8 Finger Eddie

8 Finger Eddie - The Original Freak

2007-02-27T13:10:00.000+05:30

Read about Eddie’s investigation
of sexual thrills before five;
His beginnings as a story teller;
His becoming a hero of his sixth grade class
for his rendition of popular songs;
His loss of his hero status when his voice changed;
The following years and his time as a zoot-suiter,
a jazz bassist, and an unpublished writer;
His relationship with his later friends;
His becoming a househusband to his call girl wife;
And more…..
in his book
"My Rise to Relative Obscurity"
(see archives here on the right)

My Rise to Relative Obscurity Part 4

2007-02-27T13:06:00.000+05:30

1966
“I’m sorry, but I can’t permit you people to sleep in the church again tonight,” the Armenian priest in Mashad informs the English couple, the young Canadian and me.
“I wonder why he’s asking us to leave,” says the English girl..
“Possibly because he saw you prancing about in your panties last night,” I say.
“Three nights more we have to spend in this place to take those fucking cholera pills they’ve given us,” she says. “Are you guys taking yours?”
“No, I threw mine away as soon as I got them?” I say.
“So, what are we going to do now?”
“Let’s find a park to relax in,” I suggest.

“You people have no place, you stay with us,” says a young Iranian, one of a group we’re smoking Afghani with in the park.
“Thanks, but some students have already offered us a room,” I tell him.
“Aw, those students don’t smoke,” the Canadian says.
“Yes, let’s stay with these guys,” seconds the English girl..
“Come, we take you nice house.”
Everyone rises to leave. The Canadian gets up, then topples forward onto the ground.
“He smoke too much,” an Iranian laughs, the Canadian is helped to his feet.
“You people don’t know how to smoke,” the Canadian chides us. “I’m not afraid to go all the way.”

“Cigar, dari?” the English girl asks one of the Iranians for another cigarette, and she is quickly given one.
Her boyfriend busily rolls joints, while the Canadian is passed out.
It seems that I’m the only one who sees that the dozen or so Iranians in the room with us are not entirely friendly. Some of them have been trying to stare me down while we’ve been smoking.
“What is your name?” the Iranian who has told us he’s a boxer asks the English boy.
“Tom Dooley.”
“And your woman’s name?”
“My name is Cheryl.”
“And I’m Eddie.”
“Tom, you have photo of you for me?” asks the Iranian.
“No, I haven’t.” An obvious lie; he must have visa photos.
“You give me your address, Tom?”
“Sure.” Tom stops rolling to write.
“Tom Dooley,” the Iranian reads. “Fuck you, England. What is fuck you, Tom?”
“My home in England.”
What kind of dumb game is Tom playing? Isn’t he aware of the kind of people he’s dealing with?
“Eddie, you have photo for me?”
“Yeah.” I hand him a photo. “And here’s a photo of my ten year old son.”
“Very good looking boy.” The boxer, impressed, hands the photo of Vincent around.
Tom and Cheryl, having fallen asleep, the attention of the Iranians focuses on me. Some of them are still trying to freak me out by glaring at me when I take a hit, but I smile and pass the joint back to them until they finally relax and smile back at me.
“Look, Eddie.” The boxer rolls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me a very long scar with widely spaced stitch marks on his upper arm. “We are all brothers here. You want to become one of us?”
“I don’t have to do that to be your brother.”

“Have these boys given you alcohol?” the police chief of Mashad asks us the following evening, after we’ve been rounded up at the hotel the Iranian gang moved us to.
“No.”
“Charas?”
“No.”
“Opium?”
“No.”
“Have you any complaint to make against them?”
“No.”
“All right, leave.”
“What was that all about?” Cheryl asks.
“I think it means that if this gang makes trouble for us now, we can forget about asking the police for help. Look, Cheryl, this is a gang known to the police. I think we should stay with those students who invited us.”
“Why? We’re getting everything from these guys: food, drink, drugs. ”
“But they are smokers, Cheryl, and their smokers’ eyes assess what we take and what we give.”

“What’s wrong these people, Eddie?” the boxer asks, nodding toward the sleeping Cheryl and Tom, as he and I cut vegetables for the evening meal. “They sleep too much. You always laugh, sing, bring things to eat.”
“I’ve been doing drugs longer than they have.”
Tom, opening his eyes, sits up groggily.
“Look, Tom, I make special joint for you.” The boxer hands Tom a joint.
“Thanks,” Tom says, lighting up. “Today, I smoke with you; tomorrow, I cut your throat.”
I’m stunned by what Tom has said.
“What you say, Tom?” asks the boxer, leaning toward him.
“Today, I smoke with you; tomorrow, I cut your throat.”
What world is Tom living in? Does he imagine that he can take on this gang? He’s seems to be totally unaware of the situation that he is in. This is why I prefer to travel alone. Being with people like Tom can get me into a lot of unnecessary trouble.

“Tom, don’t you think it would be better for Cheryl to sleep between you and me, rather than on the other side of you where one of the Iranians could lie next to her?” I ask in the dormitory of the hotel.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Eddie.”
Cheryl, not wearing a skirt, rises and saunters out of the room. Two gang members nudge each other as they watch her leave. Now, they move over to lie down on either side of Tom who is lying on his mattress. Laughingly, they prod Tom with their elbows, again and again. Looking down on Tom’s face, I see that he’s afraid. So much for, “Tomorrow, I cut your throat.”

“Here’s our chief!” announces a young gang member, barging into the dormitory early in the morning.
A thin man in a dark blue pinstriped suit appears, pulls out a big roll of banknotes and flicks through them.
“You want drink, charas, opium?” he asks Cheryl, and she nods yes to everything.
“You,” the chief turns to Tom, “you want drink, charas, opium?”
“Yeah, that would be greatly appreciated.”
“You also want everything?” the chief asks the Canadian.
“Sure.”
“I don’t want anything,” I tell the chief.
“Take something, please.”
“No, I have to go this morning to the Afghan consulate to get a visa.”

Leaving the Afghan consulate, I think it would be safer for me to go to Afghanistan without returning to the dormitory. I’m almost certain there’s going to be trouble at the hotel today, and I don’t want to be there for it.
But perhaps I’m being paranoid. The situation may not be as bad as I imagine it to be. And if I do return to the hotel, I’ll at least discover whether or not I’m paranoid. I’ll also be able to pick up my bag.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I greet, walking into the dormitory.
A man, wearing an American movie gangster hat, sits on a chair in the center of the room. Behind him sits the boxer. The chief sits on the edge of the mattress upon which Tom and Cheryl are lying, both asleep. The Canadian is passed out in a corner.
I empty a bag of biscuits and one of grapes onto the table and motion to the Iranians to help themselves. They nod but do not move. I hold out a packet of cigarettes to the man in the hat. He takes two. Yes, there’s going to be trouble this afternoon. It’s gratifying, at least, to learn that I’ve not been paranoid.
“Sit down,” says the chief. “Show me your hand. What happened?”
“Nothing, I was born with it.”
“You are very lucky man.”
“I know.”
“Um, these people making me feel very sleepy.” The chief nods his head toward the sleeping Tom and Cheryl. “I think I go in bed with them. You sit here where I sit.”
I sit on the edge of the mattress, faced by the hatted man and the boxer who lean toward me, ready to strike if I make a move. Except for the noise of traffic outside, all is quiet in the room.
“Oh, you filthy man,” I hear Cheryl cry. “Tom, wake up, wake up. I thought it was you, but it was this dirty man who slipped in behind me.”
“Uh, what?” mutters Tom.
“Tom, do I have to say it again? This pig has fucked me from behind.”
“So?” the chief says, holding open his arms and smiling into Tom’s face.
“Don’t do that again,” is the best that Tom can come up with.
“Okay, you two, leave this hotel,” the chief tells Tom and Cheryl.
“Eddie, why didn’t you stop him?” Cheryl asks.
“I’d already warned you that it would be better not to stay with these guys, but you wouldn’t listen to me. The next time you’re with smokers, try not to be so obviously greedy and vain.”
“Where you go?” the chief asks, seeing me pick up my bag.
“My bus to the Afghan border leaves early in the morning, so I want to stay in hotel closer to the bus stand.”
“I’m leaving, too,” the Canadian says.
“Wait.” The chief pulls out his roll of banknotes. “How much you want?”
“For what?” I ask.
The chief raises a finger to his lips.
“Oh, man, we’re not going to talk,” I say, laughing.
“Take something,” the chief says.
“No, it’s okay.”
The Canadian and I walk down the stairs together.
“Why didn’t you want to take his money?” the Canadian asks me.
“Man, I was just happy to get out of there.”

1966 - 1967
My spirit leaps when my passport is stamped in Amritsar airport. I’m safe and snug again in good old India where I’m just one amongst hundreds of millions of Indians and where foreign agents are not allowed to operate.
Christmas in Kathmandu is the happening thing for the hippies this winter, but that’s the last place I want to be. I hate cold weather, and I don’t want to be taken for a hippy. I head south for the warmth of Goa.

“Are there any guest houses or hotels here?” I ask a small group of Goan boys sitting near the entrance to Colva Beach.
“It’s not season now. Tourists come here only in April and May,” one of the boys tells me.
“Sleep on the porch of an empty house,” suggests another boy.
“Or break in and sleep inside,” says a third boy.
“Where are you from?” asks the first boy.
“America.”
“What is your name?”
“Eddie. And yours?”
“Anthony. Okay, you can stay in my house for three nights with my mother, my younger brother and two sisters.”
“And your father?”
“He’s at sea. He’s home only about one month each year. Come, my house is here,”
Great, I’ve found the distant palm-treed beach I’d pictured in my head as Roger was telling me of the man who would beat me to within an inch of my life. Let that man try to find me here.

Lying in bed and hearing a car drive up to the beach, I become anxious. If I should be discovered here, it would be so easy for them to beat up on me. I thought I’d be safe when I arrived, but being the only foreigner here makes me very conspicuous.
I must start doing pushups and other exercises to prepare my body to withstand a beating.

I’m awakened by a jolt. The entire house is shaking. It must be an earthquake.
“Who’s there?” members of the family shout.
Who do they imagine to be so powerful that he can make the entire house tremble by knocking on the door?
“It’s an earthquake,” I tell them as they scurry about the house in confusion, but they don’t seem to understand what I’m telling them. “There’s no one at the door. The ground under the house is shaking. This is what is known as an earthquake.”
I give up trying to explain. In the morning they’ll learn what an earthquake is from their neighbors.

“The police were here today, wanting to know what you are doing here at this time of year,” Anthony tells me. “Tourists come here in April and May only. They suspect that you’re a spy.”
“What could I be spying on? The sand, the sea, the sky?”

Whenever I burn a piece of hash to make a joint, Anthony’s brother and sisters, attracted by the smell, come to watch.
“What are you putting in that cigarette?” they ask.
“A little something to make it stronger.”

“Why you’re going Bombay?” Anthony’s five-year old sister asks me.
“I’m going only to get some money and coming right back.”
“No, you don’t come back,” she says. “When you gone who bring biscuits and bananas for us?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”
“Why you don’t go Margao to get money?”

“I’ve been expecting you people to come to Colva,” I tell American Dave, having run into him at American Express in Bombay. “In Kabul you told me you’d be coming.”
“We were, but then Mary found this great bamboo house on Juhu Beach, and we’ve got a nice little scene there with about fifteen or twenty freaks coming and going. We’ve got lots of great sounds and good food. Come and stay with us. We’re driving back in Mary’s van.”
“No, the Goan family I’m staying with in Colva expects me back soon,” I say, not eager to stay with hippies.
“At least come for a few days. I’m sure you’ll have a good time”.
“Al right, I’ll come, but only for a few days.”

“You still thinking of going back to Colva?” asks Dave.
“Less and less each day. This is the first time I’ve spent time with freaks, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I like hearing the lyrics to some of the Dylan and Beatles songs.”
What I don’t tell Dave is that when I listen to him and Mary sing I feel that their lyrics are aimed at me. That, behind their smiles, they’re waiting to come down hard on me for some crime they believe I committed against freaks while I was in custody in Copenhagen.

“Hi, Eddie.”
“Wow, Camilla, is that you? I hardly recognize you. You’ve lost so much weight since I saw you in Copenhagen.”
“I’ve had a difficult time on the road, Eddie. Not taking such good care of myself: not eating well, becoming dehydrated, taking too many drugs, running out of money, stuff like that.”
“Well, you’ll be able to rest here and get yourself together.”
“Yeah, it’s good to be with friends again.”

“What’s happening?” I ask, returning to the bamboo house and finding the boys gathered in the front yard.
“Camilla’s been screaming. And we’re trying to decide whether or not we should take her to the Danish consulate in Bombay and have her sent home. What do you think, Eddie?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should give her a few days to see if she pulls out of it.”

“Camilla wants to speak with you,” her friend Lone tells me. “She’s in the dining room.”
I go to the dining room and sit beside Camilla at the table.
“You wanted to see me, Camilla?”
“I don’t know what it is, Eddie,” she says, peering at me through her blonde hair fallen over her face,” but I dig you.”
At one time, if such a girl had said this to me, I would have shrugged her off, but after all I’ve been through I no longer feel that way.
“You dig me, Camilla? Well, I dig you, too.”
A rustle behind me makes me turn in my seat. Doris, the girl who has been spending some evenings talking with me walks by the open door, looking concerned. I’ve known for some time that Doris is fond of me, known too that her boyfriend knows that she is. But he’s the gentle kind of freak who wouldn’t stand in her way if I should ask her to come to me.
“Look, Camilla, it’s a nice sunny day; let’s go have ice cream at the Sun ‘n Sands.”

“You see, Camilla, there are only sights and sounds,” I say, as we sit at a table overlooking the sea. “Only what you see and what you hear is real. What you think about what you see and what you hear is not real.”
Down on the beach, Doris and her boyfriend are going into the water together. She’s with her boyfriend because she assumes that I’m coming on to Camilla. She doesn’t understand that I’m only trying to help a friend who is troubled. And the freaks in the house, what are they saying? “Oh, we thought Eddie was a cool guy, but look at him trying make out with that flip-out Camilla.” At one time, influenced by what others thought of me, I would have distanced myself from Camilla. But now I don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s enough that I know I want nothing from her.
“You see the leaves on top of the palm trees, Eddie? I’m making them move.”
“I thought it was the wind that made them move.”
“No, it’s me.”
“Shall we walk back to the house through the village, Camilla?”
“I don’t care.”

“They’re spying on me!” Camilla shrieks.
“Who’s spying on you?”
“The Indians in their shops. They’re spying on me through their radios.”
“They’re only listening to their radios while they work. They’re not even looking at you. I also listen to my radio. Am I spying on you?”
“You’re not an Indian.” Camilla stops and puts her hands to her head. “Eddie, I want to scream.”
“Look, Camilla, what a peaceful sunny day it is, the sky so blue and the rice fields so green” I talk in order to divert Camilla’s thoughts from herself. I must get her back to the house before she breaks down.
A helicopter passes overhead, and Camilla grabs my arm.
“You see!” She points to the sky. “They’re still spying on me.”
“Why are they spying on you, Camilla? Is there something you’re hiding from them?”
“No.”

Camilla sits beside me, listening to Mary play guitar and sing. A girl comes into the room carrying a lit candelabrum.
“Take away the fire! Take the fire away!” screams Camilla, covering her eyes. “Take it away. Please take the fire away.”
Finally Dave blows out the candles, and Camilla becomes calm.
Mary begins to play again. Camilla rises from my side and goes to the couch to lie down.
Happy to see her resting after many sleepless nights, I go to kiss her forehead. She opens her eyes as I’m leaning over her and she screams.
My mistake, but at least I learn that there’s something about sex that is disturbing to her.

“I notice that Camilla wears a St. Christopher medal,” a girl tells me in the morning.
“What’s a St. Christopher medal?”
“St. Christopher is the saint who protects children and travelers.”

That evening, during an interval in the music making, I get on my knees before Camilla who has been sitting beside me.
“Camilla, is there anyone you hate so much that you’d like to put into a fire to burn for all time?”
“N- no.”
“Is there anyone you dislike enough to put into a fire for just a moment?”
“No.”
“Well, Camilla, if there is a God, and I don’t know if there is one, it must be at least as nice as you. And I don’t think any God would ever put anyone into a fire.”
Next morning, I watch Camilla remove the chain with the St. Christopher medal on it from around her neck and drop it onto the table.

“There’s something in the dark outside, Eddie. Will you come out with me?”
“Of course, Camilla”
Leaving the house, we walk a short distance on the sand. Camilla stops, and covering her eyes with her hands, she begins to shriek.
“What is it, Camilla?” I ask, taking hold of her shoulders. “Tell me what it is.”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Something happened to you a long time ago. Tell me what it was.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t want to.”
“It happened in the dark like this. Tell me and it will be all over.”
“No, no.”
“Tell me, Camilla, tell me.”
“One night when I was a young girl I came out of a cinema and a man jumped out of a doorway and - ”
“And what, Camilla? Tell me.”
“He tried to grab me and I ran and ran, but he kept coming after me. I was so frightened, so afraid.”
“All right, Camilla, open your eyes. What do you see? You see me, you see the stars in the sky, you the see the moonlight on the sea. What happened to you happened a long time ago, when you were a little girl. But you’re not a little girl now; you’re a twenty-one year old woman. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then let’s go back to the house.”

Walking back to the house through Juhu village, it strikes me that I don’t know what to do with Camilla. Nobody in the whole world knows what to do with Camilla is the next thought that strikes me and almost makes me topple forward onto my face. Without being aware of it I’ve been seeking security in knowledge: that someone somewhere knows something.
“I’m sorry, madam, but there’s no book that contains the whole truth,” I recall having overheard a librarian telling an old woman, and how that statement had jolted me into asking myself if I was reading in order to discover the entire truth in a book.
Ultimately, no one truly knows anything. All the sciences are incomplete: new theories arise to supplant previous ones.
So, I can’t rely on knowledge in my relationship with Camilla. All I can do is to simply see her as she is, and not try to analyze her nor to judge her nor to expect her to behave as I would want her to behave. It’s like I’m on a tightrope with her, and one false step on my part could send her hurtling to the ground below.

“Pull yourself together, you bitch,” the girls shout at Camilla.
Standing beside her, I see what Camilla sees: the angry eyes of the girls. Surely, those hate-filled eyes won’t help her to recover.
“How are you, Camilla?” Dave asked the other evening, kneeling before her and his eyes boring into her as though he was diabolically pleased to witness her distress.
“Don’t look at me like that, Dave,” Camilla had pleaded. “Please look away.”
I saw what Camilla saw in Dave’s eyes, but she didn’t see that Dave was so unnerved that he didn’t know how to look at her. I used to be like Dave: hearing the laugh of someone mad would set thing unpleasant off in my own head.

“It’s all right, Camilla.” I say, kneeling before her and pressing her trembling body close to mine. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The deep silence in the room makes me look about. Some girls are sitting quietly against a wall and watching Camilla and me as they would a movie romance. Yes, this is what most of them want: to be in someone’s arms. They’re wishing to be where Camilla is at this moment. For some time I refused to believe what I was seeing, telling myself that they couldn’t all be hung-up on me, that it was my ego seeing things as it wished them to be. But I’ve seen it so often now that I can no longer deny what I’m seeing.
Oh, what a loveless world this is. So many wishing to be loved and so few capable of loving.

Camilla, smiling as though she’s harboring a mischievous thought, walks into the main room and sits in an armchair near me.
I turn to look at her. “Oh, Camilla, you’re so beautiful, baby.”
Sitting up, she becomes a very lovely girl. And all the other girls leave the room.
Camilla is a number of women. Sometimes, she’s the young student who can speak intelligently with me on a number of subjects; at other times, she’s the lesbian who looks at me with eyes that doubt that I care for her; often she’s the dumb blonde, hiding her face behind her disheveled hair. That’s when she’s horny and feeling guilty about it. Being with her is like being in a hotel corridor and waiting to see which Camilla is going to pop out of which door. The five year old Camilla from the second door on the right; the seventeen year old Camilla from the fourth door on the left; the twelve year old Camilla from the last door on the right.
Watching her from moment to moment, day after day, I’m feeling as though I’m on acid. I go to sleep feeling high and wake up feeling the same. I wonder if I’m still getting high on smoke? I should stop smoking to see how that feels.

Three days without drugs and I still feel high. So, it seems that I no longer need to smoke. That simplifies my life considerably, as I no longer have to score drugs nor be concerned about concealing them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask, coming into the kitchen and finding Camilla sawing away at her wrist with a knife.
“I’m killing myself.” She looks up at me through her blonde hair, ashamed again of feeling sexy.
“Why are you doing that, Camilla? I don’t want you to die. No one here wants you to die.”
“But I want to die.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Not really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Then, why don’t you use this knife? It’s much sharper than the one you’re using,” I hand her the sharper knife and leave the kitchen.
A few moments later, Camilla comes quietly into the main room.

“I’m leaving the house for a few days, Eddie,” Mary tells me. “You and Camilla may use my bedroom while I’m away.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I haven’t slept in a bed for some time.”
“But don’t think, Eddie, that I’m leaving because I can’t take what’s going on in this house.”
“That thought didn’t occur to me, Mary, until you just said it.”

“I look like an old bag,” Camilla says, looking at the image of her naked body in the full-length mirror in Mary’s room. “A boyfriend told me that.”
“You see how we try to destroy one another; if not with weapons, then with words. You don’t look like an old bag to me.”
“Look all these spots on my body.”
“Those spots are only temporary.”
She comes to lie beside me in the bed. I take her in my arms and kiss her, something I would never have done before with someone who didn’t truly turn me on. I rise above her, frame her face with my hands and enter her. She becomes as lovely as a princess.
“So, this is what fucking is,” she says.
Later, after we’ve been lying peacefully together, Camilla takes hold of my cock.
“Go to sleep, Camilla.” I push away her hand.
I will no longer to be the obliging lover, always ready to do as my partner bids. I’ll fuck only when I feel like fucking.

“Let’s leave this house, Eddie.”
“Why should we do that, Camilla? Here we have friends, food, music, the beach.”
“But I’m bringing everyone down. I can see it in their eyes.”
“You’re not bringing anyone down. What you’re seeing in their eyes what was in them before they ever saw you. What about my eyes, can you look at them?”
“Your eyes I can look at.”
“Well then, Camilla, stick around until you have eyes like mine, and then we’ll help the others to get eyes like ours.”
“You’re crazy, Eddie.”

“Camilla tells me that she wants to leave,” I inform the others in the house, some of whom would love to have her go. “But I don’t want any of you to help her to go. If she leaves, she leaves on her own.”

“You all listen to the love songs of Dylan, the Beatles and the others,” I say to the people in the house seated before me. “And the word love is often on your lips. But I didn’t see much love from any of you for Camilla while she was here. You girls just wanted to get her out of the way to get to me. So, here I am. What do you want from me?
“You know, if I wished to, I could fuck you on Monday, you on Tuesday, you on Wednesday, you on Thursday, you on Friday, and you would not resist me.” Their boyfriends are listening, and they know what I’m saying is true. “But, you know something? I wouldn’t fuck any of you, because I don’t want to be responsible for having made mothers of you. I’m certainly glad that not one of you is my mother nor my father.
“You all know that I don’t dislike you and that I’m not putting you down. I’m just telling you how I see [t.
“And forget about this love thing. It’s based only on the illusions you have of one another. We’re all mad, right? So, how can mad people love? Say sex and not love, because sex is all there is. Sex is what you truly want. Would any of you agree to live with someone who refuses to have sex with you?”

I can no longer play the love game. I have no illusions about them, but they can have illusions about me. I can’t possibly fall in love with them, whereas they are capable of falling in love with me. To have sex with them would be to take advantage of them, causing them unnecessary grief. No, I can’t become sexually involved with anyone.
With no need of sex nor of drugs, I feel incredibly free.

The others having gone to Bombay to score hash, I sit alone in the house, feeling so absolutely serene that one moment such as this seems enough for a lifetime

“Before we came to Juhu, Eddie, we met this wonderful old enlightened man.”
“What’s an enlightened man?”
“Eddie doesn’t know about these things, Mary, “ Dave says. “He’s the one person I‘ve met who hasn’t come to India looking for anything spiritual.”
“An enlightened person is one who has no ego, no sense of self,” explains Mary. “The man we met had the gentle eyes of an innocent child. He seemed so at ease, as though nothing could possibly annoy him. It was hard to imagine him ever speaking a harsh word. He seemed to be enjoying every moment to the full. You remind me a lot of him.”
“Yeah Eddie,” Dave says. “You don’t complain or get uptight or become bored. And some of the things you say are like what the old man says.”
“Lately, some of the things I say just come out of me, like it’s not me saying them.”
“You may be enlightened and not know it.”
“Mary said an enlightened person has no sense of self, so I can’t be enlightened because I have a strong sense of self.”

“This sure is a great house,” says Bill, a diminutive American newcomer to the house. “This table is always loaded with fruit, biscuits, nuts, cigarettes. I just have to reach out and take whatever I want.”
“Yeah, Bill, most people bring those things when they return to the house from outside.”
“I’m sure gonna miss this house when I leave.”
“Where you going from here, Bill?”
“To Italy. To live with my sister.”
“Your sister is rich?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“What is she, a movie star or something? Or did she marry someone with money?”
“She’s a nurse.”
“A nurse? I never heard of a rich nurse, Bill. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“You’re twenty-three years old, and you’re going to live with a sister who’s a nurse? When are you going to grow up, Bill?”
He blinks at me.
“Listen, man, you’re welcome to help yourself to anything that’s on that table, but I, personally, wn’t give you a single penny.”

“Why were you court-martialed out of the navy, Bill?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Come on, Bill, you were arrested, you spent time in the brig, you sat in a courtroom where you were tried. You must remember some of all that.”
Bill, his eyes open, is blanked out. Then seems to be back.
“Where did I go? How long have I been away?”
“Only a moment.”
“What were you saying?”
“I was asking you why you were dismissed from the navy.”
“One night, I was reading a comic book in my bunk . . .”
Again he blanks out, but only for a moment.
“How long was I gone this time?”
“Only some seconds.”
I look at Bill; he blanks out. He’s blanking out whenever I look into his eyes and returning when I look away. I must avoid looking into his eyes.
“You were in your bunk reading a comic book.”
“Yeah, and an officer came by and shouted at me to turn off my light and go to sleep. I became so furious that I jumped out of bed and punched him in the face.” So, Bill’s jovial exterior conceals a strong aggression.

“I’m coming with you,” Bill tells me.
“No, Bill, I’m just going out to eat.”
“That’s all right, I only want to come along.”
“I’ve told you already that I’m not buying you anything.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Okay then, let’s go.”
As we begin our walk through Juhu village, I see that Bill shows no interest in what is happening around us. All he wants to do is lean forward and try to look into my eyes.

“This is what I’ve been doing all my life, Eddie,” Bill says, as we’re about to leave the restaurant.
“What’s that, Bill?”
“Standing and waiting for someone else to pay the bill.”
“And you never liked it, did you, Bill?”
“I know what you’re doing, Eddie. You’re trying to make a man of me.”

“I’ve been wanting to speak with you for days, Eddie,” Mary says.
“I’ve been spending so much time with Bill that I haven’t been available for anyone else. What did you want to speak about with me?”
“Yes, what I‘d like to know is . . .”
“I just remembered something, Eddie,” Bill says, interrupting Mary.
“Mary was trying to say something to me, Bill.”
“No, what I have to tell you is more important.”
“Tell me later. Look, food is being served. You must be very hungry. Go to the dining room and eat.”
Bill leaves.

“We just saw Bill,” a girl tells me. “We were on our way here from Bombay when we met him, and he told us he was on his way there.”
“Oh, that’s terrible news.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s been going on my eyes for the past few days. Now, what kind of eyes is he going to see in Bombay? Angry eyes, greedy eyes, envious eyes, all kinds of insane eyes. He could flip completely.”

The next morning, many of the residents of the house gather in the main room to meet a couple who have just arrived.
“We’ve come all the way from Delhi to meet Eddie,” announces the young man.
“I’m Eddie.”
“Oh, we’ve heard so much about you,” his girlfriend says.
“Don’t believe all those lies.”
“But there were only nice things said about you.”
“All the more reason to believe they were lies. Anyway, are you people planning to stay here?”
“No, we’re on our way to Australia to get married,“ he says.
“Why would you want to get married?”
“To get piles of expensive marriage gifts,” she says.
“I guess that’s a good enough reason as any to . . .”
I’m rocked by a hard thump on my back. I rise to my feet, my little radio falling from my lap onto the floor. I stoop, pick it up and put it on the table. Standing erect and looking about, I see Bill standing in the backyard and, mouth open, staring wild-eyed over dark glasses at me. He has a knife in his hand. He must have stabbed me.
“Give me that knife, motherfucker!”
I pull off my shirt to keep it from becoming bloodied, then try to make my way through the small space between the chairs to the backyard. Realizing that some people in the house may be in shock, I stop to announce, “Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen, this is just another performance of the living theater.”
I rush out, but Bill has fled.
Dave and some of the others come out to inspect my knife-wound.
“You’re so lucky, Eddie,” Dave says. “Bill hit you smack on the backbone. An inch or so to either side, and that dirty old blade of his would have gone deep into you.”
“Does this sort of thing happen here often?” asks the Australian girl.
“Only on Sunday mornings,” I say. “I felt that going to Bombay wasn’t
“You said that going to Bombay wasn’t going to do Bill much good, “Mary says.
“If any of you run into Bill, tell him that I want to see him and that I don’t want to hurt him.”

“There are four policemen checking passports in the house,” Mary says, interrupting my rest in the hammock. “They want to see yours.”
I go into the house with Mary.
“Has anyone checked the identity papers of these men?” I ask. “No? Show me your papers, and I’ll show you my passport.”
They show their papers to everyone.
“Is it true,” I ask the officer checking my visa, “that an enlightened person may stay in India indefinitely?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Good. Then, I’m enlightened.”
“Prove it. Make a golden tree appear in this room.”
“That’s only magic. But look into my eyes. You can see that I love you.”
His eyes become glazed and he becomes silent.
“Tea and biscuits, everyone,” Mary invites, laying a laden tray upon a low table.
Three of the police officers sit on the floor before the table. The fourth remains apart.
The youngest officer points to a medal that Dave is wearing. “That’s Saint Prebananda.”
“Yes, a minor saint,” David says.
The young officer turns his eyes to me.
“Eddie,” he says, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I say, laughing.
“Can we come here, not as police, but just as men?” asks another officer.
“Of course, come whenever you like,” Mary says.
“All right, all right, that’s enough,” says the officer who’s been sitting apart from everyone. “Let’s clear out of here.”
“Too much,” David says, watching the police leave. “Just give them some bhakti and a little prasad, and an Indian will become your devotee.”
“The police must have been told there’s something going on in this house by the locals,” I say. “The other day I saw a couple of the girls in the house refusing entrance at the gate to Conrad Rook who also must have heard that something was happening here.”
“I have an idea of how we can all be permitted to stay in India,” Dave says. “Eddie, if you can convince the Indian government that you’re enlightened, you may be granted the right to set up an ashram, and then we’ll all be able to stay in India as your devotees.”
“But I won’t be giving you love and biscuits.”
“We’re not expecting anything. Just go to that enlightened man and see if he’ll confirm that you’re enlightened. If he does so, go to the Indian government with his confirmation and see what happens. I’ll tell you how to find the old man in Delhi.”

“It’s sad to see that some of you are going to miss me when I’m gone,” I tell some of the freaks staying of the house. “But I’ll tell you something: I won’t be missing any of you. When I step out that door, I’ll be stepping into a completely new scene with different characters. Then, it will be one scene after another, and I’ll be so totally into each of those scenes that I won’t be able to think of past scenes.”
“So, you’re happy to be leaving us, Eddie.”
“No, Mary, I’m not happy and I’m not unhappy. It’s simply time for me to leave. I’ll be seeing some of you in Kathmandu and elsewhere.”

1967
“So, Eddie, tell us what happened in Delhi?” ask Mary and Dave in The Blue Tibetan Restaurant in Kathmandu.
“The first thing I did in Delhi was something I’d been dreading to do for months: go to The American Consulate to ask for a new passport. I’d been afraid that I might not only be denied a passport, but be apprehended by the Embassy and sent back to the States to face trial. But now, ready for any eventuality, I walked into The Consulate, asked for a new passport and was given one in a few minutes.”
“Did you meet the holy man?” asks Dave.
“Yeah, I met him at a meeting with his followers. Being the only foreigner there, he motioned to me to come up to him. When I told him that some of my friends thought that I might be enlightened and wanted to know his opinion about that, he asked me if I’d seen the light. I said that I sometimes saw flashes of light and at other times a flickering light. He didn’t seem to be impressed by what I said, so I dropped the matter.”
“That was it for having an ashram,” Dave says.
“No, I went to the Lok Saba and made an appointment to see someone about that. Then, back in Connaught Place, I ran into Nigel who’d been staying with us in the Juhu house, and told him that I had sores on my penis that made me afraid that I had a venereal disease. He told me that he also had sores on his dick and had gone to a doctor that very day and learned that he had scabies, a common disease in India. He’d bought a bottle of escabial lotion and was going to the flat of a young English couple to take a warm shower and to use the lotion. I was welcome to come along to do the treatment.
“The English couple were really sweet. They’d just heard about Mellow Yellow – you know smoking the inside of banana peels- and were eager to try doing that.”
“That would be too much if it really worked and bananas became illegal all over the world,” Mary says.
“Yeah, imagine trying to smuggle banana peels before they spoil,” says Dave. “But tell us what happened at the Lok Saba.”
“The minister I was assigned to meet was the son of Radakrishnan, the Indian philosopher. I told him that my friends thought I was enlightened and that I should be permitted to have an ashram in India. He said he was also enlightened but he didn’t wish to have an ashram. ‘If your friends want you to have an ashram, they should build it in your own country,’ he said.”
“Yes, it’s better this way,” Mary says. “If the Indian government granted you the right to have an ashram, the police would be coming often to see what’s going on. That wouldn’t be very free or much fun.”
“Wherever Eddie happens to be is his ashram,” Dave says.

When Mary and Dave play their guitars in The Blue Tibetan it becomes jammed, the crowd overflowing onto the street.
Apparently Mary and Dave have been talking about me because a number of freaks have questions for me.
“What can I do to become enlightened?”
“Nothing. Don’t want to become enlightened.”
“What will happen to us after we die?”
“Most likely we’ll be forgotten.”
“But I’m an artist and I want to be remembered.”
“What difference will it make when you’re dead and gone what people say about you?”
“Plenty of difference. I want my work to be known and appreciated.”
“For how long? Forever? But there is no forever. This earth, this solar system and this universe are destined to die.”
“You’re bringing me down, man.”
“No, I’m only reminding you of the way it is. Just enjoy making your art and forget about becoming famous.”
“Eddie, what is your sign?”
“No parking.”

I scat sing to rhythms I tap out on a tabletop in the Blue Tibetan.
“Eddie, I really dig you.”
Looking up, I see Swedish Ingella sitting beside me.
“Hey, Ingella, you’re out of the hospital. Are you fully recovered?”
“Almost. When I left they gave me a list of medicines I should take, but my friend Greg doesn’t want to get them for me because they are chemical.”
“That’s okay, so long he gets you the non-chemical equivalents.”
“I was so glad you came to visit me in the hospital. I liked talking with you when I came to the house in Juhu. You speak to me simply as a friend with no game involved.”
Greg stands before our table.
“Let’s go home, Ingella,” he says.
“I’m talking with Eddie, Greg.”
“I said, let’s go home.”
Don’t do this, Greg. I pray silently.
“You go, Greg; I’ll come later.”
“Come now, or pack your bags and leave when you finally do come.”
Ingella makes no move, and Greg stomps out.
“Does he mean what he says, Ingella?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So, what will you do? Do you have somewhere to stay?”
“I’ll have to look for one.”
“If you like, you can stay in the dormitory where I stay. It’s a rupee a night, but I can pay for you until you have your own money.”
“That sounds cool, Eddie.”

“It’s outrageous what he’s doing.”
“ . . . a girl less than half his age.”
“ . . . hard to believe unless you see it.”
The boys, lying on mattresses on the opposite wall of The Dormitory, whisper about Ingella occupying a mattress beside mine.
It’s disappointing to hear such comments coming from supposedly freedom- loving hippies. They’re not as hip as they think they are. They may smoke pot, but they’re as conventional in their thinking as their alcohol- using parents.
I lie back and shut my eyes. Vivid colors swirl upon the screen in my head. A man’s frowning face forms amongst the colors, then slowly glides from view to be replaced by an angry face and a phantasmagoria of faces - ugly, leering, glowering - blending into one another or pushing each other aside. It’s like I’m on an acid. Did someone drop a trip into my tea? These faces must be manifestations of the emotions of the boys across the room?

“Listen, Ingella, I’m not into having sex any longer. So, if you have eyes for anyone, feel free to go for him.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I know how to go for what I like.”

“I just heard that Roger and Gisella are in jail in Spain for practicing black magic,” Dave tells me.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You’re sorry, after what you said they’d done to you?”
“I thought at first they’d done a most terrible thing to me, sending me into the deepest despair, even bringing me to the brink of killing myself. But it seems now to be the best thing that anyone could have done for me. Because if I hadn’t gone down to that lowest point of my mind, I wouldn’t be who I am today.”
“But Roger and Gisella never intended that you benefit from what they did.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m grateful for what happened.”

“Another anti-hippy article in the paper today.” A young freak drops the newspaper onto the floor of the Blue Tibetan. “Why don’t they get off our backs?” “Why does that article disturb you?” I ask. “Do you think you’re a hippy?”
“Of course I do. You don’t?”
“I never wish to be anyone but me.”
“Well, they think you’re a hippy.”
“It doesn’t matter to me what anyone thinks I am. But why do you want to be known as a hippy? Is it because you’ll feel stronger if you belong to a group? But you can never belong to anyone but yourself. No matter how tight you hug someone, you remain separate. You are alone, you have always been alone and you will always be alone. No one else can taste an apple for you, nor have an orgasm for you, nor die in your place.”
“These are great times we’re livin’ in, man,” another freak chimes in. “We’re all going to be enlightened soon.”
“Sure, we’re all going to take a train and arrive in Nirvana station together?” I laugh. “That’s a lot of wishful thinking.”
“No, there’s going to be a great blast of light in the sky which we’re all going to see and become enlightened.”
“I’ll give you odds of a million to one that it doesn’t happen.”
“The Beatles are into it.”
“So what? Are they an authority on enlightenment? They’re just riding on the crest of a fad, man.”

“I’m moving into a nice little house in Swayambhu,” Ingella tells me. “You want to stay there with me?”
“No, I want to be in town where I can meet more freaks.”
“Mary, David and many other freaks are leaving Kathmandu to avoid the monsoon.”
“I know that, but student on vacation from Europe are arriving.”

“Where can I meet this doctor who gives heroin injections?” a freak asks me in The Blue Tibetan.
“His place is not far from here, but it’s not easy to tell you how to get there. I’ll have take you.”
“Good, let’s go.”
“Wait!” another freak pipes up. “Do you think it’s moral of you to take this dude to Doctor Smack?”
“Would it be more moral to know the way and not to tell him? Look, I’m not trying to persuade him to go there, and I’m not going to give him the fix. I’m merely showing him the way. I took you to the black market money changer, didn’t I?. Was that being immoral?”

“Ingella collapsed in the street this afternoon,” a French freak living in Swayambhu tells me. “We had to take her to the hospital.”
“Which one?”
“The Mission.”
“Do you know the visiting hours there?”
“Afternoons.”

“This time, Ingella, stay in the hospital until you’re fully recovered. I’ll try to visit you as often as I can.”
“But it’s boring in here, Eddie.”
“Look, there’s nothing happening for you anywhere but where you happen to be. Just now you have to be here, so this is where it’s happening for you. If you can’t bear to be with yourself, how can you expect anyone else to bear being with you?”
“The nurses and attendants aren’t real here, Eddie. They wish me good morning and ask me how I feel, but they’re not even looking at me when they speak. It’s like they’re robots, just repeating things they’ve been taught to say.”
“Make the best of it, Ingella. Look, you have a nice bed facing the whole room. Everything in this room is going on before you.”
“Yes, sometimes it’s funny watching the other patients. A woman can be laughing and joking with the other patients, but as soon as she sees the doctor coming to her bed she’ll become quiet and look like she’s in pain so she can keep him by her bedside.
“And a young girl who was going to get married talked only about all the things she was going to get and not a word about the man she was going to marry. You’re right, Eddie, most people in the East don’t believe in romantic love.”
“Some men in Nepal do. They have two wives: the arranged marriage wife followed by the love wife.”

A tall man wearing robes walks up to my table in The Blue Tibetan. “Eddie!” It’s the Michael I’d met in Athens and later at the hotel in Heart.
“What’s happening, Michael?”
“I’m not Michael any longer. I’m Bhagvan Das, an ordained Sri Lankan Buddhist monk. And you, how are you, Eddie? Heard you did a little time in Copenhagen.”
“Yeah, three months.”
I see that Michael in his robes impresses the freaks present. How gullible these hippies are. I can see guys like Michael going to the West to become hippy authorities on Eastern religions.

“I’m gonna do a little chanting to help you get better, Ingella,” Bhagavan Das says in the hospital.
He lays an animal skin on the floor at the foot of her bed, then sits on it in like a yogi. Producing a candle from within his robes, he lights it and sets it on the floor.
A nurse approaches to watch over his shoulder.
“Put out that candle,” she orders. “You can’t perform a Buddhist ceremony here.”
“Why not?”
“This is a Christian hospital and it’s not permitted.”
“What harm is there in my saying a few prayers for the sick girl?”
“Please put out the candle.”
“How can you people be so intolerant of the practices of other religions?”
“And how can you be so disrespectful of the rules of this hospital? We believe in God; you Buddhists do not.”
“Come on, Bhagavan, give it up, man,” I tell him.
“All right, I see it’s useless to reason with these people. Ingella, you must leave this place immediately.”
“No, she stays here until she’s fully fit.”
“If Buddhists don’t believe there’s a god, who were you going to pray to?” asks Ingella.

“Hey, Eddie, Richard Alpert is in town,” a young freak tells me.
“I know he came to The Blue Tibetan with an Indian guide.”
“And, like I heard he did in Benares, he’s giving a trip of acid and one of STP to any freak who wants. All we have to do is go to The Soaltee Hotel to get them”

“I’m going to visit Richard Alpert and his friend at the Soaltee,” Bhagavan Das tells me.
“Are you buying yourself a pair of shoes?”
“No, why should I?”
“So many barefoot freaks have been going to the hotel to pick up their free trips of acid and STP that the hotel management has decided not to allow shoeless freaks to enter.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get in, Eddie. By the way, I heard Ingella is out of the hosspital. How is she?”
“She seems to be as well as can be.”

“Hey, Eddie, I just saw an article in The London Sunday Times about the white tribes overland trek to India and Nepal,” a young freak tells me. “It was a four page article with color photographs. At the end of the article there was a photo of you. ‘Eight Finger Eddie, Uncle of the Hippies’ was printed under it. Your going to be famous, Eddie. Almost every freak coming to India from Britain will have seen that article and will want to meet you.”

Entering The Blue Tibetan, I find Bhagavan Das sitting at a table with a number of freaks.
“Alpert gave me some money and trips to distribute, Eddie,” he says. “You need anything?”
“No, I’m all right. You were a long time in the Soaltee. You must’ve been having a ball?”
“Not at all. Those guys played tapes of their acid trips, and you wouldn’t hear anything for an hour or so until someone would go, ‘Wow!’ or ‘Phew’. But it’s going to get better now; Alpert and I are going to a Zen Buddhist conference in Kyoto. And we’ll be stopping in Calcutta to catch the October Indian classical music concerts.”

“I’m going to Benares and then to Goa, Ingella. You feel like coming with me?” I ask.
“I want to come with you.”

“What is your relationship to this girl?” asks one of a group of rowdy teen-age students on the train to Benares.
“She’s my daughter,” I say, and that silences them.
That’s a good one; I’ll use it whenever a girl travels with me.

In Benares, Ingella and I stay on one of the houseboats on rented to freaks on the Ganges. We meet a number of Benares freaks: some going to university or studying Indian classical music or dance and others just hanging out.
“Why won’t you let anyone put a tika on your forehead?” asks Ingella.
“I don’t want anyone to think I’m Hindu.”

Someone enters the houseboat while I’m just falling asleep and goes to where Ingella lies. It’s Australian John I can tell by the sound of his voice. Assuming that he’s here to come on to her, I tune off.
He’s not here in the morning.
“What happened to John, Ingella?”
“He got bored and left.”
“He seemed to be far from bored when I fell asleep last night.”
“I was hitch-hiking in India with a boyfriend once and we got picked up by a lorry. The sound of the engine was so deafening in the driver’s cabin that I asked to go on the back of the lorry. My friend stayed with the driver. While the lorry was in motion the driver’s assistant crawled up to me and told me that he was going to fuck me. ‘Go ahead,’ I said, and lay there like a limp pancake. It was such a turnoff that he left.”
“Is that what you did to John last night?”
“That shouldn’t concern you, Eddie.”

“Eddie!”
Turning, I find Alice.
“Hi, Alice, you just arriving?” I nod toward the bag she’s carrying.
“Yes, glad I can stop for awhile. But who is this?”
“This is Ingella. She’s been traveling with me.”
“Oh, and where are you staying?”
“On a houseboat.”
“May I see?”
“Sure, we’re going there now.”

“Yes it’s a cosy little boat you have,” Alice says, dropping her bag on the floor. “I’m staying here, too.”
“Good. So, if you’re going to stay with us, I’d better tell you about our sleeping arrangements. Ingella sleeps on the raised floor in the front end of the boat, I sleep on the floor of the main section, and you can sleep either on the floor or on the benches along the sides of the boat.”
“There’s no toilet on the boat, I see.”
“We go outside.”
“Where outside?”
“Anywhere. Also, some of the other boats have toilets. If you make friends with the freaks staying on those boats, they might let you use their toilet.”

“This Alice seems to be very hung-up on you,” Ingella says when Alice has gone out the following morning.
“Yes, she didn’t sleep at all last night. Just smoked one cigarette after another.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing special. Just treated her the way I do anyone else. One afternoon in The Blue Tibetan I heard a girl at another table laughing at almost everything I said, and I knew that she’d heard about me before coming to Kathmandu. That was Alice. She quickly became one of those freaks who went wherever I went. She even moved into The Dormitory later.”
“She doesn’t seem to be a freak.”
“She isn’t. She’s a Peace Corps dropout who became discouraged when she couldn’t get anything done in India because of the incompetence of the Indian and American governments.”
“So, she left the Peace Corps and found you.”
“It seems that she wants to be a part of some great endeavor.”
“You are engaged in a great endeavor, Eddie?”
“Of course, I’m constantly endeavoring to remain entirely unemployed.”

“Ingella must leave this boat,” Alice declares to us. “ She just walks off the boat whenever she pleases without saying a word to you.”
“Ingella’s free to come and go as she likes.”
“She’s not aware of what great man you are. She’s not devoted to you at all.”
“I don’t expect anyone to be devoted to me. Are you devoted to me, Alice?”
“Certainly, I am.”
“I don’t believe you are.”
“I am totally devoted to you.”
“Let’s see how devoted you are. Take off your clothes, lie on the floor and let’s fuck. Ingella won’t mind.”
Alice hesitates, then stares at me until tears appear in her eyes. Sobbing, she picks up her bag and leaves the boat.
“What would you have done if she’d taken off her clothes, Eddie?”
“I would have shit.”

“Why does Ingella have to be sent back to Sweden?” I ask the Swedish delegate who’s come onto our houseboat with an Indian police officer.
“She’s a minor, and her family is worried that she may be dying of drug abuse.”
“Look at her. Does she look like she’s dying?”
“No, but what can I do? I have my orders.”
“Can’t you assure her family that you’ve found her that she’s in good health?”
“I sincerely wish I could do that, but. . . ”
“What if I don’t want to go back?” asks Ingella.
“You’re only seventeen and not old enough to decide that for yourself.”
“Well, Ingella, it looks like we’ve reached the end of this particular road. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you back in India soon.”

1967 - 1968
“We hate to disturb your peace, Eddie, but we heard you were in Colva and we wanted to see you” American Steve says, coming up to me on the beach with his wife and ten year old daughter. “This Colva is really a fine beach. Are you alone here?”
“I was last season, but this year there are a couple of huts on the beach,”
“We’re staying in Calungate, but it’s nowhere as nice as this.”
“You’re staying near the beach, Eddie?”
“The first occupied house on your right as you’re leaving the beach. The same family I stayed with last season. They invited me to stay for three nights; I stayed three months, and they were begging me not to go when I left. Now, they are happy I’m back.”
“What do you do all day?” asks Odile, Steve’s wife.
“Only what I like to do. I read, I listen to music, I go on the beach, I eat.”
“Don’t you get bored, with so little to do?”
“I get bored only when there’s something to do.”

“I hope you don’t mind, Eddie, but we’ve decided to move to this beach,” Steve tells me a few days later. “Do you know of any good houses for rent?”
“No one rents houses this time of year, but I’ll show you around.”

“We like the house,” Steve says to the landlady of the first house I take them to. “How much money you want for one month?”
The landlady hesitates for some moments, then says, “Fifty rupees,” and quickly covers her mouth as though she’s uttered a great sin.
“That seems reasonable,” Steve says, not even trying to bargain with the woman. Assuming that he knew how to do business in India I hadn’t bothered to tell him that the Goans paid only five rupees a month for such a house.
“With people like Steve arriving it won’t be long before I’ll be asked to pay rent.

“The little blonde girl living in a hut on the beach is Mia Farrow,” Big Eddie tells.
“How do you know?”
“We used to live next door to each other in California.”
“Were you lovers?”
“No.”
“Are you now?”
“I asked her if she’d like to get it on with me, but she told we’d known each other too long for that. What’s too long, man?”
“When the mystery is gone, it seems.”

After having had dinner at Steve and Odile’s. I lie exhausted on my mattress at home. My body is tired, but my mind is fully awake. A light, as though coming from an adjoining room, shines within my head. And I become aware that my consciousness is imprisoned in this animal, the body. It’s tired so I have to lie down with it. Actyally, the body is king. It dictates almost all that I do. When it’s hungry I must stop to eat, when it’s thirsty I must drink, when it needs to go to the toilet I must go with it. I’m imprisoned within this animal which will outlive me. When my consciousness dies the elements that comprise the body will live forever in other forms.

“My mother says we need your room, Eddie, because some of our relatives are arriving,” Anthony tells me.
“Okay, I’ll move out right away.”
I can’t blame the family for asking me to leave when they see how much Steve and the the others who are arriving are willing to pay for a house.
I move to the outdoor bar on the beach, closed for the season, to use one of their tables to sleep on.

“I don’t like it, Eddie,” Steve says. “All these people: petty gangsters from New York; idiots who shoot LSD in the vein; assholes who frighten the Goan landladies by insisting on standing naked before them; shitheads who’ve only heard of you running around and shouting Eight Finger Eddie all over the place. They’re making you into a cult figure.”
“What should I do, Steve? Disappear? At least, they’re not on spiritual trips.”
“I’m not blaming you, Eddie. You can’t help what they do. I just can’t stand having them around.”
“Is that why you never come to my house?”
“Why did you have to rent that place? It was so quiet here before. Now there’s noise coming from your place almost all night long.”
“It’s cold here at night, Steve, so I’m providing shelter for those who have little or no money to rent a room. Come over sometime; you might enjoy it. ”
“I don’t want to associate with those young shitasses. I don’t see how you can bear to be with them.”
“Because of the way I choose to live, it’s inevitable that I must spend almost all my time with people half my age. I only wonder how they can bear to be with me.”
“But what can you learn from them?”
“I always assume that everyone I meet knows all that I know, plus what they know. So, I can learn something from everyone I meet.”
“But what do these young shits learn from you?”
“How they can still be freaks when they’re twice as old as they are. How old are you, Steve? Early thirties, right? About fifteen years younger than me. So, if I felt as you do, I wouldn’t be associating with a young shitass like you.”

“You people are so lucky to be able to live as you do,” Mia Farrow tells us on Steve’s porch. “I wish I could do it, but I have to work.”
“You must have enough money to drop everything and just hang out for the rest of your life.” I say. “Garbo did it,”
“But I’m not Garbo. It’s not so easy for me to break out of my contracts and other commitments.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult if you didn’t have the desire to further your career. But what are you doing in India?”
“Waiting to go to Rishikesh with the Beatles and the others to meet our guru. A woman at the Indian Tourist Bureau suggested that I come to Goa to wait. But I’ll be leaving soon. Will any of you be coming to Rishikesh?”
“Not me,” says Steve.
“Nor me,” I say. “If you were to tell me that a living Buddha was standing under that tree in the garden, I wouldn’t step off this porch to look at him. What can a Buddha do for me?”
“You don’t think a guru can help you to understand yourself?”
“You were probably into being psychoanalized before you got on this guru trip, and you’ll probably return to it when you become disillusioned with the spiritual quest. No, no one can help me to understand myself. To me, these Indian gurus are con men who take advantage of starry-eyed believers, especially those from the West who have the most money. Religion is a very profitable business, selling a product that costs nothing.”
“You’re being quite cynical, Eddie? What product does religion have to sell?”
“Hope, what else. Hope of rebirth into a better life; hope of a life everlasting in heaven above.”

“These are exciting times, Eddie,” Nigel, who had been a regular at Mary’s house in Juhu. “So many freaks are into spirituality, and the Mahesh Yogi is getting a large following now that The Beatles are into him.
“I don’t see this as a spiritual time at all but as a hopelessly naïve one. And I deplore the coupling of religion with enlightenment.”
“That’s because you’re enlightened but not religious.”
“Some of my friends say that, but I don’t know enough about it to say I am or not. If I am, then how did it happen? I wasn’t religious nor was I looking for enlightenment. In fact, I didn’t learn about it until I was in Mary’s house. Judging by that, there must have been enlightened beings on earth before religion discovered them.”
“That’s right, it couldn’t have been the other way around. That means that an enlightened being cannot belong to any religion. And yet, some religions claim to know the way to enlightenment.”
“If there were such a path, we could all go on it and reach the goal”

1968
Returned to Kathmandu, I’m back in The Dormitory and spending much time in The Blue Tibetan. One afternoon, a Nepalese man who seems familiar to me walks into the restaurant, drops a paper bag on top of a table and orders tea. From within the bag he removes chunks of hashish and lays them on the table. A couple of freaks go over to inspect his wares.
Now I remember the man. The season before he’d sometimes sit in The Blue Tibetan packed with smokers and contemptuously drink American beer from a can. His way of protesting against the smokers. And here he is not only smoking the stuff but pushing it as well.

A girl approaches me in The Dormitory.
“Can I speak to you?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Some of the guys around here have me totally upset, telling me this is the era of free sex and that I should get with it. When I tell them I would if I found someone I liked they accuse me of being a discriminating bitch, a frigid nun masquerading as a freak and that I should get free or leave the scene. They make me feel so unsure of myself.”
“You are free. You’re free to say no.”
“That’s right, isn’t it: I’m free to say no.”

Tibetan Joe, the proprieter of The Blue Tibetan, approaches the man sitting with his hash on the table.
“I told you one time, I told you two times, keep your hashish off my table.”
“There’s no law aganst having the stuff on the table.”
“This is my shop, and I am the law here. So, take your bag off the table.”
The man simply stares up at Joe. Joe picks up the bag and drops it in the man’s lap. The man plops the bag back onto the table.
“I’m a Rana and you’re only a refugee, so go back to your cash counter,” the man says, and Tibetan Joe retreats.

Many freaks, sitting on the floor of the new art gallery, wait to see Jean Cocteau’s film “Beauty and the Beast”.
“Eddie,” the lady who owns the gallery calls out. “Tell your people to not smoke in the gallery.”
“My people, don’t smoke in the gallery.” There is much laughter. “You see, madam, these are not my people; they are their own people.”

I’m suatting on the toilet in The Dormitory when there is a lod banging on the door.
“Eddie, Eddie, come out quick,” members of the Nepali shout to me.
“Wait awhile; let me finish.”
“Sir, much danger, come out.”
I pull up my pants and open the door. The landlady’s son grabs my arm and pulls me out. A man with a flashlight in one hand and a stick in the other enters the toilet.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’ll see, sir.”
The man comes out of the toilet, a snake dangling from his stick. The two Nepalis beat the snake to death.
“Very poisonous snake, sir.”
“How did you know he was in there?”
“We saw him go in. You very lucky he didn’t bite you.”

“You’re not paying attention, my boy,” Ganesh Baba says, singling me out from the freaks gathered around him in The Matchbox Lodge.
“Don’t mind me. Continue with your comments on Immanuel Kant. I’m no longer interested in philosophy.”
“And why have you lost your interest in philosophy?”
“Because it’s nothing but ideas strung together by the mind and whatever the mind concocts is not true ultimately.”
“All right, that’s enough. You’re talking rubbish because your spine is not straight. A bent spine produces bent thought. But tell us something: what does interest you?”
“I’ll show you.”
I rise from the floor and sit in a chair. Taking out the radio from my bag, I find a station broadcasting Indian raga being played on the sarod. Sitting, I move my arms and the upper part of my body to the music.
“Ah, look how gracefully his body moves. It flows with effortless ease,” Ganesh Baba says. “He could dance in a number of ensembles in India. And, you see. he dances so well because his spine is straight.”
I begin to sing along with the music on the radio.
“Oh, such a wonderful voice. It raises the hair on the back of my neck. And, look again at how straight his spine is. When he sings, when he dances, it is heavenly because his spine is straight. But when he speaks his spine is crooked, so he speaks bullshit.”
I slide off the chair and sit on the floor.
“What is your name, my friend?”
“Eddie.”
“Ah, but you’re not Eight Finger Eddie, are you?”
I hold up my hands.
“Oh, please forget any criticism I’ve made of you. I’ve heard so many good things about you. Whatever you’re doing is fine. Be just as you are.”

“Eddie, I never met anyone like you,” Tibetan Joe tells me before anyone has arrived one early morning in The Blue Tibetan. “You never sad, you never complain, you always singing. In Tibetan Buddhism we have five Buddhas. I think you are the Yellow Buddha. He also have same two fingers as you missing his right hand.”
Actually, I don’t want to be known as the Yellow Buddha.
“I not call you Mr. Eddie any more; I call you Mr. Buddha.”
“Sounds like a good title for a book, Joe.”
The man who calls himself a Rana enters The Blue Tibetan and drops his bag of hash onto a table. It’s early morning and I’m the only customer there. Tibetan Joe pick up Rana’s hash bag and throws it on the floor.
The Rana pushes Joe who fights back and they grapple. The cook comes running down the stairs, takes out the long sword from the scabard hanging on the wall and places its pointed end against The Rana’s body.
“Stop it, you guys, before somebody gets hurt,” I say, and they back away from each other. “Rana pick up your bag and get out of here.”
“Come with me,” he says, and we leave together. “If I want to sell hash I must have my own place. You help me look for a place?”
“Yeah, sure. In fact, I think I know a good place for a club.”

Sitting on my bed, I move my arms and the upper part of my body to the Indian classical music on my radio. From an adjoining room come sounds of a female moaning sexually. One of the landlady’s daughters probably, entertaning a client. Quite a number of freaks moved out of The Dormitory as soon as they suspected it to be a brothel as well as a tourist lodge. What would they think of me if they knew of my life with Gwen? They probably wouldn’t believe it if I told them.
What’s this? My arms are moving with incredible speed with hardly any effort on my part. I look at them with amazement as they fly about me. I’ve never experienced such tremendous energy. My eyes shut, a vision of my spine weaving to the music like the body of a snake appears within me. An upward rush of energy makes my head seem that it is the top of a tower capable of receiving pictures and of sending messages. I seem to see freaks stoned out in various chi shops around Kathmandu.
A large sun appears before me in my room. It is very bright, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes to look at it. In fact, it’s impossible not to look at it. No matter where I look it’s there before me. I shut my eyes and the sun, unchanged, shines within me.
The sun is power, sheer power. It must be the core of all life. All living things must spring from this sun. And if it’s in me, it must be in everyone.
The sun is drawing me to it. An invisible cord attached to my body just below my right rib is pulling me toward it.
If I allow myself to be drawn into the sun, its great power will surely burn out my brain, destroy my body. This is a moment of truth for me. There is only the sun and me, and it’s impossible for me to lie to myself. I can’t tell myself that I’m not afraid of becoming insane, that I’m not afraid of dying, when I am. No, I’m not ready to die. I still have things I wish to do in life.
I pull back from the sun, and it vanishes.
I sit with my back against the wall of my room, disappointed that I’ve failed to join the sun. But I wasn’t ready to risk dying to do that.
At least I know that I’m not enlightened. That’s a relief. Some people had me half-believing that I was. But how can I tell them what happened tonight. It would be too embarrassing to say that I backed away from the sun when I had the opportunity to go to the other side. I could simply say that the sun is in everyone and that it seems one must risk dying to become enlightened. And if I’m asked how I know that?
Why not tell what happened? How many people have I met who’ve been where I’ve been tonight? Not one, right? So, why should I be ashamed to simply tell it as it was?

What happened to me last night? I wonder the following morning. In the dorm there are many books dealing with spirituality the freaks leave when they go to town. I go there to look through their titles until I find one that interests me: “The Secret Oral teachings of Tibetan Buddhism” by Alexandre David-Neal. Reading, I come upon the word Kundalini and learn that my Kundalini had risen to the top of my head last night. Kundalini, the Serpent Power. Yes, and hadn’t I visualized my spine weaving like the body of a snake? So, one doesn’t have to believe in Buddhism to have one’s Kundalini rise.
I learn also that there are two teachngs in Tibetan Buddhism: an exoteric teaching meant for the masses, with belief in rebirth and all that; and an esoteric teaching for the elite, without a belief in rebirth. I’d been wondering how the Tibetan Buddhists could speak of reincarnation when the Buddha had pronounced that there was nothing permanent in life, no Atman to travel from this life to the next.
Also, I learn that there are two main teachings in Hinduism: Yoga and Sankiya. Yoga is the way of doing: reading the sacred books, meditating, performing puja, following a guru and so on. Sankiya is the way of not doing: not reading the sacred books, not meditating, not doing puja, not looking for a guru, not seeking enlightenment because it can only come to you; you can’t go to it. Seems I’ve been a Sankia person and not known it

“So you say that all the spiritual disciplines I’m practicing are a waste of time,” a freak tells me on a houseboat on the Gunga in Benares.
“Sankiya states that. But it won’t be a total waste of time if you go all the way with those disciplines and end up where Sankiya begins.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Okay, you read the sacred books until you realize that they don’t get you anywhere and you throw them out. And you do puja until you see it doesn’t work and you throw it out. You do this and you do that and, seeing they don’t help, you drop them. Finally, like a junkie kicking an addiction, you kick the guru. And where are you? You’re where Sankiya begins when it states that nothing you do will get you anywhere.”
“So all Indian gurus teach the way of Yoga.?”
“Some of them may have been espousing Sankiya before they became discouraged by seeinging those they spoke to nod in agreement with what was being said and then run after the first guru who happened along. Deciding that most people are incapable of learning by hearing alone, that they think they must make an effort to achieve enlightenment, these individuals stop speaking of Sankiya to become gurus in the hope that they will win fame and fortune and Western pussy. They will teach their followers to make an effort. All to no avail. Because who will make the effort? Ego will. But Ego doesn’t know what enlightenment is nor where it is. But in the end, it seems we will all become one with the sun without making the slightest effort.
“What does that mean?”
“If we’ve all come from the sun, then we will all return to it an instant before we die.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I say that I’m not ready to give up me guru nor my practices just yet.”
“Why should I mind? Look, I have not the slightest interest in what you do or of what becomes of you. I don’t want to change you or to save you. And I don’t want to save humankind nor to do anything to save the environment. It’s too late for all that. The human mind and the environment are polluted and they’re becoming more polluted by the day. No, everything is all right just as it is.”
“Spoken like a truly pessimistic and unenlightened being.”
“Pessimist, realist, I’m not enlightened and I don’t want to be.”

1968 - 1969
“I’ve rented the first house when you leave the beach,” I tell a number of freaks on Colva. “And any who wishes is welcome to stay there.”
“You mean that abandoned house some Goans are using to piss on?”
“They won’t be doing that when we’re there. Have you noticed how large place is? We could have up to a hundred freaks staying there.”
“You gonna be serving food?”
“If someone wants to make food, they may.”
“I guess we could collect money for the food.”
“No, this will be a free house. There’ll be no collecting money. Voluntary contributions will be accepted. Otherwise, I’ll pay for everything.”

“Something scary happened to me on Christmas Eve, Eddie,” Dutch Harry tells me. “I went to midnight mass in the church here in Colva and, before I knew what was happening, I found myself lying flat on my face on the floor of the church and crying like a baby.”
“I guess you were brought up a Catholic, right? So you may been crying because you think you haven’t been a good Catholic. Or you may have been crying for your self, afraid that you will burn in hell forever.”
“Ah, I have to go now.”
“How‘re you getting along in the house, Harry.”
“Oh, fine, I like being with a lot of people.”

“Don’t listen to Eddie,” Dutch Harry advises. “He talks bullshit. He’s an old man afraid to be alone, so he gives us food and a place to stay to keep him company. Don’t listen to him; listen to me.”
For days, Harry has been sitting across the room from me and watching as I speak to those who come to me. It seems that Harry is the lonely one who wishes to have people around him.
“Look, everybody, look!” Harry, standing, extends his arms as far as he can to the right and to the left. Hanging his head, grunting and seeming to make a great effort, he pulls his arms down to his hips.

“Don’t play with the fire!” Harry shouts, charging into the room where the freaks, candles burning before them, sit on the floor along the walls of the main room.
He runs around the room and kicks out the candles one after another.
“Only I can play with the fire.”
Harry picks up a candle, lights it and holding it before him, he rubs his thumb and forefinger in the flame.
“You see? Only I can play with the fire.”

“Eddie’s lonely hearts’ club home,” Harry taunts the others in the house. “Look at him. He’s the only one who dances, the only one who’s happy, while the rest of you are lonely bleeding hearts.”
As he raises his fist to strike someone, I rush toward him, and he backs away.
“Harry,” I say, “quite a number of people are making music ot listening to music in the house.”
“That’s not music; that’s fucking noise.”
I’ve noticed that some of the boys playing instruments seem to direct their aggressive sounds at Harry.

“Eddie! Save me.”
Returning to the house after shopping, I find Harry being chased around the room by a number of the boys. Harry runs to me and uses me as a shield.
“What are you guys doing?” I ask the irate boys. “Why are you beating up on Harry?”
“We can’t take his bullshit any more. He’s got it coming to him.”
“What’s wrong with you people? You complain about the way mental patients are mistreated in hospitals, and here you are mistreating Harry.”
“Aw, he’s not crazy. He’s only acting.”
“Anyone who acts as he does must be crazy. Don’t forget, what’s happening to Harry could happen to any one of us. Would we like to be treated the way you’re treating Harry?”
“He’s a menace; he should be hospitalized.”
“No, he stays, and we stop him only when he tries to hurt someone. If you object to that, you’re free to leave.”

“What is the significance of that?” An Indian tourist, who has casually walked into the house, points at a colored design painted on the wall.
“It has no significance other than what you see,” I explain.
“Look at the hippies making chapaties,” a lady tourist’s voice comes from the kitchen.
“We’ve come more than a thousand miles to see this house,” one of the tourists tells me.
Recently, numbers of Indian tourists, all seeming to have prior knowledge of the house, have been descending from buses and entering the house as though it’s a museum. Are all Indians clairvoyant?

“The police put me jail in Margao, and look how they beat me.” Harry rolls up his shirt to show us the lash marks on his back.
“Oh, Harry, how awful,” says a young girl. ”But why were you jailed, Harry?”
“I attacked a priest in his church.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he refused to recognize me.”

“I am the now,” Harry announces, seeming to use all his strength to force his arms down beside him. “I am the now.”
“What’s Harry trying to tell us, Eddie?” asks Felicity.
“I don’t know. Nothing comes to me. I’m not trying to analyze him.”
“You know, watching what Harry is going through teaches me a lot about madness and of how my own mind works. I see now how madness can happen to anyone.”
“We’re all mad to some degree or other.”

“Eddie! Eddie!”
Two girls rush toward me as I’m returning to the house.
“The police are here to take Dutch Harry away.”
“Don’t let them do it, Eddie.”
A Sikh police officer in civilian clothes approaches me.
“There has been a complaint made against this man by your Goan neighbors. They say he has been desecrating Christian symbols. We are obliged to take him with us.”
“Don’t you think it would be better for him to stay with us?”
“No, he’ll be safer in our custody. Do you know how the local people treat a mad person? They beat him until he becomes sane.”
“But his cellmates or the police may beat him if he’s locked up in a cell. He’s already been beaten while in police custody. Here, at least, he has a number of friends who like him and are willing to take care of him.”
“That would be contrary to all regulations. He must come with us.”
“But Harry may break down completely if he’s placed in an hostile environment.”
The officer looks at me for some time.
“If he’s allowed to stay with you people, can you guarantee to prevent him from going out and doing things that would antagonize the locals”
“We’ll do the best we can.”

“Harry, I’m tired of always sitting in this spot. You sit in my place.” I say, moving to one side and allowing Harry to sit in the space he mistakenly believes belongs to the leader of the house.
“I am the new leader here,” Harry announces to those waiting for the evening meal. “You will all do as I order.”
“Eat shit, Harry,” shouts Danish Stuff.
Harry jumps to his feet and stands before Stuff.
“You tell your new leader to eat shit?”
“Sit down and shut up, Harry. We don’t need any leader here.”
“I’ll teach you that you need me as your leader.”
Harry kicks out at Stuff, but Stuff leaps up, to take hold of Harry’s leg and push him back to sit him down beside me.
“Can I get you something, Harry?” I ask.
“A glass of water, please.”

“What can I get you now, Harry?” I ask that evening.
“Another glass of water.”
I go for the tenth or so glass of water.
Someone puts on the Beatles’ “White Album”.
“Here’s your water, Harry. Drink it and let’s dance.”
Dancing with Harry, I realize that if I’d had the understanding then that I have now, I would not have been annoyed by the way Gwen had reacted when I’d begun my affair with Debbie. I would have remembered how shaken up I’d been when I’d first discovered Gwen with another man, and I would have sympathized with her and tried to reassure her. But there’s no use in regretting what’s been done. I’m in a good space now.
“You win, Eddie.” Harry says, having stopped dancing.
“Come, Harry, I’ll stay with you tonight.” A young German girl leads Harry away.

“You wanted to see me?” I ask the police chief of Margao who happens to be a Sikh. All the officers seem to be Sikhs.
“Have you seen this?” He unfolds a newspaper and lays it flat upon his desk. “Do you recognize what is photographed here?”
“It’s a house.”
“It’s your house in Colva Beach,” he says proudly. “A full page article about you and your house in the Indian Express, a newspaper published in every state of India.” He’s more impressed by the article than I am.
So, the Indian tourists who had been visiting the house had not been clairvoyant after all.
“Is it a positive article?” I ask.
“Very positive.”

“Do you know what it is when I do this?” Harry asks me, extending his arms and forcibly lowering them.
“No, what is it, Harry?”
“It’s me, the new Christ, coming off the cross.”
“I was wondering what it meant.”
“And do you know what I see when I look into the flame of a candle? I see Christ in the center of the fire.”
Christ in the center of the flame is untouched by the fire. Harry, the new Christ, by rubbing his thumb and fingers in the candleflame tries to reassure himself that he will not be burned by the fires of hell.

That evening, Harry sits beside me to wait for the evening meal. When he’s settled I lower my hand to the candle on the floor before us and rub my thumb and forefinger in its flame.
“You are the Father!” Harry exclaims, leaning away from me.
“We’re all the Father here, Harry. We can all play with the fire.”

Spotty Dick walks into the room, followed, step by step and as closely as it’s possible by Harry. Dick sits down before me. Harry sits down beside Dick and arranges his body as Dick’s body is arranged. Dick clears his throat. Harry, not removing his eyes from Dick, clears his throat.
“How are you, Dick?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“How are you, Harry?”
“Ah, what did he say?” Harry asks, nodding toward Dick.
“He said he’s fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“Does it bother you, Dick, that Harry is following you about all day and mimicing all your movements?”
“No, but I won’t allow him to get into bed with me.”

“Eddie, come here,” Felicity calls from outside..
I go to the front porch.
“Look!” She points to Harry marching in step behind a young American who is leaving. “Do you think Harry will come back?”
“We’ll see.”

Some nights as I turn in my sleep I hear Felicity, Stuff and young Jean Luc talking in the back room. Jean Luc often says complimentary things about me.

“Eddie!” Jean Luc greets from the porch as I return to the house. “You didn’t kill yourself in Margao.”
“No, I didn’t even think of it, Jean Luc.”
What makes him think that I’d want to kill myself?

“Look at this, Eddie?” Jean Luc stops me, an open copy of Allen Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” in his hand. The book has been burned from the binding out, so that only the first words of phrases appear on one page and only the last words remain on the page opposite.
“Look, Eddie!” Jean Luc points to the word felicity.

I’m awakened by a scraping sound in the back room.
“You shit!” I hear Jean Luc shout. “You fucking shit!”
I rise and hurry into the back room. Jean Luc, squatting and glarng at Stuff who cowers before him, scrapes the long blade of a knife on the stone floor.
“What’s going on, Jean Luc?”
“Oh, good morning, Eddie. I hope I’ve not disturbed your sleep, but night after night I’ve been listening to this shit asking me why I’m afraid to die. Now, regard.”
Jean Luc, knife extended before him, lunges toward Stuff who covers his eyes and backs against the wall.
“You see, Eddie, how this hypocrite is not afraid to die.”
“Okay, now that we know that Stuff’s afraid to die, you can put the knife away.”
“Ah, but how nice to watch him cringe. No more lectures from him at night. Actually, I don’t want to see his ugly face in this house.”
Jean Luc grabs Stuff, lifts him to his feet, drags him to the front door and kicks him out of the house.
“There, we are rid of the dog.”

As Felicity speaks with me, Jean Luc waves his finger at us from across the room.
“Eddie and Felicity, the father and the mother of the universe. Eddie with his beedies and Felicity with her opium.”

“Eddie, here’s a postcard from Dutch Harry,” Spotty Dick says. “And it’s addressed to Eddie’s Happy Hippy Home.”
“What does he write?”
“He’s under observation in a hospital in Bangalore and is feeling well. He hopes we’re all okay and thanks us for what we’ve done for him. And he’d appreciate it if we’d send him some sweets.”

“Eat the shit food that your Eddie cooks for you,” Jean Luc sneers, marching to and fro like a storm trooper before us as we eat.
“Sit down and eat, Jean Luc,” I say.
“No! I don’t eat the food you make. I know what you’re putting in it. Aphro-dafro, you know what I mean? Yes, you do, bastard. Oh, I know you so well. Eddie.”
Jean Luc leans forward to glare at me.
“Tic-toc, tic-toc, you know what is tic-toc? Tic-toc, Swiss clock, Swiss bank. With all the money you have in your tic-toc bank you serve us rice and dal and vegetables, you miser, when you should be serving us lobster and chicken and champagne every night.”
He points his finger at me.
“Next full moon, Eddie, I’m putting you under the ground where you belong.”

“Look at the hippies. Aren’t they having a good time,” announces the Sikh police chief of Margao, having come into the house with his wife and with a number of his officers and their wives. The ladies are dressed in expensive saris. “Mr. Eddie, it’s just like a night club here. Some people are making music, others are dancing. You people always make your own music?”
“Not always. There’s a record player and records in the house and I have a radio.”
Jean Luc comes in, making faces and lewd gestures, but the police don’t seem to notice him.
“You people shouldn’t smoke too much of that stuff,” the chief says, leaning over some freaks who are lighting a chillum. “It is very bad for your health.”
The smokers laugh at him.
“So, Mr. Eddie, good night.”
“You’re going so soon? You just arrived.”
“We just came to see how you are all doing. And now we have seen, we can go and allow you to carry on with your merrymaking.”

“You killed Dutch Harry and then sent that postcard addressed to Eddie’s Happy Hippy Home, you murderer,” Jean Luc snarls. “But you’re not going to kill me like you did poor Harry. I’m going to kill you before you can kill me. Do you hear me? I’m going to kill you, bastard. Look at him, he doesn’t seem to understand that I’m going to kill him.”
Jean Luc picks up a sandal and throws it at me, hitting me above my right eye. Two freaks jump him and pull him to the floor.
“Don’t hurt him,” I say. “Let him go.”

“Watch out, Eddie!”
Carrying a bucket of water in each hand, I turn to see Jean Luc charging toward me. He comes to a stop before me and looks into my eyes. Now, he places is hands on my shoulders, leans toward me and kisses me on the mouth.
The boy’s in love with me! Why haven’t I seen it? That’s why he’s been angry angry at me like a young girl being ignored by the one she adores.”

“Jean Luc grabbed my arm as I was walking by him this afternoon,” Felicity tells me. “ ‘Let go of me, you psycho,’ I shouted at him, and he removed his hand from me. But I almost passed out when I saw that he’d had a knife in his hand all the time.”
“Then what happened?”
“He followed me to my room and fell asleep on the floor as he’s been doing lately.”
“But he doesn’t try to have sex with you, does he?”
“No, not at all.”
“Yes, he’s in your room to prevent us from getting it on together.”
“Why would he do that when he doesn’t seem to be interested in me? Oh, I see, he’s interested in you!”

“I was born under a bad star,” Jean Luc declares. “And you, Eddie, you were born under a black hole. Be prepared, your last days are near. I’m burying you deep in the ground to rid the universe of you.”
I look up at Jean Luc who stands over me.
“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” he warns, cocking his fist. “Look away.”
Whack! Jean Luc punches me hard on the cheek almost toppling me onto my side.
The boys pull him away from me.
I’m surprised that I feel no pain from his blow.

“Yah!” Jean Luc leaps out at me from Felicity’s door. “Ah-hah, I scared you, didn’t I, you shit?”
“Jean Luc, go inside and leave Eddie alone,” Felicity orders.
“So, the mother of the universe wishes to speak to the father before he dies,” Jean Luc says, doing as she’s said.
“He seems to listen to you, Felicity.”
“He sleeps on my floor at night, but he often goes out before he sleeps.”
“I happened to see him one night, standing naked under the moon and speaking to it.”
“But I have a feeling he’s going down into our well to shit in it.”
“That’s bad news, Felicity. I hope it’s not true. We’ll have to watch him closely from now on.”

“Ah-ha.” Jean Luc, turning from the front door, glares at me. “So, Eddie, you’ve called the Indian army to take me prisoner.”
A group of soldiers are marching by the house to do their usual training exercises on the beach.
“But I’m leaving, Eddie, before they capture me.”
Jean Luc is not going anywhere. I’ve seen him too afraid to step off the front porch.

“I want you guys to invite Jean Luc to the bar for a drink,” I tell a group of the boys. “Tell him you’re on his side against me, and ask him what he thinks you should do about me.”

“Jean Luc told us that he doesn’t want to dirty his hands with your blood. What he wants us to do is to ignore you, to not speak to you, so that you’ll become so depressed you’ll go to Margao to kill yourself.”
“So, that’s what we’ll do. Tell everyone in the house to stay away from me for now.”

“You’re dying, Eddie.” Jean Luc smiles in at me as I cook. “You’re dying alone in your kitchen.”

Jean Luc, looking into the kitchen, sees Felicity with me. “Yah!” he exclaims, poking a finger of his right hand into the circle formed by the index finger and thumb of his left hand.
“He thinks of fucking as being dirty,” Felicity remarks.
“He’s reverted to his childhood self.”

“All right, everyone, the season’s almost over and it’s time for me to go,” I announce. “There’s still some rent left, so those who wish to stay can do so until the owner comes.”
“Where are you going, Eddie?” Jean Luc asks.
“I’m going to Margao to kill myself.”
“Too late, you bastard, too late.”

1969
In Kathmandu I discover that Tibetan Joe has a new place called The Ling Kesar which has a comfortable room upstairs where freaks can smoke, make music and discuss issues of the day. And Rana’s Cabin Restaurant is in full swing, small scales on the counter to weigh grams of hashish along with a record player and a number of recent discs. I decide to spend afternoons in The Ling Kesar and evenings in The Cabin.

“Beady eyed Nepalis, rice, dal, chapatti; I hate it all,” young German Karl complains, as we walk through downtown Kathmandu..
“So, why are you here?”
“Because you are.”
“Why? I don’t owe you money, do I?”
“Eddie, those mountains in the distance, are they coming toward us and receding like they’re breathing?”
“No, Karl, I don’t see them doing that.”
“There must be something wrong with my eyesight, then.”

“Eddie, do you think I should take LSD?” asks young Brigitte.
“You’ve never had it before?”
“No, but almost everyone I know has.”
“It‘s up to you to decide whether or not to take it. But if you do take it, just go where the acid takes you; don’t fight it.”

“Eddie, please come out to Swayambhu,” pleads an American Freak. “Black Jim, you know the one who was a fighter pilot in Viet Nam, has freaked, and everyone is avoiding him because he’s so big,”
“What’s happening with his little Japanese wife?”
“She’s staying with some friends. She’s safe because Jim doesn’t want to to have anything to do with her,”
“”I don’t have to come to Swayambhu; I’m sure Jim will come to town to see me.”

“I took the LSD, Eddie,” Brigitte says. “It was a very strange experience. Sometimes, I was very frightened, and at other times I felt like I was in some wonderland. And often everything would seem so ridiculous that I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing. Also, I took some STP a few days ago, and I’m not quite back to my usual self yet.”

“I hope my next life will be better than this one,” Karl tells me.
“What makes you think will be a next life, Karl?”
“Don’t you think so, Eddie?”
“Isn’t one life enough to do all that you want to do?”
“But if there is no next life, what will happen when I die?”
“What happened to you before you were born?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s what will probably happen after you die.”
“You mean, I’ll just become nothing?”
“Isn’t that the ultimate goal of most Eastern religions?”
“I thought enlightenment was the goal.”
“Enlightenment is the ending of thinking of yourself.”

I look out the front window of the Dormitory at dawn and see Brigitte, wearing a long Afghan fur coat, walking sedately across the street before a number of Nepali men who are silently following her. Now, she stops, whirls about to face her followers who have also stopped. and opens wide her coat. The men cover their eyes and shrink back from the sight of her nakedness. Brigitte buttons her coat and turns to resume her stately walk, the men following quietly.

“Hey, Eddie, what’s wrong with these sorry fuckers in Kathmandu?” Black American Jim says, entering the upstairs room of The Ling Kesar. “In this shop down the street, I find a bolt of cloth which is just the right color for my devotees to wear. So, I pick up the bolt and I’m walkin’ out with it when the shopkeepers stop me and ask me for money. I try to explain to them that my followers are gonna look great all decked out in this material, but that don’t mean nothin’ to them. They want money and start makin’ noises about police and all that shit. So, I decide to split the shop without the cloth.”
“Sit down, Jim, and tell me what else has been happening.”
“After I piss.” Jim, undoing his pants, walks into a corner of the room.
“Not there, Jim; there’s a toilet downstairs.”

“This afternoon, I lost all my money, my passport and all the clothes I was wearing,” Karl tells me.
“How’d you manage to do that?”
“I was in Swayambhu, and I suddenly I felt like running. I ran through the rice fields, hissng all the while to ward off the snakes. When I came to the river it looked so clear and cool that I took off all my clothes, dropped them on the riverbank and dove into the water. I must have been taken downstream by the river, because when I came out of the water I couldn’t find my things.”

“Ah, so you’ve come to visit me in my palatial abode,” laughs Brigitte, walking naked in the dormitory of the hotel where she’s staying. “Excuse me, while I complete my soliloquy.”
She strolls about the room, speaking French.
“This is worse than the worst soap opera,” a French freak tells me. “All day and all night she’s crying, ‘Rick, Rick, Rick.’ Who is this fucking Rick? He never comes to see her.”
Brigitte picks up a very large pair of scissors from the floor and, smiling to herself, slashes at a mobile hanging before her.
“Has she been violent?”
“She was peaceful until she began to go out into the street and swing at people with a metal bar. Now, we have to keep an eye on her.”
“Come, Eddie, let us begin a meaningful conversation in English,” Brigitte says, sitting beside me and rubbing her body with the inside of a mango skin.

Tears form in Jim’s eyes as I sing a blues-like melody to him. The upstairs room of The Ling Kesar is packed with freaks watching us. Some of them are probably waiting to see Jim smash me.

“You wake up in the morning, and the whole miserable scene in Kathmandu comes spinning out of your head: the Nepalis, the freaks, all nd everything,” Karl tells me. “ And you create us separated from one another so we’re unable to have sex. You have us imprisoned in Davey Jones’ locker at the bottom of the sea. Free us, Eddie, release us.”
“Do you actually believe that I can release you, Karl?”
“If you can imprison us, you can release us.”
“All right, then, I release you.”

“Hey, Eddie, come over here and sit by me,” Jim calls to me in The Ling Kesar. “Yeah, you sit by the window.”
The window overlooks a busy little square.
Jim holds the handle of an umbrella he has placed in a standing position between our two chairs. He begins to move the handle back slowly, then forward and back again, to one side and then to the other, all the while looking past me and out the window at the activity in the square below. Abruptly, he turns his head to look into my eyes questioningly. He’s looking to see if I’m afraid. He’s seeing me as his co-pilot in Viet Nam.

“I hope you’re enjoying your meal, Brigitte,” I say, having invited her to bathe and to have food at The Dormitory.
“Oh, I am enjoying very much, Eddie,” she laughs, throwing the dessert plate over her shoulder and smashing it against the wall behind her, just as she has done to the soup bowl and to all the plates and cups served her.
Seeing what Brigitte is doing and confident that I will pay for all that she destroys, the family continue to bring her food on their costliest dinnerware.

“I suggest, Mr. Eddie, that you cultivate a few enemies,“ a Nepali friend tells me.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you have aroused the suspicion of the police. They’re asking who is this man who is friendly with everyone, making himself unusually popular. They’re wondering what you’re game is.”
“Yes, the police assume that everyone is engaged in some sort of criminal activity.”

“Eddie, until two days ago I thought I was in an ashram, but I see now that I’m in jail,” Brigitte tells me when I visit her. “Please get me out of here.”

“What are those straight bitches doin’ in here?” Jim says as we’re about to take our seats in The Cabin. “I think I’ll go do a number on them.”
“Sit down, Jim.” I take hold of his arm. “Save your energy for greater things.”
Karl staggers in, passes our table, then turns to face us. Wavering as though he’s about to collapse, he unbuckles his belt and begins to pull down his pants.
“I rush up to him.” What’re you trying to do? Get yourself in jail? Pull up your pants and come sit with us.”
Karl pulls up his pants but goes to sit at a table away from us.
“Who is that motherfucker, Eddie? I catch him staring at me all the time.”
“His name is Karl.”
“That’s his fuckin’ name, is it? He’d better stay away from me if he doesn’t want to get his face bashed.”

“I’ve met her, Eddie, the girl beyond all my expectations,” German Harry says. “She’s beautiful, sensitive, deep.”
“Is that why you’re looking so fucked up, unshaven and with dark circles under your eyes?”
“I can’t sleep thinking about her.”
“If you’re only thinking about her, you’re not seeing her.”
“She refuses to see me, Eddie. She just sits in her hotel room and doesn’t come out. I know she’s freaking out in there, but all I can do is stand outside and shout up to her window.”
“Why do you shout up to her from the street instead of going up to see her?”
“She’s ordered the hotel manager not to let me in.”
“What have you done to this girl, Harry?”
“She became hysterical on an acid trip in Pokara, and I had to punck her to calm her down. She hasn’t wanted to speak to me since then. Oh, Eddie, what am I going to do?”
“Just wait. She can’t stay in her room forever.”

“I want to be fucked in the ass by black JIm,” Karl tells me in my room at The Dormitory. “I’m going to get my guitar and sing a song about that.”
Jim’s voice comes to us from the restaurant downstairs.
“That’s Jim,” Karl says. “I’m going down there.”
“No, Karl, it’s better you stay here.”
“Better to stay here with you while Jim is down there? You must be mad.”
Karl hurries out, and I lie back to rest.
“Get that fucker away from me,” I hear Jim shout.

I’m awakened by voices in the dorm room, but I continue to lie in bed, hoping to be left alone.
“Jim wants to see you, Eddie,” Karl says in a voice deceitfully sweet.
I rise reluctantly, yawn and stretch before entering the dorm. It’s German Kurt who’s been speaking with Jim.
“Hey, Eddie, good you’re here, man,” Jim greets. Then, nodding toward Kurt, he says, “I think this is the blue-eyed killer who’s out to get me.”
I look at Kurt whose eyes reveal fear of Jim. Jim’s eyes, mistaking the fear in Kurt’s eyes for that of malevolence, reflect fear of Kurt. Kurt fears Jim who fears Kurt. Paranoia whirls around the room.
“What is this place, Eddie?” asks Jim, looking at the walls apprehensively.
“This is where I stay, Jim.”
“Oh yeah, I should’ve figured that.”
Karl leans toward Jim and says, “Eddie must go.”
Jim looks long at Karl.
“Eddie don’t go,” he says.
Karl, as though struck a blow, backs away and, sobbimg, falls onto a mattress on the floor.
I go to Karl. “It’s all right, Karl, there’s nothing to cry about.”
“You leave me alone, Eddie.”
“I’m gettin’ the fuck outta here,” Jim says, rising to his feet
“You don’t have to go, Jim,” Kurt says. “You can sleep here.”
“Keep an eye on these fuckers for me, Eddie.” Jim nods toward Kurt and Karl. “Make sure they don’t follow me.”

“I just saw Jim comin’ to town, wavin’ a big stick and talkin’ to himself,” a young freak announces in The Ling Kesar the next morning. “He looked totally freaked out.”
“Did you try to talk to him?”
“No, man, he was too out there to talk to.”
“Mr. Buddha!” Tibetan Joe calls me. “Come downstairs. American Embassy send car for you.”

“What’s goin’ on in Kathmandu, Eddie?” Jim asks in the office of the American Vice Consul. “This mornin’ the army was shoot’n’ at me in Swayambhu.”
“They weren’t shooting at you, Jim. They were just doing their usual target practice.”
“Bullets were ricocheting all around me. I’m a livin’ Buddha; they shouldn’t be shootin’ at me.”
“Their shots often go wild, Jim.”
“Would you like a burger and coke, Jim?” asks the Vice Consul.
“Yeah, great. Listen, can I talk to Eddie alone?”
“Sure, just go into the next office.”
Jim and I go into an unoccupied room.
“Be careful, Eddie, you don’t touch me. I’m contaminated with nuclear fallout. We dropped atom bombs on Japan, right? And my wife is Japanese, right? So, every time I touch her, I get contaminated with that crap.”
I lay my hand down on Jim’s hand. “Don’t worry, Jim, I’m not afraid of getting contaminated by you.”
“I just wanted to warn you, that’s all.”
“Thanks, Jim. Now, let’s go back.”
“Your burger and coke are here, Jim,” the Vice Consul says as we return.
Jim, sitting down, bites into his burger.
“Just as I thought, Eddie.” Jim looks at me. “Cyanide!”
“You don’t have to worry, Jim. You’re a living Buddha, right, and cyanide can’t touch you.”
“I know that, Eddie, but why do they have to play these games with me?”

“Jim wants to be repatriated,” the Vice Consul tells me, “but the American government is reluctant to do that because Jim already owes it seven thousand dollars.”
“He’ll probably recover as soon as he’s back in the States, and the government can recover its money from him at that time,” I say.

Stepping out of The Cabin Restaurant at closing time, I see Karl sitting under a running water tap.
“Come on home, Karl. You’re going to freeze to death under there.”
“Go away, Eddie. I’ll kill you.”

“Would you want to fly back to the States with Jim in a military transport plane, Eddie?” asks the Vice Consul. “You’re the only one he seems to trust. You’d be flown back here directly, of course.”
“I’d rather not.”
“We’ll have to think of some other arrangement, then.”

In the office of a police station, Karl, sitting before me, stares out unblinkingly with eyes that register nothing.
“How did he come to be arrested?” I ask the police officer who sits nearby.
“Two nights ago, he was throwing stones at innocent passersby in the street, and he had to be subdued.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“Since his arrest.”
“It looks like he’ll have to be sent home.”
“The German Embassy is making arrangements for that.”

“Jim’s flying back to the States with the embassy doctor,” the Vice Consul tells me in Jim’s hospital room.
“That’s good news, huh, Jim,” I say.
“Yeah, man.”
“Jim, there are a few more questions I have to ask you to complete this report. Who do you wish informed in the event of death?”
“Eddie.”
“No, Jim,” I laugh. “Your mother, man.”
“Oh yeah, my mother.”

“Isn’t Valerie beautiful, Eddie?” German Harry says, having persuaded me to meet her in a little restaurant around the corner from The Ling Kesar.
“Yes, but her eyes are unsteady and her hands are shaking,” I observe. Harry tells me you’re flying back to Paris, Valery.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid I may explode in the plane.”
“You’re afraid that the plane may explode?”
“No, that I will explode.”
“But why do you think that?”
“Because I feel even now that I may explode at any moment. I know it will be much worse on the plane.”
“All right, I’ll give you this.” I hand her a tab of Thorazine that someone has recently given me.
“What is it?”
“Something to make you feel calm. But don’t take it unless it’s absolutely necessary. You may not feel as shaky on the plane as you now imagine.”
“Valerie is going to get back safely,” Harry says. “Then, she’s going to send me money to fly to Paris.”
“I wish I could be sure of Harry.” Valerie says, looking at me.
“I’m not going to tell you whether or not you should trust Harry. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Remember his good points, but don’t forget his not so good ones.”
“But I love Valerie, and that’s what counts most.”
“Listen, Harry, as long as Valerie feels as she does now, you shouldn’t have sex with her.”
“I’ll do anything to help her, Eddie, anything.”
“But, Harry, I may feel this way for the rest of my life.”
“No, you won’t,” I say. “You’ll come out of it.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I used to feel as you’re feeling, and I came out of it.”
“You give me some hope.”
“You see, Valerie, I told you that Eddie would help you.”

1969 -1970
“How does it feel to be a living legend?” a girl asks me on Calungate Beach.
“It doesn’t feel like anything at all. I live and I sleep in this body, so even if every human being in the world were worshipping me day and night, I would not be aware of it. Fame, I used to want so much to be famous and to have many lovers, but now that I can have such things I no longer want them.”

“So, you’re staying in Baga, Eddie,” says David.
“Yeah, when I learned that our house in Colva had been made into a bar I decided to come here instead. I’ve been staying with different people almost every night. ‘We all stayed in your house last season, Eddie, so this season you can stay in all our houses.’ They tell me.”
“David and I were looking forward to having a house again this year,” Sheri says “We brought pots, pans and other utensils with us.”
“So. you were intending to do the cooking. That’s fine, but there are no large houses left to rent in Baga.”

“The scopolamine boys struck again yesterday,” a freak tells me. “Another one of their victims is wandering about out of his head today.”
“Who are the scopolamine boys?”
“A German, a Swiss and a French national who invite new arrivals to their house for tea, then spike them with scopolamine, a truth serum used by the Nazis to get information from their captives. But these three bastards are not interested in acquiring information. They only want to rob and rape.”
“Hasn’t anyone asked them to stop doing what they’re doing?”
“More than once, but all they say is, ‘We don’t believe in love like you stupid hippies.’ What do you think we should do about them, Eddie?” “Me, I don’t want to do anything about them.”
“That’s kind of a wishy-washy stance, don’t you think, Eddie?”
“I’m not interested in policing the scene. Whatever happens will happen without my having taken part in it.”

“I say we stop those bastards before they pollute all the wells in Baga for Christmas,” a tattooed freak exhorts the people gathered around him on the beach in Baga. “We should grab the fuckers, tie them to a tree, then tar and feather them. Then, we should go into their house to find and destroy their scopolamine. They must haveripped that stuff off from a lab in Germany, and they’re probably all wanted in their own countries. So. let’s grab their passports and mail them to their respective embassies and escort those fuckers out of Goa. How’s that sound?”
It all sounds quite illegal to me.

“Oh, it was awful, Eddie, awful and also ludicrous,” a girl says. “First of all, this Nigerian boy was guarding the door of the scopolamine house, and he wasn’t letting anyone in, the crowd shouting at him to get out of the way. But what hardly anyone noticed was that the scopolamine guys had joined the crowd and were shouting to be allowed into the house, making a mockery of the proceedings.
“Finally, the Nigerian was pushed aside, and a great number of boys rushed into the house. Then they came rushing out again. Someone in the house had shot off a tear gas gun. Everyone had to wait for the air to clear before they could go into the house again. The one who found the bottle of scopolamine wanted to keep it, saying we could get high on the stuff if we used it judiciously, but he was ordered to smash it against a rock.
“And you should’ve seen the stack of passports, cash and travelers checks they found in that house, Eddie.
“Then the scopolamine guys were seized and forced to begin marching to Panjim where they’ll be put on tomorrow’s boat to Bombay. But they were as defiant as ever, stopping every few steps to raise their arms in a Nazi salute and to shout, ‘Where is your love now, you dunb hippies? We’ve succeeded in destroying it.’ ”

“Jack, many people have told us that Anjuna Beach is beautiful, but they’ve always said that there are no houses there. Yesterday, a Japanese girl, who had just returned from Anjuna, told me that she did see houses there. I know you’re one of those who want us to have a house like the one we had in Colva last season, so why don’t you go to Anjuna and see if you can find a house to rent.”

“I got a five room house, “ Jack tells me that evening. “We can move in right away.”
“How much?”
“Since the owner doesn’t live there, the lady caretaker gave me the keys without asking for money.”
“Good whoever wants to can move in. I want to stay in Baga for the New Year’s Eve party. There should be hundreds of people here for that. Quite a change from a couple of seasons ago when I was almost alone in Colva.”

After I’ve eaten my first meal in Anjuna a young man rises and says, “ All right, let’s get some money together for our next meal.”
“No,” I say. “We won’t ask for money and we won’t ask for anyoneto work in this house. Those who wish to contribute may do so. If there’s not enough money, I’ll provide it. That’s how we did it in Colva last season, and that’s how we’ll do it here.”

“It looks like Ray has found us, Jack, Isn’t that so, Ray?” I say, but he looks at me uncomprehendingly.
“He’s really out of it,” Jack says.
“He’s been running around Baga freaked out on scopolamine for more than a month.”
Ray looks warily at the white walls and the darkness outside the windows. Now, he puts his arms around me from behind and tries to wrestle me to the floor. Jack takes hold of one of his arms, while I take the other, and we force him to the floor. He doesn’t try to resist.
“It’s all right, Ray,” I try to reassure him. “This is not a prison. Look, there are no bars on the windows and the door is always open. You can leave whenever you want to.”
“I know I’m not dead now because I can feel pain,” Ray says, relaxing.

“When do you people go naked on the beach?” asks one of the two Goan boys who have spent night with us.
“There’s no set time,” I say. “People go to the beach whenever they feel like going.”
“Can’t you ask some of them to go now?”
“I never ask anyone to do anything.”
“Are you afraid of the police coming? They are such a nuisance, don’t you think?”
“If complaints are made, the police are obliged to act.”
“You are a very nice man, Eddie.”
And you boys are a couple of nice cops, I say to myself.

Mary arrives with a number of people from Baga.
“We thought we’d come to Eddie’s Beach and see how you people ate doing,” she says. “We brought some rice, dal, vegetables and other things.”
“Come in the big room and sit,” I say. “You must be tired after walking over the hill.”
Ray walks in and sits on the floor in the center of the room.
“So, Ray, this is where you’ve been,” Mary says. “Are you all right?”
Ray makes grotesque faces and contorts his body into a succession of ungainly postures.
One of the girl who has come with Mary seems shocked to see Ray’s condition.
“Ray’s allowed to do anything he wishes as long as he doesn’t try to hurt anyone,” I tell the girl.
“Are spending as much time with Ray as you did with Camilla?” asks Mary.
“Ray doesn’t want to open up as much as she did.”
A tall attractive girl approaches Ray and says, “Would you like to step out wath me, Ray?”
Ray rises, puts an arm around the girl”s waist and leads her out.”
“That Rosalinde is so wnderful,” says Mary.

Having distributed the forty trips of acid smeone has donated to the house, I watch the ensuing chaos. The boys are rushing here and there while some of the girls are sitting and smiling beatifically. Dinner is announced and I wonder who will eat. The chapattis come in varios sizes and shapes.
“Eddie, smell the whipped cream on this pie I made and tell me if you think it’s spoiled,” Spotty Dick says, presenting the pie for my inspection.
I lean forward to smell the pie, and Spotty Dick pushes it into my face.
“Hey, this stuff isn’t whipped cream; what is it?”
“It’s shaving cream.”
“I guess I may as well shave.”

“Here, take this,” German Kurt says the next morning, proffering me a packet.
“What is it?”
“It’s all my money.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“I came all the way from Germany with this money nine months ago and managed to get by without spending any of it by pretending I didn’t have it. Now, I want to stop pretending and truly live without money.”
“Qkay, but don’t ask me to return it to you later.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

“Ray’s taking brown sugar from the kitchen,” David tells me.
“Let him. I’ll buy an extra kilo for him.”
“L et him have whatever he wants until he sees that it’s not what he truly wants, right?””
“Right, David. By the way, I don’t see Sheri working in the kitchen with you.”
“Her pregnancy is making her very tired.”
“Which means I’ll have to help you in the kitchen.”

“Isn’t it a shame, Eddie,” Ray says, biting into a piece of molasses sugar in his hand.
“You’d better look out for worms in that sugar, Ray.”
Ray looks at the sugar and, to my surprise, there is a white worm in it.

“I’ll go next door and pick up the bananas and papaya from Joe Bananas,” says Spotty Dick.

“Ray’s in jail for causing a disturbance in a bar,” Andrea tells us.
“Ah, good,” an Italian freak says “Now I can get a good night’s sleep for a change. That bastard’s been keeping me awake night after night with his wandering about the house and talking to himself.”
“You won’t believe the horrible place where they’re keeping. It’s a dark dank dungeon. He’ll die in there. I”ve got to get him out.”
“Leave him there for God’s sake.”
“You needn’t worry, I’ll take care of him.”

“Fuck off, Andrea,” Ray shouts. “Leave me alone.”
“But you’re filthy, Ray. You’ll feel so much better if you’ll take a bath.”
“What makes you think I want to feel better, you bitch?”
“I’m only concerned for your welfare, Ray.”
“I’m not looking for welfare.”
“It’s admirable that you’re not expecting Ray to be grateful to you for getting him out of prison,” I say to Andrea.
“I got him out for his sake; not for mine.”

“I’ve heard Ray’s been going into Goan houses during the day and frightening the housewives,” Jack announces.
“Oh, shit, he’s going to land his ass in jail again,” Andrea remarks.
“I have an idea,” Jack says. “Let’s give Ray an acid trip.”
“What good will that do?” asks Andrea.
“The acid will take him up, and maybe he’ll come down in a better space than the one he’s in now. What’s the alternative? Have him get picked up by the police again?”
“How can we get him to take the acid?” Andrea asks.
“We can give him a banana coated with it.”
“But what if he should come down in a worse space?”
“Can it be much worse than the one he’s in now?”

Ray comes to the house colorfully attired and with a large sombrero on his head. Humming a tune, he strums a pretend guitar in his lap.
“You see, Ray’s still freaked out even after the acid,” Andrea observes.
“Yes, but at least he’s happily freaked.”

“Hey, you’re the one we really want to interview,” says the leader of the BBC film crew, who has been in the kitchen and heard me talking while I’ve been preparing the evening meal.
“No, you really don’t want to interview me because I won’t do it for ten or twenty rupees like some of the others.”
“How much do you want?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“We don’t have that kind of money with us.”
“Then, forget about interviewing me.”
“Let me go see how much I can dig up. We’ve got to have you on film.”
“Five thousand dollars is a lot of money to ask for,” David says.
“Yeah, I’m sure they won’t come up with it, saving me the bother of having to be interviewed.”
“All we can manage is three thousand rupees,” the interviewer says.
“Forget it.”
“Look, the sun’s about to set. There’s only a few minutes of light for shooting. Three thousand rupees is quite a lot of money for a short interview.”
“I don’t want to do it,”
Freaks sitting in the kitchen stare at me with their mouths open.
“All right, let’s do it,” I say, having decided to distribute the three thousand rupees to those in the house in need of money.

“So, what did they ask you. Eddie?”
“They wanted to know what we’re doing here and why and inevitably, of course, they asked about sex and drugs. I told them there was more sex amongst the upper-middle classes in Los Angeles in the fifties and sixties
than there is on the scene here. We see each other in the nude every day and that’s a sexual turnoff. And as for drugs, I said thare was probably as much drug consumption on the street where they lived on in Britain as there was here. The light weakened and that was bout it. So, who needs money?”

“This is sure some fucked up house, Eddie,” Ray says. “I don’t know what you guy’s are trying to do here.”
“Well, you won’t have to wonder much longer, Ray, because it’ll be all over soon.”
“You’re closing the house?” he asks, suddenly sobered.
“No, David and Sheri are going to stay, but they’re going to have a baby and they probably won’t have anyone staying with them.
“Oh,” Ray says, suddenly sobered.
“All things, good and bad, come eventually to an end, Ray.”

“Are you people coming back next season?” Joe Bananas wants to know.
“Looks like it,” I say.
“Do you think I should buy a fridge and make a grocery and bagi shop?”
“Yeah, why not.”

1970
“Valerie and I are married,” Harry tells me in The Cabin.
“Why’d you do that?”
“So, we can be together if we get busted. Being with Valerie has been good for me, Eddie. Look at me, I’m completely clean: no drugs, no alcohol, not even cigarettes.”
“Valerie, you’re looking much better than the last time I saw you.”
“Yes, I’m feeling better now.”
“Eddie,” Harry says, “in our flat in London we had a picture of Buddha on one wall and a photo of you on the opposite one.”
“I hope you didn’t pray to me, because I don’t answer prayers.”

“Valerie and I are going to London, Eddie.”
“Already? You just got here, Harry.”
“We’ll only be gone for a short while. We’re doing a run for this guy who’s shipping one of those big Tibetan dogs in a cage rigged with hash. We go to Calcutta first, then catch a flight to London. The timing of the flights has to be perfect and the pickup in London must be done as soon as we arrive, so the dog doesn’t dehydrate.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for Valerie to stay here? Then, if you should go down, she’d be on the outside to try to help you.”
“No, we’ll look more straight going as a couple.”

I wake up to find the dimensions of my room completely altered. It seems to be much longer with one upper corner higher than the others.
Having to piss, I go out, hurry along the balcony and down the steps leading to the toilet. I feel strange, as though my body control of itself. Going back to my room along the balcony, I suddenly realize that my body is totally irresponsible. It is capable of playfully leaping off the balcony onto the paved courtyard below, unmindful of what may happen to it. It’s as if I’m have to take my body by the hand to lead it safely back to my room.
Lying in bed, I hear voices and see faces. Someone accuses me of being the undercover narc on the scene in Kathmandu. I see the face of the freak whom I believe to be that narc. More faces appear, more voices sound, until my head seems about to burst.
I fall prostrate onto the floor, completely surrendered. The voices and visions in my head dissolve. My room becomes again the one I’m used to seeing. Calmed, I’m thankful that the storm in my head has ceased. Perhaps every living person may somrday have to go through what I’ve just been through, so how can I possibly dislike anyone. I feel that this, my not disliking anyone, has pulled me through. If I hadn’t surrendered, if I’d been full of hate or fear, I may have become insane.

Harry and Valerie walk into The Cabin.
“You guys back already,” I say. “That was quick.”
“We only got as far as Calcutta, Eddie,” Harry says. “As soon as we entered the airport the fucking dog cage started to fall apart. There I was on the floor of the lobby trying to hammer the cage together again with my bare hands, travelers coming and going staring at me. I couldn’t get anywhere, so we decided that the best thing to do was to return here safely with the dog.”
“Now the man refuses to pay us unless we try again to go to London.” Valerie says.
“But, Eddie, we don’t want to try again,” Harry says. “We have someone else to do the run, but the man still doesn’t want to pay us. He even threatened me with a gun”

“That shit-face Harry comes to my house after he’s fucked up what he was supposed to do and wants money from me,” the man tells me. “ ‘What money?’ I ask him. ‘All your travel expenses were covered. including your bill at that fancy hotel in Calcutta. You’ll get money when you get the dog to London.’ No, he’s got someone else lined up who’s willing to do that. He wants money for getting the dog back to Kathmandu. I tell him he’s wasting my time.
“And do you know what the simple fuck has the stupidity to say to me? Sitting in my house, he tells me, ‘If I should go to the American Embassy and tell . . .’ He never gets to complete that sentence. In a flash, I’ve got the nozzle of my revolver placed right between his eyes. ‘Don’t ever let a thought like that cross your mind, Harry,’ I warn the little fink bastard. You should’ve seen the color drain from his face. His body was trembling even after I’d put down the gun.”

“Valerie, what are you doing here?” I ask, finding her sitting on the doorstep of a shop in town. “You’re so pale. Are you ill?”
“The doctor says I’m anemic. I seem to become ill whenever I’m in Kathmandu.”
“Yes, I’ve known people who feel bad as soon as they arrive here. Too many positive ions, they say.”
“Eddie, do you think the doctors know I’m dying and won’t tell me?”
“If they knew that, they’d probably have you hospitalized.”
“Or maybe I have a disease that they don’t know anything about.”
“It may be that you have a morbid imagination.”
“Do you know what I fear more than anything else? Of being buried alive.”
“These days they usually drain the body before its buried.”
“I hope that’s so.”
“Where’s Harry?”
“I don’t know. He’s tired of going to doctors with me.”

“Go home and feed the dog, Valerie,” Harry orders in The Cabin.
“You come with me.”
“I want to stay here for awhile with Eddie and the guys.”
“I’d like to stay, too.”
“Valerie, the dog may starve to death if you don’t feed it.”
“But it’s your dog, Harry. You’re the one who brought it to the house.”
“Now we have it, it’s our dog. So, don’t make a scene about feeding it. I’ll be there soon.”
Valerie, looking unhappy, leaves.
“Why don’t you go with her, Harry? You know she’s not feeling well.”
“Oh, how I know it, Eddie. She’s always not feeling well. I’m sick of her being sick. She comes to The Cabin and, instead of dancing with us, she sits and mopes. If she’d just get up and shake her ass, she’d feel better. No doctor is able to find anything wrong with her because she’s just worrying herself into being sick.”

“Sometimes I feel a need to lay my head on someone’s shoulder,” Valerie tells me.
“You have Harry’s shoulder to lay your head on.”
“Harry’s shoulder is not wide enough. He’d rather lay his head on mine. Or on yours. He likes you much more than he does me.”

“Eddie, you won’t believe what happened,” Harry announces, standing before my table at The Ling Kesar. “After Valerie and I left your room last night, we went to hear Chris play guitar in his room. It became too late to go home, so we slept there. This morning, Eddie, there was money missing from Valerie’s bag. I never suspected that Chris was a thief.”
“Couldn’t someone else have entered the room and taken the money?”
“No, the door was locked the whole night. Only Chris could have taken it. I’m going all around town to warn everyone about him. I’ll see you later, Eddie.”
“That guy’s just too much,” scoffs a girl sitting at another table.
“Why do you say that?” someone asks.
“If you knew Harry, then you’d guess what probably went down last night. Harry sees that Valerie is attracted to Chris, so he takes her money and accuses Chris of having taken it. Neat, huh.”

“There’s only one thing in life that I want, Eddie,” Harry says while he’s on acid.
“What’s that, Harry?”
“To be living in this room with you.”
“What about Valerie, Harry?”
“Oh yeah, there’s Valerie. I forgot about her.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
“Now, Valerie doesn’t want to have sex with me.”
“But you can understand that when you see how ill she is.”
“What’s the point of our being married if we’re not going to fuck?”
“Only a year ago you said you’d do anything to be with Valerie.”
“Yeah, that was a year ago.”

“Eddie, Valerie is passing out,” Rana tells me, interrupting my dancing in The Cabin. “She’s upstairs in my room.”
“Okay, I’ll go up.”
I kneel by the side of the bed upon which Valerie is lying. Turning her head to me, she opens her eyes. “Am I dying, Eddie?”
“No, you’re not dying, Valerie.”
Harry comes in and, not looking at Valerie, he sits on the floor with his back against the wall.
“Eddie, I want to tell you about a weird dream I had last night,” he says.
With not the slightest concern for Valerie’s condition, he wants to tell me about his dream. Is he incapable of looking after her or simply unwilling to do so? Is he leaving it to me to do that? Am I to assume that responsibility? If not me, then who will ?
“Valerie, do you want to come with me when you feel strong enough to get up?”
“Yes Eddie.”

“What’s going to happen to you, Eddie?” a girl asks.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. Why’re you asking that?”
“We’ve never seen you with a girl before.”
“I’m not with her; she’s with me. I’m taking care of until she feels better.”
Seeing Valerie with me, everyone seems to conclude that we are lovers. Tibetan Joe no longer calls me Mr. Buddha.

“Harry’s moved in two doors away from us, Valerie.”
“It didn’t take him long to do that, did it?”
“The manager’s worried about him. He says Harry is looking very troubled, that he’s trying to listen at our door or to look into our room through a crack in the paneling. But when I see Harry later and ask him if he’s upset, he says, ‘Why should I be upset? You’re not fucking Valerie.’ Actually, he seems to be proud of the fact that you’re with me. Remember the other night in The Cabin when we heard his voice at another table saying, “And that girl sitting with Eight Finger Eddie is my wife.’ ”

“Harry told me you flipped on acid when you were in Pokara, Do you want to tell me what happened on that trip, Valerie?”
“Actually, there were two trips. The first one was lovely. Everything: the lake, the forest, the Annapurna peak, was vibrating with amazing colors. And Harry was looking like a saint with a halo around his head. I was breathlessly joyfull.
“The next day, Harry wanted us to trip again, but I told him it was too soon, that I hadn’t fully recovered from the trip of the day before. But he continued to insist until I gave in to him.
“This trip put me straight into a hellish place. Everything seemed dark, murky, sinister. I felt I was crushing thousands of insects with each step I took. There was a German couple tripping with us, and the man seemed to be infatuated with all things dead. Whatever he picked up to show us was skeletal, dead. And I suddenly realized that I was alone with three Germans and remembered how frightened I’d been as a child when I’d hear the explosion of German bombs.
“Harry no longer looked like a saint, but like someone I didn’t want to know. At one point, while he had his arms around me, I looked up and saw a large swastika spinning down toward us from the sun. The hub of the swastika encircled our waists as it spun around us, and I wanted to get away from Harry and the German couple, but I was afraid to be alone.
“Later, we all went rowing on the lake and Harry pushed me out of the boat even though he knew I couldn’t swim. I screamed for him to pull me out of the water, but he just laughed at me for the longest time. Finally, he did help me to climb onto the boat.
“By the time Harry and I got back to our hotel room, I was so hysterical that he had to punch me in the face. When we got back to Kathmandu I locked myself in my room and didn’t want to see anyone, especially Harry. For days I sat on the edge of my bed, unable to see the floor because it was covered by a heavy mist, like when you look down from an airplane onto the tops of clouds.”
“Had you ever taken acid before?”
“Yes, a few times. Once, I took a trip with the boyfriend before Harry, and it was very different from the two in Pokara. I felt calm, so very calm, just sitting and looking at everything before me.. My boyfriend was standing a short distance away and, seeing me so unperturbed, he began to scowl and to shake his fist at me. I could see he was having a bad time and wanted to bring me down, but he was unable to frighten me as he usually did.”
. “That’s where acid should take you, Valerie. Not to heaven and not to hell but to a neutral place beyond good and evil.”

“While I was asleep, I saw myself lying in this bed,” Valerie tells me. “Then, I saw the door open and you come in. I opened my eyes and here you are! It’s like there are two of me: the one sleeping and the one seeing me sleeping.”
“But there was a third seer: the one who saw all that. It’s called the final seer, the one who sees all but cannot see itself.”

Valerie and I move to Benares to stay on a houseboat on the Ganga, Harry and some others tagging along.

“Look at him,” Valerie says, nodding toward Harry who is shouting at those on shore as he marches to and fro on the roof of the houseboat. “He looks just like a little Hitler.
“Again and again I make the mistake of choosing the young handsome boy over the more mature and understanding man. And the young ones always end up by mistreating me. I must dislike myself very much to allow myself to be punished like that. Have you read ‘The Story of O’?”
“Some time ago.”
“It’s my favorite book. The way that girl is systematically enslaved by the man she loves fascinates me. Once . . . But maybe I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“That’s up to you.”
“Once, I had my boyfriend take me to this forest near Paris where people go at night to look for unusual sex. I wanted him to tie me to a tree and leave me there so that whoever came along could do whatever he wished to me.”
“You could have been a great temple prostitute, Valerie. Did your boyfriend try to talk you out of it?”
“No, he said he would watch from a distance. He enjoyed to see me being humiliated. Once, he asked me to persuade my innocent little neice to have sex with him. I didn’t want to do it, but he insisted until I gave in. And my neice didn’t want to do it either until I induced her to change her mind. I was in the room while they did it together and, watching them, I had the only orgasm I’ve ever had.”
“You’ve never masturbated?”
“The only orgasm I’ve ever had with other people involved.”
“Right. So, what happened back at the forest? Did you get tied to a tree and left there?”
“No, I changed my mind at he last moment.”

“Eddie, you deserve to be with a nice happy healthy girl and not with a broken down wreck like me.”
“You know that I’m not looking for anyone to be with.”
“Yes, but you have better things to do than to look after me.”
“I’m not doing anything I don’t wish to do.”
“Something about these streets jammed with so many Indians makes me feel very uneasy. Someone once told me that if I went to India, I would die there.”
“And you believed it. You see how we try to destroy each other; if not with weapons, then with words or thoughts.”

“Sometimes when we’re walking through these narrow alleyways my consciousness rises high overhead and I can see forward to the next intersection.”
“That’s great, Valerie. You can see who we’re going to run into when we arrive there. It’s like seeing into the future. You could be the envy of many a spiritual seeker.”
“But I don’t like it whan it happens.”
“Don’t give any importance to these unusual ways of seeing, Valerie. Just let them slide by.”

“I found my money bag lying on the floor in the front room of the boat,” Valerie tells me early one morning. “Only my Indian rupees are missing.”
“And so is Harry.”
“That no good ripoff, stealing from his wife,” comments a freak staying on the boat.
“Let’s hold the bastard’s head under water when he comes back until he coughs up her money,” suggests someone else.
“No, let’s not say a word to him and see what happens,” I say.

“Hi, Eddie,” Harry greets, stepping into the boat.
“Hello, Harry.”
He sits on the other side of the boat and watches the tourist boats glide by. Now, he walks into the front room, then returns to the main room. The freaks on the boat, occupied with their chores or speaking quietly with one another, pay no attention to him. He walks out onto the deck but not for long. He returns and sits down beside me. I continue to read. He leans toward me and whispers, “Was there much money missing from Valerie’s wallet?”
“Who said there was money missing from Valerie’s wallet, Harry?”
“I saw it lying on the floor near the toilet this morning.”
“You saw it lying there, and you didn’t pick it up to return to her? If any of us had found your wallet lying on the floor, we certainly would have returned it to you. Now, everyone here suspects that you took Valerie’s money.”
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Believe me, Eddie, I didn’t take her money. Say you believe me.”
“How can I say that when I don’t believe it?”
“It’s easy, just say you do.”
“Harry, it doesn’t matter to me at all whether or not you took Valerie’s money.”
“Why won’t you believe me when I tell you I didn’t take it?”
“Because I’m not a believer, Harry.”

1970 - 1971

"Eddie, it's so good seeing you again," David says after welcoming Valerie and me to the Anjuna house.
"It's not as if we weren't expecting you," Sheri says. "The local ladies told us you'd be coming today. I swear they must be clairvoyant. You've heard we have a baby boy. We'll show him to you when he wakes up."
"Something else that's new is Joe Bananas' shop," David says.
"Yes, we stopped by there before we came here."
"Are you and Valerie lovers?" asks Sheri.
"No, she's traveling with me for now."
"Hello! Is anybody there?"Someone calls from outside.
"It's Jerry," David says, having gone to the door "Come on in, Jerry."
"Wow, it sure good to be on this scene again," Jerry says. "Oh, hi, Sheri."
"Before we go any further, Jerry," Sheri says, "I have to tell you that I have a child now, and that I can’t have all sorts of people staying here who might leave matches and razor blades lying around on the floor.”
"This is Eddie's house, right?"
"Eddie and his friend Valerie may stay here, but no one else."
"One moment, Sheri," I say. "As I prefer to stay where everyone is welcome, I won't be staying here."
"But David and I are looking forward to having you with us.”
“I know, but so many people will want to visit me that my being here will become an imposition upon you.”
“No, Eddie,” David says, “this is your house. Sheri and I will move out.”
“You and Sheri are already settled here, while I have all of Anjuna in which to look for a place."

The next morning Valerie and I and a number of others stumble into Joe Bananas.
"Where you people coming from?" asks Joe.
"We tried to sleep on the beach, " I say, but it was so cold and the surf was so loud that we didn't get much rest."
"To sleep on beach you need heavy clothes and good sleeping bag," Joe says. "Where you sleeping tonight?"
"Somewhere near a well and also close to your shop," I say. "Hey, whose house is this just before your place?"
"Some people living in London."
"You think we could stay on their porch?"
"Who's to complain?"
"Great, we've got a place."

“Valerie, look how relaxed Eddie's leg is,” Harry says, tapping my calf, as the three of us sit on the floor of the porch.
"Stop annoying Eddie," Valerie says.
"Eddie doesn't get annoyed so easily. You still refuse to believe me when I say that I didn’t take Valerie’s money, Eddie?”
“Yes, Harry."
"Very wise of you not to believe that; because I did take the money. Do you believe me when I tell you that?"
"I'll never believe anything you say."

“While you were on your morning walk on the beach Valery asked me to go with her to a hospital in Mapusa,” Jack tells me.
"So, did they find anything wrong with her?"
"I didn't wait around for that because she wanted to stay there."
"What? She intends to spend the season in a hospital?"
“She wants you to visit her.”
“I came to Goa to be on the beach and not in some dismal hospital.”

“I’ve been to see Valerie in the hospital,” says Maggie, a London friend of Valerie and Harry. “She’s not feeling well enough to come out yet. She would like to see you.”
“She can see me when she returns to the beach.”
“Eddie, she needs someone to go out and buy the medication perscribed for her. I would do it, but I have a child to look after.”
"She can hire someone to run errands for her."
"Eddie, go and get her out of there."

"So. Valerie, you may think you've found a safe haven here, but you know of course that there are more germs and microbes in hospitals than anywhere else. Of course, there is the consolation of hearing the moans and shrieks of those suffering more than yourself."
“Eddie, see that cot in the corner of the room? That's there for friends of the patient to spend the night on."
"You can't possibly expect me to sleep here."
"Just for a night or two, Eddie. Someone has to help me eat all the food they give me."

"Have you been having any of your dying attacks here, Valerie?" I ask the following day.
"Yes, and the nurses can't understand why I'm so afraid to die. 'What is so wonderful about being alive,?' they want to know.
Yeah, Valerie, what is so wonderful about being alive? You don't dance, you don't play sports, you don't do anything but worry over your symptoms.
If you could resist fighting your fear of dying, you might be able to overcome it. For years I was very afraid of dying. If I’d known then to confront my fear, I would have saved myself a lot of needless suffering.”
“But I don't think I can do that.”

"Valerie, let's get a fruit juice before we take the bus to Anjuna," I suggest after we leave the hospital.
"Oh, do you know the name of the song that's playing, Eddie?"
"No, and I don't ever wish to know it."
“You don’t care at all for popular music, do you?"
“What’s there to care for in that sentimental crap the music industry churns out to make a fast buck. I like to listen to music with more substance, like jazz or Indian classical music.”
“But most people like pop music.”
“I don’t like what most people like. Best sellers turn me off. Do you enjoy listening to that drivel?”
“You’re not at all romantic.”
“You mean I have no illusions about so-called love.”
“You’re a killer, Eddie. You’re killing all that I believe in and hope for. Do you remember the day Harry introduced you to me and I told you I was going to fly to Paris but that I was afraid of blowing up in the plane? You gave me a tablet, saying it would calm me down, but adding that I should not take it unless it was absolutely necessary. And I thought you were the kindest killer of them all, giving me the poison and telling me not to take it unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“There’s a vision I often have that puzzles me,” Valerie tells me on the bus to Anjuna. “It’s of a hand seen through a pastel shaded transparent veil. It's a well-formed hand and gentle seeming, but there's something very sinister about it. I wish I knew what lay behind that vision. Oh, and there’s something more: whenever that vision appears I feel like screaming, but I can’t manage to make a sound."

While I'm preparing the evening meal I hear voices approaching the porch. Soon Mataji appears accompanied by a number of foreign freaks.
"I find you, Mr. Fingers," she laughs, shaking her fist at me.
"What are you doing here, Mataji? Last season you were begging me for money to leave Goa."
"These boys bring me in car from Benares to cook for you."
"Tonight, I'm already cooking, so you'll eat with us."
"Then tomorrow, I cook for everyone," Mataji says.
"Good, we'll help you."
"How you can let this man cook?" Mataji shouts at Valerie. "Why you're not cooking for him?"
“It’s okay, Mataji,” I say, “I usually do the cooking."
"Okay, I make chillum."
Valerie edges closer to me. “Eddie, who’s the one sitting on the end of the porch?"
“German Wolf, why? ”
“Because he has those crazy eyes that I can’t look away from. I don’t know why I find them to be so fascinating. It’s almost impossible for me to resist a man who has those eyes, but it’a disaster if I don’t.”

A middle-aged Indian couple approach the porch.
“It seems you people are camping here,” the man says.
“We have been for some time,” I tell him. "Why do you ask?"
“Because we are the proprieters of this house.”
“If you’ve come to occupy the house, we’ll move.”
“There’s no need for you to move; you may remain on the porch while my wife and I occupy the house.”
“Thank you but no, that would be too inconvenient for you. We'll look for another place.”

“We looked here and there and everywhere before we discovered the ruins just next to the porch,” I tell Harry who has been away all day. “The front porch of the ruins is set high and can serve as a stage, and there are three rooms and a kitchen area inside. Man, I suspect that we’re going to have lots of visitors.”

"Hey, Eddie, aren't you afraid of being so conspicuous on those ruins?" asks New Yorker Ron. "Somebody could stand in the dark and pop you off."
"Who would want to waste a bullet on me?"
"Me, maybe. I hear you been telling people that I'm a gangster."
“That's what you are, isn't it, with your ill-concealed revolver and your heavy vibes?"
“What's a gangster, Eddie? Someone who hangs in gangs, right? Well, no one here has got a bigger gang than you have. So, that makes you the gangster on the scene."

“You don’t know what to do with me, do you, Eddie," Valery says. "No one in the whole world knows what to do with you."
"I wish I knew what is wrong with me."
"Many of the doctors you've been to have told you that, but you've chosen not to hear them. Do you think you'd feel better if you knew what's bothering you?"
"Of course."
"I know what it is. Shall I tell you?"
"You're suffering from hypochondria. Does knowing that make you feel better?"
"But you haven't told me anything."
"You see, Valerie, no matter what anyone calls your malady, it'll only be words to you."
"What makes you think I'm suffering from hypochondria?"
"Time and again you tell me you're dying, and time and again I hold you in my arms and you're no longer dying. How can that be? How can you stop dying simply because I’m hugging you? It signifies that you’re not actually dying but imagining that you are.”
“How can I stop imagining that?”
"You can't; there's no cure for hypochondria."
"Knowing that, why are you with me?"
"That's not the question you should be asking. Better to ask yourself why you are with me. I know where I'm going. In some days I'll be heading back to Kathmandu. And where will you be going?"
"With you, I guess."

1971
“You’re very ill, Eddie,” Valery tells me. “Go to the Bir hospital and see the French Embassy doctor who’s working there. I’ve told him about your condition, and he says you should go to him.”
“I’ll be all right, Valerie. The body knows how to cure itself.”
“Sometimes the body needs help from outside, especially in a place like Kathmandu. Take help when it’s offered to you.”

“The French doctor has seen your chest X-ray, and he thinks you have a very bad case of tuberculosis or maybe of lung cancer,” Valerie tells me. “He says it’s imperative that you to go to a sanitarium, preferably one that he recommends in the French Alps. He told me not to tell you this, but he says you may have only six months more to live.”
“Six more months!” I clap my hands. “Wow, Valerie, no one has ever promised me six months more of life.”
“So, you don’t intend to go to a sanitarium.”
“No, I intend to begin celebrating my final six months.”

Valerie returns to our room while I’m dancing with the upper part of my body to Indian music on the radio.
“I spoil everything,” she says, listlessly dropping her bag on the floor and dropping onto the bed.
“Why do you say that, Valerie?”
“I let someone have sex with me. I was so disgusted with myself that I almost passed out.”
“Why feel guilty about having sex, Valerie? You’re free to do as you like.”
“No, what disgusted me is why I did it. Like me, he's an extra in that movie they're shooting here, so I see him often. He keeps telling me he wants to take me to live on his farm in America which is located in a fabulous countryside with the air so fresh and the water so sweet. And that's why I let him have me: for security, like a whore.”

"Just as you're getting over your illness, I fall ill," Valerie tells me. "I must go to a hosptal in Delhi."
“But why go to a hospital in Dehlii when there are hospitals here? It costs money to fly to Delhi.”
“I don’t trust the hospitals in Kathmandu.”
"Listen, Valerie, I'm almost certain that you have hepatitus, a common illness amonst freaks. The cure is rest and a good diet. We've taken care of many people who've had it."
"How can you say that; you're not a doctor? You just want me to die."

“Okay, so I got two airline tickets to Delhi,” I tell Valerie. “But before we go, will you let them check you at the hospital here?
“All right.”

“Can’t you see that she’s got hepatitus?” the doctor snarls at me.
“Okay, sorry. That's what I've been telling her. Thanks, Doctor. Let’s go. Valerie.”
“That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it, Eddie.”
“I can't deny it. Now, we don’t have to go to Delhi in the rainy season. Do you know how hot it can get there? And, best of all, I can get a refund on those airline tickets.”
“What about my illness?”
“It'll take care of iself. Ask any freak."

“My American lover came to see me, but he didn't sit close to me, probably because he was afraid of catching what I have,” Valery tells me. “That’s how much he loves me. You don’t love me, but you sleep in the same bed with me.”
“That’s because I’m reckless. And because you make no sexual demands upon me.”

“So, Mr. Eddie, why are you here?” asks the Chief of the Immigration Department.
“I’d like to have a one month visa extension.”
“For you, Mr. Eddie, nothing. You have been a great disappointment to us. We believed you to be a kind of holy man, but now we see you for what you truly are.”
I get up to leave.
“What is that in your bag. Mr. Eddie?”
“An X-ray of my lungs.”
“Give it to me.”
Taking the photo, he studies it as though he’s able to decipher it.
“Um, very bad,” he nods his head and clucks his tongue. “I’ll give you seven days more. No, take fourteen days. Wait, twenty-one days and leave Nepal.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You see, Mr. Eddie, to what a state your way of life has brought you to. Now, all the medicine in the world cannot help you. It will be like pouring a cup of water onto desert sands. Your days of merry-making have come to an end.”

“So, you and Valery must leave Nepal soon,” says French Henri. “That’s not so good. My wife and I wished to see more of you. But I think I can offer you some solace to your woes. I have a used Mercedes mail van which my friend Didier drove here from Europe and which we intended to sell here, but now we find that it's better to sell it in Kabul. Didier will drive it there, taking passengers to there or to anywhere along the way. Of course, you and Valery will go without having to pay. How does that sound?”
“It couldn't sound better, Henri. Thanks.”
“Also, my wife and I would be very pleased if you and Valery would stay with us until you leave Nepal.”

A small boy comes running onto the road from an embankment on our right. Didier, braking, swerves the van as far to the left of the road as is possible to avoid hitting the boy. But the child, seemingly determined to run into us, disappears with a thunp under the left front of the van.
A number of Indian men rush forward and begin to strike the windshield of the van with long wooden poles, but fail to cause any damage. Other men shove their poles through the open side windows of the van and try to poke the passengers.
Didier is trying to open his door.
“Are you crazy, Didier?” I shout. “You can’t go out there; you’ll get killed.”
“But the child is stuck around the wheel.”
“He’s dead already. There’s nothing to do but get us out of here.”
Didier steps on the gas, and we start off. But soon we hear a siren, and a police jeep overtakes us and makes us stop.
“Get out and come with us,” a police officer orders Didier, leading him away.
“Where are you taking our driver?” asks a girl passenger.
“Back to the scene of the accident,” an officer answers. “He will go on trial tomorrow.”
“And we’re taking you people to a government guest house where you'll spend the night,” says another officer, getting into the van and starting the motor

“I don’t ever want to drive again,” Didier says when he returns to us in the evening.
“You mustn’t let this incident create a block in your mind, Didier,” I’m surprised to hear Valery say. “It was not your fault. You did all you could to avoid hitting that boy. Come, Eddie and I will go with you to the court in the morning, and then you’ll drive the van to Delhi and to Kabul.”

“During the monsoon floods these country people move to the elevated roadsides, but they are not accustomed to living near the highway, so I'm inclined believe your account of what happened,” the police chief tells Didier. “You are free to go.”
“Thank you, sir,” Didier says. “I’d like to leave some money for the parents of the boy.”
“No need; they are of the very lowest caste.”
“All the more reason to give them money.”

“Isn't Kabul great, Eddie?” Harry says. “What a scene. We know so many freaks here. Every time we turn around someone or other is inviting us to their place. Some freaks have such nice houses just outside the city. And Ziggy's is a great place to hang out. I’ll be able to make money dealing there and get my own room."

As I'm returning to my hotel room, I hear someone coming up the stairs and bawling loudly. I wait to see who it is.
“Harry, what’s happened, man?”
“Oh, Eddie, you won’t believe it,” he sobs. “It's the worst thing that could happen to me. Let’s go to the room.”
“Why are crying like that, Harry?” asks Valery. “Were you rejected by a lover?"
“It’s worse than that, much worse. O wah!”
“Tell us what it is.”
“Okay. I was coming home on Chicken Street when I decided to have a curd. After I had the curd, paid for it, left the shop and was walking here the feeling came over me that something was not right. I reached into my pocket and –WOW!- my wallet was missing. Adrenalin charged, I rushed back to the curd shop and asked for my wallet. ‘What wallet?’ they wanted to know. ‘My brown wallet, the one I remember distinctly laying on this counter to take out the money to pay for the curd I bought here just a short while ago. Please give it back to me.’ No, they hadn’t seen any wallet. ‘It's brown, it's mine! All the money I have in the world is in it! Pease return it to me,' I begged, but they just shook their heads. How could they do that, Eddie: having my wallet, but looking me straight in the face and saying that they hadn’t seen it?”
“You know very well how that’s done, Harry,” Valery says.
“When I began to shout and bang the counter with my fists they came at me with big sticks and chased me out of the shop and down the street. O, what am I going to do? All my money is gone. Oh, wah!”
“Stop crying, Harry. One day you’re going to lose your life,“ Valery says. “Look, here’s about fifty trips of acid you can have to get yourself started again.”
“Thanks, Valery,” Harry says, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “I’ll pay you back soon.”
“I don’t care to be disappointed, so I won’t be expecting you to do that.”
“Where’d you get the acid, Valerie?”
“Someone gave it to me before leaving Afghanistan.”

“Do you know what those French freaks just said to me, Eddie?” Valerie says as we walk to our hotel in Kabul. “They said that they respect you very much and are happy to see me with you, but they think it’s a shame for a beautiful girl like me to be living without sex.”
“But you’re free to have sex, Valerie.”
“I know, but I don’t want them to know that.”

“I went to this Afghan doctor that someone recommended to me and told him what was bothering me, "Valerie tells me. "And he told me to take off my clothes. Take off my clothes for a mental problem! These doctors don't know any more than I do. I'm not going to waste any more time going to them."
"Let's hope so."

“I dread this bus trip back to Pakistan,” Valerie tells me.
“Would you rather be working in an office, sitting in jail or lying ill on a hospital bed?" I ask. "Not very likely. So just sit back and enjoy your good fortune.”

“You people are crazy, wanting to go to India?” the Pakistani border guard tells us. “Don’t you know we’re going give India a good beating?”

1972
"I've been meaning to speak with you two, but something has always interfered," Australian Jenny says, coimng up to Valerie and me on the beach in Anjuna. “Those rumors of Pakistani bombers coming this way really frightened me. And the blackouts at night were quite a nuisance.”
“The war was over soon enough, Jenny.”
“You know, Eddie, you remind me very much of my sister’s husband. Oh, I was so in love with him, but my sister got to marry him. I hated her for that.”
“Do you still hate your sister?”
“I don’t think so.” Jenny glances at Valerie. “I’ll see you later.”
“You can see she’s infatuated with you, so why do you encourage her by speaking to her?” Valerie asks.
“Hey, Valerie, don’t tell me who I can and cannot speak to. I’ll speak to anyone I wish. What can Jenny possibly get from me?”
“Oh, merde, here comes the one we met in Kabul.”
“That’s Johanna.”
“I don’t care what her name is. She’s ambitious that one, and she’d also like to get close to you. She copies the way I dress, the way I do my hair, the way I speak.”
“She must admire you very much.”
“No, she only copies those things that she thinks you find attractive in me. She’s so stupid.”

“Look at that young Vias work,” Valerie remarks. “Every day he carries all those huge stones to make improvements to the ruins.”
“He’s working so hard because he’s seeing the ruins as a temple, his temple. He’s still a bit freaked by what he experienced in Delhi during the war with Pakistan. He gave me a garbled account of how spooked he became in a blacked-out hotel hearing the sounds of bombers overhead.”
“Every evening, he lies on his side before us and stares up into our faces. I wonder what he’s seeing,”
“We’ll soon find out.”
“And Harry’s back to his old ways: spending most of his time with the junkies in the back room. Monique has left her boyfriend to be with him.“
“Monique’s the one you bring around when she passes out after shooting up, right?”
“No one else knows how to bring her out of it.”

“What’s up, Jenny?”
“Oh, nothing, Eddie, nothing at all,” she laughs and, raising her hands, she makes scratching movements before Valerie’s eyes. Then, frowning as though she recalls something, she hurries away.
“She’s seeing me as the sister who robbed her of the man she loved.”
“Did you have a sister that you disliked, Valerie?”
“I had two sisters, one older and one younger, and I liked them both. But I wanted very much to have a younger brother, so I could teach him all about sex.”
“So, that’s where it comes from?”
“Where what comes from?”
“Your preference for lovers younger than yourself.”
“Yes, that must be so.”

“Soon will come the time to crack the coconut,” Vias says as he lies before Valerie and me on the porch of the ruins.
He says that so often that I suspect the coconut he means to crack is my head.
“Do you see the face?” he asks.
“What face, Vias?” I ask.
“A man’s face, floating above the entrance to this compound.”
“I don’t see anything, Vias,” I say.
“Neither do I,” says Valerie.

“Jenny’s jumped into Joe Bananas' well,” Cindy says, coming winded to the ruins. “One of the boys went down, tied a rope around her waist and had her pulled out. Didn't you hear all the commotion, Eddie?"
"There's commotion every day."
"Anyway, Jenny's lying on the porch next door and asking to see you.”
“Okay, I’ll go see her.”
“Do you think Jenny jumped into the well so she could gain some affection from you, Eddie?”
“I hope not, Cindy."
Jenny opens her eyes when we arrive.
“Is there much pain, Jenny?” I ask.
“There was, but now that you’re here, the pain is gone.”
“Why’d you do it, Jenny?”
“I heard a voice telling me to jump.”

There’s a crash of pots and pans being thrown about in the kitchen. I get there just as Pierre, one of the junkies staying in the back room, is hurling the small kerosene stove out the window.
“I’m sorry, Eddie, but I can’t take any more. Every time we go out, that bastard Vias goes through our bags, takes what he likes and throws the rest all about the place.”
“That’s what some flipouts do, Pierre.”
“Not to me, not to us. We do not support such behavior. We will beat the bastard shitless.”

“The face is there again tonight,” Vias says on the ruins.
“Yes, Vias, I see it now,” Valerie says
“You see the face?” gasps Vias. “What does it look like?”
“It’s big and round and it shines like a bright moon. Its eyes are shut, and it has a mustache that curls down and around the end of his lips.”
“Ahhh!” Vias falls back.
“And I see the rope, too.”
“You see the rope?”
“Yes, it floats beneath the face, and it has a series of loops in it with tiny medallions hanging from each loop.”
Vias hurries to his mat and lies down.
“Are you afraid?” Valerie asks, going to him.
“No.”
“Don’t lie, Vias.”

“Eddie, you should’ve been here to see Valerie this afternoon,” Jack says. “She was too much.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“The junkies had Vias up against the wall and were about to wail into him with big sticks when Valerie stepped before him and told the junkies that if they wanted to hit Vias, they would have to hit her first. That stopped them cold. They begged and begged Valerie to step aside, but she wouldn’t move. They couldn’t do anything against her because she’s the only one able to bring Monique around when she’s passed out."

“I hear I may have to go to The States to get a new passport.” I tell Valerie.
“I’ll go with you.”
“How can you go? You have no money.”

Turning in my sleep, I hear Valerie whispering with Chris who is lying on the other side of her. As she speaks to him, she holds onto my arm behind her back.

“You are the father, Eddie, and Valerie is the daughter you’re going to present to me as my bride,” Vias says.
“But you’re already married, Vias.”
“That was in a much duller time, Eddie, but now is the time of the cracking of the coconut. Valerie belongs to me because she saw the vision of the face I projected.”

“Vias is following us again, Eddie,” Valerie says, as we walk along the beach.
“Yeah, he’s quite out of it, waving his arms about and talking to himself."
Reaching the north end of the beach, we turn and head back for the ruins.
"Where's Vias? I don't see him any more," Valerie says.
"Look, he's standing behind that tree and sending arm signals to the ships at sea."
"I don't see any ships at sea."
"You don't and I don't, but Vias does."

“Do you remember your first sexual experience, Valerie? Sometimes that first one determines subsequent experiences.”
“Let me think.” Valerie pauses, then gasps. “Oh, Eddie, that’s what's behind the vision of the hand!
“I was thirteen years old and staying with my older married sister who was pregnant, when I woke up gradually one night to a most pleasurable sensation. I lay back and enjoyed the feeling. But when I saw that it was caused by the hand of my sister’s husband lying between my legs I became frightened was about to scream. But, not wishing to disturb my sister, I swallowed it. And that must be why I feel like screaming sometimes but am not able to make a sound. Anyway, the gentle touch of my brother-in-law’s hand was making me feel so good that I wanted it to continue touching me.
“The next day, I tried to catch his eye, hoping for a wink or a nod to signal that he would touch me again that night. But he refused to even glance at me. I couldn't understand, but I realized later that he must have been terrified of being discovered that he had toyed with a minor.”

Valerie and I are awakened before dawn by Vias, standing before the porch of the ruins.
“Oh, Valerie, how I have suffered for you. Today, I went to Mapusa to look for you, but not finding you anywhere, I became furious. The police picked me up, beat me viciously and didn’t release me until after midnight. I’ve walked all the way here from Mapusa in the dark hearing the snarls of wild animals nearby. I have suffered all this for you.”
Vias leans forward onto the porch and takes Valerie’s foot in his hand.
“Don’t touch me, Vias.” She kicks his hand away.
“Why do you make me suffer even more, Valerie?”
Vias notices my hand resting on Valerie’s thigh.
“Take your filthy hand off my love.!”
My hand remains on Valerie’s thigh. Vias rushes toward the steps leading up to the porch, but stops to pick up a large rock. “The time has come to crack the coconut,” he says, resuming his ascent, the rock hoisted above his head.
We’re going all the way, Vias and I. I’m not removing my hand from Valerie’s thigh, and Vias seems determined to drop the stone on my head.
Without warning, Chris and a second freak charge Vias, knocking the rock out of his hands and pushing him back off the porch. Vias picks up a long pole in the yard and, pointing it at me, he charges forward. Chris and the boy hold up a blanket and shield me from the oncoming pole. Now Chris jumps off the porch and takes hold of Vias. Some of the others, awake now, help Chris to tie him up.
“Oh, Valerie, help me,” Vias pleads.
Valerie goes to Vias, inspects the rope that binds him and tightens it.
“You got him, huh,” Joe Bananas says, appearing in the yard. ”Good, he make too much trouble my shop. I take him to Mapusa and put him in mental hospital.”

"Have you noticed the boy who arrived this morning, Eddie?" asks Valerie.
"What about him?"
"He's got those crazy eyes I can't resist."
"He, too?"
"I think I'll go to the beach with him tonight to see if I can discover why I'm so attracted to eyes like his."

“I’m really proud of myself tonight,” Valerie tells me. “This was the first time I’ve been with a boy who has those eyes and not given myself to him.”
“You had no difficulty in resisting those eyes?”
“No so much, probably because I was trying to see what it was about them that attracted me.”
“And did you find out what that was?”
“No, the answer seemed to be so close, so close.”
“What about your father’s eyes, Valerie?”
“Oh, Eddie!" she gasps. "That's it! The last time I saw my father his eyes were like that. I was eleven years old and at home alone with my younger sister when my father came home drunk and in a very bad mood. He was always drunk in those days, but this night he was in a rage. He led my sister and me into the kitchen and ordered us to stand still while he wet a towel in the sink and began to wring it menacingly before us. I looked up at his face and I saw his eyes, his angry crazy eyes, and I became more afraid than I had ever been. ‘Run,’ I shouted to my sister, and we both ran out of that flat and all the way to our grandmother’s house. ‘That man is too dangerous for you children to be with,’ my grandmother said, and she had us removed from his custody. For years I walked the streets of Paris, looking for my father and those crazy eyes of his. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

“You two are constantly arguing with each other and disrupting the scene around me,” I tell Valerie and Chris. “So, why don’t you go off somewhere together?”
“But I want to be with you,” Valerie says.
“I want to be with you, too,” says Chris.
“So, move to the porch of the house next to the ruins. There you can argue as much as you like.”
“No, I want to be close to you,” Valerie says.
“I also want to be close to you.”
“All right, since you both insist on being near to me, I forbid you to speak to each other while you’re in my presence.”
“Oh, so where’s our freedom, then?” Valerie asks. “You’re always telling us how important it is to be free.”
“You are free, Valerie, free to leave.”

“You can’t seem to stop arguing. So, from now on, you will sleep on my left, Valerie, and Chris will sleep on my right. And please don’t argue over my body.”

“Eddie, Valerie’s been talking to herself and walking near the well the last few nights,” Cindy reports. “I’m afraid she may jump in.”
“Okay, I’ll go see what she’s up to.”
I go out through the back of the ruins and find Valerie by the well.
“What are you doing out here, Valerie?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Come to the porch. There’s a fine guitarist who’s going to play, and someone's brought lots of sweets.”
“I don’t want to come.”
“Why not, Valerie?”
“Because they’re all talking about me.”
“No one’s talking about you.”
“Yes, they are.”
“And what are they saying about you?”
“I don’t know. They’re whispering.”
“Oh, come on, Valerie, it’s not important what anyone is saying about you. Come to the porch.” I take her arm to lead her away.
With a determined jerk, she frees her arm from my hand.
And that is it!
With that movement of her arm out of my grasp, she reveals to me the mistake I’ve been making these past few years. Although I’ve been telling those around me not to follow anyone, I’ve failed to see that they’ve been following me. Without intending to, I have become a kind of drug to them. I must bring an end to this.

“The Eight Finger Eddie you’ve known is no more,” I announce to those on the ruins after dinner that evening. “I’m still here, but I’m no longer listening to your problems. You must solve your own problems. No one else can solve them for you. And I'm not listening to your dreams. My mistake was that I didn’t notice how many of you had become dependent on me. I thought because the scene broke up periodically that there was no danger of that happening. I was very mistaken. But from this moment on, you’re on your own.”
.
“Chris, don’t go to her whenever she calls for you. Let her go through what she’s going through.”
“But she might jump into the well, Eddie.”
“We have to give her the opportunity not to jump into the well. Don’t make the mistake I’ve been making. If you try to help her, she’ll become attached to you.”
Chris goes to Valerie.

“I’ve told you two not to argue over my body, and still you do. So, from now on Johanna sleeps on my left and you, Valerie, on the other side of her.”
“Ooof!” Valerie makes a sound of exasperation then, rising, she rushes off the porch, through the yard and on toward the beach.
“You stay here this time, Chris,” I say, turning to him. “You’ve been blocking Valerie’s way for days now.”
“Eddie?”
I turn to look at Cindy, then instantly look back at Chris, but he’s already slipped out the back way.

“It was terrible, Eddie,” Valerie says, having returned alone. “There were lights exploding everywhere, in the sky and in my head. And my body was shaking from head to toe. Then Chris came and touched me. His hands were as cold as ice. He spoke to me, but I couldn’t speak to him. My lips were sealed, and it seemed as though there was a block of ice from my throat down to my heart. I had to get away from him and come back here. Oh, Eddie, what point is there to this life?”
“No point at all. But you can give it any meaning you wish.”
“What about the couple in the house, Eddie?”
“So, that’s your final dream, Valerie. Forget about the couple in the house. You have go on living on without that dream.”
“Then, I want to die.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t want to die and you don’t want to live. Actually, you don’t want anything at all. So, just go to sleep.”
Lying down, Valerie assumes a fetal position.

Valerie is deathly pale in the morning, so I allow her to face her misery and head for the beach. Johanna, sitting on the sand, watches me as I come up to her.
“I don’t want this,” she says, looking up at me petulantly.
“You don’t want what?”
“This!” She waves her arm at the scene before us.
“Take it, baby. What do you think I’m seeing?” I say and walk away.

“I felt so good after you told me to, ‘Take it, baby. What do you think I’m seeing?’ that I just went to a quiet place and took it. And it was terrible: the light was blinding and the sounds were deafening.
“You know what some of us are going through, Eddie, lying in a fetal position, burning with fever and smelling of sulphur, fire and brimstone iy says in The Bible? We’re dying. And it’s important that we see our suffering through to the end and not try to escape from it. When the fever comes to an end it feels so good. We may have found a way to die and to return, Eddie.”
“Do you think so, Johanna?”
“And it was all brought on by your rejection of us. You know the grief we suffer when someone we’re fond of leaves us or dies? Well, that’s the grief that some of us are suffering now.”

“Valerie’s gone off with Chris for a few days to help him kick his habit,” Cindy tells me. “You know, Eddie, sometimes I see her eyes become unclear again.”
“Yes, I’ve seen that in your eyes, too, Cindy. You and Johanna and Valerie had such clear eyes when you came out of what we dub the Death Trip that I almost believed that there might be something to it. But soon doubt and uncertainty began to reappear in your eyes, and it became obvious that the trip had no lasting effect."

“Chris wants to tell you about a dream he had, Eddie,” Valerie says.
"No, I don't want to hear any more dreams."
"Just this last one, Eddie.Tell it, Chris.”
“I dreamt that I was in a hot desert. The sun was beating down on me, and I was incredibly thirsty. Suddenly, I came upon a Goan ice cream vendor lying dead on the sand, his bicycle down beside him and his ice cream boxes scattered all about. He looked just like you, Eddie. I reached into one of the boxes and frantically pulled out an ice cream stick. But when I went to eat it I couldn’t open my mouth.”
“The meaning of the dream seems to be quite clear, Chris. The dead ice cream man was the Eddie you killed when you spoke to Valerie after I’d told you both not to speak to each other. Valerie, did what I’d asked her to do and was unable to open her mouth to speak to you. But you spoke to her. So, in your dream you were punished for that by not being able to open your mouth to eat the ice cream you craved. Finally, the torrid heat of the desert was a result of the guilt you felt for being untrue to me.”

“I’m not afraid of becoming pregnant any longer,” Valerie says to no one in particular, as she comes skipping out of the house next to Joe Bananas where she’s staying with Chris.
She’s living out her dream of the couple in the house. It seems that most people must try to make their dreams come true until they realize that those dreams are actually nightmares.
As for me, without dreams and with nothing to live for, I'm just gong on nicely for no reason at all. I could have been here four years ago, in '68, when the sun came to me, but no regrets. No, I'm grateful for all that has happened to me because it has resulted in my becoming who I am.

Copyright 1993
Revised 2004

My Rise to Relative Obscurity Part 3

2007-02-27T13:02:00.000+05:30

1955 - 1958
“You won’t believe what just happened, Eddie,” Gwen says, stepping out of the bedroom of the new trailer. “This client who just left came in, pulled out his cock, said, ‘Suck this.’ And after I did, he turned around, bent forward, pointed to a spot between his asshole and his balls and said, ‘That’s my clit. Suck it.’ I did, and he quivered like he was having an orgasm, pulled up his pants and left.”
“How much did he pay you?”
“Oh, my god, I forgot to collect!”
“You were raped, my dear,” I laugh. “I was wondering why he’d left his car motor idling outside. He pulled a con on you. I thought you always collected the money in front.”
“Not any longer. Once the tricks know you’re experienced, they don’t try to pull any shit on you, like underpaying you in the dark or giving you bad checks. Most of them are real gentlemen, opening doors for me, offering me lights for my cigarettes. But I know that if I worked with them as an office girl, they’d be crude, trying to cop feels behind cabinets and shit like that. When I find a client who is really nice, he doesn’t have to pay me any longer.”
“Do you still see the one who holds his breath when he’s coming so he can come twice for the price of one?”
“No, he hasn’t come since I caught onto his game.”

“I met this girl, Marti, who’s a call girl and a sort of madam, and she told me about a motel where many girls take their Johns. Now, I won’t have to bring them here any longer and disturb you. Marti also advised me to sign up with an answering service, to avoid being bothered by clients calling here or by clients I never want to meet again.. She told me, too, that I really inspire her with my drive to get the money. The movie people I see also admire my hustle. They like me because they can relax with me. They know I’m not at all interested in getting into films or falling in love with them.”

“I got the scare of my life today. This trick I was with kept telling me that he was going to kill me. Finally, I worked up enough courage to ask him how he was going to do that. ‘I’m going to fuck you to death,’ he said. Wow, was I relieved. He had a penis that was no bigger than Vincent’s.
“Why are most men so concerned about the size of their cocks? If they have one as long as a garden hose, they hold it in their two hands and lament that it’s so small; while, if they have one that’s barely visible, they tell you they’re going to fuck you to death. Sometimes I wish I had a tape machine under my bed to record all the ridiculous things men say when they’re in bed with me.”

“I broke off with my black boyfriend today. Too bad, because he was such a good dancer.”
“Why’d you do that, Gwen?”
“Because he told me that now that I’d made it with him, no white man would ever satisfy me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had to admit that, yes, on the whole most black men were better fuckers than white men, but I added that I knew some white men who were as good as black men. When he scoffed at that I asked him if he’d ever been fucked by a black man or by a white man. Of course he hadn’t. ‘Well, I have,’ I said, ‘so I should know.’ Then he accused me of defending my own kind. ‘You think I’m lying to you?’ I asked, and he said that he was sure I was. Then I got angry and told him, ‘If you want to see me after this, you’re going to have to begin paying me again.’ ”

“Gwen’s not coming out tonight.”
“Who’s at the door, Eddie?” Gwen calls from the bedroom.
“That hipster you sometimes nod to around town and a guy in a leather jacket.”
“Tell them to come in.”
The two men enter the trailer and go into the bedroom to sit on the side of the bed. While they’re speaking with Gwen, I decide to give the hipster a treat. Reaching up to the air vent in the ceiling, I retrieve the joint hidden there and, with one downward motion of my arm, drop it into the hipster’s lap. He backs away from it as though it’s a bomb. The one in the leather jacket leans over and grabs the joint, and I back out of the room, certain that the hipster has brought the heat right into our trailer.
“You got any more of this stuff?” Leather Jacket says, coming up behind me. “I gotta have it. I’m hooked.”
The stupid bastard doesn’t even know that no one gets hooked on grass.
“No, that’s just a joint someone left here. I don’t smoke that shit.”
Leather Jacket returns to the bedroom to talk with Gwen.
I’m surprised to see her getting ready to go out with them. Hasn’t she seen what happened to that joint?
The hipster and Leather Jacket walk out first, and I take hold of Gwen’s wrist as she’s about to go out with them..
“Don’t go, Gwen. That’s a cop with the hipster.”
“Oh, you’re paranoid, Eddie.”
“No, I’m not. Didn’t you see what went down with that joint? The hipster jumped back from it like I’d thrown a viper in his lap, while the one in the leather jacket pounced on it like he’d found heaven.”
“I’ll see you later, Eddie.”
“Where, in jail? Please, don’t go, baby.”
She leaves and I sit back to wait for bad news.

When nothing has happened for a couple of hours I begin to hope that I’ve been mistaken.
There’s a loud knock on the door.
As soon as I open it, Leather Jacket and a man in a suit rush past me into the trailer.
“Okay, where’s the rest of the stuff?” Leather Jacket asks, while the Suit goes into the bedroom.
“I told you that was a joint someone had left here. I don’t use the stuff.”
“You’re high now; I can see it in your eyes.”
“I get high listening to music.” I nod toward the LPs on the shelf.
“Look at all these names in her phonebook,” the Suit remarks, looking through the Gwen’s book in the bedroom. “Movie stars and directors, all kinds of prominent people. She must’ve been making a bundle. How much did she make a week?”
“I never asked her.”
“You don’t have pockets in your pants,” observes Leather Jacket. “Where’d that stick come from?”
“From the vent up there.”
“Whose name is the trailer in?” asks the Suit.
“Hers.”
Vincent, awakened, crawls out of his bed under the couch.
“Is that’s her child?” asks the Suit. “What a shame she’s doing what she’s doing when she’s got such a good looking kid.”
I don’t bother to tell him that the good looking kid had never eaten as well as he does since Gwen’s been doing what she’s doing.
“All right, get the kid dressed,” Leather Jacket tells me. “We’re taking you in.”
I’d always expected to be busted someday for doing something I really hadn’t wanted to do.

“Vincent! Eddie!” Gwen exclaims when we enter enter the police office. “Why’d you bring them in? They’re innocent.”
I give Gwen an I-told-you-so look, and she returns a you-were-right shrug.
“It’s the real stuff,” Leather Jacket announces, bustling in with a fragment of the joint in his hand. “The lab just confirmed it.”
What did he expect it would be, spinach?
“Look, whose name is in here,” Leather Jacket says, looking through Gwen’s phonebook. “DeLong. Do you know what he is? He’s a muffdiver.”
I’d better keep my mouth shut. I’d forgotten that there were still such Neanderthals roaminging about.
“We’re letting you go now,” Leather Jacket tells us. “But you, Gwen, have to appear in court in two days, and with you I want to have a little chat.”
Leather Jacket takes me into an adjoining room.
“You’re going to gather information for me. I want you to check out that bar next to your trailer park and find out if there’s any booking going on.”
Like fuck I am. The first thing I’m going to do is move the trailer out of Burbank. Lucky, they haven’t booked us for possession; probably because they don’t want to take care of Vincent.

“After we left here,” Gwen tells me, “we dropped off the hipster, then went to my motel. Leather Jacket gave me the money and I undressed. I knew there was something wrong when he didn’t take off his clothes. He showed me his badge and grabbed my purse with the marked money in it. Then we had to wait around for the witnessing cop to appear. The longer we waited, the more agitated Leather Jacket became.
“ ‘I’m going out of my mind looking at your body,’ he told me.
“Hearing that, I began to work on him. ‘Come on, man, take off your clothes and let’s get it on,’ I coaxed, knowing that if I could identify a mark on his body, the case against me would be thrown out. ‘What are you waiting for? Here you are, forcing yourself to sit like a dead man while you’re dying to make it with me.’
“ ‘I can’t,’ he said.
“ ‘Why can’t you?’ I asked, standing seductively before him.
“ ‘I’d lose my job.’
“ ‘You can find a better job than this,’ I told him. ‘Be true to yourself. Your body is craving to have me, but your frightened little mind is preventing it from reaching out for me.’
“ ‘Why don’t you lie down and let me watch you play with yourself?’ he asked, but I wasn’t about to do that and have him charge me with having exhibited myself.
“So, it was stalemate until the witnessing cop arrived and I was put in a squad car. On the way to the station, I told the cops it was crazy of them to arrest me when I was doing a service to the community by disposing of some of the excess male sexual energy that would otherwise be used to rape women and children.”
“Why’d you tell them that, Gwen? You were advised by an attorney not to say anything if you were arrested. Now those cops are going to present what you said to the judge, who’ll have no choice but to consider you an unrepentant criminal.”
“That’s just what I am.”

“Marti tells me I don’t need an attorney, Gwen tells me. “She says prostitution is only a misdemeanor and that I’ll probably only be fined.”
“That doesn’t sound right. You’d better consult an attorney.”
“Why should she tell me something that’s not true?”
“Because she has eyes for me.”
“But she wouldn’t want me in jail just so she could get to you. She knows that I don’t mind her making it with you.”
“Yes, but I mind.”

“Hi, Eddie, Marti here. What happened with Gwen’s trial?”
“She got a month.”
“That’s unbelievable. Usually, it’s just a fifty- dollar fine. How you taking it?”
“Not too well. I feel like there’s a heavy weight on my chest making it difficult for me to breathe. This bust had to happen just when she was doing so well. Now, she’s going to want to quit when she comes out.”
“Yeah, it’s a drag, man. Anyway, what’re you doing this afternoon? You wanna come out to the track with me?”
“I can’t. I have to pick up Vincent at four.”
“You don’t look so good, Gwen,” I say when I pick her up after her release from jail.
“I don’t feel so good, physically or mentally. The food there was terrible.”
“I came to see you, but they told me that you’d lost your right to have visitors. Why was that?”
“It happened because I tried to speak up for an inmate who’d been unfairly accused by one of the matrons. Wow, Eddie, to think that I’d once wanted to be a cop and be able to help the inmates. There’s no space in that system to help anyone. In a way, I’m grateful to have gone to jail because it opened my eyes to just how rotten the underbelly of society really is.
“The inmates were no angels, either. All my things were ripped off the very first day because I didn’t bother to lock them up. The girls couldn’t believe that I was in there for prostitution. ‘Baby, no one does time for that,’ they laughed. Most of them were in for junk and accustomed to being there. ‘Hi, babies, I’m home again,’ one girl said when she arrived. ‘Now, at least, I don’t have to worry about getting busted.’
“One of their favorite pastimes was cutting out cardboard syringes, then attaching a needle or pin to the end of it, cooking up some imaginary dope in a spoon, tieing up and giving themselves a fantasy fix.
“I made myself disliked during my first shower hour. ‘Who’s the dumb cunt flushed the toilet?’ I heard them shouting just after I’d done it. I didn’t know why they were so pissed off until I looked into one of the shower rooms later and saw a girl lying on the floor with her legs up on the wall, exposing her clit to the sharpest spray the shower spigot was capable of producing. And I understood that I’d weakened the force of the spray when I’d flushed the toilet.
“Some of the girls were professional entertainers, singers and dancers, and sometimes they’d put on shows. They’d tie a string around a tampon, throw it up and over the girders, and use it as a microphone. ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ a girl would announce, bowing to ‘him’. ‘He’ was the most popular one there. The girls would write ‘him’ love letters, give ‘him’ gifts and kneel by ‘his’ bed, hoping to be chosen as ‘his’ sleeping partner for the night. After you’d been there for a time, she really did become a ‘he’ for you.
“As soon as the lights would go out at night, I’d hear the girls scurrying to each others’ beds. I received a few love letters, but I was too depressed to get into anything
“The only sensitive and intelligent girl there was the one who’d been busted for having all those hundred dollar a night girls working for her. I spent much of my time talking with her about books and music. She wants me to help her by buying her phonebook from her boyfriend. She says the book has the names and numbers of dozens of her clients, how much they pay and their sexual predilections.”
“I guess if you bought that book, you could sell it many times.”
“Oh, Eddie, I don’t think I can go back to work. I feel so tired of the whole thing. Will you work?” Gwen asks, just as I’d expected she would.
“No,” I answer without hesitation. Why should I work to fulfill her dream of having her own home, an income for life and an education for Vincent?

“I told Marti that I was thinking of leaving you,” Gwen tells me. “ ‘If you’re staying in the business, you couldn’t ask to be with a better guy,’ she told me. ‘He doesn’t take your money; you even have to beg him to buy clothes for himself. He cooks, takes care of your kid, puts your money in your account. I never met a guy so down to earth. But if you don’t want him, send him over to me.’ ”
“She sounds like my public relations agent.”
“You know who’s been calling me, hoping to become a client? Leather Jacket.”

Gwen, emerging from the bedroom naked, suddenly retreats when Vincent’s friends open the door and try to rush in. I go to the door to stop them.
“Wait outside, you guys. Vince will be out in a minute,” I say, shutting the door and turning to Vincent. “Listen, Vincey, there’s nothing wrong with being naked.”
“Then, why did Mommy hide?”
“Because if your friends should tell their mothers that they’d seen your mother with no clothes on, their mothers would think that your mother is a very bad woman to allow herself to be seen naked by children.”
“But why do people think it’s bad?”
“I guess they don’t know any better.”
“Okay, Dad, I’m going out to play now.”

“Why were you looking so pissed off at Marti’s orgy, Eddie?”
“I didn’t like seeing you being used by her. I guess you didn’t notice what was happening?”
“No, I was too busy.”
“Marti invites all the working girls she knows and their boyfriends to a sex orgy. So, we go, but in a little while I begin to notice a number of straight guys present. Who are they? I wonder. And it comes to me that they’re probably her doctor, her dentist, her parole officer, her who knows who. So, Marti’s paying off her debts by conning you girls into turning free tricks with these Johns. That’s why I wanted to get out of there.”
“She’s sly, isn’t she?”
“Anyway, I’m getting tired of these sex orgies. Ever since we returned from Mexico, almost every party we’ve been to has developed into an orgy.”
“You don’t have to go to them, Eddie. Many tricks will be happy to pay me to take them.”
“Good. And I’m tired of exchanging partners, too. We’ve made it with almost every couple we know, even with the ones we hadn’t said anything to at first because we thought they’d be offended or shocked. But, baby, as soon as they learned of it, they wanted to get right into it. But from now on I’m not going to oblige them if I don’t feel like it.”
“You don’t have to?”
“When I come with women who don’t really turn me on there’s no thrill, only semen spurting out of me. So, I’m no longer going to do it just to be polite. ‘If you and Gwen want to get it on with each other, it doesn’t mean that I have to get it on with your woman,’ I’ll say, not caring whose feelings may get hurt. Why should I suffer?”
“Oh, how you suffer, Eddie.”

“I’ve noticed that you no longer ask to make it with me.” Gwen tells me. “Are you getting tired of me?”
“Not at all. I’ve found that it’s best if I wait until you’re horny.
Otherwise, it’s me asking you to get it on, and you saying, ‘Oh, how romantic.’ Or me being romantic, and you saying, ‘Oh, all that romance just to have sex.’ A no-no situation. That’s why it’s better I wait until . . ..”
“You hear the sound of my vibrator, you mean. That was certainly a strange gift you gave me on Valentine’s Day: a vibrator that doesn’t become hot in my hand and is silent.”
“This orgasm has been brought to you by your friendly local electric company. Better orgasms for better living, a splinter-free advance over the old broomstick. Here comes the bride; here comes the broom.”
“This one’s a fifty dollar trick.” Gwen indicates a man walking past our parked car on Hollywood Boulevard. “Here’s a twenty, and that one’s another twenty. Oh, see the one in the gray suit? He pays a hundred.”
“You can tell by just looking at them?”
“Of course, I’ve seen so many by now. You know, if you should gather all the Johns I’ve serviced this year, I wouldn’t remember most of them.”
“What if you saw me walking by?”
“Oh, I’d know that you’re not the type who’d pay for sex.”

“How can you sit there and type in this filthy mess?” asks Gwen petulantly. “The floor and walls need to be polished, the stove has to be cleaned. I’d have to do all that before I could do anything else.”
“That’s why you haven’t done anything else,” I say, rising and going to the calendar.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if your period is due.”
“You’re a crazy one,” she laughs.
“The other day, I checked the calendar for an altogether different reason. While I was making it with you, I was overcome by what I call a true sexual feeling. I wanted to make you pregnant, to blow your body up like a balloon. All my caution and selfish fear of being burdened with the rearing of a child were gone. I felt free of my old worrying self.”
“Are you telling me that you want to have a child by me?”
“No, as soon as we finished making it, I became my usual cautious self. I went to the calendar, checking to see if it was one of your danger days.”
“You know I never do it on those days, Eddie.”
“I’ve had this true sexual feeling twice before. Once, while I was looking out our window and I saw a boy who looked to be about eighteen months old sitting on the ground with his legs straight out before him. He reminded me so much of Vincent when he was that age, and that feeling came over me. The other time it happened was when I was stopped behind a sports car at an intersection waiting for the light to change, and I saw a child in the front seat, standing between a young couple with his arms resting on their shoulders.”

“You know, most of my clients don’t come to me for sex as much as they do to have someone listen to them. They tell me things they’d never tell their wives, their best friends or their business partners. And they needn’t worry about meeting me socially because they know I don’t move in their circles. That’s why I have so many steadies, regularly coming to me to resume our talks. The sex is usually over in a few minutes, but most of them stay for the whole hour.
“I’ll tell you how I turn a trick. First, I offer him a drink and talk with him for awhile to make him relax. Then, I suggest that we go to bed. I may help to undress him. In bed, I begin by sucking him. But not for long, because most Johns come as soon as I touch them. And, if they come too soon, they expect me to do them again and, man, that is work. After sucking him, I get on top of him, again for just a few strokes. Telling him he’s wearing me out, I have him get on top of me. A few strokes and it’s over. Then, I don’t make the mistake of lying down beside him and encouraging thoughts of making it with me again spring to his mind. No, I get up right away, go into the bathroom, put on a robe and return with a warm towel to wipe his dick. The entire operation lasts only a few minutes, but it seems longer because I’ve put it through all those phases of sucking and getting on top and so on. I’m more an illusionist than anything else. Then, we’ll sit and talk the rest of the hour.
“The only one who doesn’t take the entire hour is Mr.Walker. He arrives, makes it and leaves. I’m expected to be wearing a garter-belt, dark hose, high heels and long black gloves when he arrives. As soon as he walks in, we both fall to the floor on all fours. He crawls behind me and sniffs my behind like a dog until he’s ready. Then he sits back and watches me masturbate him until he comes all over my black glove. And he goes.”

“I could kick my ass for breaking my promise never to do stag parties again,” Gwen says, throwing her purse onto the bed. “Men are at their very worst at those things. Someone who’s always been a gentleman when he’s been alone with me will become as offensive as he can be at a stag party, just so he can impress his buddies. But tonight’s party was the worst.
“This bar owner asked me to help him get together a party at his place, and like a fool I agreed to do it. After the two girls and I finished our little performance together, we went into separate rooms to turn tricks. I’d done about three or four and I was on my knees ready to French another when he pulls back his jacket and shows me his badge. Oh, shit, busted again, I thought, cold sweat running down my sides. ‘It’s all right, honey,’ he says. ‘We’re all cops here. This is a stag party for cops.’ I was so incensed that I got up immediately, put on my dress, picked up my purse and headed for the door. ‘Where you going, honey?’ he asked. ‘If I’d known this was a party for cops, I wouldn’t have come,’ I snapped back. ‘Take it easy, we’re only human like other guys,’ he said. ‘Yes, but other guys don’t make a living busting people for doing this,’ I said and walked out.”
“Good for you, baby.”

“Marti really let me down last night, letting me take on all those young guys alone.”
“It was all your doing, Gwen. We bring Marti to Big Sur to take a break from turning tricks, and what do you do on our first night here? You suggest having a sex orgy at The Hot Springs Lodge to all those horny young studs here. Whatever induced you to do that?”
“Marti said she was for it, but she didn’t come down to the baths to help me. Where was she, anyhow?”
“In her bed at the far end of the dormitory, waiting for the gay cat to leave. And I was lying in bed, waiting for her to leave so I could tell the gay boy to go.”
“What was the he doing there?”
“Coming on to me, telling me that if you and I ever separated, he’d take care of me and jazz like that, while sandpapering my cheek with his stubble. It was so irritating that I made a vow to shave more often from now on to spare you from having to go through that ordeal.”
“You sound like you preferred to have him rather than Marti to make love to you.”
“I didn’t want to make it with either of them, but you’re right, I was using the gay cat as a buffer against Marti. But then things became interesting when he took out my joint, straddled me and directed the head of it to the area between his balls and his asshole. Then, he rubbed his bottom on my cock until he came on my belly. As soon as he left, I went into the bathroom to wash the semen off me. Man, I had to scrub and scrub before I got rid of the smell of his jizz.”
“what about the shit smell on your cock?”
“There wasn’t any. It didn’t feel like there was any penetration unless he had a very loose asshole.”
“And Marti watched this whole scene?”
“I think she may have fallen asleep.”

“Gwen, I don’t want you to see that fucking Jacques again.”
“Why, what happened?”
“He phoned three times this afternoon asking for you, without saying hello to me. ‘Tell Gwen Jacques called,’ was all he said. Then, he called a fourth time. ‘Hello, Eddie, this is Jacques, remember me?’ Of course, I remembered him. It was just two weeks ago that you brought him here to meet me before you went off to spend the weekend with him. ‘Gwen’s been trying to phone me all afternoon; what do you think about that?’
“ ‘I don’t think anything about it,’ I told him. What did he expect me to think about it, the asshole?
“ ‘Well, how do you feel?’ he asked.
“ ‘The usual great,” I told him. “I’m reading, writing, listening to music, doing all the things I like to do.’ That shitass, playing this one-up game on me.”
“He didn’t mean anything by what he said, Eddie.”
“Everyone else I’ve told this to heard what he said as I’d heard it. How else can you hear it but as a challenge from one who thinks of himself as a great fucker? Besides, he’s a liar. He’s never told you that he’s married, but I’m sure he is. Finally, I don’t trust anyone who likes bad poetry. So, tell him you can’t see him again.”
“I’ll tell him tonight.”
“Your other lovers have never tried to give me any shit. Some of them have remained my friends after their romance with you has ended. Just the other day, one of them phoned me and said, ‘I had a date with Gwen tonight, but she showed up with another guy. What should I do, Eddie?’ He was almost crying. All I could tell him was, ‘If you think she’s worth sharing with someone else, then do it.’ They’re jealous of each other but not of me.”
“Yes, because you’re like the mountain in the background that they know I’ll return to when their affair with me is over, saving them from having to endure tearful recriminatory scenes from me.”

“Who was that on the phone?”
“Marti, calling to inform me that you were no lady last night, shocking the two men who were present with your vulgarity. She even hinted that I should beat you.”
“She should know you’d never do that.”
“What did you do last night that was so outrageous?”
“Marti asked me if I’d like to meet an interesting, intelligent and witty guy. So, of course, I said I would and went to her place. There were these two men there and, after we had a drink, one of them nodded me toward the bedroom. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Marti tells me you’re a far out guy, so do your stuff. Knock me over with your brilliant wit and intelligence.’ He looked at me dumbfounded and couldn’t come up with a single thing to say. So, I put on my own verbal show. I don’t remember what I came out with, but it was inspired stuff. And I left.”
“Marti told me those two guys were cops.”
“That figures, conning me into turning a trick to help get herself out of trouble with the law. She really confides in you, doesn’t she?”
“Why not? You always hand me the phone whenever she asks to borrow money.”
“You know how to say no better than I do. I can hear you now. ‘No, Marti, we can’t lend you money because you may be struck by lightning or fall into a crater created by a sudden earthquake or get hit by a bus before you’re able to repay us.’ I can’t think up excuses like that.”

“Hey, Dad, is there a God?”
“I don’t know, Vince.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Billy’s dad knows everything.”
“Does he really?”
“Well, he says he does.”
“I guess, Vince, if you believe there’s a God, then there’s a God for you. And if you don’t believe there’s one, there’s no God for you.”
“Do you mind if I believe for awhile, Dad? The other kids all do.”
“Sure, Vince, you go ahead and believe.”

“Last night, I had dinner with this steady who always wants me to hold his cock under the table while we eat. I don’t know how he expects me to eat steak with one hand, and I don’t know what he gets from my holding his cock under the table, unless it’s the kick he gets from concealing something from the unsuspecting waiter. Anyway, last night he tells me that he wishes he had a wife like me.”
“ ‘No, you don’t,’ I tell him.
“ ‘Yes, I do,’ he insists.
“ ‘Then, why don’t you have a wife like me? You’re married.’
“ ‘Ah, but you don’t know my wife.’
“ ‘Teach her to be like me. How do you think I got to be the way I am? Someone had to teach me.’
“ ‘She’d never allow me to teach her.’
“ ‘Does your wife suck you off?’
“ ‘No, of course not.’
“ ‘Have you ever asked her to?’
“ ‘There’d be no point in asking; she would never do it.’
“ ‘Then, force her to do it.’
“ Oh, I couldn’t do that. She’d want me to have my head examined, divorce me, take me to the cleaners.’
“ ‘Let her. You don’t want a wife like her, anyway.’
“ ‘But she is the mother of my children, after all.’
“ ‘You see, you don’t want a wife like me. And, if you had a wife like me, where would you be tonight? Home, taking care of the children while she’d be out with someone else.’ He had nothing more to say.”

“Mommy, Daddy,” Vincent shouts, rushing into the trailer. “I saw it. I saw it. On the way home from school, I was walking by the church and the door was open, and I saw a man inside with blood all over him and with big nails stuck through his hands and feet. I have to go to church, I have to.”
“Okay, next Sunday, you go,” Gwen tells him.
Sunday morning, Vincent showers, combs his hair and dresses smartly.
“I’m going to church now, Dad.”
“Okay, see you when you get back.”
“So, give me the money.”
“What money?”
“The money to give to the church.”
“You don’t have to give any money.”
“But the other kids are giving money.”
“They’re giving money because they want to give money. You don’t have to give any.”
“But I want to give money, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really, Dad.”
“Then give some of the money in your piggy bank.”
“Oh, I forgot all about that.”
He takes the piggy bank and shakes all the coins onto the couch.
“How much should I give, Dad?”
“That’s up to you. You can give all of it, one penny of it or anything in between.”
“Is a dime enough to give?”
“If that’s what you want to give, then it’s enough.”
Vincent returns all the coins, except the dime, to the piggy bank.
“You know something, Dad? I don’t think I’ll give anything.”
He drops the dime back into the piggy bank.

Lying in bed, I watch Gwen as she applies makeup.
“I’m sure glad I have the looks and the guts to do what I’m doing.” She smiles at her mirrored image.
“Is that true, Gwen?”
“Of course, it is. Look at all that hustling has done for me. It’s taught me how to apply makeup correctly, to dress properly for every time of day and for each season of the year, and it’s given me the confidence and the poise to meet anyone, no matter how important he may be. Remember how afraid I once was to meet anyone with authority? That’s all gone now. I have politicians, judges, bankers, businessmen as my clients.
“And I’m glad you’re here to look after Vincent. I don’t trust anyone else to look after him. So, why should you work, when I can make in one hour what it would take you all day to earn?”

“Dad, you’re always telling me not to fight, but you’re watching the fights on television all the time.”
“But those are professional fighters I’m watching.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those are men who fight for money.“
“Really.”
“Of course, you don’t think those two guys are smashing each other for fun, do you? They’re getting paid. And the winner usually gets more than the loser.”
“But where does the money come from?”
“You see all those people sitting and watching the fight? They have to pay for their seats, just like you have to pay for your seat when you go to the movies. And that razor blade company has to pay lots of money to show ads for its blades.”

“Old Montgomery just phoned to tell me that you’d been a bad girl and that I should beat you.”
“He thinks you do, anyway. He accuses you of having made every bruise he happens to see on my body.”
“But he forgot to tell me why I should beat you.”
“He offered me an Alfa Romeo last night, but told me that I mustn’t allow you to lay your three fingered hand on the steering wheel. So, I told him to drive that car up his ass.”
“He really has a thing about my hand, doesn’t he. In the manuscript of his unfinished novel, the hero is a sixty-nine year old manly sportsman who has sex with the tall young blonde whenever he chooses. While her boyfriend, doubly evil since he has three fingers on both hands, has to remain in the rain or the cold until the hero is ready to leave the blonde’s bed.”
“Does he write that this sixty-nine year old hero goes to a doctor during the day and pays for hormone shots to get an erection. And then goes to the tall blonde that night and pays her to do away with the erection, using her mouth only, because his body can no longer maintain a cock stiff enough to fuck?”
“No, somehow he seems to have overlooked that aspect of the hero’s life.”

Unable any longer to ignore the commotion outside, I lay down the book I’m reading and pull aside the drapes to look out the window. In the yard outside, one of Vincent’s friends is being belt-whipped on his bare back by his mother who commands him to fight the older boy waiting for him with cocked fists. A group of neighbors are watching the proceedings. Impelled forward by his mother’s lashes, the boy runs into a barrage of blows from the older boy, which drive him back to his mother and her belt. Vincent’s friend has been shuttled back and forth like this for almost an hour. It’s useless for me to intervene. These people are Oklahomans, and they wouldn’t listen to me.
“In Oklahoma,” a friend had once told me, “when a boy moves into a neighborhood he’s expected to fight the local toughs. It don’t matter if he wins or loses so long as he puts up a good fight. But, if he won’t fight, no one will ever speak to him again so long as he lives there. That’s a custom adopted from the Indians, but more cruel. If an Indian boy wouldn’t fight, he’d have to dress as a squaw from that time on, but people would still talk to him.”
I return to my book.
“Vincent! Vincent! Get him, Vincent!” I hear voices shouting.
Vincent, who hasn’t fought for weeks, must be fighting again.
The door opens and Vincent leans in excitedly.
“Daddy, Daddy, I just beat up a boy two years older than me, and I did it for money!” He holds out his hands full of coins.
“How’d you get all that money?”
“The people asked me to fight to save my friend, but I told them I didn’t fight unless I got money. So, they took up a collection and gave it to me.”
There’s a knock at the door.
“Must be some of your friends, Vince.”
Vincent opens the door to a number of neighborhood women.
“You’re a real man, Vincent. Yes, you are,” the women congratulate him.
He smiles at them, but looks at me with eyes that say, “They’re crazy, aren’t they, Dad.”

“You’ve written in two different names on your offer to buy this property,” the woman realtor says to Gwen.
This is a surprise. I didn’t expect Gwen to name me co-owner.
“If anything should happen to me, I know that Eddie will take good care of my son.”
.”A handsome couple like you, and you’re not married!” exclaims the woman. “Marry this lovely lady.”
I look at Gwen to smirk with her at the woman’s suggestion, but she’s not smirking. She’s looking into her lap pensively. After all these years of ridiculing marriage, does she actually want to be married? I can’t believe it.

“Do you think we should marry, Gwen?” I ask, after having pondered the matter for days and finally overcome my resolve never to marry.
“Why? Do you?”
“It might be a good idea. We’d have to pay less income tax, for one thing.”
“Let’s do it, then. Where and when?”
“I haven’t thought about that.”
“We can get it done quickly in Las Vegas.”

“Hey, Dad, why did that man with the gun make you kiss Mommy?” Vincent asks, after seeing Gwen and I married by a man wearing a police uniform and a holstered gun.

“I saw you and your wife on television last night.” the supermarket cashier tells me.
“My wife and I have never been on television.”
“It was you two, all right. You were reading poetry and your wife was dancing.”
“It couldn’t possibly have been us.”
“I know what it is: you don’t want to be hounded by autograph hunters.”
I had watched television last night, but I hadn’t seen what the cashier said she’d seen. Then, as I’m driving home, it comes to me: the program on Beatniks. A group of young people sitting on the floor in a loft to listen to a bearded man reading poetry while a tall blonde girl danced behind him. So, my beard makes people think that I’m a Beatnik. And I don’t want to be seen as belonging to any group. I’ll shave off my beard as soon as I get home.

“Let me off at the corner, Dad.”
“What for? It’ll only take half a minute to drive you to school.’
“No, I feel like walking a bit.”
“You can walk in the schoolyard.”
“Please let me off here, Dad.”
“Don’t be silly. The school’s just around the corner.”
As we near the school, Vincent crouches down in the front seat.
“See you later, Dad,” he says over his shoulder and, still crouching, he opens the door and slides out.
I laugh, seeing that Vincent is ashamed to be seen with me when I no longer have a beard.

“Did you check on the guy who just phoned, Gwen?”
“I didn’t have to. I don’t remember him, but he described perfectly the party we’d been to a year ago.”
“Who else was at that party?”
“Marti was and . . .”
“Hey, baby, don’t you think that Marti could be setting you up for a bust?”
“You’re being paranoid again, Eddie. Marti may be rank, but she’s not that rank.”
“Oh, no? She told me that if she were busted again, she wasn’t going to do her own time.”
“Don’t worry about it, Eddie.”

“Did you hear the great news, Eddie?” Gwen is exuberant when I bail her out of jail the following morning. “Stompanado finally got what was coming to him. I told him the day he threw me out of his house that someday someone was going to get him. ‘I’m not paying you; you dug it too much,’ that bastard said after making it with me. ‘You phoned to see me and I drove all the way to your place,’ I reminded him. ‘Get out of my house before I kick you out, you whore.’ But he’s the one who’s been kicked straight out of this life. Someone got him, as I predicted they would.”
“And Marti got you, Gwen.”
“You were right again. Why don’t I listen to you?”
“You’d rather rely on your famed woman’s intuition. If women have such great intuitions, why are so many of them in jail?”

Vincent runs in and sits beside me.
“How was the camping, Vince?”
“Pretty good.” He stops, then gives me a confiding look. “And Mommy kissed that guy.”
Gwen storms in.
“I’m never taking him camping with me again. He ruined my entire weekend with his sulking non-cooperation. He was a total bring down.”
“Why don’t you go out and see your friends, Vince?”
“Good idea, Dad. See you later.”
“What we have to realize, Gwen, is that Vincent, like most kids, is very straight. He doesn’t like seeing you or me being loving with other people.”
“He doesn’t even like to see me come close to you. Whenever I hug or kiss you in his presence he comes between us and pushes me away from you. He’s always trying to hug you, but you fend him off by raising your elbow to his face. If only once he’d do that to me I’d be so happy. Why does he like you so much, when you never buy him anything?”
“I spend time with him, and that’s more important to him than all the toys in the world.”

“Only a man can be a consummate cocksucker,” Alex, the painter, pontificates.
“Come upstairs with me, Alex, and let me show you what I can do,” Gwen says, surprising me with her display of vanity.
“Oh, no, my dear, we’ve known each other too long to engage in such whimsy.”
“Hey, Alex,” I say, “you and Lila are about the only couple we know whom we haven’t had sex with.”
“Let our relationship remain on that exalted level, my friend.”

Screaming girls streak out of the kitchen, pick up their belongings and dash from the party.
The girl who plays Vampira in a TV series leans over me, sitting in an armchair. “I’m so sorry you brought your wife to my house,” she says, then leaves.
I go into the kitchen to see what all the fuss is about. Gwen, totally naked, is sitting on a table and smoking a big cigar while entertaining a group of jovial men.
“Hey, Gwen, here’s the guy I said you have to meet.” One of the men points to me.
“Oh, I know him. He’s my man. Hey, Eddie, did you see how I got rid of all those straight bitches.”

“Last night I took this John to a sex orgy in a Beverly Hills mansion. We walk in and find everyone dressed formally, sipping drinks and listening to someone tinkling on a grand piano.
“ ‘I thought this was supposed to be a sex orgy,’ I said, and crawled under the piano, unzipped the pianist’s pants, took out his cock and got the party off.”
“Sometimes you flaunt your freedom before wives less free than you are. At one straight party, I saw you begin to undress a man before the eyes of his wife who didn’t know what to do. First, she glared at you, then at her helpless husband and, finally, she turned to look at me with beseeching eyes. I could only shrug and turned away from her.”
“You’re right. I have more freedom than most wives have. Oh, they’re free to go to orgies and to exchange partners, but only when their husbands are present. Hardly a one of them is free to go off with a lover for a week or two or more.”

“Did you think up a story for me to tell my phone trick, Eddie?”
“Okay, you’re sunbathing naked in your backyard, allowing the sun to penetrate deep into you. Your eyes shut, your arms flung wide, you’re surrendering totally to the warmth of the sun. Then you feel someone lapping your pussy. Oh, god, it’s so wonderful and so different. Your boyfriend must have discovered a new technique, you think. You raise your ass from the grass to have more of that delightful tongue. And suddenly he slides his cock into your wetness and begins to slobber on your neck and shoulder. You encircle him with your arms to draw him closer to you. But his body feels strange, much hairier than your boyfriend’s body. You open your eyes and see that it’s your Doberman fucking you. Finished. You can elaborate on that.”
“You think he’s going to like that story?”
“He’s going to lap it up.”
“You men, you’re all so weird, getting off on such dumb things.”
“Imagination is probably the principle component of sex. Without it, there’s no thrill. You know the story of the husband and wife fucking and fucking and fucking until he says to her, ‘Can’t you think of anyone else, either?’ ”
“You’re probably right about imagination being a part of sex. My masochist trick is always complaining that I’m not truly enjoying torturing him. But I’m a call girl and not an actress.”
“But you do fake orgasms, Gwen.”

“This afternoon, I made one of the easiest hundred dollars I’ve ever made.”
“How’d you do that, Gwen?”
“I went to this mansion in Pasadena where I was asked to come. I was instructed to wear high heels and to be ready to scream at the proper moment. A butler met me at the door and led me up a long bare staircase. Tic-tic, tic-tic, my high heels sounded all the way to the top. The butler opened a door and nodded to me to enter a dark room. There were two tall candles burning at the upper corners of a coffin containing the body of a man. As I watched, the body slowly began to rise to a sitting position. I screamed as loud as I could. The butler led me away, gave me the hundred dollars and that was all.
“When the man in the coffin hears the tic-tic of the high heels coming up the stairs he gets an erection, and when she screams he gets his nuts off.”

“I’m still in a state of shock, Eddie. I can still hear the crash of the door being broken in while I’m in the throes of a fuck. It was like being instantly transported from ecstasy into sheer terror.” Gwen tells me after I’ve bail her out. “Then, shadowy forms came gliding into the room, flashing light around and into our eyes. One of the invaders rushed up to Rodney as he was disengaging himself from me and directed his flashlight on his cock. ‘It’s wet, all right,’ he announced to the others. And they took us in. It was a completely illegal break-in. Rodney wasn’t even a trick, but a boyfriend. They will pay for this. I’m going to fight this case.”
“That’s crazy, Gwen. You’re a two time loser; you can’t win.”
“I can’t let them get away with this injustice.”
“You’re not going to get any justice. The police will sit in court and perjure their asses off while they look at you with utter contempt. Just pay the fifty dollar fine and find another apartment to work in.”
“No, I’m going to photograph the door they broke in.”
“A photo won’t prove who broke the door in. Don’t waste your money on a case you can’t win.”
“Rodney’s a prominent film producer. With him testifying that we’re lovers, I have a good chance of winning.”

“Rodney’s settled his case out of court,” Gwen tells me.
“Well, you can’t expect him to jeopardize his career by being involved in a sex scandal.”
“I expect loyalty from a lover.”
“You’ve got love on the brain. One night, when I first knew you, a young priest walked by us on the street and, seeing him, you said, ‘I’d like to get my hands on him to teach him all about love and to make him give up those silly robes he’s wearing.’ Hearing that, I thought you were overvaluing the power of love. No, Rodney’s not going to sacrifice his hard-earned success for a temporary love affair.”
“Men, your careers mean more to you than love.”
“I have no career, Gwen.”
“But you’re very concerned about mine. You can see how shaken I am, but do you offer to help? No, you only give me pep talks to get me back to work.”
“You don’t have to work. You have enough money to live on.”
“A number of times I’ve been on the verge of retiring, but I’ve not been able to go through with it. It’s not easy for me to quit when I can still earn so much money each day.”

“So, I lost my court case as you said I would. But, to console myself, I’m going to shop for new clothes. Come with me.”
“Why do you want me to come? You know I usually try to talk you out of buying anything.”
“I need you to tell me what looks sexy on me. I have no idea of what men think is sexy.”

“One of the Johns I had this afternoon was a judge who he under the bed and into the closets as soon as he came in. He told me the police were slipping into a working girl’s apartment to hide before she arrived, then popping out when she’d be servicing a client. It’s good to have a judge as a client and learn the latest on what the police are up to. Lucky he didn’t find Conrad in a closet or I might have lost the judge as a client.”
“What would Conrad be doing in your closet?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you. He conceals himself in it and when he hears I’ve finished with a John he dances out in drag, hoping to find a cock to suck or, if not, to slurp cum out of me.”
“And what do your clients think of his antics?”
“Most of them think he’s amusing.”
“Well, I don’t think so. I think it’s very uncool of you to allow Conrad to carry on like that in your apartment. He’s a renowned writer whose novels have been made into movies. If he should be busted in your apartment, it would be a sensational scandal that you don’t need. So, tell Conrad to stop performing his act in your apartment.”

“Business has been hectic recently, what with Trujillo’s yacht in the harbor and the Democratic Party Convention in town. All the hustling girls are making lots of money doing it with those big shot politicians and celebrities. Most of the girls want Kennedy to become president because he’s such a big trick, as if that would help them any.”
“Yeah, the last thing they should want is for prostitution to be legalized.”
“I forgot to tell you, Eddie, that I’m going to Hawaii for a convention being held by this company that I give advice to.”
“You give advice to a company?”
“Yes, I’ve made it with so many of the staff that I know better than the top brass who deserves to be raised to a better position.”

“Last night, I saw the Jacques you told me never to see.”
“Why’d you see do that?”
“I’m glad I did because I learned that you’d been right about him all along. After he’d finished making it with me, he looked down on me and said, ‘I guess that’ll take care of you for awhile.’ And that was goodbye for that arrogant bastard.”

“All you have to do, Eddie, is write a happy ending to your novel, and that director may be interested in making it into a movie.”
“It does have a happy ending; the main character achieves his ambition to kill himself.”
“So, you won’t compromise and write what he wants. Also, you pretended not to hear him when he hinted that he’d like you to get down on him.”
“I’m not into sucking cock.”
“But I’ve licked cunts at stag shows.”
“You chose to get into the sex business; I never did.”
“But you didn’t refuse to do a threesome with Marti and me that time for those two couples.”
“I was only helping you girls out when your regular stud couldn’t come.”
“You weren’t much of a stud that night, although the two young wives did enjoy your clowning around.”
“Whenever I was in you or Marti one of the husbands would shine his flashlight up between my legs and announce, ‘He’s only sixty per cent hard,’ or some shit like that, making me laugh and lose my hard-on. Also, I was wondering how those people could just sit and watch and not take off their clothes and join in the fun.”

“Now that you’re getting on so well with Roger, it may be a good time for me to go Europe to see if I can get my novel published.”
Gwen begins to cry.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve never thought of being without you.”
“Come on, you’ve thought of leaving me a number of times. Anyway, I won’t be gone long.”
“I know you. Once you’re away from me, you’ll keep postponing your return. You’re always trying to get away, always happy to see me leave the house. Some mornings, I call to go with you when I hear you about to leave the house, and you pretend you haven’t heard me and take off.”
“That’s because I’m primed to go and I don’t feel like waiting for you to get out of bed. Also, I’m giving you the time you complain you don’t have enough of to do the things you’d like to do.”
“What can I do in such a short period of time? You’re like all men, you don’t want to look at me if I’m not made up.”
“That’s a lot of shit and you know it. No other woman turns me on as much as you do.”
“But you never tell me you’ve missed me when I’ve been away.”
“I become so engrossed in what I’m doing that I have no time to miss anyone. But when you and Vincent are with me, I often remind myself to look intently at the scene around me because all that I see will someday be gone.”

1958 - 1963
“Go out with Eddie, Debbie. He’ll make you feel better,” Gwen says on the phone. “I know he’s my ole man. So what if he goes out with you? I’ve had plenty of boyfriends, haven’t I?
“Eddie, Debbie’s feeling depressed. Do you mind taking her out for the day?”
“No, but don’t you want to come along?”
“I want to stay home with Vincent for a change.”
“But Vincent likes to stay home alone and paint his fabulous abstracts.”
“I’d like to see how he does them. Without thinking, he simply chooses any color and adds it to his drawing. I wish I could do that.”

“Hi, Gwen,” Debbie phones while I’m looking through her record collection. “You were right, I had a great time with Eddie. After the beach, Eddie took me to meet Tom and Hazel at their wonderful house with the swimming pool and the lovely bar. We had a great time there, then went to check how the house you’re having built is coming along, and wound things up with a delicious Italian meal in Hollywood. Yes, Eddie’s here. Yeah, he’ll be there in a few minutes. Hey, Gwen, I have an idea. Why don’t the three of us live together?”

“I’ve decided not to have any more boyfriends,” Gwen tells me.
“How come.?”
“I’m tired of having affairs.”
Is she dropping her boyfriends because she would like me to stop seeing Debbie? I like Gwen far better than I do Debbie, but I’ll continue to go with Debbie to see just how free I am. In all my years with Gwen, I’ve had only sexual escapades with other women and never an affair.

“Where’s Debbie?” Gwen asks when I come home.
“At her place. Why?”
“I thought I heard her car drive up, and I didn’t hear it go away.”
“She told me take it because she said she was too tired to drive me here. She’ll probably phone tomorrow and ask for her car. That’s her way of getting me to spend the day with her.”
Gwen goes to the oven and returns with a plateful of chocolate chip cookies and other goodies to place before me.
“I baked these while you were out, Eddie.”
What is this? She can’t actually be trying to get to my heart through my stomach, can she? I can’t believe she’s on that level.

“Why did you keep Vincent up so late tonight?” I ask, coming home.
“I didn’t keep him up. He said he wasn’t sleepy, so I let him draw.”
She hands me a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“A letter I wrote to you.”
She writes that she is the luckiest woman in the world to be living with the finest man she has ever known - and more in that vein.
While I read, Gwen seats herself on the floor before me and, drawing up her knees, offers me a view of her pussy. That old bribe again, the proffered honey pot to draw me to her.
“This is a very flattering letter, Gwen. But I’m not all that wonderful, you know. While you were writing this letter, did you recall the day you came out of jail and asked me to work, and I refused?”
“Why do you always have to remind me of that time.”
“Because that was me, too.“
She doesn’t seem to realize that if I had not refused to work, she would not have what she has now.
“Why did you refuse to go to work?”
I think of the most self-deprecating reason I can give: “Because I had you where I wanted you, and you had no choice but to go back to work.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” she says gravely and leaves the room.
She’s accepted what I’ve said at face value. I’ve forgotten how literal-minded she is, often taking seriously the most obviously ironic remarks. If she’d only stop to think, she’d see that she had other choices at that time. She could have gone to live in Mexico or in Europe with or without me; she could have taken some other kind of work; she could have found a new lover. Perhaps, I should remind her of all that. No, let her discover that for herself.

“I’ve rented a little love nest in Laurel Canyon for Roger and me,” Gwen informs me by telephone. “So, from now on, I’ll only be spending every other day with Vincey and you.”

I step out of the bedroom just as Vincent throws a ball at a pyramid of blocks he’s built on the table before the seated Debbie. The ball and the dislodged blocks hurtle into her.
“What do you think you’re doing, Vince?”
“Just playing, Dad.”
“If you want to play like that, do it outside.”
“Okay, Dad. See you.”
“Boy, that kid really dislikes me,” says Debbie.
“Now that he sees you as much as he does Gwen, he may be blaming you for keeping her away.”
“He’s so possessive of you. If he sees my arm around you, he’s sure to pull it down.”
“He does that to Gwen, too.”

“Eddie, I’ve a copy of Roger’s grandfatheris will here, but I can’t understand it,” Gwen tells me on the phone. “Can I read it to you to see if you can tell me if Roger will get the money when his grandfather dies or when his father does.”
I can’t believe this is Gwen speaking to me. When has she become so avaricious?
“I’m not qualified to tell you, Gwen. You’d better have an attorney look at it.”

“Roger’s willing to work for me, are you?” Gwen asks on the phone.
“No. Why do you need two men to work for you?”
Why should I work when we already have enough to live on?

“Now you have to work, Eddie,” Gwen phones. “I’ve moved all the money in our joint account to an account in my name only, and you’ll have to pay all our bills.”
Which means I’ll have to work as a draftsman again and won’t have time for Debbie.

“I’ve decided to stay with you and Vincent from now on,” Gwen says some days after I’ve been working as a draftsman.
“What happened to Roger? You told me he was willing to work for you.”
“Roger’s just a lot of talk.”
“I want you to know that I’m putting the money I earn into our joint account.”
“You can do as you like.”

“I wonder how long I’ll have to work before I can collect unemployment insurance,” I say.
“Why do you always have to spoil everything? You should be proud to work for Vincent and me.”
“I should be proud to work when there’s no real need for me to do so.”
“There’s always a need for more money.”

I come home from work to find Gwen crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“My father has died. I just received a letter from my mother.”
“I always thought you’d be dancing with joy when your father died. You’ve been wishing him dead ever since I’ve known you. He was the one who had beaten you every day of your childhood, the one who wouldn’t allow you to smoke or to use makeup, the one who destroyed your chances of becoming a great dancer. But now that he’s dead, you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying for him; I’m crying for my mother.”
“There’s no need to cry for her. Old couples are prepared for the death of their partners.”

“I saw him today,” Gwen tells me.
“You saw who?”
“My father. He was sitting on the living room couch and watching me as I put on my makeup in the bedroom.”
“Did you offer him coffee and biscuits?”
“This is not a laughing matter.”
“Right, I forgot for a moment that you’re from Mississippi, where they believe in ghosts and poltergeists and such phenomenon. You told me once that you’d seen an angel sitting in a tree when you were a little girl.” “Just shut up, Eddie.”

“Oh, my God, look out the window at the foot of the bed,” Gwen gasps, as she lies next to me. “What do you see? Don’t be afraid to look.”
“I only see the shadows of leaves and branches.”
“Look closer. Don’t you see him?”
“See who?”
“My father. He’s looking in here and frowning because he doesn’t like what he sees.”
Gwen’s losing her hold on reality.
“He’s able to see through opaque glass, Gwen?”

“He’s the one!” Gwen points at me at a gathering of friends. “He’s the one who made me into a balling chick, the one who turned me into a call girl. He’s the Devil who convinced us all to have sex with one another. Don’t laugh. He’s the Devil, I tell you.”
“Come on, Gwen,” Tom says. “We’d been having orgies long before we’d met Eddie and you.”
“For years you’ve been praising Eddie up to the skies,” Hazel says.
“Yes, you’ve been putting Eddie up on a pedestal and now you want to topple him,” Tom adds.
I see what Gwen is doing. She’s putting on a performance for her dead father. Now that he’s dead, she believes he can see what’s become of her. So, she’s pointing her finger at me and blaming me for bringing about her degradation. While her father was alive, she blamed him for being the cause of her shortcomings. It seems she has a need to blame someone other than herself.

“My analyst tells me I should leave you,” Gwen tells me.
“And you’re going to take the advice of this straight guy who’s never been through what we’ve been through together?”
“He sees my situation far better than I do.”
“Bullshit. He can’t conceive of your situation. He comes from the world of your tricks.”
“I showed him the letter you wrote suggesting that, now that you have as much money as I have in my private account, we could put the money we each have into the joint account and go on from there. He said it was obvious that you are more interested in the money than you are in me.”
“You know that’s not true. How much of your money have I diverted into my own pocket?”
“That doesn’t matter. I think we should divorce.”
“If that’s what you want, we can do that after the first of the year.”
“That’s more than seven months away. Why should we wait until then?”
“It’ll be better for our income tax.”
“You married me for income tax reasons, and now you want to divorce me for income tax reasons.”
“I don’t want to divorce you. Divorcing is your idea. Anyway, in seven months you should be more stable mentally.”
“You intend to stay here until then?”
“Why not? We’re not having sex, anyhow.”
“I want to know when you’re going to move out.”
“As soon as we’re divorced, I’ll go to Europe.”
“You’ll go to Europe, you bastard. I worked seven years for you and now you should work seven years for me.”
“Yes, when you worked seven years for me we were living together. Now, you’re expecting me to work seven years for you while we’ll not be living together.”
“You’ve never done anything for me. You weren’t even as useful to me as a pimp would have been. You never brought me one client.”
I don’t bother to remind her of all that I do. Let her find out for herself after I’m gone.

Gwen snatches my eyeglasses, lays them on the table and shatters each lens with the heel of her shoe.
“What the fuck did you do that for, Gwen? Now, I’ll have to work without glasses for a few days.”
Actually, she would like to punch in my eyes.
“Tell her you love her, Eddie. Tell her you love her,” Hazel pleads, but I remain silent. “Eddie, please tell her that you love her.”
“How can I, after what she’s done?”

“I know what I’m going to do,” Gwen tells me, lying beside me in bed. “I’m going to kill myself.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Because no one cares.”
“But I’ve been telling you that for years, Gwen. We care for ourselves primarily.”
“If that’s the way it is, then I want to die.”
“You see, you don’t care enough for Vincent to go on living for him.”
“He likes you more than me, anyhow. I know you’ll take care of him.”
“But he doesn’t want you to die. I don’t want you to die.”
“But I want to die.”
“You’re going to die soon enough. Why can’t you wait?”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Come on, Gwen, you’ll get over this. You have lots of good times ahead of you.”
“Shut up, Eddie. I’ve told you that I’ve decided.”
Silence.
“Will you do one thing before you kill yourself?”
“What’s that?”
“Will you go to the bank and return all the money in your account to our joint account?”
“How can you talk about money at a time like this?”
“Look, Gwen, nothing’s going to change just because you’re dead. The milkman and the bread man are still going to want money. So, why shouldn’t Vincent and I have the use of the money in your account?”
Actually, Gwen wants to kill me. Short of that, she wants to kill herself so I’ll suffer for the rest of my life. By telling her that nothing is going to change if she kills herself, I’ve deprived her of that motive.

“You’re always giving me things that you want for yourself,” Gwen complains.
“This is a recording of Schoenberg’s ‘Moses and Aron’, a masterpiece. Don’t you like it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You told me you loved atonal music when I first met you. But, now that you dislike me, you dislike the music. That’s a bit dishonest, don’t you think?”
“That’s how women are.”
“Not all women. Many of them have likes and dislikes independent from those of the man they happen to be with.”

“Maybe it would have been better for me to have married a jealous man who took care of me,” Gwen tells me.
“And would you have more today if you’d been turning tricks for that man alone? Anyway, you still have time to marry a jealous man after I’m gone.”

“My wife wants me to divorce her,” I tell the attorney.
“Why doesn’t she want to divorce you?“
“I guess she doesn’t want to appear in court.”
“Okay, that don’t matter. Let’s hear what you got.”
“I want her to have the new house, the car, the money in her bank account and her half of the income property.”
“All this been accumulated since you’ve been married?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t give her nothin’. This is California, and you’re entitled to half of everything you’ve accumulated since your marriage.”
“But she earned it all.”
“It don’t matter who earned it, you split it all down the middle.”
“But I’m willing to give her what I’ve told you.”
“Don’t be a sap. Take what’s comin’ to you.”
“No, do it the way I want it done.”

“Is this all I get?” Gwen asks, after reading the divorce settlement.
“What more do you want?”
“I want the down payment I made in your name when I bought the income property.”
“But you made half that down payment in my name. I didn’t ask you to do it.” “And now I want it back.”
“It was in your power to give me half the down payment, but it’s not in your power to have it back. It’s in my power, and I don’t care what you do - shout, stamp your feet, bang your head against the wall - I’m not giving it to you.”
“I can have you put in jail for having lived with a call girl. I have all your love letters to prove it.”
“That’s great, Gwen. When we’re living together we live outside the law; but now that we’re not going to be together, you want to throw me into the jaws of that law.”
“That’s not very nice, is it?”
“Look, I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do. While I’m in Europe, you’ll be taking care of the income property here. So, send me only half of my share of the income every month. We can do that as long as we have income property in common. I don’t mind repaying you ten times what you think I owe you. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes, it sounds fair enough.”

“Eddie, you went to court to divorce me two days ago, didn’t you? And you didn’t even tell me.”
“What does the date of the divorce matter compared to the fact that we are divorced?”
“And you’ll be leaving soon?”
“Right, it’s already arranged: Greyhound bus to New York, Danish freighter to Copenhagen.”

A few days before I’m to leave, Gwen steps out of the bedroom, wearing only garter-belt, hose and high heels. Placing a mirror on the kitchen sink, she bends forward to apply the final touches to her makeup. She knows that this is how I like to see her. Can this display be meant for me after all those months of verbal abuse? Let me see.
I go to her, turn her about and, holding her close, kiss her. Her lips part and her body melts in complete surrender. My cock hardens against her body, and I look over her shoulder at the bed in the other room.
“If you do that, you’re not a man,” cautions a tiny voice within me.
I release Gwen and step back from her.

“You don’t have to go, Eddie,” Gwen says as she drives me to the bus stand.
“Yeah, Dad, don’t go,” Vincent seconds, leaning over the back of my seat. “Mommy, let’s not let Daddy go.”
“I’d like to stay and play games with you, Vince, but I already have the tickets to go.”
“You can cancel them and get some refund,” Gwen says.
“No, it’s best I go. We may have a clearer view of our situation if we look at it from a distance.”

As the bus passes through towns where Gwen and I have had such good times with friends, I’m overcome with nostalgia. I’m leaving behind those good times, the comfortable new house, my books and records - and Vincent.
He’s really going to miss me. I’m the only father he’s known. I begin to sob, recalling the fun he and I had together during the past ten years. I don’t try to stop sobbing, the tears running down my cheeks.
Every impulse within me urges me to go back, back to Vincent, back to Gwen, back to the comfort. But that one little voice within me says, “Keep on going, man. There’s nothing left for you back there, and there’s no way you can forget all the harsh words she spat at you.”
I always listen to that one little voice, and it never lets me down.

1963 - 1964
Walking through the early evening street in downtown Copenhagen, I see a group of Danish sailors coming toward me. My body becomes tense and I ready myself to ignore the expected taunts and the challenges to fight. But the sailors, as they pass, innocently look at the items on display in the shop windows, not one of them even glancing at me. What a welcome contrast to what I’ve been conditioned to expect in a similar situation back in the States

“You made your bed, now lie in it,” Gwen writes in reply to my letter to her, admitting that I often think of Vincent and of her. “I’m so happy to be free of your Super Ego, always judging everything I did.”
She thinks super ego means a big ego.

“I’m going to print your wonderfully fanciful story in my photo book of labyrinths,” Jacueline tells me.
“Even though I’m not a Situationist?”
“You may be one and not know it.”
“Any success with your novel?” asks Gordon, the action painter.
“I went to one publisher and said that if there was censorship in Denmark, I didn’t wish to waist his time and mine by showing him my manuscript. He said there was no censorship, and I left my manuscript with him. It’s just been returned to me with a note stating that they don’t dare publish my manuscript. There’s no censorship in Denmark, but they don’t dare publish. Also, a small publisher told me he’d love to publish it if he had the money to lose. He said that not even established writers such as Camus or Genet sell in Denmark. I guess I’ll have to wait until I see Olympia Press in Paris.”
“So. let’s drown your sorrow at the opening of an art exhibit.”
“There seems to be an opening every other day, Gordon.”
“Have you seen any good work by promising young painters, Gordon?” Jacqueline asks.
“Eddie and me never look at the paintings. We just hover around the food and drinks tables.”

“How do you expect me to do all this by myself?” writes Gwen.
When I was with her she accused me of doing nothing, but now that she has to do that “nothing”, it has become too much for her.
“I took my analyst to Big Sur recently, and he liked being there very much. But whenever I tried to draw close to him he shrank back from me. I’m sure he’s a faggot.”

“Who do you think you are that you have the right to drag me by the arm into the car?” little Linde asks me in her flat before her four young friends.
“You were a quite drunk, and I was trying to help you get into the car, that’s all.”
“Me a bit drunk. You were so drunk you almost tore off my arm.”
“Cigar?” One of the boys holds out a small thin cigarillo to me.
“No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Try one. They’re quite mild, you know.” He hands me the cigarillo and offers me a light.
“Look, Linde, you were keeping us all waiting in the car while you performed your antics on the sidewalk. Your friends here were too nice to ask you to stop.”
“So, you admit you’re not nice.”
“Not as nice as your friends.”
Oh-oh, I have to vomit. I get to my feet and dash for the kitchen, but too late. I vomit onto the floor before I get there. I rise quickly to look for a washcloth.
“Ho, big man, can’t even hold your liquor. Clean up that mess you made.”
“I’m looking for a washcloth.”
“In the kitchen.”
I find the cloth and begin to wipe the floor.
“Look at big man on his knees before his own vomit.”
As soon as Linde’s friends leave, I pack my belongings.
“What are you doing, Eddie?”
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving, just like that?”
“I’m leaving, just like that.”
“But what about love, Eddie?”
“Yes, Linde, what about love?”
I’m no longer willing to accept abuse from any woman. I don’t offer them any, so why should I accept it from them? One harsh word and I’m out the door.

“You hear anything from your ex-wife?” asks Gordon.
“A couple of letters. In one she writes that she almost backed her car off a cliff, and in the other that she’s burned her legs badly while lighting a hibachi. She’s in terrible pain and is unable to walk She’ll have to have skin grafting. Vincent’s staying with his grandmother. She adds that I don’t have to come.”
“You’re not going there?”
“I don’t feel like it. When I saw the Statue of Liberty dwindling in the distance I felt that I’d never see it again.”
“So, where you going this winter?”
“Someone told me that Marrakech in Morocco is a great place.”
“Is anyone going with you?”
“No, I prefer to travel alone.”

“Olympia Press is in the process of moving to the States,” the man in charge of the Paris office tells me. “Censorship is easing there, while it’s on the increase here.”
“It looks like I made my move to Europe at precisely the wrong moment.”
“You can always go back there.”
“I know, but I don’t want to.”

“Ah, how inspiring it is to be in Marrakech, music and dancing in the streets every day,” says Charles, the young painter from New York. “Looking down from the roof of the hotel at all the activity in the square is like seeing a Breughel painting in motion.”
“I’ll tell you something, Charles. The first few days here, I stayed in French town. I might still be there if this Moroccan hustler hadn’t hipped me to moving to the souk.”
“French town! That’s where we sometimes go to snicker at the pretentious young Moroccan snobs, aping the latest in European chic and gesture. What induced you to stay in French town?”
“I never imagined that whites stayed in casbahs. American movies had conditioned me to believe that casbahs were murky alleyways teaming with sinister figures with daggers under their cloaks, ready to leap upon any foreigner unfortunate enough to wander into one. Now, I walk through the souk almost every day just to look at the colors and smell the fragrance.”

“When we learned that your President Kennedy had been assassinated we Europeans were shocked and dismayed,” the Dutch linguist tells me. “But when this Oswald person was shot and killed before a television audience the very next day we considered the entire affair to be a ludicrous farce.”
“It’s quite violent in the America, isn’t it,” I say. “Living there, I was taught that all countries in the world were more violent, but I’ve yet to be anywhere that’s as violent as there.”

Gwen forwards a letter to me from a Realtor in L.A. who has a client offering us $50,000 cash for our income property. She writes that she wants to sell. I don’t want to sell.
From my vermin infested room in Marrakech, I write to the Realtor that I’m vacationing in Morocco and do not wish to be bothered with offers of less than $60,000 cash. I write what I’ve done to Gwen and ask her to contact the parcel deliverers across the street from our property to see if they’ll come up with $65,000. And if they will, to ask those who made the original offer for $70,000 and so on.

“Eddie, you’re shaking,” observes Didier.
“You just noticing that? He’s been trembling for days,” says Charles. “Looks like he’s got Parkinson’s disease.”
“You’re giggling, Eddie,” Didier says. “Does it feel ticklish?”
“Yeah, in a way. It’s like I have a double heartbeat: mine, followed a fraction of a second later by the heartbeat of what could be a tapeworm.”
“Perhaps it’s caused by all the kif you’ve been smoking.” Didier says.
“I don’t know what’s causing it. It’s never happened before.”

Gwen sends a contract that she’s signed, agreeing to sell for $60,000 cash. She asks that I sign the contract before a notary public and return it to her.
I write back that she hasn’t done what I’d asked her to do and that I’m unwilling to sell.

The Moroccan street musician begins to play his bass-toned string instrument before a number of guests in Didier’s house. A deep note seems to be directed at me. I look up at the musician. He nods and signals to me with his eyes to stop brooding and pay attention to the music. Smiling, I settle back to listen to him play.

Gwen writes that we’ll be sued if we refuse to sell. That I’ve set a price of $60,OOO and the buyer has met my asking price.
I have little choice but to sign the contract.

I’m being chased, but I don’t look back to see who is chasing me. My legs become heavier with each step I take. My thighs seem to be turning into metal. I can’t run any further. I can’t breathe. My head feels like it’s being crushed. I’ve been like this before, and I know that I must struggle to awaken so I can breathe again. I’ve always reached consciousness at the very last moment. But it doesn’t seem as though I’m going to be able to do so this time.
My body is jolted explosively, and there’s a bright flash of light in my head.
I’m sitting in bed in complete calm. I’m not shaking, and I have no double heartbeat. Not a sound reaches me from early morning Marrakech. The plain white wall at the foot of my bed is embedded with beautiful dots of twinkling light.
I am dead, and I don’t care.

“I can’t find anything wrong with your heart,” a doctor tells me in the morning. “There’s no sign that you’ve had an heart attack.”
“That’s good to know. What happened to my body last night was so powerful that I thought it might have damaged my heart.”

Gwen writes that her house on the outskirts of Los Angeles will appreciate greatly in value when that city expands beyond her land. She wishes to buy land just beyond the confines of that city, build a number of houses on it and sell it at a profit when it has been absorbed by the city. That’s what she plans to do after the sale of the property with our money.
OUR MONEY! Never! Does she expect me to trust her after she once removed the money from our joint account? She’s crazy if she does.
I write to the bank handling the sale of our property to instruct them that not one penny of my half of the proceeds from the sale are to be diverted to my wife’s half. Then, I write to Gwen to inform her of what I’ve done, adding that I’m still willing to invest in income property with her.

“I want my money, Jack,” Gwen writes back, sending along a contract for me to sign, agreeing to pay her the sum of money she claims I owe her. I throw away the contract.
I notice that the date of the sale of the property falls within the span of time I will use to return to Copenhagen. A check should be waiting for me by the time I arrive there.

1964
There is no check waiting for me in Copenhagen, only a letter from Gwen to inform me that the date for the sale of the property has been put back sixty days to give us time to reach an agreement. She’s willing now to accept two-thirds of the money I owe her. I drop papers into the trash bin.

“How do you like it, Eddie?” asks Jacqueline. “Your story printed under an aerial photograph of Vester Faengsel, a jail in Copenhagen.”
“At last, I’m in print.”
“I’ll give you some copies to give to your friends. And I’ve already begun my next project: a picture book on chains. I hope you’ll write a tale on that subject.”
“I’ll try to come up with something.”
“I hope to have it published by Christmas.”
“You are indefatigable, Jacqueline.”

Gwen writes that I’d better come to an agreement with her or she’ll refuse to sell, which will constitute a breach of contract and make it certain that we’ll be sued. She adds that she’s willing to lose everything.
Lose everything! She’s just crazy enough to do it, to throw away all we’ve worked for and saved all those years. I panic. I’ll be left penniless and have to start up with nothing again. Do I have the will or the energy for that? To become a wage earner again is a most depressing prospect.
I must get in touch with Gwen and try to persuade her to be sensible. But how can I contact her? A letter will take too long to reach her; I can’t say all I have to say in a telegram, and I don’t have her unlisted phone number. Must I fly to California? I dread having to do that. I probably don’t have enough money to fly, anyway. I feel powerless.
I can’t eat, I can’t read, I can’t listen to music. I can only pace up and down my room endlessly, my mind in turmoil. How quickly time vanishes when I’m troubled. Should I agree to her terms and at least salvage some money? Or should I try to gather enough money to go to California? I’m going out of my mind with worry.
Suddenly, what I should do strikes me. It’s so simple. A total calm suffuses my being. Gwen’s willing to lose everything; so am I. Now, let’s see if she’s bluffing. Me, I’m not backing down. I’ll be left with nothing if she goes ahead and loses everything, but so what? I’m no stranger to poverty. I’ll survive somehow. I was born with nothing, wasn’t I?
I’m free! Free of my fear of being destitute! I feel weightless; my being soars.
I have nothing to do but to wait calmly to see what Gwen is going to do..

Why don’t you write? Gwen asks. We’re all waiting here to hear from you.
So, I write, asking her if she’s read any good books, heard any great music or seen any memorable movies.

How can you send such a letter? Gwen writes. I’m warning you, this is your last chance. Sign and return the enclosed agreement immediately.
But I have nothing more to say to her.

The check arrives. Gwen’s bluff has been called.
Keep the money, you faggot, she writes in a separate letter. You need it more than I do.
If she knew I needed it more than she did, why did she fight so long to deprive me of it?

Some weeks after the arrival of the check, I receive what seems to be a conciliatory letter from Gwen, almost an invitation. In the upper margin of the letter, Vincent has made drawings of his pets, a baseball glove and bat.
I write that I’m willing to come to California to look for income property we could invest in together, and ask if it would be possible for me to sleep in her van while I’m there.

Sleep in my van? When are you going to grow up and get your own car and your own house to sleep in?
Good, now, I don’t have to go all the way back to California. I’m free to go wherever I wish.

“Don’t leave, Eddie,” Mona pleads. “Stay here with me.”
“There are two things in life I wish to avoid: work and cold weather.”
“You can move into my flat and sit before the electric heater all winter long. You’ll never have to go out; I’ll do all the shopping.”
“There are more interesting things in the world than can be seen inside your flat, Mona.”
“What will I do without you?”
“Come on, Mona, don’t you remember what you said before we made it together?”
“What did I say?”
“When you wondered what it would be like to make it with me I told you it would be all right as long as you didn’t get hung up on me. And you said there was no danger of that happening because you were in love with the man whose child you were carrying. Do you remember all that?”
“Yes, but it didn’t prevent me from falling in love with you.”
“I’m sorry it happened to you, but I have to leave. I should be back in the spring. You should have your baby by then.”
I don’t tell Mona that I won’t be spending time with her when I return. I’ve already lived with a woman and child and, though it was a rewarding experience, I have no need to repeat it.
With so many eager young girls in Copenhagen, why had I allowed Mona to get so close to me? Because after having worked on my novel all day, I had found it convenient when Mona came in the evening and saved me the trouble of having to go out to look for a lover.

“What’re you doing in Athens, Eddie?” asks Peter, a young American living in a large house with a number of freaks who’ve been to India.
“I’m on my way to Egypt for the winter. I spent last winter in Morocco and now I want to go somewhere I haven’t been to.”
“I have a house and a servant in Cairo where you can stay if you like. But, you know, for twenty dollars more you could go to India.”
“Is India better than Egypt?”
“Infinitely.”
“Then I’ll go to India. How do I get there?”
“Overland through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan or by boat from Kuwait to Bombay.”
“Man, you’re going to love India, Eddie,” says Ron, another American living in the house. “So many great places to visit, and most of them accessible by train. But be sure to have a second class sleeper reservation. And if you like Indian classical music, take a transistor radio with you. Lots of great music broadcast every day. And do you go for spicy food?”
“My girl and I spent six months in Mexico once, and the food tasted so bland when we returned to the States that we had to liven it up with hot sauce.”
“Look at this you guys,” exclaims a tall freak coming into the room wearing cowboy gear and holding an open magazine. “Pictures of Allen Ginsberg at the Gunga in Benares.”
He lays the open magazine onto a table, allowing us to see photos of Ginsberg immersed in, and emerging from, the river.
“Wow, these are great photos, Michael,” Peter says.
“Yeah, Ginsberg’s sure on a good trip,” says Michael.
I think he’s on a terrible fucking religious trip,.

1964 - 1965
Sitting on the upper deck of a Bombay bus with a joint in my hand, I look down at the mass of people on the street. So many people without jobs, so many sitting on doorsteps, remind me of my childhood during the Depression in America, and I’m becoming rapidly fond of India. . How is the driver ever going to get this bus through that throng in the street? Why should I care? That’s his problem; not mine. I sit back and take another hit on my joint.

As I look out at the passing landscape on the train to Trivanderam, I become aware that some of the passengers sitting opposite me are waiting to catch my attention.
“What happened to your hand?” asks a man, as soon as I glance at the interior of the car.
“I was born with it,” I answer. “See, there are no cuts.”
“Oh, you are a very lucky man, sir.”
“I am?”
“Yes, because if you had been born with five fingers, you would have been a very evil man. But being born with only three fingers has made you very humble.”
“Excuse me, sir, what are you doing in India?” asks a second man.
“I’m sightseeing.”
“Have you been to many places?”
“Bombay, Badami, Mysore City, Belur, Halebid, Bangalore and Cochin are the places I’ve been to so far.”
“How did you come to Bombay?”
“By boat from Kuwait.”
“And are you enjoying your travels?”
“Yes, very much so. The local people I’ve met have been breaking my heart daily with the kindness they’ve shown me.”

A man in a western suit and accompanied by a woman leans toward me from his seat on the bus to Cape Comorin.
“Excuse me, sir. You are from?”
“The United States.”
“You are in service here?”
“No, only touring.”
“How much money does your government give you to cover your traveling expenses?”
“Not one penny.” How many times I’ve answered this question since I’ve been in India.
“Such a wealthy country, and it’s not giving you money?”
“That’s why it’s such a wealthy country.”
“How are you providing for your food and shelter?”
“From interest on my savings.”
“A capitalist,” he says to the woman beside him. “Your travels must be costing you much money.”
“Not at all. I’m usually traveling by ticket-less third class train, and I’m eating and sleeping in railway stations. The thought of becoming a poor old man sleeping in railway stations used to terrify me. Now, it doesn’t bother me at all to sleep in railway stations.”

A group of beggars, who stand alongside the railroad tracks at a stop before Madurai, hold up their stumps to me.
I hold up my hand for the beggars to see. They look puzzled, then gradually begin to smile and to nudge each other as though to convey, “Look, a beggar who’s made it.”

“You’re traveling alone?” asks a woman who is with a group of middle class Indians visiting the temple in Tiruchi. “Where is your family?”
“In America I have four brothers, two sisters and a mother.”
“You have no wife and children?”
“I’m divorced and I have a twelve year old son.”
“You’re going to see them after you leave India?”
“No, I’m going my own way.”
“Tch, tch, I can’t imagine living without my family. Who will take care of you in your old age?”
“I never ask myself that.”
“I am so sorry for you.”
And I feel so sad for her, imprisoned in her family.

“How are you finding India?” asks a man on the beach at Mahabilapuram.
“I’m liking it more each day. I like the people, the classical music, the food, the warm winter weather in the south, and so much else. I’m feeling truly ecstatic.”
“Something has touched your mind, sir.”
“India has. I can live here on my small income and never have to work again.”

Three young men come my way in Bhubanswar railway station.
“Hey, mate, you goin’ to Madras?” one of them asks me.
“No, I’m coming from there.”
“We’re catching the cheap boat from Madras to the Andamans and then skipping over to Malaysia. Where you headed?”
“Calcutta, Bodh Gaya, then Benares, where I think I’ll spend a few weeks to do some writing.”
“Man, much better to spend time in Kathmandu than in Benares.”
“Kathmandu? Where’s that?”
“In Nepal, north of India. Get a visa at the Nepalese consulate in Calcutta.”

“If your government doesn’t give you money, how do you meet your expenses?” asks a man on the train to Bodh Gaya.
“My wife sends me money to stay away.”
“Why does she do that?”
“She says that my squeamishness is bad for her business.”
“What is your wife’s business?”
“She has slaves.”
“I thought slavery was abolished in your country.”
“It is?”
“Then?”
“My wife has sex slaves.”
“May I offer you a cup of tea?”

1965
I finally find The Globe Restaurant in Kathmandu.
“Eddie!” someone calls as I step in. It’s Susie, a young Dane I knew in Copenhagen. “Man, when did you get in?”
“A couple of days ago. It took me some time to find this place. I kept asking young Nepalis if they knew where the foreign traveler’s ate, and they kept sending me to their favorite restaurants.”
“Where you staying?”
“As soon as I got off the bus a Nepalese boy struck up a conversation with me and then offered me his room until he returns from his home village.”
“Eddie, this is Dahl, the guy I’m traveling with.”
“Hey, Dahl, how are you?”
“Fine. How long you gonna be around, Eddie?”
“About five or six weeks.”
“Hi, folks,” greets a young man entering with a girl.
“Eddie, this is Mick, an American, and his German girlfriend Ushie,” Susie introduces. “This is the entire freak scene in Kathmandu. Usually, we spend most of the whole day in The Globe, eating good food and smoking Nepalese hash and grass.”
“How you finding Kathmandu, Eddie?” asks Dahl.
“Mornings are so cold it takes me a long time to get myself out of bed. After having a breakfast in a small chi shop, I hustle over to the American Library because it’s heated. There, I read until noon, then have lunch and spend the afternoon wandering around. But I think I’ll be spending most of my time in this place from now on.”

Dahl is eating from a large plate of food when I enter The Globe.
“What’s happening, Eddie?”
“Nothing but good things.”
“Hi, Eddie,” Susie greets, joining us at the table. “Dahl, I’m very hungry, man.”
“Baby, we’ve got to go easy on the spending. We’re runnin’ very low on money”
“I’ll bet you’ve eaten?”
“I had a bite.”
“Sure, you did. But I want more than a bite. I want to eat a huge plate of food.”
“What can we do, Susie?”
Susie hesitates. “I think I’ll join those two cute Nepali boys sitting at that table over there.”
Dahl pauses, chews on the end of his chin whiskers and, hands trembling, he opens his purse and studies its contents.
“Well, I think we have enough for you to order something to eat, Susie.” Susie gives me a meaningful look.

“Are you two as impressed by India as I am?” I ask Mick and Ushi.
“Yes, but our guru Meyer Baba has told us to never return there.”
“And you’re not going to?”
“He’s our guru, so he should know what’s best for us.”
This, I cannot understand. I’d never allow anyone to tell me where to go and what to do.

Dahl and Susie rush excitedly into The Globe.
“We just met a couple of photographers from Stern Magazine,” Dahl says. “And they want to photograph the five of us smoking before various temples and other places of interest in Kathmandu. We’ll be able to order all the most expensive dishes here at The Globe, and they’ll give us twenty dollars. Doesn’t that sound cool?”
“Twenty dollars each?” I ask.
“No, twenty dollars in all.”
“That’s crazy. Twenty dollars divided by five is next to nothing. Tell them we won’t do it unless they give us twenty dollars each.”
“What if they won’t go for it?”
“Then we won’t do it. But, don’t worry, they’ll come up with the money. It’s peanuts to them.”

“Those assholes from Stern were so straight,” Ushi tells me. “You should have seen them wrinkle their noses when Mick and I told them that we’re not married.”

“What are you people doing, sitting at that table all day long?” asks the very large American girl who has told us that she is a shot-putter on the U.S. Olympic team and that she’s returning home from the games in Japan.
“We’re getting high,” Dahl answers. “You wanna try?”
“Sure, why not?” she says, evidently game to try almost anything once.
“So, sit down then,” Dahl tells her. “Hey, Eddie, what shall we make her, a hash joint or a grass joint?”
“Make a hash and grass joint.”
“Comin’ up.”
What’s your name?” I ask the girl.
“Linda.”
“Listen, Linda, I’ve never made it with a shot-putter called Linda. You want to get it on with me.”
“I don’t think we’ve known each other long enough for that.”
Dahl lights the joint he’s made, takes a big hit and passes it to Linda.
“How long do you have to know a girl before you can have sex with her?” asks Dahl.
“In an arranged marriage, you may not even have met your wife before you go to bed with her,” I say.
“I wouldn’t let anyone tell me who to marry,” says Ushi.
“Not even Meyer Baba?” I ask.
“You’re ridiculing our beliefs,” Mick says.
“All beliefs are ridiculous,” I say.
“Hey, whatever happened to that joint?” asks Dahl.
The shot-putter has her head on the table, the remains of the burning joint between her fingers.
“She’s smoked the whole thing herself,” Dahl says. “She didn’t know that she was supposed to pass it on.”
“Hey, Linda,” I say, leaning over her and nudging her arm. “How are you?”
She turns her head toward me, opens her eyes and says, “How long does this last?”
“For a few hours.”
“Oh, my God.”

1965
“We meet again,” I say, surprising Linda near the burning ghats in Benares. “Are you fascinated by the scene?”
“It’s ghastly.”
“Better than being buried alive, don’t you think? Anyway, seeing that life comes to an end, don’t you think we should get it on immediately?”
“I think we’ve known each other too long for that.”

“India is the most beautiful, the most spiritual and the most powerful country in the world,” a villager tells me on the bus leaving Khajurao.
“India may be the most beautiful and the most spiritual country in the world, but it’s certainly not the most powerful,” I say. “The United States or The Soviet Union could obliterate India with a few hydrogen bombs.”
“I will not reveal at this time the secret weapons that India has at its disposal.”
“Even China was able to bloody India’s nose and then withdraw.”
“China is immoral. In India, we regard all women to be our mothers or our sisters. What is the situation in your country?”
“In my country, we don’t usually go to bed with our mothers and sisters.”
Some of the passengers on the bus snicker.
“If you should say that in my village, we would put you against the wall and shoot you.”

In Delhi, I grab the railing inside a bus that is just beginning to move, but I can’t seem to pull myself up onto the bus as it picks up speed. Still holding onto the railing, I am pulled forward alongside the bus at a quickening pace. Realizing at last that I must release my hold of the railing, I let go and find myself being carried forward by momentum alone. I make myself fall onto the gravel to stop myself from going further. I rise to my feet and check my body for serious injury. Except for a few scratches, I’m not hurt. Man, if there had been a wagon or vendor’s cart in my path, I could have been killed.

“Open your bag,” orders the Pakistani customs official at the border
“I’m American,” I tell him, holding up my passport.
“Oh, sorry,” he apologizes and marks my bag with a large white cross.
I hope it’s going to be like this at all the borders waiting for me.

As the bus approaches Khandahar, the young Afghan soldier sitting beside me becomes gay.
“I’m happy because I will see my wife in Khandahar,” he tells me.
“But when we left Kabul you were crying because you were leaving your wife behind,” I remind him.
“Yes, that was my Kabul wife; now I will see my Khandahar wife.”
The bus is arriving in Khandahar late at night. That would have been a cause of concern when I first began to travel. I would have worried about finding a room for the night. But after having slept in railway stations, in public parks and on sidewalks, I no longer have such cares.
“That’s the tourist hotel,” the soldier tells me, pointing out the window toward a passing building.
Whatever I need to know always seems to be presented to me in time.

Finally understanding that I want charas, the proprietor of the chi shop steps out from behind his samovar and motions to me to follow him. Bending low, he leads me through a small opening in the back wall of his shop and into a room which contains a large water pipe and some mats on the floor.
He breaks a large chunk of charas into the bole on top of the water pipe, places some burning charcoal upon it, takes a big hit and passes the nozzle to me. I take a hit, another, and pass it back to him. I’m already feeling the effects of the charas by the time I take my second round of hits. After the third round, I signal that I’ve had enough. I follow the proprietor back into the teashop. He resumes his seat behind the samovar. I look down into his stoned eyes; he looks up into mine, and it’s evident that neither of us is sober enough to talk business. “Tomorrow,” I say, and he nods in agreement.
I leave the shop and, giggling and almost falling forward onto my face, I stagger across the street toward the lights of a restaurant. I stumble in and plop myself down onto a seat. Feeling giddy, I laugh loud at a radio band playing the most listless cha-cha-cha I’ve ever heard.

I make notes on the protagonist of the novel I’ve not worked on since I’ve left Copenhagen. That protagonist is modeled on me, so I’m actually examining my own character. Why have I always liked people? Because I was so skinny as a boy that I had to like my peers, or was it because I wanted to be liked by them in return?

“Eddie, what’s up, man?”
I turn to see the Michael I met in Athens standing in the doorway of a hotel on the main street of Herat.
“Too much, Michael. I never expected to see anyone I knew in this place. Which way you going?”
“Back to India. And you?”
“Coming from there.”
“You must have smoke on you.”
“Some Afghani, Pakistani, Kashmiri and Nepali.”
“Come up to my room and let’s turn on.“
“I’ll see you guys later,” I tell the three young Australians who are with me, then follow Michael up to his room.
“Who were those boys?” asks Michael.
“Three Australians who happen to be taking the same buses as me. I’ve been trying to distance myself from them because of the racist way they’ve been coming on to the Afghans, ridiculing them when they stop to pray or saying things like, ‘Who’re you lookin’ at, monkey?’ ”
“Eddie, this is my fiend, Peter. He’s going to India with me.”
“Great.” I shake hands with Peter.
“So, Eddie, are we going to smoke?” Michael hands me a pipe with a long stem and a large bole.
“How about Nepalese hash and grass?”
“Sounds excellent, Eddie.”
After we’ve smoked a number of boles, I say, “That’s it for me, Michael.”
“No, let’s have another one”, he says, and I begin to doubt the strength of my stuff and to doubt, too, my standing as a true smoker.
“I’ll make a bole for you, then go to the restaurant downstairs. I’m starving.”
“I’ll go with you,” Peter says. “I’m also starving. You coming, Michael?”
“No, you guys go. And, Eddie, do right by those Australians.” He means I should turn them on.
“Yeah, Michael,” I say, not intending to do so.
In the restaurant, Peter and I, giggling, dig into the food before us.
Suddenly, Michael, looking very pale, leans over our table.
“I’m dying,” he says, his hand on his breast. “I’m having a heart attack.”
Hearing this, I am elated. My dope is good after all, and I’m a true smoker.
“You’re not dying,” Peter laughs. “You just smoked too much, that’s all.”
“No, I’m dying, I tell you.”
“Sit down and eat something to bring you down.”
“How can I eat when I’m dying?” Michael asks, leaving.

“Hey, Eddie, what’re we gonna do all night long?” one of the Australians asks, as the four of us sit on the carpeted floor of the back room in a grocery store in Jusef Abad, Iran.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I know what I’m going to do.” I take out my hash, grass and rolling papers.
“Is that maryawany or whatever it’s called?” asks a second Australian.
“Yeah, you guessed it.”
“What happens when you smoke it?” asks the first Australian.
“You may feel very relaxed and content. Then things may become may seem to become different. Time, for instance, will be passing quicker or slower than usual, sounds will have depths you’ve never noticed, and everything will be so ridiculous that you won’t be able to stop laughing. Then, you’ll probably become very hungry and thirsty and run out to buy goodies and drink.”
“Ah, that is all bullshit,” says a bespectacled German who is also spending the night in this shop. “I have smoked that stuff many times and nothing happens.”
He’s the catalyst I’ll use to turn on the Australians. Lighting the joint I’ve made, I hand it to the German. He takes a hit and hands it to the first Australian.
“No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“I don’t smoke tobacco, either,” I say. “This stuff is milder than tobacco.”
“It is?” he says and takes a cautious toke before passing it to the second Australian.
“How is it?”
“It’s mild.”
While the joint goes around, I prepare a second one.
“Hey, Eddie, I don’t feel anything,” the third Australian says.
“Be patient. The effect can be very subtle. You may be high and not notice it for some time.”
I light the second joint and hand it to the . . . Hey, what happened to the German? I go into the next room and find him lying in bed, his face pale.
“I thought this stuff did nothing to you,” I say, leaning over him.
“Get out, bastard!”
“Hey, Eddie, I’m feeling different now,” the third Australian announces.
The second Australian has his head buried in his arms, and the first one is lying on his back with his eyes shut.
“You’re all feeling different,” I laugh.
“Hey, Eddie, is my voice sounding strange or am I hearing strange?” asks the third Australian.
“I don’t know. You sound the same to me.”
“Everything seems so unusual. Will I come back to normal?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“I’m feeling very hungry.”
“Go out and get something to eat.”
The three Australians go out, while I sit back contentedly. I’ve done right by them, after all.
The Australians return, their hands laden with sandwiches, cokes and other goodies.
“Guess what, Eddie. After I bought this egg sandwich, I was standing in front of the shop when my mate came along and asked me what I was doing. And, you know something, Eddie? I wasn’t doing anything. I’d probably still be standing there if he hadn’t come along.”
I roll onto the carpet, laughing.
“Hey, Eddie, you don’t act like no forty year old man. Our fathers are your age, and they’re nothing like you.”
“They don’t smoke this stuff.”
They all laugh.
“Hey, Eddie, how’re we gonna get up at five in the morning to catch that bus to Mashed?”
“Don’t worry, I can wake up any time I need to.”
Unrolling their sleeping bags and sliding into them, they’re off to sleep.
Pleased with myself, I lay my head down and - BANG - my body is jolted, and there’s a flash of bright light in my head.
And I recall the first time that my brother and I had gone to the movies without our mother. The film was already on when we arrived on the balcony to look for seats in the theater packed with laughing children. Their laughter suddenly made me feel self-conscious. I hoped that the children were looking at the movie and not at me with my Dutch clip haircut, my three fingered hand and my skinny body.
So, that girl with the remarkable hair and hands and no body I’d dreamt of on the night after I’d first read Freud had been the younger me of the Dutch clip, the three-fingered hand and the thin body on the balcony of the crowded theater. And in that dream, I had been doing what I had wished the children in the theater to be doing: watching the screen and not noticing me.

1965
“Man, I didn’t realize how stoned I was yesterday until I found I couldn’t get myself to walk over the bridge to town,” says one of the young Danes who had smoked my stuff at Mona’s the day before.
“That used to happen to me sometimes,” I say. “I was so afraid of feeling an irresistible urge to jump if I looked at the water below, that I’d turn away from the railing and watch the traffic on the bridge road.”
“Me, when I left here last night I went into a hardware store,” a second Dane says. “I was there for some time before I realized that there was no reason at all for me to be in that store.”
I’m gratified to hear you say this. Yesterday, when all you smokers left Mona’s without saying a word about my stuff I began to doubt its potency.”
“Eddie, you gotta sell us some of that stuff.”
“I don’t have any to sell. I’ll give you a piece.”
“No, man, listen, I’ve got a jazz trio, and we’re doing a gig on Danish radio tomorrow, and you’re dope will keep us flying through it.”
“If I sell my stuff, I’ll soon run out of it and . . .”
“Please, man.”
“All right, tell me the going price.”

“I’ve never known anyone who sleeps as much as you do,” Mona tells me. “You don’t go out. You don’t do anything.”
“I guess that overland trip from India has taken a lot out of me.”

“You go all the way to India and you don’t bring back a single chillum,” Mona complains..
“I never thought of bringing one because I don’t smoke tobacco.”
“That’s right, you think only of yourself, never of anyone else.”
She’s uptight because I’m sleeping with her but not touching her. I haven’t told her that I’m only staying with her until I find my own place.

“That bag of yours is stinking up my room,” she says.
“You don’t seem to mind smoking the stinking stuff inside it, Mona.”

“I’m going to the bath house, Mona.”
Sobbing hysterically, she rushes up to me, grabs my arms and begins to shake me.
I look down at her, wondering why she’s acting like this to someone who’s never spoken a harsh word to her.
“Pull yourself together, Mona.” Putting my hands on her shoulders, I push her back onto the bed.
She looks up at me like an admonished child.
“I’ll see you later, Mona.”

The following day is my second Sunday at Mona’s, and the smokers have returned.
“Mik.” I approach one of them when he’s preparing to leave. “Do you know of a room I can rent?”
“You’re welcome to stay with my wife and me. We have a room with a bed in it which we only use to store things in.”
“No, I don’t want to be a bother to you.”
“It’s no bother at all. When would you like to move in?”
“Tonight, when you leave.”
“We’re going now.”
“I’ll get my bag.”
“Where are you going, Eddie?” Mona asks.
“Mik and his wife have offered me a room. Thanks for putting up with me all this week.”

As I get settled in my new room, I hear Joan, Mik’s wife, whistling. She seems to be too happy. I’ll have to be on my guard against her. I need the room more than I need her. There are more girls than rooms available in Copenhagen.
“Come, Eddie, and have some coffee and cake,” Joan calls.

Mik and Joan gone to work, I eat breakfast on their cluttered table. They’ve told me to help myself to whatever there is. This is wonderful, having a flat all to myself five days a week. I’ll have a quiet place to write.
What’s this? A large photo lying on the table. It’s of Joan, sitting naked on the floor with her arms resting on drawn up knees, a position that reveals the contours of an admirable breast. She‘s obviously left the photo on the table for me to see.
“You’re very attractive with your lovely body and your very blonde hair,” I say to Joan’s smiling likeness. “But you’re not going to get me.”
How can she get to me? She works.

That evening, Mona stands before me when I answer the door.
“Pia wants me to bring you to her place.”
“Come in. Mik and Joan are here.”
While the three of them talk in Danish, I’m glad that Mona has come to remove me from Joan’s presence.
“Hey, Eddie, I know how you get people to like you,” Mona says, turning to me. “You hypnotize them.”
“Come on, Mona, I’ve never studied hypnotism.”
“You do it naturally, then.”
“I like his eyes,” Joan says.
“Let’s go, Eddie. Pia’s waiting.”

“Gordon is an interesting painter, isn’t he?” I say the following evening after having taken Mik and Joan to Gordon’s studio.
“He has imagination, but I suspect that he’s not all that technically proficient,” Mik says.
“That may be so. You’re a graphic artist, and Gordon may not have the technique that you have.”
“I’m glad you took us to see his paintings,” Joan says, yawning.
“Okay, you’re tired. I’ll see you people tomorrow.”
I go to my room, undress and slip into bed.
Mik comes in. “My wife would like to speak with you.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, she’s in the front room.”
I get out of bed and get dressed, wondering what Joan wants of me. Surely, with Mik here, it can’t be sex. But what else can it be?
Finished dressing, I go into the front room. On the bright turquoise bedcover lies Joan’s white body, the legs outstretched
“Did you wish to speak to me, Joan?”
“I want you to fuck me.” She says, hands under her head and smiling up at me
So, this is it: the beginning of the end. If I don’t fuck her, I lose the room; and if I fuck her, I lose the room.
“What about him?” I say, nodding toward Mik walking in.
“Oh, it’s quite all right with me,” he says, going to the armchair.
I guess it would be ungrateful of me to refuse to fuck her.

Mik and I, having taken turns coupling with Joan, all three of us lie side by side on the bed, Joan in the middle.
“This is the happiest day of my life,” she says, turning her head to me.
“The second happiest day,” I whisper. “Don’t forget the day of your marriage.”

“I’m so glad you’re staying with us.” Joan tells me. “I like hearing the stories you tell. Mik, too, likes that you’re here. You help take his mind off himself. He can be very morbid at times.”
“He sure likes to smoke.”
“He has a permit from the government to smoke. His mother kept him on pills so he’d be dependent on her and never leave her. But I came into the picture and whisked him away. I’m saving his life, you know.”
“And is that enough to make you happy?”
“Mik allows me to do what I want.”
“So I’ve noticed.”

I wake up to hear that I’m not alone in the apartment.
“Is today a holiday, Joan?”
“No, I decided to stay home to clean the house.”
Fuck, with Joan here, I won’t be able to do any writing.
“Do you know what I like about you, Eddie? Whenever I show you the paintings or drawings I’ve made you always look at them and encourage me to make more. I know they’re not very good, but I like making them. Mik just tells me I’m wasting my time.”
“Mik’s a commercial artist, so he’s not impressed by what you do. Also, I’ve noticed that many Danes are reluctant to admit that they like anything for fear of being ridiculed. ‘You like Bach? Bah. You like your wife? Ha.’ Isn’t that so, Joan?”
She sits down beside me.
“I’m going to dream about you again tonight, Eddie.”
“How do you know?”
“Before I fall asleep, I decide what I’m going to dream,” she says, coming closer to me
“Look out the window, Joan. What a lovely sunny day it is. It’s a shame to stay indoors and waste such a rare day. You want to go for a walk with me when you’ve finished cleaning the house?”
“I’d like that, Eddie.”

A sudden thump on my bed awakens me.
“I’ve got you.” Joan pins me down and kisses me.
“You’re not going to work again today?”
“No, I’m going. But Mik always leaves for work before I do, and so when the cat’s away . . .”
And I find that our bodies are so attuned to one another that we have four orgasms in quick succession.
“So, Eddie, we have found a new time to play.”

“Now that we’ve had our morning sexercise, I’m ready to go to work,” Joan says, rising from my side and stretching. “I really enjoy going to work these days. I do like you do: I’m friendly with everyone I meet, and they all smile back at me. You know, I didn’t see them before as having thoughts and feelings in them like I do. I saw them as things that happened to be there. Now that I see them as they are, my life has become brighter. And it’s all because of you.”
“No, it’s all because of you, Joan. You saw that change was possible and you made that change.”

“I think it’s time we leave this place,” Mik says, rising from our table in the crowded afternoon bar.
I feel a light tap on my foot. Looking across the table at Joan, I see her signaling to me with her eyes to stay with her. I hesitate for a moment, but then decide not to side with her against Mik.
“See you later, Joan.” I say and walk out with Mik.
“You didn’t even ask Joan to come with us, Mik.”
“She could see we were leaving and could have come with us if she wished.”
“But Joan’s an attractive girl. Aren’t you afraid that someone will pick her up?”
“I know that Joan will never leave me.”
I look at him in complete astonishment
“Mik, I’ve never been able to be that certain of any woman.”
“But, you see, Joan and I have had some special experiences that bind us firmly together.”

“I saw Mona in the street today, wandering about like a mad woman,” Mik informs Joan and me. “She’s suffering because she’s missing you, Eddie.”
I feel he’s saying this for Joan’s benefit. “Do you see the kind of man Eddie is?” he’s implying. “He’ll just get up and leave a woman whenever it suits him, unconcerned about what happens to her. He’s totally disloyal to a woman, whereas I will always stay with you.”

“Is Mik becoming worried about my being staying with you, Joan?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Yesterday, he took me to meet a number of girls who live alone, and I had the feeling that he was hoping that I’d find one I liked.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“And when his mother visited us last Sunday evening and was so hostile toward me that it seemed she’d been warned that a scandal was about to erupt here and had come to put an it.”
“Danes are very afraid of scandal.”
“His mother was probably asking Mik why I was here.”
“Then, she should have asked me too. This is also my house.”

“Joan, you’re down to your panties,” exclaims Lone, the girl Mik has invited to play strip poker with us. “You’re going to be the first one naked.”
Mik deals the another hand, and Joan loses again.
“Take it off. Take it off.” Lone gleefully claps her hands.
Joan, smiling, takes my hand.
“Let’s go to your room,” she says, pulling me away.
“Do you think Mik invited that girl for me?” I ask Joan in my room.
“I don’t know. Are you angry with me for taking you away from her?”
“If I wished to be with her, you wouldn’t be able to take me away.”
“Let Mik have her. He’s the one who invited her. Meanwhile, we can have each other.”
Joan and I bring our bodies together.
“Oh,” Joan says, interrupting our play, “Mik doesn’t want you to come in me.”
“I see. He probably doesn’t want you to become pregnant by me. I guess we should obey him. Do you think we should?”
“Let’s not.”

Just as I’m about to fall asleep, Joan rushes naked into my room. Panting like a crazed horse, she tries to pull me out of bed.
“Come, Eddie. Come to our room.”
“Oh, pardon me,” Mik says, coming in naked.
“Eddie, come, come!” Joan pulls on my arm frenziedly.
She can no longer bear to have sex with Mik unless I’m also involved.
“Please, Eddie.”
“You come into my bed, Joan,” I say, no longer willing to help them save their marriage.
“No, you come!” she cries.
Mik, seeing that I don’t intend to leave my bed, takes the sobbing Joan away.

“I’m sure Mik’s going to ask me to leave, Joan.”
“I won’t let him.”
“How are you gong to stop him?”
“It’s my flat as well as his.”

“I’m very sorry to have to do this, Eddie,” Mik tells me, “but I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave.”
“Where’s Joan, Mik?”
“She won’t be coming until later.”
The little coward, hiding while I’m being put out.
“Can you give me a day or two to find another place?”
“That won’t be necessary. My brother is on his honeymoon, and you may use his flat for the next three weeks. I’ll take you there now.”
“I’m sorry this situation developed as it did, Mik. It was not my intention to make love to Joan when I accepted your offer to stay with you.”
“I’m well aware of that. I’m not blaming you at all.”
“I thank you for all you’ve done for me, and I assure you that I won’t bother you and Joan by coming to see you.”
“I was hoping that you would.”
Of course he was; he loves to smoke Afghani.
“I won’t be coming to you, but I won’t prevent Joan from coming to me. If I know anything at all about women, Mik, Joan’s so in love with me at the moment that I can’t conceive of her being able to stay away.”
“That may very well be.”

Three days later, sitting on the canal wharf where the freaks hang out in downtown Copenhagen, I spot a very blonde head bobbing along on the walkway above, and I rise and rush up to Joan.
“I knew you’d come, Joan.”
“Hurry, let’s go to your place.”

“Some Afghani’s arrived, Eddie,” Danish Stuff tells me. “Two guys and a girl brought it here in a van.”
“That’s too much. The very day my dope runs out, new dope arrives. How do I get to meet these people?”
“We’ll tell you. But my friends would like to see you before you go there. We want to add our money to your money and have you score for us.”
“Why don’t you score for yourselves?”
“Eddie, man, we Danes get two years if we’re busted while you only get put out of the country. Two years inside is a very long time when you’re young. Besides, by putting all the money together you should be able to make a better deal. We’re trusting you, Eddie.”
“When can we get together?”
“In an hour in my place.”

“Mik made me fuck a black man so I’d forget you,” Joan tells me the next time she comes to me.
“That’s so sad.”
How did Mik make Joan fuck a black man? Did he hold her down while she was being mounted? Did he drug her into insensibility? Did he beat her until she agreed to do it? But I see no bruises on her body.
“I wish I could know you, Eddie, but your brown eyes prevent me from looking into you. Blue eyes, I can look into easily.”

“How’d you like India?” a young man asks me as I’m about to leave the restaurant.
“I liked it so much I’m going back to live there.”
“Did you go to Goa?”
“No, I wanted more to see Indian India.”
“Go to Colva Beach when you’re back in India. You can’t help being impressed by it. Get off the train in Margao, then take a bus to the beach.”
“How’d you know I’d been to India?”
“You’re wearing Indian chappals, man.”

“Mik came to see me Saturday morning, Joan.”
“Did he ask if I’d come to see you?”
“We didn’t talk about you. I think he came here to smoke.”
“He likes you, Eddie. He misses having you with us.”
“I couldn’t believe it when he got up to leave. I wondered how he, stoned as he was, was going to make it through the noisy noonday streets. He said goodbye and casually walked out, while I sat back, glad that I didn’t have to go out. A moment later, the door opened and Mik stuck his head in and asked if I minded if he stayed a little longer. I laughed and told him to stay as long as he wished.”
“How do you manage to always be so cheerful, Eddie? I wish I could be like that.”
“I don’t do anything; it just happens. Although I often imagine that an ideal woman is watching all that I do, and inspiring me to be as noble as I can be so that she will be pleased with me. These days that woman could be you, Joan.”
“But I’m not ideal, Eddie.”
“I can imagine that you are her. Look, joan, my life is composed of one scene after another. I’m in each one of these scenes, and it’s up to me to make them as harmonious as possible.”
“I have an idea, Eddie. Why don’t we have lunch together on weekdays. There’s a quiet little woods across the street from my workplace where we can eat in peace. I’ll bring the lunch.”
“Sounds good.”

“Can you eat the rest of my sandwich, Eddie?”
“Why? Aren’t you feeling well, Joan?”
“I’m so unhappy. I can’t go on living the way I am. It’s as though I’m being suffocated by a heavy weight that is lying on my breast.”
“So, what do you want to do, Joan?”
“What can I do?”
She could get out of the miserable marriage that she’s in, but she’s too insecure to be on her own, too attached to her job and her cosy little flat. She could never make the overland trip to India. But maybe I should offer to help her to extricate herself from the situation she’s in?
“If I find a flat, do you want to move in with me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Are you sure, Joan? Don’t let me go through the trouble of searching for a place for nothing.”
“I’m sure, Eddie. Find a place.”

Junkie Ullie is sitting alone on the canal wharf when I return to the city.
“What’s up, Ullie?”
“I’m depressed. I want to go to Morocco, but I have no money. If I could find someone to rent my flat for two or three months, I could go.”
I can’t believe this. Things are presented to me whenever I need them. I need a flat, one pops up; I need hash, Afghani arrives.
“How big is your flat, Ullie?”
“Two rooms, a kitchen and toilet.”
“I’m looking for a flat. Take me there. If I like it, I’ll give you three month’s rent. How soon can you leave if I decide to take it?”
“Today’s Friday. I can buy train tickets tomorrow and leave by Sunday.”
“That’s perfect, Ullie. I’ll go with you to buy the tickets, then stay with you until you leave.”

“Now that I’m all set to go, I feel like staying here and listening to you tell stories,” Ullie says, alarming me.
“Ullie, Morocco’s waiting for you, man. Once you’re there, you’ll never want to come back here. The pharmacies are stocked with everything you could want, majoon and kief are not illegal and the living is easy.”

Early Monday morning, I phone Joan at her workplace.
“Joan. This is Eddie. I’ve been dying to tell you all weekend. I got the flat.”
“I can’t talk just now, Eddie,” she says dully. “We’re very busy today.”
“Okay, I’ll call you later.”
What is this? I expect she’ll be truly elated when I tell her the news, but she comes on like I’m telling her she has terminal cancer.
I phone her an hour later.
“As I said before, Joan, I got the flat. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Eddie, I hear you.”
“Good, I’ll tell you about it at lunch.”
“I can’t come out today, Eddie. The office is swamped with work.”
“I WANT TO SEE YOU, JOAN. BE THERE.”
The fucking bitch, trying to back out on her word.

Emerging from her workplace and walking toward me, Joan looks like a dog who’s shit on the best rug in the house. Without speaking, we go to our eating place.
“So, Joan, I have the apartment.”
“I can’t come, Eddie.”
“What do you mean you can’t come? Three days ago you could and now you can’t. Why can’t you come?”
“I just can’t.”
“You don’t want to come, you mean.”
“I’m sorry, Eddie.”
“Sorry for what? That you can’t remember your word for three days?”
Silence, while I eat.
“Do you like the new way I’ve done my eyebrows, Eddie?”
I’m so disgusted by this remark that I can’t bear to look at her.
“I’m not going to waste any more of your time, Joan. This is our last lunch together.”
Silence again as I continue to eat.
Joan’s tremulous hands hold out an address book and a pen to me.
“What’s that for?”
“For your address.”
“I don’t want you to have it.”
“Please, Eddie.”
“No. It’s time for you to return to your office that’s swamped with work.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Eddie?”
“Why do you want my address? So you can come for a surreptitious fuck when you feel like it? Well, I’m not interested in that any longer.”
“Please.”
“Okay, I’ll give it to you. But don’t come unless you’re moving in.”

Just as I’m about to step into The Montmartre, I come face to face with Joan. She gasps, turns pale and raises a hand to her breast.
“You still haven’t gotten over me, huh, Joan. It’s been more than a month since we last saw each other.”
“I don’t think I ever will.”
“Shall we resume having lunch together?”
“I’d like that.”
“I’ll phone you tomorrow.”
“Go in and sit with Mik. I’ll be right back.”

Mik and Joan pay me an unexpected visit. Joan immediately proceeds to inspect the flat. Is she thinking of moving in? Meanwhile, Mik looks out the fourth floor window at the street below. Is he contemplating jumping out?
“Come to us tomorrow evening,” Joan says before they leave.
Has she finally decided to leave Mik?

Joan isn’t at their flat when I arrive the following evening. Mik and I sit and talk, a hammer lying on the table between our two armchairs. Why is it there? Is he trying to freak me? Does he intend to bop me on the head? The hammer remains on the table even after Joan arrives. She and Mik begin to speak in Danish. Is he reminding her of all the good times they’ve had together, of how reliable he is, and of how insecure a life with a dope dealing India lover would be?
I wait for Joan to make her move. Finally, tired of waiting, I make mine.
“I’m going. Are you coming, Joan?”
“Coming? Why, no!”
“Okay, then, if it’s all right with you two, the next time I come here I’ll bring a very sweet and bright young girl I’ve met recently.”
Joan sits up straight, her eyes ablaze like those of an aroused cat.

“At a party last night, Mik and I took this wonderful new drug,” Joan tells me on the phone. “It was such a moving experience. It made us feel so close and so completely open to one another. I’m certain now that we were meant for each other.”
“Good. I’m happy for you.”
Meant for one another. So close, so completely open, to each other. Just how open, I’d like to know. It’s Saturday morning and Mik’s at home while Joan’s at work. I’ll go to see him.

“Joan was telling me on the phone that you both took some drug last night that had a profound effect on you. She said that it made you feel completely open to each other. I was glad to hear that, because I think couples should be able to reveal their innermost thoughts to one another.”
“Last night, we did feel that way.”
“While Joan was being open with you, did she tell you that she’d come to me on a number of occasions after I left your flat?”
“No, she didn’t mention that?”
“I didn’t think so. Look, Mik, I haven’t come here to make trouble between you and Joan. I’d like to see you happy together. I have to say, though, that I think you’re more honest with her than she is with you. Is she protecting you from the truth, afraid that you might harm yourself if you discovered something that was not to your liking? Or is she just fond of intrigue for the sake of intrigue?”
“I really can’t say.”
“I didn’t like carrying on a clandestine affair with Joan, but I’d told you when you moved me out that I wouldn’t prevent her from coming to see me.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Eddie?”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
While Mik is in the kitchen, Joan walks in.
“Eddie! What are you doing here?”
“I came to tell Mik everything.”
“Oh, why did you do that?” she says, collapsing back onto the bed.
“For the sake of openness.”

“I called to say goodbye, Joan. I have to leave the country. I was out walking last evening when I saw three or four bruisers, excited as rhinos in heat, rush out of an apartment building. A moment later, two dealers of Afghani came out, escorted by more police.”
“Where will you go?”
“To mainland Europe or to Gordon’s studio in southern Sweden.”
“Go to Sweden, Eddie.”

“Eddie, Gordon here. Listen, man, you’ve got to leave my place. Your name is headlined in every newspaper in Copenhagen. You’re wanted to answer to some dope charges. Interpol may be called in.” Gordon sounds more worried than I am. “Leave Scandinavia. Go to Stockholm, take a train to Helsinki and fly out.”
“I don’t think the police know my name. What name are they using?”
“Eight Finger Eddie, in bold black letters.”
“That’s not much for the police to go on, but it might be good enough in Scandinavia where the first thing people do is put out their hands for you to shake. I can see me standing before an extended hand and pretending not to notice it. So, okay, thanks, Gordon, for having let me use your place. Take care, man.”
“You take care, Eddie.”
Wanted! Me! Just like a character in a movie. But this is no movie; this is my life. Anonymous only yesterday, I’m notorious today. And where had the police come by the name I’m known by? Had my Afghani connection given me up?
Can I leave Scandinavia while my hundred thousand kroner sit in a Danish bank? Should I risk trying to withdraw it? I can’t run far without money. Perhaps I should I go to the police to see what all the fuss is about? Why not, I’m clean as can be. The worst that can happen to me is I’ll be expelled from Denmark.

1965
“ Three Danish musicians have accused you of having sold hashish to them,” the Inspector tells me. (The three motherfuckers who had begged me to sell to them in Mona’s flat.) “And your name appears a number of times in this sales booklet we found in the apartment of the dealers we arrested a short time ago.”
“It could be some other Eddie.”
“Some other Eight Finger Eddie? In Denmark, if three persons accuse you of committing a crime, you’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent.”
Why didn’t I check on all this before I came here?

“So, why am I in jail?” I ask the narcotics police. “I’ve had a physical examination, and they found nothing wrong with my body. And you can see, by my attitude toward you, that my mind is undamaged. Using cannabis doesn’t seem to have harmed me.”
“But it may lead to the use of harder drugs.”
“A specious argument. Before I smoked grass I drank beer. So, why isn’t beer illegal for having lead me to grass?”
“So, why is cannabis illegal?” The Inspector is asking me!
“It may be because it grows wild and is difficult to tax. Or it may be that liquor companies and other big concerns want to keep it illegal. Or it could be that cannabis opens the minds of those who use it and they’re not so easily taken in by government propaganda. Someone with such a mind might not wish to go into the army, for instance.”
“Were you in the army?”
“No.”
“Ah!” they exclaim, thinking they’ve discovered a universal truth.

“Years ago, before I had this job,” the American Vice Consul tells me,” I smuggled some Mexican marijuana into the States.”
This is what I’ve been waiting to hear since I entered this office and found him sitting with his shoes on the table, attempting to give me the impression that he’s a cool stud. I’ve been putting him off by speaking of the tragedies of Shakespeare, the novels of Joyce, the music of Anton Webern and of Ornette Coleman, the thinking of Heidegger, of how to invest in real estate or to sell short on the stock market.
“I didn’t smoke grass before I went to Morocco, and I haven’t been to the States since then.”
“Well, Eddie, if you need me, don’t hesitate to ask for me.”
He follows me out of the office.
Walking away, I turn to look at him and see him watching me and nodding his head. Does his nod mean that he thinks it’s a shame for me, with all my knowledge, to be into dealing drugs? Or does it indicate that he thinks I’m crazy?

“Yah!” The Inspector tosses a cellophane packet onto the table. “What are these, Eddie?”
“They’re only hemp seeds.”
“Can they be smoked?”
“Yes, but you’ll only get a headache. They’re for planting, not for smoking.”
It’s surprising that the Danish narcs don’t even know the difference between grass and hash.

“We need your help, Eddie,” the Inspector says. “Just look at these photos and tell us if you’ve smoked with any of these people.”
I look at each photo long and carefully. “Oh, she’s nice.” I kiss a photo. “And this one’s also nice.” Finally, I hand the photos back to the Inspector. “You should know by now that, even if I smoked with any of them, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why won’t you help us?”
“You wouldn’t respect me if I did.”

“Your Australian friend Steve has told us you sold him hashish on at least one occasion,” the Inspector informs me.
“Steve is busted?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe Steve told you that.”
“Yes, he told us that in his flat one night you showed him how to pour hash powder into the cellophane wrapper of a cigarette pack, lay a damp towel over it, and press it with a hot iron to make a piece of hashish.”
How could Steve have told them that?
“If Steve said that, it must be true.”
The police rush out like excited bulls.

In my cell, I recall that the night I’d been at Steve’s there had been a couple visiting him: a black American we knew and a Danish girl we’d not met before. That girl must have been a cop! And the black cat must have been keeping himself out of jail by escorting her to drug scenes around town. She, not Steve, had told the narcs what had happened that night at his flat. Like an idiot, I’ve allowed the police to trick me. I should have denied being at Steve’s that night? When will I learn to be hip?

“Look out the window, Eddie,” the Inspector says. “A fine sunny day. How would you like to go for a ride around Copenhagen in a squad car? You’ll be able to buy yourself beer and cigarettes, and all you’ll have to do is point out the houses in which you smoked hashish.”
“I’ve already told you that I’m not talking about anyone else.”
“This is the kind of unfriendly attitude that prevent you from having visitors.”

“These three accuse me of selling hashish to them, but I don’t accuse them of buying hashish from me; and these other two have written in their sales records that I bought hashish from them, but I don’t accuse them of selling hashish to me,” I say in court.
“How much of this hashish did you smoke?” asks the judge.
“As much as I could,” I answer, evoking laughter from the freaks in attendance.
The verdict is three months in jail.

A prison guard enters my cell and drops a brown paper bag on the desk. I look into the bag and see an apple, some biscuits and other goodies left by a recently released prisoner. The guard places a finger before his lips.
“You were at my trial. You know I don’t talk.”
The guard smiles and leaves.
After my trial books and goodies began to arrive, sent to me by freaks gratified to learn that I hadn’t fingered anyone.

The police, unhappy that I’ve been sentenced to serve only three months, have brought me up before a higher court. Steve is also in the dock.
“Hey, Steve, how you doin’?”
“No talking,” the guards order.
There are three judges presiding. The one in the center, seated higher than the other two, reminds me of a bear. The pale expressionless one on his left looks like a church organist, while the small nervous one on his right is a fluttery bird.
As the alcoholic attorney assigned to defend us speaks, I look up at the judges and see that the main judge is asleep with his mouth open.
“Hey, Steve,” I whisper in the dock. “Dig the main judge.”
“No talking,” a guard reminds me.
The birdlike judge, looking up at us, follows our amused gazes up to the sleeping judge. Alarmed, he somehow awakens the bear who, opening his eyes, signals that everything is under control.
The high court decides against awarding longer sentences to Steve and me. . A cheer rises from the onlookers.

“Tomorrow you fly to your own country,” a police official tells me.
“No, I don’t.”
“You must.”
“No, I mustn’t. You can put me out of Denmark, but you can’t send me to the States. Just put me on a train to Germany.”
“You have money, so you must fly.”
“But not to the States.”
“Buy a ticket to the States and get off in London.”
“Why should I do that when I’m not going to the States?”
“All right. Go back to your cell.”
I envisage a struggle at the airport, the police trying to hustle me onto a plane bound for the States.

“You can fly to Zurich or to London,” I’m informed by a police officer the following day.
“I’ll go to London,” I say, intending to pick up Steve when he arrives in England without money three days after me.
“You are expelled from Denmark for a period of ten years, but we are not going to stamp that into your passport. You will be given the passport as you board the plane. Before taking you to the airport, two officers will accompany you around Copenhagen to pick up whatever belongings you may have.”

I hand my passport to the immigration officer at the airport in London. He lays it on the table before him and opens it. There’s a piece of paper folded in it! Immediately, I snatch it up and put it in my pocket. I’m given one month’s stay in England. When I’m outside I take the paper out of my pocket. It’s from the Danish police! The fuckers have tried to have the English extradite me to the States.
I hate to think of what would have happened to me if I hadn’t seen that paper. Sent to the States to face trial and to totally fuck up my plans. Clever of the Danish police to tell me they weren’t going to stamp my expulsion from Denmark into my passport so I wouldn’t be inclined to look into it.
But lucky, lucky me, I continue to live in ecstasy. This day ranks as one of the greatest of my life.

“Thanks for picking me up,” Steve tells me on the train from Dover to London.
“I knew you’d be arriving without money, and I know what a drag that is.”
“Where you going for the winter, Eddie?”
“It’s too cold to go overland to India now, so I’ll go to Marrakech again for the season.”
“Miriam and I may come down, too. Hey, you know who’s dying to get out of Denmark? Gisella. You know her?”
“I’ve seen her around but never spoken to her.”
“She’s great, man. She likes jazz and blues and is one of the girls on the scene in Copenhagen. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend and wants very much to leave town. If you write to her and invite her, she’ll come right away. I’ve got her address.”
“She’ll think I’m crazy to write to her when I barely know her.”
“She’ll love you for helping her to get out of Copenhagen.”

“You’re leaving London on Christmas day?” asks Steve.
“Yeah, the train will be almost empty. Man, I’m happy to leave London. It seems like a madhouse after the relative sanity of my jail cell. First, we stay with your gallery- owner friend and his wife and three kids, and the next morning she’s so knocked out by the stories we’ve told about our travels that she’s ready to leave her husband and kids and go to Morocco with you. Next, we stay with this Danish woman and her teenage daughter who sits calmly and watches television while her mother kneels beside her to skin-pop her. The daughter tells us she’ll meet us in Morocco. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get out of London. Why do so many people stay here in all this noise and dirt when they could be in India or Morocco?”
“They need their jobs and their security, Eddie.”
“Good. Let them work. Someone has to grow the food and bake the bread and deliver the mail to us to us.”

1966
“Thank you so very much for inviting me to Marrakech,” Gisella writes. “I’m coming as soon as I sell the things I have no use for. Write and tell me how to get there and where to meet you. Should I bring my blues and jazz records? Please, please, don’t change your mind.”

“Forget about Gisella,” writes Steve. “She’s suicidal.”
But it’s too late for that; she’s already on her way. Suicidal? I guess I’ll have to make the best of it from one day to the next.

“What a terrible time I had getting here from Copenhagen. I couldn’t sleep at all the whole way and started to hallucinate,” Gisella tells me.
“You’ll get lots of sleep now that you’re here.”
“You know, you’d make a nice boyfriend for my mother,” she says, pinching my arm.
“Hey, Gisella, I’m not into pain” I say, ribbing my arm. “So, how old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“I’m more than twice your age, but probably not more experienced than you. I’d heard that you were going to be married, then Steve told me you wanted desperately to leave Copenhagen. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Can I talk freely with you, or are you one of these guys who can’t bear to hear about a girl’s past loves?”
“Test me.”
“Well, I made a stupid mistake. After putting him off for a long time, I agreed to pose in the nude for this guy who was constantly begging me to do it. But after the photos were developed, he told me he would show them to my boyfriend if I didn’t have sex with him. I thought he was joking, so I refused him. When my boyfriend saw the photos he became so shaken up he couldn’t forgive me.”
“Your boyfriend seems very straight for a Dane.”
“There are many like him.”

“Before leaving Copenhagen, I saw a movie that really scared me. It was called ‘Repulsion’. Have you seen it, Eddie?”
“No, I don’t get to see many movies living the way I do.”
“It was about a girl alone in her sister’s apartment, and I couldn’t tell whether the girl was actually seeing or only imagining, what was going on in the apartment. I became more and more terrified as the film went on.
“But I’ve been more frightened than that. When I was about ten or eleven my mother had a boyfriend who used to do things to me in bed while she was out working. ‘Now, we have a secret from Mommy,’ he’d tell me. He never hurt me. What he really liked to do was scare me. He’d have me sit beside him in his car at night as he drove to the little side street in Copenhagen that goes right onto the docks. He’d switch off the headlights, zoom down that street and onto the dock, and somehow he always managed stop the car on the very edge of the dock.
“But even more scary than that was when he’d take me up the steps that circle the spire of that well-known church in Copenhagen. It was scary just being up there because the wind made that spire sway like mad. Then he’d pick me up and hold me out over the railing with one hand, with nothing between me and the ground so far below.”
“It makes me shiver just to hear you tell me of it, Gisella”

“You and Miriam can stay in this room which Gisella and I don’t use, Steve.”
“That’s cool, Eddie.”
“But there won’t be food, because we eat out.”
“We have sort of a standing invitation from a couple of Moroccan families, each of them happy t see us whenever we stop by,” Gisella says. “It’s like they’ve adopted us.”
“Sometimes a few young Moroccans come here to jam with us, Steve.”
“And once they made tea for us from some white flowers,” Gisella says.
“They call it stakis mil or something like that,” I say.
“How was that?” asks Steve.
“We didn’t like it. I drank liters of water the next day and still couldn’t satisfy my thirst, and Gisella had trouble trying to read..”
“Yes, all the letters seemed to have a red border around them.”
“How’s the kif, weak?” asks Steve.
“Right, not as potent as Eastern shit. The majoon biscuits are stronger, but you quickly build up a tolerance for them, eating almost twice as many as the day before.”
“And you’ve had no problems?” asks Miriam.
“Not really,” I say. “One young Moroccan shopkeeper invited us to his house to have dinner and to meet his wife. But when we got there it didn’t take us long to see that the house wasn’t his and that the woman was not his wife bu a prostitute.”
“Yes, he had provided a huge mound of majoon and many bottles of wine,” Gisella says. “He obviously intended to get us stoned and jump me, but by the time we skipped out of there he was the one who was so out of it that he couldn’t stand.”
“And there was the guy who invited us to a hotel bar in French Town and was suddenly not there when it came time for the bill to be paid. The bartender insisted that we pay, but we refused and a police detective was invited. We told him our story and gave him a description of the man who’d invited us. And the detective told us to leave because he had a good idea of who the scoundrel was that had left us stranded with the bar bill and assured us that he’d pick him up in the morning.”
“Then the detective began popping up wherever we happened to be and eventually got around to inviting me out,” Gisella says. “I went with him a few times, during daylight hours only.”
“He told Gisella that he was in love with her and wanted to marry her.”
“But when he started putting Eddie down, I stopped seeing him.”
“I was glad you did because I suspected that he was using you to get information on me.”
“You miss Copenhagen at all, Gisella?” asks Miriam.
“No. But you just reminded me: I got a letter from friends there who write that some people think Eddie has me working in a whore house here. Where do people get such strange ideas?”

“Hey, Gisella, what are you doing?”
“I’m making a packet to send to Copenhagen.”
“Baby, please don’t mail those majoon biscuits.”
“It’s all right, Eddie. I’ve got all this incense and other things packed in with them. Why are you so worried?”
“I’m not altogether unknown, you know. It’s even possible that we’re being watched. I’ve received letters from both my mother and my wife telling me to write to alternate addresses because the FBI have come to their houses. If your friends in Copenhagen want to get high, let them come here.”

“You want some, Miriam?” asks Steve, holding up his works.
“Not tonight, Steve.”
“I know Eddie doesn’t like speed. How about you, Gisella?”
“I’m always ready.”
“It looks like Gisella and Steve will be up all night making speed drawings,” I say. “Miriam and I may as well go to bed.”
Gisella looks at me in alarm.
“Hey, Gisella, I didn’t mean that Miriam and I should go to bed together. She has a bed in the other room, while mine is here.”

“Have you heard Bob Dylan, Eddie,” Gisella asks.
“One number, ‘Masters of War,’ while I was in jail. I liked it.”
“He composes such great songs, and he’s such a great guitarist.”
“You mean he improvises like a jazz guitarist?”
“No, he plays his own kind of music.”
“So, how can he be a great guitarist?”
“You don’t think Segovia is a great guitarist because he doesn’t play jazz? Why are you constantly trying to impose your opinions of what is great in music on me? Just because you like something doesn’t mean that I have to like it. Don’t play the mental tyrant with me, Eddie.”
“Thanks for making me aware of what I’m doing.”

“I’ve got a super treat for you guys,” American Bill tells us. “Sandoz acid. Have you ever had any?”
“Once,” Gisella says. “I really liked it.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot about it, but I’ve never come across any,” I say.
“Great, you’re going to love it,” Bill says. “Read this before you take it. It’ll help you a lot.”
“ ‘The Psychedelic Experience’, by Timothy Leary.”
“The main thing is to simply watch what happens in your mind and not to fight it. ‘Turn off your mind, relax and flow downstream’, is how Leary puts it. How can what’s happening in your mind possibly hurt you?”
“Thanks, Bill. I’ll read the book before I take the acid.”
“What I like to do on LSD is to lie down with my eyes shut and try to see the white light.”

“You’re not going to lie there like Bill and try to see the white light, are you?” Gisella asks, after we’ve dropped the acid.
“No, I guess not. We may as well spend the day as we usually do.”
The light in the room flickers. Gisella seems to be walking in small jerky movements, like she’s in an old sepia-toned movie shot in an insane asylum.
I hold out my arm. It looks like a stick with flesh hanging from it. My legs, too, are only sticks. Can these sticks actually support me? I rise laboriously to my feet.
“Hey, Gisella, look, I’m standing.”
“That’s good, Eddie.”
“Let’s listen to some jazz.”
As the records play, I tell Gisella stories about some of the jazz masters.
“Eddie, you speak about them as if they were ordinary people.”
“That’s all they were, baby. What do you think they were?”
“Bigger than life, like mythical beings.”
“They may seem like that to you because many of them died before you could see them in person.”
“Look at this letter from my mother. Written on company paper, like orders from above.”
“You could look at it in another way, Gisella. Here’s a woman who lived through some harrowing experiences during the war. Later, she landed a job with the company she’s with now. She worked hard, saved money and now owns one third of that company. Yet she writes to you on company paper because she still thinks herself to be the poor woman she’d once been.”
“My poor mother,” Gisella sobs, “I want to see her.”
“Look at the cat. It’s acting as if it senses that we’re on acid.”
“I’d better feed it.”
I watch Gisella slice meat, then drop almost transparent pieces of it into the cat’s mouth. How does something so insubstantial sustain life?
“What are you doing, Eddie?”
“I can’t seem to wash away my underarm smell.”
“Come here, Eddie.”
I lie on my side behind Gisella.
“Look at this room, baby. It’s like a concentration camp cell, and we’ve been happy here.”
“But, Eddie, look. It’s beautiful.”
Waves of light flow in and make it seem like we’re in a palace.
Gisella’s shoulder just before me is so thin. The poor girl is emaciated. She rises, leaves the room. Returning, she appears to be as sturdy as a naked Aztec warrior.
She pulls me to her. I kiss her lips, her body, her clitoris. She’s a juvenile delinquent, an Indian goddess, a movie star; she becomes whatever I imagine her to be.
Colored lights swirl behind my eyes, gather together, rush upward, hit the bell at the top. Clang! Orgasm!
I sit on the floor and cut an orange in half. It seems to be blue inside. I study the knife in my hand. Do I want to kill anyone? What an absurd question; of course I don’t. I pick up a Moroccan banknote. It’s only a piece of paper. Should I throw away all my money? No, they believe in this paper out there, so I may as well pretend I believe and play the game with them.
“Let’s go out, Eddie.”
“Right. I’d forgotten that there’s a world out there.”
Outside, most children have happy faces, while most adults look sad.
“Let’s have an ice cream, Eddie.”
The vendor lifts the lid of his box, and I act that I’m diving in.
“Hey, Eddie, I was looking for you in there,” Gisella says, looking up.
Ice cream stick in hand, I prance along beside Gisella. Teenage boys, having come up behind us, deliberately bump me. What a sad world it is, where the sight of joy invites violence. I’ll just have to hide my feelings.
We go into a park.
“Did you bring the kif and pipe, Eddie?”
“Yeah,”
An argument flares up in the back of the park.
“Let’s leave, baby, before they get closer.”
The musicians in the Jmal Fna, taking their midday break, call to us to return when they see us prance by. They begin to play, and I dance. A crowd gathers, cheering me on. Thinking that I’m doing harm to myself by dancing in the hot sun, I stop and begin to skip away. One of the musicians runs after me, holding out a hat. “Gisella, he wants money from me, when it was my dancing that brought the crowd around.”
We go to the kiosk of our kief connection. Smiling up at us, he nods that he has nothing, which is a surprise. But then I see two pairs of nicely polished shoes near the back of his kiosk and realize that the police must have picked up on me when I was dancing.
“The kif man’s great, Gisella. We bring the police to his shop and he still smiles at us.”
“Let’s go home, Eddie.”
“Why? We’ve already been there. I feel like seeing everyone we know while I’m on acid. Shall we go see Bill?”
Gisella hesitates, then says, “I don’t want to see him.”
“How about visiting Steve and Miriam in their new place?”
Gisella takes so long to respond to my questions that I feel there’s a gulf between us, her mind working much slower than mine.

I’m doing a Charlie Chaplin walk on the balcony of a restaurant when Steve and Miriam arrive.
“Eddie, sit down,” Gisella calls. “The waiters don’t like what you’re doing. They may ask us to leave.”
“Waiters are usually unhappy.”
“We’re on acid,” Gisella explains to Steve and Miriam.
I play invisible piano on the tabletop, scat-singing to the movement of my fingers.
“Don’t mind Eddie,” Gisella tells Steve and Miriam.
“But he’s beautiful,” says Miriam.
“The music out there is so slow. Everything in life seems so slow. Why don’t they speed things up?”
“Eddie, look at the sky,” Gisella says.
“What’s wrong with the sky?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Baby, it’s not beautiful; it’s not ugly, it’s just the sky.”
Steve hands me a burning subsi.
“Oh, smoke, I forgot all about that.” I take a big hit and blow out the smoke. “So, that’s what smoking is.”
Bill is sitting on the parapet with his back turned to me, showing he doesn’t approve of the trip I’m on.”
“Hey, Bill, I want to report that I haven’t had a single generous impulse while on acid.”
“You have such a gigantic ego, man. I’m going to have to give you a triple dose next time.”

“I want to have a baby by you,” Gisella tells me the next day.
Is she serious? Hasn’t she noticed how much our minds differ?

“Why do I always want to hurt whatever I love?” Gisella asks on the bus to Rabat, where we will apply for a free studio in Fez for artists.

“Eddie, don’t you think we’re having sex too often?”
“We’re doing it only when we feet the urge, right? If you’ll stop looking sexy, I’ll probably feel the urge less often.”

“I’m sorry I’m so late, Eddie.” Gisella looks apprehensively at me. “Are you angry with me?”
“Of course I’m not. It must have been a very long movie.”
“Why don’t you like to come to the movies with our friends? They like you so much. And they’ve been so nice to us since we’ve been in Fez, inviting us often to eat with them, introducing us to some of their talented friends, that makes me think you should spend more time with them. ”
“In a movie house? How much communicating can we do in such an ambience? No, I like to be with Hussain and the boys, but the movies they like to watch bore me.”

“Eddie.” Hussain holds me back, as his friends and Gisella continue to walk ahead. “I think of you as my brother, Eddie. So, it is very sad for me that this thing has happened between Gisella and me. Believe me, I never intended that it should.”
“I’m sure you didn’t, Hussain. It’s just nature doing as nature does. No one can prevent oneself from falling in love. Gisella and I understand that, and we try to be open to anything that could happen.”

“Gisella, I’ve just received a check from my bank which I won’t be able to cash for American dollars in Morocco. I’ll have to go to Gibralter. Do you want to stay here with Hussain and the boys while I’m gone?”
“You’d leave me here alone?” she asks, her face becoming pale
“You’d feel alone being here with Hussain? I thought that, since you and he have a thing for each other, you’d like to be with him.”
“I wouldn’t think of staying here without you.”
“Okay, we’ll go to Asila and rent a house in which to leave our things while we’re in Gibralter. Then, we’ll return to Asila and stay there until the weather becomes cool enough to go overland to India. How does that sound to you?”
“Why can’t we stay in Fez?”
“Because Asila is closer to Gibralter.”

“It’s a telegram from my mother.” Gisella holds up the message. “She wants me to meet her in Torremolinos, Spain.”
“And you’re going?”
“I think I should.”
“Then, I’ll wait for you here.”
“Yes, I’ll leave most of my things with you.”

“Excuse me.” A middle-aged man hurries up to me as I’m returning to the house in Asila after I’ve accompanied Gisella to the boat in Tangiers. “You’re staying in my house, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. A guy called Hamid rented it to me.”
“Hamid had no right to rent that house to you. It belongs to my wife and me, and we need it.”
“Okay, I’ll move out when the rent’s up.”
“No, we want the house tomorrow.”
“That’s very short notice, don’t you think?”
“It can’t be helped. Hamid will put you up in the bar he’s building.”

Stepping out of Hamid’s, I see a man in a dark suit standing nearby on the sidewalk. What’s he doing there? It’s not a bus stop, and he can’t be waiting for a girlfriend. He must be a cop. I’m being watched. Is Hamid holding me captive? Is the middle-aged man also a cop?

“Well, it’s been quite interesting listening to you,” the middle-aged man says, he and his wife having come to see me in Hamid’s.
“Yes, you’ve set my head spinning with your verbal pyrotechnics,” she says, taking her supposed husband’s arm. “It’s nice meeting someone who’s able to speak on such a variety of unusual topics.”
But not on the topic this cop couple wanted to hear.

“You asked to see me?” I say to the Asila chief of police.
“Where is your girlfriend?”
“In Spain.”
“Where in Spain?”
“Madrid.”
“In which hotel in Madrid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did she go to Madrid?”
“To meet her mother.”
“Why did not her mother come to Morocco?”
“I don’t know. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“That is none of your business.”
I think it is very much my business. I must go to Torremolinos to warn Gisella not to return to Morocco. And I must leave Asila without being seen. I’ll leave all our belongings in Hamid’s and slip into a taxi for Tangiers.

I feel safe at last when I’m on the boat moving toward Algerceras. I’ve left my typewriter and unfinished manuscript, my dictionary and thesaurus and, most important of all, my ambition to become a great writer in Asila. And I‘m feeling relieved for having done so. What was it that lay beyond my ambition to be a great novelist? To be free some day to do nothing at all. Why not begin to do nothing at all today without bothering to become a great writer? Yes, I’m traveling light, and I’m liking it.

“Eddie, what are you doing here?” Gisella gasps, coming face to face with me in the lobby of the hotel in Torremolinos where her mother is staying.
“I came to warn you not to return to Morocco. The chief of police in Asila was asking me where you were.”
“Come, let’s go to the disco and find Roger. We can probably stay with him in his abandoned house.” Gisella says, seeming not to be surprised by what I’ve told her.
“Where are our things?”
“I had to leave them in Asila to get away without being seen.”
“What! You left the jazz records and all my things there! ”
“What’s more important, Gisella, to have your things or to be free?”

“Why did you insist that I come with you?” Gisella asks on the rapid boat from Algerceras to Gibralter.
“So you could choose which records and record player you’d like to have after I’ve cashed my check.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to find any good jazz records in Gibralter?”
“We’ll see.”
“Oh, see that fat guy with the beard, sitting across from us next to that man in the blue pin striped suit? He makes it with lots of boys in Torremolinos.”
Why is she telling me this? Has she been told that I may be gay?

“Not tonight,” Gisella tells me in our hotel room in Algerceras.
“Are you angry because we have to go to Gibralter again tomorrow?
“No, it’s not your fault that there was an error in the numbers on your check.”
She doesn’t want me to touch her because she’s fond of someone else and it’s over between us.

On board the morning boat to Gibralter stands the man in the blue pinstriped suit. There are boats leaving every few minutes, so his presence seems more than coincidental. Is he another cop watching me?

“What a strange name for a bank,” Gisella says, studying my check on the counter of the bank.
Is she trying to memorize the name of my bank to relay that information to the police? I no longer trust her.

Standing before us on the boat returning to Algerceras is the man in the blue pinstriped suit. I say nothing to Gisella.

“Eddie doesn’t want me to work,” I overhear Gisella say to Roger on the beach, while I search the short wave band on our new radio-record player.
“Hey, Eddie, how you like Torremolinos?” Roger asks.
“Not much. It’s not my kind of place. Too glitzy. I prefer more earthy places like Imdia or Morocco.”

“I’ve just been released from the navy, and I’m taking fifty kilos of hash which won’t be checked to Boston,” I hear someone say behind me at a disco bar. I don’t turn to look at this loudmouth. I can see in the bar mirror before me that he looks like Mickey Rooney.
Fifty kilos to Boston my old home grounds. Is this another cop, trying to suck me into a setup?

“Roger and I are going to take five tabs of speed every morning,” Gisella tells me.
“You want to take with us?” asks Roger.
“Eddie doesn’t like speed,” she says. “He wouldn’t take Maxitone with Steve and me in Marrakech.”
“There’s not much smoke around at the moment, Eddie, so why not have some fun with speed?” Roger suggests.
“Okay, I’ll take it with you.”
“Great, here’s your five tabs.” Roger drops the tablets in my hand. “Oh, by the way, Eddie, did you get into Eastern religions while you were in India?”
“No, I saw plenty of poor illiterate people taken in by that superstitious bullshit.”
“The superstitious bullshit is for the masses, Eddie. There’s a deeper teaching meant for the those in the inner circle.”
“The inner circle! The in-crowd! I don’t want to be a member of any circle or crowd.”
“What do you want to be, Eddie?”
“I don’t want to be anything.”
“You’re satisfied with the way you are?”
“I’m not satisfied; I’m not dissatisfied. I don’t think about the way I am.”
“That’s good, Eddie. So, you realize that nothing you see is ultimately real. This table and these walls are nothing but molecules in motion. Everything is impermanent, changing, dying.”
“If these walls aren’t real, why do you walk through the door when you come into the room?”
“The walls are relatively real, Eddie.”
“That’s real enough for me.”
“When I die the whole world will die,” Gisella says.
“Yes, when you’re dead the world will be dead for you,” I say.
“No, the world will be destroyed when I die.”
“You mean that New York, London, Paris, Moscow will no longer exist after you die?”
“Yes, the whole world will die.”
“Along with any children you may have, Gisella?”
She falls silent
.
“Hey, man,” Fifty Kilos waves me over to his table in the disco bar. “Sit down and have a drink. I wanna talk to you. Whadaya wanna drink?”
“Rum and cola.”
“Good. You’re from Boston, right?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I guess I heard it blowin’ in the wind. Look, I got these fifty kilos of dope I’m taking with me to Boston. I’m wondering if you can help me. Can you give me the names of any contacts you have there?”
“I haven’t been to Boston for more than fifteen years.”
“Um. Well, maybe you can help me out with my present problem. I got no place to stash my fifty keys. Can I stash them in your room until I leave?”
He thinks I’m a complete imbecile. Good, it’s better they think that about me. It’ll make them less cautious and more careless.
“I don’t have a room.”
“Where you staying, then?”
“Here, there and everywhere.”

. .Gisella and I listen to a recording of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ at the house of the Trinidadian steel drum band. As the song comes to its close Gisella leans forward to glower at me and say along with Dylan, “And I hope you die.”
She thinks I’m a master of war! Steve was wrong about her. She’s not suicidal; she’s homicidal.
“I’m so happy tonight I could die,” she says.

During a break in the filming of a movie that he, Gisella and a number of others are working on as extras Roger drums on a box he sits on while I scatsing.
“You better watch out, Eddie, or you’re gonna land a starring role,” Roger says, nodding toward the doorway of the diner.
A thin Spanish man stands there, looking at me as though he’s mesmerized. His unblinking eyes move slowly down the length of me and slowly up again, like police eyes registering each detail of my appearance.
“Eddie, reach over and hand me that guitar leaning against the wall,” Roger says. “I’ve always wanted a guitar.”
“That’s someone’s horn, man. I wouldn’t think of touching it.”
“Eddie doesn’t steal,” Gisella says.
“So, what’s wrong with that?” I ask.
“Well, I stole.”
“But that was from a department store and not from an individual.”
“You make a distinction, Eddie?” asks Roger.
“Not really. But anyway, Gisella, you weren’t stealing, but just taking books and magazines home for the night and returning them in the morning.”

“This kid, Jack Pointer, didn’t show today,” Roger tells me when the filming is over. “If you sign his name, you can collect his money.”
Not at all a cool thing to do. Something more I can be charged with if I’m busted. But, since I’m staying with Roger and Gisella, I should pehaps live up to their world.
I sign Pointer’s name with my left hand and collect the money. As we leave, I offer it to Roger; he doesn’t take it. I offer it to Gisella; she takes it.

“How do you like what Dylan’s layin’ down, Eddie?” Roger asks, when we’re back at the abandoned house.
“It’s all right. But he’s not playing jazz.”
“But he’s singin’ the truth.”
“Can words express the truth?”
“Oh, Eddie,” Roger moans. Now he begins to wail, loud and long. Is he flipping it? Still wailing, he crawls across the floor to Gisella. Putting her arms around him, she draws his head to her breast.
“So, Eddie, what are you going to do about this?” asks Roger.
“What is there to do about it. I guess it’s time for me to leave Torremolinos.”
“Oooh!” Roger and Gisella wail in unison.
“We don’t want you to go, Eddie,” Gisella says. “We want you to stay, so we can teach you how to love.”
I don’t think I have anything to learn about love from these two.
“Okay, if you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”
“Great, Eddie.” Roger rises to his feet. “Now, let’s go to the disco, and then to the party.”
“You guys go. I just want to stay here and listen to the jazz records we bought..”
“You don’t have to stay here alone just because you’re sad.” Gisella says.
“I’m not sad. I just want to stay here..”
“Oh, come on, it’ll do you good to come dancing with us.”
“Don’t beg him,” Roger tells her.
“Okay, I’ll come to the disco, but I’m not going to any party.”

“How come you don’t dance, Eddie?” Roger asks at the disco. “There’s no right way or wrong way these days. You just move any way you feel.”
“I know, but I’m feeling very tired now.”
Roger gets up to dance with Gisella.
Four young blacks in dark suits sit down at my table.
“You’re bringing the girls to the party tonight, right?” one of them says to me.
“I’m not even going to any party.”
“We were told that you were supplying the girls.”
“That’s strange, nobody told me anything like that.”
“You’re just playing cool with us.”
They think I’m a pimp. Who the fuck are these guys? Four black cops who’ve been updated on my past life with Gwen?
“Okay, how many girls you want?” I ask, just to get rid of them.
“We don’t know. How many can you bring?”
“Any amount. Ten, twenty, a hundred.”
“Twenty’s plenty enough.”
“Good, I’ll go round them up.”
I leave and, luckily, meet someone with a car who drives me to the abandoned house.

In the morning, Roger and Gisella wake up just after me. I rise, stand in the aisle separating their bed from mine and, clapping my hands, say, “Hey, babies, looks like we’re going to have a great summer together.”
A toweled head lowers itself just outside the window before me.
“Hey, Roger, there’s someone out there tuning in on us.”
Roger swings out of bed and runs for the front door.
“Whoever it was got away,” he says, returning. “Hey Eddie, how’d you get here last night?”
“Someone gave me a ride.”
“Who?”
“Some head who knows you.”
“Man, I told you not to tell anyone I’m staying here.”
“Well, he already knew you were. Besides, you’ve brought lots of girls here, right?”
“Come in the other room, Eddie. I got something to tell you. Yeah, sit where you usually sit. There was once an Eddie, not you, Eddie, but an Eddie Carpenter. And one day Eddie Carpenter heard a voice and that voice said, ‘Don’t walk through that door, Eddie.’ “
Why is he telling me this?
Roger’s eyeballs roll about eerily in their sockets.
What’s this now, some good old black magic?
“You know, Eddie, you have to pay for all the misdeeds you’ve committed in your life. There’s a man in this town who can look at you with love in his eyes while he beats you to within an inch of your life. Now, you might not meet that man today. And you might not meet him tomorrow. But someday, Eddie, you’re going to come face to face with him.”
I envisage a distant palm treed beach where no such man will find me.
“You don’t fool me with those innocent eyes, Eddie. Inside, you’re quaking with fear.”
I don’t say anything.
“Come on, Eddie, let’s go to the Cafe Centrale and get some breakfast.”
I make sure I have my passport with me when we go out. There’s no reason for me to remain in Torremolinos.

“You’re so lucky, Roger. She’s so beautiful.” Not believing what I say, I lean over Roger at the bar of the Cafe Centrale.
“Don’t forget, Eddie, it’s only a girl.”
Some of the people sitting before me are staring at me. My eyes must look strange after all the speed I’ve had.
“Here’s Gisella. Go sit at a table and talk with her. I have to go out for a little while.”
Gisella and I go to an unoccupied table. Three young men with close-cropped hair, sitting at another table, look at us with what seems like utter contempt.
“Gisella, look at those three guys in sports-clothes digging us from that table over there. Don’t they scare you?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because they look like American cops to me.”
“You’re seeing cops everywhere, Eddie.”
“But that’s where they are, baby.”
“The steel drum band guys told me they’ve invited you to their house for dinner tonight.”
“Yes, it was so nice to hear some friendly voices for a change.”
The three young men who look like cops are leaving. Does one of them nod to Gisella as they walk out?
“I think I’ll start out for the steel drum band house, Gisella.”
“But the dinner isn’t until tonight, Eddie.”
“I know, but I feel like taking a good long walk.”
“Before you go, Eddie, let’s go to the photo booth outside and take some photos of us together.”
Even this she wants: the latest photos of Eight Finger Eddie to present to the police. But I say nothing to her while we sit before the camera. The photos done, Gisella keeps them all.
“Okay, Gisella, I’m off. But, wow, I’m feeling very shaky.”
“You’ll feel worse tomorrow.”
I turn and begin to walk away. After I’ve taken a few steps, her last words suddenly register in my mind. “You’ll feel worse tomorrow.” What does she mean by that? That I’ll be beaten to within an inch of my life? That I’ll find myself in jail?
It was great of the steel drum band to invite me to dinner. I need to be with friendly people. ‘Don’t walk through that door, Eddie,’ I hear Roger’s voice in my head. Oh no, I can’t distrust the steel drummers. They’ve been kind to me every time I’ve been with them. “You made it, man,” they’ll cheer me when I walk into their house. “You’ll feel worse tomorrow.” Am I walking into a trap? Is the man who’s going to beat me to within an inch of my life with love in his eyes waiting for me in that house? No, this is pure paranoia. How can I think such things about people who’ve never been hostile to me? But perhaps, as Roger and Gisella seem to be, they’re in trouble with the law and are working with the police. The crewcut Americans nodding toward Gisella, the four blacks in suits asking for girls, Mickey Rooney and his fifty kilos, the man in the blue pin-striped suit, Gisella wanting the latest photo of me, can all that be paranoia? Speed intensifies paranoia. I may be paranoid, but why not be on my guard? Why should I make it easy for them to get me?
The steel drum band house comes into view. It looks innocent enough from the outside on this sunny afternoon. But who knows what may be waiting for me inside. Fuck it, I’ll just go in. No, I’d better go partway down this last road leading down to the beach and smoke a cigarette while I decide what to do.
Before I know it, I’ve smoked the whole pack of cigarettes and still haven’t decided whether or not I should enter that house. It’s sunset and soon it’ll be dark Fuck it, I’ll play it safe and leave Torremolinos. I’ll go down to the beach to see if there’s a bar where I can get a drink and ask how to get to Malaga.
How gray the sea is after sunset. They say that drowning is not a painful way to die. If I allow myself to drown, it’ll be much less painful than if I should fall into the hands of my pursuers. What am I thinking of? I’ve never once thought of killing myself, and I’m going to stifle that thought instantly. No, as long as I am breathing, I’ll go on from one breath to the next.

In Malaga, waiting for a second bus to take me to the railway station, I have to fight to keep myself from curling up on the pavement and falling asleep. I’m coming down hard from the speed. If only I had a tab to keep me awake until I board the train to Madrid.

In Madrid, I have my goatee shaved off and my hair cut shorter, and I move to a different pension every night until I can think of a safe way to leave Spain.
Every day could be my last day. What do I do on my last day? Go to a movie, read a novel? No, my own life is more vital to me than the lives of characters in books and movies. There’s nothing to do but to look at life: at people, dogs, birds, trees, flowers. I look at women and I see them simply as creatures, like myself, destined to die.
What a desperate situation Roger and Gisella have put me in. Wouldn’t they be surprised if I should turn up in Torremolinos to confront them with a gun in my hand. What am I thinking? I’ve never wished to kill anyone, and I don’t wish it now. Better I concentrate on getting out of Spain.

Tours; the word catches my eye as I walk past a travel agency. That’s it! To take a tour may be the safest way to slip out of Spain. Why didn’t I think of that before? The shortest tour listed is to Lourdes, but it’s not for three weeks. I don’t care to wait that long. The earliest one is to Portugal. It’s in the opposite direction to where I want to go, but at least it’s out of Spain. I’ll go there.

My hope plummets when I see waiting for me, not a bus with many tourists aboard, but a limousine with a single lady tourist within it. There’s the woman guide and the driver, but they won’t be able to take me across the border. So, I have three days of freedom before reaching that border, and I may as well make the best of them.

A bus with many tourists on board is waiting for us at the border. A smiling young hostess asks the lady tourist and me for our passports and goes off with them to the kiosk of the Spanish border guards. I stare at that building, expecting to see the tri-cornered hats to emerge from it and come for me. The hostess comes out alone, returning with our passports! I could kiss her.
Yipee, I’m out of Spain! One more day of freedom for me!

“Is there boat service from Portugal to northern, or to southern, Europe?” I ask the woman waiting on me in a travel agency in Lisbon.
“Where do you wish to go, to the north or to the south?” she asks impatiently.
“That all depends on which boats are available and when.”
“One moment,” she says and moves to a desk behind her.
I flick through a travel brochure lying on the counter.
“ . . . mustache . . .”
Hearing that word makes me look up. The woman’s on the phone, looking at me as she speaks. She’s giving a description of me to the police!
I hurry out, deciding to fly out of Lisbon as soon as possible.
My first day of freedom in Portugal, and I almost fuck up.

I write to the London bank to forward all my money to a bank in Zurich, then take a train to Trieste to wait for the money to arrive in Switzerland.

“Tell him he’s in big trouble. Police. Narcotics.” I hear a man’s voice outside the door of my hotel room in Trieste.
Are his words intended for my ears? Are they on to me here? Is there no escape from them? Or am I going mad and hearing voices that exist only in my head? I am down as low as I’ve ever been. If only I could undo all the stupid things I’ve done that have brought me to my sorry state.

In Zurich, I collect in cash all the money sent to me from London, thereby eliminating any trace of it. Then I take a train to The Hague to stay with Sypko, a painter I’d met in Marrakech.

“How old do you think this man is, Eddie?” Sypko asks, nodding toward a man in a smart suit who is joking with friends on the sidewalk.
“Sixty, sixty-five?”
“He’s over ninety. And he still dances at parties.”
“Sypko man, I’m going to be like him when I’m ninety.”