were transformed from the two who had gondola'ed up just hours earlier. Lilting and swooping across the gondola's middle tower, we looked at the lights of Vancouver before the 1980s had its way with the city - an innocent, vulnerable, spun-glass kingdom. We tried to spot our houses, which twinkled across the Capilano River inside our sober, sterile mountain suburb.
I felt faraway as I then looked underneath the gondola at the white angel-food snowpack and the black granite that poked out from within it. I had the sensation that I was from some other world and had fallen onto Earth like a meteorite. Instead of being an earthling I had crash-landed here Ka-thunkkk! - and my life on Earth was an accident. First-time gondola riders and fraidy-cats tittered and screamed as our gondola swooned downward. I looked at Karen, with her head resting atop her ski poles. She had the extra pulse of beauty people have when they know they're being fondly admired.
The gondola moored at the base; we clomped to my Datsun B-210, where we removed the plastic anchors of our ski boots and luxuriated in the freedom of recently unfurled toes. We hopped into the car and drove to a party we had been warned might be a house-wrecker - up to a winding suburban street on the mountain of West Vancouver. It was a party where a now forgotten teen of questionable popularity had been left minding the house while parents gambled away in Las Vegas. And indeed the party was a grand house-wrecker - larger than any of us had seen to date. We arrived around 10:00 P.M., and the Datsun was one of dozens of cars parked up and down Eyremont Drive. Teenagers leaped out of cedar hedges and spruce shrubberies like protons, their beer boxes clutched under knobby jean-jacketed arms, bottles inside carrying imprisoned genies offering just one last wish. From all directions came the sound of excited voices and smashing bottles. Silhouettes of teens sparkled atop broken bottles lit by streetlights. Several of us were just arriving from Grouse Mountain. I heard a hiss - my friend, Hamilton - my own personal patron saint of badly folded maps, damp matches, low-grade pornography, bad perms, tetracycline, and borrowed cigarettes. He beckoned me from inside a hedge of laurels just ahead of the parked car, hissing, "Richard, drag your butt in here."
I complied, and inside I found a branchy wigwam rife with headache-inducing Mexican pot of the weakest caliber. Roughly ten of Hamilton's drug buddies were toking furiously. In no mood for a headache, I said, "Jesus, Ham - it smells like an egg fart inside a subway car. Come out and meet me and the girls. Where's Linus?" "Down at the party. I'll be out in a minute. Dean,please,passmethoseZig-Zags " Back at the car, Karen, Pam, and Wendy were discussing Karen's new diet. I said, "Karen, you're not still hell-bent on starvation, are you?"
Karen had been obsessed with Hawaii and dieting. "Richard, Beb, I've just got to be a size five by next week or I won't fit into my new Hawaii swimsuit."Pam, wafer-thin, asked, "Are you still taking diet pills? My mom gives them to me all the time. I refuse."
"Pam," Karen replied, "you know I was raised on pills; Mom's a walking pharmacy. But if I take even one speeder, I spazz out and climb the walls with my teeth." She paused to sweep hair from her eyes. "Most drugs, even vitamins, send me to the Moon. But downers are okay. I take them to cool out. Mom gave me my own bottle." To all of us, this sounded glamorous and wanton. Wendy, trying to be cooler than she really felt, said, "That'd be just so loser-ish - you know, OD'ing on vitamins," and her quip was met with polite stares.
Pam broke the silence. She was then trying to break into the world of modeling, and she said, "Oh - I was at a shoot yesterday - do you want to know what models sound like when they talk?" We agreed enthusiastically. "Like this," she said, "like Pebbles Flintstone: 'Koogookoobaabaabaadietpillsgookookoo.' Promise me that if I ever