| Zipper When Zipper first started coming around, we considered him to be "straight," which in those university days of the late sixties meant that he lacked the trappings of non conformity that we all conformed to. Zipper, an honors business major, had short hair, was beardless, wore slacks and a sport shirt and even worse, he had never smoked pot. "What's that smell?" Zipper would ask when he met one of us on the staircase of the apartment building. "Turkish tobacco," we would say. In actuality, Zipper wasn't really that "straight." He was a high stakes gambler and was what "straight people" would call a "wheeler-dealer," often involved in moneymaking schemes on the edge of legality. Finally, we learned to trust Zipper and he was "turned on" to the wonders and magic of marijuana. Two weeks later, Zipper, who had disappeared after a three day pot-smoking binge at our apartment, showed up in a new car, the trunk of which was filled with a high grade pot that we called "Panama Red." Zipper became the dealer. He had the best pot in Buffalo, always available and always good. After graduation, Zipper and I went our separate ways. Three years later, I was back in Buffalo on a visit. Coincidentally, Zipper had just arrived there also. We met at my friend's apartment where I was staying, and where Zipper would be staying also. That evening Zipper told us the story of his last three years. After graduation, Zipper became a schoolteacher in New York City. He did this primarily to avoid being drafted into the army during those days of the unpopular Vietnam War. He taught for one year and then left the United States to travel the world. He went all through Europe, the Middle East, Tibet, Nepal and India. He settled down in Amsterdam and, using his connections that he made during his travels, began a business of smuggling and selling hashish in that liberal city where the penalties for this activity were not very severe. One day Zipper was returning to Amsterdam on a flight that originated in Katmandu. He had several kilos of hashish strapped to his body along with some five or six thousand U.S. dollars. The plane made a routine stop in Tashkent, then part of the Soviet Union. Generally, there are no customs or immigration formalities there as the passengers in transit to Amsterdam just stay on the plane and wait. This time, however, agents of the Russian intelligence agency, the KGB, boarded the aircraft and inspected the passengers' documents. When they got to Zipper and saw his American passport, they singled him out for further scrutiny. The agents discovered the hashish and the money, and Zipper became the first American to be arrested in the Soviet Union since Francis Gary Powers piloting the super-secret U2 Spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace and captured. The Russians must have thought that Zipper was an American CIA agent because when Zipper, totally terrified by the turn of events, popped a valium into his mouth, a Russian agent screamed "Cyanide, cyanide!" He grabbed Zipper by the head, forced his mouth open and pounded on his chest causing him to spit out the little pill. "Tranquilizer, tranquilizer," Zipper whimpered, as he was subdued by the burly agents and dragged off the airplane. (Cyanide pills were found on Francis Gary Powers.) Zipper was interrogated by the KGB. He did not give us the details of the interrogation procedure, but told us that it was "horrendous" and involved long periods of psychological and physical abuse. When Zipper did not get off the plane in Amsterdam, his girlfriend contacted the airlines and was told of his arrest in the Soviet Union. She contacted his parents who got in touch with the US State Department. A concerted effort was made to obtain Zipper's release, which for a long time seemed to be futile. After almost a year of incarceration, Zipper's father suffered a heart attack and died. His mother, overcome by the death of her husband and the fate of her son had to be hospitalized for severe depression. The State Department contacted the Soviets with this information and finally a release was arranged, which was described as an "official act of mercy" by the Soviet Union. As a condition of Zipper's liberation, he was asked to sign a document that would be used by the Russians for propaganda purposes. Zipper admitted to the institutionalized prejudice and racism of the American public school system and described in detail the injustices that his superiors forced him to commit against blacks, other minorities and members of the working class. Zipper's declaration was published in several leftist-leaning newspapers in Western Europe. Zipper was finally freed and was flown back to Amsterdam. When the plane landed, agents of the CIA took him into custody for "debriefing". The American officials viewed Zipper as unpatriotic because of his involvement in the cannabis trade, his denunciation of the American school system and his draft avoidance. They were suspicious that he might actually be working for the KGB. As a result, his debriefing was, according to Zipper, reminiscent of his interrogation by the KGB and "almost as bad." After more than a week of detention by the CIA, Zipper was set free. He returned to the United States and visited his mother in the hospital. He then contacted an old friend who offered him a job as road manager for a popular rock-and-roll band that had a gig in Buffalo, which is what brought us together again. We talked until late that night. He spoke about holy men in the Himalayas, the bazaars of Marrakech and the Amsterdam drug scene. But most of all he talked about his year of desperate solitude in the bowels of the Russian prison. Zipper never saw that next gray and rainy Buffalo morning. He died during the night having ingested a lethal dose of sleeping pills. |