It was spring, clearly it was spring, why else the effort to replace the front right wheel that had fallen away from the lawnmower in the fall. Dalton Vrij had mowed the last few runs back in October on three wheels.A period that leaned more toward the general style of flowing with the exigencies of fate and the lawn tamed by summers sun surrendered easily enough to a three wheel skim. But this was spring a time for starting on four wheels against the sturdy slow growth of a mild North West winter.

He had learned his lesson on the springtide grass program, a few years back after a winter wherein shooting smack had been the primary focus.Out there in a sea of verdant green, weak as a kitten, forced to rock the mower up on its back wheels, hacking into the green wall at an angle, else the mower would just stop, the places that allowed for a snails pace on four wheels included a lot of reaching down to pull away the masses clogging the side vent. True he had defeated the shut off bar with duct tape eliminating the balletic stretch while squeezing maneuver, but only in exchange for the inescapable image of blade hitting finger tips as they gingerly pulled the grass away.

Over the three days it took him, that spring, to hammer down the lawn section by section, during the many smokebreaks that accumulated, he reflected on how easy it might have gone had he simply reversed the order on kicking dope and mowing the lawn, yep couple weeks back he coulda done a big smack issue and torn through that lawn for fun.

Though it is conceivable that Dalton might have taken a loaded whim to declare open season on the dreaded grass, it was extremely unlikely, verging upon impossible that he might have foreseen this scenario, as any doperun once engaged would seem to his reptilian mind to be as permanent as the mountains or the sea.

Poking around his little shop scouting for an appropriate bolt to reattach the vagrant wheel, having ground away the impeding detritus, he ran across a little item that transported him back the summer that had followed upon the hellish mowing spring, the summer of his 50th year.

Time, since, had seen some millions of high school graduates progress to Bachelors of arts or sciences while he had merely learned yet again that once a week was a much more effective interval for dope hits than some random hourly schedule. Of course being a bit older he was in a graduate school where the terrain is a bit more opaque, He had spent his Quadrennial mastering in discovering his HIV status, gaining a Phd. in why it worked for him.

The item of things past was a gauge that had once been part of water meter, a brass water meter.

Another worthless widget gathered by some sleep deprived human magpie, a hamster toy.

Dalton, somewhere in the middle of a five day flail had dropped into the Bogart compound, looking no doubt for a smack issue, that was of course the attraction over there.

An Island of opiate sanity in a sea of Speed.

That summer found him on an ironic tour of his immediate environment, for years he had slid the twenty miles south into Seattle, for heroin and cocaine, for weed or acid, for live concerts of Classical Indian music for the obscure movies he found amusing. He sold most of his jewelry in its shops, found Go opponents in its Coffee houses , women in its bars. Though he lived by circumstance a little north of the city, over the Snohomish County line, it was his town, on a clear late night he could roll on its dope strolls in 20 minutes.

Suddenly here he was in 97 like Margaret Mead on speed discovering an indigenous culture that had gone on, all around him, invisible, a different tribe its rituals related but unique. He had gone native in Hamster land a spreading archipelago that went on literally from sea to shining sea. Somewhere in Iowa flailer cooks were sucking down the gasses from a giant tank of ---- to mix with melted down batteries some ephedra perhaps a little red phosphorus to precipitate their crystal brew. Long ago some one had stated to Dalton Vrij that airplane glue was the pure and quintessential Amerikkkan drug.

Adolescent boy steeped in Balsa B-17 parts and testors glue ,ponders superman sqirts another tube onto his sock and sucks deep,but no it was Meth surely ,lifted like so much rocket science from its Nazi past. Passed through arcane and mysterious channels from Goerings personal chemist, the apocryphal lore transmitted to Hells Angels cooks, greedy graduate students, all the various and assorted cadres of Amerikkkan underground chemistry, their Mexican counterparts, all these persued the alchemical vision, why turn lead into gold with its value languishing in the mid $300?tm)s an ounce, with good flail at $700 easy, even in pounds it easily surpassed gold, and was so much easier to make.

Dalton Vrij, was not a stranger to the dreaded Meth Amphetamine had witnessed its first crop of victims spun all over Haight Street. Late in 68 returning from the Montezuma Caper six quiet months south of the border, and a new baby to show for it.Dalton, wife Gail and baby Antigone got a room at Phils flophouse, two large flats over a store front on California off Polk.

What had been Phils psychedelic vision, his "Underground Railway"

Transporting the flower children to the broadlit sunny uplands, had degenerated just a bit from those Halcyon days some fifteen months previous, when Dalton had met Gail upon those premises, she was then Phils chief aide, she the cook, the practical girl from Pittsburgh.

Fading sunset of the summer of love, Phil had then a room on the top floor, living with his people. Driving them around, in his brand new red Mustang convertible, wind in the thinning blond hair, lack of chin not yet a problem, spending old South Carolina money to usher in some telepathic dawn, no clue that the magic light was shrinking towards some long night of the dopefiends. Life would not be an endless wallow in teenage hippie pussy.

Just as the speedfreaks with their hepatitis had turned University Ave. in Seattle into what looked like a concentration camp for Jap prisoners of war. So too had S.F. fallen to the crystal scourge. Phil crouched in his little Apt. behind the former wine shop on the first floor locked into a reluctant role as landlord to his motley collection of junkies upstairs.

Arriving broke in the city, 57 Buick station wagon crammed to the gunnels with sitar tablas tape recorders books assorted other instruments cats and a baby. The little Vrij family, could have cared less listening to Phils little tale of how things were. How no one "up there" was still his friend. They were more than happy for permission to kick in a door and move in. That their room turned out to be back facing with view and fireplace a welcome bonus.

As it turned out phils Hamster hotel attracted a better class of freaks than the truly degenerate mutts that populated the streets outside.

After selling his tacky cost plus sitar for enough cash to buy a sarod and taking a quick turn through, some pornographic opportunities, Dalton had enough money for his instrument and tuition for the Ali Akbar Khan college of North Indian music, settled now in sunny Marin.

Some where in the Archives of the Mitchell brothers later to gain fame with Behind the Green Door, and the resurrection of Eve promoting Marilyn Chambers right off the Ivory Soap box, there is a clip of film a little movie of Gail Nee Graf playing with their first born daughter . A film of perfect naked innocence. Perhaps it was never developed Artie Mitchell having shot it said simply "We can never play this, these guys have fucking kids."

He must have known this while he cranked it, burning 16mm and lights, but there was something about the kid, she happened to bring along that caught his eye.

Paid anyway and moving on Dalton had to work a bit for the other few hundred. That some repressed dweeb from South San Francisco would pay him a hundred buck to snap stills not once but thrice would pay so quietly to watch him fuck his own fucking wife seemed so unbelievably quaint and sweet as to be almost a miracle, kept immaculate through non continuance, certainly the last time Dalton Vrij ever got paid to fuck anything.

Through that fall and winter the Vrijs got well enough along, with the denizens of Phils, it seemed to Dalton like a residence for Vaudevillians each of the eight rooms on either floor contained some unique act. New York Eugene next door spent his days at S.F. State in a tiny piano filled room struggling with four part harmonies. Jose down the hall slung stereos down on Mkt street in between the weekly concerts of Jimi Janice or the Whoever. Downstairs Rose the beautiful Puerto Rican girl shared her soft Bronx accent and a herion habit with her man John, tall quiet and good looking out of Denver.

There were various flailers scattered about, they tended to rotate through, Fat Paul was an exception, top floor front left, the large original parlor, bay windows, working fireplace, coved ceilings, a room to hang on to. Fat paul and his nurse girlfriend shot a river of speed in that room.Two or three times a day their door would lock for an hour or so while she doused his gelatinous bulk with these three or four inch points she picked up down at work, no easy task even for a professional, and Paul usually had some kind of an abscess going off a miss ,Paul was a sort of remittance man, dropped out of an Ivy league graduate study in philosophy. Dalton traded books and

Te ta Te?tm)s with fat Paul, the non dualist Upanishads of Sankara in a friendly grapple with Kant, Nietze, various opaque Germans.

Paul kept his large assortment of rigs in the secret lower chamber of an elaborate Marqueted (sp)Victorian opera box.That box and all of Pauls books fell to Dalton late that winter, the elaborate medical scam centered on a conveniently dropped jar of baby food at Mayfair Market,

Paid off in spades, the Pauls $15,000 fatter headed for Nepal.

Dalton Vrij still on the right hand path tossed the rigs in the garbage.Sold the box and the books at his leisure.

Lest we get the impression that life at Phils was all beer and skittles, reflect upon the quiet gray Tuesday morning in January when Dalton invited down the hall to observe the anemic progress of a pot plant struggling to grow in a fire escape well, was interrupted mid botanical critique by someone shoving through the door, found himself staring into the very large bore of a .45 Automatic aimed at his face. Not staring really, more like tracking, as the giant pistol jerked in the twitching hand of some skinny ragged loser.

"I should kill you all for selling me bunk." addressing the nameless companions of the nameless pot farmer. Dalton chose not to interject that he was an accidental tourist here, from way up the hall where the Sony 260 spun out raga

12 hours a day, where the smell of the cat boxes battled insence in a miasma of Bianca drops, where his wife spread her affections among four cats and a baby. Money and dope changed hands, Dalton staggered back up the hall.

"We gotta we really gotta get out of this fucking place!"

Outside it was way more of the same all the people Dalton knew that lived in the Haight or Gough Gulch had been robbed at gun point on the street by speedfreaks. Peace and love had been traded for a piece of dope and a rig, meth was pure ten bucks a gram and all the "Real" hippies were out on some farm learning about water born diseases

and brown rice. It was about that time that Dalton spotted Charlie Manson up in the Haight at Tracys donut shop, he was then of course unknown, but he impressed the casual glance sitting there with five of his women, the burning stare had met Daltons eye and moved on.

It was about 10:30 of a warm June night, Dalton heading for Bogarts rolled slowly out his long straight driveway, toward Maltby Road, full moon rising, on his left, Looking out across the field, 50 yards to the pole fence, his eye was caught by the old hand pump standing, just a bit taller than the grass, turning now more to hay as the heavy seed heads, nodded in a slow breeze.

"The pump don?tm)t work,

cause the vandals

broke the handles"

The old Dylan verse and this view were forever joined in the mind of Dalton Vrij, in Go terms mia if one then the other, moves inseparably linked.

Pausing at the quiet road, enough moonlight illuminated the van interior for him to easily select from a small pile on the opposite captains chair, an 8 track tape.

A glance to check the insipid features of Neil Diamond, the solid clunk, the almost instant strains of

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" Pink floyd, Dalton had not only the cranking 8 track player he had a console unit that recorded same from

L.P. as Neil covered Wish You were Here, Lawrence Welk had Ali Akbar Khan and V.K. Jog, Mitch Millers Christmas held Locatellis Art of The Violin, Cat Stevens and Led Zepplin,

Spoke true.

Turning right Dalton waited until he cleared the Gravel entrance before he stepped down hard enough to catch a little rubber, and the slightest of drifts, as the 302 dug in and started to wind, he was clearing the crest when the big C-6 tranny snapped him a gear at about 40, his head a weightless instant,

Then back against the high headrest,

Four barrels pumping the long windout. Eyes on automatic checked off Popos little hideouts down the hill.

"No one knows where you are

how near or how far"

Easing off and hitting a few brake taps Dalton was pulling around 70 dropping over the last rise, glad of a clear view to the corner, as he whipped around some shrub in a cheese box running up to about 85, before slowing down. The corner was clear and from this distance red his best chance, longer brake drags as the corner came up red, red, red,

Boomshot green, swinging well out to his left at about 40 he cut hard right and punched it. A woman kittycorner pumping gas at the 24 hr Arco looked up at screech of tires to see the short Ford 150 van snap out of a 45 degree drift, and roar north up hiway nine toward Clearveiw.

"Fucking Ed oughta be back with my smack by now" thought Dalton rolling up the long straights.

Ed ,Carl Bogart and whichever of their women could only earn while stores were open, plus their Mexicans up in Arlington like Mexicans everywhere liked to shut down early. It was desire rather than need that propelled, no jones in play, but that morning when he tagged Ed with five O for some later speedball he was on a third day run could sense sleep lurking out there somewhere, and if as he suspected the big sleep was coming closer then, best to lay in some dope, both for the easing in and the wakeup.

That morning around six up at Bogarts, sitting in Eds Winabego clone sharing a fat flail issue with him, demarking another night become day. Dalton handed the 50 bill over knowing full well it would go straight into a run to Jibimbo, Carls mysterious country Mexican. Knew that they would steal that day all the better for starting out loaded, boosting in the morning sick was not a fucking party, true Juan their old chicano buddie, he that did most if not all the real work

would almost certainly get them to the spoon. The look that ed gave him was one that belied an appreciation that would or should, be measured in the size of that nights payback.

"Comes around go s around" thought Dalton sitting on a fat wad of cash from his recent landscaping score. Three leisurely days in the Bellvue hills one with Laura sleeping in his car billed out at $18 an hour,she got ten, put him up $550 ooohhh the chainsaw "danger pay", mostly just a quiet cleanup on a newly bought property, the smug and starchy broad that hired him off a next door gig, had said something off, made some look, that put her in the double pay category, Dalton had tugged forelock over whatever imperious slight, and put her on the not return list, just mumbled mam and took her fucking money, Geneteks money? Microsofts money? What did she care her place looked good, and nothing was missing.

Though the light was on at Eds he was not there, it was this kid Mickey, Dalton had seen him around remembered some vague tale of his fuck ups, he seemed cheerful enough growing more cheerful after doing the generous rinse Dalton left him

off his final from the current 8 ball of flail, as he also had the baggie to wash into his hit he was a bit behind Dalton who was coming out of his rush and feeling talkative as Mickey finally hit pay dirt on one of his fat little arms. His hit was too small to slow him down much and soon they were deep in conversation.

Mickey it seems grew up half a block from Eds mom over in Everett.

Ten or twelve years back he had fallen as a young teenager under the sway of the older man. Ed was in his truck driving phase, no doubt the lore and the lure of the big wheels rolling, the Smokey, ten four good buddy, CB yada yada was more than enough to rope some small town kid for life. Just how Eds pill popping 16 wheeler life style degenerated into sitting high and dry in Carls yard with a triple dope habit we leave to the imagination.

Mikey was still tagging along,

Minion of the poormans Willie Nelson. Frozen in some quiet dope fiend amber, he was staying out of jail, but his development was so arrested that one could only hope he had some fun in the maze.

As David Meissner so often used to say with that wry smile.

"How can you lose when your born to lose."

The talk soon turned to Mikeys adventures in the scrap trade. Settling to the description of a veritable mountain of red brass sitting up in Sedro Wooley, 50 miles north deep in Jibimbo land, Skajit Count seat somewhere out behind the

Courthouse. The water district was switching over to plastic meters, red brass was just piling up.

Mikey before he lost his pickup had been dealing more or less on the square, paying 40 cent a pound, selling at .65, having removed the non brass components. As yet no one in government had realized that dealing with Mikey always led to unforeseen loss, more the unseen loss falling so far below the purview of county concerns as to not exist, assuming of course one could avoid detection in the act.

There was a knock at the camper door a minion from the main house bearing news, Ed Carl ect. Were delayed up north, something about buying a Porsche.

There was enough detail to breed hope on catching them en passant, on a scrap run to Sedro Wooley, so they rolled.

A clearer eye or a wider focus might have revealed the tableau some 10 miles north of Arlington, across the median and opposing freeway, of the hapless Carl Ed caravan, broke down on the side of the road. X ray vision would have seen Juan, and Lucy, his long time girlfriend cozy in Eds Chevy van slamming speedballs whilst Carl and Ed played Deutshe Auto werke just outside. Thus the attempted rendezvous, tenuous at best,failed as expected to materialize ,and the Ford 150 headed on into Skajit County.

Sighting sign, Sedro Wooley, city line, knocked the dominos about so far back, in mind for Dalton Vrij, as to make him wonder hard just where, from this spot, lay, whatever was left of Western State Hospital.

Somewhere to the east closer to the mountains that was sure. As for where it lay in time, that was two shots in the crosshairs 67 and 70.

After 30 years the images were yet as clear as the dashboard in front of his face, the trees and little sidewalks linking the individual wards, the mustard stucco walls, the red tile roofs, the heavy dark interior trim work, good hardwood blending against an institutional brown paint scheme selected no doubt by the original architect and perpetuated for the 50 years, the whole edifice required to age into the perfect crèche for the initiation of Dalton Vrij.

There was in particular one little spot one area that best expressed, the former hospitals quintessential charm, upstairs in each of the multi duplicated wards, upstairs, the locked more closely monitered security area, where they brought the fresh and flaming cases,

was an outside covered porch. A 19^th century designer of such places would never deign to bar the client in totality from the graces of the outside airs, or some place for moderate exercise. The entire original hospital was done in the mission style, the charms of which can still be seen in fragments, say down in Everett with whats left of the county courthouse and former jail,also closer to the water, the old Great Northern train depot. Dalton grew up around the mission style his family ties and trips to 50,s California wore it deeper he had been to Capistrano.

And so on that porch the one specific to the King County ward,

With its rows of arches screened in ancient heavy mesh its red tile floor that matched almost, the color of the curved roof tile of his and other roofs ,he found the serenity to emerge at last, at least for a moment from the turbulence. He was engaged with an old punching bag no doubt more original equipment decaying now after some 50 or 60 dank winters ,the leather was crumbling now loosing its Victorian kapock to the littered neglected floor. To strike its original purpose would be unthinkable to a mind so freshly born as Dalton Vrijs in that moment, he merely pushed it gently letting it swing and sway slowly retarded just a bit by its dragging entrails.

"Breakthrough in grey room" the words read not so very long ago, in San Francisco, turning the pages of Burroughs,s Nova Express down in his room in Chucks basement on Divisadero, came through his mind, spoken in the cadence and tone heard on his first acid trip seattle Oct. 1965. the voice of whichever fug spoke them on the record continued on through inner mind "Calling partisans of all nations" "Towers open fire". Suddenly the meaning of those first words came clear, surely the grey room was the brain some first step leading upon a path, some other of the parts he had heard were already clear, he had seen the wounded galaxies tapping on the window pane, the lights of Seattles, Queen Anne hill across lake union swirled and danced on Eastlake glass, that very night,

"Storm the reality studio" was waiting for the internet ,while the "Dead hand " looking anywhere would find him soon enough.

The mysteries and visions of the turbulence, then so recent would unfold in their own time. Some while the ebb and flow continued ,now he was riding the surf and not just rolling in the curls. He rode upon and found support in a succession of bits and phrases picked mostly in the long but recent past after his mind broken out to the void by L.S.D. and later projected kaleidoscopically with DMT collected lyric totemic keys.

"The doctor said give them jug band music it seems to make em feel just fine" became a mantra of comfort and support like the black "Cant bust em" cant bust him jeans

that kept him invulnerable to the darker forces in play. Anybody whose seen baby turtles trying to make it to the sea knows the dangers of the young. Can they see the hovering angels, which seagulls must be fed?

It was truly ironic that it was somehow speed that brought him back to Sedo Wooley on the 30th anniversary of his "19^th nervous breakdown" twisted forty-niner of the brass rush. That previous time it was just some pills reluctantly accepted in liew of cash on a little pot deal tossed casually into his stash to await their appointed hour.

Within the week he chowed them down four or five rounded triangles in tan, Dexadrine by name, humble form for the keys to the kingdom.

Dalton was then back up from a year in the bay area, saying Bon Voyage and showing off the new girlfriend, getting his passport together, his shots and whatever else, the final details for their trip to India.

All that proceeding year in San Francisco while the flower children danced away their days in Golden Gate Park, or made Frisbees of their minds on the Haight, Dalton Vrij was sorting letters parcels and he thought his future life down at the Post Office. Truly he and his girlfriend Sarah Danced their fair share of gigs at the Avalon Ballroom took their acid on weekends in the Park. However they both had Dreams and goals that lay though separate beyond the American shore.

The whole time Daltons vision was of to study at some American University of Istambul in Balkan studies, did it even exist we shall never know because that all shifted in an instant one morning in January of 67.He was living the single life then having handed off Sarah almost ceremonially on New Years Eve back to her long term man Alan another former denizen of LA. Back at long last from England, back to paint it black, Dalton was taking the red door through to other women other streets. He told her the first week that it was gonna be like a recent folk song ,they were going to sing in the sunshine and it was going to last for a year. That seemed to suit her fine, the timing was right, down to the necessary number of te ta tes the Alan Sarahs needed to negotiate the next stage.

January found Dalton living in the warm wooden familiar basement at

Chucks and Blythes house on Divisadero the basement that Micheal Van Nuis the new Bedford Poet had elegantly occupied all the previous summer, Dalton had shot DMT in that room, had crowded in with 20 others for a peyote meeting the burned hole left over was covered by a rug. Dalton was back on his own, spread between his two mentors Chuck upstairs with Blythe and the kids, and Woody, Sarahs good and long time friend, over in the mission.

Chuck, was his original main man from Seattle, had plucked his drunk and debauched teenage form from Jacks Tavern and the clutches of Boeing,poured in acid and weed, stirred with the I Ching, marinated with a little William S. Burroughs, Sauted him in Zen ,garnished him with poetry, and served him up to Woody using a couple of Ravi Shankar records for a plate.

Woody came out of Muscle Beach part of the L.A. crew that included Sarah ,Alan, and Micheal Robbins.

Woody and Micheal were slammers, Micheal pounded down Meth hits in the gough gulch hamstering on a Harpsichord kit and madly tootling various Baroque airs on his little recorder.

Woody shot whatever was going all over town though it was mostly smack over at his room in the dog house on pine when Dalton met him spring of "66".

From the beginning it was the music that held the draw for Dalton Vrij The Indian classical music that blared forth from a succession of funky record players. Accompanied always by Woodys on going commentaries, mixed as they were with various snippets of yogic lore.

Dalton learned how the yogis slowly stretched and cut away at the base of the tongue until the the tip could touch the center of the forehead then being long enough to insert back up into the nasal cavity so as to seal that area for extended time periods needed for truly deep meditations. He spent hours mesmerized listening to descriptions of the three thousand years of musical tradition developed to such a fine degree within the system of the 33,000 ragas that there were not only Ragas for all times of the day and season but ones to summon the various deities, to cure ,perhaps inflict various diseases.

There had been a Ravi Shankar record amongst the mix of Jug band funky blues Jazz and early psychedelic rock and roll that Dalton had listened to back up north in Seattle, the night he had taken his first truly big acid hit a lick of pure crystal he had put that Ravi shankar on repeat and stared deeply into a mirror rode those strains through a thousand of his many faces. He had read Siddartha and the Journey to the East, was primed for the India lore that Woody so loved to dish out.

Moving into Chucks basement to stay while he finished up his tooth work at the medical school above Golden Gate Park, Dalton had fallen in with Chucks latest phase Zen Macrobiotics, he was about five days into his ten day all grain diet when he awoke one morning with the realization that the path of Indian music was the one he would follow.

He went over to Woodys pad now in the Mission to let him know his decision, kudos and long discussions while Dalton cut tape direct through mic on his little sony taperecorder.

Dalton stayed on for another month in Chucks basement getting gold inlays in his front teeth a gold crown and assorted other dental goodies.

One night around ten, Artie his next older brother rolled in from Seattle with a pack of his College buddies, they had in Daltons absence fallen under the sway of the whole hippie revolution to the degree of digging the music and learning to smoke weed, by the next morning they were also onto acid. It was an intense night of colorful compression, Chuck was working a night shift at the Post Office and Blythe was alone upstairs trying to keep a sick kid asleep. Dalton wove candles incense and the music from his little taperecorder into a quiet mellow groove of initiation, from time to time the energy grown somewhat too boisterous was tamped down by Blythes interjections.

With the rising sun they piled into the collegiate conveyance and headed for lands end where a couple of the boys who were English and knew something of Seafood pried large mussels near the breakers for a psychedelic brunch.

About three weeks after this little adventure, Chuck packed the once again pregnant Blythe the kids and his earthly goods into a 1942 Dodge 4wd Ambulance and headed north. Dalton ended up following David Meissner part of the original Seattle crew over to Phils on California Street just off Kearny ?.

David was an artist and a Gemini he had been in the 53 buick that rolled Dalton,Chuck Blythe and the kids into S.F. back in Jan 66 since then he had been bouncing in true Gemini fashion between Seattle Portland, and S.F. spending usually just a few days with some new girlfriend in each town, before moving on two exceptions being a three week smack run down in the fillmore with Mushy Smith and Mark Brown and a two week trip to Europe, with Mark Brown after they had burned some Reed College kid for two grand on an acid deal, that was a comes around goes around thing as they got peeled in Ostend Belgium day three of that tour and spent most of their time conning uncle Sam for a return ticket.

Well as Chuck pulled out in Feb. 67 David was around and introduced Dalton to the Phil scene. First night over there, taking acid to check out the freakout potential

David spent the night with Gail, later to be first wife of Vrij, while Dalton got more or less a sexual healing from a squidgy nameless nurse, being in need after a rather ruthless handling from a Montana nymphomaniac out in Marin a week before, he had just about to come for the fourth time on acid with this blond monster woman, when she says "Not yet" his space out was more than successful and all to soon she was shaking him like a rag doll screaming "Fuck me" while his mind was anywhere else, what followed was a too long night of trying to get back to a sexual frame of mind, as her ministrations turned down right cruel in the slow motions of time that followed, it was an evening that?tm)s only other redeeming happening was to find the music that he thought only existed in the exalted state of shooting DMT playing on the phonograph under the guise of Swami Paharvitkar playing the Swaramandala an Indian Zither he had never heard over at woodys.

On the Saturday following whichever night Dalton and David moved into Phils, a bunch of them headed over to Muir Beach in the red mustang for acid and waves, they spent that day spread between the beach and the sparsely furnished house of some rich eccentric friend of Phils whose claim to fame was having had written the song Circus of Sours which showed up on a Donavan album apparently this guy wrote it and left a copy sitting somewhere in LA before taking off to Mexico for a while when he returned it was all over the radio.

Be that as it may Dalton ended up spending several Psycedelic hours sitting with Gail on a big rock by the sea a rock he sensed was just rolling along fracturing in some super slow motion time frame, as he pitched her on a life spent with him in India playing music, she bit, accompanying him, two weeks later sans wisdom teeth to Seattle for the final preparations.

Gail was from Pittsburgh a Simon and Garfunkel sort of girl unpretentious and unintimidating

Either intellectually like Sarah or sexually like Montana Woman she touched something in Dalton perhaps like a sister he never had ,to move him to make the serious pitch on acid having never even kissed her,

mysteries of life go figure.