Shedding Skin

by Robert Ward

  The days pass slowly. Lily’s mascara has been sliding around on her face for the last three or four hours. She was fortunate enough to find a jagged piece of mirror on the floor, and now she spends most of her time holding it in front of her. The last time we made love, I could not breathe because the air has become so heavy with rancid spice. She cried mightily into my lap and I held her dripping, stringy hair. If I were cruel, I would tell you it looked like the broccoli that Mother Freda overcooked.

  It is becoming hotter all the time. The plexiglass beans give off a pulsating brown-red glow. The juices of the artificial meat ooze an overripe aroma, which is difficult to assess. Though the lettuce still shimmers, I noticed (after climbing a ladder to survey the situation) that several of the inner pieces are wilted and soggy. I fear the Taco is losing its charm. It is definitely not edible.

  “Carlos or no Carlos,” I say, staring at the floor, “I can stand the heat no longer. I’ve got to have air.”

  Lily is kneeling in front of her creation. In her hands is a large burned-out bean, and over one shoulder is the lettuce.

  She is playing her trump card—pathos.

  All I know is the odor is making me sick.

  Lily has lost her suntan.

  There is a knock on the sliding door.

  The Phantom stands next to me.

  “We have to go,” I say to Lily.

  “It always ends like this,” she replies, cuddling the bean to her cheek.

  Another cold bean falls to the floor. It rolls toward my feet. I pick it up and hand it to her. But she refuses to accept it.

  “Take it as a souvenir,” she whispers.

  “Did you get the money?” asks Phantom, wheeling away on the English racer.

  “No, prick.”

  “Then fuck you,” says Phantom.

  He gives me the bird and leaves.

  I hire a U-Haul, and Lily and I take the remains of the Taco up the narrow mountain path. It is difficult, but we manage to pull it off. The Taco rolls down through two cedar trees and runs into a black boulder. It is fractured into countless pieces.

  The ride back is marked by grief.

  “If you are evah in Atlanta …” she says, attaching her false eyelashes. “I may be. I just may be,” I say.

  We kiss. It’s very painful. We kiss again. It’s getting dull.

  I let her out of the truck and watch her ass shimmying up the rocky hill.

  PART THREE

  XXIII.

  In Which I Arrive in San Francisco and Meet My Queen and My Astral Twin

  Now it is San Francisco. I have had three uneventful days, and am entering at night. The hills are all lights. The bridge is burning with brightness. It is Warren and me together, entering this American Wonderland. I am feeling my body move, blinded by the brilliance of the place. In the car, the driver looks at me strangely. I talk to Warren.

  “Do you realize what this is, Warren?” I say as we cross the Bay Bridge.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “This is indeed the living Town of Thatched Rooves.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “I count on it, Warren,” I say.

  “You have been burned before.”

  “I count on it. I am through liking pain. I am getting out of the movie. I will not be taken in by Phantoms. I will not be taken in by rustic phoniness. I don’t believe in mom and dad. And I distrust the whole revolution.”

  “So where does that put you?” says Warren.

  “Out of the car,” says the driver, a sophisticated-looking man with French cuffs and three or four wavy strands of hair.

  “How come?” I say.

  “I don’t like people who talk to themselves. It’s not healthy.”

  “I live in a fantasy world to compensate for the absurdity and stupidity of this one,” I say, which is the complete truth. Or nearly the complete truth.

  “You are crazy then,” says the driver, as he pulls off at an exit and lets me out.

  “I’m young and I can dance,” I say. I jump out the car door and dance on his hood.

  He yells, “Hey, hold on there,” and jumps out after me. I run down the street, waving good-bye to him, feeling wonder and love surging through me. I am home at last.

  And what a home. The home that I have imagined is at once a poor substitute for the reality of the streets. Thousands upon thousands of people wearing all colors. Music in every doorway, sung from pimply lips. Shops selling articles to be found nowhere else in America. It’s exotic. It’s alive. I skip from person to person, not caring that their faces are filthy. I accept joints from black people who have long since transcended Miss Rosie. Hostility everywhere, but hostility for the right people.

  “This is indeed brotherhood,” I say to Warren, as I accept an acid tablet from a short boy with more hair than Old Shep.

  “That’s correct,” he says, looking past me, his eyes waiting for a miracle.

  “How long has this been here?”

  “I don’t know, man. I just got here yesterday. You’re taking some boss acid, man. Righteous.”

  “Beautiful,” I agree, and think of Walter and Kirk back in ancient Baltimore, walking through gray streets.

  “Did you hear the news?” I say. “Baltimore, Maryland, was hit by a bomb, but no one knew it.”

  “Don’t laugh,” says the kid, as he brushes the hair out of his eyes and stands with all his weight on one foot, just like the Grateful Dead in the picture above his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Laughter is lies, man,” he says.

  “How can that be?” I say, amazed that I have gotten into such a deep philosophical question with someone only three seconds after meeting him.

  “Because while you are laughing, your circuits are shortened, you aren’t seeing, and what if your Astral Twin came by while this blindness was taking place?”

  I start to say “My Who?” but think better of it. I will not be accused of deep probing, the mark of the weakened intellectual. Instead I grunt.

  “Uh,” I say.

  “You dig what I’m talking about, man?” he asks, and disappears into a shop called the Phoenix.

  I sit on the curb and finger the blue-dot tablet he has given me. “Acid,” I say over and over again. “I am taking acid.”

  “That makes you a real fucking guru,” says Warren.

  “Cynics are only failed saints,” I answer.

  I think about my Astral Twin and look at the feet of those passing by. All the feet seem to be etched with character. All the feet are the feet of Victor Mature in The Robe. Sandals with one strap, sandals with two straps, sandals with knee-high straps, toes that ride on the sandals majestically. Toes with the dirt of a million cities, a million miles in them. I remember Mother Freda trying to force me to take baths, bitching about the amount of water I use, and I laugh wickedly. I hold the pill to my eyes and imagine all the wonders of the world seen in it, and then more wonders, wonders which are not seen by the masses, but only by people who have the courage to face them. Beauty so blinding that Glenn’s eye sockets would go up in smoke. I assume a hunched-over position, like the boy next to me, and mutter to myself:

  “So this is my fate then. To be a carrier of beauty.”

  I throw the pill down my throat, with no precautions, hoping that an FBI agent sees me. I will transform him into a drop of water and carry him to the Pacific Ocean. Then I will blow the drop to the waves, and he will become like the sea, ever changing yet the same.

  Shep is back.

  “You drop the acid, my friend?” he says. “Yes.”

  “O.K., man. Now let me tell you about Astral Twins.”

  “Yeah, man, you do dat,” I say, dropping my voice to a man-of-the-world huskiness.

  “The guidebook says that every person in the world has an Astral Twin, and that if you get your consciousness expanded you can see him. So like I been taking this Owsley shit for three days, standing here waiting for the cat.”

  “Wo
w,” I say, genuinely excited.

  “Yeah,” he says, closing his eyes and waving back his hair with a jerk of his head. “And when I find him, I’m going to swing some big deals, you dig?”

  “Sure,” I say, immediately picking up on the fantasy, which I know is a fantasy but which draws me into it anyway.

  “I dig. You can pull some kinda huge deal, make a whole lotta money, and then let your Astral Twin take the rap, fly to South America and start a new life for yourself.”

  “India,” he corrects.

  “Yeah, I see. Spend the bread on a palace, study yogi.”

  “Study what?”

  “Yogi,” I say, terrified that he has found a chink in my new hip armor. If this were Baltimore and he called me like this I could rap him in the chops, but this is San Francisco.

  “It’s Yoga,” he says coolly. “You not some kinda cop, are you?”

  “No, I was just testing you,” I say, remembering the same stunt pulled by George Raft in Undercover Man, when he was nearly found out by a gang of weapon thieves.

  “I don’t know about you, man,” he says, and gets up. “If you’re a cop, though, you’ll have a bad trip. See you around.”

  I try once more to convince Shep that I am not a cop, but it’s no go. He goes through a beaded curtain in the back part of the Psychedelic Shop, and I imagine him calling out a band of hippie toughs to hurt me. Just as this mind-expanding drug comes on I will be taken out to Golden Gate Park. They will camouflauge my screams by playing rock music through sixteen amplifiers. Then they will circle around me, hitting me with love beads and old sandal straps. I will fall on my knees to show them that I am indeed a religious man, but to no avail. Louder music, and circling hateful hippies, my belching mouth filling with drugs (music louder and louder). In the end they will give me an overdose of heroin and leave me in Golden Gate Zoo, lying broken and moaning in the seals’ cage. Horrified by this prospect, I immediately head away from Haight Street. Already I can feel my body moving through space, and a definite tingling in my brain. Good Lord, this is a mighty drug I have taken, and I am having paranoid thoughts. This will not do. I decide to sit in the Panhandle, a wide strip of park two blocks down from Haight Street. Once there I will look at the smallest flowers and see all the veins pulsating life, just as the girls in the Life magazine articles do. Then I will feel a oneness with nature and get rid of all the hateful impulses which have been programmed into me from a lifetime of hate and fear. Sixteen hours later I will come back to this earth a new man, a man who has earned the right to wear colorful tunics. I will hold my neck back at a tilt like Charlton Heston.

  I sit on the faded green park bench, a sprig of some yellow flower in my hand. Actually, I am unable to concentrate on it, because the LSD is sending me out of my body at incredible rates. I can think of nothing, can do nothing. Everything is going around and around. I am afraid I will fall off the bench and break open my skull. Therefore, I use the little presence of mind I have left and lie on the grass. This is much better. Every blade seems to hold precious moisture in it. Every little ant is made up of the finest organs. I hum happily to myself and roll my forehead on the wetness.

  “Wonderful,” I say. “This is indeed wonderful.”

  “Give me all your money or I will kill you,” a voice says.

  I realize that this is just an acid hallucination and feel no fear. In fact, it seems to me that I have come upon a great insight. The mind is like a pie, and one little slice of the pie might be fear, and that is the part that most people feed on. But I will take another slice, the slice of the pie that is full of cherries and wonderful flaky crust, and by eating this piece instead of the moldy old fear piece, I will magically restore the whole pie to its original sweetness.

  “If you don’t give me that money,” says the voice, “you aren’t going to believe what’s going to happen to you.”

  I feel a sharp point on my back, and though I am certain it’s only a hallucination caused by this consciousness expander, I turn over. Above me is a girl with long hair and a beautiful face. The face of all the stars in the galaxies. The face … my Queen from the Town of Thatched Rooves.

  “You are my Queen,” I say.

  “You are a dead king unless I get the money, sweetie,” she says, smiling.

  The knife is at my throat, but I am not afraid. My Queen would do me no harm. This is a test to see if I am brave enough to be worthy of her hand.

  “Here is my money, little Queen,” I cry, delighted.

  I hand her my wallet and see her sprinkle fairy dust all over my body. She says, “Thanks, baby,” and disappears into the bushes. I cannot believe she has called me “baby,” and pat my own cheeks many times. The grass, however, is a little cold, for she accidentally cut off the buttons on my pants and shirt before leaving.

  I stand, shivering, and hold on to my pants. Along Oak Street the cars whiz by at two hundred miles an hour. Several people look out at me and point with great enthusiasm.

  “What a wonderful place, this San Francisco,” I say.

  Then I walk along the edge of the road, listening to the sounds of the engines, hearing the musical honks of the horns. Lights are beacons of friendliness, windows are eyes which look back at me and shine with approval. Two blocks back, on Haight, there is a red glow, the glow of warmth and great fellowship. And now, standing next to me on this corner (which is really a pleasant oasis where the weary travelers stop to refresh) is a huge bus. The door opens, the door to all the caves of Ali Baba, and I ponder the wonder of it.

  “Opened all by itself,” I say, shaking my sailing head.

  “You wanna ged on?” says the bus driver, who looks exactly like Ralph Cramden.

  “Oh no,” I say, feeling suddenly afraid. What if he takes me back to Baltimore? What if the authorities get hold of me and make me have a choice between ninety-nine years in the pen or being a banker for the rest of my life?

  The bus driver shakes his balloon head at me and starts to slam the door. It is at that moment that it happens. I see him. Sitting near the back, and staring directly at me, is my Astral Twin. Joy shoots all over my body, every pore an orgasm of happiness.

  I pound on the door and the driver opens.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I say, ecstatic.

  “You want on?” he asks.

  “What do you think?” I say, running up the steps, my arms open, embracing the fat sweating driver.

  “Of course I want on,” I shout. “God almighty I want on.”

  The driver does not respond warmly to my hugs and kisses, and yells “Fuck off, buddy,” but that does not worry me. I race to the back seat and fall on my knees in front of my Astral Twin.

  “I’ve found you, Bobby,” I yell. “And on the first trip.”

  The man makes an attempt to stand but I grab his knees.

  “Together we can make a million,” I say. “We can change the whole world.”

  “Who is this nut?” says the man, kicking at my smiling mouth.

  “Don’t play hard to get,” I retort. “Fair’s fair, and I have found you. It’s in the guidebook.”

  The man falls on top of me and the bus driver grabs my legs.

  “Don’t Bumjar me,” I yell loudly, as they carry me up the aisle.

  “You’re my Astral Twin,” I scream, as they toss me down the steps of the bus.

  “Please come back,” I say, drowning in my own tears, as the huge lopsided bus rolls away forever into the San Francisco night.

  XXIV.

  Poem for My Queen

  It is only fitting that I have a Queen. It is only fitting that she wear royal robes, that she be a goddess. Nothing about her must be ordinary. She must speak with the diction of Mab. She must walk with the elegance of a cheetah. She must be a good cook, and must hold my soaking head in her arms after a hard day on the throne.

  Even her urine should be regal. I demand red urine.

  Blood of Queen.

  Even her armpits should be re
gal. I demand lightning

  every time she raises her triumphant fist.

  Even her ears should never hold wax.

  I demand a Queen.

  All of the Town is out a-hunting for her.

  For the next several days I will hold auditions.

  In a week I will have my goddess, my love, my Queen.

  Warren is behind a curtain, dressed in striped plumage.

  He whispers that I am heading for a fall.

  Though I am sure he is right, I will never listen.

  Palms at my feet. Stars for breakfast.

  I am no mean King.

  XXV.

  Love Among the Liberated

  The next day I am on the street. My suitcase has been stolen, and my pants are held together by pins which I stole from a drugstore. I am standing on the corner selling papers called The Oracle. In The Oracle there are many articles of great interest, such as “How to Get by on the Street.” In this article (written by someone with the name Head) the author explains that you should first realize that there are many benefits to living on the street, and these benefits are in exact ratio to the dangers. Head says that without danger life is nothing, which sounds like the Phantom’s philosophy, and my own philosophy of Doorways, which I now realize was again the Phantom’s philosophy. Anyway, Head goes on to say that living on the street toughens you up, gets you out of many softhearted middle-class death trips. I say Three Cheers for Head. I have always believed this, but if I do not eat soon I might die before I have a chance to toughen up. Head also says that living on the street exposes you to the sun and the rain; in short, forces you to realize Nature. This realization, according to Head, will bring about a lessening of the ego. And when the ego is diminished, then you will be able to see outside yourself and be in touch with the eternal. I agree with Head in principle, but I still wish I had my shoes. Head did not mention the broken glass which is in between every sidewalk crack, and which makes painful injections into your soft middle-class feet. Right now I am bleeding profusely. Head finally goes on to say that you get laid a lot on the street, and that the chicks and cats whom you lay will not be anything like Billy and Susie from back in Butte, Montana. I think Head has good intentions here too, but the only girl I tried to start a conversation with barked like a dog and flipped her forefinger on my nose. Head apparently gets to go to bed with Gentle All-Loving Flower Girls, and it is I who must sit here on the street reading his article. I am not certain that if I met him I would care for Head. In fact, I might like to kick Head’s head around (like big Lou Michaels kicking the football Sunday at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore). And how I miss Baltimore. Actually this fantasy cheers me up. The very thought of Baltimore gives me renewed faith in San Francisco. Nothing could be worse than Baltimore, with its gray streets, ten thousand Catholics, with its Baba Looie and Kirk, my vicious friends. I grit my teeth and yell “Get your Oracle” to cars which are lined up all the way down to Fillmore Street. My luck is not so good, because within ten square feet there are about fifty paper boys. One of them is playing a flute, another is beating on a drum, one girl, who is very small (weighs about forty pounds), is dancing in whirling circles singing, “love, love, buy your love.” All of these people are selling papers, and I realize that I must have a gimmick. Therefore I go into the little candy store and with my last quarter buy five Bonomo Turkish Taffys, which I lick and put on my cheeks and forehead.