Bruce Wagner - Memorial

“We already have.”

Joan felt foolish sitting there bawling at a kinescope. Her father said something about how well-done the shows were but she couldn’t hear him for the roaring in her ears. So as not to make a scene for the ladies in the next room, Joan quashed her sobs into snuffles, a grotesque pulmonary collapsing-in upon herself — like demolished rooms. Her father handed her Kleenex and was glad she was moved, it was gratifying and sensible that his “blood” would appreciate the Golden Age craft, the emotions evoked, it never occurring to him she was responding on a multitude of levels, and Joan was grateful for that, for his simplicities. Then he made a dry little laugh and said the show reminded him of that night when the officers

prayed to the 4 directions, something she’d been shown by some kind of shaman in Northern California. Chess never took mushrooms before though once did acid as a teenager, by mistake, his friends said it was psilocybin, whatever that was, he still didn’t know, supposedly something milder but it turned out to be “Tim Leary’s Blue Blasters” and scared the holy shit out of him: 12 hours alone in the basement rec room Cinema-scoping krazy kavalcade of buxom breasts while every fiber in his being fought not to go mad or run upstairs to tell his mom.

Now here they were in the desert, insurance check on its way, “set and setting” a groove, Laxmi an old hand, said she would only take half a dose herself so if he “freaked” she could take care of him, they were going to do some MDMA 1st to chill him out, so beautiful she said, but then goddammit, he started stressing over what happened to Maurie, his culpability, same ol same old, shit, everything had been going so well, he’d been determined to tamp that down and mellow out, he thought he was succeeding yet here it was, OK, that was his demon, that was all part of it, but what if he got stuck on a guilt-trip in the middle of his visionquest and spilled his guts/ran screaming into Joshua trees of red-armied boulder dusk, coyote-mauled and soulcrushed by the Great Cactus-Needled Karmic Wheel? Suddenly worried the vertigo might come back too. Jesus, I’m a bigger Jew than Maurie Levin. Why was he even doing this? Because it’s righteous and she’s righteous and this is my path so fuck you. Chess shouted at himself and wished he were dead, hated being in his own skin, being Chester Herlihy was such a fucked-up chore. This was supposed to be his Journey of a Lifetime. They had watched that show on the Travel Channel, the guy who plays the agent on Entourage went over to India, it was corny but cool, the actor visited orphanages and 5-star spas, did Laughing Yoga, stumbled into elephant processions, met a guru, and generally had a high old time. Still, that was pussytime compared to mushroomville. Finally he became resolute: Fuck it, this is how it is, this is my fucking path, my Journey of a Lifetime, and guilt is all right, vertigo’s all right, guilt and vertigo are part of it anyhow, this shit probably cures guilt and vertigo.

He told Laxmi his plan (the plan that dropped down on him one day and had motivated him to settle his suit, stoked by bad vibes, the fear that Maurie would wake up and accuse him, or that Chess might weaken and turn himself in to the cops — further aided and abetted by the paranoia that what happened to his mother was karmic retribution, and preamble to his own fate should he remain in the City of Angels): that he wanted them to go to India, he would buy their tickets with the monies, that way she could see her dad and Chess could get away from everything I mean fucking everything his mom was in good hands with Joan, get away from all the bad energy and the failure and the years of bullshit that clouded his life, find a new road in that epic magisterial dirty consecrated country. Of course he didn’t Viagrashare; there was no need. She was so moved by his invitation and stratagem, everything he said sounded so right, not just for Chess, but for her as well; this way, he said, she could confront her demons, plus see her old man yet not be dependent, the settlement would last them years, God knew how many rupees it translated into, and even if it did run out (which it wouldn’t), by then they’d be off into something else, earning their keep, Western ingenuity, teaching English, founding schools or hospitals or whatever, until that illusive unlikely impossible time when funds dried up lifetimes stretched before them, a life in which they would never have to worry about survival, a life in which to heal, to write (her eyes welled up, because Laxmi knew he was referring to her book), a life to do yoga and cleanse, to be of service, to help others —Laxmi called that “Karma Yoga,” a supposed actual ancient term — Chess said he wanted to stop taking painkillers, India would be the perfect place to detox, he was confident he’d get better there, repair himself physically, spiritually, emotionally, like a sidewalk preacher the more he spoke the more he believed, talking about it was medicine, the doing of it would be the cure, and his makeshift girlfriend, fellow traveler, Journeyer (Journaler) of a Lifetime, said she knew he was right, he was so right about everything, she was so glad God brought them together! that everything was right and had happened for a reason, they had met through Maurie and been “broughten” together through Chess’s injuries, that awful thing happened at Morongo for a reason, and Chess winced then quickly recovered because he knew: no malice behind it, no malice of Universe behind anything, an ethereal rather than satanic plan — what a concept! — for the 1st time Chess became aware, She made him aware, She, goddess and woman, in the cool stunned fading lucid heat of high desert he let all of it in, erstwhile canned notion of Higher Power — it sounded so pathetic through the years, the AA slogan, but it was true, Chester Herlihy was an instant convert, there was a Higher Power, how could he have not known or thought that, how could he be so arrogant to believe it was a cliché, to believe or not in clichés had nothing to do with what Maurie had visited on him or what Chess then visited upon his friend or what Laxmi/Chess/Maurie made of their triangle (pyramid) — it was only what had happened, without judgment or reason, the Universe did not plot, was not engineered from guilt or shame or pride or desiring, it was gloriously unbuilt of jigsaw happenings and events. Chess realized he would have to learn a new language: old gates need be abrogated, he’d molt like a snake, be- come someone, was becoming, some thing, different, that was the Path because what he still/once is/was had broken down and no longer worked.

They prayed to the 4 directions and to earth, moon, and sun. Laxmi read from a book written by a saint she wanted to visit in Bombay, about having your head “in the mouth of the tiger”—there was no escape if one continued to fight with the Self — true freedom meant not liberation from the ego but liberation for it. Chess made a bad joke about Siegfried and Roy, how the one who didn’t get mangled might have a different opinion, but she attributed his clowning to sheer nerves. Suddenly he remembered a book he loved as a boy (they weren’t coming on yet, though Laxmi said they were close to the stage where you wondered if you were, or should be, even though you still felt sorta normal), he began talking about it 10 minutes after Laxmi diced up “the little ones” (what the cognoscenti called cubensis, they’d swallowed them with banana to cut the bitterness), Chess saying that as a kid he hardly read but the book he loved more than any just happened to be called The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. Laxmi sexily guffawed. When the title came out of his mouth, neither of them could actually believe it. What an omen! she said. He told her that the most beautiful thing about it, the thing he could never forget, and thought of even to this day to calm himself when times were tough, was the rocketship that a tribe of children built in the middle of the night, they rose from their beds and went to the beach to blast off (Tim Leary’s Blue Blasters!) —“How amazing,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing?” he countered, their amazing s somehow perfectly overlapping — maybe they were coming on — rocketship on blackvault oceanshore seemed to embody everything, all wonder of cosmos harmoniously attuned until adolescent cynicism snowed under, “the headlamps of childhood,” as some writer put it, headlamps onto motes of orgiastic Mystery then wattage dimmed and lamp cords frayed before one grew callous, hide-bound, and rueful over what he could no longer feel, taste, see, or remember, so far from the awesome messages once carried on beachwind of infinity-looped, dead-on summer nights now dead.