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Authors: Spalding Gray
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swell of the valley below. There was suddenly no me, or I should say no complication of me. There was no Brewster with a history anymore. My body was filled with a colored liquid, like the mercury in a thermometer, and then it all went down until it drained out my feet and left only an empty outline, like a Matisse drawing. Now I was the landscape, which was all liquid and flowing through my outlines. I don’t know how long this lasted or what it meant. I only know that I never experienced anything like it before or ever after.
At some point I turned to see Joe glowing behind the wheel of the pickup. I climbed in beside him and everything in that cabin wasas liquid and interesting as the valley below. As we drove down the winding mountain road toward New Paltz I began again with the what-ifs. But this time it wasn’t Seventh Street. “What if we were in Vietnam tripping right now, Joe? What if we were in the middle of that war? What if we couldn’t get our fingers off the triggers of our machine guns?”
Joe didn’t answer. He just smiled and drove. As the what-ifs spun by in my mind, I knew I could stop the Ferris wheel at any point and take the thought out and examine it. Or I could let the Ferris wheel keep spinning. Then the Ferris wheel turned into a stream just like the one I’d been standing by and its seats were now wooden boxes floating down the stream and every box, I knew, contained a thought. I could drag it out and open it up. Or I could let the boxes go—and I did. I watched them flow by.
That night I pledged myself to Meg. “I think we should try to make a life together,” I said to her at the diner over a BLT. “For better or worse, let’s try to make a life together.” Meg seemed a little surprised and then took my hand while I turned to her and said, “I like you, Meg, because things matter to you.”
M EG AND I had made love once or twice, but I didn’t like that out-of-control animal feeling. I liked that all-over spiritual feeling I got from the LSD better, and I began to feel that my little room in the back of the bookstore was meant to be a monk’s cell, not a sex pad, and I wanted to keep it that way. I had had the sex pad with Melissa; now I wanted something else with Meg.
One day I found a way to re-enter that joyously transcendental state without using drugs. Actually, Meg found it. Meg came up with the idea that I should try modeling for her life drawing class to make some extra money. They were looking for a model, so I took the job. I had never modeled before but I knew I’d be right for it. I was ingood shape and had an almost classic body. I had no objection to being naked in front of an art class, although a jock strap was required. I hated jock straps and had never owned one.
I bought one at the college athletic store and then, repulsed by the horrid white clinical aspect of it, I decided to dye it red. On Monday at nine in the morning I showed up at Meg’s life drawing class with an old bathrobe I had bought at a thrift shop and my new scarlet-red jock strap. I think the drawing teacher and the whole class were impressed and thought of me as a real professional.
It all happened on that first day. I made the wonderful discovery within an hour. I found that I could empty out and turn into an outline again. I could disappear without fear because I knew that the whole class was keeping me in that room with their eyes. The more people looked at me, the more I was present, and I was also free to come and go from that presence. If there were ten students looking at me, times two eyes, then I’d feel twenty times larger than I usually felt. It was their constant gaze that kept my body in that room, while my imagination flew to Bali, then out into the cosmos, getting ever closer to a state of nothingness. It was a way of constantly dying and being brought back from the dead, resurrected once again by the voice of the art instructor, which was like the voice of God bringing me
At some point I turned to see Joe glowing behind the wheel of the pickup. I climbed in beside him and everything in that cabin wasas liquid and interesting as the valley below. As we drove down the winding mountain road toward New Paltz I began again with the what-ifs. But this time it wasn’t Seventh Street. “What if we were in Vietnam tripping right now, Joe? What if we were in the middle of that war? What if we couldn’t get our fingers off the triggers of our machine guns?”
Joe didn’t answer. He just smiled and drove. As the what-ifs spun by in my mind, I knew I could stop the Ferris wheel at any point and take the thought out and examine it. Or I could let the Ferris wheel keep spinning. Then the Ferris wheel turned into a stream just like the one I’d been standing by and its seats were now wooden boxes floating down the stream and every box, I knew, contained a thought. I could drag it out and open it up. Or I could let the boxes go—and I did. I watched them flow by.
That night I pledged myself to Meg. “I think we should try to make a life together,” I said to her at the diner over a BLT. “For better or worse, let’s try to make a life together.” Meg seemed a little surprised and then took my hand while I turned to her and said, “I like you, Meg, because things matter to you.”
M EG AND I had made love once or twice, but I didn’t like that out-of-control animal feeling. I liked that all-over spiritual feeling I got from the LSD better, and I began to feel that my little room in the back of the bookstore was meant to be a monk’s cell, not a sex pad, and I wanted to keep it that way. I had had the sex pad with Melissa; now I wanted something else with Meg.
One day I found a way to re-enter that joyously transcendental state without using drugs. Actually, Meg found it. Meg came up with the idea that I should try modeling for her life drawing class to make some extra money. They were looking for a model, so I took the job. I had never modeled before but I knew I’d be right for it. I was ingood shape and had an almost classic body. I had no objection to being naked in front of an art class, although a jock strap was required. I hated jock straps and had never owned one.
I bought one at the college athletic store and then, repulsed by the horrid white clinical aspect of it, I decided to dye it red. On Monday at nine in the morning I showed up at Meg’s life drawing class with an old bathrobe I had bought at a thrift shop and my new scarlet-red jock strap. I think the drawing teacher and the whole class were impressed and thought of me as a real professional.
It all happened on that first day. I made the wonderful discovery within an hour. I found that I could empty out and turn into an outline again. I could disappear without fear because I knew that the whole class was keeping me in that room with their eyes. The more people looked at me, the more I was present, and I was also free to come and go from that presence. If there were ten students looking at me, times two eyes, then I’d feel twenty times larger than I usually felt. It was their constant gaze that kept my body in that room, while my imagination flew to Bali, then out into the cosmos, getting ever closer to a state of nothingness. It was a way of constantly dying and being brought back from the dead, resurrected once again by the voice of the art instructor, which was like the voice of God bringing me
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