This was all in the late sixties in high school.
I went to this little hippie high school, and there were a lot of drugs available. Cocaine was very rare back then. People were taking acid, but I wasn’t. There was hash you could buy for five dollars a ball, wrapped in a little silver foil, but it had been soaked in opium, and it was so unbelievably delicious and good. It gave you that feeling of floating, that kind of amniotic feeling. So a girlfriend at my school had made me this little hash pipe out of clay. I had it in my pocket. We’d been smoking hash with opium init at lunch, and we came back to my very favorite class, with this teacher I just adored. A literature course, and I really lived for him. He was really an important figure in my life. He drank but he wasn’t a doper. He was actually disgusted with all the dope at this school. I was seen as a good girl because I was a tennis champ and because I wasn’t ostensibly “out there.”
Back in the classroom, I remember him asking me a question and I realized I couldn’t get my mouth to work! I’d gotten too stoned, which is basically the story of my life … too drunk, too stoned, too often! He asked me a question, and I was concentrating so hard on getting my lips around the answer that very slowly the hash pipe slid out of my pocket and crashed to the floor and shattered. I got a big shot of adrenaline and my friend tried to pick it up. There were only about eight kids in my classes and everyone knew what it was, but I’m not sure if he did. It didn’t matter though, because I went into such a terrorized state of paranoia from being stoned and also the hash pipe being broken in front of my cherished teacher that I felt like I had completely lost my mind. I had to sit there while everyone around me cleaned it up, tried to get rid of the evidence. My teacher looked at me like … oh, God! All I could think to do was to try to win back his love—after I could think again.
It never occurred to me that I should think about the fact that I was so stoned that I couldn’t answer a question, that I couldn’t form an English word. What I thought was I just had to find a way back into his heart, ’cause it made me feel of value. That such a cool teacher loved me.
I had to try to get the schedule right. Get the levels right. I remember a number of times being way too stoned to function or to pull it off. I really liked getting impaired. I tried to find that edge where I could still sort of function but have that wonderful feeling of no feeling. That sort of vague stoned floating and the energy and the music. And being with other stoned and drunk people. I really drink to get impaired. I don’t like to get “a little drunk.” Many, many, many times, beginning in high school, I would get so that I couldn’t walk, couldn’t get up off the floor, and it didn’t bother me that much. I just learned to sort of sit it out. Somebody would come by with cocaine or methedrine or a nice diet pill and get me going again. And I wouldn’t even think, “Gee, that’s scary. I couldn’t even get off the floor.”I would just think, “Thank God for crank!”
I went off to college in Baltimore for a couple of years and sort of loved it but really wanted to be a writer. While I was there, there were the girls that I hung with and many of them were hippie feminists. I went to a women’s college called Goucher. They were older girls who could buy alcohol legally for us, and I just always gravitated toward the type of people who liked to get drunk and who liked to be alone. We all started smoking by then, and there would be five or six of us listening to Carole King or whoever we were listening to and getting stoned and drunk. Talking about life and then going out and doing really silly, goofball, dumb things together. I was not able to stay in college, although I loved English, philosophy, and literature. I think I scheduled them later in the day because there was one
I went to this little hippie high school, and there were a lot of drugs available. Cocaine was very rare back then. People were taking acid, but I wasn’t. There was hash you could buy for five dollars a ball, wrapped in a little silver foil, but it had been soaked in opium, and it was so unbelievably delicious and good. It gave you that feeling of floating, that kind of amniotic feeling. So a girlfriend at my school had made me this little hash pipe out of clay. I had it in my pocket. We’d been smoking hash with opium init at lunch, and we came back to my very favorite class, with this teacher I just adored. A literature course, and I really lived for him. He was really an important figure in my life. He drank but he wasn’t a doper. He was actually disgusted with all the dope at this school. I was seen as a good girl because I was a tennis champ and because I wasn’t ostensibly “out there.”
Back in the classroom, I remember him asking me a question and I realized I couldn’t get my mouth to work! I’d gotten too stoned, which is basically the story of my life … too drunk, too stoned, too often! He asked me a question, and I was concentrating so hard on getting my lips around the answer that very slowly the hash pipe slid out of my pocket and crashed to the floor and shattered. I got a big shot of adrenaline and my friend tried to pick it up. There were only about eight kids in my classes and everyone knew what it was, but I’m not sure if he did. It didn’t matter though, because I went into such a terrorized state of paranoia from being stoned and also the hash pipe being broken in front of my cherished teacher that I felt like I had completely lost my mind. I had to sit there while everyone around me cleaned it up, tried to get rid of the evidence. My teacher looked at me like … oh, God! All I could think to do was to try to win back his love—after I could think again.
It never occurred to me that I should think about the fact that I was so stoned that I couldn’t answer a question, that I couldn’t form an English word. What I thought was I just had to find a way back into his heart, ’cause it made me feel of value. That such a cool teacher loved me.
I had to try to get the schedule right. Get the levels right. I remember a number of times being way too stoned to function or to pull it off. I really liked getting impaired. I tried to find that edge where I could still sort of function but have that wonderful feeling of no feeling. That sort of vague stoned floating and the energy and the music. And being with other stoned and drunk people. I really drink to get impaired. I don’t like to get “a little drunk.” Many, many, many times, beginning in high school, I would get so that I couldn’t walk, couldn’t get up off the floor, and it didn’t bother me that much. I just learned to sort of sit it out. Somebody would come by with cocaine or methedrine or a nice diet pill and get me going again. And I wouldn’t even think, “Gee, that’s scary. I couldn’t even get off the floor.”I would just think, “Thank God for crank!”
I went off to college in Baltimore for a couple of years and sort of loved it but really wanted to be a writer. While I was there, there were the girls that I hung with and many of them were hippie feminists. I went to a women’s college called Goucher. They were older girls who could buy alcohol legally for us, and I just always gravitated toward the type of people who liked to get drunk and who liked to be alone. We all started smoking by then, and there would be five or six of us listening to Carole King or whoever we were listening to and getting stoned and drunk. Talking about life and then going out and doing really silly, goofball, dumb things together. I was not able to stay in college, although I loved English, philosophy, and literature. I think I scheduled them later in the day because there was one
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