LSD - KEN'S FIRST
"What brought YOU here, Ken," asked Fran, after she had told her story.
"My psychiatrist told me about the place, and I got to the psychiatrist --- well, I guess I should start at the beginning. I guess the first time I even HEARD about drugs that affected the mind was from a friend of mine from Philadelphia. I was in the army for six months at Aberdeen Providing Grounds, and that gave me the chance --- " and Ken began to laugh, and amazed expression on his face.
"What's so funny?" asked Fran, chuckling herself.
"I just made the connection that it's been thanks to the U.S. Army that many of my "firsts" came about." He laughed some more, and Fran laughed, patiently waiting to hear how it came about.
"I was in the Signal Corps reserves when I was in college --- the only reason I joined was to get more money, and to whittle down my longevity in the reserves. I had been in ROTC in college, and was going to be commissioned when I graduated, but I could get two years reserve duty out of the way while I was in college, get paid one day's wages for two hours' evening work. It really wasn't work: I was a clerk-typist, so I didn't have to drill or anything, just went into work and practiced my typing. It was fun --- had the biggest crush on the guy who drove me to the meetings, but that's ANOTHER story."
"Seems you're just full of stories," observed Fran, smiling and settling more comfortably into her chair, pulling her bathrobe around her ankles.
"Um. You can always tell me to shut up, you know," said Ken, paused a moment while Fran didn't shut him up, and continued.
"Every summer the unit went on summer camp to Fort George G. Meade, or Fuggum, as it was affectionately known. That's in Maryland, not too far from New York. There was a lieutenant in the unit, huge guy, but he always gave the impression of an enormous woman dressed in man's clothes. You know, limp wrist, high voice, energetic facial expressions," and Ken rolled his eyes around, pursed his limps, and moved his head as if he were writing with a pencil held in his pursed lips.
"Anyway, HE told me that I would have to get up to New York. I'd been telling him about a friend of mine from high school who was going to college at Columbia University, and who came home every summer and told me what a fantastic time he had in the city. He was gay, too, as it turns out. I guess he knew about me, and I knew about him, all through high school, but we never said anything about it."
"I didn't KNOW there were so many gay people in the world." Fran seemed a bit put out about all the competition, or men withdrawn from competition.
"Yeah. So this lieutenant tells me to be sure to get down to the Village --- Washington Square, he says, is the center of everything. It was, too. So when we got to summer camp, there was one weekend between, and I got a train up to New York for the greatest 24-hour introduction there was ever was. The first thing I saw when I came out of Pennsylvania Station was the Empire State Building, and from there I saw the Times Square area, and I went to the box office and got a ticket to my first play, and later went to a Cinerama film which I'd never seen before, and by that time it was 2AM, and I wanted to see the Wall Street area, so I caught a subway down there, my first subway ride, and walked around. Spooky, just nobody around, with smoke pouring up from holes in the street. I walked uptown through Chinatown and the Bowery --- that was scary --- "
"Did anything happen?"
"I told myself I would avoid the Bowery, but when I kept seeing all these guys stretched out and stinking in doorways, and one guy with a bloody bandage on his hand lurched up to me to ask me for money, I decided to recheck my street, and found I'd stumbled onto the Bowery by accident. I walked crosstown just to get away from it, and found myself at Washington Square. By this time it was 4AM, and I was hungry, so I stopped into a Nedicks --- that's another New York landmark --- and this guy came in and sat next to me. I didn't pay any attention to him, but I could tell he was looking at me. When I finished, I walked down 8th Street and looked into some of the paperback bookshop windows, and this same guy came up to me, and, so help me, said 'Would you mind very much if I picked you up?'" Ken stopped to widen his eyes and gape across the room in memory of the question, and Fran rocked back and forth in her seat with laughter.
"How weird," she said.
"Yeah, particularly for my first time. I couldn't say anything, just stared into the window. Then he said, 'Well, what do I have to do, take you by the EAR or something?' That was all I needed. I said, 'No, I'll come along peacefully,' and we went to his place to talk, and later we went to bed."
"Did you like it?" Fran hitched herself around in her chair, listening.
"Actually, I didn't. He was older, hadn't shaved, and he smelled of some kind of booze. It was the first time I realized men kissed men. I didn't like it with him, but I knew there would be SOME men I'd love it with, and knew thing would be better latter. He went down on me --- sucked me," Ken said, in case Fran hadn't heard of the term before, but from the quick way she nodded, she had. "It didn't excite me, but again I figured with the RIGHT guy, it would be great."
"Did you suck him, too?" Fran wasn't reticent with her questions.
"I tried it, but I didn't like it, not at the time." There was a short pause for Ken's small grin of implication about his current likes. "I stayed there until 6AM, then walked uptown, bought a ticket to Radio City, saw the first show, then took a tour of Upper Manhattan and saw Columbia for the first time. I remember clearly looking at it, saying 'THAT'S where I want to go to college, some day' and loving every bit of Upper Manhattan. So I was only there for 24 hours, left on the 5PM train, but I saw more of New York in that day than a lot of people see in a lifetime."
"You said it," said Fran, pulling the left side of her long blond locks. "So that was the first time you saw New York."
"Yeah. Hey, I got off the subject, didn't I? I was saying that the Army was responsible for a lot of "firsts," and that was the first time in New York, thanks to the Army Reserves. Now I wouldn't leave New York if you paid me twice what I'm making. Anyway, when I got on active duty, I was sent to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, got a soft job in the Computing Center, and had every weekend free. So I'd either go up to Philly or down to D.C. for the weekends, and in Philly I met Gordon Leslie, a guy from New Zealand who was working in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. HE was the one who let me know about drugs. He said he knew a guy who took something, and it made him feel like he was having an orgasm for over half an HOUR."
"Wow," said Fran, and the expression on her face spoke of instant desire.
"Yeah, that's what I said, wow. I asked him to tell me about it, and he called it some long name that I later found out was lysergic acid di-ethyl-amide, which has a goofy reputation now as LSD. I kept asking him about it, but my self-image at that time was not one that was hung up on sex, so I felt silly about pressing the subject, but the idea of a half-hour orgasm was too good to forget. Then I read a book by Aldous Huxley --- I've always been a nut on Huxley --- read him?"
"Only 'Brave New World' in college," said Fran.
"Read 'After Many a Summer Dies the Swan' --- it's about the quest for eternal life. That rang a bell for me."
"Me, too," she said, "I'll remember that and read it."
"Huxley wrote this book called 'The Doors of Perception', and in it he told about his experience with mescaline --- all about his book bindings turning to rubies, and people being beautiful. I heard him talk once, at the YMHA, and he said that things like jewels and fireworks are so impressive to us because they remind us of a world we --- sort of USED to live in, a world of intense lights and brilliant colors. He kept talking about the 'vee-veed' colors. Anyway, I read 'The Doors of Perception', and that reminded me of what Gordon had said about LSD --- the guy I knew in Philly," said Ken, in response to Fran's puzzlement when he mentioned Gordon.
"Oh," she nodded.
"Then Timothy Leary came to town with his light show, and they talked a lot about drugs, and what happened with LSD, and how you have to have a guru whom you can trust, and how important the setting is, and things like that. He also mentioned morning glory seeds, particularly "Heavenly Blue" and "Pearly Gates," as being hallucinogenic, and he said that someone must have known about their properties to name them so appropriately. So that was another source of interest in drugs. One night at a party given by Mensa --- that's a club for brains ---- of COURSE I belonged," Ken said, drawing himself up in his chair. Fran laughed.
"I met a guy who happened to work with me, and HE started talking about morning glory seeds. He'd taken them before, but he had pretty bad trips. He kept talking about how he looked at himself in the mirror, and his face got wrinkled and ugly and menacing. His hands would grow hair and the nails would turn into claws, and they'd be beast hands." Fran shuddered and pulled her robe tighter around her neck, a look of disquiet on her face.
"The faces of friends who were with him would change too, and he'd be afraid of them. Really bad scene, but I figured he didn't like himself very much if his face turned into some sort of monster face. Since I figured I liked myself pretty much, I wasn't worried about those side effects, but I concentrated on what he said about an orange coming to life, and a rose growing before his eyes, and colors becoming heightened, and smelling music and things like that. So I wrote away for a Burpee's catalog of plants, and sure enough, they advertised for Pearly Gates and Heavenly Blue, so I mailed away for some, fully expecting to be hauled before the Supreme Court on a narcotics charge. But nothing happened, except that the seeds came, and I had them. When I contacted the guy at work, to find what to do with them --- I remembered he'd said it was the husks that make you sick, but you have to chop through the husks, or else you'd never get to the good part of the seed --- he said 'Oh, if you want some of the real stuff, I've got some.'"
Fran clapped her hands and chortled in her seat. Ken grinned at the entertainment value in his story. "Go on," she urged, when he paused.
"So I bought 330 micrograms for just a penny a microgram, which I thought was very reasonable. I really wanted to have someone with me, and the person I wanted wasn't living in New York anymore. He and I had been lovers for a couple of years, and we could talk about anything to each other. He really understood me, and he was onto all these things about spiritualism and he read Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and Nicoll" --- Fran shook her head with a line between her brows --- "and tried to get me into these things. But I figured he would be perfect, only he wasn't in town. But the fellow who had introduced Fred and me --- it gets complicated, doesn't it? --- WAS in town, and was a psychotherapist who had watched others take LSD, and he was also a friend of mine, so I asked HIM to be with me."
"Were you going to take it at his place, too?" asked Fran.
"No. They say you should take it where you're comfortable, and I was very comfortable in my own apartment. But it was funny, I made a list of things I wanted to try, and went out and bought whole piles of stuff, like candy and flowers and champagne and oranges and apples? I didn't want to miss a thing. So I took it at my place. By coincidence, a book I'd ordered about LSD came that same day, and I read it through. Among other things, I read that 100 micrograms was about the usual dose, so I emptied the capsule and divided the white powder into three even parts, figuring I had not one but THREE trips."
Echoing Fran's look of doubt, Ken said, "I know it sounds stupid, but you'll see it didn't really matter."
"All the stuff could have been in just ONE of those sections," she said.
"Right," said Ken, "and it may have been that way. My friend came over and I took one of the little piles of white powder, and we sat around and talked as I got more and more nervous, but nothing happened. He wanted a friend of HIS to be around, too, so we walked up to his friend's place, and came back, and after two or three hours, nothing was happening, so I decided to take the rest of the two piles. Then I really got nervous. My stomach was feeling worse and worse, and finally I just felt I had to lie down. It was very uncomfortable with this other person, and at last I told Dorian, that's my friend, to send his buddy away. It turned out to be wise." Ken paused, and took a deep breath, putting one hand over his stomach.
"How do you feel?" asked Fran, sensing that Ken was uneasy.
"I can feel my stomach reacting just thinking about it." He kneaded the roll of flesh over his stomach and sat up straighter in his chair.
"It must have been quite a trip." Fran tried her motherly smile.
"Yeah. Soon Dorian was sitting beside me and I was trying to tell him something, but there was something I had to say before that, and then there was something I had to say before THAT, and I got all confused and couldn't say anything. It was a terribly frustrating feeling, and I felt more and more nauseous, choked up, and panicky. Dorian was very good about the whole thing, asking HOW sick I felt, but when he mentioned throwing up, it was obvious I didn't want to do THAT, so I felt a bit better. But I still couldn't talk coherently, and in desperation I went to the typewriter and began to type --- it was like I kept repeating things: that I was sorry to be doing this to him, that I was grateful to him for sitting there with me, that I was tied up with him, somehow." Ken leaned forward, working his hands against each other to relieve some of the pressures building within him.
"Had you had an affair with him?" asked Fran, afraid to hurt feelings.
"I'd wanted to. It was HE that I wanted to fall in love with, not Fred, but he palmed me off on Fred, so Fred and I had an affair. One day I actually FORCED Dorian to go to bed with me, but it was pretty unpleasant, and I didn't particularly want to repeat it. But I still like him an awful lot. You know," Ken paused, looking straight at Fran, but thinking of someone else, "I think I WOULD have liked him as a lover, even then."
There was silence for a time, and Fran smiled awkwardly and put her hand on Ken's. "Your hands are cold," said Ken with a start, coming out of his dream. She smiled and nodded.
"Dorian had always said that I should see a psychiatrist, but I kept looking at him, and all the problems HE had --- he'd been married once, and then divorced, and he was forever looking for the great love of his life --- and saying that he was a FINE one to recommend therapy, since he'd been in it for six years, and it didn't seem to be doing HIM much good. But there were so many things inside me that I wanted to get out, but I couldn't. We decided it was because I wanted control of everything --- I wanted control of everything --- I wanted control of my life, and his too, and the LSD experience, and the whole world. It sounded right --- it STILL sounds right," and Ken smiled an embarrassed smile at his confession.
"We went on for a couple of hours, and came to a couple of conclusions that I didn't like --- the main one was that I was a little child looking for love. It hurt me to say it then, and" --- he straightened himself in the chair again, sighed deeply, and moved his neck and shoulders back --- "it even hurts a little to say it now." Fran looked about to weep, and slowly and deliberately uncurled herself from her chair, wrapping her robe more tightly about her, and sat down on a tiny corner of Ken's chair, and with more drama than he would have wished at that moment, pulled his head down on her shoulder.
"Everyone's looking for love, I guess," she whispered, and they sat quietly, Ken conscious of her slight perfume, and of his own unwashed scent. He sat stiffly, not knowing what to do next, wishing he could feel more comfortable, that he could think of what to say next. Fran put one arm gently around his shoulders, patted his back, drew him against her, then pulled back to look into his face. "Do you feel better now?"
"Yes," he lied, smiling into her eyes, "I think I do." They kissed because their lips were so close it seemed the logical thing to do. But logic should have no place in a situation like this, and Ken was growing more and more uncomfortable. What would she expect from him in a few seconds more? But she squeezed his shoulders again, kissed his cheek, and stood up, moving her chair closer and sitting in it, holding his two clasped hands in an envelope of her hands.
"It's just human to want love," she said, and Ken couldn't shake the unwanted thought that she was parroting something she had read or been told. He cursed himself for thinking so much at a time like this: that was his real trouble, the thought came savagely, "You THINK too much!"
"Thanks," he gasped, not knowing what else to say. They sat quietly, together, each acutely conscious not only of the other but of themselves. After a few moments, Ken heard sounds from outside, and realized it was silly to be sitting like this.
"Thanks," he said again, more firmly, and shook her hands, kissed them, and gave them back to her. He settled once more into his chair, not touching her, careful to keep his knees out of the range of motion of her knees. "So there was something from that first trip, but not much. He kept saying that I should see a psychiatrist, and maybe I was only being suggestible, but it did sound like a good idea to me at that time, so I asked him for the name of someone, and he gave me the name of a clinic where I could be interviewed and given to someone who would fit my needs. When I went to them, I said that I was here mainly because I'd had LSD, and so I wanted someone who had some experience with it themselves, hopefully someone who'd taken it and knew how useful it could be. They referred me to Dr. Alison. He'd worked with Osmond when he was in Jersey, had taken it a number of times himself, and thought it was good stuff. We got along just fine, and then on the third or fourth meeting, he told me about this place.
"'Do you think I should go there,' I remember asking him. And he said 'I'm not saying you SHOULD go there, but I thought you might be interested in knowing that there was such a place.' When I went back the next time, I told him I was thinking of going, so he gave the address, I wrote and got the autobiographical form, and here I am."
"Are you still seeing Dr. Alison?" Fran, too, sat back in her chair.
"Not any more. I saw him eight or nine times, and it seemed he was always saying the same thing: 'Find out what you want to do, and then do it.' It was good advice, but I got tired of paying $30 an hour to hear him say it, so I told him I didn't feel right coming in --- I wanted to quit --- and so I quit, it was as simple as that. I took his advice: I found what I wanted to do, and I did it. I came here."
They sat quietly, facing each other but not looking at each other, each sunk in his own thoughts. The shadow of the window frame moved slowly across the floor, touching one object, leaving another object, moving so slowly that the motion was invisible, but so rapidly that a glance a minute later showed that it had moved perceptibly. Again the sounds of voices outside impinged on their awareness, and at one loud shout Fran got out of her chair and moved to the window.
The feeling of being in their own special world came strongly to Ken. How different this place was than the world was, and wouldn't it be great if the world could be more like this place. But this was a unique atmosphere, he told himself again. No one worked, everyone had the time to really TALK with people, really LISTEN to people. There's no competition for power, no jockeying for position. There was enough food, room for everyone, even drugs enough for everyone --- more than enough, Ken knew, as he remembered the talk about the availability of drugs for fun and games back in the alcoholic ward. And everyone here admitted that they had a problem; there was no hiding that fact, whereas in the real world outside, everyone was supposed to be happy, and to act like they enjoyed what they were doing. There were too many differences between this world and the one outside.
"It's a different world out there," said Ken, almost to himself.
LSD - PERFECT WORLD
"It shouldn't' be different," said Fran, almost picking up his thought, "but I guess it is --- it has to be." The last phrase was regretful, doubtful.
"No it doesn't have to be," said Ken forcefully. Dr. MacKenzie got it into his mind that he wanted to build a hospital, and by golly he built a hospital. It might not be exactly what he wanted it to be, but it's a darn sight closer to HIS dream than to anyone else's dream. It's better for him HERE than in the world out there."
"Yes, but Dr. Mackenzie already had a reputation as a doctor, and he had the money to buy this house, and build on the addition, and he knew enough people so that they could tell people to come here. It's just a lot of work," she concluded rather lamely.
"Anything that's good is a lot of work," said Ken, knowing that Fran had to agree with him. "But it's like my Dr. Alison said, 'You have to find out what you want to do, and then DO it.' What do YOU really want to do, Fran," he asked abruptly.
"Me?" she asked stupidly, the only other person in the room. "I --- I don't know. Oh, sure, I want to be happy, and I don't want to be sick, but what do I REALLY want?" She stopped, looking at Ken, then looking out the window. "I could be coy," she said with a laugh, "and say I wanted everyone in the world to be happy, but I guess that would be a lie."
"That's one of the problems --- oh, not with you, but with everyone. Everyone wants for themselves to be happy, but they don't think about others enough. I know I don't. But, somehow --- just think, if everyone really wanted themselves to be happy, and everyone DID it, the world would be a lot better."
"What if I'm a poor sharecropper in Tennessee, though," said Fran, the birthplace of her parents throwing shadows across her memory. "What if what would really make me happy would be the death of the absentee land-owner? I don't think that would make the absentee land-owner very happy, do you?"
Ken didn't answer, following another train of thought. But Fran's comment remained in his inner ear, and when he was ready, he played it back and thought how to answer it. "I guess there's two ways to look at it: if this absentee-landowner is such a schmuck that he doesn't deserve to live, it would be better for this world if he were dead. But I also guess that if you were to ASK the absentee-landowner if he were a schmuck, he'd probably say no. Then what to do?" The question was strictly rhetorical. Fran was off on her own tangent at the window, not listening terribly closely to Ken.
"But what does the landowner REALLY want, let's look at that," said Ken, feeling his way out of the well into which he had thrown himself. "He doesn't necessarily want the sharecropper to be unhappy. I suspect a happy sharecropper would probably work harder for the landowner, and give him even MORE money. That's what everyone really wants, money."
Fran whirled from the window, listening at last. "That's not true for everyone, "she said defensively. "Everyone's got to have enough money to LIVE on. Some people just want too much, that's all."
"But what IS this almighty money? It's just a medium of exchange. People don't really want money --- except a few sick cases, I suppose, but they want what they can BUY with money: like food, clothing, shelter --- yeah," Ken interrupted himself, "but if you're talking about the perfect world, some of those things are nonsense, too. Like in the perfect world, there wouldn't be and NEED for clothing, any NEED for shelter."
"You tell an Eskimo that," laughed Fran, sitting again in her chair.
"Of course there has to be clothing for protection against the elements, but those would be very few items for clothing. What's wrong with nudity? It's only this stupid Judeo-Christian ethic we're so darned proud of that prevents people action normally and undressing. Everyone looks with envy on the South Sea islands, all those cocks and tits right out there to be stared at --- and why not? But the missionaries, the stupid up-tight missionaries came amongst them and put on the fig leaves and pasties, and now the healthy natives can get colds, just like the rest of the "civilized" world."
"You can't be against EVERYTHING in the civilized world. What would you do if you didn't have computers to work on?" Fran scored one.
"I MIGHT be happier raising corn on a farm, but I'll never know, because I'll never have a chance to try it. Farmers are in low positions these days. It's not the "in" thing to be a farmer." Ken's voice was angry; Fran smiled.
"But if we didn't have the civilization, even the farmers wouldn't have proper fertilizer --- "
"Who says the world has to be fertilized? It's only the money-grubbers who have to plant the same fields year after year. It's also possible to live on fruit and nuts, and they don't have trouble growing year after year."
"I can't imagine the three billion, or whatever it is, people on earth living on fruit and nuts. I hate to bring up the Eskimos again, but I don't think there are too many orange trees in Alaska."
Ken's anger was beginning to be directed more toward his own shortsightedness. "Wait a minute, let me TELL you about my perfect world. In the first place, there aren't going to be so many people in it."
"What will you do," said Fran, sarcastically, "kill off about 90% of them?"
"It might be one of the few GOOD things to come out of an atomic war," said Ken nastily. "BLAM, and the population expansion is halted."
"Maybe permanently," observed Fran. "BLAM, as you put it, and genes are so messed up they can't reproduce anyone anymore."
"I'm not saying it SHOULD be done through bombs, but that it could be done through bombs. What happened to the old survival of the fittest. People move into Africa and kill off the lions. Then the antelope population increases because they aren't killed off so often by lions, and the antelope start eating the plains clean, and nothing will grow because everything's cropped too close. It's like saying something has to control the antelope population explosion, or something will happen. But who controls the HUMAN population explosion? Maybe it IS war and hydrogen bombs! Usually, the world manages things pretty well itself --- like rivers, even. I saw pictures of the Hudson River once. Some upstate city dumps all its crap into the river, and it's polluted for a hundred miles downstream. But the river has ways of cleaning itself, precipitating solid wastes, aerating liquid gunk, churning shit around until it becomes drinking water. So two hundred miles downstream you can drink it from it again. Then some other city craps into it again, and it's an open sewer when it floats past Manhattan, with asphyxiated fish topping off the oily stew. Remove the cities, and the rivers would be pure again."
"So you're saying people shouldn't live in the cities," said Fran. "Fine, but you talk about the attractions of New York --- the ballet, the opera, the concerts, the plays. If everyone lived in the trees, what's going to happen to your ballet and opera?"
"If I had one day to live on earth, do you think I'd want to see a ballet? Ballets are fine, but they're not what I would call the highest form of entertainment the human race offers. What would I like? I'd like to live somewhere, on the ground floor, with no one above me, and work at some job where I felt useful, something that I LIKED to do, and have a couple people around that I loved. That's not asking too much, is it?"
"Maybe not, but who carries off the garbage, who milks the cows, who breeds the cattle?" Fran lurched forward with each question, her hair setting up currents in the sunlight, glittering in the rays of gold.
"I do, and people like me. What's WRONG with garbage collecting, for heaven sake? It's only the rich ones who crinkle up their noses and say 'ugh' to garbage. Everyone carries out his OWN garbage. If people ate more healthily, there wouldn't BE so much garbage. When you grow your own carrots, you don't have to worry about where to throw the cans, and the peelings can go right out into the backyard, there's no problem with that."
"The world has got a long way to go before it considers a garbage collector on the same level with, say, a computer programmer," said Fran, looking slyly at Ken. She didn't quite know why she enjoyed baiting him, but she did.
"But that doesn't mean it's impossible," Ken said weakly. "It's only society, nothing innate in man, that makes one occupation more 'worth-while' than another. Collecting garbage is MUCH more worthwhile than computer programming, since if the garbage doesn't get collected, you'll get SICK, but if the computer doesn't operate --- big deal." He threw up his arms.
"So progress should have stopped long ago --- " Fran started slowly.
"Right," said Ken, too hastily.
"And we wouldn't know how to CURE or PREVENT the tetanus we might contract some day when something terrible happened and the garbage didn't get collected and someone stepped on a nail!" said Fran, triumphantly.
"There's progress and there's progress," said Ken, covering himself. "Some people are only happy by looking for better ways to help people. Fine, let them do it, it's what make them happy. So we GOT computers now, and big machinery. Fine," and he saw his out, "so we build plastic domes over the Arctic, and then even the Eskimos don't have to worry about the cold. And we melt down the ice in the world," he went on, knowing he was going too far, but enjoying it, "boil it all off, and get rid of lots of the water and get rid of the oceans and make the whole planet into a soap bubble of peace and plenty --- OK, OK, I've gone too far."
"If you're saying we should stop someplace, it's the old question, WHO says WHEN do we stop?" Fran knew when she had a good point.
"That's another thing that's wrong with our imperfect world," beamed Ken with his answer, "everyone's too afraid of making a mistake. So someone, I don't care who --- say they spin a big wheel marked with years, and where the wheel stops, there the progress stops, it really doesn't matter when. Someone says stop sometime! Then what? TRY it. If it doesn't work, then have a little more progress, then stop again and try it again. Pretty soon, no one will want to even START it again."
"I am not so sure," said Fran, "that's not what we have now. Every so often progress DOES stop. We have war, death rate goes up from killing, birth rate goes down because all the guys are busy killing each other. Then someone doesn't like the stopped progress, so they stop the war and start progress again. Gee, Ken, you've got the system you want."
"Oh, you're so funny," and Ken made a face at laughing Fran. "Everyone's so tied up in progress they don't know WHEN to stop. The merry-go-round's going so fast people have gotten USED to the speed, and they might even get sick when it stops. But it's GOT to stop someday, or that merry-go-round's gonna break down."
"OK," Fran again baited Ken. "Now you know what you want to do, create a perfect world. Fine, you just go out and DO it. OK?" She smiled, batting her eyelashes like pinned butterflies. Ken didn't say anything, and Fran feared she's killed the conversation. "How do you start?" she egged him on.
"I have to start with myself," said Ken, with a touch of sullenness. "I have to be happy first, then maybe my example can be followed by others."
"I'm going to be awfully sarcastic, Ken," said Fran, fearing she might antagonize him, "but you could start by killing yourself, and leave the world a little closer to your idea of perfection. Fewer people, I mean," and she felt awful as she said it.
Ken stared, then his face relaxed into a smile. "I like you, Fran," he said. "You really know how to needle."
"Seriously," Fran said, happy to see the smile, "how DO you start?"
Ken was silent for a few moments, then he said, "OK, here it comes, flight of fantasy #537: one perfect world coming up. You'll have to be patient with my stumbling, I've never done this before." Fran nodded and listened. "First, I have to accept the fact that the world's fouled up: private ownership is rampant, nationalism exits everywhere. So first I have to nullify this particular evil. How? I accumulate $700,000,000 --- I SAID this was a flight of fantasy! --- and by up an island in the Caribbean, let's say in the Grenadines, I can actually buy one from England. OK, I and 500 other people who think like I do --- I warned you! --- buy and ship and sail for this island, which I'll call --- just picking random syllables out of the air --- Kostrzyn. Now, this island had food --- little deer, a few wild boar which can be caught and bred --- OK, we'll buy a couple of cows --- and a whole garden full of seeds for everything else. There's water, falling in rain, stored in the only lake, nestled in the cone of an extinct volcano --- " Ken waved a double-over giggling Fran to silence.
"--- and that's all we need. We can evaporate ocean water for salt, we plant orange trees so we don't get scurvy, and, yes, we carry along a first aid kit with all the latest drugs in it. There are tasks to be done, and that might be the hardest thing to do, since everyone will have to learn to do something. That's one of the biggest rubs: to start a new world, we have to start somewhere, with the old world, so the first set of new people will remember the OLD ways, and that'll be the biggest danger to the new society. We can't even call it Communism, because that's a dirty word. I'll call it a commune, though that's becoming an even dirtier word, since I don't want to invent a new word, like 'clup.' Who'd want to live in a 'clup', anyway?"
"Oh, Ken," reproved Fran, unhappy that the serious discussion seemed to be over.
"Hush!" said Ken haughtily, "let me finish. So there are 500 of us, 250 men and 250 women, and there's no such thing as families, which is the cause of most of the problems, anyway. What's so great about a family? This clup --- ah, commune --- will be one big family. Wouldn't you rather have your choice of 250 mothers, rather than being stuck with the one you've got? With the birth of a genius, you should throw out the mother with the afterbirth, not the baby with the bath water. Kids are born and put into a communal house, like a hospital, where everyone take turns caring for them and loving them. If a woman's busy because she's the best --- salt-evaporator in the village, well, she won't HAVE to spend so much time with her kids, if she even wants them. She can do what she wants. This is assuming that SOME women have what used to known as maternal instincts, otherwise, no one would walk to take over the kids."
"Maybe in the perfect world, there'd be no more NEED for maternal instinct," said Fran, hopping into the conversation wherever she could.
"Oh, maybe," said Ken huffily, "but it MAY be, too, that the perfect world is one that ends with the people in it --- might be bit hard on the last few, but lots of things MAY be."
Fran sat silently.
"If I'd really want to fantasize, I could say that when the number of kids in the communal nursery got too large," said Ken, relishing the "evilness" of his thought, "they'd weed out the little ones, just like a garden is weeded, for the good of the garden. Bring BACK a survival of the fittest concept for human beings."
"What if they'd chosen to weed YOU out when you were five years old?"
said Fran, forgetting not be nasty.
"Then I wouldn't be here, would I?" retorted Ken loudly, "and would the world be any DIFFERENT from what it is now?"
"Absolutely, since you're the one who's going to create the new, perfect world," Fran's voice rose higher, too, matching Ken in the battle.
"Who knows which of the millions of guys killed in the two or three dozen WARS might not have had the idea, and carried it THROUGH, had they LIVED," shouted Ken.
Fran ducked down into her seat. "OK, OK, let's not let this talk get as out of control as the population. We're not arguing with each other, are we?"
"NO, WE'RE NOT," roared Ken, then he smiled sheepishly, "it just sounds like we are." Fran smiled with relief. "But let me go on," Ken went on, "it MIGHT be a good idea to get back to the Greek idea of putting feeble kids out to die; who NEEDS a crowded world?"
"For one thing, the kids who were let out to die might LOVE a crowded world, and for another thing, wasn't it the baddy-baddy Spartans, and not the goody-goody Athenians, who let the girl-babies die?"
"Oh, go ahead and quibble about details if you want to," said Ken loftily, while Fran opened and shut her mouth. "We kill cattle to eat, we weed gardens, we douse hundreds of acres with insecticides, we kill each other, so why can't there be a killing for a good reason. And IS a baby so much, outside of our society and our ethic? A squalling shitting thing that has to be loved and cared for and taught and coddled. It's not much when it starts, but it grows into something, when cared for. But if there's not enough care to go around, why create a race of half-loved kids, when you could have half as big a race of fully-loved kids, who would be FOUR times better to live with.
"The whole smash," said Ken, opening his arms to encompass the world, "is a whole bunch of particles, no one knows what these particles really are and on one knows how small they can get. A baby is just a certain arrangement of particles --- no less, but no more. Tell me a baby's got a soul, and I'll tell you the steak you had for dinner yesterday had just as much soul before someone slashed out its innards. Look at your murderers and your rapists --- where? where?" Ken mimicked an eager girl, looking around for rapists, getting silly with the length of his demi-monologue. "Take away their unloving mothers and their poor neighborhoods and what do you have? Yeah! Rich, loved, rapists and murderers!" By this time both Ken and Fran were red in the face from laughing.
"Stop it, Fran, you're making me all silly," gasped Ken, and regained control of himself. "You know what I mean, and that's what I THINK. I wrote a story, almost a novel, when I was in high school, about how increasing population drove the human race out to the planets and to the stars to house themselves. That's when I thought the human race was comprised of human beings. But it's not, Fran, and you know it now after your LSD trip. The human race is comprised of love, and that's IT. If the circumstances are wrong for love, those circumstances have to be changed. How much room is there in THIS world for love? Let me make a million bucks, guarantee that I'll never get sick, let me have someone physically attractive that I can fuck when I feel like it, and then I might have time for love --- that is, until I feel the urge to get TWO million bucks. Where is the love in the world today? Here, maybe, here in this hospital --- acid house, because Dr. MacKenzie loves what he's doing. Maybe in insane asylums, too. I've always be intrigued by the thought that those who go "insane" are the real sane ones in the world. They have their own world, they do what they want, I'll bet they even love each other, too. Where was I?"
The conversation had gotten so involved that Ken finally lost the thread of it, entangled in rhetoric and half-formed feelings. Fran looked up at him and winced through a smile, or smiled through a wince, and said nothing.
"There has got to be more love in the world," insisted Ken, knowing that that was a fact, anyway. "And it's hard enough to find in this world, so it's got to be easier to find in a perfect world." Suddenly the words were nonsensical, and he felt as if he were standing on a podium before the world, with his zipper open.
"You're right," whispered Fran. "Of course you're right. That's what everyone wants, but no one, not any one," she insisted, trying to be gentle, "knows exactly how to do it. Everyone has a lot of ideas, and many of them aren't worth the wind taken to say them. Some of them are great" she paused, hoping somehow to encourage him by a momentary silence, "and some of them aren't. Yours might be great, but I guess the only way you're going to find out, like you say, is not to talk about it but to DO it. All the talking in the world isn't going to DO anything for anyone."
"Hey," said Ken, feeling soft and vulnerable, "I did manage to get something across to you, didn't I? Yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right."
Fran lifted her arm into the air, as if holding a torch; and she raised it and pushed the torch in her face, and Ken saw that she was feigning drinking. "Here's to your perfect world. I'd love to be a part of it," she said, and her hand dropped to her side.
DAY 13
TRIP #3: Hollywood Hospital: Patient's description of experience
Date 9/26/66
Started by telling John I wanted to go "not inside, not outside, but only with the music." Began the session on the floor, but a discomfort exhausted me as I tried to go along with the music, and could only feel myself tossed back and forth, fearing to think, to allow the intellect to block the emotion, and fearing to move to allow the body to hold sway. Finally I had to urinate, and John acted the practical, kindly father taking his stupid child to potty. I lay down on the sofa. That idea of father stayed with me, and when I felt lost in the music (but going nowhere), I simply asked him for help, and the strength he gave me was so simple, so direct, that I began to concentrate on father, and told him so. I felt only the vaguest sensations (mildly pleasant) as the music continued and then I panicked. I might miss feeling again. John put on "Jerusalem" and I cried with feeling and relief; those voices, this triumph --- it shattered me and I cried. John as much as said "What next?" and I could only say "I don't know, I only know you stand for something important." And I remembered the shining faces of his two sons. John was a father, one who tried to love his children. We began talking about my father (Oh, at the very start, I told John what Brian had said which shook me emotionally: "My father said 'I never knew I had such an intelligent son'"); I haven't seen my father for years. Phil had touched this before, but I had blocked; but John, a father, was important. "Jerusalem" came again, agonizedly slowly, and I cried with exultation. It was a FATHER I had sought! At the end I felt drained and I needed to think. When John had left before I called him back, but when he finally left I asked for a glass of water. My drinking the water, and saying "Thank you" to John, ended the main LSD-section of the session. I was awake thinking of what I had found: All tears, all life, all love, from father through son to son. I may mock it later, but the fact is there; I found love and father. All choral music sings of love, for without fathers, and love, there would be no people to sing or to write the music or to play the instruments. I couldn't have babies (to assuage a stomach pain), but that was for a mother to do. Father and mother and child and love equals more children, in infinite number. I looked in a mirror, and was god and man and evil and woman, and any man who did not have children was not doing as much as he could for life. I resolved (1) to see my mother and father as soon as possible; (2) try, at least try to love, marry and have children of my own, for love. Enormous thanks to John, Phil, Frank and Dr. MacLean: I FOUND WHAT I CAME FOR.
THE HOLY CITY (Stephen Adams) Roger Wagner Chorale
MALES:
Last night I lay a-sleeping; there came a dream so fair,
I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there.
I heard the children singing, and ever as they sang,
Methough the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang,
Methough the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang.
ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
ALL:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem - tatata - lift up your gates and sing tatata tatata ta
Hosannah in the highest, Hosannah to your king.
(flute and violin: plunk plunk plunk PLINK)
FEMALES:
And then, methought, my dream was changed; the streets no longer rang.
Hushed were the glad hosannahs, the little children sang.
The sun grew dark with mystery, the morn was cold and chill
As the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill,
As the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill.
ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
ALL: Jerusalem, Jerusalem - tatata - hark how the angels sing tatatatatatata
Hosannah in the highest, Hosannah to your king
(violins: plung, plung, plung)
FEMALE VOICES, MALE CROON:
And once, again, the scene was changed, new earth there seemed to be.
I saw the Holy City, beside the timeless sea.
The light of God was on its streets, the gates were open wide,
And over all thy virgin, and no one was denied,
MALES ONLY:
No need of moon or stars by night, or sun to shine by day,
It was the new Jerusalem, that would not pass away,
It was the new Jerusalem, that would not pass away.
tatata tatata tatata TA TA TA, TA TA TA TA
ALL:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, TATATA, sing for the night is o'er TATATA TATATA TATATA TA
Hosannah in the highest, Hosannah forevermore.
TA TA TA TA TA TA TA TA TA
Hosannah in the highest (silence) Hosannah forevermore. TATATA TATATA TATATA TA
Hosannah FOREVERMORE. TA TA TA TA TATA TA (smash)
