Cue the groove

 The California sun is a many-faced God and summers spent beneath it tend to overstimulate the pituitary gland. All that vitamin D and bare skin can make a teenage girl behave recklessly. (Case in point: the Manson girls.) For me the sun was intoxicating, and intoxication usually had regrettable consequences often with regrettable men. The only thing I ever regretted about my time spent with Anthony Kiedis was not fulfilling his request for a kiss.

​Just before the Red Hot Chili Peppers bubbled out of the primordial funkadelic onto the streets of Hollywood, the four of us assembled in Alison's living room to drop the needle and dance 'round the fire. Someone produced a jar of mushrooms that we passed between us like a ceremonial chalice. All the honey in the world couldn't make them palatable, but we didn't care—the turntable was eager to get to work and so were we. 

Alison carefully slid the vinyl out of the protective paper sleeve and cued the groove. "Wild and Peaceful" was the soundtrack to our communal plunge into the psychedelic boogie, Kool and the Gang our party ambassadors in the cosmic get-down.
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