The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (35 page)
Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
Her mother gave her money for the second semester at San Jose State, and although it would hurt her mother at first, she knew what she had to do. She took the money and headed off to Mexico with some beautiful kids. It was a little more complicated than that. She knew Zonk at San Jose State and she knew he was heading for Mexico, for Mazatlan, although she didn't know about the Kesey prank, and so she was following Zonk, for if there were beautiful people, Zonk was one of them.
Mazatlan was just beginning to be the acid heads' favorite spot on the Mexican west coast. It wasn't a place the real hard-core tourists were onto yet. They went on down the coast to Acapulco, generally. At the same time Mazatlan wasn't so unbearably Mexicali â¦
sad
⦠like the true Acid Central of Mexico, Ajijic, on Lake Chapala. Those poor sad Lake Chapala villages, Ajijic, Chapala, Jocotepec, with the lake drying up and the old suck-smack lily-pad scum mud showing and failed American aesthetes padding around earnestly in sandals, 48-year-old bohos sucking up to young heads of the new generation of Hip. Very sad. It is truly a sad thing when an American boho says fuck this and picks up and leaves this fucking tailfin and shopping plaza and war-crazy civilization and goes to live among real people, the honest folk-type folk, in the land of Earth feelings, Mexico, and the hell with tile bathsâand then he
sits
there, in Mexico, amid the hunkering hardcheese mestizos, and, man, it is honest and real here ⦠and just as miserable as hell, and he is a miserable aging fuckup with no place else to go.
sad
⦠like the true Acid Central of Mexico, Ajijic, on Lake Chapala. Those poor sad Lake Chapala villages, Ajijic, Chapala, Jocotepec, with the lake drying up and the old suck-smack lily-pad scum mud showing and failed American aesthetes padding around earnestly in sandals, 48-year-old bohos sucking up to young heads of the new generation of Hip. Very sad. It is truly a sad thing when an American boho says fuck this and picks up and leaves this fucking tailfin and shopping plaza and war-crazy civilization and goes to live among real people, the honest folk-type folk, in the land of Earth feelings, Mexico, and the hell with tile bathsâand then he
sits
there, in Mexico, amid the hunkering hardcheese mestizos, and, man, it is honest and real here ⦠and just as miserable as hell, and he is a miserable aging fuckup with no place else to go.
But Mazatlanâthe head scene there was a happy thing and a groove. So she sat down in Mazatlan and wrote her mother a Beautiful People letter â¦
And she found Zonk and, unexpectedly, the famous Ken Kesey and beautiful people. But one thing about the beautiful people themselves ⦠. Namely, the Merry Pranksters. She had heard of the fabulous Merry Pranksters even in San Jose. Kesey and Zonk talked about them all the time, of course. The fabulous Babbs, the fabulous Mountain Girl, the fabulous Cassady, Hermit, Hassler and the rest. She had a Prankster name, Black Maria, but she was not yet a Prankster. She was sensitive even to the contours of Kesey's world, too. Sooner or later Kesey would reunite with the Pranksters â¦
Well ⦠put out Zonker's shirt when the coast is clear. Zonker's billowy faggy-looking shirt. Let him stay out on his jungle run for a while. If he enjoys the Fugitive game, why spoil it.
SHHHHHHHHHHWAAAAAAAAAP
flopping lush P.V. fronds Kesey thrashes out of the jungle and across the roadâ
CARS? ONE MEX ONE AMERICAN COMING IN PALE TAN VW?
no, no cars, man, and then down across the road to rocky scrabble down by the ocean on the rocks, his heart rattling away, he sinks down in his Cornel Wilde running jacket listening
no, no cars, man, and then down across the road to rocky scrabble down by the ocean on the rocks, his heart rattling away, he sinks down in his Cornel Wilde running jacket listening
WHOP!
surf hits the rocks, just a little holiday in picturesque P.V. with the sea kicking up at twilight. He concentrates on the surfâanalogy spoken here?âbut the surf is too aimless this way. His heart rattles tachycardiac at this speed, and the surf is synched in to another thing WHOPping against the rocks
BRANNGGGH
a tin-door sound up on the road like the ominous tin-car-door sounds in
Hud
always bring on the bad actionâlike brown Mex and crewcut drip-dry American up on the road eyes rocketing around, Brown Mex puffing
I'm-supposed-to-be-off-duty-now-señor.
Kesey faces out to sea, pulls a tablet out of the jacket. Makes the pink cover visible as if to prove just an aimless surf artist drawing water swells furl by furl like Leonardo who
must
have been a head, all the minute instincts, to sit by the water drawing the little furls as the water laps up on beach then starts rolling back toward the sea and minute little churning furls in the lead edge of the water, he drew it all, furl by furl, like a very meth head plugged into the great God Rotor. More surf, then
a tin-door sound up on the road like the ominous tin-car-door sounds in
Hud
always bring on the bad actionâlike brown Mex and crewcut drip-dry American up on the road eyes rocketing around, Brown Mex puffing
I'm-supposed-to-be-off-duty-now-señor.
Kesey faces out to sea, pulls a tablet out of the jacket. Makes the pink cover visible as if to prove just an aimless surf artist drawing water swells furl by furl like Leonardo who
must
have been a head, all the minute instincts, to sit by the water drawing the little furls as the water laps up on beach then starts rolling back toward the sea and minute little churning furls in the lead edge of the water, he drew it all, furl by furl, like a very meth head plugged into the great God Rotor. More surf, then
KABOOM!
firstâthey're FIRING on him. They don't give a shit.
firstâthey're FIRING on him. They don't give a shit.
HOT PURSUIT!
we got the guns and the rights, signed on this piece of paper here, one move blow yr fucking head off and you have
already moved,
Keseyâ
we got the guns and the rights, signed on this piece of paper here, one move blow yr fucking head off and you have
already moved,
Keseyâ
HOT PURSUIT!
KABOOM!
but nothing happens. Silence except for the surf.
THAT IS VERY PARANOID, HONDO
why would they try to blast you out of the tub with elephant guns anyway. It must be workmen using dynamite. So he edges up
to the road and it is workmen all right, sweating and heaving while the green fronds flap up the hill. He'll just sit here and watch them dynamite
why would they try to blast you out of the tub with elephant guns anyway. It must be workmen using dynamite. So he edges up
to the road and it is workmen all right, sweating and heaving while the green fronds flap up the hill. He'll just sit here and watch them dynamite
SURE
just watch them dynamite while every gringo car comes spinning off the shore drive out here Baskin-Robbins tourist matron lookout and say
“Hey, Honey, that's Ken Kee-zee ⦔
just watch them dynamite while every gringo car comes spinning off the shore drive out here Baskin-Robbins tourist matron lookout and say
“Hey, Honey, that's Ken Kee-zee ⦔
Back into the jungle, Cornel Wilde. Heart still banging up to the edge of fibrillation, through the lush shadowy danks of the jungle. Well, yessir, lookee here a minute, what's this. A three-sided hut in the jungle, some kind of woodsman's hut, with a cot in it and a little hoard of mango papaya, some kind of pallid little fruit. He sinks back on the cot, unzips his fly to air out his sweating nuts and dips into his jacket and pulls out three roaches and wraps a leaf around them like a cone and lights up. He cuts open a fruit and it bleeds meek white and he puts it aside.
A TRAP FOR JUNGLE RUNNERS
this perfect little snug harbor to suck you in, a hut, a cot, meek milk white fruit to eat, a joint of sorts, oh to be back in Baskin-Robbins country just one time facing endless beige tubs of ice cream 31 flavor decisions to make, pointed cone or cup-style
this perfect little snug harbor to suck you in, a hut, a cot, meek milk white fruit to eat, a joint of sorts, oh to be back in Baskin-Robbins country just one time facing endless beige tubs of ice cream 31 flavor decisions to make, pointed cone or cup-style
¡PARANOIA!
but this is the real-life jungle, Major. Two-winged flies, dapple-wing Anapholes, Culex tarsalis, verruga-crazed Phlebotomus biting 8-day fever and Oriental sores, greenhead rabbit-fever horseflies, tularemic Loa loa, tsetse mites, Mexican fleas, chinches, chiggers, velvet ants, crab lice crawling up your balls up your belly under your arms right up to your eyelashes for a nice fix of Mexican murine typhus, puss caterpillars, cantharidae beetles, Indian bedbugs, ticks, itch mites nice for scabies and rickety pox, Pacific Coast female tick hiding in the hairs at the base of the head sucking in the death bloat with blood, paralysis coming up from the toes will it reach the lungs before the big blood sausage mother drops off, a blood bag with tiny feet wriggling like worm hairs
but this is the real-life jungle, Major. Two-winged flies, dapple-wing Anapholes, Culex tarsalis, verruga-crazed Phlebotomus biting 8-day fever and Oriental sores, greenhead rabbit-fever horseflies, tularemic Loa loa, tsetse mites, Mexican fleas, chinches, chiggers, velvet ants, crab lice crawling up your balls up your belly under your arms right up to your eyelashes for a nice fix of Mexican murine typhus, puss caterpillars, cantharidae beetles, Indian bedbugs, ticks, itch mites nice for scabies and rickety pox, Pacific Coast female tick hiding in the hairs at the base of the head sucking in the death bloat with blood, paralysis coming up from the toes will it reach the lungs before the big blood sausage mother drops off, a blood bag with tiny feet wriggling like worm hairs
DDT!
he gets down and pulls the DDT can out of the jacket and starts dusting all around the ground there around the cot, setting up a mighty defense perimeter against the mites of the jungleâwhich is very funny, come to think of itâdown on all fours in deadly battle with the microscopic mites while
he gets down and pulls the DDT can out of the jacket and starts dusting all around the ground there around the cot, setting up a mighty defense perimeter against the mites of the jungleâwhich is very funny, come to think of itâdown on all fours in deadly battle with the microscopic mites while
THEY
close in to slam you away for five, eight, twenty years ⦠driven at last out onto the edge of your professed beliefs. You believed that a man should move off his sure center out onto the outer edges, that the outlaw, even more than the artist, is he who tests the limits of life and thatâThe Movie :::: by getting totally into Now and paying total Attention until it all flows together in the
synch
and imagining them all into the Movie, your will will determine the flow and control all jungles great and small
close in to slam you away for five, eight, twenty years ⦠driven at last out onto the edge of your professed beliefs. You believed that a man should move off his sure center out onto the outer edges, that the outlaw, even more than the artist, is he who tests the limits of life and thatâThe Movie :::: by getting totally into Now and paying total Attention until it all flows together in the
synch
and imagining them all into the Movie, your will will determine the flow and control all jungles great and small
NEXT TO LAST JOINT IN ALL OF MEXICO
he pulls it out of his pocket and lights up.
Maybe I'll knock off the grass for a while.
Su-u-u-ure.
he pulls it out of his pocket and lights up.
Maybe I'll knock off the grass for a while.
Su-u-u-ure.
AND THEN BELIEVE ALL THAT CRAP YOU'VE BEEN CLAIMING ABOUT ALTERING BY ACCEPTING. BELIEVE IT! OR YOU ARE A GONER, AND BOY, A WALKING DEAD MAN FOREVERMORE FADING FINALLY INAUDIBLE LIKE THE VOICES MUMBLING BITONES IN THE CATHEDRAL!
And now that I've got your attentionâif he sits very still, the rush lowers in his ears, he can concentrate, pay total attention, an even, even, even world, flowing into
now,
no past terrors, no anticipation of the future horror, only
now, this
movie, the vibrating parallel rods, and he can
feel
them drawn into the flow, his, every verruga fly, velvet ant, murine fleas and crabs, every chinch and tick, every lizard, cat, palm, the very power of the most ancient palm, held in his will, and he is immuneâ
now,
no past terrors, no anticipation of the future horror, only
now, this
movie, the vibrating parallel rods, and he can
feel
them drawn into the flow, his, every verruga fly, velvet ant, murine fleas and crabs, every chinch and tick, every lizard, cat, palm, the very power of the most ancient palm, held in his will, and he is immuneâ
¡Diablo!
M
OUNTAIN GIRL STUCK IT OUT WITH BABBS, GRETCH, Walkerâfor the sake of the great ideaâand she meant itâbut any way she thought it out, it came out Kesey. Mountain Girl was almost eight months pregnant now. The bus, The Movie, was at a total standstill now, sinking into the swamper bogs. One day a package came in by mail, from Mexico, a tape, from Kesey, to Mountain Girl. And there was his voice. She could hardly make out a word he said, the quality of the tape was so badâall she could make out was, he was in the jungle somewhere and paranoid as hell and smoking a lot of grass.
OUNTAIN GIRL STUCK IT OUT WITH BABBS, GRETCH, Walkerâfor the sake of the great ideaâand she meant itâbut any way she thought it out, it came out Kesey. Mountain Girl was almost eight months pregnant now. The bus, The Movie, was at a total standstill now, sinking into the swamper bogs. One day a package came in by mail, from Mexico, a tape, from Kesey, to Mountain Girl. And there was his voice. She could hardly make out a word he said, the quality of the tape was so badâall she could make out was, he was in the jungle somewhere and paranoid as hell and smoking a lot of grass.
O DEAR DEAD ONE!
Then Babbs made the decision to take the bus to Mexico. They were a little paranoid themselves, about the heat put on the Acid Tests. Two days after the story broke about Kesey being in Puerto Vallarta, the good fink California press ran another big one: KESEY'S PALS IN LSD PARTY IN L.A.âa barnburner about the Watts
Test. But mainly they couldn't hack it any more; not even Babbs. Get the goddamn bus moving, that was the main thing.
Test. But mainly they couldn't hack it any more; not even Babbs. Get the goddamn bus moving, that was the main thing.
Mountain Girl had one more ordeal to go through. She had to stand trial in San Francisco for possession of marijuana, result of the bust on the rooftop. All the shit in society that the Pranksters had liberated themselves from through years of arduous initiationâthe shit rolled in, in lava gulps. She had to sit there, great with child, like a prisoner of war in a bamboo cage, while the straight world put her on prize exhibit and clucked and remonstrated and scolded and then shook its head and blubbered a little over her. Doped, seduced and abandoned, the poor miscreant teenager. She got a little Prankster mileage out of it even then, although she had to play it fairly straight, just to let them play out their game so she could get on with it. Their fantasy for her was a new dawn for this unfortunate girl, not a beeline for Mexico, but that was their fantasy.
Mountain Girl showed up in court on March 20 in a red dress, four inches above the knees, and this was long before mini-dresses were on every eyeball, and pregnant as hell. She came to court on the arm of the Cavalier Hassler. Hassler was great throughout the whole thing. He was her sanity. Hassler came to court with her, wearing a green velveteen shirt, yellow bouclé stretch pants and red boots, and when the reporters came up slavering for sob stuff, he put them on so righteously, it was beautiful.
“We must do everything possible,” he would say, peering out as sincere as the Student Council president from under his Prince Valiant locks, “to get Carolyn on her feet and out of this life of crime”âCarolyn Adams, naturally, being the fantasy that the Court knew her by. “I'm going to be the strong stabilizing force in her life”âvibrating yellow and green. “She's had a lot of misjudgment.”
“My misjudgment may extend to you,” said Mountain Girl. Great fun had by all.
The sob-story angle was the fantasy they all came up with for
her in court, her lawyer included. It was like they had all looked at her and thought it over and hmmmmmmmm this poor misguided runaway girl 20 years old, lately a teenager, you understand, and more than seven months in the family way seduction by the demon Kesey who left her to take the whole blame for the dope charge as
well as
abandoning her with an unborn child. Urgggggggggghhhhhh the prosecutor agreed on it, her lawyer agreed on it, the Judge agreed on it. So went the Justice game. And where was the demon Kesey who left so fast breathing dope from every nostrilâit was as if everybody was going to be nice to her by way of pointing out the lesson of Kesey's evil.
her in court, her lawyer included. It was like they had all looked at her and thought it over and hmmmmmmmm this poor misguided runaway girl 20 years old, lately a teenager, you understand, and more than seven months in the family way seduction by the demon Kesey who left her to take the whole blame for the dope charge as
well as
abandoning her with an unborn child. Urgggggggggghhhhhh the prosecutor agreed on it, her lawyer agreed on it, the Judge agreed on it. So went the Justice game. And where was the demon Kesey who left so fast breathing dope from every nostrilâit was as if everybody was going to be nice to her by way of pointing out the lesson of Kesey's evil.
Her lawyer, Steven Dedina, said: “Carolyn is no dope fiend, no dope addict. Her one addiction is a perennial overdose of solicitude for persons who are far away. Were it not for that particular addiction, this defendant would not be standing in this particular place at this particular time.”
So on March 22 Mountain Girl was let off with a fine of $250 for possession of marijuana. Yet if Kesey had left her in a lurch, it was a lurch that they would never understand in a million years.
THE TRIP DOWN INTO MEXICO WAS THE BUS AT ITS MOST AWFUL. Mountain Girl, so pregnant, just held on and forced back the bilious as the thing bounced and pitched and rolled through the desert. She felt like a 200-pound egg. But moving again! that was the main thing. Anything was better than what she had been going through. And this was truly something. Every 20 miles it seemed like the bus broke down and Babbs sweated over it. All the vibrations outside were bad. Corpses, chiefly. Scrub cactus, brown dung dust and bloated corpses, dogs, coyotes, armadillos, a cow, all gas-bellied and dead, swollen and dead, Babbs, Gretch, Faye and the kids, Walker and Mountain Girl.
The fantasy this time had been dreamed up by Zonker. Zonker had gotten in touch with them, and Hagen had already
driven down in an old car. Now the bus was going to keep a secret rendezvous with them in Mazatlan. Kesey had lit out for Mazatlan after the big scare in Puerto Vallarta.
driven down in an old car. Now the bus was going to keep a secret rendezvous with them in Mazatlan. Kesey had lit out for Mazatlan after the big scare in Puerto Vallarta.
In Puerto Vallarta, Kesey had sure enough had something to worry about after all. Chief Arturo MartÃnez Garza of the Mexican Federales had ordered a search of Puerto Vallarta on February 16, two days after the story broke in the California papers. They had hassled all strange bohemian-looking Americans on the streets and so on. But Kesey had already made a run for it, back to Mazatlan. Zonker had arranged the rendezvous for the beach at Mazatlan, such-and-such a day, such-and-such an hour.
Babbs flogged the bus through the corpse horizon day and night, desperate to make it on time, with the bus breaking down over and over again, everybody ill, not just Mountain Girl, but flogging on like it was life or death. And finally, Mazatlan, the sea, the big curve of the malecónâthey
made
it. This was the flow, and it was a sickening horrible flow, but they had
made
it, and they tooled up to the rendezvous pointâno Kesey. No Zonker and no Hagen.
made
it. This was the flow, and it was a sickening horrible flow, but they had
made
it, and they tooled up to the rendezvous pointâno Kesey. No Zonker and no Hagen.
It was too much, this particular predictable fuckup, after all that. It wasn't a cool thing for them to just sit there by the beach in this lurid freak of a bus, such as Mexico had never seen, but this was too much, and they sat there, beat, and let the hours tool by. They were a hell of a hit with the Mexicans, however. They never saw anything like it. “¡Diablo!” they kept saying. Women hid their children with their skirts. A whole bunch of locals gathered around the bus and grinned their hideous magenta-gummed native grins and stared at the crazies.
Heeeee!âan old car with no windows in the mother comes by, slowing down. The face at the driver's window, with the incredulous lookâHagen. And that old gray head peeking over the window's edge in the back, just peeking over ever so gingerlyâcould it
possibly
be ⦠Hagen stops and gets out. Then the back door opens ever so gingerly and out steps a gray-haired soul
with his head cocked to one side, radiating surprise and appall and not at all happy about the Diablo multitudes.
possibly
be ⦠Hagen stops and gets out. Then the back door opens ever so gingerly and out steps a gray-haired soul
with his head cocked to one side, radiating surprise and appall and not at all happy about the Diablo multitudes.
He has on a hincty washed-out faded tourist sport shirt and balloon-seat pants. He walks like a repertory theater shambles. He looks ten or fifteen years older, like an old workadaddy on the 21-day plan to Mexico.
Ecce
Fugitive.
Ecce
Fugitive.
Shee-ut, it's all too freaking absurd, this secret rendezvous. The bus glowing Day-Glo on the beach at Mazatlan, the Diablo multitudes whooping it up like a cock fight, Mountain Girl beautiful and fulsome with her hair down to her waist and dyed yellow from the last Testâthey could have sold tickets.
You're looking at the New Super Fugitive, Mountain Girl: Steve Lambâ45-yearâold gray-haired ninny. Certified I.D.; Zonker's driver's license with the Steve Lambrecht doctored to read Steve Lamb and the birth date altered to make him 45 instead of 25. Mild-mannered lamb among men, Steve Lamb, 45-year-old reporter, creep and amateur ornithologist, broadcaster for KSRO, Mighty 590 on your dial. Got his tape recorder right here, yessir, for collecting bird calls. Also you never know when the spot news will break and the diligent reporter is always ready, even on holiday. Old mild-mannered Steve Lamb has learned the secret of invisibility, which is to crawl into the rut, the bottomest awfulest part of the sunken way society has dug for all those who properly fear her might, O Mighty 590.
But hardly seem worth it, somehow, with the bus beginning to glow in the Mexican dusk. ¡Fuck it! ¡Diablo! ¡Cosmo! Let's bull it through, here in the Rat lands! Glittering Prankster glances all around. Paint it big enough and bright enough and they won't even be able to see it! Kesey and Mountain Girl and Babbs and Gretch and Faye and the kids standing here in the Rat vistas ⦠and along the edge of the circle a little Mexican-looking girl with long black hair just emerged from the old car ⦠Black Maria stares out to sea.
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