So I got on the bus.  I didn’t tell my parents what I was doing, because I didn’t think they would really care, so I didn’t tell them.  I just went to the station and left. 

 

When we got to San Francisco, I got off and started walking on the sidewalk.  It was pretty cold and I kept on going for a while.  One part of me was thinking, why are you here John, why don’t you go home?  But another part thought,  your name’s not John,  and you’re just thinking this way because you think l think you’re supposed to.  But they can’t make you think things anymore that aren’t true. 

 

There were wrinkled crumpling papers swipping along, rising and swooshing the sidewalk, and making such loud scratch sounds on the sidewalk when they were going over and off all those tiny concrete bumps. There was a guy that was standing near the door in the deep rectangle carved into the wall.  His face was all grimed and his eyes glowed red-white and his hair knotted.  He waved when I was walking past, but I wasn’t ready so I kept walking. 

 

Some other kids were walking past too, and the girls turned and said, “Hey! Where are you going?”

 

I turned and said, “I don’t know, I just got here for the first time so I am wandering and looking around.”

 

They said “Come with us!” and beckoned. They were smiling and there was something in their eyes.  So I went. The one girl wanted to know where I came from, so I said Ohio, I came here on the bus, I just really want to see what is happening in San Francisco.  And she said oh right on, and she put her arm around my shoulder and we started walking together.  And I could tell she was pretty. 

 

They brought me to where they were living. They said, this is the Haight, now you’re in the Haight.  It was a bazaar. There were poles with rugs and blankets draping over,  and all kinds of soft things were laid out on the ground,  so you could stretch out and not hurt. 

 

We went to sleep. 

 

*

 

The next day we dropped acid. The pressure in my forehead got harder and harder and I started to feel this line or long stretching extending from the center of my forehead and going toward where I was looking. 

 

One of the kids Josh liked to write poetry and he had a notebook and a pen out on his blanket.  He wasn’t there.  I was sitting next to Sue.  We were sitting Indian-style.  She put her head on my shoulder and it fell through my shoulder and I caught her.  We were laughing about that. 

 

I told her hey watch this, and I concentrated on the pen and Josh’s notebook.  And showed her.  I made the stretching that was coming out of my forehead keep going till it got to the pen at the notebook.  I closed my eyes and I just concentrated and let it be easy, and the pen opened the notebook and was writing. 

 

The pen was on its point just standing up.  Myself didn’t move.  Myself only has to be there.  It does what I tell it.  I told Sue tell me what to write, and she said things and we wrote them.  When it was done writing, the pen let down.  Sue put her hands on the sidewalk blankets and pushed herself down to rise herself up.  She walked and checked the paper.  And she came back over and sat down and kissed my cheek, and she whispered in my ear, that’s so sexy. 

 

*

​

So after that it was changing, in a way, because people liked what I would do, and whenever I was on acid I would show how things move from far off. Everyone thinks it was great I could do it.  I told them they could too, but most of them didn’t believe me so they couldn’t.  But sometimes I showed someone how. 

 

So people knew who I was.  Some kids had places to live and they would invite me to stay for a while, so I was lying on a bed or a couch. And when I wanted to leave I would go.  And people I never met before would say hey John right on man when I walked past on the sidewalk.  People would talk to me.  And when there are new kids who just got here, sometimes they come up to me and say hey man are you John I heard about you.