Blacklisting Myself Excerpt: A Night With Timothy Leary
An excerpt from the chapter "Father Timothy and My Three Wives" in Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, published today by Encounter Books. (Read Roger Simon on his media blitz here. Also podcast interview on National Review.)
… Usually an event at Timothy Learys’ was a circus out of the hippie past, with characters like Wavy Gravy mingling with punk rockers, and studio execs and actors trolling for parts more intently than for any sex or drugs. Once, my ex-wife Renee and I arrived for an intimate dinner for eight. During dessert, Timothy casually asked if any of us had “done crack.” Conversation came to a screeching halt. Sophisticated as this group might have been, crack meant underclass addicts and violent neighborhoods dangerous to white people like us. After a dramatic pause, Timothy smiled and allowed that he had. At a crack house in East Hollywood. He said it was “not what you expected” and “amazingly enlightening.” He wanted to do it again — right then! Did any of us want to join him?
More silence ensued, followed by nervous coughs. Timothy looked disappointed (this may have been feigned). Then he fixed his gaze on me, saying, “Why don’t you come, Roger? Moses Wine would, wouldn’t he?”
I sat up straight. Did he expect me to know karate because my character did? I had been challenged before to live up to my adventurous detective hero, but normally it didn’t involve a potential mugging in a latter-day opium den. Nevertheless, just to make up for wussing out on those Harvard LSD experiments, and after a sideways glance at Renee, who, wisely, had already demurred on the feeble grounds that she was “too tired,” I assured her I’d be back early and said yes to Timothy. Within minutes, he, Barbara, and I were en route from Brentwood to East Hollywood — a thirty-minute trek even at midnight with little traffic. I was designated driver, a job I was pleased to have, mainly so that I could be in as much control as possible of our moment of exit.
The crack house was a decaying, six-story stucco affair in the badlands between Yucca Street and the Hollywood Freeway — in those days, junkie and hooker central. Timothy rang the bell. A rangy black kid in a t-shirt opened the door almost immediately. (He had been phoned.) He looked about eighteen and held a baby in his arms. Other babies cried out in the background from other parts of the house, which reeked of a variety of odors ranging from frying hamburger to something suspiciously like vomit.
“Hey, Timothy, my man!” He gave Leary the Eighties equivalent of a high-five. I remember wondering for a second if he had any idea he was greeting the man who coined “Tune in, turn on, drop out!” I’m almost certain he didn’t, and I doubt that he would have cared if he had. What he saw in front of him was just what he wanted — a tall white-haired middle-class geezer with cash.
We clomped up the stairs behind the young man, past those screaming babies and some mothers and grandmothers, to a room full of cushions on the fifth floor. A price of one hundred dollars apiece for a round of crack seemed to have been negotiated — by whom and at what I rate I didn’t know or care to ask. The young man and his buddies, ever the conscientious service provider, had determined that Timothy and Barbara were a couple and that I was alone. I might need “company.” I was asked if I wanted it, but declined.
Then we reclined on the cushions to wait. In short order, the crack pipes arrived and we toked up. Though I did this fairly gingerly, I was taking off for Alpha Centauri within a megasecond. I don’t know if I would agree with Timothy that it was “amazingly enlightening,” but it was sure one hell of a high.
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Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger, and the CEO of Pajamas Media. His book, Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, was released in February 2009.
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30 Comments
1. Allston:A dsmall side-story, Roger:
My Father (regrettably passed away many years ago) grew up in the same neighborhood (Springfield, Mass.) as Tim Leary. He and his friends remember him distinctly at weekend card games. Tim was a very natty dresser (spats and all!) in those days, and while everyone else would be saying “gimme a card,” or “See ya a quarter,” Leary was razor-sharp precise. “I would like to wager a bet.”
My sole regret is that years later, when I could have had the opportunity, I never went to an event with Mister Leary and said, “I’d like to wager a bet.”
Feb 5, 2009 - 3:51 am 2. Spider79:Oooohh – k. Not sure I would have told that story.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:24 am 3. jvon:Amazon emailed me yesterday to say your book was on the way. I’m looking forward to reading it.
I had an acquaintance who got involved in crack in the late 80s (or “b-rock” as he referred to it) — your description took me back to far too many experiences hauling him out of houses like this. You were lucky to get out when you did. I had my life threatened, I had my car upholstery torn up by a paranoid addict convinced I was a cop and the car contained recording devices… yes, fun times. Whatever his redeeming qualities might have been, Mr. Leary’s judgment when it came to recreational chemicals always seemed a bit off.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:25 am 4. Bernard Chapin:I loved that section but really think the segment on Richard Pryor was the best. Perhaps that’s because I knew so little about him in the flesh and blood. Awesome book though folks!
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:37 am 5. Jane:Just received your book today… looking forward to reading it, but this story – yuck, oh yuck. My sister is a meth druggie. Lost, lost. I think your book is going to rile some people. But what you describe here…it is such an unappealing world to me. Yuck.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:38 am 6. Gary Ogletree:I tried plain coke a few times when I was a lad, realized I liked to too much and it had a decadent feel about it, so I abstained from then on. Unfortunately, for years I liked good bud too much and spent too many days as an incoherent zombie chasing The Rush. My policy on drugs: get high if you want but first know you will pay a bigger price than you can imagine. That should be the key to Drug Education. Before and after photos of Meth heads are priceless. Leary seemed to believe his own hype. He was smart enough to dazzle others but not wise enough to grow up.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:43 am 7. George:I met Timothy Leary around late 1979 or early 1980. He was an interesting and likable man. When asked if he was still using drugs, he was very coy and gave a cryptic response. It was as if he was using something new and unknown to most but didn’t want the word to get around for fear of it being declared illegal. I should have known he was still using drugs. I believe his extreme curiosity drove him to it.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:45 am 8. Al Maviva:Based on what I’ve seen it do to my friends, crack is the drug to take if you’re interested in killing yourself quickly but don’t have the guts to do it with a pistol. If you get hooked – and one blast may do it – it teams up with you to destroy your life, your family and your friendships in very short order. Six to 18 months should do it. It’s like dropping a hand grenade in the middle of a crowded party.
Feb 5, 2009 - 5:57 am 9. Thomas:Say what you want about Leary, he was a fascinating, much maligned and much misunderstood person. He went from being the most respected psychologist in his field to public enemy #1 and a figure of public ridicule almost overnight. He was actually called America’s most dangerous man, by Richard Nixon, DURING HIS TRIAL. Heck, he was Quayle/Palined by the media. Unfortunately, the successful experiments done by Alpert and Leary, treating alcoholics with LSD have been totally ignored by modern clinicians because of the nutty drug laws in this country. His autobiography, aptly entitled Flashbacks is a great read, whatever your feelings about him. While he wasn’t right about everything, he may not have been totally wrong either.
Feb 5, 2009 - 6:08 am 10. paul kramer:in what year was this party ? the 80’s
Feb 5, 2009 - 7:46 am 11. Bill White:My inner editor is compelled to note that a megasecond is one million seconds, or about 11-1/2 days. Perhaps you meant a millisecond or a microsecond?
Feb 5, 2009 - 7:51 am 12. Bugs:I’m wondering what Leary thought about his suppliers – the poor black kids and their screaming babies. Or about the addicts.
Feb 5, 2009 - 7:58 am 13. MINA:Why you incredulous old dog you!!. If that house was almost under the overpass and reminded one of the Adams family mansion, I’ve been there.
Feb 5, 2009 - 8:27 am 14. Dave II:I once spent (3) days idling inside and experimenting with #24 some of the best I’d ever had. I don’t believe daylight ever interrupted the nights. This of course was after my return from RVN,coming from Dizzyland to find myself in Disneyland trying to be normal whatever that might have been perceived to be. The whole thing was like an technocolor erotic nigthmare into dante’s inferno. Strange times they were. Honestly though I miss ole Tim, he was the cause of my sanity.
Interesting…in a freeway-accident voyeuristic sort of way…
Your little parenthesis about Leary, “he was naïve in some ways” actually says ALOT about his character, and the “character” he showed the world.
It was the basis for his “charm”, his puppy-dog lovability, and his ability to “shock” without being revolting or seemingly dangerous.
Whether he knew he had it and used it, or it just came so natural to him that it was second nature, doesn’t really matter…but my guess is he knew exactly how far he could take it and when to use it to his advantage.
That you fell under his “spell”, if only for a night, is not all that surprising…
Feb 5, 2009 - 9:20 am 15. A. N. Pierson:Just finished the book. Well done. There’s a lot more in that Leary chapter- and the ending is surprising. This is definitely a memoir written by a skilled mystery writer.
Feb 5, 2009 - 9:33 am 16. UnmooredLefty:Well, this tends to confirm my impression of Leary dating to paying 5-10 bucks to hear him speak at a university assembly around 1967-8 or so. He rambled, showed a complete lack of understanding of history (”If generals had to lead from the front, there’d be no more wars” I recall him saying, pretty much totally ignoring the first 9000 or so years of recorded history), offered flawed syllogisms and worse metaphors. Near as I could tell, he thought all the good stuff in the world just fell from the sky without any effort on anyone’s part other than “loving one another.” Since I was raised on a farm I found this to be a bit dubious.
I always regarded Leary as a prime example of what could happen to the moderately intelligent who found no useful work. Notoriety is really no substitute for any useful endeavor. I’d think more of him if he’d made an honest living cleaning septic tanks.
Feb 5, 2009 - 9:34 am 17. Whistle_Blower:TURN ON_ TUNE IN_DROP OUT —-> and drop dead
———————————————-
Timothy Leary was not so much a moving force of the “Cultural Revolution” of the 60s as he was a product of that era. His devastating and deadly influence of the young of that period was unique.
Here was a man who supposedly had it all, a famous professor at an elite university, impeccable connections and so forth, yet he gave it all up for “doing his own thing”, perhaps the most famous phrase of the 60s, only surpassed perhaps, by the equally excreable “Turn on_Tune In_Drop Out”, a phrase, by the way, penned and hoisted by T. Leary himself.
For countless innocents of that time, who did turn on, tune in and drop out, the final result was that they ended up dropping dead or what is perhaps worse, lolling mindlessly in mental institutions staring at walls, dribbling spittle down their chins until the end of their lives.
Feb 5, 2009 - 10:16 am 18. Charles Perry:In 1967, Leary toured the country with a “psychedelic” stage show, “A Death of the Mind.” At one point in his talk (a mannered evocation of the wandering, trance-like babble of a peaking acid head), he would pause and ask his audience to send out a prayer for “all our brothers who are on the lonely yoga of heroin.”
Feb 5, 2009 - 10:45 am 19. thomas:“Lonely yoga”! So I’m not surprised to hear he was cool with “fleeting satori” of crack.
This all reminds me of the general public’s opinion of Sarah Palin. Most of the opinions expressed here are based on the repitition of similar “facts”. As a matter of fact, Leary was a rather brilliant and successful scientist, if nothing else. One could reasonably argue that he lost it, jumped the shark etc. etc. etc. but facts are inconvenient to the narrative. Like Palin, whatever he was, he was not an idiot. I really do recommend Flashbacks as a great read. His prison escape and time spent held hostage by the Black Panthers and then his subsequent kidnapping/rescue by the CIA makes a fascinating tale. Much more interesting than his doing crack in E. LA. Agree with him or not, he was quite the guy. More like Liddy than you might think.
Feb 5, 2009 - 2:08 pm 20. D Foster:And the reason we want to relive the Communist, Anti-War Draft Dodger 60’s and 70’s is??????????????????????????
Feb 5, 2009 - 4:19 pm 21. Linda in California:No conservative is interested in the enlightned Neo Conservative. And we have never experienced lost days due to Drugs. Why has it taken so long for Simon to wake up.
Will not look back to that time, I was in the JFK Viet Nam. When the Liberals and Democrats were behind the War. When the Harvard CIA and State Department guys would not leave the Air conditioned Trailers and stayed close to the Brothels.Today’s Liberal.
A neighbor from Laguna Beach told me “When I was in grade school Timothy Leary moved in next door. My parents freaked. They put out house up for sale and put me in Catholic school.”
I guess they weren’t into the Brotherhood of Eternal Light!!
Feb 5, 2009 - 9:03 pm 22. daddy:Saw him at a college lecture in 74 or 75. He said he thought ourselves from the future had invented the ability to travel through time and that they had come back through time to create us.
Feb 5, 2009 - 11:04 pm 23. jaime:In 1961 I was in Mexico City when Leary arrived. I was living in a compound of six houses, one of which was rented by a painter of some promise from Philly. Because I had friends in the medical profession the painter asked me to obtain some psylocybin a Sandoz Pharmateutical product and join him and Leary in a jaunt to Xijuatanejo, then a very primitive coastal village north of Acapulco. I checked it out with a psychiatrist friend who had worked in New Jersey and had experimented (unsuccessfully) with the drug. As it turned out Leary was able to get all the drug he wanted over the counter in Mexico City. He and the painter went to Xijuatenejo and when the painter returned to his family he psychotic and never really the same person he was. In fact, his talent was gone. That scared the hell out of me; and Leary scared the hell out of me ever after.
Feb 6, 2009 - 6:26 am 24. Thomas:Damn, why didn’t he just drink and gorge himself to death like a good ol’ boy?
Feb 6, 2009 - 7:25 am 25. Charles Perry:Actually, he did that too. For part of the “Death of the Mind” tour, Leary’s stage musician was a friend of mine with impressive hippie credentials (he was also an artist and designed the Grateful Dead’s skull-and-lightning logo). My friend was shocked to see Leary eat steak and drink cocktails at his commune in Millbrook, N.Y. (secretly; all the resident hobbits would have been shocked beyond all help).
Feb 6, 2009 - 9:56 am 26. Donald Roth:Roger,
I’m reading your excerpts here. I’m reading your excerpts in Commentary. Please talk your publisher into putting out a Kindle edition.
Regards,
Feb 6, 2009 - 2:07 pm 27. Blackwater:Don
Anyone who does hard drugs is retarded. I don’t care if you’re experimenting or whatever. It isn’t hard to say no. I feel the same way about smokers and alcoholics. I just don’t get how someone could get addicted to things that obviously screw up your body.
Feb 6, 2009 - 2:56 pm 28. happy1ga:Very interesting story, Mr. Simon. I think what drew me in was the first sentence or so, when you reference Wavy Gravy! I had a friend who was a massuese, and she was very good friends with Mr. Gravy. Neat insight into Leary, also.
Feb 7, 2009 - 5:31 am 29. Wadeusaf:I have never been able to make any sense, or justify the lives of those who immersed their soul in drugs. Retrieving the humanity seemed always to leave a part of oneself behind, and more inclined to stupidity than prior to the engagement. A reverse ignorance, if you will.
Mr Leary it is my impression did start out quite brilliant and with quite a bit of promise. Too bad he spent it all chasing a sale, selling himself for what? A Waste.
Feb 8, 2009 - 11:37 am 30. Wadeusaf:I should add…,now I have to read the book.
Feb 8, 2009 - 11:51 am