Rough Living: Tips and Tales of a Vagabond

omfg...no wonder my father disowned me

One aspect of this site is to share my work as a writer through the years. For example, I’m sharing the audiobook version of Notes from Nowhere (2020) in weekly installments (episode 1 here) for paid subscribers. I’m also sharing some new and experimental (and quite explicit and graphic) fiction with paid subscribers on another day - Here’s the first part of The Ghosts of Intimacy.

Today, I continue with a series of posts are from the first book I wrote, Rough Living: Tips and Tales of a Vagabond (2003 & 2012 revised) Here is a link to Part 1 of this series - the Introduction. In a sense, the success of this book set me on the path I’m on, or the failure of this book - depending on how you look at it.

This week, in the paid subscriber section - I offer expanded content- as well as links to where you can get the full PDF versions of the book for free. I’ll offer commentary on the parts of the text we cover. In addition, paid subscribers have already gotten valuable updates on new ways to do things more than two decades after first publication because keep in mind, I wrote this in 2002 so much of it has been absorbed by the world and some of it simply doesn’t work any longer. The world has changed dramatically since that time. We may not see it clearly, like a person who looks in the mirror every day and doesn’t see themselves aging - but the change is profound. This is one more reason to become a paid subscriber - you will get the value of modern perspectives and tools. Your subscription will pay for itself.

Don’t worry though, free subscribers will always get pieces of the original 2003 text itself, delivered weekly. Share it with a friend. Allons-y!

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Hot Settlement

In the year 2000, I lived in Bellingham but was commuting with my little VW Fox to Seattle every day for a new job. It was a lot of driving, but I liked it. Then a 16-year-old girl t-boned me at a crossroads and totaled my little car. Erma, the insurance adjuster who came to see the car was one of the hottest women I’d ever met.

I was pretty bummed when she told me the car was totaled. I said no big deal but I was disappointed. She asked if I had any further questions and I said just one figuring I"d already lost my great commuting car and would need to move to Seattle. I asked her if she wanted to have a drink with me.

She paused. “I’ m not supposed to,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
She said, “That’s just what they say.”
“We’ll talk about accidents,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. "Call me in a few days."

We got off the phone and I literally jumped up and down for joy that this beautiful woman was even willing to agree to have a drink with me.

“Hey, Erma, this is Vago the VW guy.”
“Oh, hey, I was just thinking about you.” Was it just me or did she sound like she was naked? It was nothing in her voice, I just pictured her naked..thinking about me!
“Really? What are you doing?” Here it came…I knew she was going to tell me she was in the bath or eating a banana.
“Trying to get my valves adjusted right. I can’t seem to get them to stop clanking. I’ve got oil all over me.” Okay, so this was okay, she was thinking of me as she lay on the ground covered in oil…that was sort of sexy…I mean, maybe it was her way of telling me something.
“Wow, you’ve got to make sure the feeler gauge is going all the way in the slot. Wiggle it around in there. You have to penetrate all the way and fill the gap completely. You want it tight, but not too tight!” I could play this game too, I was good at this.

“Hey, what are you wearing?” She asked me and guffawed loudly. “Do you come here often?” She completely ruined it.

I laughed " Hey, that was fun, why’d you ruin it? Do you want to get that drink?”

“Shit. My roommate is moving so me and my other roommate have to move too since she’s the one who rented the house. We’re packing up everything today. I should really be doing that now….”

Here was where she blew me off..I knew it was too good to be true.

“What do you think about tomorrow night? You can come out with me and my roommates. They’re hot, you just can’t touch em, okay?” It was better than rejection.
“Hmm, tomorrow, let me look at my calendar.” Like I had a calendar. I didn’t even know what the date was. “Yeah, it looks like I can shift this around a bit…yeah, that sounds great. What time?”

“Come to my house about six. We’ll start drinking there.” She gave me quick directions to her place. “See you then.”

“Right on Erma. Good luck with the lube job, I mean valves.” What a dork I am.
I was excited, she’d probably laugh when she found out I was living in my bus.
When I got there, she had modified plans a little. Her friend from Colorado was in town so we were going to go meet him at the Triangle Bar in Fremont.

I drove my new car, a Subaru wagon, to her house, where I met her two roommates. Both were hotties but the one who was moving out, Bertha, looked like a meth head chick. She had that high-strung, strung out, white trash way about her. Mathilda, the roommate who was getting a new place with Erma was a princess in a white angora sweater. Mathilda was coming with us too. I wasn’t too upset about that. Erma was absolutely stunning decked out in fashionable Seattle hippie girl attire. Sexy sexy sexy sexy…probably way to sexy for me. But maybe not…

We got to the Triangle and met up with Erma’s friend, John. As a result of his drunkenness, I got to spend all the time we were in the bar getting to know Mathilda instead of Erma while she nursed John. John and his friend needed a place to crash. John especially, and being a good friend, Erma suggested they crash at her pad. We piled into her car and went back to the girl’s place. On the trip I learned more about Erma than I’d ever thought possible because of John’s drunken commentary on her past loves, lovers, and exploits.

She was easily the hottest woman everywhere we went, with Mathilda coming in a close second. It occurred to me again that she might be out of my league what with her good looks, good job, and obviously full social life. It occurred to me over and over and over.

At her house, we drank beer and red wine.

“I remember when my dad used to molest me,” Erma started. “Can you believe that I loved it. I mean, I didn’t know not to. He was so gentle and loving, you know? I thought that was what all little girls and their Dad’s did. I cried and cried when they took him away.”

Erma had no problems talking about being molested or raped as a young girl. She was almost light about it.

“My fucking Grandpa on the other hand. That fucker used to love raping me. He wasn’t able to get off unless I was crying.”

Nobody else seemed shocked at her candor. I was totally creeped out. I just wanted to leave.

“What about you?” she asked. “Got any fucked up childhood stories?”

On the one hand, I did have and it would have been easy to talk about it. But on the other hand, I no longer wanted to be there. And, I was even more disturbed because I was turned on. I mean, here is this incredibly sexy chick talking about getting fucked. She’s talking about it in detail, like, “I used to love sucking Daddy’s dick. It was my favorite lollypop” and “I had to pretend I didn’t like it when Grandpa ass fucked me.” I mean these are disturbing fucking stories, but I felt my dick getting hard as she said it. I wanted to fuck this chick even though she was totally fucked up and at the same time, I wanted to get as far from her as possible.

So when she asked me to tell her a story, I just made an excuse about how normal my childhood had been. She pressed and I said that I had lost my father — we went to the park and I never saw him again. It was a lie, but I meant it to be funny and ended with "I always pictured him somewhere with amnesia.”

“I bet that’s his girlfriend’s name,” she laughed. I laughed too. Had she been lying about all that shit? I have no idea.

John passed out on Mathilda’s bed (of course) and his buddy left with some friends who arrived to take him back to the bar. Mathilda went to bed with John and Erma sat up talking with me. Finally, I got up the nerve to kiss her and to my surprise she kissed me back. When I put my hand on her breast she pointed to the bedroom door. I carried her to bed. The night was delightful and thank god she didn’t call me Daddy.

"Give me a call," I said to her the next morning. “Let’s hang out more.”

She never did. I didn’t call her either - it was too much. I still have no idea if she was just a chick with a twisted sense of humor or deeply damaged. I should have offered her a lollypop.

Conversations with Unremarkable Men

George Hush and I got on his bikes (George always keeps a couple of extra bikes around for his guests) and rode down to the industrial beach where I had parked my bus. This is where Aquillo Mallot and the other bums we like hang out.

He was sitting in a tent with a couple of other bums. Aquillo introduced me to Jeff, the older guy whose little tent we sat around as we smoked more ganja. Jeff, it turns out, is the heir apparent to the throne of Wales. True or not, none of us knew, but on the sand or in the streets, you don’t question anyone’s story. For all we knew he could be the King of Sweden.

Aquillo put it another way when he, George, and I moved down the beach. “Everybody is entitled to their fantasy, and what the hell, he could be a fucking alien from the Dog Star.”

George started a fire. It was starting to rain and we set up Aquillo’s dingy as a wind/rain break. Then we just chilled out. Talking.

“The fundamentalist Christian’s told me that peace in Israel would mean the end of the world in 3 ½ years,” I told them.

“It’ll end sooner than that if they keep spraying this chemical shit from these high altitude jets,” Aquillo said, “They’re trying to immunize us, or poison us, or something, but I’ve seen the chem.-trails for three days running now.”

“I hear that Maitreya has been having secret meetings with the United Nations and letting the world leaders know what they need to do to fix the planet, but they won’t listen.” George told us in a conspiratorial whisper about the future Buddha and his hidden agenda. “Maitreya is gonna fuck up the leaders man. He’s the fighting Buddha.”
It’s funny how enjoyable the free things in life are. Sitting on a beach in the rain, having a fire, riding bikes, and talking about anything and everything.

George’s cell phone rang as I recovered in the silence. It was our friend Ursula. Sort of a surreal moment when she found out we were with Aquillo and asked to speak to him. George and me looked at each other with huge shit eating grins as Aquillo Mallot sat on the beach, next to a fire, dog leash in hand, talking to a pretty girl on a cell phone.

Aquillo had never used a cell phone before. George kept whispering and giggling

“Look, Aquillo’s on the cell phone.” She tried to talk him into coming over but Aquillo doesn’t like sitting indoors. We sat on the beach drinking whiskey instead until sleep called us away one by one. I woke up in the morning and was going to leave when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Aquillo and his dogs coming down the hill. I shut off the bus and waited.

“It’s a good thing you waited,” he told me with a grin “We’re about to smoke a joint.”
Shannon and Hopalong weren’t far behind him. We smoked and fell into our usual patois.

“Here we are, “ I said. “2001. We all survived the bigY2K…no problems.”

They laughed. Shannon shook his head. “ The country is heading into a recession but why should that bother warriors of alternative means?” We all laughed louder.

“2001,” Aquillo roared, “ A homeless oddity.” We all roared with him.

We sat by the fire drinking whiskey, smoking pot, and listening to each other talk pure bullshit.

A Further Conversation with Aquillo Mallot

(This conversation was recorded and transcribed by my good friend Izak Holden and originally published in Conchsense Magazine which was an anarchist zine I published in the late 90's in Bellingham, Washington)

“The Secret Chiefs told me to do it, ” he once told me when I asked why he was trying to revive the Old Goddess Worship down on this beach.

“I want these kids to worship the Sumerian Goddess of the underworld, Eris Kegal, at 4:20 in the afternoon and morning.”

He lit up a joint and dirt covered it from his soiled brown lingers. He took a puff and passed it to me. I hit it. Shit weed. Rescued from a dumpster outside the dorms.

“How do you feel about being called homeless?” I asked, trying to figure out how I should feel about being “homeless.” Aquillo laughed. “I think it’s a line and outstanding name. I think everybody should refer to me as homeless. That way there’s definition. I think we should wear orange armbands so we can be identified by the populace and get picked up with the daily trash by the police. I think we should be branded with a “V” for vagrant on the forehead like in old time England and if caught inside the gates be beheaded. That’s what I think about homelessness.” I passed the joint back. “Yeah, but what about the people who refer to people like you and me as lazy bums?”

Aquillo took a deep hit and replied in a hold it in voice.” I am the king of laziness! I am laziness himself! The God basking in the fuckin’ sunshine, that is I. Laziness! Sloth! Indolence! It all comes down to dirt level.” He exhaled.

Aquillo is a prophet of the dumpster. “Dirt level?”

“Dirt level. How much dirt you have on you and how much dirt you don’t. It’s the general fear. Cultural fear. The thing about homelessness is that it’s the right for children growing up in America to grow up killing homeless people. It’s the new rite of passage in America as well to let children go into high schools and mow down their classmates. This is what I feel is happening. You know? I don’t even look at it as homelessness though, that’s the main thing. You got the wrong guy as far as the homeless dude. You picked the wrong fuckin dude."

"I’m just a low down clown. You know? The homeless guy, he’s another dude, cause I carry my home in my heart. That’s the amazing thing, all those other people are homeless out there.. .not me. I’m just adequately shelter deprived." "Unable to build my sacrificial fires whenever I need to. I’m a holy man. I have a gift. I’m bringing it to the people without a roof over my head. That’s the same thing Jesus said, go into the wilderness and fornicate... .rapidly.” He stood up and started gathering the dry brush that grew along the beach. He left the joint with me.

“Class war. It’s all so the evil masters of the earth, the WTO, can have their UN goon squad bop down in the back yard and start gathering up “homeless” people and shipping them off to the concentration camps to fuel the new Soylent Green factory dog food conspiracy. What do you think will happen when we sell a billion cars to China? Everyone will be homeless then. “

He looked up and smiled as he came back to where I was listening.

"Everybody is going to be living off of dirt and sticks. It just changes hands. The water is rising. Better get ready. My people in the end times will eat the people with homes. They’ll be food and slaves. Their world ends and mine begins.”

“But what motivates you to continue with this lifestyle?” I asked as Aquillo built a small teepee and struck match to the fine tinder.

“Love. Love of Life. The story of Riley. The guy in Ireland who went around like a Roman God. He got drunk and whored and laid around in the countryside. Not working. Just kicking back. The love of life or I have no reason to be doing what I’m doing. I’m leading the life of Riley. People should elect me. Fll be the mayor! I’m here because I have to be here. Other people are here because they have drug or mental problems. I have no mental problems except for this fetish of digging through dumpsters."

"I do have a mental problem though, megalomania. I believe in what I do. Since other people are taught not to believe anything unless it comes from the TV or some authority. I say usurp that authority, get naked, throw off your fucking.. .light sabers. Come live in the wilderness with me."

"I’m like Til Ubinspiegal. He’s the German naturalist who lived like Robin Hood in 1840’s Germany. Stagecoaches would go by and he’d ride out and take all of their money. He did it so humorously that everybody laughed while he was taking it. And he would say ‘Come with me! Come live with me! You don’t need this!’ This was in the 1840’s.” He laughed again. “And he robbed the rich for thirty years and then of course, they had him up on the gallows. Everybody in the country knew him, so maybe a thousand people from all over showed up to see him hanged. And on the gallows, he was laughing, and everybody watching was laughing. And they kept laughing even after no more sound came from his swinging, smiling face.”

“Do you choose to stay adequate shelter deprived?” I asked as the fire started to warm up and the weed made things different.

“No, not by choice. My choice would be to be burning down houses and using them for ceremonial fires to stay warm with in the winter. A house a day. The basic thing about the whole lifestyle is that if the police leave you alone, then you’re going to have a good winter. It’s the police that are the problem, nothing else."

"Homeless people aren’t tough enough. You know a few get murdered here and there out on the tracks because they don’t protect themselves. They get preyed on. The basic thing is arm yourself to the teeth and build many fires and do many sacrifices to the great Gods. The great old ones. How can I answer these questions with a straight face?"

"I just am. One in ten thousand is I. One of the ten thousand. I live here; I’m a natural person. I’m an aboriginal. I’ve gone native and I fucking live here.” Aquillo pulled a pint of cheap whiskey from his pocket. “Have a slug of this and let me explain something. It’s us against them. Either you over throw your masters or else you just walk away and ignore them. That’s why I think work is part of the prison system. You know? Make something for somebody to do so they can stay warm and eat. Make them do that to get here. It’s something they want to do.

"Am I lazy? No, I just don’t want to be a dumb shit workman and get paid shit. I’d rather be scrounging through trash and picking exotic mushrooms and being the barter system. I’d rather be pirating all the goods I can get my hands on. Life was simple a hundred years ago. Kick back. People are recently homeless."

"In the old days they were just pilgrims and holy men and raving monks. Spiritual warriors that live outside and brave the weather. That’s why I don’t call it homeless. A lot of people have houses, but very few have homes. You could have the biggest house and be just rotting inside your soul. What I’m saying is a home is not a house. And having all your reality around you and its all wealth and opulence but that doesn’t mean you have anything. Your soul might be rotten. So its spiritual health inside the body which keeps me the way I am."

"Natural. People weren’t meant to work or do for anybody else unless they felt like it, you know? Like ‘that’s a good thing to do’ not ‘ I gotta get up and go dig this ditch for this fucker who I don’t even like’ I’d rather feast on his flesh for breakfast. That’s the lie they told you and that’s the lie they sold you. Go to school, go to work, and then die!”

The Duck.

I stopped and talked with the bum who was lying in the grass listening to country music on headphones and complaining about the rain as he smoked a cigarette. He told me a lot of the tramps had been getting their gear stolen. We talked about life on the road and he told me he was going to Phoenix. “Get where it was still warm and didn’t rain.”

I walked all the way through Vancouver to reach the on ramp and this tramp named Duck walked with me part of the way. He complained about the rain and bum’s gear getting ripped off. Curiously, he had a huge bag of stuff he complained about too.

He asked “You drunk?”

It was about 10 AM.

“No,” I replied.

“I am. Been tramping a long time. You got any cardboard?” “Just my sign.” I showed him the sign I’d made which simply said "Bellingham."

“Well I gotta get me some so I can fly some cardboard and get me some spending money.” He was dressed all in camouflage.

“I gotta piss… I wouldn’t be a tramp if I couldn’t piss and walk at the same time."

I started walking a bit faster as he slowed down. Suddenly I heard the additional splash of urine on the sidewalk. The Duck didn’t seem to mind that it was daylight or think that the couple walking behind him would mind a little extra precipitation.

I walked about 20 feet ahead of him and tried not to burst out laughing. He kept cussing about the rain and pissing. I turned around once and saw him pissing all over himself. That was the last I saw of The Duck.

A Random Bender in Seattle

I was bored, not knowing what to do with my time, so I settled down in my bus and read Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. Costa was the Chicano lawyer who gained fame through representing and carousing with Hunter S. Thompson. The overall effect of the book on me was to create an overwhelming urge to drink.

I decided to head to downtown Seattle and see what I could see. I thought bus fare was a buck and a quarter and asked a woman at a Pony Express Postal Service if she could give me change for a dollar. She refused She nearly spit at me as she belched out

“I don’t give change!” She said it like she was saying "I don’t suck strangers cocks." As if I were asking the old white cow to give me a blowjob. I just wanted change for a buck. The cab driver at the counter looked as shocked as I felt at her reaction. She must have thought I was going to go play some demented video games or visit the peepshows.

I got change at a Mexican restaurant. The Mexican lady was nice about it. The cabbie came out of Pony Express and asked me if I still needed change. Turns out I didn’t need the quarters until later when I visited the Peep Shows on First Avenue and played some demented video games at Wizards of the Coast because bus fare was just a $1. Why had I thought it was $1.25.

I caught a bus to the U-district and made sure to get a transfer. Bus transfers are such fantastic things. Useful for an all day trip around the city and all for a measly dollar! I was good and drunk when I got on the bus. A tall black man in a short white coat sat next to me. He broke bus etiquette by holding out his hand. "Hi. I’m Tim." I knew something was coming after that.

"I used to go to church to pick up pussy," he told me. “I used to come home with these nervous, prudish girls white girls and just fuck em. But then I got sucked into the religion."

This was where I thought the pitch would come. He was going to tell me about God.

"I became a Christian and a cult in California. It was run by a Hollywood agent named Christopher who came to Seattle to scout talent. Man, that guy used to fuck us all with his big cock. I even let him fuck me!”

Maybe this was a gay pickup. I was too drunk to be bothered by his weird confession, but I liked the lesson. He had joined a church to get fucked and then gotten fucked. I made a mental note to my self to stay away from religious girls.

Next up when Tim got off the bus (with no solicitation at all, by the way, just the odd confession) was a crack whore in torn fishnet stockings and a silver dress. She too, sat next to me and broke bus etiquette.

“This is a crazy fucking bus,” she whispered. “All the people that ride this bus are fucking nuts!”

She smiled, a big gnarly tooth crack-whore smile. “That’s why we’re both here, right?”
Maybe they smelled the booze on me. I laughed anyway. We both laughed. “I’m Mary Jane.”

Not a surprising name but I had thought she’d be Twinkie for some reason.

Behind us were two big black guys. They were laughing and joking with each other. Telling stories. In front of us was a short white guy, and a large fat Indian woman with a tiny red bindi on her giant fat face.

My new friend, Mary Jane the crack whore, got off the bus with me and grabbed my arm. "I’ll buy you a beer," she said. I hadn’t seen that coming. We wandered into Earl’s on the Avenue. Earl’s is a sports bar. Mary Jane bought me a beer. Next to us a very drunk red faced guy was arguing with a priest — both sitting at the bar. “God damn” and “Dammit to hell” were the only phrases I caught. Mary Jane and I were cracking up. No pun intended.

Mary Jane had a wine spritzer which is a perfect cheap whore drink and I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon which is a perfect drink for a cheap whore to buy you. We moved to a table when I bought the next round. I was hammered. I decided to piss on the floor, under the table. I thought I could do it without getting up. I unzipped and pissed. I guess I was inspired by The Duck.

"What the fuck?" Apparently, I got some on Mary Jane. The sound of my stream of piss hitting the brass table legs made a musical sound that caused the priest and his drunken friend to turn around. Mary Jane, much to her credit, started singing "Like a Virgin" to cover up the sound once she’d figured out what I was doing. We giggled together as a yellow stream wound its way across the uneven bar floor.

We moved to another table and the foul mouthed guy from the bar came and joined us. He was on the bottom end of a thirty-day bender and he kept popping Xanex and putting them back with full glasses of red wine. 46-years-old and proudly told us he had never worked a day in his life because he had a trust fund. A fucking trustafarian.
"I got a DUI last year," he told us. "I fucking worked the system though. I got off with two weeks of intense relapse prevention instead of two years of treatment. It was my third one." He seemed proud of it. "I laugh every time I drink a beer. I’m a fucking alcoholic, what the hell else am I supposed to do?”

"I’m a whore," Mary Jane said, which didn’t surprise anyone. "I used to have a pussy made of gold. These days, maybe it’s made of nickel though."

"You ain’t that bad," Nate said. He wasn’t a nice man, so he was obviously hammered.

"I can make any man come in less than ten minutes," Mary Jane said. "I still got that going for me."

The trustafarian bought the rounds after that. He was actually chatting her up. I was ready to go. I used my transfer to catch a bus to 1st Avenue. At Pike Place Market I heard two little English boys talking with their babysitter “Rose, it must be nice to not have to go to school and be able to sit around and do whatever you want all day” the smaller of the two said to her, to which the other replied “Not me, I want an education, I don’t want to have to sit on the street and beg people for money saying
“Please give me money because I need a prostitute.” I swear. That was what they said. I heard it.

I dropped a dollar into a bum’s guitar case as he played some old timey bluegrass. It made me feel good — so I gave him a buck. I spent 50 cents in a peep show, but couldn’t really focus on the girl behind the glass. Maybe I spent more than fifty cents…I don’t remember.

The next thing I knew, I was in a Bingo Hall.

I screamed out "Bingo!" as the numbers on my card danced in front of me. None of the oldsters were amused. My last number came up on the screen but the caller hadn’t called it yet. I screamed out “Bingo!!” again and the woman next to me yelled. Keep going, "He doesn’t have it!"

“But all my numbers are covered,” I said.
“He’s got to call the number before you can say Bingo. Those are the rules.” More dirty looks from the serious Bingo players. The paymaster grudgingly laid $40 in front of me after checking my card very carefully.

I still had the $40 when I got home. I passed out on the floor. I woke up in a puddle of wine and Chinese food. I’d forgotten about Chinese food. It came back to me suddenly. I started to wish I’d never read anything by Oscar Zeta Acosta.

Shroomin at the Hot Springs

Scenic Hot Springs is off of Highway 2 near Snoqualmie between Seattle and Everett.
We hiked two miles vertically and finally reached the hot springs where about a dozen people were nudely soaking and reveling despite the snow, the icy slick trail, and the difficult hike. By the time we got there, it was dark.

Someone there offered us some psychedelic mushrooms almost as soon as we arrived and so we settled into the natural hot spring tubs with an expectation of the unexpected. Just as the shrooms began to kick, which I think was faster than normal because we were soaking in the hot pools

A Puerto Rican man in his 40’s who reached fame through traveling to different hot springs and cooking incredible gourmet treats for those lucky enough to be there. He was, of course, naked, as were we. Everybody was — this, after all was a wilderness hot spring in the Pacific Northwest.

Before he cooked, Robert explained the hierarchy of the hot springs to everyone there.

“There is a class system here” he said, “It goes like this. This place and this energy is a result of Goddess. So first in the hierarchy are the goddesses who come here.Whatever they want, they get. Here they are not girls or women, they are Goddesses and I exist to serve. ” The beautiful girls in the tub with us murmured in delight.

“Next come those who serve Goddess and the Goddesses who visit. So this young man,” he indicated a dark youth with a secure energy about him who was happily massaging a Goddess’s shoulders. “He is next because he helped me carry my gear up the mountain and he is really pleasing this Goddess. After that come the rest of the guys.”

The shrooms started reshaping my reality and the snow-capped peak directly across from us began sort of bow and kow-tow to me while the trees began to giggle. Faces and words began to blend into each other and I thought of how the whirling dervish spins so reality blurs together and God can be seen in totality. My reality was blurring into the steam rising into the clouds and the stars that were not there dancing among those that were.

One of the boys brought out a pipe and propane lighter. We shared his weed. I was intensely reflecting inward while I sat in the corner. Sitting in a bucket looking at my bucket. The Goddesses were lovely and the water was divine at just the right heat. A light snow began to fall.

Robert pontificated pleasantly from the pool called The Lobster Pot and I settled into a comfortable corner of another called The Bear’s Den. The dark boy and his Goddess were next to me; they were very comforting and real. The Naked Gourmet served up a delicious treat with orange slices that I tasted with my ears and felt with my nose.
Goddesses first, then helpers, and then the guys. Strange things still blurred the corners of my vision.

Two very drunk teenage Goddesses came and got in the Bear’s Den with me. They both had huge bottles of beer. I struggled to hold on to the center as their much older boyfriends came and got in with them. Let the molesting begin…

I felt an urge to speak but each time I tried, I realized, I fit in better being quiet. The Goddess and her dark servant moved to the Lobster Pot and the drunk young Goddesses squealed in delight at the extra room. I felt like I was going to be soaking in their boyfriend’s sperm soon so I moved to the Lobster Pot.

Robert’s constant patter about the adventures of the Naked Gourmet allowed me to simply listen and exist in my own world. Each time someone got out of the pool, we all shifted to a more comfortable spot. Slowly faces became distinguishable and words took on meaning. The visual died away and I returned to the somewhat Valhallalike world of Scenic Hot Springs.

The Naked Gourmet cooked in the snow and then turned from his makeshift kitchen with quesadillas and more orange slices.

Shortly afterward he began packing his enormous load of gear into a sled and set off yelling “For those of you here tomorrow, I’ll be back for brunch!”

I stayed in the Lobster Pot for the next 6 hours or so, only getting out once to take an enormous pee in a downhill snowdrift.

About 3:00 AM, my friends and I dressed as needle like snowflakes flogged our mineral bathed skins. The hike down the mountain was a slick ride on one foot while crouched in the easy parts and treacherous ice in the flatter areas.

I thought my trip was still going on as a loud buzzing got near deafening and I looked up to see the purplish blue wires coursing up and down the mountain with an eerie ionic glow.

My friend saw me looking and said “Isn’t that a trip?”

“You mean it’s real?” I asked.

“Yeah, freaky huh?”

I thought about the strange effects all of that electromagnetic energy must be having on my brain, nervous system, and body as I lived among it every day…the same as standing under the same power lines in a city… the thought made me shudder.