Fillmore Auditorium was a large hall in the middle of San Francisco’s black district, the Fillmore. On this evening, it was almost impossible to find even a few inches of empty floor space. People sat hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, or stood banked along walls, waiting for the first band to play. The hall was dark except for the multi-mirrored silver ball reflecting dots of light over the crowd and a slow-moving light that turned the waiting faces red, green, yellow, or blue. Soft conversation traveled through the theater, and outbursts of laughter broke through the murmurs. The heavy, scent-filled haze from hundreds of joints drifted and swirled in the colored lights.
“Well, Marcie,” Kathy observed after picking up the tickets at the will call window, “I guess he’s for real. Want to go backstage? It might be fun.”
“I think I’d rather stay with Richard,” she said, looking over to where he waited. Her tongue trailed across her upper lip in nervous anticipation.
“Okay. I’ll meet you right here when the concert’s over.”
The hall was jammed with people. Richard took Marcie’s hand and pushed his way to the center of the auditorium, gently pulling her behind him. “Here, brother, have a joint,” he offered, moving swiftly through the crowd, passing out rolled cigarettes. “Excuse us. Have a joint …” No one seemed to mind his intrusion, his careful pushing, as he slipped between people to find a spot that looked as if it might have room for two and sat down. From his pocket, he pulled out the plastic bag with the tabs Alex had given him. Marcie watched him choose one and eat it.
“Here,” he said, turning to her, “this is what I wanted to show you. It’s acid.”
So this is LSD, she thought, taking the small tablet and looking at it in the palm of her hand. It looks harmless enough. Let’s see what this is all about.
Richard put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze as she swallowed, then turned to the man beside him. “Want some acid? White domed tabs.”
“Can I have one for my old lady?”
“Take as many as you want. One’s a trip; two’s an experience. Pass ’em down.”
Men began to appear on the darkened stage, playing with the knobs of amplifiers, sending shrieks through the speakers. The excitement stirring the crowd picked up. People on stage scurried to positions. A spotlight hit the lead mike. Bill Graham, a thin man with dark hair, stepped into the light. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Fillmore Auditorium! Let’s give a big hand to welcome a sensational group … Electric Reason!”
In seconds, the entire auditorium was on its feet, moving with the sound that slammed into the crowds. From different angles of the room, color burst on the stage, bathing the musicians in blends of colored lights, gliding over huge screens, vibrating to the music, pulsating with the beat. Strobes flashed. The sound was primitive, naked energy. The simple room was transformed into a living organism, breathing with life. Thousands who had sat alone minutes before were beginning to move together. This collective body had a beat, a pulse. Other handfuls of acid appeared, passed through the crowd, everyone going up together, mind patterns mirrored by the dancing patterns on the walls.
About ten minutes after dropping, Marcie’s head began to clear from the pot haze. Her body had a new energy. She wanted to ask Richard what the feeling was, but he wouldn’t hear her over the sound. She looked at him, giggled, swayed in his arms, and saw him laugh with her. Electrical energy raised her body hair. A new tingle rushed through her, her legs unstable, trembling. Richard’s face was a maze of movement, color ebbing and flowing around him. He was pulsating with the music, with her heartbeat, moving in and out with his own breath. She laid her hand on his chest to feel the rhythm of his heart. When he laughed, the resonance quivered up her arm. The poet looked for words and could find none. Only feeling flowed through her body, and something new, an acute awareness of Richard, a connection, a deepening, as though she were falling into a warm sea where there were no boundaries. In the moment’s semiquiet that followed the end of the song, she said softly into his ear, “So this is what acid’s like.”
The music began again, hitting the walls of the auditorium, reverberating through their bodies. She was distinctly aware of the receptor-like quality of her nervous system, knew dramatically that she was part of the electronic age. She moved with Richard and, together, they moved with the crowd, driven by the beat. The colorful organism changed, swirled over them. Richard began to touch her, to connect with her, becoming more suggestive, more intimate in his gestures. Her breasts were soft against his chest, her body a glow of tiny orgasms. Powerless to separate the multitude of feeling, she could only laugh and move to the soft, velvet energy pushing them, close with him in body and mind, single and separate ego gone.
I’m sharing the same mind with him! There is a consciousness common to all men! I feel as if I’ve climbed a mountain and can finally see the whole, vast plain. If only I had paper and pencil to put it all down! But how? How to ever express this vision of eye and mind? How to ever express this feeling rushing through my body?
All the while, she danced and laughed and cried, one thought falling into another, and overwhelmed, she held to the feeling of Richard flowing around her.
Once backstage, Kathy followed Felix’s manager Tony down a hallway as crowded as the front of the auditorium and charged with the same explosive energy. Like Honey, some of the women wore long velvet dresses with lace at the sleeves and neckline; others wore bell-bottomed sailor’s jeans with soft, colorful blouses. A few of the men reminded Kathy of Alex—leather jacket, corduroy bell-bottoms, boots.
“Hey, Tony,” a loud voice called.
Kathy recognized David, the man who had held the pot under the table at the restaurant.
“Felix show you that Gold?” he asked, his voice low, pitched so that only Tony and Kathy could hear.
“Yeah, pick us up a kilo. How much?”
“Two hundred.”
Tony nodded. “Thanks. Let’s talk about it later. Right now, I have to get some things on stage.” Then, turning to Kathy, he said, “Felix is going to play pretty soon. You can stand at the back of the stage, if you want. Come hang out after the show.”
Even in the dim light, Kathy could see David’s eyes travel her body, and she laughed with abandon, high on the sexual energy that floated though the air. Suddenly, David’s attention shifted.
“Kevin—hey, man, what’s happening?”
“That hash should be in soon,” Kevin said, close to David’s ear.
“That coming from Laguna? From Christian?”
Kevin shrugged, keeping his business and his contacts to himself. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’ve got a few keys left of that Gold if you want any. Why don’t I stop by after the concert with a sample? I’d like to see your new canvas.” David looked around, searching. “Where’s your old lady?” “
“Debbie’s over there with Morning Star, waiting to touch Felix.”
As if just remembering, David turned his attention back to Kathy. “Kevin, this is Kathy. She’s a friend of Felix’s.”
“Yeah?” Kevin lit a cigarette. “Get him to drop by after the show.” He smiled and held out a cigarette pack. “Smoke?”
She laughed, picking up on the energy, ready to fly.
David stepped forward, brushing against her. “You want some coke, Kathy?”
“Sure,” she giggled, thirsty. She’d been smoking for hours.
But instead of passing her a can, David took out a small bottle and a tiny silver spoon.
Oh, my God! I think he means cocaine!
Affecting a nonchalant pose, she watched keenly as he dipped the tiny spoon into the bottle, held it to one of his nostrils, and sniffed.
“Where’d you get the coke?” Kevin asked. “You don’t see much of it.”
“Felix asked me to look around. Expensive, man.” David held the spoon to Kathy, standing near enough to touch her. “Here you go.”
Kathy sniffed as she had watched him do, felt the tiny crystals hit the inside of her nostrils—first one side, then the other. The powder burned, made her eyes water, her nose run. Bitter mucous dripped into her throat. She sniffed again, easily. Her heart beat more rapidly, the muscles tightened in her chest and stomach; she became hot, nauseated, and anxious. “Is … is there a restroom somewhere?”
Finding the toilet, she immediately emptied her bowels, trying to understand this new drug.
It’s not like pot, she told herself, wondering where the light came from that filled the room. Her breathing was fast, her eyes widened, her vision cleared. She took several deep breaths trying to catch up with her heart.
“Wow!” she cried aloud to no one. “Suddenly everything’s crystal clear. Bright!”
Just as she reentered the hallway outside the dressing rooms, people began pushing back against the walls. The charged energy erupted just as lightning might break the thick air before a thunderstorm. “Here comes Felix!” Debbie cried. Felix wore a huge black hat with an enormous red plume, boots, striped pants, a red cummerbund, and a silver sequined vest. He and the other band members walked slowly to the stage, laughing and calling greetings along the way.
“Well, hello, baby,” Felix said, close to Kathy’s ear. “You made it!”
Kathy’s heart was still racing, her eyes large and dilated. Her body wanted to move, and he sensed it. “Come dance!” he told her. “Debbie! Morning Star! Come dance!”
Kathy stood to one side of the stage waiting for the music. And when it came, it surrounded her—loud, driving, vibrating up from the floor through her legs, pounding against her body. Laughing and shaking, she turned to Debbie and Morning Star, and the women began to move together to the sound, beautiful nymphs, dancing a circle, making bonds in the easy friendships of youth.
Kathy could only marvel that this was the same man she had known in the park. This Felix was all-powerful, controlling the dance hall and everyone in it with his sound. Electric sound. Filling the ears. Shifting perception. Hundreds of stoned people plugged into his output. He tantalized them, moving them to erotic feeling, stirring primitive memory. The offering he made to the crowd passed through them and was returned in something close to adoration.
He’s boundless, she thought. Almost … almost a god.
The music went on and on, and still Kathy danced, never stopping, dizzy, moving faster, stars flashing in front of her eyes, swimming in amoebas projected onto the stage. Her body was wet, her blouse clinging, framing her outline, holding hands with Debbie and Morning Star, circling with flying hair, locked inside herself with only the music in her head—then, the crowd’s roar and applause, the band pushing past her down the steps of the stage.
“Come on, baby.” Felix put an arm around her waist. “Let’s go to my dressing room. We need something to smoke. Big Brother’s on next. We’ll come back for the performance.”
“The tickets,” she said softly. “How can I thank you!”
“Later, baby, later,” he touched her arm. “Let’s see the rest of the concert. The night’s only started.”
“Ladies and gentlemen … Big Brother and the Holding Company!”
In the center of the stage, Janis Joplin grabbed the microphone and began bouncing with the beat. In moments, the crowd was with her. Hundreds of joints pierced the darkness with points of red light, brighter on the toke. Standing in the stage light, Janis became a flaming candle bathed in changing colors of light. An electric drum flash, and she inhaled every breath in the room and sent it back, melodic, raspy, shrill, her lips pursed around the mike to howl both joy and pain.
Marcie watched and listened, enraptured, breathless. Janis’s body was emotion, fingers spread wide, skin trembling, boots stomping, a finger pushed into the air to match the thrust of her voice. Sweat poured from her face and scattered as glistening drops in the stage lights, like tiny crystals. A feather became tangled in her wildly flying hair. Strands of beads swayed and bounced with her body. Marcie could not move, barely breathed, lest she destroy the poetry of the moment, all the while wondering whether she would ever be able to sing with such passion. Every note was a separate world, round and full, and she floated atop each note, higher, higher, jumping from bubble to bubble, always carried up. She leaned into Richard, entwined, just as the guitar mingled with Janis’s voice, through one song then the next. She and Richard moved against each other now, easy sexual excitement in every touch, without the burden of time.
Then, suddenly, surprised, time did move, and Janis and the band members were gone. Low lights and quiet music filled the auditorium. The slow gush of cold air from opened doors brought her to a new place, and she watched, startled, as people moved toward the exits. Richard took her hand, and she found herself following, unsure, staying close to him. Once outside on the sidewalk, she looked into his face, grinning and self-conscious, cheeks hurting from her constant smile, her lips red, everything strange in the bright lights. Other stoned smiles passed them, walking rapidly in small groups to some safe harbor to finish the night.
“What now?” she asked breathlessly.
“We go home. In the car.”
“You’re … you’re going to drive?” The idea seemed so incredible, that Marcie had trouble finding the words.
“I’m used to it. I’ve done lots of acid. You learn to work with it.”
By twos, their party grouped together. Greta and Merlin first, arms around each other, their hair frizzing in the damp, fog-shrouded night, grinning ear-to-ear. Alex next, his arm linked with Honey’s. The crowds thinned until only a few people straggled out of the theater.
“Okay, I guess it’s just us,” Richard told the group.
“What about Kathy?” Marcie asked, still searching the faces moving past her.
“I’m sure she’s with Felix. She’ll find her way back tomorrow. Or whenever she makes it.”
“You think she’s alright?”
“Of course. She’s just doing her own thing. Come on. The car’s this way.”
As Marcie walked, she couldn’t imagine how Richard could find his way. The streets were all the same, a colorful blur without any distinguishing landmarks—concrete and asphalt, curbs and cars. How could he find the one car among all those cars that would take them where they wanted to go?
But before long, Merlin was settling into the backseat with Greta close beside him, and Alex was pulling Honey onto his lap. Merlin started laughing, a loud, high-pitched giggle that set them all off. Acid caused a tremendous heat to come off bodies, and with every breath, the windows were soon thoroughly fogged.
Richard, rifling wildly through the pockets of his jacket looking for the keys, murmured, “Everybody calm down. We’ll never get out of here if we don’t stop laughing and pull it together.”
But the thought of calming down when everyone was up, sent a new roar of laughter through the car.
“Marcie, roll down your window.” Then, more loudly, “I need something to wipe the windshield.”
Greta passed a scarf forward, and attention began to focus on getting the car started. Sharing the same mind-energy was cool, but it meant that all their minds had to be directed to the same task.
“What you need is a joint, man,” Merlin told him, lighting one and passing it up front.
Richard toked, easing the muscles in his face, and Marcie followed, only to find that visions intensified, colors brightened, and patterns covered every surface.
“Can … can you drive?” she asked.
In answer, the car moved slowly away from the curb, lurching down the street, Richard working the clutch. The ride took them up Fillmore to Haight Street, then toward the park. For Marcie, there was no thought of time or destination. Only a sense of being in her body, comfortable, strong, mobile, a sense of clarity of mind, of being with Richard, feeling she could go anywhere with him, become anything.
All I want is time alone with him.
She pictured the yab-yum poster on the wall of his room, the blue and red paisleys covering the bodies of the man and woman.
Tonight will be like the print—only three-dimensional. Union with Richard and a covering of colorful paisleys from my own eyes.
Even though it was well after midnight, crowds still walked Haight Street—laughing, dancing, tripping to their own thoughts, the same flow of movement as at noon. Yet there were no neon lights to call people together, no theaters or shops or restaurants, just lights shinning through the windows of houses and from one all-night coffee shop across the street from the park.
When Richard finally stopped the car, Marcie was amazed to see that he’d found the flat’s driveway. A rush of activity followed, doors opening, everyone falling out of the car. A clamor, and the door to the flat opened. Greta and Merlin immediately disappeared into their room.
“So what do you think?” Alex cornered Richard. “Should we buy?”
“Yeah. The acid’s good—but in the morning. I don’t want to do the deal tonight.”
“We have to,” Alex insisted. “They’ll sell to someone else if we don’t.”
“They have another buyer?”
“Ron and Carl for one. I don’t know if there are others.”
Marcie could see thoughts pass across Richard’s eyes, his mind becoming focused. “Where did you meet these guys?” he asked.
“Through Carl. He turned me on to them at the Drogstore.”
“How long has he known them? Has he done business with them before?”
“I don’t know.” Alex sighed.
“Did you pick the tabs from the pile? Or did they give them to you?”
“No, they just handed me a plastic bag.” Alex considered. “Come to think of it, they were a bit …” He searched for a word. “… smug. I guess you’re right. I’d better check this out some more, maybe make sure Ron and Carl know what they’re doing.” He turned to Honey. “Wanna hang?”
Honey, her pupils as dilated as everyone else’s, eyed him happily. “Sure.”
Richard stood thinking after they’d left. Marcie watched him—his brown eyes in thought, steady, hair in soft waves reflecting the red light from the paper lantern, moustache dark against his skin, mouth slightly open, warm lips, full shoulders, long arms …
“Hey,” he turned to her, smiling suddenly. “Are you studying me?’
“I’m … I can’t help it. I’m really into things!”
Putting his arm around her and taking her to him, he whispered close to her ear, “And I’d really like to get into you. Care to check out the sanctum sanctorum?”
Marcie nodded, her eyes downcast, suddenly shy.
“My lady,” he bowed, “this way.”
Richard quietly closed the door to his room. Now that they were actually alone, everything was different. Marcie trembled with the sense of intimacy. With the crowds gone, the music finished, friends away and into the night, it was just the two of them. Richard leaned over to light candles, and Marcie gazed around the room in the diamond light, observing patterns. Objects were whole but slightly shifting, unfolding, somehow expanding and turning in on themselves all in the same moment. Frangipani incense drifted through the air, the scent taking her to another place, a garden in an Arabian story. Richard turned on the radio. The soft music of a flute filled the room with images, a bird in a tree, a rippling brook.
“Would you like to take your shoes off?” he asked, rolling a joint from his box. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
Marcie complied, stretching her toes back and forth.
“You can take off the rest of your clothes, if you’d like. Feel more free.”
She pulled off her shirt, and her hair fell over her face, crackling with electricity, covering her breasts. She unbuckled her belt, pushing away Levis and underwear. She stretched her hands above her head and closed her eyes. As she stretched, she flowed with the flute, flew with the bird, swam in the brook.
When she turned on her toes, Richard simply stared at her beauty, his eyes on fire. In them, she read messages, could see that he wanted to pierce the thin veil between them, climb into her, touch her laughter, her softness, her secrets, her shyness, all that was personal to her. More, she wanted to open all those places to him.
“Can I brush your hair?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The brush massaged her scalp, pulling tangles from her hair, separating strands. “There’s light shifting among the waves,” he said softly. “Like rainbows.”
Marcie turned and connected with his eyes. In that single moment, whatever they were, they laid bare to each other.
“Take off your clothes,” she said softly, leaning against the bed pillows.
When he was naked, she held out her arms, and he moved into them, lying next to her, getting closer, feeling her skin, caressing her, letting her get accustomed to his body, to his nearness, to the sound of his breath in her ear, to his lips on her face and neck. He moved in rhythm to the soft music, hands touching her body, slowly, lingering, memorizing as he went, until he had touched all of her, deep into her muscles, rubbing her back and buttocks and thighs, gently caressing the sacred place between her legs. Marcie wanted him to fill her, to reach deep inside, to the place that ached to be touched, and began to push against him with an urgency that spoke both of giving and taking.
Slowly, he pulled her to him and sat her in his lap, their faces close. As Richard looked into her eyes, she knew here was her future, her children in the making. His penetration was more than physical. Inside, she was hot, and she moved with him, reaching deeper into his mind. When he finally groaned in his orgasm, his mouth against her neck, the feeling rushed through their bodies as if it would never stop, all mingled with the color and patterns of their visions, the smell of the incense, the gentle building notes of the guitar on the radio.
“I love you, Marcie,” he whispered. “I love you.”
Behind her eyes, at the height of her own pulsating orgasm, Marcie’s mind heard his voice flying through the tunnel of her own emotions and sensations. For the first time, she clearly knew that love was not of the body alone but a union of body, heart, mind, and spirit, something reverent, sacramental, connected through man to God.
When their breathing was stilled and they had fallen back together onto the pillows, Richard leaned up on one elbow, a hand caressing her gently, moving from her breast to her stomach.
“What do you think of the acid?” he asked quietly.
“What can I say? It’s wondrous. What can I say to you? Thank you for the turn-on. For your love.”
“Marcie, my love will be yours for a long, long time. Do you believe that?”
In his eyes, she saw his unguarded self still watching her. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “It’s almost like I always have.”
“What are you doing here in the Haight?” he asked. “What did you come to find?”
“I think it was you. Love. An ideal to live for. A life with a dream. What’s your dream, Richard?”
“To do what I’m doing. To create change by turning people on, dissolving ego. We’re in the middle of an insane war with no hope of winning. People are dying—Americans, Vietnamese. There’s no reason for this war. Or any other.”
“And with acid …?”
“Acid teaches, reveals the fragile soul-ego of each person. One trip, and you know that we’re all in this world to learn, to gain knowledge. Brothers and sisters playing the game together.”
Marcie’s brow furrowed slightly. “It’s hard to understand why acid’s illegal.”
Richard closed his eyes, held her a bit closer. “Marcie, you can’t run a military nation or make money off a war if people believe there’s no point in fighting. If they know there are other ways to solve problems. The military-industrial complex can’t afford to allow the voice of people whose first concern is human life, rather than wealth.”
Marcie leaned back to look more closely into his face. “You’re actually more than a pirate, aren’t you? You’re a kind of revolutionary.”
“I’m fighting the system, just like pirates of old. But you’re right. I am a revolutionary—only, a kind the world has never seen before. I’m here to join with my brothers and sisters to make spiritual revolution, using acid as our weapon.”
“You know, I’m not really sure what I’ve experienced tonight, except that I’ve never had a more profound experience. I’ve a new intimacy with God—as if I’ve gone from some dark age into the light.”
Touching his face, she asked, “Richard, how old are you?”
“Twenty-one. Richard Blake Harrison, from Seattle, Washington. Born August 5, 1946. How about you?”
“Eighteen. I’ll be nineteen next month. July 17, 1948. Marcelle Jacqueline Arceneaux.”
“Well, Marcelle Jacqueline Arceneaux, let’s shower and get dressed. Have you seen the ocean yet? I want to show you the Pacific at sunrise.” He gathered her in his arms, kissed her mouth, and said softly, “I heard the first of the birds. It’ll be morning soon.”
Marcie watched as he jumped up, but stopped him with a word. “Richard.”
Something in her tone brought him back to the edge of the bed.
“I want you to know,” she said, her gaze sure and unwavering, “that no matter what happens, I’m with you in this revolution.”
They drove through the park to the beach, running across the highway and down the concrete steps to the sand. Others were already there with bonfires. The ocean slapped against the shore with a roar. The wind blew cold off the water. Richard put his arm around her shoulders, and they began to walk along the beach.
Everything has its own rhythm, Marcie thought, watching the waves. If I can match my life to each varying rhythm as it comes to me, then I’ll flow, easily.
The water was starting to change color, from black with frills of white surf to deep gray. The first shades of pink began to tint the sky. Her soul drank in the colors, the inexplicable beauty of the soft subtleties of grays and pinks and golds. Even in the new illumination, her eyes made out subtly changing hues of objects, tiny patterns imprinting themselves on surfaces.
A seagull flew overhead, calling out in the morning mist, and as she watched it circle overhead, catch the wind, move with the air current, she intimately knew the bird’s spirit.
“Oh, Richard, everything is so beautiful. How can I thank you?”
“By letting me love you. By being my lady.”
“Always and forever.”
The wind from the ocean carried their promise as they stood alone at the edge of the sea, and only the gulls overhead, the pelicans dipping into the waves, the sandpipers running through the morning tide, gave witness to their vows.