Fear and Loating in Las Vegas. A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

from the tub as it would go, then I left and closed the door behind me.

Within seconds he was shouting at me. “Help! You bastard! Ineed help!”

I rushed back inside, thinking he’d sliced off an ear by accident.

But no ...he was reaching across the bathroom toward the white formica shelf where the radio sat. “I want that tuckin radio,” he snarled.

I grabbed it away from his hand. “You fool!” I said. “Get in that tub! Get away from that goddamn radio!” I shoved it back from his hand. The volume was so far up that it was hard to know what was playing unless you knew Surrealistic Pillow almost note for note ... which I did, at the time, so I knew that “White Rabbit” had finished; the peak and had come and gone.

But my attorney, it seemed, had not made it. He wanted more. “Back the tape up!” he yelled. “I need it again!” His eyes were full of craziness now, unable to focus. He seemed on the verge of some awful psychic orgasm

“Let it roll!” he screamed. “Just as high as the fucker can go! And when it comes to that fantastic note where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that fuckin radio into the tub with me.”

I stared at him, keeping a firm grip on the radio. “Not me,” I said finally. “I’d be happy to ram a goddamn 440-volt cattle prod into that tub with you right now, but not this radio. It would blast you right through the wall- stone—dead in ten seconds.” I laughed. “Shit, they’d make me explain it—drag me down to some rotten coroner’s inquest and grill me about. . yes ...the exact details. I don’t need that.”

“Bullshit!” he screamed. “Just tell them I wanted to get Higher!”

I thought for a moment. “Okay,” I said finally. “You’re right. This is probably the only solution.” I picked up the tape/radio—which was still plugged in—and held it over the tub. “Just let me make sure I have it all lined up,” I said.

“You want me to throw this thing into the tub when ‘White Rabbit’ peaks—is that it?”

He fell back in the water and smiled gratefully. “Fuck yes,” he said. “I was beginnjng to think I was going to have to go out and get one of the goddamn maids to do it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Are you ready?” I hit the “play” button and “White Rabbit” started building again.

Almost immediately he began to howl and moan ... another fast run up that mountain, and thinking, this time, that he would finally get over the top. His eyes were gripped shut and only his head and both kneecaps poked up through the oily green water.

I let the song build while I sorted through the pile of fat ripe grapefruit next to the basin. The biggest one of the lot weighed almost two pounds. I got a good Vida Blue faitball grip on the fucker—and just as “Whit. Rabbit” peaked Ilashed it into the tub like a cannonball.

My attorney screamed crazily, thrashing around in the tub like a shark after meat, churning water all over the floor as he struggled to get hold of something.

I jerked the AC cord out of the tape/radio and moved out of the bathroom very quickly ... the machine kept on playing, but now it was back on its own harmless battery power. I could hear the beat cooling down as I moved across the room to my kitbag and fetched up the Mace can ...just as my attorney ripped the bathroom door open and started out. His eyes were still unfocused, but he was waving the blade out in front of him like a man who meant to cut something.

“Mace!” I shouted. “You want this?” I waved the Mace bomb in front of his watery eyes.

He stopped, “You bastard!” he hissed. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

I laughed, still waving the bomb at him. “Why worry? You’ll like it. Shit, there’s nothing in the world like a Mace high - forty-five minutes on your knees with the dry heaves, gasping for breath. It’ll calm you right down.”

He stared in my general direction, trying to focus. “You cheap honky sonofabitch,” he muttered. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

“Why not?” I said. “Hell, just a minute ago you were asking me to kilt you! And now you want to kill me! What I should do, goddamn it, is call the police!”

He sagged. “The cops?”

I nodded. “Yeah, there’s no choice. I wouldn’t dare go to sleep with you wandering around in this condition—with a head full of acid and wanting to slice me up with that god-damn knife.”

He rolled his eyes for a moment, then tried to smile.

“Who said anything about slicing you up?” he mumbled. I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead— nothing serious.”

He shrugged and reached for a cigarette of the TV set,

I menaced him again with the Mace can. “Get back in that tub,” I said. “Eat some reds and try to calm down. Smoke some grass, shoot some smack—shit, do whatever you have to do, but let me get some rest.”

He shrugged and smiled distractedly, as if everything I’d said made perfect sense.

“Hell yes,” he said very earnestly. “You really need some sleep. You have towork tomorrow.” He shook his head sadly and turned back toward the bathroom. “God damn! What a bummer.” He waved me off. “Try to rest,” he said. “Don’t let me keep you up.”

I nodded, and watched him shuffle back into the bathroom—still holding the blade, but now he seemed unaware of it. The acid had shifted gears on him; the next phase would probably be one of those hellishly intense introspection night mares. Four hours or so of catatonic despair; but nothing physical, nothing dangerous. I watched the door close behind him, then I quietly slid a heavy, sharp-angled chair up in front of the bathroom knob and put the Mace can beside the alarm clock.

The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel—white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.

8. “Genius ’Round the Wand Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle ’Round” — Art LinkIetter

I live in a quiet place, where any sound at night means some thing is about to happen: You come awake fast-thinking, what does that mean?

Usually nothing. But sometimes ...it’s hard to adjust to a city gig where the night is full of sounds, all of them comfortably routine. Cars, horns, footsteps ...no way to relax; so drown it all out with the fine white drone of a cross-eyed TV set. Jam the bugger between channels and doze off nicely.

Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom- struck gimp who couldn’t handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion—often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation—that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.

And neither have I, for that matter. But I once lived down the hill from Dr.-on-Road, Names deleted at insistence of publisher’s lawyer) a former acid guru who later claimed to have made that long jump from chemical frenzy to preternatural consciousness. One fine afternoon in the first rising curl of what would soon become the Great San Francisco Acid Wave I stopped by the Good Doctor’s house with the idea of asking him (since he was even then a known drug authority) what sort of advice he might have for a neighbor with a healthy curiosity about LSD.

I parked on the road and lumbered up his gravel driveway, pausing enroute to wave pleasantly at his wife, who was working out in the graden ...pruning carrots, or whatever ...humming while she works, some tune I fail to recognize.

Humming. Yes ...but it would be nearly ten years before I would recognize that sound for what it was: like Ginsberg far gone in the Om,—was trying to humm me off. That was no old lady out there in that garden; it was the good doctor himself—and his humming was a frantic attempt to block me out of his higher consciousness.