Getting Off

1969...

It was a time of extremes, of unknown limits. It was a time of upheaval, of rapid and relentless change, of the explosion of myths, of the fear of annihilation.

There was a sense that things had gotten out of control, that the divisions in American society between parents and their children, between the Establishment and the flowering Counter-culture, had grown too deep.

It was a time when the Children of America went in search of ultimate experience…and occasionally found it.

Getting Off

by

Joshua Tal

Copyright 2013 Joshua Tal

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One – First Flight

Chapter Two – The Distaff Side

Chapter Three – The Crystal Ship

Chapter Four – Uncle Tim's Cabin

Chapter Five – Weekend

Chapter Six – Runway

Chapter Seven – In Plato’s Cave

Chapter Eight – Blonde on Blonde

Chapter Nine – Trip, the Light Fantastic

Chapter Ten – Feast of Weekes

Chapter Eleven – Eastern Wind

Chapter Twelve – Woodstock on One Leg

Chapter Thirteen – Balling

Chapter Fourteen – The Apocalypse Mets

Chapter Fifteen – One Hand Clapping

Chapter Sixteen – The Messiah of Route 81

Chapter Seventeen – Starting Over

Chapter Eighteen – Blind Justice

Chapter Nineteen – Doctor Strangelove

Chapter Twenty – May Days

Chapter Twenty One – In Elijah's Cave

Chapter Twenty Two – Letting Go

Chapter Twenty Three – Dropping Out

Chapter One

First Flight

They both felt the rush. After driving north out of New York for over two hours in holiday traffic, they had finally passed the Harriman Interchange. The sports car seemed to lurch forward beneath them, like a cork popping out of a bottle. They were Upstate. It felt good.

Chase turned to Peter and nodded. Peter, in turn, reached under the dashboard and lit one of the joints they had hidden there, dragged deeply, and let the smoke out slowly before passing it on to Chase. Chase accelerated the Bee to ninety miles an hour. It seemed only natural: it was the speed they were used to.

Snow covered the fields and hills. Ahead, the blanket of white gave way only to a ribbon of gray concrete splattered with patches and swirls of chalky white salt. Oil- and dirt-stained banks of snow and ice lined the roadsides, left over from the morning plowing. More snow and sub-zero temperatures were being forecast for Christmas Eve. The biting cold drafts of air filtering through the thin leather cover of the sports car and the bluish-white clouds filling the far-off northern sky were confirmation enough. They hoped to get into Albany early enough to be able to find Randy's house before nightfall, so Peter shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing, when Chase accelerated again to one hundred.

Peter had come to trust Chase instinctively. He had been with Chase, hadn't he, that time Chase drove the old Pontiac with two bald tires a hundred miles an hour on the Northern State? Nothing happened then; it only confirmed Peter's suspicion that Chase somehow led a charmed life. Anyway, the tires on the Bee were good, and the music rising on the wafts of hot air from the footwell, the joint, and the scenery made it easier to let go and forget.

Peter spun the radio dial searching for rock music as the distance increased between them and the downstate broadcast areas. There's not much rock on the FM band outside New York, I guess, Peter complained.

Keep trying. Maybe we'll pick up a college station along the way.

You know, Peter said wistfully, my brother Andrew told me his friends are smoking pot now.

Wait a minute. Isn't Andrew the one in eighth grade?

Yeah, Peter confirmed, Eighth grade.

Man, that's outrageous, Chase said, only half-shocked. Shit, we never even saw a joint till a couple of years ago. Chase laughed to himself. 'The only hope is dope,' he parroted, half-seriously. Peter chuckled, nodding.

Remember the Love-in? Chase asked a few minutes later. "With Randy at the fountain in Washington Square when that spacey chick handed us the paper bag with all the weird writing on it?"

Paper bag? Peter asked, puzzled. The joint had gone out, half-smoked. Peter lit the charcoal end and passed it again to Chase.

"The jellybeans! Don't you remember the jellybeans?"

Oh, yeah. She said they had LSD in them. Peter began to laugh uproariously, …and we didn't know whether to believe her. Man, were we ever stupid, or what?

Chase smiled to himself, remembering. The park that day was full of smiling young people, rolling and smoking joints openly, in painted faces, dancing, blowing bubbles, kissing. The three weekend hippies each took one of the jellybeans and smiled weakly at the barefoot girl who went off again to another part of the park. The trio looked at one another nervously, each daring the other to eat one. Finally, they all did and waited expectantly all that day for something to happen. Nothing did.

Now, as an experienced college sophomore Chase could appreciate being goofed on. The irony wasn't lost on him. He was about to get his first taste of psychedelics and, this time, there would be no hesitation.

At the ripe old age of nineteen, we're already talking of the good old days, Chase said blankly to himself. Peter was silent now, drifting. Chase remembered being happy then and it made him unhappier now because of the contrast. He wanted to reach back and live those good times again but most of his friends were gone now, at school or in the army, and his family had moved back into the city. His former life had all but disappeared. He was adrift, seeking safe haven.

Chase and Peter had grown up together through grade school, and later with Randy in high school as scholar-athletes, had come to believe in the golden mean, the Greek ideal. They had become aware that they were living in a golden age, aware of their education, aware that they were living atop a pyramid of wealth and power, about to step into the world of the post-industrial age, an age promising unlimited leisure, a world in which the last frontier seemed to be the vast and unlimited space of the mind. Was there ever a greater challenge?

Peter was the least concerned of the three with such things, though. Who needed a Philosopher's stone or even to be Philosophically Stoned? He had youth and with it a childlike spontaneity, a sense of abandonment that attracted everyone that knew him. He often expressed his impish Irish humor in outrageous pranks, and sometimes, in irrepressibly dangerous behavior. He was the first among the group to fuck regularly, drink heavily, smoke dope, drop acid. Why did he drink that fifth of Chivas in Chase's basement? When Chase found him, covered in his own puke, his pants full of shit, Chase thought Peter would die.

He survived, of course, but now, after a year and a half of college, Peter was flunking and dropping most of his courses, having completed less than a semester's work. Peter knew that at that rate he would soon be meat for the draft. When pressed, Peter's answer was always the same, flippant and uncompromising: Who gives a flying fuck, anyway?

But there was also a smartness hidden in the wildness. Peter somehow knew when to stop. It was as if he knew how to lean out over a chasm, and looking down and stepping out into the void, he could reach back at the very last moment and grab for the safety line to stop his fall. Now the wild circles seemed to be growing wider and he began to suspect that his drive would somehow, someday, push him too far off that ledge. He feared for his very life, and in Linda he found a refuge, a contrast, a constant, and he was falling ever more deeply into love with her.

Chase was very different. Maybe that's what attracted them to each other. Chase was a seeker, a diviner of riddles. Caught in a web of conflicts, of living contradictions; with no means of escape, without the tools to cut himself free, he couldn't adjust at college. He liked the intellectual challenge, liked all his subjects, in fact, but that was part of the problem, wasn't it? Each time he'd make up his mind, set a course of action to suit himself, someone would come up with a contrary, equally plausible suggestion, and he was back to square one.

When he tried to decide if he should drop out of college, though, anxiety would well up inside him, grab hold of his guts, and eat away at him. He felt, at those times, as if he'd been thrown into a pit or like one of Skinner's rats: he wanted to get away from the maze, to sit back and look at himself, to taste life before someone else chose his future for him. He had come to understand the Melancholy Dane quite well and now the path laid out before him filled him with dread.

They were closing in on Albany now. The heavy clouds, which before were distant, mystic on the approaching horizon, were now looming, thick above them, reflecting Chase's mood.

When had Chase decided to kill himself? He couldn't remember exactly. He had decided, though, consciously, coolly, that if things didn't improve for him, it would be in his twenty-first year. Why twenty-one? Did it matter, really? Any age would do. Twenty-one is the age when you could vote and drink in every state, the year of Adulthood in America. Free, male, and twenty-one. Old enough to kill yourself, he thought. He hadn't yet given any thought as to how he would do it, and as close as he was to Peter, he couldn't bring himself to confide in him about it. He was growing up absurd, wasn't he? It seemed only natural to seek an absurd remedy. Absurd had become his favorite word.

Chase's musings on absurdities were suddenly broken when Peter asked the one thing Chase wished he wouldn't ask. Have you seen Caroline since you've been back?

Ah, Caroline. Sweet, Caroline. She was fifteen, he seventeen, when they met. After six months, she had finally given in and made love to him. But then, in the springtime, she had told him she was pregnant and he found himself incapable of coping with the sharp twist his life would take. It turned out to be a false alarm, but then their relationship became on-again, off-again. Now he saw her everywhere – her shape, the flow of her long, golden hair – and he would follow her with his eyes, till he realized she was not there, that it wasn't her.

Sorry I asked, Peter finally said.

Huh? ... What? ... Oh, uh Caroline… Chase was drifting between leaden clouds and the white lines that punctuated the rolling gray carpet ahead. Why couldn't Peter keep off that subject? Oh yeah, you know. It's about the same, man.

Peter understood the complications in Chase's relationship with Caroline better than anyone, and a lot better than he wanted to; it was a source of constant pain for Chase and took up a big part of their friendship. Linda sometimes served as a go-between when Caroline was grounded and Peter had even pretended to be Caroline's date a few times just to get her out of the house.

'Fucking Chase', Peter thought, 'why can't you lighten up a bit about that girl?’ but only said, Let me see those caps again, will ya?

Peter fished into Chase's jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic baggie tied by a loose knot. Peter opened it and held its contents, two gelatin capsules filled with bluish-white powder, in the palm of his hand.

Peter studied them for a minute and then Chase said, We're almost to the toll booth. Better put them away.

Darkness had fallen and a light snow was drifting lazily down on the windshield as they paid the toll. A heavy blanket of snow already covered the city by the time they found the address on DeWitt Street a half-hour later. As they began to climb to the upstairs apartment, they looked up to see Randy standing at the top of the stairs with a broad grin on his face, clapping his hands gleefully. All right! All right! Merr-rry Christmas! Come on up.

Wow. Look at his hair, Peter, Chase razzed Randy when they were finally inside. "When are you going to get a haircut, Hippie? Shit. Look at this guy. He looks like fucking John Lennon."

Yeah, he does, agreed Peter. "Oh, John. Sing Please Please Me for us," he twitted.

Fuck you, you guys, Randy replied, smiling, and then hugging each of them said, Shit, it's great to see you. Come on in and get warm.

The apartment was softly lit. Posters announcing rock concerts and art shows long since held, and book shelves filled with textbooks and paperback editions of the great novels and classical poetry lined the walls. Randy's roommates had all gone home for the holidays, but Randy had decided to stay in Albany. He had his own problems at home. As his hair had grown longer, the strain between him and his father had gotten worse. For all three friends, the farther they had drifted from the world of their parents, the closer they had drifted together.

While the snow continued to fall beyond the tall Victorian windows, the three settled into overstuffed couches and chairs. Randy rolled and lit a joint.

We haven't been together since our midnight drive to Montauk last Easter. Randy mused. Chase nursed the joint, remembering Randy and Peter as distant blanket-clad forms that had turned into fluttering bats on the beach at Hither Hills. The three had drifted through that night engaged in star-ciphering, floating from astronomical science to astrological mystery. They had watched the rising sun chase the full moon, marveled as the Terminator of the Night pulled the day behind it in its relentless parabolic march to the west, reaching the sea far to the south and blotting out the stars in its course.

But do you remember later in the morning – we were pretty wasted – and Chase drove through the stop sign on the Lighthouse Road? asked Peter.

'I think I saw a stop sign,' Randy said, giggling.

'Yeah, but it looks about the size of a quarter,' said Peter, laughing, re-living the moment.

Yeah, but when the state cop stopped us, Randy continued, you didn't think it was so funny, Peter. Chase said he hadn't seen the sign at all, and while the cop wrote the ticket, you snuck off and dumped the rest of the pot on the beach because you got paranoid. Randy and Peter began laughing hysterically.

Sure, but what you don't know, said Chase, unamused, is that I nearly got thrown in jail because when I went to traffic court to pay the fine, the judge thought I was being a smart-ass and threw me in the lock up. One of my parents' friends had to come pay the fine because I didn't have enough cash.

Peter and Randy burst out laughing again and Chase eventually joined in.

Listen, you guys, Chase broke in, let's get started already. He pulled the plastic baggie out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Randy. I could only get two caps. They were five bucks apiece, but Norman, my roommate, says it's pretty good mescaline.

Let's check it out, Randy suggested as he opened the baggie. As they drifted over to the kitchen table Randy asked, Is it organic or synthetic? Chase looked back dumbly. Well, it doesn't much matter, really, Randy continued, as long as it's clean.

Randy took one of the capsules and pulled it apart, dropping the powder in a neat pile on the table. He inspected it and, as he did, Peter and Chase watched him closely, eager to get started.

While Peter had used acid several times, and Randy even more than that, this was to be Chase's first trip. Chase had always been the most conservative of the three. He was the last to start smoking grass though he soon learned to like it, giving up booze in the process. He had long since discarded the images of addiction and depravity about drugs that he had been fed at school. Marijuana had all the advertised advantages of alcohol without the hangover. The downside was that it was illegal, but he could live with that, once he got over the paranoia. Now he was a big fan of the stuff; the step up to psychedelics was easy.

Randy took out a dollar bill and, holding it edgewise, carefully divided the powder into six equal piles on the kitchen table.

This is my first trip, you know. Chase reminded them. Along with the eagerness and anticipation came nervousness and it showed.

Peter and Randy smiled at him, and Peter clapped him on the back. Randy said, Dynamite! You're really going to like it. I know you will. He rolled the dollar bill into a narrow tube and handed it to Chase.

Chase took the roll uncertainly and asked, What do I do with it?

Randy and Peter laughed again. Watch carefully, now. Randy took the tube back and exaggeratedly placed one end in his right nostril, pinched his left nostril with his other hand, bent over and sucked up one of the piles. Then he handed the bill back to Chase and said, Here. Have a snort, sport.

Chase smiled and took the roll again and tentatively began to sniff at one of the remaining piles until it was gone. Peter followed suit, and each finished off his share, snorting into the opposite nostril. For balance, Randy assured them.

Chase asked, How long before anything happens?

Randy shrugged, Half hour, hour maybe, depends on the stuff.

About ten minutes later, as they sat around the kitchen table, joking and telling stories, Chase felt a lightness in his head and a slight queasiness in his stomach. A half-hour passed, forty five minutes, an hour, and still he felt nothing more, nothing unusual.

I don't think I'm getting off, he said.

I'm starting to, Peter said.

"I definitely am, Randy chimed in. Don't worry about it Chase. You will." He was smiling broadly.

Chase began to feel more out of it, than off on it. As Randy and Peter spoke together, he started thinking of the long drive up to Albany, of his most recent spat with Caroline, of having to return to school again the following week. He recalled a conversation he had had with a philosophy professor after he had smoked some potent hashish one night. He had emerged from that experience with insights about the nature of life, discerning answers to metaphysical questions, filled with wonder at the unseen forces at work in the universe. Metaphysical had been his favorite word for some time afterward. Someone else had suggested that God is motion. He wondered about the Prime Monad.

Getting off yet Chase? Peter smiled, comically lifting his eyebrows.

Chase became suddenly aware of multi-colored patterns, dancing and swaying around the room. Phantasmagorical shapes and colors splashed and disappeared against the walls. He began to smile.

He's off, Randy confirmed, smiling. Come on in here. Randy led the other two into a small, darkened room, where they sat together in a circle on the floor. Only a faint shaft of light entered through a small window high above them. They sat cross-legged, knees touching, forming the shape of a triangle together. As Randy started chanting what sounded like an American Indian hymn, Peter and Chase joined in. They clasped shoulders and Chase sensed a bond being created among them. The chanting turned into to a low humming which dropped away until only stillness enveloped them.

I see crystalline patterns, colored, like stained glass... Chase finally said.

"Yes, yes good, but that's in your head, Chase. Don't lay your trip on us," Peter admonished him, but it was too late. The moment had already passed, the ring broken. Chase had gotten his first psychedelic lesson. He realized that he had been experiencing the moment in his own way, the others in theirs. To each his own. Peter got up quietly and left the room, seeking solitude.

So it went through the long night. They came together, broke up and gathered again, as they felt the urge. They talked about friends, home, college, The War, played music on the stereo, and then went off to be alone again.

Let's take a walk in the park across the street, Randy suggested. Peter readily agreed but they had to persuade Chase to come out with them. Chase resisted at first, preferring the relative safety of the apartment and its womb-like warmth but was glad to have relented. The air was crisp and invigorating, the park silent and peaceful. A light snow was now falling, adding to the previous snowfall clinging heavily to the tree branches. Sparkling icy stalactites hung suspended from Victorian carriage bridges. When they returned to the warm interior of the apartment, they all felt exhilarated and refreshed.

Randy put a record on his stereo as they sat down together again at the small kitchen table. A plastic orange jack-o-lantern hung from the ceiling, centered over the table, and just above eye level. A candle burned inside, casting an eerie light through the eyes and mouth cut into its upper half. A soft yellow lamp lit the apartment from a corner of the living room. Smoke from a stick of strawberry incense rose in a swift stream under the lampshade and reappeared above it in light puffs, scattering invisibly into the air.

Outside, the snow continued to fall. A snowplow occasionally rumbled noisily past on the street out front. But at the rear of the house, in the kitchen, only their own reflections, and the darkness beyond, could be seen in the tall windows, as if the house itself had entered into a silent void, black and timeless.

Chase's thinking became clearer, more manageable. He realized he had been travelling this night in his thoughts. Elation was now giving way to sobriety. The hallucinatory effects of the mescaline were starting to wear off and the strange, other-body feelings in his skin and muscles were now less pronounced. The rush of images, and insights, was slowing as well.

Their conversation also took on a tone of greater coherency, but the closeness they felt, and their mutual trust and understanding allowed them to communicate at some higher level. Long periods passed with no one saying a word. They came to realize that if anyone else were listening, they would have a difficult time following the thread of conversation. Chase began to wonder what normal communication was, anyway.

On the turntable, Scottish druids were singing off-key, roundabout melodies, punctuated by a small, childlike voice that whispered:

Amoebas are very small...

Chase took hold of the jack-o-lantern and let it swing in a wide elliptical path above the table. The three watched it intently as it swung in an ever-narrowing path.

Peter caught the globe. You know, he said, "I got turned on to this book called the I Ching. It's this ancient