1969 and Then Some by Robert Wintner

Author:Robert Wintner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yucca Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

A Flea-Bit Painted Monkey

ANARCHY IN CONFINEMENT was the Revolution in a nutshell. Young men hung out in university towns waiting to leave for Canada or Southeast Asia or maybe San Francisco. Meanwhile, we raised hell, goofed and made a scene. Or we gazed inward and beyond, wondering what and when. The dream began to end that year. Jimmy Levin failed college because he never went to class. We got by going to the first day of class, maybe a day or two during the semester and showing up for the final exam to fill a bluebook with nonsense. Jimmy was radical, ahead of the curve. Jimmy didn’t fuck with any of that first day, last day, bluebook bullshit. Jimmy laughed, and then everybody laughed.

The cosmic goof in play was that neither the University nor Selective Service had connected Jimmy’s non-dots. He fell through the cracks. Hardly a year or so later people would describe his life that way, but many thought Jimmy turned into a sunbeam and shined his way out.

Mick Jagger’s plaintive song of Mr. Jimmy seemed obvious to those of us who knew Jimmy Levin. That was many, many people around campus and uptown. Oh, Jimmy was known. Why wouldn’t Mick Jagger know him too? Mick’s moves seemed to imitate Jimmy Levin in every way. Mick Jagger even admitted to standing in line with Mr. Jimmy. We did not take that as coincidence but we also refrained from discussing Mick’s further revelation that he said one word to me, and that was dead.

A pioneer of the one-way ride, Jimmy was dead when they found him, cold but smiling serenely, like he knew, or had known. Jimmy seemed supremely indifferent at the end, when his surly, casual arrogance acquired depth and subtlety into the next phase, his body language softly saying, Yeah? So?

Jimmy overdosed on downers, Tuinals, which were yellow but weren’t called yellows, not like Seconals were called reds. Both were trademark names, for what that was worth, which was millions to the drug companies and maybe had value for us too as a cultural component of what we’d fled. Or in Jimmy’s case, pharmaceutical drugs were something to goof like no tomorrow. Mick Jagger narrated to a T one more time with Mother’s Little Helper, a rock ode to barbiturates and the blessed acceptance they provided to suburbanites everywhere.

Chief among the images of the day was Jimmy Levin’s Mick Jagger, with the slink and swagger, hollow cheeks and puffy lips. Jimmy aped Mick down to the hip hugger bell-bottoms with green and pink stripes and paisley usher ribbons down the legs. After mastering every cut on Let It Bleed that spring, Jimmy deferred to stardom with a new pair of pants he wouldn’t take off, because they were leather, and at sixty dollars were known to be “the last pants you’ll ever need!” And so they were.

Jimmy had zero body fat, just like Mick, though Jimmy stayed skinny by shooting speed, likely far more than Mick ever did, if Mick ever did.

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