Memoirs 5
Peter had earlier rented a two-story house for $60 a month. Actually, he was living then in two places. One was with Colin, David and Bob, which he thought of as "The Party House." The other place was a boarding house more up for study of mathematics. This was the turret in a wooden castle across from Ross Island.
Anyway, a guy showed up -- The Party House was sometimes called "The Zoo" -- and brought along what he called both "pot" and "grass." It took at least three months for Peter to realize that this was marijuana. (The owner at the other place kept carrying on about "marihuana" -- how, in Anslinger's terms, "If you smoke a joint, you're likely to kill your brother!")
Peter smoked marijuana for about three months . . . before it became magical -- when he had a marvelous sense of simply being across an ice cream counter from two girls. Since then, marijuana, he's said, "has always enriched my mind."
At that earlier time, Peter used pot only occasionally -- when it showed up about once a month. Later, he went to New York City where he had heard there were people who smoked it every day. He thought this "horrible." Within three or four days after arrival there, he revised this idea.
At that time, he visited a friend from Reed -- thrown out because of the charge that he had been using peyote. At Reed, they were sensitive about being a "liberal" school. Student use of psychedelics had occasioned quite a fight among faculty.
Vito was the first victim. He did, however, have some fine pot when Peter saw him on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and also turned Peter onto the first DMT he ever smoked.
That was a revelation. When Peter met Kelly -- a chemistry student at Columbia University -- he was a willing accomplice once Kelly suggested making this product. Peter was soon over at Fischer Pharmaceuticals with a list of half a dozen chemicals needed in the process.
Peter didn't have any idea how he would respond if asked why he was buying them. In six or seven trips over there, this matter never came up. Later, Peter got nervous about repeating the request.
The transformation process was beautiful -- two clear liquids combining, giving off yellow and then orange smoke, then golden crystals percipitating, then the batch turning white, then gunky, almost like clay -- eventually yielding translucent oil, which appeared greenish-blue viewed directly above, but with orange and yellow glints seen from the side. Each batch of chemicals cost about $70, yielding several thousand hits distributed upon parsley. One toke nailer!
The initial run-through took an entire day, and because Peter and Kelley had been amidst acrid fumes, they decided to put off the "taste test" until morning. But shortly after Peter left, another Columbia student came over to visit Kelley. They couldn't resist trying the stuff.
The report from Kelley that night to Peter was, "We smoked the parsley, and my arms and legs fell off -- and then the Garden of God opened up."
