Chapter 1: Silverman Smokes a Joint

David Silverman, surprisingly depressed for this early in the day, glanced in the rear view mirror as the '84 Honda crossed Market Street, but Shelly had already disappeared in the crowd in front of Nordstrom’s. She had things to do all morning. He did not.

Breathing the sigh of a man set free, he turned left on Ellis, removed his seat belt and slowly, casually, with the grace of one who has done it many times before, reached for the wallet in his hip pocket and removed the joint neatly stashed inside. It was in the little flap just behind the picture of Ganesha. “Om gam Ganapataye namaha”, he intoned somewhat reverently to the elephant headed Hindu deity known for his power to remove the obstacles in life. “Do your thing”, he thought silently.

Directly ahead a white delivery van was double parked with its taillights blinking and its rear gate open. The driver was nowhere in sight. Peering over his shoulder, David moved smoothly into the middle lane, then slowed and stopped at the light at Larkin, reaching into the denim jacket's left inside pocket and pulling out a box of matches as he did. They were from Melody’s, one of the night spots in The City where Adam had a regular gig. Adam was a jazz musician and a good one, enough others had said so that he knew it wasn’t just his own bias.

David had been his first teacher, sitting at the old upright piano in the family room, pounding out basic blues chords in the bass as four year old Adam sat on the bench to his right.

”You do the top part”, David had urged. “Play a note”.

“What note should I play?” Adam had asked.

“Any note you want”, David had answered. “If it sounds good play it again. If it doesn’t, try another one.” That was twenty-five years ago. Adam had progressed beyond what David could teach him a long time ago. Adam also didn’t smoke pot. Adam didn’t smoke anything. Never had. Never would. Adam didn’t like David’s smoking. Neither did Shelly.

Checking out the drivers on either side and pleased that none was taking notice of him, Silverman raised a cupped hand and placed the crinkled paper cylinder between his lips. He pulled ahead as the light turned green and raising his left thigh till he could steer with it, let go of the wheel, struck the match, lit the joint, and inhaled. He felt the pleasant feeling of smoke in his lungs as he shook out the flame and took the wheel again in his hands.

Traffic was light and he was in no hurry, no need to play New York cabbie today and draw attention to himself. He kept to the speed limit and took another drag. Funny how he was taking the risk of being caught smoking pot in public just to avoid the risk of being caught smoking pot in private. He was engulfed in a thousand kinds of guilt, he loved her so much.

He and Shelly had met at college back in New Jersey, he a first year grad student at Rutgers, she a sophomore at Douglass. He didn’t smoke pot in those days. He probably wouldn’t have made it through college if he had.

"What do you want to be," Shelly had asked on their first date, “...when you grow up” being unspoken but implied. They had been talking across a table over ice cream sodas at Mal’s.

"I want to be happy," he had answered. This time his mother was not there and nobody slapped him. Shelly just smiled like she knew what he meant. "And you," he asked her in return.

"I want to live happily ever after", she responded without skipping a beat and he knew right away he had found his soulmate. Afterwards, they had driven down to Riverside Park and danced on the benches and tables till curfew, pretending to be Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Then they had gone back to her dorm and he had played piano in the lounge and sung to her. “When I faaaall in love...... it will beeee foreverrrr.......”. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her. He hadn’t needed to, he felt so great just being with her.

He proposed two days later on their second date, sitting on the stone steps in front of his off campus apartment on Bayard Street. She had said they couldn’t get together on Saturday because she needed to be in the lottery for next year’s dorm rooms. “You won’t need a dorm room next year”, he had told her, “we’ll be married by then.”

“Hey”, he had added, almost as an after thought, "I may not be the best husband in the world, but life with me will never be dull". She had laughed at the time and told him he was crazy, but they were married in six months.

“I should have believed you, you warned me, you really did. Why didn’t I listen to you?” she cried the last time they had a fight. Was it only last night? It had been a while since they had danced on tables.

He was driving through the projects of the Western Addition now. He knew that if any of the men in undershirts sitting on the upturned boxes playing cards actually looked in his passing car and saw him smoking pot, their only reaction would be "Hit me, man". Yet he remained circumspect. God, he was paranoid.

The pot was beginning to have an effect. That indescribable something was happening that took him over, that took him off to another place. He couldn’t deny that he was different stoned than not stoned. After all, changing the way he felt was why he smoked in the first place. Why else would he take that yutz into his lungs if it didn't have some positive effect on his being, on how he experienced reality. So yes, he had to admit, she was right. He did relate differently to Shelly when he was high than when he was straight.

But it's not like he turned into a Mr. Hyde or anything. He always stayed within control, didn't become loud, or violent, or nasty, or mean. He was still a loving husband, possibly even more so than usual because he was out of his intellect and into his feelings. That’s why he gave such good massages when he was stoned. Shelly liked massages. What woman doesn’t?

“But that’s not the point”, she had sighed. “You are missing the point completely. I've seen it over the years. When you are in a smoking stage nothing gets accomplished. When you are in a non-smoking stage it does.” The sigh became a sob. “When you smoke everything is just fine and dandy. The universe is just as it should be. You don’t earn any money because you don’t think you need to. I love you, dammit, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I do not intend to work until I drop. I'm tired, exhausted, burned-out, spent. I want to stay home and do whatever it is I want to do. Just like you do. I don't even know what it is I want to do anymore. You go out and bring in the money. You promised!!!"

That had been a low blow. Sure he had promised with all the fervor of his twenty-three year old heart to provide the income that would allow them both to play games together for the rest of their life. He had meant it, too. And he had tried, Lord knows he had tried, in fact he was still trying. It's just that nothing had changed in his job karma over the past thirty-two years and he was rapidly hurtling head first into economic oblivion. Ironic, wasn't it. He didn’t care about money. Shelly’s freedom and happiness were all he really wanted. But he needed money for that. His freedom and happiness depended on it.

He turned left onto Masonic and headed across The Panhandle. Was it wrong for him to still believe that he could get a job that paid him for doing what he wanted to do? Was it wrong for him to believe that he could still be one of the fortunate ones who gets to live his dreams? How can you settle for less than you want when you know it can still be achieved. And you know it can still be achieved because you can still vision it happening! It’s like seeing the top of the mountain and aiming for something else. And that made no sense to him. Why would you aim for anything other than what it is that makes you happy?

"The world is full of people who would like to get paid for doing what they want to do", a mentor had told him once. The guy liked David and was the Executive Director of a foundation where David had tried to get a job, but there were no openings. At least that’s what he had been told. A lot of people who liked David hadn’t given him jobs, and what the hell did that mean?

A vision of Cheech and Chong formed inside his head holding this same conversation several years prior.

"Hey man, this is fuckin' great. I'd sure like to get paid for gettin' stoned."

"Yeah, man, fuckin' great."

He took another drag. He also took a reality check of the world around him and the improbability of the ‘here and now' boggled his mind. Here he was, David Silverman, afraid to smoke in front of his wife, driving through the intersection of San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury Streets, the power spot that had given its name to the New Age hippie movement of the sixties, with the remnants of a joint dangling from his lips right out in the open. That was a fact. That was reality.

Another reality was that if anybody on the sidewalk or in a passing car saw a roach in his lips, nobody would care. Even the occasional policeman wouldn't care. What would they do? Run out in the street to stop his car and arrest him for smoking pot in the heart of Haight/Ashbury? Yeah... right. He felt suddenly relaxed and safe. He had definitely gone over.

Up ahead in the crosswalk, a young woman wearing army boots, torn granny skirt, gold camisole, and bright green hair crossed in front of him in earnest conversation with a man of indeterminate age dressed in maroon medieval garb complete with a black velvet Tower of London hat. “That, too, is reality”, thought David, “though highly improbable.”

"You cannot come to the Himalayas to escape your duties", the immortal Babaji had told Lahiri Mahasaya in response to his pleas, after opening the disciple’s mind to the Absolute. "Your role is to be a householder yogi, to show that it is possible to live a spiritual life while still participating in the world." The first time David had seen Lahiri's picture in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi he had felt an immediate connection to this gentle looking man seated in lotus position, eyes turned inward. Only then did he read about him, about his job and his wife and his children and the enlightenment experience in his mid-thirties and how he had wanted to run to the mountains but knew it was impossible. This is the way it had happened to David, too and why he thought of Lahiri Mahasaya as his guru even though Sri Lahiri had died half a century before David was even born. “What I did in India in the last century you do in America in this one” the tiny voice inside had chanted. Lahiri's picture was in his wallet, right behind Ganesha. Lahiri had probably never smoked ganja.

He suddenly realized his mind had wandered off inside into a world far from the streets on which he was driving. He refocused on the world around him and continued to drive slowly up Haight, taking in the street musicians, Vietnam vets sitting in doorways, college kids on break, homeless women pushing shopping carts, black leather silver chained punks huddling on the corners. This was not the sixties of flower children but the new millennium of whatever you wanted to be. Inside David's head he could hear the Sesame Street song he and Adam used to sing together, "Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood... in your neighborhood... in your neigh... bor... hood...".

One of them was a stoned fifty-five year old writer driving an '84 Honda, with plans to enjoy himself for the next six hours. He took another drag but the joint had gone out.

* * *