The shaman had warned them about this vomiting effect, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant. The liquid had tasted far fouler coming back up than it had on the way down, and was so bad that they were all feverishly shuddering for a few seconds.
Then the effects started to take a hold of them. Scott and Madeline began to space out, giggling and euphoric. But Eugene was disappointed. He’d been expecting a really heavy trip and in the event it was all pretty mild. He took another cup. Then another. He didn’t feel bad, but it was obvious that for Scott and Madeline it was the mind-blowing high of a lifetime. Eugene looked around the barren desert, and tried to see what they were seeing. He felt like a ragged urchin pressed against the window of a great, opulent house where a raging, decadent party was taking place. He upped his consumption to six cups of the elixir and felt his heartbeat race, but the big doors of the mansion house stayed fastened shut. Why was he excluded? Eugene had done big hallucinogenic acid trips with Scott and even, recently, Madeline. He knew that both were seasoned acid-heads. But they had their set of keys. Where were his?
As he sat wondering what to do next, Eugene heard Scott reciting something to an open-mouthed Madeline as the pair of them sat side by side, looking into the sky, — ‘When the Eagle once again flies with the Condor, a lasting peace will reign in the Americas and will spread throughout the world to unite humanity.’ These words are from the Andean shamans who believe we’re living in the Pachacuti; a time when we must go within and know ourselves more deeply, to heal our emotional wounds of the past, and use the power of that healing to help others in their healing.
— That is sooo awesome, Madeline gasped. She pointed upward. — Lookit that sky…
While they were taking off onto another astral plane, all Eugene had done was to shit: loads and loads of it, deposited with the puke behind the closest big boulders in the rock-strewn terrain. He’d listened for a while to Scott going on about the internal purging actions of the drug, and then simply lain down in the tent for the best sleep of his life. Meanwhile, Scott and Madeline hallucinated, partied and talked till dawn. Something in Eugene had resisted the trip, and that concerned him. He recalled Dominquez saying in his lecture, though, that the drug often got you where you needed it. Eugene conceded that his body, with all the charlie and booze he’d indulged in recently, was crying out for a cleansing. Since splitting up with Lana, he’d taken up residence in several North Beach neighborhood bars, his psychosis drawing in on him, the walls of those temples of liberation shrinking to become prison cells. His jailers were the other drinkers and their obsessions. They would crowd his head with their stupid advice. He needed to get out of town for a bit, and Burning Man seemed to fit the bill.
It had been Scott’s idea. Madeline had come along, in her usual pushy way, Eugene thought, although he had very much welcomed it. He had tentatively lined her up as a possible replacement for Lana.
Eugene and Scott, old college buddies, had met Madeline last Halloween. They were drinking in Vesuvio’s Bar when she came in with three girlfriends. All of them were dressed as Storm from the X-Men; skintight black catsuits, big boots and platinum-blond wigs. At first all the girls looked identical. It was a while before Eugene recognized one as Candy, a student and an ex-co-worker in a North Beach tavern he once bartended in.
They all chatted sociably, drinking some more before heading off to join the packed throngs of revelers on Castro. Eugene had found himself talking a lot to Madeline, but in the crowd they had all gotten separated from each other. As the night wore on, the carnival mood on the streets had then turned sour. One man was fatally stabbed as a small mob of Mexican youths rampaged through the crowd. They had taken exception to what they perceived as the hijacking of the ancient Day of the Dead ceremony by the city’s gay community. Paranoia hung heavily in the air. There was a lot of jostling and screaming and Eugene, who was on a nasty coke comedown anyway, had been happy to call it a night and head home. That night he thought of that hot chick — they were all hot in that Storm get-up but the one he’d talked to — and wondered if he’d see her again and hoped that she’d gotten home okay with all the trouble of that night.
Eugene needn’t have concerned himself. After this, he seemed to keep running into Madeline. The next day he saw her in Washington Square Park, practicing t’ai chi on her own. He’d been sitting reading a newspaper. She waved at him and it took a while for Eugene to connect that she was one of the Storm girls at the bar the previous evening. After a bit she came over and they went for a coffee, discussing the previous night’s events with concern. Then he saw her again a couple of days after, in the City Lights bookstore. They went for a drink, which quickly became several; trawling some neighborhood bars they both knew, ending up in a place on Grant. Despite Madeline being quite new to town (she’d told him she’d come in from Cleveland at the end of last summer), they had a few mutual haunts and wondered how it was that they hadn’t run into each other before. They planned to go for some sushi, but somehow ended up at a dive bar on Broadway, sandwiched between strip clubs and sex shops that buzzed with neon. Eugene was impressed that Madeline was totally at ease there, even though she was the only woman present who wasn’t obviously touting for business. They’d talked about sex then, but in an abstract way, as he was at the time too depressed about the Lana situation to make a move.
They started hanging out a lot together: Madeline, Eugene, and Scott. Even at the time, he thought it was weird the way she fussed over them like they were fags, bought them little presents and cards on their birthdays and the like. When Scott had mentioned the Burning Man trip to Eugene, she’d interjected, — Count me in! with such bushy-tailed zeal that it would have been an injurious snub not to do just that.
And while Eugene was rapt in his anticipation, Scott appeared downcast. He liked to engineer what he called ‘buddy time’. A frat-boy thing, Eugene supposed.
The developing relationship with Madeline was mystifying to him, though. Eugene was twenty-six and had never been friends with a chick he hadn’t banged. He wondered whether she was a dyke, but then she would casually go and bring up some guy she’d once fucked. He knew everything about her and nothing at the same time. In those North Beach bars Madeline would sometimes look at him so tenderly; it unequivocably told Eugene that she harbored fervid passions for him. She was still shy of twenty, and he wondered how much experience she’d really had with guys. One time they’d kissed drunkenly, but not particularly passionately, with Eugene holding back, still wondering about Lana. But when his former girlfriend’s ghost receded, Eugene’s feelings for Madeline grew exponentially. Sometimes he could sense that she wanted him, perhaps so desperately that if she let herself go, she’d fall totally, unreservedly in love and give herself completely to him. Be his. In his power. To be neglected. Hurt. And he wanted to tell her: I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t know what sort of shit you heard about me and Lana, but I’m not that kind of guy!
But it was only sometimes that she looked at him like that. On other occasions the look of loathing she vented at him could glaciate his blood.
So Madeline confused Eugene. He’d never met a girl like her before. That was because, despite his wastrel behavior and occasional bohemian affectations, his big, strong, athletic build and his overt sporting sensibilities did not encourage vacillation in girls, who tended to be obviously attracted or completely repelled from the off. But Madeline was different; a constant enigma to him.