Washington Square contained one avant-garde ballet company — free-form antigrav dancing to memorized but unplayed music — one dissociated light show that couldn’t quite cope with the afternoon sun, and the entire population of the Greater New York region. The piquant tang of caprylic acid hung over everything like a panning review.
We stopped in the uncrowded east side of the park and planned. “Separate,” I told my trusty aides. “We’ll work through the crowd individually, Otherwise we won’t get through at all. Look for The People.” That’s what we called our expanded peer group in those days, when we were still a minority. “Tell them — it’s four-ten now — tell them to meet us in The Garden at five. Got that?”
They had it.
“Groovy. And be sure you’re there at five, too. Don’t forget.”
They promised to be there.
“Then there’s nothing left to tell you but Good Luck,” I told them. Then I yelled, “Charge!” and we charged.
The Square was as jammed as a subway at rush hour. Everyone was pushed into the most intimate and compromising physical contact with everyone else whilst nervously pretending there was nothing going on — a kind of casually erotic situation of which I’m generally quite fond, but hell to hunt for people in. You can’t push through such a press, you either have to climb over it (which will rapidly impair your popularity) or get down on your hands and knees and crawl through a forest of anonymous legs (not the best way to find specific people, unless you’ve made a fairly close study of legs).
Naturally, I crawled. Sean, I later learned, tried the other approach, but was soon converted to mine. Anyhow, I crawled, and no one even tried to kick me. America is losing its spirit of fun.
By a winning blend of luck and intuition, I located Stewart Fiske and Pat Gerstein standing together near Holley’s bust, just beyond the stage where all that unheard music was going on. Stu’s boots didn’t match — same color, nothing else the same — and Pat was barefooted.
I popped up in front of them, told them what was happening, explained as little as possible, and got them to promise to meet me at The Garden. Then, after a quick look at the dancers — they were awful — I submerged again and went on with my search.
Sativa and Sean were going through much the same routine, with only minor variations. Sean, for instance, had his hand stepped on by a moderately ugly girl. “I think she done it on purpose, man. You know, like tryin’ to strike up a conversation. Didn’t hurt me none.”
Sativa discovered three male teenyboppers squatting in a circle in the middle of the leg-forest, unconcernedly smoking what they firmly believed was marijuana, which was still illegal then. “They were nice. Pretty! They wanted to turn me on, but I told them I only smoke pot.”
Michael, too, had his share of quaint adventures, wrestling the Tripsmobile — our bus — from the far east crosstown to MacDougal Street and fighting against impressive odds to park it within walking distance of The Garden.
“She’s still got a tendency to try to go over traffic instead of through it. In fact, she got halfway up a police car before I caught on. I thought she was just being friendly.”
Nevertheless, we were all safely established in The Garden of Eden’s supercooled darkness by quarter to five, and almost everyone we wanted was either there or coming. It was really quite a feat, considering.
19
“SERIOUSLY, CHESTER,” droned the double reed of Andrew Blake, “What’s this really all about? You can tell Me.”
“Wait a bit.” I was tired of repeating my long, involved story, and even more tired of trying to condense it for popular consumption. “Mike’ll tell you all about it. Just wait till five, okay?”
The Kallikak box was playing our old arrangement of “Love Sold in Doses,” and I was trying to remember the arrangement I’d pulled on Ktch and his fellow crustaceans last night, but I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the tune, not even while I was listening to it. This was a very odd sensation.
“Chester? Mr. Anderson?” That sweet and worried voice belonged to Karen Greenbaum, who was still going around in not quite circles with Saint Andrew, though by now you’d think she’d know better. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“You look so — Funny. You know.”
“Oh. I’m just trying to remember something that I know too well to recall.”
That seemed to satisfy her.
The Garden was full of our people, a professionally motley crew, with more coming in all the time. It was rather flattering to see how large a crowd our people were. I mused idly that it would pay some Village businessman to open a coffeehouse catering pretty exclusively to our crowd, then I remembered that that’s what The Garden of Eden was and gave up musing for Lent. It was three minutes to five.
I turned to Michael the Theodore Bear and said, “Do you have some kind of speech worked out?” He looked worried. If it were anyone else, I’d say he looked nervous.
“That’s the trouble,” he fretted. “I’ve got three of ’em, and I don’t know which one to use.”
“Don’t sweat it. You’ll probably have a chance to use ’em all.”
Sean and Sativa were holding hands and things, oblivious to the crowd and The Garden and Sativa’s current karma — unless maybe Sean was part of that — an island of horny serenity in a lake of curious hipsters. Stu, Pat, and Kevin were huddled off in a nearby corner singing four-part harmony.
Four-part harmony? That brought me up. Oh: they had Little Micky with them. It’s fairly hard to see Little Micky when there’s anybody else in the room, unless you’re looking for him. He’s quite small. (He was also singing flat, which made him even harder to see.)
Sandi Heller and her old man Leo were sitting with a bunch of people named David several tables away from mine. Leo was grinning like a dentist’s testimonial. Sandi, assisted by years of drama study and dance experience, was totally failing to communicate with me by means of beautifully expressive gestured and neat pantomimes. Nicely picturesque.
“What’s happening?” I yelled to her when it became obvious that she really did want to tell me something.
“Mutter jumble mutter garble Baby,” she explained.
“Oh.”
And then it was five o’clock. Joe pulled the plug on the kallikak box, which had next to no effect on the noise level of the room. Michael, having previously obtained permission to do so, climbed up on the table. He spread his hands wide like an old-time revivalist and said, “Ladies and gentlemen!” in stentorian tones I’d never before suspected he possessed.
Nothing happened.
He said it again, even more loudly, and nothing continued to happen. Somehow he wasn’t communicating. He tried it again, to be fair, and when it didn’t work that time either, he puffed out his chest, stood on tiptoe, arched his spine, threw back his head, opened his mouth too wide, and hollered, “COOL IT!” so loudly the whole room rang like a cymbal.