Summer of Love, a Time Travel (38 page)

Susan
shivers and sips her coffee. She never drank coffee in the morning before.
Coffee was her parents’ prerogative. Now she can’t imagine how she ever woke up
without it. She feels as if she’s been half-awake her whole life. As if her
former reality was like watching herself on TV.

This
is real. This is as real as it gets. She
knew
Superspade. A tall,
handsome black dude, he lived two doors down on Clayton with a series of pretty
young white women. Susan always thought Superspade had style with his leather
jumpsuit and his button, “Faster Than a Speeding Mind.” And she
knew
Shob. He was always hanging out on Haight or at the Avalon Ballroom. A
pixie-faced guy, sweetly aging at twenty-five with his handlebar mustache and
receding hairline,
his
button said, “America is Going to Pot.”

She
shouldn’t feel sad Shob and Superspade are dead. Shob and Superspade were bad. They
were drug dealers. But, she thinks, recalling her Econ class, people want to
buy pot and speed and acid. They’re screaming for it. There is—what did her
teacher call it?—a consumer demand. Shob and Superspade were supplying that
demand. You could say they were capitalists. Entrepreneurs. Their products are
illegal, of course, and with good reason. But isn’t entrepreneurialism the
American way?

Or
the Syndicate’s way.

Susan
doesn’t know. It’s like everyone has been infected by the virus from the planet
Psi 2000. The virus releases people’s deepest repressions. Last night, Susan
watched the
Star Trek
rerun of “The Naked Time” with growing horror. The
virus makes people act as if they were shooting crystal meth, the dope easiest
to score these days. Mr. Spock weeps over his mother, Nurse Chapel wants to sleep
with Mr. Spock, and crewman Tormolen dies of despair. And Mr. Sulu—sweet Mr.
Sulu with his flat, pockmarked cheeks—threatens everyone with a fencing foil! It
reminds her so much of the mood in the Haight-Ashbury that she turns the TV off
before Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Scotty prevent the ship from being sucked
into Psi 2000. She knows they save the
Enterprise.
They always do.

The
question is, can
this
starship be saved?

She
doesn’t have to take this bad theater from Nance and Professor Zoom. She scrapes
back her chair and stands. “I think you’re right, Professor Zoom. I think Shank
was involved in a burn. Did you know Stan the Man was involved in a burn? The
dragon’s blood wasn’t acid, it was rat poison. He burned Stovepipe and the
Lizard for seven grand. You knew that, didn’t you? Plus, he still owes me a
hundred bucks for my time and trouble.”

Nance
stares at her, wide-eyed. No drama queen this time.

“You
tell Stan I want my hundred bucks, Professor Zoom. You know what I heard? I
heard when a burn comes down, shit comes down. Now, where did I hear that?” She
slings the woven handbag Ruby gave her over the shoulder of her high-collared
shirt.

Nance
grins with that sly appreciation Susan used to love. For a moment, her eyes
twinkle at Susan, a look that gives her courage.

“Dig
it, Harold. You take care of it for me,” Susan says. “And how many times do I
have to tell you? Do
not
to call me a pussy.”

Professor
Zoom scrapes back his chair. He’s gone.

“Far
out, Starbright,” Nance says. “You have passed the acid test.” She pats the
chair. “Don’t go. Not just yet.”

Susan
sits. Try. Try.

“Stan
really burned some dealers?” Nance says.

She
nods. In all the crazy times she had with Professor Zoom, they never shared a
smoke with such intimacy. She swigs her coffee, burning her tongue. “So. You
balling him, too?”

Nance
cackles. “Sweetheart, who am I not balling?”

Weather
Report

The
blues life is a mystique. And the blues-life mystique is that if you want to do
anything, you have to lose your arm. You have to pay a lot of dues, to live
full out, if the cost is in dues. The only people who can do it are oppressed,
the hard-kick seekers who lay down the patterns of extreme beauty for this
civilization. They’re people who got burned for who they are and what they did.
Do you understand what that means? People who get burned for who they are, are
oppressed beyond recourse. To be oppressed beyond recourse is the blues life.

Interview with Peter
Berg

Voices of the Love
Generation,
by Leonard Wolf

(Little Brown and
Company, 1968)

Susan
loves the Blue Unicorn. It’s one of her favorite cafés. You can curl up on the
swayback sofa with a friend, use the chessboards and sewing kits, read the
books and magazines lying around. There’s no jukebox like in Bob’s Big Boy.
Instead, there’s a funky old off-tune piano anyone can play, and people do,
mostly badly but sometimes pretty well. The owner is a grizzled old Beatnik who
believes coffee is the supreme drug of enlightenment and has a soft spot for
hippie chicks. Susan always pays for one cup, and he always gives her two free
refills.

Nance
sits down with her second cup and says, “Guess what? I panhandled George
Harrison yesterday.”

“You
mean—
George Harrison?
”

“Yeah!
We were hanging out on Hippie Hill passing doo around. The Pied Piper was
playing his guitar. This dude strolled up, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and
flowered bell-bottoms and a button that said, “I’m the Head of My Community.”
He walked up to the Piper and said, “Can I borrow your guitar, man?” The Piper
said sure, and the dude riffed into ‘Norwegian Wood.’ Pretty soon everyone’s
screaming, ‘It’s George Harrison! It’s George Harrison!’”

“Wow!
No shuck?”

“No
shuck.” Nance lights another Kool. “I would have balled him in a second, but
his bucktooth wife was tagging along. Is she ugly or what? So I panhandled him,
instead.”

Susan
finishes her coffee, goes to the counter, returns with a refill. She turns over
a newspaper lying on the next table. Sure enough, beneath “Hippie Drug Murders”
is a photograph of George Harrison in heart-shaped glasses.

Nance
ball George Harrison? Susan is offended. George Harrison’s wife is one of the
skinny, white-blond models in
Life
and
Seventeen.
She is the
ideal of beauty everyone adores. What makes Nance, a girl from Euclid Heights
with a freaky crew cut, think George Harrison would ever want to ball her?

“Is
Marilyn still around?” It’s a mean question, and Susan knows it.

“Who’s
Marilyn?”

“That
girl from Mill Valley. Stan the Man was balling her.”

“I
don’t know any Marilyn. I never met any Marilyn.”

Uh-huh,
as Ruby would say. Susan studies her. “Penny Lane, Stan’s not someone you can
depend on, you know.”

“Sweetheart,
I haven’t depended on anyone since 1960. I mean, Stan, say hey, he’s good in
bed and he’s always got good dope, but I’m not hung up on him or anything like
that. Who has time for hang-ups? It’s freakin’ neverending party at the house.
So many cool people. And music, always music.” She punches Susan’s shoulder.
“Well, you know. Zoom tells me you lived there a while.”

“Yeah,
I did.” Zoom. Count on Nance to dub Harold ‘Zoom.’

Susan
can’t help it. A pang of envy strikes her. The neverending party where you
don’t have to give a damn about the Syndicate or the Vietnam War or whether
spades from the Fillmore are going to burn your house down or some guy you
thought you maybe were falling in love with is plugging in with his electric
lady friend back home in the future. It felt good not to give a damn.

And
she threw it all away, her connection to the Double Barrel house, to the neverending
party. For what? Her chaste little room, her chaste little crush on Ruby? Ruby,
forbidding her to watch TV unless there’s a science fiction program on.
Switching
off
the TV when she walks into Susan’s room to talk. What kind
of Nazi is she, anyway? And Chi. There’s a freak. To think she was starting to
fall for him before he talked about Bella Venus. Her painted head. Balling
while they link. Gross! Oh, he still tries to act cool. He still follows her
around like a lost puppy. But she stays away from him now as best she can.

So
what about the demon. Be ready, always? She’s ready. Let the demon come. Let
the demon try and touch her. She doesn’t trust Chi’s ability to stave off the
demon any more than she trusts the government’s ability to stave off a nuclear
war. Survive? Far out. She’s surviving.

“But
are you in love with Stan the Man?” Susan persists.

“Sweetheart,
I love everybody.”

“You
don’t care if he balls other girls?”

“Love
isn’t the possession of someone’s body. Anyway, love is crap.”

“Love
is the highest, holiest consciousness we can attain.”

Nance
howls with laughter, tears spurting from her eyes. Other patrons in the café
turn and stare.

Susan
looks away. Does she know this person?

In a
while, Nance calms down. “Are you in love with that red-haired dude?” she asks
sardonically.

“Not
anymore.”

“There,
you see? Can I have him if you’re done with him?” Nance digs in her ratty
handbag, takes out an eyeliner pencil and a compact, and starts to fix her
makeup.

Susan
can’t finish her coffee. She pushes the cup away.

“So
how’s tricks at the Mystic Eye?” Nance grips the cap of the eyeliner in her
teeth. “I heard Ruby Maverick is down on dope.”

“That’s
true.”

“So
you’re not smoking or tripping or anything?”

“I’m
done with that scene.”

“What
a square.” Nance snaps the compact shut. “Still, I’d like to meet her.”

“Meet
Ruby?”

“Yeah.”
The shrug. “I’d like to rap with her about the trip that came down on her.”

“The
trip?”

“Yeah,
her cousin was a junkie.”

“I
know. She told me.”

“Then
you must know how he raped her. He was going cold turkey, that’s what Stan the
Man says. And the cousin, he raped Ruby. She was like twenty.”

The
shock is like touching a frayed electrical wire. Speechless, Susan fiddles with
her coffee cup.

“That’s
how junk is, you know?” Nance says. Fake-cool of the new expert on the street.
“When you come down from junk, you go crazy and wild. Crystal meth is just the
opposite. When you come down from crystal, you just want to lie down and die.
Anyway, I’d like to talk to her about it. Compare notes.” Nance giggles. “Remember
how we used to trade crib notes at the back of class?”

Susan
nods. What on earth is Nance talking about? The question hovers like a storm
cloud, dark and foreboding, before she works up the nerve to ask. “Compare
notes about what?”

Nance
rolls her eyes and tokes her Kool. “About my stepfather. Stepfather, huh. I
mean, Handy Andy, my new daddy-o. You know.”

“Know
what?
”

“For
goodness sakes, Starbright. He started doing me when I was seven. Mom went out,
God knows where, and he came into my bedroom. He gave me a little kiss
goodnight, and then another little kiss goodnight, and then his hands were in
my PJs, and then he did me. He’s been doing me on and off ever since. Oh, he
slaps poor ol’ Dave around, but Handy Andy saves the very best for me,
sweetheart. I mean, that’s why I had to leave.”

“Oh,
Penny Lane,” Susan whispers.

“I
thought you knew.”

“You
never told me. You never said a word.”

Nance
rubbing her crotch on the nub of her bicycle seat. Nance making angels in the
snow, pumping her slim little pelvis up and down. Nance leaping from the old
oak tree in Cheryl Long’s front yard, shouting, “I want to die! I want to die!”
Nance dancing in the recreation room in front of Susan’s father, smiling at him
as she moved her hips like a belly dancer. Daddy had frowned. Susan thought he
was unfair. She still does.

“Don’t
cry, sweetheart. Really, I thought you knew. That Starbright, she’s the smart
one.” Nance scoots her chair next to Susan’s, circles her arm around Susan’s
shoulders. “Poor Starbright,” she croons. “Daddy called her stupid for being best
friends with that tramp, that no-good so-and-so. But Starbright knows very well
Daddy knows she’s not stupid. And that Starbright, she is so sensitive. Mom and
Daddy fight sometimes, but they’re not divorced, they would never do that. I
mean, what would the neighbors think? Mom’s not very nice sometimes, but
Starbright will get new clothes for the ninth grade, won’t she?”