Rebel Without a Clue

One Halloween Night

S

ometime in the early 1970s, I was at loose ends one Halloween and somehow ended up with a couple of friends—Mark and Greig—at an old house over on Roberts Road, just off University Avenue. Mark’s sister was having a party, and her guests were all a bit older than the three of us (we were in our early twenties), so when they all left to go to another party, we stayed behind. There was music playing in the background, and a drizzle of rain pattering outside. 

We were sitting around in what might have been some sort of sunroom, although the windows were black. Twilight was over and done with. There were books and chairs, and the stereo of course. It was one of those evenings, like the unvoiced conversations people have:

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

“Well, what? Do you guys want to do something?”

“Maybe. What do you want to do?”

It went on like that like a remake of Marty for a few minutes when Mark brought out an army surplus  fighter pilot’s breathing mask and started fiddling with it. I’d never seen one up close. Just pictures. I think he’d been carrying it in a brown paper bag, now crumpled on the floor, which I hadn’t noticed until then. The breathing mask was made of very soft, almost powdery rubber, with a ribbed air supply hose right in front of where one’s mouth would be. 

The hose had been cut off to about twelve inches, and at the end of it was a small wooden tobacco pipe, the stem been jammed into the hose. It was ingenious and odd looking, like something out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. The contraption intrigued me, for it was pregnant with mystery and promise, and provided a great number of unvoiced questions that competed for attention. I wanted to know more but remained silent, figuring such answers would be forthcoming. Watch and learn became my motto of the moment.

Greig pulled out a tobacco pouch and contributed what turned out to be high-grade grass, which he and Mark used to fill the pipe. Greig took the first few hits, then Mark checked it out, and then I got my hands on it. Strangest thing in the world; the rubber was soft as butter and covered the nose and face such that when you breathed in, it molded itself to you like a second skin, and every bit of air came through the pipe at the end of the breathing tube.

As you can imagine, this mask|pipe combination could give a rather significant hit. I wasn’t used to smoking grass and I wanted to know what a real high was like, so I kept at it in a persistent kind of way, occasionally passing it back to Mark or Greig. I remember the music playing in the background as I sat on an old couch with this mask contraption on my face making sure the thing actually worked while Mark and Greig wandered about the place. 

At about one-thirty in the morning we noticed that Mark’s sister and her friends were still missing, and we decided to go to Mark’s house to spend the night because it was getting late, and his house was less than a mile away—almost a straight shot down University Avenue. 

A few minutes later I found myself standing outside with Mark and Greig on the gravel drive in the drizzling rain. There must have been a back porch light because there was just enough light to see. There was a fine mist falling and each of us was explaining to the other why we personally should not be the one to drive the car. The car in question was mine; a white 1968 MGB with the chrome bumpers (one of the last good MGBs), which I’d purchased sight unseen from Vicky’s friend’s older sister because she’d gone to live in New York City. It could hold all three of us if I put down the top. 

I remember trying to make my case, that I really really shouldn’t be the driver when the most extraordinary thing happened. Without any warning whatsoever, the earth came up to greet me, and it said it with pea gravel. Honestly, all thirteen billion trillion tons of it swiveled on its axis and slammed into my head. And now there was wet gravel against my face. Mark and Greig were standing sideways, looking down at me, snickering quietly in the night. After a little bit, they helped me to get my legs working, and I staggered to my feet, which is when I realized the earth had not moved as much as I’d thought. It had been all about me, as usual.

In any case, Mark and Greig both said that they were actually in much worse shape than I was—believe it or not—and somehow convinced me. We all piled into the MG; myself in the driver’s seat, Mark next to me, and Greig sitting on the rear deck lid, holding onto the roll bar. Or maybe it was Greig next to me and Mark holding onto the roll bar, I’m not sure. We started down University Avenue in a soft cloud of fog at about seven mph. Mark was giving directions because I’d never been to his house before, and Greig was coaching me on the driving.

I was being extra super careful that night. There wasn’t any traffic, and I decided we would be safer if I kept the car going right down the dotted line—in the middle of the street. They always said to follow the dotted line on the cereal boxes, and so that’s what I would do, follow the dotted line. 

Our headlights shone on the wet road and the dotted white line kept disappearing under the car. I hit the windshield wipers briefly every hundred feet or so to clear the glass. I kept looking in the mirror to make sure there weren’t any cars behind me, but droplets kept collecting on the mirror from the rain, and I kept getting caught up in the droplets—watching them instead of the road—when Greig or Mark would nudge me a little and suggest in a polite way that it might be better for all concerned if I could perhaps just get back over a bit toward the other side of the white line, this not being England. 

I remember thinking that I’d better do just that when another droplet would catch my eye and then Mark or perhaps Greig would help me (they were being very helpful), by mentioning the whole right-hand side of the road thing to me a little louder in case I hadn’t heard them, given that there were cars parked right where we were heading, and so I would carefully turn the wheel and aim for the other side. 

Okay, so we made it down University Avenue and up College Avenue through the mist to Reservoir Road, following that dotted white line that kept disappearing for some reason under the car. Then we were at Mark’s house. I parked and we went inside and up a staircase to his room where we all sat on the floor and looked at each other. And then Mark had a great idea. He chuckled to himself with the thought of it and started rummaging around, muttering about lone genius coming up with stuff. 

Greig and I just accepted that whatever he came up with would very likely be supremely great, since Mark thought it would be, and we waited him out. Pretty soon he put a Playboy magazine in front of us, opened to the centerfold.. and I remember wondering what was so great about it because we were all guys and we’d all seen the inside of a Playboy when he giggled a bit and sprayed some talc body spray in the air.

Suddenly the pilot’s mask, marijuana, Playboy Centerfold, and provocative scent of a woman combined to create an immediate reaction. Unbelievable.

Greig and I groaned and Mark laughed. 

“Told you!” 

And then we all fell asleep in our clothes.

🔹