The Fillmore Auditorium 1967

Dropping acid and going to a dance was a lot like going into battle.  You never knew what would happen inside those auditoriums.  I wore my favorite wide legged, denim Navy workpants.  The front of the legs were so thin you could almost see through them.  When a spot finally gave out completely, I patched them with scraps from the little barrel of fabrics I kept by my sewing machine. With one of my bedspread dresses as a top, a pair of sandals and two long strings of beads, I was ready to go.  I flew down the stairs of my building, excited, free, and ready for the ride downtown in Fluff’s white Pontiac.

The worst part of owning a car in the City was parking.  The neighborhood around the Fillmore was the ghetto, and we were very white, but the big white Pontiac fit right in, a pimp car if there ever was one.  As long as we weren’t too far from the dance hall, we were golden.  Fluff drove around and around, looking for a legal space, rare as hen’s teeth in this area destined for gentrification. Lots with old Victorians long ago broken up into narrow flats, empty, doors and windows boarded then broken so the long glass-less windows looked out over trash covered yard, vacant and soul-less.  We ended up five blocks from the Fillmore next to a car without tires and doors held in place with rope.  Even in broad daylight the neighborhood was dodgy, but at night it was downright scary. 

The acid we dropped when we left my flat was coming on and by the time we climbed the stairs to the Fillmore, I wasn’t sure how we’d arrived.  It didn’t matter.  This time the Fillmore was different.  I wasn’t hanging on Jeffrey’s arm.  I was only responsible for myself.  I was, however, the fifth wheel, the third in a party of two.  As we neared the stairs by the box office, Carol linked her arm through mine. The light bent and slid in and out of focus, as if I was actually wading through molecules.  No matter what happened with Fluff, Carol and I would always be friends.  I looked at her through the haze of smoke that hung in the lobby.  She was gone, smiling that silly, beatific smile that acid trippers sometimes exhibited.  Oh boy, I thought, here we go.

The light from the foyer disappeared as we entered the auditorium and the double doors shut.  The universe turned murky black.  The wall space to the north and south sides of the ballroom pulsed with light projections, perfectly timed to the music.  We headed directly for the left corner of the stage. While the Fillmore wasn’t as elegant as the Avalon Ballroom, it’s strobe light was more powerful and more pervasive.  It engulfed revelers in an insistent, aggressive pulsing that constantly changed speed.  I noticed the Dead were on the stage warming up, or in the middle of a song, lost and trying to find their way, or merely transitioning from one tune to another.  As always, with the Dead it was hard to tell.  For a while Carol and I danced near one another until the sound of Viola Lee Blues gathered momentum and everyone got on board, moving as one. 

In my peripheral, I caught an eerie bluish glow coming from a group of people clustered on the floor under the mezzanine.  As I moved closer, a girl lay on her stomach and two crouching forms leaned over her in the dark, laughing and giggling.  Looking closer, intricate swirling designs spread over her body and were illuminated by the black light.  I reached for one of the crayons from a box in the center of the circle of bodies and swiped it across my arm.  A trail of glowing pink continued past the border of my wrist and into the inky void beyond, curling into vapor-like smoke.  A shoeless guy with hair in long braids picked up another crayon and started drawing on my pant leg.  I stretched my legs out to give him more room.  The colors came to life, permeating the thin layer of denim covering my skin.  I lost myself in the sensual delight of the moment, lying back on the sticky floor of the Fillmore Ballroom.  When I sat up, my pants vibrated in blue, pink, purple, yellow, green and orange designs.  I stared at them in awe.

This area, under an overhang that ran along three sides of the ballroom, was littered with piles of coats and shoes, other clothing, and people lying in the mess making out, staring at the light show.  Some just sat and looked at their toes, examined a piece of flotsam, or gently wept.

As I turned back to the stage, a group of dancers had replaced the Dead and the sound of a shakuhachi, a Chinese flute filled the room. Tears ran down my face as I was engulfed in sorrow, loneliness, mourning, and regret.  The apocalypse was near.  I would die before I learned the answer to the meaning of life.  We were all prisoners in this place, condemned to live out what was left of time in a miasma of black light and music.  We would never leave here alive because we were dead already.

I approached the front of the high stage and felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back, gently, folding me into an embrace of warmth and comfort.  I relaxed, melted, let go of my sadness, and allowed Carol to pull me to the dance floor.  The peak of the acid trip was over.  My ego returned, wearing jackboots and a smile as the fleeting moment of nirvana passed.  I was okay now.

The evening was bathed in a balmy breeze when Carol, Fluff and I stumbled out of the Fillmore and walked toward the car.  We were coming down.  We ran up and down the streets, giggling.  Perhaps we never had a car.  Perhaps we hallucinated one.  No watch, no clocks, no sense of time or place, the universe stretched and breathed out the ends of my fingers.  We walked up and down, up and down every street in the Fillmore for hours, days, years, eons.  I was barefoot, and I walked until my feet felt sanded smooth by the rough sidewalk.  My legs collapsed and I lay flat out, crucified on the floor of the city, sinking into the concrete, slipping easily between the molecules of stone, the breathless dead earth beneath the cement.  I made a joke about soles and souls and my laughter turned to despair.

Shaking his head, bewildered, Fluff declared, “I can’t find it.  I can’t find the car.  I think it’s gone.” 

Carol pulled on my arms, trying to get me to stand up.  “And just where would it go, all on its own?”  We sputtered with laughter and I rolled over to my knees.  Carol pulled my arm one more time and I was up.

“I can’t walk one more block.  Shall we catch a bus?”

Fluff shook his head, the remnants of a smile playing uncertainly around the corners of his mouth.  He hailed a taxi.  By one of those acid miracles, it stopped right there in the ghetto and let three obviously stoned freaks into the back seat.  We maintained a respectable silence until the cab pulled up at Downey Street.  Fluff pulled out a couple of bills from the roll in his jacket pocket and paid the driver well.  As we left the car, the cabby turned to us with a big grin. Fortune follows the Cosmic Fool.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Fluff realized the car was truly gone.  It had been towed away.  Retrieving it was out of the question.  Things like titles and licenses were not part of living in the Haight.  Karma was the reason for the car’s disappearance, and karma was the reason Fluff was soon sporting another anonymous vehicle for driving Superspade to and from appointments.