She was turned on, and the rest of us weren't far behind. Time telescoped in on me and the scene changed like the sudden shift of a kaleidoscope with all the pieces taking on new shapes and colors. I seemed to be seeing with some inner eye, in a way I'd never seen before. It was borne home to me in the instant-and the truth of it remains with me even now-that there are no words for perspective, no definitions for color, no accurate semantics for the optic experience. To say, for instance, that the red of Voluptua’s gown was the reddest red ever perceived is not to even begin to convey that redness. To remember, for example, that for the briefest of instants there seemed a whole philosophy of life in the curve of April Wilder’ s neck—caught by the light as it was for only a split second -- may seem an aberration in retrospect, and yet I know that retrospect is treachery, for the insight was valid and true. To recall such beauty in the movement by which Misty crossed her ankles as artists seek for all their lives and never find, to know that part of it was the flexing tendon of her ankle and part the muscle movement of one’s own eye and still the most important part the opening of the inner brain lens to the image—to recall this is to lose the memory; to relate it by speech, or by written word, is to destroy it utterly. And with it all is the knowledge that a part of the mind remained cool and aloof from one’s own experience and was the camera eye by which the experience of others was recorded.
This camera eye of my inner skull perceived Winthrop Van Ardsdale turning himself into a monster, for instance. The transformation was within his control, but purposeful. His lips curled back and his teeth became fangs. His hands arched into beast-claws; the fingers became talons. He let his shoulders fall forward so that his back seemed to sprout a hump. “Lugosi lives!” he announced, shuffling ominously toward April.
“Bela Lugosi went to pot!” Happy Daze chortled.
“A vamp for the vampire!” Winthrop ignored Happy and continued toward April. “Virgin blood, or I’ll go bats!”
“Have you ever got the wrong girl,” April murmured.
“I am a fly-by-night demon who flies by night!” Winthrop insisted. He grabbed April, pushed her down on the couch and started nibbling her neck.
“Help!” she screamed. “He's bitting me!”
“Leave her alone now, Dracula.” Happy dragged Winthrop away.
“You don’t understand. I must refill my jug from her jugular,” Winthrop protested.
“No night withdrawals from the blood bank,” Happy told him. “Stay away from her.”
Winthrop settled down in a corner of the room. He tucked his hands under his armpits and flapped his folded arms morosely like tired bat-wings. He remained that way a long time, sulking.
“YIII! Don't step on me!” My attention was distracted from Winthrop by Rank’s sudden scream. He was standing up in front of Louis Ching, who was a good foot shorter than he was, and cowering.
“What’s the matter?” Louis was bewildered.
“I’ve shrunk! Be careful!” Rank wailed. “Watch where you walk! You’ll crush me!” He put his hands over the top of his head as if to ward off the descending foot of some giant.
“You’re flipping,” Misty told him. “You’re the same size as you've always been."
“No I'm not. I'm only six inches tall. You have to be very careful, all of you.” He retreated to the corner opposite from the one where Winthrop was flapping his bat-wings and huddled there. “Stay away from me," he pleaded. “I'm fragile. I'm breakable. I'm tiny. Don’t squash me!"
“Oah! Goody! A doll!” April clapped her hands. “A-doll-a-doll-a-doll! A doll for me to play with!” She started for Rank.
“Get away from me!” he screamed.
“Leave him alone.” Misty intercepted April.
“It's my doll!” April pouted. “Why can't I play with him?”
“Not now, honey.” Misty soothed her in motherly fashion. “Play something else now.”
“What? There's nothing to play. I have nothing to do,” April whined.
“Skip rope," Misty suggested.
“All right.” April began skipping in rhythm with an imaginary rope. “One-two-three-O’Lairy. . . ."
“My flesh is a flower bed!” Voluptua stretched out on the floor. “Come pluck my roses!” She beckoned to each of the men in turn. “But beware of thorns!” she warned.
“I don’t even know if I'll have enough strength to fly back to Forest Lawn,” Winthrop muttered, still flapping battily.
“You’re really not six inches tall.” Now Mistywas trying to reason with Rank. “You just have an inferiority complex.”
“That’s all you know,” Rank insisted. “I have shrunk and I am too six inches tall. The same thing happened to a friend of mine and they tried to tell him it was an inferiority complex, and he believed them, and that was fatal. You’re not going to fool me that way.”
“What way? What are you talking about?"
“This friend, just like me, he shrank. And everybody told him it was all in his mind, so he went to a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist told him he had a Napoleonic complex about being small. He pointed out that some of the greatest men in the history of the world have been undersized. He convinced him there was nothing to be concerned about. And my friend left the psychiatrist’s office feeling quite large, maybe six feet tall, instead of the six inches which he really was. And that was his undoing.”
“What happened?”
“As he came out of the building, a cat pounced on him and ate him up.”
“That’ s ridiculous!”
“Maybe so. But you just keep that bat over there away from me.” Rank pointed at Winthrop with trembling fingers. “And you be careful, too!” he screamed at April.
“Sorry.” She skipped away from him. “A, my name is April, and I eat Apples . . .”
In my eyes she was a rainbow of color now, skipping across the room. I followed the rainbow to the pot of gold at its end and found Nirvana. Nirvana, at that moment, was Louis Ching.
The Chinese had divested himself of all of his clothing without fanfare. Now he was standing on his head in the center of the room, his arms outstretched, his body perfectly balanced, a small, upside-down smile of pure contentment on his face. I can’t say what the position meant in terms of his psychedelic experience, but in terms of mine, it represented the attainment of Nirvana. His naked body shimmered and assumed impossible forms before my eyes. It was as if his very atomic structure was revealed to me, as if I were glimpsing the harmony of the universe, the mystery revealed in all its utmost simplicity. I didn't have to count the angels dancing on his pinhead to know that the nature of the ectoplasm was benign, all-encompassing and omnipotent. At that moment, to me, Louis Ching was Nirvana.
But, as happens in real life, this particular phase of my “trip” was shattered by the intrusion of flesh on the spirit. The flesh belonged to Misty Milo. She too had been looking at Louis Ching, but her reaction had been different from mine. Far from finding spiritual tranquillity in his posture, Misty had been spurred by it to a renewal of passion. Never taking her eyes off his nudity, she had crossed the room to me, and now she plopped herself down on my lap, The way she writhed there, her hands jumping like nervous cats over the erogenous zones of my body, her breathing heavy, her lips burning as they brushed my neck and my ear, her eyes glittering with desire, there was no doubt of the erotic nature of the effect the LSD was having on her.
“He’s naked,” she murmured in my ear.