The Damned Highway Read Online Free Page A
Author: Nick Mamatas
floor and stub it out beneath my heel. Then I lean back and close my eyes and wait for the bus to come. It occurs to me to ask the vagrant how itâs possible that he sees the pink tentacle, too. This is my trip, after all. Jack Kirby kicked me in the head, not him. If the vagrant wants to trip, then let him buy his own acid, the swine. But my tongue is too thick to say these things, and then the tentacle is gently caressing my ankle. I should be repulsed or frightened, but Iâm not. In truth, the sensation is nice. The tentacleâs flesh is warm and smooth, and not at all slimy. Its touch makes me think of a woman I once knew in Puerto Rico. She touched me in just the same way. I still miss her sometimes.
The first time I tripped on acid was back when I was writing the Hells Angels book. Ken Kesey was having a big party at his place in La Honda. He was desperate to meet some of the Angels, so he reached out to me and invited us all down for the weekend. About fifty of us came rolling in on our bikes, and the Angels began to mingle with Keseyâs friends. Then he offered them acid, and I decided Iâd better join in, if only to bear witness to the bizarre scene to come. The bikers were already loaded on cheap wine and bennies when we arrived, and now they had LSD in their systems. I expected a weekend of great and terrible violence and bloodshed, but other than the gangbang, the entire experience was actually peaceful and nice, much like the current trip with the friendly tentacle.
âMy friend likes you,â the derelict informs me.
âThatâs good. I like your friend, too.â
We stay like that until the bus arrives.
THREE
Aluminum Shit Tubes Four Hundred Miles Long . . . The Bilious Man-Boobery of Dogbane Fiends . . . Twenty-Ounce Margaritas Lined with the Blood of the Industrial Proletariat . . . Pardon Me, Waiter, but There Is a Three-Lobed Burning Eye in My Starfish . . . The Power of Names and Cuff Links . . . The Ibogaine Effect Redux
ââ
I havenât actually spent much time on buses. In Colorado, there are very few, of course. Mass transit is like the varicose veins of the aging East, tortuous and dilated, pushing oxygen-starved ham and eggers to the outskirts in the evenings, only to suck them back into the diseased heart of the city at dawn. Out West, the wanderer is king. Whether itâs the Great White Freaks in their jam-packed Falcons or VW microbuses getting off on the thin air of Colorado, or fourteen-year-old farm girls who were born with stick shifts in one hand, everyone drives everywhere.
In the cities of the East, Iâd learned the easy way that buses were for the Bad Craziness. Theyâre the worst of both worlds to begin withâyouâre stuck in a tube full of lunatics, just like the subway, and also stuck in traffic at the same time, just like a taxicab. One time in New York City, when I was rushing uptown to the New York Times , I made the near-fatal error of taking the bus instead of just hailing a cab and expensing it. Walking would have been better. She sat down next to me, a girl who looked like she had come right off another bus, a Greyhound perhaps, hailing from some dying New England mill town. She was blond, with hair so light that it was nearly colorless, and thin like a tree in autumn. She didnât return my smile, but instead looked down at her hands and played with her fingernails. When the bus lurched into the streets, it started.
âIâll fuck for horse,â she said.
âWhat?â
âIâll fuck for horse,â she said, this time a little louder, but she wasnât talking to me. She was talking to anyone whoâd listen.
âGet a grip on yourself,â I told her, but I donât think she understood me. I am afflicted with a Southern accent, and some people say Iâm given to mumbling. The girl stared at me for a moment and then turned away.
A little louder came the third time:
The first time I tripped on acid was back when I was writing the Hells Angels book. Ken Kesey was having a big party at his place in La Honda. He was desperate to meet some of the Angels, so he reached out to me and invited us all down for the weekend. About fifty of us came rolling in on our bikes, and the Angels began to mingle with Keseyâs friends. Then he offered them acid, and I decided Iâd better join in, if only to bear witness to the bizarre scene to come. The bikers were already loaded on cheap wine and bennies when we arrived, and now they had LSD in their systems. I expected a weekend of great and terrible violence and bloodshed, but other than the gangbang, the entire experience was actually peaceful and nice, much like the current trip with the friendly tentacle.
âMy friend likes you,â the derelict informs me.
âThatâs good. I like your friend, too.â
We stay like that until the bus arrives.
THREE
Aluminum Shit Tubes Four Hundred Miles Long . . . The Bilious Man-Boobery of Dogbane Fiends . . . Twenty-Ounce Margaritas Lined with the Blood of the Industrial Proletariat . . . Pardon Me, Waiter, but There Is a Three-Lobed Burning Eye in My Starfish . . . The Power of Names and Cuff Links . . . The Ibogaine Effect Redux
ââ
I havenât actually spent much time on buses. In Colorado, there are very few, of course. Mass transit is like the varicose veins of the aging East, tortuous and dilated, pushing oxygen-starved ham and eggers to the outskirts in the evenings, only to suck them back into the diseased heart of the city at dawn. Out West, the wanderer is king. Whether itâs the Great White Freaks in their jam-packed Falcons or VW microbuses getting off on the thin air of Colorado, or fourteen-year-old farm girls who were born with stick shifts in one hand, everyone drives everywhere.
In the cities of the East, Iâd learned the easy way that buses were for the Bad Craziness. Theyâre the worst of both worlds to begin withâyouâre stuck in a tube full of lunatics, just like the subway, and also stuck in traffic at the same time, just like a taxicab. One time in New York City, when I was rushing uptown to the New York Times , I made the near-fatal error of taking the bus instead of just hailing a cab and expensing it. Walking would have been better. She sat down next to me, a girl who looked like she had come right off another bus, a Greyhound perhaps, hailing from some dying New England mill town. She was blond, with hair so light that it was nearly colorless, and thin like a tree in autumn. She didnât return my smile, but instead looked down at her hands and played with her fingernails. When the bus lurched into the streets, it started.
âIâll fuck for horse,â she said.
âWhat?â
âIâll fuck for horse,â she said, this time a little louder, but she wasnât talking to me. She was talking to anyone whoâd listen.
âGet a grip on yourself,â I told her, but I donât think she understood me. I am afflicted with a Southern accent, and some people say Iâm given to mumbling. The girl stared at me for a moment and then turned away.
A little louder came the third time:
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