The kids I knew who were into it, the real ones—not the merely curious or the dilettantes or the false worshippers—gave up almost all of their material possessions. They dropped out of school, took an implicit vow of poverty, and roamed the country. They begged for food and rides and dressed in rags, sewing and patching their clothing in accordance with their anti-worldly views. This was the 1980s, an era of red meat and fancy cars, but they ate simple meals like rice and beans. If they had cars at all, they were beaters or vans that doubled as rough living quarters. They had an earnest and plainspoken manner; they were likely to exclaim with wonder and gratitude over the simplest offerings, like a sunset, a piece of pretty fabric, or a bowl of soup. They hated to cut their hair.
Whenever possible, they gathered in great numbers before their gurus and, often under the influence of drugs, threw themselves into whirling physical ecstasies. Although I was never a true devotee, I went to a few of these events in my teen years. At one of them, I remember watching a girl, skinny and freckled and dressed in a gauzy skirt and primitive leather sandals, sway her arms and twist her body, her eyes closed in what seemed like a meditative trance. Then she threw back her head and wailed the name of the main guru: “Jerrrrryyyyy!”
These were Deadheads, of course, not members of a Christian sect. But it could be hard to tell the difference between the superfans of the Grateful Dead and religious fanatics. In fact, I’m not sure there is much of a difference. I’d always thought the Dead and its culture were holdovers from the counterculture of the ’60s, but lately, as the age of atheism becomes a solid event that we can examine, possibly in the rearview mirror, I’ve begun to think they were holding out on something else, something actually entirely normal to every culture.
