pedestrian soup...first draft, 50k words over

A novel by
E. Bradford


PEDESTRIAN SOUP

creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties
-Erich Fromm

live free and pay the piper
-an epitath

CHAPTER 1
Am i there yet and do they have enough space to hang my polysorbate 80!?!?

My won ton soup began to simmer in these most curious of circumstances, surroundings and my own loathsome fear. Curious onlookers began to wantonly boil this hot and sour soup, (coddled fear dumplings my plump yet tauntingly tasty nemesis) as they slowly sort of lumped and schlumped their way together into the small groups that were their very well defined inner sanctum neighborhood of cliques, held together by the nesting of these conspicuously and patronly positioned bodies, and the rags that covered them (as if they actually lived here or something).

When I first began to navigate my way through the gridded streets of my new home, I felt light and relieved. And, albeit San Francisco is absolutely gorgeous this time of year, I, inside the mishkin of my soup container, swallowed all the painful muses of the dumplings and then smiled to myself while pouring over the map of the city's streets stretched out on the hood of my car. There are many ways to say "I'm lost" and this was a pretty good one. And as their innuendo-razed questions began their Sodom and Gomorrah-like torrent of verbal sulfur, from what could only be step childed nephews and grandsons, I found myself, for the first time in my life, doe eyed in the proverbial headlights.

It was a big negro I'll call Goldtoof (for obvious reasons i hope) I heard say:
"Hey HEy HEY SON, you straight or you need me to hook it up some fo ya?"

Skinny uppity Jerry Curl, Goldtoof's associate (once again obvious), plumply popped off:
"Yo Yo snowflake, what kinda stupid is you anyhow, the regular white boy kind or the 'I gotta lotta white boy stoopid guilt bein' fool 'niggah, cracker jack?"

A taunted and dark devil hungrily licks its' saran wrapped chops somewhere chasing down jungle bunnies, devouring......

All that soup and its dumplings lodged themselves in the jejunum of my insecurity and got me to a pretty uncomfortable point of adrenal and primal fear...borderline pineal, if you ask the Mayans...but thats, well, something else...

The take-away container wanted to burst., the concrete jungle bunnies, hoppers, all with a mouthful of crack in little tiny baggies to sell and it was all Mishkin wanted was to flaunt marching powder dumplings deep and on grasshopper wings into other uncomfortable zones lurking inside me...

I felt ill......

It dawned on me that I could, however, slide back into my wheels and slowly tool off until I found myself at an intersection where I could regroup, one without 4 niggers to a corner and if you ain’t buyin’, you best keep rollin’ an enigmatic bubble of energy radiating from the thug thing

this was paramount
this was monumental
this was bloated soup talk of course....

"Hey Boss, de SOUP Boss de SOUP!!!”

No, not Tattoo from Fantasy Island...not here in my head, not now, not ....ever

Ricky Ricardo’s image appears to me, donning his usual impeccably white suit…
“Don't spill the soup...Don't spill the goddamn soup", but I just kept hearing rich, Corinthian leather seats”

My days travel had begun in Reno, only several hours before. I was shaken from the "attack of the killah homeboys" and once I finally pulled over, I, as casually and coolly as possible, allowed my won ton soup, still hot and doubly sour, sans dumplings of course (too good to leave curbside), to evacuate all over the curb.

The relief of the purge was peyote-esque. Come to think of it, epiphanic. That kind of epiphanic clarity commonly associated with the deep, deep throes of a high powered acid trip, or perhaps, that of an alcoholic who has realized, after his liver transplant, that he may now begin to sluice the remaining parts of his body away without worrying about that meddlesome spam-filter of foie he has that's kept his immune system healthy, up and running until his last gurgling gurgle of humanity has drained the bottle that never floated until just before it drowned.

Freshly purged and freewheeling, I then figured out where I made my navigational error and made my way up McCallister's steep hill until I hit Divisadero, where I took a right and found myself on the previously elusive Golden Gate Ave. I hung another right onto this one-way, 35 degree angle of a street and started looking at the dingy and vaguely legible numbers on the brick that indicated who's plot was who's, that had an "if you don't know, then you shouldn't even be here in the first place" air and ire. The streets seemed to have a moonfully quiet touch for the time of day to me, but what did I know, I'd only just arrived, it was mid-afternoon, somewhere around Valentines Day, and I was already getting that "white dumpling wong soup" feeling from Goldtoof and his "niggah" J-Curl...

segue 1
her furry mail slot was a sad salty slick of abandon that she and I
both rolled and smiled in....

I met short, voluptuous, Sugarbush while attending Culinary School. With her little titter of a laugh and platinum-ish bleached blond hair's roots who telling me exactly what the real deal was, an unspoken, fragrant connection was there from the first furtive, frenzied, pheromone tango. She was from NYC and let everyone know it, as New Yorkers from 'THE CITY" are so famous for and fond of doing. I didn't mind, me being a Philly native and all, and there was some sort of solace in knowing that I was not alone here on the Upper North East Coast; that someone without question, loves hot dogs, soft pretzels, Philly cheese steaks with whiz and other such little touches that make the east coast a unique and niche place to call home, as I did......

CHAPTER 2
"Oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra"....."Gold in Peace, Iron in War"......but what about latex dildos and those nice leather maskies????

The city is located at the tip of the SFo Peninsula, with the kind and oh-so-innocent sounding misnamed Big Blue to the west, the SFo Bay to the east, and the Golden Gate to the north. In 1776, the Spanish settled the tip of the peninsula, establishing a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Umbrian Francis of Assissi, TAKE THIS OUT AND USE IT LATER WITH AYALA DN FSSISSI BEING SPIRITUALL Y CONNECTED(apparantly, was no sissy (but to the LORD I suppose) at all.

The first Spaniard man who not only charted the San Francisco Bay in the early 1770's on a mission to start missions and, more importantly "to ascertain if there were any Russian Settlements on the coast of California, as well as "to examine the Port of San Francisco", and who discovered and ulitmately named our famed Alcatraz "La Isle de los Alcatraces" (Island of Pelicans, and home to the California Slender Salamander), as it seems wasn't much of a sissy himself and a really BIG FAN of Monsigneur Assissi, was named Juan Manuel de Ayala. The two, bound by spirit, centuries apart, could never have forseen what our beloved Bay Area of today has developed, evolved and been rainbow'ed into.

San Francisco, Caaaaaaaaaaalifoooooorneeeeeaaaahhhh, her orgasmic roll off my tongue pleases and surprises me...my disembodied from yet wistful wet dream, that cool place in my mind that was in and of itself a megalopolis on its own, a lush felty whisper right into my being was scary and calling from my own ears from thousands of miles, as if Coit Tower was some beacon only I thought I could hear, drawing me into the gentle breast of her, this city of new lights to hear, beacons, calling, talking, coaxing. She is so very NOT New York, so very NOT Cincinnati, NOT Philly nor was it anything I had ever seen. It was amazing, the pure gentry mixed, artistic artisans assembling anxiously awaiting another ephiphanic egg from their creative vulva to be steriod-rocketed into a human growth hormone addled expansion, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time.

All that after tragedy slaked the last rivulets of juicy juice off its saran wrapped grin in 1906, after being man-handeled by San Andreas, which was definately all his fault with his partner-in-crime, Spyro Gyro the Pyro, San Francisco crumbled deeply, darkly, and without crying. After all that, she was quickly rebuilt by all the post tragedy zeal one would expect. Things became more and more GRAND... and beautiful!...as if heavens were brought down for a closer look. After WW II, returning GI's and insane amounts of immigration peppered liberalizing attitudes that gave rise to the Summer of Love, the Gay Rights Movement, and what we all like to admire as 'love-ins" even on a rainy day, has anchored San Francisco as a liberal bastion for liberty and justice for all...and ding-dongs... Lots and lots of Ding-Dongs.....

And then BANG, it was 1992 and people all over America (save Willow Creek, CA.), still smoked in restaurants, at bars, in enclosed sports events, pretty much wherever they damn well pleased actually, and I had just planted myself smack dab in what was and to this day still is to me, without question, one of America's pride and joys of a city.

The Bay Area, rife with a "gay freedom for all" (and I use that in the most dictionarian of use) attitude full of rainbows, a city who had been through a lot in her short time as a burgeoning hub of exponentially epic change into liberal lifestyle, music, art and my passion at the time, food...and things that none of us at that time were privy to, were about to get a bit more colorful.


segue 2
megalopolis and the california slender salamander snake

We felt it coming on for a while and, up in my room, with Mike and Gary idlly watching tube downstairs, were relieved as we slithered out of our chef uniforms, and onto the clean, warm safety of my bed. We kissed deeply, slowly, fucking erotically.....her salubriously slick snatches scent wafted gently up to my nose, causing me to bury it in the shiny sheriffs badge of oh-so-platinum (yes, she died that as well the minx!) and yet silkily soft tuft of hair at the crest of her hips. Sweet.....clean.....fucking erotic.....proverbial sugar. Her body bucked as she pulled my hair a little further past its shoulders than it already was and closer, more deeply, into her lovely little badge. I looked up and saw her looking down past the perfectly rounded mounds that were a lighthouse beacon to all men, telling them she was a fertile mertyl, would conceive easily and provide all the milk necessary. She dragged me onto my back by my hair, licked and schlurped the juicy juice from my face, grabbed my California Slender Salamander Snake, and buried it deep in the back of her throat.....


CHAPTER 3
the digs in the Western Addition, dig?

Sugarbush and The Booz had set up shop earlier in the week and were anxiously awaiting my arrival. This was not exactly the neighborhood it seemed upon first glance, and I was all the happier for it's immediate charm..... and its weirdness...
The Western Addition, sandwiched between Van Ness, Golden Gate Park, the Upper and Lower Haights and Pac Heights, was first developed around the turn of the 20th century as a middle-class suburb with cable cars running through it. After WW II, she became the proud big, bodacious black soul sistah to and heart of the black community in the not so Gay part of the Bay Area. The Fillmore District suffered from crime and poverty, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, hadn't changed a whole hell of a lot, and was my new home. Her busses, eloquently and flamboyantly muraled and named "The African Queen" had replaced whitey's little cable cars and bowled through her streets like a black panther (under the guise of the cheetah, of course) chasing a gazelle through the Serengeti, as if to say "take that you banded bunch of mongeese....dats how we roll in the mutha-fuckin jungle"

I doubled parked my (mustang may suit better) Subaru 4 Wheel Drive Hatchback, hit the flashers, jumped out and rang the buzzer for apartment 402. Suddenly I heard the all too familiar sounds of my two closest friends here wailing off of a balcony 4 stories above me. It was The Booz I heard first;

"Unkleriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, where you been!!?? You're late by a couple-a days!"

"Shut-cher fuggin pie-hole ya goon and get down here. I ain't letting this car full of shit sit here alone man!"

All 6'3" of The Booz came down to street level, Sugarbush languidly lolling in some sort of lazy freshly fucked female tow. It was good to see him. It was good to see them both in all honesty. They had been a couple during the past year of school. He knew nothing of our tryst before his arrival in both our lives, and they were a real natural fit, so, I was happy with the match up. She adored him and he was just staid enough to keep that leash taught. In a brand new city, in which there were infinite possibilities, he was smart enough to take a flat with me. She was also happy to have her space and had taken a flat next street over on McCallister with a sleight young gay kid (who's name I can't remember and who isn't much part of this story anyhow, so, lets just call him Dave the skinny little gay kid, in case he pops up later), and was content with the the arrangement.

The apartment was, and I am being neither dreary nor dramatic at all, an utter shit hole. From the moment I started moving my stuff from the car into the hallway and eventually to the elevator, I started, little by little, taking the scene in. It was NOT, I will tell you, lined with flowers, Spick-n-Span clean tiled floors or, as I would find out come night time, furnished with working ceiling lights (or any lights for that matter) either. Grimy mailbox slots, sticky, tacky, dingy walls that at one time must've been either a light shade of yellow (like butter) or a real dull alabaster raised my perilous and neurotically aided and abetted curiosity to feverishly funny levels of humor and peace somehow....

And then I got a whiff; an odor....an odor, that odor......what the HELL is that man! In short times to come, I would become all too familiar with this stinky, unnatural fragrance...

This small entrance, overrun and staggering on a salty sailors' peg leg, made my already overwhelmed and lightly frazzled mind paint an immediate mental picture of the apartment to come; grim. It was, as well, the only shit hole we could afford at the time, so, as it was OUR shit hole, we, by default, were more than OK with it. I immediately knew I was home without even having to question it...

By the time we had the elevator loaded full of the miscellaneous stuff that was my life in bags and boxes and hit the button for "4", we were squawked at by a very high pitched alarm, which, by all standards set, seemed to be in the best working condition of the lot.

We exchanged glances with that silent "You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me" look, and began to put what we could in the hall so the thing would accept the weight. He's a big galoot of a guy with a pair of steel toed Doc Martins on, so I made the dash up the stairs while Sugarbush kept her glazzballs (and sheriffs badge....was it still as platinum or had she let it grow out? yummm) with my wheels. I didn't run up the stairs, I kinda took my time actually now that I think of it, and could hear the straining and groaning of my new elevator and its cargo. I immediately stopped and waited for the thing to get to the second floor, at which I had to stop and laugh, having beat the lift just by walking a flight of stairs. I mentioned something about the amount of Steely Dans he still had tucked away "where the sun don't shine" being the true cause of the elevators vertical drag. I thought I heard something like "....a broken slingshot around the corner of mediocrity"smoking its way out from said steel trap, although I couldn't quite tell if it was my hearing, the fact that he was trapped inside a very slowly moving metal mook of a machine, micturating its lazy pissing way between floors, judging by the pace of its ascent, or if it was all the noise inside my head. I let it go and carried on...

While I bolted up the stairs in my sophomoric idiocy, I reveled in pounding on the elevator doors as it reached each floor...for this, I received the appropriate "Get bent ya prick" from inside the lift, had a laugh and continued on my journey up to the fourth floor. On the third floor, I felt eyes from somewhere when I heard a door slam. The current tenants/inhabitants of our building, as they peered through barely opened security doors to see what all the "fuss" was about, made the move in seem to be an unsettling event on a level we were completely unaware of. We would later realize just how much we resembled light bulbs in the afternoon dark of Golden Gate Ave.

He had the keys to the flat and I was waiting outside of our new bachelor pad with a box of cookbooks I had carried up with me.

What I did not know was that confined spaces were the mongoose to The Booz's cobra.

Since then, I don't think I have felt that shitty, or even ever before that, without a word being said. I never really knew until that moment I saw him wedged and cornered in behind all of my crap, in the front corner of the elevator by the control panel;

he got slapped

that real fear that no-phobia-fobes ever hear of, or witness by chance.

This was dished up on the silver platter of surprise, as if trapped in some sort of hellishly cruel cocktail party where they only serve miniature plastic models of food to people fresh off a hunger strike, it was a freaky thing man; the phobia gets handed to them and it roots itself first in the mind of the observer with their facial recoil in fear; everything slows down as their faces contort in a molotov of surprised desperation, searing itself into your memory for times when only the benign weirdness of dreams can recall the REAL horror. Then its the way the sounds slowly clouding from their mouths all the sudden drop below their usual pitch and elongate in some bizarre and real real creepy manatee 800 number routed through Manila. The body follows the head while some salivating, unseen demon from Hades North with its lewd, lascivious, lecherous leer, perverted, queer and hungry, swallows their pride, turning it into a desperately feared moment that shakes the core to its own chill of bone and flesh.

He was as white as a ghost, the unpasteurized crinkles of his mug cragging deeply in fear and disdain, his slicked back, dirty blonde hair partially covering the Frankenstein crack on his forehead. It was shining with a fresh coat of sweat, the look on his face said "I just might never get into this fuckin' thing ever, ever again".

The playful smile I had scurried away faster than a fox bolting down bunny rabbits on its way through the everyday traffic of a world of creatures who's languages we don't speak, who's music we can't fathom, who's dreams we can only imagine as we do when we see good ole Fido kicking in his sleep, guessing that he is dreaming of running through grassy fields, chasing down those "putty tats" from our Cindy Brady childhood.

"Hey man, you ok? You don't look so hot"

"Fuuuuuuuuuck maaaaaaannnn"

He immediately got out of the lift, and with his left hand, slammed the key into the lock and opened the apartment door. He had set out a bottle of Jack Daniels for my arrival and, going directly to the coffee table on which it sat, opened, drained and grimaced at a good 4 second belt straight out the bottle. Over his shoulder he looked at me and said;

"I get freaked out by that kinda shit"

I walked right in, grabbed the bottle from him, repeated his quaff and said "Yeah, well man....."

That was all that was ever said on the matter and I was more than happy to delve no further into it nor his psyche. I had blocked the door to the lift so it didn't travel back down to the first floor and we unloaded the contents of it into the hall and then into my room. We took the stairs down, and it was awfully quiet.

When we got to the bottom, we were both a bit flushed from the bourbon. I started fiddling around, putting the next load into the elevator while The Booz went outside to check out Sugarbush and scope out just how much more crap was going to emerge from my wheels. She looked at him and, fortunately for him, the bourbon flushed cheeks and the eyes covered by his shades provoked no ill inklings within Sugs about his harrowing ele-hell.

I did hear her caterwauling though...

"Hey, you guys started driiiiiiiiiiiinking without meeeeee!",

This kinda set things back in their natural order and more importantly, set his mind back to the task at hand. After that and a few gropes, slurps and smooches, the whole thing was behind him and his pain-in-my-culo being, smart-ass started back into its homage to our friendship;

I'll take "overtly homophobic humor" for $200 Pat.

Indeed, bad things were behind us, good things were still to come and the mongoose of my weirdness was peeking its rascally long neck around the bend.

CHAPTER 4
a frosted flake life?

My room was furnished with the following: a mattress on the floor (of unknown origin), a closet (in which i couldn't hang a polysorbate 80 laden Ding Dong if I tried), and paint chips....lots and lots of paint chips, as if I just moved into Tony the Tiger’s favorite cereal box.

Paint chips on the ceilings, paint chips on the walls, paint chips in my cereal and paint chips on my balls!"

...was the song I heard rise in the back of my mind. I still never really got why I do that, but making up little songs in honor of the inane is one of my little tools for dealing with the odd events that my unconscious mind needs to process throughout the day. Even I was stunned....there were so many paint chips that I thought I was in an ad from the 70's about poor parenting in urban Philadelphia, or, like I said, about to begin living in a breakfast cereal world. Apparently, there were a few things we were to learn along the way about our new abode and no one gave this place any real touching up before we moved in.

The rest of the place was on par with my room, save that The Booz's big black behemoth of a leather chair was there and he had bought some furniture. This chair was a chair of epic proportions, a manly mans man chair, you know the kind, built for leisure; it makes most women's' noses wrinkle in ire when they lay eyes on it, and most men try and figure out just how they are going to get it home and into the perfect position in front of the boob tube that is as equidistant from the kitchen as it is from the john. Our slumlord had replaced the carpet and painted the walls of the living room, of which I was a little suspect, the vibe of the room was so very unsettling, and after today's "getting to know you" session with Goldtoof n Jerry Curl, I felt a pretty strong signal of what the area was like, and that perhaps the prior tenants left this world in an accidental (or intentional, who knows) rush of black bottomed spoons, spikes, surgical tube and very small projectiles moving at light speed due to that wondrous invention by the Chinese, gunpowder.

The bathroom had a rust stained sink, a toilet big enough to hold either of our big ole butts and a shower which made me feel as if I were Gulliver, and the Liliputians had constructed the biggest shower in their history to accommodate their over-sized guest. Immediately images of myself buying those little "individual serving" sized shampoos and soaps to pretend I was even more Gulliver and not Gilligan warbling for the Skipper came to to mind, ohhh you soapy Ginger....whoops, slippped there... I can only imagine how The Booz felt, being of significantly larger girth, breadth and weight than yours truly, but maybe he was the Giant on a beanstalk of his own. Suffice to say, it seemed like neither of us dawdled around within those confines any longer than necessary.

"Hey man, how come yer room is twice the size of mine" I chirped up, fully knowing the answer. "And don't gimme that first come first serve crap either"

Rolling up his sleeves to the elbow revealed a hydra, all 9 necks wrapped around an 8-ball in an unusual take on the yin-yang of the great early minds of those from "the Middle Kingdom".

"OK jerky, I found the flat and been here a week and yer lily white ass just got here half spun and strung out.... watchyooooo teeeeenk about dat caaaaaaaaaaabron?""

"Choo know mang, I teeeeeeeenk chooo gonna pay for theeeeeeeeeeeeeees culito, choo wait n seeee mang, I''mma geev it jew andn choo know you gonna not wanna be takin eeet caaaavron"

"Bring it pillow biter"

"Bite me fart-knocker"

I surveyed the living room and deemed the choice of furniture a good one, especially for the amount of wooden nickle's he had paid, and realized that our kitchen, the kitchen of 2 swinging dick chefs new to a Bay Area we were both convinced had been waiting and waiting just for the likes of us, was just a bit larger than the closet in his room.

"Sphincty is as sphincty does sphinctah boy"

I would not lose this exchange.....

"At 200 million sperm per load shot, how many civilizations do ya reckon you've swallowed or wiped from the corner of your mouth this week????"

Sugarbush sat and observed our exchange in silence, shaking her head and rolling joints out of a bag of pretty skunky weed I had brought with me from my stopover in Ohio that I had produced in the midst of settling in.

I lost the exchange when he hit me with

"Entire universes ........and thats just what I shot into the space continuum of my gym socks"

It couldn't be helped....I busted into laughter that

a)must have sounded alot like crying

or

b)was reminiscient of 2 wild hyenas going at it "double-double animal style" on the plains of the Serengeti

I almost threw up the shots of Jack we had been slugging down, and was semi-relieved I didn't, semi-positive I should have.

And so it came to pass that the walls, ceiling and incredibly burnt orange shag carpet of our now properly broken in flat was officially home.

segue 3
"gonna hike up that skirt and get'cha back up on my groove thang, groove thang"

I felt like a Love Cowboy.
I was fighting for dear life.
"hike up hike up n get ya back up on my grooooove thang"
No, not just yet...

I would rope my shit off, use a lanyard to not lose it, although that seemed to be her charge, her purpose. Goddamnit just hold on, hold on. Her pace had sped up and I was getting close to leaving my sweet stuff in her mouth. She moved up and down it, sliding her tongue from testes to tip and even down down down to the Dark Star. I never wanted it to end but my body was telling me in a very direct way that this was not going to extend ability of doing it seemed a reality. Her tongue danced down to Dark Star again while her left hand kept a nicely firm and squeezy grip on the Salamander Snake. I groaned a groan that got her attention when she popped a thumb into the Black Hole...or maybe it was the family jewels increasing active heaving and ho-ing that told her that my time had come, and the sailors wanted to exacuate the submarine..more likely than not, it was both. She plunged the Salamander deep, real deep in the back of her throat again one last time and made her way up my body. On her way north, she stopped to bite my nipples pretty hard, which evoked another groan of ecstasy AND produced an evil grin on her warm, wet mouth that told me that I was "gonna geeeeeet iiiiiiiit soooooooo baddddd". Our warm, wet mouths met and our tongues danced around the fire in a ritualistic Indian rain dance, invoking thunderous slides between slicked bodies....

CHAPTER 5
lovely rita, meter maid

We had been watching my double parked (and now locked) silver hatchback with the flashers still on carefully from the balcony while we began lighting up Sugarbushs' efforts. This was not a grandiose balcony, not the balcony of all balcony's, not the balcony of kings.....hell nah! It was more like someone had wished to put a giant bay window in to oversee their ten year old "hoppers" running crack from one side of the schoolyard to the other. It was about the size of the bathroom actually and I immediately lamented the architectual choice of balcony over "over sized outdoor balcony shower". It was standing here, on this balcony, with my best friend and a nicely rolled spliff, that I saw it coming down the hill of Golden Gate Ave. From afar, it looked a lot like a cucaracha hopped up on crystal meth, weaving its way through the afternoon traffic, seemingly drawn to my car by some sort of insectual homing beacon. And thus began my very first (and most definitely not the last) encounter with the meter maids of San Francisco. I was down by the car in light speed.

She was a pretty yet squat, plumpish dike of a woman, the type you expect might like to dress up as a man or take the "dominant role" in a lesbian relationship. She was gruff and grouchy and built as if she played field hockey throughout high school until she found her true calling as a meter maid in one of our country's most notorious cities for acquiring parking violations. Her badge, inconceivably, unbelievably, read "Rita". I rubbed my already reddened eyes to clear what surely must be a hallucination; "you gotta be shittin' me" I heard me silently say to myself and suddenly realized I had not been listening "Loooooooooveleeeeeeeeey Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaah, meter maid" to her very well practiced public service announcement.

I got the feeling she was trying to suss out if I would be a problem in the times to come, also wondering why the hell a white boy from the east coast with PA tags chose a neighborhood who's main buses that ran through were aptly muraled, adorned, painted and named "The African Queen". This was her turf and she didn't roll a red carpet out...

I was cordial and polite, nodding at, what i hoped were, the appropriate times, genuinely apologetic for my ignorance as well, and, as she informed me that this is not a joke, parking is a serious problem, "Loooooooooveleeeeeeeeey Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaah, meter maid" especially here in the Western Addition, it would serve me well to remember that. Ever since I laid eyes on her very plainly emblazoned name-tag, that damn Beatles tune had started making me want to sing that long, drawn out whiny part to her, wanting to enlighten her about just what was REALLY on my mind, to revel in the humorous irony I had, through eyes like a badly sunburned child, just encountered.

I failed to acknowledge, however, one, simple and in hindsight, not-all-that-surprising truth; that she also knew this song. From her first day on the job, she had used it as a mantra that anyone foolish enough to raise the issue, in the future, would be razed by numerous different and costly parking violations. Exceptions being reserved for 2 and only 2 occasions: an attractive gay or bisexual woman bursting with the right mix of pheromones, candor and willingness to have coffee down on Polk Street after her shift we'll call it, OR humor; a quip of such unique nature, something of such revelation, the joke she had never heard and when she did laughed so hard at that her cute and cherubic little face had tears streaming down it that she HAD to "give ya credit and a pass on this one, but don't you do it again OK....oh god that was so funny, wait til I tell Marcia" reaction.

I was so distracted "Loooooooooveleeeeeeeeey Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaah, meter maid" in my freshly enlightened state that all of the sudden I realized the smartest move for me was to ignore those high pitched voices crooning in my head and desperately try and continue listening to her speech.

In my mind I heard "Concentrate you monkey, the task at hand is wheedling your way out this ticket....silence and acquiescence are your personal saviors".

What flew out of my mouth, with a light homosexual lisp and all of the lilt, ending statements with invisible question marks and hands on hips PLACE, was the most inflammatory thing I supposed I could have said to my newly found muse;

"Sssssso, come here often? I have a huuuuuuuuuuuooooge Beatles collection upstairs if you'd ever like to come by and listen to "Sgt.Peppers" on vinyl and have a Bartles and James Wine Cooler or two 'cause I buy 'em by the case dontcha know? OH MY GAWWWWD, "Loooooooooveleeeeeeeeey Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaah, meter maid" did I just say the Beatles, and your name is Rita? (deeply dramatic and faggy homosexual tinted inhale here"), wow, what a silly billy boy banci I AM!" OR REMOVE AND INSERT SSSSOOOOOO, YOU LIKE GIRLS TOO HUNH?

There was a moment of silence which I thought was in honor of the death of my future hard earned cash in parking tickets to the municipal government. Then I just looked at her and started laughing, and laughing, and laughing some more. I was lucky that The Booz and Sugs didn't hear what I had said or how I had said it as they most definitely would have been laughing; and instead of crucifying my hetero-sexual, new from outta town, long haired and obviously stoned ass, she started laughing with me, laughing AT me and at at just how outrageously I had insulted not only her, her lifestyle and her job, but the lifestyle of a very large sector of the Bay Area bancong and gays world wide, as well as meter-maids and manishly manly women world wide.

"Look, just follow the signs and you shouldn't have any problems with tickets, OK?"

I was allowed to carry on my issue of parking unmolested and un-ticketed, despite the fact that I had acted, as my dad had said of me many times as a teenager, like a smacked ass. I thanked her in my normal voice with a smile and a chuckle and went on my way for the first time in my life, searching for a parking spot in San Francisco.

segue 4
the meeting of middles....

Her movement up my body was slow and steady, eeking out of me a stadium-full moan of approval at those nipples again. I felt like Hercules on his 13th (and little spoken of) labor of "don't lose the sweet juice, don't lose the sweet juice". Her perfectly shaped breast kissed my face, and I found the tight, hard nipple in my mouth, between my teeth, my tongue rounding and rounding...it was her turn to moan. That moan got me, so plush, so deep, as if ages of pleasure were whispering their way as smoke into the here and now....

She climbed on top of me
Kissing me
OUR mouth becoming the only mouth
She whispered, I listened
"No rubbers right?"
Right
I'm cool if you are

I felt the all too familiar anticipation of the joy of unbridled sensitivity and having polished her down already, well enough to shine, I was more than game....I wanted to see her in the middle of all middles. I quietly slaked her ear while murmuring "we allllll good", and instead of letting her slide on top of the Slender Salamander Snake, my hands found her hips and raised them to my face, I wanted that middle again....she spun around and took a seat, her clean little perenium resting on my own, facial perenium (between my nose and upper lip), her sweet little Dark Star, clean and relaxed, nudging itself onto the very tip of my nose into it, my mouth surrounding and finding her soft, pinky spot...life's meaning, once again, was clear as Big Sur sky with no moon, showing me constellations I had only read or heard of.....

CHAPTER 6
Tommy's, Shiva and Scorned Beast....

I finished parking the car and hoofed it back to my new digs, anxiously looking forward to a little down time with my buddy, sans Sugarbush. Don't get me wrong, I loved Sugs, but I just got there and wanted a little drinking time with The Booz. I was greeted again, this time more intimately, by my friends with a load of crap about how I was putting the moves on that "sexy ass meter maid" and did I bang her in the backseat or "in da backseat!"....my answer was simple;

"her twisted uncle could love you too if ya just give it a chance tootsie log"

I believe if Rita had gotten wind of any part of this, she may have beaten me within an inch of my smart ass east coast city boy life with her billy club. It only got worse when I told them what I had done, Wine Coolers and all, and we all felt sick enough to vomit and yet cheery and happy about it.

Sugarbush had to go somewhere and do something so after it all died down she made off with a little twist of the heel while saying "I don't even want to hear about a hangover from either of you.....and as for you, Big Booz, call me if (she wink winked at him here) you can't sleep.....

With that, the jackals, reunited, were free and voracious. We gurgled down most that remained of that bottle of JD without a second thought as we laid into some of the other toys I brought along, ie: a bit of that blow I had been tooling across country on to be exact.

So there we sat, snurfling up hits out of a little glass bullet and playing ketchup.

"Man, I think I need a shower after that drive, and I am hooooooooooooongrry"

"'K, I'm gonna twist a couple for the road and, by the way, what else ya got in yer bag of trix, Felix?"

"Lets split a hit of these purple windowpanes, 180 mic's of sheer LSD joy, then I am jumping in the shower."

We split said hit of acid, I took a shower, got dressed in some beat up Levis, my shit-kickers, a yellow t-shirt with red letters and a black fist that professed said "Power to the People" and of course, my biker jacket. We must have looked like twisted brothers or lovers. We could have been wearing those shirts that had a hand pointing at the one next to you that said "butt monkey" and "MY butt monkey" as we left the apartment on our first of many binges in the cool ass jungle that was and still is San Francisco.

Even though I have been taught through the generations and now consider myself an expert on the subject, I am not a big drunk driving fan, generations of hard working Americans knew that it was a necessary evil and put their best foot first, more times than not, making it home safe and sound. EVERYONE has played this game, from grandparents to parents, uncles and cousins all had their night in the moonlight, playing "which eye should I close" on the way home. High school under Nancy Regans claws preached the "designated driver" rule once we were of driving age, and some did abide. I know of a couple who didn't and are not alive to tell the tale. I tended to drink a lot period and was generally a poor yet reliable choice as a designated driver. I was, however, usually (save one pretty minor incident that landed me in the clink then a psych ward, another time dear reader, another time) and unusually, a pretty good and steady drunk driver. I was cautious and it had kept many people safe. On this particular day, however, with plenty of hours of cross country driving behind me and a half decent parking spot, I was in no mood to roll the dice on my first day of many nights in what has been hailed as the "Baghdad by the Bay", obviously when Baghdad was in its heyday. And this night it was pretty mild out, around 60 degrees Farenheit, and a walk down the block to get some street bearings seemed to be the call of the day.

We stumbled along down Golden Gate until we hit Van Ness, took a left and headed for what The Booz deemed our first destination, Tommy's Joynt. Tommy's was and still is a Bay Area landmark, with its smokey smelling wooden walls, the faint hint of stale beer and booze, leftover cigarettes, dirty ashtrays and a whack of memories. Pictures of all the famous athletes and actors from a generation not too far behind my own hung on the well seasoned walls. You even saw pictures of a very glamorous Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, boxers like Jake La Motta, even a shot of good ole Jack Kennedy in his hand waving glory before the horror.

The place was a bit empty when we arrived after our 30 some odd minute stumble, and it was a good thing. The effects of those lil bullet hits were sauntering yet still fresh and was about to be rushed upon very quickly by the effects of that purple windowpane we split. We (it felt like striding but, well, acid is a funny drug that way, in many ways acutally) made our way out of the sunshine and into the cozy and comfortable air conditioning of the joynt.

"2 Jack-n-Gingers pops, and tell Gilligan he has no chance"

As my third eye started opening with this plush, round and lovely rush from the acid, the advent of air conditioning and my mind playing Tom and Jerry with me, his movements gave him the numerous arms of my favorite of all hindu deities, the oh so auspicious Shiva, the destroyer, the transformer, with as few as four arms but depending on how loopy your frame of mind is, may have a great deal more, kinda like now...

Surly bartender guy was unimpressed with my attempt...

"WHAT"

The Booz, popped in to the rescue and it was becoming obvious that things had started for me a little more quickly than had for him,...I was moving sideways, really real sideways fast and loose, which it kinda felt like a lot of the time come to think of it with my cheshire cat grin and for him, well, he said this:

"Pardon my buddy man, its his first day here, just came off a long cross country ride and he's a little loopy for it all...he was just messin' around, two double jack-n-gingers, please, man"

This exchange earned us (or at very least me) the disdain of the geezer behind the bar, who was a squat, older cat in his 60's with, what looked like one of those big red rubber balls we used to play "bombardment" with as kids at recess hiding (well, not really hidden in all actuality) perhaps better to say, safely tucked underneath a t-shirt that would have fit him many years, pounds and bottles of whiskey before. It was around then the acid started getting up nicey nice on me and I was feeling sprightly and talkative, even in light of that damned metallic taste in my mouth that tasted like aluminum foil smells...always hated that but there's always penance to pay for spiritual uplifting and depravity when tinkering with the grey matter given to us as birthright.

Lysergic acid Diethylamide (LSD is the abbreviated form for the German Lysergsäure-diethylamid which carries a code behind, this one being 25 for its batch number), which can be made from Morning Glory seeds believe it or not, had its modest beginnings in a laboratory in Basel, Switzerland under the creative eye of a 32 year old not-so-mad scientist named Albert Hoffman (in America, he is the infamous Abby Hoffman, from stories of yore, and has passed away this year 2008 actually....fly in peace acid guru!). Doc Hoff pegged the minimum amount of LSD 25 needed to be taken for psychoactive response was 25-30 micrograms 0r mics, as I am fond of saying. One day in his lab, without his knowledge, a bit of the LSD must have somehow come in contact with his skin, as upon knocking off for the day, he experienced a dizziness and restlessness that he described as feeling a "not unpleasant intoxication" which then moved into "fantastic images not unlike a kaleidascope" behind his closed eyes whilst laying in bed . Three days later, his own famous first trip was on 250 mics, and was named "Bicycle Day", due to his very lengthy and heady trip that had a large part of the experience while on his bicycle, and a hellova lot more after....but thats is his tale and this is ours, so back to the story, dear reader! The hit we shared was 180 mics and in having split it, we had taken 3X the minimum dosage required by any normal human being to kick start the minds third eye. In previous escapades, I have been party and witness to having 4 of these hits at once (D.O. you remember that 4 days dontchya?), and I will tell that story another time as it truly is a lengthy and one! Needless to say, it was the beginning of a long day for many...

We tucked into our drinks with all the back slapping camaraderie one would imagine from a couple of 20-something year old knuckleheads. There was a menu of torture to inflict on our oh so young and ( I imagine they would be) pink livers, who's main catalyst was bourbon, that saucy temptress. The menu was a kaleidescope of text and images I could barely make out and with all of its BBQ-ey goodness + all the fixin's, burgers and sandwiches. I went for the first words I could sorta see and say. the menu being an unusually tangible yet entangled puzzle

"roast beef au-jus, open faced, fries"

Booz had the same with German Potato Salad. Food is one of those things while on acid that becomes a weird encounter; all that handling and masticating while the acid is gold fishing around your grey matter, lightly puckering on the little electric tidbits, going from one firing synapse to another until every circuit in your mind gets fired up on this oh-so-vibrant drug. By the time the food arrived we were flying our asses off and caught up in a giggle, the origin of which had long since passed and we were just a couple of lurching, laughing loons. The barkeep warily eyed us and kept his distance having already gunned down half a dozen drinks, paying for each round as we went with a neat little tip "to ensure prompt service". It wasn't long before he became bored with our buffoonery. Instincts were screaming that the bartender knows your goldfish are multiplying and swishing and puckering around, and it was half way through trying to choke down a suddenly awesome sandwich that I so very (in my mind) casually said;


"how the hell am i gonna eat this",

"hey man, how long you been working here?"

"long enough, whats it to you?" (gruff gruff gruff)

"you're not from around here are ya?"

"not that its any of your business, but no, I'm from The City, why"

"'cause, you answered like an East Coaster. I just got here about 2 hours ago and don't my ass from my elbow, but what I DO know is that YOU sound like a fuggin East Coaster....even if you are from (with a lisp) "the ssssssity".

He didn't warm to the taunt in the jovial way I had thrust it upon him and now visibly was not liking the direction nor tone this seemed to be taking, but decided to play along anyhow, regarding me with that wary eye...his arms moved, grooved and trailed whilst making our next round of drinks and he seemed to be dancing the Tandava upon the demon of ignorance in his manifestation of Nataraja the lord of the dance;

"where ya from anyhow?"

"Philly"

"so you got city envy then"

"I don't know which part of Harlem you're from, brothah, but it can't be as glorious as the City of Brotherly Love?"

At this, the plump, white, seemingly Irish bartender became an agitated version of Siva, Hindu God, destroyer of Ignorance...seems someone or something somewhere had turned the lights on in his cobwebbily bored head.

"hey kid, watch the volume, no need for that kinda talk 'round here. "

"whooooooooooooooa-ho-ho my man, thought we're just breakin balls oveh heeeeeeeeeeere... my man, c'mon. Lost your East Coast Xmas decorations or are ya happy with the direction that incomplete sex change is going in for ya?"

"look you little wise-ass, you can pay yer bill and get the fuck out of here with that smart potty mouth of yours"

(yes, you know it, he said potty mouth. i all but had to give The Booz the Heimlich to keep him from choking on his mouth full of potato salad lest he choke or it launch itself from his gullet on onto the mirror behind all the bottles behind the bar before us...potty mouth, good lord!)

"here's your bill, i recommend you don't be such a smacked ass wherever you go next"

"sounds to me like you all the sudden are the one with potty mouth"

"shove it and pay up ya little prick"

I waited for our food to be boxed up, paid the bill (leaving him a respectable tip in light of our seemingly unfriendly exchange), gave my best "takes on to know one ya d-bag", and grabbing a very giddy Booz who was being washed upon the Shores of Silly in the Archipelago of Absolute Acid, we made our way out of this Sfo icon of another time and place, purring and sloshing into the street, flying our heads off, me with no idea of where we were, where we were going, or what the evening ahead of us would turn into.

Immediately I acknowledged my feeling of comfort and decided that I loved this city ....and still do to this day...at least my romanticized version of it anyhow.

I never saw Shiva the Surly Irish God of Ginger Ale flavored Jack Daniels' there again, although I wasn't a regular (for no good reason), even though i worked around the corner at Stars', and guessed I just may have been missing his shift, perhaps he had found a home somewhere amongst the Katooey of Thailand, or in the grandest of grand, a Nathan's Deli Hot Scorned Beast and Pastrami (my personal favorite) with Swiss on Rye, Spicy Mustard, hold the onions, extra thousand island and pickles on the side there toots.

segue 5
"pop goes the weasel"

My pleasingly thick thumb stopped circling her Dark Star and, once buried, found itself at home in there. Her moan, muffled by the Salamander she was tongue tied with, started a fidgit in my yearning that I was no longer willing to stave off...I pushed her hips forward a little bit, signaling that it was time. As my attention had been redirected, the crew of the submarine had gone back to their bunks until orders for the charge were to be given. She did move forward a bit, then back up and onto my face hard again, my thumb going in up to my wrist, her lovely little pussy grinding my lips against my teeth...she was gonna blow. I kept my hands busy, one with a nipple, the other flying circles inside Dark Star. I let her take charge. She knew how to ensure she erupted, I was in no mood to have anything else happen for the moment. Her back arched, I could feel a cold shiver run down her spine and warm up when it hit my mouth. I pinched her nipple harder, jammed my thumb deeper. Her groan was centuries old pleasure finally making its debut in our here and now, her body weaseling itself all over mine...

CHAPTER 7
Shroom T, Dante's Farm and expensive boogies

I had stopped over in a few places on my cross-country drive from Vermont, those being at my folks house outside of Philly, Oxford, OH, Amarillo, Texas and Reno.

The Miami of Ohio University was an unusual choice to my high school pals; some perhaps surprised that my suspected sub-par-performance ruse got me into such a well respected institution of higher learning, others just thought that it was supposed to be in Florida and "why the hell would you move to Ohio and not Florida anyhow?" line of reasoning...as it turns out, I could have gone to either or and the result very easily could have been the same, save the killer tan and the venereal diseases......

I had planned to stop in Oxford for a few days to catch up with my old crew and travel across to the Bay Area with some of the "toys" I required when moving to a new city and not knowing anything about the place or anyone well enough there to procure said items of luxury. The Booz was predominantly as his name proclaimed, sticking mainly to passing recreational tokes, toots and teh tarik + fungi, so it was, of course, my personal charge to stock the shelves of my medicine chest.

I arrived on a Thursday afternoon and my schedule put me leaving by the following Monday, solemnly swearing to hop back in my car and make my way West, but, these things, at times, have a mind and direction of their own. I was more than game to follow the casual and relaxed way the breeze quite possibly could carry me along after a 2 year hiatus from my long lost pals, people who made my send off from this town a night to be remembered, forgotten, turned into local legend and then into lore amongst the furry, fuzzy-eyed freaks that stayed around long enough to be re-visited with a smile that says "Been too long my man".

With he blinking wink of the North Star peeking at me through a moonless sky, my moon-roof apparantly had other plans for me. I could hear Steel Pulse reggae in rhythm with The Star and, licking my chops, knew that things would get more than a little blurry, real quick.

I hit the towns limits and slowly rolled down High Street, taking the scene in. This college town, where nothing changes and reliability is just that, at times, an inconspicuous blessing living in an unreliable diatribe of strength and fear that made me bee-line straight outta town for the Farm. Dante, ShroomT and the rest of the crew were waiting for me out at the Farm, who's big, fat, star filled skies had my brain working overtime...gotta love the power of a moon-roof in a good mood. Although Vermont had oodles and oodles of gorgeous star filled nights, they were not filled with the people that the Farm would be and I yearned to open the moon-roof as far as possible during my short return.

On this relatively short drive, my minds appetite was whetted with fond, fun filled memoribilia that made up the lasting memories of a time well lived and not too far behind, a time, where, the magic fungi was at the top of a very long list of vowels and consenants that created the cafeteria list of "regulated, high schedule, class A" toys we loved to delve into on any given day. Hell, I remember MDMA still being legally sold in Texas and Colorado and understanding fully the appeal of "the love drug". A shiver from the cold made it all the better...my mind was stretching its arms up and up an up through moon-roof and to The Star, and the hatchback somehow went on auto-pilot while those arms pulled me up to The Star with them, its glow warm and inviting and asking me;

Just how many mushrooms could you gobble, imbibe through tea and/or throw into your morning flapjacks before actually going fungi? Would copious gluttony turn something in that system of yours turdy enough to sprout spores yourself? Would the body begin to produce its own psilocybin and then, while in the body, by dephosphorylation, convert it into active psilocin? Could you then, begin to pick bits of your ears off, loaded with mature mycelium, fooling the minds serotonin recepetors and start the serotonin-esque ride so many "better living through nature not chemistry" fans had all hoped and dreamed for? Would your boogies become $40 a quarter, and eaten with peanut butter to mask the taste, made into an Darjeerling Booger Sun Tea not to be found in any restaurant of coffee shop (the days of Starbucks had not quite come yet although it was a rising tide)? Could you become the proverbial frog that everyone squirms and squeams at licking, but would under the right gurus guidance?

Inquiring minds, at least this one, wanted to know....

I pulled into the not too long, gravel driveway that lead to the Farm, infamous throughout the Midwest for its' annual celebration inspired by Don Mr.Frank Zappa Esq's "St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast". My windows were down, despite that Midwestern February chill that was in the air, (moon-roof protesting the upon arrival closure clause, of course) and heard the familiar sounds of lightly buzzed chatter and "Hell Inna Bucket" from within. Damn it was good to feel this warm, cozy down comforter comfort of friends, all-night cribbage on high octane Peruvian and, of course, the end of a 12 hour drive, which, had produced a speeding ticket not an hour after my hitting the PA Turnpike and an uncomfortable amount of urine built up from not wanting to arrive any later than needed. I relieved myself in some pretty gray snow before trying the back door, which was used as the front due to driveway access and the hidden, unshoveled paths that lead to the front.

Noone had heard the car pull in nor my groaning relief in the snow.

This was the crew that shown me the way out of sophomoric and adolescent fumblings with hallucinogens, the crew that opened my eyes to the real beauty head trip of it all, the relaxed nitro balloons' pageant of the dead show, the back alleys from college town morphing into ye old-E streets of yore.

"If I knew it was gonna be this kinda party Chef woulda stuck his dick in tha mash potatoes!"...(ahh jojo dancer....)

Through the spiced, dragoney breath of a warm, smoke filled room, the ususal suspects from my years of debauchery prior to my exit for culinary school, and, amongst the Joe Spleef doobied handshakes, warm and breasty female embraces and smiles, I spied my boy, my brother, my partner in crime; Shroom T. As he sauntered at me through the 15 some odd people there, all 5'4" of him, nearly tackling me to the floor, it was that Cheshire cat grin, arms spread-out to grab my significantly larger frame, saying in that quiet, comforting and soulful tone I had gotten so accustomed to hearing over our years of friendship that buttered out of his mouth...

"My niggah"

...that made it all real. You have just been re-released into gen-pop after a day in the hole

"What UP kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!"

"You gotta be thirsty!"

"Thirsty hoss, damn thuuuuuuuuuuuursteeeee"

music symbol here "your imagination, champagne from yer boot, want a taste of the elegant pride, might be gong to hell inna bucket baby, at least im enjoyin' the ride," music symbol here also

I liked this quality about the Farm on this day as well as many prior to it and I was content in the moment, a rare quality in life to enjoy on any occasion, and daily was even better. Noone was a junkie, noone had their nose bent out of shape and if they did, they had no place here or in this warm coccoon. What I did know was that the crew was there, we were all in place to have a little stroll down memory lane and make a few more during the ride and that Shroom-T was there with a look in the eye that was warming and a grin that could tease the cubs away from watchful mother mountain lion.

Shroom T was a mountain of a man trapped in not quite a hobbit sized frame, although when gripped or tripping, it all seemed very very real that he just may be. He was slightly plump, his barely kempt hair a shock of darker than Nigerian black; his smile, cherubic, cheshirely, inviting and ominous, was ear to ear. His attire was, as usual, a bit dishevelled, a black Marley T-shirt boldly telling the world in neon green to "LEGALIZE IT". His dark, swarthy eyes more than slightly reddened around the sides and through to the iris with hours of bong hits, lifetimes of all-nighters and a little tear at seeing his old partner in crime.

We Zig-Zagged our way to the kitchen, where a couple of icey kegs and plastic cups stacked within arms reach called to us, as did the bottles of Jagermeister that were neatly tucked in the freezer for an occasion such as this. The tequila always catches my eye as well, but I let my boy take the lead on my inebriation. Cold beer and a Jager it was and it, all the sudden, felt like home.

A mural of people were sitting, lounging around a 4 foot long glass grafix with frisbees full of yummy, red haired skunk and white haired Indica, others standing, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It was through the confined space of a musky fog, full of horny, hopped up hooligans and hooliganettes that we weaved on our way on "upstairs"...

We ascended the short, curved flight of stairs and arrived at the top, where a herring and T-Roy, along with Dante, all sat around a very large, round mirror that at one time took residence in my bedroom in our old digs. NoWhereLand was where Shroom and I and a couple of other cats used to live, those guys still in school, myself, recently liberated from my educational confines due to lack of attendance my junior year via Room 2 frog laden debauchery, Emis Jayus and lots of the purple windowpanes of acid I kept trying to see the world through, much to the disdain of my life long and educational benefactors, those being, of course, my folks.

We all took a seat around the mirror and...

"We've been waiting for ya to even tap into this shit..."

This explained the Himalayan mogul and thick lightning bolts on that big round mirror Dante was still trying to perfect.

"not perfect grammar, only perfect timin' holmes"

We dove into this virgin, fresh drift of lightly floofy white decadance of the "just say no post-Regan era" while burning a joint when, suddenly, the drive really was over, my body all at once relaxed and woke up with the addition of what reminded me of Colorado Rocky Tree Powder, when Dante said....

music notes here "the heart has its beaches, it homeland and thoughts of its own" music notes here also

"So...."

The shit was high octane

Shiny, pink and creamy soft as the untamed thighs of many a pubescent after school "special" before my folks got home from their daily grind, I cheshired at its' decadantly numbing quality.

Not a man of many words, 6' something" not including a giant afro-puff mop atop of his, what I guessed to be, Mediterranean headed features, with his not very athletic but nonetheless Mack Truck frame all working together to create the melting pot that was Dante. He was good humored, rarely negative and "self employed", as we like to call it, and we'll just leave it at that.

He was just Dante. The quintessential "purr of a well fed cougar after feeding, trapped in a mans body" smoothed out of him like so much silk from a tiny and delicate silkworm. There was some quality within him, whether it was his easy way of talking to people, the sedate-yet-very-much-in-tune chrysalis-like sheath of general ease protecting him, or perhaps his smile... all were very disarming to men and women alike. Noone I had ever met had the Dante Vaccine and I never met anyone who even wanted it had it been found in some ancient ruin.

Jibber-jabber lead to more light hearted jibber-jabber with me telling of some of my exploits since I had been gone, they (me too), chewing the insides of their mouths as the effects of the marching powder worked its wonders on our synapses and nervous system, leading into their telling me their tall tales of times I had missed, women they had salamandered, close brushes with the conspicuously darkly tinted window van people lurking outside homes in Oxford that had caused all of them at one time or another, to bail out of town for a few weeks, thinking that "If Vermont were as close as Colorado, we would have come to visit ya man". Boulder, CO, being a good 400 miles further away than Burlington, VT, was an unspoken fact that never made the journey from my gray matter to my mouth.

After a few more slides down the mogul hills, we made our way downstairs to join our mysticlly matched, psychic-deli cafeteria gathering of music, people and inebriants. It was as I hit the bottom of the stairs that Spunk dropped a hit of that windowpane on my tongue with a smile and said

"There's no place like home, do not click yer heels, you have arrived"

I manly hug-grabbed the toe-head, kissed him on the cheek and said

"Damn skippy my man, daaaaaaaamn skippy"

It was a homecoming of sorts, returning to this place, this crew, this life that never seemed to inch its way away from me, neither forward NOR backward at all, remaining as if a still life that said "Hey man, meeeeee-YOW!" in some sort of Zippy-tarded innocence, and it needed nothing more or less....a utopia of a moment who's time was sure to come for those pure of heart and true to nature. Nirvana was as tangible as the finger that applied the hit of acid to your tongue, that smoothed your fevered head as a kid, knew icecaps were melting...and the outside people of the world just seemed to keep spinning and spinning on their stationary bikes, around and around in theri futile attempt to grow into more, expand into new areas of technology...."to boldly go where no man has gone before". We, relieved of this burden, had and have the luxary to this day of independance from a society based on consumption. We were and are consumers as well, but we chose and still choose our consumables, which made and makes all the difference to me.

It was a night to remember, or in this case, patches and blurbs of, as if non-sequentially torn from some odd deja vu, heading on until breakfast at some mystically found diner, some of us able to eat what we ordered, others leering warily at what was presented before them, eggs benedict suddenly looking far too much into its owners own personal benedict slathered with hollandaise...

We posse'd up and headed back to the Farm to rest up for round two's raid on the plush stash of alphabetized"Farmaceuticals" and I, while watching the morning sky go from dusk to mai-tai Johnny Winter dawn in the back of the pick-up, realized just why I left, and even more, why I would always return. There was plenty of unfinished business, and a light rest, a shower and a little albino guitar would be rejuvenating.

segue 6
the eruption of Mt. St. Sugarbush

So warm, so sweet, so wet...her geyser like precipation warm like a jungle during a huge rainstorm, gushing faithfully like Yellowstones' Old Fatihful. The sounds, as wild and inviting and in heat, made my Salamander Snake stand even more at attention. Her hips had backed themselves so far onto my face, that she was almost, in the most literal of senses, on my mind. Her loverly liquid lava erupting all over my face, into my nose, my ears, my mouth, I drank and schlurped and bathed in it as if I had just come from a week in the desert. My thirst was now slaked and i was voracious...

CHAPTER 8
Flashing Pervert, Hidden Ding Dongs

As we lushed ourselves out of Tommy's, we realized that the bullet was not quite but coming on empty and The Booz suggested we head to Vesuvio in North Beach for more libations and a walk around, it being a good walking area for the new-comer and more likely than not, good for both of our heads. It was mid afternoonish going on gooney goo goo and this, for a pair of gooney goo goo's like us in San Francisco, her climate being about 60-some-odd degrees F this time of day, made for an ideal setting to not be inside.

North Beach had a rich beat, beatnik, yet with a fading bohemianism to it that has been overrun by tourism, pop-development and a moose. The moose is the least of the problems, trust me, as is the tourism believe it or not. The saving graces of the area to me were City Lights, Vesuvio, a porn theater with live strip-tease and all the condimentals hunkering within its cheaply lined red velvet walls. With close proximity to all the "littles" as well....Italy (sorta dead on on that one), China and Hipster Coffeeshop at the intersection Broadway and Columbus, or close enough, we had options.

We arrived via Broadway where it connects with Columbus, hopped out, spotted Vesuvio and promptly went in the opposite direction, making our way up Columbus to Washington Square to grab a bench and do some people watching. The two white guys making out across Washington Square on a bench of their own looked at us like we were wearing the butt monkey shirts....

I wasn't sure if it was the acid, my not "getting" the West Coast just yet or perhaps a light sense of confusion that prevailed, but I found myself more watched and less the watcher, with which, I inhaled deeply on a freshly loaded yet soon to be dry bullet, got up and started heading back down to Vesuvio. Did I want a drink, a gelato or a lap dance and a blow job? All seemed likely (there being a gelato shop in bloodshot range)...and where was The Booz all of the sudden?

The bladder of The Booz had gotten the best of him and I hadn't noticed him relieving himself on the tree just next to the bench, being wound up in my people watching gone into paranoid acid and toot induced seduction of the watched ones. Perhaps that was why our two new buddies were studying us with such tawdry content, perhaps they were just coming up for air.

I suddenly felt naked without him....where the hell was he anyhow!?!?!?!?

"Where you think yer goin' jerky?"

Ahhhhh, safety....I am NOT alone

"Vesuvio....gotta be done"

With a quick, loud ZIP he was suddenly back by my side and as we headed towards our original destination, I passed him the bullet, all the while the gay couple resuming their mid afternoon snack of "your nose, my ear" as if they were sharing some deviant secret in public for the first time came back into our line of vision...

"Sphincty is as sphincty does" sniiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffffffffffffff

"Not a truer word spoken my man"

The thick, wooden door gave in with a sturdy shove and we found ourselves standing in the entrance of an empty bar, save the bartendress and her angsty, dikey tunes, our own heads careening off the soft, dimly lit afternoon warmth of the place.

In her singlet, I was able to see the tattoos that ran up her left arm and up to her neck to a real nice looking doggie collar (with little studs), making me feel a little better about being inside and getting something to squelch this pesky aluminum foil taste I wasn't able to shake. Another platinum blond and I wondered (silver sheriffs star snatch badge?) how much longer I would be able to remain not only indoors but with rainbow flagged dike tunes trying to drown my heads tranquil manatee mating tune out.

She gave us a look that said "Women are from Venus, Men are from Penus" (with "the Pig Planet" inbedded deep in that 1000 yard stare) while we ordered our Jack Daniels flavored Ginger Ales and Zippo lit our Marlboros. That stare very well could have been emblazoned on her singlet and a "...and you are an asshole" one as well stashed in her dirty laundry hamper of disdain at our particular breed of inhumane humans next to the "I like my spam on Tuesdays because yesterdays flowers just smell better"

BE MORE DESCRIPTIVE ABOUT MURIOS AND KEROUAC'S TIME THERE

We had one at the bar and decided to tool around North Beach just to see what there was to be seen after getting a freezing cold shoulder for not being gay boys on the bench. We bypassed them (the one guy had succeeded in engulfing the other guys entire face in his purty lil mouff) without the looking, and I was happy that no one with in my eye-shot was looking at me anymore.

I suppose we meandered about for half an hour, the sun beginning to set and rest for the night, a wispy clouded sky beginning to soften the squarish, rigid structures the city pushed into the sky, and my attitude softened as well.

As we rounded the corner (we were walking downhill back towards the intersection, I have no recollection of the street) , we were jovial and giddy. We strode past half closed shops moving towards Broadway, towards that Live Sex joint. I couldn't help but notice this cat standing off to the side, hiding just around the entrance's corner, as if ducking bouncers. He was just standing there, in his high top Chuck Taylors, trench coat and what I believe was a blank look, as if some extraterrestials were sending him messages about their alien exploits in the Sex Joint.

We bowled by this guy (I had never cast my glims anyone like this in my life up close and personal) and, thumbing my right thumb at him, I goofily (and in hindsight) a bit too loudly said to The Booz;

"Dude, Check this flasher guy out man"

....with a hearty guffaw tacked on the end.

Acutally we both had a laugh at his expense as we cruised past him, speaking as if he didn't understand the Swahili of our acid laden lingo.

Within seconds I almost tripped...he did understand our Swahili, didn't like it and was, quite literaly, kicking my heels.

I turned quickly, telling him to

"back the fuck off scumbag "

and, turning on my heel, carried on walking down the street with The Booz.

When he did it again I didn't hesitate. His foot no sooner hit the back of my right ankle than I spinned around on my left, shoving him to the ground, my leather flapping like a dark, thick bats wing. He fell to the ground and I pointed as if to say "Just stay there asshole". Apparantly he hadn't studied sign language in Swahili for that and just seconds later, did it again for the third time. I spun around this time and laid a pretty solid right to the perenium between his mouth and nose, dropping him down, the red beauty slowly making its' way south from his nose to his upper lip.

"Back off asshole"

Believing "third times a charm, fourth time you just gotta be stupid", we, once again, began to walk away when, unbelievably, he did it again...

"he could have tried anything but he had to do that didn't he" was what my left uppercut said to his chin, knocking him back and surprisingly to The Booz and me, not down. It was as if he was on angeldust and I had hit him square in the bottom of the kisser with with a Ding Dong.

What most people didn't know is that The Booz walked around with a nice, 4" "pig sticker" as he called it, curvy and wood handled, in a nice leather sheath on his belt, which he produced real quick...

"Lets gut this prick"

There was a near by alley and having had enough of this weirdo and , acid or no, enough had been enough for the two of us.


segue 7
double-double, animal style

In-and-Out was open for business and I wanted a "double-double, animal style"....a Wild Kingdom, National Geographic, I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter inspired pounce, that had the cheetahs of the Serengeti salivating had arrived and something bombastically primal was about to happen...

Her body and knees were quaking and I could feel them warble as she did a 180 degree spin, her face, once again with mine, her mouth, this time, softer and more yielding. Her sheriffs badge was matted and wet against my hips. She wanted me to take the lead, and I wasn't going Jungle Book on her at all....oh no sir, this was Animal Planet, The Planet of the Apes, that "butt naked ass backward on a zebra" shit. She gently was kissing her lava from all over my face, The Salamander Snake gently, teasingly poking his head into the mouth of the recently erupted volcano. He slide all over both of her nether entrances, and I guided all girth addled 8" slowly and sweetly into the volcano.

We both moaned with acceptance, her cunt, tight, warm, right. I wanted to stay buried there forever.

CHAPTER 9
the train kept a rollin'

Coming down from an acid trip is, to me at least, squirrely at best and nerve racking torture at worst for those who would have done best not to have taken it on that particular day, with all those "things" troubling them in the first place, whether they be the lewd hands of good old Uncle Timmy or the fear buried deep within by two over-bearing Type A (for ass more times than not I have noticed) parents for whom a 99% on an exam was just not quite up to par. I, thankfully and for potentially ebryonic reasons (or sheer luck, or, perhaps, a mind full of nothing), found myself at times a Bullwinkle-less Rocky on the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, Boris and Natasha forcing their aluminum foiled Pottsvillian "Kill Moose and Squirrel" breath into my warped and lagged out yet conspiracy-theory laden cerebrum from an entirely different generation, and for entirely different reasons. Moose and Squirrel were innocent, righteous, commie hating '50s American do gooders! A cartoon who's influence was guided right from political innuendo and fear of the power of others into the children it was exposed to, inviting us to be an all American, red white and blue, baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet loving generation of Americans, who still were too young to understand the difference between democracy, socialism and communism. We just liked Moose and Squirrell and drat those pesky Boris and Natascha! Where socialized medicine is a bain to our culture, well, for the wealthy anyhow....its so troublesome with all those sick people in the waiting room who don't have money to help their own children, or themselves...Hey, Thanks Tricky Dick...we LOVE HMO's, boy did you do right be the general population on that one! Hey, if ya like that one, I also have a nice bridge to sell you in Brooklyn! Myself not being of affluent ilk to go and dedicate myself to being Dudley Do Right, I guess I should hop into the Mystery Van and Scooby away from this immediately, although, I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids! God Bless good old Nixon, he sure did know how to make a buck...and change a country, some not even ours (sorry Cambodia, whoops, it didn't work after all!)...but I digress...

The LSD fervor fuels a sort of amphetamine-like intoxication of the body mixed with the mind's kaleidascope eye, which, at ropes end, seemed to be a real low crash for some, for other Mooseless Squirrelites such as your truly, just sheer exhaustion from the head full of meanderings and solutions to any gamet of personal, world or socio-economic problems. It is for these wondrous mid trip revelations of world solutions that "acid is the answer" was such a well coined and commonly believed, albeit short lived, monkier for the generation of people that conceived, bore, then reared the likes of your truly, and to whom "I am the walrus" made so much sense to them and their like minded cronies. Mid trip you find the answers to many of the worlds problems and your own are so simple, so tangible, yet so distant the next day when you are already on a horizon you saw from centuries away the day before.

It must have been one hell of a Halloween party that late October for me to have popped out as a child born into "The Summer of Love", for which, I have always been will be, eternally grateful, as I have been party to and a member of a unique tribe of Americans whom, from womb until present, still have all the great musicians of those days fresh in our minds. Perhaps it was all those great tunes ebbing through flesh and the inner sanctums walls of my aquatic beginnings, perhaps it was the errant quality of the drugs being imbibed and the contact high that wafted through, or maybe just the lack of chemicals present in todays cancer sticks that gave, at least me, what I feel to date is a heightened sense of connection with the stars above, the moon, the ocean and the spirits that spin the earth like a childs' top, who's string we have never had the eyes to see nor the gumption to find. Or maybe it was being 6 weeks old and seeing "Ummagumma" performed live, still swaddled in a blanket and close to my own mothers teat that has given me such an affinity for things of a generation not yet gone, for which, I am profoundly grateful for mind you.....I'll never know.

A DIATRIBE

What I do know is this; what at one point was socially acceptable has now become outlaw and even criminal, our fair nation will never know another generation such as the one that produced mine, nor the one I proudly claim a part of and salute, exemplified by a current state of affairs I am not entirely convinced that has continued forward with growing out of Darwin's original model, of Freuds' family factory of Oedipal flamboyance, or Rocky and Bullwinkles' paranoia.

In the days before I was breathing, they also didn't have many of the worlds contributions made by some of the many aspiring cartels such as Big Pablos' Medellin, the mangabey monkey cartel (also known as the White-collared monkey) of West Africa, whom carried the SIV virus, or Merck and its other pals in the "better living through chemisty" industry, which helps me rationalize that those times were perhaps simpler, more innocent and less convoluted for the every day "Joe" in a way, the people, nonetheless, the same in their endeavors for personal happiness, love and success. And I am not even touching contemporary corporate connivance, here anyhow....

Ahhh, yes, our good old friend the white collared monkey has given contemporary society more than a head full to contemplate whilst on the perky, un-jaded minds of the collegiate or the survivors of meandering torrents of laborious and slickly, corporately joined government bodies, to dissect, and it is on these Icarian wings that those who fly to close to the sun fully understand just how poignant both simean and corporate white collared monkeys have influenced contemporary existence, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and HMO, 'til do you die and we begin rebuilding control of what little is left of a world full of lost societies, forgotten rituals and human compassion traded for a greed that was beset upon us by multinational enterprises picking the meagerly earned dollars from our pockets, whether those be controlled, class A substances, food or drugs "for the good of mankind". Dupont had it right with the whole "better things for better living... through chemistry" slogan, they just failed to realize which ones actually will push society as a whole forward, as opposed to the ones that keep us passive, sedate and docile and multinationals in wealth of such staggering proportion that they could reinvent our beloved country with their profits alone "for better living". I suppose that's not their or any of their responsibilities to the world though, even though there are human beings not monkeys in white collars making all the "big decisions". So I wonder, aside from the hard working, every day people of the WORLD, who are trying to raise honest, intelligent, sober kids who currently do not need "ambien" or any of the other wonder drugs they have been developed for our own personal health, who may have a future, who most likely will experiment with illegal drugs just to try them out (keeping in mind that the 'scrip drugs are not nearly as cool as any mushroom, leaf or root that comes from the planet on which we walk), why are the corporate children that America and the rest of the world has encouraged to grow not taking care of he new generation of people to run our planet, as any mother and father could, would and should? It also stands to reason that if you put us on your teat, you should have or do your best to have the wherewithall to show us how to live to the best of your ability, no? Lest you become a deadbeat dad, which, in the States, carries stiff penalties.

Inquiring minds, once again, want to know...and what I also knew on that afternoon was that coming down off coke, to the undisciplined, (as if anyone who uses this uniquely inviting toy has discipline after enjoying prolonged exposure still retains it....an oxymoron of sorts that needed to be penned) is nothing short of torture, especially if you have what seems to be loads of it at the moment, a healthy taste for it, and no responsibilities...then again, that never stopped anyone before, whether they be the trbes that first started masticating the coca plants leaves up in the Andes of South America or the everyday white collared monkey, or monkeys of any collar for that matter as it seems to have panned out...

CHAPTER 10
and now back to our regularly scheduled program, still in progress

So, two great intoxicants rolled into my first night out at the Farm made for an uneasy bout of sleep that left me with a painful demeanor to be gator-wrestled (and i wont play lunch nor lapdog to a gator mind you) in the afternoon after a night of nights that I that made me sluggish upon coming out of my dormir. Had the cat been sleeping and purring in the Rufus of my mouth? Where was the water? Man I have to hit the porcelin...

It must have been the noisy muffler outside that broke my albeit short yet restful and restless rest, bringing me back into "reality". I was stripnotized; my bare naked mind still held in a small, dreamlike trance by the high powered purple placed by Spunk on my tongue the evening before. It was going to take more than coffee to start this day off right, and fortunately had exercised control with the "gift bag" I had acquired the night before. Dante was feeding the dogs, the sofa on which I had drifted off on quite close to the open yet screen doored portal that lead out to the way in which I arrived. He looked like I felt and let him know as much, my left hand rubbing my tousled hair, the right making the usual morning adjustments of my crotch needed to get comfortable.

"What time is it man?"

"I think its around 1:30"

He was about done dealing with the dogs and talking to a mountain of a man about something in the distance, who I was in a moment about to recognize as Tyke Rattler. It took us both a second and we smiled and strided up to eachother, right hands extended, smiles on our faces.

"Hey man, where have you been, I haven't seen you in a while man"

"Tyke, I have been gone for almost 2 years man"

"No shit"

"Yeah man, no shit"

"Where did you go?"

"I went to Vermont to learn how to wrestle bears"

"What!?"

"Culinary school man, you really don't remember my going away party do ya?"

"Uhhmmmm, well..."

Tyke was one of the aforementioned that had totally blown his barometer for "when to stop" when it came to tackling the great white buffalo. He had long since lost his internal North Star, and a compass would just have been a band-aid. The cat had always been, and by the looks of him, still was, bent. It was with this in mind I silently, mentally retracted an offer that almost left my mouth to start the day off with a dash down a mogul hill. And I could only imagine why his noisy ass muffler was here...it didn't bode well for anyone, but he was a local and locals stick together, at least in certain circles, but even those circles, forged in fire, can be melted down to a point where the mold need be re-cast. I got an uneasy feeling that this particular afternoon, whilst he fed the doggies, that a mold was not being recast, but melted down, never to be re-molded again and, with another handshake and a smile, let the boys get back to it and moved back inside, it being about 10 degrees farenheit and myself in only a pair of jeans and a thermal underwear top, thankfully with long sleeves.

It was also around this time a year prior that Stevie Ray Vaughn, like Elvis, Janis, Mojo Risin, Jimi and John Bonham, had left the building via a helicopter wreck into a ski slope less than a mile from where he had been jamming with greats Robert Cray, Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy, and, from which, his singular body was recovered, making it seem as if he had somehow, maybe, survived, for a few last tortured moments. Considering this and my own personal fit of discomfort, it seemed a good idea to seek his musical contribution to the world out and start the day the right way. I chose Riviera Paradise and found a small pile of leftover snow and, looking up to some heaven I know nothing of, gave a little moment for SRV, piling the snow through my sinuses in a frenzied, coptic helios, punching directly into the back of my throat. I shook my head, my throat having closed a little and I all of the sudden could tell it was going to be another long couple of days of fun and decadance, today being Friday, and me no stranger to this town or this life.

Little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg and that my well scheduled and organized itinerary, would take a pleasureably heinous turn for the weird.

CHAPTER 11
"eye am what eye am and thats all what eye am"

"Lets get 'im 'Rik" (sounded like "lessgit'imreek")

We both grabbed this stinky, grimy little punctuation of a person (was he a semi-colon or a full blown colon?) to which he protested and resisted, his Chuck Taylors too beat up to help with any traction, his trench coat now holding him like a straight-jacket.

"Fuck you you assholes"

"No my man, this is not us, this is allllll you baby"

He resisted as we dragged him down the alley, roughing him up pretty nicely. He resisted passively, as if it a postman who always rang twice had sounded the third bell for him.

The Saran Wrap came off the chops....

The devil could smell the fear, the sinful depravity of it all, reeking and oozing of so many dark pleasures, again, he licked his chops. With no warning, no beacon, no thought the blade went from The Booz's sweaty, light grip in his left hand and into the comfortable nookish part of mine.

I palmed it into the bottom carriage of my right hand, my target, without thought, so very clear.

My aim, true, with a quickness of the mongoose in the heat of battle for its life with his arch enemy, the cobra of Montenegro....

As I was pulling it out, it gave a soft "squishysquish" before it popeye'd out with the ginsu-sharp blade I had lodged in it and I, with a casual flick of the wrist, disconnected it from his optic nerve and all its friends for him. It hit the ground with a dull, quiet splat between the two of us and him. I didn't hear popeye's signature "guh-guhguhguhgugh" chuckle while his eye took a Newtonian descent to the ground anywhere, and this guys supply of spinach ran out on him...

All of us lost the blood in our faces for different reasons.

Horror show me droogies, real real horror show...

His chops, now wet and happily satiated, were Saran Wrapped back into place and I somehow found myself thinking of Goodtoof and Jerry Curl, not really knowing why or what they were doing in my head in this all of the sudden surprising moment.

After cutting his buttons off, I wiped the blade on his trench coat. I had to see if all this was validated, that he was indeed the punctuation, the perverted exhibitionist he had made me believe he was or just some guy who was wearing shorts under his jacket, a bored, broke street urchin trying to hustle up some 20/20 money before going to the shelter in The Mission, who was agitated by my childish and insensitive humor at his expense.

As his dangling prick, pale gold, uncircumsized, and engorged (surprisingly!) stared down at the ground at his eyeball, I realized this guy was no saint, and suddenly, neither was I for a very new and unique reason...

With a glance, a silent pact was immediately made that would last us the rest of our lives.

Our new friend the colon had escaped unimmasculated, although somewhere inside me, it would have served the world well to have used the blade again to create a eunuch. It seemed to me that the blood line had gone one too far; it seemed he was now a thoroughbred, the child of the purest incest whose differences between pure bred and inbred seemed only greater by a few letters and a slide down the evolutionary chain. Something from deep inside me told me he was fitted for a different future that I did not need to have a part in and that I refused to fulfill. I had just plucked his eye out and, with the threat of losing the other and "that dirty little excuse of a prick you got there" if he even tried to report this, him being pretty easy to find today, either at the hospital, the free clinic, a shelter or a homemade "Hooverville" under the bridge with his government cheese and food stamps, told him he better not attempt to extract retribution in any way, shape or form.

I shoved him and he shot back a bit like a fresh lychee from its' skin, creating an opportunity for him to walk away, lest the taste begin to get good on me. Recovering from my shove, he stooped and grabbed his marble off the alley's refuse strewn ground. He backed away, eyeball in one hand, the other over the open gap in his head where squishysquish used to reside and we were, all three of us, shaken and shaking our heads in irreverent shock. Although I never understood why he never made a peep more than that first short inhale of shock, I later theorized that perhaps I wasn't so far off the mark with the Ding Dong Theory and it was PCP after all...but only he really knows that truth.

After the very adrenal and totally psychidelic rush of it all, we'd decided we'd had enough of North Beach for the day (it would be some time before I returned mind you) and I suddenly realized that once again today, I was having fear dumplings, this time in my own, homemade wanton soup.

segue 8
indigo berries

The Salamander was happily being tugged tugged along as she carried on moving forward. He was in the depths of the volcano all the way, warmly brushing against its walls that almost seemed to lick and slick at him to come closer. They wrapped themselves tightly around him, their grip sweet sugar in the berry bush. We were on our knees. All 8 of her fingers and both thumbs were pulling my hair hard and my head even harder against hers, as if I wasn't quite all the way in, that there were deeper, darker chasms, whose bushes berries, when crushed, were the sweetest clitoral indigo one could ever taste...

CHAPTER 12
as night turns to day and a day turns to days

After the encounter with Tyke, I went back into Dante's lair, fully intent on taking a shower to wash the madness of the evening before down the drain.

Most of the pack had cleared out late earlier that morning, with all of the promises to see each other again "in a few hours" that one would expect from a nice bout of reminiscing, reggae and late night cribbage to ride the buzz out and into peaceful slumber. That an easy promise to keep and something I relished on this hot-diggety-dog of a visit. It had started well frankly and to those whom had stayed the night, cubbied or cuddled up in various parts of the Farm, I was feeling genuinely missed in my snow bound, culinary driven stint in Vermont. Dante and I had our own little session after things settled down and all the furry eyed animals had, for the most part, taken a pass on being awake any longer. It was in these wee, new hours of the morning that we got our "one-on-one" time, lazily playing cribbage, snurfling bumps of marching powder and playing the best game of all, ketchup.

I emerged from the bathroom with his rubber ducky on my shoulder...

"Hey man, put that back"

"When da ducky wants water, it'll tell me, trust me, we have an understanding"

He shook his head in a sort of acceptance based in disbelief (and he could understand where I was coming from by the look in his eyes)...I was in love with its gleaming yellow simplicity, its plump perfection, its radiant candor for the simple, the benign, and the simply benign. I wanted to be a rubber ducky, and was glad to have found the right spiritual leader on the corner of the tub. Dante would let it slide without further incident, as the yellow rubber ducky had told me would happen, yet with a call to arms of sorts;

"Only Dante can know, only Dante can lead the way"

"Whoooooooa, this is some really good shit" I heard from some coherently inside my head talking, the blow really gettin up on top of me, my suddenly unusually uncomfortable ducky about to be lambasted upon next arrival in my head and then out of the head when I headed over to my seat...that almost Republican-esque force of this rubber ducky telling me where to seat myself, as if I didn't know....you condescending little ducky!!!!!....you may be my personal phoenix pimping and posting personal pedestrian pontiffs and pariahs up on up in heeeere, but best stoke the fires first, I'm coming in for a landing"

We sat with a small lamp that resided on a small square table on my left between two relatively comfy chairs, and it was on the coffee table by our knees between us, now cleared of all the previous knuckleheads leftover beers, stinky ashtrays and assorted nonesense, that we placed the Cribbage board and our cards when Dante said;

"So..."

"We had a fight, me n the ducky and I'm thinkin' its best if the rubber ducky is out man, he's got a lot of shit talk goin on up in there"

"Well, I suppose between the two of ya, you know whats best"

"You suppose so my man!" I was transcendentally mucklucked by the ducky, and as predicted by that damned ducky, only Dante could pull me out of this one..

In his left hand was a small round mirror on which several lightning bolts were served up proper for the game and our ketchup time. As he spoke, he handed it to me, the crisp one hundred million trillion gazillion dollar bill forever rolled into its tubular form and I accepted it with a smile;

"So what D?" sniiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff, handing the setup back to Dante, him, slowly and deeply enjoying his inhalation process

"So how's that whole cooking thing man? Shroom says you were doing well and that school went well for ya. Heard you even spent some time in Bean-town"

In the background, Jerry Garcia was telling Bertha not to MUSIC NOTES"come around here, anymore" because he had a hard run, MUSIC NOTES and I agreed with him...

"Yeah man, Boston was nothing like I expected and on the upside duckfully"

"Hunh?"

"Thankfully"

I threw out a few anectodes about seeing some 'Sox games, living in Sommervilles' notoriously Irish Rough Neck Winter Hillian days and nights, dining and, of course, work, wine and women. Through this we played, passed, and proposed plans for the weekend ahead of us when it came .....

"I'm glad Cookiepuss isn't around anymore"

"That makes two of us, he wasn't worth his salt then and even now, not worth wasting this moment on. If the boys in blue grabbed him, he was gonna flip easier than a grilled cheese sandwich inna telfon pan"

Chef Dante, my man!, for whom I had flipped many a shroom laden omlette and pancake at work and an "Alphonso's", was one of the few who stood the test of time, stood my test of time and who was, in this moment, one of the few, real people I trusted and believed would weather any storm. Dante, his big ole smile with a hit of double dipped Woodstock on his index finger of my memory, Dante, the man who knew I was one of the real ones, not made of grilled cheese, was an American Beauty.

We wiled a couple of games of cribbage talking back and forth of times passed and some of my times to come, all of me telling him that I had a feeling about Cali, things to come, great things to come out there, and if he ever needed or wanted, always had a place to rest his afro for as long as he needed in my digs. It was with a big hug and a snurfle that he went up to crash and I hit the sofa, fingers laced behind my head in contemplation about real friendships, partners and a silent code that I shared only with Shroom and Dante that I allowed myself to relax into a peaceful, safe and sage slumber as I reveled at the thought of the few days to come, I floated into my dreams, which were speckled like a robins egg with the memories of good, bad, ugly and bonding times, forged in fire and stone.

As I floated into my dreamstate, they all came flooding back into a day, many daze that made our existence so transcendental, serene, and Looney Tunes that it felt like it was all happening so fast that I would never be able to keep up with its flashing lights of moments and emotion, its comaradie and brotherhood that would be a bond that would keep us solid in times of change, pain, joy and trial, staid and steady, no grilled cheese sandwiches were allowed nor were they welcomed as I had been into a circle that when I entered had no idea who's depth ran to such homestand true depths as I had never know, of times that would build foundations of truth via bond, brotherhoods forged in fire and stone that would never be found again outside this well kempt Atlantis in which we all resided, loved, laughed, cried, felt fear and lazed on its proverbials sofas doing bonghits watching the "Days of Our Lives" pass by and began to create safety in coptic times, define social pecking orders, exercise unspoken laws of right and so-very-not-right like the very maggots that tried to lay their offspring before our proverbial rubbish and its bins that we could all bind together in the spiritual mass of our own design, warding off predators and infidels who would cloak themselves, their evil behind smiling facades of farce, through which it was so easy to see, yet we knew better than to blow their ruse, knowing it better to double the arms length or even triple or quadruple it with an end to the means, with survival and ascent of a reality that not all were invited to, many were periferals to, conventional acquaintances only that in a world of unreliables, through whos' maskies we could so easily see, pluck an eye through, take the heart from and put out to pasture, to exorcise while exercising our inner sanctums non-verbalized, unwritten but clearly to those inside of it laws that were based on nature, not nurture, that we would unflinchingly defend against all predators and any from within that turned Benedict Cookiepuss would be rousted, outed and flagged from all other known associates and associations until their shame and grilled cheese followed them as far as our arms stretched, ours not a judgemental coccoon, rather, a protective chrysalis against those who were fearful, those who failed to go where eagles in our Atlantis dared, those who were not true of heart and virtual were handled without kid gloves, without apology, without remorse for the recourse they had invited, it being their own doing and them, making themselves blantantly obvious to those of us who knew there was no breaking the circle of trust, that once in the circle, all things, bad, unsavory and illegitimate could and would be handled proper, like a family bound by code, honor, respect and above all truth does for its own, watching out for yet not coddling its own newly embraced future...this was the bond of brotherhood, and there was only one way to be outed, and few, very few, were, and those that were, lament their follly, those that branched out, had the responsibility of their branch and took it to appropriate heart, as there are many who are instinctual of heart, with its truth being a bear who watches over her cubs so they learn not to fear, as the bear will always, until death, take care of family, the bear, who shows up in neither chinese nor western zodiac, the bear, who families its way through life as humans do, the bear, true of nature and heart, who will not tolerate attack upon nor foolishness from outside NOR inside, the bear, who's heart is as the heart os so few homo sapiens, truer, committed, unflinching with compassion and love for its own, who views betrayal as just that, betrayal never being justified, simply rectified..this was out Atlantis above water, and we were great grizzleys in a time where some hearts of men and women alike were wanton and would take a grilled cheese over one for the family, yes they would dear reader, and even though the bear is primarily a loner, we had our family and it was these who were outed for just cause and few have been outed since this troubled instance, and all we grizzleys, kodiak, rocky mountain , panda and arctic polars, our non-retractable claws digging our plot, were all happier mammels for it knowing even in our independance, we had ascended to another level of mammalian behavior and had never let our independance cannibalize our humanity as a tribe of individuals, bound together by our bare yet not barren nature...

When I awoke to the sound of Tykes shitty muffler, I felt the need to piss, drink water and have some of natures sweet leaf before my carnivorous endeavor of breakfast, and did.

CHAPTER 13
on a soapbox with chopsticks and a chinese spoon in my soup...

While deep, deep in the illustriously colorful confines of sleep (at times a waking slumber) I, at times, find myself prone to wondering if the tooth fairy is a gay boy or one happy girl, if the Easter Bunny really does poop out chocolate eggs as he does now as in days of yore, if Santa was an angel but actually an angel of death who's claws were feared by all involved in those days (like Passover perhaps?), if teenagers still had bad acne and if Hallmark Moments came about around the same time as Ramadan, Rosh Hashana and Rufus Wainwright. In this benign dream I float in I and I and I wonder... and then I consider Tinkerbell or those who fancy themselves an impish little fairy, a fairy who grants wishes to children which stirs some sort of fear for our future within me as these thoughts make me shudder then wonder if survival of the fittest in such freakish situations are applicable to Darwinism and/or creationism as well as many societies and religions long and illustriously documented pedafilic history have revealed themselves to us and is it to through own sort of biased named "long, ancient history" as a race of humans that rape is kind.

I stir in my sleep as I recalled a history prof (who loved theology) while he said;

"Darwinism is a term used for various different movements or concepts related, to a greater or lesser extent, to good old Uncle Chuck D's 19th century work on evolution, highligting natural selection and survival of the fittest . The meaning of Darwinism has changed over time, and depending on who is using the term, makes it, at times, unclear to some, a stamp validating primal urge as well as many other basic primal needs to others.

D's philosophy has remained in use amongst scientific authors and is regarded more and more as an inappropriate description of the modern Theory of Evolution. Darwin had little idea about heredity and genetics so he may have said somethign like this: "Don't light me up in a witches bonfire but, it wasn't adam n eve you guys... and I'm working on it!"


In Darwin's day there was as much a clear definition of the term "Darwinism" as their was weighing a duck and a witch, and fortunately for Uncle Chuck, it was used by opponents and proponents of Darwin's biological theory of natural selection alike to mean whatever they wanted it to in a larger context, keeping him off that weighing scale!


Its not uncommon to hear promoters of creationism manipulating the term Darwinism to describe evolution. In this usage, the term has connotations of Athiesm, and Charles Hodges' even called a spade a spade in his book "What Is Darwinism?" by concluding: "It is Atheism." I bet he would have gotten along well with Nietzsche in the outlaw days, the renegade Nietzsche in the height of his "God is my bitch and I'll say what I want to" days for that one. "Anzzah exprrrresssoooo Herr Darwin, vee haf much to discuss jah?"

Pejoratively creationists often use the term Darwinism to imply that the theory has been held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his followers, whom they cast as dogmatic and inflexible in their beliefs. Fortunately for our children and their children, casting evolution as a doctrine or belief has bolstered religiously motivated political arguments to mandate equal time for the teaching of creationism in public schools in many places, which I see as an advance in our collective ability to create new realities for our very new and unusual times, understanding that certain very archaic practices from a different time in a different world erode with a greater understanding of the application to the times, places and, well, ALL OF US; to be honest, I just can't see Satan surfing on the Lake of Fire cranking Metallica and Slipknot in the same way I used to I suppose, can you? In case you missed that, yes, religion is, at times an archaic concept especially in America (I can only speak of what little I do know after all) pushed by pundits posing and preening before an audience that gets more members hooked as children than tobacco and alcohol together, a dinosaur in the sense of the once grand Triceratops, who may have evolved into the viscious yet magestic Rhino of today, and many proprietors of this are accused by many believers of being false prophets, and just as well I suppose, mainly because they ARE! Religion has many uses in a contemporary society such as ours for building solid foundations in faith, belief and homogenous existence, I think they tried to pasteurize me twice actually and myself evolving with no jaded overview or mal content for any religion in me nor myself to date, loving the great stories of all religions, some of the ideals and philosophies, but not buying into Saint Lucifer living in the earths core, and "the big guy", or all and any of the worlds religions "big guys" living up somewhere in an unknown stratosphere, some with a gate keeper with long, flaxen hair with a Santa's checklist of when you were naughty and nice, others telling you that you died honorably and are therefore absolved of your earthly wrong doings, HORSEPUCKY!. Honestly, if the big G wanted to tell us something, ALL OF US, wouldn't it be clearer than Mt Sinais' message handed down to about 3000 Israelites, interpretations DAILY ON THAT, eroded ozones, continental drift, the big kiss off to the dinosaurs? Seems it kind of falls into that whole Giant Bunny who hides chocolate eggs Easter, on Jesus' resurrection day, mere days after they put him up on the cross, and I wonder "did Jesus secretly eat chocolate bunny shatted eggies raw while everyone else ate wafers and got drunk on his blood?" Instinctively I have to go with a resounding NO on that one, and, the bunny as a metaphor, NO, so I still can't figure that one out, regardless of whatever teutonic european frenchmen may have drawn. Or should we all just try and use the same deoderant?"

I mulled this benign dream over while verbally engaged with Tyke, his half toothless rank demeanor fouling over any thoughts of global democracy and peace, without hate mongering and greed, at that moment, yet suddenly found myself thinking "you cannot draw nature, one may only draw fromm it" and let the whole trip slide away thinking I was glad I was just talking to myself in my sleep from some acid addled amphibian who came to life on the shores of some unknown bay, myself, awake and mildly alert, praising nature, and respecting many of mankinds' accomplishments knowing it was not spent karma, just a rubber ducky of a life bobbing around in the not so still mental bathtub of tributaries in my unclear mind when it came at me for a second round of Hitler-esque taunting;

EEEeasteah buuuoonneey, za toofff faireee, mit Zanta KKKlaus...UND du bis eine "tree hugger" (which, mind you, shouldn't mean you are typecast into not loving the death penalty at all).....it was in this really twilight zone of semi-coherence he proposed "santa claus oder satans claws. dolling out coal until people saw the light shine through a dark time...ignoring all of history's cries for reason with its credibility with the whole "they didn't speak english then there in the Midiveal times zoooooo" ...would I be burned like a witch at the stake, a pedagogue of sorts built from the trees I was metaphorically trying to hug and being tragically misunderstood by the mass insanity of being awake, yet still asleep? I had to shake this off me once and for all, and a shower after being nudged awake by noise seemed like a real good start...

It was dream addled and armed with an albatross of armchair antagonism such as this, and a rubber ducky on my shoulder, that I, in my acid washed mind, rationalized to myself that it was natures choice, natural selection that put my hand with his knife into that guys eye, and I therefore, was spiritually and karmatically forgiven (as was my own new private rubber ducky dogma) for my recent display of rash surgery on Captain Colon the Flashers' ocular portal, and on a biological survival level it all went down because I was, in this particular moment, the fittest, and in being such, totally absolved on a carnal level ergo a biological level for my socially unacceptable act of malice, and that if our genes bubble here and boil there, all of us being common folk, regular, everyday people, pedestrian in our individual yet collectively moving entity coming from the fire of "The Big Bang" and from there together in some sort of primordial human soup in which our individuals came and began, then our emotions boil in the same way as the first homo sapians, after discovering fire began to cook the raw products of our emotional evolution as animals and the very animals and plants we had to eat then, finding we had stumbled into a new age of food and life in a basic form, much like Uncle Chucks Theory states but has had difficulty in explaining the roots of it says, then it serves that our minds are our own personal soup kitchens producing the broth in which float Uncle Ziggy Freuds dumplings of our id, ego and super-ego would float, making them are our own personal Seinfeldian soup nazis, walking us along the way to a biologically inevitable future, us serving, slurping and savoring the procreating pedestrian soup that has walked wherever we walked, having never taken a day off for Lent.

Things were looking up and it was time to make a move...

segue 9
somethings are for free

It was buried deep inside and behind her on my knees, her mouth and my ear almost one, when I heard her say "I'm on the pill"; I started bending her supple frame over the edge of the bed, suddenly wanting, needing to put my entire body inside her grippingly friendly mailbox, an odd delivery (maybe not so from the rumors of housewives and sancho the mailman) indeed, but now that I knew it was open with a 99% reliable welcoming party at the gate of her uterus for a deposit, I began to grow thicker in the glow of knowing that no dump trucks were going to be required today, that a full fledged bare back delivery was being called to be made, when my left knee slid off the side of the bed, causing us both to tumble onto the floor, still somehow connected.

I had had enough of this, and flipped her onto her back, the stiff, red polyester carpet promising rug burns for all, no charge!, and us not even feeling or caring about the freebie...

CHAPTER 14
the peering eyes of the third floor

I was still quite in control of my trip after my 5-second Darwinian epiphany and The Booz said it was time to hit Upper Haight and it sounded alright to me. I just wanted to wash my hands and clear out of this part of town pronto. A bus stopped just past the corner of the alley we rounded out of and Broadway and we, without a word, jumped on it, not caring where it went, me with my hand inside my jacket pocket, The Booz fishing in his jeans for the appropriate change for the two of us to ride this convenient mass transit getaway car or sorts.

He grabbed our tickets and flopped down next to me in the seat.

"Where is it?"

"Last I saw he picked it up and walked away with it. What kind of sicko you think I am anyhow dude? No souvenier wanted or needed"

"The blade jerky"

Previously lost in my semi-transcendental justification for gouging the guys eye out, I had forgotten all about the pig sticker, and realized I had never let go of it. It was in my pocket, still in the very tight grip of my fingers.

"I can't let it go"

"What do ya mean"

"Like I-can't-let-it-go (making up my own sort of sign language) man. I keep trying to release my fingers from the handle but they're not doin' it"

"Don't worry about it. All in good time. Just leave it where it is for the moment."

"Lets just not talk about it right here, right now"

"I can do that"

"Are we going the right way?"

"Looks like it. We should hit Divisadero cause we caught a good break on this bus and its western route down Broadway. We can go home before hitting Murios to get you cleaned up and into fresh clothes. Zip yer jacket up jerky, there's a bunch of that freaks red croovy on it"

I closed my jacket with my left hand as best I could as I couldn't zip with this blade securely sort of super glued into the palm of my right hand. The bus rolled due west, and all the sudden it started hitting me.

I couldn't stop trembling.

The Booz tried to look nonchalant.

The windowpane was on its way to coming back around for a second wave.

I felt pale and flushed at the same time, the acid making my head start to spin a bit, the anxiety of the violence (acids violins stringing along in my head, violets for the dark garden of his eye socket?) putting me on edge, the trembling, deep inside, shaking hands with Mishkin in a purgatorial part of my intestines.

The bus let us off pretty much at the top of our street and it was a 30 second walk to our apartment building. It was still light out, dinner time was coming upon us, and we were both thankful that there weren't too many people on the street. I inquired about having beer in the fridge or not, he said we had a couple, and I felt a little better, yet still couldn't let go of the damned pig sticker.

We hopped in the lift. The doors were about to close when an elderly black woman, plump and hunched over by her massive mammaries, asked us to hold the lift by sticking her cane in between the doors as they tried to shut like a bi-valve.

"Well thank ya thank ya boys. Y'all such polite boys to keep this e-le-vatuh for a tired old woman after her afternoon stroll. Lawdy it sho' does get that cir-que-lation goin them walks do mhmmm"

We both knew it was The Booz's charge to handle this, my tongue tied, stolen by an alley cat that ran around the corner of the restaurant where they threw out the dirty dish water...

"You bet ma'am. What floor you stopping on?"

"Ooooooh and you's sooo poh-lite too! Wantin' to hep an old woman, um-um-mph! My daughter should be as lucky to meet the big, strong likes of you tell you what. You them new boys up on 4 ain'tchya? I saw this one (jutting a disapproving and well knobbed thumb as yours truly) today banging on this old e-le-vatahs doo's and makin' an awful racket. Oh lordy me I does go on doesn't I? I'z on 3 son"

With that The Booz pushed the black button with a 3 engraved on its plastic face, as well as the one with 4 on its mug. I thought I was going to lose my mind with all her inocolous verbal fodder. My mind suddenly began telling me that this woman knew what I had done, my guilt and fear bubbling away like cooking gravy for the sausage and biscuits and I knew that there was only one way to remedy that. Without thought my right hand slid out of my jacket pocket and down by my right thigh. When the lift arrived at the third floor I desperately wanted to drag its ginsu-y goodness across her throat and shove her out of the open door and into her own floors hallway, yet couldn't and quickly jammed it back into my right hand jacket pocket again, cutting through the lining and opening a nice little part of myself just above the waist and below my ribcage, around where people have what are affectionately referred to as love handles.

"Well, it sho was nice meeting you young man" she chirped to The Booz.

"I promise I won't make any more trouble here ma'am. I was just horsing around"

"Well, you don't looks like no cowboys or no Injuns neiver sos its best you leave that horsing around to thems. And thank you young man, I'mma hold ya to it! Mhmmm I will sho' nuff'!"

She got out of the lift and I wanted to puke. I forced the mouthful of booze, food and bile back down my gullet and into my belly. Upon arriving on our floor, I floated out of the lift on dragon breath and twice swallowed bourbon, roast beast and french fries.

He got the door open quickly and we walked into the foyer (if thats what you could call the foot and a half long and wide opening at the mouth of the door and of our kitchen), me shoving past him a little en route to that bottle of JD. I gulped greedily from its teat and swallowed, not sure if i would be able to keep it down. The Booz hung his jacket on the back of the bohemouth and started opening those cold beers.

"Here smacky, drink this and take yer coat off. I wanna clean that blade off and give it some flame time. I don't want to nick myself with that scumbags blood on it, who knows what the kinda nastiness he has floating around in there"

It hit me like a rhino running roses down in a rampage. I ran to the toilet where I promptly puked up the contents of my stomach. The acid made me believe that I had left part of my guts (but never my mishkin) in the bowl as well.

"DUDE! Are you OK?"

Pig sticker still stuck to my hand, I came out of the vomitorium and it was when I started taking my jacket off, revealing where the blade had gashed me in my haste, that I saw real fear for me in someone's eyes for the very first time.

He looked terrified, as if his saying it somehow made it happen. He didn't know about what almost happened in the lift and how I had pricked myself. I lied...

"I jabbed myself getting on the bus and didn't want to worry you about it on there. Too many people around man"

"OK OK OK OHHHH FUCK FUCK FUCK MAN, what the hell are we gonna do with that man? I mean, the thing, your side, OH FUCK MAN OH FUCK!"

"OK OK man, c'mon, just, just relax man. I'm sure I'm fine. Just, you have to do something for me, ok. You promise me you'll do this one thing for me Booz, please"

"OK Ok man, what?"

"Wash the blade, put it over the flame until its like branding iron hot and cauterize this gash...it won't stop leaking and I am NOT going to a hospital emergency room on acid with a suspicious knife wound, you dig? They have to call the cops on these matters from what I hear. If the guy had something, I am screwed as of this moment anyway. I will have a blood test after I sober up in a day or two, OK?"

"C'mon man, you gotta be kidding right? I mean, like, who the hell cauterizes wounds anymore anyhow hunh?"

"If you have any better suggestions I'm all ears bro...really, no sarcasm. But this bleeding has to stop, you know it, I know it and the gash knows it."

"Ok man look, why don't you take a shower and I will get this all ready fer ya. There's a little bottle of iodine in the medicine chest behind the mirror."

"And who the hell has iodine in this day and age? What generation are you from man? My great-grandmother has iodine in her medicine chest"

Recalling my own personal medicine chest, I wondered if there weren't a magical cure in there....

"Just shut up, throw that shirt in the trash and take a hot shower to wash all that blood off of of you. You'll feel better, trust me. And wash that jab out really well too."

I did trust him and did as I was instructed. I threw my shirt in the trash and the blade into the sink, where The Booz was preparing to wash it with a pair of kitchen tongs and some rubbing alcohol he had produced, also from the medicine chest. The cut wasn't nearly as bad as we had originally suspected, the bulk of the blood being mine and not the flashers, which was, on some level, a big relief. I took some salt into the shower in a glass with me and scrubbed my wound out rigorously with a salt and water past with a toothbrush, not really knowing why I was doing it, but it made sense at the time. It, despite its prime location on my body, did not tickle. Would snakebite juice save me? Is there any of that hiding amongst Doctor Booz's olde thym-e medicine chest full of cure-alls? Was there a cactus juice saave secrety tucked away in there? If I packed it in psilocybin would the spores greedily drink the poison from the area?

Once out of the shower I toweled off and after wrapping said towel around my waist, walked out into the living room, from where I could see The Booz holding the pig sticker over the blue gas flame of the stove. I was relieved somehow that our range wasn't electric and walked over to him with the Tincture of Iodine in my hand. He informed me that Sugarbush was on her way with some essentials and I was neither here nor there about it.

"What do ya think?"

"I think you gotta start going back to the gym"

"Thank you Doctor Uncle Sphinctah-boy. The cut ya mook, does it look like we gotta brand me?"

The ebbing of the blood had all but stopped and we exchanged an uncertain glance.

"Man, I don't really know. I mean, it seems to have stopped and I don't really think firebranding yer love handle is going to do anything more than make people think we're having a pig roast"

"Well, I'm definitely at a loss for people to call as a medical reference on this subject...my old man would know but do I really want to call him at work to ask him? The raised eyebrows of a Jewish father can be felt through telephone lines from here to Tel Aviv and I am not really feeling like explaining all of this on a head full of acid. Aaaaand, there's NO WAY I can tell him the truth and being an unbelievably bad liar will raise the eyebrows. I knew I shoulda brought my Encyclopedia Brittanica with me!"

"I doubt your edition from the 50's will have any mention of todays contemporary diseases of the blood...a book on sports medicine would help as much"

"Keep it up laughing boy and I'll 23-skidoo you!"

We both gave a sort of nervous little laugh and the decision was silently made to abandon branding me when he produced some gauze, medical tape and some antibacterial cream. I cleaned it out with some of the rubbing alcohol, dabbed the hole in my side with the Iodine tincture until I was satisfied I could do no more good by applying any more, added the cream and put the gauze pad on it. Doc Booz taped me up and I went into my room to change. We never spoke of it again without being prompted by booze, the God of Booze, or inane and agnostically unknowable events.

segue 10
this baby got sauce

I mounted her again quickly, pinning her knees behind her ears like a yoga yogi, making her look suddenly and momentarily like a bunny rabbit who's ears had cute little green painted toe nails on their ends. Was I about to make hasenpfeffer? Sure seemed like I was about to do something! The nails on her hands were digging ditches deeply into my back, dragging up from my lowest of lombars almost to their very top by the base of my neck. I was the one who bucked this time, feeling the duality of pain and pleasure from the busted corpusles and breached epidermis and I was anxious to get myself back into her mink lined glove...

CHAPTER 15
ohhh that smell and the "royal dis"

Sugarbush showed up not too long after we had sorted out my moronically acquired knife wound, she looked lightly drunk, perhaps a little stoned. Unbeknownst to me, The Booz had instructed her to buy a few different colors of hair dye without telling her why as well as not telling her any of the details of our adventure that shook down in an alley in North Beach. She arrived and looked like she needed a nap and, after dropping the bag on the kitchen counter and a little smooch for him on the shoulder (him towering over her by his birth given heigth and her lack of it), promptly went into The Booz's bedroom to take a little "nappy nap", closing the door behind her. I smelled that familiar and as of yet unrecognizable smell I had encounted hours before when I was unloading the Silver Hatchback and disregarded it as being part of our new digs when I said;

"You didn't tell her did ya"

"Noooo, not yet, but you know one of us will at some point."

"The fewer that know the better"

"Well "at some point" could mean down the road a lot further than now couldn't it jerky"

I agreed; the longer the time the better, it was a benign and sordid instance that provoked many different emotions within me; fear (primarly of incarceration...jail an unappealing notion for a crime of this magnitude on so many levels), loathing (was it self loathing or loathing the not so loquacious yet innately lewd letch that lead me down the excremental path he had?), excitement from the moment of primal, cro-mag hunter/defender like violence, or was my fear really my fear of the desire to carry on, thirsty and waiting in some dark shadows of my mind, or in the streets of San Francisco? What the hell was happening inside this head of mine? Was it the acid? I disagreed with myself that it was; it had attempted a second coming of sorts on the bus and was refused entry by some cognisant part of my mind that knew the importance of clarity in moments such as these. A full understanding of what went down was imperitave and I had somehow thwarted the LSD's attempt to regain control, for the moment at least.

"What's in the bag"

"What bag?"

"The bag that Sugs brought over...whats she doing here anyhow? I thougth we were Secret Squirrell on this"

"We are, quit being so paranoid. She went to the pharmacy to get this stuff for you, you cornea cornholing kook."

For that little jibe he got a look from my own glazzballs that threateningly begged him to quit, and he acquiesced. He opened the bag and dumped several different Miss Clairol boxes on the table. It looked like she had gotten a rainbow of colors to change my appearance in the event some cops had been tipped off. Of course it never occurred to either of us and we never suspected that The Booz could be fingered in any of this at all, me being the assailant, and he an innocent bystander...of sorts...

"Ohhhh nooo, no way man. No fuckin way"

"Dude, I would ask if you were high but I know you are. You have to be joking to not believe this is a pragmatic solution to your looks being altered. Its important man, you want someone to notice you?"

He also produced a pair of shears for pulling a Delilah on my Samsonian head of hair. I was disheartened yet swallowed the bitter pill of my disdain, understand its practical application in this particular instance.

"So do we cut n dye or dye n cut?"

"Think its best we dye and cut"

"Seems like a waste and its my hair so lets cut it first...JESUS this sucks"

I said this with a real vehemence. I was not only expressing my displeasure in this particular part of our day, but at all of the stupidity of the eyeball folly. I was agitated and it was not going to be easily abated.

He went into his room and got his clippers as well, at which i cringed. I was not a happy camper, I was an agitated camper and the song we were singing around the bonfire was "If yer a jerky and ya know it cut yer hair (clap clap), if yer a jerky and ya know it cut yer hair (clap clap) if yer a jerky and ya know it and ya really wanna show it if yer a jerky and ya know it cut yer hair (clap clap)"

I grabbed one of the barstools from the opposite side of the counter that separated kitchen from living room, placed it in the kitchen and invited him to go for it, his smile widening in a purely devilish grin. We threw some of the day's newspaper down on the floor under the barstool and he slyly asked me if I wanted to make the first cut. I gave him the appropriate "Bite me fuck-o, just get it done" and he laid into my locks, much to my despair. After he had cut nice, curly lengths of my locks to the floor, we had to inch a bit closer to the wall socket for him to plug the clippers in to "even it all out" as he put it.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaait wait wait wait wait a minnie Sphinctey Sweeney Todd, I want to have a gander. No high and tight Jarhead cuts for me, especially if you are gonna dye whats left of it."

"Fair enough fruitcake, go and have a look. It ain't as bad as ya think, yet"

I made my way to the bathroom to have a look. He had only trimmed the length (not too bad either from the way I saw it, although, the mirror began to wash the acid back into the fore shore of my mind) and my simple request of not looking military seemed well in hand.

"I think we should dye it now, then dry it and then put the finishing touches to it"

"OK, (and in his best gay latino hairstylist lisp rolled off) soooooo, wat color chooo teek choo quieres mijo?"

"Think you a funny Frankenstein head havin' mutha (insert Shaft music theme here with the "shut yo mouf" ) dontchya?"

His giggle of sorts told me that he did think he was funny, regardless of any of my slanderous assaults. I examined my choices. Italian Black, Irish Red, Teutonic Blonde, Platinum Marilyn, Canary Yellow, Hershey's Chocolate Milk affectionately named "Brown and Sassy"...I was at a crossroads and got uppity again.

"Wait"

I went to my room and I realized that that familiar yet still unrecognizable smell had begun to permeate our apartment. I ignored it, paying more mind to the paint chips that were crinkling and getting trampled under foot. No "oh you poor little paint chips" here, I had no qualms about squashing their randomly scattered little society. I began searching within my bags for my cache of head toys, when a blood curdling scream came from The Booz's bedroom. We both jumped a little, looked at each other through my door and took hurried steps to his room He opened the door only to find out what the reason for her screams were. Sugarbush had been snoozing on her back and we could see the ugly little bastard scurrying away as we entered.

"A huge cockroach just fell off the ceiling, onto my face and tried to go in my mouth"

Ahhhh, now I knew, it was the smell of America's recently delegalized insecticide DDT, fumigation from the third floor being bombed that I hadn't been able to pin down, and it had sent the little bastards running for cover up to the fourth floor and no doubt down to the second floor as well.

We exchanged a look.....and started laughing, and oohhhhh what a laugh it was! To imagine vunerable little Sugs, snoozing soundly with her mouth open in an innocent, cute little snore, and a roach, about the size of a Bic lighter landing on her face and making a move into the warmest, safest place it could find in a time of crisis, her mouth, was just a little too much for me, no to US, to not begin just fully lose our shit in laughter. I about pissed my pants as I hit the floor, my hands gripping my sides, The Booz was still erect and "guughgugugughgugugghh-ing", his hands trying to fight off Sugarbush's angry hands advances at the lack of sensitivity of her man.

"You guys are such assholes!" (not the first time in an hour we had been dubbed this in the same way mind you).

She, obviously, found it not only not amusing, but was so pissed off that she, once again, turned on her heel and left, with a giant "You guys suck, thanks for the royal dis" to boot and whisked out, perhaps wanting to brush her teeth and have a good rinse of mouthwash after. It seemed obvious to me that she would not want to see us the rest of this day, no matter what the circumstances, and especially would not be game at staying at our place, not just tonight, but for a while...

It felt like hours before we regained consciousness from our new found folly and when we did, I chose to go Irish, myself being an American mutt, a 1/4 of that being Irish and it, quite literally, took all the sting out of my fresh wound and the days events. We opened all the windows to air the DDT's stench out, me lighting incense to try and mask its deep, rank odor.

CHPATER 16
the Tao of DDT and a dye job

After a well earned laugh (too bad it was at Sugs expense, but, these things have a way of happening after all) over a nicely rolled doob, we got back to the task at hand.

"So, yer going with 'Luck of the Irish' are ye"

"I'm sure it'll suit me better than 'platinum marilyn'"

"Couldn't agree more, we can use a bunch of 'em and make ya look like a Jackson Pollack painting"

"I have little faith in your art work as a "hair stylist "(this loaded with sarcasm mind you) my brother, reminds me of the hazelnut extract meatloaf from days of yore"

He liked that jibe about as much as a finger in the eye, that particular meatloaf being our drunken creation one night in culinary school in his apartments' kitchen that took days to purge the extract of hazelnut from our systems. I was, quite possibly, the worst thing either of us had had a hand in creating in our new and illustrious new careers as chefs, yet we refused to not eat it; we made it and damnit we ate the whole thing and, in a word, it was vile viLE VILE! Disgusting to the point that we almost booted it out of our systems that very night, but, we held it down, and both smelled like hazelnut cookie perfume for days. It didn't go unnoticed either, and neither of us would own up to it in the face of classmates and instructors alike, blaming a spill in the pastry shop for days at our respective outlets whilst in coolinary school. I can still taste it to this day somehow, and I assure you that it reminds me that some things just are not worth remembering, no matter how strongly they punctuated your life.

After this little flashback, we agreed he may not be suited to dying my already butchered hair mulitcolor and red was as safe a bet as any. We had opened all windows and the balcony doors as well to escape the unsavory odor from the not so enticing and most definately not floral DDT fumigation. It was very, very, VERY bad. The odor, acrid. Permeating. Relentless. Unforgiving. Sticking in your sinus like a bit of aspirin, a nugget that just sat there, melting its way into white hot pain, deep into the base of your sinus, unrelenting in its mission. An odor that humans should not have to endure in my mind.

It had been outlawed for a reason, outlaws not being a bad thing to me under normal outlaw circumstances and by the seemingly frivolous and at times apparantly "no holds barred" rules of the outlaw, but, in this stench I found reason for fumigational racism, there being more and more advances in chemistry these days, leading to somewhat "healthier" options to killing a bug that has been secured a future after the onset of nuclear war. Los cucarachas and the bees were to overtake the world and set things in order once homo-sapiens were done raping and pillaging their mother, Mother Earth, and I believe if I could understand their language, their common message would be so very Taoist in its base in the three jewels of compassion, moderation, and humility, that perhaps we should learn their way of speaking...

Taoist thought focuses on non-action, spontaneity, transformation and emptiness, much as we perceive animals to do, going throughout their life based on existence rather than unnecessary gain of consumption beyond their means, not having the bastard step child of consumerism, banks, credit or deferred responsibility to jade their perspective, that was all ours, for better or worse, for richer and in many cases poorer, in sickening greed and healthy wealth.

The emphasis placed on the link between people and nature, this link that lessens the need for rules and order in a contemporary societal way, leading one to a better understanding of the world and one's surroundings, seems so non-republican in a way, and in a different way so very undemocratic that the law of Darwin seems so very plain and true that it may serve a species well to live by the simple laws of a simpler jungle, without all the "contemporary" hitches we have devised to capture people via commerce....when was the last time you saw a bengal tiger on discovery channel asking a loan shark for a few more days, the Toucan negotiating a work contract, the giraffe asking a Rhino for to put a lean on what leaves he has to eat today with the promise of more to come tomorrow in that Wimpy-esque twirl of "Pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" way? Reverence for nature and ancestor spirits is common in popular Taoist edict, yet not in contemporary society.

It makes a man like myself wonder what those "cavemen" had to worry about, aside, of course, from "boy that glacier is getting close" or "how am i going to cook that wooley mammoth and make some wooley socks so we can sit around and watch OUR nature channel, the sky"...but maybe I am giving too much credit to the cognisant thought of our predecessors....or, are all those different bibles right and we all sprouted from their own contrived works of a history passed down, many times verbally in their origins, that are laden with fiction, one will never know.

As we dyed my hair in the bathroom I inquired;

"Have they been doing every day this since you got here or what?"

"What"

"Uhm, the fumigation ya big mook"

"It seems like they go weekly and top to bottom then back, least that the pattern since I got the place"

"So I am guessing when you moved in, they did our floor"

"Who knows but tell you this, it seemed a hell of a lot like it...no bugs until you showed Onkel Freakshow"

"And this, now, is my fault for arriving or it's just a part of life here then? Do they post a notice or something?"

"Seems like everyone knows the drill"

"Damn, guess we best learn that drill and make ourselves scarce"

"Right about that"

It began to rain, the rain's light drizzle making me fall more and more in love with the smoky incense wafted sound of Steely Dan's sandalwoody, sexy, sultry San Francisco, just the thought of her brings the sounds of Steely Dans' music to mind for some reason...and we've got roaches the size of a Bic lighter. Somehow it didn't fit into my idealistc picture but, understanding my new neighborhood more and more, I knew what I must do. I immediately accepted that there was no escaping this pest infiltration and infestation, an infestation that made it seem more like we were the outsiders to an insect world that was just waiting for Uncle George Herbert Walker Bush or one of his "buttons" (as mafiosos are so fond of calling hit men) to push the proverbial red button with his big toe forward toward nuclear nuggets green lantering lighting the skies and cities to get rid of all those pesky humans, mammals, buildings and such, so bugs could finally live in harmony...perhaps we are destined for a future perfect such as this, but who knows what goes on in the collective bug worlds mind but them anyhow, hell, maybe they're Taoist after all, just without Steely Dan, that we know of anyhow...maybe they have Luther Vandross too, and his name is different, and the vibes, the same.

segue 11
back with the pelicans

On the floor of my bedroom, the California Slender Salamander was home again. incarcerated in a jail as snug as a tailor made, mink lined baby harp seal skin glove...warm, snug and as inviting as if the Greek God of Getting Naked himself, Eros, had it cast from a model of his mothers own notoriously pleasurable sugarbush, Aphrodite, just for my pleasure today....

The Salamander preened and arched, goose-necked and twisted, rubber-necked and slithered, dove deep deep deeeeep into the warm, fur lined volcano. I backed off and let her legs down and with a flick of my wrist she left her back for her stomach and the sudden twist nearly tore The Salamanders' head clean off.

I moaned so loud I thought they could hear it in Montreal

Trapped back on Alcatrazs' tight, cozy, comfortable domicile that he never wanted to be away from ever again, The California Slender Salamander Snake, slow and cool, moved amongst the pelicans as they smiled their labial grin...

CHAPTER 17
a redskin adventure and a mambo

He was a young Injun scout who died an untimely death at natures' hand with a head full, unbeknownst to him, of psylocibin. He was a young man on an expedition, hungry with only a little deer jerky in his pouch and had found a large collection of assorted mushrooms under the cool branches of the woods. Nature, being a giving and, in the same breath, brutal mistress under the watchful eye of Mother Earth, has claimed many a victim and in a veritable plethora of ways. She can giveth and taketh away to sound mildly biblical...but then again, those pesky Injuns didn't have a copy of The New Testament did they! Not that it would have helped a lick either...maybe good to start a fire with at best...


An American Indian is a person who descended from the original inhabitants of what is is now the good ole US of A. Columbus encountered the natives and named the people whom he met "Indians," believing that he had reached India. Columbus was in need of more than just a better map (the world not really being flat after all!) and was terribly off course and of course, mistaken, but his legacy lives on in many ways and the name of the land's native people still stays to this day, although its more politically correct-amundo to call them Native Americans. It is widely believed that the American Indians migrated to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge. They evolved culturally, socially, economically, and politically into largely diverse groups and historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists generally divide the history of Indian people in Ohio into five time periods, our young indian scout was from was is deemd "The Historic Period" which goes from 1650 to 1843 and due to their presence, Miami University of Ohio, is named as it is to this day.

The spirit of the dead scout, who I will name Flying Squirrel (Rocky for short), is reported to have been from said Miami Tribe, who originally lived in Indiana, Illinois, and southern Michigan at the time of European arrival. They moved into the Maumee Valley about 1700 and soon became the most powerful Indian tribe in Ohio.

The Miamis were allies of the French until around 1740. British traders moved into the Ohio Country and were forced out by the French, and the Miamis re-allied themselves with the French again until the British victory in the Franco-Indian War. The Miamis were especially fearful of additional white settlers (and with good reason, I would have been) moving into the Ohio Country and fought with the British against the Americans. After the defeat of the British, the Miami Indians continued to fight the Americans lead by Little Turtle (said to be the father of Rocky) who was a great leader of the Miamis and helped lead his forces to defeat two American armies in battle. As history shows us, two wasn't quite enough to keep them on their land and were eventually forced to give it up, and were, consequently, forced out of Ohio.

In simpler, earlier times, before those pesky Europeans (French and Brit alike), there was a lot less to worry about in the grand scheme of unnatural danger. Sure you might get charged by a moose, wild boar or step on a twig and get a splinter that lead to gangrene, but it was the age old tale of Nature against man and Flying Squirrel/Rocky was just out surveying the outskirts of his tribes village when he encountered a place of real and true beauty, a place we currently call the Bluffs. It was after eating a variety of the aforementioned mushrooms that he, quite literally, stumbled upon, then down and to his death, a very deep ravine, who's face is steep and unforgiving rock, who's fall, was deadly. His head full of mushrooms may have lead to his accidental death, or perhaps he really believed he could fly; maybe he could fly and the new meal took his magic powers away, maybe he just ran out of Trixie Dust, who knows. It is said that what we now call "the Bluffs" is haunted by the troubled spirit of Rocky/Flying Squirrel, and those who dare to enter this particular section of the woods, upon hearing his cries, are turned from humans into toadstools. People who have taken psilocybin are said to be exempt from this curse that enables him to keep his place of death and final resting safe and to himself, and it is said he looks over and protects those who are "enlightened" and mistakenly venture too close to the edge of the Bluffs and could plunge to an untimely and unnecessary death.

It was this bit of lore in mind in Dante's kitchen after my tete-a-tete with Tyke and a nice long hot shower that I brewed a big, strong batch of mushroom tea with a touch of lemon, sugar, honey and sasafrass root, the Lipton in the little individual bags steeping nicely when, feeling an unusual chill, I spied a tightly wound bunch of dried sage hanging in the corner and decided to burn it to wave everywhere, hopefully expelling any bad omens or demons.

Dante returned from his morning chores outside with a look of alarm on his face.

"Whats burning man"

"That sage you had hanging in that corner, didn't think you'd mind"

"I suppose that depends on why you decided to burn it"

I went through a Cliffs Notes version of what had been bouncing around on the inside of that cranium of mine and, as his smile began to widen, his moustache did a little dance. I had been tasting the tea for the appropriate balance of sweetness, lemon and sasafrass and it seemed to be getting up and on me quicker and harder than I had expected.

I started to grin, then giggle. Dante looked at me, smiled more after noticing the minimal amount of shrooms laying inside the bag on the kitchen counter, and started to laugh.

"Whats so funny man"

"Uhhh, well, I wasn't sure if I put enough 'shrooms in this here pot but, uh, well, "

.....the giggles were taking me over and they started to spread to Dante.

"Here, drink some of this"

"How much have you had"

"Not much"

"Then I'll wait until just before we leave, I don't want to be driving through town looking like you seem like you're feelin right now'"

.....more giggling from me...

"Yer moustachio is doing a mambo across yer upper lip"

"I definately ain't having any now then"

"So, why did ya burn the sage, I was saving that"

We retired to the living room where we had played cribbage the night before and laid out the whole story about Rocky, the bluffs and the ancient Injun curse. He laughed at me. I didn't feel any more silly for it than I already was about everything, I was just feeling silly PERIOD. I promised to replace the sage. He said it was a good enough reason for him and went to get things in order for the day. He tossed me a nice bag of sativa and, as I had been appointed to joint rolling duty, went at the task. I was a little too giddy to roll anything of beauty and, when Spunk arrived, I delegated it to him, myself having made what was looking to be a hearty batch of tea. I had sifted the tea after an hour of steeping the bags and 'shrooms in it, ditching the tea bags and squeezing the remaining juice from the 'shrooms. Whoever was going to drink tea, and there were about six of us in the end, all had to have their share of the "mushroom dregs". People would wince at the thought, but waste not want not was called, and that was the end of any cringing.

It was around this time that Shroom T himself came in from his slumber in the guest room and said

"who's burning rag weed"

"Its sage bro"

"Why"

"Don't ask, you thirsty?"

"Yeah"

I iced down a round of glasses of tea for the three of us when Joe Spleef showed up with Emis Jayus. They had been part of the exodus in the middle of the night before's events and knew the agenda for the day. I handed them both glasses as well, we toasted the irony of Shroom T drinking 'shroom tea and I doled out the dregs from the brewing of the tea. I washed them down with hearty slugs from my glass of tea, some of the other boys who hadn't eaten yet, made peanut butter and dreg sandwiches. I recommended throwing a banana and some bacon in there, which fell on deaf ears. By this time Dante emerged, his thin mustachio still doing its little dance when he smiled as I handed him his tea and dregs and we threw some Allman Brothers on to prepare for evacuation procedures out to the Bluffs.


segue 12
The Salamander slammed home hard and deep into her sugary bush from behind, crushing her volcanic indigo berries, the Salamander preparing to send a veritable civilization of mini me's trooping off to the welcoming committee that awaited them at her uterus' wall. 200 million were looking to grab a foothold and start a new life, her body's fortress well defended by the attack by her (in my opinion) excellent choice and foresight in using oral contraceptives.

CHAPTER 18
tea totalling in the afternoon

We all got hit as hard as three years of rain in Macondo, a strong, steady and unrelenting downpour, an invasion, overtaking our minds, bodies and senses. I started getting squirrely, itching for something and not knowing just what. Did I need a drink? A doob? A cigarette? More tea? My mind kept telling me that the rains torrents had a long way to go, soaking into every inch, every fork split nook and cranny of my soul and I felt saturated, flooded, about to start treading when I stood up, fidgety and implacable and light of being, heart and mind. Then, without warning, a sudden burst of light came through the torrents and it hit me like a fish, madly flipping when out of water, or a lightning bolt thrown by Zeus himself, with Thor's hammer creating the big booming crash that accompanied such a bolt; we needed to be outside, yesssss, outside, outside is good, cold, the air clean and fresh. The confines of the house quickly becoming far too small to keep all six of our heads in there, they all growing full and well above 3 feet high when Emis, through the smoke wafting in the warm air conversation, chirped up

"Lets go play with the dogs"

Ahhhh, yes, a grand idea. I couldn't have agreed more and, cautiously looking around in case someone were listening in on the conversation going on in my head between different government offices, judges chambers and playgrounds with that thing you spin on...damn what was that called I called out to the office or literature, but they had to contact the Thesaurical wing while I thought "Why didn't I think of that?" Lets let the dogs out of their pen and toss a ball or a disc or someting around for them to chase. As long as we were outside, things would come together. The tea took a heady buzz to us all with that aforementioned quickness and we were all at a bit of a loss what to do with it; the dogs, yeah, the dogs.

Dante was quick on the draw

"Hey man, don't let the dogs out, they see anything move in the trees and its not just you followin' the tracks in the snow"

I agreed and disagreed all at once and was torn between the exhuberance of playing with some fun doggies and the toil of tracking animals mid chase through the woods. What if we just let one out? Put him on his run? Years before, when Emis and I lived together with another cat we'll call Carl, I had fallen asleep on the sofa. The next morning, he woke me up, shaking me a bit, calling my name and, when I had my first moment of consciousness and, just as I opened my mouth to say "Whaaat", his index finger went in and out of my mouth faster than it takes to get a really good papercut with a hit of high toned window pane before asking me if I had class or not. I answered him, fully knowing what he had just done by saying

"Not anymore, whats the plan"

"Well, I just took mine before I got ya so I dunno. My mom and dad should be at work so we can drive down to Cinci, grab my dog and hit the woods for the afternoon. "

It was autumn, must have been late September, when its just warm enough to dress lightly, just chilly enough after 5 to throw the leather on and I smiled

"Knew there was a reason I live with you."

"Ok well, shower up and lets git outta here...we're losing time"

"Which one did you put on my tongue"

"One of those purple ones you told me to save 'in case of emergency, windowpanes', and this qualifies"

"What man, what could I have missed since we got home from closing the bar?"

"The sunrise"

"Doooood, did you sleep"

"A little, anyway I was gonna hit ya last night but"

"But what"

"You looked like you needed the sleep"

"Good thinking, just wake me up to it after a 6 hour snooze"

"Hurry up"

We hit the road out of town quickly and made it down to his folks house in Cinci to pick his shepard up. He didn't anticipate his mother leaving church so early and coming home for lunch at all. She had actually taken the day off, her car, in the garage, which, mind you was impossible to imagine as

"She hates closing the garage door and always leaves it in the driveway"

A rash of minor burgaleries prompted his folks to install an automatic opener, his folks being up in years, unbeknownst to the two of us, the burgle bit i mean, his folks were the same age as my grandparents at the time. As we opened the front door, it now about 10:45 a.m. and we were flying, HARD when the scent of fried chicken hit the both of us like a ton of bricks. He looked over his shoulder at me, the surprise and fear all written like the scribblings of an autistic child all over my face

"No"

"Shit man, I think my mom's home. She's usually at church this time of day...

(she did charity work and was a hard working christian)

... but I don't know, lemme check first"

"Nonononononnoooooo, dude, I can't meet yer mom like this, no way"

It was then it was sealed into our fate, his mother approached from the stairs on the right

"I heard the door and, what are you boys doing here?"

"Came for the dog"

"You boys hungry, well well, its been a while since I've seen you! My your hair is getting long isn't it"

...it felt like I had tied my shoelaces around my neck

"Yes ma'am, it sure is. "

...petrified, mortified, I was a mental eunuch with my tongue tied under my feet, or maybe stuck around my hips, tucked neatly into my belt

"Aren't your parents coming for a visit soon, (looking at her son) aren't his parents coming for a visit soon. We're really lookin' forward to meetin' them, you boys being friends and all"

"We just came to get the dog mama"

"Well you boys gotta stay for lunch now, I just fried up some chicken and it would be a waste not for you two young boys to have lunch"

I shifted weight uncomfortably in more places than you could imagine. These damn laces, my damn tongue...

He offered his hand to help her down the stairs, through the foyer and into the kitchen which was a bee-line, right at twelve o'clock, straight ahead. Without realiziing it I followed him, getting a reassuring wink over the shoulder as we took the strides into the house. I suddenly felt the need to inform her of my cigarette habit and with a quick smile stole right back out the back door and off to the side of the house. I was peaking. I was freaked out. I couldn't handle someone else's mom as a 19 year old guy peaking his ass of on acid. It was worse than having to go into a convenience store and I was freakin'. Emis reappeared.

"Hey man"

"Nononononooonoonononooooo, dude I just can't be in there right now, you know this'

"I know but we have to"

"Nonononononoooo man, this is a big addition to the plan and your mom is gonna know man"

"Look, finish the smoke, come in and eat or she will know and then she is gonna lay into me with a million questions all alone because you're the one acting weird"

"Fuck"

"Get in there"

I ate one piece of chicken with some potatoes and green beans and proclaiming to be full, much to the disbelief of his mom (boys like you are always hungry...are you feeling ok.....lady, if ya only knew), I stepped out for more of my, as she put it with flair, "a good way to mess your mind and body up"

I silently agreed and slipped out, going to his penned up shepard, who was a good friend of mine, playing with her through the fencing.

Emis emerged moments later, with his usual smile (that helped alot, tell ya) and a

"Let her out"

I did and got shepard all over me. We hit the car. We made it to the woods without incident and his dog ran lap after lap around us, marking territory in an ever widening circle, perhaps chasing a small furry creature a bit, but returning at first every two minutes, then five, then ultimatly ten for about the entire time we sat there in the middle of the foliage, the forest a million different shades of autumn hanging on her trees, in her air and on the ground on which we sat for many many hours, talking the day into a conversation as colorful, scattered and intricate as the forests leaves, me, all the while the two of us considering the importance of tetherball, psychadelics, music, and damn that was good fried chicken~! If I wasn't peakin so hard I would had more!

So, when Emis said "lets play with the dogs", that was the image my mushy, muddled mind manufactured immediately, and lamented Dante's dogs not knowing either of us as well as his bitch did.

I felt like I had more eyes than a potato. The music was lush and full but in the constant background there was the sound of silence. My fingers were interestingly attached to my hands somehow and we were all laughing and smiling so hard my face started to hurt. I needed fresh air, immediatly! and went out into the chilly early afternoon sun light, lighting a smoke and enjoying the universe finally putting it's proverbial yamaka on me, reminding me that there is something above watching, and watching over, me. I felt re-born and all the sudden that Marlboro tasted damn good, an invisible monkey went off to climb up someone else's vines, the crispy, deliciously sour green apple of the air inviting all of my senses on for a ride. I took my jacket off, unzipped my maroon sweater, left the scarf on and strolled about the yard, taking in the sun, seeing the not quite full moon in the afternoon sky and wondering if children remember as adults how good this feeling feels.

segue 13
the rising tide

The fit was indeed as true and honest as an earnest young bible thumper on communion day and as I turned her back onto her back, her internal grip furrying the salamanders' way along as I began to slowly, languidly, glide in and out of her, my eyes only straying from hers in the white hot bursts that were produced either by her fingernails on my back, or the strong tugs she had been applying to my hair. I loved it. She came forward to my slowly heaving chest above her, wrapping her pink little lips around my left nipple and locking her teeth down around and on it with a steadily growing firmness which increased in strength until it produced the target of her mastication, a stiff, firm, thick, hard shove from my Salamander while I moaned at the clenching pressure of her jaw. Softly she began to whisper out loud, to herself and to me,
fuck me
fuck me
fuck me
the cadence just slow enough to eek out of my imagination what I could do to get her from this slight volume to a full blown roar. I put my left leg on the outside of her right and saddled up, her left leg now going up on my shoulder. I couldn't hear her saying fuck me anymore now, all I could hear was
deeper
deeper
deeper
and I obliged up until my hips were crooked in hers, my hands roaming along the smooth curve of her ass cheek, my fingers beginning to rush along with intent along the slickness of her sweat dotted skin when I grabbed her foot from just behind my head, put the sole into my mouth, and started to apply the same pressure she had on my nipple. She squirmed more and more and I continued to push the salamander deeper, masticating her foot, letting the pressure subside with nibbles and then returning to the starting gate for a longer, harder, deeper chomp into her fleshy arch, her ocean ebbing closer and closer to a crash on the shores of my hips, my prick, burying itself for moments at a time within her, holding position, grinding her beautifully popped out clit. I felt like I was the one armed bandit and she was about to yell jackpot all over again and before she did is when I reached down grabbed her by the throat with my left hand...

CHAPTER 19
the bluffs and a redskin rendesvous

I hung out there for a while, marvelling at the trees, the melty glisten of (and on! how do they do that!) the snow. The doggies had peeked their heads out when I first left the building, hoping for Dante to appear and, upon seeing me, put themselves back at ease on the ground inside the house that Dante built for them. Shroom came out, simultaneously smelling smoky, skunky and firewoody, pupils bigger than when you are looking at coffee in a mug really close up, and just as dark.

"What you doin' holmes"

"Uh, ya know, I dunno, 'ts good out here"

"Ain't you cold or somethin'?"

"Winter on a sunny afternoon, busy but not as busy as in there"

"Yeah but, ain't you cold or somethin'?"

"Got my jacket here, its nice...apples"

"What apples"

"Nothing, (shaking my head) Ok , so , whats up? We gonna head out soon? The room was getting too small for my head"

"Yeah man, we're gonna drive down to High Street and leave the truck in the parking lot of the pizza joint/liquor barn and walk in from there"

"Good call. I want to ride in the back."

"No complaints here bro"

It seemed like I had been outside for a long time. Shroom told me it was less than five minutes. It was then I realized I was smoking the same cigarette and laughed. We went inside where supplies such as small water bottles (three of which held the remains of the tea) and bud cans were being divvied up amongst the six of us. I gave my money to Emis (as I have a tendancy to lose money when I'm like this), Shroom in charge of the communal smoking paraphenalia.

"Hey man, everyone have two lighters?"

Emis decided to drive as well so Dante, Spunk and Troy hopped into the pickup, Emis, Shroom and me in his old, beat up gray Honda.

We parked the wheels in the parking lot as planned, happy to be out of the confines of the car. Six grinning bozos with open bud cans spilled out of the vehicles. Noone but me noticed the cops inside grabbing their lunch, and I really really wanted a "grinder" all of the sudden.

We goofed out of the parking lot like a bunch of sailors in a '50 movie, walking, nudging, smiling, smoking, talking about nothing anyone sober could understand and it was about ten minutes until we reached the entry spot for the Bluffs.

I would swear I felt something, but then again, I was feeling a lot of things and wrote it off as just one more of the days illustrious and Monet addled moments. We filed one by one into a break in between homes, the Bluffs not really being a part of the park behind these homes that was patrolled or guarded by the park. The residents were old timers and generally didn't want to hassle with anyone that wanted to walk into the woods, after all, there's a hell of a lot of things to see in the forest and the Bluffs had a tale behind it that we all knew and didn't give much creedance to. It wasn't that complicated. All of us had been there many times before, just not collectively and definately not collectively 'shrooming.

And, it came to me that, as I walked through this foliaged vacant path of winter's naked trees...

I once met a frog
along my way down the road
under a leaf the frog lay
forest ground hiding her toad

"what business have you, tall one on this bog"
came to ask of me her toad
i only stroll on this type of day
"and I know what you seek on this road"

i then spied a fog
that came slow as if to me to bode
"you haven't far to stray
your mind wanders to a dark and colorful abode"

Comfort is within , I say, to the fair maiden frog
I am sure, your abode
I would be in debted to be light and gay
"then a brew of fugus into thy tea I shall load"

To smile, a light grog
this nectar in this humble abode
I felt light as hay
from the stool of the toad

Few fear the stool of the frog
said to me the toad
Many seek a different array
unlike you, forcing a mode

enjoy i hear as she kissed me with a hug
and into the random I strode
a mind within a day
on the stool of a good toad

Life was suddenly good, understandable, TRUE in the deepest sense of comfort it coming clear and head on that one of the keys to it all is finding the benign it the every day that allows you and to make it real, and intimate what things truly are

I breathed my real first true breath of the day, the universe, under Ra's strong yet momentary watchful eye blinded by a green so deep that only poets write of its intensity.

Lush, sweet air, cool yet not cold in the February afternoon, flushed us out and we followed our nose, like a knowing commercial Toucan in the cartooned minds eye of our plummage into the forest. The path clear, the destination realistic, this was no movie, no picnic, it was a quest, and as I watched squirrel leap from tree to tree, I wondered if they really could fly.

Joe Spleef, surprisngly, produced a pistol and I protested. He paid me no heed as he shot at Rocky and I lost it. It was when the boys were trying to cajole me into acquiesence when he hit a flying squirrel and I dropped down the steep, tree studded edge, my vision blacking with speed moving past inanimate objects and reaching hands.

My nose had tomato'ed. I was on my back. Disoriented. Everything was blurry. And the sounds of silence were broken by the yelps of concern. I immediately regained consciousness, and I was an angry skunk. I grabbed Dante's hand, him being an anchor to get me up the slope I had slid down and I was, once again, erect. I saw Joe Spleef and hit him square in the nose to extract what I in such a primal way needed, her name being payback. His glasses crunched under my right fist, my left knee hitting him in the back of his leg, by the sciatic nerve. He dumped over into a funny position and I laughed at that. Noone got it and I was held back by our four friends, exclamations sounding hard and loud. It was Dante that grabbed me by my head...

"What are you doing man?"

"Fuckin prick"

"What are you doing man?"

"Why shoot the fuggin squirrel?"

"What squirrel"

"Ask Spleef, he's a bike wreck of a prick"

"Ok okokokokok, hey HEY! WHERE ARE YOU?"

"Bluffs and an asshole brought a gun"

"So, whaddya want? Hunh?"

"Want to walk, wanna walk in and get to the bluffs"

"Ok then, you gonna be cool there"

"I'm not the one who blew his cool my man"

"Be that as it may (I struggle with him) Hey HEy HEY, stay with me."

"With you"

"Ok, you go and shake hands then"

"For who"

"For me"

"hmrmnmrhmmrhhmrhh....

fine, "

With this we all had a seat on the path, trading smokes, water, tea and joints, although no one would put me and Spleef together or within my grabbing reach. I was still hot and it would take the right type of cocktail to bring me into the realm of reason. It was Shroom that smoothed me out when he came next to me, joint in hand and said

"We're all here cuz we're tight, right?"

"Yeah"

"Well then, collect yer shit and let it go. Ammo has been loaded out and Spleef promises not to pull that shit out again. K?"

I couldn't reject this and after a few hits off the doob, we carried on our way to the Bluffs, four of six believing, two still wary and suspicious.



CHAPTER
two cats fucking deep in the heart of a big nosed Cowgirl from Texarcana

She was a handsome woman, not traditionally beautiful, misunderstood in that traditional sense of "real puuurty", but nonetheless beautiful from where I sat, her smoky, sultry Cathleen Turner as a Southern Belle-esque ways calling to me, her protuding probiscus calling out to me on some level I found exotic, arousing and unusually animal.

I had left Oxford the following Thursday morning, fully stocked with a high quality hangover, even better homegrown, several bags of well handled 'shrooms, an 8 ball for my head on the drive out and a small assortment of differently logo'ed LSD. It was a long week .of playing catch up and we had all lost a few days in there, not entirely sure where they went or what we spent them doing. What I was certain of is that I left half a week behind schedule and no amount of blow was going to make me do the straight shot to the West Coast with out stopping for food, lodging and a nice hot shower, which I did in Amarillo, TX. You may be asking yourself why I left my northern route for the southern one and the answer is very simple. It wasn't that much different in mileage for me to break my northern route to go down to Texas and get me some BBQ. Ever since I could remember I had always wanted to go and get me some down home Texas vittles and ideally some "southern hospitality", so I did. It made for a couple of longer days behind the wheel, but then again I wanted to go places I had never known or been, and that had never know or heard of me.

I stopped at a Circle K convenience store to fill up the tank for the next morning and to ask at which motel was best to stay. The skinny, pimply faced teenager behind the counter with a belt buckle that threatened to pull him to the ground stating "Everythings bigger in Texas" referred me to "La Quinta". I asked if it was in close proximity to a good BBQ restaurant and he named "The Cattle Call" as a local favorite, as well as it Thirsty Thursday, where "Shiners" were half off. I was pleased to hear that local beer was discounted and when asked if they really had good BBq, he replied

"The best 'round these parts friend, and its in a mall!"

The whole mall thing didn't blow my skirt up, but it made the choice safe and I was famished. It was around 8:30 pm and I made my way there to get me some good ol' down home Southern cooking, hit the hotel, check in, shower and relax after an almost 1000 mile drive from the outskirts of Cincinatti.

It was a young, busty, bee-hived Mabel, that strolled up to my table. She was not an unattractive woman for her age and you could tell she won a "Miss Something" pageant of something, her heyday not being too far in the past.

"Well heeeey hon how yewe dewin tonaight? What can I get fer ya? We got ice cold Shiners 2 fer 1 on account of it bein' Thursday and all. So what'll I be? Hey you ain't from around these parts are ya hon?"

She had been cracking her gum whilst taking my order and I must admit that I had a little yankee fear welled up in me for no real good reason...it was a family restaurant. No mechanical bulls, Waylon Jennings warbling on about a broken heart or pickup truck, or both, I don't really know. I just knew that I was going to speak as little as possible in case someone, be it Mabel or one of the barkeeps or cooks, had a thing for hating yankees, as we yankees have been trained to fear; no siree bob, noone gonna spit in my beer or on my food tonight

I washed a rack of ribs with a baked potato loaded with butter, sour cream, bacon bits and scallions, a side salad and some corn on the cob down with a couple of "ice cold Shiners" with absolutely no incident, and was thankful for the opportunity of a semi-sober silent reprieve from the road. I felt a food coma coming on quickly, left her 15%, and made my way out to the hatchback.

For the price, La Quintas rooms were adequate for a nights crash alone, albeit musty with lousy water pressure, and well fed, clean and showered, I fell into a deep sleep that lasted until 7:30 the next morning.

CHAPTER
a lot of sweating in the Salt Flats

When I hit the road going out of Amarillo, I felt well rested and rejuvenated. I was happy to journey to my new city well stocked in the event that I was unable to pull the usual "day or two" to figure things out (meaning where to buy weed). You can tell I really had no idea where i was moving to and how silly it was to travel across the country with all this "contraband", it being San Francisco, one of Americas' great havens for stoners, trippers, bikers and all other sorts of, what society deems, "deviants". But, I wasn't really convinced of the Bay Areas' reputation as I had never been, and it seemed perfectly natural to bring my own sand, shovel and bucket to the beach. It also never dawned on me (did it and I ignored it?) that if caught, I would be considered as trafficking controlled substances as I crossed state line after state line, making any arrest a federal crime, what with RICO (Rackeeter Influenced & Corrupt Orginizations) statutes being what they are. That never really bothered me all that much, and it was the kind of naive thought in my head which loudly claimed that it was silly to worry as that kind of thing only happened to other people, people not as clever as I am, as many of us in our younger and so called salad days believed....until the cuffs got slapped on and reality shifted to an unnatural and uncomfortable enclosed place.

It was with all this well in the back of my mind and a earful of Hendrix that I just about shit myself when a young officer pulled me over in the Salt Flats of Utah. I had passed his un-marked vehicle. I had taken a nice bit hit off of a bullet that held a goodly amount of the coke I had in that little vial and I immediately felt my skin begin to creep, making alllll my little hairs all over stand at attention. Its that fear that one feels when he knows he has alot more to hide than the apparent fear of getting a ticket. Incarceration was not in my game plan. My palms got slick with sweat, as did my brow, a combination of the toot and fear as I began to fumble around for the primary request of all occifers of "license and registration please." I can't remember if we had to show proof of insurance back then, but if we did, I am sure I produced that as well prior to his arrival at my drivers side door. He was a pleasant enough looking guy, sauntering casually up to the car with a smile as if neither he nor I had a thing to worry about, and all I was going to hear was that my taillight was out, or that I was beginning to get a flat and I "really should pull over at the next rest stop and have it checked out." We both knew the reason he pulled me over, and thankfully he was a cheery enough guy to not make a mogul out of a small pile of coke hiding out in my car full of luggage and Hefty bags full of clothing.

"Good Afternoon Sir. You realize why I pulled you over don't you?"

"I most certainly do officer and feel like a real idiot (sweat beading uncontrollably on my brow)"

"So is that to say had you been more clever you would have gotten away with speeding past an un-marked vehicle with an officer of the law at the wheel sir?"

"Most certainly not sir, rather, it would have behooved me to follow the speed limit. I just....."

"Yes, I agree, it would have, but you didn't....Hey, this is an awful lot of stuff you have here in your car. Are you sure you are able to see clearly out of your side and rear view mirrors and windows? I may just have to give you a citation for that as well as it could be considered hazardous to you and other drivers..."

"Oh officer, it is completely safe and I have full visiblilty. (the almost unbearrable urge to clear my sinuses via a big snurffle grips me and I begin to perspire again) I have been driving across country for about 3 days now and have had no problems. Would you care to have a seat and see for yourself? You will need to adjust the mirror and seat of course."

"No sir, I believe that won't be necessary. So, you mind telling me why you are in such a hurry going through our fair state and how you so carelessly passed a police car?"

(I resisted the coked up urge to explain how well "unmarked" it was and instead came up with)

"Well, I have just graduated from Culinary School in Vermont and....."

.....after explaining that I was an aspiring young chef who was fresh out of culinary school en route to my first REAL job in a REAL restaurant, his tone lightened. As it tuned out, his wife "loves to cook..matter a fact, she's purty darn good at it too! keeps my belt buckle a notch ahead of my football days I'll tell ya what!" This spurned a 10 minute enquiry about how it came to be that I went to culinary school, how all the men in my family back to my great-grandpa the butcher/farmer cooked and "I can even show ya, I have some of the knives he made the handles for and chose the steel for well before I was even born, Officer"; it was all true, absolutely, 100% no bullshit was working out nicely...I could have shown him the blades....a few grams of coke would have tumbled out of the bag during this obtuse "show and tell" opportunity, but I was well beyond nervous at this point, the blow having taken full effect made me feel as if every word out of my mouth would seal the deal and get me out of this ticket.....well, obviously the drugs were talking as I ,of course, got a ticket, but I got off with the lowest ticket he could give me with a wink from him and a request for a proper way to prepare the ever ubiquitous "chiiiicken gorden bleeeew" as he said it.

I obliged.

Nice guy, around my age and told me that if I got another ticket he would not be able to guarantee the same measure of hospitality that has made Utah stick in my mind to this day for more than Mormons and polygamy. I carried on sweatily, a little more unnerved by the whole experience than one would originally have suspected, and set the cruise control on 58 MPH, (the speed limit in those days being 55) on my grandfathers advice that this was a safe enough increase in the limit, due to cars speedometers not all being uniformly adjusted.

CHAPTER 19
a stroll up Haight Ashbury to Murios

If God is perfect we are not, and Man made whiskey, and God made Pot, I wonder, was it Jack Daniels who said all work and no play makes Jack a jackoff? Was he so stoned on moonshine and/or homegrown that his moonshine mash was fogotten long enough to sour into one of America's most world wide well loved libations, not to mention the pride and joy of Tennessee, ironically located in one of our countries only remaining dry counties. History says not, that good ole Uncle Jack was a licensed distiller at the age of 16, having learned the ropes from his family, specifically his grandaddy who was forced from Wales (during a teatotatling chapel revival movement) for making whiskey and over to the good ole US of A.

Would such an unusually benign yet beautiful disaster ever occur again? Would someone be evicted from their home and homeland to hit the States to produce some of the sexiest booze in US history? Its Welsh peat left a little behind, Jack being a bit akin to Welsh brands of whiskey such as Penderyn in taste that tickles the tonsels traveling through to the mind and liver, swishing around our gullet creating smiles that have given inspiration to popular culture in music, art, humor and AA. Is there no new firewater to be created or would our cartels try to dangle pill bottles and plastic bags full of goodies to distract and sedate us into acquiesence? Or would I resign myself (again, as if I need affirmation) that in the whole "nature vs. nurture" conundrum, that I am a nature boy who likes some of mankinds achievements? I was pretty convinced that the former was the ticket I bought and was happy to enjoy the ride it was to continue taking me on...."I am nature boy, hear the gorillas meathooks drum loudly on his chest and be content, because life will continue to evolve, whether we understand it course or not"

As I contemplated all of this I was also refilling the bullet for round two of day one in the not entirely but well saturated Gay Bay. As is (for me) usually with the great white buffalo, its better to enjoy it as it can be as opposed to dragging it out to unnecessarily late hours with small ingestion of dwindling supply. To me, the opportunity cost of doing what remains for as long as possible was a much higher liability than enjoying that moment and its rush for what it is and leaving it behind when the fat lady sang her last soprasetta. Thats just me and there are rooms full of cheap coffee slugging, donut eating 12 steppers that may very well understand that their folly was extending what should have been left behind at the oasis of their buzz. I have respect for the people who want to change the slovenly direction their abusive, cartel designed lifestyle has taken for something more palatable and rewarding like life. It ain't easy getting off the cheese and its even more difficult to remain staid in those convictions, so I don't jibe those in recovery. I may say "too bad for you ", but then again, thats just nature talking, not being a terribly nuturing cat in the first place.

Without knowing it, I was very soon to learn about a very different side of San Francisco and, instinctively realizing it somewhere in my gut (my jejunum?), got a fair weathered chill up my spine that made me smile in light of the days most recent and depraved events. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind (on recess, playing bombardment) I understood and whole heartedly believed that the day could not possibly get any weirder, although, the words of good ole Dr. Gonzo "it never got weird enough for me" came to mind and I reminded myself that this was just the beginning, who's end was not written on some tabula rasa and if it was, it was in a language I failed to comprehend.

The Booz and I met in Culinary School and were fast friends. From the shot of Jack we drank and the first few spliffs we chuffed up, there was a natural ease in which we got along, like the way birds dance around each other mid air, never bumping wings, always keeping it tight, both then diving their chicken hawk dive to see who came up with the prize. He was cool, funny and looked mean as hell (but with a pussycat demeanor...most of the time); basically, the way I saw it, a helluva lot like me...hooligans for whom everyday could be Halloween, if we so chose. Aside from looking nothing alike and being from different parts of the country, we were, what I can only imagine, what brothers can be like. We did everything together and when we both realized each of us had gotten our first choices of apprenticeships in the Bay Area, it was only a matter of a "awww hell yeeeah" and a raised glass or ten that we decided to brave San Francisco together.

And we were about to brave a whole new part of this brave new world...

We left the flat, my wound and myself both freshly dressed (although with little deviation from the previous ensemble) and headed up to Divisadero to wait for the bus which would carry us The Fillmore where we would alight and then meander up Haight to Murios. We were both feeling a little more light hearted after a few quicker picker upper lightning bolts at the flat, leaving the tawdry business of eyeballs and watchful eyes behind us as we alighted from the bus.

"Now where tall boy?"

"JAH vee be goooo dis vey Jah, vee valk oop da strasse to moooooooooriosss"

"Ok freakshow"

"Hey jerky, I gotta say, its good having ya back, ya prick"

"Good to be here butt monkey"

We walked up hill until we crested the area which is near the famed intersection where Haight and Ashbury meet. We slowed the pace a bit (the marching powder had created the much needed frizzle fry intended for marching up or down hill, or no hill at all) as I wanted to take the scene in. I had arrived and was hoping for whatever weirdness that all the stories of Haight Ashbury that could, unfold. It was just past Ashbury where I spied a freakishly tall white guy, moving at paranormal speed down the sidewalk. It took my mind a moment to realize that he was moving at the pace he was due to the roller skates he was gliding on. He wore, what I could only rub my eyes and look again to believe, was a bright pink track and field uniform, yes, like those ones from High School. The tank top taught, his nipples gave a perky shove, his silky (silly?) track shorts cupping his junk in the front like a sack of peanuts for an elephant at the zoo. The closer he got, the more I marvelled at him; Mickey Mouse ears hat thing, groovy sunglasses. I kind of expected Zippy the Pinhead to waddle up beside him, a box of Ding Dongs under one arm, a broom made of Muenster Cheese in the opposite hand, Swiss Cheese having far too many holes to be a good broom, obviously! God I loved this place! Or the acid. Or both...hell, it was just beginning to hit levels of strange that I had pined away for while cruising through the Salt Flats. He came within earshot and I had to ask;

"What's up man?', at which he slowed and stopped, towering over both The Booz and myself. He must have been 8 feet tall with those skates on.

"What's up?", rather emphatically

"Yeah man, What's up?"

"Its a two letter word indicating a direction, but thats not important right now", at which point, he carried along his merry way, ne'er to be seen again (I could have sworn I saw Zippy's Cheese-o-matic sweeping up behind him, its owner marvelling at natures newest invention, his hands)

The Booz and I looked at each other and smiled;

"What the hell was that, man?"

"Unkleriko only knows that neither buffalo lightning nor windowpanes created that. That was no figment my man, that was real deal freakshow, surreal and direct"

We both retained the smiles that Roller Mickey (who seemed to be either very high on polysorbate 80 or Shroomin' from where I stood, but who knows of such things really) had put on our faces until we got to the Panhandle, home to an array of people, destinations and things, our destination being John Murios Trophy Room. Some of that list would include an excellent burrito shop, McDonalds (unfortuantely), a supermarket and a gaggle of homeless who slept in the park, young homeboys peddling dime bags of weed, crack and smack (the latter two mostly after dusk) and various caucasians peddling their assorted wares which, in my experiences to come would teach me were, more times than not, hallucinogenic in nature.

In front of Murios we spied a surprisingly wide array of motorcycles, about 20 of them being Harleys, my favorite being a very nicely re-tooled '59 Sportster. It looked to be a '59 and I wondered who inside was the proud owner of this Iron Caballo, as well as who the owners of many of the other equally as impressive Peter Fonda Easy Rider inspired Choppers, Soft Tails, Flatheads, Knuckleheads, Panheads, Shovelheads and Blockheads that sat in line at the entrance to the bar. I wondered if the men would fit the bike. It was an impressive deisplay of Hogs and I felt like I was in "Hog Heaven" just looking at them. Now if I could only ride ALL OF THEM would today become as remarkable as I hoped it would be when tooling across country in my very functional hatchback (who's 4 wheel drive came in very handy during those long Vermont winters, substance winning the battle over style in that moment).

The late afternoon light was warm on my face as we opened the door, its air conditioned, cool dark cave like wisdom appealing to so many primal senses all at once, never knowing that "frozen by volume" that so many contemporary establishments of libations try to pull off as "cool".

Murios Trophy Room is said to have opened in 1959 at the Upper Haight part of Haight Street within eyeshot of The Panhandle (is that why they are called panhandlers?). Fitted out with loads of wood, bikers, stiff drinks, big cans of PBR and gruff yet affable bartenders, I felt like I had found an infinately more appropriate part of town than North Beach to get my drink on in. The juke was on the left when we entered, the bar on the right, with a couple of empty seats right there on the end called our names. I left The Booz in charge of ordering the booze and I headed straight to the rear of the bar to put our names up on the board to shoot some stick. When I got back and took my seat at the bar next to The Booz, the music stopped and we heard a voice bell out from the back by the pool table;

"Goofy. GOofy! GOOFY! Yer up (sounding a helluva lot like europe)"

On my left sat a couple of cats, one of them standing up as he heard his name. Goofy. What the hell kinda name is Goofy? Well, as it turns out, it was the name of a guy who stood about 6' 6" with a receding hairline, over sized spectacles (kinda like him in retrospect) and a leather vest, emblazoned on the front (in cursive) with Goofy and on the back with Hells Angels, San Francisco Chapter. I adopted a new philosophy immediatly. I under no circumstances was going to try and find out why this seemingly not so jolly giant was named Goofy. It just seemed out of my league, beyond my abilities to handle and a real, real bad idea. His buddy seated next to him also got up, his vest named him as Buck. Buck was a world and a half of Goofy's height, but as strong and thick as a peanut butter sandwich stuck in your mouth in the Sahara Desert. This cat looked like he had given and taken plenty of trips to the emergency room and I re-affirmed my new philosophy to include him as well. It was leery to speak of things within the confines of the bar about anything within said bar, so I got up to hit the juke, asking The Booz if he had any requests...

"Metallica"

I grabbed some coins from my pocket as I strutted over to the machine, machismo in full swing. It seemed necessary to "walk like a maaaaaaaan, talk like a maaaaaaaaaaan", so I figured I'd start with the walk. Greg and Duane Allman were lamenting their lack of money and a sheriff on their tail

add music notes here "and I got one mo' silver dollar and I ain't gonna let 'em catch me no not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rideeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr" and here more music notes

as I made my way to the juke. I started flipping through the choices, chose Kiss' "Detroit Rock City" and a little ditty from "Ride The Lightning" for The Booz named "Trapped Under Ice". I figured these were pretty safe choices, both liking the songs and them seeming like appropriate material for this room built for trophys, hoods and what suburbanites would frowningly name "NoGoodNicks", when Samantha Fox came on. WHAT?!!? I was not expecting this and suddenly every movement froze in its' tracks. No Clapton? No Motorhead? No Johnny Winter? No Jimi, Janis, Jer-Bear or Mojo Risin? What the hell was happening here? Was I some aberrant character in one of Rod Serlings twisted tales from The Twilight Zone? Was I totally and utterly screwed here? Was someone going to stride up and ask me if I thought I was funny and if I wasn't realy "cruisin' fer a bruisin'" in the shadow of their mammoth biker surliness that blocked out the sun like an eclipse? I wanted to shrink away, hide, better yet, disappear in the blink of any eye would have been best. I wanted to be one of the ice cubes in my double Jack on the rocks, cooly and unobservededly melting with noone noticing. Many of the people at the bar and in the bar turned their head to look at the juke as I was walking away from it and I immediately felt like I was going to get beaten, knifed, shot and dragged behind that big ass Peter Fonda Chopper in front. I was saved (and relieved) when one of the biker chicks got up on the table at which they sat and started to dance for her man, singing the words, meowmeowing in her body language (that more resembled a lemur cleaning itself than a cat actually) about how "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)"was HER SONG BABY! THIS IS MY JAM! JUST FOR YOU BABY. A sigh of relief washed over me and as I sat down, The Booz was laughing...and laughing and laughing....

"Why not put some Debbie Gibson on next?"

"You're a dick'

"Yeah but I ain't your dick"

"As a matter of fact you are in an unusual yet appropriate way. Your juke requests will no longer be entertained fuck-o"

...and then I saw it; there, in the midst of this Sfo icon of a biker bar, were big, tattooed looks-to-kill bikers bouncing their head to Samantha Foxs' pop warblings. THIS IS THE TWILIGHT ZONE. I shook my head in disbelief and hoped "Back In Black" or something I knew the words to that wasn't teenybopper pop crap (not knowing said sort of tunes) would come along. I did feel relieved though. Perhaps if I had put Debbie Gibson on it would have shown a love for a wider and more diverse range of music. Such was not the case in my case and I was, nonetheless, relieved. My image of the place was suddenly skewed and I was confused. I broke a purple window pane in half under the cover of the bar, offered half to The Booz who accepted it, and popped it under my tongue to melt. This is weird, and dag nabit, I'll be damned if we don't go whole hog!

segue

THOUGHTS

The 1959 Harley-Davidson XLCH Sportster The 1959 Harley-Davidson XLCH Sportster was a hotter version of the traditional Harley Sportster. Intended as a performance-oriented on/off road machine (rumor had it the "C" stood for "Competition," though Harley never said one way or the other), it differed from its milder XLH sibling by sporting magneto ignition, high-mounted exhaust pipe, "peanut" fuel tank, "bobbed" rear fender, and semi-knobby tires. By contrast, the touring-oriented XLH looked (and was) heavier, with fuller fenders, large headlight nacelle, larger fuel and oil tanks, and low exhaust. Harley-Davidson maintained these two Sportster models through the 1960s, during which time they proved very successful, both on the racetrack and in the showrooM

CHAPTER ROUND OFF MURIOS WITH BUCK N GOOFY TAKING US SOMEWHERE ON THEIR HOGS TO DO WEIRD SHIT...trogladites
heading towards infinity
bleagured wild ducks flying backward like in "villa incogninto?
disillusioned paranoia shock therapy
when disco lights are a thin fo the past and grovy walls fo teh tutur

CHAPTER
reno and the beginning of the days journey into the gay area
the south winning the civil war we'd still have slavery etc

battered and shorn libido
does tony llama make boots for the dali llama and is there some sort of familial bond, centuries old we dont know of that says "not just a good idea but good in quality"

now i understand...those people chanting to themselves as we insanre, they are not, they are philosopheers stuck in a shower of thought without pen and paper

send the indigent to jail for the stabbing!
forget me when Im dead, lament me while i am here

i was so comfortable i didn't wake up to take a nap

did you ahve to buy a dick to be this big of one?

all men have a, its just on the unerside of the balls

her skin carried teh scent (sang songs?) that only songbirds sang, the songs of undiscovered flowers never before's with perfumeof her skin tan adn beautiful, her salbrious smile was as etchign as a cooling mid day rain in teh blistering sun

the boozasaurus was alive and well kicking around in the cirrohsis orchids his liver held, trying to awaken a thirst tath would never be quenched in the droopy eyed discontent of the bottle


FINAL SENTENCE THOUGHT....
we both had some wonton soup and breather easy ata a long day well spent adn I curled up on my mattress, flaked with paint chips with a belly full of dumplings, ready to rest up for another weird day to come, who had not yet been quite born