TUIs
“How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?”
—TITLE OF A SONG BY DAN HICKS
After that fateful tour, Marty left the group again, Grace was already gone, and Starship began the search for a new lead singer. While they were regrouping, I'd settled (?) back home and was alternately working on a solo album titled Dreams and driving the highway patrol nuts.
Some drunks sit around and cry or watch infomercials, but when I was high, I just had to drive a car. It is a great bit of good fortune that I never hit any living beings, because an automobile is definitely a weapon in the hands of chemically altered individuals. I was arrested during the seventies on three separate occasions for drunk driving, but I wasn't actually in the car for any of the three arrests.
How did that work? It's called a DUI—“driving under the influence.” But in my case, it should have been called a TUI—for “talking under the influence.”
When my first arrest occurred, I'd had a couple glasses of white wine (Vanessi's restaurant in San Francisco had enormous glasses), Paul and I were arguing in the car on the way home, and I was driving. When he got tired of the debate, he reached over, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and heaved them out the window onto somebody's front lawn. Completely disgusted, he got out of the car and started walking home, while I also got out of the car and started rooting around in the grass on my hands and knees, searching for the keys. After about ten minutes of unsuccessful close-to-the-ground ferreting, I heard the delicate footsteps of someone approaching me on my right side. Turning my head to view the inquisitor, I came face to feet with a pair of black boots. Lo and behold—it was a member of the SFPD. He stood there in full regalia: navy blue outfit, badge, hands on hips, and an expression that asked, “What's going on here?”
When I heard him actually utter the words, I started laughing because I had a good idea where I was going next—the Bryant Street police station. I stood up to face him and he repeated the question, “What's going on here?” Now I knew where I was going next because instead of answering him, I kept on laughing. Cops don't like it when you laugh instead of answering; they get highly offended when you show them you don't give a shit. They also don't like it when you're down on all fours, rooting around in some strange person's lawn. I already had several strikes against me.
At the jail my cellmate was puking all over the place, so I started practicing karate, knowing that if they thought I might be violent, they'd give me a single-person cell. I was transferred to alternate accommodations, but unfortunately, I was accompanied by a girl, high on speed, who sang Paul McCartney's “Band on the Run” all night long. After three forms of gray food for breakfast, bail was posted, I was let out, and my name appeared in the newspaper for my parents and friends to enjoy with their breakfast.
The second TUI was a result of not checking the oil gauge in the car. At 150 mph, racing uphill on Waldo Grade in Marin County, a car without oil is bound to give the driver some strong objections to that oversight. On the way back down the hill, when my Aston Martin started belching and throwing flames out from under the hood, I pulled over to the side of the freeway and got the hell out of the potentially exploding car. As I waited (it was 3:00 A.M., so there wasn't much traffic) for someone to flag down, a guy in a Volkswagen pulled over. “Do you want me to call the highway patrol for you?” he asked.
“Yes!” I said.
In about five minutes, the black-and-white pulled up. I was ready to do the female in distress thing, but the officer, six feet, four inches, with thumbs hooked in his belt under a beer gut, said, “Okay, what's going on here?” His mistake. My problem.
“I'm having a goddamned party at three A.M. all by myself on the fucking freeway,” I heard myself answer. “That's what's going on here.”
We took an instant dislike to each other: I didn't like his helpful tone of voice and he didn't like my snappy rejoinder. I was booked for a DUI masquerading as a TUI and spent the night at the Frank Lloyd Wright Marin County Jail.
The last TUI happened when I played Omar Khayyam in a black pickup truck. I thought it would be romantic to take a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and a book of poetry, and go out among the woodsy back roads of Mill Valley. I was already out of the truck, sitting against a tree trunk, reading, eating, and drinking, when, in sharp contrast to the lovely green foliage, the old black-and-white swung around a curve in the road. The uniformed driver got out, stood there, and watched me for a moment. I was clearly enjoying myself, but he decided to inquire about why I happened to be there. The fatal sentence escaped his mouth.
“What's going on here?” he asked. (Don't they know any other words?)
“Is it really any of your fucking business?” I answered.
That was the wrong answer. I could have been pleasant and said, “Just having a peaceful meal in the woods,” but badges, liquor, and those four little words turn me into a smaller version of Roseanne at best, or a larger version of a wolverine at worst.
So Officer Krupke says, “I'm arresting you for being drunk in public!”
“Public!? You call pine trees, squirrels, and you PUBLIC?!!”
Back to lovely Marin Civic and my old room in the female lockup for the evening. Skip and a lawyer friend rescued me in the morning.
My glib recounting of these events comes off like I didn't give a shit about anything or anybody. But really, I've always felt a kind of contrition when I cause pain to people who've done nothing to deserve it. Lawyers get paid to post bail or show up in court, it's their job. But I do care about my friends whose days are interrupted by calls informing them that “the nut is at it again, trying to bad-mouth the police” or “we need to get Grace out of the slammer again.” I know these unfortunates all have better things to do than come to the aid of Yours Truly. Unfortunately, there's this hard-to-squelch part of me that comes off like some ninety-year-old Ozark ruffian determined to guard her illegal gin mills to the death.
Is it genetics? Environment? Or just plain irresponsibility? Probably all of the above, and too much pepper in the bouillabaisse. But I don't blame the Master Chef in the sky; there's a slippery rascal down here spicing her own soup.
“Gun Mouth Grace” (Grace Slick)