The Trip

 

It's 10AM in Key West, Henry walks a few blocks to Frank's Place for a breakfast. He orders fried Parrot Fish, eggs, and grits with coffee.

Frank, who's a Korean War veteran, asks, 

where you been Henry? 

Hiding in my study.

You got the Cave Syndrome, boy? 

Yeah, I’m afraid of something, I don’t know what.

You’re not the only nut out there. I work at the VFW Post on weekends. a lot of vets got that PSTD. Were you in the service Henry?

No, thankfully, I’m no killer, I have flat feet, I was 4F. 

Frank laughs.

A black woman sits next to Henry like she knows him. She has white dreadlocks and a young face.

I’m Henry, how bout a drink? 

Sure, my name's Jade, I'll have a rum and Coke. 

What ya doin in Key West? 

On holiday, I’m a programmer for Tech Group in Miami.

As she sucks down her drink, Henry orders a pitcher of the same. 

Did you come alone? 

Yeah, I’m single, if that's what you mean.

You get high, Jade? 

Yeah, you holdin? 

Sure, weed, and mescaline. Whataya say we finish our drinks and go to my place, it’s close.

Can I trust you, Henry? 

Ask Frank, the bartender, so she asks, 

Frank is Henry on the up and up? Frank says, 

Henry? The best ever, a real plum. 

At the bungalow, they undress and get into the patio hot tub to relax, and he suggests,

there’s a cove on Saddle Bunch Key, it's well-shaded by pine trees and palms, we can drive there.

Sure, that'd be great.

They ice down his Coleman cooler, filling it with spam sandwiches, pickles, Miller Light, mescaline, and roll a few joints. 

Outside, they open the panel door of Henry's 70 VW Bus, placing the cooler inside.

With Jade by his side, he shifts into reverse, backs out of the driveway, takes Flagger Avenue to the Overseas Highway, drives north, and says,

we're going to the Sacred Mound.

He exits Highway 1 at Saddle Bunch Key, and drives until the road ends, parking in a cracked stone parking lot for 5 bucks.

The parking guy, a surfer with blond hair says, 

Are you guys going to the Sacred Mound? There’re some heavy vibes there, most folks go to Nude Beach. 

Yeah, where is it? The surfer points and says

take the sand path through the trees.

The Sacred Mound is surrounded by a green sand cove, they place a straw mat in the sand with the cooler on top. 

The couple is blown away as they eyeball the Sacred Mound, which is a story high, composed of crustacean shells that are decomposed and bleached from being in the sun for thousands of years. 

He grabs a couple of Miller Lights, which go down real easy,

then bringing to light a baggy of mescaline buds. 

They chew the bitter buds, washing down a handful each with beer.

As they come on the universe around them begins to wave up and down and colors become clear-cut.

Before their eyes, the Sacred Mound inflates to the size of a dirigible airship, persistently expanding, eventually engulfing Henry and Jade, undulating their bodies. They feel enraptured, born again.

In what seems like an eternity the paranormal dirigible ruptures and things around them appear to be covered with chalk dust.

Henry and Jade are visualizing matter in its purely energetic state. 

Testing the alternate environment they walk inside and through chalk-covered trees. Then wading into the white sea fifty meters out. As the waves break they move ashore as though they are walking through cotton fluff, effortlessly.

The mescaline has chemically altered their consciousness to a higher level of mindfulness.

Coming down Henry and Jade walk the tree-lined trail to the parking lot.

Back at the bungalow, Henry parks the VW Bus in the driveway. 

In the sauna again, they drink rum and Coke as the sun sets in the bay, talking about things, laughing at nothing, just trippin. 

F*ck sEx

 

Henry’s sitting on the patio of his Key West bungalow, home from Mexico, pondering sex.

His X wife Lucia divorced him in Acapulco for a muscle man, sex is everything for them.

Sexually, Henry isn’t much, he doesn’t care about it. Screwing seems like an act to him, a grand performance.

There's more to life than balling, how long does it last? 7 minutes, or maybe 14 if you think about baseball. 

Henry knew a guy, a swinger, a sex addict, who spent hours at Plato’s Retreat. After years of orgies, his cock became permanently bent, shaped like a ram's horn. 

Sex is about the power to force your favorite position on your lover, regardless of what she or he feels.

We live on a planet that’s a 24/7 sex asylum.

Martians laugh at our sex lives, thinking we have the most mundane sex under the sun.

A Martian orgasm is the most spectacular thing imaginable. They merely touch fingers and their bodies ignite from head to toe, quivering, lasting for hours.

Many bohemians in the 60s believed Wilhelm Reich’s orgone box was a liberation machine that would lead to utopia. 

The device is a wallboard box, about 10 cubic feet in size, which contains a smaller box made of galvanized iron. Between the two boxes are alternating layers of rock wool and steel wool. 

How on earth could people shed sexual repression by climbing into a closet? 

Yet, the box was in vogue with many famous hipsters and intellectuals of the time.

Norman Mailer who saw psychiatrists as ball shrinkers said at the time, 

the hipster didn't need to dissect his desires on the couch because the orgasm was his therapy.

Mailer built several variants of the orgone box in his barn in Connecticut. One was carpet-lined so that he could scream his lungs out inside while having sex, combining Reich's ideas with primal scream therapy— others were built like huge dinosaur eggs so he could roll about inside them with his lover. 

Influenced by the orgone box, Mailer, considered a genius by many, wasted a lot of time obsessing about his orgasms, how fucking childish. 

Eventually, Reich’s orgone box made its way to Big Sur, California where Henry Miller and his bohemian pals were experimenting with psychedelics— so they fucked on acid in cabin-size orgone boxes, more than a few freaking out.

Personally, I think the orgone box is a crock of shit, surfacing at the right time— during the 60s sexual revolution.

Wilhelm Reich died in the mid-60s of a heart attack, most likely having a wank in his orgone box.

Aldous Huxley wrote in his novel, Brave New World, about a futuristic dystopia where sexual promiscuity becomes the law, as political and economic freedom diminishes, a clever con by the dictator.

Huxley’s Brave New World was written in 1946 and if he were alive today he’d be stunned to see a planet that's evolved into a giant orgone box gone mad. 

Henry was sexed up plenty while attending NYU, in the 70s, and he had a rule of thumb— if a girl didn’t ball on the first date he didn’t ask her out again.  

Sometimes if his date was a quick lay, they'd go out again, but his relationships never lasted, until he met Lucia while editing The Gringo Times, an English language rag in Havana.

Yeah, Lucia is sultry, she looks like Sophia Lauren. 

She moved to Havana straight off the Sugarcane farm at 17, landing a job at The Habana Cafe as a dancer. 

She even had a fling with Fidel Castro, who sent a soldier to pluck her from The Habana Cafe, taking her to his suburban house and getting her loaded on Chivas Regal. Like the muscle man in Acapulco, she claimed, 

Fidel was hung like a burro.

Lucia was karmic payback for the women Henry balled once and threw away while at NYU.

Henry never gave knocking up a woman a thought and never used condoms, because he has black sperm that poisons anything it touches.

These days Henry's chaste, a saint, pure as the driven snow with his black poison sperm, because the word is out and there's not a woman in the Keys who'll go near him.

 

Atomic Bomb Tequila

 

Henry and his wife Lucia are eating tropical breakfast at 8AM by the pool at El Hotel Hamocas in Acapulco and he comments, 

isn't it a lovely day darling? And she replies, 

I want a divorce, I fell in love with a muscle man I met on the beach yesterday. He's hung like a burro. 

Henry shocked says, 

there's more to life than cock size and muscles.

Yeah, sure, right, pendejo, Rico and I are soulmates. So let's get a move on, my lawyer is paying off the judge for the divorce. 

The Mexican divorce takes 45 minutes.

Walking out of the courthouse Henry asks,

  

what about our bungalow in Key West, Lucia?

The deeds in your name estúpido. I’m going to pack, I have a date with Rico at Farmacia Sanborns for lunch.

In the room, Lucia slings her clothes and makeup into a suitcase and walks out without saying goodbye.

Henry goes to the patio, sits down, lights a joint, feeling dejected, and thinks, 

time to man up, I’m gonna pull my socks up and dive back into life, fuck Lucia. 

He changes into cut-offs, a Hawaiian shirt, rolls his long hair into a bun, and walks across the road to the beach. 

With his shirt off, sitting on a hotel towel, he smokes another joint, staring at the Pacific Ocean. A stunning Mexican woman in her 40s, with long black hair looking shapely in a bikini approaches him and asks,

how bout a toke, Guapo? He smiles and says

by all means,

She sits next to him and says, I’m Rosa, what’s your name, 

Henry. 

Are you single Henry? 

Yeah, I’ve been divorced for 45 minutes, 

they laugh hardily, and Rosa asks,

you're joking, aren’t you? 

No, my wife fell in love with a muscle man yesterday, love's an endurance test ain't it?

Yes, it is Henry,

what do you do, Rosa?

I live with my family in the hills of Morelos, we own a ganja-seasoned tequila factory, the mix is called Atom Bomb Tequila. 

Wow, that's novel Rosa.  

She sits closer and says, 

I like you, Henry, 

I like you too Rosa, maybe we're soulmates same as my X wife and her muscle man,

they laugh.

I’m taking the 3PM bus to Morelos, come with me querido, you can meet my family and see our tequila farm.

Rosa wraps a rebozo cloth around her bikini and they walk across the road to El Hotel Hamocas.

In Henry’s room, they fall into each other's arms and make out on the bed for a while. Then he packs and checks out. They have a few hours to blow before the bus departs and Rosa says, 

common, let’s have a few drinks at Sunset Bar it’s near the bus station.

They sit at a table outside Sunset and order tacos, guacamole, enchiladas with mole sauce, and rice, washing it down with Pacifica beer. Rosa tells Henry,

I was married before, my husband was a drunk who’d beat me, so my brothers tied him to a table and cut 2 of his fingers off with a machete. That was the last we saw of the burro. We write our own laws on the tequila farm.

They board the bus at 3PM. Tight from the beer they lean on one another as the bus rolls uphill through the Coculo Mountains.  

At Morelos Station, they’re met by Rosas's brother, Antonio, who smiles broadly, happy to see his sister.

Antonio puts their bags in the back of his 4-door Black Ram pickup. 

The Atomic Bomb Tequila farm is 30 kilometers outside of Morelos City, up country. 

Rosa tells her brother, 

Antonio, Henry's grand, he’s a freelance writer, our family will love him as I do. 

The farm’s front gate is opened by a vaquero with an AK-47 strapped on his shoulder. 

Inside, the pickup moves slowly over a dirt road through 1000s of acres of Blue Agave cactus used to distill tequila.

Then the pickup passes acres and acres of marijuana plants.

The family lives in a hacienda built around a landscaped courtyard and surrounded by a walkway lined with Roman arches.

Some meters off to the side is the tequila factory, a brown brick building with an arched roof and a large smokestack that reaches up to the sky.

Antonio grabs the bags and they go inside.

The hacienda floor is inlaid with handmade tile, the ceiling’s constructed of yellow-brown Bocote wood, the walls are covered with modern Latino art, and there's antique furniture made of rustic wood everywhere.

Inside Rosa introduces Henry to mamá y papá, and her older brother Hector. The family's cordial. Then Rosa says, 

there's a pleasant breeze and the sun's setting, let’s go to the courtyard and sip Atomic Bomb.

They walk into the palm tree and bush-lined courtyard, sitting at a round wooden table. 

Maids place trays brimful with shots of Atomic Bomb Tequila, and plates of Mexican food on the table. 

Everyone raises their shot glasses towards the setting sun and papá proposes a toast, 

brindemos por el alcohol, las copas color de rosa de la vida.

here’s to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.

Henry quickly downs a couple shots and says, 

Happiness is not knowing where you’ve been, where you’re going, or where you are.

Fit a Camel Through the Eye of a Needle

 

I doubt if you've noticed, but, I haven’t posted a story for a month. Instead, I’ve been busy dicking around with depression, a real motha fucker.

This verse from Stadler Brothers tune, Flowers on the Wall, references depression inanely,

Countin' flowers on the wall

That don't bother me at all

Playin' solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51

Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo.

Now don't tell me, I've nothin' to do?

Day after day I tried working but felt vapid, thinking,

maybe the parties over.

Many world literary lions have suffered writer’s block or depression— Hunter S Thompson, Toni Morrison, Leon Tolstoy, Virginia Wolf— a few of the many.

There are 2 writers who've eluded writer's block over the years— Saint Peter, and Charles Bukowski. Saint Peter had God and the Angels writing through him vicariously— Buk’s holy spirit was beer.

I ain’t got much bacon, so writing’s it. Without it I’m jejune and bloodless.

Thank God for modern pharmaceutics, the psychotropic goodies have beat the blues down for now. Will I have take the pills forever? God, I hope not. 

I have a pal who grows pot and shrooms, and he swears psychedelic mushrooms will cure the blues. But, the last time I ate shrooms I felt like an insect with amped up antennae. 

I’m good for a couple beers in the evening while watching Netflix.

This is a touchy subject, but, I don’t like kids, God bless em.  

I do love dogs though, they don’t talk back and aren’t smart asses. I have 11.

I suppose everybody should have a kid, if you’ve got the bread, it costs millions to raise the little shits. 

Then, you give em all you got and when they hit adolescence they hate you anyway. 

I’ve been meditating, what a fuckin bitch, try it. 

I lay in bed, because I don’t have a decent chair. Thai furniture is made with less leg space because Thais are shorter than Europeans. 

So I lay there, breathing through my nose, trying to keep my mind from wondering, hoping to get somewhere, face to face with Ganesha maybe, the pot bellied god with a elephant trunk, who’s the lord of success, knowledge and wealth, none of which I have.

Do you like Putin? Funny hey? I posted a pic of Vlad on Facebook in the image of Hitler, and the Facebook put me in jail. 

I just can’t put it together, is Facebook protecting Vlad’s image? Would they put me in the joint if I posted a picture of Hitler or Stalin? 

What the fuck is Putin thinking, the heart ship he seeds? I think his head’s full of grandiose Russian Federation voodoo, having been brainwashed by his old man who was Stalin's cook. 

Vlad deserves the Bulgarian Umbrella treatment, the same  poison pokes he authorizes for errant Russian journalist. 

As for American politics I prefer to stay mum, cause you're gonna piss someone off no matter what you say.

I feel removed from the U.S. political scene living in Thailand— whether Biden or Trump is reelected, the same fuck show is gonna come down— and a plate of veggie Pad Thai will still be 75 cents in Siam.

Farangs or foreigners in Thailand can't become citizens, and, are considered visitors as long as they're here.

I’ve lived here 20 years and have to renew my visa every year. 

Thai people are super sweet so the bullshit is worth it.

In the film Hangover II, parts filmed here, the scene where Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up on hangover morning was shoot in Chinatown, Bangkok, a super place for steamed tea duck with noodles. 

Chinatown is a few square meters— Chinamen there own  townhouses they run businesses out of— selling cloth, monk paraphernalia, noodle soup, gold, and so on.

According to Credit Suisse, Thailand has the largest wealth gap in the world, the richest 1% control 67% of the country’s wealth. 

It breaks my heart seeing the hustles poor Thais are forced into, being hookers of course, selling pork balls, chicken and rice, Pad Thai or cold coffee from portable stands on burning hot streets.

How does it feel to have deep pockets? Maybe they worry about life like the rest of us because no-one escapes illness.

Yet, The rich appear pretentious, like they live in a rich folks vacuum of their own creation, overlooking what Jesus said in Matthew 19:24 

I'll say it again-it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!

Radiate Everything You Are

I'm radiating everything I am, so what?

Some months ago Thailand legalized ganja. There are a couple of things at play here— the underage and those under 5 feet tall can’t smoke, and you can’t smoke in public. 

We get fabulous weed here now, but Thai Stick hasn't surfaced. 

Sometime in the 80s a girlfriend and I went to a Taj Mahal concert in  Cleveland. At the stadium, we park the car, walk to the trunk, and lit up some Thai Stick. I inhale and fall to my knees. 

Thailand, the fleshpot of Asia, orbs to boot— Soi Cowboy, Soi Twilight, Patong, and Nana Plaza. 

You can go for a health massage, 200 Baht, and before you know it the masseuse is coming down on you. 

For dried-in-the-wool insane sex go to New York, the Anvil Bar, where barking mad boy-on-boy sex is happening.

I’ve been watching the Netflix series, The Andy Warhol Diaries, a gay-as-gay can-be series. 

Andy was the hardest-working-kid in show business. I like all of his work but am not interested in looking at cocks and rectums.

Bangkok dumps raw sewerage into the Gulf of Thailand and the currents carry the shit to Pattaya Shore, nobody swims at Beach Road beach, it's toxic, although, you can find safe places to swim in Jomtien and off Ko Lon Island.

It's no secret that worldwide municipalities dump processed fecal matter into to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.

It's asshat Man at it again, everything He touches turns to shit.  

I don’t think I’ll be around to see the end— maybe you will. 

The Angel smyphonia roars as the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride through Cloud 9.

I'm on my way to Pattaya on Thai Lion Air, it’s wonderful, wonderful, the Thais sitting straight in place, showing off their fine posture with their masks on, but don't ask for a drop of water or a peanut from the stews because you won't be able to take your face out of that fucking mask to eat or drink.

Welcome to Asia, hallelujah, 

the Chinaman won the war, and the propaganda minister was awarded The Order of National Glory or 國光勳章, the country's highest honor. 

America owes the Chinaman 6956100000 Yuan, 6956100000元 in the Chinaman's head.

Xiānshēng Chinaman counting every 元, down to the last jaio. 

Boiled Potatoes & Red Ants

 

 

Henry and Lucia wake up on the 10th floor of La Concha Hotel, the tallest building in Key West. Henry’s excited saying, 

Tennessee Williams slept here, in room 1024, maybe penning The Night of the Iguana, here, I’ve got chicken skin, baby. 

Ground control to Major Tom, Hello Henry, Lucia here, the bug guys are going to take the tent off our house by noon, let's eat breakfast at Pepe’s Cafe

They walk to Pepe’s.

Pepe’s gay Cuban, and he loves Lucia,

darling you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, I’m queer and I want you. Will it be Cubano food kids? 

Yeah, pulled pork, black beans wrapped in a tortilla, a bowl of rice pudding, and coffee.

Pepe pours 3 shots of Cuban rum and Lucia says, 

how's your liver, Chica?  

When the love couple gets home they're shocked to see that their house has disappeared, the cops and the firemen are there, and the bug guys have fled. 

Neighbors, Layla and Zeigred, new immigrants from Slovakia, explain what they saw, 

Yah, yah, she evaporated alright, yah gone in a green cloud. 

A fireman walks up to Henry and Lucia giving his account, 

when we got here there was a burnt area where your house was, forensic's gathering samples of the scorched patch, we’ll let you know.

Last month before the disappearance, a friend, a Skin medicine man known as Red Horn, spent the weekend with Henry and Lucia, drinking tequila and sitting in the sauna for hours, preachifying that their land was spooked with evil spirits.  

Red Horn would set up a pow-wow in the backyard to purify the land, but the couple worried the Native dancing would kill the lawn.

Page 3

Forget About William Burroughs, Already.

I’ve written commentaries on most cool modern writers on the lost blog, The Headbangers Ball, including Hemingway.

Earnest Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, his father Everest  P. was a  physician, and his mother Grace a piano teacher. 

They were well-respected and loved by most in Oak Park, a conservative community that Frank Lloyd Wright said, 

so many churches for so many good people to go to. 

Hemingway's mother was a known performer and violin player in Oak Park, and she taught her son to play the cello despite his hesitance to learn— though later in life admitting the music lessons contributed to his writing style, why the fuck would that be? 

Hunting, peppering deer, wild birds, squirrels, and possums with shotguns was the name of the game for Earnest and his old man, they blew the shit outta anything coming down the pike. 

The Hemingway family always had food on the table, and plenty often feeding the neighbors.

Some thought Martians had a part in the disappearance of the Lucowski bungalow, one was Chester Bicep, mayor of Key West.

Unbeknown to the press, Mayor Bicep had reported the Lucowski happening to the Air Force and The National Security Association.

Some say  Martians de-materialized and transported the Lucownki house to Mars for a museum exhibit they call, 

Earthbound Humans are Odd.

I’m convinced Martians are as real as you or I, waiting for the right time to show their faces. 

I’m all eyes and ears when it comes to the Martians, they can come and go, colonize, have sex, or dance with humans up to them, but, don't ask me to get out of bed. 

Extraterrestrials eat essential carbs and protein— boiled potatoes, and red ants.

In the end, I’m convinced Martians didn’t bury the Lucowski house in a sinkhole. There's a simple explanation, a Chinaman sucked it through the center of the earth using a hollowed-out bamboo shoot like a straw.