Free Dreams by Richard A. Lupoff

It was The Last Picture Show, and I am nuts for anything that Bogdanovich directs.
    Amazing. This was starting to look like a match made in heaven.
    As planned, I showed up at the theater half an hour before show time. No sign of Vampie, but what the hell, it was early yet and I knew she wanted to see the film. She'd even told me she had a crush on Timothy Bottoms. She wouldn't miss it.
    It was one of those chilly nights, a cold mist in the air and glowing nimbuses around street lamps and storefront neon. I wore a sweatshirt under a quilted jacket and still I was freezing ten minutes after I arrived. There was a coffee shop next door to the theater so I headed in to get a hot cup.
    She was sitting in a booth with one of the Kerr twins. Oh, jeez.
    You don't know the Kerr twins. Frankie and Jimmy. Frank Arthur Kerr and James Otho Kerr. I don't know what their parents were thinking of. Look at the initials. Their names turn into Faker and Joker. They both work for Scorpion Blues, my mag's meanest competitor. Every time I try for a plum interview I have to worry about getting to the artist before Faker or Joker. Every time B!B!B! loses an important ad, you can guess who got it. Scorpion Blues. Right.
    And there was Vampie drinking latté and playing footsie with Frankie. Or maybe Jimmy. I stood there, probably looking like a pimply high school nerd who just got dumped in favor of Superjock and knows he's about to become the laughingstock of the junior class.
    Vampie displayed a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth grin and waved to me and said, "Oh, hi there. Del, isn't it? Del Martin?"
    "Marston," I stammered, as if she didn't know.
    "You here for The Last Picture Show?" Jimmy asked. Or maybe Frankie.
    I ignored him. I said, "I thought we were going together, Vampirella. We just talked about it this morning, don't you remember?"
    "I'm sorry, Don," the sentence slithered from between her luscious lips like an aerial snake. "I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you're thinking of somebody else."
    Jimmy-Frankie slid his arm around her shoulders and said, "That rag of yours still going, Dan? I don't hear much about it these days."
    I couldn't take any more. I went home and turned on Blue Oyster Cult loud and opened a bottle of cheap wine and got stinko. I played "Don't Fear the Reaper" a dozen times and sang along with Roeser and fantasized about Patti Smith.
    Next day I enjoyed a hangover that would surely land me in The Guinness Book of World Records if I could figure out how to describe it to them. I excavated my favorite shirt out of the hamper and pulled it on. Either the shirt was getting ripe or I was, but I was in no shape to do anything about that. I peered into the mirror and when I saw what was squinting back at me I scrounged up a Commander Cody baseball cap that I'd got as a reward for a nice little article when the Commander was just getting started. Money would have been nicer.
    I managed to crawl down to the office and write a couple of record reviews. I ripped into the material and the performances and the production and the cover art, and for all I know I destroyed a dozen promising careers and sent as many sensitive artistic souls back to grad school for MBAs.
    Sorry about that.
    I drank a pot of coffee wishing I was a private eye who kept a bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer to spike the java with, but I wasn't and I didn't and by mid-afternoon I was feeling at least slightly human.
    There was a free show in Golden Gate Park and the sun was shining. I left the bug in the driveway and struggled over to the park on foot. I heard the band tuning up from three blocks away. By the time I got there Hot Tuna was launched into one of their patented all-day versions of "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning."
    A haze of blue-gray stonedness was floating over the crowd. I struggled to a place near the stage and plopped my tuchuss onto the grass and tried to get my head into the music. It was then that I heard the