Ray has decided to go light on Christmas this year.

Mother is off tooting around the Carribean. Fine. So he will just stay put, won't angle to be invited anywhere. No tree, no caroling, no solitary Yuletide dinner at Howard Johnson's. Let Miss Basnight lure him down to the parlor for a ritual cup of eggnog and be done with it.

And so Christmas comes and goes. Ray stays out of public view and makes himself reread War and Peace. Then, a solitary New Year's eve wraps it up and the holiday season is officially over and done with, thank God.

"It's going to snow again," Juanita mutters, seconds into the new academic year.

Sure enough, snow falls hopelessly on Applestock--almost a foot of it. Then more, foot after foot after foot, it seems. Ray buys a set of snow tires for the Cherokee, but it's a pathetic gesture. He has no place to go. . . .

[To my dear readers:

Well, folks. . . it does seem that inclement weather, holiday wear & tear, "bad habits," and lingering bouts of CCSFS (Chronic Culture Shock Fatigue Syndrome) have temporarily swamped me and my elves here at Applestock '66.

Apologies galore to the faithful & thanks for the cards and letters & even the pissed-off e-mails. I've triple-searched for an appropriate holiday post & think I've found one; not perhaps the most spectacular single moment in the book, but, on my solemn word, I guarantee at least 3 paragraphs as "appropriate-to-the-season" as a bipolar sugarplum fairy. And coming up VERY soon!

WATCH THIS SPOT!

—WMH]

Police Chief Hadley cut a new halfway notch in his belt and it seemed to be working okay--the idea being the belt would hold up his stomach without crimping him so tight as to make it spill over and get in the way of business.

Sitting outside the Bell Sisters' Bakery in his patrol car, munching a Danish, Hadley had that uneasy feeling that years of law enforcement had taught him to respect: something was about to happen.

Sure enough, he wasn't halfway through his coffee when his ears detected a loud putt-putt-putt (illegal) and his nose smelt a cloud of bluish oil smoke (also illegal). He stopped chewing and listened hard.

A piece of rasberry jam dropped on his crotch. Damn.

Then, here came a van, painted with flames or tiger stripes in every color of the rainbow. Over the flames, in wavy, spooky looking letters, it said, "KICKIN' MACHINE,"and there were plexiglass bubbles on the side and a dome on the roof. Faces in the windows all had mustaches and such, or, if they were female, long hair parted down the middle. There was a lot of flesh showing. They were laughing at something in there.

You might know the plates on the van said it was from California.


(from "Hadley on the Case," pg. 108)

There's nothing like a congregation of real acid-heads to change the world, is there? By sounding a chord, singing a song, thinking a thought.

By starting our own nation. . . .

Yes, I was at Woodstock--though in recent years it has become a cliche to make that claim. I had nothing else to do at that point, being three years out of a job. My severance package from Applestock was generous enough that I lived on it well through the 60s, and so, like everyone else, I was there, in the mud, in the landfill refuse sea, making love, not war, tripping my brains out on the dreaded brown acid. At 32, I was nearing the end of my days as aging poster boy for the psychedelic revolution. Oh yes, I came to my senses. But not before suffering through that monster-movie distortion of my own original dream.

I was also at Woodstock '94, by the way. No comment.

I was offered VIP seating at Woodstock '99, the last such slicked up horror show of the old millenium. I didn't go.

All Woodstocks are the same.

All Woodstocks suck.


(from "Epilogue," pg. 281)

Melanie Witherspoon ran the tips of her fingers along the creamy ivory keyboard of her Steinway grand. Black, white, black, white—the abacus of her life—so elemental yet so mysterious, the piano. Like an artifact from some advanced civilization, left on earth for only a few elite mortals to decode and master.

Play, elite mortal!

Her hands assumed their positions, fingers like hungry legs caressing ivory thighs and ebony groins. . . .

She had just enough time for one of those heartbreaking autumnal Chopin waltzes before Russell Parmenter was due to arrive. Damn!—a new liver spot on her right hand, just above the knuckle. Time!

She leaned into the waltz, such a melancholy little thing. Chopin had lived to be exactly her age, poor soul. In a man, it seemed so young, 39. By comparison, she felt poised on the precipice of senility—and hardly taking it cheerfully. She knew the things they called her. Arrogant. Indomitable. Bitch. If they only knew how vulnerable she was—the little flame of her soul, how sensitive it was to the winds of vulgarity. There were some who thought her nothing but a cluster of romantic poses and gestures. Well, she was romantic, damn it, and proud of it, too! Let the little people scoff. She stood tall (6 feet!) for Art, solidly and unequivocally. . . well, up through 1900, anyway, when Art began to lose its mind.

This haunting little Chopin, for instance—it could take on any form of regret. Today it spoke of the unutterable sadness of lives lived and left behind. To be among students only sharpened the hurt. They were puppies, too young to have accumulated a past. Melanie had lived whole lifetimes unknown to the little people of Applestock: winning her spurs in Rome, where men threw flowers at the stage and hailed her as a diva; concertizing in the remotest backwaters of the earth, with the fading Russian violinist Anton Belznikov. . . poor dear Anton, such a fine lover, such an attentive, gentlemanly steed. It was when Anton died in her arms (Bogota), that she took to wearing black, retired, and accepted her first teaching position, at the Juillard Conservatory, where—wouldn’t you know it—not there three weeks and she was burning in a fiery triangle with the conservatory head and the dean of the faculty. Love! So much idiocy in the name of what they called love!

Melanie stopped playing for a moment and lifted all ten of her miraculous digits, letting them flutter lightly across her breasts. Nothing. A deadness there. Well, it was appropriate enough: today she was a warrior. And make no mistake about it: if they wanted war, they would get a war. A war for the very soul of Applestock. . . .

(from "Musicianship or Death," pg. 81)

riffles: welcome & welcome & welcome to applestock and forgive please this descent upon you in the moment of your arrival but there is much to impart, dire warnings, it might be said & might also be said forewarned is forearmed is unharmed. In pursuit of such my wife & i extend invitation to drinks & dinner upon yr arrival. casual. no need to change, no need to confirm, simply arrive. we live only 2 blocks from miss basnight's. yellow house at spruce & exeter. you will not regret this early intelligence. ear to ground and a good meal in the belly. awaiting.

very sincerely yrs,
prof. russell parmenter

Ray sounds the Parmenter's cacophonic doorbell. Bradley Peers has warned him about it—it’s the 12-tone "set," whatever the hell that is, from Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto. What is it with these modernists? Atonal doorbells? A simple dinner invitation tortured into a fractured artifact—

The door flies open and Ellen Parmenter is staring at him, out of her milky shapeless face.

"Mrs. Parmenter? . . . Ellen?" He holds out his hand. She reaches to touch it gingerly, as if it's a rare sausage. “Sorry I’m late. I—” Ray tries to make eye contact, which she avoids by tilting her head and crossing her eyes.

Vocal commotion issues from the kitchen. "DOP-da-DAAAAH!!" It's Russell Parmenter singing or shouting while he cracks some ice. "Da-DAAAAH! Pop-pop-POP!" Atonal electronic fright music is playing on the stereo, and he's trying to sing along with it. Ellen shows Ray into the living room, her cheeks quivering oddly, then rushes back into the kitchen for a quick, hissing conference with Russell. Hissing done, the two of them emerge—Hansel and Gretel, Russell spewing pipe smoke this way and that, and swizzling a fat highball. His trademark cadaverish quality seems gone, replaced by a high flush and wobbly swagger.

"Dr. Riffles!" he shouts, all urgency and anticipation. "We'd given you up for this evening. Da-DAAAAH! How about a drink? Whiskey?"

"Wonderful."

Ray doesn’t smell anything cooking. What he does smell is bouquet of doo-doo and catbox, with an overlay of disinfectant.

A dog lopes through the room. . . .



(from pg. 24, "Walk in his Shoes")

The music starts and Ray is so thrilled he’s close to wetting his pants. Gilbert was absolutely right: this Grateful Dead crew is the perfect headliner to open the Festival. There’s not a thing you can say, or think, or imagine that even begins to describe the energy that rolls forth again and again, like waves of St. Elmo’s fire, over the lifted faces and hands of the crowd—they now number in the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands. Is it fair to take a pat on one’s back? Look at what Ray has done. Look what happens when an underling, a dead-end post-adolescent, a whipped dog, rips the leash out of his master’s hands and takes over.

Ray turns to a the young bushy-headed boy next to him and bellows through the din, “Rockin’ good shit!”

The boy holds a fist high in the air and shouts something back. Ray can’t even hear his voice, and has to read his lips. He’s not sure, but what it looks like is, “Rock on, Baba!”

Oh, it is sweet, so sweet to have built this launching pad to tomorrow! Rock on.



Spin, spin, spin!

Marnie has been up and spinning from the first explosive note. Like a wobbling top, she spins here, spins there. Her head is reeling and jangling and it feels good, good, good! Staggering to a momentary stop, she draws a bead on Jerry. Vibes, vibes, vibes, vibes— Look at me, Jerry, look at me. HE DOES. Now she can spin off again—and she’s not the only one. At least a couple of dozen spinners have found their own spaces to boogie in, as this spacey, loud, ugly, beautiful group of magic guys fills up the field or meadow or Dell, or whatever the hell they’re calling this glorified cow pasture, with musical SUNSHINE. She wonders what the Dead (they call themselves that, “the Dead”) are like at home, hanging out in that so, so other country, California, where getting high is just plain old white-bread reality to them, and everyday life is so advanced and futuristic that it makes poor little Applestock look like Duckburg, USA. Jerry, look at me! Jerry, I love you! She loves this guy, she DOES! In the way she first loved Gilbert Tully, how cool he once was—up there behind his big black guitar with The Hey Youse twenty zillion years ago—and the way he escorted her and Ray and Captain Jim and Becky all around the clubs of Back Bay that night, the night he said, “This is the past. . . and this is the future.”

Well, what happened, brother?

Spin, spin, spin.

Well, here's what happened to her: Captain Jim coaxed her secret body into full flower, then he freed her mind. Now, Jerry is all the things Jim refitted her for: Jerry is God’s Cock, the Whole Cream Pie. Jerry is I, ME, NOW. Jerry is No Compromise. Jerry is the now and future King. Jerry is Cloverland. Gilbert, by sorry contrast, is just the caterpillar who was once a butterfly, evolving backwards, king to clod, receding into the dumpster of history.

Have a nice safe life, Gilbert Tully! I love you, Jerryyyy!

Spin, spin, spin.


(from pp. 238, "Healing the Sick")

Even as a kid, Ray sensed something momentous happening outside the polite world. Whatever it was lay entirely beyond the ken of social bullies like Mother or snotty diaper intellectuals like Peter J. Upjohn. At Oberlin (the non-Ivy compromise he and his parents agreed upon), Ray really tried to swear off low culture. But the more he listened to Brahms’ Requiem or The Magic Flute, the more he ached to spin the dial. Whenever he did allow himself to watch a little TV, or pig out on Top-40 radio or take in a dumb Hollywood flick, the need to purge would drive him back to the tabernacle to torture himself with several hours of late Beethoven string quartets.

He really was a good boy, after all. He wasn't put on earth to wreck or destroy. Try to tame the baser instincts, he was taught, and if you fail, just keep on trying. What else but a desire to please could keep him here at Newton Academy? Would any self-respecting destroyer be sitting in this same miserable closet of an office, year after hopeless year, administering the snotty lives of these heedless little snobs?

Ten past four. . . .

Ray leaves his desk and peeks into Dean McGarrigle’s office, where Becky is pecking away at one of her error-free secretarial masterworks. He's been hoping he could talk her into knocking off a few minutes early, since the Dean is gone for the day. What a piece of work she is. He takes a full minute to watch her, hunched over the IBM. Her precise, trim back. Her tweedy skirt. The long rum-dark hair that hides her rather plain, girlish face.

"Almost finished typing up the Gutenberg Bible?" Ray calls from the connecting office door.

"One more sec.”

“Becky, I want to get out of here.”

"I'm trying to get this thing done, do you mind?" Her fingers cascade over the keys.

Ray slams the door and sits back down at his desk in a pout. Why so all-fired dedicated when it comes to getting out Dean McGarrigle's soporific little droppings? He stares at the forlorn artifacts on his desk: smudgy student papers, a half-eaten Snickers bar, a smug copy of The New York Review of Books. . . and Robby Cahill's marijuana cigarette.

Joint, that's what you call it. A joint.

Hmmm. All right Latest studies indicate that, contrary to government propaganda, a joint won't turn you into a homicidal maniac or make your pecker rot. It isn't addictive, it alters your mind—and if there's one thing Ray could use right now, it's an altered mind. He shoves the joint into his mouth and lights it. . . .

After a while, Ray isn't sure how long, Becky stops typing. An enveloping profusion of silence, full of microcosmic sounds from everywhere, pours into the vacuum of the now not-typing typewriter. Then comes the clacking of her heels. She sticks her head in. "Are you nuts? I could smell that all the way back in McGarrigle's office."

Ray looks at her, forgets what she just said, then realizes she must have smelled the smoke.

"McGarrigle's gone," he says. "It's Friday."

Becky glances around. "Did you smoke the whole thing?”

"No. The other, um. . . half is—"

Becky reaches for what is left of the joint, places it between her lips, and sucks hard. Where, Ray wonders, has she learned to do this? How can he not have known? He watches in wonder as she pops the the burnt remainder of the joint into her mouth. She smiles at him and her face transforms into the faces of twenty or thirty different women, none of whom he knows, each one merging into the next and into the next and the next. . . .

"Let's go," he says. "I need some air."

"Congratulations." She is grinning monstrously. "Your first joint."

He wants to flip something sassy at her like, “not yours, I notice,” but all he can do is grin back. Becky slides onto his lap and smooches him lightly on the mouth. Then she opens up and thrusts her tongue between his lips—a thing she normally never does. A tongue in his mouth. Something about it is obscenely funny. Ray finds himself dissolving into hysteria. His mood has a life of its own and he can't control it. Becky bounces off his lap as giggles overtake him like an army of chipmunks pouring through chinks in a fence. He falls off the chair and rolls to the floor. The giggles merge into sobs.

Incredibly, he is weeping.

(from pp. 4-6, "Better Sex on the Radio")

At dinner, Houdini hatched a plan. Form an armed caravan—Bob-bob first, on his Harley, then Ray's Cherokee, then the Kickin’ Machine—and rumble down the hill, straight through "Rube City," firing Bob-bob's shotgun in the air if there was any weird shit from the rubes.

Marnie, who was from rube stock herself, took a hard line: "Why fire in the air?" she said. "Real force is the only thing the rube understands. Hit something."

Captain Jim brooded at the head of the long table, prophecy cooking in his eyes. "We don't want any trouble," he said. "They may be assholes, but deep down they desire us. A brick through our window, that's like reaching out to grab our ass. It's twisted love. And we love them back, don't forget."

"Right on, Cap," said RPM, tugging on his mustache. "But it's a different kind of love. It's armed love. I say shoot out a tire or a window or something."

Candles softened the room and lent the dinner a Biblical look. Captain Jim's hair was freshly washed and hung free of his normal ponytail, tumbling in tresses over both shoulders. He wore a shiny Mao with thick epaulets. Clay plates were piled with the remains of the dinner, a feast of chicken pot pie. There had been wine and cider and fat joints of Colombian weed just brought in from Boston by a little dealer named Johnny Appleseed. Flower produced a fresh pineapple upside-down cake, and that put an end to any more discussion about war with the rubes. . . .

(from p. 78, "I'm God, you're God")