

"By the way," I said, “I’m James.  What’s your name?"

        "For now I'm Madame Zora," she said smiling. "If you're a good boy maybe I'll tell you tomorrow."

        We met on the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian at four.

        "Sorry I'm such a pest," I said after we settled in under a large striped umbrella, "but I have the feeling you can help me."

        "So what's wrong with you?  You look OK to me," she said unsentimentally.

        "Yeah, I'm OK moneywise, but my life's a mess otherwise.  You want to hear about it?"

        "OK, but make it short.  I can’t handle much misery on days off."

        I told her about the affair with Magdalena, the business, the epiphany in the Post Office, and my first trip.  She listened dispassionately, nodding here and there, asking the odd question.

        "So what's the doubt?  What do you want to know?" she said.

        "I'd like to know what you make of it."

        She sat quietly, looking out at the ocean, observing the sunburned tourists playing in the shallow surf.

        "Well, it bears out what I said the other night.  You don't know

who you are."

        “You’re the second woman who told me this.  I don’t get it.”

        "I'm not trying to be difficult,” she said.  It's just that I can't tell you in so many words.  It's not a verbal thing."

"So what kind of thing is it?"

        "A spiritual thing."

        "Are you saying I'm spiritual?"

        "Not exactly.  Spiritual's not an act, not something you do to make yourself feel good."

        "So what is it?"

        "It's what you are."

        "What do you mean?"

        "Remember how you felt on your first trip when you stepped out on the edge of the hills and the sun was setting and you felt as if you were dissolving in light?"

        "You bet!  How could I forget?"

        And you said you felt like you didn't exist, as if you had died, but you didn't die?"

        "Yes."

        "Well, that light you dissolved into was you.  The one who dissolved and died was James, your ego."

        I still did not get it but it did not- matter.  I could see what an unselfish and compassionate person she was.  A great love for her arose.

        "When I hear you talk I have the feeling that you're saying something very important, but it’s as if your words are filtering through cotton.  I'm only understanding part of them."

        "As time goes by you'll understand," she said.  "Spirit unfolds in its own time.  You can't force it."

        "What about you?  I've been pretty rude, talking only about myself."

        "Me, I'm nobody, just a stripper at a second-rate Mafia joint,"

she replied.

        We spent the rest of the afternoon together and met the following day.  I went to her flat near the club to pick her up and asked her about a small black boxlike object nestled in the center of a group of plants on an antique parlor table.

        "An orgone energy accumulator," she said.

        "A what?"

        "Orgone energy accumulator."

        "God, Linda, are you all right?  What the hell is that?"

        "It collects orgone energy."

        "What's orgone energy?"

        "The cosmic energy.  It's spread evenly throughout the universe but this box concentrates it here."

        "The box concentrates it?  How do you know?"

        "I can feel it.  It's like the pyramids only more powerful."

        "The pyramids?  What do the pyramids have to do with energy?"  I thought they were tombs.”

        They are but they also play an occult role.”

        “Occult?”

        “Hidden.  They had secret spiritual knowledge and made the pyramids according to certain occult principles that take into account the fact that the universe is a spiritual entity, not just a material one.

        "That box acts on the same principle, focusing cosmic energy."

        "How do you know this Linda?  All due respect, but it sounds pretty far-fetched to me."

        "There's a lot you don't know, James," she replied. "I know it because I know it."

        "But how, Linda?  How?"

        "I feel it."

        "I don't get it, Linda.  I don't feel anything coming from that box."

        " You're just not that sensitive, James.  You think too much."

        "Yeah, but Linda, are we talking about the same energy I experience when I take acid?"

        "There's only one energy," James.

        "Only one energy?"

        "Yes."

        "Tell me about it."

        "What's to tell?  Either you experience it or you don't."

        "So we're talking cosmic energy here?"

        "Right."

        "OK, Linda, then how does the acid release the cosmic energy?  That whole trip is happening inside my mind, not out there in the universe."

"That's right, James, but the whole universe is inside you."

 "Jesus, Linda, some of this stuff is pretty hard to swallow."

         "Well, you don't have to swallow it.  I'm not trying to convince you of anything, believe me.  The way it works is I say certain things and you either get it or you don't.  If you don't get it, it doesn't matter.  It will make sense someday when you’ve had certain experiences.”

        "I'll take your word for it, Linda.  Now back to the box.  If it puts out the same energy I get when I take acid, why have the box?"

        "Look, James, you can't take acid all your life, can you?  You'll end up a space case.  You've got to figure out how to get it naturally. This box brings it in naturally.  It's better than dope because it's healing all the time."

        "Healing what, Linda?  You sick?"

        "We're all sick, James.  It's nothing physical.  The soul's sick.  It's suffering the disease of ignorance and needs healing."

         "So how does a box heal the soul?"

        "It's not the box, James.  It's the energy.  Energy heals."

        "Who invented that box, Linda?"

        "Wilhelm Reich."

        "Who's that?

        "A great man, James.  A great man who was locked up by the government and died in a nut house because of his ideas.  He said the universe is made up of orgone energy and sold these boxes to collect it.  The government said he was a quack and persecuted him.  He's a saint.  Let's go to the beach.  I can't handle too much of the spiritual stuff so early in the day."

        The conversation continued a couple of days later. 

        I had a chance to think about what you said last time," I said.  "Remember we were talking about the orgone energy and how it healed the soul?"

        "Yes."

        "So what's this disease of ignorance you're talking about?"

        "It's a long story.  You sure you're up for it?"

        "Sure Linda, I don't work.  I've got time on my hands."

        "A long time ago," she began, "all souls were one with the energy.  And everything was fine, each soul knew that it was pure energy.  But then somehow they got cut off and forgot who they were.  And the forgetting made them choose to live in physical bodies and suffer pleasure and pain.  But there was a deep longing to go back to where they came from.  And that's what we're doing, going back."

        "You believe that Linda?"

        "Yes.  More than that, James, I know it."

        "How do you know it, Linda?"

        "We've been through that with the pyramids.  You know it when you know it.  Something has to happen."

        "OK, Linda, so were does the disease of ignorance come in?"

        "When the souls forget who they are, then they're ignorant.  They want to know because that is the only thing that makes them happy."

        "I hate to say this, Linda, but that sounds very simple-minded, like a fairy tale."

        "It sounds like a fairy tale, James, because of your state of mind.  If I told it to you the day the energy turned your life around or during your first acid trip you wouldn't have had a problem with it.  As long as you're in the dream the truth seems false.  When you wake up it makes sense."

        "But..."

        "No "buts" James.  I don't argue.  Either you get it or you don’t.  If you don't it's OK with me.  But there's no argument."

        Linda was right, I couldn't see the connection between the powerful experience of God, the inner energy, and this balmy doctrine.  At the same time her ideas touched something in me I couldn't explain.  She had been sent to plant a seed.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2

 

 

A DANGEROUS PATH TO FREEDOM

 

 

“Better living through chemistry”

 

                                                                             Fifties Slogan of

                                                                    Westinghouse Corporation

 

 

        I think I may have unconsciously seen dropping out of school, taking up with a married woman, and doing business as a rebellion against my parent’s conventional and decent ambitions for me.  Yet even after I realized that rebellion is immature and futile, a deeper impulse pushed me down a dangerous path to freedom. 

        I would have preferred a painless rosy-cheeked born-again awakening, an enthusiastic acceptance of the hair shirt and the mind-numbing certainty of church doctrine, but the path laid out was more complex and subtle, a patient gleaning of the intention of the total as it unfolded through the events of my life.   

        The day Magdalena signed the papers I ordered a dumpster and ruthlessly jettisoned everything associated with that life.  I quit drinking and took up vegetarianism, shedding the excess weight.  One day I met a sexy blond coed from Washington, D.C. and left the island for good with no regrets.  We flew to California, hitched to the Mexican border, and, partying hard, caught the train, El Ferocarill del Pacifico, for points south. 

        In Mazatlan I went for a morning stroll while Cindy had her hair done.  Suddenly, on a back street, without provocation, a police car pulled up, two cops jumped out and unceremoniously shoved me inside.  We drove a couple of blocks and passed through the gates of the local prison where I was ushered into the cliché third-world cell: a bare bulb illumining pocked decaying walls, a filthy toilet, a rusted iron bed sporting a stained mattress, the obligatory horde of cockroaches and flocks of flies.  The door slammed and I was left to cool my heels and contemplate my misdeeds.

        In about an hour another cliché, a beady-eyed plain-clothes cop with greasy slicked back hair, entered and with cheerful sarcasm spoke the following obviously well rehearsed lines.       "Ah, senor, welcome to the Mazatlan Hilton.  I hope you enjoy your stay."

        I forced a smile at his witticism.

        "Perhaps you are wondering why you are here, senor," he said nonchalantly with a hint of menace.

        "Yes, I am," I said with forced humility.

        "Well, senor," he said eyeing my Omega, "You have committed a serious crime."

        "Oh?  What did I do?" I replied dispassionately, trying to keep my anxiety under control.

        "You do not know, senor?"

        "No, I was just taking a walk when you picked me up."

        "Oh, senor, it is such a shame that you do not remember.  You have violated the sacred laws of Mexico.  Come with me, senor, I will help you remember."

        He led me out of the cell and down a corridor into a room that had obviously witnessed its share of human depravity.  He pushed a button next to an electric cord whose bare ends were dangling near a metal bucket half-filled with water.  A gargantuan man with rippling muscles, a protruding jaw and vacant stare lumbered into the room.

        "Ah senor, this is my assistant, Pedro.  I hope I will not need his services.”

        Pedro moved a step closer.

        "What work do you do in your country, senor?"

        "I'm a businessman, sir, the executive vice-president of a retail corporation," I said, handing him my card.

        "Ah, the senor is an important person," he said, turning to Pedro who nodded like a robot.

        "But I think the senor is not telling the truth," he said with menace.  "He breaks our laws and tells lies.  How can a man like you wear such long hair?" he said contemptuously.  "Perhaps the senor is a rock star?"

        "Just a businessman on vacation with my wife," I said.

        "Oh, senor has a senora?" he replied, obviously unhappy I was not alone.

        "Yes, she's the daughter of the ambassador to Uruguay and speaks Spanish," I replied…which happened to be the truth.  “And when she discovers I am not back for lunch she will start looking for me."

        I could see him thinking, so I decided to do business.

        "I think there is some way we can make things right, Senor.  Perhaps I was making a violation of your law, but I am just foolish gringo, senor.  I did not know what I was doing.  I am sorry I made a mistake.  Perhaps I can give you this nice Omega to pay my fine."

        "Ah, I can see the senor is a reasonable man.  It is important to confess your crimes.  But the watch is not enough, senor.  These are serious charges against you. 

        “Perhaps the watch and twenty dollars would be correct,” I said.

        "Now the senor understands the importance of the situation.  But there is one more thing you must give me, senor."

        "Yes, what's that?" I replied, amazed at his greed.

        "Your hair, senor.  Such hair is in violation of the laws of Mexico."

        I was shown a seat in an nearby room where a barber humorlessly  removed every hair - except the mustache.

        The detective appeared and laughed uproariously at what could only have been a well-worn joke, "Ah Senor, you look just like Pancho Villa!"

        When I got back to the hotel Cindy burst into tears; she wanted a flower child, not a Pancho Villa look-a-like.

        That the police were not in the business of guaranteeing the safety of the citizenry was a tad unsettling, but the knowledge that the greased palm neutralized a host of crimes and misdemeanors made it possible to continue our hedonistic extravaganza.  We hit all the mandatory tourist spots and ingested copious quantities of controlled substances too numerous to catalogue.  Weeks later we crossed the border at Brownsville and hitched to DC but at an aging twenty-seven I simply could not party hard enough to suit Cindy and fell by the wayside.

 

THE HOLY MAN JAM

        I flew to California and stayed with my brother in Redwood City, not far from Woodside where Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, immortalized in Tom Wolf's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, made their home.  Though the revolution had peaked, it was far from over, so I set out to make up for lost time, practicing both low and high church psychedelic: dancing all night at Winterland, the Fillmore West, or the Family Dog, making free love with an assortment of hippie chicks, reading Watts and Huxley and practicing yoga and photography.

        I went wherever the flow carried me, marveling at the weirdness of the straight and psychedelic worlds.  One day, walking down Market Street, I was blessed with the prismatic vision of a fly, seeing thousands of skyscrapers through each eye.  And in the middle of each tiny image, I saw Giulia and me, a girlfriend from Amsterdam, walking arm in arm down Market Street!

        Often I would be tripping and suddenly someone would enter my energy bubble, or I theirs, and for however long, a few minutes or days, two lives would be welded together by the intimacy that comes from sharing a common vision.  When it ended it ended; each unemotionally wandered off into an unknown future. 

        I never knew where I would sleep or what I would do from one day to the next: head off into the Sierras with a sleeping bag and ten pounds of brown rice or spend a week making love with a beautiful woman in an elegant apartment on Telegraph Hill.  Whatever it was, each experience was pervaded by an infinite sense of richness and promise, a feeling of abundance and adventure.

        But reality, which I preferred to think of as unreality seemed to enjoy raining on my parade.  One day, dressed in an expensive fringed leather jacket, striped pants and tie-die T-shirt, I was sitting on the fender of my rig in a posh San Mateo neighborhood waiting for a girlfriend when the cops appeared and demanded my ID.  Failure to register my vehicle on time resulted in a citation, putting me in hock to the State for seventeen dollars.  I offered to pay on the spot but the police had other ideas.

        "No way. You're under arrest, buddy.  Spread ‘em!” the officer said gleefully spinning me around and pushing me toward their vehicle.

        My mind entered a state of hyper anxiety because a tiny bag of grass, two hits of mescaline, a tab of acid, a piece of hash, a pack of Zig Zag rolling papers and a stone hash pipe were hidden in the breast pocket of the jacket!

        By the grace of God, however, the lining containing the pocket, had pulled loose from the seams by virtue of excessive use, so when I leaned against the car it hung in the space between my body and the jacket and the officer to missed it when he patted me down.

        The search completed, I was handcuffed by one officer while the other opened the back door.

        "Watch your head," he said, as he violently kicked me in the backside sending me crashing headfirst into the steel screen separating the front from the back of the car.

         I was meant to rant and rave and accuse them of a great injustice to provide them with an opportunity for further abuse, but I remained silent.  I think my non-response caused them to become aware of their own guilt because they seemed almost subdued when we arrived at the station. 

        We entered the building and took the elevator up to the jail. A light blinked on above a steel door, a buzzer sounded, and the door swung open.  On the right I noticed a glassed area housing jail personnel.  In a large holding cell on the left my cuffs were removed and I was left to cool my heels in the company of a couple of fellow miscreants as the cops sauntered off to start the paper work.

        While contemplating how to rid myself of the offending items, two burly deputies deposited a huge, wild-eyed, tattooed, jackbooted Hell's Angel, the type for whom jails are intended, in the holding cell.  Judging by the vibes, he had probably just murdered his girlfriend, shot a cop, or robbed a bank. 

        He stood trancelike, staring into some private hell for a few minutes and then, without warning, ran into the glass separating the holding from the common area, beating it with his fists, screaming with rage at the top of his lungs.

        All hell broke loose when the officers returned to subdue him.  Secretly hoping he would bust a couple of heads, I swallowed the dope, quite a feat without water, ripped the bottom off one of the attorney/visitor phones, stashed the paraphernalia inside, and sat patiently in the corner hoping the booking would end before coming on to what promised to be, in the jargon of the times, a ‘bummer.’

        Mercifully, twenty minutes later I was booked, searched, fingerprinted, allowed to pay my fine, and released.  When the drugs wore off the following afternoon I began to think seriously about cleaning up my act.

        A couple of weeks later I met a fellow in a cafe in the Haight who turned me on to two hits of mescaline and told me about a rock concert at the Family Dog on the Great Highway across from Seal Rock, next to Playland.  "Don't miss it," he said, "The Dead and Eric Clapton are on the bill."

        The parking lot was jammed when I pulled up just after sunset.  I walked across the highway, sat on the beach, snorted both caps, one in each nostril, and waited for the explosion.

      Expecting to be entertained by the Dead's weird, happy, psychedelic vibes when I opened the door, I was treated instead to the sight of Alan Ginsburg French kissing a young man in the entranceway.  The main room was crawling with spiritual types: ochre-clad Hare Krishnas with drums and cymbals chanting the maha-mantra, turbaned Sikhs, and healthy granola-fed women with sparkling eyes, dressed mostly in white, wearing Birkenstocks.  On one wall a movie showing Satya Sai Baba vomiting a huge stone Shiva lingam from his innards played, viewed by a crowd of otherworldly types.

      I noticed Steve Gaskin, former San Francisco State professor turned hippie and an acid age guru famous for his "Monday Night Class" who eventually ran off to Tennessee with several hundred dedicated followers, standing in one corner surrounded by members of his flock.  A blissful Yogi Bhajan sat stage center, a beam of light emitting from what appeared to be a diamond between his eyebrows.

        The vibes were...well, good.  A little strange, but good.  Along the wall blonde California yogi surfer types dressed like Indian naga-babas sat twisting their beautiful lithe bodies like pretzels.

      After wandering around in a daze for a few minutes an attractive young woman, dressed in white, came up bearing a tray with fruit juice and banana bread.

      "Electric kool-aid?" I queried cleverly.

      She looked at me with adoring eyes, missing the joke.

      "Wow," she said, "are you beautiful!  Your energy is incredible.  What meditation are you doing?"

      "Two hits of mescaline," I said, her look of devotion changing to one of horror.

      "You mean you're high," she said in disbelief.

      "Sure.  They told me the Grateful Dead was playing.  I snorted a couple of caps of mescaline and came to dance.  But it's clear even to me that this isn't a rock concert."

      "You're really high on drugs," she said.  "Really?"

      "Sure, why not?"

      "You poor dear, don't you know?"

      "Don't I know what?' I replied.

      "Drugs aren't where it's at."

      "OK.  So what's were it's at?"

      God. It's the highest high."

      Something in me believed her.

      "OK, God.  That’s fine,” I said, “So where's God?"

      "India," she said smiling.

      "India?

      Yes, my guru is in India.  He's a perfect master.  He's God."

      "Come on, you don't believe that, do you?" I replied. "God's a kind of energy, a power, a force.  It's not a person."

      "It's a person too," she replied.  "But we're not supposed to argue

with people who don't believe."

        "Who's we?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.

      "The devotees," she said enigmatically.

      "What devotees?"

      "The devotees of my guru."

      "So who's your guru?"

      "Guru Marharaji.  Want to see his picture?  It's full of shakti."

      "What's shakti?"

      "Boy you don't know anything, do you!  Shakti's energy, divine energy.  Here."

        She showed me a picture of a teen-age boy dressed in silks sitting on a throne.”

      "That's God?"

      “You have to have darshan and get shaktipat before you can see it," she replied.

      "What are these words you're talking?  This isn't English."

      "Sanskrit.  The language of God."

      "God has a special language?"

      "That's right, Sanskrit.  It comes from India.  It's thousands of years old.  The oldest language in the world."

      Cynical as I was, some part of me was fascinated by this young woman and what she had to say.

        "So what's this dar...shat?" I asked.

        "Darshan," she said.

        "OK, darshan.  What is it?"

        "Darshan's when the guru gives you the experience of God."

        "You're kidding.  Nobody can do that.  It just happens," I countered.

        "I don't argue," she said.  "You have to come and see for yourself. 

        “Here," she said giving me a card with an address and telephone number, "come and meditate with us.  See for yourself."

          A few minutes later I made the acquaintance of a tall skinny fellow with a turban.

        "So what's your trip?" I asked.

        "Kundalini, man.  Breath of fire."

        "Breath of fire?"

        "Yeah, it's like this."  He started what seemed like hyperventilating, his eyes glassing over, the veins in his forehead popping out.

        "So what's that do?" I asked after he'd finished.

        "Wakes up the kundalini," he replied sincerely.

        "OK, so what's the kundalini?

        "It's like a snake energy in the spine.  It gets waked up and blows your mind.  That's enlightenment."

        It was news to me.

        "So you enlightened?" I said.

        "No," he said sadly, "I'm not ready yet.  I'm still too impure."

I wandered off wondering if the poor fellow hadn't done a bit too much acid.

        The movie of Sai Baba, a meaty weird-looking guy with orange clothes and an Afro, started replaying.  He was walking in front of hundreds of people who were reaching out to touch him as if he were a rock star.  He stopped in front of someone, waved his hand several times in a circular motion and a little shower of ‘sacred ash’ poured into the devotee's hand seemingly out of thin air.  A picture of one of the Hindu Gods, Ram, blessed by the avatar continuously generated ash.  He produced watches and jewelry from nowhere like a magician.

        "That's pretty weird," I said to the fellow standing next to me, his hands folded in a prayerful attitude."

        "It's not weird," he said, offended. "Not if you know who he is."

        "So who is he?" I asked.

        "He's an avatar," the man replied.

        "So what's an avatar?"

        "He's God."

        "How can he be God?" I said, "I just met a woman who said that her guru was God."

        "Oh, a lot of people think their gurus are God," he said with certainty, "but they're deluded.  Sai Baba is the one true God.  Who can do that?" he said, as the part where God vomited up a huge phallic stone object started rerunning.

        "I don't know," I said, "probably God."

        "There is no God," said a small clean-shaven fellow with a bald head wearing a purple caftan and carrying an odd oriental rosary when I asked him about Sai Baba. "There is no God and there is no self.  There is nothing but bodhi, the suchness.  The Hindus are deluded.”

        "What's bodhi?"

        "Enlightenment."

        "OK, what's enlightenment?"

        "He who says doesn't know and he who knows doesn't say," he replied inscrutably, his hands fairly zipping around the beads.

        "There is one God and his name is Allah," said a scruffy long-haired hippie who purported to be a Sufi.

        "What's a Sufi?" I asked.

        A lover of God.  God is the Beloved and we are his lovers."

        "You mean sex?  How can you have sex with God?"

        "Everyone's God, so when you're having sex, it's with God," he said employing an irrefutable logic.

        "So what you into, man?" I said to an emaciated young man with sunken eyes who looked like he'd just been released from Auschwitz.

        "Macrobiotics," he replied.

        "Oh, what's that?"

        "Balancing the yin and yang in your food."

        "The yin and yang?" I replied.

        "Do you eat meat," he said changing the subject.

        "Some, why not?"

"If you don't know, you're beyond help," he replied walking off.

        I must have talked to fifty people about God, gurus, buddhas, avatars, kundalini, chakras, yin-yang, acupuncture, and meditation before the event wound down around midnight.  Nobody was touting better living through chemistry.  And, not surprisingly, nobody was touting Lord Jesus.

A SETBACK

        I swore off drugs and decided head for India.  A few days later I met a woman, light years ahead of me spiritually, in the Trieste, an Italian coffee shop in North Beach, to whom I showed a recently-purchased book on Hatha yoga. 

        "Meatballs," she said unable to conceal her scorn. "Look at them.  Beef on the hoof.  This is not spiritual.  This is gymnastics."

        On a subsequent occasion she showed me a book with pictures of a different type of yogi. "Look at them," she said, "the grace, the poise.  See how they aren't really here."

        "Aren't here?" I said bewildered.

        "In meditation.  They're looking inward at the light within.  This is yoga.  It has nothing to do with the body."

        It was news to me.

        A day later I came across a book entitled “The Yoga of Knowledge” by an Indian, Swami Vivekananda, who visited the States around the turn of the century.  As I read, each consciousness-soaked word gave form to the vision I’d had on the Kuai beach.  And, like Linda, it spoke of the disease of ignorance.  When I put it down I realized with renewed conviction I had to know who I was.

        So I made up my mind to go to India and find God.  I know it sounds eminently laughable, a real cliché, but that was my thinking.   I won’t chronicle the events that led up to my next near disaster and will cut to the chase but a few months later I found myself in New York city, the proud proprietor of a booming dope business.  One afternoon my partner and I, a young Jewish woman from Brooklyn with nerves of steel and a good head for business, fixed over two hundred lids, stashed them in her granny’s embroidered antique bag, and caught a taxi for Randall's Island where Jimi Hendrix and Jethro Tull were headlining. 

        I hunkered down in the row of dealers and started selling while Inez wandered around looking at the freaks.  Within minutes I was surrounded by dozens of hands thrusting greenbacks in my direction.  As the supply dwindled and my pockets filled with money, I noticed two young blacks worming their way to the front of the crowd.  Suddenly one lunged at me, his knife slashing my jacket pocket, sending a flurry of greenbacks into the air.  I swung the nearly empty bag at the second whose blade cut it open spilling the dope.  As the crowd groped for the bonanza I took off at full speed, powered by adrenaline and a tab of acid.  When I got to the corner of the grandstand I took the twenty-five foot leap onto the freeway into the path of an oncoming taxi which squealed to a stop inches away.  I climbed in, thrust a twenty in the face of the driver and gave my assailants the finger as we sped off to the Village where I changed, stashed the money, and returned to the concert just as Jimi Hendrix was bashing a flaming guitar to bits on the stage. 

        We went to a party after the concert and just as Inez climbed into bed the cops showed up.  I was barely able to get dressed before being cuffed and tossed in a paddy wagon with my fellow revelers.  I plead guilty to disorderly conduct, paid the fine, and when I walked out into the early morning air, I realized that I was on the wrong path. 

        I gave Inez ten thousand, kissed her goodbye and flew to Montana where the family had a log cabin on the Big Blackfoot River to think about things.  Early one morning a few days after I arrived I dreamt I was in an exotic Oriental country standing on a series of stone steps waiting for a boat on the banks of a large calm blue-gray river in front of a group of ancient temples, majestic snow-capped peaks in the distance.

        I woke up, grabbed my stash, and walked down the river.  Slowly, ceremoniously, I threw my dope into the river.  As the last bit passed from view I saw a wriggling snakelike bluish light emerge from the depths, hover over the surface for what seemed an eternity, and rise up glimmering and winking until it merged into the first glow of dawn suffusing the top of Sheep Mountain.

        Within a week I walked into Icelandic Air's San Francisco office and bought a ticket for Europe, first stop on the way to India, Land of Light.

 

THE THRILL IS GONE

 

        Though treated to faint glimmerings, I did not know that life was not about being different from who I was, but about understanding why I was as I was.  So when I had the dream, threw away the dope, and saw the mystic snake rise out of the river, I resolved to pursue a purer style of life.  If I had to do it all over, I would not do it differently because disillusionment and broken resolutions are as important as inspiration and kept ones…if they teach the why. 

        An improved and subtler version of the alcoholic, the druggie, though a kinder, gentler fool was doomed to extinction.  Yes, I went to a rock concert on the Isle of Wight, a wet miserable typically English affair, hit the clubs in Amsterdam, Paradiso's and the like, smoked a bit of hash, the European equivalent of pot, had a couple of hot little episodes with the ladies, but the not high days started to outnumber the high days and I noticed a curious fact: the not high days were sometimes higher than the high days…which made me suspect that something other than dope was making me feel good.  Before long I would have to face the blasphemous prospect that dope was bringing me down.  

        I bought a bicycle in Paris and worked my way down the French coast to Spain, stopped off in Madrid where I initiated a bizarre bit of karma of involving the President of the United States, of which more will be said later, and ended up in Malaga where I caught the ferry for Morocco, surrendering my hair at the border.

 

IT IS NOT HERE ON EARTH I AM SEEKING

 

        After another love affair in Tangiers, I shucked my hippie rags, bought a jellabia and caught the Marrakech Express.  In Marrakech I discreetly smoked hash in the cafes, drank opium tea made from poppies readily available in the souks, traded books with travelers, rode camels in the desert, and socialized with consumer society’s flotsam and jetsam, an assortment of crazy and incurable romantics in search of pleasure and adventure: a pair of lipstick lesbians from New York on vacation from the modeling trade, a diminutive bald dealer from California named Jason who walked through the streets wildly banging on a drum, a born-again Cherokee from Muskogee, Oklahoma on the lam from a bank robbery in New York who whiled away his days spouting scripture, a merchant seaman from San Francisco who appeared later at critical points in my life, and a fellow whose presence in Morocco was probably a consequence of reading Dune on Acid, a tall rich upper middle-class WASP from LA who spoke Arabic, wore a blue burnoose and turban, and tried to encourage me to join a camel-riding band of revolutionary guerrillas who hung out in the desert to the south. 

        Exotic as it all was, the more I played the less meaningful it was.  As the libertine extravaganza slowly wound down I found myself turning down nights of love for the silence of the desert where, in sacred moments I became acutely aware of a wonderful seed sprouting in the depths, the spiritual force striving to articulate itself.  Because it had saved me from myself so many times I started to think of It as a friend and guide.  And one day, sitting alone on a rock in the desert at dawn, the Friend called me Ram, the one who revels in the Heart.

        This power, the exquisitely beautiful "thumb-sized Person sitting in the Heart" as the Upanishad says, attracted me like nothing else and set in motion a new way of thinking which would slowly transform me into an ascetic and a mystic.  A power longing to be known, it created a restlessness no earthly experience could satisfy, an immense longing for liberation.

        Bored with Marrakech, I took a bus to a small village of simple domed whitewashed houses tucked away in the Atlas Mountains, checked into a tourist hotel and visited one of the local cafes where a skinny frizzy blonde astrologer from Philadelphia, who must have intuited my soft spot for eccentrics, made a bee-line for my table.

        George, a walking talking guide to the galaxies, had the whole planetary system and beyond wired.  As we sipped our tea I was informed that Venus conjunct mars in the something house had decreed our meeting.  The stars also insisted we take a trip into the mountains to search the remains of a lost civilization.  Always one for a bit of a hike, I agreed to go and met her the next morning after breakfast.

        As we climbed she revealed the startling cosmic information that we were fated to take acid and make love.  There was a time, in the not terribly distant past, when such a prospect, even with a skinny girl like George, might have proved an interesting proposition, but I found myself remarkably disinterested.  George, and indeed the whole world, seemed a million miles away.  I politely made my excuses, further endearing me to her.  Perhaps she figured I was playing hard to get, a critical planet gone retrograde for a few minutes.  Arriving at the crest of a peak with an awesome view of the mountains and the desert beyond, we sat down to take a break and, in a well-choreographed move, George broke out her stash.

        "OK, man," she said with complete authority, "At exactly nine-forty three we're supposed to take this dope."

        "George, I've got something to tell you."

        "OK, Jim, let it fly."

        "With all due respect to the planets, I don't feel much like taking any more acid."

        Her face dropped.

        "Suit yourself, Jim," she said coldly, "but you have to take responsibility."

        "For what George?  Responsibility for what?"

        "For fucking up the karma, man.  This is supposed to happen.  You take the karma."

        "What karma, George?"

        "Look, Jim, can I level with you?" she said, the wheels spinning.  She was not going to give up without a fight.

        "Sure, George, let me have it."

        "Everything in this whole fucking cosmos is connected to everything else.  Dig?  And that means if one little thing doesn't do what it's supposed to do it causes all kinds of problems for everything else."

        "What you're saying, George," I interrupted, "is that you'll be bummed out if I don't trip with you, right?"

        "It's not just me, Jim, it's the whole cosmos that suffers in many ways.  You can't fight the stars.  You fight the stars and you come out a loser.  That's the way it is.  Now, we've got ten minutes until exactly nine forty three and I want you to think long and hard about your decision and I'll be back to get your reply after I take a pee."

        She got up and wandered off behind some boulders.

        I did not think very long or very hard because it really did not matter if I tripped or not.  I was inclined against it because I objected to the way she tried to work the guilt angle.

        "Well, you've got two minutes," she said appearing from behind the rock, "did you make up your mind?"

        "No, George, I haven't.  On one hand I don't want to fuck up the cosmos and on the other I don't feel that much like tripping.  I've tripped enough for ten people in the last couple of years and I can't see it's going to change me that much."

        "One minute, Jim, you've got one minute.  Don't blow it."

        I decided to let the deadline pass, just to see what she would do next when the Voice said, "Take the dope, Jim."

        So I said, "OK" and George handed me a tab of acid with a big smile.  I made her day.  And I did not know when I popped George's tab at exactly nine forty three a.m. that I was taking the trip that put the nail in the coffin of LSD.

        I do not pretend to be an authority, but here is the short version of my theory on the psychology of drugs: in the beginning there is the you that wants to be different from it is.  Then you ingest the stuff that makes you different, ‘high’ in drug vernacular.  Finally, the drug wears off and the different you changes back to the original you.  However if you are not the boring you in the first place, you will not mind if the boring you stays bored.  Therefore, you will have no need for drugs.

        As George's acid coursed through my veins I discovered I was not whoever or whatever was getting high.  Within minutes telltale changes occurred and the doors of perception opened on the rich inner world, where the waving, pulsating, Life Force strained against the thin film of matter struggling to contain its energy.

        But I did not change at all!

        As the drug generated the standard hallucinations, I observed the mind expanding like a rapid-fill helium balloon, pervading subtler layers of existence, producing an indescribable lightness of being, until it dissolved entirely in the Emptiness, creating delicious ecstasy.

        But it did not get close to me!

        Suddenly I realized I was seated on an infinitely high inner mountain, one so high it was not high at all, indifferently watching an insignificant display of psychedelic pyrotechnics. 

        I was much more than the paltry body sitting on the earthy mountain top, or the expanding pleasure-filled mind.

        I was the unblinking all-seeing Eye of Knowledge, the unchanging Center around which the mind and the world, like far-away planets, spin.

        George had her day too.  We did not make love but she stumbled on a monstrous fossilized vertebrae, perhaps a dinosaur part, which she lovingly lugged down the mountain, her interest in astrology vindicated.  After all, had not the planets said we would uncover lost treasures from the past?

        Apart from the pleasure, I think I strove to possess and enjoy things to find out what they were.  And I discovered a fact that should turn off everyone rushing around out there in the world looking for happiness: once an object or activity is understood for what it is, it looses its power.  It was like that with money and sex.  And then drugs.  Everything here is limited, but the human heart is unlimited.  It will not rest until it has discovered itself.

        To say I gave up those things misses the point.  I lived through them, like a needle passing through many layers of fabric, emerging on the other side.  All resolutions are ultimately futile because will power is not enough.  Vanity made me think I could overcome these things, but live it to the fullest and life will take everything in its own time.

           It is not up to us.

          Though I would take a few more trips, more or less out of habit, the experience on the mountain provided such a clear and powerful affirmation of who I really was I could no longer take drugs seriously.  So I decided to make life my drug and hitchhike alone to Cairo, vowing to rely only on that all-knowing Being sitting on the peak of my consciousness, whose supreme dispassion put all my drug-induced hallucinations in perspective. 

          A week after the trip with George I was sitting cross-legged in the courtyard of an old Catholic church warmed by the slanting rays of the autumnal sun in a small town on the edge of the desert.  The shadows deepened, the sky glowed electric blue, and an orange aura appeared over the mountains as the sun dipped below the horizon.  My consciousness emptied and an unearthly silence descended.  Suddenly the mind began spinning like a top, picking up momentum, compacting itself into a tiny point of consciousness.  Then, as if it knew exactly what it was doing, it left the body through the left eye and hovered in front of my face a few inches away!

          Like a space ship, it took off at astronomical speed propelled by an unknown force.  Try as I might I cannot find words to describe what happened as it traveled through myriad worlds gathering experience.  All I can say is that I was left with a strong conviction that our little planet is only one of many worlds evolving in a sea of transcendental consciousness.

          After a while it returned and I saw it hovering in front of a bearded man sleeping in the back of a local cafe, as if trying to enter his body.  My awareness caused it to appear in front of my left eye, hover like a hummingbird, pierce the center of the eye, expand to the size of the body, and come to rest, its mission completed.

CASABLANCA TO CAIRO

        Tanned and fit, wearing a jellabia and sandals, looking every inch the later day mystic, I hiked to the edge of town and stuck out my thumb, a small French W.W.I. army pack on my back, a large bamboo flute adorned with zodiacal signs slung over my shoulder.  I would like to report adventure, intrigue, and romance, but the Morocco I experienced from this point on was a different journey.  I spent most of the long and uneventful days sitting by the roadside waiting for a ride, watching the mind run the gamut of emotion, trying to keep it anchored in the present.  At the end of the day, more exhausted than if I had lugged the cross to Calvary, I walked into the desert, curled up in my jellabia and slept.

        Different cultures view the same symbols differently.  In the West for example, a cloudy day symbolizes unhappiness, confusion, and depression.  But in India, an unbearably hot country, because they bring the rains, clouds are a symbol of hope, joy, and abundance.  In the West the desert carries the projection of an inhospitable lifeless world, but throughout the Orient it has come to symbolize the vastness of Allah, the stark pristine immaterial energy of Spirit.  Christ's trip into the ‘desert’ indicates an inward turning, a movement in the direction of Life itself, a journey into the hot heart of Allah.

        The Saharan air burned away the heaviness and meatiness in the body, cleansed the breath, working its way inward to gently purify the cells.  I felt radiant, alive, like never before, as toxins began to purify.  One day in a small town near the Algerian border I took my first hammam, Turkish bath.  Sitting in the tub I noticed a greenish film collecting on the surface and called the attendant. "Monsieur, what is this?" I said in French.

        "Monsieur is a smoker.  That is the nicotine," he replied.

        "I haven't smoked for two years," I replied.

        "It does not matter," he replied trundling out a well-worn story.

        "I have been the attendant in these baths for many years, Monsieur.  One day a man came in and, like you, saw the green film and he became very angry.  He said the tubs are filthy, that we do not keep our bath clean.  I said "You are a smoker, Monsieur," as I said to you.  But he denied it.  Then he remembered that he had smoked twenty years before.  The nicotine was still in his body."

        The vast expanse and the endless horizon exert a magical effect on the mind.  There are moments when outward and inward blend, the mind empties, sublime emotions come into play and an overwhelming sense of reality informs every perception.

        The words "Inshallah," Lord Willing, appear frequently in the speech of the locals.  A statement is made and the Lord remembered.  Life cannot proceed without the blessing.  Uninclined to pray at regular intervals like my Muslim brothers, my soul prayed when it felt the urge - which was often.

        One day a man driving a camel cart picked me up and called me ‘Sufi.’  I nod and smile because I understand.  I am here, I belong to the inner desert.  I am a mystic by default.

        At the Algerian border the police smiled, said "LSD! LSD!" and gave a big thumbs up.  I continued on, day after day, making respectable progress, a persistent current of joy running through my being.

        About three weeks into the trip, I caught a ride in eastern Algeria with a Libyan oil tanker, passing, late afternoon, through rolling hills covered with olive trees as far as the eye could see.  Though intending to ride all the way to Tripoli, I felt called to get down, the body, mind of its own, leading me into the landscape for a couple of miles until I came to the top of a small hill with a commanding view.  I played the flute, watched the sunset, and fell into a deep sleep, awaking just before dawn to see dozens of pairs of eyes glowing in the dark shadows ringing the edge of the clearing, peering intently in my direction.  As I lay in the half-light trying to make out what was going on, I became aware of an unearthly silence pressing down, as if I were lying on the bottom of a deep ocean.  At the same time I felt light and high as if I were floating in the upper reaches of the atmosphere in a body made of fine energy, a holy white radiance, an island of light in a sea of darkness.

          Then I realized that my body, squeezed between these two forces was hovering a full six inches off the ground!  The mind raced, fracturing the spell, and the body dropped to earth and broke the silence which jiggled the ring of eyes, a herd of goats intently staring in my direction.  Hoping to repeat the experience, I lay totally still for a long time but nothing happened.

          A visitor from another world, I walked for several days through the countryside until the mind gradually merged into physical reality.  I made my way to Tunis where I hung out for a few days and moved on, working my way across Libya to Bhenghazi where a young blonde Englishwoman, working in her father's oil firm, spied me walking through the market, and invited me for tea.  Love, a gift, came easily and we spent two idyllic weeks together, our tearful departure one of the most tender and romantic moments of my life.

 

CHAPTER 3

 

 

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

 

 

THE TRICK FROM CALIFORNIA

 

          People in Islamic countries often find it difficult to get along with each other, their list of hatreds stretching back to the beginning of time.  A British post-war politician, Clement Atlee, once perceptively and humorously remarked that politics (he might have included religion) was the ‘organization of hatred.’  Perhaps hatred keeps you on your toes so somebody does not sneak up and snitch your camel or your wife.  I found it peculiar that in a land where the name of Allah the Merciful is on every set of lips, hatred, cruelty and brutality have evolved to the level of fine arts.

          My desire to continue overland to the Nile was frustrated because the Libyan-Egyptian border, a ‘sensitive area,’ was closed, and Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, the only Cairo access.  I wondered how my first flesh and blood encounter with the Evil Empire would turn out.  All political views decimated by business and drugs, I may have harbored unconscious sympathetic Communist resonances from my days as a beret-wearing umbrella-toting cappuccino-drinking coffee shop revolutionary, son of a ‘pinko’ town judge, who earned radical credentials screwing his girlfriend on Joe MacCarthy's grave.  Were I to encounter a hostile, highly disciplined, steely-eyed cadre of uniformed anti-capitalist commies, I felt I could rely on my karma to pull me through.

          Much to my surprise, at the entrance to the plane I was warmly greeted by a rolly-polly Babushka type with the calves of a front lineman who might well have been recently recruited from a Ukrainian potato collective.  Two disheveled pilots, sitting in the cockpit of their aging inattentively-maintained Illyushin jet, were laughing and joking with an attractive blonde stewardess, the unmistakable smell of distilled spirits wafting out of the cabin.  We taxied down the runway, the plane straining mightily into Ghadaffi's none-to-friendly skies, vibrating like an overloaded washing machine on spin cycle.  Scarcely had the seat-belt light been turned off than the vodka started flowing.  Wishing to keep a clear head in the land of the pharaohs, I refrained.

          My heart leapt to my throat as the Nile and the Pyramids came into view during our descent, awakening ancient spiritual feelings, the perfect landing greeted by a spontaneous outburst of applause.

          Emerging from the dinghy terminal, contemplating the interface between the first and third worlds, the embarrassing moment when haves and have-nots cease to be ideas and actually touch, my state changes.  Does a five dollar taxi ride actually mean life or death to the children of this emaciated hawk-eyed fellow pulling so frantically at my sleeve?  I sympathize with the tourist's propensity to throw money at the problem, the insistence on being met inside the terminal by a well-dressed well-spoken young man from the travel agency, the desire to be ceremoniously whisked from the airport in an air-conditioned limousine, deposited safely on the steps of a luxury hotel.

          I could have ridden the limo, but it was the incorrect path, not out of mawkish liberal sympathy with the struggling and dispossessed, but because somewhere along the line, incrementally and imperceptibly, an island of awareness had opened in the mind, a point from which to dispassionately view the world.  To nurture that awareness and redeem myself it was important not to insulate against unpleasantness, mandatory that I rub the soul raw on life's realities - hands and knees over cobblestones to Lourdes.

          I did not wade into that angry mass to lose myself in an Egypt that would test me to the limit because recent experiences had transformed me into a saint.  My awareful inner island was less a major land mass than a tiny atoll surrounded by an ocean of ignorance, hardly within easy reach.

          I cautiously stepped off the curb and picked my way through the army of touts like a soldier gingerly crossing a mine-field, anger and paranoia seeping in.  Taxis are not the ticket when you are paranoid; one imagines every turn seemingly leading to a disreputable section of town where worst fears become realities.

          So I caught the bus and sat in silence, looking out the window at the unaesthetic grayness of the slummy polluted city, contemplating the sheer volume of unfortunate humanity.  I had no need for further information after the scene at the terminal, but the bus was a good read of the nation's psyche; what I saw was little cause for optimism, every eighth or ninth person a soldier, fully armed.

          I got down near the Nile Hilton and began searching a traveler’s hotel but drew a blank.  Spying a park on the other side of the river, I set out to cross a bridge a quarter of a mile downstream.  At the bridge approach, challenged by sullen soldiers sporting automatic weapons, I showed my visa, and was allowed to pass.  Shaken, I retreated to the deserted park and sat a bench facing the river lost in thought as traffic ground humorously along the other side.  Based on recent evidence I faced the possibility that my romantic sojourn in the land of the Pharaohs was going to be a wash.

          Coming out of my thoughts I found the sun setting and myself homeless.  Cautiously exploring the park, I discovered a secluded and secure spot, stashed my valuables under a rock, spread the mat, and slept without incident, awakening rested and refreshed shortly after dawn.

          After bundling the mat, I sat in the morning sun on the riverbank near the bridge watching the city come to life, the flute's full rich tones eliciting no response from occasional passersby.  Finally a lovely woman, balancing a woven reed tray full of oranges on her head, came up, smiled, placed two on my bench, and proceeded on her way.

          As the sun labored above the skyline, I gave thanks to Allah, ate the oranges, and wandered up the road wondering what the day would bring, entering, twenty minutes later, the courtyard of a shabby complex of low-income high-rise tenements where I sat on a bench under a huge tree, hoping to strike up conversation and pick up hotel information.

          A group of small children gathered.  I played a happy tune as they inched closer and was soon encircled by a ring of appreciative onlookers.  Sporting wavy blonding hair, beard, jellabia, and bamboo flute, I must have seemed more an apparition than flesh and blood.  Against a backdrop of military vehicles, soldiers, anti-aircraft-gun-adorned rooftops and sandbagged buildings, perhaps they viewed me as comic relief.

        Sucking images from the air, a new musical style emerged: Saharan psychedelic.  The crowd swelled and I wondered how it would end, not knowing I should have polished off the tune, bowed, and beat a hasty retreat.  Welded to the spot, my destiny drew near.

        Suddenly, as if conjured by a malevolent djin, the vibes about-faced and from the back of the crowd I heard the strident voice of poverty, injustice and sexual frustration yelling, "Passaport! Passaport!"

        "Passaport! Passaport!”

        A shower of pebbles from the kids, like telltales, indicate a storm.  A memory of the Manila crowd flashes and I realize that if I bolt I am done.  I retreat into the music, fear ripping off my attention, the tune contorting.  Released from its spell, minds wander, amplifying the angry cries as bodies inch ominously closer, a nightmare about to happen.

        The music stops.  Surrounded by a wild, excited crowd, two nasty young men are in my face, menacing, pulling my jellabia and shouting, "Passaport! Passaport!"

        "No way man, no way.  Fuck you!" I think, stepping back, my strength waning.

        Then...hope!  Four battered blue-black police vans race into the courtyard and brake abruptly, vomiting bodies.  Long leather straps flailing, the boys in khaki disperse the crowd.

        Inshallah, someone called the cops!

        Bumping through the streets in the back of the van, the hostile stares of my fellow detainees suggest I am responsible for the sudden change in fortune.  Deposited on stationhouse steps, I am ushered into the cavernous interior and find my self at the end of the cue, blessed with ample time to contemplate an uncertain future.

        A humorless pen-wielding scribe stands at a tall desk at the head of the line entering the accused’s particulars in large dog-eared ledger.  The paperwork completed, the hapless subject is ushered down a long hall and disappears.  The clank of steel sends shudders down my spine.  The line shrinks, images of Mazatlan flashing.  When it is my turn the wheels of justice grind to a halt.

        "English, English!  Speaking English!" I say frantically.

        He looks around uneasily, unsure of the next move.

        "English, English!" I repeat.

        Dead silence, and time expands into eternity.

        A door opens and a well-dressed cop, an officer, fills the corridor with his presence.

        "What's the matter?" he says in excellent English, sauntering over. "There's been a mistake, sir," I say, verging on obsequious. "I've been arrested for playing the flute in public."

        He looks at me as if I were mad, says something to the scribe and ushers me into his office.

        Contemplating his amused countenance, I relax.

        The captain seemed supremely uninterested as I recounted the morning's events in self-serving detail.

        "You see the people are very unhappy these days," he said  "They think every foreigner is a Jewish spy.  You are German?"

        "No American.  My grandfather was German."

        "And what will happen to them," I said, amazed at my concern. 

        "Nothing.  We will leave them for a few hours and send them home.  Public demonstrations are forbidden," he replied. "And where do you stay?"

        "Nile Hilton," I said jokingly.

        "Seriously," he said.

        "I just got in and have been unable to find a hotel.  I was looking for one when this business happened."

        "Perhaps you are poor and can't afford a proper hotel."

        "No, it's not that," I said showing him my money pouch, "I could stay at the Hilton.  I'm looking for a small clean hotel in a neighborhood where I can experience a bit of your culture.  I hate tourist hotels.” 

        He smiled.  "You are in the wrong area," he replied helpfully, directing me to a group of local hotels on the other side of the river about half-an-hour's walk.

        "Thank-you," I said.  "I assume I'm free to go."

        "Why not have a cup of tea?" he said.  "I have always wanted to know about America.  I went to school in England but did not get to see America.  Of course I should not be talking with you because America supports the Jews, but to tell the truth I am sick and tired of war."

        So we spent the next half-hour talking sports, politics, religion, and women.

        Convinced someone up there loved me but obviously shaken, I followed instructions which took me to a group of small hotels catering to locals, one of which sported a neon sign with a palm tree and the sentimentally appealing name ‘Hotel Hawaii.’  Within minutes I was ensconced in a small, clean, reasonably-priced room on the third floor with a verandah looking out over a souk which provided ample local color.  I deposited the pack, showered, grabbed the flute and hit the streets.  Things were looking up.

        Having come up with the short end of the stick in the Sinai the previous year, Egyptians were angry.  I walked in the crowded downtown area for nearly an hour before I saw a smile, a little boy whose father treated him to a hot buttered sweet potato from a street vendor.

        About noon I stumbled on a large cafe with a smattering of bored middle-aged men aimlessly puffing hookahs and staring mindlessly into the street, ordered mint tea and accepted an invitation to smoke from one of the patrons, a fat businessman who deftly crumbled a generous chunk of blonde Lebanese hash on the glowing coals.  A few minutes later, properly stoned, I walked out into the afternoon, feeling ever-so-pleased, the morning's incident a faint memory.  So this was Egypt, land of the Pharaohs.  Not bad.

        After wandering aimlessly for about thirty minutes I ascended a small hill offering an excellent vista of the city, an easy trek up a gentle incline.  In a few minutes, about two hundred feet from the top, I encountered a barbed wire fence hung with signs in Arabic placed at regular intervals, certain they said, ‘Keep out!’

        Though denied the all around views the top provided, memory of the morning's folly suggesting discretion the better part of valor, I pulled up twenty yards short of the fence, parked my bottom on a rock, and took in a city stretching as far as the eye could see, melting mysteriously into the Sahara at the horizon.  The maternal domes and phallic minarets of many mosques added an air of old world inscrutability to the picture, inflaming my romantic soul, inspiring a haunting melody.

        I played for a few minutes when suddenly the mind's eye saw my bullet-riddled body rolling down the hill!  Trying to grasp the full significance of this disturbing image, I stopped playing and heard the metallic sound of a round of ammunition being injected into the chamber of a gun.  Turning around, I found myself confronting a soldier with his rifle trained on me!  With great deliberation I put the flute on the ground and raised my hands, signal for three or four heavily-armed soldiers to emerge from the brush along the fence.  Two climbed over, covered by their companions, one picking up the flute, the other herding me up the hill, the tip of his rifle jabbing the small of my back.

        Experiencing a fairly serious case of anxiety, unable to figure our destination because there was no sign of life as we approached the summit, and suffering the reason-distorting effects of a powerful surge of adrenaline, for a moment I foolishly thought of bolting, but wisely reigned in the overtaxed mind.

        About fifty feet short of the summit we approached an artfully camouflaged entrance near a couple of large boulders in a clump of brush, which, activated by an electronic device, opened automatically. 

        Ushered into the bowels of the earth, I was confronted with a reasonably large room filled with communications equipment manned by half-a-dozen soldiers.  After a rough strip-search and examination of my documents, I was shown a wooden chair under a bare bulb.                                                  It was like a scene out of a bad movie and I half expected to hear the hackneyed line, "Where were you on the night of...?"

        Sporting a button-down shirt, polyester slacks, baseball cap, and carrying a snappie, my story might have carried a little more weight: tourist wanders off the beaten track.  But, minus the flute, to the untrained eye I could have easily passed as a rank and file camel jock.

        Discounting their justifiable paranoia, my story, at least on the surface did not make sense because I was not real, camel jock just the latest in a long line of honestly-come-by inauthenticities.  People do not change identities like a chameleon unless there is something to hide.  I was not hiding the obvious, an identity as a Jewish spy, but I was hiding none-the-less.

        From my self.

        Somehow I garnered the impression that the niceties of our legal system, Miranda, habeus corpus, and a free call to an attorney of one's choice, sensible as they are, were not excessively popular in Egyptian legal circles.  This was war and they had just snagged a scumbag Jew.

        Though family stock on both sides for several generations is pure WASP, I had occasionally been told by close friends that my features, particularly in the nasal area, could pass for Semitic.  This, coupled with tanned skin, jellabia, and insensitive choice of location for an afternoon stroll, lent justifiable credence to their suspicions.  Tourists sit in air-conditioned bars, take group tours to the pyramids, squander their hard-earned capital in the souks, dine in fancy restaurants, and wallow in the brothels.

        An officer who spoke good English interrogated me.  I told him that I was a businessman on holiday, omitting the story of the morning brush with the law, but including the stop in the cafe for a smoke, figuring the truth might play well: stoned hippie stumbles on sensitive military installation.

        "What are you doing here?" he asked.

        "I was taking a walk, saw this little hill, thought I'd get a view of the city."

        "But did you not know that this was a military base?"

        "No. I didn't.  I saw the signs on the fence and figured they said ‘keep out’ so I did not cross.  If your man hadn't showed himself I wouldn't have known anything.  I rested a few minutes, played the flute, and was about to leave."

        In the background an examination of the flute was in progress.

Then out of the blue he said, "So what do you think of President Nixon?"

        Dumfounded, I replied, “I don't have any politics, sir."

        "Everyone has politics," he said menacingly.

        I was too frightened to see what he was getting at: America had supported the Jews and Nixon, to an Egyptian, was the Great Satan. "Really sir, I don't know much about the President."

        He nodded to a soldier standing behind me and I felt a searing pain as the butt of a rifle crashed into the back of my neck.  When I regained my seat and my composure, he said, "Everyone has an opinion about Nixon."

        It seemed reasonable to develop an opinion.

        "Well," I said picking my way cautiously, "I don't think he's an honest man."

        He seemed interested. ”People say, "Would you by a used car from this man?"  He missed the joke so I tried again.

      "People ask, ‘Would you by an old camel from this man?’"

      The hint of a smile crossed his face.

      "Honestly, I don't know that much.  I live in Hawaii and make business with the tourists.  I saved my money to make a trip around the world.  I don't know what's happening in politics.  I find it interesting to learn about different people.  I came to see the pyramids and the Nile.  I don't read the papers."

      "So what do you think about Israel?"

      "I don't know anything about Israel."

      Suddenly I found myself sitting on the floor, the chair kicked out from under me.

      "I do not believe you," he said, his voice quivering with anger as he loomed menacingly over me.  It suddenly dawned on me what was going on in his head.

      I started to get up but he viciously kicked me down.

      "Are you a Jew?"

      “No way."

      "You look like a Jew."

      "I am not a Jew.  I was born in Montana.  There are no Jews in Montana.  It is impossible."

      "So what do you think of Jews?"

      At this point he gestured to another soldier who came over, received instructions and left the room with a companion and my passport, giving me time to think about my reply.

      The energy changed and it seemed I’d been through the worst.

      "So what do you think of Jews?"

      "Not much," I said meaning I didn't have an opinion - which I didn't. "You mean you don't like Jews?"

      "You see, sir, I don't know any Jews.  Where I come from there are no Jews.  But people in America think Jews are only after money."

      He seemed familiar with this view.

      "They are pigs," he said with complete contempt, violently hitting the table with a baton. "Pigs!"

      Nearby several clearly-baffled men speaking in low tones clustered around the flute, tapping it on a table, carefully examining the inside, holding it up to the light, poking it with a knife, looking for my transmitter, secret codes, and cyanide capsules.

      "And what about that?" said my interrogator, indicating the flute.

      "It's only a flute.  Shall I show you how it works?"

      "He nodded and gestured toward the men, one of whom brought the flute.

      The sweet full tones of ‘Row, Row, Row your Boat’ oozed from the big bamboo flute and the bunker went silent.

      "It's an old folk song from my country.  Would you like to hear the words?’’

      To my surprise, he nodded.

      When I said, “Life is just a dream,” I distinctly noticed a softening around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

        The interrogation abruptly stopped and I sat alone in the center of the room as the men went about their business.  For the next two hours I was treated to a practical demonstration in the relativity of time, seconds stretching to eons while battalions of angry and fearful thoughts goose-stepped across my consciousness. 

        Eventually the two men returned, said a few words to the captain, and went to their stations. 

        The captain approached.

        "It is as you say.  We have checked with the CIA and you are not a spy.  I am sorry for the inconvenience, but war is war.  Perhaps you should not smoke the hashish.  My driver will take you to your hotel.  Do not mention this place to anyone, do you understand?" he said, handing back my passport. 

        I nodded.

        I followed the driver down the hill to a jeep parked on a nearby side street.  Twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of the hotel.  Oddly, it seemed to carry a sleazy, almost sinister, vibe.  I was glad to see it none-the-less, chalked the perception up to lingering paranoia from the day's events, and dragged my exhausted and aching body up the stairs to the quiet sanctuary of my room.

        I sat on the verandah as the sun set, watching the activity in the bazaar, listening to a bad recording of call to prayers crackling from a faulty loudspeaker wired to the minaret of the local mosque, musing on the old days when the muezzin sang in his own voice.  A crow landed on the railing of an adjacent verandah mindlessly cawing.  Unconscious and hectic as it all was, I took great solace in the noise of the city winding down.  At last the day was over!

        Exhausted, I stumbled into the room and fell into a deep sleep, only to be awakened a few minutes later by insistent pounding on the door.  Thinking the army had changed its mind, I jumped up, grabbed my pack and headed for the verandah and a quick exit over the rooftops when the Voice, on vacation all day, said, "Open the door, Jim."

        I dropped the pack and opened the door.

        An obese man with beady eyes, three days stubble on slack jowls and food-stained jellabia, the kind of person only a mother could love, lumbered carelessly into the room, stopped in front of me, reached into the hood of his jellabia, extracted a small wad of money, and offered it to me.  As I inched back to put myself out range of his decaying breath, he grabbed me in a bear hug and planted a sloppy kiss on my lips.

        The cops, OK, the military, maybe, but this?  Full of rage, I wiggled free, stepped back, and threw a blow that connected solidly, sending him careening out the door and across the hall where he collapsed in a heap against the wall.  Letting fly a stream of invective, I slammed the door, locked it, and lay on the bed shaking.

        No sooner had I regained my composure than another barrage of knocking shook the door.  Thinking it might be the lover boy with the cops, I again contemplated the alternative exit, but the Voice repeated "Open the door, Jim."

        I reluctantly followed advice and was confronted with a second man, not quite as disgusting as the first, but with similar intentions.  Before he could make any moves I slammed the door hard in his face.

        Seems I'm a slow learner.  After the third episode bells started ringing.  The Hotel Hawaii, so innocent and peaceful during the day, transformed itself into a male whorehouse when the sun set.  And, in a realization that put me in such a state I did not know whether to laugh or cry I was the trick from California!

        Judging the situation not life-threatening and too weary to dig up alternative accommodations, I jammed the couch and a chest of drawers between the door and a wall, reducing the possibility of forcible entry to manageable odds and fell into a deep sleep, awaking early to a real life nightmare, one that had me longing for the relative pleasures of a military interrogation or life in the slammer.  The body, barely moveable, was on fire, molten sand coursing through the veins!  I dragged myself up and looked in the mirror to discover I was covered from head to toe with ugly red welts.

        The bedbug is a pernicious insect, the bite not particularly serious unless he is diseased, a distinct possibility in rat-infested Cairo.  But a handful of bites can almost drive you crazy.  And a body full is dangerous. 

        Once in India I met a nice young man, a French junkie, who was bitten on the legs sleeping in a sleazy ten-rupee hotel.  In his torpid state he scratched the bites with none-to-clean fingernails bringing on an infection which, left untreated, turned into a serious case of gangrene.

        As one would imagine, life is cheap in India.  Humans go for under a hundred, a hit man will bump off an enemy for thirty, so what's the big deal about an arm or a leg?  They charged him eight dollars and sawed it off just below the knee.  When we met he was hobbling around Connaught Circus on a hand-made wooden crutch begging for a ticket home, an idea that suddenly sprang to mind as I stood in utter agony looking at myself in the mirror.

        My luck seemed to be running out; perhaps it was time to bag it.  But the Voice, which had been working overtime recently, said, "Hang in there Jim."

        "OK," I thought, "It can't get any worse."

        But I was so wrong.

        While my straight clothes, reserved for visas and special events, were getting a proper pressing at a little tailor shop around the corner, I ran down the local dealer, purchased enough opium to kill a horse, and had my hair trimmed.  Returning to the hotel, I showered and changed - Bedouin to businessman in the blink of an eye. 

        When I stopped at the desk to drop off the key, the clerk exhibited signs of what could only be called awe.  Whether it was my makeover, the story of the night's events, or a combination of both, I will never know.

        Next I checked into a posh colonial-style hotel with hardwood floors, immaculate tiled baths, high ceilings with brass-fitted fans and dark mahogany blades, tall generous windows with louvered shutters, huge four poster beds, a snooty staff, and spendy prices.

        A scientist obtaining chemicals for an experiment, a doctor supplying a prescription, not a low-life junkie, knowledge, not depravity, sent me to the street to score.  So when I undressed and lay on the cool clean white sheets under the ceiling fan, the soft light and sounds of the city filtering in through thick wooden shutters, and ingested the opium, I was not blindly and unconsciously groping for nirvana.  I knew exactly where it was and how to get there.  With the help of the poppy my consciousness lifted out of the body to the point where the bites were too distant to scratch.  Within minutes I rediscovered that inner dimension where pleasure bubbles up in endless self-generating waves, wiping away even the memory of pain. 

        A couple of days later, I re-entered the body.  The bites, still ugly as sin, had lost their sting, the wad of opium reduced to the size of a raisin.  I was eager to get on with my life, such as it was, but was not feeling well; I had not eaten for two days and was experiencing a hard pain in my bowels.  When I examined it, my stool, ordinarily inert waste product, proved to be an orgy of life, host to hundreds of wiggling maggot-like white worms!

        As one might suspect, the third world takes a reasonably casual approach to public health.  In Rajasthan, India's western desert, the dentist squats by the side of the road on a small mat surrounded by the tools of his trade: a little hand-painted sign showing red lips and white teeth, a couple of pairs of dusty dentures which he will graciously consent to wipe with his shirttail should you wish to fit them, a few metal picks, and several pairs of pliers.  For a pittance, upwards of a dollar, you can relieve yourself of an offending molar, an unpleasant incisor.  You squat, mouth open; he peers in, identifies the culprit, grabs the pliers and yanks.

          In those days Egypt, whose street level health system was probably on a par with India's, had no Food and Drug Administration to my knowledge.  At least it would be fair to say that people with whom I came in contact in my search for a remedy did not have access to the latest pharmaceuticals.  Long-standing formulas available in the bazaar had to suffice.  The strange brown fluid I purchased, probably a close kin to carbolic acid, had obviously not been excessively scrutinized, analyzed, and rigorously tested by teams of steely-eyed white-smocked government scientists before grudgingly receiving the imprimatur of officialdom.  The man who sold it knew one small fact: it was toxic enough to kill little white worms but not quite toxic enough to kill a human being.

          As I suffered the cure and parasites by the score met their untimely fate, I contemplated my options: plan ‘a’ had me on the next available flight to New York , a cop-out; plan ‘b’ saw me booking the next available flight to Bombay, an eminently reasonable idea, and plan ‘c,’ would take me up the Nile into the Sudan, down to Uganda, over to Kenya, and across the Indian Ocean to Bombay - total folly.  And my heart's desire.

          Though I have since changed my philosophy and learned to cut my losses, I just could not see heading back to the States, tail between my legs.  The flights to Bombay were booked a month in advance scotching that option.  So without even visiting the pyramids, I caught the first train south, figuring, based on information I had picked up on the street, I could procure a Sudanese visa at Aswan, and hoping that with a bit of luck Egypt would soon be history.

          In my rush to get out I took the milk run, a boxcar without window panes featuring tightly packed rows of straight backed wooden benches. As the train inched out of the station I wondered  if it was truly more sensible to put my life in jeopardy in the land of the pharaohs than to subject it to the vacuous world of TV, Kleenex, and Lycra Spandex?  Had my hatred of plastic, which mocks a psyche weaned on millions of years of organic life, been the ultimate cause of my present torture, rubbing elbows with the most humorless sullen God-forsaken human beings I had ever encountered? After about twenty seconds I definitely wished I were back in mom's Formica kitchen drinking a coke.

          For two hours nobody spoke.  Hostility, so thick you could cut it with a knife, gave lie to the liberal notion of a stalwart, simple, fun-loving peasantry; I had obviously read too much Marxist propaganda in college.  These people were as hard as the benches on which they sat, as unfeeling as the desert that sent its stinging sand raining into our faces.  Yet, in spite of it all I was happy to be leaving a city that seemed to have only ill will for a good-hearted but naive traveler.

          Traveling a game played with time.  You find yourself in a time bound world, your destiny rolling out like a ribbon in front, the past receding into the distance behind.  The trick is to find the still point, the here and now moment when everything is in perfect balance.  Get ahead of yourself and you suffer.  Fall into the past, you suffer.  Like the pole a tightrope walker uses to maintain balance, you carefully adjust the past and the future to keep the mind awake and centered.  Then things are known as they are, the simple profundity of existence fully appreciated.

          For a few hours I achieved that state in spite of the ache in my guts and the torturous conditions.  The memory of the ugly city receded into the past balanced by the vision of ancient Egypt: Thebes, Luxor, and Abu Simbel.  Perhaps I had made the right move.  At one point, several hours down the line, the journey seemed almost festive as the train stopped in the middle of a sugar cane field permitting the passengers to evacuate and harvest as much sweet cane as they could carry.

        Things seemed to be picking up when I found a seat in a second-class compartment next to a window with a pane, but my bliss was short-lived.  After about an hour I noticed everyone in the compartment staring suspiciously at me, awakening much-too-recent memories.  I tried to ignore them, but to no avail.  When the tension reached a certain pitch, as if under orders, a soldier, clutching a rifle, sitting near the door on the opposite side of the compartment came over and demanded to see the pack wedged between my feet.  Had I been driven by a hidden force to purchase this World War I French army pack several months ago in a Paris flea market just to incite the suspicions of a paranoid Egyptian soldier?

        I undid the straps and gently snapped my blanket like a carpet merchant, all eyes tracking my movements.  Next I removed the velvet cover from my I Ching, scrolled through the pages, and lifted it heavenward, saying "Allah" to indicate that it was a holy book.

        The moment I spoke the Lord's name a well-dressed man passing in the aisle stopped to observe.

        I modeled the dress shirt and tie.  No smiles, but the energy was not getting worse.  Finally I dry brushed my teeth with a yellow toothbrush.   Just as I ran out of possessions and ideas the man in the aisle said, "Well, done!  Bravo!  An excellent performance!" in perfect English English.

        He stepped through the door, filling the compartment with his presence, speaking Arabic and chiding, perhaps scolding the passengers, rendering them docile as lambs.  I breathed a sigh of relief and joined him for tea in the dining car.

        "What did you tell them," I asked, once we were sitting comfortably in the diner.

        "I told them they should behave as if you were a guest.  It is our tradition that strangers are to be treated as guests."

        "I'm very pleased you happened along," I said.  “I don't know how to thank you.  It seems everywhere I turn I find myself in a tight situation.  The people are very angry."

        “It is the war.  They cannot forget the humiliation.  One cannot blame them."

        "But how do you feel?  Are you Egyptian?"

        "Well, yes and no," he said enigmatically.

        "How do you mean?"

        "Here we have two Egypts - Arab Egypt and the real Egypt.  What you saw in that compartment is Arab Egypt."

        "And the real Egypt?"

        "The reason I intervened for the real Egypt."

        "You mean the Pharaohs, the pyramids, the Nile?"

        "Yes."

        Something in me stirred and my head spun as if I were coming on to a psychedelic.  For a moment it seemed as if the train were stationary and the desert moving.

        "Spiritual Egypt?"

        "Yes,” he said, and my cells tingled with bliss.

        Some part of me had been waiting for this conversation for a very long time. 

        I heard his voice speaking out a blaze of radiance say, “I intervened because I owe you a favor.”

        Barely able to keep it together, I heard myself reply, "A favor?  But I don't know you," realizing it was not true as soon as I said it.

        "As far as this life is concerned," he replied.

        "This life?"

        "A long time ago not far from here," he said motioned upstream, "we were best of friends.  You helped me.  Today it was my turn to repay my debt."

        "But how do you know this?  You're talking reincarnation, aren't you?"

        "It is hard to say how I know it.  Something in me told me to get up and walk through the train.  When I saw you standing there entertaining those fools I remembered something.  I do no know what it was, exactly.  I recognized you.  I knew you."

        "You knew me?"

        "Yes, not your body, but you, the real you, your soul.  I knew you and I knew why you had returned."

        I told him about the first few days in Egypt and suggested that I had come to suffer.  He laughed.

        "No, that's not what I mean," he said. "You will suffer, no doubt, but that is not the reason you are here.

        When he said "here" I had the feeling he meant ‘on earth’ or ‘in this life.’

        "You are looking for something and a piece of the puzzle is here."

        In a flash of illumination I saw that nothing in my life had worked like I thought it should because God had His own ideas about what was good for me.  I was not running away or rebelling for the reasons I thought.  The granola girl's words, "God is where it’s at," flashed in my mind.

        I was searching Him, all this a necessary part of that.

        I heard the voice of God speaking through him.

        "You have forgotten who you are.  That is all," he said with compassion.  "Before long you will remember."

        "Just who am I then?"

        "That's for you to discover," he said smiling, his eyes pools of

light.

SECOND TIME AROUND

        Because they were footing the bill for the dam, Russians called the shots in Aswan.  Proffering my passport at several of the better hotels proved futile so I had to settle for an Arab joint.  Predictably, morning found me covered with bites.  To add insult to injury the Embassy informed me that Sudanese visas were only available in Cairo!  Chastened, I caught the train back.  Though I was through with Egypt, she was obviously not through with me.

        I booked through to Cairo but felt inspired to get down as the train pulled into Thebes.  Near what had once been a small bathing pool I came across a tall slim black man with an Afro sitting in meditation in the sun next to an orange pup tent, naked except for a G-string.

        I sat down and waited until he opened his eyes.

        "What's happening, man?"

        "Not much, just hanging out," he replied.

        "I take it you're not working on your tan," I said.

        He smiled.

        "So, what's going on?

        "Meditation, man.  Meditation."

        "OK, but what's it all about?  What you meditating on?"

        "It's a long story, man."

        "Tell me, I've got time.  I'll buy you a beer."

        He perked up.

        "It's a long walk to the nearest beer.  Let's have a smoke."

        OK.

        So we hunkered down in the shade of a ruined temple, toked up, and he began.

        "I was working in a Savings and Loan in LA.  It was nothing much, just a job to pay the rent.  One day during lunch break I went to the library and was thumbing through a big art book on Egypt.  As I turned the pages I felt a strange energy come over me, as if I knew all about this stuff.  In the middle of the book was a full-page bust of Nefertitti that completely captivated me.  As I looked at her the image came alive.  My eyes were drawn to a spot on her neck just below her ear and when I concentrated on it I suddenly zoomed into her and woke up in ancient Egypt.  And I realized I was not who I thought I was. "

        "From that point on I couldn't stand my job.  Something told me it was time to bag it, but I didn't have anything to fall back on.  I was living hand to mouth, really, like a slave, even though I wore a coat and tie.  I couldn't get the picture of the goddess out of my mind.  It was like an obsession.  There were times when I would work myself up into such a state that I'd journey back and relive past lives.  It was all very real, but I couldn't tell anyone.  The crowd I ran with would have la