Let’s Do Lunch
JEREMY TARCHER
It was 1975 at 9110 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California—a time and place when everything was still possible—so when my secretary said tremulously, “Timothy Leary is here to see you,” I wasn’t surprised. My lunch date had arrived. I had diligently read the popular press of the prior ten years, and had no trouble identifying the despoiler of American youth when he came calling under his own name. (I have since had it on good report that Timothy has been known to come calling under a variety of names, genders, and disguises.)
Jumping out of my seat and tingling with fear (is he catching?), anticipation (will he catch me?), and righteous loathing, I showed him to a chair. What a nice anecdote this will make, I thought. Timothy Leary, Mephistopheles himself, in my office, asking me to read a manuscript. Not a chance, Leary. I won’t be associated with a cultural criminal of mythic proportions, but I’ll listen anyway. Maybe that battered folder contained an appropriately contrite confession.
Those papers weren’t a mea culpa, and I was neither understanding of what they were (I still have that problem with Tim sometimes), nor interested in what I didn’t understand.
We lunched and as a public service, with the Osso Bucco, I pointed out some of his shortcomings so widely reported in the press. Where his mind could have been I really don’t know (and I’m not at all alone in this), but the heavier the axe blows of my accusation, the broader his smile and the more quizzical his expression. I think he had heard it all before.
Good-bye, Mr. Leary, and good luck. Try elsewhere.
Apparently he didn’t hear, for it wasn’t long before he was back on my luncheon calendar and sitting in my office, still smiling with more unpublishable-by-me ideas. We sat at Le Dome, my warm duck salad disappearing while Tim seemed to have lost his appetite but not his sense of having something important to tell me (and I’m still not entirely clear as to what it is). All I do remember is that I hadn’t felt that optimistic, that full of possibilities since I first read Henry Miller.
Dammit, I felt good. Being with Timothy Leary made me feel good.
And so over the next few years when Tim would call from time to time, we would go out to lunch and I would return to my office with a broad smile on my face, but never quite clear on what had transpired.
I had worked with many famous people in the television industry and had been out in public with many of them, but I noticed something different when I was out with Tim. No one who recognized him failed to smile. Apparently he had devoted strangers posted on every corner. A stroll with Prometheus in ancient Athens would, I imagine, have brought the same words and winks of pleasure, gratitude, conspiracy, and community as a stroll with Timothy in Beverly Hills. It was clear I wasn’t the only one who liked to be with him. The Leary energy field made these people feel positive about life’s potential. (It’s his gift—grace, direct from God.) I could tell that there was a little bit of what Tim symbolized in every one of these at-least-once-ignited souls, and they were happy and proud to know about that part of themselves. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time but I wanted to be part of that community.
Inevitably, all unknowing (like you were once, too), I eventually found myself 47 minutes into 250 µg of Tim Scully’s Orange Sunshine. The knowable world fell apart in front of what I had understood to be my mind.
Hours went by before I wanted to rise to my feet (I’ve never been fully erect since) and the first thing I did was to get Tim on the phone. “Tim,” I throated, “six hours ago I took Scully’s Orange Sunshine. I must see you for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Tomorrow? I can’t make breakfast tomorrow, but I’m free for lunch.”
That time I did the talking, but when he spoke I felt I understood him far better than before.
And the years rolled by again and in 1983 I got to publish those confessions, but, in reflection, I don’t remember them as being particularly contrite.