At the police station, they confiscated our personal possessions—Jim carried only a driver's license and an American Express card. They ordered us to strip naked—in front of a large area full of clerks and other department employees, male and female—and sprayed us with roach powder, ordering us to pull apart our butt cheeks so they could spray our assholes. Then they put us into a cell with bars that were a story and a half high. Jim immediately climbed up these bars so that he was overlooking the whole large office of cops and clerks and yelled—in that resonant baritone and precise enunciation that was fast becoming world famous—“Hey Bob, ain't they the ugliest motherfuckers you ever saw?”
        This attracted the policeman who'd delivered the threat in the car. He walked to the front of the cell and this time promised us we definitely had a date when he and his partner got off duty at midnight. Jim loudly proclaimed that we'd been falsely arrested and demanded to telephone his lawyer in Los Angeles, and threatened a lawsuit if we were beaten. The cop laughed and walked away. I lay down on one of the steel bunks and tried to telepathically convey to Bev the acute need to somehow get us the hell out of here before midnight. She had worked for Life Magazine when she lived in New York, and had the resourcefulness of a skilled journalist.

        I had met Jim at a luncheon in a restaurant just off Sunset Strip, surrounded by about six guys in suits and ties—The Doors' management. During that lunch, the management people gave me their version of The Doors, while Jim sat glowering, eating little and saying less. The management people seemed determined to speak for him. I was wondering how I was going to get past them to interview him when he signaled me with a subtle wag of his head. We connected as we were leaving the restaurant.
        Soon we were chatting amiably as we strolled one of LA's small parks. Jim said he'd read my first novel and really liked it and we talked about satire. He said something that had me frowning: “Society destroys its satirists.” Then he pulled a notebook out of his leather pants and showed me some poems he'd written in longhand and asked about getting them published. “I'm really a poet,” he said. I told him that with his fast-rising rock star fame, I didn't think it would be difficult to interest a major publisher in his poetry, even though poetry was, back then, considered totally un-commercial. I asked him to read me a poem. He did. I was amazed. Here was a handsome young stud rock star with a mind that roamed through rare spaces, exploring our modern monotheistic reality from an ancient pantheistic perspective.
        He had to be somewhere later that afternoon so I asked if he'd come out to my house for brunch the next day so we could continue the interview. I needed to get to know more about him if I was going to write something that did him justice.

                                10