until the hot tea is in your hand: and you come back, treated
like a holy traveler, an honored guest, by the warm hairy
strangers. You look at the colored beads and the huge drawings
of tantric intertwinings on the walls: and you are home here
on earth, taken care of, given refuge: until you move on, the
acid pushing you, the pulse somewhere calling you.
51
Outside it is dark now, and you roam through the streets
until dawn when you watch the light come up. There are people
you touch, their faces, their tongues, you slip behind cars or
into doorways or spread out on suddenly available floors,
mattresses that seem to just be there waiting for the simple
traveler with legs that spread all wet. You smoke and smiling
people hand you pills and you swallow them because nothing
can hurt you now: and you stop cars with your acid smile: and
communicate with your acid brain: and you watch something
you could never look at before, a huge roach, a dead rat, and
you are awed by its monstrous beauty.
Your sweat simply melts you and you take off your clothes
somewhere with someone and you come and come and come:
and laugh: and fuck: and smoke: and drink: and run, run, run:
and smile: and the music is everywhere, in the traffic, in the
rumbling of the heavy trucks, in the sirens, in the screeching
wheels of police cars, in nasty motorcycles and in the sucking
sounds of the dirty men who whisper cunt when you walk by.
And you talk, intensely. The universe. Reality. Light. Truth.
Time. Dawn comes and you are hungry. You are coming down.
You smoke. You sit on a stoop, tired and content. A man
walks by. You ask him for breakfast. He takes you to one of
the all-night restaurants run for the likes of you on the Lower
East Side. The rabble are eating, all tired, all fucked out, all
drugged out. It is beautiful, serene. You get orange juice and
blintzes and sour cream and eggs and toast and coffee. The
man waits. Hey mister, you say laughing, wanna buy us
breakfast? He nods. Now you sit and eat and he watches. Now
you are full. Now he pays the bill. Now you say, hey, mister,
wanna fuck? You are still zinging on the acid a little but mostly
it is over: back to business: of course mister wants to fuck.
*
N and I sit on the stoop in front of poor R ’s apartment. The
light is just beginning. The dark is lit up from inside. The acid
is beginning to soften, to lose its grip. We are still wavy, still
floating, still charged, still porous, bodies floating in light and
air: but personality is beginning to creep back in: we know
who we are and where we are: we know that dawn is on its
way: we know that we are hungry and have to eat: we know
the acid is going: we know the night is over and the trip is over
