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“Modern thought is lacking in food, victim of its own nature.”

“Time is the only factor which cannot be limited.”

“This time-element is reduced in proportion to the concentrated intensity of the task at hand.”

“Crude forms of objective life.”

“Living as comfortably as possible without considering others at all. This is the ideal of the brute, born of the slime of life.”

Scene One

Our story opens on 231 Cappleton Street. Sidney is sitting on his front steps waiting ot go down to the rehearsal roo downtown. Anyways he’s on his front steps and he sees a young attractive woman across the street who seems to be upset about something. Sidney thinks she might have had a fight with her boyfriend. She throws a glass bottle on the groundin frustration. She seems to be mad at another girl who has red hari. She sits across the street directly across from Sidney. Their eyes meet, for a moment. Sidney thinks how pleasant it would be able to make her smile. Why would she have a reason to be sad, he thinks. She’s young and so good looking, she could probably have any intelligent warm guy she wanted.

Sidney’s cousin Tom comes outside to the front steps and says to someone else outside, “Look at those hookers across the street.” Cousin Tom is somewhat loud, and can be obnozious at times.

Sidney thinks how life could be like if he could be around this girl, even if it was only for a moment. It doesn’t matter to him if she’s a working girl. This girl has oomph. Oomph is the quality that excites unusual interest.

Sidney leaves and goes off to his rehearsl space, after the pretty woman leaves from across the street, when his friend with the red hair come back to get her. Sidney thinks he may never see her again. Or able to make her laugh.

Scene Two

Sidney sees the young woman a few more times on Crappleton Street over the next few weeks. It’s a Saturday and a friend comes down to see Sidney, to see if he wants to go to Boston to see a good friend, that Sidney hasn’t seen a while. This friend has had some hard luck, with a self-centered person called Eggs. Anyways, Was, Sidney’s bass playing friend, knows Sidney wants to bring a guitar to Brad, their musician friend in Boston. Sidney knows how Eggs changed the locks on the doors and the phone number. Brad doesn’t have the thing he enjoys most, a guitar.

Sidney loves that guitar but is giving it to Brad because he knows when you give up something you love no matter how hard it is, you always get something better.

Was and Sidney go to Boston and see Brad and give him the guitar. Brad wants to pay Sidney, but Sidney says no. I have another guitar that I can use, besides, you’re a good friend and you respect my music and understand my lyrics.

Sidney and Was leave or go back to Bowell, the town Sidney lives in.

Sidney very rarely takes mind-altering drugs. But today he is waiting for the early evening, so he can take three hits of mescaline and practice some tune, or be more in turn with nature. He knows it will not make him any more enlightened. But if only for a little while, it helps. You would neve guess that he is on anything. He if more creative. It opens up a flow of ideas that he would not normally think of. The drug is rather weak anyways.

He takes it and gets ready to go downtown to his rehearsal room. When he gets outside on the seps, he sees the young woman across the street, alone this time. It’s July, Sidney has shorts on, and thinks, Hey, I’ll show thos street walkers that I’ve got flesh too. He has on his shorts and no underwear. He has not done his wash yet this wek, and he sits on his front steps, like he has done for years, off and on, but a lot of weirdos stop by and chat, he doesn’t mind them as much as the others.

Sidney is in his altered state, and sees Daphne, that’s the young woman’s name, across the street, alone without the redhead. He wants more than anything to ask her why she is so sad. To a hooker, that might seem corny t osay, but what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose.

She walks by his house and looks around the corner. She starts to walk back toward Sidney at a slow pace, and Sidney says to her, “Can I ask you a question?” She says, “What?” “You always look sad. I’ve seen you around here and you always look sad.” Daphne says, “I don’t know, I don’t have anything to smile about. I guess I’m just a sad person.” She sits down on the steps with Sidney while business is slow.

But while she first talks to Sidney leaning on the fence. Daphne says she has to make some money and she wants to get a soda.

Sidney offers her a ten dollar loan. She says that he’ll have to do better than that. Sidney only has twenty dollars, and he knows what she means by “better than that,” but she says it in a soft way as if she doen’t even want to say it. Sidney thinks that she is a pleasant warm person, and has Sidney’s favorite body type. But he can only spare ten dollars. He has to eat too. Besides, he would rather explore a woman’s body than just have oral sex given to him. Daphne thinks that Sidney might just be a nice guy. Could it be? No. She has met too many uncaring selfish people, who have little interest in the real her. Her the poet, her the artist. She sits on the front steps with Sidney. He goes inside to get the ten dollars to give her, so she can buy a Pepsi. A vice squad car drives by, and she says, “Don’t go out right now. My name is Daphne.” But Sidney goes in and gets the ten dollars. He may never see her again. Maybe he can help with a loan. He goes in and comes back out with the ten dollars, in case he gets the chance to give her a loan.

Being the youngest, and most attractive working girl on Crappleton Street, and the only one out that early. She is back on the move, whenever a possible client drives by. She makes a few tricks, and talks to another worker, a black chick names Pat, about scoring some coke. They call a cab a go to Atoms Street to score. Daphne says to Sidney that she’ll be right back. Sidney waits. They talked about splitting an eighty dollar bag. Sidney thinks that it must be expensive to work the streets. But it makes sense with their job – it might help to be on coke. After all, their business is sexual pleasure. It’s no different than the so-called massage parlors they have downtown, where they can give you a rub down or play pool, besides having sex. It’s the same price, $20 for the top, and $40 for the bottom. Only it’s $15 to get in for an hour. And of course extra for the extras. The girls on the street are all clean, or as close as you can get for being on the streets. But it’s mainly oral sex on the streets. Unles they have a room to work out of, the girls on the streets can’t make much money, especialy if there are too many out on the same corner or the same section of Crappleton Street.

Daphne and Pat come back and go into Sidney’s bathroom. Daphne asks Sidney if they can use the downstairs bathroom. Sidney says sure. He knows they are doing coke. Now Sidney knows why Daphne’s eyes are always running, besides being a sad person and being in a suck spot. A suck spot is a lifestyle, environment, or job that you don’t enjoy, but have to do because of your needs at the moment.

Daphne and Pat come back outside and go back to work. Both split up, and Daphne waits on the steps with Sidney on the corner of the building. Sidney goes inside and puts on some pants and a shirt. Daphne talks a bit to Sidney, but doesn’t have much time to chat. It’s getting late now and Daphne goes off again and says to Sidney to stay outside because she’ll be back. Sidney doesn’t know how long it will take before she will be back. He wants but being an impatient person he goes back inside to his third story penthouse. He is really shaken up by not being able to talk to Daphne anymore. He had the guts from taking mescaline, but he did not have the control he would have wanted. He will never take any more mescaline after that night, although he was only a joy popper when he did it. He will never do it again. He doesn’t want Daphne to see him that way. He sometimes smokes pot but he is very active and good pot slows him down a bit, like valium. Daphne doesn’t smoke pot or drink while she works, only coke. Later that night, Sidney goes outside on his penthouse roof to see if Daphne is around. She is with a black dude, who Sidney knew years ago, and who is an unsavory type of person He is probably getting coke for Daphne, or who knows what. Daphne is in with a bad crowd now with Otis.

Sidney goes outside to get a soda at the gas station and talks to Otis for a few minutes before he buys his soda. Daphne comes back and sees Sidney with Otis, and being a good judge of a character like Sidney’s, she thinks that Sidney knows Otis. She knows even now that Otis will only bring her pain, but he can help her in some way, and Sindey may not be as caring as she thought he was. That’s what Sidney thought anyway when they went off. He went and got his soda and watched TV until he finally goes to sleep. How could he help Daphne, he asked himself, a make her laugh more.

Scene Three

The next few weeks Sidney starts to observe the streets and all the prostitutes more, and sits on his steps when any of them are around, when he comes home from practice with his band The Outsiders. They were also known as the Trance Dancers, the Abstractions, with John Chicks on guitar and bass, and the Intones with Dave Duck on drums, one of the most promising drums in the Bowell area. Sidney Hipple normally plays guitar, sometimes bass, and he likes to sing a lot too. He writes most of the songs for the band. He also jammed with a band called Frog Motors at the same time. Dave Duck was on drums, and two young friends of Sid’s play guitar and bass. theyw ere just starting out and Sidney wanted to have them jam with Mr. Duck a few times. Dave worked with Sidney and played bass, and Jimmy played rhythm guitar. Sidney played lead guitar and did some vocals. It was only for jams. Dave could play good drums too. Sidney did vocals when they played as the Intones with John C. Chicks. But John got bored and didn’t show up for rehearsal a few times. Sidney and Dave started The Outsiders. Sidney and Dave tried to join a person named Lance Gargoyle. they even started a band called Lance Gargoyle and the Hip Tones. Lance was the guy who wrote all the songs or basic ideas for the band. John joined in a few times, but lost interest. Lance said he wanted to get into his awareness studiesmore, and didn’t have time to be with the band until he worked some of his studiesand researches in some practical use in his daily life.

Now Dave Betaduck and Sidney Hipple have started The Outsiders with Dave on drums and Sidney on guitar and vocals. Now you know where Sidney Hipple stands musically. Lance Gargoyle is giving Sidney Hipple some of his songs to get a band together. Maybe later he can play synthesizer again and vocals. But back to Sidney and his new friend Daphne Lamore.

Sidney sees Daphne one day again when he is walking down Crappleton Street going to his rehearsal room. He sees Daphne sitting on some steps down the street. He still doesn’t know her that well, but he stops and chats with her. He treats her as any other new friend he would meet. He enjoys being around women very much, and this woman has character and depth and cutlrue, even if she doesn’t know it. She asks for a cancer stick, and he gives her one. She says she is going to be working in a hotel in Boston. Sidney said in a chummy like way, “Are you going downtown to work in a massage parlor?” She said, no, it was a hotel in Boston and she would be taking the job next week. Sidney thought, “Well, I might as well make the best of it while she’s still here in Bowell. He did not know much about her except that she was a good person and she showed an honest interest in Sidney. He went to his space and got his guitar to paly at home. He got back to his house to possibly see Daphne again on the front step.

Sooner or later, he got to meet all the girls that sometimes work on Crappleton Street. Sue, Daphne, and Kelly lived in Nolawsense and came down to Bowell sometimes or went to Boston to the House of Pizza. Kelly was the woman that Sid first saw Daphne with. He also found out that Daphnes was giving money to Kelly because she was a junkie and could not work until she got a fix. So Daphne had to go out and hustle and make some money, to help get Kelly going sometimes. She never refused to give Kelly money and sometimes Sue too. She never wanted to become a streetwalker. But she tried to help some people and got sucked into a suck place.

Sue, who was from Nolawsense too, had a boyfriend named Mr. Big.He was trying to get Sue off heroin too! But just being needed felt good. He was lonely, about fifty years old, smoked a cigar, and was a straight cat. He and Sidney became friends from sitting on the front step some nights. Sue had the most experience, or maybe you could say the right attitude. She had a bad heart and wanted to get off heroin, but she needed $150 to go into the hospital to get cured. She has about a $200 a day habit. She had to work. If she didn’t she would get very sick. Sindey never saw her real sick, but had seen junkies around Bowell years agao. It was not a pleasant experience. But Sue wanted to get well.

The next girl was called Bobbie Joe. She was a good scout and could spot the vice squad easily. She was a local girl and also a junkie. She and Sue used Sidney’s bathroom sometimes, but it was on the first floor only.

BJ was the first hooker that Sidney met in Bowell, months before when she asked about a room in his building. She tried but didn’t get in. But Sidney thought she was very hyper and probably a speed freak, but she turned out to be a junkie, as he found out later. She had gone to get cured before she came back on the street. She started booting rightaway. I guess she saw how Daphne and Sue had built up Sidney’s corner to a good place to score. Sid did not feel BJ was the type of person he could help or put up with for very long. Daphne was different. She was always different to Sid. He knew he could be with her through anything, even if she was a heavy addict. If only he could be around her more before she went to work in the hotel in Boston. Sidney foundhe had a great fondness for Daphne. He knew he might never see her again. He cherished every moment he was with her. He did not know how she felt about him, but she just wanted to be her friend. She cared about people’s feelings. She was honest with Sidney and had a good nature. From conversation on the steps, Sidney found out more about Daphne from overhearing the girls talking. She was married. The last time she saw her husband was in jail and he didn’t recognize her. She had a son who was living with some honest woman. He was about five years old, and she wished that she was out of the business and could be with her son. It made her very sad at what she was doing to herself. She needed a friend who was not involved with coke or heroin or having sex with just anyone.

Sidney was very choosy with girls he will have sex with. He thinks that love-making should be trying to please each other. He would have intercourse with women who wereinterest in him, not just as an unusual song writer and musician, or because he had a good nature, and was huours and had a stead job and an interest in awarenss – but as a person who had average people who were his friends around himat times and knew lots of diverse people from all walks of life. He would always try to relate some kindness, if he thought they needed it. That was the type of woman Sidney was looking for, even for just a friend, to go dancing with or go see movies and talk to. A woman he could grow with and learn from and share some of his essence with. To be needed and accepted for what he was, and not for what he could do for the other perosn, unless they really needed it.

Sexually Sidney was a monster. He got excited very easily over the young women he saw day to day. Some he could meet, some he could dance with, some he could talk to, but none to find out that his main interest was awareness, especially books by Carlos Castaneda, or books on Zen, or Tibetan life, and good biographies of productive people. His main subject of research is astral projection, the astral body and the other realms of existence in the universe. He had been researching the out of the body experience of humans for years. It is the subject he enjoys reading about the most. He has several books on the subject andis always researching and trying to consciously leave his body. But he rarely remembers his dreams, maybe twelve or twenty a year. He’s starting to remember more. He is going to perfect his astral body or his double, it it takes him the rest of his life. That is his main goal at the moment. He wishes he cold spend more time reading and studying other aspects of awareness, and maybe work it into a reuglar routine which would progressively more profoudna nd helpful to his consciousness or awareness of life. Even the word karma can take a lifetime to uunderstand properly. Not many – if any – of the women he meets have the least interest in improving their awareness. Even if they show a little interest, or even acceptance, of what he is into. If she isn’t he won’t forceit on her, unless she showed an interest in such matters. It would be a big, big plus if Sidney had someone to talk to about intelligent matters, someone he could relate to and grow with no matter how far it went. He wold show an honest interest in any subject that his companion was involved with or had an interest in. He would at least try to get involved in sport or any activity any woman friend was interested in. His love for her will never be less than hers for him. Their motton would be: What we have done in the past can’t change what we can do in the future.

The second priority in Sidney’s life is music. He enjoys heady jazz, oldies from the fifties and sixties, rock, blues, funk, some new generation music, and of course, his own music. Sidney Hipple is hard to describe musically. You either love or hate his music. But he has many styles and stories that people have never heard, because he is always writing something new, there is so much to tell the world, if they would only listen. But maybe they have to learn themselves, for now. He sings and has many different voices that he uses.

He used to be heavy into Wrank Zuppa, but could not listen to Wrank and be totally original in his own music. He has not heard his music in over four years. He has been mailing Zuppa tapes and material since 1974. They were songs from his albums. It never got to him. Sidney talked to Wrank’s agent. Sid was starting to play bass,and singing a lot of strange songs and stories. Wrank agent Berh Hohen, said send them registered mail. Sidney had already sent Wrank’s agency some 8-tracks in 1976, a month before he talked to Berh. The Meat Records said hey didn’t get them, after he had talked to them in march 1975. Then he talked to Berh about an interview with Mr. Zuppa and an audition for Discreet Records. He said, Send your material registered mail, and I’ll get it for sure. Sidney sent all his tapes of original songs, songbooks full of weird lyrics, stories, poems, movie outlines, album covers. Almost everything he owned creatively he sent out to be looked at by someone from the Meat Records. He called a month later and they said they couldn’t find it, that they were reorganizing and that when they found it, they would send it back to him. He never got it back. He lost he receipt. May 29, 1975 was the postmark.

In 1978 Sid sent Wrank a painting that a friend had painted especially for Sid. It was a painting of Wrank Zuppa with a vine around him. It was about three feet by four feet, and was of Zuppa from his head to his chest. It was very good, and Sidney loved that painting very much. He sold it to Robert Garnick at Garnick’s Music Store for $25. It had cost Sidney $100. It was a favor that is was that cheap, from the person who paintedit, Mark Harvey. Sidney finally bought it back for $100 from Robert. Sid later sent it to Waltoke Concern, Wrank’s new agency. Wrank’s birthday present in December 1978 or 1979, was that painting from sidney Hipple. It was mailed by a nun at the hospital where Sidney worked by UPS. He never got a receipt because it was sent on Company money. It also contained a picture of Sidney, and some tapes of his new progress in the music. He started to play guitar and sing sometimes and that was on the tapes he sent to Glotzer. He never got an answer or thank you from Glotzer or Wrank. He kept on palying guitar and singing sometimes. IN 1980 he bought an Arp AXXEE. He old a Baldwin synthesizer in 1976 and a Fender bass, Fender head, and Sun cab. The Baldwin Synasound got repossessed. The bass got stolen when he moved to Bowell. In frustration, he smashed his hollow body harmony bass against he radiator in his room. He was on welfare and didn’t have any money, and he had to go to the health center for some meals. He was so mad that day that he gave up. He was so disgusted with life in Bowell that he threw away al lhis tapes, all his notes, even his clothes, except the ones on his back, everything he owned. He couldn’t even sell his record collection, one of the only things he had left. A friend in the building got a friend to buy the record from him for twenty dolalrs. He needed to get bombed. It was the only time Sidney had fallen down drunk in his whole life. It happened when he was walking home from Tewksbury. He had too far to walk. He fell down, but as soon as he did, a car stopped and asked if he was all right and asked him if he needed a ride. He said yes. As soon as he got into the car and knew he had a ride, he was absolutely straight. He wasn’t loaded anymore. The guys that picked him up seemed to have just aken off make-up. They even smoked a joint of good pot with him and droped him off right in front of his house.

As I say, it was a bad day for Sidney, but it got better. The more screwed up you are, the stronger you before if you change. You can always start again as long as you have friends. If Sidney Hipple can change, anyone can. He got a guitar with four strings from Mike of Mike and the Spikes, a musical comrade of Sidney’s, but he started playing the old acoustic guitar with only two strings, the last two strings on the guitar, the bass strings. Mike showed him some guitar riffs, and he was off. He finally got a Japanese made electric guitar in 1978 and played it through his 8-track connected to his stereo. In 1979 he bought a Hagstrom III guitar and really started playing a lot. He even stopped riving a cab and stopped singing as much as he had before. He was going to play guitar is if killed him, ar chords and moveable chords. He had gotten the Arp Axxe synth in 1980, but it took him over two years to use it in a practical way and to sing while playing it.

By the way, our story takes place in the year 1983.

“A true friend warms you with her presence, trust you with her secrets, and remembers you in her prayers.”