During the summer of 1967, as part of the centennial celebration of Dominion Day, the Canadian equivalent of the Fourth of July, the queen of England visited Canada aboard H.M.S Brittania. Bound for Toronto via the St. Lawrence Seaway, the great ship transited that part of the River in front of Alexandria Bay one sunny summer afternoon, and I remember standing on the well-kept lawn of family friends whose summer home overlooked the American channel, watching as the royal yacht motored slowly past amid a picture-postcard Thousand Islands tableau: blue water, green islands, cerulean sky, and a pageant of boats. Tour boats, cruisers, motor-sailers, launches and runabouts—boats of every description crowded the narrow waterway, forming a vast flotilla from which hundreds of spectators gazed upward as Brittania loomed above them like a colossus, its decks as high as those of the massive freighters that routinely plied the seaway on their way to and from the ports of the Great Lakes.

There was nothing of the merchantman about Brittania, however; she was all showboat. On her decks impeccably-uniformed crewmen could be seen standing at their posts, heedless of the adoring masses below, who bobbed about in the wake-riled waters like so many courtiers genuflecting in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen. Along the ship’s superstructure, an array of masts and spars flaunted brightly colored pennants, while above the stern an immense Union Jack the size of a highway billboard waved languidly in the breeze.

Then fifteen, I was wonderstruck, and, what was more, deeply shocked to think that such a magnificent vessel was the personal property of one rather frumpy, middle-aged woman. Knowing little about the English monarchy or much of anything else, I could scarcely imagine the basis for such personal wealth and preeminence, and the idea of it violated my sense of fairness and propriety. It was one thing for Her Majesty to own a lot of castles and lord it over everyone on account of her breeding. This I could accept, it didn’t bother me. That such an attitude could extend to the world of boats, however, approached too near my own pretensions, for I knew boats, or imagined I did. Boats and the status they conveyed represented a large part of my understanding of human society. I had grown up around boats. Boats were a part of my heritage. I was a boat-snob.

In this, I was joined and largely inspired by two male cousins of similar age, who had likewise grown up on the River and whose father, my uncle, owned a small fleet of classic wooden inboards. The pride of the collection was a 28-foot Gar Wood launch with immaculately-varnished mahogany decks, hard-topped main cabin, and two-seater cockpit aft. Beneath a wide, chromium-trimmed hatch lay a large-bore, eight-cylinder Chrysler Marine engine with a high-performance, hemispherical powerhead and twin four-barrel carburetors. When idling, it produced an ominous rumble interrupted by the intermittent, throat-clearing spew of coolant water, which shot out the rear of the dual pipes to a distance of several yards. At full throttle the sound was a continuous thunder modulated by the high-pitched whine of whirling machinery. Built in the 1930’s, the make and model had long since gone out of production, which gave it a certain mystique and accounted for its considerable value. One of the last survivors of a dying breed, it had earned a name and reputation on the River much like that of some celebrated elder personage. Indeed, we could scarcely have been more respectful had it been the reincarnation of our storied grandfather, its original owner, who had grown up during the River’s heyday. Many were the hours we lounged in the comfort of its deep, leather-appointed seats, with engine hatches propped open, gazing affectionately at "the hemie."

That we should have admired that boat so much seems altogether baffling to me now. Both in appearance and performance, it was one of the least practical nautical designs imaginable, and not at all the sort of boat to win the fickle and demanding affection of teenage boys. Loud it certainly was, and, for its size, exceptionally fast. But there were a good many louder, faster boats on the River, and its enclosed cabin and elegant appearance gave it an altogether domesticated look, the look of a boat best suited to transporting well-dressed ladies to afternoon teas, which, as it happens, had been its primary function in former times.

In addition, the boat had a nasty habit of broaching at high speed in a following sea, a characteristic that led to moments of abject terror when, suddenly and without warning, its prow buried in a receding swell, the hull would undergo a relentless roll, threatening to trap the occupants of the enclosed cabin in a foundering and potentially sinking vessel. A function of the engine’s powerful torque, such behavior could only to be countered by cutting the throttle and waiting for the boat to stagger back to its feet. Even so, the flaw didn’t diminish our admiration, which had nothing to do with either practicality or safety; on the contrary, the boat’s want of these qualities was what made it so special. Practicality, after all, was a concern of humbler folk, whereas only the upper ranks of the boating class could afford to own so conspicuously useless and temperamental a craft. The boat’s real charm lay in its ability to turn heads and inspire envy. It was its aura of exclusivity we cherished.

And then there was Brittannia. On that brilliant summer day, as I watched the royal yacht make its way through the clutter of lesser vessels—the largest of which would scarcely have served as its tender—I was forced to confront my own delusional elitism. Here was arguably the largest, most conspicuous pleasure boat in the world, its impossible grandeur eclipsing all sense of scale such that I could never again entertain the slightest degree of boat-pride without thinking of its belittling magnificence and going red-faced with humiliation. More worldly observers might simply have enjoyed the spectacle of its passing, taking a vicarious thrill in the queen’s titular status for Canadians, but I wasn’t of an age to appreciate the significance of the occasion, and Her Majesty was no queen of mine. Indeed, when I considered that in the course of her passage through my home waters she did not trouble herself to appear on deck, did not deign to wave so much as a hanky at the worshipful masses who had gathered to see her, my resentment verged on outrage.

The incident would mark the dawning of my political consciousness. What was the point of lording it over the less fortunate, I reasoned, when a stodgy old matron with a trumped-up pedigree could turn the tables so completely? Better to work the other side of the street, decrying wealth and privilege in the high moral cause of the Common Man. From that day forward mine was the soul of a populist. After all, I wasn’t without credentials in that regard; my father, as it happened, was a Democrat, a party affiliation I had come to associate with a zealous advocacy of the underdog in a world defined chiefly by class struggle. A great virtue of this association lay in its power to simplify things, reducing otherwise obscure legal and constitutional subtleties to an easily-recognizable formula. Whenever presented with a matter of public debate, I had only to determine which was the less-advantaged faction to know where my sympathies ought to lie, for where was the romance in championing the cause of those who were well off? It seemed I had discovered a touchstone by which a wide range of complex, ideological issues could be decided.

In the years that followed, however, I found it increasingly difficult to apply my new political insight to a world increasingly subject to alarming new developments. On the world stage, for instance, 1968 got off to a harrowing start with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which quickly revealed that the war—begun under false pretenses and with assurances that American forces would readily prevail—wasn’t going to be over any time soon, and that, barring college deferments or other exemptions, those then in high school could expect to be subject to a draft upon graduation.

No sooner had this awareness begun to sink in than the back-to-back assassinations of two of the country’s foremost political leaders cast an even deeper pall over the future, and the confusing world of politics became a hopeless muddle of violence and mourning leading up to the presidential election of that fateful year. Soon, amid mounting evidence that, contrary to official propaganda, the war was actually being lost, substantial numbers of those destined for military service were reportedly fleeing the country or simply refusing to enlist, encouraged by returning veterans who joined a groundswell of opposition. On the other side of the growing debate were those who spoke of Duty and Honor and the dearth of such noble sensibilities in a generation given over to wanton selfishness. With such conflicting sentiments in the air, my crude formula for determining political right and wrong proved utterly useless, and throughout much of my high school years I remained deeply confused.

Meanwhile, my sense of disillusionment with the world of politics was compounded by equally unsettling developments at home, where a long-standing family problem was growing steadily worse. "Happy families are all alike," according to Tolstoy; "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In our particular case, the unhappiness tended to revolve around my older brother, who from an early age had been subject to developmental difficulties that regularly led to violent behavior of one kind or another, whether directed as others or, more disturbingly, at himself. While the rest of the siblings—two sisters and a younger brother—were exposed to such outbursts to varying degrees, I tended to be on the receiving end of the lion’s share of them, if only because I was closest to him in age and felt most compelled to fight back. Despite periods of relative harmony and even brotherly affection, the resentments associated with his unknown and unaddressed condition would eventually get the better of him, he would find a way to visit his frustrations on me, and we would let slip the dogs of fratricide.

By the time we were in high school, his difficulties had become pronounced, and while the other siblings were away at various private schools, he and I carried on in the public system, attending Watertown High, where his social awkwardness made him a target of concerted harassment by the more thuggish members of the student population. I remember one occasion when I happened upon him in a school hallway, standing in the middle of a number of would-be toughs intent on humiliating him for no other reason than they could do so with minimal risk of being called out for it. Virtually paralysed by the encounter, my brother simply stood there, and in response to his apparent distress I went over and attempted to engage him in conversation. What I said, I don’t recall, but the gesture alone seemed to curb his tormentors, if only for the moment. The fact that someone, anyone, had presumed to establish a connection with the object of their intimidation somehow gave them pause, and individual members of pack slowly peeled away and departed.

I knew better that to expect anything like gratitude from my brother, however. If anything, my involvement only made things worse, for in bearing witness to his humiliation I unwittingly made myself a surrogate for those with far less understanding and sympathy for his condition than I. My clearest inkling of this sort of transference came some months later, when I was home from school, recovering from abdominal surgery.

A week earlier, while the parents were away on a ski trip in Quebec, I’d suffered an attack of appendicitis. Bent over with pain, I staggered next door to the home of a doctor, whose wife, upon hearing my complaint, had me lie down on a sofa while she called her husband at his office. Minutes later, he arrived and looked me over. Pressing with his fingers against my right side, he asked if it hurt, and when I said no, he removed the pressure as deliberately as he had applied it, whereupon I winced in pain. It was all the confirmation he needed, and, helping me to his car, he took me straight to the hospital, where the offending organ was summarily removed with permission obtained from my grand-mother. Meanwhile, my parents were duly contacted and, cutting short their vacation, arrived the next day to take me home.

I spent the following week hobbling around the house on crutches, and happened to be in the front entry one afternoon, picking up the mail, when my brother arrived home, clearly seething over some fresh outrage he had suffered at school. Storming in the front door and finding me in his way, he started in without prologue or provocation, giving me a brief thrashing before continuing on his way. I managed to fend him off without tearing my stitches, but the incident was revealing—to me, at least—of something seriously amiss with his moral compass and basic self-control.

Even so, he never seemed to fight in anger so much as frustration. It was nothing personal, really, just a habit he had acquired to ward off some more desperate response. And I was a convenient sparring partner, someone he could take his anger out on in what was readily construed as a standard case of sibling rivalry. I disagreed with such an assessment, but was hardly in a position to say so, and at some level, knowing what I knew of his difficulties and what he was up against at school, I didn’t really blame him. He was my brother, after all, and our fighting was something of a secret, something we did when no one was around, a means whereby he could work out his anger at the world. However, it was hardly an amicable sort of arrangement. Self-preservation alone demanded that I not allow him get the better of such battles, which further undermined his position as older brother and created an increasingly poisonous dynamic between us. And so it continued throughout our high school years, developing into a pattern of knock-down-drag-out, anything-goes brawls, some lasting as much as a half-hour and ending only with the complete exhaustion of the combatants.

Over time, our particular variety of domestic abuse inevitably took its toll, and I began to internalize a degree of anger of my own, for if my brother wasn’t entirely to blame for the family’s unhappiness, I sure as hell wasn’t either. Accordingly, I started acting out my own, far less compelling psycho-drama, performing random acts of rebellion for no other reason than to prove my existence.

My first forays in this direction involved alcohol, and I remember sneaking a beer from the fridge at sixteen and drinking it behind the garage in our back yard, where a neighbor woman (the same doctor’s wife who came to my rescue during the appendicitis incident) caught me and gave me hell for it, vowing to tell my mother. Indeed, she was a lot tougher on me than the latter, who in her infinitely forgiving way wondered why I’d felt it necessary to go outside to drink some beer, a response that, however sensible, scarcely addressed the underlying issue. In any case, one night several weeks later I moved on to the hard stuff, pouring myself a short glass of scotch from a bottle in my father’s liquor cabinet and downing it in the privacy of our laundry room prior to heading out the back door. It was no more rambunctious a deed than every adolescent performs sooner or later, except perhaps for the fact that my destination that night was a teen-age dance event at the nearby First Presbyterian Church, where, visibly tipsy and reeking of booze, I made quite an impression among those of my friends in attendance. Though never a regular at the church, prior to this I had always had a reputation as something of a straight-arrow. Not any more.

Apart from these walks on the not-so-wild side, I was far from a scofflaw, and when it came to the so-called counter-culture, I was utterly clueless. I don’t recall when I first became aware of the practice of smoking marijuana, but by the time I was a high-school senior there was no escaping its influence on the prevailing zeitgeist. The previous summer had seen the watershed event at Woodstock, a setting alarmingly close to home for us north-country yokels. Even so, pot-smoking remained beyond the understanding or admiration of the vast majority of my high-school friends and me, having yet to be discovered even by the local "hoods" (those socially-disadvantaged toughs who generally modeled all dangerous or taboo practices for the rest of us—known as "clicks"). Unlike other wild or unsavory behaviors, however, from a sociological standpoint pot-smoking tended to be a top-down rather than a bottom-up phenomenon, and was widely perceived as a mark of sophistication among the college students of the day.

That’s how I would experience it, anyway, smoking for the first time within a few weeks of my arrival at college, on which occasion I was invited to partake by two dormmates: a sophomore from Portland who supplied the stuff, and a fellow freshman from Providence with considerable experience in the smoking arts, both of whom were glad of the chance to initiate an admitted neophyte in the ways of the mysterious weed. With my roommate engaged elsewhere, we prepared for the ritual by taking the standard precautions: locking the door and placing a rolled-up towel along the threshold to avoid detection by passersby in the hall. (Did it never occur to us that the walls themselves might be engulfed in flame before smoke would leak out along the floor?) Next we huddled furtively around my desk, where our supplier rolled a bulky joint from the contents of a plastic baggy, lit up, and passed it to me with a certain nonchalant largesse. Taking a windy drag in my turn, I passed it on with as much savoir faire as I could manage, and so we continued, taking turns until nothing was left but a stub and the two practiced smokers had slipped into a heavy-lidded haze, at which point they began looking at me for signs of my reaction.

I fear I was a disappointment to them. Like many first-timers, I didn’t appear to be high, partly as a consequence of not knowing what to expect. Anticipating some sort of dramatic transformation, I seemed to miss the mood of the thing and sat waiting impatiently for the effects to kick in. Meanwhile, my companions were getting goofier by the minute, and, as if to prove how impaired he had become, the Portland native decided to perform what I gathered was some sort of pot-smoker’s version of a sobriety test. Moving to an open area in the middle of the room, he touched one hand to the floor and spun around in a tight circle three times as fast as he could, after which, he stood up, took a deep breath, and held it.

What happened next occurred so seamlessly as to appear intentional. Passing out on his feet, he tipped over like a felled tree and landed flat on his back, his head hitting the floor with a sickening thud. This, it seemed to me, was going a bit far in the name of entertainment, yet as I continued to watch, he began twitching spasmodically, his head bouncing off the floor like a tightly-dribbled basketball. Now genuinely alarmed, I turned to the experienced smoker next to me for guidance, only to find him staring open-mouthed and glassy-eyed at our fallen comrade.

"Whoa, man!" he drawled, "—Holy shit! Holy shit!"

Even more alarming was the realization that the incident was taking place in my room, and that if I didn’t get things under control I was liable to find myself in a lot of trouble. Thus, going to the assistance of the still-convulsing figure before me, I placed my hands on his shoulders and held him firmly against the floor, whereupon his spasms ceased and he remained motionless for what seemed a long time.

Eventually coming to, he opened his eyes and looked straight up at me.

"What happened?" he asked, completely oblivious of his recent peril.

"Jesus, man!" exclaimed the other, his tone more aggrieved than concerned, "you were really fucked-up! You passed out and went all, like, catatonic!"

At this the victim slowly sat up and looked at me for confirmation, to which I responded with a dubious sort of frown, as if to say it hadn’t been as bad as all that. On second thought, I was anxious to avoid any further surprises and made bold to offer some advice:

"That thing you do, twirling around in a circle and then standing up? Don’t do that again, okay?"

"Yeah," he agreed, rubbing the back of his head. "Guess it worked, though, huh?"

"–Like a charm."

"You crazy bastard!" continued the other. "You nearly scared the piss out of me. I was freaking out over here!"

Next, the two of them started complaining of hunger and decided to go in search of something to eat. When I begged off, they looked at me suspiciously and inquired about my state of mind.

"I feel pretty weird, alright," I said, "which is why I better stay here—in case I freak out or something."

They allowed as how I was probably right. "Don’t worry," said the Whirling Dervish in parting, "you’ll get the hang of it."

As for my state of mind, the thought occurred to me soon after they left that involvement in a drug-related death probably constituted grounds for dismissal, and I began to experience a certain residual paranoia. Apart from this, however, I felt perfectly normal, and remained perplexed by the whole marijuana craze. Despite my best efforts, pot’s unique form of lunacy seemed to have eluded me, and I decided the stuff was vastly overrated. On the whole, I had gotten more light-headed and had considerably more fun smoking cigarettes with my cousins back when I was twelve.

The next morning, as if to reinforce my disillusionment with the whole experience, I no sooner awoke from sleep than the room began to spin violently, forcing me to retreat into darkness. Moments later I opened my eyes again, and again the room spun crazily, driving me back once more into a sleepless void. By now I was fully conscious, and for a few terrifying seconds I wondered if my vision, or indeed my brain, hadn’t become permanently skewed. When I opened my eyes a third time, however, the room swung to a stop, and as far as I could tell I was back to normal. Readily attributing the strange dizziness to pot’s insidious after-effects, I felt a certain remorse at having tried it, yet even while suffering the pangs of lost innocence the thought never occurred to me to swear off the stuff or avoid those who smoked it. If nothing else, I seemed to recognize that there was more to pot-smoking than met the eye, and had come to accept its significance as ritual, the sense in which it represented an act of communion uniting the adherents of a new faith. As I understood it, this faith held that the world was hopelessly fucked-up, and that only by defying accepted norms could one begin to appreciate the extent of its confusion. Thus, as my erstwhile mentor had assured me, I eventually got the hang of it, and along with nearly everyone I knew, I became a regular smoker.

Later that first year, in company with a number of friends, I pledged one of the college’s several fraternities, if only as a means to avoid the annual room draw by which one’s living circumstances would otherwise be left to chance. Then too, by pledging as a group, we thought to mitigate the foolishness associated with initiation, though we needn’t have worried much on that score. The organization we opted to join was comprised for the most part of pot-addled slackers who scarcely bothered to recruit us, let alone subject us to anything as strenuous as hazing. Indeed, faced with declining numbers, they were in no position to subject us to impediments of any kind, nor, to their credit, did they show any inclination to do so. Instead, they took the attitude that their unkempt appearance and practiced indifference provided all the inducement we pledges could possibly require. And indeed, how right they were! –How well they understood the trend of the times, for we soon came to embrace the very essence of their dysfunctional cynicism, aspiring with all our hearts to their lack of aspiration.

Such perversity was attributable in part to a larger malaise in the world beyond college, where the war in Vietnam continued to consume lives and resources with a steady appetite, not the least of its ironies being a draft lottery in which birthdates became the basis for determining who would be called to military service, a system with the wonderfully insensitive effect of associating the occasion of one’s birth with the real possibility of his meeting an untimely death. A political sleight-of-hand, the lottery only seemed to heighten the sense of randomness and illogic by which, in the absence of a clear mandate in support of the war, large numbers of unlucky young men continued to be delivered to a far-off, foreign shore, where all manner of evil things were apt to befall them and the people they met with. Meanwhile, college attendance continued to exempt one from service, and thus my fraternity friends and I pursed our academic careers according to an unspoken deal designed to placate the more powerful elements of the body politic. In hindsight, it was as shameful an arrangement as I never again hope to be party to, and what made it worse was that, unlike our predecessors, we didn’t even have the decency to actively protest the conflict. Indeed, by the time my cohort came along such gestures had come to seem hopelessly naïve, and our opinions about the war, insofar as we had any, tended to be mired in deep ambivalence.

And yet, if the country’s predicament in Vietnam was beyond the reach of our indignation, the figure of Richard Nixon was not, and in many ways the Nixon presidency came to assume a greater evil than the war itself. This was due in part to mere convenience (other targets of opportunity having left the field) and in part to a profoundly mysterious quality about Nixon. For reasons unknown to political or behavioral science, the man had an uncanny ability to focus upon himself the pent-up rage of an entire generation. Something about his dark physiognomy and disingenuous expression made him a perfect symbol of the political subterfuge that had caught us in its web, and we would learn to hate him with a fury bordering on hysteria.

Throughout the latter stages of the 1972 presidential election, for example, we made a habit of following the nightly newscasts with a degree of participatory zeal seldom seen outside professional wrestling arenas. Draping ourselves in semi-recumbent ease upon a series of decrepit chairs and sofas in the fraternity’s cave-like basement rooms, we gazed up at a large, wall-mounted television like so many zombies awaiting the motivating influence of a full moon. And sure enough, as soon as the president appeared, something within us came to life: we jeered, fumed, carried on obscene conversations with his image, threw things at the set, all traces of pot-induced serenity a distant memory. It was as if, like characters in an aliens-among-us horror movie, we possessed a special clairvoyance that the rest of the population lacked, and in shouting at the TV we were seeking to alert those others to the strange indentations on the neck or the elongated finger that marked Nixon as a monster. "Don’t you see?" our imprecations seemed to say. "—He’s one of them!"

It soon became apparent, however, that a substantial majority of the voting public didn’t see, and moreover didn’t much appreciate the insights of a bunch of whiny, self-indulgent college kids. Winning reelection by a comfortable margin, Nixon embarked upon his second term in what could only be construed as a wholesale rejection of our political judgment and intelligence. To this we responded with as much maturity as we could muster. After all, we had grown up considerably over the past year, becoming more resilient and philosophical in the process. And so it was that we began taking stronger, more psychoactive drugs, among them a variety of pills identifiable by color-coded names such as Orange Sunshine and Purple Haze, names to which we attached mystical significance. While their popularity had diminished somewhat in recent years, with a growing nostalgia for the Good Old Days of the previous decade (clearly, we had acquired an imperfect understanding of the recent past) we thought to bring them back, as if in so doing we might reveal the insidious link between those who had reelected Nixon and the similarly ill-informed, reactionary forces that opposed recreational drug use.

These experiences were indeed revealing, for nothing about the mellow euphoria of pot had quite prepared us for the active dementia of LSD. It wasn’t that the drug inspired particularly outlandish behavior, but rather that under its influence the most innocuous events or encounters were apt to seem bizarre or disturbing, particularly where it concerned relationships within the groups. Whereas pot tended to suppress a lot of traditional male behavior (including sperm production), the hyper-consciousness of acid seemed to throw them into stark and startling relief, such that on more than one occasion while under its influence we found ourselves reverting to the petty rivalries of boyhood, posing dares and asserting claims to dominance we would otherwise have considered flagrantly uncool. For all of its seeming novelty, such behavior made sense in the context of the larger challenge posed by the drug itself. Like the ability to hold one’s liquor, this challenge involved "keeping one’s shit together" under the disconcerting effects of a neurological toxin, and, according to the unwritten rules of maleness, asserting the integrity of one’s shit inevitably called for a certain amount of one-upmanship. And even when these drug adventures were over they were not over, for the active part of a trip was inevitably followed by a long period of sleepless, hollow-eyed stupefaction in which one was obliged to wait for the damn stuff to wear off.

Other such adventures involved a substance I first discovered one evening upon returning to the fraternity in the company of a girlfriend. Hailed by a group of partiers upon our entry, we stopped to investigate, and were invited to sample some sort of amazing new weed. While my companion sensibly declined, I felt a certain obligation to determine if the vaunted compound was worthy of my refined, pot-smoker’s palate, and after taking a generous hit from a small metal hashpipe, I awaited the effects with a wine-taster’s careful deliberation. Indeed, the substance had an interesting bouquet, and its volatile fumes produced an almost immediate sensation of physical relaxation.

“Interesting,” I mused, “so what is it?”

“Parsley flakes soaked in animal tranquilizer.”

This put me in mind of certain episodes of the television series "Wild Kingdom," in which drug-darted rhinos, wildebeests and other large animals were seen to stagger pitifully about the African plain before collapsing in a heap. While the show had once inspired pity for the poor beasts, however, their plight no longer seemed to touch me. In fact, after taking another hit, I considered lying down for awhile myself, and if somebody had wanted to staple a tag to my ear or fit me out with a radio transmitter, well, what was the harm?

At this point my companion and I were sitting next to each other on the floor, and for no apparent reason she nudged me with her shoulder, a gesture that sent me crashing to the carpet with all the violence of a concerted shove. For a moment, I lay there awaiting an explanation, but she only laughed, calling attention to my apparent helplessness and suggesting that she could outwrestle me. This, I decided, was idle boasting, and after taking a moment to plan my strategy (a cross-body tackle, followed by a leg lift for the pin), I exploded into action. Or tried to. Getting to my knees, I lunged at her, but with amazing swiftness she slipped away and I ended up sprawled on the carpet again. Next, forcing me onto my back, she straddled my chest and pinned my arms above my head, at which point, finding myself powerless to resist, I started laughing from somewhere deep in my gut, a laughter so pure and mindless that it seemed to carry me off in a torrent of hilarity.

Years later, having adopted the life of a recluse, I would find little to laugh about in connection with such moments, the joy of which, according to the immutable law of the Conservation of Spiritual Energy, would be remembered with an equal and opposite measure of remorse. At the time, however, I didn’t see anything particularly insidious or harmful about the drug, which, for all of its debilitating physical effects, was a great dispeller of social unease and didn’t interfere with the kind of wrestling that went on in private. Even so, Angel Dust—the suggestive name by which it was known—was thought to be hazardous to one’s intelligence, and on this account I soon gave it up. In fact, it was about this time that I began to lose interest in the drug culture altogether, and with the advent of my gliding career I thought to have discovered a worthy, indeed metaphorical, substitute for getting high.

Then too, it was about this time that I met Sara, whose circumstances alone had a sobering effect on me, rebuking my genius for self-absorption and forcing me to acknowledge a wider world of experience. She was someone I couldn’t talk my way around or over, for she possessed talking points of her own, and without saying a word held the power to reshape my thinking more than I hers. As it happened, the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade, had been decided earlier that year, and the way I saw it, the outcome only made her situation seem the more courageous. Indeed, had her choice been mandated or otherwise circumscribed by law, in all likelihood I wouldn’t have felt the same way. As it was, however, her singular feat of daring never failed to bring me up short, forcing me to reexamine assumptions with which I had grown comfortable.

Even so, the two of us never spoke about such things. There was no need. Her situation was argument enough, and I came to accept her choice without question or discussion, for I had arrived at last at a perception of truth beyond the reach of reason or politics. To be sure, this transformation, and our relationship itself, proved more than a little awkward in the context of life at the fraternity. The Brotherhood could hardly be expected to understand. Getting twisted over a girl was one thing—it happened to everyone sooner or later—but a local girl with a kid of her own… this was beyond the pale. I was throwing off the curve, setting a bad example for the younger guys. Nobody said anything, but I could sense a certain alienation, if not ostracism, in their looks. I was no longer to be trusted, and the worst of it was I didn’t seem to care. In truth, apart from a place to live, I didn’t have much use for the organization any more, and so long as I retained sufficient good will among the membership to avoid open hostility, I was content to go my own way.

The larger adjustment was no doubt Sara’s, both in terms of her visits to the fraternity—the inevitable, yet none-too-convenient scene of our trysts—and mine to her home. Once we started seeing each other regularly, it was only proper that I meet her family, and thus one night, prior to taking her out to a movie, I stopped in at the house on the country road, where she made introductions to her mom and step-dad, brother, sister and daughter. Though the occasion threatened the exposure of her world in all its familial intimacy, she carried it off with her usual aplomb, motioning me to sit on a sofa, where Tasha was soon crawling about on my lap. The one person in the room without a trace of nervousness, the toddler gave me a long, inquisitive look—bright eyes wide with a mixture of curiosity and wonder—before patting me about the face and otherwise invading my personal space. Strangely enough, I wasn’t offended in the least.

Meanwhile, I maintained a close vigil on the weather forecasts, and when the portents were right I would be up at first light, retrieving the glider from its storage area in the fraternity basement and lashing it to the roof of the Impala. Throwing the rest of my gear on the back seat, I was soon racing across the Maine countryside in the pre-dawn twilight, intent on performing the sacrament of flight. Crossing the Kennebec at Norridgewock, I followed the river north to the Carrabassett, then up into the high country.

One day it went like this:

A clear, bright, breathless morning, the sun winking up along the route north, revealing sky, trees, houses, roadway, the whole of the snowbound countryside. Finding no sign of Paul along the route, I continue to the mountain, and soon, geared up and ticketed, am on my way uphill, intent on making my first flight from the summit. At mid-station, I call out the window of the gondola to the attendant: “Send me up!” to which he responds with a whoop of encouragement.

Now the lift cable rakes steeply upward, and as I ride through the morning stillness the familiar scenes of the lower mountain fall away, the trees becoming stunted, icebound, the sky opening up until nothing remains but a patch of frozen tundra beneath a cloudless sky, and the singular compulsion of an archetypal dream.

Once outside the terminal, I ski a short distance down the summit ridge to where the trail Winter’s Way begins its steep descent of the mountain’s northern face. Coming to a stop on a flat stretch of terrain some twenty yards from the headwall, I step out of my skis and begin setting up the glider, when several males about my age appear on the trail above and eventually skid to a stop nearby. Forming a rough semi-circle around my position, they lean on their poles, studying the glider.

"What the hell is it?" asks one, directing the question at no one in particular.

"It’s a glider," I respond.

"What do you mean?"

"—A hang-glider. I’ll be flying down from here."

"Flying off the mountain?"

"That’s the plan."

"Right!" scoffs another, looking to his friends for confirmation. For some reason he seems to take the idea personally. "No way, man. –No fucking way!"

“This I gotta see!” says another.

“Help yourself. Just give me a clear path to the top of the trail, okay?”

“Sure, buddy,” he calls over his shoulder as he departs, “—IT’S YOUR FUNERAL!”

The rest follow, but before going, the original speaker makes a final observation: “You’re out of your mind, you know that?

It’s just an expression, but as it’s to be my first flight from the top I experience a flicker of doubt on the subject just the same. Even so, the sound of blowhard laughter emanating from the slope below provides an incentive of its own, and after a thorough check of the glider, I step into the skis, strap myself to the harness, and bring the airframe to my shoulders.

For a moment, I stand looking down a shallow in-run to where the slope drops away abruptly. I consider side-slipping down to the lip of the headwall and launching from there, but, partly to avoid any further sniping from the bystanders, I decide to let the skis run from where I stand, quickly building speed such that I’m obliged to tuck the control bar tight to my waist to keep from taking off too soon. As I reach the drop, the sail flags wildly overhead, only to inflate with a sudden snap as I advance the bar and the glider leaps into the air, climbing skyward with an abundance of momentum that carries me well above the take-off. As the wing slips into a glide, I turn to look back at the trail, where several of the on-lookers lie sprawled out in the snow, having lost their footing in a rush to get out of harm’s way.

Heading straight out from the summit ridge, I am soon high above the valley, so high that time and space seem strangely irrelevant. Some ten miles to the north lies the singular massif of the Bigelow Range, its crest dominated by a series of distinct peaks. A towering presence from the valley floor, the mountain is now easily surmounted by the eye, and beyond it I can see the frozen expanse of Flagstaff Lake and the boggy, Dead River country of local legend. Here, two centuries earlier, the Arnold expedition—flinty pioneers from the wilds of Pennslyvania and Virginia—slogged toward Quebec, intent upon the conquest of Canada. I think of them, and seem to know the reach of their ambition.

Through an immensity of space I float, my remoteness from the ground precluding any perception of motion, leaving me aware only of a mesmerizing combination of sensations: the slight, upward drift of the horizon, the steady inertia of the airframe, and the low whistling of the wires. I’m not flying so much as acutely being, my consciousness expanding outward in every direction until it seems that I am locked in some inexplicable stasis, frozen in space and watching the universe evolve slowly around me. Far away, elsewhere in the vast, swirling unquiet of the atmosphere, tempests rage, yet I have been allowed this moment’s calm.

A brief eternity later, the muted hum and clatter of the ski lifts rises up from the trails below, breaking the spell, and I begin to swing the glider in a series of turns above the open slope, bleeding off altitude before setting up for a final approach. As the slope grows closer, my consciousness quickens, and by the time my skis touch down, I am back in the present, once again moving to the rythms of the clockbound world.

Later, with three more flights under my belt and the wind beginning to build, I called it a day and started back to Waterville, stopping at a small gas station/store in the middle of Kingfield for something to eat. While standing at the check-out counter, I looked up to see a strange character in military-issue boots and tattered, bell-bottomed jeans enter the place and walk directly up to me.

"You’re the kite-flyer," he declared, as if I might be unaware of it.

"Yes."

“Good.”

Stationing himself near the door as if to prevent my escape, he waited for me to complete my transaction before preceding me outside, where he introduced himself and explained that he had recently purchased a glider from Paul and was anxious to begin flying from the mountain as soon as possible. Sporting a bright-red, paisley-print bandanna and a well-worn ski parka with American-flag motif, he bore the unmistakable, if somewhat dated, look of the Hippy, an affect reinforced by shoulder-length hair and a scruffy beard, neither of which showed signs of regular grooming. As for his plans to take up flying, there was that in his expression that would not countenance any doubt on the subject, and I assured him that I would be glad of his company, at which point he radiated good fellowship and insisted that I accompany him to his nearby apartment. Though the purpose of the visit wasn’t clear, the sheer intensity of the invitation was difficult to resist, and dropping off my purchases in the car, I followed him across the street and into a non-descript wooden tenement.

Two flights up a narrow stairway we arrived in a seemingly empty room, where bright sunlight streamed through a pair of unadorned windows upon a deeply-scuffed wooden floor. Temporarily blinded by the light, I was about to ask when he was planning to move in, when a collection of flotsam in a corner resolved itself into a sitting area of sorts and he motioned me toward an amorphous, bean-bag chair. Sitting on a bare mattress opposite, he dug into a pile of assorted rubbish in the corner, produced a baggy, and began rolling a joint. In the manner of aboriginal Americans cementing a new friendship, we were to smoke on it.

Call him Jake. A former seaman in the Navy, he’d been stationed at various bases throughout the Pacific, including a stint in southern California, where he’d witnessed a number of glider freaks leaping from the sand dunes near Long Beach. That was a year ago, since which time he’d returned home to Maine and settled in Kingfield, where, upon learning of the sport’s arrival at the ski area, he became one of Paul’s first customers, quickly arranging to purchase a new glider.

When I asked him what he did for dollars, he held up the joint and smiled broadly: "Best home-grown in the valley."

Indeed, some time later the two of us were sprawled out upon what passed with him for furniture, having entered that state of smoke-induced oblivion in which it is possible to stare at nothing in particular—a light fixture, one’s shoelace—for minutes at a time without a trace of boredom or self-consciousness. At some point we had devoured the contents of a large box of dry cereal, which now lay empty on the floor between us. Meanwhile, the apartment had grown noticeably cooler (the great thing about a third-floor room, according to Jake, was that heat rises, but it was only a theory). Suddenly aware of the advancing day from the low angle of the sun through the windows, I recalled plans to call Sara and see if she wanted to go out, whereupon, struggling out of the bean-bag, I thanked my host for his hospitality, promised to look him up on my next visit, and made my way to the door.

“’Kay man,” he replied. “If my truck ain’t outside, I’m probably up at the mountain.”

On the way back across the street, I made note of a beat-up VW van parked nearby and connected the dots: of course, the all-time classic hippy-mobile. In any case, I was glad to have made his acquaintance, and with daylight rapidly draining out of the sky, I continued my journey back to school pleasantly attuned to the celestial afterglow.

By the time I arrived back at the fraternity, darkness had fallen, and after stowing my gear, I called Sara’s number only to learn that she wasn’t home. At this point I hadn’t spoken with her in several days and was vaguely aware of being neglectful on that account. Making a mental note to be more attentive in future, I proceeded into town to take part in the Saturday night foosball wars.

At one time or another, I suspect everyone develops a secret ambition in life, an inner yearning to realize one’s God-given talents, whether they be in the realm of music, stagecraft or any of a thousand other skills that aspire to the name of Art. In my case this holy grail of personal attainment revolved around table-soccer. For years I had worked to acquire the hair-trigger reflexes and Zen-like concentration the game demanded, shunning all other bar sports to focus solely on my chosen field. A defensive specialist, I made a careful study of standard scoring techniques and evolved counter-strategies for each, laboriously honing my skills during long nights of practice amid the punishing environs of many a malodorous, smoke-filled arena, with nothing but a few gallons of beer to sustain me. Having once perfected my goal-keeping skills, I worked to develop an arsenal of offensive shots of my own, and in time was able to send the ping-pong-sized ball the length of the table at speeds too fast for the eye to follow, its location discernible only from the resounding KA-BONG with which it struck the interior of the opposing goal. And so I earned a name and reputation among the table-soccer cognoscente of the town, hearing myself referred to in hushed tones—whisperings, alas, which not infrequently included expressions such as "lucky prick" and "dipshit," to which, with the hauteur of the virtuoso, I paid no heed.

The best foosball venue in town was located in the basement of an old railroad depot, which had since been converted into a popular nightclub with an ample bar and nearby dance floor. Arriving around ten, I stopped at the bar for a beer, then made my way to an adjoining foosball arena, where I scared up a partner from a small crowd of spectators, and for the next half hour or so the two of us held the table against a series of challengers, eventually losing to a couple of shitheel regulars with an impossible run of luck (ba-dum-bum-ching!).

Returning to the bar, I ordered another beer, and stood gazing out across the ill-lit interior, where the night’s band was busy grinding out some vaguely recognizable rock tune. In the middle distance, a mass of shadowy figures occupied the dance floor, while others sat at a number of outlying tables, their individual forms and faces briefly illuminated by the intermittent flash of a strobe light. It was while gazing at the strange, stop-action effect of the strobe that I suddenly recognized a familiar face within the surrounding darkness. There, seated next to a shaggy companion at a table cluttered with the accumulated glassware of a larger group, was Sara.

This came as a bit of a shock, and while I tried not to leap to any unfounded conclusions, I had to acknowledge that the scenario did not appear favorable to my interests. My first impulse was to avoid being seen in return, but this thought was quickly followed by a righteous determination to remain at least long enough to drink my beer, and, eventually draining the bottle, I sent a final, glowering look in Sara’s direction, then waded back through the crowd and out the door, destination unknown.

Once outside, I decided to drive around town for a while and collect my thoughts. There was always the chance that the situation was perfectly innocuous, and I scarcely wanted to believe otherwise. On the other hand, neither did I want to fool myself about a matter as important as Sara’s affections, for even more surprising than seeing her under such circumstances was the realization of how important those affections had become. While I wasn’t so self-deluded as to suppose that I had become the be-all and end-all of her existence (a supposition her situation would not allow and I had no real interest in promoting), there was no denying my sense of potential betrayal, and thus I began the painful process of reconstructing my interior world to allow for the possibility of her departure.

Arriving back at the fraternity after midnight, I made my way through the lingering revelers and accumulated trash of yet another weekend blowout, and, falling into bed with dim prospects for the morrow, fell readily asleep. I hadn’t been out long, however, when I was awakened by the sound of someone entering the room and approaching my bed. At first, I assumed the intruder was a refugee from the recent party, looking for a place to crash, but instead it was Sara. Later, she explained that she’d been invited to a spontaneous get-together with some high school friends, but for the time being she slipped out of her clothes, crawled in beside me, and neither one of us said a word.

Next Chapter: 3) The Importance of Career Planning [excerpt]