The Lotus Crew Read Free

scratched his crotch and flipped pages of the book he was reading. It was study-hall period, and he’d just administered a healthy bang of Dr. Nova in a deserted balcony above the auditorium. Now he’d be able to sit it out. Study-hall was one of the few periods JJ liked. It allowed him to read what he wanted. First he’d burned down various histories of Hannibal. Baddest warrior the world has ever seen, and dark like JJ. But history couldn’t hold him. Who really knows what happened back then? People can’t agree on what happened five minutes ago right in front of their faces.
    The next phase of his reading career began with that cantankerous and kinky Englishman, the Beast. Crowley! The book was called Diary of a Drug Fiend, a title hard to resist. So, sitting in Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park on the corner of Dumont Avenue and Miller in East New York, JJ exposed himself to genteel blanco bohemianisms. “Prudence, I have some lovely heroin you might enjoy.” Sheee-a-zit, Jim! It boggle the mind. JJ told Furman Whittle about Crowley, and a new regime kicked in. Drug literature. Together they braved dusty bloodless corridors of those bone-dry pavilions of illiteracy: libraries, most of them on college campuses, as if what they were seeking had an air of contraband. This was their discovery after asking a maternal librarian for a copy of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by De Quincey and receiving instead a verbose lecture that she didn’t want mistaken for a verbal reprimand but, given her tact, had all the qualities of one. Evoking such passionate outpourings from so contained a creature further ignited their hungry young appetites.
    Down in the coal room under JJ’s building, where they hung out like the Mighty Mezz cloistered away from all those petty Earthlings up there, they started to build their own book collection. A slumbum Library of the Damned. Crowley, De Quincey, Baudelaire, Cocteau, Coleridge. Getting weary of the antique, they slid into Alexander Trocchi, Leroy Street, Piri Thomas, Malcolm X. They almost gagged on Burroughs but got it down. Burroughs was good to chill out on. Just like Billie Holiday was good to nod out on. A thick stolen Webster’s dictionary cleared up the mysteries of words. Without the slightest effort their reading vocabularies were becoming immense. They could pull up some erudite verbiage and baffle Mr. Fob to the bone.
    JJ was snapped out of his study hall dream-reading session by a sharp, obtrusive voice. A subtle bark, if there is such a thing.
    â€œReading Coleridge, are you, John Jacob?”
    Lazy eyes looked up into the face of none other than Mr. Fob, a stiff disciplinarian and renowned imposer of sophomore English. JJ had recently concluded it was not the material that was dead but the delivery boy.
    â€œYesssa,” JJ let out, perched over a copy Kubla Khan, propping the lids open.
    â€œYou look very tired, John Jacob. Are you getting enough sleep these days?”
    â€œYesssa.”
    â€œWell, see that you’re alert for my class. You are among my brighter students, and I expect your performance to reflect that fact. Say, are you high on something?”
    â€œNoooosssa!”
    Mr. Fob did not look convinced. “John Jacob, if you allow yourself to use narcotics, you will be betraying the natural gifts God gave you. No one on drugs ever amounted to anything. You’re not sheltered. You should know that.”
    â€œYessssa.” Shit, good thing Mr. Fob hadn’t laid his sound on Coleridge, or there’d be no Kubla Khan.
    Mr. Fob sat down, making his bulky form ridiculous by squeezing it into the undersized seat. “Please roll up your sleeves for me, John Jacob,” he barked softly, eyes knowing and smug. He wrinkled his face like a jewel appraiser. “I’ve seen needle marks. If you have none I’ll apologize, but—”
    â€œYesssssa.” JJ, eyes painfully wide open,