In an episode near the end of their marriage, Ted Hughes found a joint in the house, and the ensuing crisis prompted Sylvia Plath to reveal to him a secret from her past.
“I did a little experimenting myself,” Sylvia said. “With JFK. I want you to know I’ve smoked pot.”
Tensions rose in the air as she prepared to confess. “JFK?” said Ted sharply. “How much do you know?”
In fact, insiders say Sylvia Plath often met with JFK in London when he visited, turning him on to marijuana and LSD while he bared his administration’s darkest secrets.
And Sylvia, cool casual Sylvia, without emotion, would she fit better into JFK’s mold – with the help of those drugged cigarettes?
Sylvia rolled a couple of joints for Jack before going to the party and they tentatively chatted.
“You seem to know all about it,” JFK said. “I wish I could turn-on. All the groovy people seem to.”
“Well, don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll fix you up. I know a Stone”
“You have to be a nut to go for them psychedelic drugs,” the cabbie said, enjoying the captive audience as he drove them to Brian Jones’s flat. “How do you know what’s going to happen to you when you turn-on with that stuff?”
“The politics of imagination and the hallucinogenic drugs used in the 1960s as part of the drive towards a visionary quest have always incited material opposition,” said Sylvia. “Western materialism considers decadent those whose preoccupations are with inner events. Like Brian.”
Brian Jones had withdrawn into his own private world, experimenting with drugs alongside his close friend Sylvia Plath and, some say
JFK.
When they arrived they were both conscious of an oversweet scent in the air. “Pot” Sylvia said in answer to JFK’s quizzical look. “Don’t worry,” she mocked. “I don’t freak out on drugs.”
For a while, Smith dorms were sweet with pot parties. It hadn’t lasted.
When they got there The usual groover types were lying about the front room, stoned and hypnotized by the dream machine.
Hundreds of slender joints had been rolled and were accessible in bowls and on paper plates while fruit jars of the manicured pot had
been set out for those who might bring their own special smoking devices.
Incense smoke curled out of three or four empty coffee cans and clouded the apartment with murky fragrance.
JFK went in and frankly was a bit surprised at the scene. There were five or six sets of hippies sitting around the place.
They were smoking pot no doubt about that. Mostly they were just sitting there gazing rapturously at the lights surrounding them.
The dream machine experience begins with what visually approximates a perpetually metamorphosing Persian rug.
As the color spectrum broadens so the symmetrical patterns
grow increasingly intricate.
From where Sylvia sat she could see the narrow hall with walls all swirling colors, painted with exploding women and acid flowers, plus the odd monster or two.
Purple walls. And a Reynolds Wrap ceiling. And on the purple walls and Reynolds Wrap ceiling gold circles and half-moons. And on the gold circles and half-moons, on the purple walls and Reynolds Wrap ceiling black red and green letters spelling out words Like LOVE or phrases like: There is no life above the grasstops or Reveal Your Nature! And Let Me Lick it! Over it all hung a miasma of marijuana.
Brian Jones had never appeared so radically divorced from reality
As he wandered amongst the crowd as the unofficial Shaman of ceremonies or perhaps as the drug-addled Acid King. Singing.
I’m so high and so dry
I’m sailin’ in the sky
Just blow some gage
I’m on a rampage,
Jack, I’m mellow
The blond, long-haired Brian put down his guitar and
came over and flopped down on the cot near JFK’s chair.
Brian Jones smiled, took out a joint and lit up in a moment another sweet, sickening odor was added to the room’s collection.
He took a few drags and said “Jack, you don’t seem to fit in.”
Sylvia reached over, lifted Brian Jones’s cigarette and had a deep puff.
“Smoke the marijuana sometime. You know a little in the evening.
Every now and then.”
Without a word she handed the cigarette over to JFK.
“None of us are habitual smokers but it is nice to have sometimes on a quiet night when there is nothing special to do”
A sharp pain like a knife slashed down JFK’s windpipe into his lungs as he inhaled. “Hold it,” Sylvia coached. “Hold it” She pressed the flat of her hand across JFK’s mouth for a minute preventing him from exhaling.
He dropped the joint and Brian picked up the fallen reefer and handed it back to JFK.
Sylvia moved to sit in the exact center of the rug, lighting one of the tiny cigarettes, and shaking the daisy petals of her bright head.
“…the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.”
She sucked in her breath hard, studying the stick of tea holding it in front of her eyes, concentrating on the spiral of smoke.
“Real crazy stuff” Brian Jones said proudly. “This cat came back from Vietnam with a barracks bag full of it. Wild, man. He says you’re walking through the jungle over there, 90 miles from the asshole of nowhere, all spooky and mean, and some little guy will run out of the grass and grab your arm and say “Hey Mac you want to buy some hash?”
Then he stood a minute watching. “Take another drag, Jack,” he said finally. Slowly JFK’s hand rose to his mouth almost against his will, but it rose. The pain was not nearly as sharp this time.
“If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take to hashish,” said Brian.
If he had gotten high JFK didn’t know it, or even what high was supposed to be. He remembered now still blinking at Sylvia’s freckled back becoming terribly sleepy after smoking the bitter cigarettes, then eating the sweet crunchy bars of chocolate.
Brian Jones had let them share his vibrations – a tape of Moroccan ear-zonkers that Brion Gysin had lifted somewhere. And the rockets of music flew overhead.
Brahim Jones Joujouka Very Stoned
“Listen to that sound,” Brian Jones said excitedly. “Isn’t that beautiful? It sounds like a bag of snakes.”
Inspired, he picked up his guitar:
I’m so high and so dry
I’m way up in the sky
The world seems light
And I’m so right
Jack, I’m mellow
“It’s crazy” Brian Jones said. “But I figure if we can show how pot doesn’t corrupt anybody – except the fuzz. Look at Sylvia over there. Does she look corrupted?”
Sylvia inhaled deeply and held the smoke deep within her lungs, her large tits jutting out from her chest as she sucked on the small cigarette
“Capitalist ideologies function by the manipulative means of keeping the collective immersed in real time,” she said, after she’d exhaled.
But right now JFK wanted something that would reassure him that this was really a great kick.
Mentally, he tallied the effects: Euphoria. Thought magnification all the way to thought animation. Formal structures seen on their own terms. Aesthetic experiences, all brought into high relief. Self and other mix and pull apart. Perspective.
It was absolutely the greatest JFK told himself, enveloped in exhilaration. What a kook he’d been, to miss this.
Brian was still talking. Meditation, music and sex were part of his ideas, he explained, but the whole process should be combined with drugs.
“Wow, You kids are really hip.” JFK’s eyes strayed religiously to the high rise of Sylvia’s breasts, pushing audaciously against her blue cashmere sweater.
Both of them stayed quietly, with their backs to a wall, super stoned while it happened all around them. Then she felt his arm around her waist.
“Drugs accelerate the opening of the mind.” Brian Jones kept on saying that drugs were part of humanity’s evolution
“Cannabis may be mankind’s first cultivated plant, but it has never lost its wildness.” Sylvia said as he wandered off, guitar in hand.
She drew on her joint, and began to sway with the music, head back , eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. She gyrated to the beat of the music, mentally willing JFK to join her.
JFK grinned, his eyes fastened to the tight stretch of fabric across her breasts.
It’s not Sylvia who dances. He thought. It‘s the dope.
For a moment JFK felt that he was above it all, beyond the reach of ordinary rules and laws. He could have done any sort of physical task no matter how difficult. He was amazed at himself as compared to what he had been only a few moments before.
“Take off your sweater and let me look at you,” he urgently ordered.
Sylvia moved her shoulders backward in a deliberately provocative gesture.
“Crazy” JFK muttered but his hand found its way beneath the cashmere sweater. Beneath the filmy bra.
“Take off your clothes and let me see your gorgeous body.” JFK said, removing his coat and tie.
Sylvia pulled her sweater slowly above her breasts, over her head. Dropped it at her feet.
She arched toward him so that he could find the snaps that restrained the pulsating rise of her breasts.
His swift intake of breath at the sight of her popping above the limp lace was like a good chew of khat – the old African aphrodisiac that the CIA had brought to him.
Sylvia stretched her arms high above her head lifting her breasts into freestanding mounds, tips stiffening audaciously.
His hand that wasn’t occupied with his joint clutched at the high rise of her.
So what JFK thought defiantly. His mouth descended in a sudden hunger that brought forth a gasp of pleasure.
Oh Golly, he thought in sweet abandon, I could go ape this way!
She knew how she looked hovering there before him in brief panties and nylons. She was glad her breasts were full and firm,with the nipples pushing out enticingly from huge dark circles that no longer embarrassed her.
She felt strange, high, like she was someone else.
When she was naked, she went over and kneeled down before JFK.
On the floor he reached down and took her breasts in his hands and started squeezing them.
She lay close against him, not moving except for the lift of her round breasts.
The masturbation scene was something she had been into before.
She had been taught to masturbate by a far out guy named Wilhelm Reich.
In time she grew to enjoy the caress. Enjoy having him firm and demanding in her hands, enjoy the excitement that coursed through him and the pleasure that her hands brought him.
JFK was trance-like and intent on reaching his mind-climax. But Sylvia couldn’t concentrate. Too many walls were bending and colors changing, and she couldn’t get the words or ideas together in her head.
As his cock pumped deeper and deeper down her throat she was struck by the idea that, at that moment, all his power rested in her mouth. I may never go down in history, she couldn’t help thinking, but I am certainly going down on it.
Then she heard a ghost of a memory say a Leary thing that No trip is a real trip without... but she could not hear the ghost’s whisper. She could only feel the wetness of his hands on her body and the rhythm of his words.
The floor beneath her felt as comfortable and soft as her own bed. The hands that touched and prodded, the mouth that kissed, felt absolutely one hundred percent out of this world
Really will go ape JFK thought dizzily. It was too marvelous to be real.
This was one of those crazy drugs that make everything bigger than reality. “Let it never end,” he gasped in soaring ecstasy.
And then there was no need for talk because they were all-absorbed in this compulsion to merge completely, the sounds of their labored breathing, blending with the squalling beat of the recording repeating itself endlessly.
Don’t let this ever be over, JFK thought, passion lifting him to incredible ecstasy, Don’t let it ever be over! And then the dam of his passion bathed her and he spilled over with soft moans of satisfaction.
It was nice to know how lost he got in the sensation, because it helped Sylvia get lost as well and until she got lost she could never get there.
I’m so high and so dry
I’m sailin’ in the sky
I got my roach around
I can’t come down
Jack, I’m mellow
JFK was dazed, rather drugged with experience and sensation.
He understood a lot of what happened at the party. But a lot of it baffled him. He’d been blowing pot true, but now a lot of what Brian had been saying made sense.
He decided to call for serious research in the public and private sector
in order to move toward decriminalizing marijuana. A presidential panel to end the politicized debate by conducting in-depth and impartial scientific research into all the possible benefits for humanity.
“Her eyes were red, white and blue, hurrah,” added JFK and lit a joint, handing it to Sylvia.
JFK slipped by in slow motion. He slid his eyes into slits. He reconnoitered reefer wracked and wrapped in a marijuana mushroom cloud.
Brian Jones listened superciliously and said “Really, Sylvia.” And spreading his legs asked her to suck him off to make him less uptight.
Maybe if he’d asked her to plate him, she might have obliged, feeling guilty as she did about Jack’s cum on the rug, but she hated the “suck me off” expression, and together with all his cracks about her and JFK, she didn’t feel very cooperative.
So she told him no she really couldn’t manage it right now
He gave her a disappointed look and asked her to roll him a joint instead. Which she did
She wandered off for a bath hoping Brian Jones would forget about JFK.
Early next morning, Detective Inspector raided a London flat belonging to Brian Jones and confiscated for chemical analysis 11 different items, including suspicious vegetative matter.
My mother’s friend Sylvia smoked pot with JFK and he told her that it’s actually better for you than cigarettes because it doesn’t have all the extra chemicals that cigarette makers put in tobacco. Was he right?
FH, 14, Mytholmroyd
Dear FH,
What if Sylvia is with her guy JFK when he’s busted for possession, she’s going to get in lots of trouble. Or what if he’s “holding” when he happens to be assassinated, what would our nation think of that?
Let Sylvia know that if she really wants to be a great girlfriend she needs to help her guy JFK get off drugs.
Crown: You shall hear from Detective Inspector, of the Drug Squad of Scotland Yard, who has taken part in raids on many premises where cannabis resin was being smoked and who is familiar with its effects.
You have heard about a naked girl and a strong unusual smell. We are not in any way concerned with who that young woman was or may have been. But was she someone who had lost her inhibitions? And had she lost them because she had been smoking Indian Hemp?
The passing on of the habit, which seems to be one of the strongest desires of the drug fiend, makes Mr. Jones even more dangerous to society than he might otherwise become.
What had to be proved by the Crown is that Brian Jones knew and permitted someone else to smoke cannabis in his house.
Captain R. Kempe, head of the city-county police laboratory testified that cigarette papers and 32.4 grams of bottled marijuana – enough to make 125 cigarettes – had been found under a mattress in the Jones guest room.
Crown: Do you know of a girl named Sylvia and a 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine around London?
Jones: No.
Crown: Have you seen the picture showing you, Sylvia, an unidentified man and a piece of paper and another piece of paper and a marijuana cigarette?
Jones: I know nothing of it.
It presumably wasn’t the drugs per se which caused the authorities such vindictive consternation, it was more the altered states of consciousness with which they are associated.
Miss Plath gave the jurors something to think about when she testified that she was originally introduced to a marijuana cigarette by Jones at his flat. She said he told her he had been “stoned on marijuana” during a trip to Monterey to attend a pop festival. Jones had wondered aloud if police would soon raid his flat and find drugs there.
Jones called her testimony a lie.
Sylvia’s own drug case came and went. She got off with a small fine, by playing it very straight, saying that she had just been trying to find out what it was all about, that she didn’t like it, and she was sorry and never again.
Actually, Sylvia did not truly understand the reason why she did drugs. She guessed her reason was quite shallow. She enjoyed them.
When she thought about it, whenever she smoked some bud with her buddies she ended up having a great time. When she was stoned Everything was kind of fun – you could just play records and have a good time when you might normally be kind of bored. It was pretty darn sad really. Wasn’t it?
Brian Jones was unable to shrug off his drug charges so flippantly. Slipping further into notoriety at his own case on October 30, he was found guilty of possessing cannabis and allowing his flat to be used for the smoking of the drug.
Brian in a convincingly repentant mood, spoke from the witness box of drugs as having “only brought me trouble and disrupted my career, and I hope this will be an example for all young people who wish to try them.”
But in the end isn’t it it understandably difficult to believe that a woman who had performed sex acts with Kennedy, smoking pot with him, perhaps turning him on to LSD, a woman who knew Brian Jones and believed Kennedy had been murdered as the result of high level conspiracy to prevent him from legalizing marijuana –
Moreover a woman who was married to a poet who was a known CIA asset in charge of “dirty tricks” against UK’s leftist writers – how could her mysterious “suicide” not be related to Kennedy’s assassination and its cover-up?
And what of Brain Jones’s own inexplicable drowning?
At the end Sylvia saw JFK at a far window, beyond her reach in a golden haze. She wanted to shout a warning, but couldn’t spring the words. She could only taste marijuana on her tongue.
“Anything wrong? JFK asked
“No, nothing,” Sylvia said. “It’s just the marijuana.”
A Leak In The Safe 