They had just come in from Kabul. Walking on dirt roads, riding in the backs of trucks and on horseback. Both were tall and weathered. Long hair, worn clothes. They were high on this stuff or that. Their speech was both wild and sweet. Kabul 1970. They didn’t say much about it. It must have been too strange. They were the real thing. I wanted to be like them. They were far beyond what I became a couple of years later, beyond anyone I met later. We stood on a street corner in West Berlin looking for stuff. I tried to act hip. Not a very good act, especially when you ask how long it takes to come back from the big gig. They didn’t mind or notice that I wasn’t hip. One of them just looked down at me with eyes that couldn’t see much closer than the moon and said, “You never come back.” We got some stuff easily enough and went back to my girl friend’s apartment. It was a long, bizarre night that ended with me retching in the alley.
