Bobbo smoked and sold ALOT of weed. He was my connection and I was the distributor, so I was trusted. Now I know a lot of you are envisioning Bobbo to be some thin enlightened veggie long haired peace-nik. I can assure you this was not the case. Bobbo was a vile man, both in physical appearance and in spirit. He was kind of like a nerd biker guy, as he was a computer egineer. Sexist, overly flirtatious, almost spherical, unkempt and just foul. He had a twin dreadlocked beard that joined at the end that he would flip over his head to eat his meat. And he ate only meat, with only maybe the occasional potato to break things up. He had heard that Owsley Stanley was a strict carnivore, and semi adopted that stance. He often reeked so bad it was hard to be near him. And, as I said, he smoked ALOT of weed, I’d estimate a half an ounce a day on average. With all his flaws though, I was in his inner circle, and had been in business with him for years. That business payed for my college mostly, so I dealt with it. Besides, from a business point of view, he was very good at what he did. He was extremely careful, knew the laws inside and out. We never held anything but weed at GD shows, and never ever sold there it was just to big and iconic a vehicle to keep anything but joints on the downlow. Even alcohol was prohibited on board.

We had done this “set up and scoop up” for tickets deal a few times and it was a huge success. There are few stories there, but they are not germane. We had our sights on the upcoming shows in Las Vegas, which sounded like a lot of fun. Something happened before the shows though that changed everything – Bobbo got a girlfriend. I know I know it sounds implausible, but its true. She was a local homeless alcoholic named Vanda. I use her real name, because a) I am certain she is no longer alive, and b) she claimed to have a twin sister named “Wanda”. Wanda and Vanda. Um… Ok. Bobbo and Vanda were quite the pair. Bobbo was trying to set her up with a business making incense at shows, printing up labels that said “Vanda’s Vapors”, of all things, and buying her some essential oils and what not. Vanda made me slightly uncomfortable, as brash insane homeless alcoholics often do, but hey, it was a big bus. Like so many things in my life, I could deal.

I too had a new girlfriend, Zulu, whom you may remember from “Second Date”. I invited her on the ride to Vegas, and even though she absolutely LOATHED Bobbo, the allure of free tickets and adventure was too much to pass up. So me Bobbo Zulu, and Vanda packed up our wholistically obtained guatamalan backpacks, boarded Laughin Jack, and head inland to Sin City. As an aside, there was one other person in the caravan who was not riding on the bus and that was Eli. Eli was driving a very normal looking K-Car sedan. Why was he not in the bus you may ask? Well it was Eli’s job to transport large quantities of LSD back to town after Bobbo had hooked it up at the show. The bus was a cop target, but Eli and his baby face and boring car were not. Even though I knew, I would never guess that that brown car driven by what appeared to be a Youth for Christ crusader was in fact carrying up to 10 *books* of acid (thats 10,000 hits in case you are wondering). So off we went.

We arrived friday late afternoon at the Sands Hotel and parked in the parking lot. Bobbo went up to meet with the crew and receive our assignments. We were going to be spending the night in this parking lot, and then driving in the morning to the UNLV arena to set things up for the Sat/Sun shows. Bobbo returned shortly from his meeting with some special treats for us all – some rather large hits of “purple gel” LSD. I had only ever seen blotter acid, and this crystaline, translucent thing that looked like a bit of hardened fruit roll up looked ominous My tripping days were almost over at this point, having failed the acid test miserably a few months prior (a great story for another day), but I was in Vegas, baby, and feeling all Fear and Loathing. I was also urged by new girlfriend who was all about the hallucinogens. So with a wince of what’s to come, I swallowed the tab and headed with Zulu out to the strip.

One thing one must consider. When given drugs by people affiliated by the grateful dead organization itself, said drugs are going to be of the very highest quality, and very very strong. The mescaline I had been given in Oregon a while back kept me up for a two and a half day lesson on the reason native american art tends to be so rectilinear. This purple thing I had eaten was no exception, and as such, I can only offer a few glimpses into what transpired. I remember the bulk of the trip was spent at Circus Circus, which is why, like black cats, clowns now make me flinch. Though I was sure that EVERYONE knew that I was cerebrally supercharged, I soon came to the realization that, no matter what one looks like or how odd one talks or laughs inappropriately, as long as one is pumping money into some sort of game, no one will pester you – hell they will even give you free tang screwdrivers! So Zulu and I camped out at the nickel slots below one of the circus stages, an enormous bucket of shiny nickels in our laps, watching the most bizarre acts perform languidly on stage. I remember going to one of the buffets and watching the animalistic ways in which the morbidly obese ate their dried up steak breakfasts, like some sort of swollen lion guarding her kill. I remember running into shabby old Vanda at one point, who in an alcoholic stupor and tripping balls was trying to aggressively sell incense in the lobbies of the casinos up and down the strip. “Insent! Insent! Smell good! Insent!” How she stayed out of jail that night I’ll never know.

Towards dawn we returned to the bus and tried to sleep a little which was of course, impossible. Around 10 we headed over to the arena and did our thing, passing out trash bags and directing parking as folks arrived. We got our tickets during the first song and went in to enjoy the show. As we got situated, Zulu produced a bag of mushrooms and indicated we should at them. Again, I was reluctant, but I knew that mushrooms and lsd are cross tolerant, and after the intensity of the trip the night before, they probably wouldn’t hit me that hard. So as not to be a party pooper, I ate the damn things. They hit me alright, and for the most part, I had a good show. At the end, we stumbled back to the bus to see what was cooking. Well, besides meat, Bobbo had been granted the custody of three acid casualties which we were going to have to drive back into town and attempt to find where they lived. Groups of acid casualties can be either amusing, annoying or terrifying, and in this case we had one of each variety. The amusing one was a woman whose clothes kept ‘falling’ off and wanted to cuddle with everyone. The terrifying one was a black dude who had unwittingly taken a dose of something and was very angry about it, but couldn’t get it together to actually be violent, and the annoying was a man who just kept talking talking talking nonsense. Me and Zulu crept up in the bed in the back and left the three to sort it out on their own. We were tired and I needed to lay down for the 20 minute drive to town. They would be ok. Vanda could deal with them, as she was more at their level anyway.

Just as I was being lulled into a coma by the rhythm of the bus I was awoken by the flashing red and blue lights of doom streaking into the rear window. I peered out. We were in the parking lot of some gas station/mini mart in the middle of nowhere, and had a undercover SUV blocking us in. The cop got into to talk to Bobbo the driver. Apparently he had pulled a three point turn across a double yellow line… in a ginormous psychedelic school bus, which was the real reason for the stop. Bad points for Bobbo for giving them a legit reason, but really, if you were a small town desert cop, wouldn’t you be just a little bit curious? The reason Bobbo got pulled off the bus was no doubt the ashtray filled to the rim with roaches the size of your thumb. This was also probably the reason for his road side sobriety test, which was one of the most pitiful things I had ever witnessed. Owing to his short, morbidly obese stature, even if he was stone cold sober, he was simply not physically able to walk a line or touch his nose. At any rate, his sub par performance was what led him to be cuffed and led to the arriving squad car. In fact soon, we had a small regiment of squad cars and police vehicles. I guess, some lights in Vegas are just not so cool, you know?

We were inside the bus, the adrenaline of the reality closing in on everyone had a somewhat sobering effect, even on out guests. We watched the cops huddle up and decide what to do next, which as it turned out was to forcefully instruct us all to get off the bus with our id’s. For the next four hours we went through every form of cop trick in the book on the side of that chilly desert road, while what looked like the DEA stormed through the bus, tearing every thing to bits. We had the group interview with the ‘good’ cop which consisted of them trying to convince us that they knew we were on *something*, and it would be better for us all if we just told them what it was. I could understand. As a group we looked more like extras from the movie road warrior, all dusty and disheveled, but I was not gonna give up. Then it was the ‘bad cop’ who threatened us harm if we didn’t confess our ingestion transgressions. One of the most amazing things to come out of this was, that to a person, no one confessed. Everyone copped to “having a couple of beers”, except for Vanda, who when asked what she was on managed to belt out “I drank a liter of Vodka!” in her best homeless rasp. I do believe she was the only one the police had no doubts about. Then it was time for individual interviews with both good and bad cop, where they tried to get us to turn on one another. BAd cop even laced our fingers together behind our back and squeezed hard saying if we did not confess, he was going to break my fingers. I stuck it out and so did the rest, which, given the circumstances, had to be some sort of record.

All during the interview, the DEA guys were pulling random bits of hippy ephemera out of the bus and making a little pile on the hood of one of the cars. Rolling papers. Small bag of weed. Quartz crystal. Stickers (which I think they thought were LSD). End of a bag of mushrooms. So despite our surprisingly unified “two beer” resolve, it looked like we were screwed. But the cops made one critical error. They had pulled us off the bus with just our id’s, not our ’stuff’. So by the time the had finished putting the contents of the bus through the blender of justice, they couldn’t tell what belonged to whom. Good for us, bad for Bobbo, as he was the registered owner of the bus, and no was legally responsible for all its contents. Especially bad for Bobbo when they found the half ounce of weed that Vanda had stolen from Bobbo and bagged into eigths to sell sereptitously for sending money. Now Nevada has some pretty fucking steep possession penalties as they like to control the means of delusion in that town, but even in the more liberal states, bagged out quantity is “intent to distribute” – and that usually means time. Bobbo was fucked.

The cops took all our particulars, took Bobbo off some jail themed casino, and, after allowing the two girls to go on the bus to grab everyone’e sleeping bag, towed Laughing Jack off to god knows where, leaving us, weary, dirty, traumatized and cold on the side of the freeway. Now as Bobbo had been being put in the car he had shouted some instructions to me. BAsically I was to go to the Sands Hotel and find someone named Peter Smith, who would put me in touch with the Dead’s lawyer. So slowly we devised a plan. We went into the mini market and pooled our money and caught a cab into Vegas, to the sands. Arriving there, I instructed everyone to wait for me in the lobby, that I would find this guy and everything would be put right. So I left them in a huddled lump on a bench, and me, looking Mad Max Manson himself, approached the front desk.

Excuse me good sir, do you have the room number for a Peter Smith at this hotel?” I asked, hoping that decent grammar could over come the obvious displacement of my physical presence.

Clickity click click… “No sir, Im sorry, we have nobody here by that name.”

Damn I thought. So I tried some other names that I knew worked in GDM… clickety click clickety… “No sir…” “No sir…” “Im sorry sir…”

Things were getting desperate. “Do you have anyone by the name Jerry Garcia listed here?”

CClickety. “Im sorry sir…”

So after going through all of the band members’ names, and realizing that I was seriously testing the patience of the man behind the counter, I threw out my hail mary pass. “Look”, I said, “do you have ANYONE affiliated with the Grateful Dead staying at this hotel at all?”

“Do you want the Grateful Dead party room”? he said.

“Um… yes?

“Take that elevator in the corner to the top floor”

“What’s the room number”?

“Its the whole top floor”.

“Thank you very much!”

I gave the molten lump of my compatriots a thumbs up and headed for the elevator. A well dressed man got in with me, and after seeing that I had selected the top floor, he eyed me suspiciously. Dead heads are forever trying to meet band members and sneak back stage to give Phil that special crystal from Pluton 7 that can cause low harmonic telepathy or whatever they cook up in their chemically imaginative brain. “Where you headed”?, the man asked.

“Grateful Dead Party room.” I said, matter of factly.

“Um… Who invited you?”

“Nobody.”

“Well you just cant…”

“Look, no one invited me, but I need to find someone named Peter Smith, who will put me in touch with a lwyer because Bobbo just got arrested and he’s in jail and Laughin Jacks been impounded…” I blurted out in a panic.

And who did it turn out to be that I was speaking to in that elevator? Why Peter Smith himself. He was alarmed and invited me to come up and relax while he made some calls.

OK. Dead shows are about sleeping in tents, getting dirty, eating “kind veggie burritos’ that were barely heated on a propane stove… its kind of the deal. But the room I was in now was palatial! There was a huge buffet filled with all kinds of delicious foods. Amazing couches and views and just well, rock star penthouse in Vegas. All the people were elegantly dressed, or at least clean. I ate, I sat. And as word got round that I had the hottest gossip in the scene, I told the story again and again. Peter Smith told me that lawyers had been called and the legal wheels were in motion to spring Bobbo on bail. I was finally beginning to relax. It was then, after about two or three hours of living the lif of luxury, that I remembered what I had left in a dusty heap down in the lobby. I excused myself, and head downstairs to see what was what.

The three hangers on had all wandered off and I found Zulu and Eli in the lobby with very worried expressions on their faces. I assured them all would eventually be as well as it could be. We got a room and decided to head back to Santa Barbara the next day, as there was very little more we could do. I slept the sleep of the dead, as it were.

The absolute funniest thing happened the very next day. I got up and went downstairs to obtain my continental under-ripe melon balls and shitty coffee. I passed a news stand. There on the front cover of the Sunday paper, in full living color, was a picture of Zulu taken through the glass of the rear window of Laughin Jack, accompanying a story about how the Dead had come to town. I bought a few copies, and we all had a good laugh. Later I framed that clipping with our unused Sunday concert ticket and gave it to her as a gift. I dont think she liked it very much though as it always reminded her of a very traumatic scary time. But whatever, a keepsake is a keepsake.

Epilogue:

We all, save Vanda, had to return to Vegas two months later for Bobbo’s trial. I will never forget the look on the cops faces when we all showed up, all spit shined and in nice clothes, college degrees in hand. The prosecution cut a deal with the Dead’s high power lawyer, and Bobbo paid a $10,000 fine, had to take a Drug Awareness Course by mail, and promise never to return to Vegas. Which was fine, none of us were all that hot to get back there anyway.

After I graduated college, I lingered around for a while. I rented a two car garage in a house known as the “Witch House”, which was a house occupied by five young witches. I guess they would be more accurately described as “wiccans” or “pagans”, but owing to their penchant for performing elaborate rituals involving fire and costumes and whatnot, the house could not have been more descriptively named by the locals. Shortly after moving to the Witch House, I developed a crush on the girl next door. Well, it was actually three houses down, but close enough to stretch for the cliche, eh? As I have said before, I was rather freaky in my daily attire, and this girl could not have been more the opposite. Clearly an athlete, she looked more like a sorority sister than anything else. Also, the house she lived in was nice. Really nice. There was nothing burning in the backyard, and no one lived in the garage. Everyone knows the freaks can often turn the normal chicks, but my crush lay idle. I mean what was I going to do? Invite her back to my cement floor repository of bones, art and laundry?

That all changed one evening when I ran into her at a party and she bummed a cigarette from me. We got to talking, and I had to pretend to be surprised to find out we were neighbors. We walked around and talked and she turned out to only be half of what she appeared. She was from a wealthy-ish LA family, the only daughter with three older brothers. She did dress normal on the outside, but on the inside, there was definite strangeness. That strangeness appealed to me greatly. We ended up kissing a little and setting up what we would consider our second date for later that week. For the sake of the story, I will call her Zulu, in honor of her strange side, as here real name definitely reflects the normality she projected at that time.

The second date day arrived, and seeing as I had yet to own a car, we took her truck. We headed up into the beautiful Santa Barbara hills to a place called the Vedanta Temple. Vedanta is kind of like the Unitarian Universalist of the East in that they accept everything, but have way groovier bric-a-brac and architecture. Its like this big garden with little nooks and stuff to meditate. Strolling around was very nice, as we got to know each other better. After aligning our meridians for the afternoon, we decided to go out to dinner. So back down the hill we went, to some little bistro in Santa Barbara. We had a lovely dinner over a bottle of wine, and played with the two black cats that appeared to live on the patio.

Ah. Those black cats. I must say at this point that I am a fairly superstitious guy, but my superstitions are rarely of the cliché variety. I have a whole host of totally specific, unbelievably obtuse, and highly irrational cause and effects running around in my brain, but I dont think they affect anyone but myself, so I mostly keep them to myself. That said, to this day whenever a black cat crosses my path, I flinch a little and put my guard up. Sad, eh? But here’s why.

The day, the meal, the wine – it was all overwhelming. We got caught up in the moment and didn’t want it to end. So we decided to go “driving in the Santa Barbara hills”, which may as well be a euphemism, so thinly veiled are its truths. There is nothing in the hills to do at night. Nothing. There are barely even any houses. There *are*, however plenty of little out of the way places to park and have a little lovin in the back of a truck with a camper shell. So me, Zulu, and her neurotic black dog got in the light blue toyota and headed up into the hills drenched in Santa Barbara night.

To be perfectly honest, I thought she was driving a little fast. It was almost as we were in a movie, and she was trying to give a thrilling experience up the curvy, desolate hillside roads. She must have sensed my unease, and actually explained to me that she had grown up driving fast in the canyons of LA, and that I shouldn’t worry. Besides, its not like there are any other cars up there at that hour. I tried to relax, but I didn’t really even find the time, as we went into a turn a little bit fast, hit a patch of gravel that had slipped into the road and began to skid.

Now this wasn’t a fast skid. Or perhaps, as we discussed later, the whole thing seemed to be happening in slow motion. I watched the front left tire, with the car at a jaunty angle, slowly approach the edge of the embankment. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that the car would stop in time, I mean, life is charmed right? Things like that don’t happen in real life right? And then things started happening fast again, as the nose of the car went over into empty space.

Now growing up having a family car that has barely functioning seat belts (’65 VW microbus), my family had developed an odd habit for abrupt traffic situations. My parents would always lunge on arm across the passenger compartment, and attempt to prevent the passenger from, oh i don’t know what, defying the laws of physics i guess. This was the move that I attempted out of instinct as the car went airborne nose first. I leaned over and put my arm out to prevent Zulu from hitting the dash. I was a little late and my arm arrived just after the first impact. Funny thing was, neither her nor her dog were there, by which I mean that they had been tossed out the shattered windshield. This left me laying across the bench seat of the truck, a position as it turns out, that would save my life. So down down down I went, 250 feet or so, in a flurry of noise metal and glass. I remember very little save for the gearshift hitting me periodically in the torso on some of the five or so impacts on my log ride of the damned. I was knocked out as the car finally came to rest.

Coming to. Noise. What is that noise? Is that yelling? What is that roar? Where am I? What an odd light? Ouch! And it all began to come back to me in an adrenaline fueled rampage. That roar is the engine with the throttle stuck open. That light is the one headlight pointing straight into the sky through the demolished windshield and dry swirling Santa Barbara dust. That yelling is Zulu coming down the hill telling me to shut the car off. I started to get myself together. I shut off the ignition. I drug myself up to a semi sitting position. Thats when I noticed that the roof of the cab had been crushed down to the seats. I was in the only possible angle that I could be in in the car that allowed my body to remain with its factory issued geometry. I crawled out of the drivers side gap in the windshield and got out of the car.

The swirly light and sudden silence were straight out of a movie as I staggered away from the vehicle. Now perhaps it was the cinematic quality of the ambiance, or perhaps a byproduct of an overly imaginative brain, but at that moment I remember having one of the most truly unusual thoughts I have ever had. One of those thoughts that leaps into one’s head and really soaks in to the core. I had the sneaking suspicion that when I turned around I was going to see my body in the car, all, well, deceased. It is truly hard to explain what it feels like to be utterly convinced that you are already dead. I turned slowly and was greatly relieved, yet slightly confused to find I, or rather my remains, were not there. I was startled out of my confused revery as Zulu arrived at the bottom of the embankment.

Now telling me to shut off the car was sound logical advice, but what followed from her mouth presently was absolutely incomprehensible. She was panicked, saying things like “They can’t find out it was me!” and “I have shoplifting on my record, I will go to jail”. Before I could even process what this all meant she took off running into the maze of manzanita at the bottom of this valley. Not just running, but rather more like fleeing in terror. As I have said, I live my daily life in a superstition induced personal maze of specific yet irrational fears. There is only one good thing about this fact, although I would be hard pressed to explain why it is true. When the shit actually does hit the fan in real life, I am not panicked at all. So, even though I had just done the ultimate barrel roll, and knowing how easy it is for one to get lost in manzanita scrub, I chased her down the valley and eventually caught up with her. I talked her down, telling her that it was her car, with her name attached to the plate and that there was nowhere to run. Besides, we had had an accident, we had done nothing wrong. Slowly I brought her back to both reality and the accident site. And slowly we began our long climb up the ravine.

Upon reaching the top, we found the body of her dog, which switched her last remaining traces of panic to absolute grief. I sat with her on the side of the road, consoling her as best I could while staring down at the single cyclopic headlight beaming up from the depths below. The adrenaline was wearing off and I was beginning to hurt bad. I heard sirens in the distance. A car pulled up before the firetruck, and said that she lived up the hill always and had heard/seen the accident and dialed 911. Good thing too, as this was a time before cell phones. Once again, things began to to happen really fast. The silence and darkness of the night hills was broken by a flurry of activity, lights and shouting. Firemen. Police. Paramedics. Onlookers. The police, no doubt judging my freaky book cover to Zulu’s normal one, were absolutely convinced that 1) I was driving and 2) that I was on drugs of some sort. Despite our unified protestation to the contrary, they were very nasty in their disbelief. Finally, we were left to the paramedics who, in a much more friendly tone, let me know that they needed to know what I was on before they could treat me. God damnit. I’m not ‘on’ anything!

Finally convinced they prepared us for the ambulance ride. Zulu, still not making much sense, started going on about how much an ambulance ride would cost, especially for me since I had no insurance. I don’t know why, perhaps it was a final relenting to the absurdity of fear, or perhaps my brain had been finally rattled sufficiently and all sense was left down in the ditch, but I agreed to forego the ambulance ride. I hadn’t even considered how we might actually get to the hospital or home or whatever hell was next in this calvalcade of hellish confusion, when a kindly old grandmother right out of central casting stepped up and offered us a ride.

So now my second date found me in the back of an old Nova sedan, rolling down the 101, my body’s natural painkillers wearing off fast. The thing I remember about this ride was how long it took to get to the hospital. I don’t know if it was because this woman was a senior, or whether she was trying not to stress us out by going too fast in a car, but she was driving So. Slow. We eventually arrived at the ER, where I was checked out and miraculously hadn’t broken a single thing. Friends came and picked us up. I spent the next four days jacked out of my gourd on pain killers and unable to move.

But on that ride with the old woman, I remember considering my life, the black cats, the silent crazy of the person sitting next to me. It was just one of those take stock moments that arrive every now and then. Unfortunately, the only stock I got out of that moment was that at least I would have a good story to tell, which was disappointing as I have always believed that a proper near death experience should be accompanied by some sort of life changing epiphany. Here I had gone to the trouble of nearly mangling mysel in 3000 pounds of glass steel and rubber and I hadn’t changed at all. I mean, what was it gonna take? That was many years ago, and I still haven’t had my epiphany. I wonder I ever will. Perhaps it is just not in the cards for me, or perhaps such does not exist. I wish I knew, though, and still feel it is something that I need. Perhaps that itself is the epiphany. Odd that.

Paul was a kindly old bespectacled man who was the proofreader at the newspaper where I worked. He looked the sort of idealized Norman Rockwell grandfather archetype that some how instilled in me the urge to go fly fishing with him at some bucolic cabin, despite my never having had in interest in such activities. So it was to my surprise to find out that he collected weaponry. Collected may be too soft a word actually, I better go with horded. If his claims were true, his home was a depot that housed enough various implements of destruction to arm a small South American militia. After I had recalled to him yet another tale of feeling menaced on my midnight commute cross town, he gave me a small gift. He called it a “CIA LEtter Opener”, and it looked rather like a triangular tent spike with a handle. It was made of black hardened teflon of some kind and was about 8-9 inches long. It was explained to me that I could carry it anywhere as its material would not set off metal detectors, and that its beveled triangular sides were designed to cause “the maximum amount of bleed out from a puncture wound”. Um, thanks? My fly fishing fantasy kinda died that day, but I digress. As I am not accustomed to being “armed” in any sense of the word, I threw it in my messenger bag and kinda forgot about it.

Some weeks later I found myself on the good old 38 Geary line about to embark on yet another adventure to make it home. It was years until I figured out that riding a bicycle was a much more fun, more safe and more healthy way to approach this epic nightly voyage, so here I was, paying my dollar and trying to pick a seat. There are many schools of thought when it comes to picking a seat on a bus late night. Personally I have always been fond of sitting all the way in the back, thus being able to have a visual on everything thats going on. Now the problem with this is that the back of the bus is almost invariably where the brigands, ruffians and highway men gravitate, so one may find oneself in close company with such nefarious characters. I am of the opinion that to keep these folks close is bad, as you may be forced to interact and as such have to utilize “The Crazy Eyes”. For those wondering, The Crazy Eyes is where one allows just a little white to show over the *top* of your iris, cultivating a truly maniacal visage that can be varied by degree – the more white, the more crazy (see ref: Michelle Bachmann, Charles Manson). By practicing in front of the mirror, you too can become a master of The Crazy Eyes, and when accompanied by the hollow demented half smile, pretty much everyone will just want to leave you alone. Now as bad as getting into an interaction with the hive of scum and villainry that congregate in the back row of seats is, I still would rather have them where I can see them. After all,I dont have Crazy Eyes in the back of my head. The very front of the bus is out of the question, as it prematurely ages and feminizes a young man.

Yes, I have my seat selection opinions, but not very many hard and fast rules, and seeing that this was a relatively uncrowded bus, and just, well, *felt* like an uneventful night, for some reason I perched myself in the middle to rear segment in a forward facing seat. I settled in and within a couple stops, of course, he got on. And oh, gentle readers, what a specimen he was! By means of a quick description, I would say he was cross between Rasputin dressed as a homeless ninja and the black Spy vs. Spy guy. People that live on the streets for a long time often get this patina, and judging by this guy’s shine, he had been in survival mode for quite a while. He was all dressed in black, with strips of cloth tied around his outer garments. He had armbands, a black scarf pulled across his lower face and this magnificent hat. It was a hat straight out of a kung fu movie, a kind of fedora with a wider brim that left the rim at a downward angle, obscuring his eyes. It was a spy vs. spy hat, plain and simple.

As he got on the bus he locked on to me as, my overly developed freak magnetism, and two, there were very few people on the bus. It was clear immediately that no amount of white above my eyes was going to out crazy or dissuade this fellow, and I did not meet his gaze. I merely observed him with that absent peripheral vision thing people do sometimes. He walked past me and straight to the empty back of the bus. The next thirty minutes were abject psychological hell, as I soon discovered that this fellow had a habit, and I could just feel it was directed at me. The habit? Lord. He had a nylon velcro man band that apparently housed a watch. This fellow would check his watch, creating that distinct scccrrrritch of velcro being pulled apart, and then change his seat. Sometimes he would get right behind me and do it real slow, and then move a little farther, and then back. Nerve. Wracking.

It is this point that I must lay down one little fact. I lived at the very end of the line. Now downtown SF is always bustling, but out in the avenues at one am, there isn’t a whole lot going on. There are only very rarely other people on the streets, and generally I would see no one on my six block walk from bus stop to hacienda. This thought became more prominent in my bean as on by one, the bus emptied out until it was just me an my new friend, popping around the seats behind me. Scrrrriiiitch. With about twenty blocks left in the trip, I became certain that he would be getting off at the last stop as well. It was then that I remembered my gift from Paul, and I slowly retrieved the menacing black spike from my bag and palmed it. If my number had finally come up, I wasn’t going down without inflicting “significant bleed out”.

I got up to get off at the last stop, and so did my ninja. He stood right behind me, a little too close, and exited the bus with me. The bus drove off to the barn, and I started walking fast. He followed me step for step, maybe one foot behind me, quite literally like some evil shadow. I still hadn’t turned to face him, but I could only take about 100 feet of that. I quite literally snapped into some sort of fight or flight mode, wheeled around brandishing my dreadfull weapon and literally screamed, “What the fuck do you want!?! My ninja was startled by this sudden affront and instantly ran down the street and disappeared around the corner. That was the longest six blocks I have ever walked home, and the ones following for the next couple months weren’t much shorter.

I never saw the man again, but I remember that moment so clearly to this day. I am a gentle, non-violent person, but if that man had made a move toward me rather than running away, I without a doubt would have plunged that weapon into his neck without hesitating, so jacked on adrenalin was I. I know I would have, and thats a kind of scary thought, to come that close to actually killing another human being. I also know that I was somewhat emboldened by having a weapon. Further, with said weapon, I actually could have done fairly easily. I cant imagine how the psychology plays out when one is carrying a gun. I know the guy was asking for trouble, but he was clearly mentally ill. What if in his mind he was just being funny? Had I completely made up the fact that he was a threat to me? I will never know, but I wonder about it sometimes. A few weeks later, I put the knife thing in a drawer, and haven’t looked back.

The Good.

It was a rather busy night for the 38 Geary line. I had just gotten off of the swing shift at the newspaper and was facing my regular walk through the tenderloin to Union Square to take this bus cross town all the way from the bay to the ocean. Its about a 45 min ride at midnight as there isn’t much traffic. Still, the busses were usually more empty at this time of night. I had paid my dollar and had just settled in to another long hour of staring absent-mindedly out the window. Something about the drone of those diesel engines an really hypnotize the tired worker bee. But despite the glaze over my eyes and the psychic coccoon I was weaving around myself, it always pays to keep at least half an eye out for the comings, goings and activities of your fellow riders. 

It was that half eye that caught them as soon as they got on. I think sometimes there is an energy about people that is instinctual, and anything that may pose a threat instantly registers, and man was it registering with these three. It was as if they were deliberately trying to send off a “you are about to die vibe”. They were three fairly strong looking black men, that just kinda had the whole ex con feel to them. No spider web or teardrop tattoos or anything that was obvious, but its clear that they were tough, and trying to act even tougher. They walked slow up and down the aisle, staring people down, almost begging people to make eye contact. Eye contact is a funny thing in a big city, and it can go either way, but I had a sinking suspicion that I knew which way this was going to go. Women were doing that ‘clutch the purse, stare at the floor and think of jesus’ thing. Men were doing the same, sans purse. There was an instant, almost tangible mood amongst all the passengers thats something really bad was about to happen.

As the three walked down the aisle one stopped in front of an older gentleman, pointed his finger and said “I don’t know you” in a menacing tone. The second stopped in front a woman and said “And I don’t know you”. The third stopped in front of another passenger and said “Who are you?” They went to several people in turn, and made similar inquiries, finally stopping near me and asking “What’s YOUR name?” No one was responding to them, and I certainly wasn’t about to be the first, but before I could process just exactly what I was going to do next, something surreal happened.

In the awkward silence that followed that last pop quiz, they all drew together, back to back, in the center of the aisle and broke into a beautiful acapella motown-y version of “What’s Your Name”. This song branched into a medley of motown numbers, all sung in amazing three part harmony. They serenaded the whole, quite stunned, bus for a good third of the trip. When they, apparently, got to their stop the proceed to exit the bus backwards through the large articulated doors slowly as they hit their last notes. The song ended, the doors closed like a curtain and after a silent second, the whole bus erupted into applause. They stood on the side walk waving, and shouting things like “We love you!” and  ”Be kind to each other!”

At one moment I was about to be shivved for my empty wallet, the next I was being crooned to. I was not alone in the sensation that we as a whole had just been put through some sort of devious social experiment. I know that whole ‘judge a book by its cover’ deal is a bit on the cliché side of the saying supermarket, but I hold this story up at least as evidence that clichés are such for a reason. To this day I hold this experience in my heart whenever I am confronted by someone scary. This is not to say that I completely ignore my instincts. I guess its just kinda comforting to know that that gangster walking toward you, instead of roll you, just might knit you a scarf or something. Its humanity, and I need all the hope I can get.

We had been through quite a bit considering the brief 2-3 years I knew him. The stories of shed life alone could fill some pages, but I will go you one better. Once he and I had been detained on suspicion of murder. I kid you not. Isla Vista is just north of Santa Barbara, adjacent to the UC school there. While I wouldn’t call it a sleepy town, it being the most densely populated square mile west of the Mississippi, I wouldn’t exactly call it crime ridden. The police blotter there reads more like minor in possession, public urination, property crime and maybe the occasional date rape thrown in for spice. So when an older couple were robbed and one was killed up the coast about a mile it was big big news. And what sensation.! The story had built itself in the press like this: Man and woman are sitting on the beach, enjoying the fresh pacific air, when they are approached by two men, one white, one black. White man says “Do you have any marijuana?”. When they said that they did not, black man draws a gun and shoots male in the head – killing him instantly. The suspects then fled the scene. See what I mean? Crazed drug addicts out of control, murder in broad daylight, this story had everything. It almost had us.

Now at this time of my life, I almost was never without an enormous, yet always under an ounce for legal purposes, bag of weed in my shoulder bag of tricks. We can talk about that more later, but I am merely stating facts. I had long long hair and was extremely scrawny. I was always dressed like I rolled out of some gypsy’s laundry basket. Freakshow. So me and Ted were out strolling around headed god knows where for who knows why and we get rolled up on by the police. Hard. Two cars. It all happened really fast, and they were really nervous like they were afraid of us. You know how police get, and who can blame them? I wouldn’t want that job. So anyway, they begin to interrogate us as to our whereabouts a couple days ago. Being slackers under the influence, we a) had a hard time getting a coherent story together out of genuine memory loss and b) did a very poor job of covering that fact up. So it was time for searching, and of course amongst the many strange objects that a modern day witch doctor is required to carry around, they found my sack. No not that sack, the weed sack. They found both OK? Ok. So it was time for new bracelets and a free car ride to the cop shop. I mentioned that we had not been read our rights, and the cop in front said we were merely being detained as persons of interest in the crime of the century. Merely. Turns out, we fit the description the woman had given exactly. That plus the whole “marijuana” connection and we were well, persons of interest if not extreme curiosity and scrutiny. We were given complimentary e tickets to jail world for a few hours while we awaited our further interviews and while the police tried to arrange to have the woman come and positively identify us. I was bummed, but knew in my heart that I was innocent, so she could pick us, and it’ll all get sorted, right? Right! And it did too, because before even being interviewed, I was given a citation for possession as a souvenir, and released without explanation. Whew. That was close eh?

We at that moment, had no idea just how close. In the paper the next day it was revealed that the woman had set her husband up for insurance cash or something, had hired a killer, and had given completely false descriptions and story, which just *happened* to look Exactly. Like. Us. Now, as so often is the case, if the timing of this whole scenario had been even slightly off, I imagine I would be telling a different story, and from the rec room at Folsom. She could have easily come in and fingered us. The cops, proud to show how quickly they solved the case and made arrests, would have stopped looking into her, and started looking into us. The Law and Order sound hadn’t been invented yet, but Im pretty sure it played in my head anyway.

We kinda bonded over that one, but this story isn’t about that. I only told it to illustrate that we were close. In fact, it was with mixed emotions that I told Ted some months later that I had managed to find an apartment. Granted it was a seven bedroom, ten person chop job, but it wasn’t a shed, and had you know, plumbing and stuff. He told me that the folks at Meade House – all the traditional freak houses had names back then, this one, the oldest building in town was on Meade street and supposedly, Margaret Meade had lived there – had said that he could stay there. So that was it. The end of shed days. There was a party at Meade House that night, and I would see him there. No biggie.

It was your typical jam band college freak party, all our friends just smoking weed and talking about the stupid idea du jour. I had been to a hundred of them. I was tired from a hard last day of schlepping skulls, antlers, artwork and general caravan of abode adornment that used to follow me around at that time. I was also excited as it was cool to finally have a place to go that was *mine*. Well mine-ish anyway. I told Ted I was bailing. He had found out that his room wasn’t quite empty yet. I told him to come crash on my floor, but he said he was faded and was just going to go sleep in the band practice room. Yes. Meade house had a practice room too. Yes. EVERY last person I knew was in a band. But me. I walked the several blocks home in the Santa Ana-y swirly twinkly SoCal night and went to bed. I believe I reflected on how cool things were as I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke to a couple of friends of mine pounding on my door, inconsolable, at about 8 am. There had been a fire. Ted was burned. Bad. Meade House was completely gone. I couldn’t get but little bits of this horrifying tale. I grabbed my bike and rushed over to Meade House only to find well, it is hard to describe. I can only describe it as kinda like a movie set for a war in only one house. The two story place had burned completely to the ground. There were fire trucks, and firemen hosing the smokey soggy wreckage, but no ambulances. There were many onlookers, but the people who lived there weren’t there. It took me a while but I got the story together. And slowly my friends started arriving back .

After I left, the residents and some stragglers had decided to hit an all night eatery for some scoobies. Ted had long since passed out in the band room. The band room was insulated, wall and ceiling with foam rubber and carpet, which the firemen said was like solid petroleum. Add to this that the walls had been insulated with blotter paper from old printing presses. Add to this that Ted had a very peculiar way of sleeping, zipped all the way up to his nose in a mummy bag. An ancient electrical outlet in the band room had jumped, igniting the foam rubber and apparently the whole house burned to the ground in fifteen minutes. Ted was the only one inside. He had apparently almost made it out but his sleeping bag melted to his body and he was on fire by the time they got to him in the door way. He had been flown by helicopter to Orange County, as I guess they have the best burn trauma center there. He had 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body. He had no more fingers, ears or face. Goddamnit, you know, just… fuck. I was devastated.

Before letting himself go, Ted stayed alive like that for nearly two months, during which our whole extended peer group lost their collective minds. There were fund raisers, story telling and memorials of all kinds when he finally went. All of this is well and good, healthy even, but it was the first real time I noticed it sharply. I noticed a social tendency that often rears its ugly head during times of such unfortunate occurrence. Maybe I have just been down the dead parent/friend/relative highway a few more times than average, or maybe it was just particularly crystal this time around for reasons unknown, but it was undeniable. Suddenly everyone was Ted’s best friend. Knowing Ted, yeah, he probably was everybody’s best friend, but this was not the implication. The implication that annoyed me to no end, and one of my personal herd of bette noire to this day, is that they hurt the most. Our extended circle had become the host nation to the grief olympics, and everyone was shooting for gold in their own overly dramatic, overly selfish, overly act outing way. I saw it in everyone. I saw it in everyone and it annoyed me. And it annoyed me because  I saw it in myself.

When a pillar of the community is removed by the mis-wound hands of time, everybody hurts. When its someone you know, man it hurts fucking bad. I can understand the hollow, the empty, the torture of the lack of reason. I have been there and so have you. I understand. It hurts soooooo bad, that sometimes it seems like it isn’t possible that anyone could hurt any more than you do, and to somehow demonstrate that is a totally natural impulse. But you know what? Its one thing to feel that way and another to externalize it. I think its ugly, though that may be my own neurosis, and I may be alone in that opinion. There is a certain beauty in grief if you let it exist. It can be a terrific lens, a powerful motivator, and an unbreakable glue. In times when everyone is grieving, be extra gentle and let them all have their grief – if at least only so that you do not annoy me. I mean, can’t you see how sad I am?