Trailer Park Hippie II: Hippies On The Hump

FIVE: 1777 Coal St./Christmas Eve 1969

And we still thought so when the rock came through the window a month later, on Christmas Eve. Casper and Very were still cool with us. We weren’t going to throw them out just because we were surrounded by a neighborhood full of frustrated Klansmen. We didn’t even want Casper to know about the threatening message, so I took the magazine page and the rock into the family room with me when Stoni and I crashed that night. As we passed the bathroom on our way to the back of the house, Bo came out and gave me back my big magenta comb.

              “Got a little rise in your Levi’s there, Bobo?” Stoni asked, almost smiling. 

              In response to this question, Bo lapsed into his daily comedy routine, part of which was to adopt a fastidious, effeminate accent and use formal, multi-syllabic terms for body parts and bodily functions: “Well, Miss Estonia,” Bo, glancing down at his fly, lisped daintily, “you see, pressing my genitalia against Peaceful’s buttocks while I was grooming her coiffure caused me to develop a drastic erection.”

              “And?” I asked, pulling long, red strands of hair from my comb.

              Bo now reverted to standard Greased-Morton-speak: “Seemed like she didn’t even know I had a hard on, brother. I kept rubbing it up against her ass, and she just kept staring in the mirror and asking me why her eyes were all different colors and s**t. I told her the best way to come down if you’re losing it on acid is if you can ball somebody.” Where had I heard thatbefore? “Then I unbuckled her belt, but she said, ‘Wow, like, I’m sorry, Bo, but I just cannotball when I’m, like, tripping, you know? JT and I tried it, and I’m just, like, dry, you know? I can’t even, like, go down on you, ’cause my teeth are all clenched and I’d probably, like, biteyou or something, you know? I’m, like, really sorry.’” Incorrigible derelict and ne’er-do-well that he was, Bo was also a gifted impressionist. His duplication of Faith’s spaced-out speech was perfect. “She said, ‘If I had, like, a sopor or something? That usually makes me want to ball,’ so I gave her that half I had [Stoni had given it to Bo], and she let me feel her up a little bit. I told her to stay put for a minute and I’d come back to get her. Can I take her back and ball her in the family room? Bony’s up in the attic, playing with his yo-yo.” 

              “And what about JT?” Stoni asked.

              Bo crooked a wrist and reverted to his lisping comedy act: “Oh, I’m sure Master JT won’t object to ‘sharing the wealth’ with a brother in need. I’ll certainly return his concubine to his bedchamber immediately after I’ve achieved orgasm. What are ‘bosom buddies’ for, after all, if not to share the available bosom?”

              “Right.” Stoni nodded. “But where’s that little junior-high girlfriend of yours with the big boobs, speaking of bosoms? What’s her name?”

              “Little Esther,” I said. 

              “Went down to Kentucky with her mom for Christmas.” Bo said.

              “And where do wesleep if you’re ‘achieving orgasm’ in my bed?” I asked.

              “Just let me just ball her on your floor then, man. I’ll hold my hand over her mouth so she don’t make no noise,” promised Bo, the Casanova of Coal Street, the poor woman’s Don Juan if ever there was one.

              Before I had time to deny his chivalrous request, Faith, belt-buckle dangling, staggered out of the bathroom behind Bo and saved me the trouble of saying no. She bounced off the opposite wall, rebounding like a human Ping-Pong ball into JT’s bedroom. (Stoni’s personal sopors were of the powerful, orange A&S variety, much more potent than the white Rorers she gave me to sell, and who knows whether Faith was really tripping that hard to begin with?) 

              “I don’t think you have to worry about it,” I said to Bo as JT’s door slammed shut under Faith’s stumbling weight.

              “Here.” Stoni unscrewed the hidden stash compartment in her own m*******a-leaf belt buckle (a Christmas present from me) and handed Bo another sopor, a whole one. “Keep this for yourself, or share it with somebody who loves you,” she said. 

              Bo tossed the whole sopor into his mouth, swallowed it dry, and growled, “f**k that loony b***h!”

              “I was just thinking the same thing,” laughed JT, edging past us toward his bedroom door, which he had to shoulder open, since Faith had apparently slid down it and was sitting against the other side, unknowingly impeding her lover’s entrance.  

              “Jayyteeee!” we heard her slurring loudly before he got the door shut again. “I wanna transcend!”  

              “Just call me ‘JT Thoreau,’” responded JT, who had obviously been paying attention in American Lit 101 at SWOCC. “Time for a little TF.” He gave us a wink and pulled the door closed.

              “‘TF’?” asked Stoni.

              “Transcendental Fornication,” I explained JT’s code phrase for s*x with Faith, and Stoni did then smile as she continued through the kitchen on her way to the rear of the house. Before following her, I stepped back into the living room to turn up the stereo against Faith’s anticipated gasps of love, for which she was notorious, and which were louder than ever when she was downed out. I wanted to be able to hear the album back in the family room, where I had a radio but no record player, and I did notwant to hear the other couple’s testimony to passion; I knew there would be no such sounds emanating from my own boudoir, though Stoni had done at least one whole sopor andsmoked an evening’s worth of pot. Listening to the intensity of the drugged lovemaking between JT and Faith would make our own that much more pitiable by comparison, so I turned the volume all the way up and resignedly took Stoni to bed as Van wailed out his tortured soul in praise of his own true love:  

                                           She’s as sweet . . . as Tupelo honey,

                                    She’s an angel . . . of the first degree,

                                 She’s as sweet--as sweet as Tupelo honey,

                                  Just like honey, baby . . . from the bees.