I studied integration in high school math classes. My friend Rich studied disintegration, physical and mental, with a steady and in many ways elegant journey into alcoholism and drug abuse. He exuded charisma. He had a charm about him even when falling down, because he would do it in some novel and surprising way you'd never seen before or thought was possible, and you would talk about for weeks afterwards.
Here's an example: His parents had a great deal of disposable income (thus the convertible Mustang constantly repaired) because his mother's parents were rich. They didn't work. They drank. They were rarely at the house on weekend nights, social engagements filling their calendar. Rich was an only child. From the time I met him he would talk of the inheritance he was to receive from his grandmother the day he turned twenty five, several hundred thousand, not exactly conducive to a youth in pursuing career choices. So he followed in his parents footsteps.
One of his parent's purchases was a houseboat they kept in the delta of San Francisco Bay, near Rio Vista. The summer I turned eighteen we decided we would drop acid one sunny day and tool around in the water on said boat, Brad, Jim, Rich and I, which we did, Rich conveying us in his Mustang along with two coolers full of beers. It was a fine excursion which the LSD only amplified, Rich drinking more than twice the beers we drank, and by mid-afternoon, steering the boat in zig-zag patterns at slow speeds through an endless expanse of bulrushes and channels, in an attempt to take an urgent piss, he abandons the wheel, stumbling to the back of the boat, and with a lit cigarette in one hand and an open beer in the other, overshoots his planned post and falls straight into the muddy, eight foot deep waters of the Bay.
In the small cockpit of the boat Brad and I are within feet of this debacle and within seconds, seeing both his arms shoot up from this murky liquid realm, we are able to each lean over and grab one and pull him back into the boat. His clothes, his hair, are dripping wet. But with this sobering plunge he shakes his head, glances at his hands, and smiles as he sees that his cigarette is still lit and his beer, as he takes a swig, uncontaminated by the Bay waters.
To this day I don't understand how someone could fall head-deep off a boat and manage this. We wondered at it like a miracle at the time. But that was Rich, miraculous and lucky even in his falls, and now I, fifty years later, am writing them down, the memories as fresh as yesterday. What does that signify.
Later, just before dusk and driving homeward, we unanimously agreed we were famished from our liquid diet all day and stopped at some neon-lit, roadside restaurant. Our LSD was now at the peak of its power and we quickly took a seat in the back of this dimly lit and near empty restaurant to order our meals. The sunlight outside had been so bright it took minutes for our eyes to adjust, but as they did I noticed that our waitress was old, in her fifties if not more, and that she was wearing a leopard skin mini-skirt and fishnet stockings. Her pale, shrivelled skin revolted me. My friends had the same reaction. Now as our eyes adjusted we glanced up from our menus and noticed that every wall of the room was covered in the heads of dead animals, hundreds of them, so close and tight that the owner must have run out of space for all his trophy kills. They were embalmed with glass eyeballs staring directly at us and if such realistic heads could ever speak, they were doing it now in my hallucinogenic mind.
We were all dazed and mesmerized by the sight and gazed in perfect unison, swivelling our necks at the full panoply of the slaughter of the room. There were bears, lions and perhaps even tigers (like in The Wizard of Oz) moose and antlered deer. But what struck me was a zebra and a gazelle. "You can't kill those", I said out loud in indignation, "that's illegal".
This coming from an eighteen year old, high on acid, made Rich laugh out loud. He always saw the sublunary ironies of life (which is why I liked him so much, and he me). In an instant we all stood up and left that place pronto, cursing the whole town as we stopped at a drive-through burger joint down the road, feasting like piranhas on large chunks of hamburger while swearing never to return.
We finished that day's adventure in Rich's basement den downing a few more beers, smoking joint after joint. That was one day's adventure. I have a few more I'll share.
By the way, I wrote a novel four years ago called "Roland House" about a chip that people can ingest which amplifies brainpower a hundred-fold (Elon Musk has a company in SF working on this exact development right now). At the end of the first chapter I introduce the character of Rich. I use my fortuitous and happily rich experiences in real life to enhance the veracity of the near-future science fiction.
If you haven't read it, here's the link, hope you enjoy:
https://www.publish0x.com/robert-oreilly/roland-house-xnnxllm
One afterthought: In my first chapter I also introduce a young woman named 'Naomi'. She wears a tee-shirt at a beer party put on inside out and wet and it spells 'I MOAN'. You can't make this stuff up. I admit it now. This was a girl at my son's high school graduation party who stepped in my front door, a skinny but strikingly beautiful and vivacious blond who impressed me indelibly, not with her tee-shirt but with the fact that she choose to talk, sitting on the couch beside me for a long half-hour, me, the only one over fifty in the house while everyone else, all fifty of them were teenagers partying. We conversed intelligently and politely on a range of topics. She was impressed that I hosted such a party and smoked the joints passed to me. I guessed she never had such a father. She drifted off later into her own crowd. But I'll never forget her. This is what forms a writer. Even typing these words, the memory of her that night comes back clearer than ever. Some people unfold and illuminate for an instant. I'm sure everyone has their moment. Great photographers capture this. Writers try. But that moment, it supersedes everything. It's the instant we shine with an unearthly glow.
