The Ninth Chord-- coming of age in 1968

        I came home from Vietnam in the spring of 1970, and spent that summer writing a novel about coming of age in 1968, a year of drastic change and emotional turmoil in America.  This short story is all that is left of that novel, once the chaff was culled out of it.  It is autobiographical to some extent, but keep in mind that I was young and stupid, and the first draft was written almost 50 years ago. 

                                            

                                                 The Ninth Chord

                                                                    by Dick Morgan

Late Friday afternoon, I watched President Lyndon B. Johnson on the TV monitor in the Portland State University student cafeteria as he declared the following Sunday to be a national day of mourning.  Martin Luther King Jr. was shot yesterday.  I had seen King on the news leading crowds of angry black people in marches protesting the way things were, but those marches were mostly in southern states.   I had little knowledge and no connection with that area, and so was not completely certain as to who was angry with whom, or why.  Mostly, I was aware that a white man had been arrested for the assassination of a black man, and being a white male, I was embarrassed by both my race and gender.  That was not an emotion that I could indulge for very long.  After all, it was Friday.

          Friday afternoon was a time to forget the national turmoil, the war in Vietnam, job and class schedules, and the fact that I had just been assigned three thick books to read by Monday.  Doing straightforward, honest homework sucked, so I had bought Cliff’s Notes for two of the books, and the third was for Literary Criticism.  I probably wouldn’t read it anyway. The class gave me headaches, and I hadn’t been to it in two weeks.  Why did upper level English classes have to become increasingly esoteric and dull?  Why was I even majoring in English?

          Well, technically, I hadn’t declared an actual major, even in my fourth year.  I wasn’t on any particular career path; I was actually going to college to defer that choice for as long as I could.  That, and the 2-S draft deferment.  If I weren’t going to college, my draft card would revert from the student deferral to a ready-to-go 1-A, and after the Tet Offensive, a 1-A lasted about six weeks. So I just made sure I had the minimum twelve hours of credit to maintain my 2-S, and took whatever courses looked interesting or easy.  But a graduation advisory meeting is required in the fourth year, so my faculty advisor had informed me that based on my transcript, I was an English major.  “If you’re going to be a teacher, you’ll need more education classes,” he told me.  I didn’t say anything, because I hadn’t really considered that. Too much protracted concentration involved.  All my English-major classmates wanted to become college professors, but I figured that was because being in school was all they knew.  It was kind of like chronically ill people aspiring to become doctors or nurses.  Hell, I just wanted to hang out in dark smoky bars that served Irish beer, and write sad, melancholy poems full of sarcasm and angst. 

The thought of becoming a teacher was depressing.  Another year of Education courses which were even more mind-numbing than Lit-Crit, followed by an internship under the thumb of a fat, sloppy dowager, only to be declared The Enemy by scores of lazy students not unlike myself.   That was not a future I could embrace.  Anyway, looking that far into the future was not my forte.  To me, the future was later this evening. 

          I was an English major only because I liked to read literature more than conduct scientific research.  Also, a knowledge of poetry was useful in holding conversations with coeds.  And the girls in English classes were prettier than the ones in science.  The ones in Sociology were gorgeous, but stupid.  The ones in writing classes were the best company, although they sometimes sported odd-looking hair, khaki-and-tank-top wardrobes, and hairy legs.  But they were more spontaneous and uninhibited.  So I became a writer.  I found that serious fiction took concentration and perseverance, so I became a poet.  I found that if one wrote short enough poems, one could do it drunk.  In fact, most of my collegiate energy had been dedicated to discovering the state of mind most conducive to Understanding the Big Picture, about which I would write epiphanies in my journal.  Marijuana aided the epiphany but seriously messed with the grammar and punctuation.  My notes began to take on Kerouac-like ramblings that were best reviewed while tipsy.  I came to feel that I did not have a drinking problem.  I had a sobriety problem which I could mitigate through the use of various psychotropic substances.

          After a morning walk in the forested paths of the West Hills, during which contraband laws might sometimes be broken, I would ensconce myself in the Portland State Student Union with coffee and a cinnamon roll. I would become enraptured with some aspect of my life and write all morning and into the afternoon, only to discover I had not been to any classes at all that day.  But look, ten pages of poetry! 

          This Friday was no exception. By the time I wrapped up my writer’s reverie, the afternoon was coasting into a balmy April evening, humid and thick with blossom fragrance.  I could feel downtown Portland tuning up for a weekend-evening celebration despite the Martin Luther King thing.  The world would go on, especially for the just-old-enough-to-drink college crowd, of which I considered myself a part, if only peripherally.  I was still living in my parent’s basement, and borrowing the old family whale, a pink DeSoto with humongous fins on the back. 

          I called up my girlfriend from the Dairy Queen where I worked, but

she was busy, she said.  Lately, she was always busy.  The last time I saw her we had worked together, me making milk shakes and banana splits, and her flipping burgers.  She had shaken her head at my question then too.  But she was prone to equivocating; she was a poly-sci major. I was an English major, so they say, and used to extrapolating meaning from obscure language.  But when she said, “No, I don’t want to go out with you.  You’re not going anywhere in life.  You’re like an ingrown toe-nail.”  I had no idea what that meant.  I had supposed it meant my future was not focused on impressing her.  But it wasn’t impressing me either. 

          Later that month, I would turn twenty-two.  At the end of the term, my college deferment would run out, and I would become a 1-A. There were a whole lot of us in 1968, the first wave of the Baby Boomers all losing their college deferments and viewing the war escalation in Viet-Nam with increasing personal concern.  Everyone knew someone who knew someone who didn’t return.

How convenient the new Tet Offensive was; all of us Boomers would have jobs now.  Just imagine my excitement as the news heads went all lowered brows, showing black-and-white newsreels of explosions, followed by various statistics.  What I heard them saying was that inside of three months, I’d be carrying an automatic weapon in mud up to my knees.  But there was a calm resignation of sorts, given the nothing-I-could-do thing.

          My four years of college hadn’t amounted to very much in the large scale of things.  Apart from the war avoidance- which wasn’t working out particularly well—it was supposed to have prepared me for an independent and productive adult life.  But all I was qualified to do was interpret poetry by William Blake and John Donne, make chocolate milkshakes, smile and actually say hundreds of times, Do you want fries with that?  That wasn’t a serious future no matter how far into it I looked.  My life made me nauseous, so I stopped thinking about it.

          In desperation, I called up my friend Ron, another English major with even less dedication than I.  He already had plans for the evening, he said. But if I drove, he would take me with him.  I could just see him smiling out of the side of his mouth when he promised it would be interesting.   

          With Ron, that could mean anything.  He was a peculiar guy, extraordinarily tall and slender with a self-conscious stoop, a clump of black curly hair growing out of a birthmark in the middle of his balding crown, and a rambling monologue that touched on everything from the evils of society to the shallowness of the fairer sex, who consistently ignored him in favor of better groomed jocks.  I had a full head of blond hair and was tall and lean from practicing martial arts, but Ron tolerated me anyway because I wrote melancholy poetry, and had access to a car with gas in it.  

          So, open for anything at all other than eulogies for dead statesmen, I drove to his parents’ house and picked him up.  He directed me to drive down past Portland State, which was tucked into the furthest southwest nook of the city, at the foot of the West Hills.  He guided me past the campus onto

Montgomery Drive, a narrow, one-lane street lined with evergreens that wound up around the rim of Goose Hollow.  About a quarter-mile up, he motioned for me to pull off the road and park under the trees.  I parked carefully, since the shoulder dropped off steeply into Goose Hollow.  I could see across the canyon, the roofs of the old, run-down apartments, frat houses, and narrow Victorian homes with gingerbread siding and skinny porch-posts.  We were only eight blocks from the center of the university, and this whole neighborhood was notorious for loud parties, artistic eccentricity, and crotchety old people who painted their curbs with Don’t Park Here signs. 

          Ron pointed to a huge, Old-Portland style four-plex on the up-hill side of the street.  The building was scrunched into the steep hillside, but still needed several square pillars in front to hold it level on the steep slope.  “We’re going up there,” he said, pointing to the highest apartment which towered a hundred feet above us.

          “Who lives there?” I asked.

          “These are the guys who own the bakery where I work,” he grinned.  They’re all crazy.”

          Crazy was a word that Ron used frequently.  His high-school friends were all crazy.  His professors were crazy.  Girls in general were all crazy.  I needed more information.  “Crazy how?” I asked.

          “Well, first of all, they’re gay.  Second, on weekends, they party very hard.  They may offer you some pills.  You should find out what they are before you take them.  And third, whatever you do, don’t pass out.  You might wake up in some guy’s bed.” 

          “Sounds charming.  I think I’ll just go for a walk.”

          “Come on, you pansy ass.  It’ll be far out.  You’ll see.”

          Ron led the way up the long, steep front steps to the top apartment.  Before we even arrived at the front door, I could smell sandalwood incense mixed with marijuana smoke, and hear Driftin’ and Driftin’ by Country Joe wailing through the door. 

          Ron knocked once.  Not the kind of short series of raps one associates with a door knock, but a single loud thump with his fist.  A short, stocky man with ruffled black hair and a full beard answered.  I could not see his facial features, as there was no porch light, and the room behind him was almost dark. 

          “Ahh, Ron!” the man said, bowed low.  “You’ve brought me a present,” he said, as he looked me up and down. 

          “This is Richard,” Ron said.

          “My friends call me Dick,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

          “I’m Robert, and I call everybody dick.  Come in.”  He swept his arm down and up in a gesture of royal entry fanfare.  “Welcome to China Court.”

          I entered behind Robert and Ron, and the décor began to solidify as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.  The front of the living room ended in a bay window style French door which opened onto a widow’s walk. Over the balustrade I could see a panoramic view of Portland’s downtown rooftops through the tops of evergreens.  The street lights and neon signs seemed brighter because of the dimness of the room.  The only other light was from a large blue paper Japanese lantern and four small black lights in each of the ceiling corners.  The black lights only lit up a few disparate surfaces: day-glo wall posters, anything white, people’s faces.  As my eyes continued to adjust to glowing faces, ghostly white shirts, and psychedelic wall art, I began to feel uneasy, distrusting my position here.  I didn’t know anyone except Ron, and I wasn’t too sure I could trust that he would take my safety and comfort into any kind of consideration.  After all, as far as I knew, neither of us was gay; why was he here? 

          There were half a dozen men in the room besides Robert, who didn’t look a bit gay.  But what did I know about what gay was supposed to look like?  I’d never before even talked to a gay man, as far as I knew.  And a guy was supposed to know.  But these guys were dressed in regular clothes, dockers or jeans, button-down collars, manly colored ties—not a ruffled shirt among them.  There were loud guffaws and sports talk, even a back-slap or two.  I even heard a bet being made on a local team.  It sounded like a pre-game locker room.  I didn’t keep up on the latest team statistics; I wasn’t even clear on which sports were in season.  I wasn’t sure I was manly enough to dissuade doubt that I myself was not gay.  And then the resident queen came in from the kitchen.

          He wore his quintessential hot pink shirt like a badge, topped with an actual paisley ascot; he pranced with just enough swivel in his hips to erase any doubt about his sexual preference.  He even flopped his wrist around as he spoke. 

          “Oh, looook who’s heeeere,” he said with a sing-song extension of his vowels and a hand gesture that might have been useful for clearing away cobwebs.  “It’s a-Rrron!” he grinned and looked at me.  And whooo’s this?”

          “I’m Richard,” I said, reluctantly offering my hand.  I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to shake a gay man’s hands-- you never knew where they had been.  Or if you did, how you did it.  But he grasped my hand—actually, just the fingers of my hand—lightly, with a disgusting hint of caress with his thumb, and then let go.

          “I’m Richard too,” he said.  “But my friends call me Dick.  You can call me anything you like.  Welcome to China Court.”

          My friends call me Dick too,” I said.  “What does China Court mean?”

          “It’s my partner’s idea.  Raah-bert likes Oriental décooor, and he likes to be the sss-enter of attention.  He holds court, so to speak.  He’s a bit of an aaasshole, but I love him,” Richard sighed, turned on his heels, and said loudly, “Look everybody!  Another Dick!  Make him welcome!”  Half a dozen men nodded and waved a hand before turning away, still nameless.  There were no women in the room at all.

          Dick guided Ron and I to a low table underneath the Japanese lantern, where we sat on pillows.  He offered us drinks.  I had a white wine, which turned out to be a sour Sauterne.  By the time I had it emptied, Ron was on his third beer. 

          Robert leaned back on a huge pillow wedged between the table and a mahogany buffet cabinet, clearly establishing that this was the head of the table, even though it was round.  I noticed that his polo shirt was unbuttoned down past his pectorals, at least two buttons past where I would have considered modest. 

          “Robert, you’re slouching,” Dick said from across the table.

          “It’s Friday.  I’m relaxing.  Don’t be a nag, fag.” Robert said.

          “Robert is an aaaasshole,” Dick said to Ron and me.  “But he has talented lips.”  Dick took a pill of some sort, and drained his glass.  “Aaaahh,” he said, gargling the last of his drink and rolling his head in a circle, flaunting his neck and throat in a particularly feminine manner.  “And what do you do, Dick?”  Dick said.

“College student,” I answered.

“What’s your major?”

“English, I’m told.”

“Why?”

“I’m a writer.”

“What kind of writer?”

“Poetry.”

Dick laughed.  “Robert! Dick’s a poet!” 

“Another Poe, or Frost, or Roethke,” Robert laughed.  “They all starved, you know.”

“It’s my job to learn everything the hard way,” I smiled weakly and looked around for Ron; I didn’t find him.  “Where’s Ron?”

Robert chuckled.  “Oh, he gets himself some liquid courage and then goes across the hall to Wanda’s place.  She’s a hooker.  He’ll be back in half an hour with a grin on his face.  Relax, Dick.  You’re among friends here,” he said, and put his arm around me in a manly hug.  His grip was forceful; his arm muscles felt like wire cables.

“You’re strong,” I said, but didn’t move away.  I thought it might be impolite.

“I work in a steel mill,” Robert said.  “In effect, I pump iron all day.”  His grip became even tighter.  “I eat poets for breakfast.”

“I practice martial arts,” I said, which was true, more or less. I had been in Kenpo class for almost three months.  “I’d fight back,” I spoke calmly, but noticed I’d used my lower than usual voice-- the macho voice I used when I went hunting with my older brothers.  So I added a spontaneous comment which I thought might be less confrontational.  I said, “Although, being eaten sounds interesting.”  After I said it, I felt redness come to my face which I was sure was visible even in the dim light. 

Robert laughed loudly, gave me another quick hug, and then let go of me.  He was still laughing as he chugged his beer, and almost choked on it. 

Dick leaned across the table with his hand outstretched.  “Dick, you need to relax.  Here, take one of these.” There was a green and white capsule in his palm.

“What is it?”

“A benny,” Dick said.  “It’ll pick you right up, but in a good way.  You’ll see.  Trust me.”  He placed the pill in my hand.

I had never had Benzedrine before, but I didn’t want to be impolite.  So I swallowed it with a second shot of Sauterne.

“Dick, put on Sergeant Pepper!” Robert said.  Then, he leaned forward toward me, he whispered, “Pretty soon, you’ll feel like dancing.”

“I’m a lousy dancer,” I said, enjoying Robert’s company despite the fact that he was gay.  “You got any bongo drums?” I asked.  “I can do that.”

“You’re fun,” Robert said, followed by, “I’d like to fuck your butt.”

I didn’t like Robert nearly as much anymore.

A thin, lithe young man, slightly older than I but much younger than Robert, stepped in between us.   He put a hand briefly, lightly on Robert’s shoulder, more of an attention-getter than a statement of friendship.  Then he withdrew his hand and swept back his dark shoulder length hair and smiled.

“Maybe you should ease up a bit, Robert.  He’s new here.” 

“It’s my house.  My rules,” Robert said.  He emptied his beer and rose, and keeping his head at that same tilt, walked toward the kitchen.

The young man slowly lowered himself onto the pillow beside me without using his hands to brace himself.  “I’m Lee,” he said, offering a hand.  I shook it; it was firm—a masculine grasp, and not at all aggressive.

During the course of the conversation, I learned that Lee was a dancer.  Not just any dancer, but a ballet dancer.  He had been with the San Francisco Ballet Company until about six months before.  Then, he had been slipped some LSD, and during the hallucinatory frenzy had experienced severe cramping.  As fine-tuned as his muscles had been, he had torn ligaments all over his body.  He had been a month learning to walk again.

Lee was just visiting friends in Portland before he went back to training in San Francisco.  He had met Dick and Robert during the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love celebration the year before.  He had never consumed any kind of drugs before meeting them, and didn’t really know whether to thank them, or kill them. 

“My dancing was ruined, at least temporarily.  But my mind was expanded out of my little cell into the vastness of the universe,” Lee said.

“As artists, that’s our job,” I replied.

“You’re an artist?”

“I’m a poet.  Or at least I try to be.  My poetry tends to be a bit too egocentric.”  I shrugged.  “Maybe I need to expand out of my little cell into the vastness of the universe myself.” I snorted out a self-conscious little laugh.

You’re right, you know, Dick.”  Lee grinned.  “Maybe I can help.”

I had never before heard a conversation quite like the one I was in the middle of.  Lee was easy to talk to.  And he was actually listening to me like I was important and interesting. So when he said, I can help, I was curious. I was intrigued with him, but that might have been the Benzedrine kicking in.  “How?” I said.

“Wait here.  I need a few things.”  Lee rose from his cross-legged position without using his hands and exited into the kitchen.

I wanted to leave the circular table before Robert came back, so I tried

to rise as Lee did, from a cross-legged seated position without using my hands, but couldn’t do it.  That only made me admire the guy more.  I made my way to the widow’s walk and gazed at the city lights.  They seemed festive, celebratory, even though this was not a holiday season.  The greens and blues seemed deep and inviting; the reds, blinking atop the highest towers, seemed to impose significant urgency.  I became intent on one particular red light, until it changed to green.  Beware Of Change, my mind spoke to me in that silent, inner language in which everything is capitalized.  The benzedrine and sauterne appeared to be potentiating. 

Lee found me leaning on the balustrade, sniffing at the air-- fir needles and car fumes from outside, sandalwood and lotus incense from inside.  Lee handed me an aluminum pie plate covered with tin foil.  There were small holes on each side.  He showed me how to inhale through one

hole while he held a lighter to the other, where there was a brown lump.  It was hashish filtered through clumps of frankincense, and tasted like lye soap and nutmeg. But after a few inhalations, I noticed the lights of the city were dancing, and had lingering after-images that blended their colors into vibrating patterns with Van Gogh auras. 

Lee placed his hand on top of mine on the balustrade railing, but when I raised my eyebrow, he laughed, and replaced it onto my arm.  “Come inside, I want you to hear something.”  While I sat down on a sofa, Lee put a record on a stereo.  Cream playing We’re Going Wrong wailed out its irregular chord from every corner of the room.  The chord contained a note one note above the main key—a ninth chord, like a mistake, only perfect for the theme.  By the time the chorus repeated, I found myself singing along with Eric Clapton:  “I found out today-ay, we’re going wrong… I found myself grinning at Lee as though I’d known him all my life.

“I’ve never heard the use of a 9^th chord,” I said.  “It’s uniquely disharmonious, and so perfect for this song.”

Lee’s eyebrow shot up.  “You’re a musician?”

“Piano when I was a kid.  Guitar now, but I’m not very good.”

“Good enough to recognize a 9^th chord,” Lee said.  “I’ve never found anybody else who understands this song.”  He smiled.  “We are going wrong, you know.”

“Yeah, as fast as we can.  Can we play it again?”

The second time through, Lee arose and danced, weaving through the smoky air with his whole body, like a willow in a strong wind.  His eyes closed, his mouth straight with concentration, he spun around on one toe in a slow and almost perfect balance, making a spiral pattern in the smoke.  I was enthralled.

By the end of the song, I found that I was looking at two Lees, dancing in almost perfect synchronization.  I realized that was impossible, that I must have been seeing a mental after-image.  I shook my head to clear it.  “That was beautiful,” I said, grinning.

“Beauty is subjective.  I think it was terrible.  My balance is off.  Not nearly good enough for the San Francisco Ballet.” He was frowning.  He shook his head and then smoothed back his long hair.  Then he shrugged and smiled, lit a cigarette, and sat down next to me.  He was close, almost touching.  But I did not feel crowded like I had with Robert.

Dick entered from the kitchen and swept into the living room with a graceless fag dance that was all his own.  “Road trip!  Road trip!” he shouted to nobody in particular and began clapping his hands.

If I had been completely sober, this would have been an alarming situation—climbing into a car full of strange gay men.  I’d be far from my pink DeSoto, a captive audience for whatever adventure they chose.  But I was feeling way past fine, chemically insulated from danger. And anyway, I only had a couple of months left of normal life before the draft board caught up with me.  What the hell, I told myself.   “Let’s go,” I said.  “Where exactly are we going?”

Robert looked at me and then at Dick, and they nodded at one another.  “Darcell’s!” they both said simultaneously. 

Dick stopped by the apartment next door on the way out to gather up Ron, who was wearing the predicted shit-eating grin.  Robert, Dick, Lee, Ron and I piled into Robert’s old Cadillac and he drove us to a seedy section of Old Town, where we parked alongside an abandoned store-front with a drunk sleeping in the doorway.  We walked to an unmarked door which entered into a bar full of outlandishly dressed people of indeterminate gender. The waitresses appeared to be flirting openly with the male customers; damned if some of them weren’t beautiful, too.  But that was probably the cumulative effect of benzedrine, sauterne, and hashish.  When we sat at a table, a very attractive girl wearing a Darcell’s apron leaned over my shoulder and put her hand lightly between my shoulder blades.  “What’ll you have, handsome?” she said about three inches from my face.  She smelled like flowers and soap. 

          “Sauterne,” I said, looking her over.  She had no cleavage at all. 

Lee saw me looking and laughed.  “She’s a guy,” he whispered in my ear. “They’re all guys.”

I was flustered by this information.  “This is a bit weird for me,” I said.

“Not really,” Lee said.  It’s just people reaching out to each other.  There is no shared love that isn’t beautiful. The plumbing is irrelevant.”  He smiled at me.

I did not see aggression in his smile.  Only a return of friendship.  I was grateful for that. “Speaking of plumbing, I need to pee.”

 “Me too.  I’ll come with you.” he said. 

I followed him through the crowd to a large men’s room with a metal trough urinal, where several men were lined up.  When I unzipped, I heard laughter.  It sounded close—too close to be from beyond the closed door.  I couldn’t locate anyone laughing in the room; the sound seemed to be coming from in front of me, from inside the wall.  That’s when I noticed the wall had a narrow overhang directly over the urinal.  There must have been people inside the wall looking at penises as men pissed in the trough.  Unseen people laughing at my penis didn’t help my flow one bit.

When we rejoined our table, Robert and Dick were reseating themselves, and I didn’t want to know where they had been.  My Sauterne was there on the table.  I slapped down a fiver and swallowed my drink in one gulp. I put the glass down with a loud clink, and crossed my arms. 

Ron laughed. “It’s an initiation rite with these guys,” he said.  “I can never take a piss in here.” 

“You did once,” Dick said.

“Yeah.  Once,” Ron answered.  “Can we go now?”

Dick looked at his watch.  “Oh my Gaaawd, we’re late.  I told Tanya we’d be at her place by now.  Let’s go!” 

Back in the car, Dick explained that Tanya was a lesbian whose lover had left her for a man.  It was devastating for her, and she needed some queenly support.  We were on our way to cheer her up.  I had no idea how to cheer up a grieving lesbian, and just hoped she had a bathroom where I could finish peeing in private. 

Robert drove slowly through the downtown streets.  I looked out the window at the store-front signs, blinking out promises of adventure and intrigue; French restaurants, jazz nightclubs, movie theaters with marquees that burnt my eyes with their bright frenzy.  Robert braked hard for two black dogs which ran across the street just in front of the car.  They seemed to me to be super-animated, flowing swiftly as if flying across the pavement without touching it.  I could see their fangs as they snarled at us over their shoulders.  Then they were gone, and I didn’t know if I had actually seen them, or whether they had been an hallucination.  Devil dogs, I told myself.  A night of visions.

Robert drove us across the Burnside Bridge to a neighborhood canopied by huge trees, and old houses nestled not far from the river.  We parked in front of a square beige apartment with peeling paint, a broken window and no porch at all.

“Looks abandoned,” I said.

“It’s not,” Dick said.  “We call it Bleak House.”

“Great,” Ron said.  “We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into a Dickens novel.  Foopular.”

“What is Foopular?” I asked.

“An explosion goes boom.  An implosion goes foop.  Foopular is the quality of being on the verge of…”

 “Focus, you guys,” Dick said.  “Tanya’s in pain. We’re here to show our support, even though we’re men.”

“Some of us,” Robert chuckled.

We entered without knocking, and found a thin woman in her early thirties, dressed in sweats with her auburn hair in a disheveled bun, sitting on a kitchen chair in the middle of an almost bare living room.  There was one couch, a record player on the floor, and a few more kitchen chairs.  The only light was from a bare hanging bulb in the middle of the room. 

“She took my furniture,” Tanya said.  “She took my table.  She even took my bed.  She took my frigging heart…for a man!”  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and wiped her nose too, leaving a streak.

Dick knelt down beside her so he could give her a hug.  Robert poured her a glass of Scotch he drew from his coat pocket.  Lee went to the record player and shuffled through the records.  He chose one and put it on the turntable.

“Who are these guys?”  Tanya said, looking at me.

“That’s Dick.  He’s a friend of Ron’s.  Ron works with us at the bakery.  That’s Lee.  He’s a dancer up from San Francisco.”

“A dancer? A man dancer?  You must be gay,” Tanya snorted.  “I never met a straight man who could dance worth a damn.  Not that I cared.  Men are all assholes.”

“I know, I know,” Dick soothed her and stroked her hair. 

“And women are all bitches,” Ron said.  “Except for Wanda.”

Ravel’s Bolero began its long prelude from the turntable.  Lee stood up and stretched, his legs flexing in sync with the rhythm of the music.  “No!” he said aloud.

“No, what?” Dick said.

“No, men are not all assholes, and women are not all bitches.  People just reach out for one another, and are often disappointed by their reception.  They act out because they haven’t gone deep enough into the problem.”

“What’s the problem, dancer man?” Tanya said.

Lee walked to her and very slowly squatted down in front of her; Dick moved back to give him room.  “The problem?”  Lee knit his brows for a second, and then smiled that enigmatic smile of his while he swept back his long hair with both hands.  “The problem is, we don’t look deeply enough into one another’s souls.”

“Yeah?”  Tanya snorted again—a particularly unfeminine sound.  “So what does my soul look like?  Am I just a super bitch that Barbie Doll couldn’t stand?”

“Let’s see,” Lee said.  He began to sway, his head rolling slightly to the music.  Then he stood up without using his hands and began to dance in front of Tanya.  He bent down into her face, and then did a complete 360 degree turn without taking his eyes off of her face, which required an incredible back bend.  I couldn’t believe a human body could bend in such a way.  He danced around her, above her, below her, and from behind her, loosening her hair and combing it down with his fingers.  He touched her arm with his shirt sleeve only, and swept the sleeve-end up her arm, along her neck, and over the side of her face.  He stepped away from her to give himself just enough room to twirl as he had earlier at China Court, but this time there was no faltering, no loss of the beat.

I watched this transpire for several minutes, and admired the body that could move in such a way, and the soul that directed it.  I had never in my life seen such movement.  How could anyone not be attracted to him?  Up until this moment, I had never in my life considered the possibility that I was gay.  Now I was not certain of anything.  I had yearned for friendship that could turn into love for a long time.  Love was never wrong, Lee had said.

No classic literature had prepared me for this.  Perhaps the best course of action, under these highly souped-up circumstances, was that I should not arrive at any earth-shaking conclusions.  At least before breakfast.

Ron had passed out on the solitary sofa within the first five minutes of Bolero, leaving Robert, Dick and I no place to sit save for the uncomfortable kitchen chairs or the floor.  I chose the floor, but could still not sit down without using my hands for balance.  I would have to practice that.

After what seemed like half an hour, the music ended.  Lee did a bow in front of Tanya, knelt down and took her face gently in his hand.  “You have a beautiful soul,” He said.

Tanya was breathing hard with her mouth open, her eyes wide, her face red.  She looked aroused, but I remembered that she was a lesbian. She exhaled and said, “That was…”

“Over,” Lee said.  He arose and walked away from her without looking back.  Tanya’s eyes followed him, an astonished look on her face.

“The moment is gone,” he said.  He came over to me.  “Got a smoke?  Let’s go outside.”

          On the sidewalk under a tall willow tree. I gave him one of my Camels and we lit up.  “I wouldn’t expect a dancer to smoke,” I said.

          “When I go back, I’ll have to quit,” Lee said.  “But that’s then, and this is now.”  He exhaled slowly, and shook his hair back without using his hands.  “I broke a sweat.  I’m out of shape.  It’s time to go back to practice, I think.”

          “When?”

          “I don’t know.  Soon.  For now, I’m just staying in the moment.  I don’t think much about the past or the future. It tears me up.” 

          “Well, I think your moment turned her on,” I chuckled.

          Lee just shrugged his shoulders and smiled.  “Maybe she’s a lesbian and maybe not.  Sexual tastes are unclear for some people.  They don’t realize it’s just a joining of spirits for a time.”

          I had not considered that, nor considered any other man the way I was considering this one.  I wondered what it would be like to kiss him.  But that thought was overwhelmingly strange to me, I knew that the thought itself was probably exhumed from the deep recesses of my mind by the drugs.  But part of me was curious about him in a physical way, and part of me was aghast at my own thoughts.  Who the hell was I?  I couldn’t answer any of that, and let go of all those thoughts immediately.

          Robert, Dick and Ron came out of the building.  “Nice going, Lee,” Robert said.  “Now she’s more confused than ever.”

          “But she’s in a better moood,” Dick said.  “Let’s go home.  I’m faaagged.”

          I don’t remember getting back to my DeSoto, or dropping Ron off, or getting home myself.  The fact that I woke up in my own bed was a good sign.  Waking up fully clothed including my shoes was not.  I could only remember fragments of the night before, and not much of it made sense.  It was like a picaresque novel with kaleidoscopic episodes which were not linked together by a discernable plot-- an electric kool-aid acid test which I had flunked.  But I did find Lee’s phone number in my pocket.

          I saw him three more times.  The first was a week later, on Friday evening.  He took me to a church. 

          We met after dark in the park blocks by the Portland State campus, at the Teddy Roosevelt statue.  We shared a joint, and then we walked a couple of blocks to an old stone church that had a side entrance into a basement.  There was a bright painted sign over the door with swirling letters that said, Chyryx.  I asked him what it meant, but he just shrugged and motioned for me to follow him.

The stairway turned left into a dark smoky room lit by a few red light bulbs and several black lights.  The room was large with a low ceiling, cement walls and a tile floor, filled with small tables and folding chairs.  Every table was surrounded by garishly dressed people with fringe vests and tattoos.  There was a ceiling fan turning slowly, but the room still smelled of sweat, perfume, spilled drinks, and marijuana smoke.  A red and blue painted piano sat in a corner of the room near the door; a fisherman’s hat sat upside-down on its top.  The only white light in the room was from a small desk lamp next to the hat, aimed down onto the piano keys. 

The guy playing the piano looked like Jesus—long dark hair, full beard and mustache, smiling around a cigarette.  He could play too, long syncopated riffs with his right hand, a low bass repeating rhythm with his left.  I had never thought about Jesus playing the piano, but there he was, stirring the crowded room into applause.  I had to admit that marijuana tended to cause me to recognize people whether I knew them or not, and here was a whole basement full of intimate friends of whom I couldn’t quite recall their names.   

Lee told me that the Chyryx had been intended by the church to be a kind of community outreach, but it was located only a few blocks from the Portland State campus.  It wasn’t long before every student who wanted to be a hippy on weekends came to the Chyryx stoned and ready to boogie. In just a few weeks, the wall murals had changed to Peter Max style fractured art, the lighting darkened, the music turned jazzy, the room filled with several different kinds of smoke.  He had heard about the place from Robert, who told him to watch for a harmonica player named Barry; he was the best.

Just then a tall, gaunt man with a pig-shaved head and a tiny goatee stood up by the piano player and spoke to him.  The two of them started a new jazz piece; the standing man led the melody with the best, most exacting harmonica playing I had ever heard.  The crowd began to clap in rhythm with the piano beat, conversation waned into only a few whispers in between claps.  “That’s Barry,” Lee said.

The harmonica player looked familiar; I knew this man.  He was Barry Barnum, the son of a neighbor from long ago, whom I had been told played the harmonica, learned in prison on a heroin bust.  The last time I had seen him, I was about six years old, but still… Of course I couldn’t be sure, given the grass influence.  As it was, I thought at least half the room was from my Modern Poetry class.  All I knew for certain was that this guy could really play.  My own feet were tapping out the rhythm, my head bobbing up and down in synchrony with a hundred others, hands clapping in perfect time.

Barry would blow a quick riff and then stop playing for a few seconds so the piano player could catch up and fill in the gap, but the rhythm never broke.  The entire room was keeping it going as a single consciousness.  I was elated to be a part of it.  Then Barry played a long ending riff, held the last trebling note for ten seconds or more, came up for air, and bowed.  The clapping broke rhythm into genuine applause.  Then raucous banter started again as if that single perfect moment hadn’t mattered. 

Lee laughed as he smoothed back his hair with both hands, and asked what I thought.  I told him what I knew about Barry, and that I wanted to go and ask him his last name.  But Barry was gone, and then I didn’t know for sure if I had really recognized him, or if he was just another hallucination.  We left the Chyryx then, and I took Lee back to China Court.  He told me to meet him at the same spot next Friday, but early in the afternoon.  There was something else he wanted me to see.

 The next Friday was April 17^th.  Robert Kennedy was giving a speech in the Portland State gymnasium.  He was the only Presidential candidate that had spoken openly, publicly against the war.  I wasn’t much of a follower of politics, but I was definitely against the war.  Especially the part about me having to participate in it.  I wanted to hear what he had to say.  And so did Lee.

I met him at the statue and we walked to the gymnasium early.  We stayed sober, on account of it being early afternoon, and also the gymnasium would have hyper-vigilant security men all around it keeping an eye out for would-be assassins and derelict roués much like I normally would be by that time of day.

The gym was already crowded, but we managed to find seats to the extreme right of the stage, about fifty feet away.  We waited for almost an hour.  Then, Bobby Kennedy came in a side door to a thunder of applause and shouting.  He looked more like his pictures than like a real person; tanned, and perfect-- not a crease or fold in his suit, not a hair out of place. 

He was introduced by the governor and spoke for half an hour about peaceful co-existence, and the absolute futility of war.  When he said, “What the students of Poland now fight for, what the students of Czechoslovakia appear to have won is not a victory of ideology; it is a victory of the spirit...”  Lee nudged me with his elbow.  “Victory of the spirit—did you hear that?” he whispered.  I didn’t really follow what had happened in Czechoslovakia or Poland, but I knew Lee had spoken many times about spiritual energy.  So I nodded enthusiastically. 

I began to see Bobby Kennedy as more than a presidential candidate.   I saw him as a man of deep conscience.  I began to believe that under his guidance, peace might actually become possible.  I vowed to myself to back this man for president because maybe he could end the war and save me from having to go to Viet-Nam.  Well, it was probably too late for that, but maybe he could save others.  I was pleased with myself for thinking of others, and that Bobby Kennedy had stimulated a spark of social consciousness.  At the end of his speech, Bobby gave that famous Kennedy quick hand wave, and I clapped until my hands hurt.  I was elated and sober at the same time; who knew that was possible?

Lee and I had a few beers at the Cheerful Tortoise before he had to leave for an appointment.  I shook his hand and thanked him for the inspirational afternoon.  I stayed at the Cheerful Tortoise for another hour, nursing a beer and writing a poem about my friend, who was teaching me many profundities about life I had not so far considered. But I took the Mt. Tabor bus home early enough to arrive in time for dinner. 

I saw Lee one more time, the following Friday.  He asked if I could pick him up and drive him and his bags to the bus station.  He was leaving for San Francisco at one o’clock.  As it happened the whale was free, so I drove the old DeSoto up to China Court.  Lee was waiting under the fir trees on the precipice above Goose Hollow.

We shared a joint and I gave him my poem.  He read it as he smoked, his head swaying rhythmically like a metronome. 

“What do you think?” I said.

“He inhaled as though about to say something, but didn’t for a minute or so.  Then he inhaled again through the joint, and when he spoke, smoke wisped out his mouth and nose.  “I think this will be my last joint for awhile.”

“About the poem, I mean,” I said.

“I’ve told everyone that I stay in the moment, Dick.  But I’ve come to realize that’s short-sighted.   I think you have to look as far into the future as you can.  It’s like opening a gate,” he said.  “I’m going back to San Francisco today.  I’m going to dance every day, all day, until I drop.  And I will listen when they tell me I need to do this or that better.  They will scold me, and maybe slap me.  But I’ll go back the next day for more, because that’s how you get better.  That’s the way you should write, Dick.  You can do better than this.”  He handed me the poem back. 

I was embarrassed and a little hurt by his comment, even though it hadn’t been about the poem at all.  But I knew he was right.  If I was going to call myself a writer, I needed to take it much more seriously.

We drove to the bus station, and I was lucky enough to find a parking spot only a block away.

Lee didn’t jump right out, but stayed and turned toward me.  I knew that we would likely not see each other again.  I began to feel the hollowness of being alone.  I gave him a slip of paper with my address on it.

“Will you write?” I said.

“Maybe,” he said.  But I knew he probably wouldn’t. 

Lee leaned toward me, reached out and touched my face lightly, then turned toward the door.  I reached out for his shoulder and turned him back toward me.  “Kiss me,” I said.  And we kissed.

I felt the stab of three-day old beard stubble and tasted cigarette smoke on his rough lips, and knew instantly that I was not the least bit gay.  My own ninth chord was sounding loud inside my head. I knew how screwed up my mind was to even be confused about that.  Lee pulled back quickly, and looking into my eyes, gave a short single chuckle.

“You’re not gay?” I ask Lee.

          “I am whatever I wish,” he said.  “What else matters?”

          I understood then that our friendship had been an amusement, a diversion.  We were no more than ships passing in the night, a few brief dazzling lights against unfathomable darkness.

          “Don’t make it more than it was.  It’s over for you too.  I could feel it,” Lee smiled and lifted his hair off his eyes, carefully, as though it were fragile.  “Don’t fret about the past.  Too much regret, self judgment, guilt.  It can tear you up.  Trust me, I know.   Begin again without all that.  This moment is gone.  Don’t think about it too much.  Good-bye, Dick.”  He gave me a beautiful wide smile, opened the door, gathered his bags up, and walked off without ever looking back.  I knew I would never see him again.

                            

          Three weeks later, I got my draft notice.  My Lit-Crit professor had submitted withdrawals from his class for those of us who had not been attending regularly.  That had put my schedule below the minimum twelve hours to maintain my 2-S deferment.   The Selective Service had been notified, and six weeks had gone by.  The end of June, I was to report in for the induction process.  The next day, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed in California.  It seemed the last hope I had for a bearable future had circled the drain.

          I wandered through the campus seeking comfort in my favorite haunts-- the student union, the cafeteria, the Park Blocks, but those places were no longer inviting.  I felt I was now a complete outsider, that life was going around me as though I were a pothole in the college bike path. 

          I ended up at the Chyryx just before sunset, after the summer sun had gone behind the West Hills and shadowed the city, though the sky was still light blue.  But it was not the same.  The lights were turned up bright for the floor sweeper, and there was no harmonica music, only some static-filled blues from a warped turntable.  The place was cheerless and empty.

          It was as though all the magic had leaked out of my life.  Lee was gone, Bobby Kennedy was dead, and my girl friend was pregnant, but not by me.  I was an English major on my way to Vietnam.  How goddamned timely for everything to fall apart at once.   I’d have taken time to be pissed off, but my energy was spent calling old girlfriends up and saying goodbye, and hoping to get laid before my departure.  I really didn’t care who it was, as long as the right plumbing was involved.  I knew it would be years before I erased the ninth chord playing in my head.

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