The next thing I remember, it was around noon and I was really hungry. LSD didn't give you the munchies--it left you totally drained. The thing was, I hadn't had anything to eat in about 30 hours. I was too woozy to drive and it was a beautiful spring day now that the thunderstorm had thoroughly cleansed the air and scrubbed the streets.
I decided to walk the five blocks to State Street, and have lunch at my favorite restaurant, Ella's Delicatessen. If you went to University of Wisconsin in Madison, you know about Ella's. They had a corned-beef sandwich with russian dressing and coleslaw that was just the prescription when you were strung-out. [Sadly, the State Street Ella's closed a few years back and now you have to drive to their East Washington Street location. The UW campus is just not the same without Ella's!]
As I walked out the door of the frat house, there was Dave--all smiles, sitting on the steps of his apartment reading his Bible. I had the feeling that he had been sitting there all morning waiting for me to stumble out the door. I explained that I didn't have time to talk, but might see him later. When I wandered back a couple of hours later, there was Dave, still sitting on the steps next to my car, reading his Bible. There was just no escaping this guy!
Since there was no way to avoid him, I stopped to talk. And just as I sat down to chat, here came Chris the Hippie with his Bible. I was trapped now!
All they wanted to talk about was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. They were convinced and trying to convince me that rather than getting high on drugs, I could get high on Jesus. They insisted that a "Jesus high" was superior to an LSD high: "And when you are high on Jesus, you don't have a hangover the next day!"
I tried to explain to them that as a Jew, Jesus was not for me. Really, the only difference that I could discern between Christians and Jews was that Christians had a god they called Jesus and we Jews worshiped the only true God. Our God wasn't a human being, neither did our God have a personal name that I remembered ever hearing. As they continued their attempts to persuade me that Jesus was the "son" of this God that Jews didn't name, I countered that it was demeaning to personalize the God of the universe with a first name! You can't just call the creator of the universe "Fred" or something like that! A little respect was in order.
Of course, just yesterday I had momentarily believed that I was somehow god--part of the greater cosmic unity that we called "God." And Dave was happy to remind me of that! Hmm, good point Dave.
So, I changed the subject and argued that this theory they proposed that Jesus died for my sins was nonsense. First of all, as a Jew I didn't think in terms of sin. I could only remember a few of the Ten Commandments:
1. "Thou shalt have no gods before me." It seemed to me as if they were putting this Jesus character on a par with God. Wasn't that a violation of this commandment?
2. "Thou shalt not kill." I hadn't killed anyone and was doing my best to stay out of Vietnam so that I wouldn't have to kill anyone.
3. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Well, I had been trying to disobey this commandment, but had been unsuccessful at finding any girls to cooperate!
And there was something about not stealing or coveting my neighbor's livestock--neither were a problem for me. Wisconsin had more cows than people, so maybe this was significant for Wisconsin natives Chris and Dave!
I think that Chris and Dave began to sense that they were not getting through to me with this line of argument. As we adjourned for the day, I knew they would be waiting for me tomorrow with a new argument. I had no idea that it would be the "California Appeal."
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