A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XVIII
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
Travelling along back country roads. Bumps, turns, dips. Each sharp turn pushed me close to Carol, leaning on her. Laughing at the tickle inside our bellies when we went down dips fast.
“These roads are very physical … just like having a back massage, especially with these shocks. Especially when you are stoned. Do you think doing dope is a sin? I am not sure. I see things clearer when I am stoned … that is the way I see things clearer when I am stoned … that is the way I got close to God … through acid. But I should be clear and close to Him all the time without dope. I’m not sometimes … most of the time … and that’s the time I take dope … to cover up my weakness. Let me take off my glove … there … let me find your hand hiding in your coat sleeve. I don’t want to feel cloth. I want skin! There, isn’t that better? Your hand is cold. When we get back to the store I’ll give you a back massage … ever had one? I love to give them … playing with skin, giving people pleasure. I drive on these roads, just Bo and me. But I like to talk to someone when I am driving. That’s why I like you so much … I can talk to you and you really understand. Are you uncomfortable like that?”
During her monolog, I had slipped down so that my head was laying on her belly, a soft pillow … but her elbow kept jabbing me every time we made a turn and my back was getting a little strained, falling half off the seat. She stopped the old Ford and sat me up, popping my head on her shoulder. Bo was staring jealously at me from the back seat. I was in his place. Come off it! I wasn’t going to be a rival to a dog.
We started the car again, after deciding not to roll another joint … that would just be wasting good shit, as high as we were. So Carol lit a cigarette instead. White farm hills dazzled my eyes. White under the bloody sun going down.
“It would be fun driving you to Santa Fe. Being with you all of the way there, but … Look at the sunset! Can you see it? God’s painting. We had better get back to the store before you get too cold. I’d better learn how to work the thing in the car before we start the trip … if we do. Getting trapped in a snow blizzard and freezing isn’t the best way to go. My father picked the best way … shot himself through the head. I found him in the living room dead. I was rather relieved that he did it … not really, you know. But I was never really close to him. He was always yelling at me, hitting me. He was a very religious man. I guess I’m a lot like him.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I was sure that he was a very religious man. Beating his kid, shooting himself. Very religious. Carol looked down at me to see why I was laughing. I hoped she wasn’t like her old man.
“I didn’t have any feelings about his being dead. But I hated him for what he did to Mom by killing himself. Why couldn’t he just have run away? We would have understood and forgiven him. But now Mom wonders what she did or didn’t do that made him kill himself. That was last year, just before I went out to California.”
When we parked in front of the store, Carol went in with Bo to get Moe to carry me all the way to the back room for the massage. Carol had put me into the car by herself to test if she could do it for the trip that she was deciding to make. Getting into the car went smooth … she was strong … but now we were stoned and didn’t want to bother with the chair. So two minutes later, Moe danced topless like a drunk prizefighter out of the circus-colored, painted store. He scooped me up with a loud belch in my ear, and carried me to my true love.
Carol was waiting on the mattress to take off my shirt. Moe turned on the overhead blacklight to give that intimate atmosphere. Moe disappeared into the front room where Badfinger was playing. “If you want it, here it is. Come and get it … it may not last!” Red, orange, green and blue day-glo popped out at us from the posters around us. She started scratching my arms and chest … beginning the massage.
“Remember what I told you yesterday about how this store closes in on me and forces me to leave? It is doing that now. I want to stay here with you. A part of me likes this place. I don’t feel as comfortable anywhere in the city. Sitting here I can make believe that the city doesn’t exist. I feel accepted and comfortable. That part of me wants to stay here … but it’s the same part that lusts, stuffs itself with food, wants cigarettes, beer and dope. Why am I so weak? I keep falling into temptation, wanting things of this world … when all I really want is to be spiritual, to give my life. But I keep forgetting.”
As Carol sighed, she rolled me over onto my belly and sat on my butt, working the tension out of my back, rocking back and forth.
“I like expressing my love directly like this. The closest I get to a person is when I’m giving him a massage. It is what I like to do the best. I can just feel my love pouring out through my fingers into your back. But sometimes I wonder if it’s too sensual.”
Carol’s voice faded. Her hands guided my body into the relaxed state of half-sleep. Then she gently rolled me over again. Leaning back on the desk leg, she put my head in her lap and softly stroked my face … sometimes she pressed my face to her body. Suddenly she left. I thought she would be back in a minute. I just lay there in a new happiness. No girl before had done just a simple thing with me … holding me tenderly … holding me as if I was a desirable man. It finally dawned on me after lying there for ten minutes that Carol went home.
“Well, Romeo, would you like to join the real world, or are you contented lying there with that idiot grin?” Moe asked, standing over me. “What did you drop, anyways?” I just gave you two birds grass. But that’s unmistakably your acid grin.”
After Moe put the board on, I asked, “What’s with D.C.? Every time I come here, I get involved with a chick.”
“We grow loony girls. But I’m still waiting to see you take one home with you.”
“That’s the trick.”
“You’ll never do it.”
“Want to bet?”
“I’m not a gambler,” Moe said, and went back to playing poker on the apple barrel with Lenny, the handsome young blonde who was about ready to quit his hardhat job and join the Before and After crew.
“Gambler he isn’t,” Lenny said, laying down a royal flush and pulling on his red beard, amused.
“Well, eat me!”
“Now, Captain, remember your blood pressure,” Lenny said. “Hey, Mondy, did you hear what your friend Louie pulled off?”
Louie, a cool, Jewish, junkie businessman with professionally styled silver hair, a lot of rings, Moe’s most expensive, flashy clothes, and a weasel face – ran a liquor store and sold dope, including smack – “If I didn’t do it, someone else would,” was what he said when I asked how he could sell heroin --- had something like if you dug about three miles under his surface.
“He painted himself black and put on an Afro-natural wig, and robbed the Riggs bank, just for kicks … almost got away with twenty grand. But three businessmen brought him down with a flying tackle. He smashed his head on the sidewalk and woke up in the hospital,” Lenny said.
“He will bribe his way out of it within a week,” Moe grunted. “Ah, yes, American justice!”