Chapter Two
The Cactus Kingdom
Doc led him, drunk and hungover much of the time through the looking glass, tumbling down Mad Hatter rabbit holes on sojourns through Death Valley in California, and the desert lands and sands of ol' New Mex and Arizona. Two madmen doomed on the dunes, without gravitational attachment to hold them to convention nor conformity. It's also when he began keeping his writing journals to become a journalista and peyotisa. So much to absorb in this mystic region.
Plentiful pastels had aligned in secret conspiracy with the allure of desert sky azures of the old ‘Merican southwest and was attracting flies to their deaths on flystrips, and more than it’s share o’ O’Keefes and Ansels. While this macabre dichotomy of life-art and bug-death raged quietly, it conquered the hearts and dreams and fostered schemes of cool conquistadores, including the king of cibola cool, Coronado and his chaotic, quioxtic quest for seven cities of gold. He searched for amazing amazons in possession of just one breast apiece who dominate and rule the herds of male livestock in the pastures and fields of the false isle of California.. baja to you-hoo! Later, in time, the region would become awash with the meandering wanderings of the lost dutchman and his fabled fabulous, fondled shaft searching for gold with one hand, while one finger was deep inside a dyke.
California, Old Mex and arid Arizona, locked and loaded with lore and legendary figures and tall tales of their own, can’t compete in the open air market of turkish madness and madmen and mayhem, ahem…amen…ah-women…with the bastard bandito chile called Nuevo Mexico … cut now to saloon scene with whore wars underway, soiled doves in can-can boxing matches and prostitutes racing in the streets for the sports as the players placed their bets on the naked runners…win, place or show more flesh
The bare stage of the smokey cantina is set. Drunks, bad whiskey and worse, desert bad asses drink, swear and spit as the purple curtain opens, the crowd goes wild with approving applause and they can’t get enough of the outlandish outlawry of Billy T. Kid, the James Dean of the wild west firing off mirthful salvos from a pearl handled six shooter with silver city bullets packed lethally with equal measure of angst and lead. The Lincoln War Regulator without a cause, unchecked and unbalanced, left handed, right handed, got to hand it to ya…guns blasting away with the ferocity and velocity of Mr. Gatlings gun..letting loose an orgasmic ejaculation of hot lead and death.
Geronimo! the avenging Apache with more Apocalypse Now attitude, machismo, and bravado than Brando’s marvelous Col. Kurtz, the king kong of the Mekong on Vietnamese methamphetamine…racing across the border skewering mex-ca-bobs in redskin retaliation for brown skinned trangressions and incursions that massacre’d mescalero women and children.
Mustachioe’d Poncho Villa, viva Villa, Viva Las Vegas, it’s a gas, gas, gas, the bandito’s bandito and bandit saint of the southwest second in importance to only the Virgin of Guadalupe, or her sister, little latin lupe lu…Poncho on the march, pillaging villages with Black Jack Pershing in hot anglo pursuit south of the border, s.o.b., north of the border, norte, sur, sur, norte, nick, nolte…
1947
Good Golly, Miss Goddard! Sci-fi hi-fi so high saucers from outer spaced, stonehenged, stoned age and crashing just outside of Roswell with a klaatu, barada, nicto thud, loaded with debris and Michael Rennie-gades who now become the alienated of the alien nation – born in lunarcy, and cloaked in secrecy with lunar cretin secretions giving birth to bug eyes, anal probers and wild eyed UFO’gists!
This all on the helter skelter heels of Rockin’ Robert Goddards rocketry revelry and associated atomic badda - bing badda boom boom bomb tests near A-Bomb Alamagordo, Flashback Gordo!
“Waitress, could I get a big ass plateful of radiation and isotopes with a side order of mushroom clouds please?” Muchas Garcias, Martinez…Holy Hiroshima, Batman! Nagasaki nuked, Fatboy Wonder…duck and cover, duck and cover..and damn, do I miss the cold war. The bomb wasn’t all bad after all hell it gave us silver screen scream direct from the new mex white sands wilderness, giving birth to Gojira and the 50 foot wo-myn, the atomic hula with large, massive coconut breasts the size of Jupitor, cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon and as delicious as Venus in a wet sweat of passion.
Outer space implodes and exposes inner space with Aldous Huxley Little House on the Mental Prarie, windows wide and doors unlocked and open..inside in the dark and cobwebs strung along like electric wires the Peyote Coyote howls with Ginsberg chanting a yiddish yin and yang and yanking all the time to a new mexico mandela mandala…om, sweet om!
Hemp, hemp, hoo-ray-gun! Hallucinogens and dream catchers and dream creators, the southwest is a pipeful of mindful illusions..chinee opium dens wove silken patterns from pipes, long and hollow, as naked lute and flute players played to the opiated and doped up cowboy cowpoke pokin’ a cow, o-boy and flying high above the clatter of the stampede.
Marijuana made it’s lewis and clark cheech and chong trek, crossing the line at the rio grande from old to new..mex..to entrench itself, muy bueno, into the hempadelic fabric of Pancho’s pancho at the el rancho. The loco locals of the locale also had other ways to get whacked out, Gringo…Mucho mescaline mined from small spineless cacti called peyote kept many a medicated medicine man or woman hopped up and happy for many moons. If haight ashbury was the fort knox of LSD, then the southwestern pueblos packed enough of a peyote punch to knock out Muhammed Ali..down for the count…out cold.
Racing thoughout all it’s history, coursing through arterial lava tubes was a thick mass of asphalt, artery cloggers with speed limits in the limitless expanse of the sand of reservations…ghostly ruts of the Santa Fe to the kitcsh kulture of Route 66…the Original El Camino Real was real heavy with burro traffic, spaniards and indios, then the 20th cent paved itself over externally while we were combusting internally and the auto engine replaced the desert injun in blazing new trails amidst the redskins red rocked mountains majestic..soon, tourist from Tucumcari to Albu-Quirky snatching up every cheap knockoff navajo souvenir like rez junkies looking for a back alley wigwam welfare fix from some imaginary free clinic..war bonnets and rubber tomahawks, woven blankets, rugs and cool kachina dolls to hear the ka-ching of mucha wampum..oh yeah, got a buck? Pose with the chief along the roadside with a spittin’ image of Tonto from Toronto..all for one u.s. greenback.
Flash forward, cross the border to today, time and space…Billy the Mysterious Kid. Is it brushy bill in tex, or the kid in sumner fort? Aliens or Area 51 military secrets kept guarded and hidden and purposely misleading? Smoky bear..is it “ey” and “The” or just “T”…?? Our search through the mist of history and the desert days searching for the buttons of holy altered altars…Doc exclaimed, and how many people actually “exclaim”, THE PEYOTE WILL FIND YOU! So while we searched for the peyote, apparently the peyote was tracking us like a pitbull in heat in search of prarie dog meat…it was also the first illumination that the journey itself is part of the destination..a journey that began long ago for me through the portals of journalism, pop culture dumpster diving, drugs and sexual revolution…it’s where I learned the difference between gonzo and ganja from my purple hazed and double domed double dazed alter states and altered ego…dr. sandoz diego cerveza…and where the hipster haiku began with a lineup of assorted sordid train-hoppers, pill poppers, junkies, trannies, anarchists, artists, activists, dykes on bykes, atomic hulas, dharmabums, haiku hobos, peyotistas and socialistas…and not just a few Tom Joadistas….it all began in the American southwest desert in 1966 outside in a parking lot at a place with a broken sign that read…”Eats” in neon….
