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.)
And extraordinarily brief. It took you up to the ceiling, or I should say the stratosphere, and then back down to Earth in about two and a half minutes, at least it did for me. Then you were ready to do it all over again — a kind of rat-in-a-maze process, with us rats reaching for the lever again and again. I could see right away how so many people had become addicted. I could almost have been one of them myself, but I seem to have a genetic failsafe mechanism against over-indulgence in drugs or alcohol. My body always rebels before the second joint or the second (well, third) martini. In this case, the atmosphere also was turning me off. The sad desperation of that world — the crying children and their teenage, undoubtedly unwed, mothers. Not exactly conducive to flights of consciousness expansion. Or to the validation of any social values I felt then or now. Ten minutes after arriving, I was ready to leave.
Timothy felt differently. Before I had a chance to object, he and Barbara ordered a second round of pipes. Just then, a woman appeared. She was white, Southern, I gathered from her accent, and attractive in the blowsy manner of a Tennessee Williams character. She was also quite stoned — and looked to have been that way for some time. An addict.
She plunked herself down next to me, as if instructed to do so. Apparently the boys hadn’t believed me when I said I wasn’t interested in company. I tried to make this clear to the woman, but she, deliberately or not, disregarded what I was saying and began to rub my crotch, asking me to buy her a round and implying favors afterwards, which to me meant betraying my wife for a venereal disease. I desperately wanted to get out of there.
Timothy, already into his second crack pipe, began to regale us with tales of G. Gordon Liddy. Those were the days when Leary made most of his living through road show college campus debates with the former undercover operative and Watergate burglar — Liddy taking the “conservative” side and Leary the “liberal.” I had always deprecated Liddy as a crypto-fascist idiot, but Timothy defended him, saying that his Hollywood friends just didn’t understand him — that he was a lot smarter than we all thought he was. We were just prejudiced against a conservative, he said. I figured Timothy was just defending his meal ticket. In retrospect, Leary was quite correct. Liddy, a former editor of the Fordham Law Review, wrote the best-selling Will, and wound up with his own radio talk show in 170 markets. I don’t know the guy, but his show is one of the more interesting of its type for the intelligence and wide-ranging background of its host.
But that night Timothy seemed particularly fed up with Hollywood, saying that his producer pals were all phonies because they never followed through on their myriad promises to hire him as an advisor on their movies and television shows. All they wanted was to say was that they knew Timothy Leary.
I could see that this hurt Timothy’s feelings (he was naïve in some ways), but the Blanche DuBois beside me was suddenly deeply impressed. Unlike the owners of the establishment, she obviously knew exactly who Timothy was and what he represented. She struggled up on her stilettos, wobbled over, and plopped down next to him, whispering in his ear — loudly enough for all to hear — a menu including oral sex and other more exotic fare. I knew immediately that I had an ally in my desire to depart. “Let’s go,” I said to Barbara. She was on her feet in an instant, reaching down to help Timothy up.
Unfortunately, leaving wasn’t going to be easy. The woman turned belligerent. She insisted we drive her home because she had lost her client. Which one of us that was supposed to be, I wasn’t sure. Our hosts backed her up. I ended up dropping her off at her apartment in North Hollywood, after a pit stop so she could pee behind the bushes of a public park. Then I drove Timothy and Barbara back to Brentwood and returned to my house in Malibu. By that time it was nearly dawn and I had some “splainin” to do — “splainin” that I don’t think Renee ever fully believed.
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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