When I first started working out of Geneva, I was sent to Cambodia to sell mutual funds to Americans employed on a dam being built by Morrison-Knudsen of Idaho, and in my spare time I hung around the Bijou Hotel in Phnom Penh, where a covey of American newspapermen had assembled to report on Cambodia’s independence from France. I found the city a new experience, a blend of tedium and challenge. For whole weeks there would be nothing to do except watch the thin-hipped girls in their sampots; at intervals bizarre events would remind you that you were in an oriental city, where the rules were different.
I became good friends with the newspapermen, who were also affected by the tedium and exhilarated by the adventure. We visited Buddhist shrines, walked morning rounds with the saffron-robed monks begging rice, went upland to the brooding temples at Angkor, and picked our way into the dives.
In Phnom Penh two rivers meet, the muddy Mekong and the smaller Tonle-Sap, and near their confluence stood several rows of low grass-covered huts. Coolies and sweepers occupied these quarters, and you could tell which families were making money by the fact that over their grass roofs they had placed squares of corrugated iron, the sign of affluence throughout Southeast Asia.
One evening, when the flies were heavy in the Bijou, a Denver newspaperman about twenty-five said, ‘Let’s go down to the waterfront,’ and all who heard him understood what he meant. About seven of us said, ‘Why not?’ and we hired four rickshaws and set out. I was wedged in with the Denver man, and on the way he told me, ‘I figured it would be silly to be stuck in Phnom Penh and not try it.’ I agreed and so, apparently, did the others.
Our rickshaws pulled up beside the Mekong at a hut with a corrugated roof. In the door stood a very thin Cambodian or Chinese—we couldn’t tell which—nodding to us pleasantly. He ushered us in and asked in French, ‘Have any of you smoked opium before?’ We all said no, and he assured us, ‘It’s no great thing. I will show.’
He had two smoking rooms, each big enough to accommodate six, and we divided into two groups, the Denver man staying with me. The traditional idea of inert bodies stretched out on narrow bunks, which most of us imagined as the opium bit, did not apply. We sat in chairs, and a serving man brought us lighted pipes, which exuded a dense but not copious smoke with a distinctive heavy odor that was not unpleasant.
We inhaled slowly, expecting, I am sure, to be knocked flat by the power of the opium, but nothing much happened, at least not in my room. I was aware that the smoke was more penetrating and lingering than that of ordinary tobacco, but nothing more. My senses did not reel, nor did I see visions, nor did I experience that lethargy which is supposed to be the hallmark of the opium user.
I can speak of these things with a certain authority because all of us made careful observations during the session and compared notes when we returned to the Bijou. We concluded that if opium were the menace writers claimed, its effects were cunningly concealed. As newsmen and people who worked in various parts of the world, we would have felt cheated had we been denied this opportunity to judge the phenomenon at first hand.
For six of the seven that was that. The Denver man wanted to investigate a little more thoroughly, so he discovered the location of a posh establishment in the residential area of the city and invited me to accompany him. I told him, ‘No more opium for me,’ and he said, ‘Who’s urging? Just wait for me while I see how this thing really works.’
So a rickshaw took us to an ornate structure that could have been a whorehouse in 1880 Denver, for it had the same red plush and mirrors, the same kind of relaxed indifference in the waiting salon. The owner, this time definitely Chinese, spoke with us in good English, and my friend explained that he was an American reporter who would like to see the place and then have a pipe or two in one of the good rooms. The proprietor bowed.
This time we did see the reclining couches and the nearly unconscious men drifting on clouds of their own making. They had retreated from reality and from all responsibility. ‘Regulars,’ the Chinese told us. He had a larger establishment, perhaps a dozen rooms, with not a woman in any of them, and I received then the impression which I still hold, that narcotics and sex are not good companions, in spite of recent propaganda to the contrary. We ended in a small, well-decorated room, where the Denver man said, ‘I’m going to smoke till something happens.’
While he was so occupied, I returned to the salon, where I talked with the owner about his business. He told me he received his opium from China … no trouble … the French had approved the trade in their day and now the Cambodians continued. It was his opinion that few Phnom Penh citizens were damaged by the drug. ‘Most of my customers are older men who have finished with their work and their women. For them, life is over. If they depart relaxed … it makes it just a little better.’
After an hour of such discussion, broken by the arrival and departure of obviously well-to-do men in their fifties, we were interrupted by a servant. He whispered something to the host, who broke into laughter. ‘Your friend is vomiting,’ he said, and a little while later the Denver newspaperman returned to the salon, very pale and much embarrassed. ‘Opium will never sweep the world,’ he said.
Two weeks later, however, he insisted that we visit another establishment to sniff heroin, and I remember that from this we did derive a sensation of power, and of fear. Two of the time-killing Americans even tried injecting small amounts of heroin into their arms, and they reported a definite bang. ‘Frightening,’ the Denver man said. ‘I’d never meddle with any of that stuff a second time.’ Later that year, when I was doing some work in Tokyo, I roomed with him for three weeks. He was engaged in a tempestuous love affair with a Ginza night-club dancer named Hiroko-san; they had known each other for about three years, and during his absence in Phnom Penh she had started taking injections of helipon, a heroin derivative much used in Japan.
I remember that each Thursday, why that day, I never understood, she would get high on helipon—two ampules shot into her left arm—and then storm into our room, even if I was in bed, and pull all his dress shirts into the middle of the floor and jump on them with her high-heeled shoes, after which she would pour hair tonic over the pile, cursing him in Japanese and English as she did so. When he returned after work he would find her curled up on the ruined shirts, sobbing in remorse. There would be a passionate reconciliation, which always ended with her emptying her purse of helipon ampules and crushing them with her shoe … right in the middle of his dress shirts. ‘I never take helipon again!’ she would promise, but next Thursday she would be back with an armful.
I followed her antics with a kind of detached amusement until the Thursday she dragged out my shirts, too, and crushed her ampules into them. I announced, ‘Hirokosan has got to go,’ but the Denver man said, ‘More better you go. I think I can straighten her out.’ Since I had only a limited number of dress shirts, I decided to scram.
The point I’m trying to make is this. If I were a young man working in the Orient and intending to do so for some years, I would want to know the basic facts about opium and its derivatives. I had spent time with about two dozen American newsmen specializing in East Asia for our journals, and most of them at one time or other, when stranded in places like Bangkok or Saigon, had experimented with opium, but only the Denver man had ever gone back for a second try. Not one of my friends had become even remotely addicted. They had more sense than to punish themselves voluntarily with such a hateful burden.
On balance, I think I would have missed a significant part of that mysterious procession of the Orient—Buddhism, the great temples, the bamboo trees at dusk, the gongs, the warlords, the buzzing new machinery—if I had not taken a cursory look at opium too. Use it? I could not imagine myself doing so even if I lived in Phnom Penh for a hundred years. And actually puncture my arm to inject a foreign substance into my bloodstream? Impossible. I even use alcohol sparingly, because I feel no desire to enhance my capacity for sensation; I already experience things too deeply. Also, I have alway
s had a special loathing for anything that might contaminate my blood, for I have seen too many friends die of leukemia or blood poisoning not to respect my blood, whose delicate balances had better not be disturbed. It has always perplexed me that our young people, who have been so judicious in opposing the pollution of rivers, should be so indifferent to the contamination of their own bloodstreams, which I would suppose to be of at least equal importance to them.
So, because I had circumspectly investigated the drug culture of the Orient, I found it impossible to condemn with an old man’s moralizing those of the younger generation who were investigating theirs. But never did I feel inclined to tell them, ‘I experimented, with no ill effects. Go ahead.’ Because the game they play is much rougher than mine had been.
When I tried opium and heroin in Phnom Penh, there was no likelihood that I would continue living in that city, or in any other where drugs would always be easily available if I happened to develop a craving. Nor would I have friends who were pestering me to continue with the habit if I wanted to retain my membership in their group.
But the young people today do live in such a society. The drugs are available. Their friends do proselytize. Their problem is thus more acute than mine had been, and when the unknown factor of LSD is added, more dangerous. I therefore tried to avoid dogmatism, which explains why, when Monica asked my opinion on LSD, I had replied. ‘I can’t understand …’
But that was before I had witnessed its effect on Gretchen. Even now I cannot erase from my memory that small room, with her writhing on the bed and crawling across the floor. That experience convinced me that sensible people ought to stay clear of the drug, and now I had no hesitancy in warning Monica of its dangers. She laughed at my fears. ‘My trips have been stunning,’ she said.
Since the young people were inviting my comment on their behavior, I had to crystallize my thinking on the matter. What did I believe about drugs? My reactions were divided into three categories: heroin, LSD, marijuana. To understand my total rejection of the first, we must go back to Tokyo, where pretty Hiroko-san continued to put on her helipon act. It continued to be amusing until that Thursday when the Denver man shouted in the hall, ‘Fairbanks, for God’s sake, help me!’ I ran to his room, where Hiroko-san, loaded with the drug, had piled his shirts in the middle of the floor, doused them with hair oil, danced the broken ampules into them, then thrown herself upon the heap and with a razor severed her throat. To me, heroin would always be the sight of Hiroko-san’s blood on the white shirts.
Looking back upon a fair number of cases, I never met anyone who took heroin for any extended period whose life was not ruined. There may be people who have broken the habit and returned to productive lives, but I didn’t know them. The penalty heroin exacted was so devastating that anyone who carelessly stumbled into its use was condemning himself to misery; those who knowingly entrapped others ought to be jailed. I would rather lose my left arm than risk the terrors of heroin, and when the young people asked me, I said so.
When LSD first appeared on the medical horizon, I heard hopes that it was to be the cure for certain specific types of mental derangement, but this did not eventuate, and its widespread abuse by young people, with devastating effect on many of them, convinced me that it should be left strictly alone. Monica and Cato might seem to be able to handle it with what appeared to be minimal effects, but it could have destroyed Gretchen. I myself would not touch LSD, principally because I would be afraid of its impact on my nervous system, but also because my mind was already so expanded with ideas and music and the joy of nature that if it were further expanded by LSD, it would probably burst.
Marijuana raised problems which were especially difficult, because we had so few hard facts about the drug, even though it had been used for more than two thousand years. I had now watched at close hand many marijuana users, and the effects did not seem destructive, but two nagging questions persisted: Did marijuana escalate to more dangerous drugs? Did it induce a general lassitude which destroyed will? Medical testimony appeared strong that cannabis was not of itself addictive, and I had found no user who admitted that he had picked up a craving that could be satiated only by stronger drugs. But it was obvious to me that the social milieu in which it was smoked did encourage further experimentation. Monica smoked grass in Vwarda, preached the doctrine in Torremolinos, and actively looked for LSD in Albufeira, principally because she was in an ambiente which enhanced her mood. What I am trying to say is: Marijuana itself might not lead to LSD, but the gang with whom one smoked it, might.
As to the question of lassitude, I was something of an expert. I had worked in seven countries where the use of marijuana was so common as to be almost a national habit, and I was disgusted by the society these countries had produced. Where were the libraries, the child-care centers, the elementary education, the highways, the committees on social justice? I saw only lethargy, both in individuals and in the society as a whole, and I concluded that marijuana was antithetical to the good life. It did destroy will.
I was not much impressed with the argument that marijuana was to the young what a martini was to the adult, for this was a false analogy masking a discrepancy: the milieu of martini-drinking neither led to heroin nor induced an anti-social lethargy. In other words, the martini drinker could still function constructively, even though he might be damaging himself personally. As for the repeated argument that taking opium did not prevent Thomas De Quincy from writing well, I had never been excited by his results.
The young people had said they were coming into Albufeira for a lunch of caldeirada, so I went to the bar to meet them, and as I waited, Churchill started the gramophone. I wasn’t aware of it at the moment, but he was preparing to show me up for a fool.
Since this bar was not a port of call for Clive and his purple carpetbag, it had none of the new records I had grown to like in Torremolinos, which meant that the things Churchill played were outdated and unfamiliar. I didn’t appreciate them until, as I was listening with one ear, I heard that crisp, hammering sound which pleased me, and I asked, ‘What’s the record?’ and he said, ‘ “Sergeant Pepper,” ’ and I asked, ‘Who’s he?’ and he looked down at me with that weary contempt which only an Oxford man who is pushing LSD in Algarve can muster. ‘It’s the Beatles,’ he said.
At Torremolinos I must surely have heard records by this famous group, but in those days I had not known enough about popular music to identify them. Now I listened with extra care to a sardonic number in which cellos sobbed and violins played nineteenth-century obbligatos while a girl from an English middle-class family ran away at dawn to live with a gentleman from the motor trade. It was devastating.
‘I didn’t know the Beatles would use a cello,’ I said, and he looked at me with a cold expression. ‘My good man, they use anything.’ Then he said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard this either,’ and he turned to a savage number in which a callow young man reflects upon the suicide of a member of the House of Lords … or something like that. His own alternative is to turn on with acid, but this doesn’t accomplish much either, for in the end the world collapses in an atomic explosion. It was a powerful statement, bleak as a desert, and I suspected I would like it when I knew it better.
‘That’s pretty rugged,’ I said.
‘It was big news two years ago,’ he replied contemptuously. ‘In Portugal we get everything late.’ I asked if he was a Portuguese national, and he said, ‘Do you think I’m insane?’
I was pondering an appropriate reply, when I heard one of the most delightful songs I’d come upon in the last dozen years. It began with the tremulous voice of a young boy reciting nonsense images: tangerine trees, marmalade skies, marshmallow pies. Normally I detest such songs, finding them mock-childhood, but this one carried a stamp of authenticity, as if the boy had actually seen these visions.
The song then moved to a more serious level, for the singer meets a girl with kaleidoscope eyes; not only was this conceit a most happy one, for
it reminded me of those dizzy, dainty girls with fluttering eyes who had befuddled me when I was young, but it was accompanied by music that made the image leap with vitality. This boy had truly met such a girl.
The fairy-tale mood was broken by three sharp raps on a drum, whereupon a chorus of voices—the full contingent of Beatles, I supposed—broke into a rapturous cry consisting of the girl’s strange name, repeated several times: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. That’s what her name was, and its effect upon me was mesmerizing, and I said, ‘A century and a half ago John Keats described that kind of phenomenon with words almost as strange.’
‘You like it?’ Churchill asked, with the only show of pleasantness I was to see him display.
‘It summarizes our age,’ I said, for it captured the fine, free-moving form of the young people I had seen in Europe and Asia.
‘It does indeed,’ Churchill said benignly. He asked again if I really liked it, and when I nodded, he said cryptically, ‘Then you must visit the room one day.’ I saw no connection between my liking a popular song and visiting his room, but before I could pursue the matter, the six young people arrived and we ordered our fish stew from across the square.
‘Listen to what your Mr. Fairbanks has chosen as his favorite song,’ Churchill said maliciously. When the strains of ‘Lucy in the Sky’ sounded through the bar my companions broke into raucous laughter, and Gretchen said, ‘I’ll never understand you, Uncle George,’ but Monica said, with an evil little leer, ‘I knew you were a dirty old man!’ When I asked what this meant, the young people teased me but made no attempt to explain. Churchill played the number twice again; apparently my group knew it well, for they chanted the words. I was about to insist upon a clarification when Monica said, ‘I’d love to know the things you do when you’re alone, you filthy old devil,’ and the waiter from across the way appeared with our seven tureens of caldeirada, from which Churchill exacted his usual tax of baby octopus.