Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  "Okay," I said, "How long does it last? I mean, will we be up most of the night?"

  "Yes, probably," he said, and I caught a glimpse of blue eyes actually daring to look at me, "Is that all right? I don't have any plans for tomorrow morning, myself, and we can sleep in."

  "Well, I'm willing to experience LSD, in fact I'm very pleased with the idea of finally meeting the dangerous enemy face to face, if you think it's a good idea -1 mean, considering the fact that we're both in a strange sort of - well, state of mind, to say the least?" That's not the clearest sentence ever spoken.

  "As a matter of fact," he said, "I thought it might help us break through our various - whatever you'd call 'em - walls, barriers. I'm feeling very stuck right now, and I don't really know how to get unstuck, and it just could be a help. I thought perhaps you might be having the same kind of trouble, and if so, this might be an interesting way to loosen ourselves, help us say what we need to say."

  He's almost as anxious as I am. Why? It's all up to him; it's not up to me. He's the one who can decide everything. Maybe he just isn't certain of what he feels.

  "Sure," I said, "At least, it's not liable to be a dull evening." "That," - he said directly to me with his first grin - "Is for sure." As I took a bath, my thoughts were a confused mess. One thing returned to my mind several times, and that was the fact that Shura was proposing a new experience tonight, which meant that he was still teaching me, introducing me to something new, and that wasn't the kind of thing one did to a person one was intending to part company with.

  All right. That's not the worry. Of course he wants me around, if for nothing more than great love-making. But what if he decides to be a hermit, after all, except for an occasional weekend with me - or with some other woman, for that matter - what do I say? I want to be part of his life forever, and 1 want to live with him the rest of his life and mine, and I don't want to be short-changed any more. And he may not feel he can give me anything close to 'what I want from him, and if he makes that clear - if that's what he tells me this weekend - what do I do?

  That's the Goddamned problem.

  In the kitchen, we stood facing each other, wearing our dressing gowns, as Shura explained, "The duration of this material is about six hours, give or take, depending on your sensitivity.

  The one thing really different from other psychedelics is the rapidity of the onset. Instead of waiting for 30 minutes or an hour, you'll find yourself feeling the effects very fast - usually within about 15 minutes. LSD is known as a 'pushy' material - you've probably heard me refer to that particular quality - and it's one of the complaints people have about it, even the people who love it; they say it tends to take over, to push you. In the higher dosage ranges, people who aren't used to it sometimes feel they have less control than they would like. It simply has to be learned, like all psychedelics. Once you're familiar with the quickness of it and realize you can control it whenever you decide you want to, there's no reason for anxiety. The scare stories have been mostly from naive people who took too high a dose the first time - "

  "I've heard some pretty wild stories about first times, yes."

  " - and the rest were cases of people who were fragile emotionally or mentally. If you're fragile, or ready to tip over, then anything can send you off center; LSD or falling in love or losing someone or having a big fight with your father."

  "I suppose there's a hidden compliment in there somewhere," I said, smiling faintly, "At least I'll take it as such. You're assuming I'm not mentally fragile, right?"

  "Oh," said Shura, his eyebrows shooting up, "Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, absolutely not!

  Certainly not! Rock solid, you are. Emotionally, of course, you're a quivering mess - "

  I gasped, caught between shocked anger and a sudden desire to explode with laughter. Two months ago, I would have aimed a kick at his balls, but this was not two months ago. I returned my face to impassive as he continued, " - but your sanity is, without question, unshakeable."

  I realized that he knew I was controlling myself, and I knew what he might not be that sure of, which was that I had excellent control and would not lose it easily, with or without LSD. Not unless I wanted to, and right now, I didn't want to.

  After we drank the colorless liquid, which consisted mainly of distilled water with the tiny amount of LSD in it (Shura had explained that tap water contained chlorine which would kill LSD immediately, as would strong light), we sat in the living room, I on the couch as usual and he in his big armchair, and I listened to him talk about the past week. " told Ruth and George about Ursula's letter, and they asked me over there to dinner so we could discuss it. I read it to them, and they were completely bewildered. They didn't see the humor of it as you did, and they didn't try to dissect her motives. On the other hand, I think their real concern was to help me feel better, and I think they knew that attacking Ursula - blaming her for what she'd done -

  wasn't what I needed at that point."

  "No, of course not."

  "They just became family. Let me talk myself out and tucked me into bed when I'd drunk too much wine, and gave me a wonderful breakfast in the morning. I left there feeling a lot more solid. It was a great help."

  I nodded, then raised my hand in the air, "Could I be feeling something already?"

  Shura got up from his chair and went into the kitchen to look at the clock. He returned and said, "You certainly could." "Well, I think I'm beginning to." "How does it feel to you?"

  I paid attention and chose my words carefully, "As if the cells of my body are trying to re-align themselves in a different way than usual." "Comfortable or not comfortable?"

  "Comfortable's the wrong word. Intriguing is the right word." Shura laughed softly, "Sounds all right. Just let it happen; you'll get the hang of it in a while."

  I looked around at the room and said, "There's a lot of color. It's more noticeable than usual -

  I mean, there are little prisms, rainbows, everywhere."

  Shura nodded silently.

  I looked out the windows at the twilight and continued, "I see what you mean by saying it's pushy. It does sort of press on you a bit. Maybe it's because the transition begins so soon. But it also gets very intense quickly, doesn't it? I mean, there's a certain sense of being on a roller-coaster ride."

  Shura nodded again.

  "Aside from that, it's pretty much familiar territory. So far." "Would you like to repair to the warm bedroom with the music, or is it better for you to stay here?"

  Oh, my, how very carefully he said that!

  In answer, I rose and led the way through kitchen and dining room and down the hallway to the bedroom, the place of love and music. When I moved, I felt solidly connected with the physical world, yet there was still that feeling of being more a body of energy particles than of flesh and bone. It was quite pleasant, when I allowed myself to feel pleasantness, and the thought occurred to me as I pushed open the bedroom door that it was time to stop worrying about keeping control or appearing in this light or that; it was time to just be who I was and let myself feel the emotions, including laughter, because to do otherwise was to be untrue to myself, manipulative of Shura, and wasteful of a possibly great experience.

  We lay beside each other on the bed, Shura naked and I still in my dressing gown. When I closed my eyes, the inner world erupted into detailed imagery. Shura went up the radio dial and found Chopin, and when he turned back to me, I sat up and took off my gown. I saw behind closed eyelids a lovely scene. We - Shura and I - were looking down from an open balcony into a central courtyard. We were in a place that appeared to consist of balconies hung with baskets of flowers, storey upon storey, surrounding the courtyard below. Ivy plants rose from the edges of the garden and crept up the walls and columns. Looking down into the center of the round garden space, I saw a tiled platform and on it, a grand piano which was being played - Chopin's music, of course - by a young man in a tuxedo. I could see only the top of his brown hair and his moving hands.


  When I heard Shura's gasp and the start of the shaking cry, I had a moment of startled anxiety, realizing that what we were doing, he and I, must be completely visible to anyone who might be standing on a balcony above ours, and that we could very well be in serious trouble if we made too much noise. The pianist might stop, and look to see what was happening up there above him. I thought of warning Shura not to yell, as he usually did, but before I could say the words, I realized that we were perfectly safe on the big bed, and that I had been letting the line between reality and fantasy blur. Shura howled, sitting up in bed, one hand clenched in my hair.

  The pianist played on, undeterred, and in my place on the floor of the balcony, I giggled into Shura's belly and stroked his hip.

  "For a moment there," I murmured, "I really did think we were going to frighten the horses."

  "Horses?"

  I reminded him of the famous saying of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, friend of George Bernard Shaw, who said that she didn't care what people did in making love just as long as they didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

  "Oh."

  I told him about my vision and he laughed, still a bit out of breath.

  "Did you go with me on that one?" he asked, as he usually did.

  I sat up and folded my legs, "To tell you the truth, I lost track because of my fascination with the fuzzing of lines between realities. I was thinking about how easy it is to get caught in that inner picture, and what fun it is, but how frightening it could be to somebody who'd never had a psychedelic drug before and didn't know how to get back in touch with his normal, ordinary reality because he couldn't tell which one it was."

  He said, "But you didn't stay fooled, did you? I mean, even a very naive person, if he finds himself seeing places and things with his eyes closed, knows at some level that he can open his eyes. Unless he's taken a real overdose, of course. To make sense of things with a heavy overdose, you have to have a good deal of experience, and even then it can be pretty hairy for a while."

  I moved up and lay beside him. The long fingers began lightly stroking, and as I looked past the big head to the ceiling, I saw against the shadowed surface a multitude of tiny kaleidoscopes, moving, bumping into each other the way blood cells do under a microscope. I smiled, and when Shura's hand paused for a moment and his eyes opened wider in question, I explained what was happening all over the ceiling. He looked up, "Yes, it's pretty active, isn't it!"

  The hand was exploring again. I thought of how well he knew my body, and then I heard him say, sounding slightly amused, "You know, I made a little experiment that might interest you.

  I asked Ruth and George this last week the same thing I'd asked the others in the group, over the past week or so, everyone except David. I asked them what they thought of my settling down to live with you. Every one of them, believe it or not, said something along the same lines: no, don't do it, beware of rebounds, I don't think she's the right woman for you, Shura. I can't remember one person saying anything positive about the idea; isn't that interesting, considering?"

  I had gone rigid. My Observer commented that most people would respond negatively just because the question had been asked in the first place; if you have to ask, the answer is no.

  I opened my mouth to say just that to him, reasonably, to explain quietly and rationally why all his friends had come up with negative responses, but suddenly - without any warning at all - something shattered and the red coals were on their way up the funnel. I was trying to focus through hot tears which were welling up and over and down and dripping off my chin. With no awareness of having moved, I found myself sitting upright on the bed, my hands clenching the blanket in front of me. My entire world had shrunk, within the space of a few seconds, to a dark purple-red tunnel which contained only pain. I was sobbing, shuddering with the force of the grief that was pulsing up from the bottom of the tunnel and scalding my eyes, then I felt bright orange knifing into the scene - anger - and the flow of energy changed. The sobs felt now as if they were grunting their way out, and I was dimly aware that my jaw hinge was tight. I lost sight and I could hear nothing but the sound of my own explosion. I seemed to be screaming through clenched teeth, and it was all making a lot of noise.

  The Observer, almost lost in the chaos, wondered with a touch of amusement whether the dear man had by any chance let loose a somewhat larger tiger than he'd expected to have to deal with.

  Shura waited quietly until the storm had begun to subside. I was on my stomach, at that point, vaguely aware of having spit out words like "cruel," "sadistic," and "insufferable;" there was an echo of "appalling," and even "stupid." I lay face down on a wet pillow and felt the tide slowing. The color of it was no longer purple-red or orange or yellow or black; the only colors I could feel were gentle blue and violet, with a edging of rose. I was washed clean of emotions, peaceful.

  I lifted myself up and turned around, slowly, until I was lying on my back again. I stared up at the ceiling, knowing that a glass wall was between me and Shura, and that the wall was my friend and would stay there unless he came up with an awfully good reason for it to come down. The best thing was, I realized with a feeling that was almost pleasure, that I wasn't hurting any more. For the moment, at least, I didn't care. In the center of my chest there was a pond of blue water, and I could float contentedly in it for a long, long time, until everything healed.

  Shura's voice came in quietly from my right, from the other side of the glass wall, "I guess I didn't say what I meant to say, or I said it in the wrong sequence, or something like that. You see, as I told you, it was a sort of experiment, asking them. I'll admit it wasn't the nicest thing to try with old friends, but I made a bet with myself, a while ago, that everyone in that group -

  again, I didn't ask David the idiotic question, but he was the only exception - I made a bet that they would all warn me against deciding to throw my lot, as the saying goes, in with you. I made the bet because I was pretty sure I knew why they'd give me negative responses, and I thought, when I told you, that you'd understand immediately, too. It was a stupid, bitter sort of joke and it was made by the less admirable side of myself - you know, the part of me that rather enjoys seeing the worst expectations come true?"

  I heard him, but nothing inside me was touched. I had no reason to speak.

  Shura continued, "I was certain that every one I asked would have some degree of worry about a woman - even one they knew and liked - becoming so close to me that she might influence my relationships with them. I knew that they'd always been afraid Ursula would do that, you know, but I never asked them what they thought about her; I never gave them a chance to say no, and they knew better than to try to influence me against her. They were always uneasy about her. I knew that. So this time, just for the fun of proving myself right, I thought I'd give them a chance to have some sort of input. I asked them, individually, what they thought of my settling down with you.

  " guessed that they'd all say don't do it, because every one of them is afraid you'd change things in some way they couldn't foresee. They don't want me to need them less, to spend less time with them. It was a stupid experiment, and all it did was confirm what I already suspected."

  I looked at him and spoke in what sounded to my Observer like a steady, reasonable voice, "Didn't it occur to you that the very fact that you asked them meant that the answer had to be no? I would have said no, myself. The rule with loving somebody is: if you have to ask your friends, you're not sure, and if you're not sure, it isn't real love. Or something like that."

  "Yes," he said, "I suppose that's true. I think it's also true that they're jealous of anyone who gets closer to me than they are."

  "Okay. Maybe so. It was a cruel experiment, as you admit yourself. And what did you expect me to do when you told me - laugh?" "I thought you might see the humor of it, yes." "Uh-uh, no humor. Not funny." "So I have learned. I'm sorry, Alice."

  He held my head to his chest, and then he said, "Look, there's no
use apologizing, is there? I don't want to waste time doing that. So why don't I just ask you: what do you think of the idea of quitting your job and moving out here with me?" "Jesus!" I muttered. "You called?" he replied.

  I laughed despite myself, and muttered into his ribs, "You idiot!" "Well, how about it?"

  In reply, I put my arms around his neck and watched the glass wall quietly crumble into diamond dust. "Are you sure?" I whispered.

  "Waddya mean, am I sure! I'm not sure of anything! I'm probably a complete and utter fool and this is probably the path to total disaster! Of course, I'm not sure! But I want you to live

  with me, because this weekend off and on stuff is ridiculous, and besides, you're not a bad kid, everything considered, and I probably could do a lot worse!"

  I hit his chest with my fists and he grabbed my wrists and, when I started crying again, he hissed, "Stop that or I'll throw ya across the room!"

  I laughed and sobbed, and he repeated the threat in what was probably meant to be a Chicago gangster accent, until I finally lay back on my pillow, face wet, gasping with laughter, and yelled, "All right, all right, all right!"

  Suddenly I thought of something - something too important to leave for later. I had to have the answer immediately, if I was to believe all this. I sat up, looked intently at Shura, and asked him, "Does this mean we can do it in the missionary position, now?"

  He stared at me, "Now7 I'm afraid I might not be up to it, right now. Could you possibly consider waiting until tomorrow morning? I'm not 18 any more, you know; it takes me a few hours to recover!"

  I shoved him back onto the bed, sputtering, "I meant from now on, you louse! Not now immediately!"

  He grinned, and I realized he'd understood all along.

  "Sure," he said, "If you insist."

  "Just occasionally," I said, "Just to make sure we don't forget how to do it the classic, old-fashioned way."

  "I'm trying to remember," grunted Shura, "But I think it goes something like this, right?" He made a circle with his left hand and poked in and out of it with the right index finger, in the gesture understood around the world.