Right after Thanksgiving, the news was all about the shooting of Harvey Milk, a gay San Francisco supervisor. He was killed by some dweeb named Dan White, a severely disturbed colleague. Marty had never heard of Milk before he died, but the news was full of his back story. Watching clips of him speaking, Marty got an impression of him as one of the few politicians who actually talked and acted like a real person. White’s defense consisted in part that he was “mentally exhausted,” and suffered chemical imbalances from eating too much junk food; chiefly Twinkies. (Earl’s tales of alien experiments suddenly leapt to mind.) It was just another casualty of the crusade to reduce human ignorance. There were times when real life was too ludicrous for cartoons, and all Marty could do was cry.
The weeks leading up to Christmas saw a change in Aquarium Beautiful. It was always the busiest time of year, when Pat’s daughter Patty showed up to help. She was a very high-strung woman who dressed like a cowgirl and consumed even more cocaine than her brother. Marge whispered to Marty a rumor that she got it from her policeman boyfriend who worked on the narc squad. She tied her hair in a ponytail so tight that stretched back the skin of her face, in a vain effort to smooth out her wrinkles. The effect just gave her squinty eyes, and made it so she couldn’t close her mouth all the way, which only made her appear more ghoulish. Her face was puttied up, as if her makeup had been applied with a trowel, which inspired Marty to reflect on the irony that too much beauty products can lead to extreme ugliness. He decided there ought to be a Surgeon General’s label on each package of makeup saying, “Warning! Overuse of this product may have the opposite effect intended.” Patty wasn’t friendly to anyone, which made her even more unattractive. She could sense Marty’s derision and hated him for it, barking at him as if he was still 15 and a bucket monkey. He wasn’t the only one who disliked her. She pissed off several customers before Bob finally confronted her and called her a bitch. That touched off a wall-to-wall sibling skirmish – with extreme prejudice – that lasted all the way through the holidays.
Meanwhile, the art room at school was becoming a lively gaggle of groupies. The would-be artists fancied themselves as a colony of avant-garde colorists – a rendering of Vincent’s vision for the little yellow cottage in Arles. Chas was in the same class as Marty, and convinced Mr. Biagini that they needed a boom box to boost their creativity, and so there was always good music playing during their period. Random students used to wander in from the halls, just to see for themselves a classroom where kids were actually having fun. “Mr. B” wouldn’t tolerate rock & roll, so they played a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, David Bromberg, and Doc Watson, which confused the hell out of people who weren’t members of the guild. On Mr. B’s birthday, they all pitched in and got him a Sony Walkman so he could listen to his classical tapes while the students enjoyed music composed by living artists. He sat behind his desk with raised eyebrows in his own little world, smiling and tapping his pencil in time. He was probably thinking, “Holy smokes, they’re actually paying me to sit here and listen to symphonies, while doodling and babysitting a bunch of hippie kids. This is so cool!” The students could basically do whatever they wanted in his class, as long as they were producing art. If Mr. B caught anyone not creating anything, he would send them to the library to do a report on a dead artist, which was very effective motivation indeed! The “artists’ colony” was cranking out drawings and paintings all the time. Marty crammed more creativity into 50 minutes than most people experience in a year. He fooled around with some animation backgrounds using acrylic paint, which offered greater control. Chas was collaborating on several cartoon projects with him, with a goal of reviving the Sir Francis Duck. His style was influenced heavily by Doonsbury, and he considered Zonker his hero. He and Marty found a lot in common about art and music, and became good friends.
The short days of the solstice were depressingly dark and rainy at the ol’ Rusty Bucket Ranch, and the kids actually looked forward to Christmas at Good Ol’ Dad’s tacky apartment. At least it would be warm and dry! Marty drove Susie in his truck, which would be the first time for G.O.D. to see the Apollo. He tried to be nice when he saw it, but you could tell he wasn’t impressed. He favored German cars, and showed them his new convertible Volkswagen Rabbit, which was viewed by Marty’s friends as the type of car a gay man would drive. Trying not to laugh, Marty asked him what happened to his Porsche, but he quickly changed the subject. Julie arrived in her Barracuda all excited, and couldn’t wait to reveal some breaking news. “Dad’s car got stolen,” she whispered at her first opportunity while going up the stairs to his apartment, with the juiciness of gossip flooding her face. “His coin collection, too! He told me some ‘girlfriend’ of his took them, but I think she was a hooker.” That was astonishing news for Marty to hear, just before taking the stage to play the recurring role of the dutiful son spending Christmas with his father! He felt light-headed when they got inside, and couldn’t catch his breath. The place looked strangely different, too. Furniture had been moved around, and his papers were put away so it looked less like a storage space, and more like a bachelor’s pad. His stereo and an assortment of fancy liquor bottles sat upon a new console, and a huge abstract painting dominated the room. It was done in the schlocky style of a watercolor that had been left out in the rain, in the ridiculous method of an artist who was trying so hard to be original that he’d lost his aesthetic sense altogether.
The “swinging bachelor” of the house was wearing tight-fitting white bell-bottoms with blue crisscrossing lines, and a loose, lavender shirt open to his sternum, with a garish print and very wide collar, which was the height of fashion at the time. He looked like George Burns trying to out-dress Elton John. His glasses had tinted lenses, and he resembled exactly what he was – a caricature of an older man trying to appear young and hip – right down to his pointy Italian shoes. His tiny deck overlooking the water had a fancy new table and chairs, a barbecue, and some potted plants… wait a minute, those were pot plants! Squirming on the couch with flabbergasted impatience, Marty waited for a chance to tell someone. While G.O.D. was making himself a Manhattan, he caught Julie’s eye and pointed quickly to the sliding glass doors. Her eyes widened in recognition and delight, and she blurted out, “Dad! Are those marijuana plants?” The dashing playboy dropped his ice cubes. Marty was still recovering his senses, and couldn’t believe it himself. He felt a growing outrage, as if all his father’s posturing over the years as the strict drill sergeant parent was a sham, and he had no right to be smoking weed – much less growing it!
“Well… yes, um…” G.O.D. fumbled and faltered, down on his hands and knees feeling for the ice cubes on his white carpet, which gave him time to compose a cover story. Then he stood up, trying to act casual and failing. “They’re just for decoration. I don’t smoke them.”
“But they’re illegal! You could get busted for that,” Marty actually scolded him, with a little too much experience in his tone, and G.O.D. looked at his one and only son oddly, as if seeing his true life for the first time. Then his face clouded with disapproval, and he nodded brusquely to himself in selfish satisfaction that his preconceptions had been right, as usual. He quickly recovered his omnipotence.
“You guys have probably smoked reefer, living out in that ‘hippie shack’ your mother bought,” he rebutted sanctimoniously, reverting to his first line of defense against any attack, which was to criticize Marge. In the back of Marty’s mind, where the ticker tape of satire perpetually streamed, he wondered: ‘reefer’? Is this guy still stuck in the Forties, or what?
“Can we smoke some of your plants?” Julie asked impossibly, just to irritate him. Susie watched in open-mouthed fascination, forgetting her lifelong fear of G.O.D. for the moment; stunned by the revelation that her square dad grew pot!
“No! Of course not!” He admonished too quickly, “Like I said, I don’t actually smoke it – that’s illegal.” He glared at Marty as if making a point and daring him to object. “I use it as a medicine.”
“Cocaine used to be a medicine, too.” Pop! There went Marty’s mouth again – spontaneously spouting sarcasm that was supposed to be funny, without regard for tact or restraint. He was seriously skating on thin ice at that point, but the freshness of the danger was so exhilarating! He mentally counted down the seconds until the explosion. Instead of screaming, G.O.D. glanced down at his coffee table and his ears started to turn red, and Marty saw the telltale traces of thin, white razor blade lines on the glass top… then his dad surged to his feet and clapped, “Presents!” in an obvious ruse to change the subject. He quickly pulled out several Macy’s bags (he never bothered to wrap gifts anymore), placing them directly on top of the evidence, while his three kids tried to look happy about the scratchy, new sweaters that they would never wear in public.
Driving home with Susie, Marty worked out the full story; embellishing it for dramatic effect. G.O.D. was becoming a swinger, hosting wild parties for hookers in his apartment. One night they slipped him a Mickey and made off with his coin collection. Then they called their pimps, who came and hot-wired his classic ’64 Porsche SC, which they probably drove out of state and sold for parts. The thieves also took all his old Playboy magazines. Meanwhile, he was growing pot on his balcony, dressing like a Hollywood producer, and snorting cocaine on his coffee table. It sounded like a cheesy plot for a low-budget TV movie. The irony was enough to give him a headache, thinking of all the times he was afraid of him, when he was really just a confused bundle of insecurities like the rest of them. He said as much to Susie, but she was silent, chewing on her lip in abject consternation, as if something was her fault and she couldn’t rest until she discovered what it was.
Marty was really growing to dislike cocaine. It was everywhere now. Both his parents used it… even his boss at work, and some friends at school snorted it regularly. Even Mike & Annie were “tooting” it, now that they had some money from her trust fund, or some other source. The kids he knew called it “blow,” which was silly because if anyone were to blow on the stuff instead of snorting it, they would instantly be the most unpopular person in the room. It must have gotten its nickname from the amount of real money one had to ‘blow’ on it to have a counterfeit good time. Coke was expensive stuff, and the rumor was that it got “cut” – or diluted – with any form of white powder that could restore its original weight and volume after the dealer consumed his share. Marty tried it only a couple of times (when he absolutely had to because everyone else was doing it), and it made him feel very uncomfortable. It felt as if he desperately needed to do something, but he didn’t know what. He could see this same wanton anxiety on the faces of other people who sniffed cocaine, as they sweated and ground their teeth in unfocused apprehension. Where pot brought out the best in people, cocaine brought out the worst. Still, it was ubiquitous in their culture. TV and movie stars consumed mass quantities of it, musicians were tooting it backstage, and star athletes were getting busted for performance enhancement. Marty respected the fact that it came from a natural plant, but by the time it got into the nostrils of the folks he knew personally, it was a potent chemical toxin that was contaminated and evil. He remembered these lines from a David Bromberg tune:
“Along came Sally with her nose all tore,
The doctor said she can’t sniff no more,
He said, cocaine’s for horses; it’s not for men.
He said it’s gonna kill me but he won’t say when.
I’m simply wild about my good cocaine.”
Then Mike got the idea that he could be the guy who gets to snort cocaine for free, by purchasing a larger amount and cutting it with a suitable facsimile. He chose baking soda, which he said was good for you, anyway. Besides, it was the only thing Marge had in the kitchen that resembled the stuff. Mike & Annie transformed ingloriously into cocaine fiends, shutting themselves in their shared bedroom and doing lines all night on Marty’s Outlaws mirror. They repeatedly entreated him to join them with increasing urgency, as if somehow he had the power to absolve their sins.