Guide, p.2
Guide, page 2
“Not me,” Mason said. And he wandered inside.
Scott veered past my shoulder. “Oh, boy,” he said, blinking. “Where’s the … living room?”
Scrounging around in one pocket, Luke found, produced the last hit of acid. “Throw this away,” he insisted. “Immediately.”
It’s spooky how Ecstasy floods one with indiscriminate affection. It’s a chemical lie. It kills thought, undermines sensibility. LSD, on the other hand, neatly demystifies sex. It can. I remember. On a great acid trip, you begin to realize the insidious way lust distorts almost every decision we make. Acid encourages us to embrace isolation, to disempower other human beings, especially their bodies. When LSD works, it makes clear how inane and addictive sex is, and how culture’s overvaluation of physical contact keeps us from a true understanding of life-and-death issues. Maybe this lesson has particularly struck home in my case, since my fantasy life is so sexual in nature and murderous in content.
“Later, guys.” Chris, hugging himself to keep warm, trotted into a typical, faintly lit mini-mall. When he turned to wave bye, his friends’ truck was a dot.
On the truck’s staticky radio, Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair” cross-faded into … uh, Guided by Voices?
“Let’s fucking end it,” said Robert. The idea arrived out of nowhere. Words just … formed, disconnected from everything else. He thought for a second, then steered toward some oncoming traffic.
Tracy’s eyes watered. “Okay,” she said. And she covered her face.
I’ll say this once. I’m extremely fucked up. It doesn’t show, but I am. Over the years I’ve developed a sociable, generous side, which I train on the people I know. It makes them feel grateful, which makes me feel purposeful. But secretly, I’m so confused about everyone and everything. Sometimes these moods will just come out of nowhere and lay me out. I’ll curl up in bed for long periods of time, catatonic and near-suicidal. Or I’ll space into a murderous sexual fantasy wherein some cute young acquaintance or stranger is dismembered in intricate detail, simply because he’s too painfully delicious, i.e., through no fault of his own. But LSD cured this psychosis—in hindsight, at least. That’s why I’m going to slip, as “recovery” types like to say. Because for ten long-lost, jumbled-up hours I’d known a kind of … whatever, peace? That’s my current belief.
“Luke’s so … amazing,” I say, knowing that word’s limitations. I’m thinking about … well, pretty much everything about him. “It’s just overwhelming, you know?”
“You think?” Mason asked. “I guess I can vaguely remember deciding so once.”
Something about the black shirt Scott was wearing made Luke sort of astral-project into …
“Where’s that kiddie porn tape?” Mason asked. He’d crouched down by the shelves where I keep CDs, videos.
This is sort of a secret, but Chris and I are involved. The whats, hows, wheres, whys will come along later. Suffice it to say that Chris is my type. Then factor in his death wish, which is neatly aligned with my aforementioned dreams. Problem is, now that my fantasy’s so doable, I can tell how complex the thing is. I’m not just stupidly tranced by the prospect of killing some boy during sex, even if that great idea’s been a bit too ignited by Chris’s and my interactions. Anyway, I’m sort of torn between Chris, who accesses the evil in me, and Luke, whom I’m beginning to love in a pure, unerotic, devotional way that I never would have thought myself capable of even four months ago. And I have to make a choice, or I want to. Actually, I’ve made my choice. That’s why Chris has to go, I don’t know how.
A twelve-year-old kid stands around in Pam’s studio, giggling. Marijuana smoke honks in and out of his freckled little nose. He has a delicate build and extremely black hair.
Chris shoots him a look of, well … sadness, bewilderment, jealousy. Some combination of those.
“Want a toke?” the kid asks. A shaky hand holds out the joint. “’Cause …” His eyes get confused. “… uh …” His jaw drops an unflattering inch, his eyes glaze. The whole face kind of … stiffens, as if it were made out of clay and Pam’s place were a kiln.
Scott saw through Luke. Literally. The guy was a multihued mist. Luke, staring back, noticed something elaborately off-key in the world. Because Scott’s eyes were too … dried out. When Luke wasn’t there, beyond stoned, in a friend’s living room, appreciating the fibrous texture of … what’s-his-name’s eyes, his view was blocked, thoughts mechanically consumed by a weird hallucination, i.e., he kept driving his car over a squashed, sizzling dog on some intensely overlit desert road. Really, over and over and over.
“Amazing,” I say, studying Luke’s gone expression. “How long …?”
A purplish-red orb strobed intently somewhere in Luke’s universe.
“Don’t ask me,” Mason said from my kitchen. He cracked the fridge. I heard a beer bottle gasp. “First they kept saying how fucked up they were. Then they shut up completely. So … since they shut up, I guess. Twenty minutes?”
I’m studying the pill. “Want to split this?”
†
I’ve tried to reconstruct my acid-fueled nervous breakdown on Maui, because between brief bouts of horrified consciousness, wherein my difference from everyone else in the world seemed profound, I saw such intense things. Have I said that already? But the experience is lost—or polluted, at least—by a bevy of earlier trips, and some later “flip-outs”—say, my insane sex with Sniffles, or my entanglement with Chris. The memories are weirdly inseparable, blurred, I don’t know why. Maybe there’s something to getting incredibly stoned, then having sex with self-destructive young guys, that resembles the world acid showed me. But there are differences, too, which I hope to define.
Robert was maybe just maybe one-quarter alive but … Tracy was definitely dead. No fucking doubt a-fucking-bout it. Because she was … upside down?
Guided by Voices: The hole I dig is bottomless / But nothing else can set me free.
Tracy couldn’t … quite … think, but she could sort of, um, sense a kind of … haze, hiss. “Um …”
Robert moved his head very, very slightly. Oh, excellent.
The skin on Luke’s face was a fog. Scott could see, or almost see, his friend’s skull or, more specifically, that curious object which certain historical types once so lazily labeled “the skull.” It was more like a pkhw … Words failed Scott. A filament? But weren’t words too complex to manipulate properly? Luke, for instance, meant nothing compared to the word “Luke,” because it defined a million people named Luke. Or take “love.” “Love” was the world’s favorite word. But it was also a lie that human beings made up to avoid actual knowledge, which was itself a lie. Or “cancer.” “Cancer” was a word that encapsulated a thought which had never reached clarity, which was why the disease was incurable. If Scott could think clearly from morning till night every day of his life, he would never get cancer. Oh, my God. It was so fucking simple. No, it was.
“So what’s going on, Pam?” Chris lets out some smoke. “Here, take this.” He hands the joint back to the kid, who pinches, looks down at it.
“Nothing.” Pam’s gazing daydreamily at what’s-his-little-name, who’s very slowly tamping out what’s still around of the joint in a nearby ashtray.
“So,” Chris says, turning to the kid. “What’s your name?”
“Huh?” The kid blinks himself away from some thought asteroid. “What?”
Goof, a.k.a. Nicholas Klein, is a horridly parented twelve-year-old. Before he got sucked into drugs, his whole life was nightmarish. Now he’s okay, sort of. Good sense of humor. Hence his nickname. Still, one shouldn’t let oneself get too attached, because he’s dying. Right now, unbeknown to him, thanks to some undiagnosable problem in one of his heart valves or something. But it’ll work out okay. No one will miss him, and thanks to a brief stint costarring in kiddie porn videos, he’ll leave behind a vital body of work that’ll only be more resonant with the knowledge he’s dead. Trust me.
Robert was haze—on the inside, at least. Thoughts sort of … frittered around. Skinwise, forget it. Might as well go ahead and die than … live … like …
Tracy: xklijmpprtizk …
Robert just bought it. Internal injuries. He … hazed. Emptied out. Refilled with something too complicated for words.
Robert: knxggsvzkqtt …
Pam’s not so bad. If she could express how she feels, she’d be motherly, even. Apart from her thing for young boys, she’s a dyke with an ongoing serious relationship. Physically, she’s large, a former fat girl turned comfortably husky, not without a shitload of effort. Her hair’s brownish and short, her clothes casual, bland, and male-esque. Like me, she’s fascinated by kiddie porn. Unlike me, she can justify making the stuff for a living. Until recently I could justify watching it, period. Now I’m confused. As a way to help Chris overcome his obsessive death wish, I’ve instigated a project, a kind of pseudo-snuff kiddie porn film to be scripted by me, starring Chris, and directed by Pam. I’m thinking it might be a safe, effective way for Chris and me to semi–act out our intermeshed fantasies once and for all, not to mention make Pam infamous on the kiddie porn circuit, which I believe is her goal.
Mason studied Scott’s awestruck or horrified face. “What do you think they’re … seeing?”
I swallow the pill. “Hard to know,” I say, handing Mason his beer. “Luke, Scott? Can you hear me? Hey!”
Luke’s eyes are greenish … no, hazel … no, aquamarine, with a spray of brown speckles and kind of, uh, yellowy smears.
Scott heard not words but a million or so little tones that were so beautifully interlinked that he got the idea to record someone saying those words, then release it on CD.
Luke’s eyes are the immediate clue to his greatness. Without them, he’d just be a sweet-looking raver—on first glance, at least. They’re large, multicolored, and often glazed over in serious thought. That’s a guess. Anyway, they seem complicatedly wired. It’s awe-inspiring to be in his presence. Especially that night, thanks to acid. Luke, meanwhile, was smiling unseeing at my awestruck face, having checked into another reality. He could tell that what he’d envisioned was wrong on a technical level. Still, he believed it was real. At the same time, he could think lucidly on his ridiculous state, i.e., Why would my mind construct this? How exactly does LSD work? Then the clarity would erode and he’d be watching a purplish-red orb flash rapidly on a depthless black field, thinking, Wow.
“I’m Goof,” says the kid. He holds out one hand.
Chris gives it a shake. “Great name.” Then he glances at Pam, who looks much less … well, distant than usual. “What’re you thinking?”
“Just …” Pam says, “… about the project with Dennis. Wondering if Goof could play you as a kid.”
“Sure, why not?” Chris says, wondering how to change the subject to heroin. He gives Goof a cursory peer. “Maybe … if you dyed his …” A yawn eats the sentence.
Chris would rather not crash there at Pam’s, but what with sleepiness being so fascistic, it’s not like he has any choice. So he asks her if he can take a very short nap, half an hour at most. “Sure,” Pam says, and kindly finds him some dope and a clean set of works. Then Chris mock-salutes Goof, who’s too out of it or whatever to notice, and scuffs into a little room just off the studio where Pam shoots her porns, kicks the door shut, and whips off his way stinky T-shirt, jeans, Nikes. Cooking his shot, he thinks and simultaneously tries not to think about me. But his hazed imagination keeps ensnaring my face in its web or whatever.
†
“This works fast,” I say, turning to Mason. “If I space too far out, stick around, keep an eye on me, yeah?” And even as I say this, I’m spacing out.
“Will do,” Mason said. He was over by my VCR, crouched, doing something.
Donovan: Looking through crystal spectacles / I can see I had your fun.
Scott was … outside, yeah. In a … driveway?
Scott was standing in somebody’s driveway. Oh, yeah, Luke’s. There was Luke, perched on the hood of a car. He was talking, gesturing, et cetera, but Scott couldn’t hear shit. No, that’s not true. He heard whooshing. Actually, the sound was extremely refined. Someone had obviously composed it. No, wait, Luke’s mouth was emitting it. Shit. Trying to sort out the details, Scott leaned back on a hedge. But the surface of leaves was flimsier than it looked, and he plunged into the depths of the plant’s slightly springy brown skeleton, then had to claw his way out.
“Hold on,” Pam says. “Before you go, I think I owe you some money.”
“Cool, thanks.” Goof digs around in a pocket. “’Cause I don’t know if I’ll see you again.” He slides out a comb. “I’m going to … change my life.”
Pam’s counting out twenties. “Really?” She extends about seven, eight. “Well, then, am I entitled to one last request?” And she eyeballs his crotch.
“God, you’re gross,” Goof yells, half-joking. “All right, all right. But … I get to pick out the sound track.” And he runs toward a Guided by Voices CD.
†
I met Chris through Robert and Tracy. Occasionally I’d shop at the store where he worked. Since he was my type, I’d developed a harmless, persistent little crush like one does. I forget how the subject came up, but I told them that I was attracted to Chris, and they told me how Chris had been known to trade sexual favors for dope. One night I dropped by the store around closing time, dropped a few hints, offered to buy him heroin, and we spent an extremely strange night at his place. Sexually, he was open to anything safe, but he didn’t give a shit the whole time very obviously. Let’s just say he was pliable. And with all that freedom, and fueled by his self-destructive urges, I guess I went sort of insane. I intend to go into the details, just not yet.
Scott stared into something beyond the constraints of human language.
Luke’s eyes are so mesmerizing they’re practically … what? I study their swirly, multiplicitous color for what seems like days, thinking, Wow.
Donovan: Dow dow dow dow … dow dow … dow … dow dow.
Luke stared into something beyond the constraints of human language.
“Mason,” I say. He’s playing a video. Kiddie porn, I think. “I’m … going.”
I’m practically gone. Luke and Scott are gone. There’s no point in describing their mental locales. Just accept that they’re in two very vast, complicated, non-narrative states. Me, I’m still flashing in and out of what we call reality. Mason has put on a kiddie porn tape that Pam lent me, three hours of Super 8 films poorly transferred to video. Goof costars in eight or nine of them, coincidentally. He’s a favorite of mine. In fact, once when I accidentally blink the real world into place for a couple of seconds, Goof’s ass is this splayed, perfect, shimmering, televised orb in my peripheral vision. Normally, seeing his ass in that state would fire off a violent daydream, but—thanks to the acid, I’m sure—it seems more like a … whatever, bric-a-brac. Kitsch. So when a finger appears on the screen and is shoved up the ass, I literally don’t understand. In other words, I’m in a better place.
Mason spaced out, daydreaming. In his fantasy, Goof’s slutty asshole belonged to Smear’s bassist. And that finger was Mason’s.
Luke, Scott: klvxmhspwwlqhx …
“God,” I say. “This is … so … intense.” I’m looking at something in Luke’s staring eyes that you wouldn’t understand.
Mason glanced over at us. All’s well, he thought. Still … “You guys okay?” Nothing. So he reburrowed his eyes into Smear’s bassist’s “body.”
Truth is dry. You’ll know the truth when everything in your world seems as if it’s been cooked until nothing is left but the exact information that separates it from other things in the world. On acid, you look at a thing, anything, with complete understanding. At the same time, everything’s more mind-boggling than ever. And that combination’s the truth. It’s as if the brain power you normally waste fantasizing re sex, love, et cetera, had been redistributed to your nonhuman contacts, i.e., between you and a … I don’t know, TV set or whatever. Something finite.
Pam’s sculpting two teeny clown hats out of Goof’s giant nipples. From the look on his face, he seems very, very into it.
Guided by Voices: I’m too tired to run from the tiger / I’m too dumb to hide in the bushes.
Suddenly there’s this, like, unbelievable pain. Upper chest. “Oh, fuck.” Goof gasps, gasps, gasps, balls his fists. “Please … stop.”
The very second Pam frees up Goof’s nipples, he dies. Empties out. Looks all weird. Crumples up on the floor.
And then there was one. I mean one rational mind in the story. I.e., mine. Everyone else was asleep, dead, in shock, drugged, or horny. Comparatively, at least, I maintained a kind of semi-sobriety, by virtue of Luke, who, out of it as we were, held my faltering interest, I don’t know why. Love, weird. So, hoping to stay in that half-aware state, I pulled out the notebook and pen I always carry around and began to take notes on my surroundings, occasionally adding a cryptic bit of analysis. Not that anything brilliant showed up on the page.
The Freed Weed
It was minutes to closing. A loud, repetitive, dense guitar riff made the store feel unreal and sort of sinister. It could have been old Spacemen 3. Maybe “O.D. Catastrophe,” weirdly enough. Chris was leaning on one of the cash registers. He had a pale, impish face, blond, disorganized hair, and a slim, lanky body that drove me insane. When our eyes met he shone, period, for a few seconds there.
“I’m … Dennis?” I took a vague step or two in his direction.
“Oh, right.” He turned down the music.
“You’re Chris. Robert’s friend.”
“Oh, right.” He folded his arms and seemed to blink the store’s depths into focus. “Actually, Robert hates me.”
I guess I looked confused.
“Robert’s trying to kick. So he’s against knowing people like me because of … you know, his withdrawals and that. But fuck him.”
