THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN

INSANE SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR

Sign my guestbook or leave email.

Dedication: to Bill Wimsatt. He's been like a father to me, and he's the man who put me in W-3.

This is a true story. It actually happened. The names have been changed to protect the innocent: me, I'm innocent; I shot the Sheriff, but I swear it was in elf-defense: I was smoking gnome-grown. Made in der voods by der elves.

I've suffered from loco brains ever since I was a Jung lad. My delusions and hallucinations began in the Invisible High, before going to the City of Night for college. Invisible City is a small town in north-central North Dakota, near the Canadian border. And just north of the Cat's Foot Hills and the Iron Claw Mountains. Yes, in this sadly remembered past I walked unabashedly thru paranoia's poison door; Rootboys straining against the grain with the force of the savage id.

While I was in the Invisible High I was a Catholic boy, with every Sacrament behind me. Certainly my unction was extreme. However, after being saved by Brother Luv's Travelling Salvation Show, driven to ever-heightening highs by weird chemicals inside the brain, I'd had a bizarre psychotic religious experience, and God died inside me. I was left a hollow, shattered thing, faithless. Yet I held onto the tawdry rags of superstition like those upon the body of the Dyer during the Crucifiction.

The psychotic symptoms finally became VADIS and abated when I had my first glaucoma surgery. Glaucoma being the disease for which doctors recommend marijuana most, I had bought myself an atomic bong--real atomic--and a baggie. And no matter how high I swept or low I swooped, I always knew exactly which way I was gonna go.

How did it affect my grades, you may ask?

When I lived in Horley House at Nite U, Bigdom Jacques was cussing me out for constantly being descoobied. So I told him, It makes me creative.

--It makes you think you're being creative! he repeated, over and over, the dull sermons of those who detest Narcohol without knowing that it can raise you from the dead.

--Then how come Veeder gave me an A for it? And I wrote an A+ paper for Wimsatt on dope.

--Show us your grades! Show us your grades!

I did: four A's and a B in a graduate course.

He dropped the report card in abject terror.

But after getting torpedoed on U-boats daily for four years, eventually the mental illness reemerged. Speed-hi nightmare; nightmare almost perfect.

Is any nightmare perfect?

Only the dawn knows for sure.

THE BRASTRAP HEAVEN

--is what I called the place I lived during the summer of love and death, the inception of my paranoia, dying inside, in the heat of Nite City, lying on the shores of the Suf sea. I'd subletted my dreamhome apartment when Margo Jediakid accosted me as I left the copy center where I was working, asked if I-wanna I should live with three deluxe/delightful slimchicks for the summer: Alice and Debbie and Jane.

But while I was living in the Brastrap Heaven, I was still suffering badly from the rejection/isolation/desolation of the Karen Relationship. Karen Ash was a girly-girl I'd met in the Scoreland, a dorm where you could score anything you wanted (except Karen). Her friend Breakfast Cathedral was the one who tried to get me into a Karen relationship. I used to eat breakfast all the time, though usually I'd see Breakfast at lunch.

>Karen was a real tease/flirt. She started hanging out with me for help on her Philosophy of Psychology course; heard that Wimsatt thought I was a genius. However, even with advanced warning, I had taken seriously the coy funky walking/dirty talking. So she concocted this scheme to tell me the guy she was studying with was a married man, so I wouldn't get jealous. Instead, I'd figured they were having an affair, and like a hypocrite-collector, threatened Karen's boy-fiend, "Waxy" Mel Paraffin, in Regenschwartz Library, home of diverse tomes.

Meanwhile, back in the Brastrap Heaven, all three of my seduc- tive\sexy slimchick roommates had boy-fiends, so fearing Waxy retribution, I'd been paranoid about practicing Ooga-Chugga Religion with the girly-girls, in spite of Debbie's cute and coy come-ons.

GALACTIC POT HEALER

Coy come-ons? You wanna know what a coy come-on is? A science fiction fan like me, and agreeing that Philip K. Dick was the world's greatest living science fiction author, and better than the dead ones, Debbie came into my room, asking, Can I look at your Dick?

I promptly handed her The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; the stigmata I share with him: alienation, blurred reality, and despair.

--That can be interpreted two ways, you know. (Wink, wink.) Looking at your Dick?

Debbie ultimately kicked me out for being a submarine Captain. (U-boat is the new slang term for marijuana. I think it origin- ated with Timothy Leary.)

LOVELACE AND BIBLE BLACK

--was the man sitting at the next table in the Cantonese Kitchen. I'd gone there for dinner one day while still in the Brastrap Heaven. He didn't seem quite right, wavering with visual distortions of oncoming acid aftershock, an early warning sign of the nightmare which was to come.

I studied the pimp across from me, sitting with four very foxy ladies. Red eye-shadow, green mascara, polymer-lovers dressed in skin-tight spandex and psychedelic furs while massive braless boobs jiggled.

The notorious malefactor, Barney da Pimp, speaking tales of love and death, informed me that some dire Vadisystem was trying to kill me. The orbiting VADIS satellite, the Vast Active Destructive Intelligence System from the planet Lucifer was scrambling every neuron in my brain, as the pimp told his tale of utter dread.

She raped my lizard.

And I liked it,

STAY KOOL AND THE GANG WON'T GET YOU

After leaving the Brastrap Heaven when Debbie Luscious narced on me, I'd moved into the servants' quarters of William Donaldson's mansion, next door to Reality.

Bubba Reality, that is. The world's boxing champ. Ghetto neighborhood of Nite City, just a mile from the University.

"So, Mr. Donaldson," the Rootboy covered with slime (that's me, folks!) asked the landlord when signing the rental agreement, "What do you do for a living?"

"I used to be a minister, but now I'm into real estate."

Gosh-wow and yowie-zowie! I guess I really ought to get rid of all my weed--a minister, sounds potentially narc-ish to me.

So I dumped my entire supply of atomic submarines into my brecchie pancakes, the invention of a Church of the Mind. Gives 'em that authentic buckwheat flavor. Don't taste bad with Mrs. Butterworth's, either.

On my way back upstairs to the gabled room with the little windows that cranked open, my glasses fell and busted. A quick trip to Kimberly Plaza, had me at an optometrist's shop. While he was fitting the lenses, I noticed in the mirror that my hair was disheveled from the rain-sprinkles outside.

And the mirror was alive. Serpent-things curled in its depths.

So, I decided to get a haircut. And I wandered, stoned and alone in the heart of the city, to Abel's barbershop.

The place was crowded, but I managed to find a chair in back and read PLAYERS Magazine until my turn came up. I whiled away the time by looking at breasts of total PENTHOUSE perfection, round and brown, the brown nearest black.

Between night's thighs. The strategy of dawn. Nuclear mourning forgets; learn to forget.

Suddenly there were voices:

--Boy got himself new glasses and a haircut, so the hitman who's looking for him won't recognize him.

I looked up from a black satin seductress to see a young Hidden Tiger in a black beret talking to Reality. Concern was suddenly etched on Bubba's face as I wondered what the reality of the situation was: "Hitman? Who's telling Bubba Reality about a hitman?" one of his bodyguards asked.

Was this really Reality? Or just another crazy high? And why had Superego turned evil? Who would break the rusted chains of prison-moons and free the robot-slaves besides her? Orange sunshine under a gray sky. Blue suns and silver lagoons.

The youth repeated Barney da Pimp's story: how I'd written suicide notes to girls, so Alfalfa High, the drug fraternity, got me drunk on top of acid which they dumped in my coffee. They did this because he was always bitching to VD Coltrane about his nervous breakdown, and now, we've really given him something to worry about. Driven mad by the Orgasm Drug, I vorkled a whore on the streets of Nite while neuroterrorists screamed for more.

Sirens in my mind.

I strained to hear. Yet as the tale was told the place gradually quieted down: you could've heard a pin drop in the telling of VADIS' terror of the mentally ill. Stigma. Shame. Disgrace, the disgrace of being cursed with loco brains.

The Tiger said, "We want you to help us protect him."

The young dude was superkool, Kool enough to deal with Reality. But Reality wasn't about to be so readily seduced into my VD Fantasy of Kentuckified Soft Machines: "Why should Reality stick his neck out for some redneck honky from North Dakota?"

"'Cause, when he was still going to the Invisible High, his best friend was Joe Kool, the new drummer for Apocalypso. The way-kool rap band."

"Rap sucks! I ain't gettin' into no business with no rap band!"

Disco's silent drummer sounds in the amphitheater of my poisoned mind. Schizophrenia, destroyer of dreams.

Undaunted, the Tiger continued, "Because it has been an open secret for years that Apocalypso is a Tigers front."

Suddenly, Reality was excited. "Can you take me to someone in the Tigers? If this kid is Kool, I'd die for him and more."

The Tigers led, Reality followed. Together with half of the throng that was there that day, Reality ran out of the barbershop, shouting, "If anyone hurts that boy, they'll be speaking to me: Reality!"

THE ATTACK OF THE INVISIBLE LAMPSHADE

Daze later, I torched another Rasta cigar. Even though I was still worried about Donaldson, I was too dependent on the shit to quit. After all, every time I quit, my grades and writing suffered.

Legalize it, I'll advertise it.

The submarine spun me 'round.

Dizzy-dizzy.

I left the mansion for the street-corner. Flashback to another street-corner. The street-corner named Desire. The Angel from the Abyss. Black whore-thing named Desiree. The Invisible doors of the harlot's mouth. The fluorescent lipstick of her face. Venus in psychedelic furs. Corpse-eating world. Copper jitters; fear of the vice-squad, the Nova Heat.

The D-minibus looped around this South-nite neighborhood, ferrying students to Regenschwartz Library. As I was standing on the corner, a UN Security Copz Car drove past, swung into a skid, and the copper looked at me with an expression of tragic awe.

He stared awhile, then drove on. He knows about the hitman.

Once in Regenschwartz, still feeling the effect of the potent herb, I entered tunnels of light in primordial rain-forests. The return to the womb. Crucifiction of the Dyer.

I heard a commotion as I entered the rows upon rows of card catalogs--it was coming from the nefarious Lampshade-man, friend of Coltrane and Relationships, Valerie Delicious and Karen. Two of the girly-girls I'd sent my famous letters.

There were voices: "It's all a front for a drug ring! It's all a front for a drug ring! He gets stoned, writes obscene letters and suicide notes to girls, then Wimsatt covers up for him. He's a damn faggot, he's never had a girlfriend, and he was living with three women--that was his last chance to get a girlfriend, and he blew it! And now, we're gonna kill him."

God, this is some potent herb. I feel like I've just shot the Orgasm Death. I must be hallucinating--

I started walking toward the elevators, when suddenly the nefarious Lampshade blurted: "There he is! I'm gonna get him!"

The dread Lampshade-man hopped the Security fence, rushed at me at incredible super-speed, while a circle of onlookers gathered.

Violence!

Danger!

Terror!

Fear and loathing in the City of Night, city of lost angels and lost innocence. Frat-rat raped with napalm fire, burning acid ejaculations.

Then the Librarian leaped over his desk, raced straight for the Lampshade, tackled him, and put him in a Full-Nelson. He yelled, "Someone call Security! Get this nut outta here!"

How come, every time I get high, this sort of shit happens? Is this more reality, or a drug dream? What's the reality of Reality? Am I going insane?

Unsure of reality, I left the circle of onlookers, entered the elevator, certain that this display was yet another bad pot trip. The Salamander moved through flame with inflexible authority like the Subliminal Kid seeking a whore on the intersection; the streets fields of living light that never die.

Finding my book, I returned to the desk.

"Say--can any of you guys tell me what happened with the fearsome/loathsome Lampshade-man?"

The librarian simply sang the chorus of PSYCHOKILLER, by the Talking Heads:

Psychokiller, qu'iest ca c'est

Fa fa fa, fa fa fa,

Better run, run, run awaaaaaaaaay!

MUHAMMAD'S RADIO

I sat in the Unexpected Boot, my favorite coffeehouse, chowing down on a bagel. Drinking Scooby-Dew and smoking dem Scooby- doobies. It was a typical day, in the mind of a thoroughly gonzo science fiction author: VADIS still blasted me from outer space with her psychedelic mind-lasers as the walls opened up into galaxies, alternate universes; stars being born and dying like orgasms on the dark streets of dreams, so far removed from the Invisible High.

I saw dinosaurs, reptiles abounding; saw fossils, caves, heights where bird-things played; saw lizard-things swarming, the teeming multitudes of the damned.

And the radio did play:

"MUHAMMAD'S RADIO by Warren Zevon coming right up after this news flash, but first I have to give you the straight dope on Reality: a bomb was found this morning in the backyard of the boxing champ, Bubba Reality. The Police bomb-squad found seven sticks of dynamite wired to a clock timer. Fortunately, Mr. Ray, Reality's bodyguard, spotted the bomb in time for it to be defused. In a statement to reporters, Bubba Reality said he suspects the Ku Klux Klan of having planted the..."

I shuddered and fled the place, radio suddenly reverting to pulse-pounding rap. Mad disco gyrations.

I was frightened, terribly frightened: now, not only were the Kooky Klan after me, they must've found out that Reality was protecting me. They were after Reality now, too--VD Coltrane's father was a Dragon of the Klan and Valerie was a Vadisystem, controlling destiny from thousands of light-years ahead. VD's boy-fiends all hated me, because I was obsessed with Valerie's Delicious Soft Machine.

And now that I'd finally forgotten her, she was back, persecuting me for my strange relationships. (Karen, at that.) All because she didn't appreciate my letters. Timothy Leary is really the only person who's ever really appreciated my letters.

But then, Timothy Leary's outside, looking in. Like Philip K. Dick.

Again, I shuddered, shivered with horror. Something had to be done. And I knew what: I was gonna write the SCUTTLING ROCK MAGAZINE, get them to sic their famous hitman hunter, Rael D. Jogupsa, on the hitman.

I AM A MAN OF LETTERS

Dear SCUTTLING ROCK:

Help! Let me explain:

While a student at the University of Nite, I had a bad habit of writing suicide notes to girls. I wrote an allegedly obscene letter (I forget what it said) under the influence of acid to one Rebecca Dutch. Her boy-fiend sicced the notorious street gang, the Insane UnderDogs, (IUDs), on me. Rebecca's boy-fiend was a dope dealer, and got the street gang to raise the money by selling Narcohol.

It was all a set-up by Alfalfa High, the drug fraternity, a coed serenity full of vorkling hos: the week before, I'd flipped out at one of Ruha Salmon's parties when Alfalfa High, VD's coed frat, began poking fun of me. They wanted to keep her from vorkling the Savage Id. The hippy artist, NORML Bean was saying, We're never gonna let him sleep with any of our women!

I exploded, was pushed down the steps and somehow, in spite of being incredibly descoobied, found my conapt.

The next weekend, Bozo Rebebo, the Bozo King, suckered me into drinking a fifth of vodka. This was after I'd already been dosed me up with four hits of blotto Heavy Metal from the planet Uranus.

Acid contains night.

And if Eowyn had a whore, would you turn around and hate it?

And it's not just the copz and the street gangs I have to worry about. The Height Park Pimps, under the leadership of their President, South-nite Barney, are opening my mail.

All right, you pimp--put this letter back in the envelope, and seal it up, like a good boy.

And a different she-wanna, Valerie Delicious Coltrane, Head of the Coltrane Clan, got her Father, an official of the Fireman's Friends, that dread mob run union, to hire the top Fireman to wipe me out. In case you want to interview him for your Scuttling Rock and Roll magazine, his address is:

Roscoe P. Coltrane

666 Bingetoke Lane

Henderson, Alabama (I forget the Zip)

I saw Sheriff Roscoe and his dread daughter walking along the beach once. He reminded me of the character in the song Joan Baez sang at Woodstock:

He's a Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man

And he's the head of the Ku Klux Klan

When summer comes rollin' around

You'll be lucky to get out of town.

I know someone is trying to kill me because a couple weeks ago the Invisible Lampshade attacked me in Regenschwartz Library.

I found out about the hitman from Barney da Pimp. I know he was a pimp, because he said I must be in the same business as he is, but I only lived with three women, and he was living with four: I never dreamed when I met him that he was a four-whore- powered pimp.

Besides the South-nite Pimps, the pigs are also opening my mail: All right, you pig--put that letter back in the envelope, and seal it up, like a good boy.

(signed) W.C. LEADBEATER

I KNOW FEAR AND LOATHING

I had a full-time job now, working in the Business School while I was finishing my Thesis (a Special Honors paper).

Professor Cohen headed on out to the water-cooler. I heard the sound of Fear and Loathing in the hall outside: Rael Duke Jogupsa had flown up from LA to get the story: "Have any of you guys seen Barney da Pimp lately? How about the Invisible Lampshade?"

Professor Cohen's voice drifted back, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's all in this letter I got... some of this stuff is really hilarious, listen to this: I never dreamed when I met him that I was dealing with a four whore-powered pimp."

--Let me see that."

There was a brief pause, wilderness of pain, then, "Oh yeah, now I remember: There were a bunch of drug busts awhile back, because of a story he wrote about it."

"What!? You mean this guy exposed a bunch of drug rings, all because some guy called 'Barney da Pimp' told him there was a professional hitman after him!? This guy's a bigger gonzo than I am! Where is this guy, anyway? I want to meet him!"

"Sorry. Mr. Leadbeater isn't taking any visitors today."

I wasn't? That was news to me.

Damn! Why'd this have to happen? Now, I'll never find out if there really is a hitman.

And my fear and loathing became a hurricane, but there was no calm in my eyes. And the cold winter winds blew in mind-chilling gusts. Mindstorms. Schiz-kriegs.

Rael took off like a rocket-man, high on every drug known to man. In parting, he said, "I'm hot on the trail of the Height Park Hitman!!"

I was ecstatic, jubilant, couldn't wait to see what would happen when fear and loathing met Reality.

I SHOT THE SHERIFF

I knocked on Bill Donaldson's door to pay the rent. Waiting for the man with 126 buckadingdongs in my hand. They just didn't build apartments the way they used to.

After handing him the money, I turned to leave, suddenly froze in abject terror as CBS Evening News came on: "Today Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, of Henderson, Alabama, was shot to death by a motorcycle gang, the Death Devils. Doc Barbarous, leader of the gang, and the person who fired the fatal shots, was arrested today by Deputy Anus, after a high-speed chase through the Alabama countryside. Doc Barbarous claimed that Sheriff Coltrane was the head of the Ku Klux Klan who had attempted to bomb Bubba Reality..."

Now that man was a Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. He should have let be the boy who lived next to Reality.

My thoughts raced. Alternate worlds came to be and disintegrated in the rushing rage of rampaging neurotransmitters.

Darkness increased by One...

A CHRISTMAS CAMEL

Christmas, like Nova conditions, was rapidly approaching... and I was talking to Wimsatt then. He sat in his little chair in his office, chain-smoking dem Scooby-doobies: Camel straights. Ruthlessly logical, brilliant philosopher and evolutionary biologist, he was trying and trying and trying to explain the irrationality of my obsession with the dire Vadisystems who were creating my loco brains, loco brains I wouldn't even admit to having.

"Are you going home for the holidays?" the wee elven thing had finally asked in exasperation at my refusal to listen to reason.

"Yes."

"Is your brother going, too?," he asked as he toked away on his non-atomic bong.

"Fearless Taco'll be riding the Nova Express back to the Invisible City with me," I replied, adding, "Dawn's Highway will take you all the way to Invisible City, if you really wanna go that far."

"Well... why don't you talk it over with Taco Jack? That's what brothers are for."

Back at my dream-home apartment, I borrowed some gift wrap from one of my roommates. I was gonna leave Reality a present, a copy of A Secret History of Time to Come by Robie Mac- Cauley. The opening was super-kool: the Tigers fighting the Revolution in a future Chicago. Awesome! Real atomic!

I wrote a message inside, all about how if the Tigers deployed excessive force to start the Revolution, it might be counterproductive, ie, they might also get blowed up real good.

After I laid it on Reality's doorstep, I ran like hell to the Yellow Cab that took me flying to Fusion Station, to board the Nova Express.

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE NOVA EXPRESS

Aboard a great phallic monstrosity of steel, I walked the aisle looking for Fearless Taco. I found him sitting in the comfy chair with his luggage slung overhead.

"Taco Brains!" I exclaimed, sitting next to him. "Didja know that there's a dire conspiracy involving such malefactors as South-nite Barney and the Kooky Klan, not to mention the Fireman's Friends and the IUDs, all of them plotting to kill me?"

He listened intently as I launched into my speech. On and on it went with manic intensity, free-fall river-run flowing in the sweltering jungle of my mind as the Hard Machine, the Iron Horse, pistons pumping, left the City of Night behind, containing as it does steel erections which rape the sky the way Lucinda Ogdoad had raped my lizard.

Fear and Loathing himself was sitting a few seats down, talking to an editor of the SCUTTLING ROCK, Big Marianne Macdonald, a/k/a "Big Mac". She'd accompanied him on this trip to the Invisible wastelands of cowboy country. Rael was taping all my mechanical sputtering rat-killing gibberish.

On top of which, the dreaded druggie burnout from Las Vegas was tripping on Heavy Metal from the planet Uranus.

TALKING ABOUT MY DICK AGAIN

I ate dinner in the diner with this lissome lass who was sitting a few seats down from me. She'd never heard of Philip K. Dick, though I assured he was the greatest science fiction author who'd ever lived. I was telling her about the ending of The Man in the High Castle:

--So the hitman's a Nazi truckdriver...

One of the waiters whispered to the other, See? I told you it was a truckdriver.

We sat together in her seat after the meal. I was feeling Plush Suzette's breasts and kissing her, lips like sugar, my terrible fear of flying gone in this cosmiccsmic interjacence--up to the point where she said, "The thing I like about going to school is meeting people from all over: like Georgia!"

"VD lives in Georgia," I said and she turned her head away in trepidation and terror. Georgia on her mind--had I encountered another Vadisystem?

The girly-girl with the angel eyes rejected me, telling me, Go back to your own seat.

--You don't love me anymore?

--I cannot love a psycho killer.

--Psycho killer? What is that?

--Better run, run, run away.

And so I did.

And so it goes. (I am really Curt Vague-and-Nuts. I wrote Venus on the Half-Shell, but lost all the buckadingdongs in the lawsuit. Certain "famous" authors can't stand to have their Trout Kilgored.)

HE'S A FIREMAN'S FRIEND

The next day, in the bar-car, the cowboys were all talking about the Fireman's Friends, the mob-corrupted Union that was trying to destroy the true Rootboy covered with slime. Horse Jamaica, the top Fireman, was gonna bomb the Apocalypso concert.

I shuddered in abject dread. Could even Rael D. Jogupsa stop such cosmic perfidy? Would Superego ever break free from the Demiurge's prison-moon? The Fire-Witch consumed me like breakfast, delicate love, savage maroon nylons, and lipstick the color of sunrise, sunset, northern skies reflected in her eyes...

All this and more in the next issue of Slime-thing Comix.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE INVISIBLE LANDSCAPE

When we arrived at the Invisible Train Station, my parents were waiting to greet Taco and I. Ma threw a big feast to welcome her kids returning from college. Boy-genius Honors Students, all six of us.

--Pass the roast beast.

--Ma! Piggin' Biggolith is stealing all the potatoes!

I am not! I am not! You've got more potatoes than I do!

Pop sat quietly through all this, drinking his glass of warm powdered milk and eating his carrot. Pop was a brilliant man, an electronics whiz and a Union Leader, but he also had a lot of eccentricities. I'd always been embarrassed by that as a kid. In the growing dawn of my insanity I projected my loco brains on him, my fear of my own madness.

Now, I'm proud of my dead Daddy: he was a hero of the Labor movement. They'd never get Pops, he was part of the Union.

That night, Fear and Loathing, together with Joe Kool, were parked outside my upstairs bedroom window in a pickup truck.

I heard the mailbox scrape open.

The hitman must've planted a bomb!

Shuddering with suspicion, I raced downstairs, hands trembling with fear. I checked, but there was no bomb.

The next day, I checked Horse Jamaica out in the Invisible Bookstore; a book on the Fireman's Friends.

He'd killed over a hundred people; his excuse, I'm just a big dumb Fireman.

Now, I was certain of it: the top Fireman was out to kill the true Rootboy. (That's me, folks!)

TAXI-GRAB

Man-the-Driver on the multi-valued motorway, the cab moved with inflexible authority away from Fusion Station. We came at last to my apartment. The lawn of my dreamhome was covered with snow, twinkling in acid dreams. Snow like crystal. Crystal- acid, a bitter poison.

The cab departed, bearing Taco to his dorm, coed Flintstomes. And I rose to the warmth of the third floor of the immense mansion. The furnace was cranking out heat against the January chill.

Inside, shrugging off my blizzard season coat, I called Bill Veeder, the lit-crit who'd been following the mysterious doings of the Height Park Hitman from the get-go. I had much to report...

"Hi, is Bill there?" I said into the numerous wiretaps.

Vast Active Destructive Intelligence Systems mutating my brains in labyrinths of dread and death.

"Speaking."

"Oh hi, Bill. This is the Savage Id. I'm sure as a Freudian you're going to appreciate talking to the Id again. The Id is a great hunger and a terrible darkness. So anyway like, I finally found out who hired the hitman: he's a Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and drives a reefer hauler for the Mafia."

"He's both a Klansman and a drug-runner for the Mob?"

"It was VD's father: Vadisystem C, Valerie Coltrane."

"Valerie's father!" he ejaculated in a moment of psychological insight, became savage, angry: "Lead, you've never treated that woman quite right. She's in love with you, you know. And all you do is hurt her feelings..."

I contemplated this for a second, yet rather than being calmed, I was driven to new heights of paranoia.

"Well, that's too bad, because he got blowed up. He got blowed up real good. And I don't give a shit about it, either. 'Cause he tried to bomb Reality!"

God, talk about being bombed right now: I hadn't slept in three days. And I hadn't even had a submarine for months. Daze and nights of confusion.

There was a moment of silence, the cold ice of terror.

Finally, I continued: "There are some wiretaps on my phone: The police--"

He grew agitated, exclaimed in dread horror, "No, Lead, I don't want to hear it...!"

"...and the Hidden Tigers. But if they think they're gonna start the Revolution this way they're going about it all..."

CLICK!!

"...wrong!!"

The machine was dead, silent, still.

What was Reality going to do now? At this point, dealing with Reality was very frightening. Reality might even want to kill me.

I went to my window, saw the little white coach house in Reality's backyard. Reality was dangerous, it was possible that even Reality would turn on me now. You just can't predict Reality.

Suddenly, a whole bank of floodlights on Reality's mansion switched on and off. Reality himself stood in his window, shouting, "Lead!" at the top of his lungs.

Boy howdy, I'd really done it now. I'd gotten Reality pissed, and everybody knew how awesome a force Reality could be. Especially when Reality is angry. Reality was prone to violence.

The Insane UnderDogs marched down the street. Seeing my lovelorn form in the window in the Bible-black moonless night, they shouted, "There really is a hitman!"

I was being threatened by IUDs. IUDs can be even worse than Reality, but at least I had Reality on my side.

Or did I?

The situation was boiling over, totally out of control: I had to confront Reality at any cost.

Trembling, I donned my parka, ran down the stairs. Outside the night was void and starless. Violin solo, flute mellotron, Frippish guitar.

A minute later I was outside Reality's mansion. As I approached, a big black Cadillac pulled up into the driveway.

Rael Duke got out.

He walked up to the fence. He stood at the gate staring for awhile, a tremendous grin on his face. After that, Rael walked off. There was a stoned darkness in his eyes, like black holes where the Spirit of Gravity devours all things. And the All from which they came.

I rang the buzzer.

Mr. Ray, Reality's bodyguard, appeared in the door. I told him I was looking for Reality.

"Reality ain't in Nite City. Reality's in Los Angeles."

"Then can I talk to someone who knows Joe Kool? I'm trying to get in touch with the Hidden Tigers!"

"I know Joe Kool," the bodyguard replied. "Joe Kool is the new President of the Tigers. Anything you want to say to Joe Kool, you say to me."

"I've got a question: when Joe Kool was in the Invisible High, he promised me that he'd make me something important when he took over. I forget. Secretary of State. Head of the Food and Drug Administration, so I could legalize marijuana. Am I something important even now?"

"Vice-president. You're Joe Kool's Vice-president."

p>"Does this mean I'm an even bigger Tiger than you?"

"Tha's right."

My tone grew urgent. The dire threats I imagined grew yet more and more concrete. New paranoid illuminations came with every minute.

I continued, "Listen, the John Birch Society is trying to bomb the Apocalypso concert, I hear they're playing here tomorrow and..."

Mr. Ray exclaimed, "The Birch Society! A bunch of crazies!"

"I've got some good news: I can tell you who the hitman is: it's Horse Jamaica, he's an official of the Fireman's Friends and he..."

Mr. Ray was jubilant. "Great! Now that we know who it is, we know who to hit!"

"It's really too bad about the Fireman's Friends, the way they've been taken over by the mob. My Pop's a Union leader, but he'd never let any Mafiosi take over his Union."

The muscular bodyguard thumped his chest. "I know Jimmy Hoffa. And Jimmy Hoffa's Kool. Jimmy Hoffa's been Kool for several years now. And I can get on the phone right now, and we can do the same thing to Horse Jamaica that we did to Jimmy Hoffa."

"If at all possible, get rid of Horse Jamaica by legal means, but if you can't do it that way, hit him with everything you've got: I wanna see a big hole in the ground where Horse Jamaica's house used to be!"

"Yes, sir!" And he saluted.

I caught sight of Rael, driving up in the alley behind Reality's mansion. He was walking on tiptoe, taking Steadman cartoon footsteps, acid burning out his brains; cold-soul nightmare. Prisoner of a City of Dreams.

Rael was holding a zoom mike and grinning evilly.

Mr. Ray said, "Reality's going to the Apocalypso concert tomorrow night at 6:00. Be here, we'll introduce you to Reality. And we've got backstage passes. We're gonna introduce Reality to Joe Kool, too."

"Sounds real atomic to me," I said.

The door closed. I was isolated, cut off from Reality.

And Rael grinned in his fine, cold night-sin, and the Great Gray Wizard blew his horn.

LET THE SERPENT SING!

LET THE DANCE OF LOVE BEGIN!

I went back to the womb-tomb of my room, the fallacy of the Id, the Lizard-thing desiring to put his phallus into someone other than a scrofulous whore. And the reptilian monster was still in perpetual battle with Superego--

--and I was a Salamander slipping through flames, to fertilize the Night with Spiritual Semen.

I tried to sleep. Sleep did not find me. It was as though my bed were burning. A funeral pyre.

THE ONLY DJ YOU CAN HEAR AFTER 3:00

In the middle of the night, I heard Rael in Reality's back yard, yelling, "I've got tapes of W.C. Leadbeater threatening to kill an official of the Fireman's Friends!"

I shuddered in anxiety. VADIS was schiz-krieging me from orbit. Heavy Metal Addicts from the planet Lucifer were poisoning me with acid dreams. Stoned Immaculate. Intoxicated Pristine Jung Lad. The Rank symbols of the Id.

I remained in bed, Vadisystems howling in my mind as the January wind wailed like a hurricane, unleashing their mind- screwing beams. Fear and loathing of the White Death-angel.

A few minutes later, Reality put his thousand dollar speakers on his window sill, turned up the music as hi-fi as it would go, and played the first two lines of DRUGSTORE TRUCKDRIVIN' MAN:

He's a Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man

And he's the Head of the Ku Klux Klan--

Then there was silence, the silence of shadows, and the shadows ate me, like a succubus. Delicious demon in dark leather. Batwinged demon Princesses; harlots from outer space.

APOCALYPSO IS KOOL

Morning came, and I still hadn't slumbered now for several days.

I walked to work, anticipating the concert tonight. As I tor- mented my typewriter, the secretary and janitor were in the halls, singing I SHOT THE SHERIFF.

On my coffee break, I called the Apocalypso concert.

"Hello? Can I talk to Joe Kool? I must warn him that there's a plot by the John Birch Society to bomb his concert."

"Just a second, I'll transfer you to the manager."

Canned Muzak while on hold, hardly way-kool rap. My brain felt like a Spam-burger, diced and sliced by Amazon princesses.

The manager came on. I repeated my message.

After he hung up, I left that place in abject anxiety, wandered the campus alone, stoned on weird chemicals my brain was producing.

BACK IN THE UNEXPECTED BOOT

--Wimsatt was threatening to give me a Swift Kick for my paranoid beliefs, and it'd been a long time since I'd eaten Breakfast, Cathedral or otherwise. Hungry, I ordered a microwave cheeseburger and squirted it with ketchup.

Shouting angrily, I pounded the table, as with ruthless logic, Wee Willy Wimsatt penetrated my delusions as rapidly as they fell like autumn leaves when they turn gold, then hit the ground.

I fled that place, scared shitless.

THE COPPER JITTERS

The copz finally picked me up in the Student Union. I was sitting there, talking to a bunch of black students about the Kool Gang, how they were going to introduce me to Reality.

And I had no doubt that this was reality. No matter how insane it may sound.

"Are you W.C. Leadbeater?" this blue-suited rent-a-cop asked.

>"Yeah, I'm Lead, but I'm rapidly turning into gold. I'm an alchemical symbol, and I really could use a good Stone right now, smoke my atomic bong."

They looked at me like, Wow man, is this guy already corrupted?

"Come with us."

They dragged me to this little cop-car, while I struggled futilely against all the evil forces which were massed against the Id. Hauled me by force into the NCU Hospital.

HI, I'M DR. RABBIT

--this hippy psychiatrist wearing cowboy boots said as he examined me. "All right, Mr. Leadbeater, tell me clearly and simply, in five minutes or less, why you believe there's a hitman after you."

I babbled incoherently for the next five minutes. With each passing moment, new conspiracies elaborated themselves in labyrinths of dread and death.

He interrupted me, saying, "No--you're getting all tangential. That's a symptom of manic-depression, if my diagnosis is correct. Back up, start over, and tell me clearly and simply why you think there's a hitman after you."

Again, I babbled disjointedly. Consumed with fear and loathing. Devoured with horror and abomination. The abomination of fornication. Eaten by fright and love. Eaten by a love-thing on dirty boulevards. The prostitution of night in a city of dreams.

>Dr. Rabbit interrupted my thoughts of hookers in heat, saying, "Try and count backward from one hundred to zero by sevens."

>"The seven is the number of the Jung light. It forms when Darkness is increased by One."

"That doesn't answer the question: I want you to count backward from 100 to zero by sevens."

"93."

"And--?"

I thought awhile. "93." I thought some more. "93."

"OK, that's a little hard. Try it by twos."

"100, 98, 96, uh--"

"What comes after 96?"

I could go no further. And I'd been a math whiz as a child; entering college, had placed into Honors Calculus.

He thrust some forms at me, "Sign these. I want to get you to a safe place."

"You mean a place where the hitman can't get me?"

"I want to get you to a safe place."

The pen. The signature. Inky blackness like a squid-jet in Living Water.

He took me, accompanied by a Security cop, to the elevator. A push of the button, a quick ascent, and we were on the third floor. The buzzer sounded, letting us into W-3, a locked place like a jail of the invisible mind. The plexiglass doors clicked shut, and I was isolated, alone.

Cut off from Reality.

THE RETURN OF REALITY

Time passed. Endless eons of alienation, blurred reality, and despair. A couple of suicide attempts. It took me twenty years to return to reality. Following years of living at home with my mother in schizophrenic isolation, several suicide attempts, and frequent and violent mood-swings. A chronic case of schizophrenia slowly eating away at my mind.

I only returned to reality after Steve Eisenstein, brilliant boy-genius psychiatrist just out of med school at the University of Chicago, put me on Clozarel. I also owe knowing reality again to Suzanne Lockwood, who replaced him.

And my days of Karen Relationships and VD fantasies are over. I'm contemplating marriage? you wanna? with my Ms. Dish, the deluxe and delightful Trish.

(PS: I no longer smoke marriage? you wanna?)

HEAR MY LAST WORDS EVERYWHERE

--hear them on planets unknown where bat-men vie with snake- people for the control of rain-forests, domains of death. Hear them in the temples of Dionysus and Apollo, crucifiction, crucifixation, and drunken orgies. Hear them in sewers blas- phemous to the idol Yog-Soggoth; terminal death-addict sewers where orgasms die.

Hear my last words on the subject of reality:

Insanity can be fun, but reality is the Greatest!

This Extremes site owned by Jim Bauer. [ Previous | Next | Skip Next | Random Site | L ist Sites ] We're all in this together.