Excerpt: Oregano Fields Forever

He liked getting high as a child likes spinning in a playground. The liquor bottles in Mom's cabinet were now more water than booze from all the times he'd sampled and refilled them; Mom wasn't a drinker and neither were her guests. The only thing Johnny hadn't ever done on purpose was sniff glue from paper bags like some of the older boys did in the well of school yard near his apartment. He decided it couldn't be good for you after seeing the gang tripping over themselves and staggering out angrily; How could it be good for you if it made you stagger or angry?

      When his sister, Claire, came home with her hippie boyfriend one day, he had a role model. She had met Moses through a friend at her high school. Scraggly unkempt dirty blond hair past his shoulders must have taken months to get there; he wasn't an overnight hippie. If Johnny started that afternoon, he could look like Moses by the time he entered high school in September. He would have to shuck his white corduroy Nehru jacket though to get that grungy effect. Moses wore what could only be called Indian carpet bell bottoms. Johnny swore he'd seen the same pattern in a store on Atlantic Avenue once when his Mom had brought him to a neighbor's pet shop and they stopped in next door for mahmul and baklava. He could almost smell the incense drifting from Moses' pants, a musty scent he was told, as from the sex glands of a deer. The water buffalo leather flip flops completed the look. The ornamental belt wasn't necessary to keep Moses’ pants up; Johnny was impressed that a belt need not be worn for a function. 

      Moses asked Claire if he could do 'it' there and pointed to Mom's bedroom. Claire said "uh-huh" and went to the bathroom. Johnny followed Moses who removed a baggie from his pocket and waved it in Johnny's face like a hypnotizing charm. The contents were green shredded leaves, not unlike parsley. Johnny was excited about his first experience with marijuana. The 'it' Johnny soon found out was the rolling of a joint on Mom's night table. Moses sat on the bed and poured some of the content out. Johnny knelled at the table a few inches away, so close that Moses jokingly asked him not to sneeze, please. So that's what it smelled like. So that's what it looked like. Soon, he hoped, he would find out what it tasted like and felt like to have tasted it. 

      Almost reverently, Moses rolled yolk-colored paper, the kind of paper Johnny noticed covering tampons. Moses pinched a large amount of the green leafy bits and placed it on the crease of the paper, If Johnny had known about seeds and twigs, he would have been skeptical; there were none in Moses’ stash. Moses rolled and Johnny sat close drop-jawed as he licked the length of the end and fastened it along the side. "Voila," said Claire enjoying the experience of providing Johnny his first experience. 

      "Where to?" asked Moses when Claire returned from the bathroom.

      "We could go up on the roof? It's safe up there," said Claire, wide-eyed with anticipation. Johnny wondered if it were her first smoke, too, the way she acted. "No one goes up there except on the Fourth of July to see fireworks or to adjust their TV antenna."

      "The roof it is. Lead the way." The two pilgrims with their guru took to the stairs that Claire pointed out. Moses led the way. It was a no-brainer to reach the top; all you had to do was go all the way. They walked up five flights. He pulled the latch out of the eye screw in the door to the roof and light streamed into the dark echoed apartment halls. Out the three stepped onto the softened black tar of the heat blisters, careful to avoid wet spots. Over waxy brown wires that littered the roof floor like snakes and connected to primitive aluminum antennas with black electrical tape, antenna all facing northwest toward the Empire State Building in the far distance of midtown Manhattan. The three sojourners found a spot of sandpaper gray, dry roof paper, sat down in a circle. The joint was lit by Moses, puffed, held in Moses’ lungs, and exhaled in a flourish like the blowing up of an invisible balloon. 

      Then it was Claire's turn. Johnny was wrong about Claire. She hadn't smoked before, she indicated, and didn't want to this time, either. “How about you, Johnny?"

      "Sure!" Johnny didn't know how to take the joint from Moses’ fingers so Moses passed the joint, back and forth, from one had to the other, in demonstration mode, until Johnny got the gist of it. 

      "Let's go to Manhattan. There's a groovy place there that has twenty flavors of ices." 

      Moses had a Karman Ghia convertible. Claire naturally sat at on the other side of the stick shift and Johnny squeezed in sideways in the back seat, if you could call it a seat; more like a plank to keep the front seats connected to the back and a space for the lowered convertible top. The weather was fine and the air was a fresh breeze down Ft. Hamilton Parkway along Greenwood Cemetery to McDonald Ave and a right at Bishop Ford Parochial school and onto the entrance of the Prospect Expressway. Everyone's hair blew in the breeze across the Gowanus and Johnny kept on saying, "What will it be; Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, or the Battery Tunnel. Yeah, the Battery Tunnel! Wow, going through a tunnel like this. He had never seen the roof of the Battery Tunnel before and now, for the first time ever, to see it like this; wow! "Take the tunnel, take the tunnel."

      "Sounds good to me," and Moses maneuvered to the left lanes that brought him to the Brooklyn side toll booths. All the cigarettes, alcohol, roller coasters, and even the holding of breath with nose pinched could not equal the phantasmagorical rush of bliss that this was. Johnny’s kept thinking about the Crystal Ship; how it was being filled with a thousand girls, a thousand thrills and a million places to visit. This was the first of a million. Life was all about living to be a million. 

      No music in the tunnel, and what a time to enter. With "Penny Lane" on WMCA just beginning, it was a double Beatles block. Johnny, Moses, and Claire joined in just as Paul sang "…of every head he's had the pleasure…" “…to know," they all continued," and the people that come and go, stop and say hello." Johnny made the noise of the piccolo before the next verse. "…never wears a mack in the pouring rain, very strange." All three went “brump bump bump, Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes." Johnny simulated the piccolo trumpet and they all joined in, in harmony, “there beneath the blue suburban skies....” Three minutes later, the song ended, mid-tunnel, but Johnny was a Good Guy DJ, and he started right in with the second half of the Beatles block. "Paperback Writer," then all "writer, writer…writer…" Claire and Moses were George's guitar as they sang: "Dear sir or madam would you read my book…" Amazingly, they all admitted later at the park, unbeknownst to them, when the signal on the radio returned as they left the Battery Tunnel in Manhattan, what was on the radio but "Paperback Writer" itself! Johnny learned what it meant to be 'tuned in and turned on' that day.  

      The Karman Ghia made a right under the Westside highway and followed Hudson Street to Waverly Place. They parked near St. Marks Place and walked to the ices cart near Washington Square Park. Johnny was amazed how Moses knew how to go everywhere he imagined. He couldn't have imagined better. 

      "Oh, by the way, Johnny, that was oregano you smoked," said Claire in front of Johnny, arm in arm with Moses.

      "What did you say, Claire?"

      "That stuff you smoked on the roof? It was oregano."

      "Are you sure? I got high from it?"

      ""She's sure, Johnny," said Moses talking over the shoulders between them" We weren't sure how you would react."

      "It was a test," said Claire apologetically. “I wouldn’t smoke that for anything.”

      "A test? What kind of a test is that? Thanks sister."

      "Are you okay with that?"asked Moses.

      "Of course I'm okay. What did you think I am; a cop?"

      "Okay okay, we're cool," and Moses reached into a sachet he had over his shoulder. "This one is for real."

      "Don't get hung about it, dude, It's strawberry fields forever for you."

      Johnny went home and started an imaginary radio station.

 He saw Moses after that day; He guessed his sister had broken up with him. He never saw his sister smoke again after that; maybe that's why they broke up. The next outfit Johnny remembers Claire doing something with was the cheerleaders at her high school, her next boyfriend on the football team. Johnny, on the other hand, got off the soul train at that station and never looked back. The tone arm was on the record for good.