Santa Fe Walkabout, Part 1

Getting High with a Little Help from My Friends

As a writer and outspoken theatre professor working within the privileged walls of academia, particularly within the liberal and cloistered confines of a Southern California “open-minded” university for the last thirty-one years of my professional career, there were very few things I wasn’t able to write about. Of course, as the political climate got more and more volatile, contentious, and censorial over the years, I did once get my big mouth in trouble by talking and writing about what I learned on my Fulbright grant in Romania, that “the ‘Romani’ (gypsies) were the ‘niggers’ of Europe.” Nope, not even in academia, could you use the “N-word”, even when I brought it back directly from the Romanian university itself where I had been hired by the American government to share my “immense” knowledge and experience. There were just simply some words and ideas that were eternally forbidden and “verboten”.

Well, another thing I always wanted to write about over my thirty-one years at USC, and for far longer was… my use of pot. Naturally, we couldn’t just call it “medical marijuana” for the last half-century, while the U.S. government called it “a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning that it had a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision”. Nope, for 50 years, we had to buy it in “nickel bags”, on street corners, and from “our sketchy best friends”, who sometimes ended up in prison for decades for being “drug dealers”, and overall bozos, like I was myself, when I left five pounds of sodden wet weed “drying” in my oven on Washington Avenue in “Bed-Stuy”, Brooklyn in 1969, while I went out and posed nude for a drawing class at Pratt University… only to find my whole neighborhood stinking of skunkweed and overflowing with white smoke when I came home three hours later. I slept at a friend’s house for a week. Ahhh… those were the days!

Now, in 2023, probably twenty-five of our fifty American States have voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, definitely, its medical usage, and more and more are on their way to legalizing the safe and FDA-approved usage of various psychedelics like Ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, and more, for treatment of PTSD, depression, life-threatening illnesses, end-of-life challenges, well-being, and transcendence, with many more psycho-physical improvements on the horizon. I’m all for it.

But for those five decades, from the time I first got high, around 1967, until 2017, when I retired from USC, “smoking pot”, “getting high”, and “turning, on, tuning in, and dropping out”, which Tim Leary first called the counter-cultural practice of taking acid and challenging mainstream society’s ideas and conformity, were all things that I couldn’t talk about with my students, ideas that I never could speak about publicly, without fear of losing my job. It always irked the hell out of me. I thought it was dumb and dumber, and because during certain periods of my life, I “smoked dope” so regularly, and I identified so much with its creativity and pleasure, I truly believed that in a certain way, I was living “in the closet”. And so I promised myself, that after retirement, I would let myself out - and throw away the key.

But what, you ask, does any of this have to do with Santa Fe, my beautiful SubStackers?

Well… for many a year… one of my favorite things to do in life… on this small and beautiful planet.. was to carve out a nice big chunk of time, get very very high, take myself to a very safe place, have absolutely nothing planned, and go on a “walkabout”. You know “Walkabout”, like the Nicolas Roeg film of the same name, where a wide-eyed Australian aboriginal boy basically saves the lives of two white, city-bred children whose father unexpectedly commits suicide and abandons them. “Walkabout”, an Australian aboriginal rite of passage for a boy, usually 10-16, to transfer into adulthood; a spiritual journey that he takes through the bush of the Australian outback, and as a result, passes into manhood and grows closer to his cultural heritage.

Well, for me, it’s more like re-immersing myself in the Bar Mitzvah waters of my own Tribe, the one I hated so much at thirteen, but the one I can now re-create any ol’ time I want; this time high as a kite, no longer simply on lil’ ol’ “weed” or medical marijuana, but now on the much-improved dispensary products of the day, which no longer intrude upon the frail breathing capacity of my lungs or depend on the unreliability of my corner-dealing drug addict. Nope, now whether it’s in California or New Mexico, with or without a medical marijuana license, I can get any quantity or dosage of PCP that I want, take it an hour beforehand, drive myself downtown to the Casa Sena Plaza, right next to the gorgeous St. Francis Cathedral in downtown Santa Fe, and start on my own 75-year-old Jewish “walkabout” - into the improvisatory cosmic unknown!

I remember the very first time I got high. It was in between my sophomore and junior years at UB, University of Buffalo, not yet formally known as SUNY Buffalo, State University of New York at Buffalo, a dreary school where I mostly suffered. I was back home for the summer in my parents’ house in Westbury, Long Island, in the knotty pine den. With Enid, my high school crush. She was “experienced”, as Jimi Hendrix sang back in the day. She hung out in “The Village” in high school with Steve Katz and Al Kooper of “The Blues Project”, before Kooper went on the play the iconic organ for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Enid had long beautiful blond hair that “curled and hung all down her breast” (Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country”). I never had the courage to ask her out on a date in high school, but on this life-changing evening, when my parents and younger sister, Alison, were out of the house, Enid came over, and yessiree, “turned me on” for the first time.

To say I was a bit anxious would be the understatement of that summer. 1967. I’m sure of the date and the year because we were excited to be listening to the new Beatles’ album, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”, which had just been released “Stateside” on June 1st. The first cut is the eponymous tune of the name of the album, the next, “With A Little Help From My Friends”:

What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

And that’s exactly what Enid and I were trying to do. Or what she was trying to help me do. “Get high with a little help from my friend”… who I just happened to still be in love with… and perhaps she mutually with me… but of course, we had never openly expressed those feelings to each other… but that love story has another “long and winding road” (not Paul McCartney’s of many years later on another of his albums), but which, length-wise, is not exactly appropriate for Santa Fe SubStack just here and now.

Anyway, by the end of the first side of “Pepper”, four songs after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the tune “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, I’m feeling… nothing. The Big Bang is not working for me. I’m a marijuana loser. A total pot failure. I’ve been puffing and puffing, inhaling and inhaling, coughing and coughing.

Enid keeps asking me in expectation and disbelief,

Don’t you feel anything?

Nope.

I flip over the side. “Within You Without You". “When I'm Sixty-Four". "Lovely Rita". Still nada.

Finally, the deafening and despondent finale, “A Day in the Life”:

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords

I’m starting to feel a terrible constriction in my chest. It’s getting tighter and tighter. I don’t know what’s happening to me! I grab my chest. Enid looks over at me.

Are you okay?

I think I’m having a heart attack!

Just take some deep breaths. You’re not having a heart attack! The pot is starting to work. You just have to let go of control and go with it.

I can’t! I’m going to die.

The Beatles come to the end of the greatest album in rock ‘n roll history:

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on…..

They begin their slow-building, Ravel Bolero-like, musical crescendo - that I’m positive is going to bring me to my imminent death!

Louder and louder. Building and building to… a final climax.

I’m having a heart attack. I’m dead sure of it! It’s inevitable. Then… exactly at the peak… at the climax of the music…. my heart…. explodes!!!

Except…..

I’m still alive!

I’m not dead!

Instead….

I EXPLODE - INTO DRUG-INDUCED ECSTASY.

I’M HIGH… for the very first time in my life.

Like on an acid trip!

It’s incredible!

My closed, adolescent, fearful mind… opens up for the very first time… after being FORCED to let go … by the POT. And the BEATLES. And Enid!

And life…. has never been the same since!!!!

—-

I’m inside the Casa Sena courtyard, my favorite spot in downtown Santa Fe. The best place to begin today’s Walkabout. In my last post, I wrote about Willard F. Clark’s memory of the courtyard, and how he recalled that was where his printing press awkwardly began, just across from the immaculate St. Francis Cathedral. I retold how the house was originally built in 1831 before the Mexican-American War, by a Spanish general for his blushing bride.

These days the entire flat roof of the block-long adobe building sags crazily, all along East Palace Avenue. It seems a miracle that the entire family residence hasn’t crumbled to the ground, instead of being transformed into one of the best restaurants, jazz clubs, and boutique rows in Santa Fe.

I’m higher than Mr. Kite himself as I climb the old rickety wooden steps of the courtyard, out onto the rooftop above the little old cigar shop, the fine men’s shoe wear store, the Native American rug and weaving boutique, a couple of lawyer shingles, and a terribly tempting bakery. I can’t resist and I splurge for one of my favorite sweets, a soft, homemade oatmeal-raisin cookie, Yum!

I exit the courtyard, feeling like Lee Marivn’s staggering drunk, Kid Shelleen, in the movie “Cat Ballou”. I weave my way down Palace Avenue toward Santa Fe’s famous Central Plaza. It’s the wooden-decked floor boards and the turquoise, blue-painted wood beams of the porticos that make me feel like I’m still in the old shoot-em-up West. I’m sure that Shelleen, or one of his drunken buddies, is gonna come flying over the balcony of the second-story whorehouse onto the street, and soon be lying at my feet, dazzle-eyed and drooling.

I make it about a sky-high, wobbly block en route to The Plaza before I hear a sexy-ass whistle. It sounds like:

“Hey there, Mister, check you out! You’re looking hot.”

I turn and sure enough, there’s a thin, brown-skinned dude, standing in the doorway of a fashionable shop. He’s wearing diamond-shaped, frameless eyeglasses, and his white teeth are glowing like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. He’s definitely whistled at me.

I naturally answer in my Bobby DeNiro “Taxi Driver” drawl,

“You talkin ta me?

“I certainly am. I love your hat.”

Ok, I’m a Leo. Sign of the Sun. Center of the Universe. Also Leo the Lion, King of the Jungle. Want to get to a Leo. Flatter him!

Actually, I forgot to say, I just bought the hat about five minutes ago. On impulse. That is, on Walkabout impulse! I’ve been in Santa Fe six months now. I’m still wearing CAPS. Blue LA Dodger caps. Crimson and gold USC caps. That’s so “bush league”! So LA! It’s time to get me a Santa Fe HAT. Not like the stiff white Stetson I bought from Zimmerman’s Western Wear on Main Street in Gallup on the drive from LA to Santa Fe. No. I need an everyday, “Santa Fe Hat”! One for the sun. One with a cool brim. With a perfect shape. And Southwest style. Enough with the LA CAPS.

So I pop into the famous Five and Dime. It’s like the traditional Woolworths of Santa Fe. Right off the Plaza. And BAM! There it is. The first hat I see on the shelf. Soft tan-brown, “natural fiber”. Sort an already broken-in, everyday, “straw” cowboy hat. It says “Medium”, but it fits my gargantuan head perfectly and “has character”. $39.95. A steal! Awright! Done deal! And instantaneously, just like Mr. Kite, I walk out of the Five & Dime, with “my new Santa Fe hat”! Oh yeah!

Thanks, man, I just bought it.

Suits, you, sir.

I like your diamond-shaped glasses. Where you from?

Argentina. Why don’t you come in the shop? We can do something for your eyes. No cost…

Aha! He’s reeled the Leo in. And when on Walkabout, “with no direction known”, I’m an easy mark. With no telling how much trouble I can get myself into. Or how much money I can be taken for!

To make a long story short, “Fernando” miraculously shrinks the puffy bags under my eyes “by 80%”, or so he says, and it’s only my experience of having been a “sucker” on so many previous Walkabouts that saves me $900 - to get out of the shop alive.

Ahhhh - Santa Fe’s Central Plaza!!!

Typical of every “plaza”, or town square, of every Spanish town or city - in Spain itself - as well as in colonial Spain, everywhere around the world - in South and Central America, as distant as the “Far East”, and definitely in what became known as the American Southwest, the plaza, sometimes referred to as the “zocalo” (especially in Mexico) is simply put, the center of city life. Social, political, and commercial. And like most around the world, Santa Fe’s plaza, built in 1609, is equally beautiful, functional, and charming, having a park-like atmosphere of bushes and benches for relaxing, a central bandstand for concerts and daily street performers, while being surrounded on three sides by local shops and restaurants, and on the fourth side by the oldest seat of government and public building in continuous use in the United States, the block-long brown adobe, Palace of Governors, built in 1605.

Well, here I am, Cowboy Trules, sittin’ in Santa Fe’s Central Plaza, in my new “Everyday Santa Fe Hat”. I’m tryin’ like hell - to feel like a local… which clearly, I’m not. Of course, I’m in too much of a hurry. Even on my open-ended, lazy-paced Walkabout! I got on my old torn blue jeans. I got the age-appropriate, gray hair and goatee, my father’s old brown leather jacket. I mean, everyone who lives here looks to be over sixty. Everyone, that is, except their kids. And their grandkids. Hey, I’m retired. An artist. A writer. I gotta new SubStack….

But… I’ve only been here six months. Unfortunately, I’m still a newbie in town. An outsider. Not only do I feel that way; but it’s the truth. I don’t know any of these locals sittin’ on the wrought iron benches, smoking joints, cigars, and cigarettes nearby. I wish I did. But… it’ll take time. Give it time, Trules.

My mind floats back to my childhood bedroom in Westbury New York. Back when I really was “a cowboy”. At heart. Sort of. My parents had my room painted lemon yellow with an original mural: a brown-fenced corral, with a chap-wearing cowboy riding a wild bucking bronc. He had a red neckerchief and was waving his cowboy hat wildly in his right hand, way above his head, desperately trying to keep his balance and not be thrown by the bronc.

I was wildly into cowboys back then. TV cowboys. Every one of them. Lash LaRue. Palladin. Zorro. The Cisco Kid. Cheyenne Body. Sugarfoot. Maverick. Wyatt Earp. Bat Masterson. The Lone Ranger. The Rifleman, Daniel Boone. Davey Crockett. Some were historical and real, most tv fictional. Didn’t matter to me. I had the full deck of 80 Davey Crockett cards. Both decks. Orange and green. I still have them in a black camper trunk here in Santa Fe!

TV cowboys were the Marvel comic heroes of the day back in the 1950s and early 60s. Before the tv execs retired them and replaced them with cops - Miami Vice, NYPD Blue, Law and Order - in the ‘70 - no doubt to counteract my counterculture’s condemnation of “the pigs”. But then, and still today, cowboys, always held my fantasy.

And so now, here I am - “Cowboy Trules” - practically 70 years later - sittin’ in Santa Fe’s Central Plaza - right at the end of the Old Pecos and Santa Fe Trails - right where “the Old West” really took place. Six guns, shootouts, and “old town justice”. I’m not “sittin’ at the dock of the bay” with Otis Redding, but I’m like sittin’ with “Mr. Bo Jangles”, and Jerry Jeff Walker, and Butch Cassidy, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Lennon, and Mr. Kite.

Then again, I’m supposed to be on a “Walkabout”! Get up off your ass, Trules!

I force myself up from my bench. I’m gonna make my way down Palace to Washington. That’s where my wife works. Right around the corner on Washington Avenue. At the Inn of the Anasazi.

She definitely does not want me to stop by when she’s working. And she’s working today.

“Anasazi”, the word that refers to the amalgam of old Pueblo people in this part of the Southwest. The indigenous people of New Mexico before the Spanish came. The Native American pueblo-dwelling tribes. However, the word “Anasazi” has fallen out of favor recently, due to all the convolutions of our culture’s recent political correctness. Along with the Inn itself, run by the classy Rosewood Hotel chain, which too, has run a bit out of favor, although the restaurant is still a major 5-star draw, and hell, it’s right nearby….

Bit I swear I won’t go in.

I’ll just walk on by…..

I promise!

To be continued….

With a little help from my friends….

Trules

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