The Sean Richter Chronicles will appear occasionally in Growing Old With Rock & Roll. They are an adjunct to I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) that played out in the blog throughout 2013. This episode slots in right around late May or early June, 1978, before Nicole had called off her engagement to her fiancée and before my wife had tumbled on our little affair.
Callie was a co-worker of Nicole's in the toy department of the K-Mart where we all worked. Callie was an INCREDIBLY sweet young girl, who couldn't have found a clue with a stepladder. When she got pregnant at 18 with her high-school boyfriend, all of us agreed that we doubted she connected the act of having sexual intercourse with said boyfriend with the resulting birth of their daughter.
This is an (unfortunately) entirely true & accurate
account of our hospital visit following that birth.
"Hey Sean," Greg the Roadie said to me as he parked the car on a street near Mt. Carmel West Hospital that late spring/early summer day, "you think we should smoke a joint before we go up to the room?"
Looking back I can't imagine HOW that would have been an appropriate - or even sane - question before a visit to the hospital on the happy occasion of the birth of a new baby, but then again, MANY of Greg's & my interactions of that period hinged on smoking joints in cars. I never indiscriminately smoked pot. That set me apart from many of my brethren of the day. I always had a REASON to get high: to attend rock & roll shows; to listen to music at home; seeing movies to make the cinematic experience more intense, etc. And then I met Greg.
Anyway, my reply in the car that day? "Yeah, I guess we should," though even at this point - more than 40 years later - I have NO IDEA how an affirmative reply was the correct one. Plus it's important to remember that buying pot on the West Side of of Columbus, Ohio in 1978 was just a Chemical Crapshoot: one time you would get a substance that just gave you a Vague Headache and a Little Sort Of High Around the Edges; the next time it might just as well have been Angel Dust that would have you hallucinating for hours. You just never knew. To quote/paraphrase Dostoyevsky; "You pays your money and you takes your shot."
The other problem in that halcyon era was that we never did ANYTHING halfway. "Moderation" was for chumps, and was not a part of our rock & roll vernacular. There was No Such Concept of MAYBE smoking half a joint to test the potency, you just lit it up and rolled the dice. I knew we were in trouble before we even got out of Greg's car, as I found I no longer knew how to work the car-door handle (and I had ridden in that car more than a hundred times).
We weren't even a block away from the hospital, but we STILL got lost finding it. Then we couldn't figure out how to GET INSIDE the building and somehow wound up in a sub-basement. By sheer luck we happened upon an elevator and managed to hit the "Up" button. To our enormous relief when the doors opened there was nobody inside, the car was completely empty. "Oh man, I am SO GLAD there's nobody on here," Greg said, "I am WAY too high to deal with any straight people."
The elevator went up exactly one floor to the lobby, the doors parted, and maybe 15 people - including a couple of doctors & nurses - were waiting to get on. They just stared at Greg & me for a second - I think we probably had a look of total panic on our faces - and then for some reason the Elevator Mexican Standoff just struck us both as hilariously funny and we started laughing so hard we couldn't stop. "Are you guys all right?" one of the doctor's asked as I tried to catch my breath to say, "Yeah, we're good, we're fine," but all I could do was laugh 'til I was crying. Greg was doubled-over, leaning on the wall, holding his stomach, then slid down the wall to a sitting position, laughing the entire time.
The doors closed again without anybody - sensibly - getting on, and we continued up to the 7th floor where the Maternity Ward was. Any Sane Person - or Persons - would have just cut their losses right then & there and gotten their asses OUT of that hospital, but apparently we were functioning on some kind of Cannabis Automatic Pilot at that point: we had COME to this building to visit Callie and her new baby, and we were damn well GOING to visit Callie and her new baby.
We ducked into the first restroom we came to so we could take a break and try to gather ourselves a little bit (and to stop laughing). "Holy shit this is good pot," Greg said, "we hit the jackpot this time." "Yeeeaaah," I said, a little less enthusiastically, "it IS good, but we still have to get through this." The High had taken a turn now, we were functioning better, but now time seemed to be slowing down rather alarmingly, and Greg was starting to flag a little.
When we got to Callie's room I couldn't believe my eyes; the room was CRAMMED with people. Callie's mom & dad were there, her boyfriend's parents were there, Nicole AND her fiance were there (and that guy was NOT a big fan of mine), plus two or three people we didn't know. EVERYBODY was just staring at us, open-mouthed, and Nicole - promptly & properly Sussing the Situation with Greg & I - was so simultaneously angry and frightened of what was going to happen next she had tears starting in her eyes.
Greg broke that little tableau by walking over to the bed, saying, "Callie, congratulations," and KISSING HER ON THE MOUTH. With her boyfriend AND his parents standing RIGHT THERE. "Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "this is getting out of hand, I should put a stop to this," but I found myself rooted to the spot, incapable of action. Before anybody could do anything, Greg then announced, "Man, I'm so tired, I've just gotta lay down for a minute," and climbed into the hospital bed WITH Callie. The entire situation had now clearly gone Train 'Round the Bend, and I knew I had to do SOMETHING. Breaking my drug-induced paralysis, I walked over to the bed, took his arm, said, "Greg, come on," and tried to pull him up. He yanked his arm away and YELLED, "GET OFF me, Sean, I'll fuck you up."
Greg was a Big Guy. He
played semi-pro football. I'd seen him
in fights. I'd personally witnessed him
beat people senseless, and I realized that if I couldn't de-fuse this situation
quickly there was going to be carnage in that hospital room and Greg & I
were going to jail, possibly for a VERY long time. "Greg, Greg, Greg," I said, a
little quieter each time, and stared in his eyes, "you have to get up off
this bed and we have to get OUT of this room RIGHT NOW before Security comes,
do you understand?"
I think something about the word "Security" cut through the haze of The Big High to reach Greg, and he let me guide him off the bed and out of the room. "Sorry, everybody," I said over my shoulder to the assembled families, "wrong room," even though Greg had called Callie by name before he kissed her.
Nicole showed up at our band rehearsal space later that night after she dropped off her fiancée, and the first words out of her mouth before I could even begin to apologize were, "What THE FUCK is wrong with you?" She was as angry at me as I'd ever seen her and she was so frustrated she started slapping me on the head & shoulders. I got her wrists and said, "Nicole, I'm really sorry. We NEVER should have gotten high before we came up there."
"Yeah, and exactly whose idea WAS it to get high before visiting Callie in the hospital," Nicole asked, whirling on Greg. Greg put his hands up before she could start pummeling him, and said, "Nicole, I'm sorry too, but getting high just seemed like a really good idea at the time." Greg had such a sincere, little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face that Nicole actually burst out laughing, much like Greg and me in the elevator.
"You guys are such CHILDREN sometimes," Nicole chided, "I bet Callie's daughter has more sense RIGHT THIS MINUTE than both of you put together." "Come on, let's go outside," she said, grabbing my hand, "you're gonna take me for a walk to get some fresh air."
I guessed things were going to be okay.
(ps. Apropos of The Dictators mention in paragraph one of this blog, we just lost genius rhythm guitarist Scott "Top Ten" Kempner of The Dictators November 29th, 2023.
check out this link - Pencil Storm / In Memoriam: Scott Kempner - for my tribute to him.)
