Super Dopeman of the Haight and Ashbury

Driven by a desire for boozy good times, an unlikely and reluctant hero finds himself wielding incomprehensible powers of psychedelic proportions! Stay tuned in, dropped on and turned out for The Adventures of Doug, the Super Dope Man of the Haight and Ashbury.

Part I

Doug could barely believe it. He’d come down to the Cosmic Candle Saloon to meet up with Charlie and get some blow when a gunman showed up. Well, really the gunman had been there for a while, leaning against the door, listening to headphones and sipping a ginger ale while staring creepily at everyone.

Doug never trusted people that didn’t drink at bars. Why were they there? Hadn’t they ever heard of coffee shops? It made it worse that this guy was by himself, but the headphones were the real coup-de-gras. Why even come out at all? Just stay at home, pressed firmly into a beanbag chair and listen to your own music on your own stereo and wait for your mom to bring you another plate of crackers and a diet Coke.

That’s about what Doug had been thinking when the guy threw the grenade. It landed in the far corner of the raised patio area, sending hippies and outdoor furniture spraying everywhere like confetti poppers at a New Years Show. Tie-dyed scraps of clothing went one way, bits of plastic chair the other. A real fuckin’ mess.

Doug didn’t really remember much of it, honestly. He mostly remembered seeing an object lobbed through the air and saw the jerk with the headphones wheel around, pulling out a gun. Maybe it was an AR-15; Doug didn’t really know. It was some Rambo shit, though, that was for sure.

The blast sent Doug, Charlie, a plastic patio table, most of a disheveled acoustic guitar and the bottom half of a wanna-be hippy from Michigan tumbling through the railing and over the edge of the upper patio area. A churning wave of nick-nacks, ashtrays, drugs, beer bottles and flesh all rolled over and fell down onto the group at the tables below.

The first thing Doug sensed was his ankle. Even though it hurt like a sharp stick in the eye, he welcomed it. “You’re not dead,” it told him, and for a fleeting moment he was happy about it. Then the gravity of the situation started to sink in. The thing he was most acutely aware of next was the weight of Charlie’s body pressing down on his.

Charlie was not a light man. While he wasn’t really fat by any means, he could certainly stand to slim down. And at six feet tall, Charlie easily broke two hundred and fifty pounds. Really, it was a marvel that Doug — who was a pretty small guy — hadn’t been crushed to death by the overweight drug dealer. Pondering this fact, Doug realized he was pressed into the large girth of Sally.

She was a nice enough woman, Sally, but absolutely rotund. The way she ate cheeseburgers, you’d think she was getting paid to do it. She was always shuffling between the bar and the burger joint with her little chihuahua — her “companion animal.” What a little rat of a companion. If you didn’t have a scrap of meat to give that mutt, it didn’t care if you were dead or alive. And it never listened to a thing Sal said.

Doug wondered where that mutt was, but there were literally more pressing matters. He could hear gunshots and screaming from inside the bar. The gunman was shouting something about Jesus in the schools and the Jews and Muslims controlling the government. Jesus. Chill out, dude. Put down the ginger ale and pick up the bong.

Doug struggled to free himself from the squishy folds of Sal and the heavy weight of Charlie the dope dealer. His right arm was hopelessly pinned but his left one was free. Using that one arm, he managed to pull his face out from between the two bodies and into a small crevice near the cement wall and the large recycling bins.

And there, between two of the recycling bins was Charlie’s briefcase. The mother load. Even in his worried state, Doug was thrilled to be alone with this brown leather treasure trove of chemical rollercoasters. This was a ticket to a fine time indeed. He could just barely touch it with one of his fingers. He stretched and screamed as his ankle twisted into even further misalignment.

The gun-toting jerk must have had his headphones off because he whirled around and unleashed a spray of bullets into Charlie and Sal. If either of them had been alive, they sure weren’t now. Then the maniac went back to raving about the problems with the world. He was ranting something about the internet and masturbation and the Coca-Cola corporation and Mickey Mouse and a viable third party candidate.

To be continued…