The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (37 page)

About 6 A.M., more cops, narcos now, six in plainclothes—and one of the diehard three-o'clock discoverers walks up to them and announces with a look of total acid-stoned glistening sincerity:

"Listen, I've got more Awareness, more ... Awareness, in my little fingernail... My Awareness is so superior to yours that... uh .. ."—obviously from the glistening strain on his face, there is no metaphor, no conceit, that can be concocted in the English language that is enormous enough to express just
how
superior, and so his face falls back into a sweet sincere look, slightly played out, and he says: "How about getting us some cigarettes? We're all out."

Strangely, one of them did and returned very quickly with a carton of Kools, which he passed around. Around 9 A.M. only the Pranksters, Clair and a few others are still around—and more cops—and finally they say to Babbs that he ought to get everybody out now, the L.A. sun is up, the good spades of Watts are going to work ... and the Pranksters troop out into the L.A. sunlight, the Devil with an orange face with silver stars, a tall wild-haired guy with half his face silver and half gold, Day-Glo crazies trooping out into the sunlight at 9 A.M. out of the chilled Pandemonium hatchery ...

And Clair Brush: "It seems that's about it... I've rambled incredibly ... Did it last?

Am I different? I can't remember. It seems so, but I am not sure. When I get under black light, or a strobe, it comes back vividly ...

"Del Close told me later I was wandering around looking 'wonderful... in the sense of full of wonder.' That's the best description I can imagine.

"I've taken LSD twice since then. Each time was different and much less dramatic, more personal, milder. The only strong similarity is the physical effect, which, for me, consists of contractions quite like labor pains and a quivering of the nerve-endings ...

anticipatory ... for prolonged periods, the feelings of being on the verge of orgasm without any contact at all... these things occurred all three times. Otherwise, all have been different.

"Take it again? Oh, probably someday ... but no urgency, no desire to run to my friendly corner pusher. I think the best way is to take it with a lover, but someone you're willing to have live in your head for a long, long time. Not too many of those around. It's a closeness not easily dismissed. "All, all. Enough, I hope."

* * *

ABOUT 1 P.M. THE PHONE STARTS RINGING IN ROMNEY'S

apartment, waking him up: "Romney, you guys ought to be shot!..." "Seven people committed!"... "Freaked out!"... "Atrocity!" And finally one from the L.A. police:

"Are you Romney? Listen, we got some
two-tone dude
down here—"

Oh, the Di-men-sion-al Kree-mo ... That would be Paul Foster. Four, five, six hundred people had been in that madhouse all night long having a goddamned orgy for themselves—and the cops couldn't lay a hand on them. So—in the sour-milk L.A.

sunlight of 9 A.M. they had seen this gangling character rocking away from the building like a Druid, half his face gold, the other half silver, so they
busted
the mother, for being . . . well. . . drunk in public, or something equally likely. But by 1

P.M. they wish to hell somebody would come pick up this two-tone dude ...

Christ, man! It's too much for us even! We wash our hands of this ::::: Atrocity :::::

::::: what... exactly have we done? and :::::

::::: even to some Pranksters, the anti-Babbs faction, the Test was a debacle. They doubted the ethics of springing the acid in the Kool-Aid, on the one hand, and thought the treatment of the Who Cares Girl, piping her freakout over the speakers, was cruel.

Shortly after they got back to L.A. from La Jolla, the Schism broke out true and rife, out front. This was a great little Morbio Inferiore all its own, the
Life
Magazine Divide.

The Watts Test in L.A., coming on top of the Trips Festival in San Francisco, had caused the fast-rising psychedelic thing to explode right out of the underground in a way nobody had dreamed of. Leary and Alpert and their experiments had had plenty of publicity, but that seemed like a fairly isolated thing with a couple of Harvard docs at the helm and being pretty solemn-faced and esoteric about it, all in all. This new San Francisco-L.A. LSD thing, with wacked-out kids and delirious rock 'n' roll, made it seem like the dread LSD had caught on like an infection among the youth—which, in fact, it had. Very few realized that it had all emanated from one electric source: Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

A team from
Life
magazine turned up, led by a photographer, Larry Schiller, who was on to the LSD world and had taken the pictures at the Hollywood Test. They interviewed the Pranksters and took pictures and said they were going to do a big spread on the acid scene and, they hoped, put the Pranksters on the cover. So they hailed the bus on over to a big photo studio and Schiller convened them all. Then—

Babbs refused to go in. But the rest of them, Norman, Hagen, Cassady, a whole flock of them, went on in, and Schiller took a lot of pictures. To Norman it seemed square.

For one thing, the guy was working in black and white, and the most obvious thing about the Pranksters was color, Day-Glo, the brighter the better, the more vibrations the better. Then Schiller had them all sit down in a group, against a black background, and in the middle they had Cassady stand up and wave his arms up and down like a crow. He took the pictures in strobe, and this would make Cassady look like he had multi-arms, like the great god Shiva. This strobe thing was at the time new in psychedelic photography, and the mass media would never tire of it. Recreates the acid experience, etc. Then Schiller told certain people to stay around for individual shots, colorful characters like Cassady, and Paul Foster with his wild mutton chops and Importancy Coat, and Norman, maybe because he had a beard. The usual... The others went on outside where Babbs was. Finally they all left, the ones who had stayed for the individual shots, and when they got outside, the bus was gone. Clean gone. Babbs, Mountain Girl, Zonker, Walker, and the others—split.

Hagen couldn't believe it. "Why—we've been
pranked!"
he said.

Pranksters—and the Pranked.

Things being like they were to begin with, the prank took on fundamental meaning. Those who got pranked finally made their way back to the moldering Sans Souci, and Babbs & Co. had cleared out of there, too, taking all the money and the food. Babbs left word that they, the inner nucleus, were going off to hold a Test of their own and would rejoin the Satellites for the UCLA Acid Test, scheduled for March 19. "The great idea still kept us together"—and Norman, Cassady, Hagen, Paul Foster, Roy Seburn, Marge and a couple others made a stab at preparing for the UCLA Test. But UCLA backed out of the deal because of the notoriety after the Watts Test, and that did it. All began drifting off. It was a strange time and a strange feeling. Nobody could figure why Babbs had pranked Cassady; the others maybe——

although that Hagen would get pranked was pretty strange, too—but Cassady—that was unbelievable.

Cassady said fuck it and headed for San Francisco. Norman and Paul Foster went to stay at Hugh Romney's. Then by and by Norman got a chance to go to New York with Marge the Barge and Evan Engber, so they headed east by car.

"HARDLY HAD LEO LEFT US, WHEN FAITH AND

CONCORD amongst us was at an end; it was as if the life-blood of our group flowed away from an invisible wound."

One day Paul Foster cranked up the great God Rotor and sat down and worked on a very intricate illuminated billhead. When he got through, there was an ornate black border, and in the middle the words

IN MEMORIAM

in florid Old English lettering, and at the bottom: January 23, 1966, the day Kesey disappeared. Nothing else, just
In Memoriam
and the date. He hung it up on the wall.

The Fugitive

HAUL ASS, KESEY. MOVE.
SCRAM. SPLIT FLEE HIDE VANISH DISINTEgrate.
Like
run.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrev or are we gonna have just a late Mexican re-run of the scene on the rooftop in San Francisco and sit here with the motor spinning and watch with fascination while the cops they climb up once again to
come git you
—

THEY JUST OPENED THE DOOR DOWN BELOW, ROTOR ROOTER, so

YOU HAVE MAYBE 45 SECONDS ASSUMING THEY BE SLOW AND

SNEAKY AND SURE ABOUT IT

Kesey sits in a little upper room in the last house down the beach, $80 a month, on paradise-blue Bandarias Bay, in Puerto Vallarta, on the west coast of Mexico, state of Jalisco, one step from the floppy green fronds of the jungle, wherein flourish lush steamy baboon lusts of paranoia—Kesey sits in this little rickety upper room with his elbow on a table and his forearm standing up perpendicular and in the palm of his hand a little mirror, so that his forearm and the mirror are like a big rear-view mirror stanchion on the side of a truck and thus he can look out the window and see them but they can't see him—

COME ON, MAN, DO YOU NEED A COPY OF THE SCRIPT TO SEE HOW THIS MOVIE

GOES? YOU HAVE MAYBE 40 SECONDS LEFT BEFORE THEY COME

GET YOU

—a Volkswagen has been cruising up and down the street for no earthly reason at all, except that they are obviously working with the fake telephone linesmen outside the window who whistle—

THERE THEY GO AGAIN

—whistle in the slow-brain brown Mexican huarache day-laborer way, for no earthly reason except that they are obviously synched in, finked in, with the Volkswagen.

Now a tan sedan comes along the street, minus a license plate but plus a stenciled white number—
exactly like a prison stencil
—police and two coat-less guys inside, both in white shirts so they're
not
prisoners—

ONE TURNED LOOKED BACK !

IF YOU WERE WATCHING ALL THIS ON A MOVIE SCREEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR

REACTION WOULD BE THROUGH A MOUTHFUL OF POPCORN FROM THE THIRD ROW:

"WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED, YOU DOLT! SCREAM OUTTA THERE ..."

—But he has just hooked down five dexedrines and the old motor is spinning and rushing most nice and euphorically in fascination and a man can't depart this nice $80-a-month snug harbor on paradise-blue Bandarias Bay just yet with a cool creek of speed rush in his veins. It is such a tiny little fink scene as he sees it in the hand mirror. He can tilt it and see his own face entropied with the strain and then tilt it—a sign!—a sparrow, fat and sleek, dives through the dwindling sun into a hole in one of the lampposts; home.

More telefono trucks! Two loud whistles this time—for no earthly reason except to come git you. You have maybe 35 seconds left

—Kesey has Cornel Wilde Running Jacket ready hanging on the wall, a jungle-jim corduroy jacket stashed with fishing line, a knife, money, DDT, tablet, ball-points, flashlight, and grass. Has it timed by test runs that he can be out the window, down through a hole in the roof below, down a drain pipe, over a wall and into thickest jungle in 45 seconds—well, only 35 seconds left, but head start is all that's needed, with the element of surprise. Besides, it's so fascinating to be here in subastral projection with the cool rushing dex, synched into
their
minds and his own, in all its surges and tributaries and convolutions, turning it this way and that and rationalizing the situation for the 100th time in split seconds, such as: If they have that many men already here, the phony telephone men, the cops in the tan car, the cops in the Volkswagen, what are they waiting for? why haven't they crashed right in through the rotten doors of this Rat building— But he gets the signal even before he finishes the question:

WAITING! THEY KNOW THEY'VE GOT YOU, FOOL, HAVE KNOWN FOR WEEKS. BUT

THEY'RE CERTAIN YOU'RE CONNECTED WITH ALL THE LSD BEING SMUGGLED UP FROM

MEXICO AND THEY WANT TO TAKE IN AS BIG A HAUL AS POSSIBLE WHEN THEY

FINALLY SLAM IT. LIKE LEARY; THEY MUST HAVE BEEN WATCHING A DREADFUL

LONG TIME BEFORE THEY WERE CONTENT THEY HAD SOMETHING WORTH HIS SIZE.

THIRTY YEARS. FOR A HARVARD DOCTOR WITH GRASS. THAT'S HOW BAD THEY

WANTED THE WHOLE BUSINESS LOCKED AWAY. THAT'S HOW DANGEROUS THEY

CONSIDER THE WHOLE BUSINESS. AND THEY WERE COMPLETELY CORRECT — IF NOT

IN THEIR FANTASY, THEN AT LEAST IN THEIR EVALUATION OF THE PRESENT AND

EVER-GROWING PSYCHEDELIC THREAT

A NOISE DOWN BELOW.

THEM?

30 SEGUNDOS LEFT?

—maybe it's Black Maria, come back with good things for eating and stuff for the new disguise, Steve Lamb, mild-mannered reporter and all-around creep—

RUN, FOOL!

—Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Such a quiet secret muffled smile will be on Black Maria's face.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrev It could have been all so quiet, just him and Zonker and the smoldering Black Maria in this $80-a-month paradise-blue Bandarias Bay in Puerto Vallarta. If the suicide ruse and the rest of the main Fugitive fantasy had but worked.

The trip into Mexico was easy, because everything with Boise was easy. Boise always
knew.
They picked up Zonker in L.A., and then Jim Fish, and they coasted on over the line at Tijuana. No hassle to cross over into Mexico. The border at Tijuana is like a huge superhighway toll station, a huge concrete apron and ten or fifteen customs booths in a row for all the cars pouring over into Tijuana from San Diego and points north, all plastic green and concrete like part of suburban superhighway America. So they rolled on over the line with Kesey hidden in the back of Boise's old panel truck and heart don't even thump too bad. Spirits up, a little of the Prankster élan back in the cosmos. In true Prankster fashion they spent one third their money stash on a Madman Muntz autostereo rig to go along with all the other valuables, like tape recorders and many tapes.

The next likely hassle is visas, because this shapes up as a long stay. Might be hot to try to get Kesey one in Tijuana, because Tijuana is just a California annex, really, the slums of San Diego, and they just might very well know about the case.