Breaking Good
(Santa Monica/June 1971)
After serving us breakfast, Doc’s mom said, “Have a nice flight, Mikey. Send me a postcard from Hawaii.”
With Gerta off to work, I pulled my onyx hash pipe and a little metal film can from my Levis. “Here you go, Doc. Get us going while I find a flight.” After dialing Continental Airlines, I got stuck on hold listening to a Muzak version of Leaving on a Jet Plane.
“You sure you don’t wanna wait till you talk to Lizardo first?” asked Doc.
“No, man, if I want to change the world, I gotta make my move now. If I lose momentum, I’ll end up in law school.”
“You’d get to work with your right-wing family! How bad could it be?” joked Doc.
The Good family’s firm defended the worst kind of scum. We’re talking politicians and white collar criminals, my Uncle Dick, the crook in the White House, was one of them.
Shuddering at the thought, I said, “Don’t even joke about it. The way I see it, the world has far too many lawyers already.”
Doc said, “You got that right,” and passed me the pipe. As I took a hit, he asked, “Do your folks know you’re going to Kona?”
Which of course, made me waste a lungful of smoke. When I stopped coughing, I asked, “Are you nuts? They’d lock me in the Dungeon of Learning until the fall semester.”
The Dungeon of Learning was Dad’s nickname for The Good Guys’ Bomb Shelter Company’s Platinum Model under our front yard. The place where I’d spent half my mischievous childhood surrounded by books. The place where I’d read hundreds of adventure stories and made a vow: No rat race for me. No, like Jim Hawkins in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, I’d live a life of fun and adventure. There were a couple of hurdles. One was being locked in a bomb shelter, the other, a lack of funding.
Doc had met my family and knew I wasn’t kidding. He pointed out a flaw in my escape plan. “How will you find Lizardo? You don’t even know where he lives.”
That was true. Eight weeks earlier, after coming back from Kona with the best pot any of us had ever smoked, our buddy Lizardo said, “You’re gonna need a new connection, guys, ‘cause I’m outta here.”
Panicked, I’d asked, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m dropping out of grad school and moving to Kona.”
Seems Lizardo had a girlfriend, a cool little coffee shack, and a bunch of marijuana growing in his new back yard. In other words, he was living my dream. Fine for him, but he was leaving us without a good connection.
After we stopped yelling, he said, “You’re a nature freak, Mikey. You should come to Kona and check it out.”
“I would if I wasn’t broke.”
“Liquidate your assets like I did.”
“I’ll still be almost broke.”
“You make it to Kona,” said Lizardo, “you won’t stay that way long.”
“No?”
“No, man, we can partner up. I’ve even got a guest house you can stay in.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, so don’t worry about money.”
It sounded almost too good to be true. “Everything’s free in the Islands?”
When Lizardo stopped laughing, he said, “Actually, it’s fucking expensive, but with me already there, you’ll hit the ground running. Before you know it, you’ll be growing da kine and raking in the dough.”
I wiped away the drool. “I can’t wait.”
__ __ __
With my measly assets sold (a stereo system, a few hundred scratched records, and a Kamikaze Deathcycle that wanted to kill me but couldn’t go fast enough—I had enough money for an ounce of Primo Afghani hash, a one-way ticket, and, well, not much else except Lizardo’s offer. Anyone with a lick of common sense would’ve reconsidered the situation. Waited till they had their shit more together. Not me. Unburdened by common sense, I dialed Lizardo’s number the day after graduating. Instead of Lizardo giving me directions to his coffee shack, I got a recording telling me his phone was out of service. It told me the same thing no matter how many times I dialed. Not a propitious start to my new life, but Lizardo smoked a lot of pot and maybe he’d forgotten to pay his bill. I resigned myself to being patient, waiting a whole hour before trying again. Not that I was obsessed. Lizardo finally checked in three days later and of due to Murphy’s Law, I missed the call. But Doc was home and he’d taken a message. Lizardo wanted me to call him at the Watanabe Store. Which sounded good until I started calling. After several hang-ups from an increasingly grouchy Mr. Watanabe—something about the word Lizardo seemed to set him off—it no longer sounded good. Another problem: coffee shacks in Kona didn’t have addresses.
With no way to my connection in Kona, I’d come up with a Plan B. Plan B meant crashing at Lisa and Becky’s Waikiki apartment until I finally got ahold of Lizardo. I knew my ex-lover Becky would be thrilled. At least alarmed. We’d had a brief fling. By brief, I mean about three minutes. Not one of my best efforts. In my defense, I got a little, well, over-excited when Lisa offered to join us. After seeing the disappointed look on Becky’s face, Lisa decided to take a pass. Excited to hear my voice, Becky hung up. Figuring there was some problem with the phones in Hawaii, I kept calling.
My persistence paid off, and after only five more tries, she heaved a weary sigh. “I guess you can crash here. But only for a couple nights.”
So, except for a welcome place to stay in Hawaii, I was all set. While Doc reloaded the pipe, the god-awful Muzak finally stopped.
I told the reservationist, “I need a flight to Hawaii. Stat!”
“Let me see what’s available.” I heard a ridiculous amount of typing, then, “We have a flight leaving for Honolulu at nine. Hmm, let me see what else.”
“Hold on a second, please.” To Doc I said, “There’s a flight at nine.”
Doc glanced at the kitchen clock. “That’s only forty-five minutes from now.”
“Perfect, I hate waiting.” I told the reservation lady, “Thanks, I’ll be right there.”
“But, sir. . .”
“Love to talk, but I’m in a hurry.”
As I hung up, Doc asked, “Are there any seats?”
“Aren’t those standard equipment?”
“I meant vacant seats.”
“Ah.” I shrugged. “Guess I’ll find out when I get there. Think we can make it?”
“Sure, man, I know the way.”
“Thanks, Magellan. I meant, you know, on time.”
“It’s doubtful.”
“Let’s go, anyway.” I jammed the film can and hash pipe in my pocket, grabbed my pack and guitar, and jumped into Doc’s bug. With no surf racks, my board would spend the summer in Gerta’s garage.
Stalled in L.A. traffic five minutes later, I asked Doc, “How far is it to the airport?”
Doc lifted a shoulder. “As the crow flies? I’d say about ten miles.”
“And as the VW crawls?”
“Well, that depends.”
“You were right, we’ll never make it.”
“Hang on, Mikey. I’ll get you there.”
And with that, he swerved like a New York cabbie onto the empty sidewalk (thank God no one walks in L.A.) and made record time. Even so, it was 8:45 when we got to the airport.
Skidding across the sidewalk, scattering travelers and porters left and right, he shouted, “You better hurry!”
Seeing a scowling policeman heading for Doc’s bug, I said, “So should you.”
My pack on my back and a guitar case in my hand, I zoomed into the terminal like a terrorist on meth. No one looked twice. I raced up to the Continental Airlines desk, barging right to the front of the line like a bigshot. Or I would have if there was a line. Everyone else, obviously compulsive early birds, had already checked in. Good, I hated lines. A porky lady named Brenda relaxed behind the podium, painting her fingernails while gobbling pork rinds dipped in nacho cheese. Conscientious about her figure, she washed her snack down with a quart bottle of Diet Coke. On the Muzak system, faux-Beatles were singing Green Tangerine. Brenda paraphrased the lyrics. “I know that what I eat I am.”
“Hi, Brenda. Can I still make the Honolulu flight?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?”
“If you got here on time and I wasn’t on a self-mandated break.”
A little reservationist humor.
“Think you could sell me a ticket and then take your snack break?”
She snorted at the absurd idea. “Theoretically, I suppose.” She stuck out her pudgy hand. “Of course, that depends if I felt motivated enough.”
Getting the hint, I handed her ten bucks. “Here, buy some more pork rinds.”
She made the ten disappear, then stuck her hand out again. “I said if I felt motivated.”
I handed her another ten, this time holding on to my end. “Can I get that ticket now? You know, before the plane leaves?”
“Take it easy,” she said, jerking it out of my hand. “I’ve got all this stuff to put away.”
“Here, let me help,” I said, picking up the bag of pork rinds. “Open wide.”
After making like an orca, Brenda typed for a minute or so. “Let’s see, one-way standby to Honolulu. . .that’ll be eighty-nine dollars.”
I waved good-bye to Ben Franklin.
Handing me my ticket, Brenda said, “Here you go, Mr. Impatient.”
“What about my change?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You wanna make your flight or not?”
Aggravated, in a hurry, and ripped off for eleven bucks, not counting the motivational bribes, I ran like O.J. in those old Avis ads—you know, before the double murder put his acting career on hold. I slowed down when I skidded around a corner and smashed into an enormous roadblock.
A lady Bigfoot disguised as a Security Guard growled, “Hey, no running.”
I replied from the floor. “Who’s running?” Then, “I hope I didn’t hurt your knuckles with my face.”
After glancing at her hand, she laughed. It sounded like a cement grinder. “That’s not my blood.”
Thanks to the pain, I’d already figured that out. I explained, “The thing is, I’m a philanthropist in a hurry.”
“A philanthropist?”
“Right, and if I miss that plane I can’t change the world.”
Another scary laugh. “Before you change anything, I need to do a thorough weapons search.”
“Weapons search?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I’m not about to let some longhaired weirdo divert this plane to Cuba.”
Unbelievable. Here I was, off to make the world a happier place, and I’d already run afoul of The Man. Or in this case, a freakishly large woman with an extraordinary amount of body hair. She wielded a foot-long black cylinder with a familiar-shaped tip.
“What’s that?” I asked, fearing the worst.
I did not like the way she smiled. “Among other things, it detects metal.”
And me with a metal film can full of hash in my pocket instead of buried deep inside my backpack and on its way to the baggage compartment. She pushed a button and the cylinder started vibrating, rotating, and going back and forth like a jackhammer. She pushed another button and sparks flew out. The Swiss Army Knife of dildos. Finished with her demonstration, she put on rubber gloves with sleeves up to the elbows.
As she lubed them up, I asked, “How thorough are we talking?”
“You’re about to find out. Now bend over and we’ll have a little fun.”
If she thought this was gonna be fun, and I mean for either of us, she was dead wrong. Doc and I had eaten at Loco’s Tacos the night before. A big mistake.
I told her, “Be careful back there; it could get dangerous.”
She didn’t listen and moments later, she snarled, “Oh my God, you are one nasty son of a bitch.”
“Sorry, but I tried to warn you.”
Fanning the air with her dildo, she pulled a gun. With a weapon in each hand, she said, “Now the front. And no more funny stuff. . .not that your fart was funny.”
I would’ve argued, but she had that gun. Even so, no longer bent over, I felt safer. At least till the metal detector let off a narc-like siren.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the noticeable bulge in my jeans.
“Not sure what you mean,” I lied.
“I mean—this.” She holstered her dildo, and moving fast for such a large woman, grabbed ahold my crotch. Upon contact she felt the hard, symmetrical metal film can. Also, the hard and quite asymmetric shape of the hash pipe in my pocket. A surprised look crossed her manly face.
“So, you like big girls with abundant testosterone?”
Oh boy. . . I had to think fast. How to let her down without ending up in jail or getting sexually assaulted? Neither result would be a good start to my mission. So I went into default mode and lied.
“Actually, that’s a prosthesis. I lost the original ten inches in ‘Nam.”
That backed her right off. “In that case, you better get a move on, Stumpy.”
Humiliated but unbusted, I sprinted the rest of the way to the boarding gate, only to come skidding to a halt. They’d already closed the doors to the tarmac. Through the big windows, I saw the plane’s door shutting, the motorized stairway pulling away.
When the boarding-pass lady saw my beseeching look and the ten dollars in my hand, she said with empathy, “Better make it twenty.”
At this rate, I’d be broke before we landed.
Extortion concluded, she called the flight deck. A minute later, the stairway drove back to the plane. When the ticket lady opened the door for me, I sauntered like a celebrity across the tarmac, every passenger on the left side of the plane watching me through their window. They were all waving, but for some reason, with only with one finger. Bemused flight attendants met me atop the staircase. When I stiffed them, they also waved the abbreviated way. Raised with good manners, I took my time walking to my seat (in clean underwear in case we crashed) so as not to seem pushy. Also, because everyone with an aisle seat tried to kick me. My shins were taking a beating but I was lucky to make the flight. Sort of. I took my last-second penalty seat in the very last row. The one near the restrooms where the seats didn’t recline and where I suffered for the next five hours surrounded by a boisterous, chain-smoking Aussie rugby team who’d been drinking fifteen hours straight. They sang fight songs and elbowed my ribs to make sure I got the jokes.
I didn’t feel lucky anymore, but as the wheels lifted, so did my spirits. I’d made the flight despite a late arrival, no reservations, extortionist employees, and a bit of molesting by a lady Bigfoot. Obviously, I had great karma. My adventure was barely under way and I’d already learned something important. Thanks to crazed hijackers diverting planes to Cuba, people who looked like me had to be careful when flying with drugs. Maybe I overdid the whole caution thing, but I waited until after the “Fasten Seatbelt” sign went off before heading to a miniature bathroom to smoke a bowl of calming hash. Ten prudent minutes later, I stumbled out feeling like an expert traveler and when the flight attendants wearing gas masks and leis drenched me with a welcoming spray of Malathion, I knew paradise was close.