Meeting Mary:
In the first week of my new friendship with Bones there occurred another chance meeting that would radically alter our futures. Within a few hours of meeting me Bones knew that I was a deep and enthusiastic student of history and literature. A few days later he was on a Bart train (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to El Cerrito on some errand. Getting on the train beside him was a very pretty woman in an electric wheelchair. He assisted her in and sat beside her and started up a conversation. She must have been in her late twenties. She had multiple sclerosis but was still able to function as a teaching assistant, working on her University degree, in what subject? History. Her name was Mary. He had his guitar with him so she asked about his music and mentioned she’d like to hear him play his original songs. He told her he’d be glad to and that he had a friend who was a history buff whom she might also like to meet. Before the ride was over a date and an afternoon were set and a few days later we were sitting in the living room of a quaint cottage, drinking tea, Bones playing her his songs and all of us chatting happily. We passed a few hours in this pleasant way. She said she had few visitors and would love for us to come again. We agreed. Just before leaving Bones asked to use the bathroom. He came back into the living room holding a glass vile of white powder that had been sitting right on the bathroom sink and asked what it was. ‘Oh, that’s methedrine, she says’, ‘I have a chemist friend who makes it for me. The medications I have to take make me drowsy and I need it to do my schoolwork’. We asked to try a line and sure enough it was the real McCoy.
A few days later we were sitting in her living room again, chatting away on a sunny afternoon, this time with one more guest, the chemist. He was a polite and respectable looking young man, about Mary’s age, with very short hair. He could have passed for a young Republican. He was far along in his post graduate degree in chemistry and had access to all the labs and supplies and told us that late at night he was often the only one there and could make anything he wanted. We told him we really liked his stuff and would like to get some. ‘Not a problem’ he said, ‘but you might also like some methaqualone to help you sleep after doing speed. I make that for Mary too’. ‘Sounds good’, we replied.
A few days later we had three vials of excellent speed and a large bottle of methaqualone in powdered form, about a hundred doses. It’s a strong muscle relaxant and does put one to sleep. On the street it comes in the form of large white pills called ‘914’s or ‘quacks’. When he gave us this present at Mary’s house we told him that it was so much we should give him some money. He said, (just to be polite I suppose) that twenty dollars would be plenty. The amount of methedrine in the vials was about nine grams, so the street value at that time would be around six hundred dollars. But he didn’t seem to know this or that the quality of his work was far superior to anything one might find on the street. We had no plans to sell it and very rarely did, except in small amounts to a few girls who kept begging us for some. But this was later on. Having been given it for free we laid it out for visitors to our pad for free, a coffee table treat.
We walked away from that house that afternoon a little stunned. We gave one vile to Phil and kept one each. The stuff was so strong that I would usually do two small lines in an evening and head to the cafe Med. and read intensely for six hours straight, then head home to the ‘Plough’ around midnight for a few beers, then upstairs to sit around and talk till three or four in the morning. Some nights, with more guests we did more lines, staying up till dawn. The methaqualone was always there in a jar in our bathroom to put us to sleep. A small amount on the tongue washed down with water did the trick, in about fifteen minutes.
We visited Mary every few days that bright December, in the late afternoons. She probably didn’t know it, but it was our first order of business of the day, such were the hours we kept. A week after the first transaction we met her friend again. He asked how we liked it and if we’d like some more. Now the word ‘more’ can be interpreted in two ways. We said ‘sure’, thinking the first way, even though we still had most of our first parcel left, (except for Phil). Our chemist was thinking the second way and asked if nine vials would be O.K. We were surprised, almost shocked at such an offer, but kept ‘poker faces’ and replied, just as before: ‘sounds good’, and settled on one hundred dollars as the price. We walked away amazed. It was as if the goddess ‘Fortune’ had come down from heaven and kissed us.
A few days later we met at Mary’s. He delivered the goods, (worth thousands) and as he counted the five, twenty dollar bills we handed him, seemed very pleased. Then he told us he was leaving Berkeley for good at Christmas in a week and could do one last transaction, and that he needed some cash for his travels. We settled on twenty-seven vials for three hundred dollars. I don’t know why it was always in multiples of three’s and seven’s but this wasn’t anything near your usual street deal and nothing to hem about. We considered him an idiot-savant, a very talented chemist, a five star chef in that department, but totally ignorant of the value of his product, as if he’d never read a newspaper in his life. A few days later the deal was done and we never saw him again. We walked away, stunned. Someone had sold us a fortune for nothing. How often does that happen? I regret to say, and feel bad about it, but we only visited Mary a few times after that. She deserved a hundred more visits, she was such a huge game-changer in our lives. She was a beautiful and brave soul sitting in her wheelchair, conversing with us, always cheerful and smiling, glad that we came by and shared our time and company with her. I suppose she had very few visitors.
Oh Mary, though I speak only to a ghost, long dead, I still remember your beaming smile as you opened your door to our visits. You only had a few more years to live and you knew each would be far more painful and anguished than the last. I can’t imagine your plight. Yet I saw the light in your face, radiant, unearthly, life itself unmasked, naked, beautiful.
Our paths converged for a little over a month. Bones sang you his songs. We talked about history and books for some hours. But it wasn’t even ‘ancient history’. You studied modern, social history. I would listen and offer up what little I could but it wasn’t the words or topic that engaged me, it was the inner voice and spirit that kept you so focused on life.
Looking back, I wish that I chose to visit you daily, as a friend, to the end. I would have learned more valuable lessons than from the poems of Keats and Shelley, whom I was reading at the time. You were a rare example of living poetry, soon to expire. But the very drugs you gave us swept us away like a strong rip tide to parties and nights you couldn’t visit. I’m sure I would have found a whole other universe of richness had I spent those months sitting with you in the light and silence of your living room. But the loud revelries and swirl of new acquaintances made us forget you. What incredible mistakes we make at twenty-three.
I’m about to go on with my narrative, leave her behind, but a thought occurs to me. Why didn’t I do both? I could have visited her several hours a day and wander off to my evening books and my ‘boogie nights’. I still had my valid stack pass to the Doe library and read there or in the coffee shop each night. She was only three stops away on the Bart, pocket change. But I was too shy to go alone. It didn’t happen and I regret that, because in my dreams I thought of her, her sad fate, her face and her sitting all alone, facing death.
