I have had many friends in my seventy-seven years of life. My early school years were long ago; so I don’t remember most of my classmates from then. However, I do remember Bob Smith. He and I grew up together and went to the same elementary school together,

Later, in high school, he was our star pitcher. We called him the Iceman. And after high school, I enlisted in the Air Force and became a flying officer, while he enlisted in the Army and became an officer in the Paratroopers. Later on, after going to UCLA together, I became a clinical psychologist and he became a psychiatrist. I haven’t heard from him in years now, not since I dropped out and began doing medicine.

I have no friends left from my days in the Air Force and only a few from my early days at UCLA. My two best friends from UCLA are both dead now. Richard Taurek drank too much and died of liver failure, and Ken Dallett killed himself by turning on the gas in his psychology lab. Another friend from UCLA, Norm Fogel, later married my ex-wife Pamela, leaving me to wander if he had been one of her lovers when she and I were married.

I had lots of friends in Berkeley, although I don’t see many of them anymore. I lived with Ariana’s mother Karen, Abby Minot and Bobby Keeler in a house in the flatlands of Berkeley. A lot of good folks hung out with us there. And then there was Jim. I really loved him. He was easily as far out as I was. I don’t think I ever knew his last name though.

I made many friends in the Rainbow Family too. I used to travel to the gatherings almost every year just to see my friends. I don’t travel as much nowadays, and I’m not planning on ever going to another gathering. Some of us are still in touch though.
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My best friends have always been those folks that I’ve tripped with. Not having done any acid these past few years, I’ve lost touch (for now) with most of them. But there still remains the acid connection, as we used to call it, that psyche tie that remains forever between two folks who have seriously tripped together.

Ramon Landero, or Mexican, was my all-time best friend. I met him back in 1973 at the gathering in Wyoming. He’s dead now, murdered in the Bay Area outside the Dead’s New Years Eve concert. He was trying to score. Too bad. He was a beautiful soul. He would have become a great wizard if he had lived.

Then there was Paul Borne. I was camping alone at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras once, and I saw this guy jump off a cliff above the creek. I rushed over to where I thought his body would be and saw that he had jumped into a pool, one that I later saw you couldn’t even see from where he had jumped. I was tripping and gave him a hit. He deserved it. The next morning, when I woke up, he was squatting by my sleeping bag with a big smile on his face. “Got more?” He’s a stunt man in Hollywood now. He’s also Ariana’s godfather.

There were a lot of folks at the gatherings who were great trippers. Mitro, who was Chastity when I first met her, turned me onto teepees, turned me onto her too. We were together for a few years, tripping and raising our kids together. I had a high house with Ramon and her and our kids up in Gold Hill, above Boulder.

Then there were Brett and Lee from Minneapolis. Aspen and I planned on meeting them somehow at the gathering in Missouri, We didn’t know how or when or where. We finally arrived there, after flying into St Louis, taking a bus south, and then hitching a ride to the gathering. When the driver stopped to let us out in the gathering’s parking lot, Brett and Lee were standing there, as if waiting to lead us to their camp. Synchronicity!

There were many others high folks from the gatherings too – Spice and Jimbo and Rex and Felipe and Hoot and Motorcycle Michael and all the others, all very high brothers and sisters.

Here in Boulder, Aspen and I had friends too, until our boys came into our lives. Most of our friends dropped off then, when they realized we had become boring, in their eyes anyway. And most of them didn’t really like kids anyway, except maybe for an hour or so. And, for our part, we were always exhausted from having to put so much of our energy into our boys

We didn’t make friends with other parents either. Not many of the couples with young kids that we have met have a 31 years age difference between them, as Aspen and I do. Aspen was friends with some of the mothers for a while, but most of the men just couldn’t relate to me. I was as old or older than all of their fathers.
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In my life now, I want grownup friends, friends of the same high quality as those of my past. I want friends who are interested in what I am interested in and doing now – which is primarily writing, doing kitchen table holy work, and being a holy medicine man. Besides having been a father for most of my adult life – for the last 50 or so years – I have spent the rest of my time either writing or healing or tripping. And I have found that this is what I like to do and do well.

I want friends who have created their own unique life, who value being conscious and loving, and who are daring and wild and live outside the law (so they must be honest, hey Dylan?) I want friends with whom I can really share my interests and hear theirs. And, when we stare, I want to be with them in person, either outdoors somewhere or else sitting together over coffee or tea and maybe a pipe and talking about what’s really going on with ourselves.
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Aspen and I were driving by all the big houses on the Hill here in Boulder earlier today. She said she’d like to live with other folks in one of the big houses. I told her that I didn’t like the neighborhood. I see rich people as greedy and selfish and too uptight – not folks I’d want to live near. But I told her I did like her idea.

I’ve been reading about the Indians of the southwest lately, and they all have large extended families. They honor the family. It’s the center of their life and their most important social world. Most white folks don’t. People move away from family for work. Children don’t stay and live near their parents. The white folks’ nuclear family is exploding.

I’ve lived in communities. I lived in the Grant Street house in Berkeley for several years. Only four of us paid rent, but there were a lot more folks there every day, going home only to sleep. It was a very high, a very fun house.

I lived briefly in the community in Deadwood, Oregon. In fact, I helped start it. I’ve lived with the Rainbow Family too, although there has never been a place for the family to live. I have had to just follow them around, going to thanksgiving and spring councils and some of the regional gatherings too.

I’ve also visited other communes or families. There was Stoneybrook in Missouri, Gaskin’s Farm in southern Tennessee and another, unnamed one in Nashville. There’s also my friend Wayne’s White Buffalo Farm in Paonia, out on the West Slope.

They’ve all been interesting, but I’ve come to see that I’m more interested in a looser family, one that comes together naturally and evolves without rules or any hierarchy. I not at all interested in any sort of formal community.

I haven’t lived with others in years. But I agree with Aspen. I would like to live with others again. I want a large family too, one bound by love and common interest. Actually, I want a family made up of all of my friends.