Post by darkstar3 on Jan 17, 2011 19:20:17 GMT
Cheetah Magazine
May 1968
The Jim Morrison Bust
By Michael Zwerin
This article is a chapter from a book, The Silent Sound Of Needles, which deals with Addict’s Rehabilitation Center in Harlem.
The leader of the Doors was busted in New Haven for, of all things, obscenity. The author was there to see it all.
On the afternoon of a strange Saturday I scored uptown. Some heroin…just for research. I’m not a junkie. Heroin will mess up your life, almost surely ruin it. Seven teen years, however, since I had some, and I wanted a reminder. I’d been too busy for months; interviewing, reading statusties, transcribing tapes and generally thinking and worrying about starting my first book; about the Addicts’ Rehabilitation Center in Harlem.
In college, I experimented along with my girl Paula and other friends. I was a jazz musician then, and in 1951 junk and the jazz scene were inseparatable as acid and rock today. Now, Paula is dead, as are two of the others - all overdoses. Two of my friends from those days are still junkies, another a graduate of Synanon after 10 years of addiction.
I’ve often wondered why I was one of the saved. We were all on the same scene at the same time, we had the same heroes and villians, roughly the same values. We all thought it “hip” to sniff junk. None of us realized its deep, unrelenting, mellow evil. Was it only luck, that I was afraid to stick a needle in my veins? Maybe I just don’t need what junk gives. I believe it is the latter, or at least I prefer to think so.
Junk is the Ferrari of highs, it takes you somewhere else fast but, like the car, is extremely hard to control. It is expensive, quickly escalating, treacherously addicting and miserable to kick. But I was sure of myself and after spending the better part of three months with addicts felt I should remiond myself what it is like.
Much of the reason for the epidemic proportions of hard drug use in the gettos is its availability, but heroin is not merely a ghetto habit. Take my friend Bill, for example.
Bill is a white musician who plays six percussion instruments and earns a medium five figure salary in the recording studios. He just bought a brownstone and has been busy installing wall brackets, meeting the tenants, cooling out his super and things like that. I’ve known him for years, since we were both scuffling on the road. Bill isn’t a junkie although he snorts fairly regularly, a dangerous game he has so far kept ahead of. For those who can afford it, with a modicum of self control, snorting heroin isn’t all that much heavier than popping tranquilzers – and it’s a lot more effective.
Making a mental note to keep track of the expense for tax purposes, I gave Bill $5 for a bag – a small glassine envelope folding in three with white powder in it. He arranged some in neat, thin lines and rolled up a dollar bill tightly. Using it as a straw, we pulled some into our nostrils. Nothing happened right away but that dry taste again. Snorting is like drinking 3.2 beer – it takes a long time to feel it and when you do it isn’t like the real thing. But it’s more than a slight hint, that’s for sure. As a matter of fact, it gets me just about as high as I ever want to be.
I asked Bill how often he’d been making it recently.
‘Man, you won’t believe this,” Bill flashed a wide, somewhat fleshy smile. He is beginning to lose his hair. “Every day for four months.”
“What?” I was appalled.
“Yeah, man. I’ve been in a strange mood lately. I just can’t seem to function without it.
“Maybe it’s all the pressure on those big time record dates you do.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, I just dig it.”
“You realize of course that you’ve probably got a habit by now. How much you use a day?”
“About two or three nickel bags…Well, I actually decided to cool it a week ago. I haven’t scored since then. Your call reminded me.”
Bill looks normal. He shows up to work on time, he is a good father to his three kids, a homeowner, short hair. A solid citizen, you might say. It never occurred to me he might be in danger. I shouldn’t have called him. We sniffed more, listened to records and played with his kids when they came back from the park. Before leaving, Bill showed me around his town house, for which he paid $150,000; $30,000 cash. Bill is not the type you read about in junkie books.
Neither am I, but I was high.
Christmas shoppers plus a crush of matineers at two o’clock made Broadway a real urban nightmare. Too many cars. Cars with New Jersey license plates turning from wrong lanes or stopping without signal. Everybody in a hurry. It should have been a terrible trip home on my scooter. But I didn’t mind it at all. Double parked limousines, taxis honking and screaming, bus exhausts in my face, December cold. Who cares? It is impossible to be bugged or cold or other than high on junk. So called reality is filtered through a lens which rejects anything unpleasant or uncomfortable. I felt fine.
*
Later, just as the Packer-Ram game began on television, the phone rang. My friend X – calling. He said his girl Y - , a writer working on a story, are going to New Haven for a Doors concert. Did I want to come along? I decided the Doors were more interesting than the Packers.
We stopped just over the Connecticut border for gas and coffee. I opened the bag, looked over my shoulder for the man, and snorted some junk up my nose. Just a little later, a patrol car drove up next to us with its roof light flashing. A touch of panic, but the trooper was only interested in our Arizona license plates.
Anybody who has carried pot will understand. Routine brushes with the police are each a potential disaster. No matter how cool you look or act, what is in your pocket puts you in jeopardy. All cops are enemies. While this one checked us out, I remembered a similar roust.
Five of us were in a station wagon on the Indiana Turnpike. Just before dawn, a siren sounded behind us – and that same rotating light. It was foggy and cold so the windows were closed. The smell of pot was strong. Max, driving threw out his lit joint and we tried to air the car out before pulling over.
“God damn,” Max said. “This is it. Wait till he sees all those instruments in the back.” Cops suspect all musicians of something in this country. And we didn’t look too cool anyway. We had worked that night and had drunk our usual share. We were hollow eyed, needed shaves, and didn’t look particularly ‘normal’ to begin with. If this cop gets curious, if he is alert and good at his job, we are sure to be busted. God knows what’s on the floor or behind the seats after three weeks of one nighters.
The trooper leaned in the window. “You were doing 90 back there. You realize that, Buddy?” His cracker twang wasn’t very encouraging. “Let me see your license.”
Max was cool. He smiled, relaxed and friendly – even innocent. “No. Really? I didn’t know it was that fast. Sorry There weren’t any cars on the road and I guess I just wasn’t watching the speedometer.”
Shining a light inside, the trooper saw the horns. I could see the morning headlines – BANDMEN ARRESTED ON DOPE RAP. “You guys musicians?” he asked.
“That’s right officer. We’re playing a dance in Splodunk tonight.”
“What band are you with?”
“____ ____,”
“Oh really. I remember him when he was featured with ____ ____. That guy’s some trumpet player. Can he still hit those high notes? I used to play a little trumpet myself in high school. What do you guys play?”
Max told him he was a drummer and we all introduced ourselves. The tropper was now downright friendly, happy to have met some celebrities. Finally, he wrote out a warning and said be more careful in the future.
The cops in New Haven weren’t going to be so loose.
*
Before the concert, X -, his girl and I went for a pizza. They guy with no sideburns and a flat top who served us looked like Dean Rusk’s idea of “enslaved” people behind the Iron Curtain – pasty, unsmiling, with out spirit. A Coke clock and Coke posters decorated the newly painted walls. The plant near the door had a ribbon on it: “Congratulations.” A fat family, out for a big Saturday night treat, ate without looking at or talking to each other. The kid kept dripping spaghetti sauce on his pants. Here was too much reality. Some hick schumuck’s free enterprise dream come true. A business of his very own. A cleanclean neon and formica business founded on American principals and artifical seasoning. The pizza was lousy.
We walked to the concert a few blocks away, through a neighborhood of gas stations, hardware stores, bars, laundromats and brick taxpayers. Plenty of cops around. Cops with baggy pants and unshined shoes. Cops walking to work in pairs swinging billy clubs. Dumb looking old cops. Burly cops with red faces. Only a few young cops with still some humanity left. All cops ready to defend the Republic against obscenity and hair.
“Boy, I sure would hate to get arrested with this junk in my pocket.” I said. “But judge – just call my editor at Prentice-Hall. But judge….” We all laughed.
The New Haven Arena was a run down hockey rink. We had “ice seats,” second row front and center. The place was filled with a few townies, not many hippies – mostly teenyboppers and Yalies. And quite a few cops. About 2,000 people in all. It was cold and drab like the neighborhood – and like the first group, locals named Tommy and the Riveras. Two saxophones, guitars, organ and drums thumping and clanging while three girls fresh from the beauty parlor in spangled semi mini dresses sany unheard into a dead microphone. After about 10 minutes I realized I wasn’t high enough for this.
In the john stall, which didn’t lock, I took out my junk again. I was nervous and inefficient, pouring too much on my thumbnail. Spilling some on the floor, I snorted it quickly. On the way out, I stopped in front of the mirror to make sure there was no white evidence around my nose.
Things were much better after I corrected my lens. I sank comfortably into the crooked, wooden folding seat, my very own Eames Chair spreading through me. My hand moved slowly, only partially under control, as I wrote in my diary.
My nose and cheeks itch. I find myself dropping off to sleep although I’m not sleepy. I feel heavy. Insular, “I am a rock.” Nothing can touch me. Certainly banality is nothing to get in a state about. Ordinarily I would be nervous and full of regret over wasting a night on the Connecticut Turnpike. But there will be other nights to work.
Fortunately, my ears were quite stuffed from the junk during the Lochsley Hall Assembly, a second local group. I gathered energy and continued pushing my pencil.
There is a shimmering film over everything. The bright lights are even brighter than they are. Okay. I am not horny – mini skirts leave me unruffled for a change. Thank God. I feel so good it worries me. Even the more than slight nausea is fine. Is this how ‘normal’ people feel all the time? Maybe I’m an addictive personality after all. I sure wouldn’t mind this being normal. Peace. Acceptance of what is. No tight muscles in my neck. I have just gone into a good nod, thinking of what to write next. The ash from my cigarette dropped on my pants. Does anybody notice? No matter. Softness around me. Tingling at the end of my fingers. Itch itch itch. My hand moves more reluctantly. Focusing is difficult. When I speak, my voce is in the back of my throat; the junkie rasp. I can no longer control my pencil. I would like to sleep. And throw up.
During intermission I went to the john again; just a little booster this time.
*
The Doors came through the curtains dressed flower casual. They plugged in and tuned up, relaxed, without hurrying, as if nothing had happened. Then, Jim Morrison and teenybopper screams. Such a lovely neck he had, all framed in hair. An erection was obvious through his tight vinyl pants. He is chief Doors and the first American male sex symbol since James Dean, so they say.
More cops around the stage, serious and bitter.
Morrison started freaking out his act, grinding, bumping, coming close to swallowing the microphone. If you had a dirty mind, you might call it obscene. His eyes were oh – so red. I wrote in my diary.
If I were a cop I’d arrest him for just looking that way.
But for the teenyboppers, he’s a gas. He does have charisma. He knows he’s different, special. He’s convinced of it. He communicates it. There’s an electricity about him. And then that beautiful, smooth neck…
Two teenyboppers flitted down front and flashed their Instamatics. More came. They sat, looking up at their funky hero with rapture.
Unhappy girl, fly fast away, don’t miss your chance to swim in mystery.
Morrison rolled the heavy round base of the microphone stand with his feet as he sang, holding the pole with one hand, barely under control.
He separated the mike from the pole and finishing the song, heaved the base off the stage, missing the kids sitting down front but not by much. The cops moved out. Somebody’s daughter sitting in the aisle next to me was dragged by her scruff's she twisted and turned like some little animal. The other little girls went back to their seats under similar pressure.
Things settled down, but the police were staring up at Morrison with undisgulsed hate as he went into a soliloquy, the rhythum section vamping quietly behind him.
“I want to tell you a story. It happened to me very recently, just a few minutes ago, right here in New Haven, Connecticut.” He continued, slow, deliberate, almost poetic.”…Yes. That’s right…Right here in New Haven…Connecticut. My friends here (waves to the band) and I went out for…a sandwich and a drink before…the concert…got to talking with the waitress there…she asked for our autographs…said it was for her daughter…but I knew she wanted it for herself…came back here…right here in New Haven, Connecticut…this girl and I went in the shower room to…get acquainted…to get to know each other. This is a true story…it happened right here in New Haven, Connecticut…just a few minutes ago…A little man in blue comes in and says, (with an Amos and Andy accent) “Watchoo doin’ heah? Break it awup. Move awon,’…There’s no love in the world…sometimes I feel so alone…like nobody loves me…”
A teenybopper ran down the aisle, her face falling apart. “I love you,” she screamed. ‘I LOVE YOU!” I was having trouble staying out of a nod. The cops were huddled on each side of the stage, like a football team going over the game plan.
“…So, this little man in blue…he takes out a shaving can…and, right here in New Haven, Connecticut…only a few minutes ago… he squirts it in my face…And I’m blind…He blinds me…I was blind for five minutes…and now they are red and they itch.” (Mine too, I thought.)
“…Yes, ladies and gentleman…”
Hard rock time began together, as if this routine was normal. Morrison leaned back, the bulge in his pants in credibly obvious, ‘WE WANT THE WHOLE….WORLD AND WE WANT IT…NOOWWW!
That did it. Two police platoons went into action as the “tune” ended. Morrison bowed to spotty applause. The lights came on. The Door on organ whispered in Morrison’s ear – something like. “Let’s get out of here,” I guessed. Ignoring him, Morrison shouted, “Do you want to hear one more?”
“Oh yes. Yes. Yeaaay,” A clump of teenyboppers screamed. “YES YES YES YES.” Most of the audience was leaving. We were standing. Morrison was salty, extremely salty – on some kind of verge. “Okay, then turn the lights out. We’re not finished yet. Turn out the lights…LIGHTS, LIGHTS.”
He stood stiff, defiant, wating for a response.
Then so called reality ran over what remained of my high. The Arena became a Living Theatre. (That’s the way it is, the way it really is.) The curtains behind the stage parted for Lieutenant Kelly in braid, Irish gray hair neat around his officer’s cap – a poster cop. He posed for fully a minute, hands on hips. It was a catharsis, a sniff of immortality, a flash of clarity. Here was the essence of America. Now! The establishment against youth. Law versus individual expression. The definitive bust. A Godard freeze. H-O-L-D..I-T…
Chaos. Girls hysterically crying as more cops poured on stage, wrestled with Morrison and finally hustled him off. The loudspeaker started a march. “Be kind to our web footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mo-ther…”
No announcment. No explanation. No psyschology. No police science. Little discipline. Just a lot of pushing. “Okay, okay, move on. Everybody out. It’s all over, folks. Let’s go, MOVE.”
The lawyer’s transcript of our statements about what happened next reads:
“…Five cops converged on a youngster in the lobby and beat him up. X __ saw it and photographed the incedent. When one of the police saw him he charged X ___, kneed him in the buttocks and threw him out through the door into the street. X __ was wearing on his coat jacket a red ‘working press’ card, X __ went up to Lieutenant Kelly, who had seen the assault, showed him his press card, and requested an apology from the offending policeman ‘as a matter of courtesy.’ Kelly was very polite and said, “Very well, I’ll take care of that in a minute, sir.”
“Shortly thereafter, the cop who had hit X ___ saw him and X __ demanded an apology. The cop said, ‘You want trouble? Arrest this man.’ The cop tried to get handcuffs on X __, cutting his finger and threatening to ‘bust him open.’ He twisted X__’s arm behind his back and hustled him to the squad car where he roughly frisked him. X___states that he was saying, “Okay, okay. I’m going quietly. I’m not armed.” He mentioned that he was English and that he had spent two years with the press in Vietnam.
“Y__ Z___witnessed X__’s arrest and approached the arresting officer saying, ‘Patrolman, you have a member of the press and I suggest you release him.’ Her request went unheeded and the cop swung at Miss Z__ grazing her lightly. She tugged at his sleeve and asked for X___’s cameras and the cop retorted. ‘You want to get arrested too? Grab that woman.’
“Z__was put into a squad car with X__and Zwerin approached the car and said, ‘Excuse me officer, but I’m with these people. Can you tell me…’ The policeman shouted, ‘He’s one of them…You’re under arrest too.’ And Zwerin was arrested.
See what I mean? Never ask a cop for directions. In the paddy wagon, I tore up the glassine envelope until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the filth on the floor.
We were booked into the Saturday night tank, well stocked with drunks yelling for cigarettes and water – and moaning. Morrison was a few cells away, not much of a sex symbol slumped on a bench, his eyes still red from the MACE sprayed at him in the locker room before the concert.
Our cell, like his, was a dirty cubicle furnished with only a splintery wooden bench and a toilet which had neither seat nor flusher. It stank. The steel wall was covered with graffiti – “Drunk March 2ne,” – “Pee Wee, 1961,” and other such historocal data. Doors clanged for hours as we were ignored. A bit paranoid, I erased some of my notes, incriminating words like ‘junk,’ ‘nod,’ and ‘snorting.’
Around 5:30 A.M. another drunk was locked up next door. He sang a soggy song”…Ooooh, you’re breaking my heart…shame on you…oooh, shame on you…”
I thought of Jesse, Wally, Dante and all the others in the Addicts’ Rehabilitation Center trying to make out with so called normal society after a lifetime of escaping from it. How many times each of them has been in this situation and worse. I wonder what I would do in their place. Could I stand so called normal society, sober, in Harlem? Is that ‘reality’ really more ‘normal’ than being high?
My unorthodox research had taken me further than I’d expected. There was no more to do.
Now I must start writing.
END.
May 1968
The Jim Morrison Bust
By Michael Zwerin
This article is a chapter from a book, The Silent Sound Of Needles, which deals with Addict’s Rehabilitation Center in Harlem.
The leader of the Doors was busted in New Haven for, of all things, obscenity. The author was there to see it all.
On the afternoon of a strange Saturday I scored uptown. Some heroin…just for research. I’m not a junkie. Heroin will mess up your life, almost surely ruin it. Seven teen years, however, since I had some, and I wanted a reminder. I’d been too busy for months; interviewing, reading statusties, transcribing tapes and generally thinking and worrying about starting my first book; about the Addicts’ Rehabilitation Center in Harlem.
In college, I experimented along with my girl Paula and other friends. I was a jazz musician then, and in 1951 junk and the jazz scene were inseparatable as acid and rock today. Now, Paula is dead, as are two of the others - all overdoses. Two of my friends from those days are still junkies, another a graduate of Synanon after 10 years of addiction.
I’ve often wondered why I was one of the saved. We were all on the same scene at the same time, we had the same heroes and villians, roughly the same values. We all thought it “hip” to sniff junk. None of us realized its deep, unrelenting, mellow evil. Was it only luck, that I was afraid to stick a needle in my veins? Maybe I just don’t need what junk gives. I believe it is the latter, or at least I prefer to think so.
Junk is the Ferrari of highs, it takes you somewhere else fast but, like the car, is extremely hard to control. It is expensive, quickly escalating, treacherously addicting and miserable to kick. But I was sure of myself and after spending the better part of three months with addicts felt I should remiond myself what it is like.
Much of the reason for the epidemic proportions of hard drug use in the gettos is its availability, but heroin is not merely a ghetto habit. Take my friend Bill, for example.
Bill is a white musician who plays six percussion instruments and earns a medium five figure salary in the recording studios. He just bought a brownstone and has been busy installing wall brackets, meeting the tenants, cooling out his super and things like that. I’ve known him for years, since we were both scuffling on the road. Bill isn’t a junkie although he snorts fairly regularly, a dangerous game he has so far kept ahead of. For those who can afford it, with a modicum of self control, snorting heroin isn’t all that much heavier than popping tranquilzers – and it’s a lot more effective.
Making a mental note to keep track of the expense for tax purposes, I gave Bill $5 for a bag – a small glassine envelope folding in three with white powder in it. He arranged some in neat, thin lines and rolled up a dollar bill tightly. Using it as a straw, we pulled some into our nostrils. Nothing happened right away but that dry taste again. Snorting is like drinking 3.2 beer – it takes a long time to feel it and when you do it isn’t like the real thing. But it’s more than a slight hint, that’s for sure. As a matter of fact, it gets me just about as high as I ever want to be.
I asked Bill how often he’d been making it recently.
‘Man, you won’t believe this,” Bill flashed a wide, somewhat fleshy smile. He is beginning to lose his hair. “Every day for four months.”
“What?” I was appalled.
“Yeah, man. I’ve been in a strange mood lately. I just can’t seem to function without it.
“Maybe it’s all the pressure on those big time record dates you do.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, I just dig it.”
“You realize of course that you’ve probably got a habit by now. How much you use a day?”
“About two or three nickel bags…Well, I actually decided to cool it a week ago. I haven’t scored since then. Your call reminded me.”
Bill looks normal. He shows up to work on time, he is a good father to his three kids, a homeowner, short hair. A solid citizen, you might say. It never occurred to me he might be in danger. I shouldn’t have called him. We sniffed more, listened to records and played with his kids when they came back from the park. Before leaving, Bill showed me around his town house, for which he paid $150,000; $30,000 cash. Bill is not the type you read about in junkie books.
Neither am I, but I was high.
Christmas shoppers plus a crush of matineers at two o’clock made Broadway a real urban nightmare. Too many cars. Cars with New Jersey license plates turning from wrong lanes or stopping without signal. Everybody in a hurry. It should have been a terrible trip home on my scooter. But I didn’t mind it at all. Double parked limousines, taxis honking and screaming, bus exhausts in my face, December cold. Who cares? It is impossible to be bugged or cold or other than high on junk. So called reality is filtered through a lens which rejects anything unpleasant or uncomfortable. I felt fine.
*
Later, just as the Packer-Ram game began on television, the phone rang. My friend X – calling. He said his girl Y - , a writer working on a story, are going to New Haven for a Doors concert. Did I want to come along? I decided the Doors were more interesting than the Packers.
We stopped just over the Connecticut border for gas and coffee. I opened the bag, looked over my shoulder for the man, and snorted some junk up my nose. Just a little later, a patrol car drove up next to us with its roof light flashing. A touch of panic, but the trooper was only interested in our Arizona license plates.
Anybody who has carried pot will understand. Routine brushes with the police are each a potential disaster. No matter how cool you look or act, what is in your pocket puts you in jeopardy. All cops are enemies. While this one checked us out, I remembered a similar roust.
Five of us were in a station wagon on the Indiana Turnpike. Just before dawn, a siren sounded behind us – and that same rotating light. It was foggy and cold so the windows were closed. The smell of pot was strong. Max, driving threw out his lit joint and we tried to air the car out before pulling over.
“God damn,” Max said. “This is it. Wait till he sees all those instruments in the back.” Cops suspect all musicians of something in this country. And we didn’t look too cool anyway. We had worked that night and had drunk our usual share. We were hollow eyed, needed shaves, and didn’t look particularly ‘normal’ to begin with. If this cop gets curious, if he is alert and good at his job, we are sure to be busted. God knows what’s on the floor or behind the seats after three weeks of one nighters.
The trooper leaned in the window. “You were doing 90 back there. You realize that, Buddy?” His cracker twang wasn’t very encouraging. “Let me see your license.”
Max was cool. He smiled, relaxed and friendly – even innocent. “No. Really? I didn’t know it was that fast. Sorry There weren’t any cars on the road and I guess I just wasn’t watching the speedometer.”
Shining a light inside, the trooper saw the horns. I could see the morning headlines – BANDMEN ARRESTED ON DOPE RAP. “You guys musicians?” he asked.
“That’s right officer. We’re playing a dance in Splodunk tonight.”
“What band are you with?”
“____ ____,”
“Oh really. I remember him when he was featured with ____ ____. That guy’s some trumpet player. Can he still hit those high notes? I used to play a little trumpet myself in high school. What do you guys play?”
Max told him he was a drummer and we all introduced ourselves. The tropper was now downright friendly, happy to have met some celebrities. Finally, he wrote out a warning and said be more careful in the future.
The cops in New Haven weren’t going to be so loose.
*
Before the concert, X -, his girl and I went for a pizza. They guy with no sideburns and a flat top who served us looked like Dean Rusk’s idea of “enslaved” people behind the Iron Curtain – pasty, unsmiling, with out spirit. A Coke clock and Coke posters decorated the newly painted walls. The plant near the door had a ribbon on it: “Congratulations.” A fat family, out for a big Saturday night treat, ate without looking at or talking to each other. The kid kept dripping spaghetti sauce on his pants. Here was too much reality. Some hick schumuck’s free enterprise dream come true. A business of his very own. A cleanclean neon and formica business founded on American principals and artifical seasoning. The pizza was lousy.
We walked to the concert a few blocks away, through a neighborhood of gas stations, hardware stores, bars, laundromats and brick taxpayers. Plenty of cops around. Cops with baggy pants and unshined shoes. Cops walking to work in pairs swinging billy clubs. Dumb looking old cops. Burly cops with red faces. Only a few young cops with still some humanity left. All cops ready to defend the Republic against obscenity and hair.
“Boy, I sure would hate to get arrested with this junk in my pocket.” I said. “But judge – just call my editor at Prentice-Hall. But judge….” We all laughed.
The New Haven Arena was a run down hockey rink. We had “ice seats,” second row front and center. The place was filled with a few townies, not many hippies – mostly teenyboppers and Yalies. And quite a few cops. About 2,000 people in all. It was cold and drab like the neighborhood – and like the first group, locals named Tommy and the Riveras. Two saxophones, guitars, organ and drums thumping and clanging while three girls fresh from the beauty parlor in spangled semi mini dresses sany unheard into a dead microphone. After about 10 minutes I realized I wasn’t high enough for this.
In the john stall, which didn’t lock, I took out my junk again. I was nervous and inefficient, pouring too much on my thumbnail. Spilling some on the floor, I snorted it quickly. On the way out, I stopped in front of the mirror to make sure there was no white evidence around my nose.
Things were much better after I corrected my lens. I sank comfortably into the crooked, wooden folding seat, my very own Eames Chair spreading through me. My hand moved slowly, only partially under control, as I wrote in my diary.
My nose and cheeks itch. I find myself dropping off to sleep although I’m not sleepy. I feel heavy. Insular, “I am a rock.” Nothing can touch me. Certainly banality is nothing to get in a state about. Ordinarily I would be nervous and full of regret over wasting a night on the Connecticut Turnpike. But there will be other nights to work.
Fortunately, my ears were quite stuffed from the junk during the Lochsley Hall Assembly, a second local group. I gathered energy and continued pushing my pencil.
There is a shimmering film over everything. The bright lights are even brighter than they are. Okay. I am not horny – mini skirts leave me unruffled for a change. Thank God. I feel so good it worries me. Even the more than slight nausea is fine. Is this how ‘normal’ people feel all the time? Maybe I’m an addictive personality after all. I sure wouldn’t mind this being normal. Peace. Acceptance of what is. No tight muscles in my neck. I have just gone into a good nod, thinking of what to write next. The ash from my cigarette dropped on my pants. Does anybody notice? No matter. Softness around me. Tingling at the end of my fingers. Itch itch itch. My hand moves more reluctantly. Focusing is difficult. When I speak, my voce is in the back of my throat; the junkie rasp. I can no longer control my pencil. I would like to sleep. And throw up.
During intermission I went to the john again; just a little booster this time.
*
The Doors came through the curtains dressed flower casual. They plugged in and tuned up, relaxed, without hurrying, as if nothing had happened. Then, Jim Morrison and teenybopper screams. Such a lovely neck he had, all framed in hair. An erection was obvious through his tight vinyl pants. He is chief Doors and the first American male sex symbol since James Dean, so they say.
More cops around the stage, serious and bitter.
Morrison started freaking out his act, grinding, bumping, coming close to swallowing the microphone. If you had a dirty mind, you might call it obscene. His eyes were oh – so red. I wrote in my diary.
If I were a cop I’d arrest him for just looking that way.
But for the teenyboppers, he’s a gas. He does have charisma. He knows he’s different, special. He’s convinced of it. He communicates it. There’s an electricity about him. And then that beautiful, smooth neck…
Two teenyboppers flitted down front and flashed their Instamatics. More came. They sat, looking up at their funky hero with rapture.
Unhappy girl, fly fast away, don’t miss your chance to swim in mystery.
Morrison rolled the heavy round base of the microphone stand with his feet as he sang, holding the pole with one hand, barely under control.
He separated the mike from the pole and finishing the song, heaved the base off the stage, missing the kids sitting down front but not by much. The cops moved out. Somebody’s daughter sitting in the aisle next to me was dragged by her scruff's she twisted and turned like some little animal. The other little girls went back to their seats under similar pressure.
Things settled down, but the police were staring up at Morrison with undisgulsed hate as he went into a soliloquy, the rhythum section vamping quietly behind him.
“I want to tell you a story. It happened to me very recently, just a few minutes ago, right here in New Haven, Connecticut.” He continued, slow, deliberate, almost poetic.”…Yes. That’s right…Right here in New Haven…Connecticut. My friends here (waves to the band) and I went out for…a sandwich and a drink before…the concert…got to talking with the waitress there…she asked for our autographs…said it was for her daughter…but I knew she wanted it for herself…came back here…right here in New Haven, Connecticut…this girl and I went in the shower room to…get acquainted…to get to know each other. This is a true story…it happened right here in New Haven, Connecticut…just a few minutes ago…A little man in blue comes in and says, (with an Amos and Andy accent) “Watchoo doin’ heah? Break it awup. Move awon,’…There’s no love in the world…sometimes I feel so alone…like nobody loves me…”
A teenybopper ran down the aisle, her face falling apart. “I love you,” she screamed. ‘I LOVE YOU!” I was having trouble staying out of a nod. The cops were huddled on each side of the stage, like a football team going over the game plan.
“…So, this little man in blue…he takes out a shaving can…and, right here in New Haven, Connecticut…only a few minutes ago… he squirts it in my face…And I’m blind…He blinds me…I was blind for five minutes…and now they are red and they itch.” (Mine too, I thought.)
“…Yes, ladies and gentleman…”
Hard rock time began together, as if this routine was normal. Morrison leaned back, the bulge in his pants in credibly obvious, ‘WE WANT THE WHOLE….WORLD AND WE WANT IT…NOOWWW!
That did it. Two police platoons went into action as the “tune” ended. Morrison bowed to spotty applause. The lights came on. The Door on organ whispered in Morrison’s ear – something like. “Let’s get out of here,” I guessed. Ignoring him, Morrison shouted, “Do you want to hear one more?”
“Oh yes. Yes. Yeaaay,” A clump of teenyboppers screamed. “YES YES YES YES.” Most of the audience was leaving. We were standing. Morrison was salty, extremely salty – on some kind of verge. “Okay, then turn the lights out. We’re not finished yet. Turn out the lights…LIGHTS, LIGHTS.”
He stood stiff, defiant, wating for a response.
Then so called reality ran over what remained of my high. The Arena became a Living Theatre. (That’s the way it is, the way it really is.) The curtains behind the stage parted for Lieutenant Kelly in braid, Irish gray hair neat around his officer’s cap – a poster cop. He posed for fully a minute, hands on hips. It was a catharsis, a sniff of immortality, a flash of clarity. Here was the essence of America. Now! The establishment against youth. Law versus individual expression. The definitive bust. A Godard freeze. H-O-L-D..I-T…
Chaos. Girls hysterically crying as more cops poured on stage, wrestled with Morrison and finally hustled him off. The loudspeaker started a march. “Be kind to our web footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mo-ther…”
No announcment. No explanation. No psyschology. No police science. Little discipline. Just a lot of pushing. “Okay, okay, move on. Everybody out. It’s all over, folks. Let’s go, MOVE.”
The lawyer’s transcript of our statements about what happened next reads:
“…Five cops converged on a youngster in the lobby and beat him up. X __ saw it and photographed the incedent. When one of the police saw him he charged X ___, kneed him in the buttocks and threw him out through the door into the street. X __ was wearing on his coat jacket a red ‘working press’ card, X __ went up to Lieutenant Kelly, who had seen the assault, showed him his press card, and requested an apology from the offending policeman ‘as a matter of courtesy.’ Kelly was very polite and said, “Very well, I’ll take care of that in a minute, sir.”
“Shortly thereafter, the cop who had hit X ___ saw him and X __ demanded an apology. The cop said, ‘You want trouble? Arrest this man.’ The cop tried to get handcuffs on X __, cutting his finger and threatening to ‘bust him open.’ He twisted X__’s arm behind his back and hustled him to the squad car where he roughly frisked him. X___states that he was saying, “Okay, okay. I’m going quietly. I’m not armed.” He mentioned that he was English and that he had spent two years with the press in Vietnam.
“Y__ Z___witnessed X__’s arrest and approached the arresting officer saying, ‘Patrolman, you have a member of the press and I suggest you release him.’ Her request went unheeded and the cop swung at Miss Z__ grazing her lightly. She tugged at his sleeve and asked for X___’s cameras and the cop retorted. ‘You want to get arrested too? Grab that woman.’
“Z__was put into a squad car with X__and Zwerin approached the car and said, ‘Excuse me officer, but I’m with these people. Can you tell me…’ The policeman shouted, ‘He’s one of them…You’re under arrest too.’ And Zwerin was arrested.
See what I mean? Never ask a cop for directions. In the paddy wagon, I tore up the glassine envelope until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the filth on the floor.
We were booked into the Saturday night tank, well stocked with drunks yelling for cigarettes and water – and moaning. Morrison was a few cells away, not much of a sex symbol slumped on a bench, his eyes still red from the MACE sprayed at him in the locker room before the concert.
Our cell, like his, was a dirty cubicle furnished with only a splintery wooden bench and a toilet which had neither seat nor flusher. It stank. The steel wall was covered with graffiti – “Drunk March 2ne,” – “Pee Wee, 1961,” and other such historocal data. Doors clanged for hours as we were ignored. A bit paranoid, I erased some of my notes, incriminating words like ‘junk,’ ‘nod,’ and ‘snorting.’
Around 5:30 A.M. another drunk was locked up next door. He sang a soggy song”…Ooooh, you’re breaking my heart…shame on you…oooh, shame on you…”
I thought of Jesse, Wally, Dante and all the others in the Addicts’ Rehabilitation Center trying to make out with so called normal society after a lifetime of escaping from it. How many times each of them has been in this situation and worse. I wonder what I would do in their place. Could I stand so called normal society, sober, in Harlem? Is that ‘reality’ really more ‘normal’ than being high?
My unorthodox research had taken me further than I’d expected. There was no more to do.
Now I must start writing.
END.