The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (51 page)

Out into the middle, under the great parachute canopy and the spotlights, sailing across the mungery carpet. . . Doris Delay of the Pranksters in Flag People coveralls and Terry the Tramp of Hell's Angels in an Ozark razorback stovepipe hat dark glasses Angel beard, a huge brown-and-black striped sweater like a raccoon, the Angels' sleeveless jacket and the death's head, blue jeans, motorcycle boots ... Christ, here's a coming-out party for you, Doris Delay and Terry the Tramp . .. stomping and flailing about in a regular hoedown ... but formal in a wacky way. They dance for about a minute and then the others rush out, a storm of them, couples in acid-head fancy dress, dancing to the rock 'n' roll, only they're dancing clean out of their gourds, they leap, they flail their arms up in the air, they throw their heads back, they gyrate and levitate ... they're in a state ... they're ecstatic ... Gary Goldhill looks on from the side. He has on a huge lake-red Chinese pajama top with a gold dragon embroidered on it. He's spooked about the Warehouse .. . Musty! . .. Insane! ... Friends or spirits?

Well—Earth can be Heaven & Hell and he takes the plunge ... and reaches into his pants pocket and swallows a potion . ..

Already a few enraptured grins breaking out in the crowd ... Rapt wet-lipped bliss... They glisten, their eyes are wide open like plastic nodules. The Telepathic Kid is so high, grinning so wet and glistening, he looks like one great psychic orgasm getting ready to unfold exfoliate into ... a calla lily ... and a blond kid with a white Nehru coat on and a big silver pendant hanging down over his chest kneeling before the rock

'n' roll band with his hands brought up like in prayer and a grin of such pure acid bliss on his face that his teeth sizzle ... a pot full of boiling pearls ... The Pranksters; Babbs and Gretch and Page and others, take to the bandstand, all electrified, and they start beaming out the most weird loud Chinese science-fiction music and cranking up the Buchla electronic music machine until it maneuvers itself into the most incalculable sonic corner, the last turn in the soldered circuit maze, and lets out a pure topologically measured scream. Ultima-time, with heavy-duty wiring, the works.

Kesey stands off to one side still, in the shadows, at... Control Central, only now he has the Flag People coveralls off and is bare chested, wearing only white leotards, a white satin cape tied at the neck, and a red, white, and blue sash running diagonally across his chest. It's ... Captain America! The Flash! Captain Marvel! the Superhero, in a word ...

At the height of the frenzy suddenly the lights go out, the sound goes out, all replaced by a single spotlight hitting the center of the floor. Kesey's brother Chuck is up in the rafters working the lights. You can hear Babbs's and Hassler's voices over microphones in the dark, rapping back and forth in a shuck manner: "Do you think they'd clear out of the center if we asked them, Hassler?" ... "Sure, they're gonna clear out the center faster than you can say clear out the center" ... But everyone just mills around, caught in the blackout. Babbs says: "If they don't clear out the center, then they're a bunch of assholes" ... Well, let's try the direct approach! They clear out of the ellipse where the spot beams down, and Kesey comes in out of the darkness. He's taken the cape and the sash off, however. Too freaking much, I guess. He's just wearing the white ballet tights and his wrestler's build. A pair of jockey shorts show faintly under the leotards—just the right touch ... here in the Rat Shack ... He has a hand microphone up to his mouth.... Kesey in the leotards with the pool of light in front of him and the heads all packed in around the loop of light in the darkness.... It's good and theatrical ... in a weird weird way ... Some of the heads get the point immediately. Without a sound, they start tossing things into the pool of light, sugar cubes, capsules, cigarette papers, a couple of joints, beads, amulets, headbands, all the charms and totems of psychedelphia into the pool of light. It's ... an altar ... Kesey starts talking over the microphone in the upcountry drawl...

"When we were down in Mexico, we learned a lot about waves. We spent six months down there learning about waves. Even in the dark you can feel the waves..."

It's a wrench, that voice, what is it? up to now—a party, a frenzy. All of a sudden it's on a whole other level... of some sort... we can't figure it out. The TV crews are trying to edge up close and jockey for position. Is this where he tells the kids to turn off LSD? ... Which is what—we came for...
Waves?

"I believe that man is changing ... in a radical basic way ... The waves are building, and every time they build, they're stronger. Our concept of reality is changing. It's been happening here in San Francisco ... I believe there's a whole new generation of kids. They walk different... I can hear it in the music ... It used to go ... life—
death,
life—
death
... but now it's ... death—
life . . .
death—
life
The TV crewmen are trying to hand their microphones to heads near Kesey. They want them to hold them near him to pick up the words better. They implore the heads, they half order them in stage whispers. The heads are disgusted. They just stare at them. Kesey shoots a few whammies their way ... These bastards and their...

positioning...
they only want to use you for a little while ... They're punctures in the dirigible, flatulent murmurs in the heart, they're—the TV crews are pissed, too. Snotty dope-head kids! ... Coverage is a pain in the ass here in Edge City. Can't do with it, can't do without it—a grand hassle in the making—

"... For a year we've been in the Garden of Eden. Acid opened the door to it. It was the Garden of Eden and Innocence and a ball. Acid opens that door and you enter and you stay awhile ..."

At which precise point—mysteries of the synch! yes—four policemen great dark-blue figures come walking in through the door on the Sixth Street side. The word starts firing around the crowd in the dark: Cops! Cops! ... One last monster raid to finish off the debacle! There is a hell of a scurrying in the darkness, bodies hitting the walls of the garage, like gigantic fancy-dress rats looking for holes ... Get the hell out of here! ... It's the Probation Generation, of course, all the kids who are out on probation under firm admonition not to associate with known dope users... they're practically digging through the concrete floor ... The four policemen keep walking in at a slow gait, looking this way and that. Cassady is on a microphone way behind Kesey now, up on the stage, in fact, beginning to rap about the cops coming in: "Four custom-tailored constables, you understand, looking for pearl heads among the swineherds..."

"The cops are here?" says Kesey. He sounds startled.

"The constabulary cops ..."

"They come in waves, too," says Kesey, "they're a pattern that repeats" ... Yah! ...

By now the cops have just stopped on the edge of the crowd in the darkness, just looking around.

"There's cops and there's policemen," Kesey says. "The cop says, 'Don't do that.

That's forbidden and that's all there is to that.' The policeman says, 'You can do that, but if you go too far, you're going to hurt yourself The policeman is the double line in the middle of the road. I'm talking about inside of us."

A spot suddenly comes on, hitting Cassady in a little cone of light. "It's like Ken once said," says Cassady. "If you ignore a cop for twenty years, then he's not there any more ..."

"Haw!—Haw!—Haw!"—Hell's Angels in the corner—the four cops just survey the camp meeting, then start turning around to leave. Cassady keeps on rapping:

"Yes! Violence, you understand .. . There's not going to be any violence here. If we wanted some violence we have some fellows here who could furnish it. .."

"Haw!—Haw!—Yah!—Yagggggh!—
A good cop is a dead cop!"

"A good cop is a dead cop!"

But the cops just walk on out, rocking at the same slow gait, brushing through a clump of Hell's Angels like they weren't there. The cops are gone, but they punctured the atmosphere again. Kesey tries to build it up, in the same soft tones, but it's tough going. He plunges in with the vision, the vision of Beyond Acid, how he saw the lines of light across the bay in Manzanillo, the line of grass .

. .

"... and I'd smoked some grass, some Acapulco Gold, as a matter of fact. . ."

Cheers go up in the dark, Acapulco Gold! Oh shit we're esoteric heads and we know the creamiest of all the marijuana. But it's a freaking puncture. Kesey plunges through the whole vision: the line of acid, the circle demanding completion, the little lights across the bay ... It's metaphorical, allegorical, brains are getting messed up left and right... The rock 'n' roll, the frenzy, the TV cameras, the darkness, the cops, and now...
this
... It keeps ricocheting from level to level. Shit! what is Kesey...
doing
... Finally the line with the hook on it—completing the circle without going all the way.

He's telling them the whole thing, but—what is . ..

"We've been going through that door and staying awhile and then going back out through that same door. But until we start going that far . . . and then going beyond . .

. we're not going to get anywhere, we're not going to experience anything new . .."

They're uncomfortable, they're stuffing their shirts in and pulling them out, too many rips in the balloon, and brains messed up.. . and the freaking TV jackals stabbing microphones around like tape-recording the hanging of Lenny Bruce—

"Let's find out where we are. Let's move it around. Let's dance on it."

The lights come back on, the music starts back up, the color is back, everything starts spinning like a top again. Goldhill is zonked by now. The music flows through his neural ganglia like a flood of relief... Love! Bless, bless! bright lights! The Hell's Angels are stomping around again, everybody dancing. But that doesn't last long.

Kesey is out in the middle of the crowd. People close in around him. The music stops.

Kesey looks slightly glazed over but plunging on, like he is determined to seize the whole debacle by the shoulders and shake it into place. He has a chunk of ice. He kisses it, he puts a big chunk in his mouth, he breaks off a chunk and gives it to Cassady. Cassady kisses a chunk and then rubs it all over his bare chest. An ice thing

... The TV cameramen and radio reporters are trying to edge in. They're buffeted back.

Everything is pitching and rolling. Kesey and Cassady are sitting on the floor communing over the ice. Pranksters and some other heads are getting into a circle on the floor with Kesey and Cassady ... the lotus position ... Gary Goldhill sits down with them. He's ready. The kid with the sizzling teeth sits down among them, zonked ... the lotus position ... His back is arched back stiff in the Nehru coat. He's rapt. The pot of pearls boils and boils. They all join hands and close their eyes—a communal circle ...

They close their eyes tighter and tighter, waiting for...
the energy.
It's coming! It's coming! A high-pitched keening noise rises up from the circle ... Do you hear it! ...

It's weird ... Half the people looking on are nonplused, they're
embarrassed.
What is this a Halloween party or a seance and the Holy Rollers? Christ... Albert Morch of
Women's Wear Daily
says to Caterine Millinaire: "Say! when! met you last night—I didn't know you were the Duke of Bedford's daughter!" ... Got religion! The Angels are restless. They're standing around the edge of the circle. "Hey! Start the music!" ...

In the circle, Kesey, Cassady, and the rest—they're starting to rap back and forth. The kid with the boiling teeth hears the voice. His eyes are still tight shut. He grins and glistens. "A dead towhee," he says, "a rumpled road and a dead towhee." His voice is on the edge of delirium and tears ... or else any moment he is going to break into an insane cackling laugh... "A dead towhee and a rumpled road and lying in the dust, a
mistake
... a
mistake,
but it's not
important...
Making a mistake is not
important...
it's the context in which the mistake is made ... A rumpled road and a dead towhee and four gasoline stations, white and sterile, refueling tailfins in mid-air for fat men in sunglasses who do not see the rumpled road and the dead towhee ..."

Goldhill sits rapt... Energy waves emanating from everywhere ... Like ... black spirits! ... Kesey & Cassady—what are they trying to do with his mind ...
Got
me, trapped me into the Big Wait—for what? an idea? a revelation? love? feeling? breakthrough—into what? or

PUT-ON

They're putting him on! Sucking him in! But—the
idea
we're waiting for—he
can feel
it, physically, it's surging through ... He looks deep down inside, to describe it.

PRESQUE vu!

Mass daemonic hallucination it is! He looks around ... All pitches and rolls...

A CIRCUS OR HELL

The tortured and the damned are all around him, the dead-for-good souls ... He gets up radiating Chinese firecrackers from his dragon pajamas and heads for the Sixth Street door but... the Dead and the Damned! Faces!

HELL'S ANGELS

Hell's Angels are packed into the corridor leading to the door ready for MASSACRE

He turns back into the crowd, sinks into a time warp ... Like his life is an endless tape loop ... Black spirits keep bubbling up out of the most ancient pits of licorice detergent

TRAP

That! Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare and as he chants he becomes... Krishna! ... Christ! ... God ...

And he pops out of the time warp into the silver haze of... The Universal Mind ...

"We almost had it," says Kesey, opening his eyes for the first time. "We would have had it. There's too much noise ..." But it's like the cloud has passed.

People are milling around, starting to leave. They're befuddled and embarrassed.

What the hell kind of party ... The Angels are beginning to leave, the TV crews, Herbert Gold has had enough ... Albert Morch ... It's getting toward three o'clock ...