The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (42 page)
Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
⦠as against the Kesey direction, which has become the prevailing life style of Haight-Ashbury â¦
beyond catastrophe
⦠like, picking up on anything that works and moves, every hot wire, every tube, ray, volt, decibel, beam, floodlight and combustion of American flag-flying neon Day-Glo America and winding it up to some mystical extreme carrying to the western-most edge of experienceâ
beyond catastrophe
⦠like, picking up on anything that works and moves, every hot wire, every tube, ray, volt, decibel, beam, floodlight and combustion of American flag-flying neon Day-Glo America and winding it up to some mystical extreme carrying to the western-most edge of experienceâ
The Day â¦
was coming, but the movement lacked a single great charismatic leader, a visionary who could pull the whole thing together. Leary was too old, heading toward fifty years old, and too remote somehow, holed up in Millbrook, N.Y. As for Keseyâhe is swamp-bound in exile in some alligator-infested Mexican hideaway, it was presumed ⦠Yet here come the Merry
Pranksters pulling back into San Francisco from Mexico via their own route ⦠The Calliope Company gives them their Warehouse on Harriet Street to live in for a month, a place Tara wants to turn into a theater, an old garage in an abandoned hotel in the Tenderloin where Jack Dempsey used to train in a special amphitheater with a sloping wooden floor now all fully claimed by the vermin and the winosâbut
Colored Power!
and the Day-Glo bus and the Pranksters come rolling in, and good heads start gathering around in the Day-Glo gloom of the place, like the Telepathic Kid who gets unspoken messagesâ
we need beds
âand he climbs a ladder and starts rigging the platforms on the theater scaffolding in here ⦠as the Pranksters assemble from all over, Hermitâback from dark adventures in Napa Valley; Stewart Brand and Lois Jenningsâback from the Southwest; Paul Fosterâback from India ⦠all joining the veteran Mexican band, Cassady, Babbs, Gretch, Mountain Girl, Faye and the children, Ram Rod, Hagen, Page, Doris Delay, Zonker, Black Maria â¦
was coming, but the movement lacked a single great charismatic leader, a visionary who could pull the whole thing together. Leary was too old, heading toward fifty years old, and too remote somehow, holed up in Millbrook, N.Y. As for Keseyâhe is swamp-bound in exile in some alligator-infested Mexican hideaway, it was presumed ⦠Yet here come the Merry
Pranksters pulling back into San Francisco from Mexico via their own route ⦠The Calliope Company gives them their Warehouse on Harriet Street to live in for a month, a place Tara wants to turn into a theater, an old garage in an abandoned hotel in the Tenderloin where Jack Dempsey used to train in a special amphitheater with a sloping wooden floor now all fully claimed by the vermin and the winosâbut
Colored Power!
and the Day-Glo bus and the Pranksters come rolling in, and good heads start gathering around in the Day-Glo gloom of the place, like the Telepathic Kid who gets unspoken messagesâ
we need beds
âand he climbs a ladder and starts rigging the platforms on the theater scaffolding in here ⦠as the Pranksters assemble from all over, Hermitâback from dark adventures in Napa Valley; Stewart Brand and Lois Jenningsâback from the Southwest; Paul Fosterâback from India ⦠all joining the veteran Mexican band, Cassady, Babbs, Gretch, Mountain Girl, Faye and the children, Ram Rod, Hagen, Page, Doris Delay, Zonker, Black Maria â¦
⦠and all at once it dawns, the main truth, spreading over the jungle drums all over the Haight-Ashbury:
Kesey himself is back, too ::::: The Man ::::
Kesey himself is back, too ::::: The Man ::::
SUCH WAS THE BACKGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND SUMMIT meeting between Kesey and Owsley. It was as crazy a scene as anybody ever dreamed up. For a start, it was in the apartment of Margot St. James, which looks like she once read a historical novel about a Roman banquet. The meeting began to shape up as a debate. Owsley, the White Rabbit, was sitting over hereâand Kesey, the Fugitive, was sitting over there. Owsley was dressed like an uptown headâlong hair, a dueling shirt with billowing sleeves, a sleeveless jacket, and beads, amulets, mandalas hanging down over his chest, tight pants and high boots. Kesey had on his buckskin shirt and tight ginger-corduroy pants and the Guadalajara red Prankster bootsâand he was in a chuckling,
giggling mood. Standing around, along with Margot, were various Pranksters, Haight-Ashbury heads, San Francisco State heads, Berkeley heads, and two or three Hell's Angels, including Terry the Tramp.
giggling mood. Standing around, along with Margot, were various Pranksters, Haight-Ashbury heads, San Francisco State heads, Berkeley heads, and two or three Hell's Angels, including Terry the Tramp.
Kesey presents his theory of going “beyond acid.” You find what you came to find when you're on acid and we've got to start doing it without acid; there's no use opening the door and going through it and then always going back out again. We've got to move on to the next step ⦠This notion has Owsley slightly freaked, naturally. He has his voice wound all the way up:
“Bullshit, Kesey! It's the
drugs
that do it. It's all the drugs, man. None of it would have happened without the drugsӉand so forth.
drugs
that do it. It's all the drugs, man. None of it would have happened without the drugsӉand so forth.
Kesey keeps cocking his head to one side and giggling in the upcountry manner and saying: “No, it's not the drugs. In fact”âchuckle, giggleâ“I'm going to tell everyone to start doing it without the drugs”âand so forth.
People in the room start following this exchange like a tennis match, the heads batting this way and that. One unfortunate kid from San Francisco State happens to get into this state of obsession about one foot in front of Terry the Tramp. He keeps edging closer and batting his head around, and edging in closer, until he is standing in front of Terry the Tramp and cutting off his line of vision, which is bad enough, but then he has to take out a cigarette and light it, all of this practically in Terry the Tramp's face, or within a couple of feet of it, which is all the same to Terry.
One billow comes up from the kid's cigarette and Terry the Tramp says, “Hey, man, how about a cigarette?”
He says it with a tone you have to hear to fully comprehend. It is the patented Hell's Angels tone of soft grinning menace, kind of like the tone the second-story man uses on the watchdog, “Come here, fel-la ⦠(so I CAN SQUASH YOUR HEAD WITH THIS BRICK).” He says it soft, but it stops the whole room like High Noon.
“Hey, man, how about a cigarette?”
The kid smells debacle in the air. It registers from his solar plexus to his earthworm lips. But he hasn't quite figured out what it's all about. He just hurries into his shirt pocket and takes out the cigarettes and shakes one free and offers it to Terry the Tramp, who takes it and puts it in his pocket. Then he says, with the soft grin menace smile snaking up out of his beard:
“How about another one?”
The kid mumbles O.K. and fishes into his pocket and shakes loose another cigarette and Terry the Tramp takes it and puts it into his pocket. The kid, meantime, is frozen, like a rabbit frozen by the eyebeams of a cougar. He knows it is time to split, but he can't move. He is stricken and fascinated by his own impending destruction. It's like there is nothing to do but play out the sequence. He puts the cigarettes back in his pocketâand precisely
then
, naturally, comes again the milky atropine:
then
, naturally, comes again the milky atropine:
“How about another one?”
O.K.âand Terry the Tramp takes another one and the kid puts them back in his pocket and Terry the Tramp says,
“How about another one?”
O.K.âand Terry the Tramp takes another one, and now every eye in the room watches the rabbit and the snake, panting for the next broken hyoid boneâhow many cigarettes does the kid have left, fans? Eightâten?âand what then, after all the cigarettes are gone?
How about your shirt?
O.K.âuhhhâ
How about your boots?
O.K.âuhhâ
How about your pants?
O.K.âuhhhâ
And now your
HIDE,
mother!
HIDE,
mother!
My ⦠hide!
Your very
HIDE,
mother! Your very
ASS!
The last vestige of your pride and honor!
AAARRRRRRRCHHHHHHHHH!!!! ⦠and his bones crunched like baked baby ortolans â¦
HIDE,
mother! Your very
ASS!
The last vestige of your pride and honor!
AAARRRRRRRCHHHHHHHHH!!!! ⦠and his bones crunched like baked baby ortolans â¦
Everyone in the room can see the entire movie in an instant, like some crucible of the prison brutes, Terry the Tramp slowly picking meat off the turkeyâfascinating!âstay tuned in for next week's broken hyoid bone!â
âuntil a couple of Pranksters intervene, with overtones of He's just a baby, Terry, don't snuff him. So the Kesey-Owsley debate resumed.
It was a small moment. No heads were broken. Certainly, the Angels have done worse. The kid even got away that night with a whole half a pack of cigarettes. Yet it stuck in the throat. One way or another, the Hell's Angels came to symbolize the side of the Kesey adventure that panicked the hip world. The Angels were too freaking real.
Outlaws?
they were outlaws by choice, from the word go, all the way out in Edge City. Furthur! The hip world, the vast majority of the acid heads, were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-class intellectualsâBehold my wings! Freedom! Flight!âbut you don't actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you? It is the eternal game in which Clement Attlee, bald as Lenin, lively as a toy tank, yodels blood to the dockworkers of Liverpoolâand dies buried in striped pants with a magenta sash across his chest and a coin with the Queen's likeness upon each eyelid. In their heart of hearts, the heads of Haight-Ashbury could never stretch their fantasy as far out as the Hell's Angels. Overtly, publicly, they included them inâsuddenly, they were the Raw Vital Proles of this thing, the favorite minority, replacing the spades. Privately, the heads remained true to their class, and to its visceral panics ⦠One trouble with this Kesey was, he really meant it.
Outlaws?
they were outlaws by choice, from the word go, all the way out in Edge City. Furthur! The hip world, the vast majority of the acid heads, were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-class intellectualsâBehold my wings! Freedom! Flight!âbut you don't actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you? It is the eternal game in which Clement Attlee, bald as Lenin, lively as a toy tank, yodels blood to the dockworkers of Liverpoolâand dies buried in striped pants with a magenta sash across his chest and a coin with the Queen's likeness upon each eyelid. In their heart of hearts, the heads of Haight-Ashbury could never stretch their fantasy as far out as the Hell's Angels. Overtly, publicly, they included them inâsuddenly, they were the Raw Vital Proles of this thing, the favorite minority, replacing the spades. Privately, the heads remained true to their class, and to its visceral panics ⦠One trouble with this Kesey was, he really meant it.
BUT! STEP UP THE MOVIE. HE SUDDENLY TURNED UP ONE AFTERNOON at Ed McClanahan's creative-writing class at Stanford. He sticks his head in the door and smiles from underneath a cowboy hat and says, “Happy birthday, Ed ⦔ In truth, it is his birthday. Then he comes on in, the Fugitive in buckskin shirt
and red Guadalajara boots; tells the students why he wants to move beyond writing to more ⦠electric forms ⦠then vanishes, that damned Pimpernel.
and red Guadalajara boots; tells the students why he wants to move beyond writing to more ⦠electric forms ⦠then vanishes, that damned Pimpernel.
Then the Haight-Ashbury heads held the first big “be-in,” the Love Festival on October 7, on the occasion of the California law against LSD going into effect. Thousands of heads piled in, in high costume, ringing bells, chanting, dancing ecstatically, blowing their minds one way and another and making their favorite satiric gesture to the cops, handing them flowers, burying the bastids in tender fruity petals of love. Oh christ, Tom, the thing was fantastic, a freaking mindblower, thousands of high-loving heads out there messing up the minds of the cops and everybody else in a fiesta of love and euphoria. And who pops up in the middle of it all, down in the panhandle strip of the Golden Gate Park, but the Pimpernel, in Guadalajara boots and cowboy suit, and just as the word gets to ricocheting through the crowd real goodâ
Kesey's here! Kesey's here
âhe vanishes, accursed Pimpernel.
Kesey's here! Kesey's here
âhe vanishes, accursed Pimpernel.
Just in case there was anybody left who didn't get the Gestalt here, Kesey made his big move in the press. He met with Donovan Bess, a reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle,
and gave him the story of his flight to Mexico and his plans, as The Fugitive. The story was a real barn burner, Secret Interview with Fugitive Wanted by FBI, with all the trimmings, awash in screamers all across the San Francisco
Chronicle.
The line that captured all imaginations was where Kesey said:
Chronicle,
and gave him the story of his flight to Mexico and his plans, as The Fugitive. The story was a real barn burner, Secret Interview with Fugitive Wanted by FBI, with all the trimmings, awash in screamers all across the San Francisco
Chronicle.
The line that captured all imaginations was where Kesey said:
“I intend to stay in this country as a fugitive, and as salt in J. Edgar Hoover's wounds.”
Thenâthis next prank was beautiful. A TV interview. The Fugitive on TV, while all, F. B. Eyes and everyone, watch helpless as the full face of the Fugitive, Kesey, beams forth into every home and bar and hospital and detective bureau in the Bay Area. It was beautiful to even think about, this prank. It was set up, much sly planning, with Roger Grimsby, a San Francisco television personality, on Station KGO, the local ABC outlet. The fantasy
was that Grimsby would tape an interview with Kesey in a hideaway in the Portrero section of San Francisco, which was far away from both Haight-Ashbury and North Beach, and then put it on the air a couple of days later, October 20, a Friday. This fantasy came off like a dream. Grimsby taped the interview, and all was cool, and on Friday afternoon Kesey's face beamed into every home, bar, hospital and detective bureau, saying it all again, in person:
was that Grimsby would tape an interview with Kesey in a hideaway in the Portrero section of San Francisco, which was far away from both Haight-Ashbury and North Beach, and then put it on the air a couple of days later, October 20, a Friday. This fantasy came off like a dream. Grimsby taped the interview, and all was cool, and on Friday afternoon Kesey's face beamed into every home, bar, hospital and detective bureau, saying it all again, in person:
“I intend to stay in this country as a fugitive, and as salt in J. Edgar Hoover's wounds ⦔
See the very hunted coons
Salt J. Edgar Hoover's wounds!
Yah! the cops and robbers game.
Salt J. Edgar Hoover's wounds!
Yah! the cops and robbers game.
All that remains to be done is the grand finale. Fugitive Extraordinaire! In this fantasy Kesey will present himself in person, in the fleshâ
Kesey!
âonly
inches
away from the greatest collection of cops in the history of the drug scene and then
Kesey!
âonly
inches
away from the greatest collection of cops in the history of the drug scene and then
VANISH
like Mandrake. The Pranksters will hold a monster trips festival, the Acid Test of all times, the ultimate, on Halloween, in San Francisco's largest hall, Winterland, for all the heads on the West Coast or coast to coast and galaxy to galaxy. Naturally, the cops will converge on this hideous bacchanal to watch for Kesey and other felons and bad actors. But of course! An integral part of the fantasy! It will be a masked ball, this Test. Nobody will know which freak is who. At the midnight hour, Kesey, masked and disguised in a Superhero costume, on the order of Captain America of the Marvel Comics pantheon, will come up on stage and deliver his vision of the future, of the way “beyond acid.”
Who is this apocalyptic
âThen he will rip off his maskâ
Why
â
it's Ken Kee-zee!
âand as the law rushes for him, he will leap up on a rope hanging down from the roof at center stage and climb, hand over hand, without even using his legs, with his cape flying,
straight up, up, up, up through a trap door in the roof, to where Babbs will be waiting with a helicopter, Captain Midnight of the U.S. Marines, and they will ascend into the California ozone looking down one last time into the upturned moon faces of all the put-on, nonplused, outwitted, befuddled befreaked
shucked!
constables and sleuths Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right! Right!
like Mandrake. The Pranksters will hold a monster trips festival, the Acid Test of all times, the ultimate, on Halloween, in San Francisco's largest hall, Winterland, for all the heads on the West Coast or coast to coast and galaxy to galaxy. Naturally, the cops will converge on this hideous bacchanal to watch for Kesey and other felons and bad actors. But of course! An integral part of the fantasy! It will be a masked ball, this Test. Nobody will know which freak is who. At the midnight hour, Kesey, masked and disguised in a Superhero costume, on the order of Captain America of the Marvel Comics pantheon, will come up on stage and deliver his vision of the future, of the way “beyond acid.”
Who is this apocalyptic
âThen he will rip off his maskâ
Why
â
it's Ken Kee-zee!
âand as the law rushes for him, he will leap up on a rope hanging down from the roof at center stage and climb, hand over hand, without even using his legs, with his cape flying,
straight up, up, up, up through a trap door in the roof, to where Babbs will be waiting with a helicopter, Captain Midnight of the U.S. Marines, and they will ascend into the California ozone looking down one last time into the upturned moon faces of all the put-on, nonplused, outwitted, befuddled befreaked
shucked!
constables and sleuths Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right! Right!
right right right right an even even even even even world twenty-five minutes after the Grimsby TV show Friday afternoon, October 20, Kesey and Hassler driving out of San Francisco on the Bayshore freeway, toward Palo Alto, in an old red panel truck. The current fantasy ⦠this movie is too real, Mommyâbut they have actually pulled it off. They have just been in town in the hideaway watching Kesey the Fugitive on TV, and this prank was too beautiful. The FBI and all cops everywhere
shucked
in the most public galling way. The sun slants down on the Bayshore freeway in the afternoon and all the shiny black-shoe multitudes are out in their 300-horsepower fantasy cars heading into the rush hour, out the freeway, toward the waiting breezeway slots. It's actually peaceful, this rush hour
shucked
in the most public galling way. The sun slants down on the Bayshore freeway in the afternoon and all the shiny black-shoe multitudes are out in their 300-horsepower fantasy cars heading into the rush hour, out the freeway, toward the waiting breezeway slots. It's actually peaceful, this rush hour
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