It was summer 1969. Scott, Mary and I dropped mescaline and headed for the Cinerama on Colorado Blvd to see 2001: a Space Odyssey. In true traditional fashion, Scott had fasted for 24 hours before ingesting the drug. Remember the Cinerama? The curved screen that reached nearly to the floor of the coliseum-like auditorium? The plush, reserved seating? The smokers' pavillions off to either side (a more civilized time)?

We settled into our seats in a row maybe half way down the theater and toward the middle of the row. Nice, light buzz of anticipatory conversation in the mostly full theater. The friendly voice of authority "There will be no smoking...of anything...in the auditorium" brought a ripple of giggles. The lights went down and the film began. The ape wields the bone tool. The space ship docks to the space station to strains of The Blue Danube. The monolith on the moon. The astronauts aboard Discovery 1. The ominous final scene of the first half with HAL reading the lips of the astronauts plotting it's/his neutralization.

Well, come intermission, the three of us were pleased with the movie but none of us had come on to the mescaline. We went outside the theater and lay down on the cement benches that sat in a semi-circle around the entrance and looked up at the stars and talked. When the lights blinked to call us back from intermission we sat up to go in and all three of us were completely stoned. I mean, Bam!, at the same moment, it seemed, we were all three utterly wasted. Mary and I made our slow, very deliberate way back to our seats while Scott went to the toilet. The two of us sat down suffused with that slightly anxious anticipation common to the onset of mind altering substances and we sat and we sat but no Scott.

The lights went down and no Scott. Finally, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him inching his way down the aisle looking for us. When he passed our row, I said "Scotty!" in a loud whisper but he didn't hear me. He kept moving on down the aisle. When he reached the first row, which was empty of people, he started sidling slowly along between it and the screen. Just as he reached the middle of the row, KAPOW! the screen lit up! The light, no more than three feet from his face, stood him straight up. He threw his arms out like Christ crucified, stood absolutely still for three seconds with his bulk silhouetted against the screen, then he toppled backwards into an empty seat.

After he'd stared at the screen for maybe three minutes, Mary and I watched his head slowly sink out of sight. A few minutes later, after crawling along the floor of the front row to the aisle, he stood and came slowly stepping back up the aisle, again looking for us. When he got near our row, I half stood and said "Scotty!" out loud. He heard me that time and squeezed past knees then lowered himself into his seat. I looked at him and he said "Man, that was heavy."