From 2016 Self Authoring

2.1 The card game in the first floor common room

As a Freshman I was eager to find models to emulate. For better or worse, what drew my interest and attention was the ongoing card game in the first floor Common Room in my dorm, just a short walk from my room. The players were current and former residents, many of whom were undergraduates who were in their fifth year (or more) of limping toward completion. They had colorful nicknames: The Bear, the Bug, the Pro, Dirty Ed Bogus, etc. They didn’t seem to go to class, just playing cards in the common room. It was a non-academic counterculture, that validated the rebel sub-personality percolating in the background since I read The Way of Zen and On the Road.

2.2 Spring Quarter Freshman Year – dropping out the first time

Spring Quarter of Freshman year everything fell apart. The worst was English 7 – Introduction to the Novel. With all my “background” reading I hadn’t read any of the assigned novels. They were all huge, and for some reason I foolishly didn’t avail myself of any Cliff Notes or any other study aid. I just struggled through a very long novel and felt my dream of being a college English professor slipping away if I couldn’t even get through the freshman novel course. My tunnel vision made me feel totally trapped and going under. Assuming a stance of defiance and rebellion, my book report for English 3C on Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, which I didn’t read, was an attempt at a breezy tone critiquing the mechanical superficiality of academic life. The TA who ran our section gave me an F and said I should submit it to the Stanford Daily. I was on my way to dropping out.

In the background Spring Quarter was Fraternity Rush. It barely made it into my consciousness. Then Wayne McCormick and Glenn Nolte told me they were going to a Kappa Alpha Rush party, did I want to come along? Seemed like another party so I went. I heard KA was a “Southern” fraternity and vaguely knew that they didn’t admit Jews. I didn’t feel like that affected me because I “wasn’t really a Jew”. I was wrong. The subtle message for me was my two buddies were getting in and there was no way I was. I was shocked, but suppressed and denied any feeling of rejection. But I think that was the tipping point that decided I was dropping out and going “on the road”.

2.3 Grass with Norman

When I came back up for my second year, after a year back at home, during winter quarter I rented a house off campus with Tom Harrell and Mike Morris. I had been admiring a small group of very colorful bohemians, mostly grad students from the University of Chicago. I hung around them and invited one to a small party we had at our house. After the party, Norman Linke invited me up to his house near Homer Lane, behind campus. I smoked marijuana for the first time. Alone in his living room, he put earphones on my head and played vinyl LPs by Muddy Waters, Ravi Shankar, and Africa Brass by John Coltrane. I was totally blown away by the multidimensional depth and vivid all-enveloping living quality of the music. It felt like I had entered another world.

2.4 LSD at Esalen

Spring quarter 1965, my second year at Stanford, I was sleeping on John Dufford’s couch. I was in danger of failing classes, which would mean I’d lose my student deferment as The war in Vietnam was ramping up. I enlisted to have a choice, but was rejected at the physical. The military threat released, I felt permission to jump off the deep end and take LSD. John was “facilitating” first trips. He was going to Esalen to tape record Fritz Perls’ Gestalt workshop. He invited me to come and take LSD. All I remember now is sitting on one of the cliffs looking down at the ocean as the acid came on. As I wrote in my Antioch Portfolio 11 years after, “I gained first hand knowledge of the experience of unity with the All, the dissolution of the ego”.

2.5 Hitchhiking to New York

Spring quarter 1965, in addition to going to the Oakland Induction Center and taking LSD at Esalen, I auditioned for the Vipers in an empty cottage on Homer Lane while Roy Sebern projected his liquids on an interior wall. I got the job. The next night Norman and I smoked DMT in Dick Alpert’s cottage. The next day, I went over to the Student Union on campus. In the parking lot I ran into Bug, Peter Talbot, and one other guy who were about to embark on a cross-country trip, as it was the first day of summer vacation. After a brief discussion, I decided to join them. I thought it would be cool to visit Carrie in New York. I had no money, no plan, no suitcase or backpack, nothing but the clothes on my back. I recall brief scenes. Dick Astle’s house in Shaker Heights Ohio. Ted Claire’s front yard in Glencoe Illinois, morphing into Jim Schwall’s empty apartment in another suburb of Chicago. Seeing Steve MIller perform solo at Big John’s. Peter Talbot’s home in Beverly Farms Massachusetts. Carrie Heldmans parents’ penthouse home overlooking Gracie Mansion. Her Radcliffe roommate’s apartment, and the roommate’s boyfriend Chip Baker, who had a band called the Free Spirits. Seeing Sun Ra at Slug’s. A great neighborhood fried fish place. Visiting Ken Weaver of the Fugs. Seeing Jack Kerouac’s daughter in the park. I have no idea how I got back to California.

2.6 Asking authority figures for permission to leave

Near the end of Freshman year, Spring 1963, when I was thinking about how to drop out, we had a party at the home of Dr. Wilfred Stone, an English professor who was the Faculty Resident for Stern Hall. It was the first time I had ever met him. It was a very tweedy cocktail party that engraved in my mind a picture of the alcohol soaked future I could look forward to as a humanities academic. I told him I was about to go off to Berkeley to visit some old high school friends and I was thinking that would be part of my dropping out. He didn’t seem too concerned and said something like, “Well, if that’s what you want to do I think you should do it.” My Stanford transcript for the first quarter of the following year just has the one word “Leave”.

Winter quarter, early 1966, I registered and tried to start a Psychology major. The previous quarter I had taken LSD at Esalen two times, smoked DMT in Dick Alpert’s empty cottage the night before I jumped in a car headed across country, smoked DMT at a party with Neal Cassidy, and attended the Palo Alto Acid Test. I decided to go to the University Psychiatrist, to get a formal leave of absence. My recollection is he gave it to me and said I would be welcome to return if and when I wanted. The only record I have is the one word on the transcript below the classes I registered for: “Leave”. I recall waxing enthusiastically about the beauty and wonder of the world I was discovering, and how limited and stultifying the academic life seemed in comparison. I was a little surprised that he granted me a leave so easily, without questioning my sanity or stability. I felt like I had the approval of the university to do things on my terms.