Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [54]
So it was obvious that the good doctor’s visit was hardly coincidental. I didn’t mind, though. Timothy was quite a striking man, both in appearance and personality, and his intelligence blazed like a klieg light, though he softened it with old-fashioned, courtly manners and understated charm. We chatted for a few minutes, and Timothy asked some questions about my acting—maybe that was just the windup for what was to come, but he was disarmingly sincere in everything he said.
Then Cary steered the conversation to psychedelic experiences.
“I think Dyan would benefit enormously from it,” Cary said. “But she’s a little apprehensive.”
“Anybody with any sense would be,” Timothy said, making his point with a chicken drumstick. I could tell he enjoyed eating as much as Cary. “It’s a powerful energy form. But if you have the proper respect for it, it’ll change your world.”
“It changed my world,” Cary said. “It brought me closer to God.”
“I just don’t see how taking a drug can bring anyone closer to God,” I said. And I didn’t. It just seemed very counterintuitive. But it was an interesting conversation. Cary was one of the most thoughtful and intelligent men I knew, and if he found something in it, I was happy to listen.
“It’s not a drug,” Timothy said. “It’s a chemical.”
“But if it brings you closer to God, why do you need a tranquilizer to bring you down?” I asked.
“It’s a matter of energy management,” Tim said. “We’re the pioneers. As time goes on, we’ll refine the method. You see, we use drugs for one of two reasons: either to put us in a nice, cozy stupor or to wake us up. LSD, though, is a chemical that contains the equivalent of about several hundred Encyclopaedia Britannicas . . . Cary, save that last shrimp for—oh, too late.”
Timothy went on laying out the case for LSD as a wonder drug—oh, make that chemical. When it was in your brain, he said, time evaporated. Colors and forms continually morphed into different colors and forms, dancing to the rhythmic pulsation of the heart. “Our brains are constantly in direct contact with our cells and our tissues, and when you take LSD, it’s like plunging through the barrel of a microscope and swimming with your own cells!” he said.
He lost me there. I didn’t want to go swimming with my own cells or anybody else’s.
Cary didn’t find that notion any more appealing than I did. So he flashed a sort of yellow caution sign. He didn’t want Timothy freaking me out by going too far. Timothy got the signal and shifted emphasis.
“And it’ll enhance any relationship with another person,” he said. “Especially the people you are closest to. It tears down the walls that divide us from each other.”
At this Cary nodded approvingly.
I had to admit I was impressed by the utter sincerity with which they both made their case. Timothy had the conviction that LSD was a spaceship to utopia. When my tutorial was over, I was starting to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I was open to anything that could tear down any wall between Cary and me and meld us into one person.
Still, somewhere deep inside, a little voice was stubbornly crying, “Danger, Dyan! Danger!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Middle Finger
The show’s next stop was Los Angeles, which for me was the best of all worlds. I was working and I was spending time with Cary and catching up with my friends. I had a great two months. Cary and I met up for an occasional lunch, went to dinner on nights when the theater was dark, relaxed at his house, and even made it to Palm Springs a couple of times. Being on the road, I’d let go and stopped worrying about what the future held. Still, at the end of two months, it was painful to say “see you later.”
The next stop for How to Succeed was Chicago. About six weeks into the run, one of my fellow actors barged into the dressing room I shared with several other women, enraged that he’d been upstaged again. It was about