Steve got out and helped Marilyn to slide out his side. When he slammed the car door, the body twitched and struggled to its feet. It was Geoff. He looked really wasted.
Marilyn took a tentative step towards him, “Jeffy?”
Geoff ignored her and said quietly to Steve, “they kicked me outta the band, man.”
“Bummer,” Steve offered.
“It's a fucking bad trip. I dropped a tab of acid at practice and Lindsay said I'm too fucked up to play with them.”
“We're all fucked up man,” Steve consoled him.
Marilyn asked, “Are you alright Geoff?”
Geoff ignored her and said to Steve, “I just like to get high when I play music, man. It's so fucking beautiful, ya know.”
Marilyn looked to Steve, “Steve? Is he okay?”
Steve ignored her and said to Geoff, “I hear ya man. It's a stoned-gas to play when you're high.”
They both laughed and then Geoff hung his head, “I don't have anywhere to go, man.” He stood up straight and tall and shouted, “I'm lost! I'm so fucking lost.”
Marilyn looked to both of them, “Ah, do you boys want to come in?”
They both ignored her.
Steve reached out and put his hand on Geoff's shoulder, “Hey! Why don't you join the Seeds of Time, man?”
Geoff stopped shouting and thought out loud, “The Seeds?”
I got out of the car and stood beside Steve.
“Yeah, you gotta join the band man. It'll be far out,” urged Steve.
Geoff smiled, “far out, man ... Far fuckin' out!”
They both looked at me. I was beaming. This was the greatest news I had ever heard - Geoff Edington, the former William Tell, in The Seeds of Time. I croaked, “Cool.”
We stampeded for the car.
Marilyn asked, “What about me?” But, nobody heard her.
“I'm really fucking peaking, man.” Geoff said to Steve.
“Hold that high.” said Steve. “I'm getting contact off of you.”
We drove off leaving Marilyn standing alone at the side of the road. Neither Steve nor Geoff ever saw her again.
School got out for the summer. Steve and I rushed to tell John about Geoff. John did not like change but his reaction was supportive. Then we all went over to break the news to Bob and Frank. They took it badly and we had a big fight. Bob and Frank did not approve of drugs and they did not want Geoff in the band. During the heated argument they both quit.
This was tragic for everybody. It was Bob and Frank who had started the band and had given us our name. Once, they had been the leaders but now, they had been left behind.
After a petty dispute over a microphone, we parted company. Ultimately, Bob showed what a classy guy he was by allowing us to retain the name even though he controlled it.
Bob and Frank started a band called Strange Brew for a time and then became Fantastic Floon while they both went on to university. Bob earned a PHD in Nutrition and has travelled all over the world working to help underprivileged children. Frank became a systems operator for Vancouver's rapid transit system, Skytrain. Frank died of cancer in 1996.
The Beatles shocked the world when they released, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In only three years they had led rock music from I Saw Her Standing There to A Day in the Life. They had progressed from simple lyrics describing a dancing seventeen year old girl to poetry questioning how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
They blew our minds and established themselves as the voice of our generation.
After the traumatic shake-up of The Seeds of Time, Steve and I drove out to New Westminster to visit Geoff. He didn't have a place of his own and was staying with his parents at the time. Steve waited in the car as I went up to the front door and knocked. Geoff came to the door and I froze. I could not even speak in his presence. Maybe this happened to him all the time, a guy with that much charisma must have been used to adulation, because he just smiled and instructed me to wait for a minute. As I stood waiting in the open doorway I felt an eerie sensation gnawing at me. I looked up and saw, at the top of the stairs, a commanding figure of a man standing rigidly, glaring at me with fiery eyes. He had long gray hair and a beard and was wearing flowing priestly robes.
I jumped and quickly backed out onto the veranda where it was safe. I learned later that Geoff’s dad had been a fabulous singer and actor hanging out with the early beatnik crowd in Los Angeles before he found his true vocation as a professional conman. His current scam was impersonating some kind of an Eastern European holy man and conning money from little old ladies around the neighbourhood.
We drove to Jim’s place on Balsam. There were a lot of people crashing there. One of the hippie chicks sat cross-legged on the living room floor and rolled a marijuana cigarette on a wooden barrel that had been cut in half as a coffee table. Even though I had dropped acid I had not yet smoked pot and I was anxious to try it.
She finished rolling, slid it in and out of her mouth a few times, slobbering all over it, then lit it up. She took a long drag and handed it on over to me. It was strong smelling stuff. She could tell by the way I held it that I was a rookie so she leaned over and gently guided it to my lips. She showed me how to inhale the smoke and hold it in my lungs. On my first try it burnt and I choked it up. Everyone laughed and I felt like an idiot but I tried again.
I forced myself to hold it in and could feel the numbing effect immediately. After three tokes I was bombed! But it was a mellow bombing - except for the exploding seeds ... Nobody warned me about any exploding seeds!
To the best of our knowledge at the time, Acapulco Gold was the sweetest high money could buy. It certainly did the job, but it was unrefined. A person had to pick the seeds out before rolling a joint. I guess the hippie chick didn't care about seeds so every time I took a toke the little guys would pop off like firecrackers.
Regardless, I liked reefer, even if the marijuana high did make me feel even more introverted. I calmed myself, sat back and observed everything around me. I listened to the conversation but did not participate; I never said anything, just eavesdropped on everyone else. Everyone sounded so wise, so funny. I didn’t think that I had anything worthy to add.
This was the first time that Geoff hung out with us. He made me feel that something really special was about to happen to us. At one point during the night he sent a shock wave through me when he referred to me as “Rocky”. It was a thrill to hear him use my name and to use such a familiar form of it. It was so intimate, as if we were old friends. Pretty soon most people started to call me Rocky instead of the harder edged, Rock.
A few days later, on a hot summer night, the whole group of us got stoned on LSD at Jim’s. There was a bowl full of sugar cubes laced with the stuff sitting on the coffee table in the middle of his living room. The manufacture and distribution of recreational drugs was already organized and was becoming a big business.
This was only my second acid trip and Trans-Love Airways was taking me for a beautiful ride. It was transcendental, almost an out-of-body experience. At one point I was looking down at myself as I lay back on a sofa, clutching a pillow to my chest. I told myself to let go and just floated out of my mind. There was no time out there, nor was there any space. There was no reality as I had come to know the meaning of it. I could travel from room to room without moving and communicate with others without speech. At least I thought so.
I saw Jim float by, and Steve and John. I recognized them all vaguely as beings I had once known.
Then Geoff