The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Read Online Free PDF Page A

fungous. His head is practically shaven and he is so thin that all the flesh seems to be gone off his head and when he contracts his jaw muscles it is as if some very clever anatomical diagram has been set in motion with little facial muscles, striations, sheathes, ligaments, tissues, nodules, integuments that nobody ever suspected before bunching up, popping out, springing into definition in a complex chain reaction. And he contracts his jaw muscles all the time, concentrating, with his head down and his eyes burning, concentrating on a drawing he is doing on a pad of paper, an extremely small but crucial drawing by the looks of his concentration . . .
    Black Maria sits on a folding chair and smiles ineffably but says nothing. One of the Flag People, a thin guy, tells me about Mexicans strung out on huaraches. Doris Delay tells me—
    "They're off on their own freak," Hassler continues, "and it may not look like much, but they're starting to transcend the bullshit. There's this old trinity, Power, Position, Authority, and why should they worship these old gods and these old forms of authority—"
    "Fuck God ... ehhhhh ... Fuck God ..."
    This is a voice behind a blanket curtain to one side. Somebody is back there rapping off what Hassler just said.
    "Fuck God. Up with the Devil."
    It is a very sleepy, dreamy voice, however. The curtain pulls back and standing there is a wiry little guy who looks like a pirate. Behind him, back in there behind the curtain, all sorts of wires, instruments, panels, speakers are all piled up, a glistening heap of electronic equipment, and the tape is back there going ... "In the Nowhere Mine ..." The guy looks like a pirate, as I said, with long black hair combed back Tarzan-style, and a mustache, and a gold ring through his left earlobe. He stares out, sleepily. In fact, he is a Hell's Angel. His name is Freewheeling Frank. He has on the Hell's Angels' "colors," meaning a jacket with insignia, a jacket with the sleeves cut off and the skull with the helmet on it and the wings and a lot of other arcane symbols.
    "Fuck God," says Freewheeling Frank. "Fuck all forms of... of. . ." and the words trail off in a kind of dreamy way, although his lips are still moving and he kind of puts his head down and trudges off into the gloom, toward the bus, with his hands flicking out, first this side, then the other, like Cassady, and he is off on his trip, like Cassady, and, all right, a Hell's Angel—and the Hassler brushes his teeth after every meal, in the middle of a Shell station tin-can economy—
    Just then Kesey arrives.

chapter
III

    The Electric Suit

    THROUGH THE SHEET OF SUNLIGHT AT THE DOORWAY AND down the incline into the crazy gloom comes a panel truck and in the front seat is Kesey. The Chief; out on bail. I half expect the whole random carnival to well up into a fluorescent yahoo of incalculably insane proportions. In fact, everybody is quiet. It is all cool.
    Kesey gets out of the truck with his eyes down. He's wearing a sport shirt, an old pair of pants, and some Western boots. He seems to see me for an instant, but there is no hello, not a glimmer of recognition. This annoys me, but then I see that he doesn't say hello to anybody. Nobody says anything. They don't all rush up or anything. It's as if... Kesey is back and what is there to say about it.
    Then Mountain Girl booms out: "How was jail, Kesey!"
    Kesey just shrugs. "Where's my shirt?" he says.
    Mountain Girl fishes around in the debris over beside a bunch of theater seats and gets the shirt, a brown buckskin shirt with an open neck and red leather lacings. Kesey takes off the shirt he has on. He has huge latissimi dorsi muscles making his upper back fan out like manta-ray wings. Then he puts on the buckskin shirt and turns around.
    Instead of saying anything, however, he cocks his head to one side and walks across the garage to the mass of wires, speakers, and microphones over there and makes some minute adjustment. "... The Nowhere