so, around about during the korean war -1951 - robert was born somewhere in new jersey. out in the father knows best suburbs. he was the youngest of 4. it would have been 5, but there was a brother, tommy, who was hit by a milk truck when he was coming home from school. this happened before robert and his next-oldest sister were born. it was the same milk truck that delivered milk to his family. the driver knew who he had hit and picked him up and carried him home. the man arrived at the door and his mother answered to see the milkman holding her dead son in his arms. needless to say, she flipped out the window and never quite came back.
    then robert was born. and he had the misfortune to look somewhat like tommy. his mother was manic/depressive (bipolar). she'd carry on in her manic states doing housework and running around shopping - dragging him along. then, when she was depressed, she lay in bed all day.
    it was during these depressed states that the thing with tommy would come up. he remembers sitting at his mother's vanity table in front of a window. he played with her perfume bottles which had prismed stoppers. he'd gaze through them into another world waiting for her to call him into her bed where she would hold him and stroke his hair and say, "oh tommy, i'm so glad you came back to me." this would then cheer her up enough that she would be able to get up and make dinner.
    he was the only one with her at the time. his father was at work. his brother and sisters were at school. they were all 4 years apart from one another. so he felt it was up to him to get his mother functioning again. and the only way he knew how to do it was to let her pretend he was tommy. so he said nothing.
    did we say that he was born on august 24th one day into virgo?
    when his mother took him on her shopping trips he'd always ask her where they were going. she'd reply with a manic gleam in her eye, "crazy - wanna come?"
    so, she knew.
    when he was a little older, he took to reading the bible. he wanted to read it from beginning to end. he hasn't done it yet, though almost. when his mother saw him doing this she would say, "if you read that it'll make you crazy."
    she knew.
    maybe she had gone to the bible to seek answers as to why tommy was taken from her. she thought it was because she was a terrible mother. the last thing she said to him when he came back east to visit her one last time as she lay dying of cancer in a hospital bed set up in the dining room was to apologize for being such a terrible mother. thanks for the final guilt trip, mom, he thought.
    it was as he approached being 5 and was nearing the time that he too would go off to school, that the fantasy of his being able to pretend along with his mother that he was tommy began breaking down. she started becoming more anxious. when he did turn 5 and went off to school she lost interest in him. as he exceeded that point in time when tommy was killed, she began to resent him. why should he be alive when tommy was dead? what right did he have to exist?
    she began to hate him.
    of course, this was largely unspoken and only existed between the two of them. the rest of the family was oblivious. they only noticed that some problems were developing between robert - who they called, bobby - and mom. she began complaining how incorrigible he was and so hard to control.
    of course he was hard to control. she couldn't get him to go back to being tommy again.
    but since mom was mom and had to function as mom for the rest of the family and as being a wife for her husband, it was seen as bobby's fault.
    he was sent to doctors to be fixed.
    he also wasn't doing very well in school.
    part of the problem there was that as well as staying in bed when she was depressed, his mother would occasionally stick her head in the oven and say she was going to kill herself. it was only robert's pleading and begging that stopped her. or so he thought.
    and now he wasn't there.
    suppose she decided to kill herself while he was at school?
    who would stop her?
    so he was distracted at school with the thought that he might be going home to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor with her head in the oven. somehow abcs and 123s didn't seem all that important compared to what was really going on - or what could really be going on.
    but he said nothing.
    he passively went to the doctors though he didn't understand why his mother wasn't going to doctors to find out how to help her.
    but it was because she didn't say anything either  - except to say what a troublesome problem bobby was.
    as time went on, and his mother wasn't getting any better or any help for what was really bothering her, her despair over losing tommy - not just once, but twice - began to manifest itself physically. she was sent to the doctors too. but not the shrinks robert was sent to, but to surgeons. they cut her up every which way to get at what was ailing her. this, robert believed, is what finally gave her cancer and killed her.
    her cancer started out as vaginal cancer. that wasn't too hard to figure out. what was the one part for her body that had betrayed her? the part that brought her babies into this world. the babies that were taken away from her. she had already had her womb cut out by this point, but that hadn't made her feel much better. the cancer started in her vagina and then traveled up through all the scar tissue and before too long - about a year - it killed her.
    she died just as robert's father retired, when they should have been off traveling the world and having fun. but that was not to be. she didn't deserve it. she'd done her duty to raise a family and see to her husband's needs and now it was time to rejoin tommy. that was her reward - not traveling.
    so that's about that with that.
    we may add more later as it might come up again. but that is the basic foundation.

    in school robert once found a dr. seuss' book, beyond zebra, on one of the class trips down to the library. it was about how you already knew about a to z but did you know there were more letters beyond z - and things beyond zebra? and he told of these letters and all the weird dr. seussian things they stood for.
    back in the classroom, robert looked up at the alphabet chart above the blackboard and wondered about what all the other things they weren't telling him about in school.
    so he imagined what they might be.
    this didn't help with him doing well in school either.
    he'd dream out the window until one of his teachers moved him to a desk away from the window in hopes that he would pay more attention. he didn't. in 3rd grade he was sent to a special school in an old victorian house. it was like being in a dickens novel. he hated it except for falling in love with a girl in his class and after being dared to by his fellow classmates he kissed her during recess.
    her name was veronica.
    he did even worse in this school than he did in public school and at the end of the year he was allowed to return to the latter. but he had to repeat 3rd grade.
    he did a little better. he certainly didn't want to be sent back to that special school again so he paid attention enough to get passing grades. he was smart enough to do better, but the effort to do so would cut into his dreaming time.
    the only thing that gave him real trouble was long division.
    he wasn't good at math. everything else was easy. everything else was more imaginary than logical. he was good at imagining.

    he used to imagine he was a soldier in war. this was pretty typical boy stuff. and the television was filled with movies and shows about how great world war 2 was fighting the evil nasty nazis and japs.
    then came the english invasion. the beatles, the rolling stones, the animals and all the rest. he then imagined he was in a rock band. he'd listen to their records and play air guitar and sing along. he wanted a guitar. his parents bought him one with the condition that he take lessons. he hated the lessons. he wasn't dexterous enough to play the notes and the chords. it was much easier to pretend. so that's what he did with the guitar. he was doing that once while listening to a record. some high school boys were playing basketball next-door and came over to look in his bedroom window and caught him. they knocked on the glass and laughed at him when he turned around and saw them. he about pissed in his pants.
    once before this he was in school and imagining things using his pencil as a fetish. it was a rocket or a sword or whatever it was at the time. he was so engrossed in this that he didn't hear the teacher call on him. when he did come out of his imagining the whole class was staring at him. he vowed that day that he would better hide what he was doing in his head. no more pencils or any other outward sign that he was actually someplace else. after all, wasn't this why he was being sent to the doctors? wasn't this because he was crazy? he didn't want people to think he was crazy. he didn't want to be crazy.
    that's probably why he stopped reading the bible.
    so, he kicked himself for being caught again by these high school boys looking in his window. at the time he was in middle school and his family - just him and his next older sister at this point - lived in a town where the middle and high schools were at the same place and middle schoolers and high schoolers rode the same bus together. so he was afraid that the next day these boys would tell everyone on the bus what they had caught him doing.
    for some reason they didn't.
    maybe it was because they did the same thing when they were alone.
    who knows?
    maybe it was like masturbation. everybody does it but no one talks about it or admits it. or, they didn't used to.

    he started masturbating when he was younger - before puberty. he was convinced he only did this because he was crazy. but it felt so good.
    then one time something came out when he had his orgasm. it was white. he thought it was pus. he was horrified. he thought that somehow he got an infection stroking his penis all the time. he would have to tell his folks and go see a doctor. it would be further evidence that something was wrong with him,
    he never told anyone.
    eventually he found out what it was.
    around that same time the girls in his class were taken to a special assembly and the boys were sent out on the playground. the girls were being told about menstruation. the boys were being told nothing but to just play around for awhile. but some of the boys knew what was going on, and the other boys, including robert, all huddled around them to hear what it was. this was how he learned the facts of life. the image he came away with was that a man and a woman took off their clothes and lay down next to each other. they then connected themselves together with a rubber hose. the man slipping it over his penis and the woman putting it into whatever she had down there. some sort of hole. then they went to sleep and during the night seeds would travel from the man to the woman and make a baby.
     he knew what girls had down there. he and a neighborhood friend paid one of the girls a dime to take off her pants and let them look at it. years later he slid a mirror under the bathroom door after his sister got out of the shower. she caught him.
    somehow between this and when he fucked his first girlfriend he got it put together right.
    it was probably from playboy.
    in high school he was over at a friend's house who had a band and he would go watch them rehearse. during one of those times his friend showed him some playboys and gave him a subscription card and told him he should send it in and get his own like he had done. "just check where it says you're 18. they won't know." so he did. and after awhile he got his first playboy. his mother handed it to him when he came home from school and asked, "what's this?" he said, "cool, it's my playboy." and took it upstairs to his room. the next day he told his friend that it had worked and he had received his first playboy. he friend was shocked. "you mean you actually did it?" his friend had apparently only been kidding. it wasn't his playboy he had shown him, but his older brother's.
    his parents never said anything to him about him getting playboys in the mail. this surprised him somewhat. before this he had drawn some pictures of naked women. he used to trace them from drawings of women clothing models in the newspaper except he make them naked. he wasn't good at drawing people himself. he hid these pictures in the bottom of his closet. his mother had found them. she sent his father to have a talk with them. his father only said don't let your mother find these again.
    he thought that they might be relieved that he was getting the playboys since they had made no effort to explain anything about sex to him. maybe they thought playboy would do this. which it did. it was in the playboy forum that he learned about cunnilingus and the existence of the clitoris and that women had orgasms too. though playboy didn't explain exactly where the clitoris was - except somewhere in the vaginal area - but did explain that it was the key to the female orgasm and that fingering it or licking it would do the trick. it wasn't until he was married and had access nightly to a vagina that he eventually discovered where the clitoris was. his wife let him know when he found it.
    all this may seem absurd to kids of today. but back then sex was taboo. playboys and such were hidden behind the counter, as were condoms. and if one did want to read about sex playboy was about it. it wasn't like now where you can read sex tips in reader's digest.
    it was because of all this taboo and hidden away stuff that he knocked up his first girlfriend, sarah. he wasn't about to walk into the pharmacy and ask for condoms - which they probably wouldn't have sold him since he wasn't 18 and/or married - because it was a small town and the pharmacist knew his parents by first name. so he and sarah relied on the rhythm and withdrawal methods. that didn't work.
    she was pregnant and they didn't tell anyone. they didn't know what to do. this was before legal abortions too. so they just went along as usual until it became too obvious and her mother finally said something to her.
    she was sent away to have the baby.
    the baby was born on the 4th of july, 1969. he even had an uncle sam - robert's older sister's husband - had he been legitimate and not put up for adoption. robert saw him the next day and never since. he was named robert paul - after him and paul mc cartney.
    she broke up with him the following school year. she told him all he thought about was sex. which was true. all he wanted to do was start fucking her again. he was 18 - what do you want?

    sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll.
    he first did drugs with another girlfriend, leslie, who was letting him fuck her - but who was on the pill. it was pot - the "gateway drug". he didn't smoke cigarettes at the time so he thought he wouldn't be able to smoke a joint. so they ate it with ice cream - a lot of it. it was hard to eat. the ice-cream would slip down easily when he swallowed but the pot would stay in his mouth. it was like eating dirt. but he did it.
    he was stoned for the whole weekend.
    he liked it. but also thought he was crazy and he would stay that way.
    he was still afraid of going crazy.
    not so much other people thinking he was crazy. what did they know? but going crazy even to himself. when he would slip away into imagining whatever and not come back. he imagined some terrible things.
    the worst that he imagined was that he was alone and no one else was real. this used to scare him. he used to see twilight zones like that and they used to scare him.
    he wasn't afraid of monsters. he thought he could always make friends with a monster. and at least he wouldn't be alone. he thought there was a monster in his closet when he was a kid. it scared him only because it was hidden in the dark. he used to send this monster telepathic messages from his bed with his sheets drawn up to his chin and told it that if it was there to please come out so he could see it. then he wouldn't be afraid anymore.
    it never did.
    maybe to the monster he was a monster too. that's what he thought. maybe the monster was scared. why else would it hide in a closet?
    the next drug he did was acid.
    this was in the early 70s, after the psychedelic 60s.
    it was orange barrel.
    by this time he was smoking pot once in awhile with some friends of his. one ex-girlfriend, sigrid - who he hadn't fucked, but fucked over because she wouldn't - and another girl. meg, who he took to see led zeppelin a couple of times who later blew her brain out with her brother's gun.
    he was hanging out with another group of friends who did acid. they hung out in this girl's house, debbi, who would later become his wife. she had a deal with her mother to watch her younger brother and sister while she worked at night as a waitress as long as she could have friends over.
    he became one of her friends through a mutual friend. it was one thanksgiving and his soon-to-be-wife debbi had friends over the following friday to bring and eat leftovers.
    he was invited.
    he kept coming back.
    he had graduated high school by this time but wasn't doing anything. they were all still in high school. he had taken off to be with his girlfriend, leslie, mentioned above - the one he was fucking who was on the pill - who had gone to college in texas. he hitch-hiked down there. but he didn't do anything there either. she got tired of that and sent him home. his parents agreed to fly him back if he agreed to see yet another doctor.
    he did.
    he was seeing this doctor when he met this group of friends.
    he used to make weird montage reel to reel tapes inspired by revolution #9. they listened to them while they were on acid.
    he ended up going to the hospital after taking too much of the meds his doctor prescribed to see what would happen. he found out. they gave him shock treatments. they used to knock him out first. but one time they either didn't give him enough or he was becoming tolerant to it because he didn't go under all the way.
    he received the injection and down he went like a boxer in slow ballet motion receiving that solid blow to the head sending him collapsing bouncing to the mat. yet not all the way down. not all the way out. suspended. it was as how a picture would be sucked down on an old vacuum tube tv to a small white glowing point dot that itself would gradually fade.
    here was gone.
    now was gone.
    am was gone.
    everything was dark.
    he was alone.
    everything soon was flooded up with this terrible electrical vibration.
    there was the remaining point of light he tried to get to.
    it was his only way back to what he had forgotten.
    he woke up back in the hospital.
    he told the doctor he felt it this time.
    the doctor told him he was wrong, that he only imagined it.
    but robert was an expert at distinguishing between what was real and what he imagined. he had kept these two separate for years. he knew what was real.
    that was real.
    he decided that he didn't want it again.
    so he agreed with the doctor that if he got a job he could get out.
    he was allowed day passes to find a job.
    he got a job as a landscaper - which would turn out to be his vocation.
    he got out.
    better still, he had money.
    this group of friends used to go down and live at the jersey shore for the summer. that was where he first did acid. they didn't want to give him any at first because he had just come out of the hospital. they had a group discussion to decide. the acid god spoke on his behalf. they agreed if his debbi would watch him. she did. she ended up watching him for the next 15 years.
    he didn't get off at first. so she walked with him to the beach and the ocean. that did it. it was ok. there were a few times when the shock treatment nightmare came back to him but she was able to distract him away from it.
    so for that summer he would work his landscaping job and then go down to the shore for the weekend and trip.
    it was a good time.
    once he went down with a friend he met somehow somewhere, mark. neither can now remember. as they were driving down the parkway mark looked at a license plate that had the letters rth in it. he said it stood for rat's tooth haven. so that's where they were headed.
    when they got there they got some acid and dropped. they were wandering down the beach and came to a place where there was a rock jetty. they were there to build up the beach again after a hurricane had eaten it away. for some reason the land beyond the jetty looked foreboding. they turned around and went back. while walking along the sidewalk robert sank into it and his friend had to pull him out. the sidewalk was solid but his friend knew what to do anyway.
    it's like that with acid.
    there was another time when he did mescaline and he thought it was snowing. the mescaline gave everyone sore jaws from grinning so much.

    after he worked for the summer he had some money saved up so he quit and hitch-hiked back down to texas. leslie was back in school. he couldn't go to her house because back the previous year in high school her mother found her birth control pills. she was looking for drugs. luckily her sister was able to call him, as he was about to go over there, and warn him. her father would have killed him.
    this time he had money and wasn't staying long so it was ok for him to be there. she was disappointed that he had done acid. she told him he didn't need it. he was already there. but they tripped together anyway. they walked around campus and noticed others who were walking along behind them obviously tripping too. they played percussion on one of the metal sculptures. and these other people did it too. again it took him awhile to get off. that happened to him a lot. he once at the shore dropped a second hit because he thought the first was a dud. as soon as he did, the first one instantly kicked in. he went with someone in their van who was collecting people to come back to the apartments where all his friends were. robert thought they were rounding up all the people, him included, who had gone crazy to haul them away.
    it's like that with acid too.

    he went home again.
    his parents were pissed that he had quit his job and taken off. he got another one as a stock boy in a department store. there were nothing but freaks who worked there. you could get almost any sort of drug you wanted. he worked in the main stockroom at the top of the store. it was his job to send the bins and boxes of items that had been priced down conveyor belts to the various departments. every once in awhile the boxes and bins would fall off and he'd have to go clean them up. this gave him a perfect way to goof off. he'd hang out by the freight elevator which was always slow. if a supervisor came along and asked what he was doing he just say he was waiting for the elevator. when he got back, if his own supervisor noticed he was gone, he'd say he had to clean up a spill on one of the belts.
    he met some guys who worked in one of the departments. they started hanging out together. they had one of the spy mirror windows in their wall facing the inside of the store. they could sit up there and see when their supervisor was coming across the floor.
    he and one of the guys - we'll call him george, even though that was his real name - decided to to do some acid and go to the museum of natural history in new york. they dropped outside. there was this skinny woman who was wearing platform shoes - which were new back then - who looked like if she took them off she would float away.
    they went to each of the floors and wandered around on their own. on one floor with all the dinosaurs robert walked around looking at everything. he then meandered around again still looking but also looking for george. he went around once. no george. he went around again this time specifically looking for george. no george. this was his nightmare. alone. nothing is real. he looked at the people around him. they all seemed old and gray. they looked like the dinosaurs. he began freaking out. suppose there never was a george. the twilight episodes that he had watched that were like this started coming back to him. there never was a george. he started seeing the museum as a museum at the end of time. everything was dead. the people were ghosts. he was alone. he started thinking what to do. he'd go outside find a phone and call the ever-watchful debbi. she'd come into the city and get him. but what if he went outside and called her she didn't exist either. what if new york didn't exist. nothing but the museum at the end of time. and him alone in it. he was at the point of really freaking out when a crowd of people walked by and there was george standing behind them. he ran up to him and almost kissed him. when he told george what had been going on with him he laughed. he said he almost was about to move on to a different floor and figured they'd meet later. thank the gods he didn't. but robert started wondering about george again. how did he miss him? everyone else was drab and gray. george was bright in a red jacket. he began wondering if he really was here or that his mind had conjured him up again when he was about to flip out. was he here talking to himself? he looked around at the other people. no one seemed to be looking at him. so maybe not. he calmed down a little.
    they moved on to other floors but now, at robert's insistence, they stayed together. they were going to go into the hall of man, or whatever it was called, but robert said no. he imagined walking past glass cases with humanoids gradually evolving into present-day man. in that last case would be george.
    they eventually left the museum. they wandered the streets. it still seemed like the museum. robert still wasn't sure.
    he was never sure.
    this was his nightmare.
    it was all gone except for him.
    alone.
    this was god.

    he imagines god in a museum at the end of time with everything that once was being on display.
    or maybe it is everything that is to be.
    both are the same to this god.
    there is no time or space for this god - except what it itself creates.
    this it - for this god is beyond all definitions and duality and characteristics and all other gods and stuff like that that it itself created in order to manufacture this creation.
    this god becomes everything - anything.
    all that is animate or inanimate.
    all is this god.
    one thing that is is that this god is alone.
    alone with all it has created or will create.
    that is it.
    this is a hall of mirrors.
    that is what this god cannot escape.
    it may give or has given that which it creates free will.
    but whose free will is it?
    is it not its own  - a billion trillion times over?

    this god drinks some coffee as it strolls.
    it lights up a cigarette.
    this is its own free will.
    it has dropped some acid awhile ago.
    that is where this all has sprung from.
    it is all hallucination.
    all illusion.
    without that there is nothing - not even nothing.
    it can dive into any part of it.
    be any part of it.
    it can be good.
    it can be evil.
    this is what it has allowed.
    for it has allowed everything possible that it can possibly imagine itself being.
    this god is both the torturer and the tortured.
    it is the giver and the taker.
    it loves and is loved.
    it hates and is hated.
    it is everything.
    anything it may despise is there because it made it so.
    there but for the grace of itself...

    it thinks to itself.
    is there anything missing?
    is there something it has forgotten?
    is there something else yet to be imagined?
    it pauses.
    no.
    it is sure that this is it.
    so now what?
    does it go through and decide what it wants to keep and what it wants to destroy?
    how does it decide when it is all itself?
    does it like itself?
    it has proven to itself that it can be cruel.
    but who has it been cruel to but itself?
    does it eliminate this cruelty? - its own cruelty?
    there is the bottomless pit.
    there is oblivion.
    once cast out never to return.
    but what?
    why?
    can it not face itself?
    what does it fear - except to be alone?
    has anything really happened here?
    who has been hurt besides itself?
    who has done the hurting?

    maybe it should never have taken that acid.
    maybe she was right.
    leave well enough alone.

    but it was fun - is going to be fun.
    and there are the crowds waiting to rejoice and praise its name.
    but who is in this crowd gathered at its temple?
    who but itself patting itself on the back?

    maybe this is as it should be.

    but he eventually came down again.
    down into what passes for the real world - whatever that is. whatever it is, here he was like everyone else doing what everyone else does - survive. that and enjoy as much of it as one can. that's what he was doing. that was his ambition. survive and enjoy.
    it wasn't too long after this that that changed. he was still working. he was still occasionally doing acid - mostly with debbi. he'd listen to music. he was still making his tapes. his parents found him an apartment in the basement of someone's house. he had his own entrance. they gave him their car to use - a '66 metallic green mustang.
    once before he moved out he had a fight with his parents and stormed out taking the car. he drove over to debbi's house and they dropped. when they were getting going his mother called. he had to bring the car back. they sat on her front steps and looked at it. the more he looked at it the more it looked like a giant grasshopper. "i can't drive that thing," he said. he called back and said they were going out to a movie and he'd bring it back later. luckily his mother said ok.
    sometimes he'd do speed at work. he loved speed. doesn't everybody? but it finally made him sick so he stopped.
    speed is like that.
    some people don't stop when they start getting sick. they start clawing at themselves.
    and time went on.
    and this time came that happened to be halloween.
    he was at her house again - though it was a different house by now. they dropped again. they were up in the attic. her younger brother kept sneaking up and spying on them. he was always trying to prove that she and her friends were doing drugs and to tell their mother that that was what his sister was doing while she was at work. he was later to become quite a pothead himself. but for now they never knew when he was up there or not. there were too many shadows and they were too stoned. they looked out the window. they felt the rain. in their acid minds they were tripping about how they were touching rain that hadn't hit the ground yet. it was straight from the clouds. until they looked up and realized it was dripping from the gutter.
    acid is like that.
    the cosmic becomes mundane in an instant - as well as vice versa.
    be careful.
    they were listening to music. they were listening to emerson, lake and palmer - take a pebble. there was something cosmic to him about that the drummer wasn't playing. he wasn't sure quite what it was. they went outside and took a walk in what was left of the rain. on their way out he got stuck in the living room by himself talking with her mother. she was home watching tv and doing some ironing. the living room was bright. everyone's skin had that acid washed look. eyes were diamonds. the tv was surreal. he thought he was blowing it. soon she came down and rescued him.
    then it was time for him to go. he was still high but he could drive. he drove home. at home he looked at himself in the mirror. it is suggested that one do not do this while on acid. but he did. he remembered the song without the drummer. was he the drummer? was he supposed to be here? he wondered why not. was it because this wasn't real? was something else real? he started thinking that he was like alice in wonderland or dorothy in oz. was he asleep or unconscious somewhere else and this was a dream? is that what the song was telling him? he began thinking that it was.
    he went out and got in his car again and started driving. where was he going? how did he get out? how did he wake up? the answer came to him quite clearly. he had to kill himself in the dream in order to end it - in order to wake up in the real world again. he drove out onto the highway. he drove by and under an overpass. there was a concrete wall. he'd come around again and drive into the wall. that would do it. so he did. as he was coming up to the overpass again. he floored it. the last he saw was 110. the overpass came up. he turned into it.
    bam!
    crash!
    then silence.
    what happened? did he do it? his head hurt. he felt a growing lump. he was still in the car. he had to kick the door open to get out. next he was standing on the overpass looking down on the car. the headlights were still on. the left blinker was blinking. he could hear it. everything else was dead quiet.
    dead.
    there was a low fog on the ground.
    he'd seen this in twilight zones before too.
    he was dead.
    was he?
    how did he find out?
    if he wasn't dead, he was in deep shit. he was tripping and had just tried to kill himself. it was going to be back to the hospital for him.
    he decided to go back to debbi's house. it was a long walk but not too far. straight through three townships. he started walking. while he was walking he was thinking. if he was dead, where was he? with the silence and the low fog he thought of limbo. what if he was in limbo or hades? what if he was doomed to always be walking toward a destination where everything would be all right if he could get there? was he sisyphus? but instead of rolling a rock up a mountain, was he walking toward a destination only dividing the distance to it by half and half again in some zeno's paradox limbo hades?
    he kept walking.
    he was halfway there. then half of that. and half again. he was on the front porch. he was halfway to the door. he reached out for the doorbell. half again. reach. reaching.
    then he rang it.
    and stood there.
    soon the door opened. it was her mother. she had been asleep. "i crashed my car," he said. she let him in, went up and woke her daughter and went back to bed. debbi came downstairs. "i don't know if i'm alive or dead," he said. "you're alive and in big trouble," she said, "what are you going to tell your parents? they're probably looking for you. the cops must have called them by now." it was becoming dawn. "i need to wait. i'm still too high."
    they waited. he eventually called them. they were frantic. the cops had found the car but couldn't find him. there was an all points bulletin out for him. he thought about how lucky he was. he had just walked down the main street of three towns with cops looking for him and they didn't find him. he'd be cooked if they did. he was a babbling idiot.
    how did they miss him? he was a wild haired freak walking out in plain sight and they hadn't seen him. how lucky was that?
    he told his parents that he'd hit his head and didn't remember anything. he had hit his head. 110 into a concrete overpass and all he did was bump his head. what turned out to be the case was that there was a guardrail hidden by weeds in front of the concrete wall. his car hit that. it then ricocheted inside the overpass and ended up back on the highway past it.
    so maybe he was supposed to be here. maybe this wasn't just all a dream. and now he'd have to hitch-hike to work. the car was totaled. his father was pissed.
    work didn't last that much longer anyway. neither did him living in his apartment. at work he and his buddies walked out the front door and sat out in the parking lot and toked up. they made the mistake of walking back in the employee's entrance. the security guard asked them if they were on break. they said they were. he told them to show them their time cards. you were supposed to clock out for breaks. they were fired. he moved back in with his folks.

    next spring came and he was still doing nothing. he was listening once to the jefferson starship blows against the empire album. it was about a bunch of freaks hijacking the first space worthy starship and taking off for parts unknown. it sounded good to him. he was looking at the lyric sheet when he saw "we're not putting you on. there's really something going on." that really sounded good. he wanted in.
    a friend of his had turned him on to autobiography of a yogi by paramahansa yogananda who was born in india and came to the us of a back in the twenties. he explained that the world was indeed a dream and that one could escape it and wake up through meditation. he founded the self-realization fellowship in california. that sounded good too. he wanted in on that as well.
    and one day, when his sister was driving him home from somewhere, he told her to stop at the barber shop where he used to get his hair cut as a kid. she said, "you're going to get a haircut?" he didn't answer. he just got out. his hair like everybody's hair back then was a big issue. his family hated it. it was curly long and tangled. his shrink asked him about it. "are you samson?" he asked. "if you cut your hair will you lose your power?" his shrink was a roly poly german in a three-piece suit complete with watch chain.  he'd shoot him up with sodium amathol (truth serum) every time he went to see him.  no, he wouldn't lose his power. what power did he have? none. he was still the troublesome baby of the family. if anything he'd gain power by cutting his hair. he wanted to find out. give them what they wanted and then some.
    the customers stared at him as he came in and sat down. he waited his turn. when it came he got in the chair and said, "shave it all off." the barber argued with him. "let me style it for you. make it look nice," he said.
    "shave it."
    and he did. it all came off. everyone watched. he was gaining his power.
    he walked home feeling the cool early spring air on his head. the owner of the barber shop, al, who he'd known since he was a kid, refused to take his money. he walked into his parents' house. his mother saw him and literally had to find a chair to sit down. power. as he saw his friends they each had similar reactions. more power. debbi was out of town at the time visiting a friend in el paso.  when she came back their friends told her what he had done. her reaction was, "well, that's robert." he knew she was someone special then. but he still had a girlfriend in texas. he took off to go see her and also to go to california to get in on the self-realization and starship business. before he left he gave away all his records.

    texas didn't go so well. he showed up at her address he'd been writing to. leslie wasn't there her roommate said. he said he'd come back later. he was walking around campus when he ran into another friend of hers. she said that she didn't live there any more that she lived at this other place. the other place turned out to be her other boyfriend's.
    oh well.
    she talked to him and said she was sorry but that his letters had been getting crazier and crazier lately. she wasn't too hip on the shaved head thing either. no power here. so he split and went west.
    there was one interesting synchronically to it all though. she was a joni mitchel fan. she had turned him on to her. the spring that this all happened was the spring joni released blue. the boyfriend's name was blue.
    actually, god, or someone like it, had prepared him for this. one ride he got was with this guy who asked where he was headed. he told him - to see his girlfriend in texas. the guy laughed and said, "i bet your girlfriend's fucking somebody else. what are you going to do then?"
    what he did then was to go to the self-realization fellowship in california. they were closed because of some dignitaries visiting, he was told. he didn't go back. they probably told that to every weirdo who showed up, he thought. on to san francisco to see what was up with the starship. he got there and they were closed too. the party was obviously over. the tents had been struck and the carnival left town. so he kept going.
    now back east.
    before he had left he told debbi that he'd come back to drive with her to california. her mother had moved there and left her in new jersey with her married older sister so she could finish high school. she didn't want her driving across country alone. so he wandered back taking the northern route this time. somebody gave him some acid and he dropped on the side of the highway. a vw bus came by. he threw up his thumb. he didn't care if they stopped or not. he felt like walking a while. but they did stop. they were going to colorado. he hopped in the back and tripped his way to colorado. once he was off his mission to nowhere, he was relaxed and things were going his way. people gave him long rides. people brought him home to crash at their place for the night. a few of them were queer. he slept on one guy's couch and woke in the morning to find him sleeping on the floor next to him.  another guy offered to take care of him and buy him anything he wanted. queers were ok, but sometimes were pains in the ass - pardon the pun. lots of them cruise the beltways around cities picking up hitch-hikers with no intention of taking them anywhere except some place to give them a blow job. as soon as you say no thanks they pull over and dump you out - usually not at an exit. you have to hike it to the next spot where you can hitch.
    in texas he was picked up by this nice guy who told him all about this commune he had up in michigan where he could come live if he wanted. he took him back to his one room apartment where there was a double bed. robert said he'd sleep on the floor, that'd be fine. the guy said, oh no, he had to sleep in the bed. he wasn't going to let him sleep on the floor. there's plenty of room, he said. he thought the guy was right and got in the bed. he fell asleep but soon was awakened by the guy laying next to him jerking himself off. he slept on the floor. the next day the guy seemed real put out over having to take him back to the freeway.
    in the midwest he got picked up by this guy who said right off that he was queer and in the army and could kill him before he got out of the car. he didn't try to get out of the car. the guy was nice after that, even though robert told him he wasn't queer. he was confused by that. it used to be all the long hairs that were queer, he said. now all the queers are shaving their heads. that's why i picked you up. he drove him through three states anyway and bought him dinner. he let him out just before a city where he said he was going to go get some. he left him on the beltway. after awhile a trucker picked him up. a big black guy. they went around the beltway and were on the other side when they pulled into a rest area to use the bathroom. robert was waiting for him outside when who should show up but the army guy. "oh, you got a ride," he said. yup. and they were talking awhile when the trucker came out. that's my ride, robert told him, the army guy said to him in his ear, "watch out this guy is queer." oh well. he was giving him a ride.
    the day turned into night and they kept going. robert was dozing when all of a sudden the guy slammed the truck to a stop. robert looked over and the guy was staring straight at him not saying anything. great, robert thought, i'm about to be hauled into the bunk and done over. he was about to jump out when the trucker shifted gears and started to reverse. he'd missed his exit and wasn't looking at him but at the mirror to see when it was clear to back up.
    whew.
    so he made it back east and to his parents' house. they asked him what he was doing and he told them. they weren't too happy. oh well. when he left his mother called him a gigolo. he didn't know what that was but it didn't sound too nice the way she said it. when he did figure it out he guessed his mother called him that because he was "hiring" himself out to accompany debbi. she didn't know that they weren't fucking - yet.
    she didn't like any of his girlfriends. they were all whores. that made him feel really good. and he wondered what his mother had going on in her head. was this the tommy thing again? he didn't know. of course the true nature of the tommy thing he didn't really figure out and remember until when he was older - on his 40th birthday. he had blanked it all out. but he knew there was something to it. he just didn't know what it was. his family thought it was his fixation.
    a painting of tommy used to hang over the mantle since he was little. it always creeped him out. in his absence this time his parents had redone his bedroom into a guest bedroom - hint hint. it was a hippie lair before then. he had his bed on the floor and the walls covered with rock posters and centerfolds from his playboys. for some reason he cut off all their heads before hanging them up. he never has figured that one out. but his mother used it. when his pregnant girlfriend, sarah, was away she was writing to him and mentioned in one of the letters the date they first fucked. his mother must have read it because she had written on one of the centerfolds, "april [whatever it was], bob's big day!"
    was she jealous?
    he didn't want to think about that.
    but when they redid his bedroom they went though all his stuff and found this painting he had done. or tried to do. he couldn't paint worth shit. so he ended up smearing the paint up and down with his brush. it looked pretty cool like ghostly figures in colored rain. he left it like that. his parents liked it too. and to prove how much they loved him they took down tommy's picture and hung that one in its place. - sideways. when he told him it was sideways they told him he was wrong. his mother said it reminded her of sunsets on the lake where they used to have a house when he was younger. they sold it the year he turned 12 and would have been able to drive powered boats. they sent him to navel camp instead.
    ever since hanging the painting they always made sure to tell him how much people admired it. they also made sure to tell him that their friends agreed with them that they were hanging it the right way.
    thanks.
    besides debbi he also invited his friend from the stockroom, george, who he tripped in the museum with. he told him how great hitch-hiking was and he should come out with him after they dropped her off. he agreed. so the three of them took off. she had a map from aaa that drew a straight line across the country. they didn't follow it. they went up to canada instead, across around the great lakes and down into montana, his friend had brought along a chunk of hash for the trip. he hid it under his jacket when they crossed the border. they were stopped. one guy took them aside and was talking to them while another guy searched the car. the guy talking to them was watching their eyes to see if they became a little too interested in where the other guy was looking. the guy who was talking to them asked if they smoked pot. they said sure they had tried it but didn't like it. they let them go.
    they wandered down to yellowstone. robert had been there earlier that spring and said it was beautiful. but now it was summer and everybody and their aunt's dog was there. the traffic was like downtown manhattan. they put up their tent and a ranger came by to tell them that bears came out at night and not to leave food out, which people did, which was why the bears came out. when you enter yellowstone they give you a pamphlet on the dos and don'ts of bears. basically, don't fuck with them.
    they were stuck in this one traffic jam awhile when they finally saw what was causing it. a mother black bear and her cub who was up in a tree. some guy had stopped his car and had gotten out to take a picture. he was tiptoeing around in the woods looking through his viewfinder for a shot. they could see the thought bubble come out of his head as what he saw in the viewfinder was that the mother bear was between him and his car. he quickly tiptoed back.
    the next day they decided to see old faithful. it was quite the tourist trap. it was surrounded by a plaza with benches. there was a clock saying when it would go off again. they were early. they sat down in the front row of benches. what they didn't realize while they waited was all these people had gathered up behind them. they were slightly stoned. robert and his friend were. debbi didn't smoke pot or hash. she was pretty much into speed and acid. when the geyser went off all of a sudden behind them was the sound of a million crickets. it was all the people taking pictures. and there they were in each and every one of them - three freaks turned away from the spectacle with their mouths hanging open. across the country when all these people went home to show their pictures and slides to their friends of their vacation, there they were gawking at them.
    they finally made it to california by way of idaho and oregon. they were at first confused by oregon since they entered from the east. it was all desert. where were all the trees? nobody told them oregon was half desert.
    so debbi was deposited safe and sound, though a little late, to her mother's. robert and his friend took off hitch-hiking. it was a disaster. where robert had always been able to get rides, he and his friend didn't. he guessed it had something to do with two guys together. people didn't trust them. they tried to go down the coast and it took them 3 days to get to big sur. his friend bought some acid from this guy and then they decided to head back east. no rides that way either - plus some guy dumped them out in the desert outside of reno. soon some other guy was dumped there too. all there was was a gas station with a sign, no hippies. they sent robert across to get some water since he had short hair. they grudgingly gave him some. technically he wasn't a hippie without the hair. no body knew what he was. this was years before punk.  this was the era of long hairs and short hairs. the lines were drawn. he was somewhere in the middle - or something. he looked straight but acted like a hippie. he got picked up and taken home once by these people who thought he was awol from the army. they offered to get him into canada.
    anyway, they finally got a ride by some guy who was picking up people in his pickup truck. they were in the back with some others. the girls he picked up got to ride up front with him. that was ok. at least they were finally going - all the way almost to salt lake city. robert thought utah looked like mars. he dropped them off. awhile later the girls came by and said that if anyone asked them they didn't get that ride. apparently the guy had robbed a store and maybe shot somebody and was fleeing the state.
    the next night robert and his friend and the other guy who had been abandoned in the desert with them got a short ride by some guy who let them off at this exit but said he'd come by in the morning and pick them up and take them further. so they camped out. they also decided to do the acid his friend had gotten. they dropped and almost immediately fell asleep. they woke up some time later tripping their brains out. the guy never showed up the next day.
    george had had enough of this. it had taken them a week to get to salt lake city. his friend was going to call his folks and have them fly him back. he gave robert $10 and split with the next ride to the city. robert crossed the freeway and headed west. by himself he was in california by the end of the next day. he went to see debbi. on the ride out to california they had done some making out and feeling around. he decided to see what was up with that. by the time he got back she was living in berkley. she came to get him. they went back to her room in this college hippie house and fucked.
    neither of them had jobs and were just hanging out. her mother was paying for the room. maybe he was a gigolo after all.  they bought some acid and decided to trip at fisherman's wharf in san francisco. once again he didn't get off. once again he took another hit. once again the first one kicked in when he dropped the second.
    they wandered around and decided to go into the wax museum. they went into the chamber of horrors but it looked cheesy. they went into where they had religious figures - mohammed with his back turned. this is where robert freaked out. the whole god thing came back. the song without the drummer came back. he thought he was dead again. they split. she drove them back to her room. crossing the bay bridge he felt like they were a blood corpuscle being pumped along in the stream of traffic. they made it home. hendrix was playing up from downstairs though the windows. they were floating and flying on the music. he hit a bliss state. he was one with everything and everything was one with him. everything was perfect. this was the first of several times he'd hit this while tripping. usually after the peak. but first was the freak out. everything was hell and death and insanity. he wanted to get down down down. but he kept going up up up until he felt like he was going to start screaming. then it'd hit. this wash of peace and calm and vibrational infinity. the universe was singing and he was vibrating with it. he never wanted it to stop. he wanted it forever. but trips don't last. but he was afraid to fall asleep. he thought he was never going to wake up again.
    he did fall asleep.
    he did wake up again.
    it was life as usual.
    he thought that he had to learn how to do this for himself. later he returned to yogananda and meditation. he mailed away for the lessons the self-realization fellowship offered. he tried to meditate. he fell asleep. he soon after they were married tried being celibate. they fucked anyway. he turned back to acid. if he could just get a hold of it and keep it. it took him awhile, but he did finally accomplish that. but not before a lot of shit had to happen first.
    but from now, his soon-to-be-wife was now his girlfriend.
    they decided to go back east.
    hitch-hiking with her was a lot easier than with his friend. people trusted a guy and a girl. they went south to visit her friend in el paso. then onward up back to new jersey. she moved in with some of her friends in one of their parents' house who were letting them stay there until they sold it - they had moved to california too. robert wasn't invited. they said he was too weird. they didn't want him living there. so he moved back in with his parents - into the guest bedroom. he got a job landscaping. debbi got  a job washing dogs in a pet shop. they fucked a lot. they tripped once but this time she freaked out. she saw the void. he had to talk her back from it. he'd been there. the friend's dog talked to him. he said in this growly voice, "i wanna go out." the dog knew he understood him. he followed him around the house looking at him.
    another time when he was tripping - she decided she didn't want to anymore - he asked her to marry him. she said, yes. the next day she asked him if he remembered doing that and if he meant it. he said, yes. they decided to move out to western new jersey - out by where his parents had had the lake house. where they could get a place together. he found another landscaping job. she worked in a nursing home. they had a tiny half a bungalow apartment. the guys he worked with were all stoners. there was lots of work. this used to be farm and lake country but route 80 had just been completed through there and people were moving out there. the suburbs were expanding. he was on the construction crew. they built railroad tie walls. once they built a wall that was supported by sky scraper-sized i-beams out over the side of a cliff and then put in a swimming pool behind it. then they were married. they were married in her father's cocktail lounge. he wore a tux and she wore a gown. it was sort of stupid considering the setting.
    whatever.
    her father's wife was weird. she read cards. not tarot, but regular playing cards. she was witchy. they were over once visiting and his wife, debbi, and her father were talking when robert saw something out of the corner of his eye. he turned his head but it was gone. when he turned back, she was looking at him. "you saw one of my spirits, didn't you," she said, "i knew you would." he got that i'm dead feeling again. he gave her one of his other paintings. she hung it right. it was another failure to paint what he wanted. so he ended up scraping all the paint off with a palette knife. this reveled how the paints had stained the canvas in an interesting expressionistic abstract. he kept it that way too. he had once shown it to his shrink after he told him he wanted to be a artist. he thought he was van gogh. his shrink said it was garbage.
    a year later they decided to have a baby. she got pregnant right away. and they had a son, daniel. however not everything was settled in paradise. by this time they were sharing a house with another couple. robert and the woman started fucking just before daniel was born. it was pretty obvious what was going on. the boyfriend noticed that robert was following her around the house a lot. debbi probably noticed too. she didn't say anything. after awhile they stopped. the next year it was back to california.
    they moved into her mom's house. she was moving some place else in a different town. her brother was a stoner by then.
robert got a job landscaping again. he worked for this guy who was a jesus freak and they spent most of the time in a coffee shop discussing religion. but when robert got hurt - he climbed on a barrel to see how the paint job looked on the roof of the van the guy just had painted and tore his knee - it turned out that the guy wasn't paying into his workman's comp and so he couldn't get it. some christian. debbi went to work in another nursing home while he stayed home and watched daniel. daniel was chewing on a straight clothespin one time and then decided to stick it into an outlet. suddenly he was running down the hall with his eyes bugging out.
    they eventually got their own house - out by some horse pastures. they got a dog for free from some people who both worked and the dog would chew up all the furniture while they were gone. it was a german shepherd with papers. robert tried to get it to chase a stick. the dog didn't get it. he finally gave up and went inside. the dog then showed up at the door with the stick in his mouth. he finally got it.  he chased sticks ever since until he died from being poisoned after they moved to oregon.
    robert and debbi were no longer doing acid - except one time back east when they went to a grateful dead show at watkin's glen. she said, "go buy me an acid." there were people selling it everywhere. they dropped while the dead were doing an extended sound check. after they left, robert and debbi walked back to their car to get warmer clothes.  along the way were people stoned totally out of their minds. by the time they got back to where they were sitting the whole air had turned into madness. it was like night on bare mountain. there was howling and screaming and the sound crew were fucking around with the sound system to add to it all. they decided to split. they got back to their car and drove back to the town of watkin's glen - the concert was at the racetrack. in town all they saw were headlights coming into town. they asked a cop how to get out. he said the only way was driving down the sidewalk. they had a beetle at this time so it fit. they got out of town. along the whole ride back to new jersey almost every car coming the other direction was full of hippies going to the show.
    in california, they had old jersey friends living in san francisco. one was the guy from rat's tooth haven days, mark. the other was the guy whose parents' house debbi lived in when they first got back to new jersey from california, doug. mark was married to another friend. at their wedding robert had faked dropping a contact lens on the floor and had much of the wedding party looking for it - until she came along and said, "you don't wear contact lenses," and put a pissed off stop to the whole thing. his friend probably doesn't remember any of this. he doesn't remember most of what robert does. but robert is probably making most of it up.
    he does that.
    none of any of this may have happened.

    he was still making tapes. they had cable hook up that they weren't paying for. it was on when they moved in. they didn't have a tv but could pick up the tv audio. he used a lot of that. he was still painting. he sort of figured out this accident thing with his painting. he tried to make accidents happen. sometimes it worked. he had also been making large collage construction pieces. he had made one back in new jersey which he traded to his boss for a trailer that they hauled their stuff out in. other than that it was landscaping. he worked for a nursery. he was the head landscape guy. he would bid jobs and design them. he'd go through the sunset book and pick out the weirdest plants he could find. that was unless the people just wanted gravel and junipers. but some people let him have his way with their yards. he planted them like crazy.
    they didn't like california. just sun and rain. no seasons. and everything was brown. they once went back east when his mother was dying in the summer. new jersey looked all green. the people looked green. he thought he could see stuff growing. around about that time debbi was pregnant with their second baby, which turned out to be a girl, rachel. when she came into labor debbi's mother came to pick up daniel. they made sure the car started because it was raining and sometimes the car wouldn't start in the rain. it did. so off they went. except the car died halfway there. it wouldn't start again. they had to hitch-hike to the hospital. luckily someone stopped and brought them right there.
    at xmass some guy would come down from oregon to sell trees at the nursery. he said robert should come up and work there and drive logging trucks. they went up to check it out but no one was hiring. it was the beginning of the timber crash. oregon was slipping into a depression. they still wanted to move up there anyway. they knew some people who lived there. some guys from the landscape company back in new jersey. also the couple they shared the house with who had gotten married and were now divorced. robert decided to go up and see if he could find landscaping work. the guys lived in eugene which was kind of a hippie college town. he went to see them first. they sat around and ate a bunch of mushrooms all the time. he didn't find work there. next he went to salem to stay with the guy of the couple awhile. he drove out to coast to look but there was nothing. when he came back the guy was out of town. so that left her. he spent the night with her and they fucked some more. when the guy came back he got him a job with the company he was working for. so he had to find a house. he took the first one he saw. it looked ok to him. the living room floor had a warp in it. but big deal. then he went back to pick up the family and bring them up. when debbi saw the house she said, what a dump. maybe it was. but they moved in anyway. they had two cats but they were chased off soon after they got there. and, as we said, the dog got poisoned. but such is life. they and the kids were ok.
     so he worked until the end of the summer. one thing he liked about working landscaping was that it was seasonal. he usually got laid off for the winter and he got to sit around and collect unemployment. that suited him just fine. and that happened this time except when he went to apply for unemployment he was told that he hadn't been in oregon long enough to claim anything. he would have to file for an out of state claim to california. that could take months to go through. meanwhile they had to go on welfare. that was a bitch. the welfare people were not nice at all. when he went in for orientation some woman berated them - men with families - about how could they not support their own families and weren't they ashamed of themselves. she also told them to bathe before their next meeting because the room stunk. great.
    he was given a job to go apply for at a mushroom growing plant. he did. he had an interview and was told that there was a training period and that at the end of it he'd be making less money than what he'd get landscaping. he told them that when the weather changed he'd probably go back to that. they understood. they didn't want to invest time and training on someone who was only going to leave at the end of it. simple. but his case worker didn't think so. she told him he had to take any job no matter what the pay - well, she more yelled this at him than told him. he told her, fine, but also about the training and that he'd leave after they trained him when landscaping started again. that was the reason they didn't hire him, not because he asked for too much money. she said that was ok then. but he was still pretty pissed and when he got home he broke a few things imagining it was her.
    the only thing that saved that winter was more acid. he was parked in front of a store while debbi went in to get something. some guy came up to the car and asked him if he wanted some acid. sure. so he arranged to meet him and got some.
    previously he had been thinking of making music. he wanted to start a band. a weird abstract band that played weird abstract music. avant garde as it were - though lennon had said avant garde was french for bullshit. the same idea anyway.  he put an ad up in a music store looking for people. salem was not the place to do that. he got a few calls. one guy who thought playing a guitar with a samurai sword was what he was talking about. no it wasn't. but one guy did call who seemed interested in finding out what he was talking about. we'll call him eric - though that's his real name. he showed up. he played guitar. he was kind of a rock and roller - ac/dc vein. but he was weird himself - though kind of a hick too. anyway they started hanging out. they did make a tape of eric playing guitar and robert singing from his notebooks that he been writing in since he was in high school. he had started out writing lyrical song type riming stuff imitating music he was listening to at the time. hippie trippie music.  he then moved on to more free verse which was where he was at now. the songs they did worked. it was totally improvised. eric would play some riff and robert would choose something to sing. but that's about as far as it went for then. nobody else had called. mostly they hung out. then they started doing acid together when robert had got some.
    acid seems to be the theme here, doesn't it?
    to robert acid was life. it was life as its most intense. he saw and felt things that he never would otherwise. things that lay buried within himself. some of it scared the living shit out of him. some of it was enlightening, not only about the world but about himself. acid was his way to god - if there was one. he thought there was. all this consciousness came from somewhere. just neurons firing didn't explain what it was. he thought of his head as a radio receiver. thoughts came from somewhere that didn't come from him. he didn't hear voices or anything - though he talked to himselves a lot. but that was a way to sort out exactly what it was he was thinking by imagining having conversations with someone else. sometimes it was someone he knew. sometimes it was someone who he made up. but these conversations usually could bring out what was really going on inside his head. that and his writing.
    so he and eric did acid that winter of his discontent. debbi had opted out. but she still watched him. she watched everything. once robert was tripping and he walked across the living room with some coffee to the tv. they had one now. stepping over the warped floor and passing by the light somehow gave him the impression that he had stepped over a hyper-dimensional edge from one world to another. this freaked him out. he told her - or her double - about this. she asked what was the difference between the two. he said nothing, they were exactly the same and he didn't know which one he was in. she said if both are the same then what difference does it make which one he was in. she had the common sense of the two. unfortunately he used her for this. he depended on her being down to earth and taking care of business, like the kids and paying the bills and stuff, while he had the luxury of being the freaky artist. when he got paid he handed his paycheck to her and forgot all about it. she'd give him money as he needed it.  that would come back to kick him in the ass eventually.
    once eric and him were tripping. they started out in his room listening to one of his tapes. that got too freaky. they came out and everything was electric. they had only just dropped. eric said they were in for a ride. they listened to the radio which was playing some weird space drama. robert thought they were listening to the control room of a spaceship and they were somehow on it. they were getting away. this was the starship. the radio transmission was actually some ethereal transmission that gathered up people and spirited them away. but why? he thought it was because the world was being destroyed or was destroying itself and they were being shifted dimensionally away from it as it was happening. was this the rapture? he was beginning to panic when he heard in his head the words, mindshift. then he was hit with that acid vibrational calm again. everything was cool. whatever it was, whatever was going on, he was cruising. of course no one else knew this was going on. he just sat there digging it. debbi walked by and said, you filled your pipe about a half hour ago, you ever going to light it? he lit it.
    afterward when they were coming down somewhat he and eric went for walks. it was usually early morning and the streets were deserted. they were walking by the state hospital when they noticed flashing lights. eric said, oh they're bringing somebody in. but when they got closer they noticed that it was actually a tow truck pulling a car out of the bushes. they could see in the frost on the expansive lawn where the car had looped around some trees and finally drove into the building. they asked the guys what happened. they didn't say anything. they got in the tow truck and drove away like nothing happened at all. they wondered if it did or were they still high?
    another time they were walking downtown and a cop stopped them. he got out of his car and walked over to them and said, ok, who am i? i mean, who are you? he and eric tried not to laugh. they handed him their ids and he looked them over. is this you? he asked. yes it is, they replied. hmmm, said the cop, color of eyes. what color are your eyes? and he started zooming the flashlight in and out from their faces. was this guy trying to goof them out? he finally let them go. it seemed every time they went out walking something weird happened. they didn't know if it was really weird or if it was just them. probably a little of both. the mind universe thing. what you see is what you get.
    through his job he met another guy who we will call tom - his real name too. they both worked for this crazy man workaholic. he once was talking to them and his son came crying up to him about something. he pushed him aside saying, "what you crying about?" without even listening to what it might have been. that pretty much reflected his attitude. tom played guitar too. he was a drunk though. but he was funny. he once cooked chicken for robert and debbi. it was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. he could be belligerent sometimes. he stayed at their house once when they had gone camping. but rain forced them to cut the trip short. when they got back tom and this chick were running around their house naked. they once recorded some music. robert had rented an organ and a guitar and amp. they played in the garage and made a lot of noise. some of it was good. unfortunately the tape they made was ruined. robert found that he could play keyboards - though not how anybody else did. he played in the key of x - which is any note is as good as another. he loves discordant music. that's the type of music he was looking for. to most other people it sounds terrible. but then, a lot of people can't handle acid either. life was discordant. why shouldn't the music reflect that? harmony is for classical and new age sissies.
    the tape of eric and robert singing his poetry was stolen or lost along the way somewhere too. robert bought a korg synthesizer. a few tapes of him playing that along with eric on guitar survive. a lot of it good - and improvised. all the music was improvised. that fit robert's theory of accident art. but that's as far as any of that went. they never played anywhere. it wasn't until later that robert got some people together that actually played in public. the band was called, wasted space. that came from this time in new jersey when he and some of his work buddies were loading stuff in the back of a truck that barely fit. one of the guys started moving the stuff around to fit more in and said, gotta get rid of all this wasted space. another guy said, hey, that's a good name for a band. it was a good name for a band - especially robert's band because that's pretty much what it was and amounted to.
    years later, tom died of cancer.