Strange Days

JG & Kami

JG went to my high school (although I didn’t know him at the time) & was half of a pair of twins. The twins were both tall, funny, intelligent, and good-looking, but only one hewed to the straight and narrow. JG was the party animal. One night, JG went to a party with his best friend & they were dared to do a jar of acid together. They accepted the dare – 100 hits of blotter acid between them. I suppose the people at the party must have thought it was funny when the two of them started acting silly and wandered off together. They made it down to the shore in Isla Vista, where JG watched his best buddy walk off into the ocean, never to return. It seems that some of the organization of JG’s mind went with his friend, for JG was never the same. That old mind-expanding LSD had rerouted some of his connections.

When I met JG, he was a regular at the New York Hero House. We used to call him the king of the non sequitur. Much of the time when one would speak with James, something unrelated would come back. “How’s the weather?” you might ask. The answer would come back, “The Dodgers didn’t play.” For years we thought we were getting pure nonsense back from our chats with JG. But it turns out that the answers tended to be more post-sequitur than non-. JG was projecting the conversation and giving the reply a few exchanges down the road, apparently without realizing it.

The weather/Dodgers conversation might have otherwise gone: “How’s the weather? - It’s been raining pretty hard. – Yeah, it’s been one of the biggest storms on record. - There have been event cancellations all over. - Yeah, baseball games have been cancelled. - The Dodgers didn’t play.” But JG would preempt the whole middle of the conversation.

When JG would drink coffee, those old neurons would start firing up, and he would be manic. After three cups, practically nothing he said would seem to make any sense. The simple act of getting a sandwich order from him would be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, when he would smoke weed, it would slow him down enough that he would be almost normal. It was very strange, but I suppose he never wanted to be like others.

JG was unemployable and legally crazy, but apparently harmless. As a result, his support was a monthly check from the Social Security Administration. But that SSI check didn’t last long. JG would get the check, rent a room, and throw a party for all of his buddies. Of course, many more would show up, and many street people would have a roof over their heads for a couple of days. Then the money would run out, JG & friends would be run out, the room would be left squalid, and JG would be without a means of support for another 3 weeks. His social worker caught wise (after calls from angry landlords, and reports of a hungry JG begging) and struck deals with local business proprietors. JG no longer would get a check, but he got to run a tab at places like the Hero House. As a result, he got fed, we got paid, & we saw him a lot.

Everything JG wore, he got from the Free Box. So imagine our surprise when he walked in one day in a leather suit! He had retrieved perfectly fitting brown leather pants and jacket in perfect shape from the free box. Must have been worth about $2500. He looked like he just came from Beverly Hills – well, aside from the grizzle on his face and the bits of shrub in his hair from sleeping in the park. We lent him the bathroom, a comb, and a disposable razor to clean up and when he walked out, he looked more like a rich celebrity than another Isla Vista burnout. College girls turned their heads, a cute little new arrival from the Midwest began sharing his sandwiches, soon shacked up with him and JG had a steady girl!

Kami was adorable. She had just arrived in town from Wisconsin and was very attractive and sweet. Like so many other new arrivals, she dropped into the New York Hero House for a bite to eat, a few jokes, some conversation, and to learn about the lay of the land. And then in walked JG, all cleaned up, with the brush removed from his hair, and in his cool leather outfit. His good looks were too much for Kami. She nearly swooned. They hooked up, and began living in some comfort in an abandoned bus in a green tree-filled lot. It seemed kind of romantic and they both were so happy that I even thought JG might heal his mind. But it was not to be.

After a few weeks, JG’s hair started going back to the way it had been. The leather started to smell. The grizzle was back on his face. The manic conversation was back. And whenever we saw Kami, JG’s arm was tightly and possessively around her, and she began to look scared. As time went on, her face got darker, her eyes got sunken and she began to look haunted. We didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was wasn’t good. She looked like she was experiencing years of street living in a few weeks. I discussed the situation with my roommates, Lyn, Eva & Alan. We thought we needed to do something, because at this point, Kami was beginning to resemble a wild animal and had moved quickly from a bright-eyed new arrival in town to something almost not quite human. It was very disturbing.

Alan & the girls came to hang out at the Hero House at about the time we thought we’d see Kami & JG. Sure enough, they arrived, JG holding on tightly. I offered to let Kami use the bathroom in back & told JG he couldn’t go in with her – there already was a longstanding policy that he couldn’t go in the back. Alan & the girls met her in the back & asked her if she wanted to get out, to escape JG. At this point, Kami seemed to have forgotten how to talk, but she nodded, so off they went & put Kami up in our spare bedroom.

She had gotten to be like a wild animal. She barely spoke. Her eyes were darting around constantly. When we gave her food, she shoved it into her mouth. She was starving, filthy, and apparently drug-addled. The girls bathed her and dressed her in some fresh clothes of theirs. Over time, we combed the tangled, matted hair out, and got her fed. Whatever drugs there were wore off, but it was taking time for the after-effects of her time in the bus with JG to be healed. We managed to get her parents’ names & phone number from her and called them in Wisconsin. We suggested they had best come soon, for their daughter seemed to be in peril. We warned them that their daughter needed help & that they might no longer recognize her personality.

One day, we got home to find that Kami had disappeared from the house. We were panicked. Had JG figured out where we lived in Santa Barbara? Had he cast his Jim Morrison-like spell over her again? Fortunately not. Kami’s parents called a week later to tell us that they had come to the house, had taken Kami home and that she was getting psychiatric help. Her bright eyes were starting to come back, and they were grateful.

After losing Kami, JG seemed to get very dark for a while. Now he was always angry when we saw him, and looked a bit haunted himself. The leather clothes were falling apart, the owner of the bus had returned to throw him out & JG seemed to feel he had lost something. Soon though, with the transitional ease of the addled, the wacky JG returned. He was back to laughing at life, back to being manic under the influence of caffeine, and nearly normal under cannabinol. But I must say that my roommates, my coworkers and I never saw him again in the same innocent light as a harmless wacko.

Whale of a tale

Man meets whale

My friend Bob went out on a boat. He’s a thin guy, but he came back flatter.

Bob & Vicki went out on Gerry’s new 27’ Bayliner. A beauty of a boat, and its maiden voyage was out in beautiful Santa Barbara Harbor. A perfect day full of whale watchers and grey whales.

Once they got out a little ways, enjoying a legendary Santa Barbara fall afternoon on the water, Bob noticed a large shape dive close by.

He called out to Gerry, “a whale sounded pretty close to the boat. You might want to watch where we’re going?”

Gerry asked, “Where’d it go down?”

Bob pointed, “over the….” and Bob’s world got very dark. A mother grey whale surfaced and leapt up at exactly the point Bob was pointing, blotting out sky, ocean and everything else from Bob’s consciousness except dark. As he was going down, Bob looked up to see Gerry getting knocked off the pilothouse, and the pilothouse getting shattered. He felt himself being pushed toward the back of the boat, knowing that no one was at the controls to stop the props. He didn’t want to end up chum in the harbor and tried to fight the great weight pushing him aft, pushing him towards those sharp, spinning props.

For Gerry’s part, as he went down, he saw Bob’s face framed in the whale’s flukes. In other circumstances, it might have been a funny picture.

As Bob’s body, ribs cracking, was pushed into the railing, the weight of the whale caused the boat to keel partway over. The whale rolled off Bob and off the boat. Bob took his first breath in a minute, and wished he hadn’t as the cracked ribs punctured his lung.

When the grey rolled off, it came back to the boat & rubbed its fluke al the way down its length before diving to join its calf.

Moments later, a whale-watching boat happened by. People on the boat leaned over to get a better look, and to take pictures of the wrecked boat and the potential tragedy of the skinny guy with the long black hair gasping for breath in the bottom of the boat, amidst the blubber & flesh the behemoth had left behind. As Bob was later told me, “there was enough whale meat left behind to have a barbecue for everyone on the boat and their families on the shore.” But then the boat went on by.

Another minute or two and some heroes in Coast Guard uniforms came upon the scene. They pushed Bob across the deck onto a stretcher and took him to a local hospital. They cut off his clothes and found 10 or 20 pounds of whale blubber inside.

His pal, Gerry the boat owner, was not badly injured. Miraculously, Bob’s wife Vicki sustained not even a scratch. Bob & Vicki’s phone had 128 messages from the media the next day.

As Gerry stood by Bob’s bedside in the hospital, the phone rang yet again. “Bob,” it’s the Montel Williams show. They want to talk with you.”

“I…..can’t….barely breathe….don’t want….to…..talk.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

The phone answered, “But everyone wants to talk to Montel.”

This apparently had immediate but temporary curative effects, for Bob was able to growl out an entire sentence, “F**k Montel!”

The story went into the papers, Bob came back to work after a little while, leaning on a cane, trying not to laugh, or otherwise breathe too much.

It’s hard to believe, for (I am told) only two other people have ever survived being landed on by a whale!

I was talking to Vicki in her shop, The Silver Gypsy. What was it like? I wondered.

“Well, it was scary. And it was over almost before I could react. I still can hardly believe it. And it was the first time I had ever been out in deep water in a boat! So, as it turns out, 100% of the time I’ve been out in a boat, some giant water creature landed on it!”

Interesting odds...

“Yes,” she said, “if I ever go out in a boat again, it’s going to be at Loch Ness. And I’m taking a camera.

By the way - the Silver Gypsy in Santa Maria, California has every kind of cool and unusual little perfume, knife, incense, herb, figurine – “gifts for the soul.” And everything a happy pagan might want as well. You should give it a visit if you’re ever in town. And let one-in-a-billion Bob or Vicki tell you a real whale tail.