Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

And "illumination" was one of the words hippies were always using to describe the experience one obtains from the highest grade of grass. Even the more common term, "turning on," had the same meaning as "illumination," when you stopped to think about. Wasn't that what the crown of light around Jesus' head in Catholic art was supposed to mean? And Goethe-if he was really part of this-might have been referring to the experience in his last words, as he lay dying: "More light!"

I should have become a rabbi, like my father wanted, Saul thought bemusedly. Police work is getting to be too much for me.

In a few minutes I'll be suspecting Thomas Edison.

ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT

Slowly, Mary Lou Servix swam back to consciousness, like a shipwreck victim reaching a raft.

"Good Lord," she breathed softly.

Simon kissed her neck. "Now you know," he whispered.

"Good Lord," she repeated. "How many times did I come?"

Simon smiled. "I'm not an anal-compulsive type-I wasn't counting. Ten or twelve, something like that, I guess."

"Good Lord. And the hallucinations. Was that what you were doing to my nervous system, or was it the grass?"

"Just tell me about what you saw."

"Well, you got a halo around you, sort of. A big blue halo. And then I saw that it was around me, too, and that

it had all sorts of little blue dots dancing in sort of whorls inside it. And then there wasn't even that anymore. Just light. Pure white light."

"Suppose I told you I have a friend who's a dolphin and he exists in that kind of limitless light all the time."

"Oh, don't start jiving me. You've been so nice, until now."

"I'm not jiving you. His name is Howard. I might arrange for you to meet him."

"A fish?"

"No, baby. A dolphin is a mammal. Just like you and me."

"You are either the world's greatest brain or the world's craziest motherfucker, Mr. Simon Moon. I mean it. But that light… My God, I will never forget that light."

"And what happened to your body?" Simon asked casually.

"You know, I didn't know where it was. Even in the middle of my orgasms I didn't know where my body was. Everything was just… the light…"

ROCK ROCK ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT

And leaving Dallas that much-discussed November 22 afternoon in 1963, the man using the name "Frank Sullivan" brushes past McCord and Barker at the airport, but no foreshadowing of Watergate darkens his mind… (Back at the Grassy Knoll, Howard Hunt's picture is being snapped and will later turn up in the files of New Orleans D.A. Jim 'The Jolly Green Giant" Garrison: not that Garrison ever came within light years of the real truth…)

"Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,"Hagbard calls.

But now we are going back, again, to April 2 and Las Vegas; Sherri Brandi (nee Sharon O'Farrell) arriving home finds Carmel in her living room at four in the morning. It doesn't surprise her; he often made these unexpected visits. He seems to enjoy invading other people's territory like some kinda creepy virus. "Darling," I cried, rushing to kiss him as he expected. I wish the creep would drop dead, I thought as our mouths met.

"An all-night John?" he asked casually.

"Yeah. One of those scientists who works at that place out in the desert we're all supposed to pretend we don't know about. A freak."

"He wanted something special?" Carmel asked quickly. "You charged him extra?" At times I thought I could really see dollar signs in his eyes.

"No," I said, "he just wanted a lay. But afterward he wouldn't let me go. Just kept jawing." I yawned, looking around at the nice furniture and the nice paintings; I had managed to get everything in shades of pink and lavender, really beautiful, if that creep hadn't been sitting there on the couch looking like a hungry dead rat. I always wanted pretty things and I think I could have been some kind of artist or designer if all my luck wasn't always lousy. Christ, who ever told Carmel a blue turtleneck would go with a brown suit? If it wasn't for women, in my honest-to-Pete opinion, men would all go around looking like that. That's what I think. Insensitive. A bunch of cavemen, or Meander Thralls, or whatever you call them. "This John had a lot on his mind," I said before old candy-bar could start cross examining me about something else. "He's against fluorides in drinking water and the Catholic church and faggots and he thinks the new birth-control pill is as bad as the old one and I should use a diaphragm instead. Christ, he's got the inside dope on everything under the sun, he thinks, and I hadda listen to it all. That kind of John."

Carmel nodded. "Scientists are schmucks," he said.

I pulled the dress over my head and hung it in the closet (it was the nice green one with the spangles and the new style where my nipples stick out through little holes, which is a pain in the ass because they're always rubbing against something and getting raw, but it really turns on the Johns, and, like I always say, that's the name of the game, in this sonofabitching town with all the lousy luck, the only way to heavy scratch is go out there, girl, and sell your snatch) and then I grabbed my robe quick before old blow-job bobo decided it was time for his weekly Frenching. "He's got a nice house, though," I said to distract the creep. "He doesn't have to live out there on the base, he's too important for rules and regularities. Nice to look at, I mean. Redwood walls and burnt orange decor, you know? Pretty. He hates it, though. Acts as if he thinks it's haunted by Count Frankenstein or somebody. Keeps jumping up and walking around like he's looking for something. Something that'll bite his head off in one gulp if he finds it." I decided to let the top of the robe hang open a little. Carmel was either horny or he wanted something else, and something else with him generally means he thinks you've been holding back some cash. Him and his damned belt. Of course, sometimes with that I go queer all over for a flash and I guess that's like the come that men have, the orgasm, but it ain't worth the pain, believe me. I wonder if it's true some women get it in intercourse? Really get it? I don't think so. I've never known anybody in the business who gets it, from a man, only from Rosy Palm and her five sisters, sometimes, and if none of us do, how could some straight nicey-nicey get it?

"Bugs," Carmel said, looking shrewd and clever, off on his usual shtick of proving he was more hip to everything than anybody else on God's green earth. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"What do you mean, bugs?" I asked. It was better than talking about money.

"The John," he said with a know-it-all grin. "He's important, you said. So his house has bugs. He probably keeps taking them out, and the FBI keeps coming back and putting in new ones. I bet he was very quiet when he was making it with you, right?" I nodded, remembering. "See. He couldn't stand the thought of those Feds eavesdropping on the other end of the wire. Just like Mal- like a guy I know in the Syndicate. He's so afraid of bugs he won't hold a business talk anywhere but the bathroom in his hotel suite with all four faucets going full blast and both of us whispering. Running water screws up a bug more than playing loud music on the radio, for some scientific reason."

"Bugs," I said suddenly. "That's it." The other kind of bugs. I was remembering Charley raving about fluoridation: "And we're all classified as mental cases, because a few right-wing nuts fifteen or twenty years ago who said fluoridation was a communist plot to poison us. Now, anybody who criticizes fluoridation is supposed to be just as bananas as God's Lightning. Good Lord, if anybody wants to do us in without firing a shot, I could-" and he caught himself, hid something that almost showed on his face, and ended like his brain was walking on one foot, "I could point to a dozen things in any chemistry book more effective than fluoride." But he wasn't thinking of chemicals, he was thinking of those little bugs, microbes is the word, and that's what he was working on. I could feel that flash I always get when I read something in a John, like if he had more money than he let on, or he'd caught his wife spreading for the milkman and was doing it to get even, or he was really a faggola and was just proving to himself that he wasn't completely a faggola.