Chapter Five

Sustaining In the Psychedelic Vacuum

There was a short period of relative calm after the anorexic experience, before the next onslaught of obsessive activity tore our frazzled family apart. And once more, I was the eye of this destructive hurricane.

By grade twelve, I was settled enough emotionally to return to intensive studying. I felt that I had to compensate for just squeaking through grade eleven by the skin of my ass. Relations with my family had returned to old, familiar patterns: Dad was reclusive, introverted and retreated into his work, spending more and more time away from home.

Mom escaped into her morning movies, classical music and reading in an effort to push away feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. Jim ran wild with the pack of Westmount wolves, thumbing his nose at authority and school. We all moved in our own separate orbits, never touching each other, never connecting or conversing together in any meaningful way. We were all living under the same roof, but we weren't living together at all.

I looked, as always, to music for comfort and serenity. The Everly Brothers wrapped their soulful, serenading harmonies around my pain and soothed me into blissful numbness. I lost myself in the pages of their international fan club newsletter each month. I lived vicariously through the eyes and hearts of two insightful and endearing siblings from Kentucky whose influence spanned the entire spectrum of rock music.

I amassed an impressive collection of albums and played them for hours at a time, losing myself in a bygone era of ducktails and drive-in movies. It wasn't my time, but a recent nostalgia wave sent ripples of the 1950's lifestyle as it crashed over the battle-weary, prematurely jaded time period of the early 1970's.

I remember wishing fervently that Time would magically begin a period of reversal to a more freshly-scrubbed and musically pure state. I knew, realistically, that this was futile dreaming.

It was as if molten lava had been poured over the Everly Brothers' domain. It was forever preserved in fossils that were merely objects of curiosity and ridicule by a society awash in the sexual revolution, the Vietnam war, and unchecked, maniacal drug-consumption.

As I'd stubbornly refused, at age twelve, to conform to the late 60's mod dress code, I immersed myself, in 1972 in a form of rock and roll that had become hackneyed and outdated. When Don and Phil Everly sang about young, untouched love, bird dogs, being the eternal fool and living in a blissful, endless youth in the rolling foothills of Kentucky during the 1940's, I was able to temporarily shut out the ominously disturbing present. Even when these brothers sang about drugs (as they did with their cover of Mary Jane) it was somehow quite innocuous and safe.

They allowed me to cling ferociously to my virginal childhood and escape the storms that whipped about my world, buffeting it upon the rocks of sexual permissiveness. In short, I was extremely reluctant to let go of my treasured past, even though it had not been a particularly blissful one.

I attended a highly-anticipated Everly Brothers show at the Seaway Beverly Hills Hotel in Toronto on March seventeenth, 1973 with my mom, Aunt Jean and Uncle Lin. While there, I met Julie, a regular contributor to the fan club magazine. She was notorious for following the brothers during their tours with a tape recorder and getting interviews with them, no small feat, since they were very particular about their relationship to the press.

I instinctively knew who the woman was even before she introduced herself and she seemed pleased at this. I had written a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail complaining about the sad lack of any coverage of the Everlys' week-long stint at the hotel. I discovered through Pat that Don and Phil had seen it.

Naturally, my teenage heart fluttered wildly and practically went into spasms after the guys signed a glossy photo of themselves with "To Jane, Thank You" scrawled across it. Just prior to this, my mother had grasped Don by the arm as he and Phil walked by us in the lobby, and told him,"My daughter has some pictures of you that she drew".

I had planned on approaching them after learning that they would leave the stage and exit through the hotel's gift shop, but after seeing my heroes at such close range, I'd frozen into an immobile chunk of dried wood.

Musicians had meant so much to me over the years and this was the first time I'd ever been fortunate enough to meet any. I was so overcome with emotion that I nearly threw up right there in that fancy hotel lobby.

Afterward, Julie and I sat together in the coffee shop and talked for several hours about our love for the Everlys and their music. She was older, about twenty-five and was a somewhat plump, curly-haired woman. She had pleasant, round face and rather old- fashioned glasses.

I admired her straightforwardness and common sense; she was also fortunate to occupy a place on the outer fringes of the musicians' lives, but was careful not to exalt the position into something it wasn't. She respected them, particularly Don, and never overstepped her boundaries and tried to needle her way into either of their personal lives.

I was in awe of her maturity and in what she had achieved in her relatively short life. Julie was an accomplished journalist and had set ambitious career goals for herself. I felt honoured that this woman would want to spend any time with a sheltered, immature seventeen-year-old. Perhaps I wasn't such a total loser after all.

I talked to Julie by phone a few times after that night and we exchanged addresses. The two of us kept in touch for awhile, but suffered a bit of a rift after the fateful day that the Everlys played Knott's Berry Farm in July of that year. It signified the end of an era, for on that sunny summer afternoon, Don and Phil split up onstage, thus dissolving the entity that was the professional and private Everly Brothers. The two of them would barely speak to one another for the next ten years.

I had planned on travelling alone to Ottawa that August to see them, but of course, the rest of their tour was cancelled. Julie became irritated with me because I still used Everly Brothers' stickers on my envelopes. She thought it highly inappropriate and was a grim reminder of the past, from which we were all supposed to be extricating ourselves.

But what destroyed our friendship completely was something insidious that overtook me at Christmas of 1973. I succumbed to drugs, after having consciously avoided the frightening spectre for the past five years. It had not been planned in any way. I was in my last year of high school, doing exceptionally well academically, but practically devoid of friendships.

Meike was still with her rather unsavoury crowd and Beverly had it firmly planted in her mind that I simply had too many problems and needed to "straighten out". It wasn't that she disliked me, but she was anxious to get into a good university in the fall and decided that her schoolwork should take precedence over looking after a confused pal. I really had to agree with her. Leslie distanced herself from me as well and I was very lonely.

I suppose if there was anything about my life that really disturbed me at this time, it was a growing sense of confusion about my sexuality. As I found myself on the threshold of adulthood, I deliberated over the sad fact that, at eighteen, I was still a virgin, and had no particular desire to change that status.

I was acutely aware that many of my contemporaries were sexually active and had been for several years, but the idea of engaging in awkward, panting sweats with some overeager, horny, adolescent boy left much to be desired.

I seriously questioned whether or not there was something wrong with me. I'd never even masturbated; in fact, I didn't even know how, since I'd surreptitiously avoided reading anything about sex, equating it with something vile and disgusting.

The sexual revolution that surged and seethed all around me was cause of much agitation and fretting. I longed for the more innocent, abstinent days of the 1950's and wished that I had been born twenty years earlier.

I couldn't understand why I felt so hopelessly out of step with the morals and practises of my generation or why I'd been such a staunch non-conformist from the age of twelve. What was I so afraid of? Why had I never traversed through that "boy crazy" phase and become reoccupied with seeking out boyfriends and back seat gropings in the dark? Was I some kind of aberration? Or worse, could I be gay?

This unsettling question preyed on my mind constantly thoughout grade 13. It wasn't as though I had ever been attracted to women; after all, my mind had been constantly obsessed with male rock stars for many years, not to mention television and movie stars like James Darren, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, and Jon Voight. However, in all my many fantasies with them, the sexual component never entered once. What did was something that I'd always known to be pretty bizarre and extremely abnormal.

From the age of four, I'd lie in bed at night, spinning my own "mini movies" in the hushed privacy of my own personal bedroom theatre. The scenarios were all strikingly similar: The "hero", for example, David Hedison in his role as Captain Lee Crane on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, would be steeped heavily in some kind of life-and-death crisis.

He'd either be severely wounded, badly hurt or gravely ill with some traumatic, multi-symptom disease. Using my trusted imagination to the maximum, I'd put the hapless guy through long, agonizing sessions of delirium, excruciating pain and soaring fevers. Either that, or he'd be racked with pain, moaning pathetically while people milled about, trying to administer to him.

Finally, after a substantial chunk of time had elapsed, he'd slowly recover, until finally, all traces of the illness or injury had disappeared.

From age four onward, I deliberated upon why I wove those elaborate soap opera-like scenes, and figured that I must be pretty twisted. I never divulged my "passive crimes" to anyone, for fear of being branded "sick" or "cruel". I would often force myself to stay awake until three AM, totally absorbed in the deliciously warm and tingling sensation that my imagination produced in my body.

I now know that this pleasant feeling was the equivalent of an orgasm, and i suppose that can adequately explain why I never got into masturbation as a kid.

It wasn't the actual pain and suffering I put my heroes through that caused the heated rush for me all those many years, but rather the effect that they had upon those around them. In virtually all of my fantasies, loved ones surrounded the sick or wounded one, wringing their hands in despair, crying and losing themselves in worry and regret that they hadn't appreciated the stricken person more when he was well.

It doesn't take a student of Sigmund Freud to conclude that what my heart and soul craved was love and acceptance. I was vicariously living through the person lying ill, soaking up thirstily the attention and devotion that radiated from everyone who thought, regretfully, that it might be too late to make amends.

But then why did I always use males, and why males the I had a wild crush on? Well, that could be explained by some elementary dimestore psychology: Although I didn't become aware of my motives until 1992, I learned that it stemmed from a lifelong belief that my parents loved my brother more, just as Tommy Smothers had always lamented to brother Dick in their famous stand-up routine.

So intense was my conviction that I'd really wanted to be a boy and searched for a reflection of myself in all the boys and men of the media that I adored. I don't know common this phenomenon is, but there are probably a great many children, teens and young adults who look to music, television and movie stars to fill a void in themselves and by living through them, they can feel wanted and loved themselves.

Most kids develop an affinity for famous, glamour-gilded personalities, but only a certain percentage become truly obsessed. I was one of those. It's just recently that I've begun to live completely as my own person and not as the embodiment and reflection of someone else who I think I wish to be.

At eighteen, I knew none of the psychological ramifications of my fantasies, only that they occupied a substantial amount of my conscious thoughts. And, coupled with my lack of sexual interest, I really began to wonder if they stemmed from an intense dislike of guys. Maybe it was time I forced myself to become more socially interactive with my peers and not live so much of my time in a dream world.

This rather uneasy decision coincided with that fateful Christmas Eve, which would lead to a head-on collision with heterosexual sex and mind-altering drugs. These elements would literally rock the foundation of my isolated existence.

Dad, Mom, Jim and I were over at our Aunt Louise's home for her yearly, seasonal bash. The house was jam-packed with people milling about, jostling and bumping into one another. I remember looking about frantically for some relatively quiet and secluded corner which would offer a brief respite from the vocal chaos.

I spotted David sitting by himself on the living room couch, looking as if he'd like to be anywhere else but where he actually was. He was the eighteen-year-old brother of my cousin Joanie's friend Tina . David was a reasonably attractive, long-haired kid with thick-lensed glasses and a slight overbite.

I'd met him a year ago, shortly after he'd arrived in Canada from Holland, and was excruciatingly shy because he knew very little English. I sat down beside him and we talked for awhile. His English had greatly improved, and he'd lost the bashful, self-consciousness completely. He'd planned on attending the midnight Christmas Eve service at St. Paul's Cathedral and asked me if I wanted to come along. Eager to escape the congested party, I readily agreed.

On the way to St. Paul's, David told me he'd acquired his own apartment, and now had "tons of friends". He talked rapidly, never making eye contact, and I sensed that there was something odd about him. We met up with two of his friends at the church. They were a strikingly attractive guy with long, jet-black hair named Lane and his female friend, Eleanor, a pretty blonde with an open, straightforward manner.

After the service, Eleanor offered to have us all over at her family's house. When we got there, my eyes were dramatically opened to the lifestyle that David had adapted during the past year. As the four of us sat cross-legged on the floor of Janet's bedroom, listening to Yes as it reverberated from her boyfriend, Gerry's speakers. Lane then took a small plastic bag out of his jacket pocket. I could see that it was full of pot and the red flags instantly shot up in my head. "Oh, God, they're all a bunch of druggies!" I thought with a shiver of panic. "I gotta get the hell out of here".

I stood up shakily and turned to David. "Can we go back to my Aunt's now?"

He smiled reassuringly at me. "In a few minutes. Just relax, Jane. Ever tried this stuff before?"

I shook my head violently, while Lane and Eleanor smiled and rolled their eyes. "Don't get all uptight", Eleanor murmured, snuggling closer to Lane, "It's not going to hurt you or anything."

Against my better judgement, I sat back down, eager not to appear out of it and childish. Although I was very much afraid of drugs, I felt a twinge of curiosity. Was it really all that dangerous? I wondered. Could smoking pot one time make me a filthy addict, eventually shoving needles into my veins?

I decided to shuck off the outer layer of fear and embrace what had become commonplace in the suburbs of Canada and the U.S. With that initial, hesitant toke on a thick, crudely rolled joint, I crossed over into a world that would nearly consume me with its decadence, depravity and despair.

As I recall, the marijuana had no effect on me initially. But after smoking for several weeks I noticed that it produced a rather comforting sensation of well-being and cosiness, as if I was tightly wrapped in a down comforter.

My cerebrum became insulated in a muffling fibreglass, effectively protecting it from incessant prodding of too much stimulation from the outside world. In short, I liked it, and thanks to Jos, who knew several pushers in the area, I was kept amply supplied in my new and deliciously forbidden habit.

Of course, being very much the amateur, having started into drugs at a comparatively late age, I wasn't too adept at hiding it from my parents. Consequently, they became quite distressed upon returning home one night and smelling pot smoke in my room (I foolishly thought that smoking at an open window would prevent its odour from being detected).

Well, all hell broke loose, and I could detect the extreme disillusionment in their frightened eyes as they struggled with the reality of having a kid on drugs to deal with. Although I was angered at their accusations that I was some sort of sewer- dwelling addict, I couldn't help but smirk inwardly with the smug satisfaction of seeing them squirm.

Over the past couple of years, I'd grown very angry and hostile toward my parents, particularly Mom. I didn't really understand it, but sometimes I felt that I despised her, and wanted her to stay out of my life completely.

It was strange that she infuriated me that much. With what I knew about Dad, he should have been the enemy. A year earlier, he had confided in me about his girlfriend, Sally Smith. Showing me a photograph of a pretty young brunette and telling me that he had gotten to know her very well over the past several months, I realized that his marriage to Mom was over. I should have hated what he was doing, having an illicit affair behind her back, but instead I felt sorry for him.

If my Mother had shown him more love, kindness and understanding, he wouldn't have to go searching for those qualities in another woman. Can you believe that? But like most teenage girls, I thought that Daddy could do no wrong. Dad obviously told me all this to help assuage some of his guilt, and perhaps because he figured that I'd react the way I did. I don't know for certain and we never discussed it.

My drug involvement just caused the rift between Mom and I to widen even further and I deeply resented her interfering in my life. It was none of her business. It wasn't as though I was pressuring her to use marijuana after all.

What the hell was the matter with her? I figured that if she concerned herself even half as much with her marriage as she did with my extracurricular activities, then her husband wouldn't be fooling around on her. It seemed to give me just cause to feel smugly superior and self-righteous. I was a real gem of a daughter, wasn't I?

My life spiralled downward soon after that introduction to seductive psychedelia. I quickly tired of pot and was curious about other illicit drugs, such as mescaline and LSD. It was extremely easy to get anything my adventurous little heart desired, as David and his friends had an abundant supply of everything. It was an exciting, rivetting new world that I had stumbled upon and like an eager explorer, I wanted to experience everything firsthand.

Knowing it was wrong and having been well-educated in the perils of drug addiction, I nonetheless took furtive pleasure in thumbing my nose at the Establishmentarian notions of what was right. I enjoyed the wild thrill that spun me in its tightening web.

I wasn't too happy about the way some of them made me feel, however, or the manner by which they caused these huge gaps in my consciousness. Mescaline was particularly bad for the latter. Once I took some just before a Slade concert at Centennial Hall and ended up missing the entire show. I sat down with a group of my new friends. The next thing I knew, the band was leaving the stage amid cheering and wild applause. I turned to Wayne, with whom I'd gone to the concert and asked why Slade had only performed one song.

"They were onstage for over two hours," Wayne had replied, looking at me as if I had live snakes sprouting out of the top of my head. "Where have you been?"

I had then spent the next half hour looking for my purse under the seat, completely lost in a drugged fog, while Wayne became quite exasperated. I decided that I had taken too much mescaline that time, so from that point on, I halved the dose and reached a satisfactory compromise between being too stoned and too based in reality. I used it at school, at home, and particularly with the gang.

Drifting away completely from Beverly and my identity as a serious, conscientious student, I embraced my inner-city compatriots, with their flamboyant clothes, gutter lingo, hard- edged cynicism and anti-social stance. Finally, I belonged somewhere, with what I thought to be the "popular kids". It was exhilarating, ego-stroking and, most of all, the drug culture itself assuaged my nagging problems and feelings of worthlessness.

Many kids used drugs for these reasons and it hasn't changed much in twenty years. Now you hear about high school and university students taking stuff that's extremely impure and hideously mutated. Drugs aren't as "safe" as they were in the 1970's, and it's frightening to think of what they'll be like in another two decades.

Purple microdot was a somewhat tame form of acid that became my personal favourite. I liked it because it caused just enough sensory distortion to allow me to feel lightheaded without totally abandoning a foundation in solid reality. Objects would swirl silently, entertaining my battle-weary eyes and distracting my mind from anything around me that I figured I couldn't handle.

In class, I became an expert at appearing "normal" while secretly experiencing spectacular mental fireworks. It was not uncommon to hear things, to smell strong essences from all kinds of normally odourless objects. Often it would feel as though something was running damp, tiny fingers over my skin. It was strangely reassuring, even though I felt shivers of fear when I'd look up from my book to discover that nobody was anywhere near me.

Food tasted different, like unexpectedly registering the flavour of marshmallows after taking a mouthful of spaghetti. It was as though all five senses were transmitting the wrong information by getting their frequencies confused. This altered state of existence became familiar after several months, and it was essential to remain in it.

This was a blissful distraction from the way I experienced life in the "real" world. I figured that as long as I was getting signals crossed, I could coexist in the world I'd rejected by slipping into a safe pocket whenever I chose.

David invited me to a party at his place one Saturday night, where I'd spent a great deal of time with Wayne. We talked for many hours, with our hands wrapped tightly together, and I could sense that he was very attracted to me. Wayne was my age but looked about sixteen, with long, shaggy red hair, large green eyes and a wide, vacant grin.

Small and wraithlike, he'd sit for hours on the floor, hunched over like a half-starved sparrow, while rocking mindlessly back and forth. He dressed in dirty, ragged jeans, and faded, worn flannel, and he could have fitted right in with the media's cliched impression of today's "alternative look". I was never all that enamoured with Wayne, but I really wanted a boyfriend, and he was more than willing to fill in for one. I didn't even like him all that much, for he had a mindless, semi- moronic giggle and talked constantly about the virtues of being "totally blasted" on chemicals.

Wayne and I began a heated period of intense dating from that night on, meeting at David's, where he rented a room, then getting stoned and wandering aimlessly around the downtown area. We never did much, preferring to explode our brain cells and revel in the effects of experiencing London's core at night with city lights dipping and strobing.

After we tired of this, Wayne and I would return to his place, where we'd make out on a threadbare couch amid empty bottles, discarded roaches and filth. I knew my mother would despise this apartment and that made it somewhat attractive despite the squaller.

I noticed that there was a pair of disapproving eyes watching me as I went through my various motions of furtive affection with my new boyfriend. Stewart, a rather heavy-set, puffy-faced blond who had a penchant for using the hard stuff (heroin was his drug of choice) had been attracted to me a few months earlier, when the two of us saw a film about Pink Floyd together.

We'd held hands throughout the movie, and later had gone back to David's, where he'd persuaded me to kiss him. Drugs had lessened my inhibitions substantially, for I would never have done anything like that straight and after that, Stewart seemed to think that we were going together. I had simply been flattered that someone had thought I was sexy and responded favourably to the compliment.

With my long, straight hair parted squarely in the middle, smallish figure and clear skin, I wasn't bad looking, but still suffered from my old, familiar "mouse mentality".

A short while later, I'd met Wayne and since I never considered myself to be going with Stewart didn't think I needed to break anything off, or terminate any relationship with this "poppy seed Casanova". Stewart apparently thought differently and I was shortly to me miserably made aware of this on what was to be the worst night of my life so far.

I formed an uneasy alliance with the other kids of this warped inner circle. There was Keith, a skinny, ravaged young man with an omnipresent black top hat and whose vapid grin revealed two missing teeth and a penchant for infesting vast quantities of a potent form of acid known as Black Death. You couldn't get much of a sensible conversation out of the Acid King, but he had a good and compassionate heart. Keith was one of the few who didn't ultimately turn on me.

Paul, tow-headed, stocky and with a bit of a nasty streak when he was stoned, didn't really like me much, but tolerated my presence because he was tight with Wayne. He was volatile and unpredictable and I steered clear of him whenever possible.

Eleanor, the girl I met on Christmas Eve, became close friends with Maryanne, a pudgy, tousled-haired seventeen-year-old with striking features and ultra-tight clothes. Eleanor ultimately left home to move in with David and Wayne, whereupon Maryanne took her the streetwalker's route and the two of them earned money for drugs by sleeping around for profit.

You'd think that I would have clued into the reality that perhaps these kids weren't particularly well-adjusted and happy, but I was too blinded by all the crap I was swallowing, snorting and smoking to notice, or care for that matter. All I was concerned with was the undeniable fact that I was affiliated with a bunch of cool teenagers for the first time in my life and I was going to enjoy it to the hilt.

I finally met the notorious Bruce, Janet's boyfriend, around March of 1974. During his absence, he'd cleaned up his act and was repulsed and disgusted by Janet's drug use, prostitution and motley friends. He broke up with her after she got busted for possession, and latched on to a virginal fifteen-year-old innocent, who would later succumb to the very substances he'd grown to hate.

One night, Bruce, Wayne, David and I were sitting on the floor, steeped in Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and reefer. (Bruce convinced himself soon after his return to London that pot wasn't really dope, so it was okay). I had reached the stage in my less-than-illustrious chemical career where I was desperate to stay high all the time.

Life had become unbearable, with my parent's marital problems, their constant harrassmentof my friends and lifestyle, growing difficulties with my schoolwork, guilt about shoplifting (to get the kinds of clothes that I wanted) and the pervasive feeling of emptiness that gripped me whenever the drug haze cleared. That was to be avoided at all cost, for it needled the message into my head that I was wasting my life away and heading for total self- annihilation.

One morning, I snorted some powder before school, a substance I knew nothing about, not even its name. I was so heavily stoned that I felt that my brain was suffocating and that I was being slowly paralyzed from the inside out. My muscles weren't getting the right messages and refused to move without a lot of spastic jerkiness. It was truly frightening, and as the feeling worsened, my eyes blurred alarmingly and my tongue seemed to swell up and fill my entire mouth.

Fumbling and stumbling down the corridor, with my ears clogged and muffling all sounds that pummelled me from the outside, I staggered into the English teachers' lounge and fell in a heap at Mr. Kellow's feet.

Well, he helped me over to a couch and talked to me for over an hour, realizing I was wasted and fearful that my life was washing down the drain. When I straightened out enough to return to class, I began to question my unhealthy habits.

So as the four of us sat smoking, I told Bruce that I was a bit frightened at the way the chemicals made me feel at times, but that, overall, the bad was worth the tremendous good. I'd try anything, even going so far as to claim that I'd shoot heroin if it wasn't so addictive.

"Clean up your act, chick", Bruce exclaimed, shaking his head, "You're going to destroy yourself one of these days. I've seen it happen too many times. That's why I quit drugs. It ain't worth the shit you go through. Believe me. Get out while you still can."

I didn't listen to him then, and instead of heeding my own conscience, I decided to take the Big Existential Plunge and do a hit of Windowpane, a very powerful acid that was infamous for its wild hallucinogenic qualities. I was somewhat reluctant, but Wayne had promised to look after me. I left our house early for the evening, and fought the urge to turn around before boarding the bus to Wayne's.

People had really flipped out on Windowpane, never to return to sanity. The psychiatric wing of Victoria Hospital, the legendary seventh floor, was inhabited almost exclusively by burned-out acid freaks. What if that happened to me?

But by this time, I'd numbed my better judgement with countless hits of mescaline, Purple Microdot and a host of other substances I didn't even know the proper names of. Common sense had become blurred with the constant exposure of my senses to mind-bending chemicals. Windowpane was simply the next logical step.

Wayne thought it best that I took only half a hit, so we spilt it. I mellowed quickly, feeling a rush of adrenaline with the realization that there was no turning back now. We settled on our favourite dumpy couch and put the Steve Miller Band's "Joker" album on the stereo. I hated that record and still cannot bring myself to listen to the title track when it's played on the radio today.

My musical tastes had radically altered since immersing myself in the drug world. I had abandoned the Everly Brothers and embraced the harder, more streetwise Canadian band The Guess Who. I'd seen them perform in concert the summer before in Windsor and had been mesmerized by the electrifyingly charismatic presence of lead singer Burton Cummings.

With his wild mop of curly, black hair, well-built lumberjack body, packed with dynamic, raw energy, he literally dominated the stage. Sweat flew from his head as he pounded fiercely on his piano, spitting, growling and stretching elastic-like vocal chords to their soaring limit.

I fell into instant lust as my long-dormant sexuality began to poke it's hesitant way out of its cryogenic state. This rock and roll sex machine grabbed hold of my post-pubescent senses and ripped the lid off my bland, sublime little universe.

So when I'd written to Sally Smith and told her about the Guess Who, and later, about my drug dalliances, she became quite disgusted with me. She had then promptly ended our correspondence. I was haughtily indignant, feeling she was being cold and unfair, so I put her letters and my Everly albums in mothballs. It was time that I grew up anyway, I figured.

I knew that Burton Cummings used drugs liberally and his band's songs were a drastic departure from the innocent ideals of Don and Phil Everly. After I'd been hanging out with the druggies, I began buying albums like Uriah Heap's "Demons and Wizards", and Deep Purple's "Burn". For Christmas that year, Jim gave me Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and I borrowed his "Paranoid" album by Black Sabbath. These records don't have a hell of a lot in common with "Wake Up, Little Susie" and "Bird Dog".

Anyway, as I sat with Wayne, listening to the wholesome strains of "Some people call me the Space Cowboy, some call me the Gangster of Love",I noticed that a poster on the back of the door had begun to swirl and swarm, seeming to breathe and pulsate to the beat of the music. Paul, sitting nearby, grinned at me and said knowingly, "Chick, you are so stoned."

After that, my cerebrum erupted, and I lost control of my emotions. Without knowing how, I ended up crouched on the floor, with my face suddenly soaked with tears. I could hear wild, uncontrollable sobbing, which seemed to be coming from a far corner of the room. Then I realized that it was me who was crying so hysterically.

I felt a choking, strangling sensation, then heard a voice speaking in guttural, flat tones into my left ear. The words tore into my eardrum, and I could feel hot, thick blood gurgling from it and running down the side of my face.

Oh God, I'm wounded! I'm going to die, I thought, terror clutching my chest and gripping onto my ribcage. Then, I knew with a sensation of pure horror that I had somehow crossed over into a vast, dead wasteland where I'd mever again see my family. I would thus be forever condemned to walk with the dead. It was a punishment for betraying my parents and defying their authority and their love.

"No! This can't be happening! I've got to get out of here!" These frightened words leapt out of my mouth and rolled across the floor, disappearing under a bookcase. I was shouting, screaming in mental agony as I watched my life circling down a huge, gaping drain. I was powerless to stop it. "Why? Why? Why is this happening to me!? Why won't you let me see my family? I'm sorry I let them down! Please! I want my mother! I need them! Don't you understand?!"

Wayne, David and Paul grew angry at this point, totally repulsed at this mama's girl who refused to grow up and assert her independence. We spent the next few hours locked in this macabre one-act play of damnation, as I grew more and more desperate and they even more resentful of my behaviour.

Wayne tried to get me to listen to James Taylor albums in order to calm down. It was futile; I was completely unhinged in a classic case of drug-induced paranoiac psychosis. Nobody knew what to do with me in such a maniacal, out-of-control state.

They decided to shame me out of it, taunting me and shouting, "Get out of here then, you whining little baby! Go home to your precious family and shut the fuck up!"

My panic escalated into unleashed, raving hysteria as I screamed and wailed, pulling my hair out at the roots and looking wildly about. I saw my three so-called friends there in the room with me one minute, then mysteriously vanished the next.

I suppose this theatrical display lasted about four hours, after which the worst of the drug's effects wore off. I was left in a semi-vegetative, exhausted state, wandering about from room to room and mumbling incoherently. Paul smirked as I stood in my hollowed-out sludge pile of a spent body and pushed me aside roughly. "You're disgusting, Jane. Acting like a fucking lunatic in front of us, freaking out from a little hit of acid. If that's the real you, then we don't want you here."

Wayne was quick to come to my defense. "Shut up, asshole. She couldn't handle it. Some people flip out on Windowpane. It happens."

I wrapped my arms tightly around my shivering frame and decided to see if Jim was home. It was long past midnight and the last bus had left Dundas and Richmond for Westmount over an hour ago. Hopefully, our parents were still out, or had retired for the night and were safely asleep.

Luckily, Jim was at home and picked me up. I said little to him on the drive home, only that I had done some heavy acid and was feeling pretty shaky. He told me to be careful, because a friend of his had gone on a trip and never returned.

Now, surely that negative experience was enough to put a lid on my anti-social, sociopathic lifestyle, but no, it took an even more gruesome incident to do that.

It was a week before my nineteenth birthday. For several months, Wayne had been pressuring me to sleep with him, and I had adamantly refused. I was fearful of sex and not particularly attracted to him in that intimate way. Though some definite stirrings had been aroused by some of the music I was exposed to and the guys who performed it with lusty abandon, I had no desire to lose my virginity to Wayne or any other boy for that matter.

Again, that persistent, nagging question gnawed at my psyche: Was there something wrong with me? After all, every other couple in our circle was sexually active and spoke glowingly about it. Joe told me repeatedly that "If you don't have sex with me, our relationship's gonna die", and finally I felt pressured enough to go on the Pill.

Then, on April fifteenth, 1974, the two of us were sitting on his bed, actively engaged in our customary necking session, while he periodically pleaded with me to do it with him.

I began to sense that he was somewhat more firmly insistent on this particular night and I knew that I had set myself up for certain disaster. I had told my father that I would be out all night. He thought that I was going to sleep with Wayne, but in actuality, I was just testing him, secretly hoping he'd put his foot down and forbid me to go.

I found out that my parents had spent many sleepless nights debating about whether or not they should not allow me to hang out with the "grass gang". Mom was sick with worry, but Dad assured her that if he laid down the law, I'd run away and disappear from their lives forever. So the consensus was to be permissive.

Jim and I had always craved discipline, as we'd be certain of our parents' love if they'd shed their lenient parenthood crap and give us some hard-stooled rules to live by. But the Big, Progressive Theory of Parenting in the 1970's was to let kids do as they pleased, loosen the ties and open the door to disaster by refusing to set limits and guidelines. Mom and Dad were only doing what they believed in their hearts to be the right thing, but it was so very, very wrong for my brother and me, and all children.

So when Dad didn't stop me from spending the night at Joe's, I felt that he really didn't love me. He wanted me out of his life and messed up on drugs, casual sex and wanton self- destructiveness.

While Wayne was kissing me, he suddenly shoved his hands down my pants and grabbed me hard. I reacted with surprised anger, yanking my face away from his and yelling at him to stop it. Instead, he leaned forward, pulling me down on the mattress and pressing his chest against me with such force that I was unable to breathe.

"Relax. It's no big deal. You want it just as bad as I do. Don't make me force this."

I knew that I would have to go through with it, even though I felt sick at the prospect and was absolutely terrified. The others were all out in the living room, a scant few yards away, and I couldn't let them witness another spectacle of a half- crazed immature brat crying for Mommy.

"Okay, just get it over with", I thought dismally, lying still on the dilapidated mattress as Wayne ripped my clothes off. In all fairness to him, he really believed that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, that he was simply helping me to enter the Wide Wonderful World of Sexual Gratification. Besides, at eighteen, he was at the height of his sexual peak and so it was a pretty big deal to him.

What I remember most vividly about my first time was that it hurt like hell. As Wayne entered me, it seemed as though this huge log had been rammed into my body, splitting it in half. Without going into a lot of graphic detail about the whole even, it's sufficient to say that I spent the whole time sobbing for him to stop while he went at me for what seemed an hour or more.

When it was over, I couldn't bear to look at him and rolled over on my side facing the wall, curled up into a fetal position. Later, after Wayne fell asleep, I put on my clothes and walked with pained difficulty out of the bedroom and out into the bright, crowded and noisy living room to get a cigarette. I'd taken up smoking soon after meeting my new friends, an activity I'd sworn years before I'd never engage in. Right now, I really needed a nicotine fix after that nightmarish encounter with Wayne's penis.

Stewart was sitting over in the corner, and when he saw me, the stoned fellow sneered, "Fucking slut". I wanted to die. After everyone had left and David had gone to bed, I lay on the couch and listened to the radio all night, unable to sleep and still hurting both physically and emotionally from the events of the evening.

At around four AM, "Cathy's Clown", by the Everly Brothers, a song I'd once played over and over, came on and I broke down in tears at my lost innocence and the death of my childhood dreams. My little brother had been on drugs since age eleven, my dad had a girlfriend, and I was totally fucked up on acid and mescaline. Not only that, I'd just lost my virginity to a man I didn't even love.

I collected myself as the Everlys' harmonies washed over my stinging body and vowed that when I walked out of that broken- down house on Blecher Street in a few hours, I'd never return. My birthday was fast approaching and so was my graduation from high school. It was time to grow up, shed the imperfections of my misspent youth and move on. If I continued at this rate, I would not Reach adulthood, or if I did, I'd be reduced by drugs to a giggling, drooling idiot. If my family wasn't going to stop me, then I had to put the brakes on.

So I did. I never saw any of those kids again. David eventually married and had a child with Down Syndrome, which was actually not caused from David's chemical abuse. Stewart died several years later of a heroin overdose. e I shudder to think about what happened to Wayne, but I feel even more sorry for his children if he was foolish enough to reproduce. Wayne had been a drug user for many years before I met him and studiously avoided being straight. Maybe he cleaned up his act eventually and achieved some measure of happiness. I hope so. Nobody deserves to be condemned like that forever.

I'm not proud of anything I did that year and there will always be a part of me that wonders if my life in the years to come would have turned out any better if it not for those chemicals. But that's a question that no-one can really answer.

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