Chapter six

            I always felt there should be a half-hour television comedy set in a hair salon. At Lilly’s request, I visited her stylist. Her name was Kate and I believe she’s an artist. I suspect I’d gone a year without a haircut. Kate scheduled an extra half an hour with me, spent a lot of time playing with my hair, then cut it into a style I wore for a long time. All the hair was one length, onto the collar, and pushed back off the forehead. I received many compliments on my new haircut. I was no longer hairy hippie hood, a derisive name we called a boy at my school who’d quit football and let his hair grow.

            I paid Kate $10, an outrageous sum at the time, plus a $2 tip, and because we had talked about getting high, I gave her a joint. Within 24 hours she called and asked if I could sell her some weed. I said yes and was invited for drinks. If I’d been smart, I would’ve purchased a haircut based solely on the amount of money I was going to pull out of that high-end salon, Bonita’s, in downtown Colorado Springs.

            I arrived at a bar called Bust, as in Pike’s Peak or Bust. I thought it an odd name for a bar catering to businessmen, but you have to understand the 1970s. Dustin Hoffman, the anti-hero seen in “Little Big Man,” was in, and rough-and-tumble movie cowboy John Wayne was out. Even men in business suits were letting their sideburns grow, or letting the hair sneak over their collars a little. The concept of long hair for men was really a brand-new thing. Sure, it started in the 1960s, but the height of the 1960s was 1973.

            I sat next to Kate, and I liked the bar. It featured curved walls, a new concept that was said to enhance space. The tables and chairs were a polished dark wood. The bar was steel and tortoiseshell. It was clean, shiny and upscale. Even in a casual, long-haired world, upscale is nice sometimes. Many businessmen and women were in the bar, dressed in suits, relaxing and talking earnestly.

            I ordered a glass of whisky, with ice, and was introduced to everyone. I liked Kate quite a lot, but she wasn’t an attractive woman. She had a large nose, a small upper body and rather solid hips and thighs. She did all she could, I think, to accentuate the positive. She had a cute, short haircut, a nice paisley top that showed a little cleavage, clean jeans and a pretty, colorful beaded necklace. She struck me as the working-class type, which I liked. She went to work early, always tried to do a good job, and never turned down work if it was possible to fit it into her schedule.

            After work, she liked to drink and smoke with fellow employees, customers and friends. Work hard, play hard. It was a colorful crew.

            I had a crush on a Romanian woman, 20 years old, with short black hair and an energetic way about her. Marie always wore a smile, but she was engaged to her childhood sweetheart and I was told I didn’t have a chance.

            Joseph was an ex-marine body-builder heterosexual stylist. He dressed well, with bellbottom slacks, not too tight – which was the mistake many people made – dress shirt, a good haircut shorter than most young people wore and a handsome Swiss Army watch. He was a hard worker, like Kate, and I enjoyed his company.

            Tonya, the oldest at 35, was a tall, strong woman who drank too much and it showed. At the time I met her, she’d been with a construction worker who regularly cheated on her and roughed her up, but was transitioning to a young lawyer who’d taken a liking to her. I’m sure he received the best, roughest sex of his life. Tonya’s life would improve in the coming years as she finally dumped the construction worker, but at the time I met her she was full of agony about which man to choose.

            Finally, there was the misnamed Angel. She was a lesbian and had a large clientele of like-minded women. I liked her a lot and also felt she was the kind of person who could end up causing me problems. She liked cross-top speeders, kind of an inexpensive amphetamine popular at the time, although I wouldn’t take them or sell them. Angel had a solid body, but her girlfriend Suzanne was small, slender and lovely to look at with long honey hair, large eyes and lips painted red. Suzanne flirted with me once, but that’s a story I’ll get to later. The thing I immediately thought about Angel was that she’d be arrested for drinking and driving, the police would find a hundred cross-tops sitting on the seat next to her she forgot about, and she’d give up anybody she could to stay out of trouble. I imagined her flirting as she was being interrogated. I saw Angel some mornings after she’d been up all night and she could be bad news, the B word. I also saw her as the kind of person who could turn an average party into madness, inserting flirting, fighting and jealously into a room full of otherwise perfectly reasonable people. As I said, it was a sitcom waiting to happen.

            I sat with Kate, Marie, Joseph, Tonya, Angel and Suzanne, sharing many drinks and laughs, getting in on all the local gossip, not only what went on amongst the stylists but also among the customers. I’m sure my relationship with Lilly had been discussed before I arrived. After a few drinks, we went out the back entrance to a small, out-of-the-way parking lot and smoked a joint in Tonya’s boyfriend’s faded-white Ford van. Since no one was around, we opened the wide, sliding side door for fresh air. The weather was starting to change and full-on summer was in the air, putting everyone in a good mood. I later learned this was another hangout for the crew and was sometimes invited to join in. I enjoyed being an insider. Marie didn’t join us in the van.

            After a while, I went with Kate and sold her an ounce for $20, although I knew it was really for Angel. Bonita is Spanish for pretty, and the salon had a back room, a lounge for the stylists. I would become a regular there, too, but it wasn’t the wild scene the van could be. When I returned home that night, I told Andy he needed to find a salon and get a haircut, make some connections, but he laughed.

            “Yeah, I want to find someone to cut my hair who smokes a lot of pot.” I saw the irony in what he said, even laughed with him about it, but it was another destination at the end of a road on a map. In my business, one is always looking for people with easy access to cash.

            About a week later, on a Saturday night, I was invited to my first lesbian party. Well, I wasn’t really invited. Angel called and asked me to bring any party favors I could scrounge up. I took 50 yellow doubledomes and an ounce of pot, sold them for $150 plus $20. I slipped Angel a couple of black beauties as a bonus; this was an all-black capsule, slightly different from the yellow and black LA turnarounds. It was pharmaceutical speed and she loved them.

            I was offered a drink and took it, and talked with a woman about art museums in Europe. It seems she was knowledgeable and I enjoyed listening to her. I know very little about art, but she suggested I start with Edgar Dugas, an impressionist who paints ballet dancers, horse races and scenes at the beach.

            I was getting ready to leave; I didn’t want to wear out my welcome. It also occurred to me I knew how to guide a group of people on an acid trip, but I didn’t know if Angel would welcome this or not. Although I was pretty comfortable talking to a variety of people in different settings, I didn’t know about male and female homosexuals. Were men welcome to hang out with lesbians? I knew some women slept with both men and women, but if the party was meant to be exclusive maybe I was holding up the party.

            My grandfather, the car salesman, told me as a child that most people liked to talk to people, but opening conversations were hard to manage. The trick, he said, was just to start in with an observation or comment that would be inoffensive and try to make a sentence of two. Once the ice was broken, most people are friendly enough, he said.

            I laughed as I thought of this. A woman in a suggestive gown looked at me and I thought about a lot of things to say but nothing that might hold her interest. You are most beautiful in that gown crossed my mind, but I was at a loss as to which direction to go.

            I could tell a few of the women were starting to get off on the pleasant yellow doubledomes. In the ’70s, psychedelics could be strong, very intense. One might see a falling star and then hear the sound of it crashing to earth. You knew it was a trick of the mind, but it was interesting. Some people enjoyed it, but some were justifiably terrified.           There was purple haze and orange sunshine first. I saw purple haze in a little, purple pill, and yellow sunshine was an orange pill or a little medicine dropped onto a piece of paper, called blotter acid. One cut out a square and took it. Sometimes there was elaborate art on a sheet of 100 doses of orange sunshine. Window pane was solely blotter. The best-looking pill I saw was the yellow doubledome. It was perfectly yellow, oval like an M&M.

            Acid trips varied greatly. I think heavy doses caused a lot of wild, deep thinking and wild scenes filling one’s field of vision. Sometimes it was pleasant, like musical notes dancing in the air, or one could hear the roar of the orange, burning end of a cigarette as it moved from the mouth to the ashtray. Many people saw or heard these “trails.”

            Yellow doubledomes were mild and in my opinion this was much better. For some reason, a person would have a little energy and a peaceful feeling, and rather than see ravens rising out of the blacktop or cars turn into monsters, one would admire the rays of light emanating from a candle or the sparkle of light off a glass or the surface of a drink.

            I looked up and saw Suzanne in the doorway to a bedroom. She smiled at me, so I walked over to talk to her. She had smiled and so all I had to say was hello. As we talked, she stood very close to me, which was of course exciting. Back to the subject of gays. As I said, I knew little about gays of either sex, and I didn’t know if it was possible Suzanne could like men as well as women. I was afraid to ask, but then Suzanne pulled me into the room, shut the door and kissed me hard. I was getting ready to move her toward the bed when the door opened. Angel walked in, backlit by the light from the hallway, smiled and said, “Not under my nose, you cheating bitch.”

            I stepped back from Suzanne. “I’ll see you later.” I don’t really know who I said it to, I just didn’t want to cause a problem.

            “Don’t make the man leave,” Suzanne said in a teasing way, putting her arms around Angel and smiling at me. I left, charged with sexual energy. It’s the ones who get away that make you crazy.

Chapter seven

            Andy and I bought the yellow doubledomes for 95 cents apiece, $95 for 100, and never sold one for less than $3. At times we sold them for $5, whole lots of 20 or 50. I once sold one for $10. I never figured out the end cost for individual doses. People would buy five or 10 and resell some of them. I wondered if anyone ever sold one for $20 a hit. I never knew where the psychedelics came from, but one day Bob Tejon told us he couldn’t get them anymore. I found the world a strange place.

            I used to sell to three guys I got along well with. They would buy large quantities and deal a little, but not enough to make a living. They all had jobs and went to college. Randy was my favorite. We used to trip together. He was roommates with Kostrba and Don. Don had played high school football and told good stories. He would talk about the people in the game, and then the way the game played out. I liked hanging out with him. Some people were bored with his football stories, but I could never get enough. He was often a person who watched a college football game with me at the Saturday party.

Kostrba was an intellectual, studying psychology as if he could figure out the human condition. There are a lot of people around like that, then and now. But he was fun, too. I used to tease him that someone had left a vowel out of his name.

            Randy was my friend during an era when we did blotter acid. He said I was the best guide he’d ever tripped with. We’d start out making a pact we wouldn’t drive our cars. A car is dangerous when one is tripping. Cars are huge, of course, and there are lights, shiny surfaces and instructions on signs everywhere. Lights might grow in size, and shiny things could turn into mirrors or rocket ships or giant swords. Also, speed and pacing, important in traffic, were difficult to manage on acid.

            Randy and I would take a hit of blotter, then go for a walk. On the ground, funny things happened but nothing dangerous. We could walk for a long way and it was a good way to burn off energy. Then we would smoke a joint and listened to Sgt. Peppers, the excellent Beatles album. It was good musically, and full of hidden messages and sounds we couldn’t figure out. It was hard to figure out the many instruments the Beatles used.

            Randy was a slender man, about my height, with curly brown hair and a beard that never really filled out. He smiled often, and was never negative. We would eat of snack of fruit, raw vegetables and crackers. I could never eat meat when I tripped. It was too heavy and mysterious. And of course one would never eat something like spaghetti. People who tripped and then had spaghetti always saw it turn into worms. Randy and I wouldn’t take that chance.

            An acid trip can be very intense for a while, but then we would mellow out. At that point, Randy and I would go to the Glass Cage and have a beer. We liked to chase women together. Andy would start out tripping with us sometimes, but by the time we went for a beer he stayed home and listened to music or worked on electronics. Andy was never completely comfortable sitting in a tavern and having a beer. But Randy and I would always engage other people in conversation, and on acid those conversations could take some strange and funny turns. We would never give anyone a hard time or start a fight.

            Once an older man listened to the opening of “Octopus’s Garden.” It was a Beatles song and went, “I’d like to be, under the sea, in an Octopus’s Garden in the shade.” The man said, “How the hell did someone think to write that song?”

            “I know,” Randy said to me. “If you’ve taken LSD, you know how a song like Octopus’s Garden gets written.”         

            “I think so too,” I said.

            “Are you experienced? Well, I am,” Randy said, repeating a line from a Jimi Hendrix song.

             Randy liked to smoke a few cigarettes in the evening. I stepped outside the Glass Cage with him. “Cigarettes really help you think,” he said. He told me about a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, “Deadeye Dick.”  In the book the main character is a pharmacist who rails against amphetamines and methaqualone, Quaaludes. “Vonnegut says we live in the age of pharmaceutical buffoonery.” We both laughed.

            Of all the drugs around then, trucker’s speed, Quaaludes, other sedatives and pain pills, the one drug I’d never tried was tobacco.

            “People who take drugs are willing to pay a price, but only after the experience,” Randy said. “You take speed, drink too much, smoke too many cigarettes, stay out late, and then the next day you pay the price for all the excitement.”

            Randy took a hit off his cigarette.

            “You’re trying too hard,” I said. “People take drugs because they’re fun.”

            He laughed, and so did I. We thought older people, stuck with the limited options of booze and cigarettes, were missing out.

            As he smoked his cigarette, I thought about the two of us. Randy’s mother was proud of him. He was working and taking classes and she thought he was doing great, while my parents thought I was blowing an opportunity to get an education or take over the family business.

            After a time, the acid was harder to get but other drugs came along. The next thing to come my way was black opium. It was oily and pleasant to smoke. I much preferred it to marijuana. The opium relaxed me, and sparked my imagination. I had many interesting thoughts while smoking it.

My curiosity about the world increased. Marianna Faithfull sang, “Don’t say it in Russian, don’t say it in German, say it in broken English.” I had marijuana from South America, I’d heard of art from Europe, the best bands were from England, my landlord was from China, a friend from Africa, and now opium, maybe from Vietnam. I felt I was part of something, a large map, but I wasn’t allowed to see the whole picture, the entire map of people, crops, laboratories and deals. It was like I was born into the middle of something I could never expect to put together, to figure out.

            I talked to Bob Tejon, of course. He was seven years older than me, and always philosophical about such things. “The world has many forces,” he said. “Money, power, women, all kinds of things drive it. But pleasure drives it, too. If something gives you pleasure, isn’t that OK?”

            As he said this, I was listening to the new album by War and smoking opium. The percussive elements were amazing and I wondered how many drummers they had in that band. Sitting in a ground-floor room of my fine old house on Colorado Boulevard on a nice chair, we were looking out the window at large, tall towers of red rock from the Garden of the Gods. I wondered if it was OK to pursue pleasure; it was interesting to think about.

            It was a good summer, 1974. Andy and I were busy. We made a few drives to Dodge City. We visited the numerous destinations on our small map of the world. I spent time at Lilly’s house in the most excellent, upscale housing division Blue Mountain Ridge, which looks over the city. I met some of her friends, and made money selling to rich kids. I took a weight-lifting class at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I had this feeling if I didn’t look good, I could never keep a woman like Lilly.

            In the fall, the football parties started again. The house would be full on Saturdays. Andy and I tried to be careful. The supply of opium had dried up, but other kinds of marijuana were showing up. At the start, I’d buy a pound for $200, some kind of good weed that sold for $20 an ounce. I’d make more than a $100 a pound with the distribution. Then Colombian marijuana showed up on the scene, and it sold for $35 an ounce, but it was a value because it was super-weed. A person could take only a couple of hits before becoming incapacitated. Some people resisted paying the higher price, but we had customers willing to pay it and the profits were even better.

            I was lifting weights and then drinking coffee on the campus of UCCS, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and met a 30-year-old studying economics. He ran a construction crew for his father and I liked him a lot. Hal looked like an intellectual, even at his young age, with wire rim glasses and mussed-up hair. He was careful when it came to drugs; he didn’t want to get into any trouble.

            I introduced him to Thai sticks, which I was told were from Thailand. It was strong marijuana, even stronger than Colombian, that came on sticks; you had to untie it before you smoked it. I could only get a limited amount of it, and Hal bought all of it at a top price. Personally, I had kept some opium back for myself, and I shared this at times with Hal, and he shared his Thai stick with me.

            He owned a house, had a smoke room – really a back porch with a ceiling fan – and I began to regret my lack of education. Hal made money for his father, and was getting an education. He was studying economics, a smart choice. He had a nice girlfriend from Spain, Isabella, and reserved getting high for Friday and Saturday nights.

            I can remember sitting in the break room at Bonita’s waiting for Angie. I had some speeders I knew she’d like. They were in a capsule with a green bottom. The other half of the capsule was clear, so one could see the red and white granules inside. The three colors, thus a Christmas tree. That’s what Bob Tejon called them.

            The break room had a table and four chairs, a couple of sinks, a washing machine and an old gas stove, a two burner. It was small but clean. Marie walked in. I said hi and she gave me a big smile. My, but she was pretty with dark hair, black eyes and a hot body.

Angie came in as Marie left. “I have something you are going to like,” I said. I held up a Christmas tree. “I could give you one. It’s speed.”

She laughed, took the pill, popped it into her mouth and took a drink of water out of the faucet. “Who are we kidding?” she said. “You might as well sell me 10.”

The next time I saw her, she bought 30, and another 30 after that. Randy also had success with them, eventually taking 100. Then, Bob Tejon said he couldn’t get any more Christmas trees.

 Andy and I had been moving cars around town, storing our marijuana stash, but in the fall we found an abandon service station off a little used road, Hill Street, and began to rent it. We purchased an old safe, and put $5,000 and four pounds of pot into it. Andy used the office to do work on electronics equipment and pinball machines. He was quite clever. He could rewire old pinball machines.

We parked in the service garage, or we could park on a rock driveway behind the garage. With a hill and rock formation behind us, we felt we were secure from a police raid; we could keep a good watch out on the run-down neighborhood. We kept our second office a secret from everyone except Bob Tejon.

            Winter came, and it was bitter cold. One night Andy, Lilly and I had dinner. I remember eating Chinese food and listening to Steely Dan’s melodic song, “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number.” Andy was complaining about his inability to find a girlfriend. Lilly and I went to bed early, and had great sex, but in the middle of the night Lilly woke me up.

            “I’m going to go into the next room and comfort Andy,” she said. “That would be OK, wouldn’t it?” I suppose, throughout history, people in confined places, out of boredom, have shared girlfriends and boyfriends. The idea, in kind of a skewed way, is arousing. I was unsure how I should answer but said OK.

            Lilly slipped out of my warm bed, crossed the hallway and entered Andy’s room. Later, I could hear his bed squeaking. Lilly didn’t come back to my bed that evening, and I didn’t sleep well. Andy may have been my sidekick in those days, but I can assure you he had his share of women. They liked him. In the morning, over coffee, the three of us sat cordially but there was a tension in the air. Lilly went home, and Andy went off to work at the service station. I didn’t know my relationship with Lilly was over.

            Until this time, I’d enjoyed only the upside of the criminal life, the fast life. We made money without being arrested or ripped off. We moved easily from woman to woman. There was sex without fear of pregnancy – the pill being a great thing – or AIDS, which no one had heard of or could even conceive of.

            Maybe I didn’t know about AIDS, but I knew about another virus, the flu – fever, muscle aches, lethargy – and I knew I had it. I packed some clothes, went to the pharmacy and purchased a bottle of aspirin, and to the liquor store and purchased a pint of whisky. I checked into the La Fountaine Hotel, got a bucket of ice, and washed down two aspirin with a drink of whisky. By evening, I was running a fever. I laid on the bed and sweat. Then I’d get a chill. A fever again, then a chill. I don’t think I slept at all. Then I began to cough, and I sat on the cold tile floor of the bathroom all day, coughing and spitting up green phlegm. I felt I was paying for every joint I’d ever smoked.

            Then I felt a fatigue and soreness like I’d never experienced. When I could, I’d take the aspirin, but sometimes I couldn’t even get up off the bed I hurt so. The next day, I woke up, took a drink of whisky, and stood outside. It was snowing lightly, but was cold outside. I went in and slept all day. I woke up and watched the evening news. They were thinking of raising the price of the 10-cent postage stamp. Then I got back in bed and slept all night. It scared me a little that I could sleep so much.

            In the morning, when I woke up, I felt better, and took a shower. I watched daytime television and napped. In the evening, there was a movie on and I watched it. I went and got ice, had a whisky, and slept again through the night. When I woke up, I felt good and was hungry. When you are sick, and then get well, it seems to me for some reason it feels extra nice just not being sick. You feel exuberant. Maybe it’s because your blood stream is loaded with antibodies.

            I know it had been scary being sick in bed, all alone. At times I felt sorry for myself that Lilly or my mother wasn’t there to care for me. But when I recovered, I packed my bag and caught a cab to the house. Andy wasn’t home, but there was a note from him saying he was sorry. There was also a note from Lilly saying she was sorry.

            I called my father at work. I was pleased that he seemed happy to hear from me. He said my younger brother was working Saturdays at the service bay. My brother always liked hanging out at work with my father; actually, I had too.

            My father asked if everything was OK, and I lied and said yes. We talked about the car dealership. My father liked every detail of his work. Making sure the service area was going well, taking care of problems with employees, looking at the financial statements, seeing the new cars and trying to sell them. Still, I knew it wasn’t an easy time for him. There was a gasoline crisis and small, foreign cars were selling well. America at that time didn’t make good, reliable small cars. We talked for a long time about the new Japanese cars, and Volkswagens. He said servicing cars had been the main profit center the past two years.

            “It was nice talking to you,” I said at last. “I need to get going. Tell mom hello, and that I’m doing OK.”

            He seemed to sense that I didn’t need a lecture about going to school or taking a job with him and learning the business. “Son,” he said, “it’s nice talking to you. Call again soon.” I said that I would, but that wasn’t the truth, either.

Chapter eight

            It was a winter of reflection for me. I thought about moving to San Diego to enjoy some California sunshine. I thought about moving to Austin, Texas, to see if I could get back together with Amy Schneider, my old girlfriend. I was reading detective novelist Dashiell Hammett; I especially liked “The Maltese Falcon.”

            I suppose if I were writing this for Hollywood, they’d want me to keep Lilly Ferrazi in the picture for a while. The main character in a movie should at least be able to keep his girlfriend, and Lilly had star quality.

            Lilly had this strong body, like a ballet dancer, but breasts too large for that. She knew how to wear make-up and clothes. She was living in that fine house with the proceeds of a divorce. I was a hippie, I suppose, with a weight-lifter’s body. In a way, it seemed to me, her life was as dead-end as mine. I knew there wasn’t any future in selling pot. She knew she couldn’t maintain her lifestyle forever on a divorce settlement.

            I liked how I looked with her on my arm. I know other people looked at us and thought, “How’s he doing it? How does he pull a woman like her.” It seemed it was going to take a long time to get over her; I resigned myself to the fact. It didn’t seem as though it had been that hard for me to get over Amy Schneider.

            I’d go for breakfast in the mornings to the Log Lodge Cafe, where I’d sit at the long table and read the newspaper and talk politics with the other locals. The Vietnam War had ended, but remained a topic of discussion. Nixon had that trouble with Watergate, and then resigned the presidency. Jimmy Hoffa was a favorite topic of conversation in those days. It was rumored he was buried in the end zone at Giants stadium. One always got a laugh saying that.

            Jimmy Hoffa was an interesting topic, though. People were strongly opinionated about the Vietnam War of Richard Nixon, but they could talk a lot about Hoffa without getting upset. Hoffa was early on the scene of the labor movement, at a time when it was dangerous to work many jobs. The unions brought safety and higher wages. Business owners hired tough guys to break strikes, so the unions also hired tough guys for their side. Hoffa’s tough guys came from the mafia. At one time, Hoffa put together a pension fund valued at $1 billion dollars. It was well established gangsters were borrowing the money to build casinos. So, Jimmy Hoffa was both a good guy and an opportunist. Significantly, Andy and I would also become a footnote in mafia history, although we didn’t know it then.         The group I sat with included Hippie Nick, Ayodele, Jessie Barlow, Miner Jack – an old guy – and some others. I’d take a walk and when I got home, Andy would be gone, working on stereos at the garage.

            During this time, Mr. Wang smoked pot for the first time. He liked it and every month when I paid my rent, I’d give him a little Colombian marijuana. He’d talk about his life in a farming village in China, his move to Hong Kong, and his move to the United States. He was sad his wife wouldn’t try pot, wouldn’t go to an X-rated movie with him, wouldn’t go to the parties they were invited to. She kept a nice home and that seemed to be her only focus in life. He said she made little effort to speak English.

            Mr. Wang wanted more, yet he wasn’t educated like his brother, the doctor, who seemed to be living an exciting life learning the ins and outs of modern medicine. Mr. Wang, meantime, unclogged toilets and did carpentry work on his brother’s rental apartments, and managed the maintenance of his brother’s medical complex. I thought about my own brother. Maybe one day I’d be the janitor at Datsun Ford while Michael ran the place.

            The one constant was that everyone wanted Colombian marijuana. The business was almost beginning to feel like a grind. I read a story about a man who sold 100 cross-tops, the amphetamine, to an undercover police officer and was sentenced to two years in prison. Andy and I were making money, but I began to wonder how much lawyers would cost if we got arrested. I didn’t think of the fear and terror of getting busted, or the hard reality of doing time, just the expense and bureaucracy of getting caught. I knew, too, that that wasn’t a healthy way to look at it.

            One night I got a call to meet Hal, which I did. He lived in a mission-style home, the first I’d really noticed. He had wood furniture and modern paintings on the walls. We walked through the house, sat in his smoke room looking out over his back yard, which was surrounded by shrubbery to provide privacy. I sold him 10 Thai sticks for $500. A $150 profit for Andy and I.

            My father’s car dealership was small, so I didn’t think our family had money like Hal’s, but still we talked about taking over the family business yet maintaining one’s sense of self. Hal was doing it, partying a little, studying economics, yet working for his father and doing well for himself, for the both of them.

            Still, I wasn’t ready to go back to Pueblo and do that. I wanted to make my own money. And anyway, my younger brother Michael had more of the personality needed to run the family business. He was established, never got in trouble. I seemed to need constant stimulation.

            Another night I had to make a trip to see Hippie Nick, also a man of about 30 I liked. Many of the people I hung out with were older than me. Nick was a mechanic on the Cog Railway, which goes up the base of Pike’s Peak. He lives in a modest home in the low-income part of Colorado Springs, the far east side of town.

Once a person enters the door to his house, he finds himself under a parachute. A reel-to-reel tape recorder plays music recorded off a local FM station. In those days, an FM station would play an album side uninterrupted. There was the implicit knowledge that people were creating their own music libraries for free, some on cassette, some on reel to reel.

            With a reel to reel, one could put on music and listen for hours. Andy and I preferred cassettes, which we could listen to in the car. At Nick’s modest home, there are cushions on the floor, and people sat in a circle and passed a pipe. Candles burn in the corners of the room. The parachute on the ceiling created a cozy atmosphere.

            Hal wore short hair and John Lennon glasses. Nick had blond hair down to the middle of his back. He was slender and strong, and welcomed people to share his pipe. He always expressed surprise at how good the Colombian marijuana was.

            “The parachute came from the military,” he said. “I was trained as a paratrooper, but they sent me to Germany, not Vietnam. I started smoking hash over there. I still dream about young women who can speak German. It was quite a party.”

            In the Log Lodge Cafe political discussions, Hippie Nick often ruminated about how some soldiers had the most difficult service imaginable, while for others it was the easiest time of their young lives.

            It was about this time Andy and I were given the opportunity to buy Bob Tejon’s connection. I remember it was spring 1975, and Bob drove his motorcycle up the sidewalk, parked on the grass and banged on the door. I came out and Bob handed me a bootleg cassette of a Bob Dylan album.

We went inside, smoked a bowl of opium, and talked about recycling. I said I figured recycling was the next big thing, and there ought to be a way to make some money out of it. Bob just laughed.

            “I like the way you think,” Bob said, “always wanting to be ahead of the game, but recycling will never catch on. All that sorting of newspapers and cans and bottles, well, it’s a waste of time. Someday they’ll come up with these bugs, and they’ll eat through the garbage at a landfill and spit out little plastic McDonald’s toys. All the people who spent time sorting the trash to recycle will feel like idiots.”

            I liked the way opium relaxed me, and though I once had a good stash, I was about to run out. That’s the way it is with drugs; eventually, you run out. We got the idea for the bugs that spit out plastic-dinosaur toys in Bitey-Man from Bob Tejon; we tried hard to make biological warfare fun. I’m getting ahead of myself.

            “Talking about business ideas is a good idea,” Bob said. “At some point, a man has to transition out of the marijuana business. You make your money, then you transition into legitimate business. That’s how all the bootleggers did it in the 1920s. That includes old Joseph Kennedy, you know?”

            I nodded but I didn’t know. Bob said, “How much of that opium do you have left?

            “Two more balls,” I said. The opium was sold in tinfoil, a little ball for $30. Each dime-sized ball was good for about 15 hits. Maybe 10 hits, the way I smoked it.

            Bob requested coffee and I got it for him, and poured a cup for myself. “We need to have a serious discussion,” Bob said. “I’m thinking of getting out of dealing myself. I’m going back to school, going to enter an electricians internship. Regular drug testing, and I’ll have to be straight anyway to do the math. They tell me it’s a rigorous program.”

            “Your father’s an electrician, right?”

            “Yeah, he’s getting me in the union. It’s a good opportunity. I’ve got to take it.”

            I nodded and took a drink of coffee.

            “I figure you’ve got a few years of the fast life left in you before you start to think of settling down. I could sell you my connection for $10,000. It’s a good deal. You’ll get better prices, and if I’ve ever known a guy who could move the product, it’s you. If you don’t want to do it, no hard feelings. If you do, it becomes a little more serious. This guy I know, I like him, but he’s not a good guy like me. He’s tough. He’d mess you up if you tried to rip him off. Of course, I know you wouldn’t do anything like that.”

            “Of course not,” I said. Andy and I had about $20,000 in the safe. Plus a kilo of Colombian marijuana. There might be other places I could buy, but I doubted I’d ever find a source as good and reliable as Bob Tejon. Many times, when other people were out of weed, Andy and I had a good supply. We had very few down times.

            Bob finished his coffee. “You think about it, and we’ll talk,” he said.

            Bob reached in his pocket and pulled out some blue pills and red capsules. “Downers, barbiturates,” he said. “I can’t take them. I can’t get anything done when I take them.”

I took the pills. Andy didn’t care to try them, so Randy, Don and I sat around one evening, pleasantly drunk. They were magic that way. They made a person feel good. We listened to some music, talked enthusiastically, and then fell asleep. We didn’t wake up for 12 hours

The next night, we took the rest of them and the same thing happened. We all

woke up about noon. “This is crazy,” Don said.

            Years later, at the Yukon Alaska Tavern, I talked to a man who told me he used to take the “red devils” with his girlfriend. “They were secobarbital,” he said. “We’d take them, get warm and friendly, then make love, trying to finish before we fell asleep.” I laughed.

He continued. “We’d wake up naked in bed, in all kinds of positions on the bed. During that period I lost stuff, and we had broken things. All unexplained. We’d sleep as if dead. A person could have thrown a party in our house, with loud music, and we’d have never known.”

I nodded. Andy and I never dealt with reds and blues after that one time, but I know they were popular in some circles.

Chapter nine

            I remember it was a Monday morning when Andy and I met Blond Bob McNally. It was as if we were going off to work. The day before, I’d given Bob Tejon a three-inch-tall stack of $20s, a stack valued at $10,000. We met in a one-block-square park in downtown Colorado Springs, surrounded by office towers and busy streets. Parker Park was a well-used little island of green in the city. It was named for the founder of Colorado Springs, General William Parker. Across the street was Bust, and a few doors down, Bonita’s hair salon.

            Blond Bob had short, blond hair. He appeared to be about 30, and he wore slacks and a dress shirt. He was pale with blue-grey eyes. He was sitting on a bench reading the newspaper when we arrived, Andy, Bob Tejon and I. He stood up when we arrived.

            Bob Tejon introduced us. We shook hands and remarked on the sunny weather. Blond Bob handed me the newspaper. It was two years old, and the picture showed a man, a defendant in a drug bust, about to enter a courthouse. He was wearing a suit, and was obviously with his lawyers, as well as about 20 law enforcement people, some in suits and some in uniform. The defendant was on crutches, and on his left knee was a bandage – some kind of wrap – covered by a brace. The story told about how the defendant had been shot in the knee the previous week entering the courthouse. I couldn’t recall having seen this story on the news at that time, but looking at it now gave me a chill. Bob McNally saw this.

            “There’s a code, you know,” Bob McNally said. “If you’re caught, you don’t cooperate. You do your time.”

            “Sure,” I understand,” I said. “I handed the newspaper to Andy.”

            “You say you understand,” Bob McNally said, “but before we do business, I want you to take some time, think about it. Never forget what I’m about to tell you. The code is a real thing. You get in trouble, keep your mouth shut, and after you get out, you get paid for being loyal. But if you try to save yourself, make a deal, get scared, there will be a price to pay. I’m ruthless, and I have a long memory.”

            I nodded. Andy was quiet; for some reason, I remembered he had a derringer in his boot. Bob Tejon, too, was quiet. I wondered if perhaps he wished he’d not dragged me into this. After all, he was getting out. He must have known getting out was the right thing to do. Sell your stock for a profit and be happy; don’t worry because you didn’t hit the high price, the peak.

            There may have been traffic noise but all I remember was the fine-looking business district, the office building of the Colorado Springs Telegraph, the sunny day, the pine trees. It seemed the world was frozen and quiet. I could still say thank you, but no, and walk off, but I knew I wouldn’t.

            Bob McNally smiled. “Now, John, I hear good things about you. I hear you’re careful, you have a clean record, and you can talk to people, make friends.”

            I didn’t say anything. I could tell he wanted to be in charge. Bob McNally put his arm around me, a friendly, jocular kind of move.

            “You move the product, my young friend. In the end, street-level people are important. I understand this better than most, and I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to give you good deals, let you make money. If you have problems, I want you to tell me, to let me help you out.”

            “Thank you,” I said.

“Bob, I think we’re doing OK, I’ll talk to you later,” Bob McNally said to

Bob Tejon, who left. A few minutes later, I heard his motorcycle start up.

Bob McNally was walking us to a restaurant, the Silver Mine. It was a small, narrow restaurant. I noticed plastic fern plants and dusty overhead lights. The counter was dull; this was probably the place for mid-level managers who were fine with the starchy special of the day for $1.99. We walked to the back, through a hallway, where there were boxes, open slots. It was like a mail drop. On the top left was a box marked “M.”

            “Here’s how you contact me,” he said. “I don’t want any midnight telephone calls saying you want this or that. You leave me a note, and I contact you. I’ll either call you from a pay telephone, or I’ll find you in Manitou Springs. Don’t leave cash in the box, and don’t say anything revealing in the note. No jokes or plays on words. Just say, JD or AF would like to say hello, and I’ll get ahold of you. If you use the word ‘Manitou,’ I’ll also know who it is.

            “If you see me sitting in the restaurant, don’t stop to talk. If I want, I’ll stop you. Don’t bring your friends to the Silver Mine. You do not, under any circumstances, bring your friends to meet me.”

            We stood in the dark, paneled hallway, in front of the boxes, and nodded to Bob McNally. Farther down the hallway there were offices.

            “One other thing,” Bob said. “Andy, I know you have a derringer in your boot. That’s OK, but don’t ever pull it out when I’m around.”

            “OK,” Andy said.

            Bob smiled. “You guys look very serious, but let me tell you we’re going to have fun, parties, women. If you leave me a message, you’re in. If I never see you again, then that’s OK too.”

            “We’re in, Bob,” I said, and I shook his hand.

            “Glad to hear it. Now, here’s a little sweetener,” he said, and he handed me a small brown bag. “Don’t open it until you’re a long way from here. See you.”

            Andy and I turned, left the dark hallway with the maroon carpet and then went through the restaurant, and we were back out on the street in the bright sunlight. It felt like spring had arrived. I saw a very attractive woman walk into the restaurant and took it as a good omen. We walked several blocks to my car – we’d purposely parked quite a ways away – and drove home in silence. 

            We entered the house, locked the front door behind us, and sat at the table in the living room. We were silent, but it seemed we were thinking the same thing. Andy took the gun out of his boot and set it on the table. I opened the bag, took out a little silver box with a spoon latched to the top. I’d never had cocaine before, but I recognized the coke spoon. I opened the box, and inside was a pink powder.

            “You first,” Andy said.

            I took the spoon, dipped it into the cocaine, and laid it on a mirror. I took a razor blade and chopped it up. The flakes grew and grew into a large line as I chopped it fine. It was like a magic trick. I snorted the first line. I felt as if I could feel the burn go up my nostril and land somewhere on my brain. It was as if someone had suddenly turned on the lights, given me the fountain of youth, the holy grail, the meaning of life, all in one spoonful of medicine.

            I pushed the mirror over, and Andy took a sniff. “My god,” he said, “the first thing we want is more of this.”

            I suspect there was about three grams in the little box, although I was no judge at the time. I know the floodgates of conversation opened at this time.

            “Do you think he means it, that shooting people in the knee caps,” Andy said. “I mean, I vote we’re in, but this is serious.”

            “I think it is serious, and I think we should consider not doing it. But, I’m going to tell you, my plan is to make some money, then get out. Just like Bob Tejon. Only I don’t want to walk out with $10,000, but maybe $100,000.”

            Andy smiled. “I was thinking of starting a business installing car stereos. Strictly high-end stuff. Pay in advance. I’d just need a small working space in Denver.”

            “We’re careful, like we always have been,” I said, “but we go to $100,000 each, then just walk away.”

            “I’d get up in the morning, take a sniff, then listen to music and put in car stereos,” Andy said. “A nice life. Live an entire life without having to work for someone else.”

            “Did you see that woman walking into the restaurant?” I said. “Do you think that’s Bob’s girlfriend?”

            “Do you think he has an office back there?” Andy said.

            We each took another sniff. “How do you think he knew about my gun?”

            “Bob Tejon told him all about us, I think. That’s OK. We’ll always be on the up and up with this guy. We don’t want any trouble.”

            Andy suddenly had a troubled look. “How long’s it been since you’ve seen Lilly Ferrazi?”

            “Four months, maybe five.”

            “Do you miss her?”

            “Sure,” I said. “We’re just young dudes. She was a woman. It wasn’t just her looks, though. She’s been married, has a house, has been to Europe. She had me buy her whisky. I’ve been to high school, and have read some books. She represents the big world out there to me. It was like I was so close, and then it disappeared into vapor. Like smoke.”

            “I was beside myself when you went away like that, when you were sick,” Andy said.

            “I told you, Andy, it wasn’t personal. I had the flu. You and I are OK.”

            “I appreciate your saying it, but I’m sorry. I’d never do anything like that to you again. No matter how hot the woman. I just wouldn’t do it. It’s like sleeping with a guy’s wife. It’s not OK.”

            “It’s not like you slept with my wife,” I said. We sat in silence, looking at the little box of cocaine. I think we were both wondering when we’d do another line.

            “It does scare me how someone could just disappear from your life,” I said. “I mean, I thought she liked me, that it was going well. Then, just like that, it was over. We talked, you know, but she went away. I wonder if Bob Tejon is going to just go away.”

            Andy nodded. “You’re really going to miss Bob.”

Chapter 10

            Our first note to Blond Bob McNally was on a card with an “April Fool’s Day” greeting. I signed “Manitou” on the bottom. In the past, Andy and I had paid $1,000 for a pound of Colombian marijuana. Now, we could buy it for $700 a pound. We would sell 16 ounces for $35 each, a profit of $820 for each pound we moved.

            But, we didn’t really get one pound. We bought in even-numbered quantities – two, four, six, eight, 10 pounds – and there are 2.2 pounds in a kilo, so the “shake,” the extra marijuana, was also profit. If you bought two pounds, you received a kilo. Name me one other business with a profit margin like we had?

            On the day I put the April Fool’s Day note in Bob’s box, I saw him that afternoon in a sports car, a shiny red MG, in Manitou. He pulled over. I told him we had the money for 10 pounds. He told me to meet him in two hours in the parking lot of the Log Lodge Cafe. I gave Blond Bob $7,000 in cash, and Bob gave me five kilos of marijuana in a grocery bag. A newspaper was folded over the top. “There’s a sweetener, too,” Bob said. It was an eight-ball, 3.5 grams of cocaine, though I had never heard the term eight-ball before.

            I made friends with some men who work in the oil fields of Kansas and also western Colorado. They make good money, $20 an hour for some of them. They would work 12-hour days in remote locations. It was hard physical work, and when they returned to Colorado Springs they had money and wanted to party.

            The success of selling to people at Bonita’s made me realize I should also work the restaurant industry. I went to the upscale Broadmoor, a bar named the Sand Wedge, and  drank a beer. I told the bartender to put out his hand, I was giving him a tip. I dropped a thin joint into his hand.

He smiled, “Yeah, I know what to do with this.”

The next night I showed up, and by the end of the evening the bartender wanted an ounce. I tried to get Andy to branch out, find a few restaurants and hair salons, but he was never good at it. He got a haircut once, but couldn’t work the topic of getting high into the conversation. It was OK; I never made an issue of the fact I was the one making all the connections.

            The Broadmoor, Top of the Cosmos, the Juniper and Yukon, all upscale restaurants and bars, except the Yukon Alaska, became places where I did business. My routine became more complicated. At 7 p.m., I’d drink a beer at the Glass Cage, then I’d switch to soda water and stop in at the above bars. I had to stop drinking after that initial beer or two because I’d become too drunk to make the rounds otherwise. No one seemed to notice when I wasn’t drinking, but I have to say the line between when I was drinking and when I wasn’t was fuzzy.

            One night, at the end of the evening, I was at the Broadmoor, the Sand Wedge, when the bartender said I should stay until closing. The bar closed, and the bartender fixed free drinks for the chef, himself, a pretty waitress with red hair named Nicole and myself. I rolled a joint and we talked. We had another drink.

            I pulled out a small bag with cocaine, chopped it into four lines on a plate, and everyone had a sniff. As quick as a snap of the fingers, we’d all had two more drinks and the bar staff was jabbering away. I went home in a cab with the waitress, Nicole. I was drinking fine whisky on the house that night.

            Andy and I made another trip to Dodge City. We promised Doug Shell and James Barlow we’d stay a night and party with them. We made the drive, checked into a hotel, exchanged five pounds for $5,500. We listened to music for a few hours at Doug Shell’s – I remember Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” was new – then, they told us we had to see this place, a tavern called the Wagon Wheel.

            It was about 10 in the evening and we got in Doug Shell’s Pontiac Bonneville, a huge car, and drove toward Hays, Kansas. We turned off the paved road and went down a dirt road several miles. We pulled into a driveway marked by a half-buried wagon wheel on each side of the road. In about a half a mile we came to a two-story sandstone building, probably once a farm house. It was beautiful in a rundown, historic way. A band played out in the yard on a stage; they sounded good. They played covers like Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You,” and Leon Russell’s “Carney.”

            The place was packed with hippies and cowboys, everyone smoking joints and drinking beer. The place was operated like a tavern, with the beer being sold, but I couldn’t imagine the good people of Kansas were going to let this place stay open. However long it lasted, it was good. Maybe it had a history not unlike our party on Colorado Boulevard.

            Some people were out on the lawn dancing. Doug and James seemed to know a lot of people as they drifted through the house. Of course they did; they were selling ounces. I met a young woman, short with thick black hair, bellbottom jeans and a blue Western shirt that fastened with snaps, not buttons. Her name was Mary and I still can’t see a snap shirt without getting a little aroused. We smoked a joint, danced a slow dance, and spent several hours talking on a couch on the front porch of the sandstone building. We made out – the snaps came undone easily – and finally fell asleep about 4 a.m. It was a perfect warm night, and when we awoke the sun threw red over the prairie grass.

            I went with Mary to a trailer park in Garden City, and we laid down on her bed, closed the shades, and took a three-hour nap. When I woke up, she was wearing a robe and her hair was wet. “If you want to take a shower, I have a robe you can wear,” she said.

            I took a shower, washed my hair and put on the robe. I met her in the bedroom, and we took our time exploring each other’s bodies. When we finished making love, I laid back, sexually exhausted but not tired. I could see the sunlight coming in through the blinds. I suddenly felt a little blue.

            The marijuana business couldn’t last. I’d run through an impressive lineup of women, from Amy Schneider to Melody, Lilly, Nicole and now Mary. This could never last. My own youth, the thick, brown hair, the taut skin, the flat stomach, it could never last. It would fade, stretch and protrude. Then where would I be? It was daylight outside, other people were working, doing productive things, and I was leading this fast, easy life. Why couldn’t I just enjoy it?

            In case Mary was feeling blue, I held her close. We got up and had lunch. I left her some marijuana. She drove me to Dodge City, to my hotel, where Andy was waiting, lounging by the pool; he knew I’d show up eventually.

            Mary gave me a kiss. We made plans to meet again, but she was upbeat. If Mary was sad, it didn’t show.

            All the way across western Kansas and eastern Colorado, I had time to think about all these things. Andy was quiet, too. As we pulled into Colorado Springs, on our way to the house, Andy said, “I suppose it’s time we leave another note for Blond Bob.”

            I nodded that it was. Andy said, “You’ve been quiet the entire six-hour drive. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

            I nodded again. “I suppose the easy life is leaving me somewhat unsatisfied, unfulfilled. How did we turn out like this? Drug dealers, I mean?”

            “We were raised by outlaws,” Andy said.

            I smiled at this absurd comment. The 1970s was the birth of pop psychology, and I think Andy was trying to think of an explanation and said the first thing that came to his mind. He wasn’t serious and smiled about a second after seeing me smile. Then, we both laughed. We laughed the final mile as we drove to our house on Colorado Boulevard.