This is that game I play where I type up a chapter or two from a famous novel (or other source) and you don’t find out who it is until the end. I think some people are going to know who this one is from the very first paragraph. I just have a feeling.
*
“Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race -about a week before the vote- word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with “some kind of strange drug” that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.
It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed know as “Wallot”…and it had been long whispered that Muskie was into something very heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of a mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.
I immediately recognized the Ibogaine Effect – from Muskie’s tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida; and finally, the condition of “total rage” that gripped him in Wisconsin.
There was no doubt about it: the Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was “when did he start?” But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the Sunshine Special in Florida… and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time.
Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers; he has often challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate him in a blaze of TV lights.
But there was none of that in Florida. When the Boohoo began grabbing at his legs and screaming for more gin, Big Ed went all to pieces… which gave rise to speculation, among reporters familiar with his campaign style in ’68 and ’70, that Muskie was not himself.
It was noticed, among other things, that he had developed a tendency to roll his eyes wildly during TV interviews, that his thought-patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even his closest advisors could predict when he might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neo-comatose funks. In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on that caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was – far gone in a bad ibogaine frenzy – suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was “the only Democrat who can beat Nixon”.
It is entirely conceivable – given the known effects of ibogaine – that Muskie’s brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at that crowd and saw Gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.
We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumors concerning the senator’s disastrous experiments with ibogaine. I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on election night in Milwaukee, but by the time the polls closed he was long gone. One of the hired bimbos in Muskie’s Holiday Inn headquarters said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Chicago, but we were never able to confirm this.
Humphrey’s addiction to Wallow has not stirred any controversy, so far. He has always campaigned like a rat in heat, and the only difference now is that he is able to do it eighteen hours a day instead of ten. The main change in his public style, since ’68, is that he no longer seems aware that his gibberish is not taken seriously by anyone except Labor Leaders and middle-class Blacks. At least half the reporters assigned to the Humphrey campaign are convinced he’s senile. When he ran for president four years ago, he was a hack and a fool, but at least he was consistent.
Now he talks like an eighty-year-old woman who just discovered speed. He will call a press conference to announce that if elected he will “have our boys out of Vietnam within ninety days”-then rush across town, weeping and jabbering the whole way, to appear on a network TV show and make a fist-shaking emotional appeal for every good American to stand behind the president and “applaud” his recent decision to resume heavy bombing in North Vietnam.
*
McGovern’s solid victory in Wisconsin was dismissed, by most of the press wizards, as further evidence that the Democratic Party has been taken over by “extremists”: George McGovern on the Left and George Wallace on the Right, with a sudden dangerous vacuum in what is referred to on editorial pages as “the vital Center”.
The root of the problem, of course, is that most of the big-time Opinion Makers decided a long time ago – along with all those Democratic senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, and other party pros- that the candidate of the “vital Center” in ’72 would be none other than that fireball statesman from Maine, Ed Muskie. By the summer of ’71 the party bosses had convinced themselves that Ed Muskie was the “only Democrat with a chance of beating Nixon”.
This was bullshit, of course. Sending Muskie against Nixon would have been like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine. Big Ed was an adequate senator – or at least he’d seemed like one until he started trying to explain his “mistake” on the war in Vietnam- but it was stone madness from the start to ever think about exposing him to the kind of bloodthirsty thugs that Nixon and John Mitchell would sic on him. They would have him screeching on his knees by sundown on Labor Day.
If I were running a campaign against Muskie, I would arrange for some anonymous creep to buy time on national TV and announce that twenty-two years ago he and Ed spent a summer working as male prostitutes at a Peg House somewhere in the North Woods. Nothing else would be necessary.
*
Total candor with the press – or anyone else, for that matter- is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business…and the main function of any candidate’s press secretary is to make sure the press gets nothing but upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory. When something like this happens, you quickly lock all the doors and send your press secretary out to start whispering, off the record, that your opponent’s California campaign coordinator just called to ask for a job.
This kind of devious bullshit is standard procedure in most campaigns. Everybody is presumed to understand it- even the reporters who can’t keep a straight face while they’re jotting it all down for page one of the early edition: “Sen. Mace Denies Pull Out Rumors; Predicts Total Victory in All States”
The best example of this kind of coverage has been the stuff coming out of the Muskie camp. In recent weeks the truth has been so painful that some journalists have gone out of their way to give the poor bastards a break and not flay them in print any more than absolutely necessary.
One of the only humorous moments in the Florida primary campaign, for instance, came when one of Muskie’s state campaign managers, Chris Hart, showed up at a meeting with representatives of the other candidates to explain why Big Ed was refusing to take part in a TV debate. “My instructions,” he said, “are that the senator should never again be put in a situation where he has to think quickly.”
By nightfall of that day every journalist in Miami was laughing at Hart’s blunder, but nobody published it; and none of the TV reporters ever mentioned it on the air. I didn’t even use it myself, for some reason, although I heard about it in Washington while I was packing to go back to Florida.
I remember thinking that I should call Hart and ask him if he actually said a thing like that, but when I got there, I didn’t feel up to it. Muskie was obviously in deep trouble, and Hart had been pretty decent to me when I’d showed up at headquarters to sign up for that awful trip on the Sunshine Special… So I figured what the hell? Let it rest. Looking back on it, I think it must have been so obvious that the Muskie campaign was doomed that nobody felt mean enough to torment the survivors over something that no longer seemed important.
*
One of my clearest memories of the Nebraska primary is getting off the elevator on the wrong floor in the Omaha Hilton and hearing a sudden burst of song from a room down one of the hallways…. Twenty to thirty young voices in ragged harmony, kicking out the jams as they swing into the final, hair-raising chorus of “The Hound and The Whore.” I had heard it before, in other hallways of other hotels along the campaign trail- but never this late at night, and never at this level of howling intensity:
O the Hound chased the Whore across
the mountains
Boom! Boom! Boom!
O the Hound chased the Whore into the sea….
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A very frightening song under any circumstances- but especially frightening if you happen to be a politician running or very high stakes and you know the people singing that song are not on your side.
I have never been in that situation myself, but I imagine it is something like camping out in the North Woods and suddenly coming awake in your tent around midnight to the horrible snarling and screaming sounds of a werewolf killing your guard dog somewhere out in the trees beyond the campfire.
*
-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
Big influence on me. Usually I say more but I’m feeling quiet today.
I enjoy promoting other fantastic bloggers. I’ve actually promoted Holly once before in the past, but this is before I learned that she is a talented fiction writer! She used to simply journal. I promoted her in the past because her online diary was (and still is) hilarious at times.
She still journals, but now she treats followers to her storytelling talent between journal posts. Below I’ve pasted the first part of one story. It’s a dark little number about a killer named Ralph.
*tip – you have to start at the bottom of the post and scroll up to read the entire series. That’s just how her blog is.
Okay, here’s that sample:
Ralph – by Holly
Claire searched frantically through the house looking for her husband. She finally found him, not dead, “thank God”, she thought, but wrapped like a mummy in plastic. She didn’t know how he was still breathing, but he was. And panicking. She tore at the plastic covering his face with her fingers. It was so thick and stretchy she couldn’t breach it. She knew she was running out of time, but she had to leave him again. “I’m coming back!”, she yelled at him. He stopped squirming for a moment, shocked perhaps? She couldn’t see his face clearly to be sure. A strained squeal leaked from his wrappings, but she had no time to waste reassuring him.
She leapt up and looked around. She was in a bedroom, fully furnished. Rushing to the dresser, she violently snatched drawers open, praying for a tool of some sort. “Fuck!” she yelled when she found the first two empty. She opened a third, again finding nothing. She wrenched the open drawer up and down in the dresser until it broke, hoping for a sliver of wood that she could use to free Carl. Having no luck, she smashed the drawer against the dresser until she did. It had been only seconds, less than a minute, she was sure, but Carl had grown still.
She rushed to his side. “I’m here, I’ve got you, just hang on.”
She pulled the plastic taut and away from Carl’s face then stabbed at it with the drawer fragment. The point broke and the splintered wood dug into her hand, but she kept at it. She was chanting “no, no, no” under her breath like a mantra. Finally, she was able to make a hole large enough to get a few fingers into, and she used all her strength to make it large enough to allow Carl to breathe. But he didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. She threw her tool down and started pressing on his chest, trying desperately to revive him. Nothing. Her mantra grew louder and more agonized.
She kept at it, blind with grief until suddenly Carl jolted, drawing a screaming breath.
She laughed though her tears, wild with excitement and relief. Carl was still trapped, but he was alive. “I’ve got you! Hold on. I’ve got you.” Claire said as she moved back to the hole to start tearing again, exposing the rest of Carl’s face. Then, Claire’s head was gone. Her torso slowly tilted forward, falling onto Carl’s wrapped chest, the blood pouring forth from his wife’s neck filling his nose and mouth, silencing his screams.
“That’s better.” Said Ralph. He walked to the bed and wiped his machete clean on the crisp white duvet. The contrast was stark, almost artful. He thought it added some much-needed flair to this boring ass room.
*
What a hell of a beginning, huh? It gets so much better than this.
She also has a touching story “Lucy and Luther” which is equal parts adorable and disturbing. Holly’s talent for mixing horror with cuteness is mind-boggling. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s pretty awesome.
Now, that link is Grace’s current blog… but today I want to talk about her old blog on Blogger. It has some jewels.
If you want something good to read on a rainy day, Grace’s old Blog is definitely worth your time.
I’m on my second reading of it, because I’ve mentioned that I struggle with eating, and Grace’s blog is riveting enough that it draws my attention in and I can sometimes read her blog instead of doing “Blog N Eat”.
How does one describe Grace? She’s complex. At times she’s reflective (bordering on philosophical), other times she’s sarcastic and humorous. Above all, Grace writes some of the best poetry I’ve seen.
Below I’ve highlighted some passages from Blogger that I enjoy:
“If you live any amount of time in a place you pick up the local lingo. I’ve lived a lot of different places but certainly never lost my native lingo and have often found myself trying to explain what I’m tawkin’ about. Our local mini-mart is owned by Hindu people, country unknown, and when I bought my lottery ticket the other day the gentleman said, “Don’t forget us when you win”. I said, “From your lips to God’s ears”. He looked at me funny.”
“It’s an odd feeling – phantom hair. Fluffing hair that isn’t there, I have no feelings of despair. It will return, I have no doubt. Until it does, I’ll do without.”
“My ‘conversations’ with the cats: Are you crazy? Must you be everywhere I am? What have you got now? Do you want the cheese or not? Move your fat butt. Leave her A-lone! Do that one more time and I swear I’m gonna kill you.
Didn’t I just tell you to get down? Am I not speaking English? Get OFF!”
“I’ve never quite understood what they mean when they say “Live each day as if it is your last” I would like to spend the last day of my life stuffing my face with jelly donuts and having hot jungle monkey sex. The last day of my life will probably be spent in a hospital bed, pooping in a diaper and gasping for breath. Truth to tell I’d rather not spend each day doing either of those things…enticing as the first may seem.”
“When I say hanging out – I mean kids would gather at the candy store, take up all the stools at the counter, order a coke and basically act like fools. Which teenagers do. Periodically there would be a brou-ha-ha and all the kids would get thrown out and possibly banned for a few days. In which case they would migrate to the other candy store – but this was not always a good solution because Jack and Ruby always knew which kids they had thrown out – so if you got banned from Jack’s, Ruby would know and he wouldn’t let you in, in which case your social life was screwed until you apologized.”
[That whole 2012 post is one of my favorites, with the Americana reference to candy stores where teens hung out in 1950’s NYC]
“We are music. The first sounds we hear are music – the beating of our mother’s heart; of our own. The low notes – we hear them first. Warm, dark, comforting. Rhythm – babies love the rhythm – rock them and they are soothed; swing them gently back and forth; our earliest memories, our first memories, are musical – rhythm and melody. The beat of the heart, the melody of the movement of the fluid we float in…our first memories. We share these memories, tho different rhythms and different melodies, and sing out to each other – hear me, hear my music.”
“I was walking home from work this afternoon and I was stopped dead in my tracks by the graceful antics of two small butterflies – they flew close to the ground – wing to wing; swooping and gliding; then chasing each other with the smaller one getting under the wing of the larger one so they looked as if they were one; they tumbled through the air, tossing themselves about and then they parted and flew off in opposite directions. And I stood there with a foolish smile on my face while traffic rushed around me and and the lunch time diners gave me strange looks as I stood stock still watching this incredible gift.”
“We piled out of the theatre, hopped up, excited, totally jazzed. As we made our way down the street, without forethought or planning, we began to dance, snapping our fingers and singing – “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, From your first cigarette to your last dying day”
We jostled around and reformed to sing – “Gee Officer Krupke, what are we to do? Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup You!”
We settled, and walked and then someone started to sing – “Could be, Who knows? There’s something due any day I will know right away Soon as it shows…” 15 sweet, beautiful teenage voices joined in. One of the boys ran ahead, leapt onto a light pole, ala Gene Kelly in ‘Singing in the Rain”, one arm wrapped around the pole, the other flung up and out …and we sang – “It may come cannon-ballin’ down from the sky, Gleam in its eye, Bright as a rose. Who knows?”
“I hear music in my head, that no one else can hear. The drummer keeps a steady beat; the guitarist throws a riff While the sax man blows it long and low – it finally hits my feet.
A shuffle, then a bump, a swing, as hips go side to side And then the trumpet sidles in and I begin to glide.”
I’ve been wanting to write about my past psychedelic experiences for a long time. Last night I discovered a great resource for researching psychedelics & experiences that I will plug at the bottom of this post, along with a few other links.
Before we get into my experiences, I gotta plug a few hilarious quotes I found.
My original intention was to do two separate posts.
One of them was going to be chock-full of funny quotes like those below, plus some quotes that were simply interesting or beautiful. The other post was going to be my personal experiences.
Well, as I continued to read about people’s experiences, I found that most of them just were not as funny as the ones below.
And I don’t have patience to make a big research project out of this whole thing.
But let’s get into the good stuff.
Quotes
“Moments later I progressed ever deeper into the ego death and lost my sense of self momentarily. I then started to feel that I was the universe searching for itself within itself but had entirely forgotten that it was itself. At this point a brief moment of realization hit me, I realized that I had found myself and that it had been right in front of me all along.”
“I was asking questions aloud to my friends/guardian spirits, like “When did you get here?” (by which I meant, ‘When did you beings come into existence?’), and my friend replied, “We’ve been here the whole time, dude” (this proved to me that they were divine).”
And later, in the same entry:
“One friend stayed behind to keep me company through all this while the other two went exploring, and I asked stuff from time to time (still thinking he was divine); “Where did you come from?” I asked, and he replied by touching my heart and whispering, “We came from inside.” Looking back on it he was simply trolling me, but my mind was blown, again.”
Haha, lmao! =) That entry above is my absolute favorite.
(The quote below is for Rob in particular)
“I decided it was finally time for me to try to play Mario cart, and as I tried to navigate through the menu with my friend I realized that I could actually still play really well. I chose a map called “rainbow road” for obvious reasons, and the neon rainbow of colors engulfed the entire room as we played. I had never felt this before, but a great peace of everything being connected to me overcame me and I started bawling my eyes out! I kept telling my friends that I was experiencing “pure love” and that the universe loved me!”
(He then goes on to explain that his friends were shitty trip sitters, and it seems like they were just ignoring him while he was having this majestic insight about the universe – how sad).
My experiences
Before we get into my experiences, I should tack a disclaimer on here.
I have never had a bad trip on any psychedelic drug. However. This was during a very social time of my life. I was young and I was surrounded by friends I trusted who I spent time hanging out with nearly every day.
The “set and setting” was continually good because this friend group had such a profoundly positive effect on my life. Thus, even when I tripped alone I never had a bad trip.
I had not yet developed anxiety or a stressful career. I had zero self-awareness. In other words, I was not yet an adult. I was an adult in age (early 20’s) but not mentally. If I took any of these substances now (besides MDMA), there’s a good chance I’d have a nightmare trip unless something in my life changed to where I could establish general emotional safety, plus a very good set and setting.
LSD
I remember the beginning of my first LSD trip like it was yesterday. It makes me smile.
Being incredibly dumb as a young person, I took that first dose alone. My girlfriend must have been at work. I have no memory of her being there. I was alone in my first apartment.
I took a low dose and waited for the effects to kick in.
It must have been one sugar cube, because I can’t remember any geometric wave patterns from this first trip. But then, I only remember the first part of the trip. I do remember a pufferfish on the ceiling. But we’ll get to that later.
The first thing I remember is a gentle and heady shift in my consciousness. I remember having a little feeling of excitement. “Wow, it’s happening!”
Some time passed, and I looked down at the carpet. The carpet was one of those low carpets like you’d find in a doctor’s waiting room office. It was normally dark blue with green specks in it.
As the effects of the acid kicked in, the floor started turning green. A neon-colored green. I was ecstatic.
I grabbed the cordless phone and dialed my friend Nick. He answered.
“Nick!” I shouted, “Nick, the floor is turning GREEN!”
Nick chuckled.
“It sounds like you took that acid.”
“Yes!!!”
I don’t remember what he said after that. I’m sure that I continued talking about how amazing everything was and he continued chuckling for some time.
I was a big marijuana stoner during this time, and I had recently discovered The 13th Floor Elevators. I grabbed a 13th Floor Elevators album, placed it in the CD deck of my stereo and cranked the music up.
The song “(I’ve Got) Levitation” came on and I was overtaken with musical ecstasy.
The lyrics talked about the ocean rolling below you. I jumped up on my couch and looked down at the floor. I wasn’t hallucinating at this point, but I had a general feeling like the room was more expansive and I imagined my floor as the ocean. A blue-green ocean of neon.
I jumped from the couch cushions up to the very top of the couch, and then back down to the couch cushions again. I just remember being ecstatic over the music.
At one point, I looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
I saw a flashing pufferfish on my ceiling. There wasn’t any color or anything, it was just the outline of the pufferfish. It was in the ceiling texture – those paint bumps you see in apartments.
But it was clearly a pufferfish. Spikes and everything. And it was flashing and moving around.
I sat for a while looking up and admiring the pufferfish.
This is an amazing thing about LSD. Where did this come from? I didn’t have any particular interest in pufferfish. But one just appeared randomly. Created by my fucking brain. Just… out of nowhere.
*
Apparently, Nick decided that I shouldn’t be alone. Because at some point there was a knock on the door. I wasn’t scared because I somehow knew that it was my friends.
I opened the door, and they all piled in. About 7 or 8 of them.
I didn’t have much furniture so most of them sat cross legged on the floor.
They suddenly looked like cabbage patch kids to me. You know, the doll from the 80’s. They didn’t literally look like the dolls, but I had a general feeling that they were cabbage patch kids because of the particular way they sat cross legged on the floor. Their crossed legs were like cabbages and they were cabbage patch kids.
Most of them were a few years younger than me. I was totally the immature 21-year-old befriending and buying beer for the 17- and 18-year-olds. And yet… I was the most childlike among the whole crowd. It was a thing they liked about me and they were special.
There’s a whole Jack Kerouac-style backstory about how I met these kids that I should tell some other time. We all remained friends for several years until a primary member of the group committed suicide and shattered each of our lives.
But, at this very moment on LSD they looked like cabbage patch kids to me, and I remember telling them so. They were always amused by “crazy Melissa” and my weird-ass antics while drunk or stoned. And they all came over to my apartment because they couldn’t miss the chance to see me on LSD. Heh.
One of the girls sat next to me on the couch and I handed her my journal with sketches and writings. She sat there reading it and looked amazed by what she was reading. I continued tripping but I don’t remember anything else.
This is something I drew with colored pencils during my acid days. I think I was just stoned, but obviously influenced by LSD. I cannot normally draw or even conceive of something like this. I have no idea what the fuck this is. Welcome to your brain on LSD.Even when you are not actively tripping on LSD – it changes your whole perspective and increases creativity for about a week. Do you see theupsidedown bong?
Other trips
I did quite a bit of LSD tripping after that. There was a great deal of listening to music and staring at the geometric swirls in the fireplace.
During the most intense experience, I remember I ate a little too much acid. Probably like 3 or 4 sugar cubes. Too much for me. I tried listening to some wild song by Jimi Hendrix.
The whole room smiled at me in mockery. The edges of everything in the room, and indeed the room itself – it was all bent sharply upward in a mocking smile. The stereo smiled at me. It wasn’t a bad trip; it was just a little too intense. I shut the radio off and waited it out. This intense moment passed pretty quickly.
One time me and the boys went to Kincaid Park and it was the most amazing trip of my life. People should trip outdoors under the moonlight. We climbed this huge hill and looked out over Anchorage’s Cook Inlet. I can’t remember much of that one, beyond the sheer beauty of Kincaid Park under the moon in early spring. Which, honestly – I’m sure is amazing while perfectly sober.
Generally speaking – low to moderate doses of LSD bring a vast amount of geometric form pattern hallucinations.
You don’t actually have the kind of hallucinations where you see things that are not really there – you just hallucinate moving geometric patterns – at times often quite intricate – in the forms of reality. Walls, carpets, desktops. And maybe – as in my case – the occasional form of some kind of animal in the wall or ceiling.
Most of the experience is spiritual in nature. It changes how you feel. There’s a spiritual transcendence.
I cannot speak for high doses. I was never brave enough to take a high dose, except the aforementioned “mocking smile” experience. That was a bit uncomfortable for a while. My male friends would take much higher doses than I did.
One time Nick told me that he had a trip after 9 sugar cubes where he thought he swallowed his tongue. I laughed my ass off and told him that’s why I stuck to lower doses.
One time I drove to Kincaid Park and ate a couple of sugar cubes in the bathroom. Alone. I hung out for a while and went and sat in the grass. Then I went to the bathroom to pee.
At some point, the walls began turning orange and the geometric hallucinations began. The walls started breathing. I had a moment of clarity where I decided it was probably not smart to hang out in the woods alone on LSD.
I drove home. High on acid. So – it was not safe enough to be alone in the woods, but driving was apparently fine. I wrote in more detail about this experience in my post about Soundgarden.
Because I listened to Soundgarden on the drive home, see. On full blast. It was the greatest driving experience of my life.
But… it was incredibly, incredibly dumb. I cannot believe I was ever that stupid. I don’t understand how I made it out of my early 20’s alive.
I paid close attention to red and green lights. I drove as carefully as I could and stayed between the highway lines while everything swirled around me. This was my Hunter S. Thompson moment.
I could have called my girlfriend to come get me. I realized this half-way through the drive. But it was too late.
But when I got home, my girlfriend was zoned out on LSD herself. She was laying on the couch watching Pink Panther cartoons.
Heh. So much for that idea.
Mushrooms
Then came magic mushrooms. Ooooh, I was arrogant about mushrooms at first. I thought I could handle a whole bag of mushrooms because I had done so much LSD.
Newsflash: They’re two different drugs. You don’t eat a whole fucking bag of mushrooms the first time you try them. It doesn’t matter how often you’ve been taking LSD.
I was laying on the couch while tripping. At some point, I completely lost my sense of self. I had no form. I had no body.
I could not perceive where the couch ended, and I began. All of this happened with my eyes closed.
I closed my eyes and the most incredible visuals with great huge beams of blue light in a shape I can only describe as hourglass-like – they moved in constant patterns like a modern screensaver.
I was too fucked up to be scared. I do not remember any fear. Whatsoever. I remember being fascinated. To the extent possible, given that I was no longer a human and I had no human form.
After a while, I came down some and opened my eyes. I took a drink of my water and it tasted like strawberries. I was astonished. I kept drinking more. How can this be? I took more sips, it kept tasting like strawberries.
The best mushroom trip happened with my friend Nick.
We ate the mushrooms (a reasonable dose this time!) and walked the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. As we entered the trail, some type of machine that cleans paved paths was driving toward us. I was starting to come up. I was absolutely fascinated.
“Nick, look at this crazy shit!”
There were a few of these machines and they were like crazy giant bugs – some kind of ant that sprayed water. He laughed because he saw the same thing. “Yeah, that’s some weird shit, I know…”
We walked the trail all night long. Gorgeous. I had to stop several times to puke. Mushrooms always had this effect on me.
Until my friend Crystal informed me that you can cut the nausea by squeezing the good shit out of the mushrooms with a strainer into a cup of double-bagged chamomile tea and steep it for 15 minutes.
It works. That’s how powerful chamomile tea is. I never puked or had nausea after making “mushroom tea”.
Here comes the best part:
We entered a park area with picnic tables. I saw a statue sitting at a picnic table. I was absolutely fascinated. I began walking quickly toward the statue. I heard Nick yell behind me, “Melissa, what you are you doing!?” He sounded alarmed, but I thought he was just being dramatic.
“I’m going to look at this statue!”
I slowed my pace as I neared the statue. The statue had its chin resting on its hand – like that whole “To be, or not to be” statue of classical whatever.
Suddenly, the statue moved! I gasped and started running away as fast as I could.
At some point, I stopped and looked back, still alarmed. I’m not sure why I did this, but I kicked dirt up into the air with my foot. Like a dog. And then continued running back toward Nick.
Nick was laughing his ass off. He was laughing so hard he was in tears.
“I thought it was a statue!” I explained.
So, let’s consider the perspective of this poor dude. He’s sitting around thinking about something. Suddenly, a young woman runs up to him at full speed, slows down, and peers closely at him with wildly dilated eyes. Ha. It’s too great.
Welcome to Anchorage, Alaska. Stranger things happen in this town.
*
As we walked, seagulls dived at Nick and it scared the shit out of him. We had walked beneath a nest. He was trying to punch them in the air. I laughed at him and he was annoyed at my laughing. And I laughed even more at his annoyance.
I wish I had a better description of walking on the Knowles Trail in summertime on mushrooms. Especially with a trusted friend. Let me just say this: This trail in Anchorage is amazing enough on its own. The lush plants, the summer light.
Nick was planning on leaving for California for winter, and toward the end of the trip we sat in a field with flowers. Suddenly Nick became Mr. Planning. Which I thought was hilarious.
He talked a great deal about things he needed to do for his cats. Nick always had cats around. He was very serious about taking care of his pet cats. Which was sweet because he was a young stoner boy. He named one of his cats “Spliff”.
He talked about his plane leaving at “Nine o’clock in the afternoon”.
We were still fairly high. I lost it. I started laughing my ass off.
“Nine o’clock is nighttime, Nick, not afternoon!” He was like, “Oh yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Heh. Shit like that. You had to be there.
MDMA
Ah, then there was MDMA. Colloquially known as “Ecstasy”. This was a few years after the LSD and mushrooms.
Far and away – the CRAZIEST hallucinations I have ever seen happened on MDMA. This is due to one of two things – either the massive doses I took, or there was something else in those pills. We’ll get into the hallucinations later.
This was during a very irresponsible time of my life. I was out of my mind, and I was reckless.
My good friend had killed himself.
Only a few months after that incident, I walked in on my best friend and my girlfriend having sex.
I remember my MDMA trips, but I do not remember much else from this period. It was the darkest period of my life.
Looking back, I used the MDMA as self-therapy. I had no one. My friend group had splintered apart after our mutual friend’s suicide. The whole group isolated and stopped seeing each other for a while.
I lived with this best friend of mine. The Betrayer. So, I had to continue living with this wench for a while until I decided to move back in with my parents. You can imagine how that went.
Well, unless I was high on MDMA, which I often was. Then I was okay with the two of them. But when I came down? Not so much. I should have moved out sooner, but you see – I couldn’t sit around doing MDMA all night long at my parent’s house.
I did ecstasy alone and it was my therapy. I forgave them both. I saw their perspective. I had intense empathy for myself, for both of them, and for everyone in the whole world. My friend would walk by and I was like, “Okay, I understand, and I forgive you” and she would be confused because hours earlier I was screaming at her and throwing shit.
I took massive doses. 5 pills at once, and then I took more once the high wore off. Nick told me I was out of my mind. He was concerned, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The craziest hallucination was The Parrot. I worked for a guitar store at the time. We were allowed to take home awesome promotional posters sent to the store for gear.
I had this poster of Jimi Hendrix with a huge Marshall stack behind him. It was a Marshall advertisement. I was high and staring at this poster intensely.
Suddenly, something started GROWING on this poster. On Jimi’s shoulder. It was a bright green color, almost a neon green. The green thing started as just a little round ball, but the ball kept growing.
The ball continued to slowly grow into a branch! From the branch, talons formed, and from the talons, legs grew up, and from the legs a torso, wings, and a head!
I sat up and squinted. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I knew that I was experiencing a hallucination, I didn’t believe it was real. But – I had never seen ANYTHING like this on LSD or mushrooms. The detail was amazing.
Best yet, this was all 3D. The branch grew out halfway into my living room and the parrot WALKED out onto the branch and stared at me. It turned its head this way and that, checking me out.
I got up and grabbed the air. People are funny like that when high – you know full and well that it’s a hallucination from your mind, but you’re going to try and grab it anyway. You know. It just seems so real that you have to make sure.
I also remember seeing a lot of spiders coming down from the ceiling on webs during this time. That was unsettling because spiders are a thing that actually exist. I was always swatting at them just to make sure. But these hallucinations were so frequent that soon enough I learned to ignore them and listen to my music.
I was constantly listening to The Meat Puppets. That music is made for MDMA. There’s no way I can explain this. The only way you could understand how The Meat Puppets are the perfect MDMA band is to take the drug and listen to the band.
It was so good that I rarely listened to anything else.
I just listened to this and it took me back. I have not heard this album in a long-ass time. This album was cemented to the point where I can almost feel like I am on MDMA while listening to this.
One morning I had a hallucination that a rat was giving birth in my bathroom heater vent. I thought it might be a hallucination, but it seemed so real that I couldn’t stop watching and trying to figure it out. It was disgusting. These little hairless rodents swirmed around like maggots and the mom rat just kept popping them out. She had like 10 babies and finally it disappeared.
Then I went to work while still high. I told one of my co-workers about how a rat may have given birth in my heater vent. I relayed this information while still obviously very high, I’m sure.
I was fired that day, of course.
Heh. And then four years later I became an HR worker. I never judged people with drug charges on those background checks, let me tell you.
*
And so ends the history of my psychedelic drug use. I had many fun times. I did many stupid things.
I have no interest in MDMA but would happily do LSD and mushrooms again under the right circumstances. But first I would need either a group of close and trusted friends, or a licensed therapist who enjoys supervising these adventures. I can’t see ever doing any of that shit again on a willy-nilly basis like I did back in the day. And I would certainly never trip alone. In general, I’m more of an actual adult now and would be very cautious about the whole affair.
Have you ever listened to a song for years only to realize one day that you’re wrong about the meaning behind the lyrics?
For me, it can totally ruin the song.
“Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin was my battle song.
I thought it was about Vikings sailing into battle.
I would really get into it.
I was a warrior woman on that Viking boat. I stood near the bow with a sword in my hand and copper cuffs on each wrist. My eyes narrowed, the ocean sprayed my face, the boat bobbed up and down over waves… and I experienced the greatest endorphin rush of my life.
Sexy bearded men stood all around me, and they all had great legs.
We were Vikings, and we were going to win.
I also looked this good and had that same french manicure.
Everything about this song screams battle song – the pulsating bass, the drums, even the title. The last stand.
At some point, I read an article which revealed the song’s true origin. The title of the song was inspired by a car wreck. Robert Plant busted his foot in a car wreck, and the title is a clever play on that incident. Awww, how cute.
The actual content of the song is about vacationing in Morocco.
Or something.
Whatever the case may be, I can no longer hear this song without thinking about Plant’s damned foot.
All I can see is Plant’s foot wrapped in bandages while a bunch of long-hairs with sunglasses relax around an outdoor pool. This is decidedly less glamorous than my fantasy. But I can’t go back! The damage is done.
Bastards.
This also happened when I read the lyrics to “Rhinoceros” by The Smashing Pumpkins. There’s a lyric which I always thought was “Open your eyes to these monster lies”.
OPEN YOUR EYES TO THESE MONSTER LIES.
Just look at that lyric! The power! As it turns out, the “monster” part is wrong. For me, that was the most important part.
Monster is defined as “huge” in this context. There are HUGE lies all around us.
Open your friggin’ eyes, people! These lies surrounding us are monstrous! This “monster” element made the lyric incredibly powerful. It added to the depth of the overall sound.
The actual lyric is, “Open your eyes to these must I lie”.
What?! What the hell does that even mean? Some lyric websites say “mustard lies”, which is far worse. It’s almost offensive. “Monster Lies” is much better. It improves the whole character of the lyric.
It’s amazing how people can interpret song meanings and lyrics. I recently looked up the lyrics to “Soot and Stars”, another Pumpkin song. To me, this song is about loss and transition. It’s poetic and sorrowful.
What do other people think this song means?
This is the first comment about “Soot and Stars” at songmeanings.com:
“This song is obviously about Star Wars. It describes the feelings of Darth Vader after all has happened and is said and done”.
I laughed out loud for about 10 seconds when I read that. I would have choked if I was eating. I am fairly certain that the guy was being satirical. But, it proves the point – people can interpret songs and other works in surprisingly diverse ways.
It actually wouldn’t surprise me if someone really believed, with all his heart, that these lyrics are about Star Wars. Yes, that man contemplating his career and life choices is Darth Vader.
“Pssssh. Duhhh, how can you not tell? That’s what makes it so poetic and sorrowful.”
Because I can totally judge Star Wars fans about their fantasy life.
March 23rd 2016 was a special night. A friend and I went to the famous Paramount Theatre in Seattle to experience my favorite band of all time.
Buzzed out of my mind on sheer anticipation, I spent the entire night of March 22nd walking around while listening to the entire Smashing Pumpkins catalog on shuffle. Afterward, I proceeded to watch several hours of DVD concert footage.
If I could only convince myself on a regular basis that I was going to see one of my favorite bands the next day, I would always be in a splendid mood. Maybe that’s the key to life – just willfully enter a state of perpetual delusion and stay there forever. Sounds good to me.
Luckily for me, I wasn’t merely pretending that there was a show the following night. There was a show, and it was my favorite band. I had not attended a Pumpkins show for sixteen years. Rumors were flying around that Billy Corgan had taken to playing classic songs again.
I couldn’t have been more excited. Somehow, I managed to sleep.
The next day, I drove into Seattle at a furious rate of speed. I met up with my friend and concert companion for a pre-show dinner and beer. We raced around the grey city together; the world whizzed by speckled with a hazy, dreamy sheen. The air was feather-light and pleasant against my skin, the pavement swirled in lollipop patterns beneath my skipping feet. It was the kind of moment people yearn for – the natural high of exuberant joy.
After dinner, we rushed off to The Paramount Theatre. The Paramount is gorgeous – it was the perfect setting for this show; ornate furnishings, chandeliers, and dim lighting. My friend and I took turns smiling at each other with idiotic pleasure.
Finally, we entered the auditorium and took our seats. Murky red lights glowed on the carpeted walls. Hushed voices whispered all around us, rising and falling in crescendos of excited anticipation. The lights dimmed, and Billy Corgan’s profile stalked across the shadowy stage. He picked up his acoustic guitar and stood in the dark.
I stiffened to attention immediately. I sat up straight on the edge of my seat, erect as a steel rod.
“Is that him!?” she whispered in my ear.
“F— yes, that’s him!” I whispered back impatiently, reeling with barely contained joy.
It was unmistakably Billy; his figure loomed over 6 feet tall, wearing his trademark black suit, sporting his notorious bald head. That was him. His long arm reached for his guitar. The house lights came up. He stood before us in a single spotlight.
The auditorium hushed.
He began playing “Tonight, Tonight” on acoustic guitar. I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. A pleasant shock overcame my senses; the moment was completely surreal. His voice carried through the air in front of me, emerging in real time and happening in front of my face.
They played songs that I never thought I would hear live. The whole middle section of the show was dedicated to the Siamese Dream era. They played a suite of four or five songs from Siamese Dream, including one of my favorites, “Soma”, reworked for piano instead of guitar.
I had to resist a very strong urge to run up to the front of the auditorium and stand under Billy, right in front of the stage. I wanted to run up and stand directly below him.
I had to resist this urge several times.
I have never experienced such a visceral pull before. I was being physically pulled by a force beyond my control. I maintained extreme willpower to resist that urge. Respect for both the band and the audience allowed me to hold onto my sense and keep my wits about me.
That experience recalls a memory from when I worked in a guitar store 11 years ago. I was the only female working at the store among several young men, all talented musicians. My co-workers and I would occasionally watch music performances on video when business was slow. One day, we watched footage of The Beatles performing in 1964. Young women threw themselves down and rolled on the floor. They screamed at the top of their lungs, flailed their arms, cried, and fainted.
The guys couldn’t believe it. They stared, awestruck and envious. “God!” one of the guys declared, “Those girls! Damn, girls were crazy back then!” I smiled slyly – the reaction of the boys was as amusing to me as the footage of girls in the throes of Beatlemania.
Years later, I now understand the tidal force that possessed those poor girls.
My fellow concert-goers were an experience as well; they were clearly hardcore fans. Everyone stood up after all the popular songs. They yelled, whistled, and begged for more. The men shouted, “BILLLLLLLY!” in long, drawn out howls. I surveyed the crowd in ecstasy. It was thrilling to be immersed in a symphony of devotion that mirrors my own. I looked around frantically, trying to drink everyone into my eyes and senses. Many were around my age, not surprisingly. Some were a little younger. My friend who attended is 10 years younger than I, but she claims she listened to The Pumpkins in high school. They are the new Pink Floyd. They span decades.
Billy’s star was shining as bright as ever that night. It was all there – flawless guitar solos, high clear singing, fascinating interplay with the other instrumentalists. My favorite part of the show was the look in his eyes during moments where he scanned the audience as we screamed and went crazy after songs. He looked like a little boy on Christmas morning.
As he scanned the crowd, his eyes lit up with love and appreciation. He smiled. The look in his eyes was genuine and unmistakable. His eyes shone with affection. Corgan has never been a guy to hide genuine emotions. So much of what he is (and what fans are) is The Child. That brief flash of his eyes was everything. He has a reputation for being the most arrogant and incorrigible asshat in the music world. Fans know a whole other side of the man – we laugh at the interviews, push them aside in amusement, and listen to the music.
As a bonus, Jimmy Chamberlin came out and drummed for a few songs. The crowd went apeshit when Jimmy emerged on the stage. A few nights later, original member James Iha also joined the band for a few songs in another town. I am horribly envious of the people who attended those shows. Those fans were damn lucky.
After the show, my friend declared this was the best show she’s ever seen at The Paramount. In 2015 she saw her favorite band, Modest Mouse, at the Paramount. She said that something was off with Mouse, that the sound wasn’t quite right.
I smiled broadly. “Well, of course, my dear,” I said in a tone of obvious superiority, “This is The Pumpkins, you see”.
I feel lucky that my hero is still alive. Above everything else, this is proof that the greatest talents of a generation do not have to die young. Great talents may release less exciting albums as they age, but you can still see them live.
I wanted it to last forever. Even now I wish I could jump back into the moment. But, like any good trip, you must come back sometime. Then you’re just left with the memory.
For the longest time, I’ve had a great blog idea. I wanted to type up a chapter from various books I love for your entertainment… and not tell you who the author is until the end. That’s the fun part. I never followed up due to the enormous work it entails, and other competing priorities. But damn, last week I read something so delicious that I just knew I had to start this series. Even if this series only happens once every three months…
Okay, let’s get to our first episode. Since I am starting halfway through the chapter, the passage will require a short introduction. I’m also going to skip some passages to get to the best part faster.
I chose this selection because the latter part of the chapter is so fucking hilarious that I stayed up too late last week re-reading the passage twice.
Introduction:
Oswald Ten Eyck is a failed playwright who is literally a starving artist. This scene takes places at a dinner party full of artsy people from the surrounding college community. Okay. Now it’s time for me to get out of the way and let the content speak for itself.
***
“Usually, when Ten Eyck went to Miss Potter’s house, he found several members of Professor Hatcher’s class who seemed to be in regular attendance on Friday afternoons.
These others may have come for a variety of reasons: because they were bored, curious, or actually enjoyed these affairs, but the strange, horribly shy and sensitive little man who bore the name of Oswald Ten Eyck came from a kind of desperate necessity, the ravenous hunger of his meagre half-starved body, and his chance to get his one good dinner of the week.
It was evident that Ten Eyck endured agonies of shyness, boredom, confusion, and tortured self-consciousness at these gatherings, but he was always there, and when they sat down at the table he ate with the voracity of a famished animal.
The visitor to Miss Potter’s reception room would find him, usually backed into an inconspicuous corner away from the full sound and tumult of the crowd, nervously holding a tea-cup in his hands, talking to someone in the strange blurted-out desperate fashion that was characteristic of him, or saying nothing for long periods, biting his nails, thrusting his slender hands desperately through his mop of black disordered hair, breaking from time to time into a shrill, sudden, almost hysterical laugh, blurting out a few volcanic words, and then relapsing into his desperate hair-thrusting silence.
The man’s agony of shyness and tortured nerves was painful to watch: it made him say and do sudden, shocking and explosive things that could suddenly stun a gathering such as this, and plunge him back immediately into a pit of silence, self-abasement and despair. And as great as his tortured sensitivity was, it was greater for other people than for himself. He could far better endure a personal affront, a wounding of his own quick pride, than see another person wounded. His anguish, in fact, when he saw this kind of suffering in other people would become so acute that he was no longer responsible for his acts: he was capable of anything on such an occasion.
And such occasions were not lacking at Miss Potter’s Friday afternoons. For even if the entire diplomatic corps had gathered there in suavest mood, that good grotesque old woman, with her unfailing talent for misrule, would have contrived to set every urbane minister of grace snarling for the other’s blood before an hour had passed. And with that museum collection of freaks, embittered aesthetes and envenomed misfits of the arts that did gather there, she never failed. Her genius for confusion and unrest was absolute.
If there were two people in the community who had been destined from birth and by every circumstance of education, religious belief, and temperament, to hate each other with a murderous hatred the moment they met, Miss Potter would see to it instantly that the introduction was effected.
If Father Davin, the passionate defender of the faith and the foe of modernism in all its hated forms, had been invited to one of Miss Potter’s Friday afternoons, he would find himself shaking hands before he knew it with Miss Shanksworth, the militant propagandist for free love, sterilization of the unfit, and the unlimited practice of birth control by everyone, especially the lower classes.
…
And so it went, all up and down the line, at one of Miss Potter’s Friday afternoons. There, in her house, you could be sure that if the lion and the lamb did not lie down together their hostess would seat them then in such close proximity to each other that the ensuring slaughter would be made as easy, swift, and unadorned as possible.
…And having done her duty, she would wheeze heavily away, looking around with her strange fixed grin and bulging eyes to see if she had left anything or anyone undone or whether there was still hope of some new riot, chaos, brawl or bitter argument.
…
As usual, Oswald found he had been seated on Miss Potter’s right hand: and the feeling of security this gave him, together with the maddening fragrance of food, the sense of ravenous hunger about to be appeased, filled him with an almost delirious joy, a desire to shout out, to sing. Instead, he stood nervously beside his chair, looking about with a shy and timid smile, passing his fingers through his hair repeatedly, waiting for the other guests to seat themselves.
… And in this mood, he unfolded his napkin, and smiling brightly, turned to dazzle his neighbor on his right with the brilliant effervescence of wit that already seemed to sparkle on his lips.
One look, and the bright smile faded, wit and confidence fell dead together, his heart shrank instantly and seemed to drop out of his very body like a rotten apple. Miss Potter had not failed.
Her unerring genius for calamity had held out to the finish. He found himself staring into the poisonous face of the one person in Cambridge that he hated most – the repulsive visage of the old composer, Cram.
An old long face, yellowed with malevolence, a sudden fox-glint of small eyes steeped in a vitriol of age-less hate, a beak of cruel nose, and thin lips stained and hardened in a rust of venom, the whole craftily, slantingly astare between a dirty frame of sparse lank locks. Cackling with malignant glee, and cramming crusty bread into his mouth, the old composer turned and spoke:
“Heh Heh Heh – It’s Mister Ten Eyck, isn’t it? The man who wrote that play Professor Hatcher put on at his last performance – that mystical fantasy kind of thing. That was your play, wasn’t it?”
The old yellow face came closer, and he snarled in a kind of gloating and vindictive whisper: “Most of the audience hated it! They thought it very bad, sir – very bad! I am only telling you because I think you ought to know – that you may profit by my criticism.”
And Ten Eyck, hunger gone now, shrank back as if a thin poisoned blade had been driven in his heart and twisted there. “I-I-I thought some of them rather liked it. Of course I don’t know – I can’t say – “, he faltered hesitantly, “but I – I really thought some of the audience – liked it.”
“Well, they didn’t,” the composer snarled, still crunching on his crust of bread. “Everyone that I saw thought it was terrible. Heh! Except my wife and I. We were the only ones who thought there would ever be any hope for you. And we found parts of it – a phrase or sentence here or there, now and then a scene – that we liked. As for the rest of them,” he suddenly made a horrible downward gesture with a clenched fist and pointing thumb, “it was thumbs down my boy! Done for! No good…”
“That’s what they said about your play, all right, but don’t take it too seriously. It’s live and learn, my boy, isn’t it? Profit by criticism – a few hard knocks will do you no harm. Heh heh heh heh!”
And turning, satisfied with the anguish he had caused, he thrust out his yellowed face with a vulture’s movement of his scrawny neck, and smacking his envenomed lips with relish, drew noisily inward with slobbering suction on a spoon of soup.
As for Ten Eyck, all hunger now destroyed by his sick shame and horror and despair, he turned, began to toy nervously with his food, and forcing his pale lips to a trembling and uncertain smile, tried desperately to compel his brain to pay attention to something that was being said by the man across the table who was the guest of honor for the day, and whose name was Hunt.
Hunt had been well known for his belligerent pacifism during the war, had been beaten by the police and put in jail more times than he could count, and now that he was temporarily out of jail, he was carrying on his assault against organized society with more ferocity than ever.
He was a man of undoubted courage and deep sincerity, but the suffering he had endured, and the brutal intolerance of which he had been the victim, had left its mutilating mark upon his life. His face was somehow like a scar, and his cut, cruel-looking mouth could twist like a snake to the corner of his face when he talked. And his voice was harsh and jeering, brutally dominant and intolerant, when he spoke to anyone, particularly if the one he spoke to didn’t share his opinions.
On this occasion, Miss Potter, with her infallible talent for error, had seated next to Hunt a young Belgian student at the university, who had little English, but a profound devotion to the Roman Catholic Church.
Within five minutes, the two were embroiled in a bitter argument, the Belgian courteous, but desperately resolved to defend his faith, and because of his almost incoherent English as helpless as a lamb before the attack of Hunt, who went for him with the rending and pitiless savagery of a tiger. It was a painful thing to watch: the young man, courteous and soft-spoken, his face flushed with embarrassment and pain, badly wounded by the naked brutality of the other man’s assault.
As Ten Eyck listened, his spirit began to emerge from the blanket of shame and sick despair that had covered it, a spark of anger and resentment, hot and bright, began to glow, to burn, to spread. His large dark eyes were shining now with a deeper, fiercer light than they had before, and on his pale cheeks there was a flush of angry color.
And now he no longer had to force himself to listen to what Hunt was saying: anger had fanned his energy and his interest to a burning flame; he listened tensely, his ears seemed almost to prick forward on his head, from time to time he dug his fork viciously into the table cloth.
Once or twice, it seemed that he would interrupt. He cleared his throat, bent forward, nervously clutching the table with his claw-like hands, but each time ended up thrusting his fingers through his mop of hair, and gulping down a glass of wine.
As Hunt talked, his voice grew so loud in it’s rasping arrogance that everyone at the table had to stop and listen, which was what he most desired. And there was no advantage, however unjust, which the man did not take in his bitter argument with the young Belgian.
He spoke jeeringly of the fat priests and the old corrupt Church, fattening themselves on the blood and life of the oppressed workers; he spoke of the bigotry, oppression, and superstition of religion, and the necessity of the workers to destroy this monster which was devouring them.
And when the young Belgian, in his faltering and painful English, would try to reply to these charges, Hunt would catch him up on his use of words, pretend to be puzzle at his pronunciation, and bully him brutally in this manner:
“You think what?….What?….I don’t understand what you’re saying half the time… it’s very difficult to speak to a man who can’t speak decent English.”
“I—Vas—say—ink,” the young Belgian would answer slowly and painfully, his face flushed with embarrassment— “—vas-say-ink-zat- I sink – zat you ex – ack – sher – ate—”
“That I what—what? What is he trying to say anyway?” demanded Hunt, brutally, looking around the table as if hoping to receive interpretation from the other guests. “Oh-h!” he cried suddenly, as if the Belgian’s meaning had just dawned on him. “Exaggerate! That’s the word you’re trying to say!” and he laughed in an ugly manner.
Oswald Ten Eyck had stopped eating and turned white as a sheet. Now he sat there, looking across in an agony of tortured sympathy at the young Belgian, biting his nails nervously, and thrusting his hands through his hair in a distracted manner. The resentment and anger that he had felt at first had now burned to a white-heat of choking, murderous rage. The little man was taken out of himself entirely. Suddenly his sense of personal wrong, the humiliation and pain he had himself endured, was fused with a white-hot anger of resentment for every injustice and wrong that had ever been done to the wounded soul of man.
United by that agony to a kind of savage fellowship with the young Belgian, with the insulted and the injured of the earth, of whatsoever class or creed, that burning coal of five feet five flamed in one withering blaze of wrath, and hurled the challenge of it’s scorn at the oppressor.
The thing happened like a flash. At the close of one of Hunt’s jeering tirades, Ten Eyck jumped from his chair, and leaning half across the table, cried out in a high shrill voice that cut into the silence like a knife:
“Hunt! You are a swine, and everyone who ever had anything to do with you is likewise a swine!”
For a moment he paused, breathing hard, clutching his napkin in a bony hand. Slowly his feverish eyes went round the table, and suddenly, seeing the malevolent stare of the old composer Cram fixed upon him, he hurled the wadded napkin down and pointing a trembling finger at that hated face, he screamed, “And that goes for you as well, you old bastard! It goes for all the rest of you,” he shrieked, gesturing wildly.
“Hunt… Cram!… Cram!… God!” he cried, shaking with laughter. “There’s a name for you! It’s perfect, Yes, you! You swine!” he yelled again, thrusting his finger at Cram’s yellow face so violently that the composer scrambled back with a startled yelp.
“And all the rest of you!” He pointed towards Miss Thrall – “You – the Expressionist!” And he paused, racked terribly again with soundless laughter – “The Greeks, the Russians, Oh how we love in Spain! – and fantasy – why, Goddamn my soul to hell, but it’s delightful!” he fairly screamed, and then pointing a trembling finger at several in succession he yelled: “You? – And You? — And you? – what the hell do you know about anything?…Food, Food, Food – you goddamn fools! That’s all that matters.”
He picked up a morsel of his untouched bread and hurled it savagely upon the table – “Food! Food! Ask Cram, he knows… Now,” he said, painting for breath and pointing a trembling finger at Miss Potter, “Now,” he panted, “I want to tell you something.”
“Oh…. Mr. …Ten… Eyck,” the old woman faltered in a tone of astonished reproach, “I… never… believed it possible… you could—”
Her voice trailed off helplessly, and she looked at him. And Ten Eyck, suddenly brought to himself by the bulging stare of that good old creature fixed on him with wounded disbelief, suddenly laughed again, shrilly and hysterically, thrust his fingers through his hair, and looked about him at the other people whose eyes were fixed on him in a stare of focal horror, and said in a confused, uncertain tone:
“Well, I don’t know – I’m always – I guess I said something that – oh, damn it, what’s the use?” and with a desperate, stricken laugh, he slumped suddenly into his chair, craned convulsively at his collar, and seizing a decanter before him, poured himself out a glass of wine with trembling haste and gulped it down.
Meanwhile, all around the table people began to talk with that kind of feverish eagerness that follows a catastrophe of this sort, and Hunt resumed his arguments, but this time in a much quieter tone and with a kind of jeering courtesy, accompanying his remarks from time to time with a heavy sarcasm directed toward Ten Eyck – “If I may say so – since, of course, Mr. Ten Eyck considers me a swine” – or – “if you will pardon such a remark form a swine like me” – or – “as Mr. Ten Eyck has told you I am nothing but a swine,” and so on.
The upshot of it was that Ten Eyck gulped down glass after glass of the strong wine, which raced instantly through his frail starved body like a flame.
He got distastefully drunk, sang snatches of bawdy songs, screamed with maudlin laughter, and began to pound enthusiastically on the table, shaking his head to himself and shouting from time to time:
“You’re right, Hunt! Goddamn it, man, you’re right! … Go on! … Go on!… I agree with you! You’re right! Everybody else is wrong but Hunt and Cram! Words by Hunt, music by Cram… no one’s right but Hunt and Cram!”
They tried to quiet him, but in vain. Suddenly Miss Potter began to cough and choke and gasp, pressed both hands over her heart, and gasped out in a terror-stricken voice, “Oh, my God! I’m dying!”
Miss Flitcroft jumped to her feet and came running to her friend’s assistance, and then while Miss Flitcroft pounded the old woman on her back and the guests scrambled up in a general disruption of the party, Oswald Ten Eyck staggered to the window, flung it open, and looking out across one of the bleak snow-covered squares of Cambridge, screamed at the top of his voice:
“Relentless!…Relentless!.. Juh sweeze Un art-e-e-est!” Here he beat on his little breast with a claw-like hand and yelled with drunken laughter, “And Goddamn it I will always be relentless…relentless…relentless!”
The cool air braced him with its cleansing shock: for a moment, the fog of shame and drunkenness shifted in his brain, he felt a vacancy of cold horror at his back, and turning suddenly found himself confronted by the frozen circle of their faces, fixed on him.
And even in that instant glimpse of utter ruin, as the knowledge of this final catastrophe was printed on his brain, over the rim of frozen faces he saw the dial hands of a clock. The time was seven fifty-two: he knew there was a train at midnight for new York – and work, food, freedom, and forgetfulness. He would have four hours to go home and pack: if he hurried he could make it.
Little was heard of him thereafter. It was rumored that he had gone back to his former lucrative employment with Mr. Hearst: and Professor Hatcher smiled thinly when he heard the news: the young men looked at one another with quiet smiles.”
~End~
And there you have it. Are you missing those social gatherings now, people? (Or does it make you miss social gatherings even more?). Ha. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was Hunter S. Thompson, who was a fan of this author… and I can see now was obviously influenced by him, right down to the use of the word “swine”. But nope.
This is a passage from Of Time and The River by Thomas Wolfe.
I did a whole full-length feature post on Thomas Wolfe. Normally this is the part where I would plug the link, but nobody ever follows my inbound links anyway. So… if you’re interested, it’s somewhere on this blog. You can find it in the About directory.
I discovered Wolfe a few years ago and devoured all his books. This is why I like re-visiting authors – the first time I connected more to his descriptions of beauty and family. I had forgotten all about his talent for fucked-up comedy.
This passage is completely insane. It’s action-packed, full of internal violence, has excellent characterization and serves a perfect example of professional level fiction. It has become, for the moment, my favorite piece of writing ever.
I could spend all night talking about why this writing works and copy and paste all the action words into a column and analyze the daylights out of it.
But, it’s time to go to bed. It was bad enough I spent an hour typing up that mufuckuh last night. It’s so dense that I literally experienced hand cramps from typing.
Yeah, this is not something I’ll be doing every weekend.
ZeroSpace 