Lots of times, the best part of life can be when we are not thinking about what we are doing too hard. And that, of course, is why intellectuals are often quite unhappy. Living in the moment is not a cerebral experience, but physical and emotional.
It's pretty much just "going for it." Were I to write a completely candid account of my life, without worrying who might be offended or shocked, I could probably document 100 moments when I simply "went for it." Much of my career as an investigative journalist, for example, was based on a kind of reckless impulse that still defines me today.
One example stands out. After my best friend, Howard Kohn, and I, wrote the first part of our three-part series of stories about Patty Hearst and the SLA in 1975, we found ourselves at the center of media hysteria. The series of negative proofs at the top of this post date from a celebration we had in Jann Wenner's office at 625 Third Street in San Francisco on the first or second night of mass media coverage of our initial scoop.
(Hint: If you click on this or any photo on my site, you will get an enlarged version; and then, if you wish, you can select "zoom" under "view" on the pull-down menu on your preview function's header, and make it larger, larger, and fuzzier, fuzzier. Some previews let you keep going to an absurd point, where you have a pixilated version that is the computer age's best impression of abstract expressionism. This is the kind of thing only an acid-head would have done in the '60s (trust me) but we all can experience virtual psychedelic trips these days, without the danger that we will try to fly out of an upper story window...)
I fear I've lost my thread.
Oh yes, the reckless David Weir. So, in the weeks following our big scoop, with constant media attention and harassment from the "left," which decided we had betrayed the politically correct standards of the time, I got my first death threat. Yep, and it was delivered by a small, slender, beautiful, dark-haired girl who was actually part of the crowd who ran with my boss (Jann Wenner)'s lovely wife, Jane.
You couldn't be at Rolling Stone in that era and not have had a crush on Jane, regardless of whether you were a man or a woman. Um, also, you couldn't have been there and, again regardless of gender, not have had Jann have a crush on you.
But I digress. This post is not about the bisexuality that was Rolling Stone in the 70s, but about me, me, me!
Yes, so back to that death threat. The pretty but deadly girl who phoned it in to me was no less than the current girlfriend of one of the SLA "soldiers" then imprisoned for assassinating Oakland School Superintendent, Marcus Foster. (The motive for this murder of the first black superintendent in Oakland history was such a twisted mess that no one of rational mind could possibly explain why these SLA idiots knocked this decent man off.)
By the time, this little girl's threat to me came in, I was some four and a half years out from my near-death experience in India, where typhoid fever/salmonella did their level best to remove me from the ranks of the living. But they failed, and thus was born a new David Weir -- the reckless one who has caused so much trouble in his 36 (and counting) years since.
You see, all of this -- being alive -- is a bonus to me, sort of like sudden-death overtime in a sports contest. God, India, germs, and I all know I cheated death big-time on February 10, 1971. And to be completely honest with you, dear reader, the reason I didn't give in to death was simple -- I wanted to move to California and have more sex than I had had up to that point in time.
Hopefully, this is not shocking or disappointing news to anyone because it is the gospel truth.
And, I must say, all these years later, I have accomplished my goals, way beyond what I could have imagined on what was supposed to be my deathbed.
I am a Yogi. I can slow down my heart rate. That is why I have lived as long as I have.
Anyway, back to the story. Besides the death threat, Howard and I were getting all sorts of interesting phone calls. (Note to younger readers: this was 20 years before email. So the main communication systems we used were the U.S mail (first-class stamps for letters were -- what?-- about 8 cents; and telephone calls were similarly affordable, even in an era where our salaries as "associate editors" at RS were $16,000.)
The worst call was a conference call from Bill Kunstler and Lenny Weinglass, leftist attorneys and heroes of mine, who told us we would "never publish again" if we went ahead with publishing our stories. The death threat followed soon after.
Then, a much more intriguing call came -- from people who revealed they were those who had eluded the police and the FBI when Patty and her three closest companions (Bill and Emily Harris and Wendy Yoshimira) were captured. Without divulging details that still must be kept confidential. Howard, Jann and I knew these guys were the people they claimed to be.
But, their call dictated the terms of how we would get the information they wanted to push to us. It was to be found in an envelope taped under the pay-telephone on a corner under the Central Freeway in downtown San Francisco.
We all looked at one another in Jann's office and agreed I would be the one to fetch this potentially valuable package. Jann's secretary drove me in a van to the appointed place, and I then walked across the street in the open to retrieve the package. Anyone from any number of hidden vantages could have easily blown me away, and these guys had all the weaponry to do so.
I remember being vaguely surprised at the lack of any gunfire when I reached the booth and located the manila envelope. The hard part, for me, was walking back to the van.
After all, the sharpshooters, if they were there, would have logically held their fire until they determined that I was the guy who they wanted to kill. Their package in my hand, I was totally exposed.
That walk across Fifth Street to the van and Jann's secretary was one of the longest of my still-then-tender life. No shots rang out, no bullets ripped into my flesh. We high-tailed it out of there, and back to Third Street. Sadly, the "communication" turned out to be worthless rhetorical bullshit; and I don't remember whether Howard and I even used it in Part Two of our series that October.
But, in a strange way, after India, I knew I wouldn't die that day in that way. That's why I was willing to be the one to go and expose myself as a possible target to people who had already proved, on multiple occasions, that they were willing to kill people.
All of them, in fact, were misguided cowards, the petit bourgeoisie "driven to frenzy," as V.I.Lenin had predicted 60 years earlier. I was such a well-read Marxist/Leninist/MaoTseTung politico at that point in my life that I didn't even realize what a fool I was, wrapped in an ideology combined with a near-death experience that combined to convince me I was indestructible.
In fact, I was only another young man -- slender, with long black hair, blue eyes, and (I now can see) quite nice-looking.
Reckless, in those years, meant ignoring death threats. Later on, it would be much more about women, wine, whiskey and writing. But that, alas, is another story altogether...
-30-
* "Must be a different you,
To be a me with you...
Of course I'll be all right.
I just had a bad night.
I had a bad night." -- Nada Surf
*
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