It is the evening... 2

Beyond Amnesia

I guess you could say the strange part was: while i didn't forget the abortive trip to NY on my birthday in 1977, I didn't revisit it either, otherwise I might have summoned up memories of the Saturday night dinner date with Ken and Bozo -- where we went, what we talked about, why Bozo ended up coming back with us and spending the night at Bozo. What actually happened between 7 PM and 2 AM - or from the moment when Bozo threw himself onto the pile of garbage bags, and the moment I found myself lying next to him on the floor at Annie's.

As I have noticed with another situation (where I believe a specific incident got totally wiped) there is a tendency to create a sort of buffer zone around an amnesic space, like a keep off the grass sign that you obey without questioning. Stupid as sounds, you just don't go there as if in response to a command not to think about it. So in remembering that weekend, I never once asked myself about the missing Saturday night which would have been the high point, the climax of the whole pointless exercise of coming to New York on my birthday.

The other detail I forgot until just recently was the crucial reason, or pretext, that Ken used to get me to agree to the trip which was "You could meet Mick Jagger." Although it could sound like some offhand stroke of silliness - like "you might get struck by lightning" or "you might land a part in a movie" -- it was delivered semi reluctantly and only after three attempts and three refusals. Even then I suspected it was nothing more than a hook dangled insincerely to hypnotize but I still bit on it. Since it never got mentioned afterwards on what turned out to be an incredibly boring New York weekend, I never thought about it afterwards. My disappointment got swallowed by the uncomfortable-ness with Ken and Bozo -- and Ken's ongoing resentment, never voiced but very apparent to me. If anyone felt let down, it was Ken -- but why? Had he taken me to New York in a lame attempt to start an affair with me? Or maybe sell me to a cult?

Yeare later I wondered if it didn't have something to do with the Lubovitchers who he began talking about around that same time. "Have you heard of Rabbi Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe?" he asked repeatedly.

In the month after the trip, I met a woman who revealed she was an astrologer and asked my birthdate. She commented on how it coincided with the recent solar eclipse and a birthday eclipse being significant or intense -  so I mentioned my weird trip to NY, concentrating on just the weirdness, not even realizing I had somehow "lost" 7 hours from that weekend.

Something must have happened during those seven missing hours to make Bozo suddenly "take charge" of me -- treating me like a princess for no known reason, was how I thought of it. Shepherding me around the following day, reversing his plan to stay in NY, squeezing in next to me on the Greyhound home, being all attentive and flattering while Ken was visibly annoyed and held that grudge for months...

All this  only dawned on me many years later, and even then I failed to get it.

In the meantime, partly thanks to the post humous intervention of Chogyam Trungpa who, it turned out, really did know Jaggerd, I had what seemed like.a very vivid recovered memory -- of being with him on a bed in New York, possibly in a hotel. We are both fully clothed. He is dressed head to foot in green leather, has shoulder length hair, as he wore it in 1977, and although stoned, he talks a blue streak. He is so funny, I can't stop laughing. I laugh so hard I cant breathe and end up rolling off the bed onto the floor. It seems like a pre arranged sexual encounter that flopped. He was expecting a prostitute who turned out to be me, and we are both incredibly embarrassed and laugh ourselves silly. And then my handlers take me back to Annie's and Ken (a trained hypnotist with telekinetic abilities, which I ought to have mentioned earlier) erases the memory and the next thing I know, I am sprawled next to Bozo and a powerful energy transfer takes place - or perhaps replaces my memory of the embarrassing rock star encounter.

It’s mostly annoying for Ken who has planned all this for at least a month and even paid my bus fare to NY, with nothing to show for all that effort. What made them do it? What made them think there was the slightest chance that Jagger and I could meet and hit it off?

Another 19 years go by before part of the answer arrives. It's the summer of 1996. I'm in Los Angeles staying at Cimarron Zen Center. I get around mostly by bike, sometimes cycling from downtown to Santa Monica or Venice Beach. One day I'm cycling up Washington Boulevard when I see Bozo on the sidewalk chatting with his neighbor, an elderly black lady. I haven't seen him since... since..

That night we go out to the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Design and bump into Wim Wenders, among other people. We go out again a couple more times. Bozo is now a well known director and tells me a story about NY in the mid seventies when he used to visit Mick Jagger while hustling to get Times Square produced.

So he knew Jagger. To a certain extent at least.

So how did I enter the picture? I see two possibilities. One, Jagger remembered me and asked Bozo if he knew me.

Or two: Bozo and Ken remembered us both from Subproject 68 at McGill, and thought it was high time we were reunited.

And then there's the third possibility, which involves a cult, and must remain off the record.