Here’s how it happens Doc gives Stan and Diane tacos.
Stan and Diane give Doc a tab of blotter acid.
Doc goes back into the water, gets into a wave, and discovers that the molecules that form the wave are the same molecules that form him, so that he does not need to become one with the wave, he is already one with the wave, in fact, we are all the same wave…
And goes and finds Stan and Diane and weepingly tells them so.
“I know, ” Diane gushes.
She can’t know, she’s never been on a board, but we’re all on the same wave, so…
“I know you do,” Doc says.
Doc comes back with his surfer buddies and they all turn on. Now you have Republican Orange County’s baddest nightmare-the worst antisocial elements (surfers and hippies) gathered on one combination plate in a demonic, drug-induced love fest.
And planning to institutionalize it, because
Stan and Diane share their problem-lack of funds-with Doc and the boys and Doc offers a solution.
“Grass,” he says. “Dope.”
Surfing and dope go together like… like… uhhhh…
… surfing and dope.
Surfers had been hauling grass back up from safaris in Mexico for years, the 1954 Plymouth station wagon being the smuggling vehicle of choice, because all of its interior panels could be removed, the insides stuffed with dope, and put back on.
“We can get you the money to fix up this place,” Doc says, volunteering not only himself but his surfing buddies. “A few Baja runs and that’s all you need.”
Doc and the boys make the requisite runs, sell the product, and donate the proceeds to Stan, Diane, et al. to spread love, peace, and acid throughout Laguna Beach and its environs.
The Bread and Marigolds Bookstore opens in May of the year.
It sells The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Anarchist Cookbook, On the Road, incense, sandals, psychedelic posters, rock albums, tie-dyed T-shirts, macrame bracelets (You know what? Go ahead and hate them), all that happy shit, and distributes acid to the turned-on.
Stan and Diane are happy.
43
The store opens, but — the guys keep making runs.
Because “enough” is a self-contradictory word.
Enough is never enough.
Finally- finally — surfers found something they could make money at without getting a j-o-b. And money they make. Fuck, they make money. Millions of dollars of the stuff. They even buy a yacht to hang out in and sail dope up in from Mexico.
Cool and cool.
But Doc Doc is a visionary.
A pioneer, an explorer.
Doc hops a plane to Germany, buys a VW van, and drives drives to Afghanistan.
Doc has heard stories about the amazing potency of Afghan hashish.
The stories turn out to be true.
Grass is fine, but Afghan hash?
Synaptic pinball, lighting all the lights, ringing all the bells.
Winner, winner, winner.
So Doc loads his van up with hash, drives back to Europe, and ships the van to California. Throws a few tasting parties, gives some samples away, and creates a market for his product.
It isn’t long before the other Association boys follow Doc’s footsteps to Afghanistan and load cars, trucks, and vans up with hash. The most ingenious smuggling vessel, though, is the surfboard. One genius ships a board to Kandahar, hollows it out, and stuffs it with hash, because nobody at the airport knows what a surfboard is or, critically, how much it should weigh. And no one even asks what a guy is doing with surfboards in a place where there’s no ocean.
All this shit comes back to Laguna.
Pretty soon Laguna Canyon fills up with houses full of dope and houses full of dopers. The canyon is so full of outlaws that the cops dub it “Dodge City.”
44
The little girl lives in a cave.
Not metaphorically-not a run-down house with no natural lighting source-a cave.
As in Neanderthal.
The cave is in the hills near the lakes that give Laguna its name.
A cave in Laguna in the summer isn’t such a bad place-it’s actually kind of congenial. The days are warm, the nights are merely cool, and the inhabitants of the cave do have some basic amenities.
They have candles for light and Sterno stoves for what little cooking they do. They have sleeping bags and blankets, rolled-up shirts and jeans for pillows. They shower and use the toilets at Main Beach, although they’ve dug a latrine down a path through the brush outside the cave.
The little girl, Kim, hates it.
Six years old, she already has a sense that there’s something better out there.
Kim imagines a room (of her own, Ms. Woolf) with walls, pink wallpaper and bedspread, dolls lined up neatly along the big pillows, and one of those Easy-Bake Ovens where she can make tiny little cupcakes. She wants a real mirror to sit in front of and brush her long blonde hair. She wants a bathroom that is immaculate and a house that is…
… perfect.
None of this is going to happen-her mother’s name is “Freaky Frederica.”
A year ago, Freddie ran away from home and (abusive) husband in Redding and found her way to some shelter (and a new name) with the hippie commune in the cave. For her, it was the best thing that ever happened- for her daughter, not so much.
She hates the dirt.
She hates the lack of privacy.
She hates the chaos.
People come in and out-the commune’s population is transient, to say the least. One frequent visitor to the cave is Doc.
He owns a house down in Dodge City, but sometimes he hangs out at the cave, smokes dope, and talks about the “revolution” and the “counterculture” and the revelatory powers of acid.
And fucks Freddie.
Kim lies there, still as a doll, pretending to sleep as her mother and Doc make love beside her. She shuts her eyes tight, tries to tune out the sounds, and imagines her new bedroom.
No one ever comes into it.
Sometimes the man with her mother isn’t Doc but someone else. Sometimes it’s several people.
But no one ever comes into Kim’s “room.”
Ever.
