A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XI
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
Fuck it. You took me for rides in your old blue Ford. Took me for rides. I was wondering how I would get back to Santa Fe. Getting to D.C. was a miracle. I could not get on the plane. We tried three times to sneak me on the plane alone. The last time was done with full fanfare suitable for a notable who I am. My press agent, hired for me by Universal Pictures, made the arrangements over the phone. He explained to the airport’s public relations manager that I was a handicapped film writer with Universal whom Dennis Hopper brought to New Mexico to work on a new movie. But now I had to get to the nation’s capital to sign a contract which meant thousands of dollars to me. The airport’s PR promised I would get the red carpet treatment when I arrived with my two aides. Everything went fine … I dug playing the role of VIP. Everything went smooth until we handed in the one ticket before I got aboard the TWA jet. Unfortunately, however, the airport thought the two aides were flying with me. Alone, I became a safety hazard, which was banned from the airlines. I didn’t understand the logic of the rule. I was considered to be a danger to the other passengers but if I flew with a frail girl who couldn’t do anything for me if the plane went down, I then wouldn’t be a safety hazard and could fly anywhere.
Usually, I could get around the rule by asking a fellow passenger to say I was with him. But the physical arrangement of the airports in both Albuquerque and in D.C. made it next to impossible to ask passengers without getting caught by an enraged ticket seller who’d yell at us to stop bothering his clients. Thank God that most of my friends had level heads or some ticket sellers would have had black eyes.
I got to D.C. on the bus after a Mister Peepers appeared going to the same place I wanted to go. Everybody thought Dennis Parson was a FBI agent because, in spite of his old lady worried air and his cloak of kooky yoga and bad-tasting health food, he had a knack of showing up at places where something revolutionary was about to happen and firing questions. But I didn’t care what he was. I had to get to D.C. and Dennis was willing to take me on the bus. What did I have to worry about? I only had thirteen lids in my suitcase. But the plane ride would have been much easier. I could have just sat in an easy chair for a couple of hours, watched the clouds and looked down at the table of multi-colored quilt with toy houses, cars, cows, trains and blue ribbons with toy boats running. But no. I had to be trapped in the pay toilet in the Cleveland bus station until Dennis could get another dime ransom to get me out.
But now, how was I going to get back to Santa Fe? Another FBI agent was not likely to pop up to escort me on the bus. I should hope not. We had a hard time getting rid of Dennis when he searched my suitcase and found the dope.
When we arrived at the D.C. bus station, Moe picked us up. Dennis naturally stayed close to us the whole time we were getting into Moe’s car. I just told Moe not to open his Christmas presents until Christmas next week. The dope was wrapped in two packages. I thought Moe got the message that Dennis wasn’t to be trusted. He took off my pointer and board and folded me into the car, the Honey Bee.
Moe invited Dennis to crash at the store. Dennis accepted saying he wanted to look up an uncle who might put him up and he wanted to find a job in the city. All of this gave me an uneasy feeling because up until he met Moe, Dennis, pushing his glasses up and patting down his hair which he just cut before we started the trip, kept telling me how anxious he was to get back to living on his parents’ West Virginia farm. Now he changed his mind. The thing that changed his mind was as soon as we got into the car, Moe started asking me how much grass I brought and how good it was. I sat in between him and Dennis without my board. I shook my head no, I didn’t bring any grass … and gave Moe a kick. That’s when Dennis decided to “find a job”, and when I got more uneasy.
As we drove along through the part of the city that had been burnt in riots and was rebuilt, Dennis asked about the local ashrams and health food stores. Moe did not know about that. But he did know the black people. Sometimes I thought Moe was really only playing being Jewish, was really black inside. He told Dennis exactly why the riots had happened and why there would be riots again.
“I don’t believe in violence. The facts are violence can’t get anything big or permanent. But if I was black, I would be violent because that would be the only way I could get self-respect.”
“But they should not be violent. They should go through channels … then they would get what they want,” Dennis said, his nature of being squeamish grandmother showing.
“They have been going through channels for a hundred years and haven’t gotten what they think they want … what they were made to think they want. The point is, they don’t really want what they think they want … a black kid will, during a riot, smash a store window and take a color TV, but he will leave the set a couple of blocks away. He didn’t want the TV at all. He thought he did. But the real reason for his looting wasn’t the TV or the excitement of the adventure. For that moment, he felt self-respect because he stood up against everything that put him down. But that self-respect is short-lived, and he starts thinking of himself as a hood and acts accordingly.” Moe ended his lecture.
We got to the store finally, and while Dennis was taking a piss in the back bathroom, which smelled of pot and hash as if someone forgot the incense, I told Moe why I kicked him … what our guest’s occupation was. Moe sent the word out and made a few calls to cool it. Then he treated Dennis as he would treat a friend who just arrived in town and needed a place to crash. The next day, I started the wheels moving on selling the grass … Dennis had gone to the health food store to get yogurt. I talked to Philip, the pale, skinny hanger-on of the store, about selling for me.
“Sure, I’ll look around. But you picked a bad time … JT just got a shitload of good grass. Moe and everybody are selling it. So, it might be two weeks before you can get rid of it. How much do you want for it?”
“Twenty … but I’ll take twelve. It’s good stuff with only a few seeds and stems.”
Phillip shook his head, heavy in thought. But his whole face lit up when I suggested he try a joint. He was about to head into the back room to get one of the two Christmas packages and spend some time in the bathroom with sandalwood incense, but he had to ask, “Why did you carry dope when you were traveling with that creepy FBI guy?”
“What safer way is there? Who would check the bag of a cripple traveling with an FBI agent? I had everything I would need on the trip in a separate sack, so he didn’t have any reason to open my suitcase … If that shithead up there,” I was looking at Moe working above us at the cash register, “hadn’t opened his mouth, Dennis would be gone by now.”
As Phillip walked back to get stoned, Dennis walked in the front door with two men in grey coats. One had a trimmed, black goatee. Both of them were straight out of an FBI movie. Their role was to walk behind the superagent. Little Dennis in black glasses didn’t exactly fit the superagent, but that is the way it was cast.
Dennis introduced them as his cousins; one of them was supposed to be a business student and the one with the beard was a graduate art student who was interested in getting into commercial art. Moe, unseen by the three on his high perch behind them, made a face as if something was caught under his contacts … as if looking up to heaven in disgust and asking why couldn’t they be more original. The three looked around the store very expertly. Doc, warned about Dennis and sitting on one of the car seats trying to read the Quicksilver Times, kept his fox eyes on the trio. After a while, the two relatives told Dennis they would see him later in the day. They left.
Dennis picked up a copy of the local underground paper and then asked Moe if he could use the phone to get a job. Moe had just finished counting yesterday’s money, so Dennis took over the tower post. He must have made twenty calls. We who were below listened with great interest. Over the phone he made the rounds of all the points of alternative living in the city … free stores, free schools, radical bookstores, free clinics. What he was doing was finding out what was happening in the city. He wasn’t as simple-minded as he appeared. After his calls were over, he marched out of the store, saying he might have a job. Moe, Doc and I just looked at one another.
“He can’t be an FBI guy. He is just too obvious … just too fucking obvious,” Doc said, looking like a king in meditation, wearing his long, fur coat and petting his long, red beard with his pale fingers covered with rings.
“That’s exactly why he is an agent. He is probably the guy he appears to be. He likes to be around freaks. But he’s got all of those patriotic and moral ideas that make him a grandmother. So, he stays on the fringe, just close enough to watch. And he gets information for the FBI to satisfy his grandma ideas of how things are and should be. He is a nice dude for an agent,” Moe said and went back to reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Philip came floating out of the bathroom. His glassy eyes told me that he was sold on the product. Moe looked up at the sheepish grin and the half-closed eyes and just said, “I’m glad our new friend took a walk before you tumbled from the opium den!”
“Holy shit, Moe! Was that creep here?”
“With two of his family. Listen, lamebrain, the next time you use the john for time-traveling, use two sticks of incense.”
"The Narc"