—They should probably be working on that web site instead Despite almost a year of effort, the four or five kids assigned to the Leary.com project have gotten frightfully little done The skeleton of the site is ingenious - a tour through Timothy's real house, where clicking on doors brings you into different rooms. But so far the rooms are still empty. Each bookcase and cabinet, though neatly labelled 'archives' or 'unpublished works' just brings you to an empty page apologizing for being 'under construction'.
—Tim's older friends and patrons - mostly part-time visitors - have been grumbling for weeks that the kids, while sweet to the core and dedicated to Tim's well-being, are just slackers The patrons resent that Tim has put the kids on salaries, and that the money they have 'loaned' Tim during these lean years is leaking out faster than it goes in.
—What they don't see is that these kids are with Tim 24/7 changing his linens, responding to his whims, and jumping into action whenever he shouts "Hello????!!!!!" only to find him collapsed, bleeding, and disoriented. If it looks like they're just sitting around rapping and smoking cigarettes, it is because they are shell-shocked. These kids are right there with Tim in the piss and blood-soaked trenches of his losing battle against death. And just when they need their mentor the most - to explain to them how to take all this in stride -he is slowly fading away. It's a traumatic experience.
—Meanwhile, the kids watch each of Tim's weekend guests with wary eyes. Everyone has a 'deal' to make with Tim, and nobody is to be trusted. In most cases this is justified - the sharks visit every day - but sometimes it's pure reflex. Danny Goldberg, of Gold Mountain (Nirvana) fame and a longtime supporter of Timothy's career, has gotten Tim to agree to a record deal for a tribute album. He believes he can get stars like Madonna to record songs that use passages of Tim's writings or samples of his voice. But the kids from the house also have ideas about releasing their own tribute album using lesser-known but 'cooler' artists.
—They pore over Goldberg's contract after he has left, objecting to points of law and tiny stipulations - partly out of concern for Tim's welfare, but just as concerned for the competition this deal could create for their own project. However earnestly they attempt to separate their own interests from Timothy's, the conflict is inevitable. Tim is both the greatest friend to them in the world, and their best shot at personal growth and successful careers. Love mixed with aspiration mixed with fear mixed with guilt.
—None of us at the house can help ourselves from checking the huge monthly calendar on the wall for advance notice of which celebrity is going to show up when. Bam Dass and Balph Metzner on Sunday afternoon attracts the rising psychedelics scholars, while Larry Flynt catches a budding journalist's eye. We all take note of Wynona Rider and William Burroughs' names, though the latter won't be arriving until mid-July, which will turn out be too late.
—Worse yet is the fate of the archives. What happens when Tim dies? Will the archives get sold to Stanford? Will the IRS - who has agreed to leave Tim's estate alone until after he's gone - jump in and take everything? Does the film company have rights to them? Where's that contract? What about the electronic rights?
—Tim is no help in sorting these questions out. Like a guru with competing devotees, Tim entertains everyone's visions and then lets them fight it out amongst themselves. He just' says 'yes' to everything, leading each of us to believe we alone are exercising Tim's true will. If only we heard him - "I don't want anything!"
—By evening Timothy is back in bed with a fresh Fentanyl patch on for pain relief, and a nitrous balloon in his hand Everyone siphons off a balloon of his or her own from the fresh tank next to Tim's bed with a loud SHHHHHH!
—Tim winces at the sound.
—"You can tell a lot about a person by the way he fills a balloon," Tim complains.
—Dave Prince, Leary's co-writer, comes in with a belligerent fax from a biographer named Peter O. Whitmer. Apparently Whitmer believes he is Leary's official biographer based on an agreement he and Leary signed back in the seventies while Leary was in jail. Whitmer wants to know how Leary could now be making biography agreements other people (including me).
—But Leary has gone cold on Whitmer. who wrote a scathing biography of Hunter S. Thompson and reportedly posed as flower deliveryman to get access to Hunter's moms house Leary declares that the writer's insolence must be avenged -and in style. After attempting to conceive a few practical jokes of his own, he has Prince send a fax to Hunter. "I'm being mugged by a literary scoundrel," Leary dictates praising Thompson for his ability to "deal with this rascal" and asking him for help crafting a cunning scenario to "punish him and his ilk." Thompson eventually responds with a phone call, and outlines a plot to invite Whitmer to Leary's house on the pretense of working out a deal; Thompson would be waiting at the door with a shotgun and scare the poor writer away. While the payback never comes to pass, the cordial conversation allows two old friends to connect one last time.
—Everyone who comes by has his or her own way to say goodbye. Yoko Ono opts for a relatively private audience in Tim's bedroom - a chaotic mess of articles and photos, blood-stained sheets, pill bottles, empty glasses, a few roaches and old balloons on the nightstand, and a huge isolation tank humming ominously in the corner. Art by friends - some great and some just weird - hangs everywhere, even on the ceiling. All four seats in the room are wheelchairs, so Yoko clears a place for herself on the bed next to Tim. A giant, 5x6 foot photo of Timothy with John and Yoko at the 'bed-in' recording of 'Give Peace a Chance' just happens to hang on the wall.
—"You were a great man," she tells him, patting his knee.
—"Was?" he responds. "We're still broadcasting!"
—They laugh over the gaff. After she's gone, Tim tells us, "She comes only when she wants to. On her own terms." I look at Tim, ready to diss her. "But that's just fine," he says. "I love her so much. Isn't she just so lovely?" Nothing makes Tim happier than to hear his friends praised. Too bad he had to do most of it.
—William Burroughs calls later that afternoon. Timothy extols the virtues of his pain-relieving fentanyl patch, and then takes down Bill's mailing address. The old beat wants to try one on. Tim is honored to be turning on 'the Bill Burroughs' to a new opiate. We send it to Kansas by Federal Express.
—John Lilly visits a few nights in a row to share some of his favorite drug, Ketamine. He administers a syringe to Timothy and then one to himself, and the two old friends lie on the bed together as the dissociative anesthetic draws them out of their failing bodies for a time. It is Timothy's first experience with the chemical - now snorted in smaller doses as a club drug - and he doesn't have the best trip.
—"The whole universe had turned into a book," he tells me at about 3 the next morning. "But the binding had come out and the pages were floating free. I knew it would take some work to find out which page to climb back onto."
—All Tim's friends say farewell in their own ways - some by getting something, and some by giving something. Timothy accepts and receives with the same graciousness.
—"Everyone sees their own Timothy Leary," he tells me, then drifts off to what looks like sleep. He suddenly stirs, stares at me, and asks, "what do you want?"
—"I don't want anything," I joke.
—He laughs. "You got me! Now you know how I feel!"
—It has been a long night, but Tim gets one of his second winds and we are all sucked in. He makes us take him to two parties, and then the Viper room for a quick listen to an LA band whose members are friends. On the way back, he directs us as we steal huge round driveway mirrors from the mansions on Benedict Canyon Drive. We put them up all over his bedroom - the deanimation chamber - so he can see around the whole room without moving his head.