Early on a grower joined the Freedom Fighters and got really enthused and took an active roll in the councils. You knew he was gung-ho because he bought the full Freedom Fighter outfit and supplied everyone with great weed.
I turned him into a cultivation writer and he dubbed himself Professor Afghani. He was very popular at the office because of the free samples. Eventually, he began selling lids. Harry Crossfield had an office that looked into the reception area and he could monitor anyone who entered. Whenever Professor Afghani arrived, Harry would intercept him, and buy out the stash and then sell if off in bits.
The Professor always brought a six-pack of Grolsch to share with me as he knew I loved the little rubber gasket that came with every bottle, which had a thousand uses, the most important of which was locking down your guitar strap so it wouldn’t slip off. He tossed me a bottle and lid of weed, took a bottle for himself, and put the other four in my mini fridge.
Professor loved playing big-shot, and followed High Times promotional tours and events around as an opportunity to glow in a spotlight of adulation. “You’re Professor Afghani! Holy shit!! You’re my hero, dude!” One time he left someone else’s passport on my couch, and waited for me to see it, and then feigned alarm and moved it inside his bag. He wanted me to think he was a spook, or at least capable of obtaining a fake passport but it was just someone else’s expired passport and I knew it. Always playing big-shot.
After the 9th Cup, dubbed the Rainbow Cup, Bloom decided to follow me into the National Rainbow Gathering and got the Professor to drive him there. I am sure the primary motivation was reuniting with the Rainbow Gypsy Dancers, the stars of the Cup who drove Dronkers, bonkers. Bloom had never shown any interest in Rainbow before.
It was well-known that I’d had a liaison with one of the dancers in Amsterdam. And she had played Alice in the Alice in Wonderland drama crafted by Garrick Beck, which also starred Bobby Faust as the hookah-smoking caterpillar.
Sadly, the Professor was a pill freak and came to the gathering in the mornings from a motel nearby, and then drove back to the motel at night. He avoided the whole intent of Rainbow, which was providing a brief respite from Babylon.
Bloom and the Professor arrived two days before me. When I drove in, and parked appropriately, and walked in, I noticed a white car deep in the gathering and wondered what is that doing here? Usually if a vehicle was going to be left on site, it was covered with tarps so as not to disturb the natural beauty of the forest.
Many of my Rainbow friends had hurried to Bloom’s camp because they’d heard “Steve from High Times is here.” When I arrived, Bloom told me how popular I was.
In an unusual turn of events, Bloom seemed suddenly eager to hang out with me. In retrospect, he likely viewed me as one of the best chick magnets at the event. He didn’t know that I never came on to pretty girls at a gathering. I gave out hugs to anyone, but never copped any feels My mind was miles away from that. The one time I had sex at the gathering (in Pennsylvania) it was with my soon-to-be wife.
We went for a stroll over a bridge that spanned the swimming river where everyone skinny-dipped. The Gypsy Dancers were there, and Bloom made a salacious comment about Alice. I guess he thought I would concur and support that vibe, but his comment annoyed me and was only evidence of how desperate Bloom was to get laid. The comment had been a veiled reference to her ample bosom. I considered it inappropriate.
I go into a different state at the gathering, for me its the equivalent of a Catholic entering St. Peter’s. Can you imagine strolling in and hearing someone say “check out her boobies” under his breath. I’d say that person is out-of-touch with the vibes.
Every morning, the gate crew tried vainly to prevent the Professor from driving deep into the site. The Professor just kept roaring through. But on July 5th, the crew trashed his rental car, blowing out the front tires and wrecking the suspension.
The Professor called the police. Just as I was coming out of the gathering, I saw the gate crew and one had a video camera. “There he is!” one shouted, pointing at me. The camera suddenly focussed on me. The Professor had billed himself as a High Times celebrity, so the crew considered us a team. They were scared as shit because the Professor was pressing charges. The gate crew was in danger of being taken away in handcuffs, hence the video camera on me.
I was furious as my total bliss pump from the OM on the fourth was now completely wiped away. I ordered the Professor not to press charges, or he’d be 86’d from High Times. He got a replacement car and we made a plan to meet at a motel a few hours down the Interstate.
We pulled into a gas station near the motel and the Professor jumped out and began racing around my Sebring convertible. (British racing green with a hemp top. I so loved that car.) The Professor was cleaning my windows and mirrors with great vigor and incredible speed. He was frantic to return to my good side.
I was calm until we checked in, but once we were all in a room, exploded.
I told the Professor he needed to stop ego-posturing and grow some humility. I talked about how he had missed the whole point of Rainbow and just created waves of negativity while soiling the High Times name. The Professor hit the floor early in my speech, putting his hands in a prayer over of his head, begging for forgiveness. I don’t lash out often, but when I do, it can be epic.
Sadly, a few months later, the Professor was attacked by muggers. He’d been in a sports bar pontificating and drinking and probably high on pills. The muggers followed him out because he was flashing a roll. One had a knife. The professor refused to submit and fought them off. His arm was ripped to shreds by that knife, but he prevailed.
The Professor wasn’t the same old jolly dude after that incident scarred him for life, and he began taking massive doses of Ketamine. One day he got in his car while it was in the garage, turned on the ignition, and opened a window while waiting to die, deep in a K-hole.
We didn’t find out for a month and only because his girlfriend was written up on the police blotter. While naked, she had gone to water the plants and locked herself in the grow room in the attic and had to break out a window and scream for help until the cops came.
They opened the door to the grow room, and then arrested her for cultivation.
I loved Ian, aka Professor Afghani, adds Chris Simunek. Like a lot of people around the magazine, or in the marijuana movement in general, and in the outlaw marijuana cultivation scene in particular, he was a flawed individual.
But he had a good heart. When I got the job as cultivation editor, I was still figuring things out, and the Professor sat me down and gave me a lecture.
He told me that I had a very important job, that there were a lot of people out there who depended on the information that it was now my duty and privilege to supply. He could be clownish at times but on this point he was dead serious and it completely changed the way I looked at the gig.
I took it far more seriously after that….the story of Ian at the gathering, I think is probably a scenario that played out over and over in his life. He couldn’t control himself and it created problems for those around him. Maybe that’s what led him to the relatively solitary life of a pot grower in Staten Island the 90s, who knows.
I saw him in that period between the fight and his suicide. He had been smoking crack with a mutual friend and came over my apartment to get some valium to calm him down.
He showed me his wounds, they sliced him up good. But he was a really big guy who hurt the two guys who jumped him more than they hurt him.
And my last memory of him is that, when he told me the gory details of what he did to them, it was like he was going to cry.
He really felt bad about hurting these two guys who jumped him out of nowhere on a dark street. Like I said, he had a good heart, and his death hit me hard at the time.
I had gotten a strange letter right around the time of the Professor’s suicide from a parent blaming me for their son’s death. I assumed this person had died from a drug overdose and tossed the letter.
“I just want you to know,” it began, “that I hold you responsible for my son’s death,” It went on for two or three pages, hate bomb after hate bomb.
I now suddenly realized the Professor was dead, and his dad had blamed me. Maybe that tirade I put him through did help push him into a K-hole. I knew that was certainly possible because the professor worshipped me. I had been trying to steer him away from pills and ego pumping, but was too harsh and maybe for the wrong reason. He had blemished my spotless Rainbow reputation.
If that was my motivation, that was my ego talking
Or maybe it was the memories of what he’d done to those two muggers who ended up crippled and in critical condition.