Bobbie and Rog (Story 3)

I was telling my man Holmes just last Thursday that Cass Elliot is my all-time favorite singer. And with no close second. Means you can take that shit to the bank.

That’s Stevie Barrows pontificating, rascal, and it sure does sound good. Where else you gonna go on a Sunday morning and be all up in that shit. Dig it, Bro. Like, hoho we’s gotsta go. Ain’t it so, and which all reminds me that time we did the OD thing on LSD-25, which I’d like to get all romantic and say the “Owsley”, James, but probably just some run-of-the-mill chemistry finding it’s way over the Cape Cod bridges and into West Yarmouth, so like it’s a Saturday and we be hitting on it double time though not my boy Roger who is heavy into the juice, like whacked, and he’s the designated driver – what kind of shit it that! – except that’s all good cause I’m hallucinating a mile a minute and Bobbie ain’t no better, that cat could speed dial his brain all the way back to sweet home New Bedford in like a nano-second, for all I know he could sit up in the bucket in Roger’s Mustang and start right now and speed-dial himself back to the whaling city like 15 seconds ago, once again in these stories time is no linear thing – that’s old school, Brah – no no , time be laying all over itself so there is not roadblock to doing now what you did half an hour ago or will do next Tuesday, shit next Tuesday it might even be 3 a.m. and I’m contemplating seriously setting the alarm for that particular time going forward like every day the rest of my life I’ve got because, like that lady says, ain’t nobody got time for that, and in this case the “that” is wasting time, see it’s always all about time and space and them old cosmic blues…….

But anyhow so Roger is cruising the backroads of the Cape and Bobbie be out at a pay phone trying to dial up his boy Kenny Tootell and plead for direct assistance – knowing full well Kenny keeps a loaded piece for just such circumstances – and I’m all lost up in the ever-present time dilemma of anybody really knowing what time it is – or not – and Bobbie’s at the pay phone for a couple of hours, like what the fuck, and I cannot stand it another second and leap out from behind the front bucket, because now a Yarmouth cruiser ala “The Man” has pulled up right beside the booth and we have got to hightail it the hell out of here Jones and I’m out of the ‘Stang and running to the booth and grabbing Bobby and vocally quite loudly and possibly screamingly we have got to go, Bro, and Bobbie fixes his eyes on me, and I count four, and says “I haven’t even dropped the dime in the slot yet you fucking asshole”, which could be worth a chuckle when I relate that tale to the grandkids maybe 40 years down the road and this, by the way, is not an assumption that I will still be alive and kicking four decades from hence because, what with the time thing folding all over itself and then is now and now is later I’ve already been there and done that, man I have sat beside my 83-year old person and eavesdropped to the comings and goings of an ever-brightening mind, later for you old mental decline but that’s a fun story of time travel which is real and alive and available for you real attention-payers…….

But back to the story and Bobbie has not made the call and I have only imagined the Yarmouth cruiser and we rush back to the vehicle and Roger is laughing at us not pityingly he’s too cool for that he is just cracking up at what the fuck are we doing and Bobbie screams to step on it Jones and Roger hits the gas and slides out of the lot which was either a bank or a Howard Johnson’s and we proceed in good orderly fashion down 28 and eventually turning on to the street Roger despite massive inebriation and non-stop chuckling still knows where it is and we drive down an ever decreasing in size road which dead ends almost right up to the ocean and he hangs a right on a dirt trail and Bobbie is out of the still-rolling car screeching about beasts of burden and possibly alien cats and friends’ of mine who came down for a quick hello and a couple dozen joints of Maryjane and have toyed with our minds and Bobbie believes without a doubt intentionally which is why he had the butcher knife in the kitchen I had to remove via stealth and cunning an hour ago or possibly it was last year at Christmas who can be sure what with time sliding over under sideways down back and forth and all around, it’s a gas gas gas, but he is off screeching to Kenny who has come out on the front porch with his chick and I eventually remove my seemingly weightless self from the back seat – don’t you have to love these two-doors when you’re whacked beyond all get-out from illicit substances (thank you Dave Johnson, RIP) and I am able to squint my way into the reality that Kenny is waving some form of dangerous automatic weapon on the porch and his chick whose name is lost on me is jumping up and down because this is for sure better than most any other regular Saturday night and this is all going to wind down in a hurry as now we are in a large room inside Kenny’s summer house – though it’s November I think – and one after another stick of marijywanna is flying around the circle we have made on the floor, Roger taking his place after projectile vomiting off the front porch for what seemed like weeks but probably was about a minute or so – based on my own vomitorial experiences which have been legion since sophomore year in high school and who knew I would like beers so much and so now the joints have been as if on a merry-go-round, hand to hand and we have mellowed I can speak for myself and as I can speak for myself meaning my contact with reality has increased I can see others have too…….

Like Bobbie has stopped all the screaming about tracking down and beheading those two motherfuckers (my old high school friends, man I do need to clue them in on psychedelic etiquette next time we cross paths which right now I am hoping will be never) and Roger has stopped tumbling over gravity or no and now we are in the Mustang on the way back to Bobbie’s and I haven’t told you this yet but earlier in the day while I distracted the two elderly owners of the record store where I was employed down on Main Street Bobbie has slipped a copy of the brand new just into the stores today Beatles “White Album” under his autumn jacket and now we are back at his place kind of feeling warm and fuzzy and thoroughly empty of nirvana and we proceed with the fabulous and direct assistance of an ounce of Columbian gold to listen to the four sides of the clipped LP 12 times. Yes, you read that correctly, which for you math scholars means we listen to 48 sides of Liverpool music in the process of coming back down to earth from that lysergic journey and see that no one has been beheaded and Kenny don’t have to do a 15-20 rap for double homicide and lookie here, my old high school sweetie Darlene is pulling up in her daddy’s caddie and begs me to take a break from my fellow adventurers and hit it back to my place for early afternoon delight which I do and then she drives me back and Roger is now up with a wicked hangover and we pile back in the Mustang and drive down to Kemp’s just the other side of the railroad tracks for three cheeseburgers each and, yup, wicked chocolate shakes.