Collected Short Fiction, page 867
VIII
THE subject of this composition is My Very First Acid Trip. My first and my last, eight years ago. Actually it wasn’t my trip at all, but Toni’s. D-lysergic acid diethylamide has never passed through my digestive tract. What I did was hitchhike on Toni’s trip. Let me tell you.
This happened in the summer of ’68. That summer was a bad trip all in itself. Do you remember ’68 at all? That was the year we all awoke to the fact that the whole business was coming apart. I mean American society. That pervasive feeling of decay and imminent collapse, so familiar to us all—it really dates from ’68, I think. When the world around us became a metaphor for the process of violent entropic collapse that had been going on inside our souls—inside my soul, at any rate—for some time.
That summer Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the White House, just barely, serving out his time after his abdication in March. Bobby Kennedy had finally met the bullet with his name on it and so had Martin Luther King. It was the year of sideburns and Buffalo Bill mustachios. Babies were dying of malnutrition in a place called Biafra, which you don’t remember, and the Russians were moving troops into Czechoslovakia in yet another demonstration of socialist brotherhood. In a place called Vietnam, which you probably wish you didn’t remember either, we were dumping napalm on everything in sight for the sake of promoting peace and democracy, and a lieutenant named William Calley had recently coordinated the liquidation of 100-odd sinister and dangerous old men, women and children at the town of Mylai, only we didn’t know anything about that yet. Let’s see, what else? President Johnson nominated Abe Fortas to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Where are you now, Chief Justice Fortas, when we need you? The Paris peace talks, believe it or not, had just begun that summer. In later years it came to seem that the talks had been going on since the beginning of time, as eternal and everlasting as the Grand Canyon and the Republican Party, but no, they were invented in 1968. That was the sort of year it was. Oh, Christ, I’ve forgotten one significant chunk of history. In the spring of ’68 we had the riots at Columbia, with radical students occupying the campus and classes being suspended and final exams called off and nightly confrontations with the police. How funny it is that I pushed that event out of my mind, when of all the things I’ve listed here it was the only one I actually experienced at first hand. Standing at Broadway and 116th Street watching platoons of cold-eyed fuzz go racing toward Butler Library. Holding my hand aloft in the forked V-for-peace gesture and screaming idiotic slogans with the best of them. Cowering in the lobby of Furnald Hall as the blue-clad nightstick brigade went on its rampage. Debating tactics with a ragged-bearded SDS gauleiter who Finally spat in my face and called me a stinking liberal fink. Watching a group of young shaggy Columbia men ritualistically pissing on a pile of research documents that had been liberated from the filing cabinet of some hapless instructor going for his doctorate. It was then that I knew there could be no hope for mankind, when even the best of us were capable of going berserk in the cause of love and peace and human equality. On those dark nights I looked into many minds and found only hysteria and madness. Once, in despair, realizing I was living in a world where two factions of lunatics were battling for control of the asylum, I went off to vomit in Riverside Park after a particularly bloody riot and was caught unawares (me, caught unawares!) by a lithe 14-year-old black mugger who smilingly relieved me of twenty-two dollars.
I was living near Columbia in ’68, in a seedy residence hotel on 114th Street, where I had one medium-big room plus kitchen and bathroom privileges. It was cheap—fourteen-fifty a week—and I had to be close to the University because of the work I was doing, researching that Israel book. Are you still following me? I was telling you about my first acid trip, which was really Toni’s trip.
WE HAD shared our shabby room nearly seven weeks—a bit of May, all of June, some of July—through thick and thin, heat waves and rainstorms, misunderstandings and reconciliations, and it had been a happy time, perhaps the happiest of my life. I loved her and I think she loved me. I haven’t had much love in my life. That isn’t intended as a grab for your pity, just as a simple statement of fact, objective and cool. The nature of my condition diminishes my capacity to love and be loved. A man in my circumstances, wide open to everyone’s innermost thoughts, really isn’t going to experience a great deal of love. He is poor at giving love because he doesn’t much trust his fellow human beings—he knows too many of their dirty little secrets and that kills his feelings for them. Unable to give, he cannot get. His soul, hardened by isolation and ungivingness, becomes inaccessible and it is not easy for others to love him. The loop closes upon itself and he is trapped within. Nevertheless I loved Toni, having taken special care not to see too deeply into her, and I didn’t doubt my love was returned.
On the Friday of our seventh week Toni came home from her office with two small squares of white blotting paper in her purse. In the center of each square was a faint blue-green stain. I studied them a moment or two without comprehending.
“Acid,” she said finally.
“Acid?”
“You know. LSD. Teddy gave them to me.”
Teddy was her boss, the editor-in-chief. LSD, yes. I knew. I had read Huxley on mescalin in 1957. I was fascinated and tempted. For years I had flirted with the psychedelic experience, even once attempting to volunteer for an LSD research program at the Columbia Medical Center. I was too late signing up, though. And then, as the drug became a fad, came all the horror stories of suicides, psychoses, bad trips. Knowing my vulnerabilities, I decided it was the part of wisdom to leave acid to others, though I was still curious about it. And now these squares of blotting paper sitting in the palm of Toni’s hand.
“It’s supposed to be dynamite stuff,” she said. “Absolutely pure, laboratory quality. Teddy’s already tripped on a tab from this batch and he says it’s very smooth, very clean, no speed in it or any crap like that. I thought we could spend tomorrow tripping and sleep it off on Sunday.”
“Both of us?”
“Why not?”
“Do you think it’s safe for both of us to be out of our minds at the same time?”
She gave me a peculiar look. “Do you think acid drives you out of your mind?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of scary stories.”
“You’ve never tripped?”
“No,” I said. “Have you?”
“Well, no. But I’ve watched friends of mine while they were tripping.” I felt a pang at this reminder of the life she had led before I met her. “They don’t go out of their minds, David. There’s a kind of wild high for an hour or so when things sometimes get jumbled up, but basically somebody who’s tripping sits there as lucid and as calm as—well, Aldous Huxley. Can you imagine Huxley out of his mind? Gibbering and drooling and smashing furniture?” She sounded impatient with me. There was a patronizing, lecturing tone in her voice. Her esteem for me seemed clearly diminished by these old-maid hesitations of mine—we were on the threshold of a real rift. “What’s the matter, David? Are you afraid to trip?”
“I think it’s unwise for both of us to trip at once, that’s all. When we aren’t sure where the stuff is going to take us.”
“Tripping together is the most loving thing two people can do.”
“But it’s a risky thing. We just don’t know. Look, you can get more acid if you want it, can’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Okay, then. Let’s do this thing in an orderly way, one step at a time. There’s no hurry. You trip tomorrow and I’ll watch. I’ll trip on Sunday and you’ll watch. If we both like what the acid does to our heads, we can trip together next time. All right, Toni? All right?”
“All right,” she said softly. “It isn’t worth a hassle.”
SATURDAY morning she skipped breakfast—she had been told to trip on an empty stomach—and after I had eaten we sat for a time in the kitchen with one of the squares of blotting paper lying innocently on the table between us. There wasn’t much conversation. She filled an ash tray with a great dismal mound of half-smoked cigarettes. From time to time she grinned nervously. From time to time I took her hand and smiled encouragingly. During this touching scene various of the tenants with whom we shared the kitchen on this floor of the hotel drifted in and out. First Eloise, the sleek black hooker. Then Miss Theotokis, the grim-faced nurse who worked at St. Luke’s. Mr. Wong, the mysterious little roly-poly Chinese who always walked around in his underwear. Aitken, the scholarly fag from Toledo, and his cadaverous mainlining roommate, Donaldson. A couple of them nodded to us but no one actually said anything, not even “Good morning.” In this place it was proper to behave as though your neighbors were invisible. The fine old New York tradition. About half-past ten in the morning Toni said, “Get me some orange juice, will you?” Giving me a wink and a broad toothy smile, all false bravado, she wadded up the blotting paper and pushed it into her mouth, bolting it and gulping the orange juice as a chaser.
“How long will it take to hit?” I asked.
“About an hour and a half,” she said.
In fact it was more like fifty minutes. We were back in our own room, the door locked, faint scratchy sounds of Bach coming from the portable phonograph. She looked up suddenly and said, “I’m starting to feel a little funny.”
“Funny how?”
“Dizzy. A slight touch of nausea. There’s a prickling at the back of my neck.”
“Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Juice?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m fine. Really I am.” A smile, timid but genuine. She seemed a little apprehensive but not at all frightened. Eager for the voyage. I put down my book and watched her vigilantly, feeling protective, almost wishing that I’d have some occasion to be of service to her. I didn’t want her to have a bad trip but I wanted her to need me.
She gave me bulletins on the progress of the acid through her nervous system. Visual effects were beginning. The walls looked a trifle concave to her and the flaws in the plaster were taking on extraordinary texture and complexity. The color of everything was unnaturally bright. The shafts of sunlight coming through the dirty window were prismatic, shattering and spewing pieces of the spectrum over the floor. The music—I had a stack of her favorite records on the changer—had acquired a curious new intensity. She was having difficulty following melodic lines and it seemed to her that the turntable kept stopping and starting, but the sound itself, as sound, had some indescribable quality of density and tangibility that fascinated her. There was a whistling sound in her ears, too, as of air rushing past her cheeks. She spoke of a pervading sense of strangeness—“I’m on some other planet,” she said twice. She looked flushed, excited, happy. Remembering the terrible tales I had heard of acid-induced descents into hell, harrowing accounts of grueling bummers lovingly recounted for the delight of the millions by the diligent anonymous journalists of Time and Life, I nearly wept in relief at this evidence that my Toni would come through her journey unscathed. I had feared the worst. But she was making out all right. Her eyes were closed. Her face was serene and exultant, her breathing deep and relaxed. Lost in transcendental realms of mystery was my Toni. She was barely speaking to me now, breaking her silences only every few minutes to murmur something indistinct and oblique. Half an hour had passed since she first had reported strange sensations. As she drifted deeper into her trip my love for her grew deeper also. Her ability to cope with acid was proof of the basic toughness of her personality and that delighted me. I admire capable women. Already I was planning my own trip for the next day—selecting the musical accompaniment, trying to imagine the sort of interesting distortions of reality I would experience, looking forward to comparing notes with Toni afterward. I was regretting the cowardice that had deprived me of the pleasure of tripping with Toni this day.
BUT what is this, now? What’s happening to my head? Why this sudden feeling of suffocation? The pounding in my chest? The dryness in my throat? The walls are flexing—the air seems close and heavy—my right arm is suddenly a foot longer than the left one. These are effects Toni had noticed and described a little while ago. Why do I feel them now? I tremble. Muscles leap about of their own accord in my thighs. Is this what they call a contact high? Merely being so close to Toni while she trips—did she breathe particles of LSD at me? Have I inadvertently turned on through some contagion of the atmosphere?
“My dear Selig,” says my armchair smugly, “how can you be so foolish? Obviously you’re picking these phenomena right out of her mind!”
Obviously? Is it so obvious? I consider the possibility. Am I reading Toni without knowing it? Apparently I am. In the past some effort of concentration, however slight, had always been necessary in order for me to manage a fine-focus peep into another head. But it seems that the acid must intensify her outputs and bring them to me unsolicited. What other explanation can there be? She is broadcasting her trip and somehow I have tuned to her wavelength. And now the acid’s strangenesses, spreading across the gap between us, infect me as well.
Shall I get out of her mind?
The acid effects distract me. I look at Toni and she seems transformed. A small dark mole on her lower cheek, near the corner of her mouth, flashes a vortex of blazing color: red, blue, violet, green. Her lips are too full, her mouth too wide. All those teeth. Row upon row upon row, like a shark’s. Why have I never noticed that predatory mouth before? She frightens me. Her neck elongates; her body compresses; her breasts move about like restless cats beneath her familiar red sweater, which itself has taken on an ominous, threatening purplish tinge. To escape her I glance toward the window. A pattern of cracks that I have never been aware of before runs through the soiled panes. In a moment, surely, the shattered window will implode and shower us with fiery fragments of glass. The building across the street is unnaturally squat today. There is menace in its altered form. The ceiling is coming toward me, too. I hear muffled drumbeats overhead—the footsteps of my upstairs neighbor, I tell myself—and I imagine cannibals preparing their dinner.
I should turn this off, before it freaks me altogether. I want out.
Well, easily done. I have my ways of stopping down the inputs, of blocking the flow. Only they don’t work this time. I am helpless before the power of the acid. I try to shut myself away from these unfamiliar and unsettling sensations and they march into me all the same. I am wide open to everything emanating from Toni. I am caught up in it.
I go deeper and deeper. This is a trip. This is a bad trip. This is a very bad trip. How odd—Toni was having a good trip, wasn’t she? Then why do I, accidentally hitchhiking on her trip, find myself having a bad one?
Whatever is in Toni’s mind floods into mine. Receiving another’s soul is no new experience for me, but this is a transfer such as I have never had before, for the information, modulated by the drug, comes to me in ghastly distortions. I am an unwilling spectator in Toni’s soul and what I see is a feast of demons. Can such darkness really live within her? I saw nothing like this those other two times—has the acid released some level of nightmare not accessible to me before? Her past is on parade. Gaudy images, bathed in a lurid light. Lovers. Copulations. Abominations. Where am I? Where am I? Ah, there—off to one side, insignificant, irrelevant. Is that thing me? Is that how she really sees me? A hairy vampire bat, a crouching huddled bloodsucker? Or is that merely David Selig’s own image of David Selig, bouncing between us like the reflections in a barber shop’s parallel mirrors? God help me, am I laying my own bad trip on her, then reading it back from her and blaming her for harboring nightmares not of her own making?
How can I break this link?
I stumble to my feet. Staggering, splay-footed, nauseated. The room whirls. Where is the door? The doorknob retreats from me. I lunge for it.
“David?” Her voice reverberates unendingly. “David David David David David David—”
“Some fresh air,” I mutter. “Just stepping outside a minute—”
It does no good. The nightmare images pursue me through the door. I lean against the sweating wall, clinging to a flickering sconce. The Chinaman drifts by me as though a ghost. Far away I hear the telephone ringing. The refrigerator door slams and slams again and slams again and the Chinaman goes by me a second time from the same direction and the doorknob retreats from me as! the universe folds back upon itself, locking me into a looped moment. Entropy decreases. The green wall sweats green blood. A voice like thistles says, “Selig? Is something wrong?” It’s Donaldson, the junkie. His face is a skull’s face. His hand on my shoulder is all bones. “Are you sick?” he asks. I shake my head. He leans toward me until his empty eye sockets are inches from my face and studies me a long moment. He says, “You’re tripping, man! Isn’t that right? Listen, if you’re freaking out come on down the hall—we’ve got some stuff that might help you.”
“No. No problem.”
I go lurching into my room. The door, suddenly flexible, will not close; I push it with both hands,! holding it in place until the latch clicks. Toni is sitting where I left her. She looks baffled. Her face is a monstrous thing, pure Picasso, I turn away from her, dismayed. “David?”
HER voice is cracked and harsh and seems to be pitched in two octaves at once, with a filling of scratchy wool between the top tone and the bottom. I wave my hands frantically, trying to get her to stop talking, but she goes on, expressing concern for me, wanting to know what’s happening, why I’ve been running in and out of the room. Every sound she makes is torment for me. Nor do the images cease to flow from her mind to mine. That shaggy toothy bat, wearing my face, still glowers in a corner of her skull. Toni, I thought you loved me. Toni, I thought I made you happy. I drop to my knees and explore the dirt-encrusted carpet, a million years old, a faded thinning threadbare piece of the Pleistocene. She comes to me, bending down solicitously, she who is tripping looking after the welfare of her untripping companion, who mysteriously is tripping also. “I don’t understand,” she whispers. “You’re crying, David. Your face is all blotchy. Did I say something wrong? Please don’t carry on, David. I was having such a good trip and now—I just don’t understand—”
