Part 32 (2/2)

I got a programming job in Newport Beach. I studied advanced topics in computer science at UC Irvine. I rented a condo for seven-hundred-twenty-five dollars per month, based on Rama's suggestion in Boulder. I worked hard, meditated deeply, and stole three eggs from a supermarket after Rama hiked the tuition again.

Rama treated me with kindness. Perhaps he believed that this time I was really with him. He invited me to his house. He invited me to the desert. He invited me to partake in his chemical experiments.

Roughly one hundred fifty miles southeast of the beaches of Orange County, in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park, was a peak called Split Mountain.

More than thirty miles away, by the edge of the park, was Casa Del Zorro, a cottage-renting resort catering to the upper middle cla.s.s.

Here, Rama divined, was a good place to drop acid in a group.

During the drive to Casa Del Zorro, a fast-food restaurant triggered a flashback of Rama giving Sal and me LSD and taking us to MacDonald's.

”Whatever you do,” Rama had said, ”don't order a strawberry shake!”

Rama and Sal proceeded to repeat the warning as if it were a mantra.

Perhaps the drug magnified my sensitivity to the way Sal parroted Rama. Perhaps it magnified my sense of independence.

Perhaps I was not in the mood for chocolate or vanilla. I stumbled to the counter and ordered a strawberry shake. It was delicious.

Rama and Sal looked at me disapprovingly. I couldn't have cared less.

The memory of the MacDonald's trip made me smile. Later, as I approached Casa Del Zorro, I had a flashback of Rama giving me acid at his home in Malibu. I had been sitting on a rug in the living room.

A Beatles record played. (”You never give me your money...”) Rama entered the room.

”How are you doing, kid?” he asked.

”Not so good.” I had been thinking about money. The world of my finances had appeared as menacing walls of debt that were surrounding and closing in on me. I felt miserable. Tears formed.

I told Rama what I was going through.

”Listen to the words of the song,” he said. (”Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go...”) ”See, kid? Nowhere to go.”

I gazed at the floor.

”You need to take time and rethink your life,” he went on.

”Somehow you got entrenched in the dark side. But life does not have to be that way. Life can be wonderful.”

Typically, I would have felt elated by the attention he was giving me.

It had been years since we were close. But through hallucinating eyes he seemed distant and small, and his attempt to cheer me up made me feel worse.

”Why don't you go jump in the pool,” he finally said.

Years before, in La Jolla, he had often suggested ”Pool Therapy”

as a way to douse the flames of a conflict burning within. In Malibu, as in La Jolla, my woes soon diffused among ripples from the impact of one hand slapping.

I played in the shallow end during that LSD trip until Rama asked Sal, who was not tripping, to drive me home. When we arrived at my apartment I felt lucid, creative, fearless. I started to say whatever popped into my mind. Sal looked surprised.

He looked at me as if I were someone else.

Sal offered to take me for a walk. With my arms dangling and torso bent, I moved like an injured ape. But gradually I slouched with Sal's support down the hill to the beach.

”Look, Mark,” said Sal. ”There's the ocean.”

I looked to the frozen snapshot of the sea. I blinked and the waves rolled closer--then they froze again. Then I saw whales diving and breaching in slow motion. I found myself among them. We swam together.

We spoke a silent language I thought I never knew. I felt complete.

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