Chapter 52: What was your first big trip?
Originally written December 13, 2021
I’m assuming this question is about psychedelic experiences, right?
I’ve written about my psychedelic/stoner daze previously, back in Chapter 26, but not my very first trip. So here’s how it all started:
I don’t remember the exact date, but it would have been in the early summer of 1972, the summer after my freshman year in college (the same period in which I was working at Lotaburger, as discussed just a couple of chapters ago.) I was 18 years old.
This trip would have been on a night in which I didn’t have work the next day. I was at least smart enough to arrange that.
The drug had been sold to us as “mescaline,” though I always expected it was just regular old blotter acid.
A bunch of us gathered at my pal Alec’s old place in Tesuque. At the time he was living in the guest house on his mom’s property in Tesuque. It was the scene for several subsequent trips. I later dubbed it “The Tesuque Teen Center.”
Present were myself, Alec, my brother, our friend Spence, our friend Nathan and three or four friends of Nathan’s who either had just gotten out of the U.S. Marines or, perhaps, were just on leave from the Marines. I don’t remember that detail.
My memories of the first part of the night are dim. I just remember thinking Nathan’s friends were pretty obnoxious and a little scary.
Not to mention racist. They’d all been in Vietnam and were discussing the best ways to kill a “gook.” The consensus seemed to be that sneaking up on the unsuspecting victim and using piano wire to decapitate the victim from behind.
It’s just so hilarious when you see a guy’s head pop off and blood spurt from his neck.
Just the type of party chatter a young acid virgin needs to hear as the shadows begin moving and the walls start breathing.
But an even bigger obstacle preventing the trip from becoming a good one at that point was Alec’s mom, who lived in the main house on the property. She had already had come knocking on the door to complain about us making too much noise.
It might have been the second time she came ton the door when she yelled “THIS IS NOT A NIGHTCLUB!” That instantly became a catchphrase that Alec, Jack and I would use throughout the next five decades or so.
Our gracious host had just bought what was then the new John Lennon album, Sometime in New York City and he thought it would be a great idea to go down to the basement of the guest house, where he’d set up some huge speakers to crank the thing — thinking, I suppose, that noise from the basement wouldn’t bother his mom.
But it didn’t work.
By the time the album got to "Don't Worry Kyoko, (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” — 16 minutes of raunchy guitar and Yoko Ono screaming frantically — I was basically lost within a series of visions.
Here’s a shorter version of that song:
I’d recently read how Yoko had been going through a nasty custody battle with her ex-husband, a funky dude naemd Tony Cox, over their daughter Kyoto.
Cox actually kidnapped Kyoko, who was about 8 years old, defying court orders and eventually joined a fundamentalist Christian cult, changing the girl’s name to keep her hidden.
In my mind that night I saw a vision of a sinister figure trying to hide a little girl while John and Yoko chased them through dark alleys and seedy looking docks. It was heartbreaking and terrifying. Little Kyoko would start crying, which prompted more blood-curdling screams from her mom.
But this vivid revelry and screeching cacophony was interrupted by another mother screaming.
It was Alec’s mom, who’d turned on the lights of the basement and was yelling at us all to leave. “YOU PEOPLE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US!” she shouted.
I realized for the first time that Alec, Jack and Spence were not there. I later learned that they’d decided to go on a little night hike in the hills in back of Alec’s house.
As Alec’s mom returned to her house, Nathan and the Marines retreated, crowding into a car outside. I began to follow them, but Nathan stopped me.
“Steve, you don’t want to go with us.”
Even then I realized Nathan was doing me a big favor. I don’t think they actually went out to kill people with piano wire that night, but I clearly was not part of that little clique.
I stayed behind, hiding in fear in the otherwise empty Tesuque Teen Center. Even though the music had been turned off, I was cowering in fear that Alec’s mother would return and find me there, defying her orders to get out.
I was more afraid for myself than I was for poor little Kyoko.
Later Jack returned to the house. I don’t remember where Alec and Spence had gone at this point. All I remember was driving into town with Jack in my ’63 Falcon.
I tried to describe my state of mind, but the only thing coming out of my mouth were the immortal words “Fuck God I’m Shit!”
Jack’s made fun of me for that ever since.
At one point, as we drove through downtown Santa Fe, Jack turned on my car radio.
First thing I heard was Ernest Tubb singing “Walking the Floor Over You,” except it sounded to my acid-fried ears as if the record was warped and Ernest was some bizarre comical hillbilly mutant, hilarious and terrifying at the same time.”
“Noooo!” I yelled as I turned the radio off. Jack laughed, and said tauntingly, “Ya like good music” as he turned the volume back up.
“NO GOOD MUSIC!!!!!!” I yelled as I turned the radio off again.
Ernest sounds fine now:
My memory of that night nearly 50 years ago has faded. I’m pretty sure that Jack and I reunited with Alec and Spence, perhaps at Denny’s on Cerrillos Road — a place where we’d frequently end our trips that summer and beyond.
A quick note on Alec’s mom: She was basically the antagonist that summer in our little acid melodrama. There was at least one other time that summer when she interrupted our good clean illegal fun because we were too loud.
A few weeks later we were tripping at the Tesuque Teen Center again and we’d all decorated our faces with colorful fluorescent paint which looked groovy and bitchen under Alec’s black light.
When she came in, all of us instinctively turned our faces to avoid the black light. We thought Alec’s mom would leave after scolding us and perhaps reminding us that this was not a nightclub.
But instead, her chewing us out went on and on. Eventually, she shouted, “Look at me, Alec! LOOK AT ME!!!”
Alec raised his head revealing his orange and blue paint-splotched face glowing like a bizarro beacon in the dark. All of us — except Alec, who realized he was in hot water, and his irate mother — started laughing uncontrollably.
“What is this HA HA HA?” she exclaimed.
So yeah, Alec’s mom was the villain during that psychedelic summer of ’72.
But a few years later, when Alec and I did some peyote and went for a hike in the Tesuque hills, she saw us returning to the Tesuque Teen Center and invited us in for some hot “punch” — a sweet concoction of tea, fruit juice and rum served hot.
Even though Alec and I still were pretty high, we calmly sat at her table, joked, laughed and enjoyed the punch like regular adults.
It undoubtedly helped that there was no Yoko music blasting and no Marines and no day-glo paint.
Drinking that punch in her kitchen, I realized we’d all come a long way since that night she felt she had to declare her home as not a nightclub. I remember her now as a sweet, caring lady.
Now in case you think I’m promoting drug abuse by teenagers, here’s a public service announcement from my pal, T. Tex Edwards:
And what the heck, here’s a cover of Yoko’s song by The B52s.