Codgers on the Moon
I was noticing that my bell bottom pants were getting nicely frayed around the cuffs when the telephone rang. It was Randy. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Recording a song about lasers." He said, "Wanna go to the moon?"
I knew what he meant. When Randy got bored it always meant that it was time to go crazy, and nothing in 1969 had been as crazy as going to the moon. I never knew what he might be thinking and I always hoped it would not end up with us in jail again. That had happened twice. Once in New Orleans for disorderly conduct, and once in San Mateo on suspicion of robbery. The police let us go both times because we were just bored kids. Even police knew what that was like. They became policemen because they hated boredom.
Thirty minutes later I heard a honk and looked out to see Randy in a pile of junk. He had bought another car for $75. Randy bought junkers and abandoned them when they stopped working. He didn't register them so he never seemed to get in trouble. It was true that the cars were not worth fixing or paying tickets. Randy always had a system to beat the system.
Today the plan was to drive to Psilocybin Beach, drop some mushrooms, and run around naked, screaming at the top of our lungs. We did that every month or so. I was relieved because I really didn't want to commit more than the day to this adventure. A year earlier Randy had decided he wanted to buy a switchblade, which meant we had to drive one of his junkers to Tijuana, Mexico, almost 1000 miles away. The short version is that the car broke down somewhere around San Diego and we had to hitchhike back in the rain. We were out for five days mostly stuck in Seal Beach, CA and got deathly ill. Also, no switchblade.
But that would not be today's plan. Just the normal day at the beach.
When Randy dropped me back at my house he asked if he could hear the song about lasers so I played the tape as it currently existed. It had no lyrics, just an instrumental so he asked if I had only been thinking about lasers while jerking off. I said, "Yeah." I desperately wanted a laser.
Randy said it was a terrible idea for a song, but he had written a poem about a moon man which would fit nicely with the music. I said, "Moon man is good."