Preparing the IV

[Robin Landseadel]

	. . . I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and
	sometimes it was, but there were odd things going around town.
	There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was
	unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. This mystical
	flirtation with the idea of "sin"—this sense that it was possible to
	go "too far," and that many people were doing it—was very
	much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented
	and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. 	
	The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked
	every night and the moon was always full. On August 9, 1969, I
	was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-Iaw's swimming
	pool in Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a
	friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate
	Polanski's house on Cielo Drive. The phone rang many times
	during the next hour. These early reports were garbled and
	contradictory. One caller would say hoods, the next would say
	chains. There were twenty dead, no, twelve, ten, eighteen.
	Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I
	remember all of the day's misinformation very clearly, and I also
	remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was
	surprised.

	Joan Didion: "The White Album"