Walking on Thin Ice

Smith’s uncomfortable with his younger self from the journals. I’m posting these entries because it’s the 40th anniversary of 1968. This is a raw perspective of the times following the death of MLK and of the emerging consciousness of his generation.

      Lady

May 5, 1968 Journal Entry

      Whew, I’m out of breath and a little dizzy… we just quite briskly walked back from April’s up on 29th. I’m still speeding, but the ceiling right now is low… but, who cares? About 11:30 we all left here to walk up to April’s… we are Otts, Gary, John, Nigel, and me or myself… tonight I could really say we “is” because when we sped together we honestly become one… a unity. We started out for April’s and went up Calvert Street – not the best section of life. A Negro threw a stone at us and broke a window… God, I was for a moment a racing flash of terror… anyway then four more Negroes started chasing us trying to fight… who wants to fight? I’m usually one who enjoys a small fight, but not on speed… we were all so passive. Fortunately a police car drove by and the Negroes ran away… Otts spoke for all of us when he said he wasn’t mad, the colored boys just didn’t understand – they didn’t want to fight us, they wanted to lash out at what the white society has and they don’t. I don’t care what color a man is… I care what he is and believes… and if he’s bigger than I am I’ll believe what he wants… maybe.
      Spiders… Sunday on a picnic a midshipman friend’s of mines’ girl named Elaine and called Joe or Lynn killed two small spiders. Genrich laughingly repeated a saying I had never heard, something about every time you kill a spider it will rain. And it really rained. Two spiders ruined the whole picnic. Robin [Smith's future wife] asked why God would bother to put such ugly creatures on earth… it’s funny, I was going to tell you why, but I am not going to get into why God does anything… I have more than I can handle figuring out myself, and I’ve yet to start on the why of the world – except I know that once I really know myself I will know the world… even if I can ever tell the world why I can’t understand myself I will have helped.
      John’s beads sparkle in this tremulous light… the sparkling drops of captive crystal play hide-n-seek among the glistening white satin of his gypsy shirt… sash about his waist, sloppy pants, rings flashing from his slender fingers… a perfect gypsy complete with the thick black of some nightly campfire as the hair framing the complete openness of his face… look deep into your crystal ball o John the gypsy and play the answers on your mystical mandolin. John the Gypsy… hail to thee.
      Right now I’m heavy and shouldn’t write much more… Nige just called this book “a diary when time isn’t”… actually it’s a diary for my future so when ever I develop enough to write my novel I’ll have the impressions with me.
      I just saw the tourniquet in the bathroom and realized I’ve never described mainlining. You start out by getting real tight in the gut with anticipation and a large amount of fear… then your conductor (I use that for lack of a better word) roughly measures out a dose of methedrine… he stops and asks you if you want more and damn but it’s hard to say no. The crystal is dissolved in about 1 c.c. of water in a sterilized pop bottle cap… the mixture is then boiled and drawn up through a filtering piece of cotton into a hypodermic needle. All the air is removed from the hypo and the tourniquet is applied to your bicep. You clench your fist as the crook of your elbow is cleaned with alcohol soaked cotton… the conductor chooses a vein and inserts that goddamn frightening needle into your vein… he draws a little blood out to make sure he’s hit your mainline and then slowly empties the needle into you as you watch hypnotically.