It’s May 1968. Martin Luther King was killed in April, and in a few weeks, Bobby Kennedy’ll be shot. I’m off to a season of Summer Stock in Reading, PA, where I meet Morrison and Claudie. Morrison’s the lead actor in our theatre company, I’m the season’s Supporting Actor, and Claudie’s the foxy blonde Ingénue. Actors come and go for specific parts, and leave after two weeks. Morrison and I spend off-hours drinking beer, shelling nuts at the Peanut Bar, and swapping life stories. By summer’s end we’re “best buds.” He’s tall, lean, intensely honest, a romantic, and has a brooding, James Taylor kinda’ quality that women find irresistible.

Summer ends, and we’re all back to reality in New York City. For me, it’s a rent controlled sublet in Spanish Harlem, with two old school buddies. We split the $89 a month rent three ways, and dine on $.99 six packs of Rupert beer, bought at the brewery around the corner. 

Morrison and Claudie run into each other at an open call, feel some electricity, and eventually move in together on the Upper West Side. We’re all poor but happy actors. Our world is about to turn upside down and inside out.

Rollin’ into 1969, we dive head first into the counter culture. Morrison, Claudie, and I hang out a lot, listening to Moody Blues, Vanilla Fudge, and The Who’s “Tommy,” smoking pure Moroccan Hash, tripping on Mescaline, and smoking lots of Maui Wowie. Livin’ the high life.

I meet a dancer on a commercial shoot and she and I run off to Cape May for the summer; free spirits, teachin’ and trippin’ on an art commune. Summer ends and it’s back to the city. We’re living in her small studio on Washington Place.

I start film school at Visual Arts, where most of my time is spent making anti-war signs: “Hell no. We won’t go!,” “Give peace a chance,” “Make love not war,” organizing and marching in protests, and getting high on higher education.

The relationship with “Dancer” eventually crashes and burns. She says, “We’re done. Ya’ gotta’ split, man.” I’m gone. After a month of couch bouncing and apartment sitting for friends, I give Morrison a buzz, and he tells me that he and Claudie were married last summer, exchanging vows in a Hippie, tie-dye and bandana wedding, by a lake in New Hampshire. They gave up their place on the Upper West Side for a cheaper one in the East Village. I explain my lack of livin’ space, and he says I can crash with him and Claudie at their pad.

I’m sleeping on a home-made platform couch in their cramped living room. Across from me, on a similar platform, sleeps Mellie. She’s a friend of Claudie, who just left her husband, an editor for the East Village Other. Morrison and Claudie sleep in a tight loft space he built above the tiny kitchen. It’s very claustrophobic and adjustments have to be made by everybody to exist in the confined space. 

Morrison works at La Mama building stage sets and Claudie works as a bored Beautician, cutting Jane Fonda style shags all day. Mellie, a dental assistant, is taking an “emotional time out.” I’m out of work and takin’ classes at film school sporadically; we’re both heartbroken, and really bummed out. 

At night, we all listen to John Lennon records, smoke lots of grass, endlessly discuss the meaning of Carlos Castaneda’s books, whether they’re real or fiction, and the social impact of Easy Rider.

Morrison and Claudie embrace “Scream Therapy,” the “Craze” of the moment, because John and Yoko are doing it. Mellie and I mostly stay stoned and feel awkward during the loud and angry Scream Therapy sessions. Too freakin’ much, man.

Claudie appeals to her building Super for help with our increasingly desperate living situation. They eventually find me a cheap phone booth size studio on St. Marks Place, across from the Electric Circus. Everybody’s cool with that. 

Mellie divorces her husband and shacks up with her dentist boss. Morrison and Claudie eventually split up. She moves to Hollywood to pursue her acting career. Last I hear from her, she’s livin’ with the drummer from Blue Cheer and working as an assistant to Saul Bellow. She works poolside in a bikini at his luxurious home, bangin’ down umbrella drinks, while proofin’ his books.

Morrison’s still coopin’ at the pad on East 9^th Street, workin’ as a carpenter, dealin’ Nickel Bags on the side. It’s there, after a hit of STP, that he experiences an intense religious conversion and becomes “born again.” He joins Hara Krishna and they send him to Florida. I hear from a mutual friend that he’s detoxed, shaved his head, and taken a vow of celibacy. “Far fuckin’ out, man!” That’s what he used to say when he was stoned.

I had no way of knowing at the time, but that “Summer of Love” in ‘69 marked the beginning of what would become for me, an incredible forty-eight-year “Magical Mystery Tour” on St. Marks Place. I’m still there, it’s still magical, and I just keep on truckin’.