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

But nobody seemed to care who was what, or why. Security was too loose for that kind of gritty paranoia. But we were also a bit tense because we’d given the registrar a bad check for our dual registration fee. It was a check from one of my attorney’s pimp/drug underworld clients that he assumed, from long experience, was absolutely worthless.

7. If You Don’t Know, Come To Learn ...If You Know, Come To Teach

The first session—the opening remarks—lasted most of the afternoon. We sat patiently through the first two hours, al though it was clear from the start that we weren’t going to Learn anything and it was equally clear that we’d be crazy to try any Teaching. It was easy enough to sit there with a head full of mescaline and listen to hour after hour of irrelevant gibberish...There was certainly no risk involved. These poor bastards didn’t know mescaline from macaroni.

I suspect we could have done the whole thing on acid...for some of the people; there were faces and bodies in that group who would have been absolutely unendurable on acid. The sight of a 344-pound police chief from Waco, Texas, necking openly with his 290-pound wife (or whatever woman he had with him) when the lights were turned off for a Dope Film was just barely tolerable on mescaline-which is mainly sensual/surface drug that exaggerates reality, instead of altering it—but with head full of acid, the sight of two fantastically obese human beings far gone in a public grope while a thousand cops all around them watched a movie about of the “dangers of marijuana” would not be emotionally acceptable. The brain would reject it:

The medulla would attempt to close itself off from the signals it was getting from the frontal lobes...and the middle-brain, meanwhile, would be trying desperately to put a different interpretation on the scene, before passing it back to the medulla and the risk of physical action.

Acid is a relatively complex drug, in its effects, while mesca line is pretty simple and straightforward—but in a scene like this, the difference was academic. There was simply no call, at this conference, for anything but a massive consumption of Downers: Reds, Grass and Booze, because the whole program had apparently been set up by people who had been in a Seconal stupor since 1964.

Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other “we must come to terms with the drug culture,” but they had no idea where to start. They couldn’t even find the goddamn thing. There were rumors in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bboomquist if he thought Margaret Mead’s “strange behavior,” of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.

“I really don’t know,” Bboomquist replied. “But at her age, if she did smoke grass, she’d have one hell of a trip.”

The audience roared with laughter at this remark.

My attorney leaned over to whisper that he was leaving. “I’ll be down in the casino,” he said. “I know a hell of a lot better ways to waste my time than listening to this bullshit.” He stood up, knocking his ashtray off the arm of his chair, and plunged down the aisle toward the door.

The seats were not arranged for random movement. People tried to make a path for him, but there was no room to move.

“Watch yourself!” somebody shouted as he bulled over them.

“Fuck you!” he snarled.

“Down in front!” somebody else yelled.

By now he was almost to the door. “I have to get out!” he shouted.. “I don’t belong here!”

“Good riddance,” said a voice.

He paused, looking around—then he seemed to think better of it, and kept moving. By the time he got to the exit the whole rear of the room was in turmoil. Even Bloomquist, far up front on the stage, seemed aware of a distant trouble. He stopped talking and peered nervously in the direction of the noise. Probably he thought a brawl had erupted—maybe a racial conflict of some kind, something that couldn’t be helped.

I stood up and plunged toward the door. It seemed like as good a time as any to flee. “Pardon me, I feel sick,” I said to the first leg I stepped on. It jerked back, and I said it again:

“Sorry, I’m about to be sick ... sorry, sick.., beg pardon, yes, feeling sick ...

This time a path opened very nicely. Not a word of protest. Hands actually helped me along. They feared I was about to vomit, and nobody wanted it—at least not on them. I made it to the door in about forty-five seconds.

My attorney was downstairs at the bar, talking to a sporty-looking cop about forty whose plastic name-tag said he was the DA from someplace in Georgia. “I’m a whiskey man, myself,” he was saying. “We don’t have much problem with drugs down where I come from.”

“You will,” said my attorney. “One of these nights you’ll wake up and find a junkie tearing your bedroom apart.”

“Naw!” said the Georgia man. “Not down in my parts.” I joined them and ordered a tall glass of rum, with ice.

“You’re another one of these California boys,” he said. Your friend here’s been tellin’ me about dope fiends.”

“They’re everywhere,” I said. “Nobody’s safe. And sure as not in the South. They like the warm weather.”

“They work in pairs,” said my attorney. “Sometimes in gangs. They’ll climb right into your bedroom and sit on your chest, with big Bowie knives.” He nodded solemniy. “They might even sit your wife’s chest—put the blade right down on her throat.”

“Jesus god almighty,” “said the southerner. “What the hell’s goin’ on in this country?”

“You’d never believe it,” said my attorney. “In L.A. it’s out of control. First it was drugs, now it’s witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft? Shit, you can’t mean it!”

“Read the newspapers,” I said. “Man, you don’t know trouble until you have to face down a bunch of these addicts gone crazy for human sacrifice!”

“Naw!” he said. “That’s science fiction stuff!”

“Not where we operate,” said my attorney. “Hell, in Malibu alone, these goddamn Satan-worshippers kill six or eight people every day.” He paused to sip his drink. “And all they want is the blood,” he continued. “They’ll take people right off the street if they have to.” He nodded. “Hell, yes. Just the other day we had a case where they grabbed a girl right out of a McDonald’s hamburger stand. She was a waitress. About six teen years old ...with a lot of people watching, too!”

“What happened?” said our friend. “What did they do to her?” He seemed very agitated by what he was hearing.

“Do?” said my attorney. “Jesus Christ man. They chopped her goddamn head off right there in the parking lot! Then they cut all kinds of holes in her and sucked out the blood!”

“God almighty!” The Georgia man exclaimed ... “And nobody did anything?”

“What could they do?” I said. “The guy that took the head was about six-seven and maybe three hundred pounds. He was packing two Lugers, and the others had M-16s. They were all veterans.”

“The big guy used to be a major in the Marines,” said my attorney. “We know where he lives, but we can’t get near the house.”

“Naw!” our friend shouted. “Not a major!”

“He wanted the pineal gland,” I said. “That’s how he got so big. When he quit the Marines he was just a little guy.”

“0 my god!” said our friend. “That’s horrible!”