I was a champion it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was the champion of the hard unsentimental common sense and reason.
That party in California was a classic of the paranoid-occultist genre, and worth describing. The place where it was held was called ``Harbingers,'' home to a group of 100 or so classic California simpletons led by a visionary occultist who claimed that his entire home state would fall into the sea any day now, that he was communicating with flying saucers and his unborn child, and so forth.
A Narad type, and a tarot-cards kind of guy, he had made several tapes explaining his system. Joe had the complete set and thought they were wonderful. The group had published one edition of a newspaper named Harbinger which was highly thought of on the West Coast. Formerly a hot springs resort, the setting was ideal for a party. At least 500 people showed up.
The idea was that the Harbinger people, by ``getting their heads together'' and ``sending out the right vibrations'' and ``calling on the powers of the group mind,'' or whatever, would in one night bring all the rest of us, which included almost every Psychedelian power on the West Coast as well as straight representatives of government and academia, over to their way of thinking. They would show us where it was ``really at.''
It didn't quite work out that way, or in a way, it did. At that party, Joe Gross' expectations would have been gratified. It rained in slashing, thunderous downpours all night. The place was raided, and in the ensuing panic, one person was killed and another injured in auto accidents. The leader's wife miscarried, and it turned out the fetus had been dead for some time, which instantly disproved everything he had been saying about his telepathic powers.
All of us were held for hours in whatever room we were occupying at the time of the raid, while a search was conducted. Only two people were arrested, however. The cops, believing the Kool-aid to be safe because they saw 10-year-olds drinking it, had helped themselves while they stood watching naked couples cavorting around the dining room demonstrating their liberation from sexual inhibitions, as was then the fashion on the West Coast. Those cops who indulged quickly became, from the viewpoint of law and order, part of the ``problem'' instead of part of the ``solution.'' There were 500 Boo Hoo Blacks in the Kool-aid I knew about. Half a cup had elevated me very nicely.
During the chaos, Charlie managed to escape with Cathy and one of her friends, Cynthia Hoag, but the other girl and I were trapped in a wood-frame dormitory with about 50 other people all night. Since she was 17 and closely resembled Deanna Durbin at the same age, I didn't really mind. All three of these girls had signed up as bee hees when Charlie had brought them over to meet me. But it was a horror-show production, and we were both very happy when we were able to hitch a ride to Sausalito in the morning.
Every occultist-supernaturalist group I knew about which attempted to integrate the use of LSD into its communal delusional system self-destructed like Harbingers, although not in such a dramatic fashion. They disintegrate because psychedelic experience cannot be made to conform to consensual expectations or indoctrination or peer pressure. Set and setting are important because they can make things easy or difficult, but they are not determinant, which is one of the great virtues of psychedelic experience.
Nobody can control it.
In terms of pre-Psychedelian religious traditions (this is intellectually treacherous ground), once Haines and I were in at Millbrook, radical ``Buddhism'' was also in and everything else, except as window dressing, was out. There was always someone, most notably Tim, trying to fold us into some version or other of the Giant Omelette, but Tim kept his DNA Deity in the closet at Millbrook, as far as I know. To expose it would have clashed with his act at the time, which was to present himself as floating freely above all of us who ``wrestled'' here below with ``problems'' he transcended.
Paranoid systems vary along various dimensions. A few are fairly harmless and even entertaining, but most are so dull and ugly it seems incredible anyone should believe in them unless forced to do so by irrefutable evidence, logical economy, and predictive perfection. Yet millions of people do believe in dull and ugly paranoid systems for which there is no evidence at all.
No apparition which fit neatly into one of these systems would change my solipsist-nihilist epistemology in the slightest. All appearances, no matter how routine or how fantastic, are, Snazzm, simply matters of plot development and scenic design within the dream.
But being aware that it's all a hallucination doesn't mean that I'm not interested in how things work out. I hope for agreeable, believable and dramatic developments such as tetrahydrocannabinol genes in the DNA of all plants, except possibly turnips, parsnips and persimmons; a new and nicer dominant species created by genetic engineering to replace homo sapiens, and so on, but with plenty of comic relief also.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the 4th of July party. I was trying to locate some lesser sacrament for Wendy's old chums.
Billy rummaged around in a drawer and came up with a brick of Vietnamese sinsemilla, which I carried back to the living room. No girls, New York from, friends Wendy of. They had fled, Wendy said. The scene was ``too much'' for them. ``Let's go swimming,'' she suggested.
I put the brick down on a coffee table and we joined the skinny-dippers in the pool. Joe, who seemed to have relaxed a little, had moved to the other end of the water from his original station and was now avidly ogling the naked bodies. Gradually, the crowd thinned out. Bill Haines, looking reasonably gruntled, and Tim, looking disgruntled, probably because he had not been the center of attention, went home with most, but not all, of their respective retinues.
As the sky lightened, passed-out people could be seen scattered about the floors and lawns, including little Jimmy, neatly laid out in his red jacket, and who can blame him? The survivors stopped swimming and dancing and gathered in the library to listen to classical music, sip brandy and talk. Back to the mood worlds. Coming down somewhat sloshed is easier than coming down sober.
While we were having bacon and eggs in the kitchen later, Billy said, ``You know, this is incredible. There hasn't been one freak-out or fuck-up all night and this party is almost over.''
No sooner had the words escaped his lips, than Len Howard and Teresa burst into the room with pained expressions on their faces. Their Corvette, they asserted, had been stolen.
``What were you saying, Billy?'' I asked. As bummers go, it didn't amount to much. We found the car later, only slightly damaged, in the woods near the Gatehouse. Susan Shoenfeld had ditched it there after taking Sarasvati and Bhavani on a joy ride along Route 44 which had culminated in a 120 m.p.h. chase by a patrol car. The festivities had not gone unnoticed by the police. Cars had been lined up all along Route 44 to watch the fireworks. Susan paid for the repairs.
One of the few uninvited guests remained a problem for two days, however. This young woman tried to move into the Bungalow, by means of the same evasion of the question of permission or invitation employed by less adventurous primitivist wanderers who were willing to settle for a hut in the woods and a free meal at the Ashram every now and then.
She calmly sat down at the Bungalow dinner table whenever there was food on it, flopped on any unoccupied bed when she felt like a snooze, and was in the process of calling up friends in New York and inviting them to join her as a fellow Stranger in Paradise when Tim, who had been rushed to the scene by Billy, took her firmly by the arm and threw her out. Ejected from Heaven by the Archangel himself. Quite a tale for the folks back home in the East Village.
This sad creature aroused both pity and indignation as do importunate beggars everywhere. She was not one of the beautiful people, or even one of the interesting people. She was a ``sad sack,'' as Bill put it, a professional victim, a ``passive aggressive,'' to use the jargon, who knew the whole time she pretended not to know, exactly what was going on, what game she was playing, what she was spoiling, and how it would all end.
She would make those she envied feel guilty by forcing them to reject her, and thus give some meaning and emotional intensity to her otherwise meaningless and dim existence. She would be a reproach, a curse, a blight. A ghoul's life, to be sure, but at least this particular example of the species was brave enough, or crazy enough, to attempt her emotional rip-off on the rich. Usually, they only practice on those as weak and poor as themselves.
In other words, of her own class, she was a star performer.
Billy was enormously pained by the whole incident.
``Don't look so glum, Billy,'' I said. ``Just another archetype.''
``But I just feel so sorry for people like that. But what the hell am I supposed to do about it? Turn my house over to them and go live in the East Village?''
I assured Billy that, in the opinion of the court philosopher, nothing of the sort was required of him. His passage through the eye of the needle was going wonderfully well, etc. Every now and then, I would tell Billy what I thought he ought to do, but my instructions were not nearly so well received as my indulgences.
Leaders of religious associations who detect the tiniest ember of guilt in a patron should blow on it and fan it until it produces some life-giving warmth. Tim routinely performed this basic survival procedure with theatrical expertise and Bill did it sometimes, but I was a hopeless case.
I had lost track of Joe Gross, and when I saw him a few weeks later, he seemed to be back at the same old stand. It would take more than half a pill to extract Joe from Purgatory, where almost anyone is welcome, no matter how he acts.
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.