NAROPA
8 The Street Clown
Sooooooooo happy to be out of there, I repair posthaste to the after-party. This one's held in a stone love cottage on University Hill, which just so happens to be adjacent to a pioneer cemetery. Cemeteries—like volcanic particulants—provide constant reminders that every day could be your last, so carpe diem. Translation: "seize the pleasure of the moment without concern for the future." Accordingly, I'm flirting and teasing and dropping double entendres for all I'm worth. Pretty soon, I feel a tug on my line. Perhaps confusing frivolity with joie de vivre, Pamela Koeverts, Naropa's only Dutch student, appears smitten by my, er, charms, such as they were.
Pamela tells me she's a street clown who performs in a popular act along with a guy in drag. She also does some TV work. The perky dark-haired Euro babe appears to be having a grand old time in the American West. I was wondering how in the world Pamela had gotten wind of Naropa in Amsterdam until she drops a clue: she has a big Beat thing. I'm not one, but I zero in on her anyway. Things are going well. We're dancing, we're yakking, our stars are aligning. I'm getting that can't-miss feeling. Distracted by something or other, I let Pamela out of my sight for a moment. When next I see her, she's being chatted up by John Steinbeck IV, one of Rinpoche's best known adherents and a big man on campus.
I sulk. I think I'll go cry in my beer and review country western albums as "Buff Oklag." I hit the street and get about ten paces before:
"Wait—beautiful boy!"
Pamela falls in stride with me. Ah. Much better. Now we're walking parallel to the cemetery, on a ten-foot wide dirt lane. I take her hand, leading her through a rusty gate and into the domain of the dead. A full moon illuminates the epitaphs. Reading them makes us feel lucky to be alive. Verifying our vitality, we start making out among the tombstones. I topple on top of Pamela, covering a grave marker from the 1800s. Anticipating a deliciously macabre mating atop the remains of some miner dude, I expose my stinger in all its exuberance. What, like Rinpoche wouldn't have done the same?
"No. Not here."
Grrrr. Here was really working for me.
Pamela leads me over to her townhouse. She introduces her roommate. I meet their set of age-matched daughters. Next I meet the roommate's boyfriend. This Karma Dzong (Naropa's hardcore Buddhist sister institution) biker dude is packing some particularly tasty material vices he's only too happy to share. Reaching inside a rucksack, he pulls out a bottle of single malt, Laphroaig 18 Year Old—not that I have much appreciation for whatever that is. Next he extracts a bundle of twenty-five aromatic Thai sticks―picture wooden shish kabob sticks skewering select cannabis buds giving off subtle hints of gardenia and night blooming jasmine―bound together with dental floss. Damn! I know exactly what those are, having purchased a similar bundle in the Hill Country above Chang Mai. It was the most memorable business transaction of my life. The $25 I spent was 25 times what the kid I bought it from paid for it, which he couldn't believe I would pay for it, and one percent of the $2500 I'd have had to pay for it in the States―which I couldn't believe he'd sell it to me for. I was beyond thrilled with the purchase, or I was up until the point when I had to leave the vast majority of it behind; I'd barely made a dent in it during the month I spent in Siam. But the Laphroaig and the Thai sticks were mere appetizers.
The main course was an imposing mound of "Peruvian marching powder." The popular stimulant has a lot of cachet, although I'm not nearly as infatuated with cocaine as your average sybarite. Why not? A gram of coke costs $100. You feel a euphoric rush for about seven minutes. Then you get all edgy. Compare that to pure LSD, the predominate Boulder drug of the 60s and 70s. That cost a whopping one dollar. You got to visit a Utopian planet for the better part of a whole day. If you took, say, 100% pure Mr. Natural blotter acid within the Boulder city limits, well, it was a simple matter of walking fifteen minutes uphill to find yourself in a geological wonderland with views out to effing Kansas. That's why not. Nonetheless we, including me and my misgivings, start methodically working our way through the generous rations.
The 18-year Laphroaig's label indicates its origin "from the rocky south coast of the Isle of Islay." I immediately recognize the Isle of Islay as the birthplace of Scottish tunesmith Donovan, a permanent resident on my shortlist of favorite songwriters. I point this factoid out to Pamela. Turns out she's partied with him. She tells me he wanted "to do her" even though he's married to Linda Lewis, Brian Jones of The Stones' ex. She said no way. That begs the question—why on earth is this lowlands babe more into me than the pop icon? Did I really have more on the ball than the chart-topping troubador of "Mellow Yellow," "Sunshine Superman" and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" fame? Well I guess I was single. Maybe that was it.
There's ample time for such superfluous thoughts cause the conversation is drags on and on and on. Speaking of "doing her," before we know it, the clock has ticked 5 AM. The aborted cemetery escapade was seven hours ago, time enough for the four of us to reduce the once bountiful mound of pinkish-white powder to a few forlorn flakes. Finally, I get Pamela alone. Uh-oh. Malfunction at the junction. Where'd that come from? If only she'd let me have her on the grave marker when I was raring to go. Sigh. I sense Pamela has formed the impression there's something seriously wrong with American men. I feel like I've let the entire country down. I trudge home, wondering if I'd ever get a proverbial "second chance to make a first impression."