Going Down the Road Feeling Bad
A Report on the Health of the Amerikan Spine (Part Two)
by Todd Brendan Fahey
Illustrations by Dave Dawson
No more headjive: straight to the Notebooks:
June 18, 1997:
Restive mood . . . recalling days of extreme tension & many questions:
Will the wire transfer come through? & will the stylish gold 15-human transport van from Rent-a-Wreck still be there for us, with the bank not open ’til 9:30?
& what are the folks really thinking… At 32, their only boy opts, for the first time in six years of teaching, to blow off summer session for untold months on the Road, and in the company of several hairy bohos-cum-musicians… (“Do you think he will he relapse to the bottle?… Or end up in jail?… And what should be our Stance then?: To post bond, or no? Should we have taken his last call about “voluntary institutionalization” more seriously?… ) These are real and heavy questions facing the ‘rents about now, I’m certain of it…
& then there’s the matter of the car: my nasty black Celica be fairly rotten through with rust; and, not but two hours before TakeOff, the muffler – and everything that keeps it married to the vehicle – decides to merge and become one with the soil of my front yard… unholy noiz up and down Pinhook, tthhrrrwwuu aaaaappppp.p.p.ppp… wwha AAAPPp.p.p… several miles across town, to the Mr. Muffler, like on any good boss Hog, only an ’83 Celica doesn’t convey precisely the same nobility as does a chopped Sportster…
… and with the plates being expired by two months, goddamn, I’d nearly forgotten…
“`afternoon, there, Officer… .” (Or, is this one fantasy better left alone? Wish-fulfillment, &tc… .)
Late June, Lafayette, Louisiana – boiling sweat and adrenaline… “How long, O Lord?… How long… ?” Hunter Thompson sed that; and I find it one of the most salient and applicable queries uttered of the 20th century. Hunter is a wise man. Bog knows, I owe him much. But there are times like these – “Days of Whine and Neuroses,” as my friend R.U. Sirius likes to call them – when I think to myself: Bugger Hunter Thompson… By age 32, he was nursing reliably on Jann Wenner’s sugar-tit, while the good publisher of Lollipop is paying me $25.00 for this piece… [Fahey’s note: I think my bridge to Rolling Stone was torched about the time I caught Timothy Leary on tape, saying, “You know, I’ve never liked Jann. Nobody likes him. But I’ve got to admire his insipidity: He’s so self-centered and narcissistic… the essence of baby-boomer” – actually, the last smouldering pylon probably dropped into the sea when I posted that interview online, in my massive Web site: “http://www.fargonebooks.com/”… ]
Hmm. I feel this installment heading southbound, in a very fast way… I had not planned on milking the bile sac so strenuously, not until the tail-end of this piece, wherefore the Readership wd be sure to fully comprehend the nature of mine Complaint.
Oh well. You know what they say about “the best-laid plans.” (Just ask Hillary Clinton.)
$$$$
Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Furthur Festival; or, Why I Am Like Michael (Tyson)…
Whatever be the cause of this splenetics, you might ask? Or, more importantly, What exactly does it portend for My life? Yes,that is the hard nugget. … but I have rattled on at length here, and I grow weary of the sound of mine own voice.
As Uncle Meat was so fond of saying, To the Crux of the Biscuit:
In late June, I had set out to mount the trail of the Furthur Festival. All around me, it seemed, there was evidence of America being in the throes of a Sixties’ renaissance… & as I am the Acid Novelist, and since I have also dedicated my life, for good or ill, or both, to the task of laying down the rude chronicle that is mine chemical existence, there seems no good point in denying it was lots of MONEY I was after… This is a rugged thing I’m about to lay on Lollipop`s readership… (tho I can think of no more accepting and ready audience for to appreciate that which I am about to breathe forth, dragon-like):
In Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel, in this one piece of sustained fiction, a work that – as I have said elsewhere – has caused me maladies both physical, psychological, marital, familial, and, financial… In this first novel of mine, I truly hoped and desired for to lift mySelf UP by the proverbial bootstraps. That is, having died many an ego-death in the five years that it took to research the Source material and to align my neurotransmitters to the 500 hits of LSD that I convinced myself was necessary for to complete this dark and deranged mother of all conspiracy thrillers, and after finally kissing off the notion of ever seeing this creature of mine in print under cover of any of America’s respectable publishing houses, I told myself that, by abnegating the prestige of a, say, Alfred A. Knopf, and in hiring out a printer and a graphic designer, and by establishing a pretty far gone space on the World Wide Web (if I do say so myself), and then in taking out seven (7) large color ads in many of mine and America’s favorite counter-cultural periodicals, I was, in essence, acceding to that American chestnut: “Build it & they will come” – Yes, “Birth this black pearl of yours yrself, and They of the Underground – all who have grown up on the wrong side of the fence… .who, after really digesting On the Road, have vowed never again (or, as rarely as is practicably feasible) to allow themselves to be suckered into the shitstream that is Mainstream American Consumer Culture… … That mine true Kindred would acknowledge those many lysergic days of hard learning and sacrifice, and wd reward me bounteously via vast sales of Wisdom’s Maw.”
But I was wrong.
O, was I wrong.
And in my being so very wrong, I have, once again, rejuvenated all that is misanthropyc in me.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Romans 2:22 (To which Toddman sez: “Dear Brother, you’ll just have to make room for another juror.”)
Not only has The Underground managed less than an a.m.’s piss-shiver to mine Beat diary, mine governmental exposé, despite really flying kudos in 25 magazines & ‘zines that comprise 9/10ths of America’s “alternative (print) media” (note: Fahey calculates receiving precisely five (5) single copy orders within the three months corresponding to publication of his full-page, high-gloss back-page ad in FactSheet 5. 5 copies sold in 3 months, from that ad… ), but I also succeeded in failing utterly despite repeated, persistent (tho I did always try to remain polite)… despite many inquiries to the offices of the Grateful Dead and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – the latter of which had recently captured Kesey’s replica Bus for somekind of Psychedelic Showcase…
Let me restate: NOT ONE HUMAN BEING FROM THE OFFICES OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD OR THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME WD TAKE, RETURN, OR ACKNOWLEDGE IN ANY MANNER MY PHONE CALLS, FAXES, OR SEVERAL BITS OF E-MAIL.
Here, I have a novel which features the entire cast of Sixties’ rebels, and wrapped in a wicked suspense narrative, and which has been acknowledged by all the critics as being a very fine debut work, and off of which I am ITCHING to give the Furthur Festival folks a 40% off sticker, for doing nothing at all but allowing me Inside… where it is I feel I belong. (Which gets me thinking: Hm… mebbe Zane Kesey wasn’t letting on as to the Whole Truth of his Pop’s response; mebbe Sr. Cuckoo, or Cuckoo, Sr., really loathes my treatment of “him” inWisdom’s Maw… But how will I ever know? Nobody, it seems, is in much of a mood for talking… )
For the better part of a year, commercially, at the Ticket Box, it has been as if I were operating in a vaporlock. Of a first-printing of 2287 of Wisdom’s Maw, I have sold about 600. (Contrast, at a conservative 2% “display-rate” draw on my ads, which shd, theoretically, work the same for peanut butter and deodorant, as it wd for a book, the pre-publication figures showed 11,000 sold.) I have given away, as review copies, about the same number as have been purchased (the irony is not lost upon me, that the Critics have made for more hardy allies than have the Masses). The other thousand sit, boxed in burst-cartons, over my shoulder and behind me.
What is a man to do?
In light of these sad findings, I find there is only one thing TO do. Today, I declare to the world that I am writing for mySelf; that I do not expect to make another dime for that which it is I do in these solitary and sometimes addled moments in front of this aging dx4-100.
Some among you might remember me having mused thusly in “Fear & Loathing in Amsterdam: The Smoke Abortion,” for Carbon 14: “So. I guess I’m an expatriate. Will any of my friends come over to play with me? & who will pay my bills? Bob Guccione? Hugh Hefner? Jann Wenner?… ” That was in November, 1996, and the world looked Very Bright indeed.
It is now the dog-daze of summer, 1997. And I must needs proclaim to America – and, yes, this means You, reading this here sentence, right now, at yr favorite boho coffeeshop or musty living room, that if, since August of ’96, whilst thumbing through Relix, or Seconds, or Cover, or Thora-Zine, or Magical Blend, or Implosion, or High Times, or The Book Reader, you’ve gurbled down even three six-packs of cheap suds, or filled yr lungs w/ less than an eighth of kindbud – and especially to any who have tripped more than twice and still not paid fealty to this Far Gone Book o’ mine: You have earned my most unadorned wrath and derision.
I will need to find a way to heal myself, spiritually, from the effects of this long and savage sojourn. It will be a hard road. But from this moment on, at least in the Gonzo incarnation that awaits you, I offer my words to you (pl.) as a reproach: When Bill Gates merges with Michael Eisner, may all Passive Resisters be forced to unwilling, hourly fellatio on the Beast’s virtual helium priapis.
I venture forth now, and forever more, a subverter of the Old Way, a majority of one – a Free Agent.
$$$$
And that’s the way it was, heading off from Far Gone Manor toward our first stop on the Furthur Fextival Tour, which was, incidentally, Atlanta. Robert Z., you were quite right: Don’t need a Weatherman to tell this beat cat where the wind blows… no, no… And like a coyote recently emerged from the bush, Toddmonster found himself on a Friday morning, Southern-time, a-carrying in his coat much “baggage” ontoward the Proud Highway :
There is Gordo, with whose sensibilities you have already been privileged, and whose dubious claim to being “a member of the beard club” made him AOK w/ moi. And although he is an able driver of our ActionVan, his knees are creaky, and, all-told, he is more like a type-B than he is a type-A, and has even been heard exclaiming, nonchalantly, “I respect Neal Cassady; but I am more like Charles Kuralt.”
There is Zeke, who thumbs a mean four-string, but who looks and acts like Jeff Goldblum-morphed-w/ Yoko Ono; a nervous tension resides in this young buck… constant whiffling,ffhhssshh … (Toddmonster makes mental note to focus his psychic energies on young master Zeke… We’ll need to try to channel that nervling drive in ways that are to better benefit The Whole… … (knowing, instinctually, that such a Prescription For Living is sure to chafe… )
We have anorexic Dave, who is red-headed like Carrot-Top, but w/ an Art Garfunkel ‘fro. Dave proved himself a quality individual in the very warm hours in the front yard of me abode – hoisting heavy luggage, and with not a kvetching to be heard anywise. How he manages to sustain life on two iced mochas and the random handful of 7-11 cuisine is, apparently, not for me to fathom.
And then there is Richard. I was told, at the proverbial “11th-hour” that we had “another band member” hooking in on our greased-lightning-like unit. The krewe watched me weigh my veto-power with some solemnity (all that cramming for the Early American portion of the Comprehensive Exams seems to have paid square dividends). Aligning myself psychically as near as cd be to Thomas Jefferson, I stared Richard hard into the eyes: “Who is Steven Guillory?” I demanded, brusquely.
Richard’s black-Irish head lowered an inch or two, as he fixed his attention on the “Nabisco” name-tag that was pinned through his shinyblue Members’ Only jacket. (And I wondered if I were the only one to have sensed the pull of the moon which was now high over our collective shoulders.) After some moments of quiet consideration, he came clean with a response:
“I ate him,” Richard said, sternly. “I thought he was an elf.”
Slim Dave collapsed in a quivering pile, and I found myself affirmed of the Answer.
“Welcome aboard,” I said. Whereupon, Richard laid into a fervid diatribe as to Adam Weishaupt and how the supposed founder of the Illuminati shares much in the way of genetic material with one J. R. “Bob” Dobbs… Which was all I needed to hear.
“Lock & Load!” I hollered defiantly, and we were Baton Rouge-bound, inching our way across America, of the setting sun.
$$$$
[Enter the Lotus (or, Five Stinky Boyz and One Rare Avis)… “Gordo on Minnesota Blue Algae”… Consciousness-as-just another multi-level marketing scam?…Tinted Windows, one Plush Rig… ShowTime on a Shoestring]
“We’re gonna make a stop, here, at the gas station, OK, Todd?”
It was Zeke’s voice, emanating from three rows back; there was a quavering quality to it, which alerted my neurologic radar to prepare for impending disaster.
“But we just got gas,” I said, by way of reminder. “Remember?”
“Eee. I remember it all too well,” uttered Gordo, from the driver’s console of the Wisdom’s Maw Express cross-country touring vehicle – which, actually, turned out to be a sleek & impressive rig to the admiring &/or curious eye.
(I had feared the worst – some stark-white painter’s van – back in Lafayette, at the branch office of Rent-a-Wreck. & in retrospect, that experience will probably come to rank with the four or five most humiliating experiences of my brief and impaired existence.
Walking in off of Johnston Street, the main drag down here in de bayou, to their clean, no-frills office – like any one might see at a Travelodge or old-style HoJo – I was already viciously aware of three of my four credit cards being maxed to the nines; but there was a fourth… Hmm… ? Got to give it that old college try, right? But that is what this entire experience has been like, from the get-go. Like a raven from the bone-pile, sometime in early ’96, in the throes of a tragic divorce and in the grip of a cheap and sleazy addiction to Robitussin, Toddmonster riseth, one long wing a-flapping, a remorseless bird, too restless to take root and just light enough to make it all fly… It is a hard and highly-specialized (and indeed, to some, quite an ignoble) thing I do in adhering to one novel (“that novel… “) for, what is now fully one-third of mine existence on this brutal plane of Reality that is the American Way… I’ve heard it said, somewhere, that perhaps the greatest imaginable sin one can commit in the Twentieth Century is “to go broke in America.”
For my money, tho, it wd be to “go broke and unremembered” in Amerika. And so, sometime early ’96, having dug deep, and in a few truly divine moments of dxm excess, having wrastled down the root-causes of many of mine greatest fears, I was given to the psychic “thumbs-up,” and proceeded to rack up debt on a lordly scale: Entering the Ph.D. program, and with a then-wife who was ever-so-frugal in the maintenance of the credit cards, I had been keeping a balance at just under $5k – a liveable burden, much of it incurred in the move from Utah to Louisiana, in late summertime ’93, that large flat’s-worth of household belongings riding in an air-conditioned truck at a pretty premium… 1997, for reasons fiscal and otherwise, is a different world entirely. As the master of my own small press, I am coming to understand the true nature of the “executive decision.” It is a lovely thing, to find oneself suddenly able to “authorize” a five-thousand dollar transaction for to get one’s own words down in cold type and slid neatly ‘tween 4-color, 10pt chromecoat covers, say, why don’t we?… A terrific feeling. Only, in my world, every decision is like the ugly flipside of the standard dream experience: While one normally awakens to realize, “Ah!… It was only a dream,” Toddmonster’s morning is nearly always ushered in with a, “Good morning, this is Citibank. We would like to help you in the managing of your account, which is now… let me see here… looks like, fully three months in arrears?… . And,about your current monthly income-level … ?”
Savage. Words cannot properly relate that which it is I endure, on a daily basis, in this sphere. But, still, that is my task; I must try…
“So, Todd whiffling hffsshhhsh it’s like this,” Zeke started to say, as casually as he could make out whilst hiking up his jeans, which generally hung low on the hip, such that the blue band of a BVD cd be seen against a pallorous background, the five of us now at the side of a very sketchy U-fill just off the offramp, in a rough section of Baton Rouge.
“Uh huh?” I said, my heel tapping reflexively. “I’m all ears.”
Then he began to do some funky shoulder thing – a hip-to-the-minute shuffle, punctuated with a “gotcha”-style click of the fingers – and I knew it was going to be terrible news.
“Y’know, it’s like this,” he said.
“ShejustgotanOKfromheradvisortobailsummerschool and shereallywantstocomewithus.”
Wwwbbbwwbbbbbb. I shook my head, so that the cheeks wobbled with the rest of my brain, and tried hard to adjust to the new vibe. “Yr gonna have to run that by me again, would you please?”
“Can she?!”
It was a perfect puppydog look he was giving me, and, oh, I don’t know, maybe sensing some estrogen-deficit in mine own life, and against my better instincts – nay, trashing my entire Program – I heard myself say simply, “Sure. She can come,” and I knew, if but for a moment, the true thing that is Charity.
His already limber and lanky frame went to rubber, and I did see then that I had made his whole summer.
“Two conditions, though,” I said, recovering from the Zen-like mode that had gripped me inexplicably, and putting on the hard-gaze. (And as incredibly tempting as it would have been to say, “A blowjob once a day from she to yr benefactor here,” it was when I did not that I knew I had reached a new plateau in my “maturation process.”)
“No two-hour feminine grooming sessions in the a.m.,” I said, of thefirst condition. “And you both count as one at meal-time. Dig?”
“We’re both light eaters. Ahhh. Thank you. This will be cool. This is extremely cool. You’ll be glad about this. Blahblahblahblahblahhh… ”
$$$$
And so it was, that we came to pick up the rare cellist of our krewe. And, truth be known, I had even thought about asking Zeke to ask along his slender, pretty, Japanese/American gal-pal. The idea of spending a month on the road w/ just us five boyz, with all the foulness of which men are capable, had been weighing on my travel-mind, in the days just prior to Taking Off. … but then my baser mind had to get in its fill, as well: “Who knows?… Mebbe, in the grip of some exceptionally clean LSD, Zeke – or even Alice herself – might decide, We’re all friends, Right?… Is that so wrong to want? Even King Kesey, who while being bridled to the ever-patient Faye, got friendly w/ Mountain Girl… & this is a ’60s retro-trip we are on, is it not…?)
(to be continued…)
