I turned to Sala. "How much is it from here to Mexico City?"

He shrugged and sipped his drink. 'Too much," he replied. "Why— you moving on?"

I nodded. "I'm pondering it."

Chenault looked up at me, her face serious for a change. "You'd love Mexico City, Paul."

"What the hell do you know about it?" Yeamon snapped.

She glared up at him, then took a long drink from her glass.

"That's it," he said. "Keep sucking it down—you're not drunk enough yet."

"Shut up!" she screamed, jumping to her feet. "Leave me alone, you goddamn pompous fool!"

His arm shot out so quickly that I barely saw the movement; there was the sound of a smack as the back of his hand hit her cheek. It was almost a casual gesture, no anger, no effort, and by the time I realized what had happened he was leaning back in the chair again, watching impassively as she staggered back a few feet and burst into tears. No one spoke for a moment, then Yeamon told her to go inside. "Go on," he snapped. "Go to bed."

She stopped crying and took her hand away from her cheek. "Damn you," she sobbed.

"Get in there," he said sternly.

She glared at him a moment longer, then turned and went inside. We could hear the squeak of the springs as she fell on the bed, then the sobbing continued.

Yeamon stood up. "Well," he said quietly, "sorry to subject you people to that sort of thing." He nodded thoughtfully, glancing at the hut. "I think I'll go on into town with you—anything happening tonight?"

Sala shrugged. I could tell he was upset. "Nothing," he said. "All I want is food, anyway. The rest can wait."

Yeamon turned toward the door. "Hang on," he said. "I'll get dressed."

After he went inside, Sala turned to me and shook his head sadly. "He treats her like a slave," he whispered. "She'll crack up pretty soon."

I stared out to sea, watching the sun as it slowly approached the horizon. I felt sorry for Chenault, but a drunken woman is something I've never liked and her witless chatter had been getting on my nerves. If that was the only way to stop her, then he had done a quick and painless job, and the only thing I disliked about it was having to sit there and watch.

We could hear him moving around inside, but there was no talk. When he came out he was dressed in his tan suit, with a tie flung loosely around his neck. He pulled the door shut and locked it from the outside. "Keep her from wandering around," he explained. "She'll probably pass out pretty soon, anyway."

There was a sudden burst of sobbing from inside the hut.Yeamon gave a hopeless shrug and tossed his coat in Sala's car. "I'll take the scooter," he said, "so I won't have to stay in town."

We backed out to the road and let him go ahead. His scooter looked like one of those things they used to parachute behind the lines in World War II—a skeleton chassis, showing signs of a red paint job far gone with rust, and beneath the seat was a little engine that made a sound like a Gatling gun. There was no muffler and the tires were completely bald.

We followed him along the road, nearly hitting him several times when he sHd in the sand. He set an awful pace and we were hard pressed to keep up without tearing the car to pieces. As we passed the native shacks little children came running out to the road to wave at us. Yeamon waved back, grinning broadly and giving a tall, straight-armed salute as he sped along, trailing a cloud of dust and noise and weaving now and then to avoid the chuckholes.

We stopped where the paved road began, and Yeamon suggested we go to a place just a mile or so farther on. "Pretty good food and cheap drink," he said, "and, besides, they'll give me credit." He nodded. "It's a native place, but they know me."

We followed him down the road until we came to a sign that said "Casa Cabrones." An arrow pointed to a dirt road that branched off toward the beach. It went through a grove of palms and ended in a small parking lot, next to a small and ratty restaurant with tables on

the patio and a jukebox beside the bar. Except for the palms and the Puerto Rican dientele, it reminded me of a third-rate tavern in the American Midwest. A string of blue bulbs hung from two poles on either side of the patio, and every thirty seconds or so the sky above us was sliced by a yellow beam from the airport tower, no more than a mile away.

As we sat down and ordered our drinks I realized we were the only white men in the place. The others were not blacks but tan Httle men with thin mustaches and greasy hair. They made a great deal of noise, singing and shouting with the jukebox, but they all seemed tired and depressed. It was not the rhythmic sadness of Mexican music but the howling emptiness of a sound I have never heard anywhere but in Puerto Rico—a combination of groaning and whining, backed up by a dreary thumping and the sound of voices bogged down in despair.

It was terribly sad—not the music itself, but the fact that it was the best they could do. Most of the tunes were translated versions of American rock-and-roll, with all the energy gone. I recognized one as "Long Fat Lover." The original version had been a hit when I was in high school. I recalled it as a wild and racy tune, but the Puerto Ricans had made it a repetitious dirge, as hollow and hopeless as the faces of the men who sang it now in this lonely wreck of a roadhouse. They were not hired musicians, but I had a feeling they were putting on a performance, and any moment I expected them to fall silent and pass the hat. Then they would finish their drinks and file quietly into the night, like a troupe of clowns at the end of a laughless day.

I had seen enough of this kind of dreariness to take it for granted. The myth of Latin virility goes all to pieces in Puerto Rico. This was one of Yeamon's earliest observations. "These people have no balls," he said. "They've been gibbed—like cats."

As a brutal generalization, it was pretty apt. At times I felt like a spectator at a worldwide convention of fugitive eunuchs. Queers who had thought New York was a pretty good deal came to San Juan and called it Valhalla. One of them, a massive fellow with a full beard, told me the boys were "the sweetest little buggers in the world."

"Not a bit of fuss," he assured me. "Touch 'em once and they melt like butter."

All manner of fearful deviations thrived in that muggy air. A legion of pederasts wandered the narrow sidewalks of the Old City, giggling at every crotch. The bars, the beaches, and even the best sections of town literally crawled with rapists and dykes and muggers and people with no sex or sanity at all. They lurked in the shadows and foamed

through the streets, grasping and grabbing like crazed shoplifters, driven mad by the Tropic Rot.

And here I was in the midst of it, pausing now and then to wonder what the hell I was doing, what it all meant, then chuckling like an ass and sitting back with a fresh drink. Now, slaking my thirst in a dirty roadhouse, I slumped in my chair and watched the light sweep through the trees above the patio.

Suddenly the music stopped and several men rushed for the jukebox. A quarrel broke out, a flurry of insults—and then, from somewhere far in the distance, Hke a national anthem played to calm a frenzied crowd, came the slow tinkhng of Brahms's "Lullaby." The quarrel ceased, there was a moment of silence, several coins fell into the bowels of the jukebox, and then it broke into a whimpering yell. The men returned to the bar, laughing and slapping each other on the back.

We ordered three more rums and the waiter brought them over. We'd decided to drink a while, putting off dinner till later, and by the time we got around to ordering food the waiter told us the kitchen was closed.

"Never in hell!" Yeamon exclaimed. 'That sign says midnight." He pointed to a sign above the bar.

The waiter shook his head.

Sala looked up at him. "Let's cut the crap, fella. I'm too hungry to fuck around—bring us three steaks and some french fries."

The waiter shook his head again, staring at the green order pad in his hand.

Suddenly Yeamon banged his fist on the table. The waiter looked fearful, then scurried behind the bar. Everyone in the place turned to look at us.

"Let's have some meat!" Yeamon shouted. "And more rum!"

A fat little man wearing a white short-sleeve shirt came running out of the kitchen. He patted Yeamon on the shoulder. "Good fellows," he said with a nervous smile. "Good customers—no trouble, okay?"

Yeamon looked at him. "All we want is some food," he said pleasantly. "A simple thing, just three steaks and another round of drinks."

The little man shook his head. "No dinner after ten," he said. "See?" He jabbed his finger at the clock. It was ten-twenty.

"That sign says midnight," Yeamon replied.

The man shook his head.

"What's the problem?" Sala asked. "The steaks won't take five minutes. Hell, forget the potatoes."

Yeamon held up his glass. "Let's get these drinks," he said, waving three fingers at the bartender.

The bartender looked at our man, who seemed to be the manager. He nodded quickly, then walked away. I thought the crisis had passed.

In a moment he was back, bringing a little green check that said $11.50. He put it on the table in front of Yeamon.

"Don't worry about that," Yeamon told him.

The manager clapped his hands. "Okay," he said angrily. "You pay." He held out his hand.

Yeamon brushed the check off the table. "I said don't worry about it."

The manager snatched the check off the floor. "You pay!" he screamed. "Pay now!"

Yeamon's face turned red and he rose half out of his chair. "I'll pay it like I paid the others," he yelled. "Now get the hell away from here and bring us some food."

The manager hesitated, then leaped forward and slapped the check on the .able. "Pay now!" he shouted. "Pay now and get out—or I call police."

He had barely got the words out of his mouth when Yeamon grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "You cheap little bastard!" he snarled. "You keep yelling and you'll never get paid."

I watched the men at the bar. They were bug-eyed and tense as dogs. The bartender stood poised at the door, ready to either flee or run outside and get a machete—I wasn't sure.

The manager, out of control by this time, shook his fist at us and screeched. "Pay, you damn, damn Yankees! Pay and get out!" He glared at us, then ran over to the bartender and whispered something in his ear.

Yeamon got up and put on his coat. "Let's go," he said. "I'll deal with this bastard later."

The manager seemed terrified at the prospect of welshers walking out on him. He followed us into the parking lot, cursing and pleading by turns. "Pay now!" he howled. "When will you pay? . . . you'll see, the police will come ... no police, just pay!"

I thought the man was crazy and my only desire was to get him off our backs. "Christ," I said. "Let's pay it."

"Yeah," said Sala, bringing out his wallet. "This place is a looney bin."

"Don't worry," said Yeamon. "He knows I'll pay." He tossed his coat in the car, then turned to the manager. "Get a grip on yourself, you fat little punk."

We got in the car. As soon as Yeamon started his scooter the manager ran back and began shouting to the men inside the bar. His screams filled the air as we pulled off, following Yeamon out the long driveway. He refused to hurry, idling along like a man intrigued with the scenery, and in a matter of seconds two carloads of screaming Puerto Ricans were right behind us. I thought they might run us down; they were driving big American cars and could have squashed the Fiat like a roach.

"Holy shit," Sala kept saying, "this may be the end of us."

When we came to the paved road, Yeamon pulled over and let us pass. We stopped a few yards ahead of him and I called back. "Come on, damnit! Let's get out of here."

The other cars came up beside him and I saw him throw up his hands as if he'd been hit. He jumped off the scooter, letting it fall, and grabbed at a man whose head was outside the window. Almost at the same moment I saw the police drive up. Four of them leaped out of a little blue Volkswagen, waving their billyclubs. The Puerto Ricans cheered wildly and scrambled out of their cars. I was tempted to run, but we were instantly surrounded. One of the cops ran up to Yeamon and pushed him backward. "What is it?" he shouted. "What are you trying to do?"

At the same time, both doors of the Fiat were jerked open and Sala and I were pulled out. I tried to break loose, but several people were holding my arms. Somewhere beside me I could hear Yeamon saying over and over: "Well the man spit on me, well the man spit on me. . . .

Suddenly everybody stopped shouting and the scene boiled down to an argument between Yeamon, the manager, and what appeared to be the cop in charge. Nobody was holding me now, so I moved up to hear what was going on.

"Look," Yeamon was saying. "I paid the other bills—what makes him think I won't pay this one?"

The manager said something about drunk, arrogant Yankees.

Before Yeamon could reply, one of the cops stepped up behind him and slammed him on the shoulder with his billy. He shouted with pain and lurched to one side, onto one of the men who had come after us in the cars. The man swung wildly with a beer bottle, hitting him in the ribs. The last thing I saw before I went down was Yeamon's savage rush on the man with the bottle. I heard several swacks of bone against bone, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something coming at my head. I ducked just in time to take the main force of the blow on my back. It knocked the wind out of me and I lost my balance.

Sala was screaming somewhere above me and I was thrashing around on my back, trying to avoid the feet that were pounding me Hke hammers. I covered my head with my arms and lashed out with my feet, but the awful hammering continued. There was not much pain, but even through the numbness I knew they were hurting me and I was suddenly sure I was going to die. I was still conscious, and the knowledge that I was being kicked to death in a Puerto Rican jungle for no reason at all filled me with such terror that I began to scream like an animal. Finally, just as I thought I was passing out, I felt myself being shoved into a car.

Ill

I was half-unconscious during the ride, and when the car finally stopped I looked out and saw ten or fifteen Puerto Ricans gathered on the sidewalk. I knew I couldn't stand another beating; when they tried to haul me out I clung desperately to the back of the seat until one of the cops hit me on the arm with a billy.

To my surprise, the crowd made no move to attack us. We were pushed up the steps, past a group of sullen cops at the door, and led into a small windowless room where they told us to sit on a bench. They then closed the door and left us alone.

"Jesus Christ," said Yeamon. "This is incredible. We have to get hold of somebody."

"We're headed for La PrincessUy'' Sala groaned. "The bastards have us now—this is the end."

"They have to let us use the phone," I said. "I'll call Lotterman."

Yeamon snorted. "He won't do a damn thing for me. Hell, he wants me locked up."

"He won't have any choice," I repHed. "He can't afford to abandon me and Sala."

Yeamon looked doubtful. "Well ... I can't think of anybody else to call."

Sala groaned again and rubbed his head. "Christ, we'll be lucky to get out of here aHve."

"We got off easy," said Yeamon, gently feeling his teeth. "I thought we were done for when it started."

Sala shook his head sadly. "These people are vicious," he muttered.

"I was dodging that cop and somebody hit me from behind with a coconut—nearly broke my neck."

The door opened and the boss cop appeared, smiHng as if nothing had happened. "Okay?" he said, watching us curiously.

Yeamon looked up at him. "We'd like to use the phone," he said.

The cop shook his head. "Your names?" he said, pulling out a small notebook.

"If you don't mind," said Yeamon. "I think we have a right to make a phone call."

The cop made a menacing gesture with his fist. "I said NO!" he shouted. "Give me your names!"

We gave our names.

"Where are you staying?" he asked.

"Goddamnit, we live here!" Sala snapped. "I work for the Daily News and I've lived on this stinking rock for more than a year!" He was trembHng with rage and the cop looked startled. My address is 409 Calle Tetuan," Sala continued, "and if I don't get an attorney down here pretty quick I'm going to cause you some trouble."

The cop thought for a moment. "You all work for the Daily News?''

"You're damn right," Sala replied.

The cop looked down at us and smiled wickedly. "Tough guys," he said. "Tough Yankee journalists."

No one said anything for a moment, then Yeamon asked again to use the phone. "Look," he said. "Nobody's trying to be tough. You just beat the hell out of us and now we want a lawyer—is that too much to ask?"

The cop smiled again. "Okay, tough guys."

"What the hell is this 'tough guy' business?" Sala exclaimed. "Where the Christ is a phone?"

He started to get up and he was still in a crouch, halfway off the bench, when the cop stepped forward and gave him a savage rabbit punch on the neck. Sala dropped to his knees and the cop kicked him in the ribs. Three more cops burst into the room as if they'd been waiting for the signal. Two of them grabbed Yeamon, twisting his arm behind his back, and the other one knocked me off the bench and stood over me with his billy. I knew he wanted to hit me and I didn't move, trying not to give him an excuse. After a long moment, the boss cop yelled, "Okay, tough guys, let's go." I was jerked off the floor and we were forced down the hall at a half-trot, our arms twisted painfully behind our backs.

At the end of the hall we came into a big room, full of people and

cops and a lot of desks—and there, sitting on a table in the middle of the room, was Moberg. He was writing in a notebook.

"Moberg!" I yelled, not caring if I was hit as long as I attracted his attention. "Call Lotterman! Get a lawyer!"

At the sound of Moberg's name, Sala looked up and screamed with rage and pain: "Swede! For Christ's sake call somebody! We're being killed!"

We were pushed through the room at high speed and I had no more than a glimpse of Moberg before we were in another hallway. The cops paid no attention to our shouts; apparently they were used to people screaming desperately as they were led away to wherever we were being taken. My only hope was that Moberg had not been too drunk to recognize us.

We spent the next six hours in a tiny concrete cell with about twenty Puerto Ricans. We couldn't sit down because they had pissed all over the floor, so we stood in the middle of the room, giving out cigarettes like representatives of the Red Cross. They were a dangerous-looking lot. Some were drunk and others seemed crazy. I felt safe as long as we could supply them with cigarettes, but I wondered what would happen when we ran out.

The guard solved this problem for us, at a nickel a cigarette. Each time we wanted one for ourselves we had to buy twenty—one for every man in the cell. After two rounds, the guard sent out for a new carton. We figured out later that our stay in the cell cost us more than fifteen dollars, which Sala and I paid, since Yeamon had no money.

It seemed like we had been there for six years when the guard finally opened the door and beckoned us out. Sala could hardly walk and Yeamon and I were so tired that we had trouble supporting him. I had no idea where we were going. Probably to the dungeon, I thought. This is the way people disappear.

We went back through the building, along several hallways, and finally into a large courtroom. As we were shoved through the door, looking as dirty and disheveled as the most horrible bums in the cell we had just left, I looked around anxiously for some familiar face.

The place was jammed and I looked for several minutes before I saw Moberg and Sanerson standing solemnly in one corner. I nodded to them and Moberg held up his fingers in a circle.

"Thank God," said Sala. "We've made contact."

"Is that Sanerson?" Yeamon asked.

"Looks like it," I said, not having the faintest idea what it meant.

"What's that prick doing here?" Sala mumbled.

"We could do a hell of a lot worse," I said. "We're damn lucky anybody's here."

It was almost an hour before they called our case. The boss cop was the first to speak and his testimony was delivered in Spanish. Sala, who understood parts of what he was saying, kept muttering: "That lying bastard . . . claims we threatened to tear the place up . . . attacked the manager . . . ran out on our bill ... hit a cop . . . Christ Jesus . . . started a fight when we got to headquarters . . . God, this is too much! We're done for!"

When the boss cop had finished, Yeamon asked for a translation of the testimony, but the judge ignored him.

The manager testified next, sweating and gesturing with excitement, his voice rising to a hysterical pitch as he swung his arms and shook his fists and pointed at us as if we had killed his entire family.

We understood nothing of what he said, but it was obvious that things were going against us. When it finally came our turn to speak, Yeamon got up and demanded a translation of all the testimony against us.

"You heard it," said the judge in perfect Enghsh.

Yeamon explained that none of us spoke Spanish well enough to understand what had been said. "These people spoke English before," he said, pointing at the cop and the manager. "Why can't they speak it now?"

The judge smiled contemptuously. "You forget where you are," he said. "What right do you have to come here and cause trouble, then tell us to speak your langauge?"

I could see that Yeamon was losing his temper and I motioned to Sanerson to do something. Just then I heard Yeamon say he "would expect fairer treatment under Trujillo."

A dead silence fell on the courtroom. The judge stared at Yeamon, his eyes bright with anger. I could almost feel the ax descending.

Sanerson called from the back of the room: "Your honor, could I have a word?"

The judge looked up. "Who are you?"

"My name is Sanerson. I'm with Adelante.."

A man I had never seen stepped quickly up to the judge and whispered in his ear. The judge nodded, then looked back at Sanerson. "Go ahead," he said.

Sanerson's voice seemed out of place after the wild denunciations of the cop and the manager. "These men are American journalists," he said. "Mr. Kemp is with The New York Times, Mr. Yeamon rep-

resents the American Travel Writers' Association, and Mr. Sala works for Life magazine." He paused and I wondered just how much good this kind of thing was going to do. Our earlier identification as Yankee journalists had been disastrous.

"Perhaps I'm wrong," Sanerson continued, "but I think this testimony has been a little confusing, and I'd hate to see it result in any unnecessary embarrassment." He glanced at the boss cop, then back to the judge.

"Jesus," Yeamon whispered. "I hope he knows what he's doing."

I nodded, watching the judge's face. Sanerson's last comment had been delivered in a tone of definite warning and it crossed my mind that he might be drunk. For all I knew, he had come straight from some party where he'd been drinking steadily since early afternoon.

"Well, Mr. Sanerson," said the judge in an even voice. "What do you suggest?"

Sanerson smiled politely. "I think it might be wise to continue this hearing when the atmosphere is a little less strained."

The same man who had spoken to the judge earlier was back at the bench. There was a quick exchange of words, then the judge spoke to Sanerson.

"You have a point," he said, "but these men have behaved in an arrogant way—they have no respect for our laws."

Sanerson's face darkened. "Well, your honor, if the case is going to be tried tonight, I'll have to ask for a recess until I can contact Adolfo Quinones." He nodded. "I'll have to get him out of bed, of course, but I don't feel qualified to act any further as an attorney."

There was another hurried conference at the bench. I could see that the name Quinones had given the court some pause. He was the News' attorney, an ex-senator, and one of the most prominent men on the island.

We all watched nervously as the conference continued. Finally the judge looked over and told us to stand. "You will be released on bail," he said. "Or you may wait in jail—as you like." He jotted something down on a piece of paper.

"Robert Sala," he said. Sala looked up. "You are charged with public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. Bail is set at one thousand dollars."

Sala grumbled and looked away.

"Addison Yeamon," said the judge. "You are charged with public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. Bail is set at one thousand dollars."

J

Yeamon said nothing.

"Paul Kemp," said the judge. "You are charged with public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Bail is set at three hundred dollars."

This was almost as much of a shock as anything that had happened all night. I felt as if I'd committed a treachery of some kind. It seemed to me that I'd resisted well enough—had it been my screaming? Was the judge taking pity on me because he knew I'd been stomped? I was still pondering it as we were led out of the courtoom and into the hall.

"What now?" said Yeamon. "Can Sanerson afford this kind of bail?"

"Don't worry," I said. "He'll handle it." As I said it I feh like a fool. If worse came to worst, I could cover my bail out of my own pocket. And I knew somebody would post Sala's, but Yeamon was a different matter. Nobody was going to make sure he came to work on Monday. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that in a few minutes we were going to go free and he would go back to that cell, because there wasn't a soul on the island with a thousand dollars who had even the slightest interest in keeping Yeamon out of jail.

Suddenly Moberg appeared, followed by Sanerson and the man who'd been huddling with the judge. Moberg laughed drunkenly as he approached us. "I thought they were going to kill you," he said.

"They almost did," I replied. "What about this bail? Can we get that much money?"

He laughed again. "It's paid. Segarra told me to sign a check." He lowered his voice. "He said to pay the fines if they weren't more than a hundred dollars. He's lucky—there weren't any fines."

"You mean we're out?" said Sala.

Moberg grinned. "Of course. I signed for it."

"Me too?" said Yeamon.

"Certainly," Moberg replied. "The deed is done—we're all free men."

As we started for the door, Sanerson shook hands with the man he'd been talking with and hurried after us. It was almost dawn and the sky was a Hght gray. Except for a few people around the police station, the streets were calm and empty. A few big freighters stood at anchor in the bay, waiting for morning and the tugboats that would bring them in.

By the time we got to the street I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I'd spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. There was a peace and a brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships

and the sea beyond them and I felt a real excitement at being free with a whole day ahead of me.

Then I realized I would sleep most of the day, and my excitement disappeared. Sanerson agreed to drop us at the apartment and we said goodnight to Moberg, who was going off to look for his car. He'd forgotten where he'd left it, but he assured us it was no problem. 'T\\ find it by the smell," he said. "I can smell it for blocks." And he shuffled off down the street, a small figure in a dirty gray suit, sniffing for his car.

Sanerson explained that Moberg had first called Lotterman, who was not home, then Quinones, who was in Miami. Then he had called Segarra, who told him to sign a check for what he presumed would be small fines. Sanerson had been at Segarra's house, just ready to leave when Moberg called, and he had stopped by the court on his way home.

"Damn good you did," I said. "We'd be back in that goddamn dungeon if you hadn't come."

Yeamon and Sala mumbled agreement.

"That's probably what you deserve," Sanerson replied. "What got into you, anyway?" Then he smiled and held up his hand. "Never mind. I'm too tired for an argument—we'll talk about it later."

We rode the rest of the way in silence. As we passed the Plaza Colon, I heard the first sounds of morning—a bus beginning its run, the shouts of early fruit peddlers, and from somewhere up on the hill came the rhythmic jangHng of Brahms's "Lullaby."

IV

"/ loved you once, but now you belong with the dead.''

Heroine, The Mummy

At times I think that any one of a hundred simple things could have brought that day to a different end. If we had lingered ten minutes longer over dinner, for instance, we'd have joined that awful dancing parade at a different point. Or if we'd turned right, instead of left, when we came down the stairs from the restaurant. Or even if I had run out of cigarettes, and we had stopped for two minutes to buy another pack. If any of those things had happened, we would not have

found ourselves in that procession next to the same people we found ourselves next to when we grabbed the first waists we saw and started that maddening shuffle.

Yet at other times I think the events of that night were so inevitably predictable that nothing we might have done would have taken us in any other direction. I think of the day before, and the week before, and the month before that; I can even go back in the years and see the chain of apparently haphazard circumstances that brought me into that yelling, drunken parade at that certain spot at that certain time, next to those people I would never have met if I'd been a minute early or late. I remember decisions made in Europe and New York, at times when I never dreamed of going to any carnival on St. Thomas, at times when I felt I could go anywhere and do anything, holding myriad life patterns in my hand like cards, and feeling free to choose—yet if I look at all that from a certain angle, I see that I never had a choice at all but was only submitting to a fate that had long since been chosen for me.

I have thought this way several times in my life but only when circumstances have led me to a bad pass. No man who has chosen well and wisely will ever credit it to fate; the only real fatalist is a man on his way down the pipe. There is no solace in fatalism. A believer is robbed even of the pleasure of shouting, "Fuck you, I quit," because he knows he was born a quitter and it would be only a matter of time before he threw in the towel, surprising no one, not even himself.

As it happened we joined the dance at a certain point on a street that ends at the waterfront and fell in next to some blacks who seemed to know each other. Somehow we got mixed up so that I was between a thin black girl with a long braid and a squatty black girl with a wide grin; Chenault was between the thin girl and a small man with a spade beard who spoke English with a Harlem accent and kept shouting, "Big noise up there, you Hell Riders! Suck 'em up and GO!" He kept yelling this and it took me a while to understand that the particular band we were following was called the Hell Riders. After each hoot of encouragement, the Httle man would turn to Yeamon and talk very rapidly.

After an hour or so of this locked-in dancing, we were all old friends. When I finally had to drop out, the two girls acted as if they were losing a vital member of the team. The rhythm of the dance meant quite a bit to them, and to alter it was not a good thing.

Yeamon was happy to quit, but he had to drag Chenault out bodily. We went back to Oliver's and ordered three cups of ice, then sat there

for a while and rested our legs. I was half-dead, but Chenault seemed hardly winded. Yeamon was soaked with sweat and after a while he announced that we would go swimming in the harbor to cool off.

We left Oliver's, which was crowded now with all manner of sweaty, half-naked people, and walked across the street to where the boats were tied up. There were people on most of them, but a few were deserted, and we boarded one that looked like a converted native sloop. We took off our clothes on the stern and dove in, much to the amusement of the people on the boat in the next slip. They yelled encouragement and offered drinks, warning us constantly about barracuda.

We finally ended up on their boat, a sleek power cruiser from San Juan. They were wealthy Puerto Ricans, and decent people in a way, but we were all so drunk that we ended up insulting each other and parting company on very ugly terms. One man claimed to be the president of Banco Popular, and I recall Yeamon telling him that when he saw him in San Juan he would kick his ass till his nose bled.

The man came back with what must have been some very elegant threats, but they were in Spanish and all I understood was something about "cutting out the heart."

We stood on the pier and listened to the sounds of the dance. It was moving through the streets a few blocks across town and I marveled at the endurance of those who had managed to hang in. Chenault wanted to join it again, but Yeamon refused and I was glad. I told myself I wouldn't have done it anyway, but I probably would have, rather than be left alone in that drunken chaos of a town.

We went to the balcony of the Grand and made fresh drinks. Sitting there in the wicker chair, with my foot on the wrought-iron railing, I thought I would like to come here sometime when the town was quiet and the natives were not howling through the streets in a great snake dance. Just for the simple luxury of sitting there with a cold gin and tonic, a faint breeze from the slow propeller of the ceiling fan, staring down at the peaceful palm-ringed plaza with the white man's burden on my shoulders and a lazy smile in my heart.

Sometimes after midnight we found ourselves in front of a place called the Blue Grotto. It was jammed, and the noise inside was unholy. We were just about to go in when we were surrounded with happy, friendly shouts. It was our friends from the dance. They were headed for the "real party" and insisted we come along. The squatty girl with the wide grin took hold of my arm, and many times in the next few days did I wish that I might have fallen drunk and helpless

on the street at that moment. If my hver had suddenly been spHt asunder by drink it would have been good luck compared to what followed.

The small, shouting fellow was slapping Yeamon on the back and telling some tale of what we had missed just a few moments before— something about a whip fight and some spicks with a case of gin. We went down the street to where they had a car, and about six more people piled in with us, laughing happily about all the things that had happened.

The car was so crowded I could barely breathe, and all the while I was in it some voice in my gut kept saying, "Get the hell out of here and call a cab for St. Louis, Get out and go back, back, back. ..." And I remember thinking that I'd read somewhere how experience makes the man, how he should push on into unknown worlds and plumb their meaning.

At the end of the main street we turned up toward the hills above the town, climbing and twisting on a dark little road through what appeared to be the residential section. The houses at the bottom of the hill were wooden, with peeHng paint, but as we went higher, more and more houses were made of concrete blocks. Finally they became almost elaborate, with screen porches and lawns and here and there a car parked in a gravel driveway. I couldn't see too well because the squatty girl was sitting on my lap.

We stopped at a house full of lights and music. The street in front of it was jammed with cars and there was no place to park. The driver let us out and said he'd join us when he found a place for the car. The squatty girl gave a loud whoop and ran up the steps to the front door. I followed, very reluctantly, and saw her talking to a fat black woman in a bright blue dress. Then she pointed back at me. Yeamon and Chenault and the others caught up with me as I stopped at the door.

"Six dollars, please," said the woman, holding out her hand.

"Christ!" I said. "How many does that pay for?"

"Two," she said curtly. "You and the young lady." She nodded at the girl who had ridden out from town on my lap.

I cursed silently and gave up six dollars. My date repaid me with a coy smile and took my hand as we entered the house. My God, I thought, this pig is after me.

Yeamon was right behind us, muttering about the six-dollar fee. "This better be good," he told Chenault. "You might as well figure on getting a job when we get back to San Juan."

She laughed, a happy little shriek that had nothing to do with Yeamon's

remark. I glanced at her and saw the excitement in her eyes. That dip in the harbor had sobered me up a bit, and Yeamon seemed pretty steady, but Chenault had the look of a hophead, ready to turn on.

We went down a dark hall toward a room full of music and noise. Halfway down the hall was a closet that served as a bar. A huge black man in a blue button-down shirt was mixing drinks and handing them over the makeshift counter to dozens of grasping hands. I stopped and bought one, a rum on ice, for a quarter. It was the ice I wanted—ice, and a cup to drink from.

At the end of the hall we came into the main room. It was jammed from wall to wall, and over in one corner a band was playing. Not the steel band I expected to see but three horns and a drum. The sound was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Then, looking up at the ceiHng where the light bulbs were wrapped in blue gelatin, I knew the sound. It was the music of a Midwestern high school dance in some rented club. And not just the music; the crowded, high-ceilinged room, the makeshift bar, doors opening onto a terrace, giggling and shouting and drinking out of paper cups—it was all exactly the same, except that every head in the room was black.

Seeing this made me a bit self-conscious and I began looking around for a dark corner where I could drink without being seen. My date still had me by the arm, but I shook her off and moved toward one corner of the room. No one paid any attention to me as I eased through the mob, bumping dancers here and there, keeping my head lowered and moving cautiously toward what looked like a vacant spot.

A few feet to my left was a door and I edged toward it, bumping more dancers. When I finally got outside I felt like I'd escaped from a jail. The air was cool and the terrace was almost empty. I walked out to the edge and looked down on Charlotte Amalie, the whole town in a cluster of lights at the bottom of the hill. I could hear music floating up from the waterfront, probably from the bars along Queen Street. It sounded like several steel bands, but I was so far away that I couldn't tell. Off to my right and left, in a half-moon of twinkling lights, I could see more houses and a few small hotels where red and blue lights marked something more than a simple residence. Maybe another party, another dance, another blue gelatin orgy full of swaying dancers and syrupy saxophones. I tried to remember the other places we'd been told to go for the "real fun" and wondered if they were any better than this one. I finished my drink and poured another from the bottle.

I thought of Vieques, and for a moment I wanted to be there. I remembered sitting on the hotel balcony and hearing the hoofbeats in

the street below. Then I remembered Zimburger, and Martin, and the Marines—the empire builders, setting up frozen-food stores and aerial bombing ranges, spreading out like a piss-puddle to every corner of the world.

There was no peace in Vieques, and certainly none here—only moments snatched out of time, pure little pauses between one madness and the next. I turned to watch the dancers, thinking that since I'd paid six dollars to get into this place, I might as well try to enjoy it. A black fellow appeared at the door and grinned at me. I nodded back, never doubting the wisdom of maintaining an amiable appearance. He came over and talked for a while, and after he'd mentioned the car once or twice I realized he was one of the people who had come up from town with us. I felt bad for not remembering him and tried to make up for it by being overly sociable. I offered him a drink out of my bottle and made some decent comments about the decor of the place, the relaxed atmosphere and the fine view—but all the while I was talking I had an awful suspicion that I wouldn't recognize him again, even if he appeared a few minutes later, smiling in exactly the same way. I remembered that old saying that "all niggers look the same," a foul and callous outlook generally attributed to white trash. But when I looked into that room full of black dancers I saw that it was true—they all looked the same. And this man in front of me looked like all the others. He might as well have been the president of Ghana, without his fancy hat. I had a feeling that it couldn't be true, that there was something terribly wrong with me because the only black face that stood out in my mind was the face of Patrice Lumumba. What is it? I wondered. And I tried to tell myself that all car salesmen looked the same, and all bank tellers. That's it, I thought, it's an occupational thing, not ethnic at all. Then I remembered that not all Jews looked the same, nor all Danes. I got extremely nervous, standing there on the terrace and trying to deny to myself that "all niggers look the same." The one beside me kept up a pleasant chatter, and the idea that I could not recognize him in ten minutes made me feel inadequate and guilty. I felt Hke beating my breast and cursing God for putting this terrible mote in my eye. I wanted to confess, to grab this well-meaning black fellow by the collar and ram my frightful secret into his ear.

Instead, I said I was going back for more ice and left him standing there on the terrace, blissfully ignorant of all that had gone through my mind while he talked. Or maybe not, I thought. Maybe he knows. This made me feel worse than ever, and I tried not to look at any faces as I made my way across the room toward the bar.

SONGS OF THE DOOMED

The dancing was getting wilder now. No more of the swaying foxtrot business. There was a driving rhythm to the music; the movements on the floor were jerky and full of lust, a swinging and thrusting of hips, accompanied by sudden cries and groans. I felt a temptation to join it, if only for laughs. But first I would have to get drunker.

On the other side of the room I found Yeamon, standing by the entrance to the hall. ^Tm ready to do the dinga," I said with a laugh. "It's finally getting hold of me."

He glared at me, taking a long slug of his drink.

I shrugged and moved on toward the hall closet, where the button-down bartender was still laboring over the drinks. "Rum and ice," I shouted, holding my cup aloft. "Heavy on the ice."

He seized it mechanically, dropped in a few lumps of ice, a flash of rum, then handed it back. I stabbed a quarter into his palm and went back to the doorway. Yeamon was staring at the dancers, looking very morose.

I stopped beside him and he nodded toward the floor. "Look at that bitch," he said.

I looked, and saw Chenault, dancing with the small, spade-bearded black we had met at the beginning of the AU-Out Tramp, and who had later brought us to the party. It occurred to me that he looked like Lumumba, but he was a good dancer, and whatever step he was doing was pretty involved. Chenault was holding her arms out like a hula charmer, a look of tense concentration on her face, while her body jerked back and forth with the rhythm of the dance. Now and then she would spin, swirling her plaid skirt around her like a fan.

"Yeah," I said. "She's hell on this dancing."

"She's part nigger," he replied, in a tone that was not soft enough to make me feel at ease.

"Careful," I said quickly. "Watch what you say in this place."

"Balls," he said loudly.

Great Jesus, I thought. Here we go. I put my hand on his arm. "Take it easy," I said. "Why don't we head back to town?"

"Fine with me," he replied. "Try talking to her." He nodded at Chenault, dancing feverishly just a few feet away.

"Hell," I said. "Just grab her. Let's go."

He shook his head. "I did. She screamed like I was killing her."

There was something in his voice that I'd never heard before, an odd wavering that suddenly made me very nervous. "Jesus," I muttered, looking around at the crowd.

"I'll just have to bat her in the head," he said.

Just then I felt a hand on my arm. It was the pig, my squatty date. "Let's go, big boy!" she whooped, dragging me onto the floor. "Let's do it!" She laughed wildly and began to stomp her feet.

Good God, I thought. What now? I watched her, holding my drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. "Come on!" she shouted. "Give me some business!" She hunched up toward me, pulling her skirt up around her thighs as she wiggled back and forth. I began to stomp and weave; my dancing was shaky at first, then I leveled out to a sort of distracted abandon. Somebody bumped me and I dropped my drink on the floor. It made no difference to the frenzied couples that hemmed us in. Nothing seemed to make any difference; I had a feehng that the dance would go on forever, that they'd forgotten everything else and didn't care to remember.

Suddenly I was next to Chenault. I shrugged helplessly and kept up the stomp. She laughed and bumped me with her hips. Then she and Lumumba drifted away in the crowd, leaving me with my pig.

Finally I shook my head and quit, making gestures to indicate I was too tired to go on. The pig gave me a contemptuous glance and danced away. I went back to the bar for a fresh drink. Yeamon was nowhere in sight and I presumed he'd been sucked into the dance. I made my way through the bodies and out to the terrace, hoping for a place to sit down. Yeamon was sitting on the railing, talking to a black girl of about fifteen. He looked up with a smile. "This is Ginny," he said. "She's going to teach me the dance."

I nodded and said hello. Behind us the music was growing wilder, and at times it was almost drowned out by the yelling of the crowd. I tried to ignore it, looking out over the town, seeing the peace below us and wanting to be down there.

Soon the music from the house grew wilder. There was a new urgency about it, and the shouts of the mob took on a different tone. Yeamon and Ginny went in to see what was happening. I could see the crowd moving back to make room for something, and I walked over to see what it was.

They had made a big circle, and in the middle of it Chenault and the small, waspish black man were doing the dance. Chenault had dropped her skirt and was dancing in her panties and her white sleeveless blouse. The black man had taken off his shirt and wore nothing but a pair of tight, red toreador pants. Both of them were barefoot.

I looked at Yeamon. His face was tense as he stood on tipotoe to watch. Suddenly he called her name. "Chenault!" But the crowd was making so much noise that I could barely hear him three feet away.

She seemed oblivous to everything but the music and the waspish black man who led her around the floor. Yeamon called again, but nobody heard.

Now, as if in some kind of trance, Chenault began to unbutton her blouse. She popped the buttons slowly, like a practiced stripper, then flung the blouse aside and pranced there in nothing but her bra and panties. I thought the crowd would go crazy. They screamed encouragement, stomping and yelling as they shoved and climbed on each other to get a better view. The music never varied except in loudness, but it was already so frenzied that any variation would have been a letdown. The horns screamed madly and the drum thundered on with a harrowing Congo rhythm. I thought the house would cave in from the noise and the terrible stomping on the floor.

I looked again at Yeamon. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, waving his hands in the air now, trying to get Chenault's attention. But he looked Uke just another spectator, carried away with the spectacle.

Now they were close together, and I saw the black man reach around Chenault and unhook the strap of her bra. He did it quickly, expertly, and she seemed unaware that now she wore nothing but her thin silk panties. The bra slid down her arms and fell to the floor. Her breasts bounced violently with the jerk and thrust of the dance. Full, pink-nippled balls of flesh, suddenly cut loose from the cotton modesty of a New York bra.

I watched, half fascinated and half terrified, and then heard Yeamon beside me as he lunged toward the floor. There was a commotion and then I saw the big bartender move up behind him and grab his arms. Several others pushed him back, treating him like a harmless drunk as they made room for the dance to go on.

Yeamon was screaming hysterically, struggling to free himself from the maze of black arms. "Chenault!" he shouted. "What the hell are you doing?" He sounded so desperate that I wanted to do something, but I felt paralyzed.

They were coming together again, weaving slowly toward the middle of the circle. The noise was unbelievable, an overpowering roar from two hundred black throats. Chenault still wore that dazed, ecstatic expression as the one they call Hugo reached out and eased her panties over her hips and down to her knees. She let them drop silently to the floor, then stepped away, breaking into the dance again, moving against him, freezing there for a moment—even the music paused— then dancing away, opening her eyes and flinging her hair from side to side on her shoulders.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON lOI

Suddenly Yeamon broke loose. He leaped into the circle and they were on him immediately, but this time he was harder to pin. I saw him whack the big bartender in the face, using his arms and elbows to keep them off, screaming with such a fury that the sound of it sent chills up my spine, and finally going down under a wave of black bodies.

The melee stopped the dance. For an instant I saw Chenault standing alone; she looked surprised and bewildered, with that little muff of brown hair standing out against the white skin and her blonde hair falling around her shoulders. She looked small and naked and helpless, and then I saw Hugo grab her arm and start pulling her toward the door.

I bulled through the crowd, cursing, shoving, trying to get to the hall before they disappeared. Behind me I could hear Yeamon, still yeUing, but I knew they had him now and my only thought was to find Chenault. Several people hit me before I got to the door, but I paid no attention. Once I thought I heard her scream, but it could have been anyone. When I finally got through to the hall it was so crowded that I couldn't get through. It seemed like hours before I was able to get to the door.

When I finally got outside I saw a crowd at the bottom of the stairs. I hurried down and found Yeamon lying there on the ground, bleeding from the mouth and groaning. Apparently they had got him out a back door. The big, button-down black was leaning over him, holding his head in his hand and wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.

I forgot about Chenault and shoved through the ring of people, mumbUng apologies as I made my way to where Yeamon was stretched out. When I got there the bartender looked up and said, "Is this your friend?"

I nodded, bending down to see if he was hurt.

"He's okay," somebody said. "We tried to be easy with him but he kept swinging."

"Yeah," I said. Yeamon was sitting up now, holding his head in his hands. "Chenault," he mumbled. "What the hell are you doing?"

I put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay," I said. "Take it easy."

"That weasel of a nigger," he said loudly.

The bartender tapped me on the arm. "You better get him out," he said. "He's not hurt now, but he will be if he stays around."

"Can we get a cab?" I asked.

He nodded. "I'll get you a car." He stepped back and yelled across the crowd. Somebody answered and he pointed at me.

"Chenault!" Yeamon shouted, trying to get up off the ground. I shoved him back down, knowing that the moment he got up we'd have

another fight. I looked up at the bartender. "Where's the girl?" I said. "What happened to her?"

He smiled faintly. "She enjoyed herself."

I realized then that we were going to be sent off without Chenault. "Where is she?" I said too loudly, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

A black man I had never seen, or at least didn't recognize, stepped up to me and snarled, "Man, you better get out."

I shuffled nervously in the dirt, looking back at the bartender who seemed to be in charge. He smiled maliciously, pointing behind me. I turned and saw a car, coming slowly through the crowd. "Here's your cab," he said. "I'll get your friend." He stepped over to Yeamon and jerked him to his feet. "Big man go to town," he said with a grin. "Leave Httle girl here."

Yeamon stiffened and began to shout. "You bastards!" He swung savagely at the bartender, who dodged easily and laughed while several blacks shoved Yeamon into the car. They shoved me in after him, and I leaned out the window to yell at the bartender: "I'll be back with the police—that girl better be all right." Suddenly I felt an awful jolt on the side of my face, and I drew back just in time to let the second punch go flying past my nose. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I rolled up the window and fell back on the seat. I heard them all laughing as we started down the hill.

San Juan, 1962

REVISITED: THE PUERTO RICAN PROBLEM

Two YEARS AGO Alfred Kazin, the hard-nosed Hterary critic, published a searing appraisal of Puerto Rico in the magazine Commentary.

It did not create much of a stir in the States, but when it was reprinted front page in the San Juan Star, all hell broke loose.

Letters poured in, calling Kazin everything from a "crazy Jew" to a "stupid provincial Americano." A few people agreed with him, but to do so in public was to provoke a wild and woolly argument. The dialogue lasted for months—in the press, in bars, in private homes, until eventually the name Kazin evolved into a sort of dirty word from one end of the island to the other.

I was living in San Juan at the time and each day I would sally forth to the fray, defending Kazin more out of sport than any real conviction, and happy in the knowledge that I had a surefire antidote to any dull conversation.

Now all that is changed. If Kazin came back now and wrote the same article it would fall flat. Puerto Rico has made it. The one-time "poorhouse of the Caribbean" is now a blue-chip tourist attraction, and what Alfred Kazin happens to think about it does not make much difference except as a literary curiosity.

This is too bad, in a way, because Puerto Rico, and especially San Juan, is a much duller place than it was two years ago. About the only way to rouse a good argument these days is to gripe about the skyrocketing prices, and of course that's a waste of time. Success has not gone so much to the Puerto Rican's head as to his belly, and a satisfied man is not nearly so quick to take insult as a scrambling neurotic.

There is no longer that defensiveness that marked the Puerto Rico of the formative years. As recently as i960, the vested interests and even the would-be vested interests were so insecure that most people would fly off the handle at the slightest inference that this island was anything less than a noble experiment and a budding Valhalla. Now the beachhead has been won. The pattern is no longer Boom or Bust, but more along the lines of Organize and Solidify.

For several years the Commonwealth promoted itself with an ad that said: suddenly, everybody's going to puerto rico. And as one wag put it, "Suddenly everybody went to Puerto Rico." Which is one of the reasons why the place has gone dull.

All during the fifties San Juan was literally brimming with geeks and hustlers and gung-ho promoters. Absolute incompetents were getting rich overnight, simply because they had stumbled on a good thing at a ripe time. You would meet a man in a bar and he might have $200 to his name: two months later you would meet him again and he'd have more money than he knew what to do with.

Gimmicks were paying off with a lunatic consistency. A whole tribe of hustlers got rich selling bowling balls to the natives. Another tribe sold Formica-top tables, and still another pushed transistor radios. Now they are all captains of commerce—and the ones who had the wrong gimmicks went broke and disappeared.

The small operator was often a big wheel in the fifties, but now the Big Boys are moving in—people like Clint Murchison of Texas and Gardner Cowles of Look magazine—and the methods are changing. Things are not so rough-edged, so crude as they were before. Everybody has a public-relations man and ready cash is no longer so all-important. They are even giving credit to the natives, which pretty well tells the story.

One of the surest signs of the new status level is that the people who once felt they had a mission here are getting apathetic. Most of those missions are accomplished, and a lot of people who grew up with the island are talking about shoving off to seek what might be called "the challenge of the uncertain."

Chuck New, a columnist for the San Juan Star, says he has a feeling that "Puerto Rico doesn't need me anymore." This may or may not be true, but what is beyond any question is the fact that New doesn't need Puerto Rico anymore, either. He came here on a shoestring, started doing a gossip column for the newspaper, and one day found he was sole owner of La Botalla, San Juan's most popular bistro. New is not particularly cunning and offers no explanation for his success except that he claims to lead a Christian life—and that he happened to be in San Juan when things were up for grabs.

Another ex-missionary is Bill Kennedy, managing editor of the Star since its beginning in the fall of 1959, who several months ago gave up his job and turned to the writing of fiction. "There was no more challenge on the paper," he says. "The excitement went out of it."

Another man, a promoter who worked for more than five years to make Puerto Rico what it is today, put it a little differently. "You know," he said, "San Juan is getting bourgeois—that's why I'm leaving."

One of the best examples of how Puerto Rico has changed can be seen in the San Juan Star. On its first anniversary it had a circulation of 5,000 or so. Now, two years and one Pulitzer Prize later, the figure is 17,000 and climbing steadily. The fact that Gardner Cowles owns it may or may not explain anything, but it is worth noting.

In the beginning the Star was staffed largely by drifters, transients who showed up out of nowhere and disappeared with a baffling and

unexplained regularity. Some of them left vast debts behind, and others went to jail. On any given night the city editor was just as likely to pick up the phone and get a routine story as he was to hear that half his staff had been locked up for creating a riot.

Nothing like that is very Hkely to happen now. The wild boys have moved on, and the EngHsh-speaking press is pretty staid. This is also what happened to the rest of San Juan—the nuts and the cranks and the oddballs have either fled or stayed long enough to become respectable.

Now the streets of the Old City are full of people who look like New Yorkers wearing ManTan—and most of them are. The streets are also full of American homosexuals—so many that the government has begun an official investigation to find out why this is. The Old City itself is getting very quaint; whole blocks of slums are being "reconstructed" and knick-knack shops are sprouting everywhere.

In a phrase, San Juan is over the hump, and the rest of Puerto Rico will not be far behind. After ten years of toil and trouble, millions of dollars spent to attract industry and tourists, savage debates and dialogues as to whether all that money and effort was worthwhile—all that is history now, and whatever happens from here on in will very definitely be a second stage. There are still problems, but they are of a different sort, and dealing with them will require different methods and even different men. For better or for worse, it is the end of an era.

San Juan, 1964

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

'*Ifyou want your dreams to come true, dont sleep.''

Old Yiddish Proverb

/ WAS IN Woody Creek when Kennedy was killed. I had no radio or telephone. Some rancher from up the road knocked on the door and said some Cuban shot Kennedy and he's dying in Dallas.

/ was extremely jolted and angry and distraught. limmediately went into town and started doing a piece on the reaction. Just a journalist's instinct. It was so heavy the Observer refused to run it. It was never printed anywhere.

I had just returned from South America, and I had regained that sort of beat generation attitude about the country. I sort of Uked the great American West, and a sense of renewing, and I was feeling good about the country.

But all of a sudden that day the country looked different to me, and I felt very bad about it.

Woody Creek, March 1990

BACK TO THE U.S.A.

When i came back from South America to the National Observer, / came as a man who'd been a star — off the plane, all the editors met me and treated me as such. There I was wild drunk in fatigues and a Panama hat. . . . I said I wouldn't work in Washington. National Observer is a Dow Jones company so I continued to write good stories — just without political context. I drifted west. National Observer became my road gig out of San Francisco. I was too much for them. I would wander in on off hours drunk and obviously on drugs, asking for my messages. Essentially, they were working for me. They liked me, but I was the Bull in the China Shop — The more I wrote about politics the more they realized who they had on their hands. They knew I wouldn't change and neither would they.

The Free Speech Movement was virtually nonexistent at the time, but I saw it coming. There was a great rumbling — you could feel it everywhere. It was wild, but Dow Jones was just too faraway. I wanted to cover the Free Speech Movement, but they didn't want me to.

Berkeley, Hell's Angels, Kesey, blacks, hippies . . . I had these con-nections. Rock and roll. I was a crossroads for everything and they

weren't making use of it. I was withdrawn from my news position and began writing book reviews — mainly for money.

My final reason for leaving was that I wrote this strongly positive review of Wolfe's Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. The feature editor of the Washington Post killed it because of a grudge. I took Observer's letter and a copy of the review with a brutal letter about it all to Wolfe. I then copied that letter and sent it to the Observer. / had told Wolfe that the review had been killed for bitchy, personal reasons. The final blow was the Wolfe review. I left to write Hell's Angels in 196^.

Woody Creek, March 1990

HELL'S ANGELS: LONG

NIGHTS, UGLY DAYS, ORGY

OF THE DOOMED . . .

In '64 THIS eX'HELl's Angel, Bernie Jarvis, a reporter for the Chronicle, took me out to a transmission shop in South San Francisco, and introduced me to them.

I was a little edgy in the box shop . . . I was surrounded by clearly vicious hoodlums who were getting kind of a kick out of me being brought in there, wing-tipped shoes and a Madras sports coat and tie.

Jarvis really helped. I would have gotten to know them eventually, but he made it much easier. I got to know the San Francisco Angels, then through them I got to know the Oakland Angels, and then when the Nation piece came out, the word got around that I was all right. Not all of them read it, but enough of them did so they were okay. That was my credential for going back to write the book.

They said it was the only honest thing ever written about them. They didn't mind the brutality or the ugliness of it, they were mainly con-

cerned with the fact that they could identify with the reality of what they were reading. They knew it was a straight, honest account of what the hell they were up to. That's why it was a credential. They weren't worried about what I would write in the book.

I wrote the Nation piece in about a month. I didn't intend to put that much into it. I just got kind of fascinated by the weirdness of it. When it finally came out, I was just sitting there, doing nothing. I paid the rent with the check for the piece, but I was still stuck with having quit journalism and trying to get back into fiction.

I went down to the lineup for the longshoremen there at the docks, where they pick people to work. The regulars all have jobs, but if they need a hand, they sort of say, you, you, you. . . . It didn't work. It was politics: the dock bosses knew whom to pick. I was a stranger.

I ended up lining up about four or five in the morning with winos down at Fifth and Folsom. A truck would pull up and they would say, ''We need twelve men to deliver circulars." Out in the Sunset district for a dollar an hour . . . those things you find on your doorstep: special

AT SAFEWAY TODAY, MEAT, PRODUCE, I4 CCntS.

But I couldn 't even get wino's work. They wouldn 't choose me there either. Hell, I was the healthiest person there . . . these were serious winos. Nobody gets up and stands on the street corner in the darkness waiting for a truck to come by and pick maybe six of twenty-five men, unless he's pretty damned desperate.

But all of a sudden when the Nation piece came out, I got about six book offers all at once, in the mail. (My phone had been taken out because I hadn't paid the bill.) I was astounded. I didn't know what the hell had happened. And one of them was an offer from Ballantine, the paperback house, that said they would give me $i,soo just for signing. The Nation piece was the equivalent of an outline for a book, so they said, ''Can you write a book on this?" And only a fool would have said no.

The other offers were kind of interesting, a little more prestigious. But the Ballantine thing was a firm offer. It was a $6,000 advance and I could get $1,^00 just by signing. I would have signed anything at the time. I'd have signed a contract to write a book about hammerhead sharks, go out in the bay, and swim with the bastards.

Of course, I had already written two novels. . . . I'd always regarded journalism as a lower form of work, a left-handed thing to make money. But of course I'd never seen any journalism that struck me as being special. It was all the same, newspaper writing.

But this subject was so strange that for the first time in any kind of journalism, I could have the kind of fun with writing that I had had in the past with fiction. I could bring the same kind of intensity and have the same kind of involvement with what I was writing about, because there were characters so weird that I couldn 't even make them up. I had never seen people this strange. In a way it was like having a novel handed to you with the characters already developed.

That happened to me again eight years later when I got into national politics. But until the Angels I had always been writing in the same mold as other newspaper hacks and I thought that was the way to do it. With the Angels, however, there was a freedom to use words. Vm a word freak. I like words. Fve always compared writing to music. That's the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it's like music. In sportswriting, you have the freedom to use really aggressive words. There's a whole breadth of vocabulary. The Angels gave me that same feeling, like hot damn, the thing was rolling right in front of you. You could touch them on their cycles, you could hear them, and you could see the fear and fright in the citizens' faces. And so I took that first $i,soo and went out and bought a motorcycle. At that point it was the fastest bike ever tested in Hot Rod magazine. And then I destroyed the son of a bitch.

I found out then that writing is a kind of therapy. One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having to come to grips with it. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool.

Later on I can look back at something like that thing about ''the edge," which I wrote about twenty minutes after coming back from doing it. My face was still almost frozen, dark red and crusted with tears, not from crying but tears that start coming to your eyes just from the wind. I was so high on that — from coming back — that I sat and wrote the whole thing, right through, and never changed a word of it. It's one of my favorite pieces of writing.

Woody Creek, March 1990

MIDNIGHT ON THE COAST HIGHWAY

All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. — Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine—four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on loi. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet, and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head, but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz . . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out . . . thirty-five, forty-five . . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these—and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get

around almost anything—then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly—zaaapppp—going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil slick . . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: "An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway i."

Indeed . . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headhght beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right . . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it . . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica . . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . . The Edge. . . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others—the living—are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

San Francisco, 1965

KEN KESEY: WALKING WITH THE KING

Twenty five years ago. That's incredible. It seems like at the most twenty-five months. It was a wild time, folks — the good old days for sure. We stomped on the terra. San Francisco in ig6^ was the best place in the world to be. Anything was possible. The crazies were seizing the reins, craziness hummed in the air, and the heavyweight king of the crazies was a rustic boy from La Honda named Ken Kesey.

He had the craziest gang in the West. LSD-2^ was legal in those days, and Kesey's people were seriously whooping it up. It was a whole new world. ''Do it now" was the motto, and anything not naked was wrong. The best minds of our generation somehow converged on La Honda, and Kesey had room for them all. His hillside ranch in the canyon became the world capital of madness. There were no rules, fear was unknown, and sleep was out of the question.

How I became involved with these people is a long, queer story. Td done an article on the HelVs Angels for The Nation, and once that was out I had my entree. After that, as far as the Angels were concerned, I was ''good people.''

As for Kesey, I always liked his work and believed then, as I still do, that he is one of the really good writers of our time. Earlier, Td been to one of the Prankster things at Kesey's La Honda place and I liked it.

I happened to have a foot in both camps, and what I did basically was act as a social director mixing a little HelVs Angel with a little Prankster to see what you came up with — for fun, of course, but I was also acting in my own interest because I wanted to have something interesting to write about. To do this safely, well, you must have control — my control ran out early on.

To the credit of Kesey and the pranksters, they were too crazy to be scared. Kesey invited the boys down to La Honda for a full scale set-to with scores of Angels converging for rapine, LSD, and fried chicken. I told Kesey that he would deserve to be shot as a war criminal if he went through with this. I remember thinking, "What the fuck have I wrought here? I have destroyed all kinds of things Tve been entrusted to at least be careful with. " / was opposed, but there wasn't

time to be opposed, there was only time to turn on my tape recorder.

I remember the hordes snarhng down the road and amassing near the big welcome banner the Pranksters had stretched across the gate. At the entrance stood the young innocents eager to extend their tribal hospitality.

It was quite a scene. People were bursting into flame everywhere you looked. There were speakers everywhere — all around the trees — there were other big delay speakers on the cliff across the road with wires. And there were about six cop cars parked in the road, flashing lights, cops everywhere, they could see right across the creek. And all the while more Angels were coming down the road and being welcomed with great happiness and friendliness. The simple fact that carnage was averted was impressive, but this was incredible.

Yep. That was Uncle Ken. He couldn't laugh unless he was going fast, and then you couldn't hear him at all because the wind made his lips flap like rubber.

One thing he never knew, though, was what it felt like to get from his house back to mine in thirty-three minutes on a 6^oBSA Lightning. . . . It was fifty-five miles: which is very, very fast. But there was no speed limit on Highway i, back then: and on most nights there was no traffic. All you had to do was screw it all the way over and hang on. Everything after that was like being shot through the looking glass. It was faster than a brain full of DMT — one of the most powerful psy-chedelics ever made. As Grace Slick observed one day, "Acid is like being sucked up a tube, but DMT is like being shot out of a cannon. "

Maybe I have gone faster, since then, but somehow it's always felt slow.

Woody Creek, March 1990

LSD-25: RES IPSA LOQUITOR

I FIRST GOT INTO add when I lived in Big Sur in the early '60s. Mike Murphy and Joanna, a Stanford research psychiatrist, were experimenting with it. The idea fascinated me, but they said, wait a minute,

there are some people who cannot take acid, and you are one of them. You're the most violent son of a bitch that's ever walked the earth. We both like you, and we probably understand you. It's just too dangerous for you to take acid. You might kill us all, or kill yourself

Mike had been into weird Indian drugs for a long time, and I gathered that he had to be locked up himself when he took it. He was a pretty peaceful guy, but he had run amuck in Palo Alto, so I took their word for it. I stayed away from it then, and I didn 't have any for a long time after that.

Even later, when I was around Kesey's place, I refused to take it, because I figured I might go crazy and do something violent. But then finally I took it down there, in a fit of despair, the night that the Angels showed up. Kesey had invited them down after I'd introduced him to them, and I felt responsible for whatever was going to happen. I thought the Angels were going to beat people up and rape them.

So I figured, why not just get it on, and I asked somebody to give me ahitofacid. I thought, whatever I do can't be worse than what's already going on around me, so I may as well do it. I can't stand it straight.

I took it and it was quite a ride. I went completely out of my head and I had a wonderful time, didn't bother a soul. Not a hint of violence. I thought, aha, I've gone to the bottom of the well here and the animal's not down there, the one they said was there.

I had a lot of confidence, and you need a lot. You have to give yourself over to your instinct because with a head full of acid you can't pull back. You're going to do whatever you feel like doing. You can't repress anything. If you 're going to jump out the window, you 're going to jump out the window. If you're going to get violent, you're going to get violent. But I didn't.

Instead, I usually get very calm. I get into music, and talking, and laughing, and heavy thinking, images coming, connections. But they come so fast it's very hard to come back from the trip and still keep them intact. Nobody's really described an acid experience properly because it's impossible to come back to one and you can't really describe it.

That's why it's hard to write on mescaline, too, because your mind is going four times as fast as your hands can go, and you get disorganized and you can't keep your mind in phase with your fingers. That's why I have to get increasingly faster typewriters.

Whatever they make, if it's faster, Til buy it.

Woody Creek, March 1990

CHICAGO 1968: DEATH TO THE WEIRD

BEFORE CHICAGO

Nobody sent me to Chicago.

I had a contract to write a book. I got an advance on it. The working title was The Death of the American Dream. / had no idea what it meant. I didn't care what it meant. I just wanted money from a pub-hsher and I wanted to write something else. Vd tried to sell Random House on a book that Tom Wolfe eventually wrote, on the whole psychedelic thing, the next uprising.

I called Silberman collect one morning from Dick Alpert's house in Palo Alto. Crazed on acid. I spent about half an hour with the phone in my hand, holding it out so Silberman could hear the sound of a bee buzzing in a lilac bush. Meanwhile, I was trying to sell him on sending me $10,000 for an advance on the book. He took it in a good-humored way, but he rejected the idea.

So what came up was this Death of the American Dream thing, and I thought, well, the best way to do that is to take a look at politics. The first thing I did after I signed the contract was to go up to the New Hampshire Primary in '68 to do an article on Nixon. That was just an excuse. I wanted to see politics working.

A presidential campaign would be a good place, I thought, to look for the Death of the American Dream. And by the time I went up to write the piece on Nixon in New Hampshire I got to know all the McCarthy people because he was running at the same time. Johnson was still president and hadn't quit yet. McCarthy had no chance, supposedly, and I just happened to get mixed up with his people because they were sort of my kind of people. Like Sy Hersh, who was McCarthy's press secretary at the time.

So when Chicago came around, my head had gotten into politics, and I thought, well, if we're going to have a real bastard up there I may as well go. I went totally prepared. You don't take a motorcycle helmet to Chicago, normally, without a motorcycle. . . . And I still got the shit beaten out of me by the police.

AFTER CHICAGO

/ figured, if this is the way you bastards want to play, okay, and I went back and shook up poHtics in Aspen pretty seriously. I persuaded a person I didn't know at all, never even talked to, to run for mayor. The current mayor was running unopposed, and I thought, when the system is as rotten as I saw in Chicago, nobody should run unopposed, particularly a bad candidate. I just got angry that the mayor of Aspen, an old Republican lady, could run unopposed.

The McCarthy movement had floundered, and Bobby Kennedy had been killed, and it was a very low time for involvement in national politics. It was a crushing defeat for this kind of political notion that had been building for three or four years, that began out in Berkeley.

So it was time to do something else. We'd been beaten in Chicago. The lesson was very clear.

I figured that first, you change a small town. Politics in a small town is very apparent. You can get hold of things much more easily. Joe Edwards, the guy I persuaded to run for mayor, lost by six votes. Fd seen the ignorant hate vote come out and beat us, so I thought next year well fool the bastards, we'll run somebody else for county commissioner, and ril run for sheriff and give the bastards a real scare. We all lost by a very small margin.

Later, of course, in 'j2 when I was covering the national campaign, Joe Edwards and his law partner both ran for county commissioner. There were only three seats and if you control two, you control the county.

So while I was off covering McGovern, Sandy organized Joe's campaign, and he won. Hell, he won easily, but by that time we'd managed to make Aspen politics pretty interesting. It was no longer fashionable to refuse to register, to get deliberately stoned on election day and refuse to vote. But that process took about two years.

Hell, we had the votes to win the mayor's race in '6g, but we couldn 't convince them to register. Aspen was a really apolitical place. We were dealing with refugees from California, refugees from the East, real dropouts from everything. The last thing they wanted to do was get involved with regular politics.

So I wrote this article, ''The Battle of Aspen," and I thought, now where should I publish this? I was writing for Scanlan's at the time. But rather than give it to them, I thought, no, this one belongs in Rolling Stone. / figured the people I wanted to get to, the dropouts, would read Rolling Stone. / thought of it more as an ad than an article. And it worked — the vote tripled in one year.

Another reason we had lost in '6g was that the Aspen Times, the only paper of any influence in town at the time, refused to back Joe Edwards. We just had no way to reach people in town. So I thought, what we have to have is a newspaper. And you can't just go starting newspapers. But we could start a wall poster.

With the posters on one side they became something people would put on a wall. And I could write my gibberish on the back. Tom Benton and Joe Edwards and I became partners in the Meat Possum Corporation. I figured if there are going to be any libel suits, they should sue the fucking Meat Possum Press and not me. Edwards was a lawyer so I made him a partner. That way we had a lawyer, and a judgment-proof corporation. I could run completely amok on the back of Benton's posters.

The Wall Posters were a booming success for a while, but then we pushed it a little too far. We doubled the size, made it four pages, selling ads on the back to pay for it. That meant that I had the middle, Benton had the front, and we had the ads on the back. It worked for one issue, but what I put in the middle scared the hell out of a lot of people.

I threatened the sheriff. That was sort of my announcement for running for sheriff, a long article mocking him — mocking his fear of being shot by a hired freak gunman, a hippie-Mafia type. He was always muttering about how he wouldn't do this or couldn't do that because the hippies would shoot him. He was always mumbling that there was an emergency condition in the town because he had heard from ''unnamed sources" that three freaks had come in there to kill him. So I mocked him, which in effect read like I was threatening to kill him.

Also I insisted, since I had the middle two pages, on running a large picture of a Japanese girl masturbating. It really freaked people out, but I thought it was one of the most erotic shots I'd ever seen. We called her Villy."

And then Oscar came out.

He'd been coming out to Aspen off and on for years. But he came up and did our ad for us on the radio. We've always used the radio as our television, or the equivalent of television, in Aspen. There was no local television then.

And Oscar read this grisly ad about his wife being taken from him in L.A., his wife named ''Jilly," who'd run off with some editor from the Wall Poster, and he'd come to Aspen to look for her. He was pleading with the people of the town to help him find his wife, who had run off with these terrible dope addicts and drunkards. He had a breakdown on the radio. It was one of the funniest and weirdest tapes

you'll ever hear, by anybody. I wrote the script for the thing and we ran it four or five times. Of course, everybody in town took it seriously.

We had to take it off the air because people were calling from Denver and the AP office about some ''kidnapping'' and ''extortion/' something going on in Aspen. Some Chicano lawyer had come looking for his wife who had been kidnapped and taken to Aspen. So it got too serious.

Oscar came back out later in the campaign to be a bodyguard. That scared a lot of people, too. They accused me of bringing in Communists, foreigners, strangers, outside agitators.

But people were threatening to kill me. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation sent a man over with a list of twelve names that they had already identified as having uttered serious assassination threats. Now, looking back on it, I really think it was an attempt by the sheriff to use the CBI to scare me out of the campaign.

Dave Meggessy, this huge brute of a linebacker with hair all the way down to his waist, came out to be a bodyguard, too. It got very violent toward the end. We were all armed. It was ironic, because one of the planks of my platform was that the police shouldn't be armed.

Meanwhile, I'd shaved my head. It was sort of a strange accident. I was going up to cover an American Legion convention in Portland, Oregon, for Scanlan's early that summer, and in order to do that I thought I should get a bit of a trim in order to look like an American Legionnaire. So I went to a friend's house. He was sort of my personal barber. Anyway, we smoked about four joints, and he started with this goddamned electric razor and just went right over one side of my head, completely down to the bone. Once a person has done that there's no choice, of course. Once you're half bald you'd look insane if the other side had hair on it. So I had no choice but to shave my head completely . . . which went over pretty well at the convention, but there wasn't enough time between the convention and the Aspen campaign to let the hair grow out to the point where it would look half normal. When that little fuzz comes up you look like a psychotic Nazi prison guard. So I had to keep it shaved.

But we brought out a massive backlash vote. They couldn't handle a mescaline-eating sheriff who shaved his head and looked like the devil.

Woody Creek, March 1990

FIRST VISIT WITH MESCALITO

February i6, 1969

Again in l.a., again at the Continental Hotel . . . full of pills and club sandwiches and Old Crow and now a fifth of Louis Martini Bar-bera, looking down from the eleventh floor balcony at a police ambulance screaming down toward the Whiskey A Go-Go on the Strip, where I used to sit in the afternoon with Lionel and talk with off-duty hookers . . . and while I was standing there, watching four flower children in bell-bottom pants, two couples, hitch-hiking toward Hollywood proper, a mile or so up the road . . . they noticed me looking down and waved. I waved, and moments later, after pointing me out to each other, they hoisted the "V" signal—and I returned that. And one of them yelled, "What are you doing up there?" And I said, 'Tm writing about all you freaks down there on the street." We talked back and forth for a while, not communicating much, and I felt like Hubert Humphrey looking down at Grant Park. Maybe if Humphrey had had a balcony in that twenty-fifth-floor Hilton suite he might have behaved differently. Looking out a window is not quite the same. A balcony puts you out in the dark, which is more neutral—like walking out on a diving board. Anyway, I was struck by the distance between me and those street freaks; to them, I was just another fat cat, hanging off a balcony over the strip . . . and it reminded me of James Farmer on TV today, teUing "Face the Nation" how he'd maintained his contacts with the Black Community, talking with fat jowls and a nervous hustler style, blundering along in the wake of George Herman's and Daniel Schorr's condescension . . . and then McGarr talking later, at the Luau, a Beverly Hills flesh pit, about how he could remember when Farmer was a radical and it scared him to see how far he'd drifted from the front lines ... it scared him, he said, because he wondered if the same thing could happen to him . . . which gets back to my scene on the balcony—Hubert Humphrey looking down at Grant Park on Tuesday night, when he still had options (then, moments later, the four flower children hailed a cab—yes, cab, taxi—and I walked down to the King's Cellar liquor store where the clerk looked at my Diners

Club card and said "Aren't you the guy who did that Hells Angels thing?" And I felt redeemed. . . . Selah).

February i8

L.A. notes, again . . . one-thirty now and pill-fear grips the brain, staring down at this half-finished article . . . test pilots, after a week (no, three days) at Edwards AFB in the desert . . . but trying to mix writing and fucking around with old friends don't work no more, this maddening, time-killing late-work syndrome, never getting down to the real machine action until two or three at night, won't make it . . . especially half drunk full of pills and grass with deadlines past and people howling in New York . . . the pressure piles up like a hang-fire lightning ball in the brain. Tired and wiggy from no sleep or at least not enough. Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end—of anything.

And now the fire alarm goes off in the hall . . . terrible ringing of bells . . . but the hall is empty. Is the hotel on fire? Nobody answers the phone at the desk; the operator doesn't answer . . . the bell screams on. You read about hotel fires: 75 killed in holocaust: LEAPING off balconies (I am on the eleventh floor) . . . but apparently there is no fire. The operator finally answers and says a "wire got crossed." But nobody else is in the hall; this happened in Washington too, at the Nixon gig. False alarms and a man screaming down the airshaft, "Does anybody want to fuck?" The foundations are crumbling.

Yesterday a dope freak tried to steal the Goodyear blimp and take it to Aspen for the Rock and Roll festival . . . carrying a guitar and a toothbrush and a transistor radio he said was a bomb. . . . "Kept authorities at bay," said the L.A. Times, "for more than an hour, claiming to be George Harrison of the Beatles." They took him to jail but couldn't figure out what to charge him with ... so they put him in a looney bin.

Meanwhile the hills keep crumbling, dropping houses down on streets and highways. Yesterday they closed two lanes of the Pacific Coast highway between Sunset and Topanga . . . passing the scene in McGarr's little British-souvenir car on the way to Gover's house in Malibu ... we looked up and saw two houses perched out in space, and dirt actually sliding down the cliff. It was only a matter of time,

and no cure, no way to prevent these two houses from dropping on the highway. They keep undercutting the hills to make more house sites, and the hills keep faUing. Fires burn the vegetation off in summer, rains make mudslides in the winter . . . massive erosion, fire and mud, with The Earthquake scheduled for April. Nobody seems to give a fuck.

Today I found marijuana seeds all over the rug in my room . . . leaning down to tie my shoes I focused low and suddenly the rug was alive with seeds. Reminds me of the time I littered a hotel room in Missoula, Montana, with crab lice . . . picking them off, one by one, and hurling them around the room. ... I was checking out for Butte. And also the last time I was in this hotel I had a shoe full of grass, and John Wilcock's package . . . awful scene at the Canadian border in Toronto, carrying all that grass and unable to say where I lived when they asked me. ... I thought the end had come, but they let me through.

And now, by total accident, I find "Property of Fat City" (necessary cop-out change self-preservation—Oscar—looting) painted on the side of this borrowed typewriter. Is it stolen? God only knows . . . seeds on the rug and a hot typewriter on the desk, we live in a jungle of pending disasters, walking constantly across a minefield . . . will my plane crash tomorrow? What if I miss it? Will the next one crash? Will my house burn down? Cover's friend's house in Topanga burned yesterday, nothing saved except an original Cezanne. Where will it all end?

February 18/19

Getting toward dawn now, very foggy in the head . . . and no Dex-edrine left. For the first time in at least five years I am out of my little energy bombs. Nothing in the bottle but five Ritahn tablets and a big spansule of mescaline and "speed." I don't know the ratio of the mixture, or what kind of speed is in there with the mescaline. I have no idea what it will do to my head, my heart, or my body. But the Ritalin is useless at this point—not strong enough—so I'll have to risk the other. Oscar is coming by at ten, to take me out to the airport for the flight to Denver and Aspen ... so if I sink into madness and weird hallucinations, at least he can get me checked out of the hotel. The plane ride itself might be another matter. How can a man know? (Well, I just swallowed the bugger . . . soon it will take hold; I have no idea what to expect, and in this dead-tired, run-down condition almost

anything can happen. My resistance is gone, so any reaction will be extreme. I've never had mescaline.)

Meanwhile, outside on the Strip the zoo action never stops. For a while I watched four L. A. sheriffs beat up two teenagers, then handcuff them and haul them away. Terrible howls and screams floated up to my balcony. 'Tm sorry, sir. ... Oh God, please, I'm sorry." WHACK. One cop picked him up by the feet while he was hanging onto a hurricane fence; the other one kicked him loose, then kneeled on his back and whacked him on the head a few times. I was tempted to hurl a wine bottle down on the cops but refrained. Later, more noise . . . this time a dope freak, bopping along and singing at the top of his lungs—some kind of medieval chant. Oblivious to everything, just bopping along the strip.

And remember that shooting scene in Alfie's . . . also the film opening with a man reeling into a plastic house, vomiting, cursing the news, picking up a pistol, and firing into the ceiling . . . driven mad by the news and the pressures of upward mobility . . . then, perhaps, to the Classic Cat on amateur night, his neighbor's wife . . . and from there to the shooting at Alfie's . . . yes, it begins to jell.

Jesus, 6:45 now and the pill has taken hold for real. The metal on the typewriter has turned from dull green to a sort of high-gloss blue, the keys sparkle, glitter with highlights. ... I sort of levitated in the chair, hovering in front of the typewriter, not sitting. Fantastic brightness on everything, polished and waxed with special lighting . . . and the physical end of the thing is like the first half-hour on acid, a sort of buzzing all over, a sense of being gripped by something, vibrating internally but with no outward sign or movement. I'm amazed that I can keep typing. I feel like both me and the typewriter have become weightless; it floats in front of me Hke a bright toy. Weird, I can still spell . . . but I had to think about that last one. . . . ''Weird." Christ, I wonder how much worse this is going to get. It's seven now, and I have to check out in an hour or so. If this is the beginning of an acid-style trip I might just as well give up on the idea of flying anywhere. Taking off in an airplane right now would be an unbearable experience, it would blow the top right off my head. The physical sensations of lifting off the ground would be unbearable in this condition; I feel like I could step off the balcony right now and float gently down to the sidewalk. Yes, and getting worse, a muscle in my thigh is seized by spasms, quivering Hke something disembodied. . . . I can watch it, feel it, but not be connected. There is not much connection between my head and my body . . . but I can still type and very fast too, much

faster than normal. Yes, the goddamn drug is definitely taking hold, very much like acid, a sense of very pleasant physical paralysis (wow, that spelling) while the brain copes with something never coped with before. The brain is doing all the work right now, adjusting to this new stimulus like an old soldier ambushed and panicked for a moment, getting a grip but not in command, hanging on, waiting for a break but expecting something worse . . . and yes, it's coming on. I couldn't possibly get out of this chair right now, I couldn't walk, all I can do is type ... it feels like the blood is racing through me, all around my body, at fantastic speeds. I don't feel any pumping, just a sense of increased flow. . . . Speed. Interior speed . . . and a buzzing without noise, high speed vibrations and more brightness. The little red indicator that moves along with the ball on this typewriter now appears to be made of arterial blood. It throbs and jumps along like a living thing.

I feel like vomiting, but the pressure is too great. My feet are cold, hands cold, head in a vise . . . fantastic effort to lift the bottle of Budweiser and take a sip, I drink like breathing it in, feeling it all the way cold into my stomach . . . very thirsty, but only a half a beer left and too early to call for more. Christ, there's the catch. I am going to have to deal with all manner of complicated shit Uke packing, paying, all that shit any moment now. If the thing bites down much harder I might wig out and demand beer . . . stay away from the phone, watch the red arrow . . . this typewriter is keeping me on my rails, without it I'd be completely adrift and weird. Maybe I should call Oscar and get him down here with some beer, to keep me away from that balcony. Ah shit, this is very weird, my legs are half frozen and a slow panic in my stomach, wondering how much stranger it will get . . . turn the radio on, focus on something but don't listen to the words, the vicious bullshit. . . . Jesus, the sun is coming up, the room is unbearably bright, then a cloud across the sun, I can see the cloud in the sudden loss of light in the room, now getting brighter as the cloud passes or moves . . . out there somewhere, much harder to type now, but it must be done, this is my handle, keep the brain tethered, hold it down. Any slippage now could be a landslide, losing the grip, falling or flipping around, Christ, can't blow my nose, can't find it but I can see it and my hand too, but they can't get together, ice in my nose, trem-bhng with the radio on now, some kind of flute music, cold and fantastic vibration so fast I can't move . . . the ball just flipped back, a space capsule floating across the page, some kind of rotten phony soul music on the radio, Melvin Laird singing 'The Weight" "O yes we get wear-

ahe, weed, wearih?" Some fuckawful accent. Hairjelly music. Anthony Hatch in Jerusalem, great God, the stinking news is on, get rid of it, no mention of Nixon, too much for a tortured head. . . . Christ, what a beastly job to look for a new station on this radio dial, up and down the bright blue line and all these numbers, quick switch to FM, get rid of the fucking news, find something in a foreign language ... the news is already on the TV screen, but I won't turn it on, won't even look at it ... . Nixon's face. . . . GODDAMN, I just called Oscar, fantastic effort to dial, and the fucking line is busy . . . hang on now, no slippage, ignore this weird trembling . . . laugh, yes, that sense of humor, snag it down from somewhere, the skyhook. . . . Jesus, I have to lock that door, get the do not disturb sign out before a maid blunders in. I can't stand it, and I just heard one out there, creeping along the hallway, jiggling doorknobs ... ho ho, yes, that famous smile . . . yes, I just got hold of Oscar . . . he's coming with some beer . . . that is the problem now, I can't start fucking around with the management, shouting for beer at this hour of dawn . . . disaster area that way, don't fuck with the management, not now in this wiggy condition . . . conserve this inch of beer until Oscar arrives with more, get a human buffer zone in here, something to hide behind ... the fucking news is on again, on FM this time. Singer Sewing time is fifteen minutes until eight o'clock, Washington's birthday sale we cannot tell a lie, our machines will sew you into a bag so fast you'll think you went blind . . . goddamn is there no human peaceful sound on the radio ... yes, I had one for an instant, but now more ads and bullshit . . . now, right there, a vioHn sound, hold that, stay with it, focus on that violin sound, ride it out ... ah, this beer won't last, the thirst will doom me to fucking with the management ... no, I have some ice left—on the balcony—but careful out there, don't look over the edge ... go out backward, feel around for the paper ice bucket, seize it carefully between thumb and forefinger, then walk slowly back to this chair ... try it now. . . . DONE, but my legs have turned to jelly, impossible to move around except like a rolling ball, don't bounce, get away from that phone, keep typing, the grip, the handle .. . Jesus, my hands are vibrating now, I don't see how they can type. The keys feel like huge plastic mounds, very mushy and that bright red arrow jumping along like a pill in one of those singalong movie shorts, bouncing from word to word with the music. . . . Thank God for the Sonata in F Major for Oboe and Guitar by Charles Starkweather ... no ads, listener-sponsored radio, not even news . . . salvation has many faces, remind me to send a check to this station when I get well. . . . KPFA? Sounds right. The beer crisis is building,

I am down to saliva in this last brown bottle . . . goddamn, half my brain is already pondering how to get more beer, but it won't work ... no way. No beer is available here. No way. Nao tem. Think about something else, thank God for this music; if I could get to the bathroom I'd like to get a towel and hang it over the face of this stinking TV set, the news is on there, I can smell it. My eyes feel bigger than grapefruits. Where are the sunglasses, I see them over there, creep across, that cloud is off the sun again, for real this time, incredible light in the room, white blaze on the walls, glittering typewriter keys . . . and down there under the balcony traffic moves steadily along the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California zip code unknown ... we just came back from a tour of the Soviet Union and Denmark, careful now, don't stray into the news, keep it pure, yes, I hear a flute now, music starting again. What about cigarettes, another problem area . . . and I hear that wily old charwoman sucking on the doorknob again, goddamn her sneaky ass what does she want? I have no money. If she comes in here the rest of her days will be spent in a fear-coma. I am not in the mood to fuck around with charwomen, keep them out of here, they prowl this hotel like crippled wolves . . . smile again, yes, gain a step, tighten the grip, ho ho. . . . When will this thing peak? It seems to be boring deeper. I know it can't be worse than acid, but that's what it feels like now. I have to catch a plane in two hours. Can it be done? Jesus, I couldn't fly now. ... I couldn't walk to the plane ... oh Jesus, the crunch is on, my throat and mouth are like hot gravel and even the saliva is gone . . . can I get to the bottle of Old Crow and mix it up with the remains of these ice fragments ... a cool drink for the freak? Give the gentleman something cool, dear, can't you see he's wired his brain to the water pump and his ears to the generator . . . stand back, those sparks! Back off, maybe he's too far gone . . . coil a snake around him ... get that drink, boy, you are slipping, we need CONCENTRATION . . . yes, the music, some kind of German flower song. Martin Bormann sings WHITE RABBIT . . . ambushed in the jungle by a legion of naked gooks . . . whiskey uber alles, get that drink, get up, move.

DONE . . . but my knees are locked and my head is about twenty feet higher than my feet ... in this room with an eight-foot roof, making travel very difficult. The Hght again, get those sunglasses, unlock the knees and creep over there . . . not far . . . yes, I'm wearing the glasses now, but the glare is still all around. Getting out of this hotel and catching this plane is going to be weird. ... I see not much hope, but that's not the way to think. ... I have managed to

do everything else I've had to do so far. Twenty-three minutes past eight on this brain-saving station, I hear echoes of the news, leaking out the back of the TV set. . . . Nixon has ordered the Condor Legion into Berkeley . . . smile . . . relax a bit, sip that drink. Bagpipes now on the radio, but it's really violins . . . they're fucking around with these instruments, sounds like a tractor in the hall, the charwomen are going to cave my door in with a fucking webbed vehicle, a crane in the hall, snapping doors off their hinges like so many cobwebs . . . creaking and clanking along, this hotel has gone all to hell since the chain took it over, no more grapefruit in the light sockets, the lamp sockets . . . put some lampblack on these walls, take off the glare. We need more hair on these walls, and crab-lice in the rug to give it life. There are marijuana seeds in this rug, the place is full of them. The rug crackles like popcorn when I walk, who planted these seedsin this rug, and why aren't they watered? Now . . . yes . . . there is a project, tend the crops, soak this rug like a drenching rain, some kind of tropical downpour . . . good for the crops, keep the ground damp and prune the leaves every other day. Be careful about renting the room, special people, nature freaks, tillers of the soil ... let them in, but for Christ's sake keep the charwomen out. They don't Hke things growing in the rug, most of them seem like third generation Finns, old muscles turned to lard and hanging like wasps nests. . . .

Wasps nests? Slipping again, beware, Oscar just came in, bringing beer. I seem to have leveled out, like after the first rush of acid. If this is as deep as it's going to bore I think we can make that plane, but I dread it. Getting in a steel tube and shot across the sky, strapped down . . . yes, I sense a peak, just now, a hint of letdown, but still vibrating and hovering around with the typewriter. The cloud is over the sun again, or maybe it's smog . . . but the glare is gone from the walls, no highlights on the buildings down below, no sparkle on the rooftops, no water, just gray air. I see a concrete mixer moving, red and gray, down on that other street a long way off. It looks like a matchbox toy; they sell them in airports. Get one for Juan. I think we will catch that plane. Someday when things are right and like they should be we can do all this again by putting a quarter in the Holiday Inn vibrator bed and taking a special madness pill ... but wait, hold over there, we can do that now. We can do almost anything now . . . and why not?

Xerox copy with author's notes of yesterday's program for today's Continental Airlines tape concert—private earphones for all passen-

gers and six-channel selector dials, along with individual volume controls, built into each seat. The "program" being twenty-four hours old plays hell with a head full of cactus madness—like watching an NFL football game with an AFL roster.

11:32—hovering again. Weightless—weird—L.A. down below—earphones and knobs—switching around Jesus, Leon Blum—the Canadian Legion Hailie Selassie speech.

Cheap rental cars at the airport—seize Batrollers and zang up to Big Sur—have Michael Murphy arrested for restraint of trade, kilUng the last true hillbilly-music cabal on the West Coast. Who can blame me for whipping on that paraplegic in the baths? Anyone would have done it—Selah.

Who are these pigs—as a vaHdated addict I demand to be left alone— drink the eucalyptus oil—with dials and knobs still high as a freak male locked into the vibrations of the jet engines—get a bag of acid and a credit card for airlines—evaluate the pitch, roll and yaw—no sense of movement in this plane—just humming—the phones—acid-style high tingling and strange, intense vibrations. Get that dead animal off the seat—put it under—where is the drink? These pigs are taking us for a ride—put it on the card. Strange feedback echoes on the headset. Gabriel Heatter screaming in the background—telephone conversations—fantastic people talking. This is yesterday's program— new songs today. A dingbat across the aisle and Kitty Wells on the headphones. This channel is hag-ridden with echoes—telephone conversations. See no wings on this plane—good God the lock on my whiskey bag is frozen—a lifting body, tends to destroy itself, very wormy. I seem to be getting higher. (12:15.) Warn the pilot—this plane feels very wormy at this altitude. An ominous sense of yaw . . . sliding off edge—fire in the ashtray. Weird things in this channel.

Further notes in the Denver airport—coming down but can't relax, looking for a plane ride to Aspen with all legitimate flights canceled due to snowstorm—if not to Aspen, then back to L.A.—last chance to get straight—final effort—and half-wanting the abyss. One of you

pigs will find me a plane—sweating obscenely, hair plastered down and dripping from the cheekbones—the drug is gone now, no more zang, failing energy, disconnected thoughts—the Goodyear blimp as a last resort but no driving. Beware of (unreadable) hawks in the company of straight people—get that charter, leaving in five minutes— fiery stomach, running through the airport screaming for Bromo-Seltzer—coming down again in the Denver airport. Now, sitting in the copilot's seat of an Aero Commander—weirdness feeds on itself— with a wheel in my lap and pedals on the floor at my feet—forty-one round dials in front of me, blinking lights, jabbering radio noise— smoking, waiting for the oxygen—sick, feeling deranged—two Ritalins don't help much—sliding—no hope of pulling out—air bubbles in the brain—open this window beside me, a rush of air and crisis sounds from the others. Smelling of booze in this tiny cabin, nobody speaks— fear and loathing, dizzy, flying and bouncing through clouds. No more hole-cards, drained. Back to L.A., rather than Grand Junction—why go there? Chaos in the Denver airport—soaking sweats and all flights canceled—charwomen working—lying swine at the counters—"here boy, rent this car." Sorry, as a certified addict I cannot drive on snow— I must fly!

Los Angeles, 1969

The

SEVENTIES

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND, RIDING THE TIGER

IGUANA PROJECT

The iguana project is as good a name as any other for this volatile thing that we're into. Why not? And so much for labels. The potential of the thing is so vast that we can't possibly define the ends—so all we can talk about for now is the "potential," the "goals," the possibility of massive "leverage," and the entirely reasonable idea that any body or bloc who can speak for 20 million voters will emerge—by mathematical definition—as a primary force in American politics.

The original discussions—in Aspen, during late June and early July of 1971—have all been agreeably resolved to the same ends: one, that the ugly realities of 1971 America leave us no choice but to involve ourselves in basic politics on the national level—beginning with the presidential campaign of 1972, then to the congressional campaigns of 1974, and finally the presidential campaign of 1976. This scenario should be kept in mind by everybody involved with this project.

The likelihood of mounting an Aspen-style "Freak Power" campaign on the national level is a far-fetched joke for 1972—at least that's what it looks Hke, for now. We should keep in mind, however, that in July of 1970 we all (in Aspen) considerd it a "far-fetched joke" that I might run for sheriff three months later. Yet in November of 1970 I got something like 44 percent of the total vote in a three-way race with two estabhshment candidates—the incumbent sheriff and the under-sheriff—backed by the local Democratic and Republican parties. Even with my head shaved completely bald and running full-bore on the "Mescahne Ticket," I forced a coalition of the establishment parties that resulted in total humihation for the GOP candidate. He got about 250 votes, compared to my 1,065 or so, and the incumbent's 1,500. (These figures and percentages are approximate; but no matter how they're cut or interpreted, a bald-headed "dope fiend" (admitted) got at least 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race . . . which suggest to me that I was right (in Rolling Stone 10/1/70) when I said that the electorate here was far more (potentially) radical than anyone knew.

Whether this is true on a national level is another question. I think not. At least not until somebody runs a genuinely Weird campaign on a national level—to put the Freak Vote together and let them see their strength. This is what the ''Joe Edwards for Mayor" campaign accomplished in Aspen in the fall of '69. We came out of nowhere and lost that one by only six votes. And it was easy, a year later, to mount a heavy Freak Power registration campaign.

There is a possibility that the McCarthy campaign of '68—which formed the death-aborted RFK effort—could provide us with the frustrated momentum and unfocused power base for a full-bore power move in 1972. If so, this would be a disastrous thing to ignore—because it might not exist in 1976.

This is a crucial and perhaps fatal question. Can we afford to nurse our momentum along for another four years? Personally, I can't be sure—but I tend to think we have to establish a national equivalent of Freak Power in '72, before we can work off a genuine power base in '74 and especially '76. Everything in the history of political base-building points in this direction—especially with regard to getting on the ballot.

On the other hand, I remember that month I spent covering the Nixon campaign in New Hampshire in '68: I spent a lot of time around McCarthy headquarters, but only because they were in the same motor inn as George Romney's hq . . . and Romney, at the time, was considered the Main Challenger.

I also remember that we began the "Thompson for Sheriff campaign in Aspen as a joke and a smokescreen—only to find, too late, that we'd tapped a latent firestorm of political energy that none of us had ever anticipated . . . and in the final analysis, this failure to take ourselves seriously, soon enough, was what cost us the whole campaign.

We can afford this kind of loss on a local level, but we can't afford it nationally. If the momentum exists in '72, it should be used in '72. (According to Carl Oglesby's analysis of American politics and the prevailing winds in the Pentagon "H ring," there will be no elections in 1976.)

But Oglesby is a fool—an SDS refugee who got hired by MIT to explain "radical politics" to old liberals. He makes a good living doing this, but as far as we're concerned he's absolutely useless.

And so much for all that. In the first three pages of this memo I have tried to define the Main Question we're faced with—whether to mount a flat-out Alternative Campaign/Candidate in 1972, or use this

coming year to build a base for a total shot in 1976. We should also consider the notion that if we mount anything serious in 1972—and if Nixon wins, which is likely—anybody identified with our '72 campaign will be living in a fishbowl for the next four years. There will be IRS harassment, phone taps, drug surveillance, all the normal bullshit that comes with menacing a high-stakes establishment.

So, where do we go from here? Mike is finally convinced that realpolitic is inevitable, even for Essalen. John agrees with a vengeance—to the point that he feels only a Freak Power-type candidate (a "Free" Democrat, entering Democratic primaries) will accomplish what we're after. Jann, from a journaHstic viewpoint, is opposed to running a Freak Power or Free Democratic candidate; he favors the original idea/mechanics of a "summit conference," out of which will come a Platform/ Statement that will speak for the 20 to 30 million potential voters who will not go to the polls unless they're convinced that at least one of the candidates (in November or even the primaries) is representing them. In other words, if we can put together a platform that speaks not only for the new eighteen-to-twenty-one vote but also the 11 million or so who turned twenty-one since '68, and also the Rock vote, the Drug vote, the Vet vote, the Hippie Vote, the Beatnik Vote, the Angry Liberal Vote—if we can do all this, we can force at least one candidate for the Democratic nomination to endorse our position and sink or swim with it.

My own point of view (somewhat reluctantly) is basically in tune with Jann's. I think the best we can hope for in '72 is the creation of a general platform and a cohesive voting bloc for 1976. (Jesus, this is such an obviously dull and foredoomed notion that I don't have much stomach for it, myself . . . and frankly I doubt if we could generate much stomach for it in anybody else, once the word got out that we were only greasing the rails for a run in '76.) This visceral reaction just occurred to me, about eighteen seconds ago. And now, after eighty more seconds of further reflection, I can see where I couldn't possibly involve myself in any kind of poHtical effort, next year, that wouldn't focus on total victory or defeat in November 1972. Anything less than that would deprive us, I think, of that energy edge that comes with running an honest, full-bore campaign . . . and the loss of that edge would be fatal to the only advantage we have.

What we have to decide, then, is what exactly would constitute a flat-out run for a "victory" in '72. Would we have to run a candidate?

Or could we win by constructing a platform that would speak for a minimum of 20 million potential voters . . . and then use this platform as a bargaining vehicle for that massive voting bloc?

What would McGovern, for instance, say to a platform that included (i) Total amnesty for all draft dodgers, deserters, etc. (2) Legalization of all drugs (without dropping the "by Rx only" concept, which would place the responsibility on doctors, where it should be, instead of cops) . . . and (3) a mandatory cut of 25 percent in the Pentagon budget in fiscal '73, followed by a mandatory cut of 50 percent in fiscal '74. Then another cut of 25 percent in '75, and back to 50 percent in

•76.

My own feeling is that if we could force this sort of a radical position on any serious candidate in '72, it would constitute the sort of victory we could work from in '76 . . . but this could work only (according to the scenario that Jann and I worked out) if the Demo nomination were still up for grabs by June of '72, with Lindsay and Kennedy (or Bayh and McGovern) going into the California primary head to head.

At this point—and especially in California—a dramatic bid for the Youth/Freak vote might make the crucial difference. But, as John has pointed out, you can't just wander into the California primary like an acid freak with a manifesto in his hand. To have any leverage in California, we will need the exposure that can come only from a skillfully orchestrated participation in at least a few other primaries .. . and this, unfortunately, would require at least a dummy candidate.

But the idea of a "dummy" is sick. If we entered Ken Kesey in the Alaska primary, for instance, we'd play hell dumping Kesey for Nick Johnson if our gig looked good by the time Cahfornia came around. The idea that almost anybody can run on our Platform is a nice, idealistic sort of notion—but the savage realities of running any political campaign would croak the idea of switching candidates in midstream, no matter what the rationale.

Maybe we should settle, from the start, on a Kesey/Ramsey Clark ticket. Or Nick Johnson and Jerry Garcia. Any combination of these four names would be good for 20 million votes, I think, if we could get on somebody's ballot.

We might even consider the possibility of letting George Wallace fight the battle to put the American Independent Party on the ballot in all fifty states, then suddenly forcing him into a primary race for the AIP nomination. He is, after all, a Populist—and so are we. The only difference is that Wallace hates Niggers and Radicals, but I think

we could turn that shit back on him. His main trip is anti-EstabUsh-ment, and we can beat him Hke a gong on that one.

I think we should consider this angle. It's so incredibly bizarre that it makes sense only when you remember that the polls in April/May of '68 showed that Robert Kennedy was the only candidate who also appealed to the Wallace voters. A lot of people called this "weird," but it wasn't. Both RFK and Wallace appealed to the "Fuck the Bosses" vote—and Wallace will be going the same racist/populist route in '72. His people are already working twenty-five hours a day to get the AIP on the ballot—on the assumption that Wallace is that party's only candidate.

This is admittedly a lunatic idea, but if we let Wallace get the AIP party on the ballot in all fifty states—then took the nomination away from him—we'd be in a hell-heavy position by November of '72. And even if we lost, we'd have generated enough national publicity to consolidate that vote-bloc we're talking about—which means we could wield it as honest leverage between Nixon and the Demo candidate.

The other way to go, of course, is to run a traditional race against all comers in the Democratic primaries. But this would require a hell of a lot of money—and with our prospects of victory almost nil, big money would be a hard thing to come by.

On the other hand, I suspect it might be cheap—at least in terms of dollars—to beat Wallace out of the AIP nomination. This would, after all, be a sudden/savage return to the Power Coalition that led to the breakup of SDS . . . and beyond that, it's so crazy, so intolerably weird, that the very idea would probably attract a laughing, wild-eyed swarm of dropout SDS organizers.

The only serious problem with this plan . . . provided it's mechanically feasible—is that it would require the full-time salaried services of at least a dozen Kennedy-style, state-level political operatives. The first moves would have to be made quietly ... or we would lose the advantage of total surprise. But once we got the basic organizing machinery working, I think the excitement and crazy adrenalin of the thing would take care of the rest.

For the first steps, however, we need somebody who understands that kind of local machinery, and who is also not committed right now to any other candidate. I think we can get the mechanics/type information we need for this move by brain-picking Radical/Lib Demos on the pretense that we want to "take over" the New Party—or maybe Peace and Freedom; whatever's on the ballot. The idea is to learn all the local ABC steps (that's A-B-C) of taking over the state-level

machinery of a party that's getting on the statewide ballot for the first (or second) time. Then, once we get this information, I think we could move in and grab the AIP nomination just about the time they get themselves on the ballot.

Woody Creek, 1971

NEVER APOLOGIZE, NEVER EXPLAIN

I WAS SITTING IN Aspcn about a week before the Derby. I hadn't done anything in a long time.

I was having dinner with a writer named Jim Salter, a good writer — he did the screenplay for Downhill Racer. / think it was the first time we met; they invited Sandy and me over for dinner. I guess the question of where I was from came up. I said Kentucky, Louisville. And just joking they said, well, my God, what are you doing here? You should be back there writing about the Derby.

It was late at night and I was drunk. At first I laughed, and then I thought. Mother of God, what a wonderful idea. I called Hinckle at about three in the morning and said, look, don't ask me why, but this is very important, I got to go to Louisville and cover the Derby and I want Pat Oliphant to go with me. It seemed to me that Oliphant would catch the madness of things, and the weird humor, better than any photographer.

Hinckle said wonderful. Call Oliphant, set it up. Go. Do it. Hinckle 's a terrible editor for touching copy, but he's my idea of a really good editor as a guy who never touches your copy but makes your life easier when you 're working.

I called Oliphant the next day, and he couldn't do it because he was under contract somehow that wouldn't let him draw for anyone else. So I called Hinckle back — by this time I was really wired on the idea — and said, Oliphant can't do it. I'm trying to think of somebody else.

A few hours later he called back and said I have an idea, just the guy I think, this weird person in London who works for Private Eye, reminds me very much of Oliphant, same kind of humor. I think you might like him.

So I said, good, then we'll try him. I had never seen his work. So I went to Louisville and Hinckle got Ralph Steadman over and I met him at the Browns and Bourbon Hotel in Louisville. It was his first trip to this country. Imagine that, being plunged into the Derby.

Of course, it became the Gonzo breakthrough piece, but at the time I thought I was finished as a writer. I remember lying in a tub in New York in some hotel where Hinckle had locked me up with nothing but a wide-open room-service account and four quarts of Johnny Walker Scotch. I was there for days. At first I was typing, then I was just ripping the pages out of my notebook, because Fd worn myself down to the point where I couldn't even think, much less write. The magazine was holding the presses . . . I thought it was a disaster.

But then just days after it came out, I began to get calls and letters from all over the country saying what a fantastic breakthrough format in journalism. I thought, Jesus Christ. . . I guess I shouldn't say anything. In a way it was an almost accidental breakthrough — a whole new style of journalism which now passes for whatever Gonzo is . . . accident and desperation.

Woody Creek, January 1990

VEGAS WIXCHCRAFT

My attorney was downstairs talking to a sporty-looking cop about forty whose plastic name tag said he was the D.A. from someplace in Georgia. "I'm a whiskey man, myself," he was saying. "We don't have much problem with drugs down where I come from."

"You will," said my attorney. "One of these nights you'll wake up and find a junkie tearing your bedroom apart."

"Naw!" said the Georgia man. "Not down in my parts."

I joined them and ordered a tall glass of rum, with ice.

"You're another one of these California boys," he said. "Your friend here's been tellin' me about dope fiends."

"They're everywhere," I said. "Nobody's safe. And sure as hell not in the South. They like the warm weather."

"They work in pairs," said my attorney. "Sometimes in gangs. They'll climb right into your bedroom and sit on your chest, with big Bowie knives." He nodded solemnly. "They might even sit on your wife's chest —put the blade right down on her throat."

"Jesus God almighty," said the Southerner. "What the hell's goin' on in this country?"

"You'd never believe it," said my attorney. "In L.A. it's out of control. First it was drugs, now it's witchcraft."

"Witchcraft? Shit, you can't mean it!"

"Read the newspapers," I said. "Man, you don't know trouble until you have to face down a bunch of these addicts gone crazy for human sacrifice!"

"Naw!" he said. "That's science fiction stuff!"

"Not where we operate," said my attorney. "Hell, in Malibu alone, these goddamn Satan-worshippers kill six or eight people every day.'' He paused to sip his drink. "And all they want is the blood," he continued. "They'll take people right off the street if they have to." He nodded. "Hell, yes. Just the other day we had a case where they grabbed a girl right out of a McDonald's hamburger stand. She was a waitress. About sixteen years old . . . with a lot of people watching, too!"

"What happened?" said our friend. "What did they do to her?" He seemed very agitated by what he was hearing.

**Do?'' said my attorney. "Jesus Christ man. They chopped her goddamn head off right there in the parking lot! Then they cut all kinds of holes in her and sucked out the blood!"

"God almightyr the Georgia man exclaimed. . . . "And nobody did anything?"

"What could they do?" I said. "The guy that took the head was about six-seven and maybe three hundred pounds. He was packing two Lugers, and the others had M-i6s. They were all veterans. . . ."

"The big guy used to be a major in the Marines," said my attorney. "We know where he lives, but we can't get near the house."

"Naw!" our friend shouted. "Not a major!"

"He wanted the pineal gland," I said. "That's how he got so big. When he quit the Marines he was just a little guy.''

"O my god!" said our friend. "That's horrible!"

"It happens every day," said my attorney. "Usually it's whole families. During the night. Most of them don't even wake up until they feel their heads going—and then, of course, it's too late."

The bartender had stopped to listen. I'd been watching him. His expression was not calm.

"Three more rums," I said. "With plenty of ice, and maybe a handful of lime chunks."

He nodded, but I could see that his mind was not on his work. He was staring at our name tags. "Are you guys with that police convention upstairs?" he said finally.

"We sure are, my friend," said the Georgia man with a big smile.

The bartender shook his head sadly. "I thought so," he said. "I never heard that kind of talk at this bar before. Jesus Christ! How do you guys stand that kind of work?"

My attorney smiled at him. "We like it," he said. "It's groovy."

The bartender drew back; his face was a mask of repugnance.

"What's wrong with you?" I said. "Hell, somebody has to do it."

He stared at me for a moment, then turned away.

"Hurry up with those drinks," said my attorney. "We're thirsty." He laughed and rolled his eyes as the bartender glanced back at him. "Only two rums," he said. "Make mine a Bloody Mary."

The bartender seemed to stiffen, but our Georgia friend didn't notice. His mind was somewhere else. "Hell, I really hate to hear this," he said quietly. "Because everything that happens in California seems to get down our way, sooner or later. Mostly Atlanta, but I guess that was back when the goddamn bastards were peaceful. It used to be that all we had to do was keep 'em under surveillance. They didn't roam around much. . . ." He shrugged. "But now, Jesus, nobody's safe. They could turn up anywhere."

"You're right," said my attorney. "We learned that in California. You remember where Manson turned up, don't you? Right out in the middle of Death Valley. He had a whole army of sex fiends out there. We only got our hands on a few. Most of the crew got away; just ran off across the sand dunes, like big lizards . . . and every one of them stark naked, except for the weapons."

"They'll turn up somewhere, pretty soon," I said. "And let's hope we'll be ready for them."

The Georgia man whacked his fist on the bar. "But we can't just lock ourselves in the house and be prisoners!" he exclaimed. "We don't even know who these people are! How do you recognize them?"

"You can't," my attorney replied. "The only way to do it is to take the bull by the horns—go to the mat with this scum!"

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"You know what I mean," said my attorney. "We've done it before, and we can damn well do it again."

"Cut their goddamn heads off," I said. "Every one of them. That's what we're doing in Cahfornia."

''What?''

"Sure," said my attorney. "It's all on the Q.T., but everybody who matters is with us all the way down the Hne."

"God! I had no idea it was that bad out there!" said our friend.

"We keep it quiet," I said. "It's not the kind of thing you'd want to talk about upstairs, for instance. Not with the press around."

Our man agreed. "Hell no!" he said. "We'd never hear the goddamn end of it."

"Dobermans don't talk," I said.

"What?"

"Sometimes it's easier to just rip out the backstraps," said my attorney. "They'll fight like hell if you try to take their head without dogs."

"God almighty!"

We left him at the bar, swirling the ice in his drink and not smiling. He was worried about whether or not to tell his wife about it. "She'd never understand," he muttered. "You know how women are."

I nodded. My attorney was already gone, scurrying through a maze of slot machines toward the front door. I said goodbye to our friend, warning him not to say anything about what we'd told him.

Las Vegas, 1971

fflGH-WATER MARK

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind

of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and ahve in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toUgate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down loi to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The whole concept of decades is wrong. That is why people have trouble with it. A decade is ten years, which some people will tell you is about as long as a dime. The only people who still talk in terms of decades are Australians and possibly some New Zealanders, but the Aussies will tell you that the New Zealanders think more in terms of twenty years, Hke us. In politics, a "generation" is twenty years: ten

is not enough. Time flies when you do most of your real work after midnight—five months can go by and it feels like one sleepless night.

Las Vegas, 1976

FEAR AND LOATHING

The phrase worked. It was like Gonzo. All of a sudden I had my own standing head.

It started when I left Vegas that first time, skipping the hotel bill, driving off in that red convertible all alone, drunk and crazy, back to L.A. That's exactly what I felt. Fear and loathing.

I was afraid of cops, mainly, extremely afraid. I figured that by noon they were bound to find out that I wasn't there anymore. And it was a long run, from Vegas to L.A. There are no side roads you can take. You can go only two directions from Route 83 out of Vegas. If you go west you can go only one. And I thought they'd catch me and bring me back and put me in the Clark County Jail. There was a guy in the Clark County Jail then who had been there for thirty years for robbing a gas station. Imagine what they'd have done to me for jumping a hotel bill.

Anyway, coming off that it worked as a standing head for the portable pieces on the igji campaign.

Woody Creek, January 1990

LIES—IT WAS ALL LIES—I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF

/ NEVER SAID that Muskic was taking Ibogaine.

I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that a strange Brazilian doctor had been showing up at his suite to administer heavy shots of some strange drug called Ibogaine.

Of course it wasn 't true. I never said it was true. I said there was a rumor to that effect. I made up the rumor.

And the reason I made it up was that I was sitting in my working room in Washington, writing this piece and going through my mail. Here was a report from the Pharm Chem Labs in Palo Alto, which does drug testing, and it was then issuing a monthly newsletter on the latest in drug information. I like to subscribe to these weird things, and that month it happend to be on Ibogaine.

They described the effects of it, what would happen to people who took it. I read it because I was curious — Fm curious about any new drug — and I got halfway through it and I thought. My God, Vve seen these symptoms, these manifestations. These are very familiar; this is not some African syndrome.

Of course, I thought, it's that bastard Muskie. They talked about stupors, and rages, uncontrollable rages, sitting mute for three days at a time. . . .

I never said that John Chancellor ate acid either, except to those people in that waiting room at the convention in Miami. These Nixon youth followers were about ready to rush out there and give a demonstration. I was putting them on.

Chancellor is still angry about that.

See, I didn't realize until about halfway through the campaign that people believed this stuff I assumed that like the people I was around, and like myself, they were getting their primary coverage of the campaign from newspapers, television, radio, the traditional media.

When the mail started pouring into Rolling Stone and I started to get all the questions from people in the press, I thought. My God, these bastards believe these things.

I think that people took it seriously because politics, particularly

presidential campaigns and the president and the White House, have always been sacred cows in this country, almost as if the president ruled by divine right. Especially since the start of the age of television.

Some people have that kind of respect for these people. I don Y, any more than I have respect for police and chambers of commerce. I have respect for quite a few things, quite a few people. Politicians just don't happen to be among them. Just because a person can subject himself to the degradations of a lifetime in politics and finally end up in the White House is certainly no reason to respect him, as Nixon has recently given us elegant evidence to confirm.

Almost all political writers cover campaigns on the basis of what they learned from the last one. I came into the 'j2 campaign knowing very little about the last one. I hadn't covered a campaign before. I was in and out of it in '68, so I didn't have any real preconceived strictures in my head. I just wrote what I saw, what I thought, and what I felt on instinct. I really have great faith in my instincts.