Selling Marijuana to the Christians

I returned from San Francisco by way of Kalamazoo, where I thought to reconnect with my childhood friends.  The first one I called was Anita Grintals.  She was in secretarial school and neither she nor her mother, the imposing Anastasia seemed pleased to see me.  I was full of my hippy tales of Haight Ashbury and the Straight Theater and the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll phenomenon.  Looking back, it was truly a "what was I thinking?" moment.

They put me up on the couch for one night, and one night only. It was clear, childhood friendships were not going to be rekindled. I never even bothered calling Nancy Boers.

Instead I called the Riddles, those friends of my dad's, who lived near the outskirts of town, and who, although she looked down on them for lack of formal education and so forth, my mother always called "the salt of the earth."

This salt of the earth family took me in with no questions asked. It was my goal to see my father and to ask him for a birthday present for my sister.  In my mind, that seemed as good an excuse as any for making contact.  The Riddles could tell me how and where to find him.

I spent about a week with them, seeing my father only once, in a diner, where he handed over $5 for me to get a puppy for my sister. He figured $5 would buy a dog from the pound.

The rest of the time I spent at the local college, Western Michigan University, in search of the "heads." In those days, you could tell who smoked dope and who didn't. Long hair, quiet demeanors, a gentleness, guitar cases.  I discovered Sam and Lee in a corner of the student union.  It was as if we had known each other for years. Sam was a student there and Lee was in between life decisions.  She was also headed to Boston for an abortion.  Now, this was before Roe v. Wade and from my experience with Crazy Jane, I understood abortions were still illegal in Boston.  Did she have an underground connection? Or was she stopping off on her way to New York, one of the few states in the Union, if not the only one in 1967, where abortion was legal.

I don't remember that part, only that in a few days we were off together on a plane for Boston.  I said goodbye to her in the airport and headed for the Beacon Hill digs I still shared with Crazy Jane.  This was before the bathroom ceiling caved in, and sent us screaming down the hill to Mass General, convinced we had contracted lice from whatever lurked beneath the ceiling tiles (asbestos fibers probably). I never saw or heard from Lee again.

Soon, I found myself with a puppy in a 3rd floor walk-up.  To accommodate the pup's needs, I got some kind of pen and covered it in newspaper.  Between my job at Filene's basement and the assortment of junkies and burnouts Jane and I had somehow inherited from Tommy Abbott, I didn't get around to cleaning out the dog's pen very often.

One day I got a call from the boys from Gordon College.  How had they found me? They wanted to know if I could get them some pot.  They were coming to Boston and they heard I had connections.

Wow, gone from the school for three months and I had a reputation as someone with connections!

Before I knew it the Christian boys were knocking on my door.

I was embarrassed by the dog poo in the middle of the kitchen, contained though it was, but they were wayward youth looking for drugs.  I did in fact have the necessary connections and made the transaction.  In some ways I felt oh so self righteous. At least I was no hypocrite. I always wondered what happened to those boys from the church.  I have looked, but I could never find mention even of my old boyfriend, who married the minister's daughter down the hall, and rumor has it, became a minister himself.

Finally, the puppy got to my sister, was named Gretchen, and grew fat and spoiled, but that was not the last I was to see of her.  It was the last, however, of my marijuana dealing days. 

Blue Eyed Poet Number 2

This was in the days of living on the coast, drinking in the afternoons, selling organic veggies and longing for the writer's life.

Bouncing with the Blue Eyed Poet -  a memory

Bouncing with the blue eyed poet, she wears other people’s cast offs. She knows she looks good, tube top, purple cotton jacket, black slinky synthetic skirt.  All turning this caterpillar into a butterfly.  They bounce together to the loud music in the gym.

Her hair is curly and her teeth are white. The blue eyed poet is suave, sexy, smiling. Bouncing together, they enchant the crowd. “What is this dance called” she shouts over the music, one hand grasping, pulling up the tube top. The blue eyed poet mimics. He is a chameleon; his eyes a mirror. His smile a cipher, slight, oh so sexy, buck teeth.

“Who knows,” he bounces her out into the street, the cool night air, September on the coast. He kisses her on the chin. He is always doing things like that. “What is it you want of me,” she asks, hugging thin cotton jacket close. He looks perplexed. Troubled. “Want?” He shrugs.

“To play. To bounce. To kiss your cheeks.  Nothing.”

She knows this then is the end before there was even a beginning. Coffee, and poetry, and gossip, and walks along the mesa bluffs. All less than a beginning. This dance, this bounce, this moonless walk toward his not new, but well-kept car.  

There is meaning in the movement.

His wife is returning and his harmless flirtation is over.

She sticks out her hand. “Well, then, goodbye,” she says, her eyes dark, submerged. He shrugs again.

“I don’t believe in goodbyes.” He smiles his cryptic smile, walking away. She goes back to the gym, but the bounce is over, the band disassembling their equipment.

Her friend Daphne waits for her. She says, “let’s go get a beer,” and the two friends cross the street to the Kingfisher Saloon, now in full post-dance boom.  

“No,” she says. “I want a grown up drink.”  They order martinis at the bar and sip until last call.