The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Part 12

So they gathered at the Spread.

"If society wants me to be an outlaw," said Kesey, "then I'll be an outlaw, and a d.a.m.ned good one. That's something people need. People at all times need outlaws."

The Pranksters comprehended it all at once.

So here is the current fantasy: tonight he is going to split for Mexico. He'll go across the border in the back of Ron Boise's truck. Boise was down at Babbs's at the time, and he had a truck that served as a kind of mobile studio. It had all his welding equipment and acetylene torches and the like and he would work back there on the mud flats out back, shaping old car fenders into the erotic poses of the Kama Sutra. Finally Roy Seburn's psychedelic car, his miniature bus, had been fed to the torches back there, too, as it was broken down for good. Nothing lasts. Art is not eternal. They would head for Puerto Vallarta. He would use another Prankster's driver's license as I.D. in case he needed it down there. Meanwhile, as a cover story, one last grand prank. The Suicide Trip.

Kesey would write a suicide note. Then D-, who looked uncommonly like him-Dee would dress up like him and get in an old panel truck that was around there and drive up the coast, toward Oregon, and pick out a likely cliff and smash the truck into a tree trunk and get out and leave the suicide note on the seat of the truck and throw his sky-blue boots down by the sh.o.r.e so it would look like he had dived in the water and gone out to sea, never to come back to his swamp of troubles. The idea was that Dee would look enough like Kesey, especially in a Prankster costume, so that if anybody did happen to see him driving along the way, they would remember him as someone answering Kesey's description. Let 'em unravel that one. Even if they don't fall for it, at least it might take the heat off. Why should we go to all this trouble-the ninny might be lying on the bottom of the ocean, them d.a.m.n dope fiends ...

"I hope Dee doesn't do a Dee-out," Mountain Girl said. But she was optimistic. The whole thing had a lot of elan du Prank.

That night Kesey and Mountain Girl got stoned on gra.s.s and started composing the great suicide note: "Last words. A vote for Barry is a vote for fun. I, Ken Kesey, being of (ahem) sound mind and body, do hereby leave the whole scene to Faye, Corporation, cash and the works (and it occurs to me here that n.o.body is going to buy this prank and now it occurs to me that I like that even better).. ."

Shee-ut, this was fun. Put-on after put-on bubbled up in their brains, and all the bulls.h.i.+t metaphors of destiny, all the bulls.h.i.+t lines a good bulls.h.i.+t poet would come up with upon looking the Grim Creeper in the a.r.s.ehole: "Wind, wind send me not this place, though, onward ..."

More! More! Louder music, more wine!

"... Ocean, ocean, ocean, I'll beat you in the end, I'll break you this time. I'll go through with my heels your hungry ribs..."

On and on it went, like a running account of the mad-drive-to-be up the coast, looking for his favorite cliff, to jump off of, presumably, the whole scene bubbling up in his brain and Mountain Girl's on the ratty rug in Babbs's living room. h.e.l.l, let's throw in some acid-they'll believe the d.a.m.n ninny dope fiend would take the dread LSD and break his a.s.s for good-and h.e.l.l, slam the freaking vehicle into a tree, bleed verisimilitude all over the California littoral: "... I've lost the ocean again. Beautiful. I drive hundreds of miles looking for my particular cliff, get so trapped behind acid I can't find the ocean, end up slamming into a redwood ..."

Beautiful. Ready, Ron? He gets into Boise's truck and they head off south for San Diego, the Mexican border, Tijuana and the land of all competent Outlaws.

chapter.

XX.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRANKSTERS AFTER KESEY'S flight to Mexico was so much like what happened to the League after Leo fled in Hermann Hesse's book The Journey to the East-well, it was freaking weird, this particular synch ... exactly ... the Pranksters ! and the great bus trip of 1964! their whole movie. No; it went on. Hesse's fantasy coincided with theirs all the way. It went on-all the way to this weird divide- The leader of the League in The Journey to the East was named Leo. He was never openly known as the leader: like Kesey, he was the "non-navigator" of the brotherhood. And Leo suddenly left "in the middle of the dangerous gorge of Morbio Inferiore," just when the League was deepest into its Journey to the East, in the critical phase of a trip that was being alternately denounced and wondered at. "From that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes! They were something so new and unheard-of in our hitherto perfectly united League. They were conducted with respect and politeness-at least in the beginning. At first they led neither to fierce conflicts nor personal reproaches or insults-at first we were still an inseparable, united brotherhood throughout the world ..." Things got more and more bitter, and the narrator, "H.," left after the Morbio Inferiore. And the narrator, Hartweg, left after ...

Very weird, the synch!

With Kesey gone, Babbs became the leader. There was no meeting, no vote, not even a parting word from Kesey. Babbs becomes the leader-the ... group mind knew that at once, without a second thought. They packed up everything at La Honda and took it up to Oregon, to Kesey's parents' home. The Archives they stashed at the Spread and, later, up at Chuck's house in Oregon. This and that they bequeathed to other heads, like the great round table with the h.e.l.l's Angels' carvings all over it. They gave that to a new psychedelic group, the Anonymous Artists of America, at a place called Rancho Diablo up at Skylonda. Whatever they could use for the Acid Tests they took along.

Babbs moved the Acid Test scene to Los Angeles and the bus lumbered on down there. They had hardly gotten there before the soft rumblings started-"certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes!" Babbs gives too many orders-Kesey, the non-navigator, merely expressed a will and merely waited for it to move forward in the Group Mind. Babbs runs this like the Army... like the Boy Scouts... Babbs's put-ons suddenly seemed pure sarcasm. His cryptic comments, his candor, seemed cruel. Some of the Pranksters even took to sympathizing with poor wretches like Pancho Pillow; the universally put-down acid-rapping fool, Pancho.

Pancho, ever in the throes of self-laceration, was still desperate to be on the bus. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d spent his last earthly dime and traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles and caught up with the bus in Lemon Grove one day. Pancho came ambling up with a huge grin of brotherhood and started to climb up the steps and Babbs met him at the door of the bus.

"I don't think anybody wants you here," said Babbs.

"What do you mean?" says Pancho. "Can't I come on the bus ? "

"There's n.o.body on the bus who wants you on the bus."

Pancho's grin is wiped off, of course, and his eyes start batting around like pinb.a.l.l.s, trying to make out who is inside the bus-you all know me, I'm Pancho!

"Well... I know I get on some people's nerves," says Pancho, "but I came all the way here to be with you guys, and I spent all my money getting here-"

"We don't care," says somebody else's voice, on the bus.

"Look," says Pancho, "I'll shut up, I'll do whatever you want. I just want to help with the Tests. I'll do anything-"

"We don't care." Somebody else's voice, on the bus.

"-odd jobs, run errands, there must be a thousand things-"

"We don't care."

Pancho stands there, speechless, his face bursts with red.

"See," says Babbs, "it's like I said. I don't think there's anybody who wants you on here."

Numb Pancho backs down off the steps and trudges off in Lemon Grove.

Well, they had a good laugh over that. The freaking Pancho Pillow! A bad-trip freak if there ever was one! A breaker of b.a.l.l.s extraordinaire! The human b.u.mmer: ::::: but it was a laugh with a metallic aftertaste, this joke on Pancho :::::: Babbs had gotten hold of an old mansion in L.A., called the Sans Souci, a great incredible moldering old place with a dome and a stone bal.u.s.trade, all crumbling and moldering, but with style. When the owner found a bunch of beatniks in there, he freaked, but that was later. Anyway, one day they were all in there and one Prankster said a very unPrankster thing. He spoke up and said: "I want to voice this idea: I can't stand Margie and I don't want her around."

Unfreakingbelievable. He was talking about Marge the Barge. So then all eyes went to Babbs, who was now thrust into the Kesey role of resolving all. Babbs turns to Marge the Barge and says: "What do you think about that?"

Marge says: "I think that's ridiculous," and with such quiet flat conviction that n.o.body else says anything.

A small moment-but one more moment in the gathering schism, the Babbs loyalists versus the had-enough-of-Babbs. Later they would realize they were in many cases merely blaming Babbs for the mysterious sense of loss in their venture. They were casting about for an explanation, and Babbs was It. What they had lost of course, was the magical cement of Kesey's charisma. "It seemed that the more certain his loss became, the more indispensable he seemed; without Leo, his handsome face, his good humor and his songs, without his enthusiasm for our great undertaking, the undertaking itself seemed in some mysterious way to lose meaning."

IN FACT, BABBS CARRIED THE ACID TESTS INTO LOS ANGELES with an amazing determination. The Pranksters were now out of their home territory, the San Francisco area, but they performed with an efficiency they never knew they had before. It was as if they were all picking up on Babbs's exhortation of months ago: "We've got to learn how to function on acid." They were soaring out of their gourds themselves, but they were pulling off Acid Tests that seemed like they were orchestrated.

Babbs was in great form, as I say, and he had also hooked up with a remarkable head named Hugh Romney, a poet, actor, and comedian who had gone the whole route, starting back in the Beat Generation days and was now into the LSD thing and had "discovered the Management," as he put it, "and when you discover the Management there's nothing to do but go to work for it." So Romney and his friend Bonnie Jean were now on the bus, and they all set out to-nothing more, nothing less-turn on Los Angeles to the Management. .. Yesss... The first Test was at Paul Sawyer's church in Northridge, just out from Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley .. . Sawyer has never lost his willingness to experiment and is on the bus himself. And if the Sport s.h.i.+rts could see these ... new experimental rites... including music, dance, and sacrifice-the sacrifice?-well... it was not strictly an Acid Test, but a "happening," which had become a harmless and un-loaded word in Cultural circles, even in Sawyer's Valley Unitarian-Universalist Church. A marvelous modern building shaped like a huge Bermuda onion, it was, forming one great towering . . . Dome, with fantastic acoustics like it had been created for the current fantasy itself. So the Pranksters moved in and wired and wound up the place, and hundreds arrived for the "happening," partaking of Prankster magic and pineapple chili, which was a concoction the Pranksters served, on the vile side in taste, but pineapple chili nonetheless, a wacky thought in itself. And Ca.s.sady had a microphone and started rapping, and Romney had a microphone and started rapping, and he was great, and Babbs and Paul Foster, flying with the G.o.d Rotor and not stuttering at all... People dancing in the most ecstatic way and getting so far into the thing, the straight mult.i.tudes even, that even they took microphones, and suddenly there was no longer any separation between the entertainers and the entertained at all, none of that well-look-at-you-startled-squares condescension of the ordinary happening. Hundreds were swept up in an experience, which built up like a dream typhoon, peace on the smooth liquid centrifugal whirling edge. In short, everybody in The Movie, on the bus, and it was beautiful... They were like... on! the Pranksters-now primed to draw the hundreds, the thousands, the millions into the new experience, and in the days ahead they came rus.h.i.+ng in ::::: ::::: Clair Brush, for one. Yes. She was a girl in her twenties, a pretty redhead, who worked for Art Kunkin, the editor of the hip circuit weekly, the Los Angeles Free Press. Her old friend Doc Stanley had called her up before the Test at Sawyer's church and said, Clair, there is going to be a happening in a Unitarian church in the Valley that you really ought to pick up on, and so forth ... But one of the things Clair did at the Free Press was compile a calendar of events for the hip circuit and this was the big season of "happenings" and she had been through all that a dozen times, and each one was always billed as the wave of the future, and was inevitably a drag. So she didn't go. Ummmm ::::: However ::::: ::::: In hearing about it from people who did attend, though, she decided to go to the next one ::::: ::::: which was set for Watts, on Lincoln's Birthday, February 12, 1966. Watts! the very Watts where hardly five months before the freaking revolution of the blacks had broken out, the symbol of all that was catastrophic and hopeless in American life, and what is this strange s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p now approaching Watts, the very Youth Opportunities center itself--Youth Opportunities!--for the trip beyond catastrophe ::::: ::::: "I think what decided me"-Clair is recalling it for me-"was someone's description of Art Kunkin's spontaneous partic.i.p.ation and enjoyment of the evening in the church. Most of the people there were given to improvisation as required, but Arthur and I share a reserve in crowds.

"Anyway. The Watts site-it was actually Compton, an incorporated city on the fringe of Watts-was chosen for reasons unknown to me. The best guesses I've heard have to do with the politics of taking such a party into the recently stricken neighborhood, as a friends.h.i.+p-thing; also a humorous-ironical?-site for such carryings-on.

"The building was a warehouse, part of a Youth Opportunities center, but still vacant. They-the Center people-were using or were going to use the building as a workshop for manual trades, possibly automotive? Job-retraining, etc. It was legally leased for 24 or 48 hours by Kesey's group, with money, and the caretaker of the center was present at all times during the Acid Test.

"Announcements were made in the usual way, Free Press and KPFK calendar, etc., and around 200 people were in attendance. When I arrived, nothing had started ... people were cl.u.s.tered in small groups, sitting on mats and blankets around the walls. The room, the main room, was huge ... my conception of feet, in yards and such, is bad, but I'd guess maybe 50 by 25. There was a smaller room to the east and bathroom to the west, and the large room had a corridor running along the south wall which had open windows waist-high without gla.s.s... through which the scene inside could be observed.

"I had driven my car down, giving two people a ride, but I left them immediately ... went to join some friends who had some rose wine and were sitting on a pad on the floor. As I said, none of the effects had started ... but shortly there was an announcement (I think by Neal Ca.s.sady, but I didn't know him then) that the evening would begin. Films were projected on the south wall, with a commentary ... films of Furthur, the bus, the people in the bus ... the commentary was a rather dull travelogue and the film seemed fairly uninspired and confused.

"Remember now, I'm a novice. I'd never even been 'high' on 'pot' or any kind of pill or anything... my strongest experience had been with alcohol. I knew a few 'heads' but didn't think much of the whole thing ... had tried pot a few times and nothing impressed me, except for the unpleasant taste.

"This may explain why a lot of people were digging the film, laughing, and also why a lot of people were there ... I'm sure that I was one of a minority who had no idea what to expect. The word must have been pa.s.sed, but didn't get to me. Also I think a lot of those in attendance had heard of Kesey's things and were very aware of what was being done. Not old unworldly Clair. Story of my life.

"The film continued, some slides were shown of flowers and patterns, this and that.. . then a large trash can, plastic, was carried to the middle of the room, and all were invited to help themselves to the Kool-Aid it contained. There was no big rush to the refreshment stand . . . people wandered up, it was being served in paper cups, and since Kool-Aid is a staple in the homes of Del Close and Hugh Romney and other friends of mine, I thought it quite a natural thing to serve . .. had a cup, had another, wandered and talked for a while, had another ..."

. . . Ironically, for Clair, anyway, it was Romney's inspiration to serve Electric Kool-Aid, as he called it. They had all... yes... laced it good and heavy with LSD. It was a prank, partly, but mainly it was the natural culmination of the Acid Tests. It was a gesture, it was sheer generosity giving all this acid away, it was truly turning on the world, inviting all in to share the Pranksters' ecstasy of the All-one ... all become divine vessels in unison, and it is all there in Kool-Aid and a paper cup. Ca.s.sady immediately drank about a gallon of it. Actually there were two cans. Romney took the microphone and said, "This one over here is for the little folk and this one over here is for the big folk. This one over here is for the kittens and this one over here is for the tigers," and so forth and so on. As far as he was concerned, he was doing everything but putting a sign on the loaded batch saying LSD. Romney was so thoroughly into the pudding himself it never occurred to him that a few simpler souls might have wandered into this unlikely way station in Watts and simply not know ... or think that all his veiled instructions probably referred to gin, like the two crystal bowls of punch at either end of the long white table at a wedding reception... or just not hear, like Clair Brush- "Severn Darden was there, and Del Close, of course, and I knew them from the Second City in Chicago. Severn and I were standing under a strobe light (first time I'd seen one, and they are kicky) doing an improvisation ... he was a jealous husband, I an unfaithful wife, something simple and funny. He was choking me and throwing me around (gently, of course) and suddenly I began to laugh ... and laugh ... and the laugh was more primitive, more gut-tearing, than anything I had ever known. It came from somewhere so deep inside that I had never felt it before ... and it continued ... and it was uncontrollable ... and wonderful. Something snapped me back and I realized that there was nothing funny ... nothing to laugh about.. . what had I been laughing at?

"I looked around and people's faces were distorted ... lights were flas.h.i.+ng everywhere ... the screen (sheets) at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flas.h.i.+ng faster than it had been ... the band, the Grateful Dead, was playing but I couldn't hear the music ... people were dancing ... someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of my eyelids (I really think this happened ... I asked and there was such a machine)... and nothing was in perspective, nothing had any touch of normalcy or reality ... I was afraid, because I honestly thought that it was all in my mind, and that I had finally flipped out.

"I sought a person I trusted, stopping and asking people what was happening. . . mostly they laughed, not believing that I didn't know. I found a man I knew not very well but with whom I felt simpatico from the first time we met. I asked him what was happening, and if it was all me, and he laughed and held me very close and told me that the Kool-Aid had been 'spiked' and that I was just beginning my first LSD experience ... and not to be afraid, but to neither accept nor reject... to always keep open, not to struggle or try to make it stop. He held me for a long time and we grew closer than two people can be ... our bones merged, our skin was one skin, there was no place where we could separate, where he stopped and I began. This closeness is impossible to describe in any but melodramatic terms... still, I did feel that we had merged and become one in the true sense, that there was nothing that could separate us, and that it had meaning beyond anything that had ever been. (Note, a year and two months later ... three months ... I later read about 'imprint' and that it was possible that we would continue to be meaningful to each other no matter what circ.u.mstances... I think this is true ... the person in question remains very special in my life, and I in his, though we have no contact and see each other infrequently ... we share something that will last. Oh h.e.l.l! There's no way to talk about that without sounding goopy.) "I wasn't afraid any more and started to look around. The setting for the above scene had been the smaller room which was illuminated only by black light, which turns people into beautiful color and texture. I saw about ten people sitting directly under the black light, which was back-draped by a white (luminescent lavender, then) sheet, painting on disembodied mannequins with fluorescent paint... and on each other, their clothes, etc. I stood under the light and drops of paint fell on my foot and sandal, and it was exquisite. I returned to this light frequently ... it was peaceful and beautiful beyond description. My skin had depth and texture under the light... a velvety purple. I remember wis.h.i.+ng it could be that color always. (I still do.) "There was much activity in the large room. People were dancing and the band was playing-but I couldn't hear them. I can't remember a note of the music, because the vibrations were so intense. I am music-oriented-sing, play instruments, etc.-which is why this seems unusual to me. I stood close to the band and let the vibrations engulf me. They started in my toes and every inch of me was quivering with them ... they made a journey through my nervous system (I remember picturing myself as one of the charts we had studied in biology which shows the nerve network), traveling each tiny path, finally reaching the top of my head, where they exploded in glorious patterns of color and line .. . perhaps like a Steinberg cartoon? ... I remember intense colors, but always with black lines ... not exactly patterns, but with some outlines and definitions.

"The strobe light broke midway ... I think they blew something in it... but that was a relief, because I had been drawn to it but it disturbed the part of me that was trying to hang onto reality ... playing with time-sense was something I'd never done ... and I found it irresistible but frightening.

"The Kool-Aid had been served at ten or so. Almost from the first the doorway was crowded with people walking in and out, and policemen. There were, throughout the evening, at least six different groups of police . .. starting with the Compton City police, then the Highway Patrol, sheriffs deputies, L.A.P.D. and the vice/narco squad. I seem to remember them in groups of five or six, standing just inside the doorway, watching, sometimes talking to pa.s.sers-by, but making no hostile gestures or threatening statements. It seems now that they must have realized that whatever was going on was more than could be coped with ... and a jail full of 150 people on acid was infinitely undesirable ... so they'd look, comment, go away, and others would come . . . this continued through the night.

"Dignitaries from the neighborhood attended . . . I'd guess around midnight, but I've no sense of the time of any of this, until 6 A.M. or so, when I finally sat down (I had walked, danced or stood from 10 P.M. on, not wanting to sit down ... for what reason I can't imagine). There were two or three women, about seven men. One of the men was dressed in a white suit and had a Shriner's cap on-I thought he was Elijah Muhammed. They smiled, watched, talked with some of the people ... stayed for about half an hour, and left, wis.h.i.+ng us a happy evening. No Kool-Aid was in evidence at that time, of course ... it had been removed quickly. The neighborhood people were Negro, naturally. They seemed to have no idea of the party as being anything but a gathering of young people, and appeared to be pleased to welcome us to the neighborhood. I remember one of the women was carrying a child and many people stooped to play with him ... probably a two-year-old boy.

"The caretaker of the building was present for the whole time. It seems he'd go back to the office part and sleep for a while, or maybe just get away from the noise and the chaos... but periodically would check to see that everything was all right. He was friendly, happy, but very, very confused at the strange activities. "Mostly I'd call the Acid Test a master production. Everything was very carefully meshed and calculated to produce the LSD effect, so that I have no idea where the production stopped and my own head took over. The films being shown were so vivid, with patterns and details of flowers and trees and often just color surrounded by black lines and fast-moving scenery and details of hands and such ... again, I avoided getting hung up watching them ...

"People were standing outside ... it was a cold, clear night... someone panicked, got in his car and drove away, burning rubber ... I wanted to go back to my house, but knew that driving would be insane. Bonnie (who was Hugh Romney's lady) was standing alone ... we touched hands and smiled, knowing, caring . . . Furthur was parked in the street. I went alone and sat in the bus, and heard and felt the spirits of the people who lived in it. . . we (the bus and I) went on a journey through time, and I knew them so well... I went back inside and found the man whose face was painted half gold and half silver, with a bushy head of curly hair, who had seemed earlier to be frightening and strange"- -this was Paul Foster-"and looked at him and understood. The costumes of the Merry Pranksters had seemed bizarre, and now they were beautiful and right. I recalled a poster which we'd had on the ceiling of the Free Press when our offices were under : the Fifth Estate ... it's a poster for a production of 'The Beard' and has 'Grah roor ograrh ... lion lioness... oh grahr ...' (like that) printed on it... and for that moment I understood exactly what was being said.

"A great flash of insight came to me. I've forgotten it now, but there was one instant when everything fell into place and made sense, and I said aloud, 'Oh, of course!'... why didn't I see all this before, why couldn't I have realized all these things and not resisted them so much. That didn't last, and hasn't recurred.

"There was a witch who was very kind and sent out the best warm and lovely vibrations. She was wearing red velvet and she's an older lady, really a witch in the best possible way. I was glad she was there, and she was smiling and understanding and enjoying, mothering those few who were not reacting well.

"There was one girl who was wrestling with G.o.d. She was with friends, and I think she was all right after a few hours. There was one man who became completely withdrawn ... I want to say catatonic, because we tried to bring him out of it, and could not make contact at all... he was sort of a friend of mine, and I had some responsibility for getting him back to town ... he had a previous history of mental hospitals, lack of contact with reality, etc., and when I realized what had happened, I begged him not to drink the Kool-Aid, but he did ... and it was very bad. These are the only two people I know of who did have bad experiences, but I'm sure I wasn't in contact with everyone.

"I told you about the tape recording ('Who CARES? ... I don't care ...') and how it was used again at the next one. Show biz."

-Show biz-yesssss-and nooooo-Clair was soaring on LSD, wondering what was happening to herself and whether she was going mad, and so forth, and the most crazed scream rang out: "Who cares!"

And then: "Ray! ... Ra-a-a-a-ay! .. . Who cares!"

Not even such a manic scream could have been heard over the general roar and rush of the Test ordinarily, over the Grateful Dead wailing, or certainly not with such clarity, except for the fact that it was being picked up by a microphone and amplified out of huge theater horns- "Who cares!"

That was just the thing for somebody like Clair to hear, Clair who thought she was going mad-the sound of a woman freaking out, blowing her mind, all of it amplified as if it were tearing out of every gut in the place and up through every brain. So Clair's protector and impromptu guide put his arms around her again and told her, "It's a tape they made. It's just a put-on. Hugh Romney made it." Well, that seemed plausible. Hugh was an actor and a great satirist and put-on artist and prankster ... In fact, between screams, there was Hugh's voice sure enough, coming over the microphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, there's a cop who's come apart in the next room! Will somebody go in there and put that cop back together again ! "

"Ray! Ra-a-a-a-ay!... It's too perfect!"

Then Romney's voice coming back in: "Does anybody have any tranquilizers? There's somebody having a little trouble in the next room."

The next room was the anteroom off the big hall that Clair had started out in. There was a girl in there sitting on the floor and freaking out in the most complete way. Just the thing for acid veterans. These things happen, what you need is-and Pranksters and other hierophants of the acid world heard about the girl sitting in there and screaming. Who cares! and freaking out. Norman Hartweg and Romney came in there, and here was a fairly pretty girl, if only her face wasn't so contorted, with one crippled leg, shrieking Who cares! and Ra-a-a-a-ay. Ray, the very Ray himself, and Romney looks at Ray and sees the picture at once. Ray is a big guy with a crewcut and a T-s.h.i.+rt and a sleeveless jacket or vest or something on, which shows his muscles very well. He looks like some sailor who fell in with a bunch of hippies and now he wonders what in the fock has happened- "Ray!"

The worst possible guy in the world to deal with the Who Cares Girl. This is a job for experts, and we have them here, some of the greatest acid experts in the world, Romney, Norman, the Ha.s.sler-he comes in-and here comes Babbs-and they're all gathered around her in a bunch-Attention!-remember Rachel Rightbred!-and it came to pa.s.s!-and they give her the freakout expertise: "... don't fight it..."

"... go with it..."

"... neither accept nor deny ..."

". . . go with the flow . . ."

"... we're with you ..."

"... you're in the hands of experts..."

-experts-and the Pranksters are there rapping over her, riff after riff of words-and then Romney got hold of some Thorazine, a tranquilizer that is good at aborting bad LSD trips and he says, "Here, take this-"

-take this-the Who Cares Girl and Ray look at this costumed freak amid a group of costumed freaks, all zonked, trying to hand her a capsule of G.o.d knows what-diabolism-and Ray throws the Thorazine away and the Who Cares Girl throws it away, the capsules go skidding across the floor, and the Who Cares Girl goes: harruummmppparummmparrrrumppparruuuuuuumparum pauharuharummmpa mumbling along, drifting in and out of the freakout, giggling for a stretch and they say ah she's coming out of it and then: "Who cares! ... Ray! ... Ra-a-a-a-ay! ... Oh, what's the use! ... s.e.x! ... Ray! s.e.x! ... Who cares!"

That phrase!-it sticks in Romney's head. He can't get it out. Her scream shrieks over the hall, because now Babbs has brought up the microphone and holds it near her, right in front of Ray, solicitously, like this will do it. Ray's head sprockets around inanely. Babbs is getting it all over the microphone to make it part of the test-not an isolated event-but All-one, anach.o.r.etic freak-out-Who cares! Romney looks at Babbs and Who cares!-well, Babbs cares, with one part of him, but with another his devotion is to the Test, to the Archives, a freakout for the Archives, freaked out on tape in the Archives, Who Cares in the Prankster Archives, and the cry wails over the hall, into every brain, including Clair's- Romney can't get this insane cry out of his head, Who cares, and it becomes the Who Cares Test for him, and he is back at the microphone, with his mission now, his voice furrowing into the microphone: "Listen, this girl's brains are coming out! and who cares? This girl's coming apart! and who cares? This girl's breaking up into crispy chips! and who cares? This girl's caked in the dust, nylon wall-to-wall on her eyeb.a.l.l.s! and who cares?"

-and it was very clear. Everybody who cared would do something, pour on the Energy if nothing else, bleed Dimensional Kreemo for her, if they truly cared. It became a test for Romney, he could feel it, to find the depths of how much he cared- Who cares! she shrieks He cares! he feels it, and feels himself growing- -while the tapes reel it all in.

FINALLY, EVEN AT THE WATTS TEST THEY WEAR DOWN, AND those who are not into the pudding begin to drift off, and the Prankster diehards and a few discoverers like Clair Brush are still there, and Norman can tell it is coming, the magic hour, and Ha.s.sler gets up in a blue pageboy costume and does a funny beautiful slow dance to the music that is just perfect... and Page is working behind him with the projectors, the film projectors and the slide projectors, and he sets up a really kind of gorgeous collage, moving projections on top of still projections ... and the Pranksters sit amazed and delighted and he makes slow changes, abstract patterns and projections from the slides and... it all fits together. . . everything .. .

About 6 A.M., more cops, narcos now, six in plainclothes-and one of the diehard three-o'clock discoverers walks up to them and announces with a look of total acid-stoned glistening sincerity: "Listen, I've got more Awareness, more ... Awareness, in my little fingernail... My Awareness is so superior to yours that... uh .. ."-obviously from the glistening strain on his face, there is no metaphor, no conceit, that can be concocted in the English language that is enormous enough to express just how superior, and so his face falls back into a sweet sincere look, slightly played out, and he says: "How about getting us some cigarettes? We're all out."

Strangely, one of them did and returned very quickly with a carton of Kools, which he pa.s.sed around. Around 9 A.M. only the Pranksters, Clair and a few others are still around-and more cops-and finally they say to Babbs that he ought to get everybody out now, the L.A. sun is up, the good spades of Watts are going to work ... and the Pranksters troop out into the L.A. sunlight, the Devil with an orange face with silver stars, a tall wild-haired guy with half his face silver and half gold, Day-Glo crazies trooping out into the sunlight at 9 A.M. out of the chilled Pandemonium hatchery ...

And Clair Brush: "It seems that's about it... I've rambled incredibly ... Did it last? Am I different? I can't remember. It seems so, but I am not sure. When I get under black light, or a strobe, it comes back vividly ...

"Del Close told me later I was wandering around looking 'wonderful... in the sense of full of wonder.' That's the best description I can imagine.

"I've taken LSD twice since then. Each time was different and much less dramatic, more personal, milder. The only strong similarity is the physical effect, which, for me, consists of contractions quite like labor pains and a quivering of the nerve-endings ... antic.i.p.atory ... for prolonged periods, the feelings of being on the verge of o.r.g.a.s.m without any contact at all... these things occurred all three times. Otherwise, all have been different.

"Take it again? Oh, probably someday ... but no urgency, no desire to run to my friendly corner pusher. I think the best way is to take it with a lover, but someone you're willing to have live in your head for a long, long time. Not too many of those around. It's a closeness not easily dismissed. "All, all. Enough, I hope."

ABOUT 1 P.M. THE PHONE STARTS RINGING IN ROMNEY'S apartment, waking him up: "Romney, you guys ought to be shot!..." "Seven people committed!"... "Freaked out!"... "Atrocity!" And finally one from the L.A. police: "Are you Romney? Listen, we got some two-tone dude down here-"

Oh, the Di-men-sion-al Kree-mo ... That would be Paul Foster. Four, five, six hundred people had been in that madhouse all night long having a G.o.dd.a.m.ned orgy for themselves-and the cops couldn't lay a hand on them. So-in the sour-milk L.A. sunlight of 9 A.M. they had seen this gangling character rocking away from the building like a Druid, half his face gold, the other half silver, so they busted the mother, for being . . . well. . . drunk in public, or something equally likely. But by 1 P.M. they wish to h.e.l.l somebody would come pick up this two-tone dude ...

Christ, man! It's too much for us even! We wash our hands of this ::::: Atrocity ::::: ::::: what... exactly have we done? and ::::: ::::: even to some Pranksters, the anti-Babbs faction, the Test was a debacle. They doubted the ethics of springing the acid in the Kool-Aid, on the one hand, and thought the treatment of the Who Cares Girl, piping her freakout over the speakers, was cruel. Shortly after they got back to L.A. from La Jolla, the Schism broke out true and rife, out front. This was a great little Morbio Inferiore all its own, the Life Magazine Divide.

The Watts Test in L.A., coming on top of the Trips Festival in San Francisco, had caused the fast-rising psychedelic thing to explode right out of the underground in a way n.o.body had dreamed of. Leary and Alpert and their experiments had had plenty of publicity, but that seemed like a fairly isolated thing with a couple of Harvard docs at the helm and being pretty solemn-faced and esoteric about it, all in all. This new San Francisco-L.A. LSD thing, with wacked-out kids and delirious rock 'n' roll, made it seem like the dread LSD had caught on like an infection among the youth-which, in fact, it had. Very few realized that it had all emanated from one electric source: Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

A team from Life magazine turned up, led by a photographer, Larry Schiller, who was on to the LSD world and had taken the pictures at the Hollywood Test. They interviewed the Pranksters and took pictures and said they were going to do a big spread on the acid scene and, they hoped, put the Pranksters on the cover. So they hailed the bus on over to a big photo studio and Schiller convened them all. Then-Babbs refused to go in. But the rest of them, Norman, Hagen, Ca.s.sady, a whole flock of them, went on in, and Schiller took a lot of pictures. To Norman it seemed square. For one thing, the guy was working in black and white, and the most obvious thing about the Pranksters was color, Day-Glo, the brighter the better, the more vibrations the better. Then Schiller had them all sit down in a group, against a black background, and in the middle they had Ca.s.sady stand up and wave his arms up and down like a crow. He took the pictures in strobe, and this would make Ca.s.sady look like he had multi-arms, like the great G.o.d s.h.i.+va. This strobe thing was at the time new in psychedelic photography, and the ma.s.s media would never tire of it. Recreates the acid experience, etc. Then Schiller told certain people to stay around for individual shots, colorful characters like Ca.s.sady, and Paul Foster with his wild mutton chops and Importancy Coat, and Norman, maybe because he had a beard. The usual... The others went on outside where Babbs was. Finally they all left, the ones who had stayed for the individual shots, and when they got outside, the bus was gone. Clean gone. Babbs, Mountain Girl, Zonker, Walker, and the others-split.

Hagen couldn't believe it. "Why-we've been pranked!" he said.

Pranksters-and the Pranked.

Things being like they were to begin with, the prank took on fundamental meaning. Those who got pranked finally made their way back to the moldering Sans Souci, and Babbs & Co. had cleared out of there, too, taking all the money and the food. Babbs left word that they, the inner nucleus, were going off to hold a Test of their own and would rejoin the Satellites for the UCLA Acid Test, scheduled for March 19. "The great idea still kept us together"-and Norman, Ca.s.sady, Hagen, Paul Foster, Roy Seburn, Marge and a couple others made a stab at preparing for the UCLA Test. But UCLA backed out of the deal because of the notoriety after the Watts Test, and that did it. All began drifting off. It was a strange time and a strange feeling. n.o.body could figure why Babbs had pranked Ca.s.sady; the others maybe--although that Hagen would get pranked was pretty strange, too-but Ca.s.sady-that was unbelievable.

Ca.s.sady said f.u.c.k it and headed for San Francisco. Norman and Paul Foster went to stay at Hugh Romney's. Then by and by Norman got a chance to go to New York with Marge the Barge and Evan Engber, so they headed east by car.