“Have you talked to the lawyers yet?”
“Uh, no . . .”
Meanwhile, the cover of the April 1978 issue of Hustler featuring a crucified Easter bunny had resulted in the largest premature return of magazines by wholesalers in several months. And you couldn’t even see the bunny’s nipples. Maybe it was the blood and the crown of thorns that turned people off, who knew? It was too early to know the return status of the May issue with the cover featuring the cutaway illustration of a pregnant woman.
The cover of the June issue was scheduled to feature Larry Flynt’s vow—“We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat!”—and, as the quasi-logical extension of that quote, it would be accompanied by photo-artist Alfred Gescheidt’s portrait of a woman as a piece of meat. Inside, there would be more of his work—a six-page menu of nude women, spread with appropriate condiments, mustard or tomato sauce—as if they were actual pieces of meat, superimposed on various dishes, a frankfurter or a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. An imitation government stamp on the cover would label this as the last all-meat issue. A memo from one editor summed up the carnivorous machinations:The meatball shot will face the hamburger shot and that would give us two open pussy shots. The turkey shot was re-shot with open pussy, but Paul got the misimpression that we only needed 50% pink and so he okay’d staying with the original turkey shot. However, we convinced him that the entire object of re-shooting the meat spread was to get more pink, and so we persuaded Paul that the pink turkey shot should be chosen.
I approved the turkey spread, not because it contributed to the correct pink quota, but rather because an editor persuaded me that this was a better shot because the model’s face was turned away from the camera.
“But ordinarily,” I pointed out, “you’ve always wanted the model’s eyes looking directly at you.”
“Yeah, but when I eat a turkey, I don’t wanna see the face looking at me.”
However, the same photo-art selections by Gescheidt appeared in another men’s magazine, and Hustler’s art department had to concoct a quick substitute. Bruce David brought in the new cover for my approval—a trick photo of a woman’s body being stuffed into a meat grinder upside down, so that only her legs were still showing.
“What’s this supposed to mean?” I asked. “Now that we aren’t hanging women up like pieces of meat anymore, we’re taking the next step and putting them into a meat grinder?”
But Bruce assured me that there was no time for anything else, and the production department backed him up. The cover immediately provoked protests in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I was accused of advocating attacks on women. I publicly apologized to those who felt hurt by the meat-grinder image, explaining that it was Hustler’s hurried attempt at self-parody.
Nevertheless, that cover was destined to become an unofficial symbol of male oppression at feminist rallies. In fact, when I attended a feminist conference with an old friend, Janet Bode—whose book on rape, Fighting Back, had just been published—she asked me to walk in separately from her and we would meet later.
A by-product of the attempt on Larry’s life was a terrible cash flow problem at the Flynt empire. Creditors wanted to be paid immediately, while those who owed the company money held back their payments. Both the Los Angeles Free Press and The Realist were dropped from the publishing schedule. I didn’t even have a chance to get out the first issue, and now I had to fire my entire staff. Althea had taken over the running of Hustler. As the staff began to get severely trimmed, the insecurity of those who remained increased. Morale got lower and tempers flared. Triggered by Bruce David yelling at a secretary, I finally sent this memo to all Hustler personnel:I would like to apologize for my lack of leadership in a particular area. Every time I’ve observed, but not spoken up about, the kind of sadistic disrespect which certain individuals have been increasingly displaying toward others, I have become a silent partner to that behavior. By allowing myself to become a figurehead, I lost sight of the fact that the reason people have taken so much shit is because they fear for their jobs. So, as of today, no one is to be fired without my approval. I cannot let my office turn into an isolation booth. It is not undermining authority if I refuse to permit blatant contempt to stifle a creative environment. This is not the Marine Corps. The misuse of power is a form of violence, and I will no longer tolerate it at Hustler. We will not treat employees like pieces of meat anymore.
“What is this,” Bruce snarled, “Fuck-Your-Buddy Week?” The tension continued to escalate between us as several key staff members threatened mutiny if he stayed. Power-crazed and short-sighted, I ended up firing Bruce and sending a telegram to Althea. She flew both of us to Atlanta.
“You’re the publisher,” she told me, “and I won’t interfere with your decision, but I’m hoping for a miracle.”
Bruce couldn’t conceive of working with me again, and I was prepared to quit rather than be maneuvered into having him back, but Althea proved to be a skillful mediator, and I ended up rehiring him. I was glad I did. He was a skillful editor under unusually heavy pressure, and I was a self-righteous fool.
In the hospital, I visited with Larry, who in his delirium was convinced that he had been walking around the room. He also told me that Hugh Hefner and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione were directly responsible for his being shot. Straining to be rational, he asked if Gore Vidal had written that article yet, about the pope being gay, and I said that we were still trying to locate him. Larry also wanted to know about “the Jesus shoot,” a photo spread he had previously described with this revisionist theory:Everyone knows who Mary Magdalene was, the prostitute that Jesus used to run around with. She was the one that was caught in the act of prostitution, and she was tried, and she was stoned to death. But if you get caught in the act of prostitution, that means you had to fuck somebody, right? So we’re gonna show that picture, and then we’re gonna show her getting stoned, and we’re gonna show Jesus walkin’ up, saying, “Let those who have not lain with her cast the first stone.”
Yes, I said that right. It’s not, “Let those without sin cast the first stone.” Because Jesus knows they’d all been fuckin’ her, and that’s why they stopped stonin’ her, because, you see, he knew everything. And not only that, he was also troubled about why she was being stoned to death and the man wasn’t being stoned, because if he hadn’t a-paid her, she wouldn’t’ve fucked him, and why should she be punished and him be let off the hook? Looks to me like somebody had something against the woman.
Althea had transformed the Coca-Cola Suite at Emory University Hospital into her office, where she was now studying the slides of that “Jesus and the Adulteress” feature. Dick Gregory was there, and he said, “This scares me.” He was concerned about reaction in the Bible Belt, notwithstanding the fact that Hustler’s research department had already made certain that the text followed the Bible. And now Althea was checking for any sexism that might have slipped past the male editors’ limited consciousness. The spread was already in page forms, but not yet collated into the magazine, and there was still a gnawing dilemma about whether or not to publish it.
The marketing people in Columbus were aghast at the possibility that wholesalers would refuse to distribute an issue of the magazine with such a blatantly blasphemous feature. Althea and I voted to publish. Dick Gregory and Bruce David voted not to publish. “I’m against it,” Bruce said, “because we’re already sucking wind with the lines of credit, and this is an issue that just simply will not be distributed.”
Faced with this crucial decision, Althea made her choice on the basis of pure whimsicality. She noticed a pair of pigeons on the window ledge. One of them was waddling toward the other. “All right,” she said, “if that dove walks over and pecks the other dove, then we will publish this.” The pigeon continued strutting along the window ledge, but it stopped short and didn’t peck the other pigeon, so publication of “Jesus and the Adulteress” was postponed indefinitely.
Larry Flynt
had been transferred to a hospital in Columbus, and Althea traveled back and forth between there and Los Angeles. On one of her visits, I mentioned that I had been interviewed for High Times and that one of their questions was, “Have you slept with Althea Flynt?”
She said, “What did you tell them?”
“I just answered, ‘No, but even if we had, I wouldn’t tell you.’”
That was the truth, but Althea was visibly upset.
“Why’d they ask that?” she asked
“Well,” I replied, “you know, just sensationalism.”
The next day Althea called me into her office. Whenever she did that, I would always take my pen and pad with me. She might have an idea for an article—on the quality of food in public schools, for example—but this time we both sat down and she got immediately to the point.
“Paul—I have to fire you.”
I wrote down fired on my pad.
Then I asked, “Does Larry know about this?”
“No, not yet. But the readers wanna see a picture on the publisher’s page of somebody who looks like he works for a living.”
“Althea, I do work for a living. I work for you.”
Of course, I knew what she meant. In the photo on the publisher’s page, I was wearing green shades and a cowboy hat over my long hair. But still?
“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “Look, Hustler is really Larry’s baby, and people wanna see his picture back on the publisher’s page. We’ve been getting a lot of calls from readers and wholesalers complaining that they don’t feel the magazine is really Hustler without Larry, and now that he’s recuperating, he should be publisher again. It’s nothing personal—I like you better than Ruth Carter Stapleton or Dick Gregory or anybody else Larry introduced me to. But whenever I walk past the office he built for himself here—he never even got a chance to use it . . .”
She started to sob. I didn’t know quite how to react. She said, “My mascara’s running.” I handed her a tissue from my pocket. It is proper etiquette to comfort one’s employer when one has just been fired. Althea started wiping her face. “This tissue is falling apart,” she complained.
“It’s not a Kleenex,” I explained. “It’s toilet tissue.” She looked stunned. “But,” I quickly added, “it’s two-ply.”
She laughed. “You really are crazy.”
“Althea, listen, I don’t have any money. I didn’t save a penny. I’ve spent it all paying back debts. I’ll need to get a severance check.”
“How much do you want?”
“Well, I think ten percent of my salary would be fair. That would be $9,000.”
“I was thinking of $5,000.”
“All right, let’s compromise—$7,000.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” she said. “Seven is God’s lucky number.”
We embraced, and Althea whispered, “I love you, Paul.”
I went back to my office and locked the door. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I phoned family and friends to tell them the news before they learned it in the media. When I called Ken Kesey, he said, “Well, why don’t you come to Egypt with us? The Grateful Dead are gonna play the Pyramids.” What perfect timing! I put my radio on and started dancing around the office. I belonged to this vast army of secret dancers who only dance when they’re alone. There I was, dancing and singing, “Oh, thank you for firing me, Althea, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
My main editorial regret was that I hadn’t been able to publish that “Jesus and the Adulteress” photo spread. The nearly life-size poster which was supposed to be included as a pull-out centerfold would instead remain on my wall at home as a memento of those six months at Hustler. There was Jesus, a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he covered up the prone Adulteress. Her head was bleeding from the stones that had been cast upon her. And she was showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulnerable pink. This poster was a startling visual image, unintentionally satirizing the ostensible change from the old Hustler to the new Hustler.
But I was through there now. That evening, I walked home totally elated. Although Hustler had been accused of exploiting women, actually it was guilty of exploiting some men’s addiction to pornography. I had been catering to an unseen audience who all had one particular quality in common—the security of never being rejected by a centerfold—but now I finally had my own life back. If you play a role long enough, there comes a point where the role begins to play you. So now I felt as though I had been born-again.
To celebrate this transition, I snorted the balance of my cocaine stash (when in Hollywood . . .)—and then I cut off all my hair with a little pair of toenail scissors.
Bob Weir looked up at the Great Pyramid and cried out, “What is it?” Actually, it was the place for locals to go on a cheap date. The Pyramids were surrounded by moats of discarded bottlecaps. The Grateful Dead were scheduled to play on three successive nights at an open-air theater in front of the Pyramids, with the Sphinx looking on.
A bootleg tape of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis doing filthy schtick was being used for a preliminary sound check. Later, an American general complained to stage manager Steve Parish that the decadence of a rock and roll band performing here was a sacrilege to five thousand years of history. Parish said, “I lost two brothers in ’Nam, and I don’t wanna hear this crap.” The general retreated in the face of those imaginary brothers.
But there were a couple of real injured veterans. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann had fallen off a horse and broken his arm. He would still be playing with the band, using one drumstick. Or, as an Arabian fortune cookie might point out, In the land of the limbless, a one-armed drummer is king. Basketball star and faithful Deadhead Bill Walton’s buttocks had been used as a pincushion by the Portland Trailblazers so that he could continue to perform on court even though the bones of his foot were being shattered with pain he couldn’t feel. Having been injected with painkilling drugs to hide the greed rather than heal the injury, he now had to walk around with crutches and one foot in a cast under his extra-long galabia. Maybe Kreutzmann and Walton could team up and enter the half-upside-down sack-race event.
An air of incredible excitement permeated the first night. Never had the Dead been so inspired. Backstage, Jerry Garcia was passing along final instructions to the band: “Remember, play in tune.” The music began with Egyptian oudist Hamza el-Din, backed up by a group tapping out ancient rhythms on their fourteen-inch-diameter tars, soon joined by Mickey Hart, a butterfly with drumsticks, then Garcia ambled on with a gentle guitar riff, then the rest of the band, and as the Dead meshed with the percussion ensemble, basking in total respect of each other, Bob Weir suddenly segued into Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
“Did you see that?” Kesey said. “The Sphinx’s jaw just dropped!”
Every morning my roommate, George Walker, climbed to the top of the pyramid. He was in training. It would be his honor to plant a Grateful Dead skull-and-lightning-bolt flag on top of the Great Pyramid. This was our Iwo Jima.
In preparation for the final concert, I was sitting in the tub-like sarcophagus at the center of gravity in the Great Pyramid, after ingesting LSD that a Prankster had smuggled into Egypt in a plastic Visine bottle. I had heard that the sound of the universe was D-flat, so that’s what I chanted. It was only as I breathed in deeply before each extended om that I was forced to ponder the mystery of those who urinate there.
I had a strong feeling that I was involved in a lesson. It was as though the secret of the Dead would finally be revealed to me, if only I paid proper attention. There was a full eclipse of the moon, and Egyptian kids were running through the streets shaking tin cans filled with rocks in order to bring it back.
“It’s okay,” I assured them. “The Grateful Dead will bring back the moon.”
And, sure enough, a rousing rendition of “Ramble on Rose” would accomplish that feat. The moon returned just as the marijuana cookie that Bill Graham gave me started blending in with the
other drugs. Graham used to wear two wristwatches, one for each coast. Now he wore one wristwatch with two faces.
(Before the original edition of this book was published, the young lawyer at Simon & Schuster who vetted the manuscript asked if I had gotten Graham’s permission. Otherwise, he could sue for libel. She thought I was referring to Billy Graham, the evangelist, who presumably was not a doper. When I explained who Bill Graham was, she said I had to precede his name with “rock impresario.” I did so, but I told her, “On the day that Billy Graham gives me a marijuana cookie at a Grateful Dead concert in front of the Great Pyramid, the revolution will have begun.”)
There was a slight problem with an amplifier, but the sound engineer said that it was “getting there.”
“Getting there ain’t good enough,” Garcia responded. “It’s gotta fuckin’ be there.”
This was a totally outrageous event. The line between incongruity and appropriateness had disappeared along with the moon. The music was so powerful that the only way to go was ecstasy. That night, when the Dead played “Fire on the Mountain,” I danced my ass off with all the others on that outdoor stage as if I had no choice.
“You know,” Bill Graham confessed, “this is the first time I ever danced in public.”
“Me too,” I said. That was the lesson.
The next day a dozen of us had a farewell party on a felucca—an ancient, roundish boat, a kind of covered wagon that floats along the river. Jerry Garcia was carrying his attaché case, just in case he suddenly got any new song ideas. There were three guides who came with our rented felucca: an old man whose skin was like corrugated leather, a younger man who was his assistant, and a kid whose job was to light the hubbly-bubbly—a giant water pipe which used hot coals to keep the hashish burning.
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut Page 38
