I didn’t wake up until we were past Barstow.  I woke outside of LA, outside of everything, outside of myself.  I awoke in a sinister little car on a ride through the wild forlorn California Desert; the only reason I woke up at all was the heat.  It turned the pleasantness of my dream into a nightmare which I had to escape by waking up.  I dreamed I was an emperor in a foreign land, a mystical Tibetan type of land where I sat in a palace of unrivalled spender and riches; I dreamed you were there, Orisis.  Luxurious tapestries covered the walls and gold trimmed divans were arranged about the room so that you might receive visitors.  I was trying to raise an army of thinkers to combat the problems of mankind; I had sent out messengers and courtesans to attract like-minded rulers to the palace.  Word came back by means of an old telegraph machine, which sat on a cherry wood table in the corner.  Next to it was an old high back throne such as one would find in Versailles, you sat in it searching, just like you Orisis, always scouring the world to put me back together.  I wanted to wander about the palace and explore but every time I walked out of the room I would hear the telegraph machine and rush back to it, only to find that it was more negative response.   I knew that you would never bother with the machine, if news was to be received it would be through me, you had given up entirely.  Inexplicably, as it often happens in dreams, I found myself sailing in a glider over the tree dotted hills of northern Mexico.  I was admiring the peaceful silence of gliding to and fro on thermals when I suddenly became aware of the unbearable heat of the cockpit, better drop down a bit I thought to myself, but as I eased the stick forward I lost control of the plane entirely and dropped like a rock toward the waiting rocky hills.  In my descent I saw and felt what John Denver must have seen and felt when he plunged to his death off the coast of Santa Cruz.  Within the dream I was musing over his actual death in an abstract way and then bang!, I hit the ground.  I don’t know if I died, I couldn’t remember but I might as well have; waking up in the cramped confines of a glib Japanese car is a small relief from death itself.  I sat sweating profusely with my forehead bumping gently against the windowpane, trying to reconstruct the details of my imaginary palace and quixotic dream quest.  In reality as it is called I was going somewhere else, Las Vegas to be precise.
Air conditioning is no match for the desert phoebus, it only brings the nightmare into sharper focus, a palpable tease to remind you that somewhere it is not hot at all; even now as I sat there some Llama herdsman in Andes was warming his frostbitten toes by a roaring fire.  Oh to be cold…  The scorching sun made it too hot to go back to sleep.  Dean was driving and Betty was still passed out in the back seat.  It must have been around ten in the morning; I didn’t move to look at the clock on the dashboard, it didn’t really matter, one thing about travel —time has no meaning.  There is only in the car and out of the car a sort of two-dimensional life.  I’m not accustomed to functioning at the ungodly hours referred to by most as ‘morning’ and I wasn’t about to start now, here in the middle of nowhere.  I hadn’t gone to bed until about six this same morning; I rested my eyes for a while longer and recounted the events in blackness.  
There was a dim recollection of breakfast at Tiffany’s (or was it Denny’s?), pancakes and eggs with a side of bacon all tasteless and uneventful; a goodbye to some lingering friends, Carey, Dean and Betty’s father Mr. Dean; then conk! I was gone off in a Tibetan dream palace.  I escaped the boredom of driving east out of LA, thank god.  The drive out through the ‘inland empire’ as it’s called is a grand tour of hell (actually I would take the straight up inferno of hell served in a flaming glass before I would go of my own free will to the Inland empire).  I missed the wrenching smell of the stockyards in Upland and the bucktoothed gas station attendants of Barstow, a crying shame to be sure.  The stockyards especially amaze me; that the smell of a cow’s ass can somehow penetrated the near perfect Freudian-sterile seal of the modern automobile seems likely to remain, along with the Kennedy assassination and the pyramids, one of the true mysteries of the earth.
Just east of Barstow there is a sign that boldly states “Greensboro NC 1297 m;” I opened my eyes again in the shadow of that unpleasant knowledge, cracked my view of the world just in time to learn that the reconstructive dentistry capital of the world was a mere 1297 miles away.  I wanted to let out a Homer Simpson “Woohoo!” but it was too hot for any unnecessary activity.  I sat up, opened my eyes, stretched as best I could and wiped the drool off my cheek.  I looked over and saw the pain on Dean’s face that only a drive through the California desert in the middle of August with a hangover can give you.  God it was hot.  And I was right it was not even eleven, which meant that the temperature was bound to climb at least another ten degrees before we got to Vegas.
Dean had volunteered to drive the whole way to Vegas (he always was charitable when he was drunk) and naturally Betty and I had thought that a lovely idea.  He looked like he was in the throws of deep regret and cursing his own self-cast fortune, which for Dean is standard operating procedure.  There isn’t a whole lot to look at out here in the desert, at least not a whole lot that you can see from the window of a Toyota Corolla.  Of course that doesn’t mean there is nothing to see, its just that racing along in as enlarged soda can at ninety miles an hour limits your view of the world.  The cramping stylings of a cheap Japanese car was hindering our view, or maybe not so much the car but the speed of it.  We humans can move what!  I mean real speed, airplanes, space rockets, trains; we can run like no other animal and with no personal effort whatsoever.  Speed doesn’t allow for minutiae, even a mere gloss of the passing scenery is too much for the human eye at ninety miles an hour.  The creosote and hohoba plants that dot its hills and serpentine sand dunes are the only relief the eye gets from the endless endless nothing.  You don’t get details with speed, but its still the best way to travel —like comet we could crash into Vegas in a couple of hours, burn down the town and then go rocketing off again.
The car contained only the barest of essentials; Dean and I had thrown a few pants and shirts in a suitcase each and then I had a small courier bag with notepads, pens and a handful of books.  A garment bag held two suits each because a stranger in a strange land ought to look his best we reasoned. Betty, being a woman, had the largest suitcase that occupied the majority of the trunk, but otherwise the interior of the car was uncluttered with the trappings of humanity.  Music had been carefully selected for its road worth qualities, a healthy mix of raucous punk rock to keep us awake and soothing melodic pieces designed to lull the mind and drown the endless droning of the wheels.  I insisted on bring Beethoven’s Ninth for nighttime drives.  The upshot of our circumstances was the we traveled light, secretly though we kept it to ourselves, Dean and I mutually figured on having to lug most of it by foot at some point when the already suspect nature of the Toyota gave out entirely and finally surrendered its fate to the junkyard.  We had all left behind an enormous pile of furnishings and creature comforts which for my part I hoped to never lay eyes on again, but our friends had assured us they would see that it all got into storage should any of us return someday and want it.
	Happenstance carried me again I surrendered my own fate to that of the car, of the road, of the random complexities of life pure life with no entrapments, encumbrances, or dovetailed catches to hang me up.  We have thrown ourselves to the wind to let the scattering process begin; the first day out and I was feeling as expansively free as the landscape, floating on the thermals of fortuitous caesura.  Sheer chance drew me here and left me staring out the car window into nothingness, the pedigreed nothingness of freedom.  The desert was a void from my window; it had the deceptive appearance of emptiness not unlike the silent inky surface of the ocean, which is not empty but teeming with life.  The desert was once a sea floor, but the life wouldn't have it, the water rolled back to greener pastures.  The desert is the void left by water and filled up with castoff bric-a-brac from the mountain regions.  To the north glittery jewel peaks, the southern most tip of the White Mountains —snow.  Its making my mouth water, I point it out to Dean which seems to snap him out of some trance state and he agreed to pull over so we can stand on top of his car and look at them through the binoculars.  I imagined the cool streams, the whole painted backdrop from the set of Bambi coated in snow.  Our enthusiasm lasted about thirty seconds and then we started to realize that in fact the air conditioning is helping and that without it we are forced to suck hot dry air like clamping your lips to an exhaust pipe.
	Besides I knew the White Mountains didn’t look like a snow covered Bambi set; I’ve been there and they’re just as hot as the desert this time of year.  I jumped down and we headed back out on the road.  I lit a cigarette.  Life was going bang!   The epi-endo-genetic bang that finally turns on the radio, like when the old crystal quarts set gets cranked next to the digital signal, cold and clear you can taste it, metallic vibrations of noise it slam into your gut.  Sock you like a plutonium fuzz blast.
The sun burned through the open window and the dry hot air sucked itself greedily down into my lungs so that the heat had the peculiar effect of feeling like it radiated out from within rather than coming from that detached burning globe that was nearing it’s apex.  I felt like I might spontaneously combust just like those “rare” cases you hear about on That’s Incredible. I thought of saying I had heard —give a man a match and he can build a fire to warm himself through the night, but set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.  True what!  
I stirred finally and Dean looked over at me.  “How ya doin’?” he asked.
“Wonderful, except for the heat or course.”
“Ya that’s why I was willing to drive… so I didn’t have to sit in the sun…”  he smiled mischievously.  I knew there had to be some hidden insidiousness behind his offer…
“Ah, so you knew?”
He glanced at me with superiority, “come on now, I’m a professional.”
With the air conditioner on high and the fortuitous curve of the freeway I found myself becoming more comfortable.  Heat radiates out from within.  I found that if you keep that in mind you can cope with it, you just have to fan it out —blow the vents so to speak—burn it off at the right pace— with the right amount of water, cigarettes, ice-cold beer, and snack food.   Eventually I came to find my mind relaxed and floating on the surface of a glassy pond.  Gentle ripples between drags of the cigarette tuned my ears to the desert frequency.
Like the teeming depths of the ocean that once covered it there is an infinite web of natural and supernatural life out there.  My father is a desert rat, so I am no stranger to the bristling spike infested country of California.  When I was younger we used to make trips out here in the blistering heat and roaring silence to go hiking and camping; the sort of thing that most fathers didn’t do I found out later, but I had a good time on those trips.  My father dragged me from one end of the desert to the other, up the 395 to Hisperia and down the 316 all the way across the Mexican border at Tecate.  I learned a million tiny nuggets of knowledge to tidy my mind over through life’s boring stretches like riding about in a car.  I can assure you that there is an unknown universe of life thriving out there in the sand and heat, a harsh unforgiving universe as the cliché would have it, but it is also a delicately beautiful latticework teeming with life. Complex and fragile ecosystems evolved over millennia of cooperation and mutually assured survival instincts are woven through the barren rock and sand washes.  In the afternoons during a summer thunderstorm if you sit in the shade of a palo verde tree and watch the edges of a dry riverbed you can catch a glimpse of that universe.  Lizards and snakes frolic and birds seem to rejoice at the smell of rain.  (Lest you actually do this it is worth stating that you ought not to dally too long as that peaceful scene can be turned into a fifty mile an hour river of mud and rock that will jump out of nowhere and kill you before you have time to realize that you are going to die— I personally hope one day to die with such peace, but in case you aren’t ready don’t say I didn’t warn you).  There are enormous anthills that look not unlike flying over Manhattan at midday.  The desert works on a smaller scale, it is only for those with infinite patience, if you live in the desert you don’t want to have a lot to do.  That’s why there are ghost towns from here clear up to the base of the Sierra Nevada, towns where people didn’t have anything to do.  There was no reason per se to go to such towns and without reason they died.  I went out to the famous Calico ghost town once; a collection of blue-gray wood shacks, collapsing roofs, broken out windows and ceaseless wind blowing dust in every crevice.  But there were loads of people milling about in the summer heat, trying to keep the dust out of their teeth and see what a ghost town is.  There are no ghosts in the traditional sense at least not any that I could see, but there were ghosts of ideas, of lives, and hopes and dreams.  What must the inhabitants of thought living here in the wind blown back alley of nowhere?  Was this entire town little more than a broken wagon wheel that changed a life?  Or did someone plan this one out; did some one think this was a good idea?  My friend Mike and I drank icy Coca-Cola in the shade and debated those and other questions. We watched the pasty bloated souls called Tourist Americanus and tried to decide what they would be isolated here instead of thriving in their air-conditioned Lysoled suburbs.
Dean’s stereo is just audible above the roar of our cracked windows and when I strain I can hear Morphine playing.  She had black hair like ravens crawling down her neck…  I quoted that line once as an example of the band’s genius and the man to whom I was speaking said ‘actually that’s basic literary imagery metaphor 101…’  I felt bad for him, but I didn’t reply.  Its in the way it floats off the tongue, its in the way one simple image can carry you all the way to a seedy bar in Paris France, it’s the way it slides out of the lung and fits so smoothly in between the base and the drums.  It can take you anywhere you want, but only if you want to go.  If you want to hear cliches then I assure you, you will hear them everywhere you go. Have fun.  Stay clear of me.
Take the subtlest of frequency modulations and dig until you find the pulsar of life; blasting straight through the chest and then stroking on soft cushions to sooth you down.  In and out.  Draws you from one world to the next, an electro- static charge, like a song played off an old Castagraf recorder.
	You move the body electric in pulsation, with receptors that crawl — feeling warmth of the spine they head the back of the brain.  The surge is ecstatic... drives me right on over into the next dimension -model -metaphor -you get the picture.  You might have even hung it on your wall when you where younger, and hungrier —hunger drives the hierarchy and it’s there, even when your stomach is full... it hit raw exposed nerve endings with the high voltage throb of life that’s hard wired into our brains...in there like a virus you might say.  Lust for what?  It’s all gone from now.  Ebb and flow, the surges come in waves.   
I gotta run to make diving in smooth... feels in slow motion... you hang in the air for a timeless moment and then hit the water like a torpedo, the waves slip out from around the impact and form a circular blueprint...  The pond turns in the throws of a tempest, frothing with uninterrupted motion.  The animal body is an alternating current, suspended in perfect fluidity like the ecstatic dances of the trance-shamans carried slip-slow up into the magic of the beyond.  Echoes abound like a caged sun gone supernova... atomizes and reforms as the cool wave hits the skin.  Smooth blue skin.
	I remember three —maybe four— days ago smoking filterless cigarettes listening to the voices trailing in from the mezzanine, a masterpiece composition of harmonized waves, sound —the trigger behind the motion.  Dancing eyes so ravenous, spiral with giddiness, threw out the tired old man mind.  Bring it back down... bring it back down cause I never quite got it the first time.
Lost in images, swirling words, sounds, smells miraculous warmth on the crawling embers of flesh.... The black on the starry night... Van Gogh and his goddamn ear always creeping in at the edges.  Diggin' fast and furious: tunnelers.  Roots and the little blooms—the moment—the purity—the wavelength transitions in simplicity—burned like hydrochloric acid onto the memory film.  Scar tissue that languishes eternally.




We are staying with Rachel, here in Vegas, things are amuck amuck as the man said.  First there is Rachel.   Rachel is a cool-mom.  In every collection of friends I have ever wandered into there is inevitably one whose mother is the cool-mom.  Cool-moms are the ones that harbor the strays, know what clit piercing is and don’t mind the excesses of youth because they never forgot their own.  Johnson through and through the cool-mom is and Rachel was the one in our circle.  She was the one who didn’t mind wayward children crashing on the floor, junkies trying to kick locked in the bedroom and only god knew how many poor lost girls Dean had dragged home and put up in her house for a month or two, sometimes more.  Through it all she was understanding and usually supportive of all human creatures.  The cool-mom never judges or casts out someone because a simple disagreement or difference in beliefs.  Rachel was every bit the part, she was a matronly woman heavy set and swaggering full of spice and fire spitting gusto, she could out drink Betty.  Right now her life has taken a turn though, the cool-mom has had the bedrock foundation of the desert blown out from under her and for the first time in my life I feel old, old and weary the whole lot of us are slowly decaying in the heat, but the ambrosial smell of decay is good for us, like a hot brand on your ass, it might scar, but it’ll wake you up.
Then there is Rachel’s boyfriend Bob. Bob on the other hand is a redneck; the backwoods stripe ran through and through. Bob was the sort of alright guy that you realize isn’t alright after talking to him for twenty minutes.  These types tended to hang around the Little Knight during the early hours of the evening where it seemed they were wrapping up a hard day of hard drinking.  Mysteriously they always seemed to be loaded with cash.  Most of the ones I had talked to were in some sort of construction related business and they were always trying to get “youngsters” like myself to give them or sell them or just get them pot.  Bob had actually taken this cliché one step further and asked Dean and I to go up to Alaska, where he supposedly had a cabin, and grow Maui-wowi for him.  Almost anybody else and I would have jumped at the chance, but the thought of getting into a small plane with that man at the controls made my blood turn to ice.  I thought about it every time I see him.  I see his false eyes glittering like pyrite in the alaskan mountains and I see our carcasses lying half eaten by the fire and Bob just sitting there smiling that absurd smile….
True to the cliche Bob worked in construction (although he never seemed to actually work), drank hard and probably beat the crap out of Rachel —if not physically then emotionally.  I pretended to watch television while carefully watching the two of them.  From what I had seen of the man his mind consisted solely of illegible notes, beer stains and racist jokes.  He possessed the outdated practical knowledge of one that works with his hands and knows how to downshift the mind into neutral in order to get things accomplished.  There is nothing wrong with that per se but Bob seemed to have left his mind in neutral a little too long, maybe flooded the engine or something; maybe he was just dumber than a bag of rocks right out of the womb.  There was something intangible in the air about him and all the others I have met like him, something sinister and vague in its intent; he is a bad man my grandmother would have said and I have had my fill of bad men for this lifetime.  I avoid him like the plague.
Lately I have been spending all my time in the Double Down with Dean.  Day’s pass like strolls through airpot loungues, arival and departure times listed in gambling winnings and losses, interims of waiting, waiting for the cards to come around waiting for a friendly drunk to throw a chip our way, waiting for the call girls to give in to the only thing money can’t buy… tenderness. typically we roll out of bed as the sun is setting and duck out before Bob comes home from work or the bar or wherever he whiles his time away.  The Double Down is all the way on the other side of town so we don’t get there until eight o’clock.  The sun has just set when we walked through the door tonight.  We weave through the human menagerie and get drinks at the bar.  In the back is a separate room a quieter one where you can have drinks with a date or a whore and talk before heading down the street to the hotel that rent by the hour where you can knock back for a few rounds and still some back for a nightcap because its Las Vegas and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want and know one seems to care.  This is the apex of modern ideals, Las Vegas.  It’s the glitter capital of the world, the sky, the buildings, the streets all glitter, refracting light through the hollow core.
Las Vegas, is what happened when the fleshy ooze of humanity confronted the barbed souls of the barrel cactus, the spiny leaves of the Palo Verde tree, and all the otherworldly creatures of the desert.  The first step in renovating what must have appeared as hell to early settlers was air-conditioned.  Before air conditioning, not even the thrill of gambling would have made people come to Las Vegas in the summertime.  But cool it down a bit and you can decorate hell up nice; some casinos, some brothels, curtains in the windows, now things are looking up. 
Th puritains preachers of the four headed beast abstinance are the only humans that don’t like Vegas.  In order to dislike Vegas you have to really dislike yourself.  Any rudimentary logic, at least male logic, would dictate that a state where prostitution and gambling are legal and free alcohol is constantly being served is closer to heaven than hell.  But these are unfortunate and trying times that we live in, they have wrought the heavy hand of the moral majority and its cronies all the way across the nation to squelch any fun you thought you might be able to have.  The contradiction of the matter is ridiculous, but the uptight religious right seem to miss the irony entirely.  Indeed I think that the American west is humanities final hope for salvation from the hideous forces of repression and the sad truth of the matter is that we are losing.  It’s later in the game than you think —possibly we already lost.  Our country’s history reads like cartoon strip of a small innocent child running from an overbearing stepmother; first it was England then New England; the poor child is tired and sat down to rest here in Las Vegas.  Las Vegas used to be the grand ball of the country, but then the overbearing bitch of ‘prurient interests” showed up.  The old casinos are being torn down and whorehouses are driven out of business every passing day and the mob has been beaten back to the landfills and over safer money laundering operations.  Now instead of quasi-burlesque shows there are silly men in tights parading wholesomely around with white tigers amid a pyrotechnics background of high wire acts.  Who the fuck wants to see tigers?  We came to buy some whores and drink until we can’t see straight.  To live more or less the way god intended —happy. 
This evening I am sitting on a bench in the mezzanenie of the Double Down which is a casino/bar/night club/breeding ground for nefariousness; I am waiting for Dean who is chatting up a beautiful girl at the back of the bar who may or may not be a whore.  It is Dean’s quest to find out and if the answer be yes then how much?  In the meantime I am watching the cheapskate old ladies with blue hair clutch at their plastic cups slowly emptying them of quarters, which they drop mechanically into the slots.  What goes through you mind when you do that all day long?  Do you still have a mind, is anything happening in there?  Perhaps this was there form of meditation, different but maybe the same idea as driving.  They assume a purely mechanical nature in order to let their minds wander about, to frolic through lost memories of youth and life when it still meant something.  More likely there was nothing going on upstairs I decide.  It is nearly nine now and the sun is but a slice of irridecent orange peel slinking behind the glittery casinos of the strip skyline, but the heat is still hanging on even in the shadows.  Off in the distance I can just see the tips of the high rise casinos where the rich gamble in private rooms waited on by topless cocktail girls and through the walls they listen to the thriving sounds of tourists dropping coins and laying down bills to line the velvet pockets which hold their Cuban cigars.  The wheels are turning twenty four hours a day seven days a week for eternity.  The velvet gets nicer every year and the girls prettier and the tourists dumber and fatter always wanting more! New! Bigger!  By god!, screams the frustrated real estate Tycoon in horror. What the hell is going on here?!  He stands up from the table in alarm, zombie eyes are peering vacantly through one way windows, what do they want?  Well sir, says the nervous pimple employee who was sent in with a message, they want more...  He speaks in a whisper unsure of whether to be more afraid of the Boss or the Mob.  We gave them a pirate ship, recreated the pyramids, and the canals of Venice, what more do you people want from us?!  I just can’t take it anymore, first it was the galls stones then kidney stones, two bi-pass surgeries (the second one a triple!) are you trying to kill me?!  And off in the distance the throngs gather about and begin to chant as if spellbound by the ancient techniques trance revivals: We want more!  We want new!  The volume increases as the numbers grow from all over the world masses gather beneath the alter and chant…We want shiny!  We want clean!  The very enslaved that the bosses has so sneered at and exploited were now subtly fighting back with incessant dreams, the perfect slave became the uncontrollable master…We want to be fitter!  We want to be happier!  The Boss scratches his head and thinks for while, eyeing the faces in the mirror staring at him though they can not see him… alright kid, here’s what were going to do, you go out and tell them that I am currently drawing up plans to build a half size replica of the Eiffel tower, the hotel next to it is going to be immense, the restaurant will be in the middle with a clear view up ninety stories to sky.  Tell them that I have plans for a tower to extend up five stories and I plan to fill it with wine bottles with will be delivered to their tables by a girl on a mechanical trapeze swing that can be raise and lowered as need to fetch their wine.  Tell them the expensive stuff is going to be at the top, those cheap bastards’ll be order screw top crap that the waiters can get, but as long as somebody buys the good stuff they all get to see the show.  The Boss is positively beaming now, inspiration has hit he is on to something.  He shoos the kid outside and through the waitress’s out after him.  He locks the door and starts sketching….
Bordem.  I wander over seeing that Dean is seated now and obviously not headed anywhere for a while; I join them in booth.  Dean introduces me to Chloe who just as I had feared is gorgeous and a whore, I can see it in her eyes.  The way she watches Dean while he talks, she is thinking that yes he will pay, but even if he didn’t she would enjoy it just the same, he has a tenderness in the dies of eyes, little flickers that light the whore imagination.  She’s right, but its only half the story —her half.  The room has the stale smell of too many smokers and not enough air filters built up over decades of excess and dapravity.  I imagine the are walls a sickly yellow color coterized with smoke and splattered with sloshed beer, but its too dark to tell for sure.  The is a sensual symphony gurgling and lurching through each minute with the ceaseless effort of the little engine that could. Cartoon character faces fill up chairs and resemble like the creatures that pop out of the walls at the Tiki room in Disneyland.  Repulsive faces that seemed devoid of all humanity —zombies with coins.  The frail frame of an elderly woman at a slot machine never so much as murmured as she dropped quarters in the machine; her arm moved from the handle to her plastic bucket full of change as if it were part of the machine rather than a warm body. Double Down became a swirl of lights, sex and drugs, the human effort to fulfill needs.


I watched with fascinated detachment as Chloe sucked on Dean's cock like something in a B movie.  She looked like she was pretty good and I said as much to Dean.  I think he found it all little too weird to have someone watching him while he got a blowjob and he made no response, which might, I guess, be the ultimate testament to quality.  She however seemed turned on by the idea of a spectator and she kept looking over at me with Dean's cock halfway down her throat.






















Chapter four falling in with the hippies and the trip across the mountains into colorado  Character sketch of natasha and Zak plus Clay.

Chapter five in neworleans using walks through the sity to tell the story of coming across the planes and lay the foundations of Dean and amanda thus giving th impetus for us to go to DC and then draw out Ashley who leads me to new york… we meet in a coffeeshop in DC where she is visiting Bill and then we go to bed and disappear to new york here through in the grand musings of life and lead up unit Dean shows up and we go to canada which allows for the critique of america to come to head and then ends with me back in new orleans and then to athens GA where the book clothes out into nothingness that is not an ending just as there is no beginning.



Transcribed from tapes: the terminal disease clerk took orders by the turnstile, finding the story in the story and logging in the disease workers all night long.  At five in the morning he got off and headed to a tavern as the sun was coming up.  Direct confrontation with the terminal virus word is a bit confusing to those who are not properly prepared.  poor fuckers never had a chance; the technical sergeant takes off his helmet and slams it on the table the near moronic mumbling of discontent.  Waging war is semantically impossible without overtones of homosexuality.  Heavy handed, the second wave fell in line with the technical sergeant at the lead.  The thing you have to watch out for are the warblers —the distractions coming in at the sides, sound is their most effective weapon, primordial hangover he called it drunkenly raising a glass.  And some of you may think this suspect, but take my advice sound's where it all started.  In the beginning was the word and the word spoke.  The sergeant stoops and cups his hands to light a cigarette.  Then there is sex or not enough of it, both is equally dangerous —biology is not something to scoff at.  sexuality is the best cover an agent can ever use.  Rockets come searing in overhead ripping flesh and scoffing at the notion of eternity, out here you don't have time to talk, the thoughts are things, they are no longer words...keep your radios tuned boys its getting ugly.  Another rocket sears in severed limbs fly out the explosion and olive drab body parts litter the scene. 
	Watch out for the bloody words, sharp words that hang in the air like knives and when uttered returned to slit the throat of their speaker and if every word you have spoken returned to act upon yourself would you survive the experience?   Me no way I'm outta here.  Situation getting sticky, humid like vaporous blood hanging on in the air.  Still acrid smell of urine and small children playing in a asphalt playground ringed on all sides by immense brick walls with basketball hoops hung half way up each of the sides.     Realize that that which we are taught from childhood to distrust is in fact a pawn of something far more immense and much much more dangerous.  The governments and nations of the world are incidental pawns of there own control systems and then beyond them there are even more and so on like looking two mirrors facing each other and going on to infinity.  The monster of power is faceless there is no one person or group that controls everything they are all parts of a immense and multi-headed monster that is constantly biting itself and attacking it own heads until some day it will destroy itself.  The end of time leaves space and word alone together
	we're taking heavy fire!  The sergeant calls for back up, the captain says love one another and cryptically hangs up the phone. The Spanish soldier selling chiclettes say no good no bueno, pictures worth not even half a thousand words.  Wouldn't give you ten words, worthless gringo words don’t mean shit. no good no bueno, not worth the blood their written in. The blood of all peoples not yours, not your shoes, by god keep your slave labor camps a closed-mouthed secret.   Gotta keep that in house, dis-credit all news agencies by routinely feeding them false information.  News doesn’t happen events happen, and the department of television information broadcasting inc. a subdivision of indoctrination inc. decides what gets out and what remains forever sealed in baby pissshitguts.  No that's not true. No comment. No need for comment, the preceding has been since proved to be untrue, cut to shots of smart bombs. Couldn’t get fifty words for those now gringo -over exposure- nobody buying.   Same old stinking shit.  No Good. No Bueno.
	Gringo go home in thousand languages in a million words, why don’t you crawl back in your cave get your tail so far between your legs it goes half way up your ass?  Lead me to the holy spigot and we’ll show you the bidet of death, constructed by gringos, for gringos, to flush out gringos, to show them all what you do behind closed doors.  Can’t close them all —we have our technicians as well and they’re getting to be better than yours. We got the money rolling in —even offered you the picture words but you don’t want them. No Good.   Can’t use those, too strong.  No fair, crying boy heads home for cave to lick his dirty balls clean.
	I gotta picture for you I on vacation in your country go to hear senator’s speak but all door are closed, all sealed.  So i gotta fiber optic and feed it in from the roof show all senators mad with sexual lust and blood thirsty, clamoring for war and stealing souls and bodies and driving them off wherever they see fit.
	The technician is retro actively of course —the papers said the man was mentally ill.  ‘my cod!’ screamed a church lady in the front row, ‘satan has garbled the lords message, this isn’t what he meant for you to hear, no it was not all like that, there was to be understanding.’ she is parading her old cunt bones whining at the justices —tissue conducts signals, animals communicate through the use of visual, acoustic , chemical, tactile and electrical signals.  Our laboratory is an abundant and well preserved feed back loop to understand and interpret Eusocial behavior. negative feedback inhibition to make you shiver Gringo.  Make you shiver good.
	Repetition unsuccessful.  The radiologist was called in to examine the patient —blisters and burns indicate high probability of skin mutation, what would you say Dr. Waiben?   Crested and on the nod? Diminutively, yes definitely.
	Information potential exists —its an unsettling thought, dependency —and what happens when things start to think? How do you draw the lines then?
	HOW THE PLAGUE BEGAN:
 	The wish to preserve -not worth saving what already is- in this scenario.  The word,  the loss of body situated at the origins of recorded sound -the temporal metaphysical and esthetic possibilities.
	<insert sounds of truck on dirt road>  
	Old man yelling.  Get off of my laaawwwnnn!   Sits down to oil his gun some more and then half turns in his chair to face the camera and says "i haven't left the porch since i got this CDRom PEOPLE version 3.0.   Updated and expanded human potential at your fingertips.  Its the only thing i need —got no use for the stinking gringos anymore—  camera pans out and down revealing a yard strewn with shotgun-blasted bodies of young children.  We see wife, face half torn off, crawling towards a pistol <shotgun blast stage left> her head disappears entirely.   Old man: "human potential, the new CDRom makes wives unnecessary." cue logo: on sale now at a sanatorium near you....
	I'm going to finally send you the orgy papers this time  -been fixing to get 'round to that for some time"  <heavy southern drawl>  don't think he's the type to do it though but i been wrong once or twice a'fore.    Don't want people showing up on my lawn though that's never good.  get off of my lllaaaawwwwnnnnn! <shotgun blast again, distant screaming sounds of deaths final agonies eeking out blood gurgling windpipes> Fucking Gringos! Go home in a thousand languages!
	  Experience as much of the human potential as possible, retain the container and forward the frog to the fun sun freaks of eastern Tibet —all is well with alkaline, and acidity is on the skids with death rooted out leaving only chicken shit shoveled scrapped and scraped like lemon lime Gatorade poured from a fuck buck of love.  Stop talking to yourself —listen to the virus talk to you.  All that you consider to be a accident was carefully orchestrated for your benefit by a benevolent cocksucking god from the twenty-third dimension to just plain old irritate the fuck out of you like a bad rectal itch.  Stupid gringo got no cure for the ass itch i show you some pictures, yes very dirty, little girls you like??????
	<<<<<commander in chief of the NATO forces in Europe is fucking small refugee boy in the ass, the boy cries for his mother the general is laughing, your mother’s down the hall boy ,she’s busy with the president of France right now.  But maybe later you’d like to lick his come off her dead face.  Ban those words tear them right out snip snip.  Can’t say that, its disgusting.  War is a snuff film for the rich.  <<<<We gotta step up the bombing chief the public’s losing innarest in us screams the chief of staff running in circles jerking off and slapping his ass until it turns a bright purple and with all seriousness General Jesse Helms pauses to reflect:  I remember a time when life was good no one got in our way, why in Europe under Patton i musta raped twenty thirty little boys and a handful of nuns too. He smiles lost in memory...
	But God hath given us these trying times....
	Yes it is bit hard to get cunt these days isn’t it, mumbles the chief of state as he strokes his wife’s cock....Yes dear start a war, get me some cute refugee boys, i so love snapping their necks when I'm coming, she growls affectionately.
	That's it gentlemen were going to war!  The president stands and ejaculates on a map of the world KOSOVO it is he says as his thick oatmeal consistency sperm all but covers the former republic of Yugoslavia.
	You like?  You like, no?  Too bad.  You can’t have those words, too strong.  I get power, you give me power, I steal power from you, to expensive to buy it.  I get power and you get pictures and maybe I tell you how to cure rectal itch? Eh? Eh? Eh?



In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh by a cacophonous blast out of heaven's pearly cum-stained ass creating the father, the son, and the holy spigot which lies in a secluded garden on the cliffs overlooking the Sargasso sea.  The spigot is buried in a volcano designed by Czech ostriches in the eleventh hour of creation to drain all human excrement off the continent of Europe and into the Sargasso sea all lumpy with turd so thick Jesus "conny" Christ in drag is walking along to the amazement of the gullible, floating gently from turd to turd.  The piss blood of a million cunts and cocks line the shores giving the whole place a radioactive iridescent red glow not to mention a awful stench.  Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo are standing on the bluffs watching the spectacle and scanning with hawk eyes for sweet tight asses in which they can stab their hungry cocks.  The father caught the son sitting in the middle of the garden sucking on an apple and he became enraged and hog tied the boy and penetrated every orifice in his body with a peeled and sculpted cucumber cock; the boy was left a whimpering, quivering lump of fleshy jello from which spawned humankind.
	The piss gut rotting flesh smell, air taunt necked and jerking at the nose, the captain's eyes role back into his head as is guts are blasted out his ass by a giggling man headed tape worm of extraordinary wit who was prone to quoting Joyce and Bugs Bunny in the same sentence in a way that reminded listeners of Buster Keaton in some strange drugstore hurricane kind of a way.  The skatolic odor was rich and the worm refused to bath.  Owing to the peculiar nature of its origin the soldiers did not disturb the worm preferring instead to watch the captain writhe in agony pulling his legs back behind his ear to attempt to lick the matted blood soaked pubic hair over the torn orangish flesh that hung in ribbons over a large hole that had once been a simple anus.  The upshot of it all was that the worm ate less rations than the captain so the men were basically satisfied with the arrangement and they followed the worm wiggling through the jungle as it did impersonations of Fred Astaire...
	Blasted rot gut con-artist with ten huge molars running across the front of his mouth in a clump owing to his mother's industrial accident with the cunt acid from the hyperdrill, drilled right on through back to china.  The asshole couldn't even close the damn thing and the lower mandible just kind of hung there like a tire swing.  
	The giggling Hyenas are dressed in black and high on amphetamines looking to turn you inside out.
	Tongue-tied porn queens scream obscenities at passersby "I'll suck your dick until your eyeballs pop out your ass..."










Every diner has its own subtle quality which distinguishes it from all the nearly identical establishments of its kind, this particular joint had enormous lazy houseflies crawling up the wall behind me which set it off in League with other infamous places I have eaten such as Ben’s Broasted Chicken an establishment that I had been to years ago.  I was headed up to the Tahoe area by way of the back road, 395, a rickety operation that shoots you straight up the length of california always keeping the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada just to the left.  About three quarters of the way to Tahoe you pass through the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Bishop where among other things there is a roadside dive called Ben’s which serves Broasted chicken and corn on the cob for two dollars a plate.  There were no other options no menu no choices no confusion, no arguing with the cook just broasted chicken and corn.  I remember going in primarily because I wanted to know just what one did to a chicken to make it broasted.  After that all I remember is the enormous lazy flies that crawled up the column next to my table.  I still can’t recollect exactly what the chicken tasted or even looked like, the corn sticks out as being over cooked and mushy and of course the flies were lazy and didn’t move when you swatted them which led me to believe that in fact they were never swatted at.  Indeed Ben’s was probably a kind of legend in fly circles, one to another word passed down the line and traveled all through the Eastern Desert of california, if you were a fly Ben’s was the place to be.  I asked to meet the infamous Ben proprietor and presumably the genius behind the broasting, but unfortunately he was out of town.  Instead the cook gave us a tour of the kitchen and that only served to make my experience at Ben’s a singular one.  I was passing through Bishop several years after that and I tried to locate Ben’s Broasted Chicken so that Amy could share the wonder of broasted chicken with me, but the place was gone, no building nothing, even some locals in town acted like they had no idea what I was talking about.  One old woman gave us that peculiar look that small town people always give to city folk as if to say you have no business poking around here asking questions, but I kept at her until she confessed that Ben’s was something she had never heard of, and what's more she informed us that she had lived in Bishop her whole life.  I started to wonder if maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing and Amy, who was in love with my eccentricities as much as my banality, I am certain though that here was the definitive proof she had always wanted to know for sure that I was totally nuts.  We snacked on bread from Shatz’s Bakery and drove up to Mammoth with me recounting the same story of Ben’s Broasted chicken that I had laid on her before Bishop, doubtlessly boring her to sleep which was just as well because my mind was pre occupied with broasted chicken not the inner depths of the female soul which was what Amy seemed to want to talk about all the time.
	I recanted the story of Ben’s to Dean over double cheeseburgers.  I still don’t let little things like fat lazy flies bother me, who ever heard of a fly that ate anything more than crumbs?  They were doing no harm and the burgers were dripping greasy and quite yummy, as Amy would have said if she had been there.  Every time I get to thinking about or talking about Ben’s Broasted Chicken strange things begin to happen, first the place disappears and then to reach across a span of maybe five years Ben’s came crashing into the present and my mouth dropped open full of half chewed cheese burger when who should come strolling in the door of this diner, but Clay Napier the very man who had been with me on that virgin trip to the land of broasted chicken.  Actually the weirdness factor way have been slightly over played on my part as I did know that Clay was in Colorado somewhere, but it’s a big state and then even in Denver how many diners how many nights what are the odds?  All of this can in someway be accounted for by the initial mystery that set it all in motion… what is broasted chicken?  I no longer care (I also have made it a point never to consult a cookbook) I prefer the mystery to which broasted chicken has attended, at least for me.
	Clay Napier was an ancient friend, not in a chronological sense but in the sense that we would always be friends regardless of the time between meetings we never had more then twenty or so awkward moments of catching up and then things fell naturally into place as if we had been together everyday for years.  I waited until the waitress had seated him and then casually sauntered up while he was reading the menu and sat down across the booth from him.  I cleared my throat and as I did so and he put down the menu to see who was disturbing him.  I watched in slow motion as his face went from blank irritation to recognition, and then surprise.  We smiled at each other for a moment and then nonplussed, as if it were perfectly natural that we should come upon each other five years and two states away from our last meeting, Clay slid out of the booth and we embraced for moment before the volume of words began to flow forth.
	“My god what are you doing here?” 
	“I was going to ask you the very same question —I thought you were up in the mountains or was it in flagstaff?”
	“Ya I was in Flagstaff until I graduated, now I’m actually living up in Boulder, but my girlfriend lives down here… she’s working right now so I was catching a late dinner… why are you in Denver last thing I heard you had gone back to school or something to that effect…?!”
	I racked my brain; where would he have gotten such foolish ideas?  Who was behind this?  “Uh, no I haven’t gotten around to that yet, who told you that one?”
	“I forget maybe Robert.”  Robert K Statmore an upright human being if there ever was one, it had been years since I had even thought of Bob, except when I went camping and realized with a fresh new sense of shame that I still had the tent I borrowed one weekend almost four years ago.
	“How is Bob?”
	“Dunno, haven’t talked to any of those guys in a couple of years, I been out here doing odd jobs, I was working for a mining firm doing archeological impact studies, you know making sure they weren’t trampling on our people.”  Our people was an old and very elaborate joke that had developed over the years, a sort of half joke actually as Clay and I were serious about some of it.  Our people were the native American’s whose blood ran through both our bodies, in Clay it was the Cherokee, and in mine it was (I think) Ogalala, but either way it wasn’t much, not even enough to claim it for scholarship purposes.  The both of us were middle European mutts, half breeds, the results of some horny individuals who had no qualms about fucking across international boundaries, but the point of “our people” was not so much about us, it was a continuous good natured way to needle the third point in our boyhood triangle of friendship.  That third point was named Jim Stout and was proudly and definitely Irish.  When we all got drunk conversation used to end up with Jim threatening to give us small pox blankets and us half-heartedly trying to scalp him while he slept.  It’s funny now looking back how teenagers can turn genocide and torture into a source of humor and competition.  We were a lot smarter back then.  I smiled at Clay’s comment and was lost for moment in a nostalgic reflection over my boyhood.  I saw Clay as I will always see him when he’s not around, he’s sitting in that diner smiling that old half crooked curve, and to this day his nasal voice echoes about in my ears whenever I think of him.  He had slow manner of speech where you leaned in close so as not to miss a word.  He often didn’t say much just shrugged or gave you a look, but the words that did fall out were carefully measured like a recipe and to miss one of them would ruin the flavor of what he was trying to say.  And then there were The Looks, you have to know someone for a while before you can communicate with them on a subverbal level with just looks, but with Clay that time was double the norm.  He had looks, which he held out in silence that could mean more than complex and overly verbose sentence.  When he was feeling thoughtful and didn’t have an opinion he would stroke his chin with a bemused expression which only over time did I realize was not in fact an ironic mockery of Allen Ginsburg, but really the genuine article of inner reflection being measure out and stirred up.  I have always thought in the time since Clay and I were fast boyhood friends that I would have liked to smoke pot with him.  I remember the first time I got high I thought what wonderful qualities this little plant would bring out in my friend Clay, but he was gone by then, off in Arizona going to school and continuing down the boisterous outdoor life that we had all lead during high school.  Nearly every weekend we headed out to Joshua Tree the local rock climbing hang out and Clay had patiently taught Jim and I how to climb until one day we were both better than him.  Or at least to be fair that’s how I remember it.  Every summer we had made glorious excursions through the Sierra Nevada, backpacking over the palisades, Mineral King, Sequoia, Yosemite and other mountains with names that I have surrendered to inaccessible regions of memory.  We all came from adventurous sort of families.
Jim was the first to go his separate way, he ended up at brown University for four years and then Clay went to NAU and I went, well I went here.  And then there and now back here.  Crisscrossing paths occasionally with each of them making plans for trips we knew we would never go on.  The last time I saw Jim, he had met me for a drink at the Little Knight and Tony had presided over our hour and a half meeting like a surgeon trying to revive the dead.  I hadn’t seen Jim since and I didn’t know where he was and apparently neither did Clay.
	“What are you doing tonight you want to come get a drink?”
	“Ya I’m with a friend of mine,” I motioned to Dean the he should come over, he didn’t know Clay and I hadn’t really said anything when he walked in I just dropped my story and walked over to a strangers table, for all Dean knew I was making arms deals with the CIA.  I introduce them and Dean went back to our both retrieved our burgers and we all sat down to dinner.  “We were over a Tangz, but the gay scene got old so we ducked out… his sister and her friend are still there, but we left them the keys anyway.  You got a ride?”
	He did and that settled it.  The three of us took off to a club/bar where Clay’s girlfriend Anna was working, on the way I filled Clay in on five years as best a could (he had heard stories it seemed —good to know that people talk about you when you’re not around).  I left out a few things that I wanted to tell him, but as I said Clay and I are ancient and until I knew where he was at now I had no reason, based on the old Clay to think the one driving now would care about.  I left out my gnosticism and the year or so that I spent trying to meet god.  Not that I was embarrassed about that stuff, nor ashamed, but rather that they were between me and the handful of people that were aware of what was going on, to go beyond that circle would cost them their flavor, the unique character of insanity that marked them.  It turned out that Clay had done about half of the things we always suspected he would do, like college, the master degree, the outdoorsy life, the move to Colorado… but there were things that I never would have thought to hear that Clay was doing.  Back in the day, in fact how I met Clay was through the church youth group, and as I say we were both indoctrinated with the Presbyterian God, but to be honest I was mainly there because there were really cute girls (if I had know then what I know now I would have been down the street at the Mormon tabernacle).  I grew out of religion around seventeen when I read a book on brainwashing and realized that even if all this malarkey they were feeding us was true, I knew nothing of it other than what I had been told.  The same tactics are used by the US military, Indian gurus, Charlie Manson and nearly every other belief centered organization in the world.  I got very angry with myself for being duped by these charlatan tricks that seemingly anyone could have employed by reading a textbook on conditioning psychology.  I was smarter than that I realized, but unfortunately all my friends were not seeing my insights and what's more they seemed genuinely concerned about me for thinking such things.  Subtle reminders were dropped hear and there over a dinner or later after we graduated, a beer, things that had the subtle subtext that good religious people can convey through even the most mundane conversation.  At least that’s what I thought at the time and I embarked on this quest to convert them all to my new religion, to undermine the system from within.  I gave them books, got them to smoke pot (well Jim anyway) got them to have some sex, in fact Dean and I even dragged Jim to meet a porn star once at some strip club, but then end up backing out when we learned that their was no alcohol allowed.  I was the propaganda of hedonism.  I always thought that Clay would come round, would wake up as I naively referred to my reactionary religion, but I was wrong.  In fact Clay was quitting his job in a month to go back to California and work at the summer camp that we went to in high school.
	Now since then I had as I said carried hedonism as far (actually a little further) as it would go and there waiting for me at the end was God and this time he wasn’t wearing the gilded robes of human flesh he was much more of a supernatural being than anything I had ever read has prepared me for and he was much subtler in its existence than I had assumed.  He hated Presbyterians and hedonists with equal fervor.  He looked like Hitler in Drag and had a nasty habit of sniffing opium tinctures at the most improbable of moments.  He was related directly to the incident with the little gnomes on ether that were mentioned earlier and how do you relate that to anyone else?  I hadn’t the foggiest and I realized that I was cut off, limited as much as freed by experience because I was so painfully aware of the limitations of being human I was limited.  I was limited to trying to understand Clay when I should have been knowing.  This thought ran like a subtle subtext through the conversation.  Dean took over for me and started telling Clay about people, parties and things that I new Clay wouldn’t relate to, but I let him because I could see Clay shifting in his seat and having to realize that the other half exists and that was exactly what I had been trying to do.  I tried every trick in the book back in my more clever days and I had forgotten about the one thing that doesn’t get into psychology textbooks: people.  The best evidence for god is man, always has been always will be, any two bit strand of sporific DNA floating through the universe could have made the rest, but man now there is an odd one.  Where did this thing come from and what the hell is wrong with it?  Who would have made such a thing?  I hold that what made us had a hell of a sense of humor and not much else going on upstairs.
	When I snapped out of it they were talking about books.  Dean was lamenting the recent demise of William S Burroughs and Clay was arguing that Burroughs was too obscure in his style to ever be the creative genius that people thought him to be.  This I decide would be great time to go the bathroom and I excused myself; there is nothing Dean can talk about with the insane fever of dementia quite like William Burroughs.  I had watched Dean discover and then devour William Burroughs the way some people get over imported chocolates.  He savored each knew book with a delicacy that I reserved for other authors, I recognized immediately that whatever his merits or faults he had at least reached Dean and Dean was a tough nut to crack, I could never do it.  He had lent me some books and then wham in I went to the world of the totally bizarre.  Burroughs tunneled himself into my brain like cancer and ate it all up, then is found another and moved on to devour that author consuming that men and women who wrote as intrinsically part of what they were saying.  I have always read that way being more interest in the whole scope of authors life rather than moving from book to book the way some people do.  Whether it was Robert Wilson or Tom Clancy it was always the same way.
	When I came back from the bathroom I could tell that things had gone awry which was just as well because I didn’t really want to talk philosophies I wanted to speed things up.  I went up the bar and asked the bartender to point out Anna for me.  He did and I knew that things between me and Clay would never be the same again.  She was an absolute work of art with delicate pale skin like a Grecian urn and a face with high cheekbones that just kind hung amid a mass of perfect blond ringlets.  She could have been a model, but she wasn’t she was Clay’s girlfriend and I was smitten.  I have notorious bad habit of sweeping my friends girlfriend out from their arms and into my own consequently my friends don’t usually call for while when they meet someone.  I was awash in cynicism from my earlier musings and I figured if Clay and I were destined to part then I might as well do it with a bang.  I went up and introduced myself.  Anna “had a smile that swerved, a smile that curved, a smile that swerved all over the road.”  If ever there was a girl that Mark Sandman described with those lines it was Anna.  She had a body that hugged the road like BMW and she laughed with the honest mirth that comes only those who know.  I struggled over that sentence for some time trying to put it without sounding like mystic, but the simple truth is if you don’t know what I mean by that then don’t worry you don’t know and if you don’t know you’ll never learn.
	Anna talked like a little demurring French pastry and once shy and bold with the dancing musical quality that seems to emanate mainly in the voices of women I find attractive and no one else.  When you’re in the presence of a magical voice such as that all you want to do is listen, any other distraction becomes an immediate irritation and all you want is to stop it and get back the sweet music.  Thus by the time a came back to the table with Anna I was already in the mood to do whatever she wanted whenever and wherever she wanted to do it (of course, and therein lies the rub, ten minutes from now it was very possible I would be smitten to another water nymph). 	
	Clay looked visibly disturbed that I had gotten to Anna before he introduced us and being aware of my past he was already uncomfortable with the idea.  The song was right is you want to be happy for the rest of your life you got to get yourself an ugly wife or in this case girlfriend, because if you’re dating the most beautiful girl in the room you have to continually maintain your Alpha Male presence or the other will swoop in and feed on your weakness.  Women who find that statement offensive have never been the most beautiful girl in the room and the rest of them are evil because they know what power they have and they use it.  Anna was the center of attention at out little table and she new it and she liked it from what I could tell because she announced before long that she was going to see if she could get off early and we were all to come with her to an exclusive party for some ban that none of use had ever heard of.  But like I said whatever, whenever wherever and I could tell Dean was not going to put up a fight.  She left and Clay wisely used this time to go to the restroom as it was not a good idea to leave the girl with the other dogs.
Dean and I talked it over and decided that we would each do our best to keep the other from sleeping with Anna, but in our quixotic logic we both agreed that the best way to do this was to each keep the other from the crime by committing it ourselves.  We could have subtitled our logic with the slogan keep others out of trouble by getting yourself into it first or as one other put it, how I found the goddess and what I did to her then” to which I would only add and how she loved it.  As they say good lovers are not born they’re made, like Mafioso bosses its all in the luck of the draw, but once you learn you will never look at life the same again.  You will understand from experience.  The question we were debating when Clay returned was whether or not good a Christian could possibly be capable of satisfying the goddess.  We were in the neighborhood of a no when we had to seamlessly shift gears and make Clay believe that we were not talking about his girlfriend the minute he left the table, but of course he knew wouldn’t you?
	I managed to suck down one more gin and tonic before the forces of control let Anna loose upon us and we all headed off in her car to this after-hours party that was supposedly in the swanky downtown area that Dean and I had been touring earlier.  When we got there it turned out to be in the bar of a rather posh high rise hotel.  The entire area was blocked off, but a couple of words between the security guards and Anna and we were all whisked in with nod here and there.  Now only was it indeed a part for some band, but this musical flavor of the month had some rather famous friends.  And suddenly Clay’s nightmare deepened because now he didn’t have to worry about Dean or I; there was new competition like Johnny Depp who was sitting by himself in the corner of the bar.  Nor were Dean and I necessarily smitten on Anna anymore when there were an abundance of women that we would have recognized if we bothered to keep up on the fashion industry.  Being from LA Dean, Clay and I were not overly impressed with celebrities anymore, you only run into a couple and then you start to realize that your own friends are infinitely more interesting.  But one thing about celebrity parties that I never get tired of is the free food and booze and the wonderful abundance of substance abuse.  How do you know if you live in LA?  You can’t remember if cocaine is illegal or not.  We made a beeline for the bar and left Clay with Anna who we figured was after all his problem not ours.  We watched the vultures feeding as the celebrities divided and conquered among the groupies, admirers and hangers on.  Its really hard to compete with a guy that’s internationally recognized as a sex symbol so we contented ourselves with the company of a guy who we thought might be the lead singer of the Black Crowes and who might have just been another emaciated scraggly haired kid that looked like the lead singer of the Black Crowes.  In either case we chatted sporadically over the course of a half-hour or so before he offered us a joint.  We graciously accepted and got up thinking we were to follow him outside when he lit it right there in the middle of the bar and with a minimum of discretion passed it to Dean who shrugged and smoked it.
“Be careful,” the dark locks leaned in closer as if to impart some clandestine knowledge, “this shits pretty hard core.”
	I laughed in his face but managed to make it look like I was only coughing.  Dean shook his hand and said thanks man don’t worry its cool or some other such dopehead lingo.  From the minute the smoke hit my lungs it was very obvious that something more powerful than what I was used to was at work here.  My toes got tingly and my hands heavy.  Maybe thirty seconds after I inhaled I was catapulted into another universe that bore absolutely no resemblance to the one before it.  Dean’s face went ashen and I thought thank god because I was going to need company on this one.
	Ten minutes later I found myself discussing the literary merits of Dorothy Allison with Winona Ryder and her brother who I thought was her boyfriend.  What I said I have no idea but I did later make it a point to read bastard out of Carolina and I was some disappointed when Winona Ryder was not in the movie.  She seemed like she genuinely wanted to play that role and in my chaotic state I sensed that she would.  Not everything that comes to you one drugs is brilliant not is all of it ‘just the drug.’  No matter what the prejudice the drug warriors have against chemicals the important thing that they ignore is that the chemicals are interacting with the human mind.  Something happens when you smoke pot that not only feels good but also over time changes the entire way in which your brain processes information whether or not that is good thing is an individual judgement call.  At this particular point that alternative brain function felt that it would only be just and fitting for Winona Ryder to play the lead in a movie version of Bastard out of Carolina.
	Dean I soon noticed was actually talking the Johnny Depp.  They seemed quite engrossed in conversation and I slid my way out from Winona and her brother and tried to cross the room without running, but I was so paranoid that I inadvertently missed the fact that Anna was calling my name behind me.  Her voice blended in with the cacophonous swirl of background noise that surged and breathed in my ears as if it were a living thing.
	Thus when she grabbed me from behind I almost punched her in the face I was so shocked.  And I was way to out of it to try to cover up it up; she fairly jumped back from me and then let out a little yelp such that everyone in the room turned there heads.  This was my worst nightmare.  In my gamble to cross the crowded room this was the scenario that was too far fetched to actually happen so I disregarded it and sure enough I was frozen like a deer in the headlights, caught before a roomful of glaring eyes.  Anna came to my rescue and gentle grabbed me by the waist and led me off into the hallway where Clay was waiting.  They were leaving it turned out and if we were to have a ride home now was the time.  I mumbled something about good to see you nice to meet you and ducked back into the party.  This time I successfully navigated the room, but Depp had left and Dean was huddled in the corner looking a bit too much like cornered wounded animal.
	I dropped in next to him and shook him a bit.
	“How are you doing?”
	“I don’t know what that shit was, but I would really like some more.”
	“Ya.” I scanned the room for the scraggly haired kid but didn’t see him.  It was pushing two in the morning, but the bar shoed no signs of caring and it wasn’t long before a waitress brought us more drinks.  The staff seemed to be the most star struck people in the bar, they all walked about half gawking and half averting their eyes they way people do around so called celebrities.  I’ve always treated celebrities with the subtle scorn that lonely men reserve for hookers, a caustic indifference held out on a stick of sarcasm and belittlement.  I figured that if I were famous that would be more interesting then simple worship.  We watched the room in silence for the better part of an hour.  Dean told me later that he saw them all completely naked and thought that so much time had passed the place had turned into an orgy.  I was musing over what life would be like if the struggle to survive were eliminated.  Dangerous fantasies because you realize that whatever hardships might accompany having lots of money there was always the freedom to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.  That most rich and famous people do not take advantage of that fact and work themselves to bones making more and more movies or albums as the case may be is the singular most depressing thing about them.  At a quarter to three last call went out and low and behold Black Crowes guy slid seemingly out of nowhere into the both and offered up the remainder of the joint.
	“You guys are holding up okay, the last time I shared this shit this girl freaked out and thought it was laced with something and tried to beat me up.”
	“I hate it when that happens.”  Dean took the rather small remnants of a joint and inhaled deeply.  “My ex-wife tried to beat me up the first time I did mushrooms.  I was really out of it and she came home all pissed off about something and she had never done mushrooms so she had no idea where I was and he started yelling at me on the stairs.  I just kind of stood there and looked at her totally unable to comprehend what she was saying then she pushed me down the stairs and kicked me.  Then my sister through her out of the house.”
Both Crowes and I were laughing by the time Dean finished his little yarn.  Crowes seemed impressed more that Dean had been married than anything else or maybe that was all of the story that he actually heard seeing how most of the joint had disappeared without us participating. 
“What was that like man, I mean being married.”
“Well I don’t really know we were only married two months when that happened I decided after that it was better if we went our separate ways.”
	“Ya but what was it like to stand at the alter and look at that person and think ya I want to spend the rest of my life with this person.  I mean what does that feel like?”  He put a particular emphasis on fee as if this would someone affect Dean’s response.
Dean sat for moment in silence staring at his hands.  “I don’t know, uh I never really had that go through my head.  It was just a kind of little thing that got out of control.  She asked me once after knowing her for like three weeks if I wanted to get married and I said sure because I thought she was joking and then next thing I knew she was dress shopping with my mom.  It just happened so fast I didn’t have time to stop it.”
	This seemed to have a profound impact on Crowes and he withdrew slightly in what I thought was a kind of meditative slouch.  Dean and I exchanged a look after a few minutes and then with still no response we shook the kid.
	Still nothing.  Hmmmm.
	“You want to get something for last call?”
	“Ya that would probably be good.”  I got up and went to the bar.  I got three drinks and set one in front of Crowes who appeared to have settled off into a comfortable coma.
	“Oh hey, Clay and Anna left.”  I delivered the news as though it were no big deal and then saying it aloud I realized the gravity of the situation.  We were fucked up out of our minds surrounded by people we didn’t know with no way out
	“Oh really!  How the fuck did that happen?”
“Uh well they wanted to go I didn’t and you were talking to Johnny Depp so I just kind of ditched them.”
	“How exactly were you planning on getting home?”
	“I didn’t really think that far in advance…”
	“Ya I can see that.”
	An idea nacently sprang forth in both our minds.  I slide around the booth and prodded at Crowes a few time to make sure he was out for good and then I dug through his pockets to find his valet card.  He didn’t have one so we figured he must have come in one of the limousines we had seen on our way in.  Between the two of us we dragged him out of the booth and with an arm over each shoulder we carried him outside.  It was then as we staggered to keep him from falling over that I noticed another joint in his breast pocket.  I ferreted it away while Dean tried to enlist the help of the valets in locating our ride.  In a few minutes an affable Tom Waites looking character pulled up in a black limousine and offered to drive us all home.  We took him up on it and the three of us kind of pitched Crowe through the door.  The driver, whose name was Jake Anderson, kept the divider window down and I did my best to guide him to marks house.  I had him tuning about in a haphazard way that my autopilot intuition told me would end us up at Marks house.  If you had drawn out our course on a map it would have looked like a staircase and we would have been falling down it like paraplegics thrown from their wheelchairs.
Eventually I managed to find the house but I felt bad because I had made the guy drive around for the better part of half and hour so I offered him the joint with a warning that it would probably be better not to smoke it and drive.  He thanked me and asked if we wanted to cruise for while and smoke it with him.  Dean ran inside and got Mark and Betty and we all took off to ride around Denver.  Jake took us up the freeway toward Boulder and we pulled over atop a hill.  We sat there for the rest of the night slowly smoking the joint in ten-minute spurts.  Any longer and we were all so high that we forgot about the joint and it went out.  Around six the sun rose over the eastern Colorado plain.  It was a magnificent fiery red and orange spectacle.  Jake told us stories about driving around the rich and famous, my favorite was the time he had driven Axl Rose’s legendary dolphin decaled limo from Hollywood out to palm Springs for the sole purpose of having a taco at some Mexican place that he really wanted to eat at.  Apparently although he didn’t say it outright Jake had driven somebody our here all the way from LA for this concert which if we were to believe him was a political bigwig event that everybody who was anybody was at.  There were more parties at other hotels that we had missed out on.  Jake assured us that they were more of the dame with the didactic tone of the kings lap dog —always superior and never actually participating.  Still he was awfully nice and as the night wore on he seemed to want to join our cross-country journey.  Several times the conversation seemed headed toward a pregnant pause where if we wanted to we could have invited him along.  We didn’t.
We did however take him to breakfast at a roadside diner that he suggested.  After a hearty meal of eggs and bacon I was ready to call it a night and pass out.  Jake dropped us off at the house around eight and I went to sleep assuming as I always do that I would wake up sober again the next morning.  I didn’t and neither did anyone else.  It was well past ten o’clock at night before any of us felt normal again.  We spent the day sleeping it off or stumbling about the house in a mesmerized trance.  To this day no other drug has fucked me up as completely or for as long as that stuff that Crowe gave us.  He claimed it wasn’t laced with anything and he identified it only as Hawaiian Redhair a potent strain to be sure, but not that potent.  Maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was us.  Quein Sabe.