Woods Hole and the Acid Gods

Finally June and the end of school arrived. I skipped my graduation. I knew that

Cindy, had a babysitting job in Woods Hole but due to broken down communications,

I didn’t know exactly where.  I threw my few tee-shirts and  underwear into a brown

paper bag, along with two long white Muslim skirts that I’d made and embroidered

myself.  Then  I stuffed into my blue jean pocket, a tiny round tab of LSD stuck onto a

piece of white paper; just like the little pink round dot candies I’d peeled off the paper

with my teeth, as a kid. In Woods Hole, I ate the tab, tossing my fate to the Acid

Gods.  Standing on a village green, I was mesmerized by my once-stubby hands

which became transformed into exquisite works of art. I had a revelation that my

hands  could think !    Someone was calling my name. I looked up from my trance

and saw Cindy waving wildly  and laughing from a psychedelic VW van.    “Get in!”

she yelled gleefully. 

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Greg, the fuzzy creature at the steering wheel, had a face that wrinkled massively

when he smiled. He brought me home with him to share his clean, queen-size bed in

Boston’s East-West Center for Self Exploration, dedicated to Meher Baba. I was

overjoyed that I didn’t have to “pay rent”: he never laid a hand on me. 

Each day Greg arose to work in a state hospital and I traipsed off to the Boston

Common to get stoned and play my recorder. One day as he was leaving, Greg said,

sarcastically, “Don’t pick too many flowers.” I thought about him wiping people while I

played fairy-queen and realized that I was living off him. Reality hit: I didn’t know how

to provide for myself. 

By early August, Greg’s irritation had grown: he delivered me to a place where I

might be saved from whoring and addiction. It was better than the streets and I

couldn’t go home. I’d been banned again after Dad had said, “Millie…she’s trying to

kill me.”