But now this new song cast him in a more laid back and thoughtful role, looking perhaps more philosophically at his past exploits and personas. The confrontational intensity of the \u201cSpace Cowboy\u201d had been replaced by a more self-effacing, reflective, live and let live voice… <\/p>\n
I’m a joker
\nI’m a smoker
\nI’m a midnight toker
\nsure don’t want to hurt no one<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I really resonated with that, given where I was at in my own development. This emerging \u201cCoopster\u201d persona I was trying on was a joker of sorts, the Tarot Fool, joyfully walking off the metaphorical cliff into whatever the unformed abyss of the future held. And I was so looking forward to being that \u201cmidnight toker\u201d with my own stash of weed that I could smoke whenever I needed to recenter myself outside the vicissitudes of time. I loved space and its various configurations as interiors and exteriors, but I struggled with the lockstep of time, always trying to drive me forward at its pace rather than my own.<\/p>\n
But back to the tactical. During my eleven weeks in Europe I had kept my money, ID and other valuables in a money belt tucked into my pants, for maximum security, particularly for my passport, traveler\u2019s checks and irreplaceable rail pass. But now that I was home I had only to carry paper money and my driver\u2019s license, so I dug through my drawers and found my old wallet, which I loaded up with my few remaining dollars and slid into my back pocket. I also put in it my ticket to the Alice Cooper concert tonight that my brother had given to me yesterday evening. Downstairs my array of coins from the various European countries were still spread on the table. I picked the favorites of my new collection and filled my front pockets for show and tell at lunch.<\/p>\n
A quick breakfast was Kellogg\u2019s Concentrate with two-percent milk, which for years had been my mom\u2019s goto, always on a diet as she was. I had gotten addicted to the stuff myself, these past few years when I was living at home, and it seemed nostalgic to start my day with it again. It was a unique cereal with tiny wheat germ infused flakes, that looked more like fish food than human cereal. It also could not be prepared like a normal cold cereal where you simply pour the dry stuff in a bowl and then cover it with milk. If you did that with Concentrate it would turn into a glop of mush. Instead you had to pour the milk in first, just the right amount, then sprinkle the tiny flakes in a fairly thick layer on top of the milk and eat quickly, while the itty bitty flakes maintained some sort of crunchy integrity before transitioning to the mush state. When done correctly, it was delicious. <\/p>\n
I heard the car pull up in the driveway and I saw through the window it was my mom returning from grocery shopping. I headed outside to help her bring in groceries. She looked at me and smiled, and it was nice to see her face looking relatively happy and relaxed, rather than so stressed and careworn, as she had often been over the past decade, both prior to and after her divorce from my dad. <\/p>\n
\u201cHey Coolie\u201d, that was one of the several variations on my name that she would call me, particularly when she was in a good mood, \u201cIt\u2019s great to have you home, sweetie.\u201d She said it slow and seriously, not just thrown off brightly. And then with continuing concern, \u201cYou slept a long time, I bet you\u2019re jetlagged. I remember how long it took me to recover from those transatlantic flights!\u201d Then after studying my face for another moment, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about your room and my office, I\u2019m sure we can work something out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we will.\u201d I nodded vigorously, while trying to think of how best to convey that I was not going to let this be a problem between me and her at all. \u201cI\u2019m already thinking about a solution that will work for both of us.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cReally!\u201d she noted, expressing some pleasant surprise, and then adding, \u201cWell\u2026 you were always the \u2018idea guy\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n
And when she said that, it was like her mind reached out and stimulated just that right part of mine so that the obvious solution came to me. I would move down to the basement. <\/p>\n
It was the perfect solution. She needed an office to help her keep her life organized, to pay bills and manage our household. She also needed to keep stuff related to the new projects she was getting into, like local politics and now this job with the Institute of Survey Research. I needed my own space too, and even more so than I had had before up in that bedroom that shared a wall with hers. I had been transformed by my trip, I knew that intuitively though I could not provide any specifics of what that meant at this point. To go back up into that room, particularly now that it had become a guest room slash office, would feel like going back to where I was before. I would be right back in my mom\u2019s world, her issues, her energy, be her \u201cClubius\u201d again, rather than this newly emerging \u201cCoopster\u201d that I was intent on becoming, if not already there.<\/p>\n
So more on that. My parents had retold the story to me over the years of the three nicknames they had given me as a little kid – \u201cZuper\u201d, \u201cClubius\u201d and \u201cCooper\u201d. My official birth certificate given name was Jonathan, a sophisticated sounding three-syllable appellation, but not the kind of name others might want to call a diminutive toddler. The kicker was, though my parents named me Jonathan, my mom did not want people to call me John or Johnny. Her brother\u2019s name was John, and she and her brother had had a difficult relationship since they were little kids. So much so that she didn\u2019t even like the name John, and was loathe to have anyone call me either John or Johnny. So why name me \u201cJonathan\u201d if she didn\u2019t want people to shorten it to John or Johnny? Were the two of them trying to be provocative and cajole the world to see me as a full blown human consciousness and not some mere \u201cchild\u201d? <\/p>\n
Beyond my given name, I did know that both my mom and dad loved giving their kids, and later all the kittens birthed by our female cat, nicknames. \u201cZuper\u201d I was told, was a play on the word \u201csuper\u201d and the first letter of our family last name of Zale. I accepted that and did not pursue the implications further, being a bit intimidated by my parents, and any grownups for that matter. But at some level I got the subtext that they thought highly of me, and I had developed comparable expectations. <\/p>\n
But then there was \u201cClubius\u201d, which was explained to me as being based on \u201cdubious\u201d, what they saw as my personality trait of being philosophical, above the fray, always questioning and undecided about things. They imagined me the reincarnation of some made up noble Roman philosopher, so \u201cdubious\u201d was rejiggered to the classical Roman sounding \u201cClubius\u201d.<\/p>\n
As affectionate pet names for a little kid in the privacy of your own home, yeah okay, but neither of these names were an acceptable moniker to share with others. But their third nickname for me, \u201cCooper\u201d, was a sort of amalgam of the other two, \u201cZuper\u201d, but with the first letter of \u201cClubius\u201d, and more suitable for use by others. In the larger world, it was generally a last name, but was plausible as a first name as well. I was apparently late to start speaking, so at age three when I did start answering for myself what my name was when asked by others, I would answer \u201cCooper\u201d, not \u201cJonathan\u201d. But to my mom and dad, in their separate hearts and their collective imagination, I was still \u201cClubius\u201d, the shy, noble but dubious Roman philosopher reincarnate.<\/p>\n
So now that I had survived two and a half months of traveling on my own in Europe, I was psychically done with being any remnant of my mom\u2019s \u201clittle Clubius\u201d. I loved my mom, and had grown, at times begrudgingly, to also respect her deeply as a fellow human being. I had come back from Europe with the goal of being of assistance to her and not giving her anymore grief. But I was going to do so on my own terms as the \u201cCoopster\u201d, rather than a grown up version of her \u201cClubius\u201d. And I would best do so, and continue with my transformation, from the basement, out of earshot from her bedroom and a good twenty seconds of descending stairs to get from her room to mine. Also in a venue where I might be able to get away with taking a puff or two of weed, once I had the wherewithal to secure some.<\/p>\n
All of that thought process went through my mind in an instant, below the level of the words I used to try to unravel it for you above, triggered by her saying I was the \u201cidea guy\u201d. All Coopstered up I said to her, \u201cI\u2019ve decided I\u2019m going to move down to the basement.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shook her head and shuddered. \u201cMy god Coop, that\u2019s no proper place for a bedroom. It\u2019s cold and a bare concrete slab floor. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s bugs down there too\u201d, and she grimaced theatrically as she said it. \u201cOkay for Midnight\u201d, that was our old male cat who spent most of his time skulking down there when not out prowling the neighborhood, \u201cBut not a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
For an idea that had just then struck me, I was instantly determined, very un-Clubius. I employed the technique on her that she had always used on me when she wanted to shut down discussion, and was confident and determined that she had the answer. I said to her, \u201cWe\u2019ll talk about it later!\u201d<\/p>\n
She nodded, silenced, pondering. Gently hoisted on her own petard.<\/p>\n
I told her I would be headed out soon for a walk and that I would meet her and Mary Jane at Bicycle Jim\u2019s at Noon. She accepted that plan and asked if it was okay if she did some work at the table in \u201cyour room\u201d. Tempted to correct her that it was now \u201cher office\u201d, I thought better of it, and instead told her that was fine, I was going to use the phone in the kitchen to check in with my friends before I headed out. She nodded and we put the groceries away, and then she headed upstairs.<\/p>\n
I called Jerry\u2019s house and his mom, Marcy, answered. She was the youngest and hippest of my friend\u2019s parents, at least five or six years younger than my mother, having even shared a joint once with Jerry and I over at their house. She got really animated when she heard it was me.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my god Cooper, you\u2019re back!\u201d, she said in her singsong voice, \u201cHow was your trip?\u201d <\/p>\n
This was obviously the first of many times I was going to be asked that question, and I was going to have to come up with a nice compact 30 second to a minute answer (the term \u201celevator speech\u201d had not yet been coined). Not having that compact answer yet, I said, \u201cIt was quite an experience, Marcy\u201d, having smoked a joint together we were obviously on a first name basis, \u201cSometime soon when I\u2019m over we\u2019ll have to sit down and I\u2019ll debrief you!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, you better. I\u2019m holding you to that. I don\u2019t want to hear it secondhand from Jerry or Paul!\u201d We had a kind of a thing for each other. I seemed to be connected to her family in several ways, having relationships with three of her offspring actually. Her oldest, Jerry, was essentially my best friend. His one year younger brother Paul, who I had actually met before I met Jerry, was a fellow comrade of mine in our Junior Light Opera youth theater group, Paul mainly a costume designer and occasional actor. Then a year younger than Paul was their sister Janice. I used to hang out with her and her best friend Melinda in the halls of Pioneer High when all three of us were skipping class. Given my thing for female best friends, I was attracted to both Janice and Melinda, and they enjoyed my low key, low maintenance thing for them.<\/p>\n
Anticipating my question, Marcy answered it before I could even ask. \u201cJerry\u2019s hitchhiking home from East Lansing for the big concert tonight, but I don\u2019t know anymore than that\u201d. Then with all the music in her voice, \u201cAlice Cooper. Snakes and guillotines. Oh my god!\u201d She always tried her best to be hip on popular culture. <\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed\u201d, I confirmed with my favorite new word brought back from England, \u201cTalk to you soon Marcy! I may be over there later once we figure out where we are getting together before the concert.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGot it. I\u2019ll tell him when he gets here. I know he\u2019ll be so excited to see you!\u201d emphasizing the \u201cso\u201d with her melodious vocal style, as if she would be excited to see me too.<\/p>\n
When I hung up the phone I felt good, like I was reconnecting with that circle of people that cared about me as much as I was realizing I cared about them.<\/p>\n
Still wanting to try to nail down where and when to meet my friends before the concert, I called Avi\u2019s house. His mom answered and I told her who was calling.<\/p>\n
\u201cCooper dear\u201d, she said in her low gravely voice, precise diction, and Middle Eastern accent, \u201cWelcome back!\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHi Margaret, thanks!\u201d. We were on a first name basis as well, though we had never smoked a joint together. She and Avi\u2019s dad, Sarkis, were bigtime academics, professors in the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Despite her lofty adult persona, she took an interest in all of Avi\u2019s friends, and we had had several conversations over the past couple years. She was interested in everything, particularly politics, and was always keen to hear from me what my mom was up to in that area. She said she did not have time for politics herself, beyond her university politics, so hearing what my mom was up to was a vicarious thing for her. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever said more than a passing \u201chello\u201d to Avi\u2019s dad, it was always Margaret that answered the phone when I called.<\/p>\n
Then after a thoughtful pause and with all her studied diction, \u201cAvi read me all your letters. I am jealous of the scope of your travels, and can\u2019t believe you could live out of a backpack for nearly three months!\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite an experience. And as to my limited set of clothes in that backpack, I won\u2019t even tell you how little they got washed.\u201d She snorted a chuckle, a nice unguarded moment I thought, recomposed herself and then said, \u201cWell I hope I have the opportunity soon to hear more. You have been in my thoughts!\u201d<\/p>\n
Then again before I could enquire, \u201cAvi\u2019s got finals today until about two o\u2019clock. I\u2019ll tell him you called when he gets home.\u201d <\/p>\n
I thanked her and we ended the call. Finally I called Clark\u2019s house and he actually answered.<\/p>\n
\u201cMister Coop is it really you or am I having some sort of audio hallucination?\u201d, and he laughed, his laugh more of a mischievous elven giggle really. He always exuded a kind of zen fatalistic positivity, plus being super smart, and possibly the wittiest of the four of us. \u201cYou ready for the big show tonight? We gave your ticket to your brother. I\u2019ve got snake repellant if you need it!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother gave it to me. Thanks, I\u2019m all set! Looking forward to seeing all of you and Alice!\u201d We chatted a bit more and I gave him a brief overview of the places I had been. He was initially curious if I had smoked any hash, the European stuff had quite a reputation in the States. Lowering my voice again in case my mom might hear me upstairs in my former room, I filled him in on several times smoking while hitchhiking. And then I went into a more detailed narrative about that day in Amsterdam, waking up in the Christian Youth Hostel having a hash pipe stuck between my lips. After getting thoroughly stoned with my three backpacker comrades, taking the Heineken brewery tour and then consuming a shitload of beer. Then even more hash before realizing that I had to make my plane reservation at the BOAC office, and how that whole thing with the officious young woman behind the counter that was almost a disaster.<\/p>\n
Clark loved every bit of it and said to me with all his patented and endearing sincerity, \u201cWe missed you Cooper!\u201d He said it had been a boring fall, him taking not so exciting science classes at UofM, Jerry in school up in East Lansing, and Avi trying to focus on finishing high school. When I asked, he said there was no plan yet for where to meet and how to get to the concert. He said he was willing to drive, but if he did he\u2019d have to go easy on the weed. He said he had a plentiful supply of a supposedly Mexican pedigree that he thought was pretty potent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want you to have to go easy on the weed\u201d, I told him, \u201cI want us all to get appropriately fucked up and celebrate being together again!\u201d Then I came up with an idea (since I was the \u201cidea guy\u201d after all).<\/p>\n
\u201cClark\u201d, I said emphatically, wielding a little of my newfound \u201cCoopster\u201d pluck, \u201cI\u2019ve spent the last eleven weeks walking through at least a dozen European cities, most of them a lot bigger than Ann Arbor. I think we should walk the two miles, or whatever it is, from Avi and Jerry\u2019s house to Crisler. We can get high in Eberwhite woods along the way.\u201d Avi and Jerry\u2019s houses, though around a bend from each other, were just some 200 feet apart and had a line of sight, so we often referred to them as a single place. The entrance to the woods was right at that bend in the street between them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we\u2019ll see\u201d, feigning that the thought of walking was just way beyond the pale, \u201cBut let\u2019s at least plan to meet there to stage our operation and finalize our plan.\u201d We all played complicated military simulation games much of the time we were together, so we liked to throw around the military game-nerd terminology. We agreed that since the concert started at eight, we should get to Crisler by sixish to get in line. That meant we should plan to meet at Avi and Jerry\u2019s by five, maybe get something to eat at the McDonald\u2019s that was just around another corner from Jerry\u2019s house. Finally Clark said he would call Avi with the plan and I should call Jerry.<\/p>\n
I made my follow up call to Marcy with the \u201cplan\u201d, and then headed out to reimmerse myself in the friendly geography of my hometown, looking forward to my scheduled \u201cdebriefing\u201d with my Mom, Mary Jane, and whoever else she may have recruited for lunch at Bicycle Jim\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Click here to read the next chapter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was Wednesday morning December 12, 1973, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. Last night had been my first night home after returning from eleven weeks backpacking through Europe. In one of my drifts in, I looked for my backpack and there it was, loaded up and ready to go like it had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5672"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5687,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672\/revisions\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/images.dailykos.com\/images\/458522\/large\/1139-martin-pl-150x150.jpg?1507506289\")
It was Wednesday morning December 12, 1973, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. Last night had been my first night home after returning from eleven weeks backpacking through Europe. In one of my drifts in, I looked for my backpack and there it was, loaded up and ready to go like it had been every day for the past eleven weeks, right there by where I was sleeping. In this case with my bell-bottom jeans and Heineken t-shirt draped on top of it. In another drift in, I just stared at the white ceiling and experienced a sense of being in the moment, but nowhere in particular and outside any when of time. In yet another I recalled that I had woken up in England yesterday, though the only evidence that suggested that fact was the full backpack, indicating I had likely been at least somewhere other than here. <\/p>\n