Mr. Know-It-All, page 20
But who could I take LSD with? Naturally I thought of the Dreamland survivors, the very same people I tripped with in the sixties. I asked Pat Moran, but she shrieked in my face, “No! Are you crazy?” Mary Vivian Pearce at least contemplated it, but then turned me down, laughing and saying, “At our age?” But, hallelujah, Mink Stole said yes. She reasoned we both had never had bad trips when we took it together then, and since this was the fiftieth anniversary of our meeting in Provincetown, why not do it there again? But we needed a third person. I mean Mink and I have been through a lot together, even had our moments of being estranged, but that was all so long ago I barely remember why. But suppose one of us freaked out? We needed a buffer, a third buddy who was neutral. Frankie Rice, a close friend of mine who is much younger but always seemed comfortable around older people, would be ideal. He is an artist, married to a man (I performed the ceremony), handsome, funny, and more importantly, a townie. Perfect.
But where do you cop acid in 2016? I had two friends who were still plugged into the Northern California drug scene both legal and illegal, and I knew I could trust them and their contacts to come up with the real thing. I mean, how will I know how much to take? I don’t want it to be a microdose disco hit that techies now take to “explore” at work, nor do I want the LSD to be so strong that I lose my marbles. Finally, through channels that were almost royal in the tripping world they got me the proper dosage. On little wafers. Each was supposedly 100 milligrams, and we were told to take about 125 to 150 for best results. I only wanted to do this once! It couldn’t be so weak that it meant I was chickening out or so strong that I’d think I could fly off my third-floor Provincetown porch. I even took a photo of my “man” handing over the drugs to me. Yes, she was a woman. So what? She had done her due diligence. The last thing either of my connections wanted was to be blamed for me or Mink going postal. I didn’t even tell them about Frankie. They were pretty sure what they had gotten for us was pure. Who wanted to be John Waters’ Cathy Smith? Remember her? The one who sold John Belushi the coke he OD’d on? No sirree, we were in good drug hands here. Susan, my assistant, drove the psychedelic little babies right up to Cape Cod in my car without knowing it along with my usual office stuff at the beginning of summer, and I later placed them in the freezer. They’re sitting in there right now, waiting to be gobbled.
I’m kind of nervous. I did tell my shrink and he seemed to take it in stride and gave me Ativan pills in case I got the horrors, but he also told me what I already knew: that friends “talking you down” is the best solution if things go south. “Oh, you’ll be fine,” a great friend who’s in AA advised me, much to my surprise. Mink said she’d try smoking pot if she freaked out because marijuana relaxes her. Frankie admitted he had had a bad trip when he was young because he didn’t think his dosage was working and then took more and it all hit at once and freaked him out. He said he was bringing art supplies in case the muse struck.
I remembered listening to certain LPs when I tripped when I was young, so I brought these same ones up on CDs with me from Baltimore: Dionne Warwick (“Once in a Lifetime” is the cut I remember most because Divine used to lip-synch the entire number as the acid began to build), Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits soundtrack, and, oddly enough, the saccharine score to Born Free. Could they possibly still work?
I remembered that looking in the mirror on acid was weird then; now it might be horrifying. I don’t think I ever saw my partially drawn-on mustache while tripping—suppose I lose it when I see how ridiculous it looks sitting on my face as it has for over forty years? Worse yet, what if I “see” through my skull? Am I well-adjusted enough today that I won’t see the ravages of time or my receding hairline reflected in the old, already-distorted bathroom mirror here?
Suppose I have to take a shit? On acid! Just the thought of all that straining and wiping while tripping is enough to give me a panic attack. Did I ever do such a disgusting thing on acid when I was young? Even now, I can’t bring myself to ask Mink such a repulsive question. I’m not eating one thing for two days before blastoff.
I guess I will have a little hootch on hand just in case we feel like having a pre-LSD cocktail, but being drunk and on LSD seems kind of ill-advised no matter how “bad” I’m trying to be. Snacks? I don’t remember ever eating on acid. And sex? Ewwwww! An orgasm on LSD? Mink, Frankie, and I had agreed not to have any of our love interests present. We needed to bond as friends on neutral emotional territory.
July 15, our agreed date, was fast approaching. I was already settled in the apartment I rent every summer on the beach in Provincetown. “I guess we’re really gonna do this…,” Mink had written months back announcing that she’d drive up the day before and stay at the house of Channing Wilroy, another Dreamland survivor. I had sneakily “auditioned” Channing for our LSD reunion by nonchalantly asking him if he had good memories of tripping, and his answer, “Absolutely not,” was immediate disqualification. I love Chan, but God knows he can be grumpy, and it was a stretch for me to imagine him “peaking” with joy. Chan’s just not a smiley-face kind of guy.
I had made my trip mates take a vow of silence. Nobody could know about our little experiment until the pub date of this book. I had included the idea of my tripping in the treatment of Mr. Know-It-All, and both my editor and agent had said, “Be careful.” Huh? If I was being careful, I wouldn’t do it, would I? Would Farrar, Straus and Giroux now be liable for damages if, high on LSD, I cross-dressed as Robert Motherwell, who used to live in Provincetown, and ran up Commercial Street attacking tourists? I hadn’t mentioned that Mink was joining me, but I figured FSG would only be happier with this chapter on my lunatic geezer reunion with my movie past included. Mink had already asked if she could use the night as material after the book had been published, and of course I answered yes. Unspoken is the question of what are the rules if one of us does have a bad trip and goes mental. I guess we all should think back to that famous line in Tea and Sympathy when the older woman kisses a much-younger closeted gay boy and says, “Years from now, when you talk of this, and you will, be kind!” We will.
We’re not using a “guide.” Remember them? Most people don’t when waxing nostalgic about LSD. A guide was supposed to be a person not on LSD, who might have been part of the drug culture, but who volunteered to be around a group of trippers making sure nothing went wrong. Kind of like the chaperone at a party. We had already made fun of that concept in Multiple Maniacs when Lady Divine’s gang of psychos dropped a net on suburban gawkers inside her Cavalcade of Perversions and then shot them up with acid. “I’ll be your guide,” Divine evilly snarled as unwilling LSD victims screamed in horror. Who could be our guide? My eighty-six-year-old landlady downstairs? My art dealers here, Jim Balla and Albert Merola? Our trip is scheduled for a Friday night in the middle of summer—they have to work, I can’t ask them. Who could stand spending twelve hours stone sober at a Dreamland multigenerational LSD party and keep their traps shut? Nobody. We’d have to take our chances.
But suppose something goes wrong? As LSD-day approaches (two more days!), I admit I’m as nervous as I was before I began my cross-country hitching trip that became the book Carsick. This I hope will be a shorter ride than the nine days that trek took, but I have no choice, other than to once again imagine the “best” and “worst” that could happen. I can’t be clueless like Lana Turner, who told me that before she filmed the ludicrous but wonderful LSD melodrama The Big Cube, in 1969, no one, including the director, had bothered to tell her what LSD was. When she shot her freak-out LSD scene (which has to be seen to be believed), she still didn’t know what LSD was. For better or worse, I do.
Maybe I’ll go crazy and never be able to write again? Or commit murder like the Z-Man character in the best LSD musical of all time, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? Will I have flashbacks to the finale of that trashterpiece and try to behead Frankie and Mink? God, I hope not. Or reenact that great Jody Reynolds suicide song “Endless Sleep” and wade into the ocean like handsome Rick Morrow (Ricky in Multiple Maniacs) did when he was freaking out with Mary Vivian Pearce and me on acid in Provincetown way back when? He lived then, but would I now?
Is an LSD-related death what I want as the lead in my obituary? Actually this might be kind of cool. Talk about eternal street cred! Yet I still have a lot I want to say in life. Or do I? Will LSD make me think, “Are you nuts? Why are you working so hard when, all things considered, you don’t have that much time left? Take off! Spend the rest of your life traveling, reading. Never work again!” Or will I have anxiety attacks that I’m still not working hard enough? Sixteen movies, nine books, speaking tours, art shows, that’s not enough, you lazy bastard! Nobody will remember you after you’ve gone. Get your lazy ass to work.
Suppose I gouge out my eyeballs while tripping like the guy we all knew in Baltimore who did just that and has been blind ever since? Could I be the Stevie Wonder of Filth? I hope I don’t experience flashbacks of my poor mother’s face in the mid-sixties the morning I arrived home tripping out of my mind as she was just leaving the house with my brother and sisters, all dressed up for Sunday mass. Our eyes locked and never did the slogan “Psychedelicize suburbia” seem sadder. Sorry again, Mom.
Turn on, tune in, drop out, as we used to say, could be a painful process back then, but today I’m much more worried about the effects of LSD on my psyche. It’s been hard to plan the many meetings or conference calls I have to schedule after my trip date. Suppose I don’t know who I am anymore? What if I turn into one of those “zombie” drug fiends in Brooklyn who, after taking bad doses of K2, a kind of synthetic weed, foamed at the mouth and staggered around screaming and attacking neighbors just like in a horror movie? An art show I’m curating in Provincetown opens just one week after our planned LSD trip. It’s called Catastrophe and I hope it doesn’t end up being about me instead of the paintings, drawings, and photographs of car accidents and freak occurrences I’ve included.
But I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. I think taking LSD at seventy will be a wonderful adventure. I read online about “the plastic fluidity of the dream state,” “the geometric patterns you see with your eyes closed,” “the subtle rainbow hues,” “the wonder and delight of renewed psychedelic experience,” and I feel excited. Maybe this trip will be a gateway to further senior-citizen drug experimentation? If it goes well, why not take every drug I ever took in ten years or so and see what happens? Could sniffing glue at eighty be my new frontier? Is experimenting with PCP at an elderly age a life-or-death crisis or a new way to say “old people want to have fun”? Suppose I get magic powers on this trip? Experience sudden automatic writing and finish this book in a day?
* * *
It’s the day before we do it. What supplies should I get? Ice cream sounds good. An ocean of Evian. Coffee, although I doubt staying awake will be a problem. Mink e-mailed me yesterday, “What are you wearing?” That question startled me because, for once, I hadn’t even thought of what to put on! Let’s see. Definitely not my Comme des Garçons jacket with the skull patterns. Mink had mentioned something about “being comfortable” and I agree. For me, that means 501 Levi’s white jeans, what I always wear in summer. Aha! Here it is in my closet. The perfect “trippy” shirt from Issey Miyake—the one with the blurry black-and-white geometric swirls that will go perfectly with the mismatched-on-purpose CDG paisley-patterned shoes I love. I better go to the beach today for one last dose of suntan maintenance so I’ll at least look healthy if I go crazy.
Will we go out while under the influence? I remember driving to Race Point Beach on acid long ago and hallucinating the sand dunes shifting and melting in the distance, so that cured me for good of driving a car on LSD. When we used to trip in Baltimore, the acid was so strong that just sitting in a chair was an experience. You were the chair. Will I be a chair again? I sort of hope not. The chairs in my summer place are a little rickety, not all that comfortable. Maybe I’ll turn into one of my landlady’s, Pat de Groot’s, paintings. That would be nice. One thing for sure. I’m going to keep real busy today and tonight so I don’t dwell. I’m actually going to do this. Acid at seventy.
Okay, it’s the morning of July 15: blastoff day. There’s no way I can chicken out. Like a murder plot conspiracy, it’s too late to stop. Will the next twelve hours be my last morning of sanity? “Christ,” I mutter out loud, “what does a grown man have to do these days to get a book deal?”
Do you clean your house for an LSD party? I did tidy up for my popper blowouts, but there were a lot more guests than two and most were already liquored up when they arrived, so I doubt any of those Rush heads were running their finger across my writing desk checking for dust. I will clean my toilet for Frankie and Mink. This I know.
I’ll buy flowers, too. Yep, that is a festive, positive, trippy way to decorate for the occasion. I just took the doses out of the freezer so they can defrost in time. Does LSD even need to be defrosted? Who knows, but I did it just to be safe. I put away all work-related materials and get out just that little pocket tape recorder I used on my hitchhiking trip in case I need to remember details. But will I be able to work it while I’m high? Or will I “be” the tape recorder? I also dig out an old digital camera to take a few photos of us—I guess before, not after. From my memory, an LSD trip is not exactly a recipe for beauty. Drained is a tough look at my age.
Suppose I blurt out deep dark secrets? Or have a heart attack? I’ve been an A-fib sufferer with no symptoms for decades but never asked my heart doctor if an LSD trip was advisable. What if there’s yet another terrorist attack while I’m tripping? I hope none of my media-freak friends call to tell me. Now that I think about it, I’ll be scared if the phone even rings.
Shit, I just noticed ants in the kitchen. Every summer I have this problem, but this year I thought I had beaten it. But no! Now I have to get more of those disgusting little white plastic poisoning trays and place them around the sink. They don’t work instantly! We’ll be tripping and still see ants. Just like that surrealist Buñuel film, Un Chien Andalou—not exactly the cinematic reference I had on the menu for a suggestible mind. Fucking ants!
Oh, stop worrying, John; it’s going to be fine. “Just do it,” as Jerry Rubin used to say. Just say yes, as Nancy Reagan most definitely did not say. It’s LSD time, be happy!
* * *
Frankie arrived at 7:25 P.M., early as always. I laughed out loud when I saw his outfit—a tank top and cargo pants freshly tie-dyed for the event. I had slipped into my LSD-friendly patterned shirt, and he laughed, too. Seven thirty-five P.M. Mink was late. I couldn’t imagine her chickening out and I was right—she just hadn’t been to my Provincetown apartment for years, and finding the entrance to my place around the back of this Grey Gardens–type house on the beach is never easy. She was dressed for comfort, and we were thrilled to be together on this secret little adventure celebrating our fifty-year friendship. Mink admitted that Chan, whom she was staying with, may have been a little miffed not to have been invited to whatever we were planning—after all I had met him over fifty years ago, even before Mink. “I was going to tell him we were going to have sex, just so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt,” she admitted with a chuckle. Yikes! “That’s a good excuse!” I responded in friendship conspiracy.
Frankie and Mink had barely met in the past but gave each other an LSD-ready hug. I put all our doses on a plate and took my usual onetime Polaroid, now Fuji, instant photo of them both together, the way I always do for every person who’s ever set foot in any of my homes, and labeled it 7/15/16. Our LSD Trip. We sat around the table and I asked that we hold hands for a second. “We are here for each other,” I said, “so let’s watch out for the other person. No pretending to be freaking out. It’s gonna be beautiful. We’re in a safe place with friends. It’s going to be a great experience.” “And,” Mink added, “if anybody sees God, please keep it to yourself.” Each picked a colored candy wafer with the hopefully equal dosage in the center; I took green, Mink took pink, and Frankie chose purple. We turned off our cell phones.
I had the music all cued up and pushed the play button. “A chair is still a chair,” sang out Dionne Warwick in that beautiful voice, setting the surreal tone of a house being a new kind of home on LSD. Yes, she was right when she sang about a chair not being a house, but a room can bloom on acid, Dionne, and a house can be a chair if you dare. A home. A chair. A house. We could be all three.
But not yet. We had been advised it would take sixty to ninety minutes to “come on.” The first thing you feel—and I had completely forgotten this—was the certain thickness in your throat when you swallowed, a mucousy chemical phlegm that lets you know liftoff time is near. We went outside to my third-floor porch, which overlooks the bay and the very tip of the end of Cape Cod—about as far away as you can get geographically from Hollywood (“3,716 miles” as the vintage “Coast to Coast, Provincetown, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles, California” postcards read). We chatted, suddenly not nervous, and it seemed like less than ninety minutes, but the first thing that happens is the concept of time vanishes. You start seeing some “trails” on movement, a few color flashes, and then WHAM!
