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RICHARD SCHLATTER
kids - especially half-starved ones - began by eating all the rolls and
butter, and then ate everything else as well. They were radiantly exuberant
and wanted to try everything; made me translate all the French on the
menu; talked without stopping; and ended up stuffed to the point of
feeling sick.
During the meal Kate remarked that if she had stayed with her
"middle-class parents" she would have been bored to death and would
never have met anyone so grand as Harry. She said this very quietly
and unaggressively, and it was very convincing.
They were both typical hippies, I suppose - very gentle, unaggres–
sive, affectionate, naive and ignorant. They know nothing: no history,
no literature, no art, except a little Pop, lots of rock 'n' roll, underground
movies and the painting and poetry they do themselves, plus what they
had in high school. This latter is, I suppose, quite a lot, but they have
successfully ignored it. They are self-consciously detached from the cul–
ture around them and have no interest in money, success, jobs or politics,
except that they are pacificists and believe in racial equality. But unlike
the radical kids who have so much to hate and are so aggressive (per–
haps properly so), these kids are extraordinarily gentle and soft-spoken
and mild.
They are religious, I suppose, in an undogmatic and wholly uncritical
and uninformed way. They like everything from Indian Great Spirits to
Hindu mystics. Kate gave me a two-minute lecture on how she had come,
recently, to believe in God and immortality. And all this, of course, gets
mixed up with marijuana and LSD.
I asked them how they lived, and they said, very offhandedly and
with no sense of guilt, that they and their friends buy marijuana for
$90 a kilo, make cigarettes worth $240 and sell them to San Francisco
high-school kids. They have some fear of going to jail, but have escaped
arrest so far. When I asked Harry about the draft, he said he would
wait until called for his physical, take a good dose of LSD and tell the
dector he hoped to be able to introduce soldiers to the benefits of pot
and acid. His friends who have done this have apparently been let off.
When we finished dinner, I asked them if they would like to go to
the bar at the top of the Fairmont. They were delighted, and we started
off.
As
we went through the lobby of the St. Francis, Harry said to some
especially coarse-looking businessmen and their wives, "I love you." He
meant it. But they looked sour!
I got them out of the lobby and suggested we take a
taxi
to the
Fairmont. They were astonished at this ridiculous extravagance, and
before I knew what was happening Harry opened the door of a Chrysler
Imperial waiting for a red light in front of the St. Francis and asked the
