If I had wanted to be more famous than I already was, I wouldn't have moved from Sonoma County, where I lived for 40 years, and settled in San Francisco where I was mostly unknown. But I did move and found myself largely anonymous and invisible in a city with about three quarters of a million people, most of them living unquiet lives of desperation. When I arrived in Sonoma County I knew no one except my parents who were homesteading, and who were growing organic vegetables, fruits and berries. I felt like an outsider and wanted to be an insider but my forays into the world of weed only made me even more of an outsider, except among cannabis farmers. Then I wrote about cannabis for several different publications, at first under a pseudonym to protect my identity, and then under my real name, which brought me some notoriety.
Since I was in favor of the legalization of weed, I came out of the cannabis closet and announced to the world that I smoked dope. On one occasion, in a classroom at Sonoma State University, where I was teaching, I decided to reveal my secret to the students. One of them asked, "Are you stoned now?" I shook my head. I had not woken and baked. Another student opened her purse, removed a joint, waved it in the air and asked, "Do you want to get stoned now?" I didn't and said so, but after I came out of the cannabis closet students wanted to get stoned with me all the time. I never did that. "You get stoned with your friends and I'll get stoned with my friends," I said.
Teaching at SSU brought me some notoriety, mostly not because of cannabis, but rather because I was an unconventional teacher and got into trouble with the administration when for example I urged the students to paint a mural on the walls of a classroom. They got creative and painted a mural with a large tree, and with images of Mother Theresa, MLK and Adam and Eve, naked of course. They were accused of defacing government property. They would not be prosecuted, I was told, if I took credit for the mural. I became the fall guy.
By the time I began to teach at SSU I knew a lot of people who had been famous in the 1960s and 1970s, including Eldridge Cleaver, Abbie Hoffman, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Kunstler. Abbie Hoffman sold me on the idea of fame. "I can get anything I want with fame and without money," he told me. "People give me stuff because I'm famous and they want to be around me." I saw that friends and acquaintances gave him money, cars, apartments, airline tickets and more. I liked the idea of getting stuff with fame and without money. It seemed cleaner, simpler and less corrupt that way, but I found that there was often a price to be paid.
Those who gave, wanted something in return, usually a favorable review of a movie they had made or a review of a restaurant they owned and operated. I lost much of my personal freedom and independence and I gained an addiction to fame and notoriety. It's more addicting than weed.
After 40 years in Sonoma County I decided it was time to bail while I was still alive and kicking. I gave away most of my possessions and invited a friend with a pickup truck to take boxes and boxes of my papers to the county dump and get rid of them. When he got to the dump he opened the boxes, removed the files, read them and decided that because I was famous they were too valuable to toss. He took them home where they now live, along with paintings and posters that graced the walls of my apartment.
Once you're famous, or people think you are, it's not easy to lose fame and revert to the state of anonymity. Even in San Francisco where I am mostly unknown, people recognize me on the street and call out my name. I don't like it, though decades ago when I played the fame game I would have enjoyed the recognition. To be anonymous again I might have to disguise myself and use a pen name to protect my identity.
Once upon a time, my fantasy was to disappear off the face of the earth, to go to some place where no one knew me, and where I wouldn't reach out and befriend strangers. But that I realized would be too much work. Besides, I like meeting people. Yesterday I had tea and a croissant with a woman who found my writings on the web and emailed me. She was sane, or seemed to be, and not a stalker, or a liability. I'm glad I came out of my cave and made a new friend.
This was fun to read. I became friends with Jonah Raskin in 1959, when he was a college freshman and I was a sophomore. Neither of us were famous but it wasn’t too long before we both became fairly well known on campus, for a variety of reasons. I felt I was “famous’ enough to write an autobiography, entitled “Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life” (2018). Jonah wrote a review of my book which you can find here: https://www.theragblog.com/jonah-raskin-books-there-may-not-be-answers/. Jonah and I both have written books and had them reviewed, and we sold some, but wish we’d sell more. So buy his books or my books, or both! Thanks, Jonah for being my friend for so many decades and for staying alive.