Car Wash

 

 

By the end of eighth grade, in 1977, my hair reached more than halfway down my back. I was attending a Catholic grammar school at the time, and surely my being allowed to look like such a freak was in the same class of miracles as the spinning sun at Fatima or the cures of Lourdes. I enjoyed security in my appearance there, but high school loomed ahead. Catholicism had already ceased to provide me with any spiritual nourishment--in fact, I was immersing myself in Hinduism and chanting slokas rather than Hail Marys--but I knew that the church's educational institutions clung to higher standards than the miserable public schools of Chicago, and I did want an education. I also knew that almost all of the Catholic high schools were segregated by sex and that for boys in these grim fastnesses, having hair touch one's collar was considered a grave offense. The former attribute was a minor problem only, as I tended to get along better with girls back then, but the latter was unacceptable. I would not cut my hair for any reason other than to save my life at that point, and thus it was that my discovering St. Benedict's was like sunrise after a cold, clear night. It was (and may still be) coeducational, and I was informed that long hair on men was tolerated as long as it was tied back, a concession I was more than willing to make. An added bonus was that no one from my grammar school had plans to enroll there. The commute seemed a bit excessive: a short jaunt on the el from Jefferson Park to Irving Park, and a twenty-block ride on the bus down the road. But better to get there in an hour with long hair than to be whisked home shorn like Samson, I figured. And hitchhiking promised to be speedier than public transportation.

If no bus was immediately apparent when I crossed the street across from the church also bearing that school's name, I stuck out my thumb and hoped for mercy and goodwill. God rewarded me from time to time. Usually, I was picked up by other freaks and often got stoned with them; once I was collected by an older gentleman driving a sixteen-wheeler who shared his whisky flask with me. But Irving Park was not the best venue for hitching a ride to Pulaski and the el station. I made my way as best I could.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, I landed my first job: proofreading handwritten, pro forma tax sheets against computer printouts. Drugs had become my principal joy in life, and although they were much cheaper back then, they still cost money, so money I had to have. I filled out the application honestly enough, including my actual birthdate, clear evidence that I was not yet sixteen, but the woman who interviewed me briefly either didn't notice or didn't care. My job started at four in the afternoon and ended at eight or nine in the evening three days a week, and other folks who hung out at Forest Glen forest preserve had jobs there as well, and thus I had smoking buddies. The operation was located at Bryn Mawr and Pulaski, so rather than sluicing through the city on a noisy silver train straight home, I would hoist my thumb into the air in an attempt to circumvent the notoriously late and slow Pulaski buses and head north without funding the Chicago Transit Authority. I had more luck on Pulaski than on Irving Park, and in more ways than one.

One day a red Mustang convertible with a black top pulled over to the curb upon seeing me there, looking all the world like some kind of drug abuse poster child ("Only you can help a hippie like Greg. Give now. Give until it hurts."), and motioned me in. I opened the door and sat down inside, sizing up my benefactor as I did so. I never worried that I might get a ride from a maniac some day and end up diced in a fifty-five-gallon drum or sodomized for days and days (which might have been fine, depending on the maniac), and the driver's appearance set off no alarums in my head. He had sandy blond hair, feathered back as was the style; chiaroscuro-shaded sunglasses, through which his squinty eyes showed enough to make his highness obvious, framed his bland, generically pleased face. A Foghat T-shirt stretched across his chest, and Ted Nugent or UFO or something similar was blasting a guitar solo through the speakers.

"Hi, man. Where you headed?" he inquired.

"Just up to Bryn Mawr. Actually, a block north of there."

"Cool, I'm heading to Devon. Wanna buy some acid?"

I had just begun working the previous week and wouldn't have a paycheck for another few days. What horrible timing, I thought.

"No, man, wish I could, I'm broke."

His expression remained impassive as he drove. "Wanna buy some pot?"

"Like I said, wish I could! I don't get paid until Thursday."

"Wanna buy some tic?" (Tic was what we called PCP back then, owing to its being falsely marketed as THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.)

"Nah, I don't do tic, man, thanks." I smiled politely at him. His eyes remained trained on mine through the glasses.

And so he continued to ply me with offers of drug sales, followed by my antiphon to the effect that I had no cash and couldn't buy any drugs, no matter how tempting they sounded and how much I wanted to stuff my face with them. I tried injecting humor into my spiel, forcing a little laugh at his insistence, but after a few minutes I found myself growing irritated. What did he want, a flash card reading I'M BROKE, GIVE IT UP? I was offered hash, mescaline, hash oil, speed, reds, opium, mushrooms, MDA, Valium, and Talwin before his list ended. He shut up. I was relieved that he'd finally gotten the message.

We'd driven another half-block when he reached toward a concert T-shirt folded on the seat between us.

"Check this out, man," he said, lifting the T-shirt and revealing a large gun.

I hadn't had much truck with guns, so I didn't know what kind it was, and neither could I tell you now. It was very big, however, and well oiled. Were I to have seen it in a magazine, surely I would have been entranced by its aesthetic appeal. I was less entranced than paralyzed at that moment. There was a large gun next to me on the seat. I was being asked to check it out. I was checking it out. What do I say? My brain shook as I frantically shifted gears.

"Oh, cool," I offered noncommittally. I figured that unconditional positive regard, such as is recommended for therapists, was my best bet. What else does one say under these circumstances, I wondered. I have one just like that. My father's is bigger. I bet you show that to everyone, you slut. My reveries remained my own.

He smiled like a latter-day transgendered Mona Lisa at my obvious discomfiture. "No, check this out, man," he purred, reaching behind himself for his wallet, which he opened. A large gold badge blazed at me as we passed Lawrence Avenue. "I'm a cop." His smile had brightened to a grin.

"You're a cop?! No way!" I exclaimed.

"How old do you think I am?"

"Eighteen?"

"I'm twenty-four. They pick us because we look young."

I was speechless though happy that the gun's owner was involved in enforcing laws rather than breaking them. Wait a minute, I thought.

Turning to regard the undercover cop, I cocked my head and asked, "So would you have busted me if I had said yes to any of your offers? Was this a setup?"

He burst out laughing, slapping his blue-jeaned knee. "Oh, fuck no, man! I just bust assholes and keep the shit for myself. Wanna do some tic?"

I avoided PCP on general principle, as most of the people I knew who fancied it ended up lying on their backs on the grass intoning "I'm going to die" over and over, which did not seem indicative of entertainment value. But given the circumstances, I felt that declining would be impolite. "Sure!" I said.

We pulled into a car wash across Pulaski, and while the whirring buffers and sprays of soapy water buffeted the Mustang, the cop pulled out a tray from under the seat, a razor from his wallet, a straw from the glove compartment, and a bag of white powder. Quickly, he chopped up a couple of fat lines of PCP, snorted one, and passed the tray and straw to me. It burned my nostril badly, but such is the price one pays for psychotropism. Just as we finished, the car wash was over; he paid, and we drove off.

Realizing that a four-hour stretch of proofreading income tax forms had just been definitively stricken from the list of possible ways to spend my time, I asked to be let out at Foster. I thanked the cop, wished him well, and got out to wait for the bus with about fifteen Catholic high school girls in their plaid uniforms. Not being experienced with PCP, I decided that thumbing was in my best interest as a timesaver--best to be near or at home when the weird wave washed over me and I started drooling or trying to rape garbage cans.

No sooner had my thumb left my fist to part the air when a white Toyota pulled over. The driver was a wiry man with dark hair and a manic expression.

"Yo, dude! Need a ride?" he yelled.

"Yeah, man, thanks!" I replied, opening the door and sitting down. The car reeked of pot. Yes blared from the stereo.

"Too bad none of those babes wants a ride, man! Do you party?" The driver moved forward as the light turned green but kept his eyes on me as much as possible, smiling goofily.

"I sure do!" I assured him.

"Great, man, there's a bowl in the glove compartment there! Fire it up!" With that, he handed me a lighter. I found a huge bell-bowl stuffed with Lumbo gold sitting on top of a map of Minnesota just where he said I'd find it, lit it, and attempted to pass it to him.

"No, thanks man, I just got high. You smoke that," he said, waving the pipe back to me and humming along with Jon Anderson's senseless yet beautiful vocals. Again, I thought it rude not to partake as invited, so by the time we got to Jefferson Park, I had reduced the brimming bowl to mere ash.

"Take care, dude!" he boomed at me as I crawled out of his car and tried to navigate my way toward the drug store where my friend Harold worked. I waved and smiled but found my mouth on strike or perhaps in back having a cigarette. I figured it would come back soon enough. The PCP was hitting me, and the Lumbo gold wasn't helping matters. I felt myself shrinking as I entered the store and engaged Harold in conversation long enough to inform him that I was high on tic and that I had to leave right way, sorry, thanks, bye. He giggled at me as I grabbed the door handle and pushed out repeatedly.

"You want to pull the door in. Pull in," he laughed.

I turned around and looked at him behind the counter, still in his right mind and much, much smarter than I. His advice was worthy, and by following it I emerged into the fading day, where the very angles of objects in relation to each other had ceased to make sense without distorting or otherwise falling prey to hallucination. I was confused and fuzzy, swathed in a stupor that begged for an answer yet couldn't have understood one had it been proffered. The placement of a tree in a parkway, the flight of robins overhead, the hum of traffic from the Kennedy Expressway--the world had become an equation with more variables than integers, and I could not solve it, no matter how hard I tried. Euphoria kept trying to insinuate itself into my consciousness, but my frustrated calculations and explanations kept me from relaxing and truly enjoying myself.

I ended up at Tim and Jerry's house, as usual, a few hours later. I must have stopped at home first, but the details escape me. I recall feeling pleasantly drunk, without the nausea that alcohol often produced in me. Later that night, as we gamboled in the darkness of the forest preserve, I noticed that my night vision had improved markedly. A few hours later and my IQ rose to its usual level once again.

I wasn't scared off hitchhiking by this experience, and in fact I scored some acid from two women who gave me a ride about a month later. I don't think they were cops, but maybe they were. They did look pretty young, after all.

 

© 2001 Gregor Everitt