The Butterfly Kid

18

HAVE YOU ever tried to talk a bunch of hippies into helping you save the world? Forget it. Next time I save the world, by Starky, I’m gonna do it solo. Easier that way, less work.

To begin with, it was a little after three on a warm summer’s Wednesday afternoon, which meant that almost everyone was hanging out in Washington Square and almost no one was home to answer vidiphone calls. When you’re trying to collect an army in a hurry, it slows you down something fierce if Andrew Blake’s the only person you can reach by vidiphone.

“I don’t believe it,” Andrew told us several times. “You’ve all been taking chemicals. You’re on a trip. It’s pretty, but I don’t believe a word of it.”

That’s the sort of thing that discourages people who’d otherwise be more than glad to save the whole world daily, twice on Sundays.

I tried to explain. I knew better, but I tried. “We’re not on anything, Andy. We’re not even high. This is really Happening, cross my heart. It’s real. It’s just like your halo, only worse.”

“Halo?” His voice changed from bassoon to oboe. “What halo?”

So I gave up. When Andrew doesn’t believe in something, he’s thorough. I did persuade him to meet us at The Garden of Eden at five, though, which would’ve been an accomplishment if it weren’t that he was planning to be there at five anyhow.

So we hit the street, the four of us. Sativa was now a member of the Army of Deliverance. While we were phoning, she’d had her daily mystical experience and decided it was her karma to save the world single-handed, but she was willing to let us come along and watch. Sativa always appreciates an audience.

Except for a half million strangers, St. Mark’s Place was empty. We’d expected that. But we wasted half an hour in Tompkins Square discovering that it was empty too, which we hadn’t expected. Tompkins Square was home turf for the Psychedelic Conspiracy that year, full of almost everyone we knew.

“Dere aw oba dere inna Village,” the Good Humor Man growled. “Dere aw oba dere watchin’a balLett, y’unnastan? All dem dencers.”

So Sativa, little Sean, and I trotted west on St. Mark’s Place, moving much too quickly for the temperature and trying not to notice, and Mike cut out for the garage, two blocks away in the other direction, to pick up The Tripouts’ bus.

That was our most treasured possession, that bus. It was an old Army surplus ground-effect troop carrier, made in 1969 or so and obsolete before delivery, that we’d converted into a mobile rock-n-roll dream pad. It could seat sixteen and sleep dozens, depending on how friendly they were, and was equipped with hot and cool running everything. The roof was a sun deck, planted with grass and dandelions. The back third was a fully stocked practice studio, complete with battery-powered duplicates of our regular instruments that couldn’t play as loudly as the real things but were otherwise quite satisfactory. We’d toured the Midwest in it last summer, getting citations for maintaining a nuisance (the blowers weren’t too well shielded, and produced authentic hurricane effects uninterruptedly as long as the motors were on), disturbing the peace (the battery-powered instruments weren’t all that quiet), and general suspicion (the bus was painted in the highest psychedelic style, even to glowing in the dark) in every town we passed through. It was a great old bus. Well, it’d do to get our army to the reservoir, at least.

Washington Square contained one avant-garde ballet company — free-form antigrav dancing to memorized but unplayed music — one dissociated light show that couldn’t quite cope with the afternoon sun, and the entire population of the Greater New York region. The piquant tang of caprylic acid hung over everything like a panning review.

We stopped in the uncrowded east side of the park and planned. “Separate,” I told my trusty aides. “We’ll work through the crowd individually, Otherwise we won’t get through at all. Look for The People.” That’s what we called our expanded peer group in those days, when we were still a minority. “Tell them — it’s four-ten now — tell them to meet us in The Garden at five. Got that?”

They had it.

“Groovy. And be sure you’re there at five, too. Don’t forget.”

They promised to be there.

“Then there’s nothing left to tell you but Good Luck,” I told them. Then I yelled, “Charge!” and we charged.

The Square was as jammed as a subway at rush hour. Everyone was pushed into the most intimate and compromising physical contact with everyone else whilst nervously pretending there was nothing going on — a kind of casually erotic situation of which I’m generally quite fond, but hell to hunt for people in. You can’t push through such a press, you either have to climb over it (which will rapidly impair your popularity) or get down on your hands and knees and crawl through a forest of anonymous legs (not the best way to find specific people, unless you’ve made a fairly close study of legs).

Naturally, I crawled. Sean, I later learned, tried the other approach, but was soon converted to mine. Anyhow, I crawled, and no one even tried to kick me. America is losing its spirit of fun.

By a winning blend of luck and intuition, I located Stewart Fiske and Pat Gerstein standing together near Holley’s bust, just beyond the stage where all that unheard music was going on. Stu’s boots didn’t match — same color, nothing else the same — and Pat was barefooted.

I popped up in front of them, told them what was happening, explained as little as possible, and got them to promise to meet me at The Garden. Then, after a quick look at the dancers — they were awful — I submerged again and went on with my search.

Sativa and Sean were going through much the same routine, with only minor variations. Sean, for instance, had his hand stepped on by a moderately ugly girl. “I think she done it on purpose, man. You know, like tryin’ to strike up a conversation. Didn’t hurt me none.”

Sativa discovered three male teenyboppers squatting in a circle in the middle of the leg-forest, unconcernedly smoking what they firmly believed was marijuana, which was still illegal then. “They were nice. Pretty! They wanted to turn me on, but I told them I only smoke pot.”

Michael, too, had his share of quaint adventures, wrestling the Tripsmobile — our bus — from the far east crosstown to MacDougal Street and fighting against impressive odds to park it within walking distance of The Garden.

“She’s still got a tendency to try to go over traffic instead of through it. In fact, she got halfway up a police car before I caught on. I thought she was just being friendly.”

Nevertheless, we were all safely established in The Garden of Eden’s supercooled darkness by quarter to five, and almost everyone we wanted was either there or coming. It was really quite a feat, considering.