Tgk1946's Blog

… pp32-3 Mercifully, the song ended. But my mood was already shattered … and now the fiendish cactus juice took over, — plunging me into a sub-human funk as we suddenly came up on the turnoff to the Mint Gun Club. “One mile,” the sign said. But even a mile away I could hear the crackling scream of two-stroke bike engines winding out . . . and then,coming closer, I heard another sound. Shotguns! No mistaking that flat hollow boom. I stopped the car. What the hell is going on down there? I rolled up all the windows and eased down the gravel road, hunched low on the wheel… until I saw about a dozen figures pointing shotguns into the air, firing at regular intervals. Standing on a slab of concrete out here in the mesquite-desert, this scraggly little oasis in a wasteland north of Vegas. They were clustered, with their shotguns, about fifty yards away from a one-story concrete block-house, half-shaded by ten or twelve trees and surrounded by cop-cars, bike-trailers and motorcycles. Of course. The Mint Gun Club! These lunatics weren’t letting anything interfere with their target practice. Here were about a hundred bikers, mechanics and assorted motorsport types milling around in the pit area, signing in for tomorrow’s race, idly sipping beers and appraising each other’s machinery — and right in the middle of all this, oblivious to everything but the clay pigeons flipping out of the traps every five seconds or so, the shotgun people never missed a beat. Well, why not? I thought. The shooting provided a certain rhythm — sort of a steady bass-line — to the high-pitched chaos of the bike scene. I parked the car and wandered into the crowd, leaving my attorney in his coma. I bought a beer and watched the bikes checking in. Many 405 Husquavarnas, high-tuned Swedish fireballs . . . also many Yamahas, Kawasakis, a few 500 Triumphs, Maicos, here & there a CZ, a Pursang  – all very fast, super-light dirt bikes. No Hogs in this league, not even a Sportster … that would be like entering our Great Red Shark in the dune buggy competition. Maybe I should do that, I thought. Sign my attorney up as the driver, then send him out to the starting line with a head full of ether and acid. How would they handle it? Nobody would dare go out on the track with a person that crazy. He would roll on the first turn, and take out four or five dune buggies — a Kamikaze trip. “What’s the entry fee?” I asked the desk-man. “Two fifty,” he said. “What if I told you I had a Vincent Black Shadow?” He stared up at me, saying nothing, not friendly. I noticed he was wearing a .38 revolver on his belt. “Forget it,” I said. “My driver’s sick, anyway.” His eyes narrowed. “Your driver ain’t the only one sick around here, buddy.” “He has a bone in his throat,” I said. “What?” The man was getting ugly, but suddenly his eyes switched away. He was staring at something else . . . My attorney; no longer wearing his Danish sunglasses, no longer wearing his Acapulco shirt . . . a very crazy looking person, half-naked and breathing heavily. “What’s the trouble here?” he croaked. “This man is my client. Are you prepared to go to court?” I grabbed his shoulder and gently spun him around. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s the Black Shadow—they won’t accept it.” “Wait a minute!” he shouted. “What do you mean, they won’t accept it? Have you made a deal with these pigs?” “Certainly not,” I said, pushing him along toward the gate. “But you notice they’re all armed. We’re the only people here without guns. Can’t you hear that shooting over there?” He paused, listened for an instant, then suddenly began… … pp66-8 Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant… . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for rea- sons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket .. . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that… There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. — There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. .. . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. … pp90-3 About five miles back I had a brush with the CHP. Not stopped or pulled over: nothing routine. I always drive properly. A bit fast, perhaps, but always with consummate skill — and a natural feel for the road that even cops recognize. No cop was ever born who isn’t a sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those clover-leaf freeway interchanges. Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him . . . and then we will start apologizing, begging for mercy. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. The thing to do — when you’re running along about a hundred or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your trail — what you want to do then is accelerate. Never pull over with the first siren-howl. Mash it down and make the bastard chase you at speeds up to 120 all the way to the next exit. He will follow. But he won’t know what to make of your blinker-signal that says you’re about to turn right. This is to let him know you’re looking for a proper place to pull off and talk . . . keep signaling and hope for an off-ramp, one of those uphill side-loops with a sign saying “Max Speed 25”… and the trick, at this point, is to suddenly leave the freeway and take him into the chute at no less than a hundred miles an hour. He will lock his brakes about the same time you lock yours, but it will take him a moment to realize that he’s about to make a 180-degree turn at this speed . .. but you will be ready for it, braced for the Gs and the fast heel-toe work, and with any luck at all you will have come to a complete stop off the road at the top of the turn and be standing beside your automobile by the time he catches up. He will not be reasonable at first . . . but no matter. Let him calm down. He will want the first word. Let him have it. His brain will be in a turmoil: he may begin jabbering, or even pull his gun. Let him unwind; keep smiling. The idea is to show him that you were always in total control of yourself and your vehicle — while he lost control of everything. It helps to have a police/press badge in your wallet when he calms down enough to ask for your license. I had one of these — but I also had a can of Budweiser in my hand. Until that moment, I was unaware that I was holding it. I had felt totally on top of the situation . . . but when I looked down and saw that little red/silver evidence-bomb in my hand, I knew I was fucked. .. . Speeding is one thing, but Drunk Driving is quite another. The cop seemed to grasp this — that I’d blown my whole performance by forgetting the beer can. His face relaxed, he actually smiled. And so did I. Because we both understood, in that moment, that my Thunder Road, moonshine-bomber act had been totally wasted: We had both scared the piss out of ourselves for nothing at all — because the fact of this beer can in my hand made any argument about “speeding” beside the point. He accepted my open wallet with his left hand, then extended his right toward the beer can. “Could I have that?” he asked. “Why not?” I said. He took it, then held it up between us and poured the beer out on the road. I smiled, no longer caring. “It was getting warm, anyway,” I said. Just behind me, on the back seat of the Shark, I could see about ten cans of hot Budweiser and a dozen or so grape-fruits. I’d forgotten all about them, but now they were too obvious for either one of us to ignore. My guilt was so gross and overwhelming that explanations were useless. The cop understood this. “You realize,” he said, “that it’s a crime to …”  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’m guilty. I understand that. I knew it was a crime, but I did it anyway.” I shrugged. “Shit, why argue? I’m a fucking criminal.” “That’s a strange attitude,” he said. ‘ I stared at him, seeing for the first time that I was dealing  with a bright-eyed young sport, around thirty, who was apparently enjoying his work. “You know,” he said, “I get the feeling you could use a nap.” He nodded. “There’s a rest area up ahead. Why don’t you pull over and sleep a few hours?” I instantly understood what he was telling me, but for some insane reason I shook my head. “A nap won’t help,” I said. “I’ve been awake for too long — three or four nights; I can’t even remember. If I go to sleep now, I’m dead for — twenty hours.” Good God, I thought. What have I said? This bastard is trying to be human; he could take me straight to jail, but he’s telling me to take a fucking nap. For Christ sake, agree with him: Yes, officer, of course I’ll take advantage of that rest . area. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this break you want to give me…. ! But no … here I was insisting that if he turned me loose I would boom straight ahead for L.A. which was true, but why say it? Why push him? This is not the right time for a show-down. This is Death Valley . . . get a grip on yourself. Of course. Get a grip. “Look,” I said. “I’ve been out in Las  Vegas covering the Mint 400.” I pointed to the “VIP Park-ing” sticker on the windshield. “Incredible,” I said. “All those a bikes and dune buggies crashing around the desert for two days. Have you seen it?” He smiled, shaking his head with a sort of melancholy understanding. I could see him thinking. Was I dangerous? Was he ready for the vicious, time-consuming scene that was bound to come if he took me under arrest? How many off- duty hours would he have to spend hanging around the court-house, waiting to testify against me? And what kind of monster lawyer would I bring in to work out on him? I knew, but how could he? “OK,” he said. “Here’s how it is. What goes into my book, as of noon, is that I apprehended you . . . for driving too fast for conditions, and advised you . . . with this written warning” — he handed it to me — “to proceed no further than the next rest area . . . your stated destination, right? Where you plan to take a long nap . . .” He hung his ticket-pad back on his belt. “Do I make myself clear?” he asked as he turned away. I shrugged. “How far is Baker? I was hoping to stop there for lunch.” “That’s not in my jurisdiction,” he said. “The city limits are two-point-two miles beyond the rest area. Can you make it that far?” He grinned heavily. “I’ll try,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to go to Baker for a long time. I’ve heard a lot about it.” “Excellent seafood,” he said. “With a mind like yours, you’ll probably want the land-crab. Try the Majestic Diner.” … pp106-8 I drove straight to the hotel after renting the car. There was still no sign of my attorney, so I decided to check in on my own — if only to get off the street and avoid a public breakdown. I left the Whale in a VIP parking slot and shambled self-consciously into the lobby with one small leather bag — a hand-crafted, custom-built satchel that had just been made for me by a leathersmith friend in Boulder. Our room was at the Flamingo, in the nerve-center of the Strip: right across the street from Caesar’s Palace and the Dunes — site of the Drug Conference. The bulk of the conferees were staying at the Dunes, but those of us who signed up fashionably late were assigned to the Flamingo. The place was full of cops. I saw this at a glance. Most of them were just standing around trying to look casual, all dressed exactly alike in their cut-rate Vegas casuals: plaid bermuda shorts, Arnie Palmer golf shirts and hairless white legs tapering down to rubberized “beach sandals.” It was a terrifying scene to walk into — a super stakeout of some kind. If I hadn’t known about the conference my mind might have snapped. You got the impression that somebody was going to be gunned down in a blazing crossfire at any moment — maybe the entire Manson Family. My arrival was badly timed. Most of the national DAs and other cop-types had already checked in, These were the people who now stood around the lobby and stared grimly at newcomers. What appeared to be the Final Stakeout was only about two hundred vacationing cops with nothing better to do. They didn’t even notice each other. I waded up to the desk and got in line. The man in front of me was a Police Chief from some small town in Michigan. His Agnew-style wife was standing about three feet off to his right while he argued with the desk clerk: “Look, fella — I told you I have a postcard here that says I have reservations in this hotel. Hell, I’m with the District Attorneys’ Conference! I’ve already paid for my room.” “Sorry, sir. You’re on the ‘late list.’ Your reservations were transferred to the … ah . . . Moonlight Motel, which is out on Paradise Boulevard and actually a very fine place of lodging and only sixteen blocks from here, with its own pool and …” “You dirty little faggot! Call the manager! I’m tired of listening to this dogshit!” The manager appeared and offered to call a cab. This was obviously the second or maybe even the third act in a cruel drama that had begun long before I showed up. The police chief’s wife was crying; the gaggle of friends that he’d mustered for support were too embarrassed to back him up — even now, in this showdown at the desk, with this angry little cop firing his best and final shot. They knew he was beaten; he was going against the RULES, and the people hired to enforce those rules said “no vacancy.” After ten minutes of standing in line behind this noisy little asshole and his friends, I felt the bile rising. Where did this cop — of all people — get the nerve to argue with anybody in terms of Right & Reason? I had been there with these fuzzy little shitheads — and so, I sensed, had the desk clerk. He had the air of a man who’d been fucked around, in his time, by a fairly good cross-section of mean-tempered rule-crazy COPS! So now he was just giving their argument back to them: It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong, man . . . or who’s paid his bill & who hasn’t . . . what matters right now is that for the first time in my life I can work out on a pig: “Fuck you, officer, I’m in charge here, and I’m telling you we don’t have room for you.” I was enjoying this whipsong, but after a while I felt dizzy, bad nervous, and my impatience got the better of my amusement. So I stepped around the Pig and spoke directly to the desk clerk. “Say,” I said, “I hate to interrupt, but I have a reservation and I wonder if maybe I could just sort of slide through and get out of your way.” I smiled, letting him know I’d been digging his snake-bully act on the cop party that was 1 now standing there, psychologically off-balance and staring at me like I was some kind of water-rat crawling up to the desk. I looked pretty bad: wearing old Levis and white Chuck — Taylor All-Star basketball sneakers … and my ten-peso ~ Acapulco shirt had long since come apart at the shoulder — seams from all that road-wind. My beard was about three days old, bordering on standard wino trim, and my eyes were — totally hidden by Sandy Bull’s Saigon-mirror shades. But my voice had the tone of a man who knows he has a reservation. I was gambling on my attorney’s foresight . . . but I couldn’t pass a chance to put the horn into a cop … and I was right. The reservation was in my attorney’s name. The desk-clerk hit his bell to summon the bag-boy. “This is all I have with me, right now,” I said. “The rest is out there in that white Cadillac convertible.” I pointed to the car that we could all see parked just outside the front door. “Can you have somebody drive it around to the room?” The desk-clerk was friendly. “Don’t worry about a thing, sir. Just enjoy your stay here — and if there’s anything you need, just call the desk.” I nodded and smiled, half-watching the stunned reaction of the cop-crowd right next to me. They were stupid with shock. Here they were arguing with every piece of leverage they could command, for a room they’d already paid for — and suddenly their whole act gets side-swiped by some crusty drifter who looks like something out of an upper-Michigan hobo jungle. And he checks in with a handful of credit cards! Jesus! What’s happening in this world? … pp152-60 It was some time around three when we pulled into the parking lot of the North Vegas diner. I was looking for a copy of the Los Angeles Times, for news of the outside world, but a quick glance at the newspaper racks made a bad joke of that notion. They don’t need the Times in North Vegas. No news is good news. “Fuck newspapers,” said my attorney. “What we need right now is coffee.” I agreed, but I stole a copy of the Vegas Sun anyway. It was yesterday’s edition, but I didn’t care. The idea of entering a coffee shop without a newspaper in my hands made me nervous. There was always the Sports Section; get wired on the baseball scores and pro-football rumors: “Bart Starr Beaten by Thugs in Chicago Tavern; Packers Seek Trade” … “Namath Quits Jets to be Governor of Alabama”… and a speculative piece on page 46 about a rookie sensation named Harrison Fire, out of Grambling: runs the hundred in nine flat, 344 pounds and still growing. “This man Fire has definite promise,” says the coach. “Yesterday, before practice, he destroyed a Greyhound Bus with his bare hands, and last night he killed a subway. He’s a natural for color TV. I’m not one to play favorites, but it looks like we’ll have to make room for him.” Indeed. There is always room on TV for a man who can beat people to jelly in nine flat . . . But not many of these were gathered, on this night, in the North Star Coffee Lounge. We had the place to ourselves — which proved to be fortunate, because we’d eaten two more pellets of mescaline on the way over, and the effects were beginning to manifest. My attorney was no longer vomiting, or even acting sick. He ordered coffee with the authority of a man long accustomed to quick service. The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life. She was definitely in charge here, and she eyed us with obvious disapproval as we settled onto our stools. I wasn’t paying much attention. The North Star Coffee Lounge seemed like a fairly safe haven from our storms. There are some you go into — in this line of work — that you | know will be heavy. The details don’t matter. All you know, for sure, is that your brain starts humming with brutal vibes as you approach the front door. Something wild and evil is — about to happen; and it’s going to involve you. But there was nothing in the atmosphere of the North Star to put me on my guard. The waitress was passively hostile, but I was accustomed to that. She was a big woman. Not fat, but large in every way, long sinewy arms and a brawler’s jawbone. A burned-out caricature of Jane Russell: big head of dark hair, face slashed with lipstick and a 48 Double-E chest that was probably spectacular about twenty years ago when she might have been a Mama for the Hell’s Angels chapter in Berdoo . . . but now she was strapped up in a giant pink elastic brassiere that showed like a bandage through the a sweaty white rayon of her uniform. Probably she was married to somebody, but I didn’t feel like speculating. All I wanted from her, tonight, was a cup of black coffee and a 29¢ hamburger with pickles and onions. No hassles, no talk — just a place to rest and re-group. I wasn’t even hungry. My attorney had no newspaper or anything else to compel his attention. So he focused, out of boredom, on the waitress. She was taking our orders like a robot when he punched through her crust with a demand for “two glasses of ice water — with ice.” My attorney drank his in one long gulp, then asked for another. I noticed that the waitress seemed tense. Fuck it, I thought. I was reading the funnies. About ten minutes later, when she brought the hamburgers, I saw my attorney hand her a napkin with something printed on it. He did it very casually, with no expression at all on his face. But I knew, from the vibes, that our peace was about to be shattered. “What was that?” I asked him. He shrugged, smiling vaguely at the waitress who was standing about ten feet away, at the end of the counter, keeping her back to us while she pondered the napkin. Finally she turned and stared . . . then she stepped resolutely forward and tossed the napkin at my attorney. “What is this?” she snapped. “A napkin,” said my attorney. There was a moment of nasty silence, then she began screaming: “Don’t give me that bullshit! I know what it means! You goddamn fat pimp bastard!” My attorney picked up the napkin, looked at what he’d written, then dropped it back on the counter. “That’s the name of a horse I used to own,” he said calmly. “What’s wrong with you?” “You sonofabitch!” she screamed. “I take a lot of shit in this place, but I sure as hell don’t have to take it off a spic pimp!” Jesus! I thought. What’s happening? I was watching the woman’s hands, hoping she wouldn’t pick up anything sharp or heavy. I picked up the napkin and read what the bastard had printed on it, in careful red letters: “Back Door Beauty?” The question mark was emphasized. The woman was screaming again: “Pay your bill and get the hell out! You want me to call the cops?” I reached for my wallet, but my attorney was already on his feet, never taking his eyes off the woman .. . then he reached under his shirt, not into his pocket, coming up suddenly with the Gerber Mini-Magnum, a nasty silver blade which the waitress seemed to understand instantly. She froze: her eyes fixed wildly on the blade. My attorney, still watching her, moved about six feet down the aisle and lifted the receiver off the hook of the pay phone. He sliced it off, then brought the receiver back to his stool and sat down. The waitress didn’t move. I was stupid with shock, not knowing whether to run or start laughing. “How much is that lemon meringue pie?” my attorney asked. His voice was casual, as if he had just wandered into the place and was debating what to order. “Thirty-five cents!” the woman blurted. Her eyes were turgid with fear, but her brain was apparently functioning on some basic motor survival level. My attorney laughed. “I mean the whole pie,” he said. She moaned. My attorney put a bill on the counter. “Let’s say it’s five dollars,” he said. “OK?” ‘ She nodded, still frozen, watching my attorney as he walked around the counter and got the pie out of the display case. I prepared to leave. The waitress was clearly in shock. The sight of the blade, jerked out in the heat of an argument, had apparently triggered bad memories. The glazed look in her eyes said her throat had been cut. She was still in the grip of paralysis when we left. … pp169-73 My attorney left at dawn. We almost missed the first flight to L.A. because I couldn’t find the airport. It was less than thirty minutes from the hotel. I was sure of that. So we left the Flamingo at exactly seven-thirty . . . but for some reason we failed to make the turnoff at the stoplight in front of the Tropicana. We kept going straight ahead on the freeway, which parallels the main airport runway, but on the opposite side from the terminal . . . and there is no way to get across legally. “Goddamnit! We’re lost!” my attorney was shouting. “What are we doing out here on this godforsaken road? The airport is right over there!” He pointed hysterically across the tundra. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve never missed a plane yet.” I smiled as the memory came back. “Except once in Peru,” I added. “I was already checked out of the country, through customs, but I went back to the bar to chat with this Bolivian cocaine dealer . . . and all of a sudden I heard those big 707 engines starting up, so I ran out to the runway and tried to get aboard, but the door was right behind the engines and they’d already rolled the ladder away. Shit, those afterburners would have fried me like bacon . . . but I was completely out of my head: I was desperate to get aboard. “The airport cops saw me coming, and they gathered into a knot at the gate. I was running like a bastard, straight at them. The guy with me was screaming: ‘No! It’s too late! Don’t try it!’ “I saw the cops waiting for me, so I slowed down like maybe I’d changed my mind . . . but when I saw them relax, I did a quick change of pace and tried to run right over the bastards.” I laughed. “Jesus, it was like running full bore into a closet full of gila monsters. The fuckers almost killed me. All I remember is seeing five or six billyclubs coming down on me at the same time, and a lot of voices screaming: ‘No! No! — It’s suicide! Stop the crazy gringo!’ “I woke up about two hours later in a bar in downtown Lima. They’d stretched me out in one of those half-moon leather booths. My luggage was all stacked beside me. Nobody had opened it . . . so I went back to sleep and caught the first flight out, the next morning.” My attorney was only half listening. “Look,” he said, “I’d really like to hear more about your adventures in Peru, but not now. Right now all I care about is getting across that god-damn runway.” We were flashing along at good speed. I was looking for an opening, some kind of access road, some lane across the runway to the terminal. We were five miles past the last stop-light and there wasn’t enough time to turn around and go back to it. There was only one way to make it on time. I hit the brakes and eased the Whale down into the grassy moat between the two freeway lanes. The ditch was too deep for a head-on run, so I took it at an angle. The Whale almost rolled, but I kept the wheels churning and we careened up the opposite bank and into the oncoming lane. Fortunately, it was empty. We came out of the moat with the nose of the car up in the air like a hydroplane . . . then bounced on the freeway and kept right on going into the cactus field on the other side. I recall running over a fence of some kind and dragging it a few hundred yards, but by the time we got to the runway we were fully under control . . . screaming along about 60 miles an hour in low gear, and it looked like a wide-open run all the way to the terminal. My only worry was the chance of getting crushed like a roach by an incoming DC-8, which we probably wouldn’t see until it was right on top of us. I wondered if they could see us from the tower. Probably so, but why worry? I kept the thing floored. There was no point in turning back now. My attorney was hanging onto the dashboard with both hands. I glanced over and saw fear in his eyes. His face appeared to be grey, and I sensed he was not happy with this move, but we were going so fast across the runway — then cactus, then runway again — that I knew he understood our position: We were past the point of debating the wisdom of this move; it was already done, and our only hope was to get to the other side. I looked at my skeleton-face Accutron and saw that we had three minutes and fifteen seconds before takeoff. “Plenty of time,” I said. “Get your stuff together. I’ll drop you right next to the plane.” I could see the big red and silver Western jetliner about 1000 yards ahead of us . . . and by this time we were skimming across smooth asphalt, past the incoming runway. “No!” he shouted. “I can’t get out! They’ll crucify me. I’ll have to take the blame!” “Ridiculous,” I said. “Just say you were hitchhiking to the airport and I picked you up. You never saw me before. Shit, this town is full of white Cadillac convertibles . . . and I plan to go through there so fast that nobody will even glimpse the goddamn license plate.” We were approaching the plane. I could see passengers boarding, but so far nobody had noticed us approaching from this unlikely direction. “Are you ready?” I said. He groaned. “Why not? But for Christ’s sake, let’s do it fast!” He was scanning the loading area, then he pointed: “Over there!” he said. “Drop me behind that big van. Just pull in behind it and I’ll jump out where they can’t see me, then you can make a run for it.” I nodded. So far, we had all the room we needed. No sign of alarm or pursuit. I wondered if maybe this kind of thing happened all the time in Vegas — cars full of late-arriving passengers screeching desperately across the runway, dropping off wild-eyed Samoans clutching mysterious canvas bags who would sprint onto planes at the last possible second and then roar off into the sunrise. Maybe so, I thought. Maybe this kind of thing is standard procedure in this town. I swung in behind the van and hit the brakes just long enough for my attorney to jump out. “Don’t take any guff from these swine,” I yelled. “Remember, if you have any trouble you can always send a telegram to the Right People.” He grinned. “Yeah . . . Explaining my Position,” he said. “Some asshole wrote a poem about that once. It’s probably good advice, if you have shit for brains.” He waved me off. “Right,” I said, moving out. I’d already spotted a break in the big hurricane fence — and now, with the Whale in low gear, I went for it. Nobody seemed to be chasing me. I couldn’t understand it. I glanced in the mirror and saw my attorney climbing into the plane, no sign of a struggle . . . and then I was through the gate and out into the early morning traffic on Paradise Road. I took a fast right on Russell, then a left onto Maryland Parkway . . . and suddenly I was cruising in warm anonymity past the campus of the University of Las Vegas . . . no tension on these faces; I stopped at a red light and got lost, for a moment, in a sunburst of flesh in the cross-walk: fine sinewy thighs, pink mini-skirts, ripe young nipples, sleeveless blouses, long sweeps of blonde hair, pink lips and blue eyes — all the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture. I was tempted to pull over and start mumbling obscene entreaties: “Hey, Sweetie, let’s you and me get weird. Jump into this hotdog Caddy and we’ll flash over to my suite at the Flamingo, load up on ether and behave like wild animals in my private, kidney-shaped pool . . .” Sure we will, I thought. But by this time I was far down the parkway, easing into the turn lane for a left at Flamingo Road. Back to the hotel, to take stock. There was every reason to believe I was heading for trouble, that I’d pushed my luck a bit far. I’d abused every rule Vegas lived by — burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help. The only hope now, I felt, was the possibility that we’d gone to such excess, with our gig, that nobody in a position to bring the hammer down on us could possibly believe it. Particularly not since we’d signed in with the Police Conference. When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it in heavy. Don’t waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Go straight for the jugular. Get right into felonies. The mentality of Las Vegas is so grossly atavistic that a really massive crime often slips by unrecognized. One of my neighbors recently spent a week in the Vegas jail for “vagrancy.” He’s about twenty years old: Long hair, Levi jacket, knapsack — an out-front drifter, a straight Road Person. Totally harmless; he just wanders around the country looking for whatever it was that we all thought we’d nailed down in the Sixties—sort of an early Bob Zimmerman trip. On a trip from Chicago to L.A., he got curious about Vegas and decided to have a look at it. Just passing through, strolling along and digging the sights on the Strip . . . no hurry, why rush? He was standing on a street-corner near the Circus-Circus, watching the multi-colored fountain, when the cop-cruiser pulled up. Wham. Straight to jail. No phone call, no lawyer, no charge. “They put me in the car and took me down to the station,” he said. “They took me into a big room full of people and told me to take off all my clothes before they booked me. I was standing in front of a big desk, about six feet tall, with a cop sitting behind it and looking down at me like some kind of medieval judge. … pp178-80 Indeed. But what is sane? Especially here in “our own country” — in this doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him . . . but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody — or at least some force — is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel. This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic . . . a blind faith in some higher and wiser “authority.” The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister . . . all the way up to “God.” One of the crucial moments of the Sixties came on that day when the Beatles cast their lot with the Maharishi. It was like Dylan going to the Vatican to kiss the Pope’s ring. First “gurus.” Then, when that didn’t work, back to Jesus. And now, following Manson’s primitive/instinct lead, a whole new wave of clan-type commune Gods like Mel Lyman, ruler of Avatar, and What’s His Name who runs “Spirit and Flesh.” Sonny Barger never quite got the hang of it, but he’ll never know how close he was to a king-hell breakthrough. The Angels blew it in 1965, at the Oakland-Berkeley line, when they acted on Barger’s hardhat, con-boss instincts and attacked the front ranks of an anti-war march. This proved to be an historic schism in the then Rising Tide of the Youth Movement of the Sixties. It was the first open break between the Greasers and the Longhairs, and the importance of that break can be read in the history of SDS, which eventually destroyed itself in the doomed effort to reconcile the interests of the lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/mid- dle, Berkeley/student activists. Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to persuade the Hell’s Angels to join forces with the radical Left from Berkeley. The final split came at Altamont, four years later, but by that time it had long been clear to everybody except a handful of rock industry dopers and the national press. The orgy of violence at Altamont merely dramatized the problem. The realities were already fixed; the illness was understood to be terminal, and the energies of The Movement were long since aggressively dissipated by the rush to self-preservation. Ah; this terrible gibberish. Grim memories and bad flash-backs, looming up through the time/fog of Stanyan Street …no solace for refugees, no point in looking back. The question, as always, is now… ? … pp192-3 It was strange to sit there in Vegas and hear Bruce singing powerful stuff like “Chicago” and “Country Song.” If the management had bothered to hear the lyrics, the whole band would have been tarred and feathered. Several months later, in Aspen, Bruce sang the same songs in a club jammed with tourists and a former Astronaut*[…] and when the last set was over, […] came over to our table and began yelling all kinds of drunken, super-patriot gibberish, hitting on Bruce about “What kind of nerve does a god-damn Canadian have to come down here and insult this country?” ” Say man,” I said. “I’m an American. I live here, and I agree with every fucking word he says.” At this point the hash-bouncers appeared, grinning inscru tably and saying: “Good evening to you gentlemen. The I Ching says it’s quiet, right? And nobody hassles the musicians in this place, is that clear?” The Astronaut left, muttering darkly about using his influence to “get something done, damn quick,” about the Immigration Statutes. “What’s your name?” he asked me, as the hash-bouncers eased him away. “Bob Zimmerman,” I said. “And if there’s one thing I hate in this world, it’s a goddamn bonehead Polack.” “You think I’m a Polack?” he screamed. “You dirty gold-bricker! You’re all shit! You don’t represent this country.” “Christ, let’s hope to hell you don’t,” Bruce muttered. […] was still raving as they muscled him out to the street. The next night, in another restaurant, The Astronaut was scarfing up his chow — stone sober — when a fourteen-year-old boy approached the table to ask for his autograph. —— acted [* Name deleted at insistence of publisher’s lawyer.] coy for a moment, feigning embarrassment, then he scrawled his signature on the small piece of paper the boy handed him. The boy looked at it for a moment, then tore it into small pieces and dropped it in ——’s lap. “Not everybody loves you, man,” he said. Then he went back and sat down at his own table, about six feet away. The Astronaut’s party was speechless. Eight or ten people  — wives, managers and favored senior engineers, showing —— a good time in fabulous Aspen. Now they looked like somebody had just sprayed their table with shit-mist. Nobody said a word. They ate quickly, and left without tipping. So much for Aspen and astronauts. —— would never have that kind of trouble in Las Vegas. A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you’ve been here for five years. Some people say they like it — but then some people like Nixon, too. He would have made a perfect Mayor for this town; with John Mitchell as Sheriff and Agnew as Master of Sewers. … pp201-3 God’s Mercy on You Swine! As I skulked around the airport, I realized that I was still wearing my police identification badge. It was a flat orange rectangle, sealed in clear plastic, that said: “Raoul Duke, Special Investigator, Los Angeles.” I saw it in the mirror above the urinal. Get rid of this thing, I thought. Tear it off. The gig is finished . . . and it proved nothing. At least not to me. And certainly not to my attorney — who also had a badge — but now he was back in Malibu, nursing his paranoid sores. It had been a waste of time, a lame fuckaround that was only — in clear retrospect — a cheap excuse for a thousand cops to spend a few days in Las Vegas and lay the bill on the tax-payers. Nobody had learned anything — or at least nothing new. Except maybe me . . . and all I learned was that the National District Attorneys’ Association is about ten years behind the grim truth and harsh kinetic realities of what they have only just recently learned to call “the Drug Culture” in this foul year of Our Lord, 1971. They are still burning the taxpayers for thousands of dollars to make films about “the dangers of LSD,” at a time when acid is widely known — to everybody but cops — to be the Studebaker of the drug market; the popularity of psychedelics has fallen off so drastically that most volume dealers no longer even handle quality acid or mescaline except as a favor to special customers: Mainly jaded, over-thirty drug dilettantes — like me, and my attorney. The big market, these days, is in Downers. Reds and smack — Seconal and heroin — and a hellbroth of bad domestic grass sprayed with everything from arsenic to horse tranquillizers. What sells, today, is whatever Fucks You Up — whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time. The ghetto market has mushroomed into suburbia. The Miltown man has turned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining … and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who went straight to the needle off Seconal. They never even bothered to try speed. Uppers are no longer stylish. Methedrine is almost as rare, on the 1971 market, as pure acid or DMT. “Consciousness Expansion” went out with LBJ . . . and it is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon. I limped onto the plane with no problem except a wave of ugly vibrations from the other passengers . . . but my head was so burned out, by then, that I wouldn’t have cared if I’d had to climb aboard stark naked and covered with oozing chancres. It would have taken extreme physical force to keep me off that plane. I was so far beyond simple fatigue that I was beginning to feel nicely adjusted to the idea of permanent hysteria. I felt like the slightest misunderstanding with the stewardess would cause me to either cry or go mad… . and the woman seemed to sense this, because she treated me very gently. When I wanted more ice cubes for my Bloody Mary, she brought them quickly . . . and when I ran out of cigarettes, she gave me a pack from her own purse. The only time she seemed nervous was when I pulled a grapefruit out of my satchel and began slicing it up with a hunting knife. I noticed her watching me closely, so I tried to smile. “I never go anywhere without grapefruit,” I said. “It’s hard to get a really good one — unless you’re rich.” She nodded. I flashed her the grimace/smile again, but it was hard to know what she was thinking. It was entirely possible, I knew, that she’d already decided to have me taken off the plane in a cage when we got to Denver. I stared fixedly into her eyes for a time, but she kept herself under control. I was asleep when our plane hit the runway, but the jolt brought me instantly awake. I looked out the window and saw the Rocky Mountains. What the fuck was I doing here? I wondered. It made no sense at all. I decided to call my attorney as soon as possible. Have him wire me some money to buy a huge albino Doberman. Denver is a national clearing house for stolen Dobermans; they come from all parts of the country. Since I was already here, I thought I might as well pick up a vicious dog. But first, something for my nerves. Immediately after the plane landed I rushed up the corridor to the airport drugstore and asked the clerk for a box of amyls. She began to fidget and shake her head. “Oh, no,” she said finally. “I can’t sell those things except by prescription.” “I know,” I said. “But you see, I’m a doctor. I don’t need a prescription.” She was still fidgeting. “Well . . . you’ll have to show me some I.D.,” she moaned. “Of course.” I jerked out my wallet and let her see the police badge while I flipped through the deck until I located my Ecclesiastical Discount Card—which identifies me as a Doctor of Divinity, a certified Minister of the Church of the New Truth. She inspected it carefully, then handed it back. I sensed a new respect in her manner. Her eyes grew warm. She seemed to want to touch me. “I hope you’ll] forgive me, Doctor,” she said with a fine smile. “But I had to ask. We get some real freaks in this place. All kinds of dangerous addicts. You’d never believe it.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I understand perfectly. But I have a bad heart and I hope—”