Okay, let’s get one thing straight from Jump Street: I’m a storyteller, you got that?
Sometimes the stories are fiction (I’ve published more than a hundred of those), but sometimes they are the other thing—the Fack, Jack . . . and it’s one of those I’m gonna serve up to you tonight. For your reading pleasure, of course.
But for this one to make total sense, we’re gonna need to make room in the Way-Back Machine1—elbowing our way in between Sheldon and Mr.Peabody—and set the dial for October, 1967. That date would make your narrator the tender age of 21 when he was a Senior at the University of Maryland. I was living in an off-campus apartment with some good-buddies (Bob S., Jay L., and Mike K.) and loving life with some “gut course” electives to ride out my degree before needing to figure out how to avoid the jungles of South Vietnam.
It was my pleasure that mid-Autumn to be dating an enigmatic young woman by the name of Fran P. (who , when they had been handing out legs, had raised her hand and said “I’ll take more if you got it . . . ). Her signature look: sheer white pantyhose (remember those) with a half-way-up-the-thigh mini-skirt. You only needed to see Fran once to never forget her. If you were a social scientist (perish the thought) investigating the reasons why people attended college back then, you would have found Fran and me at antipodal ends of the graph.
I was logging in my Selective Service2 -alloted four years of immunity from getting yanked into a physical a free ticket to Basic Training. Fran, on that well-known “other hand,” was just having a good old time in college with no real idea what would come next when they handed her a bachelor’s degree.3 I remember during one of our early dates asking her what her father did for a living (mine had been machinist at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard for 40 years after a stint in the Army Air Corps), and she looked at me with a resigned and distinctly bored expression as she said: “Oh, Daddy . . . he buys things . . . .” (After some prodding she revealed that her father was a banker and real estate developer and owned lots of commercial properties in the prosperous counties surrounding D.C.)
Yeah, that was Fran.
And so, I know, I said there was Magic in this one, and it is . . . eventually. But you got to hang with me , okay? A bit of set-up: I had invested in a primo 1967 stereo rig that featured a Fisher receiver, a Garrard turntable, and Advent speakers. It filled our living room with beautiful (albeit analog) sound. We played Beethoven to Zevon and everything in between. Even though we were young guys who would have a hard time finding their asses with a mirror on a stick, we had good sound, good tunes.
So one weekend that Fall of my Senior year, Fran showed up at our apartment (my roommates were all out so we had the place to ourselves) for a “night in” as they say. She entered with a record album4 under one arm and a small brown paper lunch-bag in her other hand. I asked her what kind of treats they might be and she just smiled and said “I think you’re going to like them . . .”
For starters, she presented me with the album. It was called Strange Days by a group called The Doors. I had never heard of the band and the photo on the cover depicted some suitably bizarre street performers in New York. I can’t recall my exact words at this juncture, but I’m sure they were something grateful and appreciative. I remember slipping the vinyl from its sleeve and turning toward my turntable, when Fran gently touched my arm, and said softly (and with a hint of something exotic) “Wait, not yet . . . we’re going to need this.”
And with that, she produced the little brown-bag grade school paper sack on our furnished-apartment-coffee-table. I watched as she unwrapped its contents: an oblong slab approximating the size of a small brick encapsuled in aluminum foil. Fran placed this on the coffee table and unfolded the foil to expose a roughly rectangular clump of obviously organic material that looked like sun-dried basil or oregano.5
But no, that would be wrong.
“What’s that?” I looked at my date with what had to be a dumbfounded expression.
She kind of smirked. “Marijuana. You’re gonna like it.”
I remember that scene as if yesterday. I felt like such a chooch . . . because I had never even seen pot/weed before. I mean I knew it was out there, but had never ran into anyone who was smoking it . . . and here is my current girlfriend bringing it into my world. I admited to looking at her with newfound admiration.
Sparing you the details, Fran dug out some papers and we rolled a few joints from her voluminous brick and haled down. Wow. My first time rip on even tepid weed was a game-changer: white bread tastes like prime rib and music is from from A Space Odyssey.
Oh yeah, the music . . . .
So after we were feelin’ it, I finally placed the pristine vinyl of Strange Days on my high-end turntable. I’m going to presume that most of you are not cultural troglodytes with no knowledge of this seminal musical bacchanalia. Which is to say (understatedly) the combination of my first encounters with cannabis sativa and Jim Morrison created an everlasting impact crater on my psyche.
As they say: what a night.
As Fran and I cruised through “Strange Days” and “Love Me Two Times” (well, yeah . . .) and “My Eyes Have Seen You” . . . neither of us were prepared for the final cut, “When the Music’s Over.” Oh yeah, I know the afterglow of the semi-crappy weed had some sway, but that final song whacked us around like we’d forgotten to click our seatbelts.
So may I skate by the particulars and just say Fran and I had experienced one of those occasions hard to forget. And as a coda to this part of the tale, I should tell any of you wondering—that after graduation, I lost (pre-internet) track of Fran and have no idea where she may still be making her mark upon the planet.
However, as they say they say in those late-nite, cheesy informercials: Wait! There’s More! And this is the important part—where the whole point of this little essay/post sharpens.
Recall: I was in stoned recline on our living room carpet with Fran betwixt my stereo speakers listening to both sides of a classic rock album featuring Jim Morrison on vocals, Ray Manzarek on keyboards, Robby Krieger on guitar, and John Densmore on drums. At that moment in time I’m almost certain I didn’t know any of their names but I was already knowing I really liked this band. Their sound was a perfect storm of classical/jazz informed keyboards, melody defining lead guitar, and bold confident drums—and of course the androgynous sexuality of Morrison’s voice, lyrics, and phrasings.
Now I know you’re probably thinking the combination of my first excursion into the grasslands and its unique way of making even mediocre music sound like genius, the exquisite company of the ever-enigmatic Fran, and the joyous discovery of a truly original, captivating band is the magic to which I referred in this post’s title.
Nah . . . not even close.
Imagine there existed some sort of metaphysical means of communicating with my 21-year-old self from a far-distant time 50+ years in the future. Now, stay with me—and further imagine the communication I received is this: the day will come when I will be published in a book alongside the guy playing the drums on Strange Days. In fact, it will be a limited edition signed by both me and John Densmore . . . .
My 21-year-old self would have most certainly denounced this as simply absurd—and rightly so. What were the odds of me and Densmore appearing in the same book? The word astronomical does indeed caper across my brow.
But, as they say, it came to pass. Like this: having been a lifelong fan and admirer and eventual friend of the brilliant writer, Richard Matheson6, I had been invited to contribute a short story to an anthology entitled Brothers in Arms which was being published as a companion volume to Matheson’s recently unearthed World War II novel, The Beardless Warriors. Honored to be part of the project, I of course accepted the invitation. Turns out, Richard Matheson’s son, Richard Christian (“R .C.”) a really fine writer himself, also played a mean set of drums. He had studied under Ginger Baker of Cream, and also knew John Densmore— who turned out to be a huge fan of Richard Matheson’s work. Being a bit of a writer himself, John approached R. C. and Barry Hoffman, the co-editor of Brothers in Arms with an idea for a story called “Unknown Soldiers for Peace.” The editors bought it, along with my contribution the book7—bringing together after 52 years a college senior and the drummer who wowed him.
And that, my friends, is truly magic.
And speaking of of stories, later this year I will be publishing my sixth and final collection of short fiction, Memos from the Abyss. Check it out here to pre-order: https://www.borderlandspress.com/shop/authors/thomas-f-monteleone/memos-from-the-abyss-by-thomas-f-monteleone-signed-limited-edition/
Readers of this substack will get a 10% discount if they email the publisher at info@borderlandspress.com.
And so in closing, if you’re enjoying what I’m doing here, be sure to share it with your friends, restack it, and all that good stuff. Do it today!
If that reference is lost to you, then you are truly Among The Lost
Not sure that govt agency is still around . . . but it administered the local Draft Boards harvesting young men for the “Bungle in the Jungle.”
Wow . . . how long before the Wokestapo consigns that term to their burgeoning dustbin of history?
For the true chooches among you, music used to be sold on large LP (long play 33 rpm) vinyl discs with a cardboard sleeve festooned with art and text. They were called “albums” even though they were no such thing. True albums were artifacts of earlier decades when recording discs were thick slabs of brittle plastic designed to spin at 78 rpm. If you wanted more than an hour or so of music for your phonograph, you needed a handful of records in separate sleeves bound into a true album of discs. Even when technology eclipsed this stage of development, the term album stuck. Now you know.
Hey, c’mon . . . I’m Italian.
He wrote The Incredible Shrinking Man, I am Legend, and some great Twilight Zone episodes (just to name a few)
“The Other Model”
Okay, I'm just baffled, happy, but baffled. Memos from the Abyss is just 28 days from release and the lettered edition is not long sold out? How it that even possible in a sane and civilized world?