Hippie, High

Hippie, you high, I say. Hippie was sitting back, left knee hunched up, squinting one eye, tongue stuck out, and just going “Squee-hee-hee” in a weird little Hippie laugh.

We were at that Hippie place I liked, down off South Dreadway, standing around outside talking while our favorite local band was inside playing too loud to talk over. It was nice to be able to relax back into old-timey hippie-dippie ways among other nappy-headed dusty-assed bong-brained buffoons with mealtime chortle-hounds abounding.

I was trying to explain something to that Hippie humper-upper, but what I was trying to do was being messed with, by all that Hippie irreverence and Hippie-don’t-care kind of tone. I was trying to explain, (and getting nothing but derision,) Doc’s theory that a body don’t need contact for a contact high. Spooky action at a distance, y’all. Which is hard enough to explain when your Hippie ain’t even high yet, but Hippie totally was.

So I go, body needs no contact at that point, you know what I’m saying? Needs no contact at all. Matter of fact, the less contact, since it really needs no contact at all, the better. That’s not what the body needs.

I resorted to hand gestures.

I put one hand here and the other over here. See that? Way over here. Like that? Way over yonder?

Of course it was all in good clean fun. At least none of them Hippies seemed to mind if you know what I’m miming here. To the casual observer, the meaning of these hand gestures was regrettably obscured, and seemed more like hand dances, probably in need of a fan.

A Hippie came out of the club and lit up a smoke. Then it looked like Hippie was coming on over. Uh oh. The miming stops, everyone gets decent again. Hippie come up, saddened by the sudden change, looks around, beseechingly, as if to beg for one faint taint of the long-vanished past, as it recedes ever farther into the metaphysical distance. We got to laugh right at that Hippie at that. I’m telling you. Shouldn’t even be funny at all, but it was.

Hippie says, man, if and I and I only was to, now listen, now, if and I was to, you know what I’m saying, right? We listened to him at first, but since he kept going on and on mumbling this endless stream of frictionless existences, we started to zone out and chill. Doc said, let’s ditch.

Out on the sidewalk at the Hippie ride we stood there and measured our drunkenness by the steadiness of the blue steel streetlights. Across the wide diagonal span of South Dreadway you could see all the way down to where rusting chemical sheds leaked unknowable toxins into the river. There were no cars nowhere at night in Bum Shit City, and Hippie knew that fact.

Doc said he knew why there were never no cars nowhere at night in Bum Shit City. Hippie say why that? So Doc says because you know they like you being out, like we is now, on the street like this, nothing but streetlight under a veil of fog, cause it mess with your head, and they can see you easier, without no other cars to compete for unwanted attentions.

Hippie needs to know who they is, that wants that.

Doc tell him Hippie, please! The police, Hippie, now do I got to say it? Did I really have to say that shit out loud and all. Damn.

Hippies got up in the ride and argued over the radio jams. Hippies get a little prickly about their hat-snackled horse-gobbler jams. I popped the stick into gear and we took off for the bridge. Hippies never found a jam they liked, either. The mood was getting desperate, Hippie chill in serious decline.

My girlfriend Lisatta saw we were almost at the bridge, and said something about, getting her up on the roof, to free fly over the bridge, and then she opened her door. The red light never changed as she slammed that door and splayed her skinny Hippie body over the car roof top. I took off when the light changed, under that crazy young body on my roof.

From a distance, you can still see it in context: red light stuck out over the empty dark street, streetlights going distant until obscured by fog, Hippie car idling there behind the near invisible ghost of a pedestrian stripe. I took off and Hippie hair blew out wondrously under the harsh insectile light.

Bum Shit City police lurk in dim corners and under dark cover, lurid eyes of policeman hate gleaming madly in the unbearable boredom of night. They sit and they shake with the ceaseless rage of them that’s unjustly condemned to be judge, jury and executioner of any random citizen that should happen to come along.

They saw my Hippie car all right. They had to let it slide on by until Hippie got on up on top of it. But by then, Hippies was almost to the bridge that marked the line to freedom from the tyranny of the current estate.

One cop says, man, we oughta. Look at that. Almost gone, though.

Other says, they still here now. They gots to stop. Then he hits the lights, and other cop crank the motor, and I got a cop car light show extravaganza on my butt. Now I’m asking you. Who wouldn’t jump a bit at all that, especially Hippie like me. You know what that means. So I’m just saying.

I’m speeding toward that bridge, and it isn’t far, just up the road a ways past the EAT RYTE Diner that’s open all night, the exit from culpability and entrance to protection from foreign rule and law. But Hippie up on top, right? Hippie still up there, hanging on that roof by Hippie fingers, little delicate ones that shouldn’t be clinging to a whole dang Hippie life, about ready to fall maybe.

What it was, was that we definitely hit that first curve a little hard, which was easy because that first curve up there on that bridge, you know the one I’m saying, is damn sharp, two wheeling it for sure if you gone a mile over forty, so then the fear became truly real as I tried to brake enough to hit it but without reverse throwing a Hippie hood ornament back into a cop car collision course.

Hippie held on great, crisis averted, Bum Shit City police stymied and infuriated, fuming in their blazing, screeching cop car at the imaginary dotted line that kept their laws from our Hippie ways. Right after we crossed over, and Bum Shit City cops stop and fume madly, I gently rolled to a stop, and got us a damn Hippie off the roof of that Hippie car. Lisa had her a ride, she did.

We got back to the crib, you know, and had the beer, and Hippies was awful glad to see us up there, you know. Soon as we lit we grabbed the axes and started to jam.

Ricodeebool was like whamming it, like he did, wailing and slamming it all over everywhere, shaking the walls and fingering the frets on his massive bass guitar. The Doctor was shaking his head and wincing every five seconds playing his dinky little chords on his nylon stringed acoustic guitar that nobody but him could even really hear. Deebool wasn’t following or listening or anything, you know, like he always did, and was lost in his Hippie Captain Harhearty slash Jakeco Pastorfastor fantasies of utter jazz funk freedom from any possibility of an expectation of rational thought in music or in form.

Let’s jam, pumper-puckers, I said, in my most cartoon scratchy cat voice, and popped me open one of them beers and guzzled down about half of it at once, rolling my eyes up at that ceiling of Hippie crash pad delight.

On a broad old street where cars used to whiz all along the way before all them straight assed noses all hauled it on out of our urban zones to raise their flaxen-haired offspring in the secure comforts of toxin-spewing pressed wood ranch housing, the red brick remnants of ancient capitalist concerns still loom, windows dark, patched here and there with plywood, girdled by wire fencing rusting in charming diamond patterns and crowned with twisted festoons of barbed-wire practicalities that distant landlords love to reassure themselves with as they drift off to sleep at night on their silken suburban pillows. The yards of these buildings are oft crammed with a kaleidoscopic variety of abandoned machines, parts packed in half-empty dirt-caked crates, truly prodigious blooms of ghetto weeds, concrete blocks in fallen stacks, thousands of broken and rotting pinewood shipping pallets, useless piles of cardboard blooming with rot, metal trash cans stacked three or four high—empty rusty dented and dinged—stuff like that and more. Anything nobody needs, anything too unsightly to take up valuable space in the green and spacious avenues far from Hippie heaven. In this lovely urban panorama we languished between dishwashing jobs and other suchlike minimum wage slaveries, in one of the smaller buildings, which had a bathtub shoehorned into one of the old workmen’s johns, making it legally habitable by the lax standards of Bum Shit City East. Nobody could hear us jam, it was perfect. The tattoo parlor was within easy walking distance, where fading displays of the old school mom hearts and anchors you could have poked into your skin were posted near the door behind cracked and dusty glass. The bar next door had a bowling alley in it that supposedly didn’t work, but they sold package liquor, six packs straight out of the cooler so cold they’d frost up into weak beer slush if you opened them too fast. Past that was a gas station, ghetto clean, with all the cigarettes and all the stale packaged junk foods you ever wanted, just outside the cloudy plastic bullet proof plexiglass turntable where you put your crumpled money up and got back the right to leave with your stuff without getting shot in your own dang back.

I got this place because the neighbors were complaining about us at the last place Hippies had, called the Playpen. Now how these neighbors of ours got to be complaining about us, when they themselves were the worst of all the damn Hippies ever caught squatting in malodorous slums and impregnating their own kids and all, how they got the right to mess with our thing, when they own things was so messed up, you know, was all way back of beyond anywhere any of us could ever figure to find. But Townaman, the landlord back there and also here, was cool, he liked the rents being paid the way we did, and he had this place, the new Playpen we called it until we called it the Launchpad, just sitting out here middle of nowhere probably not even zoned for occupancy for all we know. He even dragged off enough trash in the concrete yard that we could park our damn hoopties up behind the chain link fence that we hung a broken padlock on in the name of security, decency and the Hippie Dippie way.

Horse Badortiz came shambling up to grab him some beers in the big room where we kept all our amps. Horse had an actual job roofing that paid decent money, unlike the rest of us, so he always kicked in on the beer runs and made dang sure he got his fair share. Horse was the ugliest damn Hippie you’d ever see anywhere, but he was clean. He always scrubbed that acne-scarred mug of his on up until it was raw red fresh, and his scraggly fair hair hung limp but flew away in wisps, dry and wire-stripped grease free.

The Doctor put his guitar down carefully and came over to grab a beer. He looked tired and withdrawn and all that; hardly Hippie at all. Doc picked up one of his notebooks he always carried around and started flipping through it. We all had notebooks, composition notebooks bound with twine and mottled black and white covers, filled with poetry, beauty and songs. The Doctor was the most fervent writer among us; he had entire notebooks filled with wonderful nonsense that said nothing at all with great style.

Hey Deebool, you should’ve seen Lisatta riding the roof over the Mack-Arnold bridge with a cop car tearing after our asses, I said, cackling glee, trying to bring Doc up with us, ready to party, you know, ready to funk it on up. Doc managed a weak smile, but had no Hippie heart in it, and it soured my buzz mightily, and it saddened my Hippie soul. Deebool stopped shaking the walls long enough to grab him a beer, and his girl, Stonea, got herself one too, and it was a damn party, like I like.

Horse was a lot older than us, had been a warrior in the far southern jungle was back in the sixties, and often gave us the benefit of his sage experience when he thought of it. You guys is lucky that you didn’t get her ass killed man, you know that right? We all laughed at that, and Horse did too, of course, but he still shook his big Hippie head, gold brown locks waving, and said, seriously, fellas, I’m tellin’ ya.

Doc laughed too, of course, he might have been dolorous, but he was no nose, you know what I’m saying, so he was still with us. He wasn’t gone all punk rock quite yet, but he was starting to kind of feel it.

We had been a band for years now already, and were known far and wide as the craziest Hippie whatever anyone had ever seen, which wasn’t really anything to brag about, but we did.

I ain’t never doing that no more again, you know what I’m saying?

Doc throws back a nice slug of ice cold beer with satisfied sigh wheezing out higher’n’shit.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Nobody answers Doc, they know too well by now. That don’t stop him, hell no. Hippie loves to hear his self talk.

Once a cause occurs, if it has an effect, after the effect has occurred, both events inhabit the same moment, the moment when now ends and the future begins. Causes and effects, once both have occurred, are coeval. Before either have occurred, neither is cause or effect.

Co-evil, a Hippie giggles. Doc sputters out something about being the same ages, and that leads to some cackles and cracks about his sixteen year old girlfriend Maggle.

Doc you are whipping me high, I said, and my Hippie starts in saying that it all started when I was a little boy and I had to get on an All-State Bus, and suddenly this ambulance comes out of nowhere (yeooooommm) and causes a terrible accident and I ended up in a wheelchair trying to catch an All-State Bus, when this ambulance comes out of nowhere (yeeeeuuuuuummmm) and causes a terrible accident and I ended up in a wheelchair.

So Doc starts humming yeeeuuuuuummm and Maggle starts humming zeeeooooommmm and all the hippies are zipping through the atmosphere and banging into All-State Busses. And I ended up in a wheelchair!

Does the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? Doc asks us, then answers himself.

The universe begins before the moment when the future becomes the past.

Deebool snorts and asks when’s that?

Now, babe, now, Doc says, in a loud whisper, glasses shining. He goes on.

Where did the universe come from and where is it going? I go over to put on a record, start flipping through my music. Doc is fun for a while, but you got to plan to stop him gently before he gets too damn deep.

Where did the universe come from? Doc asks.

The universe exists both within the flow of time and is observable in a limited way within the flow of time, but is only completely observable outside the flow of time. We can’t see the entirety of the universe from our viewpoint within the flow of time, but we can easily see that it is expanding, and as the universe expands, it inhabits and defines space.

What makes you think the universe is expanding man? Stonea asks, lounging back on the filthy couch, shading her eyes with one hand from the harsh light of the security floodlights coming through the lead-paint slathered western window.

Even I know the universe is expanding, I say. And I can dig that if every second that passes means there’s another second on top of all the other seconds there ever was, you gots to admit that the past is expanding. So how could the universe not be expanding along with it, if space and time are twin concepts, as we are taught they must be?

Who taught you that? Maggle laughs, and I point my middle finger at Doc, with a tight, triumphant smirk, and swing it up at him a few times to milk the cruel guffaws from my worthless Hippie-assed friends.

Just let me say in my own defense, y’all, that all this is just plain old high school physics like you could read in any dumbed-down physics book at the library, Doc says, and then he starts up again with the pronouncements.

To say that the universe is infinite is equal to saying that wherever there is space, there is the universe, and wherever there is time, there is the most recent moment of the past, which we observe instantly after it happens, as it joins the rest of the past.

Doc is right as usual, I say, cranking up the music and shouting over it to try to close this fruitless bullshit up. The universe is as big as we can see, and time is as long as we can measure it, using the distance between stars and the speed of light to figure it out. Happy, Doc? Hippie, please!

Pip came right on up to Doc and said, man, you know you full of shit. You lying like another pucker. And one thing every father’s son has got to know, has GOT to know, is that number one, you can never bullshit another bullshitter. Ain’t nobody fuller of shit than me. Now you know that Doc.

Number two, you should never even try to bullshit someone who you know is a far better bullshitter than you. I can see your bullshit Doc. It’s just sad, that weak bullshit you’re giving me now. Come on!

And number three, really shouldn’t, because it’s a bit pathetic. Sad, really. Showing how little you know about bullshitting another pucker by mucking it all up right in my damn face.

The sadness lies in that, bullshit, as it is currently expressed in the general culture, is widely recognized, by any people of sufficient intelligence, like all y’all, as kind of stupid-assed nonsense, and is, of course, morally bankrupt. So giving that bullshit to another bullshitter is just an increase by infection, as the bullshit spreads among the populace, running amuck.

No, it’s all true, man, I shit you not! Doc sputters in outrage and angst. My theory of time will allow faster than light travel by shifting where particles come into existence in the universe from any set of coordinates to another. Because if time begins, as I insist, in the present moment, then all you have to do is figure out the precise location of one place and swap it with another, by changing the timing and frequencies of the particles making up your body and surroundings to another place elsewhere in the universe.

That’s exactly the kind of bullshit I mean. Pip sputtered, and took a long drink from his can of cheap beer. I guess you think you’re just going to come into existence elsewhere in the universe.

Yeah, because that’s how time is created. Doc said, the dark circles under his teenaged eyes conveying more than what mere words might say. Once we control the frequencies of creation calculating outward from the present moment rather than any other past-centric temporal conception, we’ll be able to change anything and everything that exists in the physical universe.

It’ll be the end of money! Pip screeched, really upset about it, because his dad was some kind of rich lawyer. Every need possible, instantly supplied. The end of want, of ownership even, since anything could be copied infinitely.

What’s wrong with that? Doc cried, genuinely upset. Why shouldn’t everybody just get anything they want, once they learn how to make it, he asked, tears streaming from his huge dark brown eyes. His rimless glasses got a little steamy.

On that note, I picked up my axe and started to bow a sweet little gypsy melody. Doc looked over at me at once, of course, and we connected, as usual, through music. He shuffled over to his beat up old catgut strung guitar and started to strum his favorite chord. It was his bag, a chord that just hung there, perfect for anything, ready to take it anywhere, even to the stage.

Doc really seemed like he knew what he was saying. He was obsessed with all this time stuff, even when he wasn’t speeding, tripping, drunk, and stoned. But what can a high school drop-out sandwich-cooking minimum wage-making upper thumper do about any of his ingenious little insights?

Ain’t nobody gone listen to his sorry Hippie ass.