Screwjack

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  INTRODUCTION

  Dear Maurice:

  Hello. Have a nice day. Yes. Mahalo. Stand back. I have finally returned from the Wilderness, where I was chased & tormented by huge radioactive Bob-cats for almost 22 weeks. When I finally escaped they put me in a Decompression Chamber with some people I couldn’t recognize, so I went all to pieces & now I can’t remember anything or Anybody or even who I was, all that time—which was exactly since Groundhog Day, when it started.

  Anyway, that’s why I fell behind in my correspondence for a while. I could not be reached except by the Animals, and they hated me. I never knew Why. There was no explanation for it.

  * * *

  So what? Who needs reasons for a thing like that? Escape is all that matters—except for the horrible scars, but that is a different question. Today we must deal with The Book, which requires my total attention now.

  A brainless whore would not say this, Maurice. The Truth is not in them. But I am not a brainless whore—and if I was, I don’t remember it. Who cares? Shit happens. On some days I don’t miss my memory at all. . . . Most days, in fact. It is like knowing that you were a Jackbastard in yr. Previous Life, then somebody tells you to be careful not to scream in yr. sleep anymore. You start to feel afraid. . . . But not me, Maurice.

  As for the ORDER, I think Screwjack should be last & Mescalito first—so the dramatic tension (& also the true chronological weirdness) can build like Bolero to a faster & wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly up a hill, & then drop him off a cliff. . . . That is the Desired Effect, and if we start with Screwjack it won’t happen. The book will peter out.

  * * *

  Okay. That’s about it, for now. We can wrap this thing up very quickly, I think. . . . Indeed. And so much for all that. I have to go out in the yard to murder a skunk—and if I fail, he will murder me. Some things never change.

  In closing, I remain—yr. calm & gentle friend,

  Hunter

  FEBRUARY 16, 1969

  Again in L.A., again at the Continental Hotel . . . full of pills and club sandwiches and Old Crow and now a fifth of Louis Martini Barbera, looking down from the eleventh floor balcony at a police ambulance screaming down toward the Whisky-a-Go-Go on the Strip, where I used to sit in the afternoon with Lionel and talk with off-duty hookers . . . and while I was standing there, watching four flower children in bell-bottom pants, two couples, hitch-hiking toward Hollywood proper, a mile or so up the road . . . they noticed me looking down and waved. I waved, and moments later, after pointing me out to each other, they hoisted the “V” signal—and I returned that. And one of them yelled, “What are you doing up there?” And I said, “I’m writing about all you freaks down there on the street.” We talked back and forth for a while, not communicating much, and I felt like Hubert Humphrey looking down at Grant Park. Maybe if Humphrey had had a balcony in that twenty-fifth-floor Hilton suite he might have behaved differently. Looking out a window is not quite the same. A balcony puts you out in the dark, which is more neutral—like walking out on a diving board. Anyway, I was struck by the distance between me and those street freaks; to them, I was just another fat cat, hanging off a balcony over the strip . . . and it reminded me of James Farmer on TV today, telling Face the Nation how he’d maintained his contacts with the Black Community, talking with fat jowls and a nervous hustler style, blundering along in the wake of George Herman’s and Daniel Schorr’s condescension . . . and then McGarr talking later, at the Luau, a Beverly Hills flesh pit, about how he could remember when Farmer was a radical and it scared him to see how far he’d drifted from the front lines . . . it scared him, he said, because he wondered if the same thing could happen to him . . . which gets back to my scene on the balcony—Hubert Humphrey looking down at Grant Park on Tuesday night, when he still had options (then, moments later, the four flower children hailed a cab—yes, cab, taxi—and I walked down to the King’s Cellar liquor store where the clerk looked at my Diners Club card and said, “Aren’t you the guy who did that Hell’s Angels thing?” And I felt redeemed. . . . Selah).

  FEBRUARY 18

  L.A. notes, again . . . one-thirty now and pill-fear grips the brain, staring down at this half-finished article . . . test pilots, after a week (no, three days) at Edwards AFB in the desert . . . but trying to mix writing and fucking around with old friends don’t work no more, this maddening, time-killing late-work syndrome, never getting down to the real machine action until two or three at night, won’t make it . . . especially half drunk full of pills and grass with deadlines past and people howling in New York . . . the pressure piles up like a hang-fire lightning ball in the brain. Tired and wiggy from no sleep or at least not enough. Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end—of anything.

  And now the fire alarm goes off in the hall . . . terrible ringing of bells . . . but the hall is empty. Is the hotel on fire? Nobody answers the phone at the desk; the operator doesn’t answer . . . the bell screams on. You read about hotel fires: 75 KILLED IN HOLOCAUST: LEAPING OFF BALCONIES (I am on the eleventh floor) . . . but apparently there is no fire. The operator finally answers and says a “wire got crossed.” But nobody else is in the hall; this happened in Washington too, at the Nixon gig. False alarms and a man screaming down the airshaft, “Does anybody want to fuck?” The foundations are crumbling.

  Yesterday a dope freak tried to steal the Goodyear blimp and take it to Aspen for the Rock and Roll festival . . . carrying a guitar and a toothbrush and a transistor radio he said was a bomb. . . . “Kept authorities at bay,” said the L.A. Times, “for more than an hour, claiming to be George Harrison of the Beatles.” They took him to jail but couldn’t figure out what to charge him with . . . so they put him in a loony bin.

  Meanwhile the hills keep crumbling, dropping houses down on streets and highways. Yesterday they closed two lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway between Sunset and Topanga . . . passing the scene in McGarr’s little British-souvenir car on the way to Gover’s house in Malibu . . . we looked up and saw two houses perched out in space, and dirt actually sliding down the cliff. It was only a matter of time, and no cure, no way to prevent these two houses from dropping on the highway. They keep undercutting the hills to make more house sites, and the hills keep falling. Fires burn the vegetation off in summer, rains make mud-slides in the winter . . . massive erosion, fire and mud, with The Earthquake scheduled for April. Nobody seems to give a fuck.

  Today I found marijuana seeds all over the rug in my room . . . leaning down to tie my shoes I focused low and suddenly the rug was alive with seeds. Reminds me of the time I littered a hotel room in Missoula, Montana, with crab lice . . . picking them off, one by one, and hurling them around the room. . . . I was checking out for Butte. And also the last time I was in this hotel I had a shoe full of grass, and John Wilcock’s package . . . awful scene at the Canadian border in Toronto, carrying all that grass and unable to say where I lived when they asked me. . . . I thought the end had come, but they let me through.

  And now, by total accident, I find “Property of Fat City” (necessary cop-out change self-preservation—Oscar—looting) painted on the side of this borrowed typewriter. Is it stolen? God only knows . . . seeds on the rug and a hot typewriter on the desk, we
live in a jungle of pending disasters, walking constantly across a minefield . . . will my plane crash tomorrow? What if I miss it? Will the next one crash? Will my house burn down? Gover’s friend’s house in Topanga burned yesterday, nothing saved except an original Cézanne. Where will it all end?

  FEBRUARY 18–19

  Getting toward dawn now, very foggy in the head . . . and no Dexedrine left. For the first time in at least five years I am out of my little energy bombs. Nothing in the bottle but five Ritalin tablets and a big spansule of mescaline and “speed.” I don’t know the ratio of the mixture, or what kind of speed is in there with the mescaline. I have no idea what it will do to my head, my heart, or my body. But the Ritalin is useless at this point—not strong enough—so I’ll have to risk the other. Oscar is coming by at ten, to take me out to the airport for the flight to Denver and Aspen . . . so if I sink into madness and weird hallucinations, at least he can get me checked out of the hotel. The plane ride itself might be another matter. How can a man know? (Well, I just swallowed the bugger . . . soon it will take hold; I have no idea what to expect, and in this dead-tired, run-down condition almost anything can happen. My resistance is gone, so any reaction will be extreme. I’ve never had mescaline.)

  Meanwhile, outside on the Strip the zoo action never stops. For a while I watched four L.A. sheriffs beat up two teenagers, then handcuff them and haul them away. Terrible howls and screams floated up to my balcony. “I’m sorry, sir . . . Oh God, please, I’m sorry.” WHACK. One cop picked him up by the feet while he was hanging on to a hurricane fence; the other one kicked him loose, then kneeled on his back and whacked him on the head a few times. I was tempted to hurl a wine bottle down on the cops but refrained. Later, more noise . . . this time a dope freak, bopping along and singing at the top of his lungs—some kind of medieval chant. Oblivious to everything, just bopping along the strip.

  And remember that shooting scene in Alfie’s . . . also the film opening with a man reeling into a plastic house, vomiting, cursing the news, picking up a pistol, and firing into the ceiling . . . driven mad by the news and the pressures of upward mobility . . . then, perhaps, to the Classic Cat on amateur night, his neighbor’s wife . . . and from there to the shooting at Alfie’s . . . yes, it begins to jell.

  Jesus, 6:45 now and the pill has taken hold for real. The metal on the typewriter has turned from dull green to a sort of high-gloss blue, the keys sparkle, glitter with highlights. . . . I sort of levitated in the chair, hovering in front of the typewriter, not sitting. Fantastic brightness on everything, polished and waxed with special lighting . . . and the physical end of the thing is like the first half-hour on acid, a sort of buzzing all over, a sense of being gripped by something, vibrating internally but with no outward sign or movement. I’m amazed that I can keep typing. I feel like both me and the typewriter have become weightless; it floats in front of me like a bright toy. Weird, I can still spell . . . but I had to think about that last one. . . . “Weird.” Christ, I wonder how much worse this is going to get. It’s seven now, and I have to check out in an hour or so. If this is the beginning of an acid-style trip I might as well give up on the idea of flying anywhere. Taking off in an airplane right now would be an unbearable experience, it would blow the top right off my head. The physical sensations of lifting off the ground would be unbearable in this condition; I feel like I could step off the balcony right now and float gently down to the sidewalk. Yes, and getting worse, a muscle in my thigh is seized by spasms, quivering like something disem-bodied. . . . I can watch it, feel it, but not be connected. There is not much connection between my head and my body . . . but I can still type and very fast too, much faster than normal. Yes, the goddamn drug is definitely taking hold, very much like acid, a sense of very pleasant physical paralysis (wow, that spelling) while the brain copes with something never coped with before. The brain is doing all the work right now, adjusting to this new stimulus like an old soldier ambushed and panicked for a moment, getting a grip but not in command, hanging on, waiting for a break but expecting something worse . . . and yes, it’s coming on. I couldn’t possibly get out of this chair right now, I couldn’t walk, all I can do is type . . . it feels like the blood is racing through me, all around my body, at fantastic speeds. I don’t feel any pumping, just a sense of increased flow. . . . Speed. Interior speed . . . and a buzzing without noise, high-speed vibrations and more brightness. The little red indicator that moves along with the ball on this typewriter now appears to be made of arterial blood. It throbs and jumps along like a living thing.

  I feel like vomiting, but the pressure is too great. My feet are cold, hands cold, head in a vise . . . fantastic effort to lift the bottle of Budweiser and take a sip, I drink like breathing it in, feeling it all the way cold into my stomach . . . very thirsty, but only a half a beer left and too early to call for more. Christ, there’s the catch. I am going to have to deal with all manner of complicated shit like packing, paying, all that shit any moment now. If the thing bites down much harder I might wig out and demand beer . . . stay away from the phone, watch the red arrow . . . this typewriter is keeping me on my rails, without it I’d be completely adrift and weird. Maybe I should call Oscar and get him down here with some beer, to keep me away from that balcony. Ah shit, this is very weird, my legs are half frozen and a slow panic in my stomach, wondering how much stranger it will get . . . turn the radio on, focus on something but don’t listen to the words, the vicious bullshit. . . . Jesus, the sun is coming up, the room is unbearably bright, then a cloud across the sun, I can see the cloud in the sudden loss of light in the room, now getting brighter as the cloud passes or moves . . . out there somewhere, much harder to type now, but it must be done, this is my handle, keep the brain tethered, hold it down. Any slippage now could be a landslide, losing the grip, falling or flipping around, Christ, can’t blow my nose, can’t find it but I can see it and my hand too, but they can’t get together, ice in my nose, trembling with the radio on now, some kind of flute music, cold and fantastic vibration so fast I can’t move . . . the ball just flipped back, a space capsule floating across the page, some kind of rotten phony soul music on the radio, Melvin Laird singing “The Weight” “O yes we get wearahe, weeri, wearih?” Some fuckawful accent. Hair-jelly music. Anthony Hatch in Jerusalem, great God, the stinking news is on, get rid of it, no mention of Nixon, too much for a tortured head. . . . Christ, what a beastly job to look for a new station on this radio dial, up and down the bright blue line and all these numbers, quick switch to FM, get rid of the fucking news, find something in a foreign language . . . the news is already on the TV screen, but I won’t turn it on, won’t even look at it. . . . Nixon’s face. . . . GODDAMN, I just called Oscar, fantastic effort to dial, and the fucking line is busy . . . hang on now, no slippage, ignore this weird trembling . . . laugh, yes, that sense of humor, snag it down from somewhere, the skyhook. . . . Jesus, I have to lock that door, get the DO NOT DISTURB sign out before a maid blunders in. I can’t stand it, and I just heard one out there, creeping along the hallway, jiggling doorknobs . . . ho ho, yes, that famous smile . . . yes, I just got hold of Oscar . . . he’s coming with some beer . . . that is the problem now, I can’t start fucking around with the management, shouting for beer at this hour of dawn . . . disaster area that way, don’t fuck with the management, not now in this wiggy condition . . . conserve this inch of beer until Oscar arrives with more, get a human buffer zone in here, something to hide behind . . . the fucking news is on again, on FM this time. Singer Sewing time is fifteen minutes until eight o’clock, Washington’s Birthday sale we cannot tell a lie, our machines will sew you into a bag so fast you’ll think you went blind . . . goddamn is there no human peaceful sound on the radio . . . yes, I had one for an instant, but now more ads and bullshit . . . now, right there, a violin sound, hold that, stay with it, focus on that violin sound, ride it out . . . ah, this beer won’t last, the thirst will doom me to fucking with the management . . . no, I have some ice left—o
n the balcony—but careful out there, don’t look over the edge . . . go out backward, feel around for the paper ice bucket, seize it carefully between thumb and forefinger, then walk slowly back to this chair . . . try it now. . . . DONE, but my legs have turned to jelly, impossible to move around except like a rolling ball, don’t bounce, get away from that phone, keep typing, the grip, the handle. . . . Jesus, my hands are vibrating now, I don’t see how they can type. The keys feel like huge plastic mounds, very mushy and that bright red arrow jumping along like a pill in one of those sing-along movie shorts, bouncing from word to word with the music. . . . Thank God for the Sonata in F Major for Oboe and Guitar by Charles Starkweather . . . no ads, listener-sponsored radio, not even news . . . salvation has many faces, remind me to send a check to this station when I get well . . . KPFK? Sounds right. The beer crisis is building, I am down to saliva in this last brown bottle . . . goddamn, half my brain is already pondering how to get more beer, but it won’t work . . . no way. No beer is available here. No way. Nao tem. Think about something else, thank God for this music; if I could get to the bathroom I’d like to get a towel and hang it over the face of this stinking TV set, the news is on there, I can smell it. My eyes feel bigger than grapefruits. Where are the sunglasses, I see them over there, creep across, that cloud is off the sun again, for real this time, incredible light in the room, white blaze on the walls, glittering typewriter keys . . . and down there under the balcony traffic moves steadily along the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, zip code unknown . . . we just came back from a tour of the Soviet Union and Denmark, careful now, don’t stray into the news, keep it pure, yes, I hear a flute now, music starting again. What about cigarettes, another problem area . . . and I hear that wily old charwoman sucking on the doorknob again, goddamn her sneaky ass what does she want? I have no money. If she comes in here the rest of her days will be spent in a fear-coma. I am not in the mood to fuck around with charwomen, keep them out of here, they prowl this hotel like crippled wolves . . . smile again, yes, gain a step, tighten the grip, ho ho. . . . When will this thing peak? It seems to be boring deeper. I know it can’t be worse than acid, but that’s what it feels like now. I have to catch a plane in two hours. Can it be done? Jesus, I couldn’t fly now. . . . I couldn’t walk to the plane . . . oh Jesus, the crunch is on, my throat and mouth are like hot gravel and even the saliva is gone . . . can I get to the bottle of Old Crow and mix it up with the remains of these ice fragments . . . a cool drink for the freak? Give the gentleman something cool, dear, can’t you see he’s wired his brain to the water pump and his ears to the generator . . . stand back, those sparks! Back off, maybe he’s too far gone . . . coil a snake around him . . . get that drink, boy, you are slipping, we need CONCENTRATION . . . yes, the music, some kind of German flower song. Martin Bormann sings WHITE RABBIT . . . ambushed in the jungle by a legion of naked gooks . . . whiskey uber alles, get that drink, get up, move.