My Search for the Beatniks Who Lived at the “Abalone Factory,” Princeton-by-the-Sea: Part III

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Marvin Lewis (ML) : So–in the interim a very peculiar thing that I wlll never forget as long as I live occurred. He came up to me one day and said, ‘You know, you’re a very interesting man.’ He said, ‘I find an empathy with you that I never have had with a capitalist world person and the establishment.’ He said, ‘You have made a good reputation for yourself and in your profession. You have money. You dress establishment, and yet,’ he said, ‘you see to fit in with my type of people, and I can have an understanding of you and I like you.’ He said, “I think you must have a rare faculty. You have the ability of living on both sides of the street’. But, he said, ‘I think to make your life fuller, you should have LSD and you should sniff glue’.

I said, Really. I have been doing very well without. In those days I’d never even heard of LSD–never heard of sniffing glue–and I said, I’m not really interested.

‘But’, he said, ‘I know you’re a great lawyer, but you’d be that much greater if you…And he said, ‘Another thing you should have some of our women in your life.’ He said, ‘I think you’re probably just making love to your wife and you need a lot more to broaden yourself’.

Marvin Lewis (ML): I don’t–I really thank you–and I really appreciate it all–but please, thanks, but no thanks.

ML (to June): I finally got them both out, and I went, Oh, my God, I don’t believe this just happened.

…To Be Continued…