The year was 1971.
I was going to a small liberal arts college in New York City. It was so small that we had only one drug dealer for the whole school! He was a pretty good guy, and one night me and a bunch of other fellows went down to his apartment in the East Village to hang out before heading out to an all-weekend school function.
OK, first things first, we all smoked our brains out. This was a good start, because this was also the night I had decided to take some LSD. I don’t remember why exactly at this point, but I suspect it had to do with this school thing, which was an overnight in the woods somewhere. So I dropped the acid, and while I was waiting for takeoff, the dealer (who I will call Jerry, since that was not his name) said, “Hey…have you ever tried cocaine?”
(Side note here: ParENTs, this is the only reason the so-called “authorities” call marijuana a “gateway drug”. Because it’s illegal, your child will be exposed to criminal drug dealers in order to get it. They will often offer your child other drugs to make more money (in the commercial world, this is known as “upselling”). To avoid this, always vote for legalized cannabis, so that children will be protected from unsafe drugs and drug dealers. Thank you. — Old Hippie)
Why no, I hadn’t. In fact, I barely knew what it was, other than it was considered a high-end kind of thing. It wasn’t till way later in that decade that people would start trying to “impress” other people by their use of cocaine, so this was just a friendly question. If I had known how expensive the stuff actually was, I probably wouldn’t have even taken it, as a gift or not.
“Wanna try some?”, asked Jerry.
Well, back then — I hate to admit it now, but I was pretty much willing to try anything except heroin — so…sure.
(Side note: Don’t try this yourself. We weren’t much on “overdoing” doses back then the way so many people do now, and we also knew we had unadulterated substances.)
Jerry showed me the little bag and the technique for snorting it and the whole mirror thing. Just about then, I felt the acid kicking in too. So when I snorted up a line or two of the coke, I was feeling it as sparkles, and seeing random bright red and green flashes.
I was now not only entering another dimension, but doing it with the accompanimENT of my own personal light show. Or to put it in today’s perspective…imagine taking off into space, but wearing a full fur pimp outfit and blasting a high-energy sound track. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine that, because thanks to modern technology, now you can experience pretty much what it was like:
This was getting better ever second, but I had no idea how great it would become.
“Hey!” Jerry said. “Have you ever heard Yes?”
Why no, I hadn’t. In fact, I barely knew what it was, other than it was considered a high-end kind of musical thing. It wasn’t till way later in that decade that people would start trying to “impress” other people by their use of the phrase “progressive rock”, so this was just a friendly question.
Jerry showed me the album cover, with a bunch of sickly-looking English dudes in fluorescENT light. It didn’t look too special, but he hooked me up with some headphones and I listened. Even if I hadn’t been way past Jupiter with wild men shooting Roman candles off all around me, I would have been pretty impressed by “Yours Is No Disgrace”.
But the last song on the first side of the album was this…
Now wait! Before you click on it, get as high as you dare — then way higher than that — and then plug in headphones and listen…and you will get an inkling of what it was like…
The end of Starship Trooper (the end of the song even has its own name. which is Würm) totally transported me. I was feeling waves of melting emotion along with the music. It was like hearing a symphony orchestra in a cathedral being conducted by Mozart while he was being held in the air by angels.
And then it was over. And then suddenly Jerry had to go somewhere else, and me and some other guy had to go on the subway to the (shudder!) Port Authority Bus Terminal (“never will you see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”), and we took a long dark bus ride out to the wilds of New Jersey somewhere, and when we told him where we were going, he let us off in complete darkness in literally the middle of nowhere (no houses, no signs, and just the road we came in on), and then I used all the power of the acid (and the extra light from the coke) to unerringly walk 3/4 of a mile through untracked fields to the very place we were going, even though I had never been that way in my life.
The End.
