The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (50 page)

"I ran into Bill Graham," he says. "He was out on the street checking tire treads to see if they'd picked up any nickels. I says, 'Bill...' and he says, 'Look, Neal, we're in two different worlds. You're a hippie and I'm a square.
Square.'
He did it like this"—

and Cassady makes a square in the air with his forefingers to show how he did it—"

'You're a hippie and I'm a square.' Says, 'I got off the subway in 1955, but you're still on it. We're in two different worlds. You're a hippie and I'm a square.' I'm telling you, Chief," he says to Kesey, "I had some very negative feelings. I remembered what you said about negative feelings, but I had some very negative feelings." Kesey laughs, but—

All day Saturday the Pranksters are working like mad. They're hassling up all sorts of equipment, mikes, spots, amplifiers, speakers, strobes, even an electronic music machine, all the stuff they had at the Acid Tests and more. They can't get into Winterland until Sunday to start rigging it up because there's some show in there Saturday night. Anyway, they're working
en charrette
Saturday and into Saturday night... At five o'clock in the morning, Sunday, it hits the fan. Kesey's lawyer, Rohan, gets wakened up at 5 a.m., at home ... Graham is on the phone, very excited, explaining a million things a mile a minute.

They are having quite a little session up in Graham's office at the Fillmore. All night it's been going on. Graham has been wrestling with many negative feelings. He knows that term, too. By heart—also Chet Helms knows it, and the Grateful Dead, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and more and more ::::: three fourths of The Scene is here, says Graham, the're all over the place, hanging on the walls... Everyone is in a terrific sweat. Are we actually going to let Kesey do this thing? pull off this debacle? Go ::::
beyond acid,
whatever that may be, which, whatever it is, is no good for anyone here .. . They've hauled out all the versions, the cop-out, the power play, the way Kesey twisted McKendrick's arm, the DMSO ... the DMSO! . .. That's it! Christ, Bill, can't you see ... They're putting pressure on Graham to pull out of the deal. . .

They've got me by each limb, wild tow trucks heading to the four points of the compass... The more they talk, the more urgent it is to
do
something, else, Christ, why have we been here all night... Hope incubates in the warm loam of every armpit...

Helms has it figured out. Kesey's mentality is military. He thinks in terms of power differentials. He's playing the desert fox—lure the enemy into your own battleground by doing a turn-face claiming you came back to stop kids from taking acid, and when you have thousands of these straight people together, turn them on to acid. Kesey's playing the tactical deceit and façade game—and so on ... And the Dead ... Why should we blow our hard-earned scenes for Kesey? As Ralph Gleason the columnist says. .. Kesey's going to blow the whole new San Francisco scene for us. And Graham

... I ran into Cassady on the street. He's waving this sledgehammer at me like he's going to knock my head off if I don't play ball... Many negative feelings. Kesey's an Elmer Gantry, says Graham ... That's it! Elmer Gantry, the evangelical demagogue . . .

Freaking debacle either way ... If he blows it, he blows it for us all. If he succeeds, he takes over the whole psychedelic movement and leads it into the Elmer Gantry thing, Father Divine, Daddy Grace, Cagliostro, charlatan limbo, sledgehammer theocracy, a phosphorescent fascist fandango, King Herod spavining the Flower Children, O Fuck

& Corruption, G-narl, G-nash, Elmer Gantry Cagliostro Day-Glo Nero .. . Stop Kesey

...

In short, Graham is pulling out of the deal and there will be no Acid Test Graduation at Winterland.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON IN THE WAREHOUSE — CHRIST, IT'S

dismal in here! The place is always a shambles, of course, but now the funk of the day's debacle is settling in like a sludge. The vermin are regaining the upper hand ...

The lice! The pigeon fleas! The roaches! rats! scabies! impetigo! clap! piles! herpes!

all rising up out of the debris like boils . . . Faye, Mountain Girl, Babbs, Gretch, Black Maria, Page, Doris Delay, Stewart Brand, Lois, the Hermit, Roy Seburn, Gut the ex-Hell's Angel, Kesey's brother Chuck, Zonker—they're all rumbling around in the gloom, but they're not Flag People any more, the costumes are off like the war is over

... They're gathering around in a circle in folding chairs and old theater seats on one side of the bus. .. Acid Test Graduation... The sign is still stretched across the whole side of the bus ... Well, shit.. . Kesey, in his buckskin shirt again, comes around in the midst of them carrying a huge easy chair—stuffed with tiny wings!—over his head—

and sets it down with the back to the bus and sits down in it—a molting chair—and the Prankster circle rings out from him. Kesey stares at a spiral notebook he has and then starts talking in a voice so soft I can hardly hear him at first... about what has just happened ... about Danny Rifkin and some others who came by to tell him they were pulling out of the Winterland fantasy.

"It didn't take long to know they wouldn't change their minds," he says. "They won't change because they have too much money involved ... As soon as they left, I lay down and I thought about it and then I knew we have everything we want right here . . ."

Right here?

". . . in this warehouse, and this is where we're going to do it. We're going to have the Graduation here and it's going to be our scene. We have a certain number of people we want to get close to us, and they're going to be here and it's going to be better than anything we could have done at Winterland ..."

Whistling

".. . Here we're on our own grounds, and we can do what we want, for our own scene, and we don't have to do any more politicking or compromising. We'll do it our own way and we'll be the Bay Area's Superheroes ..."

Last hole in the sapling sky

"... One reason it didn't come off was that it was too big and too hot and they all got frightened. They all want to be eagles, but they don't want to act like eagles, so we're going to have to do it ourselves. We tried to do it the other way, but they weren't interested ... So we're going to keep it down to those people who are going to make it as tight a scene as we can get. They are the kind of people who, if they've got anything to say, it will spread out from them, and they can say it straight, and it will spread out from them and there will be no stopping it. And that's the essential fantasy.

We're moving it all in here, into the Rat Shack."

Into the Rat Shack

Then Kesey's voice picks up and he starts assigning tasks: Page in charge of setting up a stage and chairs. Roy Seburn to decorate the place with a lot of cloth hangings.

Faye and Gretch to get food and drink. Hermit to seal up all the holes in the walls.

Zonk to draw up and post the guest list...

The few!

The fantasy is to compile an invitation list and contact them all, far and wide, now, this afternoon and tonight, by telephone, messenger, whatever it takes, and everybody starts thinking of those people close in enough to

THE WHOLE FREAKING ADVENTURE

to invite to this last roundup .. . What a thought! ...

Do YOU REMEMBER

all the Pranksters who have wandered far and wide, like June the Goon, Marge the Barge, Sensuous X, Anonymous, Norman Hartweg—

"Hire an ambulance to bring him from Ann Arbor!" Christ, all the memories... the Perry Lane people ... Sandy Lehmann-Haupt—

BECAUSE, NEVERTHELESS, HE WAS THERE WHEN

the pudding whipped up creamy-—

"Hugh Romney!"

"Bonnie Jean!"

And Paul Sawyer and Rachel Rightbred ... and all the wild screwy people who got on the bus on the golden track wherever and whither—

"Mary Microgram!"

"That little guy who wrote the pot poem!"—and they write that down—

"That guy with the ears, that weirdo!" says Babbs—and they write that down—

"That couple in Portland!"—and they write that down—

"That pretty Indian boy on Haight Street!"—and they write that down—

"The Mad Chemist!"

Yeah ! Oh shit, do you remember

"Big Nig!"

Gimme the rent

"Culley!"

"Owsley!"

Survival

"That guy in jail!"

"The Who Cares Girl!"

RA-A-A-A-AY

"Ray!"

"Pancho Pillow!"

"J. Edgar Hoover!"—and they write that down—

SEE THE VERY HUNTED COONS

"Gaylord!"

"Jim Fish!"

"Agent Number One!"

¡MARICONES!

Cosmo!

Cos-mo

Oh shit what a flow from eons ago in La Honda across the length and the breadth and the sleek and the Rat and it all comes flooding and bubbling back like a crest if they can just sit up on it and ride and ride and ride and ride here in the gloom and beat back those little crab lice in frogmen's suits six little neoprene rubber armlets for each little crab louse leg creeping about camouflaged like tiny scars in the brain the focking debacle infestation, the morose thought clumped somewhere in every brain until out through the starveling self-shuck fiesta euphoria Page brings it out front and out loud in the scabid sinkhole of the Warehouse, the ancient Shellube voice of please-don't-shit-me:

"It's great to be a part of the greatest jackoff in history."

NEVERTHEFREAKINGLESS! THE NEXT NIGHT, HALLOWEEN, the magic long-awaited hour ... I can hardly believe it, the Pranksters have transformed the place. You have to hand it to them, they must have worked like Turks. It's still a pestilence among buildings, you understand, this Warehouse, but there's verve in the air, Rat splendor. The most splendid thing is a huge orange-and-white parachute, an enormous thing, just the silk, not the strings and all, hooked to the ceiling at the apex, and billowed out to the far corners of the ceiling like some majestic canopy out of a Louis XV lawn revel in the Orangerie at Versailles. It glistens !
Grand luxe!
The very same parachute, it turns out, that Astronauts use on reentry for the splashdown ... Hmmmmm ... Yes... Quite a sight! The Pranksters have turned into the Flag People again, in their American Flag coveralls. Mountain Girl sits at the Sixth Street side in Flag coveralls checking guests against the invitation list which is posted up on the door in Paul Foster God Rotor script. Mountain Girl opens the Can't Bust 'Em coveralls and suckles Sunshine as the few, the faithful.. . the many! . . . come flapping by . . . Their faces are painted in Art Nouveau swirls, their Napoleon hats are painted, masks painted, hair dyed weird, embroidered Chinese pajamas, dresses made out of American flags, Flash Gordon diaphanous polyethylene, supermarket Saran Wrap, India-print coverlets shawls Cossack coats sleeveless fur coats piping frogging Bourbon hash embroidery serapes sarongs saris headbands bows batons vests frock coats clerical magisterial scholar's robes stripes strips flaps thongs Hookah boots harem boots Mexicali boots Durango boots elf boots Knight boots Mod boots Day-Glo Wellingtons Flagellation boots beads medallions amulets totems polished bones pigeon skulls bat skeletons frog thoraxes dog femurs lemur tibia kneecap of a coyote

... A hell of a circus, in short, a whole carnival banner, a panopticon. Hell's Angels pulling in, in their colors, the death's-head jackets, full dress, beards combed and trimmed, Terry the Tramp, Pete the Drag Racer, Ralph of Oakland, plus their girls...

miniskirts and raspberry stockings. .. Chocolate George ... Chaos! Shitfire! Chocolate George doesn't see his name on the list and his girl keeps saying, "What's the matter, George, can't we get in?" until Mountain Girl gives a bullshit laugh and waves them in. A kid about ten pops out of the door onto Sixth Street and yells, "Who's smoking grass around here?"—in the most demanding voice you ever heard ... aggressive little devil. There's even a nursery set up inside the door and they keep making the Hermit stay the hell out of there. Kesey is off to one side in a Flag People coverall, looking around, not saying much, listening to a big Angel from Oakland who has on a polka-dot shirt and a polka-dot tie under his Angels' jacket—"I wore a shirt and tie, Ken, on account of it's Halloween"—rock 'n' roll playing over the loudspeakers, which are all over the place, on the sides, on the ceiling, right up in the summit of the parachute canopy even ... microphones, cameras, TV cameras... Yes ... The Few and the Faithful!—all the same, the word of the hoopla in the scabid old Warehouse is around town like a chic piece of information. Irresistible, of course ... Three TV stations have cameramen there, four radio stations with microphones and tape machines. Herbert Gold the novelist with an aftershave smile on. Ingrid Bergman's daughter, Pia Lindstrom ... Oh, sweet adrenal edge! This is where it's at! what—could this be...
the
new wave?...
Where? in comes the
Women's Wear Daily
correspondent in San Francisco, Albert Morch, a brassy little character with a Rolleiflex around his neck ...

Caterine Milinaire of
Vogue
with a miniature camera in a chain-mail evening purse, standing amid Angels, heads, and the Probation Generation like a Bulfinch princess . .

. Larry Dietz the magazine writer from Los Angeles... And me ... Kesey looking around and saying nothing and . .. wondering . .. Hmmmmm ... The Few and the Faithful and the whole hulking world. It's a regular beano, all right. But, Mother!

These costumes aren't for a Halloween party but for the liberation of dead souls...

churchly vestiture, in truth ...

Are we blind? ... Oblation ... Consecration ... Communion ... Well... The Anonymous Artists of America climbing up onto the stage ... They're like freaking faeries out of
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
dueling shirts and long gowns of phosphorescent pastels like the world never saw before, Day-Glo death masks beaming out in front of the instruments. The music suddenly submerges the room from a million speakers... a soprano tornado of it... all-electric, plus the Buchla electronic music machine screaming like a logical lunatic ...