Going Down the Road Feeling Bad

A Report on the Health of the Amerikan Spine (3rd fragment)

by Todd Brendan Fahey
Illustration by Dave Dawson

“And once again, you’ll pretend to know me well, my friends /
And once again, I’ll pretend to know the way /
Through the empty space, through the secret places of the heart.”
B. Corgan

“It was just the beer talkin’…those boys!…”
Rev. Ivan Stang on Adolf Hitler & Friends

“Oh, look! The flower man! He’s back.”

We are about 300 yards from the freeway entrance, on our way out of Baton Rouge, stalled to an onslaught of traffic, when Alice makes the observation. Loading she and her belongings into the ActionVan had been relatively uneventful; indeed, it seems after my decision to disengage, to let this journey happen, almost in spite of itself, I had triggered in my neurochemistry a state of relaxed, even blissful, resignation.

And why not? All my money – or, rather, a lot of my parents’ money – was now tied up in a 5-ton vehicle itself lurching ever-so-slowly eastward in an Amerika of which I was now more or less a hapless spectator. For the first time in many a month, maybe even years, I had entered a great calm. This trip was no longer “about me,” per se. In fact, I became aware that by protesting at all, about anything, I would surely endanger this fine adrenaline nirvana. It was the moment promised to me by all my hippie friends and by the Zen masters of my literary acquaintance.

And so, I stare idly out the passenger-side window, at a barefoot, grinning, dancing fool, of vaguely Rastafarian extraction, whose chest is slick with the product of so many days’ toil.

“Do you know him?” I respond.

“No!” she laughs, in the way that only a 21-year old elitist college-girl can (& the vehemence of her tone surprises me a little, as I thought, just maybe, her being Japanese and all, that we might actually be onto a genuinely multicultural thang, here…). “I mean,” she says, reconsidering, “no. We just call him the Flower Man. He makes some cool things, I guess. Like, last year, he was into copper wire and crepe paper. He must have gotten a ton of copper wire out of a dumpster or something; ‘cuz that’s all he was working with for awhile – that and crepe paper.”

I nod, portending to understand. “And what does he compose his flowers of these days?”

“Uhmm…” she pauses, makes like she’s studying his wares. “I don’t know. They look… fuzzier now. Like, maybe they’ve been out in the rain.”

And so it was, with Alice, of the mono-frequency. And tho she is rumored to play a pretty mean cello, in an avant-garde way, she is more just along for the ride. Very quickly thereafter, she and Zeke take to the far-back of the human transport vehicle, and, like their idols of yore, begin the first of a three-day love-in, to which, it seems, none of us other gents are going to be privy. …but not before Zeke has announced, with a certain gleeful sadism: “Alright, guys, we’re not stopping for a long time…Off with the shoes.”

And to which Gordo, by now firmly ensconced in the drivers’ seat, with all the duties and hazards occupying said position, is made to twitch viscerally: “Bastards!”

[With the overhead dome light set at “livingroom low,” and when it seems no one is paying attention, I reach into the duffel under my feet and come up with a 4oz bottle of Robitussin and take a long pull and lapse into something of an anaesthetic dream-coma]

…to be a broke-dancing niggerfool in Amerika…a natural man out peddling his wares, no prospects, not much in the way of education…teeth gone in the head…a bad-grinnin’ lost freak in a country still (barely) free enuf to allow him his slow-shuffle…

but fr how long? Dark thoughts on the fringes of the subconscious, squirrelly pinging through the speakers, mad-girls on helium…

“What are we listening to?” hear myself say.

“Blonde Redhead,” Gordo echoes back.

“It’s deranged,” me affirms.

Gordo busts up, appropriately.

Fully under now. No body load. Dextromethorphan be a wonderful thing. The mind be even more wonderous. …Where to send it? Best probably to avoid the slipperily amorous, for lack of a receptive receptacle… hmm… where to go?…. Psychic playtime for the Toddmonster… Mebbe we shd be cultivating strategies for the getting out of Wisdom’s Maw, no? As this is the point of the whole road endeavor, good money after bad….:

OK. We’ve 1000 copies, @ a maximum $16.95/. Plus 80 copies of Far Gone #2, at $10.00 each. We shall hope for a sell-out, but we also must set goals: Figger five or six bookstores in every major city, 4 copies to each. & say, 6-10 copies at the random locale at which the band will play each eve. Yes, I had forgotten about the band. These humans I lug along, Daddy Warbucks-style.

Initially, the thought was to have a house-band formed around Wisdom’s Maw, much as Kesey had The Warlocks (later, the Grateful Dead) to supplement the Acid Tests. ….we hope they will be of value… Otherwise, I will have to eat them… A $500.00 limit on one good Mastercard, plus $300-odd in Travelers’ Cheques. Divided by five humans and their varied nutritional needs, two vehicles andtheir nutritional needs…& fourteen hundred miles to go… Toddmonster utters a silent prayer for solid Festival sales….

& again, I find myself hearkening back to “Fear & Loathing in Amsterdam” for Carbon 14: “Will America buy my acid novel? Can I make this gig pay? If so, I am the luckiest bastard alive…”

That was in November of 1996, but I find that it is still the $64 query. There’s got to be a way off of this treadmill…

….& enuf of that. Allowing myself full-freedom to roam, now… No terrain off-limits. Right? Wd Leary have censored his own thots to the written page? I wonder. I wonder just how crazy it got up there, in the mind of grandmaster Timothy. Of course, I’ll never really know; but I can guess… …hmm: for some reason, we seem to want to go to the street-dancing spade back Baton Rouge way… so, ok. A foul thing, seemingly, to opt to meditate on, but What the hell? Who am I to deny the mind that which it craves… Unless: eeeg.

Ding ding! “We are…Ladies & gentlemen, we are currently experiencing severe turbulence, please return to your seats and fasten seatbelts immediately.” “Yesh-sshsshshsshs: This issh yr captain sshspeaking…” Jesus, What are we into??? This is extreme. heeeee…. To let it out, or to keep it to oneself…?

What a quandary….

Well, we break new ground here, for sure, fellow travelers of the Weird Frontier:

wOw

Something happened today. There are not words to make measure of it [at least not in any length you cd read now]. Something blinked. There was a decision made today. Here is mine forecast:

• Wild Bill Clinton is our JFK. Only, this time, the conspirators are In Control. America is totally reformatted. It becomes a jungle, the Third World, all white people w/ resources flee. What is left behind is like Dumb Squalor – redneck ways, low-thinking mongoloids – people revert to animals, in their human dealings. There is no trust. Gangs and warlords are the only form of government. Christianity is never again mentioned.

All Dig This: Clinton doesn’t make two full ones. & the conspirators are In Control.

All religious & thinking/humane people flee to Europe. Those white people left behind are largely wiped out by the darker races, through extermination & inbreeding. America is a jungle, the Third World. Gangs & warlords are the rulers.

The Conspirators are insulated: They burrow deep in buildings, haciendas & hospitals, w/ massive private security forces, & using slaves from the outside for sanitation & dirty work, creating a sort of Inside/Outside environment – Cityscapestructureforthoseincontrolandforthosewhocanaffordit & total jungle wasteland Dark Ages thuggery outside.

Women, or certain ones, become an industry in Citydrome – massive sex trade, everything is done in credit/electronic-paperless environment. Air-conditioning is the rule. There are initially many deaths due to the shock of unnatural breathing conditions, and the dead are simply thrown Outside, on the hard Garbage Zone, where the lowest form of life & parasites, real & perceived, dwell…rotten…Things “progress” as one moves away from this meat barrier… unholy stench; no thinking thing of significance can live near it…..

“Wake up, man.”

“Whu? Uhh.”

“You were having a really bad dream. You were writhing all over.”

It is Gordo come to save me from an irretrievable madness. But when I try to explain things to him, to relate the Events of the Day, he seems not to wish to hear. And anyway, Richard, of the weak-bladder, is again giving the telltale flashing of headlights. We pull off at another Exxon, this one on the outskirts of Slidell, Louisiana. By the shadows on the pines, the six of us gauge the falling of darkness at being T-minus-20.

“Sorry, guys,” says Richard, on his way to the commode. “Must’ve been that second Nestea.”

We are flying like a battalion of banana slugs. But I seize the moment, and paper another set of restrooms with Wisdom’s Maw posters. Soon, word of our legendary Tour will spread, and we be fending off Hard Copy‘s cameras, on our way to a seven-figure multi-film deal… I am still shaking off visions of Bill Clinton taking a big one for Amerika, when my senses are heightened even furthur by the unholy roar that can only be a modified Harley… in this case, several of them. The riders are a pack of thickly-muscled rednecks, all in tight t-shirts and jeans. They disembark at the side of the building, joined swiftly by another car-load of deep thinkers. A band of good ol’ boys, just kickin’ back with a coupla cold ones…

Yet, there is an excitement of some stripe in the air….can’t quite make it out… Colt .45 and amphetamines?… Something is afoot. The vibe is no longer friendly Zydeco, no more of the lazy Cajun lilt to the speech. I sniff the breeze, taking in the pungent scent of big piney… Then: Uh-O. A layer of gooseflesh heaves up suddenly on mine forearms. Smells…. like… ssnnsh-ssnnsh:

Klan Kountry. Nothing like it in this world. Heavy tree-cover. Long traditions…. “It’s a way of doing things ’round here, if you follow my drift.”

Richard and Alice return from the restroom; Richard is chuckling madly.

“Take a look at that,” he says, pointing to a white four-ton, with dual Confederate flags in the cab window. “Just call him Bubba. Sit you right down on Momma’s knee and tell me how your day went… Bubba….”

“That is very funny,” I say, trying not to smile too phat. “Ordinarily, I would be on my knees… But under the circumstances, I think we might should be leaving.” I spell out the “K” word with my shoe on the asphalt, and the six of us make a not-so nonchalant beeline back to our respective vehicles.

“Some blue-green algae, mon?” Gordo wonders, extending in my direction an enormous tab. “Your system’s very obviously fucked up.”

I nod, whilst trying to shake of the lingering aftereffects of now several disturbing experiences, all of which are beginning to run together. “What is it, exactly? I always like to know what I’m ingesting.”

“Naturally,” he responds. “Pure Minnesota blue-green algae is pure food for the human body’s complicated cellular structure,” so begins the pitch, between dainty puffs of a Camel light.

“Naturally,” I nod again.

“Uhm-hmm,” stroking his beard. “Very. You see, basically, your body regenerates new cells every seven years. You grow a new body every seven years. We all do. And because our soil has essentially been raped of vital nutrients and minerals…”

I nod patiently.

“…it’s pulled out of a really deep lake in Minnesota, where there’s been no such rape of the firmament. My creativity has, like, basically tripled since I’ve been on it.”

It was a hard-sell, Gordo’s. But as I tried to “listen my body,” I thought mebbe I could feel an energizing of some sort – sort of a chlorophyll rush, not altogether unpleasant. Yes, mebbe there is something to this algae nonsense. Or, then again, maybe all these years of abusing psychedelics has rendered me sensate to anything at all. (Here, in the writing tablet, I make note to get my head checked as soon as I land again in Lafayette….)

“So, where does one get it, this algae?” I ask, rather abruptly, but feeling I need to cut through the salesmanship.

“My dad,” matter-of-factly. “He’s an agent. Well, I’m an agent, too; but, like, ‘cos I don’t know anybody I’m not able to be a distributor, in the way that he is.”

“A client-base is a wonderful thing. That’s what I’m looking for, too.”

Gordo then turns his head from the road, and eyes me solemnly, and in the soft glare of the dome light overhead, he looks a werewolf. His pupils are like pinpricks in the sockets; the blue of his irises are as a vapor. “Right,” he says. “Clients. I know a woman who signed up 20 clients in the first week.”

“Selling algae,” I say.

“Uh-huh. Now she makes her living from it. She makes 20 grand a year.”

“That is substantial cheese,” I intone, scratching mine own chin.

“I would think so,” Gordo says, agreeably. “Dude, you look weird in this light.”

Suddenly, Zeke is awake and alive in the second row of seats (no sign of gal-pal, who must be sleeping off the subtle grueling that had been taking place for many a moment).

A pickup truck passes. “Yeah, bruh!” Zeke offers. We enjoy a low chuckle, as bearskin-wearing ’80s boy returns our stares, with a full-turn of the head.

“Did you see that?:” Gordo wonders. “The burn,” and, with the pass of two fingers across his eyes, he simulates the tell-tale tattoo of a die-hard jet-skier. “Hha! Sucks my tits.”

Zeke joins in with some satire of his own: “Lamar County, the place where dreams are made….”

A highway sign reads: “Purvis = 11mi.”

Richard and anorexic Dave pass us suddenly, swiftly, in the former’s black muscle car.

Gordo sees a cop pull out of the brush: “Yikes! That’s always such a fright. It’s like bears or something. I get so nervous. 70 just doesn’t feel right; like they’re laying a trap or something.”

“YOG! ” Zeke screams, fairly startling us all, including his mate. “He got someone.”

“I hope it’s not Richard,” I say

“No. Richard is….two…three cars up,” Zeke offers, measuring with a squint.

“At least he didn’t have on a big flat hat,” says Gordo, relaxing visibly as the threat of smokey recedes in the rear-view mirror.

“Yeah,” I nod, “but I bet his name was Purvis.”

…& all collapse in a satisfying, deep-belly roll, somewhere in the night in Amerika.

(To be continued…)