Why I Committed Suicide (8 page)

We alternated sleeping and driving through the night and arrived in Eugene, OR this morning! Ate a great breakfast at Denny’s then stopped at a local market to buy fruits, vegetables and other sundries. I could tell we were getting close when I started spotting the older hippies buying groceries with their litters of ragtag hippy children. We aren’t on the coast yet, but I can smell the ocean in the air now.

We finally arrived in the parking lot where the show will be and it is un-believe-able. I’m so excited and so unbelievably stupidly high. All I can see are vans and campsites everywhere, all populated with moving dots of people wearing color and flair. A person might think that Volkswagens were the pinnacle and height of design, possibly even the only vehicles ever manufactured, if they were visiting from off-planet. People everywhere here look like I do! I feel like E.T. when his space ship finally came home for him. (I am on some kind of sci-fi kick today). Jim Speices’ girlfriend is here and we’re setting up camp with a few other people we know from Denton. Shane and Cheryl and YES! Jenifer’s here too, my little hippy chick. I’ll write more later, I can see she’s excited to see me and I need to be near her now before I go through withdrawals.

—Evening—

Wow, Jenifer and I talked, eXplored and hung out together most of the day. I was so thrilled; she could have literally led me around like a balloon. Lighter than air, comprende? She told me all about Kristoff getting on her nerves during the drive and that she missed me. She missed me! And it was as if we reacted as if we hadn’t seen each other in years. We smoked some native Oregon hydro that Mike the Viking bought and then wandered all over the place. I didn’t know it used to be legal to grow marijuana here. Apparently there is an entire network of private growers that cultivate the Washington/Oregon/Northern California areas. Police are related to the growers and the growers have gotten involved in local politics and their children have grown up as a part of the cities, helping to make the laws lax and letting the positive cycle continue. Oregon is so cool; I would love to live here. Any state that has no self-service gas stations is all right in my book.

The parking lot outside where the Grateful Dead show will be held is phenomenal. So many people follow the Dead on tour that they only play in places that will designate camping areas and allow people to sleep in their vehicles outside each show. Not that I’ve noticed much sleeping going on. Still, it’s nice for a band to be in tune with their core fan base so closely.

During the day I found “Shakedown Street”, which is apparently the name of a famous Dead album or song, but it’s also the area where everyone plies his or her wares. Sort of a third-world medieval market that runs through a gauntlet of vans with people selling shirts and stickers along with some shadier looking people yelling out names of the various drugs they have for sale. People are selling food and signs proclaiming “Pot Brownies” are posted everywhere. The people that follow the Dead have developed their own eco-system that revolves around goods they sell to visitors, but they depend on what they earn to live. After looking around I kind of felt sorry for a lot of people on tour that looked so run down and haggard. The bright tie-dyes and colors everywhere are like a camouflage worn to hide how hard their life really is. A contrast of severe ups and downs.

I did manage to accomplish one of my goals here. I bought a sheet of acid for $80 bucks. Hooray! I was kind of apprehensive about the whole deal because the tabs didn’t have any sort of picture on them, but this girl, Shawn, a chick Jenifer and I both knew from Denton, was quite obviously tripping her balls off on the shit, so I bought it. It is excellent and very clean. I should have expected quality having bought it from a hippy in an orange VW bus just a few hundred miles North of the acid capital of the world. I’ve never had acid that didn’t have some sort of cartoon character or crest printed on the tabs, but then this is the real deal, paper dipped in pure LSD. Totally clean stuff. The guy tried to get me to give him more money saying he would see me at the shows in California and give me more acid then. I guess I just look gullible.

The parking lot becomes almost a whole new world at night and most of the random hippies seem to have a glow about them now. Some of the gaily-decorated school busses/homes conceal bands that play a variety of musical styles ALL night long. Aspiring rock legends I suppose. I have to add that not all of them are any good, even on good acid.

I’ve mostly just been walking around with a stupid grin on my face that says “hey, I’m on strong drugs” but nobody’s paid any attention to me. Jenifer went off to do her own thing but she’s tripping too, along with everybody else I met today or brought along on this journey.

I think it’s important I give Jenifer her space right now; some sort of primordial mating knowledge is kicking in my brain. If that sounds like rubbery gibberish (ribberish) just blame the residuals.

I eventually found a bus cranking out techno music with a mini-rave going on all around it. There were even authentic little munchkin rave kids everywhere. They must sleep all day because I didn’t remember seeing any of them earlier or they could have all been entirely fictitious. I thumped and danced with the best of them for a while, getting nice and sweaty, until the strobe light started fucking with me too hard. The lady in the bus next to our van shut up about the loud music, waking her kids. I’m going to try and sleep for a few hours, tomorrow is a big day and I should conserve a little strength.

I finally made myself sleep a little last night, I sure didn’t want to but now I’m glad I did because I woke up at dawn to a beautiful sunrise coming up over the forest of green. I slept outside in my sleeping bag under a tarp to keep the dew off. The first thing I did after I pulled on some shoes and grabbed another flannel from the van, was walk down to Shakedown St. and buy some great big muffins and milk for breakfast. I have to say plain banana and blueberry muffins are some of the best tasting food one will ever eat. In fact, I was so impressed I even bought a muffin and brought it back for Jenifer, but I doubt she ate it. She’s one of the most anti-social bad morning people I’ve ever met and for some peculiar reason it’s not a turn off. I find the fact that she doesn’t give a damn in the morning’s kind of cool, plus she’s really attractive with a slight pout-y spoiled girl scowl. I hope she never comes across this because I don’t think she would appreciate me thinking her bad moods were sexy. Sometimes when I look at Jenifer I envision her as a dignified noble woman straight out of some lost ancient time—strong and determined, yet also beautiful and delicate in a land of savages.

I dropped a couple of hits of acid with my morning muffins, so I was tripping full blast by the time the show started in the mid afternoon. I found a seat on the floor with my friends and sat out in the sunshine listening to music. I watched the Indigo Girls open up the afternoon, which was cool. I’ve never been into their music very much, but today it was absolutely awesome. Their melodic harmonies and the familiarity of some of their songs was reassuring while tripping and being in the fellowship of an entire stadium filled with good vibes. People wanting to be happy is addictive.

The Grateful Dead have a lot of good people open for them; last year in Vegas they played with Sting, which may have been another influence in me wanting to get here so badly.

The stage was pretty much set up like any other any other stadium concert I’ve been to except there were giant tye-dye flags waving everywhere. I timed my acid so that I was in another world by the time the show started, but I got really nervous during the break between the Indigo Girls and the Dead because this strange cynical clown walked up to us and started performing magic tricks. Now there was no way for him not to notice that everyone in my immediate vicinity had huge eyes and idiotic grins on our faces, plus he kept saying how he performed for free and didn’t want any money which I know is usually what people say right before they ask for money in some fashion or another. I’ve never liked clowns to begin with and this guy started creeping me out like the clown from “It.” He was being really sarcastic while he was doing these dumb slight of hand tricks and I started thinking he was distracting us while the undercover cops were on their way to arrest us. I looked around and thought I saw a guy in the rafters above the stage with binoculars and I got extremely paranoid. I was tripping really hard by this point in case I forgot to mention that. He finally did get around to bumming some money and left us in peace, which made me a hell of a lot happier.

When the Grateful Dead finally came out to play after the tense session with the clown and many minutes of anticipation I was prepared for anything. I had been listening to non-stop Dead music for the past week (except for small gangster rap breaks) so I was prepared for the laid back country sound they began to play. Truthfully, I believed a lot of the hype that surrounds them and I was expecting to see some maniacal frenzied energy that only a band synonymous with helping pioneer my generation’s counter-culture could produce. I was surprised though. They came out and just began to weave a musical tapestry as if they were already in the middle of playing and giving words to everything around us. I began to see that underneath the bright colors and weariness that goes with this hard life on the road there is a true happiness. These old men who look as if they’ve been on the road wayyyy too long attract these people to them because they love what they are doing. That’s why they encourage people to tape the shows, not because they need to force their music on somebody else, not because they need to continually increase their popularity, it’s because the material aspect just doesn’t matter. It’s a way of showing the audience respect by conveying
“we’re sorry we have to sell tickets to see us, but you don’t have to buy our albums and we won’t sell you any high priced t-shirt souvenirs that insult your intelligence, just have a good time and take that with you.”
A hidden lesson that maybe the music of life isn’t theirs to package and sell? I don’t know. I see that there are a lot of problems with having a hedonistic lifestyle like this, too many drugs and corruption confuses the message, but sometimes I wouldn’t ever take it to the point where I join the dancing cult devoted to the Grateful Dead’s music. I saw some people today who twirl continuously, around and round, through every show the Dead play, living from message to message in a bizarre hippy aerobic cult.

I just wanted to put down that I got the impression there are a lot of things we miss by not being open to accepting what isn’t necessarily taught. This life is good so celebrate the good vibe all around. Of course the music was flawless but I enjoyed stumbling upon this new philosophy most of all. It’s given me a lot to mull over and think about, especially as it pertains to everything I thought I valued the most. I can sense that seeds have been planted in my mind that may change the course of my life forever. I’m going to go see if I can find Jenifer and frolic.

“And who will save your soul?”

—Jewel

Given the chance to relive any mortal moment again like in the play “Our Town”, I know that today would be one of the days I would choose. I know for a fact now that I have never loved a woman as much as I love Jenifer Lansing and I know now it’s an indisputable fact that she loves me equally as much. Jenifer Lansing loves me and I pledge before my God and any and all other minor deities who happen to hear my thoughts and prayers in passing that she will be given all the consideration and devotion as befits my wife.

Today has been the most bizarre emotional roller coaster that I’ve ever ridden, so I should start at the beginning which is a very good place to begin.

Last night, I slept as close to Jenifer as two layers of mummy bags will allow in cold weather. There was definitely some electricity between us but we kept our hormones in check and bonded closer mentally. I was on one side of her and Kristoff was on the other. Nothing dishonorable occurred; we were all exhausted from the events of the first show day and snuggling beneath the tarp. I definitely was just playing it cool around her (I hope) because (1) any decision for her to make concerning us being together must be done with complete freedom and (2) I didn’t want to piss Kristoff off by making him think I was muscling in on “his” girl and possibly provoke an anger response which might make Jenifer choose me. Actually I was tempted to attempt the second option but that dumb southern mentality I have of “dancing with the one that brung ya” kicked in.

There were a lot of various tensions going on in my mind when I entered the stadium for the second and final show in Eugene, OR. Of course I was tripping, not as hard as yesterday in case any evil looking clowns decided to show up, but hard enough. The show was great; Jerry came out on stage and I cheered like a veteran when he gave his winning smile and started jamming. He really does resemble a big teddy bear much like the Grateful Dead icons depict. Everything was cool. Sitting in the sunshine with my girl, my long hair flowing down my back and wearing nothing but a pair of shorts made from an American Flag. We were totally digging the show when this guy sitting soft of next to us said “Isn’t your name Jenifer?”

I could tell right away it was bad by the look she got on her face. When she turned to see him her dead eyes and relaxed muscles only communicated “I can’t believe this is happening” over and over.

I shouldn’t probably mention that the first time Jenifer ever had sex she was date raped. One of our earliest discussions was about losing our virginity so I knew about the “evil first guy.” I knew how much this guy had traumatized her—as much as a male can ever understand being raped—and I knew how it led to a bunch of different insecurities and doubts in her life, as well as a revulsion that occurs whenever she hears the G-N-R “Appetite For Destruction” album because it was playing at the time of the incident. She never went into the graphic details, and I had assumed she only told me about it out of respect, but I secretly hoped I could ever get my hands on the guy. I would beat him into a bloody pulp for hurting her. This was a confrontation I never expected to happen because he supposedly moved to Washington shortly after it happened. Even though Jenifer, being young and confused, never reported the rape to any authority figure it did happen.