tn[2]

This barroom was long and narrow, like a box car. The grown-up’s animated talk grew louder as the night wore on, and the Air Conditioning wasn’t keeping up with their body heat or ours. In that increasingly warmer atmosphere, I learned something that night about spirit gum .When not applied in generous amounts, spirit gums tends to lose it’s adhesiveness. Oh, yeah,my beard started to slip.

I looked over to my chums to see if they were having  similar problems. No, they were OK. When the bartender came my way, I placed a palm against the right side of my face, pushing up the errant wad of hair. When he left I would try to take a sip from the shot glass, while holding my beard in place. My friends looked straight ahead, either trying not to laugh, or paralyzed with fear that the jig would soon be up. Push up beard, take a sip, place palm on face, watch out for the bartender. Repeat. This went on for a while, but drinking (along with mescaline) doesn’t help one’s alertness. Eventually, the bartender, bottle in hand, noticed my fake bear dangling an inch off of my face, gave me a quizzical look and…kept pouring.

We closed down the bar, then drove around town for hours. As the sun rose over the San Francisco Bay area, Tim repaired to his Dad’s house, I to mine, and because neither John nor I was tired, we sat up for hours, just talking. The mescaline had worn off, the booze as well, and we were just two guys shooting the breeze.

The more John talked, the more it became apparent to me that this guy had a myriad of problems, mostly personality defects. He was confused, unsure about life in general and his life in particular.