Can you dig it?" Clipper said, still fluffing his chick's tits as the flames shot up 60 feet across the street from where the four sat watching.
"A righteous explosion, man," Dave laughed, but exuding a new determined grimness all the time. "Right out of the Mantovani section. A righteous explosion." They all stood proudly and watched as the three-alarm fire became a four and stretched on into the early morning. Clipper and his chic left early. Dave and his old lady were almost the last to leave.
"Oh, man, when I heard it, when I heard it my heart almost burst. So far out. BOOM!" He threw his head back and roared. His old lady unlocked the door of the apartment and they went in. The place was now nothing more than bare walls and floors, save for the bed. Only essentials remained.
"So far out," Dave laughed again, and he fell on the bed, his eyes closed, his face aglow in the candlelight. His old lady sat at his side, looking down reverently at her longhaired radical.
"Did you dig it?" he asked as he slipped a hand up inside her blouse to her warm breasts.
"I dug it," she said, smiling softly at him. They fell together almost immediately and balled.
Perhaps forty minutes later, they lay silent in bed, breathing easily and thinking private thoughts, private until both were aware of low throbbing sounds coming from down the hall.
"Do you hear something," she finally asked, "like music?"
"Sure do," he answered, and they listened some more.
"Know who it is?" she asked.
"Well, if I'm not mistaken, it's Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I know Deja Vu came out today."
"No, silly. I couldn't care less about what the record is. I want to know who's playing it around here."
"Who else but Clipper. I mean, the cat's crazy. No will. He's at it again." Dave reached for a cigarette.
"Now, I can't believe that," she said sitting up.
"You know him."
"I'm gonna see," and wrapping a blanket around her, she crept to the door.
"It is coming from there, and I smell dope, too."
Dave jumped out of bed.
"I think I better go rap with him about this," he said "after all the shit he was laying on us the other night how he was gonna make it."
"Me, too," his old lady chipped in.
They marched to Clipper's door, and just as Dave was about to knock, he stopped. The sound strangely enough wasn't coming from Clipper's place at all, but from the next room. Dave and his old lady exchanged quizzical glances and edged that way, unsure of their discovery. But sure enough, it was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young on the stereo. Deja Vu.
Dave slowly cracked open the door, and there on the floor on his mattress in front of a KLH portable sat Jordan Rover, naked, a fresh lid of grass at his side, and a huge joint hanging from his lips. When he saw Dave and his old lady at the door, he beamed at them, chuckling easily.
"Hey, man, com'on in." He lifted his eyebrows and nodded at them. "Com'on in and smoke a little shit, open yer ears. Sit down," and he patted the mattress at his side.
"But ... you said ... " Dave stammered, pointing at him.
Oh, man, sit down," Jordan grimaced jocularly, and then smiled. "You've got to hear this. It's sooo far out."
"But, what I said, man. I know what I said. Right on." He thrust a fist feebly into the air.
"But you were right. It's an energy . . ."
"Yeh, man, it's a drain, a real energy drain ... but it feels so good ... It feels so fuckin good, man" and his head fell back as he turned up the volume and let the music pour into their heads. And he was right.
"Gee, it does sound good, doesn't it?" Dave's old lady said as she blithely dropped the blanket at her feet and sat her pink little body down on the mattress. She went for a joint immediately. It wasn't more than a second later after a final shrug that Dave, too, sat down and took the joint in his turn.
And it wasn't more than twenty minutes later that Dave in sweet serenity was heard to remark to no one in particular: "Neil Young is a heavy, man. Neil Young is a real heavy."Oscar wrote:
My understanding isn't based on my own experience. I gained a lot of my understanding from the black perspective of others (through my University course)...
|
