Mayo and Starshine

[This is not about hair. This is about juvenile delinquency. It is unedited freee-write. Please forgive misspellings, grammar or any other problems.]

"Parents should worry if their children haven't been arrested by the time they turn sixteen. Being a juvenile delinquent is a birthright and as much a part of healthy adolescence as smoking cigarettes or getting pimples. If your kid is class president or an eager beaver in extracurricular activities, beware. These overachievers usually reach their peak in High School, and from the day they graduate, it's downhill. If your kid is a terror and refuses to go along with any authority, he will be forced to hang around with social outcasts and learn early to sort out the exciting and original people from all the idiots. I'd never trust anyone who hasn't spent at least one night of his youth in the local jail. The more hell you raise as a teenager, the sweeter your memories will be..." -John Waters

Once again, John Waters gives the best advice. It's true:

I was lucky to be arrested by the DEA when I was seventeen. I mean, I was lucky I wasn't eighteen when it happened.
Full disclosure:
I was selling LSD in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show in Roanoke VA [pause for laughter/mockery]. Unbeknown to me, the lot was a hop-skip up the road from the DEA training center.
We were selling LSD ("Aaaaacid!" I shouted, like I was selling toast), as well as giant joints made of shake and seeds ("Gorilla Fingers, Big Fat Gorilla Fingers For Sale," screamed David, may he rest in peace)

An Agent in training, we'll call him Agent Mayo (because that was his real name), approached the tent, a hippie girl climbing all over him (we'll call her Starshine). Mayo was sweaty and gross, in a new tie-dye, looking for any drugs he could find. He was that unspecific. Whatever ya got..., he said (tip-off #1).

Mayo and Starshine were freakin' authentic, their arrival announced by a waft of patchouli that manifest thirty seconds before the touchdown of their sandaled feet.
I know the patchouli/hippie thing is cliche, which in hindsight should have been another small clue. New Birkenstocks + Patchouli= Federal Agent Looking To Throw You In Jail. I must have forgotten, not known yet, or was simply eager to get rid of what I had left.

I had no suspicion. Mayo was sketchy, but Starshine was the clincher. The ultimate prop, she looked out of her mind, like a Manson Girl who didn't have the balls to carve an X into her forehead so she left LA and went on East Coast Tour. She kept wiping Mayo's bald head (tip-off #2) with a wet rag, with high pitched giggling. She laughed like the girl that got raped by the forest in The Evil Dead.

Had Mayo popped me an hour before he did, I would probably still be locked up today. I only had 25 hits left by the time he nailed me, down from the 2,500 hits I started the day with. I sold him the rest of what I had.
They even bought the shitty weed. Nobody had bought a joint all day. We wouldn't even smoke this headache weed, yet Starshine seemed pretty amped about buying the Gorilla Fingers and the LSD, so Mayo acted like he was doing us all a favor. "I'll take it all, everything you got," he said, Starshine tweaking his nipples with her painted nails (tipoff #3).
Desperation veiled any red flags. All of it in one sale? Perfect. More time to count money.

Mayo took the drugs out of my hand and put the cash into David's, locking us both into the sale. They both smiled as they noodle-walked away, Starshine exhibiting such REALNESS that I was convinced they would be together forever, hugging and swaying at Rolling Stones reunion shows until we were all dead.

Within a minute of the sale, we were surrounded. "DEA" they said, "stand up, please." They said please, which further indicated they weren't regular cops.One guy kept a hand on my shoulder and said "stay still, please."
So I ran.
Sprinting barefoot through the lot, I was a blur in red gauze Hammer Pants. As I ran, I heard Lisa yelling behind me Run, Danny, Ruuuun!
I could hear her voice melting as I dodged VW Buses, Evangelical Jesus Freaks dragging life-size crosses and confused Tour Hippies.

"Help!" Somebody heeelp meeee! They're gonna get me!" People looked up from their blankets, thinking Oh Shit, That Dude is on A Bad One...Check It Out, Pankake Dredd, this kid is buggin'..." They all thought I was just another beginner losing his mind, and watched tranfixed as I was tackled by an army of DEA and they realized I wasn't lying. "Oh, shit, Pancake, that dude was serious..."

Yeah, no kidding, Pancake. I was held for a week, shoeless in my Hammer Pants, until my mother was finally dispatched to get me, flying 1000 miles to collect me. My charge was "conspiracy to overthrow the government." (They don't weigh the LSD, but the paper/sugarcube/strawberry that it's laid onto, amping up the weight and making the seller implicit in an imagined desire to dose a water supply.)

I can tell you now that a parent doesn't know how to lecture their teen on a charge such as this. It's not like I got caught shoplifting or smoking cigarettes. The words "acid" and "conspiracy" go a long way to stifle any parental response, particularly when used in the same sentence by a judge.

I don't know what happened to Starshine, but Agent Mayo contacted at my court date six months later.
His message said:

You Were My Final Exam,
Agent Mayo

So Mayo passed. With flying colors.