We were being made a holiday spectacle.
The next great scene at Millbrook was the 4th of July party of 1967. Every Psychedelian resident of the estate was invited to the Bungalow. Fireworks! Music by the Grateful Dead and Aluminum Dreams! Girls in hootchy-kootchy costumes! Many guests were expected from the upper reaches of New York stoned society.
Liberty forever! Equality and Fraternity, to my way of thinking, did not ring with the same clear note, but what the hell, to each his own poison. The general mood at Millbrook was still too stoned, despite our quarrels, to poop parties. Most of us, most of the time, saw our differences as entertainment and variety rather than sedition or subversion. We were all, after all, heads, and the assholes had not yet stormed the gates in force. We still lived in a world of our own, which is certainly the best kind there is.
Joe Gross, the psychiatrist who had joined the Church in Miami, showed up early in the day with Cathy Elbaum, a thin blonde of 30 or so, who had vague connections in the publishing world and with Sam and Martica Clapp. Joe, who had already visited once or twice, was in his usual state of confusion and apprehension over the coming festivities. He had not yet taken LSD, although he ``believed in it,'' and couldn't make up his mind whether or not to take the plunge at the party.
Everything about Joe was confused and contradictory. A Gemini, he was alternately or simultaneously on both sides of every question, but never genuinely committed to anything. He hated New York, but lived there because his mother, with whom he had dinner twice a week, did. It was a standard case of the Jewish mother's relentless grip so well-publicized in song and story.
Still a bachelor in his late 30s, he was strongly attracted only to women he couldn't get: young, blond, preferably Scandinavian girls whom he would spot on the streets and who would invariably ``disappear'' when he followed them. The ones he could get, and there was a constant parade, were all smartasses as crazy as he was who would inevitably muck up his mind. Whenever he could afford it, he would take trips to Scandinavia and Canada in search of his ideal, but something always went wrong.
Joe's living arrangements illustrated the stark dualities which seemed to afflict every aspect of his life. His office, in the penthouse of 4 East 89th, overlooking the park and the Guggenheim Museum, was a little disorderly but comfortable and warm. Most of his patients were on Medicaid. Joe couldn't refuse anyone with any kind of sob story, and the word had spread.
His apartment, a few doors down the street, was cold, barren and dirty. No curtains, no rugs and no furniture except two inflatable plastic chairs and a huge, round bed. The condition of the bathroom was so bad that I couldn't bring myself to use it except to answer the most imperious calls of nature.
Considering all the other incongruities in his life, it probably seemed natural to Joe that he should join the Neo-American Church and hang around with me and the other Millbrookians but never take any of the stuff that was the point of it all, except a little grass now and then, which, he said, always made him ``feel paranoid.''
If you ``feel paranoid'' every now and then you are almost certainly not a paranoid, at least not in any serious way. Meat Hook, I'm pretty sure, never ``felt paranoid'' in his life.
Joe, in the language of the day, was always ``going on his patients' trips.'' Many of them must have thought he was faking approval of their enthusiasms for professional reasons, but those of us who knew him well knew he wasn't. Every time I saw him he seemed to have new favorites: a guy who was ``into'' the Kabala, a girl who was ``into'' Sokka Gakkai, food nuts, sex nuts, spiritualists, flying saucer telepathic communicationists ... the list seemed endless.
Joe looked his part, too. He resembled a bearded and soiled version of the Pop'n Fresh dough man in the TV commercials, with thick glasses, and usually had an expression of diffident, quizzical acceptance on his pleasant face. Joe wanted to understand. He assumed everyone knew something important he didn't. Unfortunately, as is often the case with nice guys, he was also afraid that he would turn into a ravening monster if he took acid, and perhaps murder his mother and rape the nearest Scandinavian blonde, or vice versa.
While Cathy and Joe were dressing for the party, Wendy took me aside and confided a deep, dark secret. She and Joe had decided to take ``lots of tranquilizers'' as soon as the festivities commenced. Since neither Wendy nor Joe could drink the way I did, they both thought that this expedient might ``allow them'' to get ``as stoned'' as I did. Could be. It stands to reason that anything disinhibiting (Quaaludes come to mind) will encourage boosting to the point where dosage doesn't really matter anymore, which was my standard pattern. What, me worry?
Tord and Joe instantly hit it off. Joe was fascinated by Tord's nonchalance. Tord was planning on taking 40 milligrams of STP for the party. And the Keeper of the Divine Toad, who loved nothing better than a session of what might be called superficial depth analysis, was delighted to rake over his various theories about the Millbrook scene and its leading lights with a professional shrink. Wendy enjoyed this indoor sport also. I left them happily maundering away at the Gatehouse and went up to the Bungalow to help the Hitchcocks with the preparations.
Charlie Rumsey, who would have died a thousand deaths if he had missed anything like this, was on hand, and I helped him prepare several pitchers of the Supreme Sacrament in the pantry off the dining room before Suzanne dragged me off to help her hang up paper streamers.
Charlie, ``that flunky'' who didn't show up at the ``get my furniture back'' meeting, was an old buddy of Billy's and became, for a while, a frequent companion of mine also. While still in his early twenties, Charlie, an offshoot of the Harriman family, which had a nice little place down river from the Place of Overflowing Shitholes, had become well known in New York for treating the daughters of wealthy families to safaris in Africa, and for heavy gambling on sporting events. He seriously depleted his income with such adventures, and then, in an effort to recoup, lost the farm in cranberry futures. The year's crop he happened to bet on was banned by the feds as too poisoned by pesticides to be marketed.
When the Psychedelian Age dawned, ``Champagne Charlie'' came into his own. Although the general public never heard of him, he became as famous among the rich of New York as Dr. Jake. If Charlie supplied one's sacraments, one could be sure that they were the best available, and that the vanguard of the jet set was stoned on the same stuff, a good sales point. Charlie knew ``everybody'' and ``everybody'' knew Charlie.
Psychedelianism will truly have triumphed on the day when the sun's early light dawns in Central Park on a statue of Charlie, a characteristically impish smile creasing his boyish face, eternally pouring a glass of fortified bubbly for Human Nature Itself, as it were. It could and should be done. The children and grandchildren who did not inherit familial sociopathy because Charlie was on call when he was needed ought to feel an obligation to do it.
``Hey, Charlie,'' Billy asked at one point, ``can you think of anyone else we should invite?''
``How about Hunt?'' Charlie immediately suggested. ``I already invited Cathy.'' Cathy Hartford, who later became a dedicated missionary bee hee of the Church and Transultrametasuperpanhypersebastocratormater of the Virgin Islands, was Huntington Hartford's 18-year-old daughter.
``But he never turns on,'' Billy objected.
``Well?'' Charlie asked, with a wink in his voice.
``Right,'' Billy said, after biting his fingernails for a moment or two. He made the call. Sure enough. Good old Hunt would try to make it.
By the time the outside guests started arriving, we were mostly zonked. Wendy, wearing her ``ecstatic clothes,'' had come up with Tord on his motorcycle, but Tord, at someone's suggestion, had gone back down to the front gate to give people directions to the Bungalow. Peggy, who had just arrived from the city, approached me with a cross expression on her face.
``Who is that awful man down at the gate?'' she wanted to know.
I explained that the awful man was my buddy Tord, Keeper of the Divine Toad, and that he was under the influence of 40 milligrams of STP, despite everything I had said to warn him off the stuff. Peggy was mollified, but not by much.
She had come up in a regular car with friends in informal attire who would don their costumes at the Bungalow. The driver had stopped to ask Tord how things were going.
``Oh, the usual with these rich bastards,'' Tord had replied. ``They're all wearing costumes and showing off for each other and everyone's stoned out of his gourd. Just go up and help yourselves to whatever you want. Eat the rich!''
From a factual standpoint, this was pretty accurate, but the tone was wrong.
``Give him hell when you see him later, Peggy,'' I said. ``There's no excuse for that kind of stuff. If Tord finds all of this so distasteful he shouldn't be living here.''
Later in the evening I saw Peggy wagging her finger in Tord's face, followed by an intense exchange of views, followed by an embrace. So much for class warfare when one is plummeting through the Mysterium Tremendum and encounters another plummet. Compared to the plummeting, nothing else matters much.
I found Joe next to the swimming pool, holding a weak highball, looking like a lost sheep, standing out like a sore thumb, being a specter at the feast, and so forth. He was surveying a throng of costumed merrymakers (Billy was a turbaned pasha, Aurora a harem dancer) with undisguised bewilderment. Nothing Joe did was ever disguised.
His incomprehension arose from seeing almost everyone present knocking back cups of acid-spiked punch and then dancing, talking, laughing and swimming around in the pool as if they were enjoying themselves.
That's what bothered Joe. If we had been wandering around pontificating in unknown tongues and pointing to non-existent objects in the sky, Joe would not have been worried. If we had stripped off our garments and fallen into a writhing heap of anybody-fuckers, he would have accepted this as explicable and likewise if we had all squatted down and examined our navels for hidden mantras, or whatever.
He would certainly have been impressed, but I don't think he would have freaked out, if we had all sprouted wings and flown away cackling like geese, but to see everyone happily chatting away and bouncing around as people usually do at a good party profoundly violated his preconceptions. Joe was out front about it, as always. Looking particularly sheepish, he said, ``You know what I want to know, Art? You aren't going to believe this.''
``What?''
``What are they all talking about?''
Exactly. It was, after all, not a frame of mind with which I was entirely unfamiliar. Despite my mescaline trip, when I first visited Millbrook I assumed the residents knew all kinds of important things I didn't know.
Joe thought of psychedelic experience as synonymous with visionary experience. He thought he could imagine what it would be like. He would have hallucinations, or something very similar, which meant he would be psychotic, or something very similar, for a while, and perhaps forever.
All the nice things Psychedelians told him faded away before this vivid and alarming concept.
It followed from this that the more trips we took, the more territory, so to speak, we covered, and so we would accumulate information in pretty much the same way lonely lechers would accumulate information on visits to Copenhagen to chase blondies. We would have quite an accumulation of information to pore over with other visitors to the same places.
The uninitiated would not be welcome at such discussions. That was why Joe was standing there all by himself. He didn't want to intrude on the ``mysteries,'' which everyone who knew about them seemed to treat so lightly, thereby making them seem even more mysterious.
I took a pill from my pocket.
``Joe, will you for Christ's sake take one of these things and forget about all that shit?''
``What shit?'' Joe wanted to know.
``Oh, all those unfounded speculations. You don't know what you're thinking about, or, to put it another way, I know what you are thinking about better than you do.''
Joe was horrified. Was I reading his mind? But after a lot of heavy drug pushing from me, he finally swallowed half the pill.
I couldn't stay with him because Billy had asked me to spell Jack and Jimmy at the bar while they prepared the fireworks. I ducked out half an hour later to check and found Joe standing in the same spot and looking at the crowd with the same expression, except now his pupils were dilated.
``How's it going, Joe?'' I asked.
``Well, how do you manage things sexually?'' he asked.
``What do you mean?'' I asked, genuinely startled.
``Oh, you know, how do you decide who gets whom?''
In my condition, I couldn't take it. I went back to the bar after saying, ``Oh, come on, Joe, relax,'' and patting him on the back.
Why should I go on Joe's bad trip? Do the strictures of decent and honorable pastoral conduct include a responsibility to wrestle with the bummers produced by people you have turned on? On the one hand it would seem so and on the other hand it would seem not. By paying attention to it, you imply it's worthy of your attention and if it's worthy of your attention, it's worthy of the attention of the nervous wreck who came up with it in the first place.
On the other hand, if you don't pay attention, your behavior may be interpreted as callous indifference and cause resentment and bad feeling all around. Tim usually did what I had done with Joe, and I think he was right. Make some gesture of friendliness and play the whole thing down.
Joe's trip confirmed him as a true Psychedelian, instead of someone who ``believes in it'' the way some people believe in the Angel Moroni, but did not bring about any major changes in his style of life or way of thinking. While I knew him, he remained an extremely eclectic supernaturalist, and continued to hope and grope for pie in the sky, as did almost everyone else.
``What do you want?'' I asked him one time.
``I want to see a miracle,'' Joe replied.
Exactly. He wanted confirmation of the beliefs he already held, and had held since childhood. Joe didn't want to change. No, far from it.
I could urge Joe to discard his preconceptions and keep an open mind, but there was no way I could do it for him or even teach him how to do it. In order to relax and enjoy himself, rather than manufacture and multiply an endless series of pseudo-problems and quasi-solutions, Joe would have to combat his own repetition compulsion, and transform himself. Aside from all the supportive, tolerant and friendly people around him, Joe had a magic kingdom, Millbrook, he could visit where a magic potion, LSD, was available and there was even a magic book, the I Ching, to assist him in this noble project. The fact was that Joe had more miraculous help available than he needed.
A wholesale transformation is only possible when one is willing to start over completely with a clean slate, and very few people have any genuine desire to do it. The enemy is always the repetition compulsion. Nothing new will ever happen to anyone who always knows what to expect.
The fireworks display, something I had never witnessed before on a trip, was everything the various light shows then becoming popular tried to be but weren't: absorbing, dazzling, ``mind blowing.'' The after images were just as good as the originals. As soon as it was over, the bands began to play. I alternately danced and tended bar. Bali Ram and Aurora put on an exhibition of fancy dancing on the porch by the flashing light of a strobe, and it wasn't long before Charlie and I had to mix up a couple new pitchers of refreshments.
People kept pouring in the front door, including the Hartfords and friends, and I was delighted when Jack appeared to take over the bar. It was more fun to wander around with a pitcher and top off all the drinks standing around. Things were taking on that timeless quality. Various tableaux developed and faded to be replaced by others. Three girlfriends of Wendy's showed up from the city, and we showed them to the first bedroom suite, which was being used as a coat room. I could see they were terrified out of their wits by the scene they had just passed through.
Wendy tried to reassure them.
``Where's the acid, Arthur?'' she asked me. ``These girls have never had anything stronger than grass.''
``It's all in the glass pitchers. Just stick to drinks out of bottles at the bar and you won't have any problems,'' I said to the trio of wide-eyed Jewish princesses. ``Tell you what, I'll go and get you some grass.'' I went off in search of Billy, whom I found in his bedroom, talking to Charlie. A misunderstanding had developed. Hunt had just told Charlie he was barred from Paradise Island for life. Hunt, although he no longer owned the island in the Bahamas outright, apparently still had enough control over it so he could bar people who had offended him.
``He accused me of giving acid to Cathy,'' Charlie said. ``The unbelievable thing is I didn't give her any. She didn't trust ours, so she brought her own. I couldn't tell Hunt that.''
``Well, is she freaking out or anything?'' Billy wanted to know.
``No, nothing like that,'' Charlie said. ``She's probably had more trips than anyone in the room. She's just stoned out of her gourd, that's all. But so is everyone else here except Hunt. He won't even let Jack pour his drinks for Christ's sake.''
Hunt remained the odd man out all night. He would step into rooms where stoned gatherings were taking place, and simply stand there, rigid, glaring balefully. Then he would suddenly wheel around and march out again. This performance, once people got used to it, caused gales of hilarity. According to Billy, he was ``always that way,'' which I found hard to believe.
Eighteen months later, at an entirely different kind of stoned party in California which I attended with Charlie, Cathy and two of her girlfriends, Cathy told me what I thought was an interesting story.
Just before the Hartford party left the party, someone had managed to bomb Hunt's highball with a small dose. A few miles down the Taconic, Hunt, who was sitting up front next to his chauffeur-bodyguard-companion, had suddenly swung around and said to the stoned kids in the back seat, ``You know, those people were really having fun up there. Maybe we should go back.''
``I've never heard him say anything like that in my life,'' Cathy said. Unfortunately, the chauffeur talked him out of it. Hunt's chauffeur, everyone said, was also his closest friend. Too bad, indeed. When I had been introduced to Hunt by Billy, I had immediately said, by way of openers, ``Listen, why don't you give Paradise Island to the Neo-American Church?'' He had immediately disappeared in front of my eyes. If he had returned and taken a large blast, who knows? Maybe he would have paid the necessary bribes, gotten his bridge, and saved the family fortune. The guy he really needed to talk to was Sam.
The Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church may be contacted through His Eminence Sahib Kevin Sanford, Original Mahout, Order of the Toad with Morning Glory Clusters, Member of the Board of Toads of the Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church, Boo Hoo General of Texas, at NeoACT, Inc., Box 3473, Austin TX 78764, telephone (512) 443-8464. You can also contact His Eminence via email at KTSanford@aol.com and His Highness The Chief Boo Hoo at ArtKleps@aol.com.
Bound copies of Millbrook, ISBN 0-9600388-6-9, are available from NeoACT for $19.95; the 1971 Boo Hoo Bible, ISBN 0-9600388-1-7, is also available at the same price.