Take my hand, I'll take your hand baby
This much madness is too much sorrow
It's impossible to make it today
-- From Down by the River by Neil Young
And I was awake and outraged and wanted to go back and never ever not anytime no how way have to deal with another day. Full stop. Sleep now and maybe forever. This was too much s-h-i-t and I was not having it and there on the floor was the whole reason. Okay maybe not whole but an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black scotch accompanied by an empty bottle of pills of what kind I do not remember was more than enough stuff tough clue blue not new for me or you. And there was a roach clip two feet from face and I was on the floor and the record player had Hendrix on or no wait that was the inside of my head or both or neither. Maybe Hendrix was here with me but he’d just died and I’d cried and oh my’ed my way to the funereal circumstances and there had been a riot yesterday and tear gas and cops and billy clubs and Jimmy’d gotten busted and Ellen was where the hell and was someone in bed or any other bed in the house I at least knew that it was my house. Mouse. A copy of On The Road splayed on the floor and Nixon standing on my coffee table talking about bombing North Vietnam into submission. That asshole. End the war, bring the boys home stop killing babies.
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in was on somewhere. No that was definitely my head and what the fuck day or month or even year was it as if it mattered. Hubert HH can suck a tail pipe. Wanna hear Joplin go to the beach wanna teach. I’m not a student anymore maybe I’ll get up shower clean clothes the whole bit or maybe not maybe start all over again. Higher and higher and higher. Listen to the doors. Shit, Joplin and Morrison dead too. Bullshit to death which I suppose repose toes is waiting for me and my crumpled ass. Dash. ////////
*? Who am I again. Curtis Norton Perrimen, just please don’t call me Curt, nobody does. I’m a…well know, what the hell am I? Writer? Fighter? I had a wild night last night in the night outta sight. We were — my friends and I — at the protests against the war. That I remember. So I turn the TV on and sit in a chair and wait, wait for my brain to settle into the day. Get the hang of consciousness which I have had little experience with and lookie there on the TV it’s old Sam Ervin questioning a witness because its the televised Watergate hearings and and AND and that fucking means that the protest where I got tear gassed was not yesterday but three years ago. Oh my my my oh me. Did I time travel? Lesse I know of this Watergate and the election of ’72 so I guess I live now oh/// Shitsky whiskey.
So why — tell me why — am I in this cab? Going where? With a nice looking woman who is talking non stop and I look in the corner of my living room and was that my brain over there and is it melting? Not in the cab. At home. Nixon is doing this to me and there he is on TV assuring us all that he is not a crook. I have on a corduroy jacket and nothing else. Not a stitch. The dog is talking to me with a Canadian accent. Conclusion: must do less drugs.
At my desk full clothed and just waking up. Sober but hungover. Down from drugs but groggy. Awake. It is 19….70? 73? 78? I stand up and walk into the kitchen and check out the calendar that I got from the bank. Thank youuuuuuuuuuu bank. If the calendar is right this is October 1973. Back to the desk. Sit down. Go through drawers and wallet. Apparently I’m a newspaper reporter and I live in Berkeley and I’m 26 years old and it looks like I have a girlfriend and there she is walking towards me. No she’s not. Yes, she is indeed walking toward me. She emerged from a room which I’m going to guess in the bedroom. Wait, I think I know her name…..Rachael Bradley. “God Curtis when the fuck are you going to get it together?” Ya know she doesn’t seem very friendly, maybe she’s just pissed at me.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Now I’m just staring at her. Oh fuck say something Curtis you bum, you idiot, you malcontent, you derelict, you ape fucker. “Rachael. Hi. I’m fine.”
“No, no you’re not fine, Curtis, you’re totally fucked up. You barely know who I am and what day it is.”
Jesus Christ, how did she know all that? Is she in my fucking brain? Woe. “Breakfast!” I pronounced. Rachael frowned. Stared at me disapprovingly and shook her head. “Yeah sure, I’ll scramble some goddamned eggs. Maybe a meal will get you set straight.”
I’m trying a smile but it feels like my face is twisted and I must look like a mentally retarded jack-o-lantern. Rachael lightly touches my shoulder as she walks by me and into the kitchen. “Toast and potatoes too?” She asks. “Yup,” I reply.
I stand. I stretch my arms. I yawn. I close my eyes. I open them and I’m seeing a tear gas canister flying over my head and I start to run like hell just as everyone around me is because the cops are charging us. My face is burning, I’m coughing and goddamned if it isn’t 1970 and who the hell is Rachael? I stop for a second to snap a picture. I think I’ve gotten a good shot of another canister in flight. I stumble across the creek that runs through the Cal campus and help someone who has fallen get back up and there’s a dog with a Canadian accent speaking this time in French and I’m back in a cab in midtown Manhattan and am convinced the military is doing mind experiments on me for some of the exposes I wrote on abuses…
Why am I falling out of tree? Why is it 1963? Why am I home from school? Because Kennedy was assassinated and gobbledygook the burned out fissures in the broken hearted Korean girl I love with the magic penny from Perlstein’s Jewelry Store on Kannis Street. But there are those eggs Rachael is making but I’ve got to pee first and in the bathroom I look in the mirror and damned if I don’t see my own reflection looking a little care worn but a handsome enough bugger if I do say so my ****asterisk*** and wait’ll dad gets home and takes off his belt and gives me what for for what for I don’t know. Crow. Go.
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit,
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit,
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.
Why was I in a cab I Manhattan with mid woman town talking and the the the the the the noises off. Nope. That's not it. I sit. Talking dogs indeed.
Dad came home and cried because the president had been killed so no belt to my ass today I guess and there was my mother looking perplexed and there was another tear gas canister and Sam Ervin and John Dean and Alexander Butterfield -- Erlichman/Haldeman -- liars liars pants on fire and Nixon on a telephone wire. Great theater. Napalm. Screw Kissinger and those drugs oh my oh my I gotta someday try to cry.
“Hey Rachael!” I holler but she’s not around just people running from the tear gas and cops in pursuit and the dog speaking Canadian — what-ever-that-means. Plus I’m in cab now I mean again in Manhattan and the driver is Pakistani.
Breakfast. Rachael sips her coffee and looks at me and I feel pretty good.
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