Coda (Adagio)
One late afternoon in August of 1969, I went to Robert Moses State Park on Long Island and walked about a half mile west of the main beach. Tranquility was there to greet me. The waves were glassy, and they didn’t pound the shore as they normally do. Instead, they gently curved in upon themselves and rushed onto the shore in soft, 
hushed tones. My sandals hung from my left hand, my shirt was tied around my waist, and the foam from the cresting waves enveloped my feet. The sand took on numerous shadows as the sun dipped toward the horizon.
It was one of those reflective walks where my mind ran freely and my breathing slowed when a sudden, cutting call of “Hey there!” startled me. The call came from someone heading toward me from the west; the sun devoured his features. When he was within ten feet, he emerged from the blinding rays as Gerry Flanagan.
“Gerry!” I said, both surprised and disappointed.
“How ya been, my Man?” he extended his hand to me like a car salesman. “It’s been ages”
“Two years to be exact,” I responded.
Gerry and I were in many classes together and, in his view, this constituted an eternal bond. He hadn’t changed: carrot red hair, a sea of freckles covering pronounced cheekbones, and flattened nose with large nostrils covered in zinc oxide. On his head was a baby blue pork pie hat with a madras band.
We quickly ran through the same litany of catch-up questions. I found out that Gerry was working at his father’s stationary store for the summer, was “burning it up” at Penn, and that he had a girlfriend that was so hot she required a welder’s mask to look at. As I was trying to force the conversation toward wrap up, he hit me with an unexpected question:
“You smoke pot?” he asked casually.
“Yeah”, I answered cautiously.
“You remember, Tony Bartollo from high school?”
Actually, I didn’t but wasn’t given the chance to get that out. Apparently, Gerry ran into Bartollo at the Shore Club; he had recently returned from a tour in Vietam and managed to bring back some marijuana. According to Gerry, “one hit will shoot your mind out to the Pleiades.”
My face assumed that dumb ass grin when one really doesn’t know how to respond. It was a line I’ve heard dozens of times already and, as with birthday gifts, I was generally disappointed. All I wanted now was to continue up the beach.
“That’s cool Gerry, but I’m meeting someone at . . . “
Before I could get the words out, Gerry reached into the pocket of his blue oxford shirt and, digging for a moment, pulled out a joint. He then took my left hand, placed the joint into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
“This is for you, buddy. Got more at home.”
I graciously thanked him, and we parted ways. I stood for a moment waiting for some distance to form between Gerry and myself before slowly opening my hand. There, bent into the shape of a horseshoe, sat the skinniest, most pathetic looking joint I had ever seen.
Coda (Allegro)
The Three Sister’s Community Park consisted of a little league field with two sets of dark green bleachers and two cinder block dugouts in desperate need of paint. For several summers, I played for the Elks Club in Little League. After that, I never played again. I couldn’t decide which was worse, watching baseball or playing it.
Separating the playing field from the road were the tennis courts: six to be exact. They were concrete, and each contained cracks of varying lengths some with blades of grass muscling their way to the surface. It wasn’t Wimbledon, but it was free, and at least one court was always available. Vince and I had been playing regularly for several summers and were beginning to hit a solid groove.
I drove to the courts in my cream colored 1960 Mercedes sedan. I wasn’t rich, a bit pretentious perhaps, but not rich. It was an eight-year old entry-level sedan with over 200,000 miles on it. The seller also gave me a deal because he was Greek and so was I. It cost me $600.
It was the interior that made the car: a pair of richly cushioned bucket seats upholstered in wine-red leather separated by a plump and accommodating arm rest. An oversized steering wheel, composed of chrome and an off-white ceramic, dominated the dash. My only tape, Disraeli Gears, by Cream, hung half way out of the eight-track cassette player that was installed only a month before.
Vince and I finished two sets of tennis and decided to call it an evening. As it was late summer, the sun was setting sooner. Its rays poked like blades of ice through the scrub pine and oak that lined the cyclone fence demarcating the outfield. A moist breeze from the nearby bay drifted by as we sat on one of the benches by the courts wiping the sweat from our heads with towels.
“I ran into Gerry Flanagan at Robert Moses last week.” I said breaking the silence.
“Sorry to hear that?” “How is he?” came the obligatory reply.
“I don’t know. Good I guess . . . he’s still a bit of an ass.” I was wiping the sweat from the back of my neck. “However, he did lay a joint on me.” I said with a bit more enthusiasm.
“You got a joint from that preppy jerk?” “Wow, even Flanagan gets high.”
“I have it in the car; want to give it a try?”
Vince was experiencing similar frustrations as I had getting stoned, so he was hesitant to answer.
“Ah, I don’t know; I’m pretty tired . . . might just call it a day.”
“C’mon . . . I’m not ready to go home yet, and it’s a great night. What the hell.”
And it was a great night. The temperature dropped as the sun faded, and there was just enough of a breeze to cool us down after our sets. The crickets began their rhythmic cadence, and the clouds were a dark steel blue and shaped very much like fish scales. It was what fishermen refer to as a mackerel sky.
“All right, you’re on.” Vince began to brighten up. “You grab the joint, and I’ll meet you in center field.”
I had the joint in my glove compartment pressed between the pages of the car’s owner’s manual to straighten it out. It took me a while to find it, but there it was: straight as a nail but pathetically thin.
As I walked out past the pitcher’s mound, it struck me how small the field actually was. When I played in grade school, the outfield seemed endless and hitting a home run near impossible. Now I could easily throw the ball from home plate deep into trees and brush that lined the fence.
Vince sat crossed legged facing the fence; he was mostly in shadow.
“I hope you have matches.”
Vince smoked cigarettes and happened to have some in his tennis bag. Relieved, I dropped to the ground opposite him. I offered him the joint to light.
“What the fuck, is this?” he said half laughing half annoyed. “I’ve seen fatter toothpicks.”
“Yeah, it’s lean, but Flanagan assured me one or two tokes would get us launched.”
Vince’s face morphed into a smirk that made me feel like I just sold the family cow for seven magic beans.
“Look” I said, “it’s better than nothing; just light the mother.”
Vince continued his smirk and struck a match from the pack with one hand and lit it. He tried to draw on it but got nowhere; the joint went out.
“It’s like sucking on a pencil.“
“Here, give it to me,” I said, and took the joint from him.
I wasn’t really sure what to do. It seemed tightly packed, so I rolled it gently between the palms of my hands hoping to loosen it up enough to allow some airflow.
“Now, give me some fire,” I leaned toward Vince awkwardly pressing the joint to my lips.
The breeze picked up, so it took several matches before ignition. I could feel it beginning to draw; the tip started to glow. My first hit was slow and easy. Immediately, I was struck by the strong, pungent taste of the smoke. It wasn’t harsh but felt thick and fragrant like some exotic incense.
“Well, at least it smells good,” Vince replied, his hand hanging in the air waiting for me to pass it on.
Vince took a hit, coughed pretty hard and then passed it back to me.
This went on a few times. We became engaged in some prattle about wood versus metal rackets and almost forgot what we were doing. And that’s when it hit. Time suddenly froze around me; it was as if I were caught in a single frame of a piece of celluloid film. I totally lost my train of thought. In fact, I now had many trains on the track and couldn’t decide which to board. My heart pounded over the song of crickets, and I could feel every cell of my body throb.
Vince sat opposite me; his right rested on his right knee with the joint still going. I wanted another hit but couldn’t manage to ask. As if intuiting what I felt, Vince stared intensely at the joint in his hand, but seem unable to do much about it either. He lifted his head, and looked at me. There was an instant recognition between us that what was happening to one was happening to the other.
We both smiled. Vince passed me the joint, and I took a mega hit. I was stoned: really, really stoned; there wasn’t a nano-doubt about it. I tried to communicate what I felt to Vince, but the words got hung up somewhere around mid-tongue. What emerged were erratic, incoherent fragments. And that’s when the laughter began.
Tears streamed from our eyes, and we shook with laughter while pounding the ground with the palms of our hands. It was laughter, side splitting waves of uncontrolable laughter; a laughter that comes from the shock of viscerally experiencing reality as if for the first time.
Our thoughts outpaced our ability to express them by a margin of ten to one. By the time we got to the third or fourth word of what we were about to say, our minds were two blocks down the road; the laughter began all over again.
The laughter suddenly stopped when I noticed Vince’s face filled with concern.
“What’s the matter?” I asked still gasping from laughter.
Vince’s eyes were as wide as silver dollars. “They’re watching us . . . “
“Who’s watching us?” I said, starting to absorb some of Vince’s apprehension.
“Along the fence behind you,” he stated in a whisper so as not to be heard.
I turned slowly and looked toward the center field fence. My eyes had been facing the nightlights from the tennis courts, so at first everything appeared as a black wall.
“They’re just standing there looking at us,” Vince continued, barely moving his lips.
Part of me realized the absurdity of there being people lined up against the center field fence simply starring at the two of us. But, as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I started to make out the shadowy outlines of human forms swaying ever so slightly. They were silent as a tomb. A flashing chill tore through my body.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,”
“Okay”, Vince agreed, “but move slowly; we don’t want to spook them.”
“Spook THEM!” I stammered incredulously. Vince immediately shooshed me.
Awkwardly, we got to our feet; it felt a bit strange standing up, like I had forgotten exactly how the mechanics of the body worked. Walking cautiously backward, facing the fence, we increased our speed as we neared the tennis courts.
With bodies wrapped in prickly skin, we made a quick dash to my car. I placed the keys in the ignition and started the engine then reached directly for the headlight switch; yellow light poured across the baseball field and barely reached the outfield fence. We both tried to discern what was behind the fence: there was nothing but blackness.
For what seemed a brief or interminable amount of time, the two of us sat silently frozen, lost in a whirlpool of thoughts
Eventually, Vince broke the silence: “You got a new tape deck.”
“Yeah, got it a month ago,” instinctively I pressed the cassette into the deck.
“You gotta hear these guys, man; they really cook.”
Vince stared intently at the flashing lights of the deck as it began to engage. A blast blew from the speakers; I had them cranked when I parked. SWLABR was already in progress:
So many fantastic colours, I feel in a wonderland.
Many fantastic colours, makes me feel so good.
And come they did . . . colors . . . explosive colors generated by every note of Clapton and Bruce and the pulsating drums of Baker. Splashes of color burst in my head without effort on my part; I was purely a spectator. I was finally able to listen to music without a condom.