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I joined the Atlanta Science Fiction and Fantasy Organization as the youngest member at 10. I lied about my age, and still don't know if they believed me, but that would begin a lifetime of lying about my age. I had discovered FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine edited by Forrest J. Ackerman and suddenly began learning the background to the films I loved so much. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLFMAN, DRACULA, THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON, DRACULA, had been shown on our Atlanta horror movie show hosted by Bestoink Dooley.
I waited for my parents to fall asleep and would sneak downstairs to watch the late night Friday horror film. Bestoink would appear often during the news broadcast, interrupting the weather to promote the film that night. He would joke, kid and ad lib and I would try to keep from laughing out loud. But I wanted more, and had heard about ASFO somehow and decided I had to go to a meeting. Maybe I would find people like me that liked the old horror movies.
I also loved comic books, DR. STRANGE, MAD MAGAZINE, SPIDER-MAN, THE FANTASTIC FOUR. I heard they were into comic books, too.
In those days there weren't enough comic book collectors to have their own group, so ASFO consisted of comic book fans, science fiction fans and movie fans. My first meeting I would meet Mensa member Joe Celko, with his owl like glasses and already balding head, Gordon Flagg whom I would come to know off and on for over 40 years, and there was no one remotely near my age. Yet they believed me when I lied about my age, and I began to be introduced to science fiction authors in a cross pollination that I guess doesn't happen anymore.
Superman #1 reached $100 in value and no one, and I mean no one ever thought it would get much higher than that. The used book stores and junk shops that had stacks of old comic books for dirt cheap were the place to find old titles like TALES FROM THE CRYPT and WEIRD SCIENCE for next to nothing. There really weren't comic book stores then, and none of the shop owners had any idea the collectors had already figured out they were going up in value.
So if a comic book dealer ever nailed you on a deal- rest assured knowing that for several years we made out like bandits scooping up titles worth loads of money for next to nothing from shop owners.
I had so much fun at ASFO because it was the first time adults had talked to me as an equal. And I kept up with them. Joe told me about Lovecraft, I went out and read Lovecraft before the next meeting. There were many science fiction monthly magazines then too, available at drug stores with writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and many more. I absorbed these stories like a sponge, and when I discovered that before TV radio had shows like X MINUS 1 with the same writers adapted for radio plays, I began searching out reel to reel copies.
My search for exciting things to read, however, would lead me to magazines that in many ways would change my life. The first was called EVERGREEN REVIEW.
Evergreen Review had something I hadn't run into in a magazine before. Coolness. Most people who saw us reading science fiction or comic books thought we were nerds, but this magazine scared people, especially in the south. Art, counter culture, sex, all in a seemingly subversive context so the Southern Baptists kept the magazine off most magazine racks. Everytime I found one I would forego my comic books and science fiction magazines and buy it. Hiding it under the bed to read late at night with a flashlight under my sheets.
This would lead to Avant Guarde Magazine, which my mom would have had a stroke if she had found out I was reading it. It was about art, and a brand new blossoming culture.
But this was not southern culture. My mom had been in the Navy when she met my dad, also in the Navy, and I don't think they would have cared for the message in the magazine. My mother was southern Irish, my father was Mexican. I would not find out until years later that when they married it was against the law for different races to marry. Then I realized why the south allowed it. I LOVE LUCY was America's hit show, and southerners had decided Desi Arnez was alright, and Lucy did love him. The law hadn't changed. But people watching TV had.
My mom had since remarried, but the stepdad was also strict. Up until then kids liked the music, films and movies of their parents. While they read LOOK however, I was reading AVANT GUARDE, throwing the issues away as I finished them.
I ran into an article on the Marquis de Sade, arguing that his work was art. Who was the Marquis de Sade? I had to find out.
I walked over to the Peachtree Mall and entered the bookstore. Keep in mind, I was just a kid.
As my small hand opened the door I marched right up to the bookstore clerk and requested "any book by the Marquis de Sade". The bookstore owner looked stunned.
" What do you want to read that for, kid?", he asked sizing me up.
"School", was my reply.
He wasn't buying that one.
"What school?", he asked looking down at me.
"Catholic School!", was my quick response.
He rolled his eyes, came from around the desk and got me a book. You could tell I had just confirmed everything this Southern Baptist had heard about Catholics!
Justine I saw on the cover, and I paid for it and ran home to read it.
That night, under the covers, I began to read.
"Form flecked his lips as he spoke these words interspersed with revolting oaths and blasphemies. The hand, which had been prying open the shrine he seemed to want to attack, now strayed over all the adjacent parts; he scratched them, he did as much to my breast, he clawed me so badly I was not to get over the pain for a forthnight. Next, he placed me on the edge of the couch, rubbed alcohol upon that mossy tonsure with which Nature ornaments the altar wherein our species finds regeneration; he set it afire and burned it. His fingers closed upon the fleshy protuberance which surmounts this same altar, he snatched at it and scraped roughly, then he inserted his fingers within and his nails ripped the membrane which lines it. Losing all control over himself, he told me that, since he had me in his lair, I might just as well not leave it, for that would spare him the nuisance of bringing me back down again; I fell to my knees and dared remind him again of what I had done in his behalf.... I observed I but further excited him by harping again upon the rights to his pity I fancies were mine; he told me to be silent, bringing up his knee and giving me a tremendous blow in the pit of the stomach which sent me sprawling on the flagstones. He seize a handful of my hair and jerked me erect. "Very well!" he said, "come now! prepare yourself; it is a certainty, I am going to kill you...."
I have no idea how much of this I understood, but I couldn't put it down. I carefully placed the book under the bed and went to sleep. When I awoke it was time to go to school. There was no one I could to about this book. But I couldn't wait to get back to it and see how really strange it was getting.
That night I went to bed, and when I heard my parents do the same got up to grab it and my flashlight and head for under the covers.
I took the flashlight and shown it under the bed..
OH NO
OH GOD NO
THE BOOK WAS GONE!
It couldn't be. It had to be there. It wasn't.
Two weeks passed, but no one had mentioned it. Did my younger brother find it? Naw, he would have ratted on me. So, what happened to the book?
Two weeks later my mom approached me when stepdad wasn't around.
"I found that book under your bed", she said.
OH NO HERE IT COMES.
"And it was the filthiest book I ever read twice in my life. Don't bring books like that home". That was it. It was never mentioned again.
Vietnam was starting to creep into the culture and magazines reflected this.
But there was also in city after city a local printing movement that was beginning, too. Underground newspapers. They weren't speculating on the war, if it was right or wrong. These papers took a stand- against. Atlanta had the Great Speckled Bird.
That wasn't allowed in the house either, so I would have to read them and give them back to the seller so they could resell them. Learning to collect comic books had taught me to read without wearing out them out, so the next person to buy it never knew, and the hippie was glad to get an extra copy to sell.
The more I read, the more I watched the news, the more I started to hear about something else.
LSD.
The negative thing I heard was that it offered a roller coaster ride into an alternative reality.
This definition was not the kind to use to convince someone not to take the drug. Somehow I had to get some, but how?
There was one kid in my school that had been rumored to have smoked pot, so I decided to ask him.
I was ready. I had read interviews and articles, knew not to take it without planning my trip first with fruits and wine and records, or if I was depressed. And I needed a guide the first time, someone with experience to help out as the trip progressed.
I wasn't just a kid taking dope. I was a nerd who had studied it before I tried it.
This scene from my play THE ACID TEST 1966 that I did with music by Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and the guitarist from Steely Dan years later recreates what happened next. When you see the name Randy, that's me as a kid, trying to find cool. And acid.
RADIO ANNOUNCER
President Johnson led a prayer for the astronaughts who died on the launch pad of the Apollo Test rocket killing Chaffe, Grissom and White.
300 of the flower people held a love in at the park cheering when a half dozen men burned their draft cards to protest the draft.
Speaking of the long haired freaky people, I saw a hippie in the Piggly Wiggly saying, "Hey man, I
got these banana peels- can I get a refill?" (drum roll) What talks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and
smells like Cheetah? A hippie! Now here's the latest from Gary Lewis and The Playboys THIS
DIAMOND RING or, now that our engagement is cancelled, can I get my ring back? (sound of
horn) It's another WQXI hot time with Dr. Don Rose!
WILD BILL
Wow man Apollo is broken.
RANDY
Apollo? Oh you mean the rocket. That was awful.
WILD BILL
Well I mean that, but I mean the age. Apollo.
RANDY
I'm sorry. I'm not following you.
WILD BILL
Every age has to choose, dig, between Apollo who was this cat that was all about knowledge and
order and rules. And the Dionysian path. Total party until you die live every second anything goes
everything is permitted! And Apollo is broke. So that leaves-
RANDY
Umm. This party?
WILD BILL
Groovy man you dig.
RANDY
I'm not sure.
WILD BILL
You can't close us down man because we have to celebrate this new age. It's part of our religion.
RANDY
I'm here for the party. I'm not here to stop it.
WILD BILL
Far out man!
RANDY
Why did you think I'd shut you down?
WILD BILL
Because you came in wearing a tie and brown shoes man. I thought you were the man.
RANDY
Ok. This is the part I'm confused by. Which man did you think I was?
WILD BILL
You don't dig?
RANDY
Do you mean digging a hole?
WILD BILL
Dig, the man can be the man who sells you your stash, or he can be the man who busts you for
buying from the man. Dig just means understand, dig?
RANDY
Ok. I dig.
WILD BILL
That's groovy man! You got it.
RANDY
This is never going to work.
WILD BILL
What isn't going to work?
RANDY
Me being here. I got this flyer at the beach about an acid test here so I thought I'd drop by.
But now I have to learn a new language and I'm not dressed for this and-
WILD BILL
Whoa, whoa right there partner. Ok, what can we do for you? Let me see.
RANDY
Maybe I should leave before women get here.
WILD BILL
The tie has to go.
RANDY
I can't lose the tie. My mom gave it to me and-
WILD BILL
Ok, ok we won't lose it. Tie it around your head.
RANDY
My head?
WILD BILL
Well its better than around your neck. The brown shoes and socks have to go.
RANDY
But I don't have any other shoes with me and-
WILD BILL
Barefoot is cool man.
RANDY
Really? Let me try it.
WILD BILL
You can't do any worse. There you go.
RANDY
I don't look silly do I?
WILD BILL
Well, maybe. But not as silly as before. There you go man. You're on your way to groovy. I have
some jeans that'll fit you. You'll find chicks to ball tonight dude. The vibes are right.
RANDY
Ball?
WILD BILL
Yeah man. You know. Screw.
RANDY
Make love?
WILD BILL
Whew, at least you dig that.
RANDY
I dig. Man. Wow, I said it.
WILD BILL
You're happening!
RANDY
I am? Where?
WILD BILL
Man you are blowing my mind. What are you talking about?
RANDY
Which part of me is happening?
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