The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Part 18

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 h.e.l.l'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 s.h.i.+rt 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 pocket- and precisely then, naturally, comes again the milky atropine: "How about another one?"

O.K.-and 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.-and 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 bone-how many cigarettes does the kid have left, fans? Eight-ten?-and what then, after all the cigarettes are gone?

How about your s.h.i.+rt?

O.K.-uhhh- How about your boots?

O.K.-uhh- How about your pants?

O.K.-uhhh- And now your HIDE, mother!

My ... hide!

Your very HIDE, mother! Your very a.s.s ! The last vestige of your pride and honor! AAARRRRRRRCHHHHHHHHH!!!! ... and his bones crunched like baked baby ortolans ...

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 turkey-fascinating!-stay tuned in for next week's broken hyoid bone!- -until 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 h.e.l.l'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-cla.s.s intellectuals-Behold my wings! Freedom! Flight!-but 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 Liverpool-and 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 h.e.l.l's Angels. Overtly, publicly, they included them in-suddenly, they were the Raw Vital Proles of this thing, the favorite minority, replacing the spades. Privately, the heads remained true to their cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt and red Guadalajara boots; tells the students why he wants to move beyond writing to more ... electric forms... then vanishes, that d.a.m.ned 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 good-Kesey's here! Kesey's here-he 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, 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."

Then-this 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: "I intend to stay in this country as a fugitive, and as salt in J. Edgar Hoover's wounds. .."

See the very hunted c.o.o.ns 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 flesh-Kesey!-only 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 baccha.n.a.l 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. n.o.body 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- Then he will rip off his mask-Why-it's Ken Kee-zee!-and 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 Ha.s.sler driving out of San Francisco on the Baysh.o.r.e freeway, toward Palo Alto, in an old red panel truck. The current fantasy . . . this movie is too real, Mommy-but 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 Baysh.o.r.e freeway in the afternoon and all the s.h.i.+ny black-shoe mult.i.tudes 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 We pulled it off thousands of cars sailing up the swooping expressway like so many Salt Flat Futur-o-matics with taillight bands like hard red candy ... It's relaxing, the rush hour is, and hypnotic, it drones, and it winks like red hard candy with the sun s.h.i.+ning through it, and the sun s.h.i.+nes in Kesey's side of the panel truck, very relaxing, and he takes off his disguise, the cowboy hat and dark gla.s.ses SEE THE VERY HUNTED c.o.o.nS.

SALT J. EDGAR HOOVER'S WOUNDS.

Ha.s.sler, driving, vaguely aware of the cars floating by in the rush hour, s.h.i.+ny hulls with so many shaved globes sticking up inside ...

KESEY!.

Suddenly coming up on his left Ha.s.sler sees a car full of s.h.i.+ny haircut faces, jammed full of them, all staring at them-Ha.s.sler and Kesey-and now gray Alumicron arms flapping out the window, stabbing and motioning Pull Over, much grimacing and shouting soundlessly into the slipstream of the rush hour, and one with his wallet dangling out the window, flapping his badge at them RUN! SPLIT! VANIs.h.!.+.

But there is no place to vanish to. It is all clear in a flash-trapped in the rush hour for a start-and the panel truck can't outrun their sedan anyway. Opposite side pickoff!-Ha.s.sler tries to squeeze between cars and lose them that way, like a basketball play, but it's no use. The cops keep floating abreast, grimacing and flapping, and drifting back and pulling even again THERE !.

Kesey motions to the shoulder of the expressway, by an embankment and Ha.s.sler cuts over there, skids to a stop THRASH !.

Kesey out the door and plunges over the guardrail and down the embankment, with the dust flying . . .

Ha.s.sler just sits there as the sedan skids to a stop in front of him, cutting him off. Seems like twenty doors fly open, haircut faces and gray-Alumicron bodies popping out in every direction, leaping over the guardrail- ALL IN s.h.i.+NY BLACK SHOES.

One orders Ha.s.sler out of the panel truck and Ha.s.sler gets out and sits down on the edge of the freeway. Very strange. The great swarm of cars with hard-candy tails keeps sailing past, hypnotically. Ha.s.sler gets into the lotus position, sitting cross-legged on the asphalt, looking straight ahead. Three sets of s.h.i.+NY BLACK FBI SHOES.

standing around him now. They all have these s.h.i.+ny black shoes on. Then one of them goes back to the sedan and comes back with a flare gun and stands over him with that. Ha.s.sler wonders if he intends to shoot him with a flare. A very Day-Glo death. Thread-soul, the causal body, ablation, Upanishads, Krishnamurti, the karmic vest.i.ture of the soul, the nirvanic consciousness-it all runs together right here, like a tinned stew, and Ha.s.sler isn't even high. On the other side of the expressway, on the edge of the bay, great fat seagulls are wheeling in the air in a great weird O pattern, coasting down below the level of the highway, then struggling up, dripping garbage out of their gullets, but a nice pattern, all in all- THE VISITACION DRAIN.

It's the Visitacion Drain they've picked to work out their karma in ... ah, we're synched up this afternoon .. . and the gulls wax fat gulping garbage at the drain and grease a slippery fat O in the sky and it occurs to Ha.s.sler that today is his twenty-seventh birthday.

Skidding down the embankment chocking up dust like in a Western the blur of the Drain flats out beyond Kesey vaults over an erosion fence at the bottom of the embankment RI-I-I-I-I-IP.

a picket catches his pants in the crotch rips out the in-seams of both pants legs most neatly flapping on his legs like Low Rent cowboy chaps running and flapping through the Visitacion flats poor petered-out suckmuck marginal housing development last blasted edge of land you can build houses on before they just sink into the ooze and the compost poor Visitacion Drain kids playing ball in the last street before the ooze runs flapping through their ballgame stare at him AND AT THE GHOST ON MY HEELS?.

like the whole world turns into an endless kids' ballgame on the edge of the ooze thousands of Drain kids furling toward the horizon like an urchin funnel AND THAT ALUMICRON BLUR BEHIND ME?.

s.h.i.+ny black shoes tusking up behind him stops stock still in the Visitacion Drain and GOTCHA!.

in the cops and robbers game.

chapter.

XXVII.

The Graduation

THEY HAVE KESEY ON THREE FELONIES: THE ORIGINAL Conviction in San Mateo County for possession of marijuana, which he never served time on; the arrest for possession in San Francisco, after which he fled to Mexico; and a Federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. A felon and a fugitive ... who; yes; was going to rub the FBI's nose in it for good measure ... and all about dope, at that... and throw away the key ... For three days they shuttle Kesey back and forth between County and Federal courthouses and jails in Redwood City and San Francisco. It will take a miracle to even get him out on bail, an inspiration, a vision ::::: ummm, a vision ::::: we can work it out ::::: Kesey's lawyers, Pat Hallinan, Brian Rohan and Paul Robertson, have a vision. The next morning they're in the courtroom in Redwood City at a bail hearing. The new style of Courtroom Modern, this courtroom, all great lineless slabs of blonde wood, and lowslung like ... the friendly banks of the suburbs. All very sunny under the fluorescent tubes. Kesey sits at the defense table wearing a blue works.h.i.+rt. Robertson is on his feet telling the judge about a certain vision Mr. Kesey has had, of "beyond acid," an inspiration, a miracle, a light he has seen, although never mind the details of the beach in Manzanillo, not... those lights... In any case ... Mr. Kesey has a very public-spirited plan ... He has returned voluntarily from exile in his safe harbor, to risk certain arrest and imprisonment, in order to call a ma.s.s meeting of all LSD takers, past, present and potential, for the purpose of telling them to move beyond this pestilent habit of taking LSD .. . Robertson's talking a streak. It's a grand speech. Kesey is sitting up straight at the table staring blue bolts at the judge. But Robertson's words are like a fog. Kesey disappears in the soup, he reappears in a mist, undergoing metamorphosis before your very eyes. He's found religion, contrition, redemption, the error of his ways, and now he's going to tell The Youth his sad lesson ... Faye and the kids are in the audience. Also many of their old Perry Lane friends, Jim and Dorothea Fadiman, Ed McClanahan, Jim Woltman, and some others ... Several will stake their homes as bail security, $35,000 worth ... Repentance and redemption are sailing around the courtroom like cherubim. All us reporters are scribbling away ... Now Kesey is standing up facing the judge with his arms folded and the judge is giving him a lecture ... He may be a great literary lion and a romantic figure to some misguided youth but to this court he is a childish a.s.s, an egotist who never grew up, a ... The judge is pouring it on, pouring it down his throat like cod-liver oil, but it's obvious it's just a buildup to saying he's going to grant bail anyway under the circ.u.mstances... Nevertheless Kesey is burning ... You can see him setting his jaw and getting ready to move his lips... G.o.d knows Hallinan and Robertson can see it. They're crouched beside him like bandits. The first peep out of him they're going to grab him around the throat... Keep your mouth shut, d.a.m.n it. Don't blow it now. It's only cod-liver oil... But the judge has finished and it's over. He's out on bail in San Mateo County.

The whole dam breaks after that. The FBI drops the Federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. All of a sudden they don't seem very interested in the case, despite the salt in J. Edgar Hoover's wounds and the rest of it. Then back in San Francisco, and Kesey is standing in front of the judge in a faded sport s.h.i.+rt, work pants and boots. The judge has a terrific speech ready, saying this case has been blown up out of proportions in the press and it is only a common dope case as far as he is concerned, and Kesey is no dragon, just an ordinary jacka.s.s ... and Kesey is starting to say something and Hallinan and Rohan are crouched for the garrote, but again it's over and Kesey is out on bail in San Francisco, too. It's unbelievable. He's out after only five days.

In the San Francisco jail Before he got out on bail Kesey met a kid with magic fingernails.

"Take a lick," said the kid And everybody did.

They all licked his nails and blew their lids.

Twenty-seven psyches Going off like Nike Missiles through the lye-scoured Concrete skyways of the San Francisco jail.

The kid had LSD on his magic fingernails.

Now- Kesey told this story To the local news reporters Who pressed around him in the courtroom, After the hearing on his bail, Just to prove how hopeless Was the drive to stamp out dope With things like cops and jails.

Try and stop a kid with magic fingernails !

The headlines said LSD ORGY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO JAIL!.

Ah...

Certain local heads cried Judas.

Finked on a stash, this Judas!

While he himself so shrewdly Copped out of jail, on bail.

A finking fingernail stash betrayal!

If the truth be known- These good hearts flapped in fibrillation.

They feared the rogue vibrations From the freaking Acid Graduation Kesey and the Pranksters planned; Their freaking Day-Glo last round-up in Winterland.

Like, I mean, You know, Can't you see it coming: Ten thousand children of the flowers and gra.s.s and acid, speed and poppers, yellow jackets, amyl nitrate, Ten thousand heads, freaks, beats, hippy-dippies, teeny-boppers descending from the crest of Haight Street Tinkling, temple bells, rattling, donkey beads, reeking, gra.s.s, shuffling, elf boots, swarming prostrate Before the returning Prophet in the bowels of Winterland.

All of psychedelphia moaning to the polyphonic droning of the Merry Prankster band!

It's too easy for this headline-blazing superhero This amazing Cagliostro Elmer Gantry Day-Glo Nero-

ON THE TOP FLOOR OF THE RUSSIAN EMBa.s.sY, IN AN Extremely crummy brown room ... It looks inflammable, or spontaneous-combustible, the next cough, maybe, and it's all up in here. Jack the Fluke sits up in bed, namely, a mattress on the floor, with his back against the wall. .. wearing nothing except his cabbie's cap and the grizzle on his face and the grizzle on his Camembert chest... a brown blanket pulled up to his waist... Take a look at that! if you want to know about Kesey. A large message tacked up on the wall on a sheet of drawing paper:

DEAR KEN,.

THE BOYS IN THE.

TANK SAY h.e.l.lO.

THEY WANT TO KNOW.

ABOUT THEIR MONEY. SHOULD.

THEY ASK YOU OR THE.

JUDGE OR WHO?.

Sandra, the girl from Bucks County, sits in a clump at the foot of the mattress. She is a very pale, tender little teenage clump. A single morsel, gone at one gulp, sitting under the room's one article of furniture, a bridge lamp, no longer goofing off the radio, just sitting in a teenage clump and listening to Jack tell me about the letter: "Oh man, there were a lot of good heads ha.s.sled and busted after Kesey told about that."

"You mean the cops-"

"The very ones. It was a bad scene. Like there's a lot of cats up here who are not enchanted with Ken Kesey. They sent him this letter."

Well, obviously they haven't, because there it is, up on the wall. But the thought is there ...

Creaks on the inflammable stairs, and into the room sidles a dark little guy in a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans carrying a round plastic box of cheese spread and a knife in a scabbard- "Jack!" he says in this weird whisper -one of those long knives with a lot of fancy mother-of-pearl on the handle that you see in a Chinatown souvenir shop.

"It was a bad scene," Jack the Fluke tells me. He ignores the guy- "Jack ... look at this," says the kid.

"That's nice, Frenchy," says Jack.

"Jack ... it's beautiful, " says Frenchy.

"Like there's a lot of cats up here," Jack says to me again- "It's beautiful," says Frenchy. "Jack-you know where there's any morphine?"

"No," says Jack, then resumes: "Like there's a lot of cats up here-"

"It's a beautiful thing," says Frenchy.