Stop That Girl (16 page)

“Ahhhhhh-ooommmmm.”

“Ahhhhhh-ooommmmmmm.”

“Ahhhhhh-ooooommmmmmmm.”

Ginsberg sat onstage in his suit, holding his harmonium and chanting. I glanced around the room. Barefoot belly dancers in ankle bracelets, men with felted hair and knit caps, babies in papooses, and acidheads young and old seemed to be his local fan base. Literary giant, free spirit: he had all bases covered. After a while, Ginsberg roamed the stage, reading us a new poem about his father’s death, and then he sang us a song accompanied by Peter Orlovsky and Bhagavan Das, and then he had us sit in silence awhile to focus on nonthinking. All I could think about was the car ride.

Would Ginsberg acknowledge my humanity without understanding the depth of my feelings for him? Should I try to tell him? Or would that seem insincere and expedient? Allen Ginsberg would
see
me at least. Bear witness to my corporeal being. I’d probably touch his skin. The eyes that had seen the best minds of his generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through
the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
would take me in too, and my image would shoot into his brain and light up some cells and mix with some of the most trenchant thoughts of the twentieth century. My being, otherwise insignificant, would sap some small part of the neurological wonder before me, perhaps elbowing out a great observation he might’ve made or, far better, nudging into place a notion just on the brink.

After the reading, there followed the usual milling and clumping of the crowd, and Bart went forward to the stage to wait his turn. I saw him rocking on his heels. And shortly Ginsberg smiled his cockeyed smile and Bart smiled his, and they grasped hands and pulled closer and Bart said one thing or another and Ginsberg this or that, and there was nodding and pointing and more talk and gestures, and then Bart was back to me in a flash.

“Quick, go get the car, he’ll be coming out the back with his stuff in five minutes,” he said.

“Right!” I said.

Alive with purpose, I sprinted out to the street and leaped into Doug’s Datsun just as a long black car rolled past, holding a passenger who looked like Julie, furious.

Must have been someone else. Julie was home, and Julie was never furious.

I whipped around the back of the auditorium and drummed my fingers on the wheel. Last-minute inspection— the smell was subdued, but what was that rubbing sound? I opened the hood, measured the oil, saw that the engine was running on black scum, pulled a couple of cans from the trunk because Doug was never without them, punctured them, poured them, tossed them into the shrubs, wiped my hands on a T-shirt—sorry Doug—and just in time, because the back door of the auditorium swung open and, in a flurry of capes and scarves, Ginsberg’s bald pate came into view. He was carrying his harmonium and a little bag.

I was grinning. I felt no gravity in my bones. My hair was clean. I had a good taste in my mouth. I had my whole life ahead of me, and I was already meeting Allen Ginsberg.

Bart introduced us. My palm slid into Ginsberg’s warm fleshy palm, then into the cool dry hand of Ginsberg’s friend Orlovsky, who grasped his banjo and an ammunition case.

“Greatly obliged,” Ginsberg said. “Not the first time I’ve been interviewed in a car.”

A black Town Car pulled around the back of the auditorium. I blinked my eyes. “Please, hop in,” I directed them.

“We’ll do fine in back,” Ginsberg said. It was a two-door, and the men squeezed past the front seats like pears diving into a can.

“Hurry,” I muttered to Bart.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just get in,” I said.

“Don’t be weird,” he said.

I scrambled to take my seat and start up the car, just as my grandmother and Julie pulled up alongside us. We shot forward abruptly, out of the lot, before Bart had even closed his door. A bellow rang out in our exhaust. A glance in the mirror showed me Julie hurling herself out of the car and jumping up and down, and my grandmother rising from the driver’s side, no mistaking her, hollering and waving. Ginsberg and Orlovsky looked startled, tottering over when I pulled onto the street.

“Slow down,” Bart said.

“Whoa!” Ginsberg yelped.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s—”

I screeched around the corner and bumped over the curb.

“Ann!” Bart yelled.

“Sorry,” I said.

Then I took a few unnecessary jags down side streets. Help!

“Cool it,” Bart said, squeezing my knee.

“Didn’t want the fans catching our scent,” I said.

“Ho-ho,” Ginsberg said.

Bart fixed me with a glare and then swiveled in his seat, as there were now more important matters to consider. His writing pad and pencil in hand, the interview began. As we motored out of town, through the traffic lights on Mission Street, past the Food Bin, Saturn Café, and Batish House, Bart began to ask the typical questions—about the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poets, at which Ginsberg taught, the effects of marijuana, LSD, and meditation on his poetry, his recent tour with Bob Dylan, his literary influences. It was hard for me to take in the stunning reality of the moment. It was all too much. And what was happening with my grandmother, what was happening to Julie? Was my grandmother reducing her to rubble? Should I have stopped? At last we left the town behind and were heading north on Highway One, a two-lane stretch of road connecting Santa Cruz with San Francisco, between farmlands and the sea, barns and cliffs all obscured now in a thick belt of fog. The man in the backseat could talk about anything and everything like a jukebox you put a dime into for a song. I couldn’t help glancing up at my mirror every few seconds. I had it trained on Ginsberg’s lips.

A car honked, somewhere nearby. The headlights caught the fog and made flying spumes of it. Lights coming our way blurred into green penumbras and were swallowed up again in the vapor. I slowed to a crawl.

“We have a literary magazine here at school. Ann and I went through a big funding struggle last year,” Bart was saying. “It’s called
The Blunt Probe.
”

“What does that remind me of?” said Ginsberg.

“Ann?” Bart said.

I cleared my throat. “We were wondering if maybe you’d let us publish something of yours,” I said. “It would be a real honor.”

“Hmm. I’ll see what I can do,” Ginsberg said. “Yes, you can give me your address, and I’ll look through my notebooks and see what I can do.”

“Here’s a few back issues,” Bart said, handing them over.

“
The
Blunt Probe,
” Ginsberg said.
Allen Ginsberg said
the name of our magazine!
“It’ll look good on my résumé.”

We laughed.

“So back to where it all begins,” Bart said. “We know what musicians do, practicing their scales, sharpening their technique. What about you? How, exactly, do you do what you do?”

Ginsberg licked his lips. In my mirror I saw it all. “A writer’s practice is one of observation. On brick walls, we pick out distinguishing characteristics, the little diagonal slashes in amber and beige which the wisteria find to climb in. Locate particulars, as Wordsworth said, of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ Find the vocal origin in your throat that corresponds with the mental image. It’s a process of waking up and noticing the ordinary mind. Inspiration— literally, standing open-mouthed to receive the muse—is when you get into your practice of mindfulness for a few hours.”

Behind us, a car flashed its lights. In the fog, the brights made it harder still to see.

“Some find that a formal meditation practice, sitting straight spine, helps develop a nonfrenzied mind from which to proceed. Don’t be afraid of laziness! Observe and learn from that as well. What’s sharp and clear will remain—”

The car behind us began to honk. I moved the mirror off Ginsberg’s mouth and found myself squinting into the encroaching glare. In a moment, in a clear pocket between drifting gray curds, I caught a glimpse of the nose of the Town Car.

I bit down on my tongue. The car began to honk again, more frenetically.

“Impatient son of a bitch,” Ginsberg said.

Orlovsky twisted around and gave the finger.

“Why don’t you pull over when you can,” Bart said. “Let them pass.”

“Yes, right,” I said. I was starting to sweat. When a wide spot appeared, I began to speed up.

“Pull over here,” Bart said.

Now she was laying on the horn for seconds at a time, flashing her high beams.

“Maniac,” Ginsberg said.

“Do you suppose it’s someone trying to tell us something?” Orlovsky said.

“Right here!” Bart said. “Pull over here!”

“I don’t want to,” I said. “I can’t see anything.”

The lights flashed into the car and onto the mirror. The horn grew louder and more insistent. The fog was boxing us in, trapping us. “Let’s just get to a clear spot,” I said.

“Stop the car,” Orlovsky said.

“Come on, Ann,” Bart said.

“This is monstrous,” Ginsberg said.

“We want you to stop,” Bart said.

“I can’t stop.” Tears were mounting in my eyes, ready to spill the banks.

“Why not?” Bart said.

“We have to keep going!” I said.

“Why?”

“Stopping is impossible—”

“No, it’s not!”

“It’s too dangerous; the road’s not wide enough!”

“It’s plenty wide enough!”

“We’re not going to stop!” I said.

“Stop the car!” Orlovsky yelled.

“Stop telling me to stop!”

The horn was bearing down on us, like the blare of a train. A fuzzy little bunny scurried under the headlights. I swerved onto the shoulder. The shoulder gave way like sponge cake. We went half tilt into a ditch.

“Damn!” Bart said.

I stepped on the gas. We were stuck.

Bart said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Insanity,” Orlovsky said. He struggled against the front seat.

Lights rolled up behind.

Bart reached over and turned the key in the switch. The engine fell quiet. I considered opening the door and running as fast as I could, but he grabbed my wrist before I could try it. “Ann?”

Gravel crunching underfoot.

“Let’s see what the jackass wants!” Ginsberg declared.

Knuckles rapping on the glass.

“Open up,” she said.

I couldn’t move.

Bart said, “Open the window!”

All right, fine. I unrolled the window. My grandmother, whom I had not seen since I was ten years old, stood by the highway. She wore a green paisley blouse, moss-green pants, a gray sweater vest and had her white hair up in a stylish bun.

“That’s quite a welcome!” she said. “Get out of this car and give me a hug!”

Bart said, “Gentlemen, I can promise you this was not in the plans.”

Ginsberg said, “The plans are not always clear.”

I opened my door and stood on the gravel shoulder with my grandmother. “My, how you’ve grown,” she said. “You look just like I did at your age. You’ve got the red in your hair from Mother. I have a beautiful sweater for you in the car from Scotland. Went over there last year to study. Spent a month in Edinburgh. Bought you a gorgeous kilt too. Come on now, let’s get back and have some dinner!”

I hugged her. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

Bart stood on the other side of the car.

“Madam, do you realize you almost ran us off the road?” Ginsberg called out from the backseat.

“Um, this is my friend Bart,” I told her, “and in back, this is the great poet Allen Ginsberg and his friend, Peter Orlovsky.”

My grandmother bent over and took a quick look. “I don’t care if they’re Tweedledum and Tweedledee, let’s go! I didn’t drive up here to chase you all over kingdom come!”

The rest folds in on itself, like a moment you don’t quite want to remember. I recall Bart pulling me away by the sleeve and saying, “Tell her to go back to your place and wait!”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“You’re supposed to take pictures!”

“You can take pictures.”

“And you’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” he said. “If you give it up, you’re sacrificing yourself for
nothing
!”

“No, no, it’s not for nothing.”

Then there was Julie. “Sorry,” she was whispering. “I’ll tell you what happened later.”

I’m the one who’s sorry, I’m sure I must have said.

And then Bart was saying something like, “You’re making a huge mistake.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re making a huge mistake in terms of
us,
” I think he said.

At that moment I considered him the meanest, most horrible person I’d ever met, and I grabbed my bag from the car and breathed one last time the scent of cloves and old wool that had accompanied the men, and asked for Ginsberg’s signature on the only piece of paper I could find, the back of my driver’s license.
Ahhhh,
he wrote.
Allen
Ginsberg.
What a generous person. Then my grandmother and Julie and I scuffed through the highway gravel back to my grandmother’s car. “This is Duke,” she said, rapping on the hood of her vehicle. I took my place in the front seat of Duke. Julie flopped in back. The Doctor turned her car around, and we made our return through the marine layer to town.