August 3, 2002

• 
  

  The biker years, episode #7:

  
  

  My first acid trip was just a trip, a journey of discovery undertaken with no goal or purpose in mind. The next thirty or so over the course of a year and a half until I realized the pills were no longer necessary were all business trips. I went down the rabbit hole looking for transcendent understanding. It was available. I found different, more transcendent rabbit holes in shamanism and druidry, but that came years later. As Dr. Leary said, once the acid had removed the paint from my window so I could see there was a world outside, I could always open the window and get out on my own. Suddenly, interestingly, I started getting high on weed. I’d smoked it at least six or seven months with little effect. After eight hits of Owsley’s Orange Sunshine, a few hits of even mediocre weed would toast me.

  
  

  During the months that VW and I dropped acid together, I don’t think he had a business trip after that first one on the beach. He chose pleasure trips. He loved acid, and the colors, and tasting the colors and seeing aromas. He was more fun stoned, fershure. When he started doing speed he was even more fun yet, but coming off speed he was mean and paranoiac, and I was suicidally depressed. Some weekends, he’d do acid and I’d do speed. If he was doing speed, I might do some too, but never acid when he was cranked. On speed, VW dropped his harsh, stern biker pose and let his affection and humor shine through. It made him fearless and without the fear he didn’t need the biker armor.

  
  

  When I took speed, my allergy symptoms and asthma cleared up and I had energy to spare. I’d been taking antihistamines and bronchodilators for years and had been switched from one type to another when sensitivities or side-effects cropped up. I learned from one doctor that the meds an earlier doctor had given me for the hay fever had brought on the asthma.

  
  

  VW’s mother recommended an old doctor in Eugene who had a treatment for allergies. I took the treatment, which consisted of swabbing my nasal passages first with cocaine to deaden the nerves and then with a mixture of five volatile and caustic chemicals that included argyrol and benzene. The rationale was that it toughened the membranes so that allergens couldn’t get through. It didn’t help my allergies, but it did almost totally kill my sense of smell. To this day, my smeller works only on rare occasions when my membranes are DRY.

  
  

  VW liked reds and yellows: barbiturates–and alcohol always, never a weekend without beer at least, never a run without wine. I’d grab a bottle of Silver Satin with Bitter Lemon for me, something really good for passing among the pack, and someone would buy a jug of Boone’s Farm or Gallo. The dance of thundering choppers as one in the pack weaves ahead or drops back and they sway closer together to pass a jug of wine or a joint is exhilarating and takes some of the length and boredom out of the road. As long as I kept my sips small and didn’t try to quench thirst with alcohol, I could enjoy the social games without getting sick or passing out. Speed helped there, too.

  
  

  In California, the bikers had been our dope connections. In Oregon, we were the bikers and we needed local connections or we’d have to commute to the Bay Area and bring back wholesale lots. The Ravens did some of each. To connect with the local dealers to buy and sell, we had to hang out in the Student Union cafeteria, or at the coffeehouse downtown.

  
  

  At the student union, I met Jim Fate. Fate was, they said, a burnout, too much acid, shrooms, fumes… a garbage head, fried. Jim Fate was LUCID, Illuminated, the purest psychic channel I’ve ever met. He freaked out anyone who would bother to listen to his rants and his murmured confidences. In the same way that dogs, cats, birds, snakes and other critters will approach and settle beside me, Fate would come right to my booth if I was in the fishbowl when he walked in. If he was there when I walked in, he would come over, greet us and follow the little knot of black-clad bikers to one of the back booths.

  
  

  The bikers were uncomfortable with Fate, but they tolerated him. He directed traffic. I never saw him deal anything, but he always knew who had what and when they’d be around or where to find them. He took his finder’s fees in merchandise, a little pinch for his trouble. As we sat in the booth waiting to make a connection, I’d tune out the loud chivvying and boasting of the bikers and focus on Jim’s soft voice, and we’d talk shop. I had met my sensei, my guru, mentor, professor of cosmology and metaphysics: Jim Fate, burnout. Heh.

  
  

  Sometimes the connection we were waiting for was The Hulk. I clicked with this big ruddy barrel-chested guy with sorrel hair and a red beard, orange chest hair, (golden pubes–I’d find out later), and blond Hobbit toes, from day one. Both Virgos, birthdays a day apart, he a year younger than I, we used to get into deep three-sided raps with Fate or we’d start a dialogue across the table in the booth and pretty soon eight or ten people would be gathered around listening. He had read Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Proust… and Jean Genet and the Beat poets. My reading covered some of that and a lot of other heavyweights. I’m getting grin cramps in my cheeks ’cause I can see in my mind’s eye the image of a couple of slack-jawed bikers every bit as enthralled by the discussion as the collection of students and hippies clustered around them. We slayed ‘em in the aisles.

  
  

  These were rarities, only five times maybe, in a year or so. More often when I was in the fishbowl with VW and his bros (seldom any other women on these ventures) Hulk wouldn’t be there, but then he often would be the topic of conversation. I learned the legend, the story of how he got his name. It started when his girlfriend broke up with him.

  
  

  He was pissed. It was a hot day and I think he’d had some beers. He was on his way to the fishbowl to confront her and her new man. He was walking across town, carrying a sizeable stash of acid, or STP, or mescaline, thirty to fifty hits. A cop car cruised by slow and attentive and he went paranoid. He covertly ate the stash, but the cop car just cruised on by and left him walking across town toward the campus.

  
  

  He was fuming over some cat moving in on his girl, building up a head of steam all the way. When he reached the double doors into the cafeteria, he opened them with a bang, stepped in, ripped off his shirt and wadded it up and threw it down. Standing there, looking around for his gone girl and her fresh meat, he was tagged by acclamation The Hulk. To clench it, when four cops tackled him, he threw them off. It took nine to subdue him. He was on probation when I met him. I guess someone doing that now would just be shot.

  
  

  On these dope dealing trips to the U of O campus, I was along as the mule, the stash carrier because patrol officers were all males and if they busted a female they had to wait for a matron from the jail to do a body search. More time to ditch the evidence. We did get rousted once, and I ditched my evidence, and after a wait and some hassle, they let us go.

  
  

  There was someone else I loved like Fate and The Hulk: Surfer, LeRoy Allen, heart-breakingly lithe and luscious, with a light brown forelock that always fell over one eye, and he’d tilt his head to see past it. I never got my hands on him. Got inside his head plenty, played with it and got played with in return. We had a running rip-off game, back and forth. Dope usually, we’d steal from each other, or pieces of clothing. He stole Hulk’s hat with the silver and turquoise concho band, once. Got my sandals at a party but I knew immediately where they’d gone and made him give them back. My best move on him was once I took his stash box with about four or five different drugs in small quantities, and pipes and such, and buried it in his yard while he was in the john. Then I left. When I got home I phoned him and told him where it was. Kid games.

  
  

  Steve was another platonic love from that time. It might not have stayed platonic, but he was gay. He was a student, pre-med, son of a Utah surgeon of repute. He and his brother had a meth lab out in the Utah desert until it blew up. He’d make weekend trips home to Utah and leave me at his apartment to answer the phone.

  
  

  He’d check in with me regularly and I’d field calls from his downline dealers and arrange a rendezvous for his return. Night and day, sitting comfortably against the wall at the head of his bed, with an excellent pair of headphones up loud and a great record collection, and an incredibly varied library, I was never bored. If someone knocked, I’d feel it through the wall, not hear it. I kept the phone snugged against my hip or thigh so I could feel it vibrate when it rang.

  
  

  He paid me in speed. He knew I didn’t use needles and he said I should never start. Needles were Hell, he said, and he knew. He couldn’t do without his. But he’d bring bennies or dexies for me, and sometimes other stuff his chemist brother would experiment with: MDA, MDMA, but some of that stuff wasn’t quite titrated right. One batch that he said started out as a creamy white powder had turned to brown stuff the consistency of honey and had eaten its way out of the gelatine caps and was working on melting the plastic box it was in, by the time it got to me.

  
  

  I rushed home with it so I could share it with Carol. Carol and Bill and VW and I had rented a sprawling suburban tract house with a big yard. We had a dog named Bugger, after the child in the movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? We had shoplifted a bunch of seeds and plants and were knocking ourselves out with shovels and rakes and a half acre of land.

  
  

  The first thing I did was to spoon out the remnants of the gelatine capsules and brown goo onto a small dish and discard the softened plastic box. Then Carol and I licked the spoon and discussed how many doses we might have on our dish. That mess of impure amphetamine stuff lasted us nearly a week and I still, thirty-some years later, can’t recall that crazy week without laughing.

  
  

  After spooning up what seemed a fair dose and then gagging on the bitter taste and washing it down with two or three glasses of water, we went out into the yard to look things over and decide what we needed for our backyard vegetable garden and the front yard landscaping. Next thing I knew I was leaning against a slender tree in the center of the lawn, puking. By this time, I recognized that as a good sign. All my best trips started that way; it’s my body’s signal that it is gettin’ off.

  
  

  Have I mentioned that Carol was a redhead, too? She and Mardy and I looked like carrot-topped stairsteps. Mardy was six feet in bare feet and usually wore boots with 3-inch heels. Carol was barely five feet tall and favored moccasins. I was right in the middle.

  
  

  We puttered around in the manic-euphoric state, spading and planting and weeding while we discussed grandiose landscaping plans. The thing we needed most was soil amendments and organic nutrients for the sterile sandy soil. After midnight, we got into the VW bug and headed for the Safeway parking lot where bales of peat moss and bags of guano and manure were piled on pallets next to the building.

  
  

  We filled the back seat with bags of composted shit and on the drive home Carol said we really needed a bale of that peat moss, too. I eyeballed the car door and the back seat and said I thought we could do it if we took out the back seat. We had hauled a Harley back there, in pieces, with the seat out.

  
  

  We unloaded, took the seat out and headed back to Safeway. Our first try failed because the passenger seat was in the way. After we put it as far forward as it would go, the bale of peat moss slid right in and we got it home okay. We probably should have gone back for another bale that night instead of putting it off, because they moved the stuff in from the parking lot at night after that.

  
  

  We had a flat of strawberry plants and Carol wanted a strawberry pot for them. That’s a specialized bit of pottery that has a number of openings, little pockets sticking out from the sides. A big one will hold a dozen or more plants. She knew where there was a nice big one, on someone’s front porch, just sitting there with dead plants in it. I drove and she navigated and we went after it.

  
  

  I parked the VW at the curb. I could see the pot near the end of the porch next to the driveway and started up the driveway to take it off the porch that way. It was just about the right height that it wouldn’t require any lifting, just ease it over the side and carry it to the car. As I started for the driveway, Carol headed up the walk and the steps and onto the porch. Just as I got in position, she lifted the pot, found it was too heavy for her, and she and the pot full of dirt and dead plants fell right into my arms.

  
  

  I saved the pot from breaking, and while Carol was dusting herself off I upended it and started shaking some of that extra weight out. I left a trail of dirt all the way to the curb and had to exercise extreme self-control not to leave streaks of rubber on the street as I pulled out. We were laughing so hard from the moment she fell on me that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole neighborhood woke up.

  
  

  
  

  Well, unless you are offended by casual drug use and petty thievery, that was a pretty innocuous blog.  If you need a dose of offensiveness today, you can always go check out www.xanga.com/ArmsMerchant.  Greyfox got on here last night with a rant he’s been incubating for days, stimulated partially by my rape blog.  It’s interesting listening to him at the keyboard.  For me, these keys go clickety-clickety, usually in little spurts with brief pauses.  When Doug is at the keyboard, it is a steady flow of soft tappity sounds as he strokes the keys.  Greyfox  hunts and pecks hesitantly until he really gets into his rant, and then he bangs on the keys and the clatter is punctuated with curses as he hits the wrong key or accidentally touches capslock or enter and has to go back to fix his typos.  He’s a trip.

  • 12:54 pm
  • 10 Comments