So that was a kha-rat. Freakout. At least, that's one way to look at it. It was also really beautiful: the Moon, the women, the shyøma. But it was a real good thing I ate those "little blue flowers" or I'd have been even more maxi-machissimo. It was another of those esperiencias sin comparisón, but I'm glad it doesn't happen more than once a month. Estaba demásiado, just too much. I mean, I've been having the best sex/love of my excessive & outrageous rock-star life on this bus ride, far better than with all the groupies I'd screwed but never loved. I was IN LOVE with Mell & Liss & Masnia & Magga & Maki and had bromances (guy style, not gay!) going with Adam & Pokey. I've just been in love with everybody on this bus! All that without drugs or alcohol, it seemed so REAL! But along comes that shyøma and I just GOTTA fuck my brains out with all these big, shaggy, weird Bigfoot women I don't even want. I really have no choice. Of course, neither do they. My point is all that love I'd been feeling seems suddenly devaluated to nothingness. We're all just sex-meat, horny horny horny. I'm not going to say those FEMALES were ugly and disgusting (I although I sure did think so at first) because I got to feeling they were all pretty loveable once we got... intimate. It ends up being not so bad. But still... Seems that after a life-style of immoral behavior I'm suddenly getting twinges of... what? Empathy? Actually, the "Freakout" I referred to probably has not so much to do with sex excesses-- I should be more or less used to that by now-- but all the other stuff: Telepathy? Visions? Somehow understanding what was being said in Nokhontli? Being part of a Group Mind trading thoughts? Zapping from a Mexican jungle to be suddenly looking through the eyes of those three guys trudging through a snowstorm in the Himalaya Mountains? That giant Moon? Come ON, hermano, how can any of that stuff be real? Although it sure seemed real at the time. All that was new to me, everyone else has been through multiple kha-rats. I'm not sure I'd want to. I mean, I gave up acid and drugs years ago because I didn't want to go crazy. The last two nights were the craziest I've EVER known, pretty scary. Although if that's the price for being with these girls and guys, I'll probably just go through it again. Guess I'm hooked-- not to the shyøma or the kha-rat, but to these people. Although at present our sex-bus express has become a motoring monastery: no sex is happening at all. Oh, I suppose any one of us could make a move on any other and probably get a little sympathetic action-- but really, I just can't be bothered either. We're all kind of burned out horniness-wise. Adam says this is SOP, in a few days we'll all be back to "normal", as if this bus ride has ever been normal. But life goes on. After leaving our squatch lady friends in the jungle we visit the ruins of Palenque. Adam & Melly insist: they aren't anthropology students for nothing. I'd never been there before but was familiar with those ruins too-- as a kid I'd been all over the life-size pyramid models of Palenque in el Museo de Anthropologia in D.F. So I'm interested too. We all are, even the squatch chicks. It's a great ruin site: pyramids in the jungle, Ancient Astronaut inscribed on the tombstone, howling monkeys in the trees, magic mushrooms in the fields. So we're staying in the campground beside the ruins and the waterfall, but need to go into the town of Palenque a few km away to buy some supplies. Our squatch friends stay in camp just to avoid the usual circus routine Bigfoots have to put up with. Pokey and Maki take care of buying stuff, the rest of us take a walk around town. Meet this Mexican guitarist in a bar. Mel, Liss and I are taking one of our breakaways from the temple of purity from alcohol or sugar or porn. We're after beers, find a dark dingy little place with a friendly atmosphere. A real Cantina Mexicana with nothing but old rancheros playing in the background. Then this thin young guy with a beat-up guitar walks in, obviously a campesino or field laborer, looking poor and under trodden (and sure enough, Pokey, he was an Indian), a Mayan. He even has a face like that ancient astronaut sculptured onto the gravestone. Anyway, el dueño of the cantina welcomes him, "Hola Chaco!" and turns off the ranchero music so that the kid can play guitar, like he's someone special. The local star maybe. It's obvious he's there to pass the hat because some real live tourists (us) have shown up in the bar, you know? And, well, chinga tu madre, cabrón, he is... amazing. The guy's playing rancheros, salsa, tango, rhumba, whatever, and he’s really good. My girls-- those unfaithful bitches --get all hypnotized, really digging his music. They give him some money. Well, me too, the guy's pretty fucking inspirational. So I turn back to my beer. But he's not finished yet. I'm surprised at how irritated that makes me. So now he's playing flamenco --which normally I like, except that he plays too good. That surprises me too. I totally recognize just how jealous I am of this poor kid, actually feeling afraid that he is a better guitarist than me. And the more he plays, the worse I feel about it. Until I have to leave that cantina. The girls come out, saying, no, come on, stay. They want to hear more. I say I'll just go for a walk, meet them back at the bus, and I go farther into the town of Palenque. It's not much of a town, the ruins are a lot more interesting, just standard impoverished Mexico; some dingy shops, a tiny Mercado selling wilted veggies, a dismal church and a few sleazy bars. If I'd been touring with Chrome Pie just then, I'd have ended up getting drunk in one of those bars whether I wanted to or not. That's just what we DID-- okay, back when we were younger, you know. But that feels so out of sync while touring with S&F-- having a beer is fine, getting wasted is stupid. So I take the easy way out and just walk the three kilometers back to our bus. Adam is there alone, playing guitar. "Hey, I think I've got a new song in progress," he tells me, playing a very Spanish riff, "want to hear what I have so far?" I say sure, but not very enthusiastically. He sings anyway.
"On the road in Mexico,
Wauh, I need me a mujer, cabrón,
But if I'm going to get a gringa I just need two more verses," he says, happy to be writing music once again. I know he's been feeling frustrated about nothing coming out. And this new song is really pretty good; latin beat, catchy melody, and funny if you understand the Mexicanismos. But it only makes me feel worse about my musical failures to hear Adam whipping out yet another inspired original song, which I have never done...well, not alone, only in collaborations. So I'm not really into being sociable, talking, or jamming. I still feel weird about having been so upset over some poor young campesino who maybe plays better guitar than me. I mean, that's totally subjective, and what does it really matter, anyway? Right? In other words, I'm feeling guilty and ashamed for having such a nasty ego. Which Adam picks up on. "Why do you feel so bad, Mike?" "Hey, 'm okay." "Come on, I can hear that you're not. Talking might help: I'm interested, if you want to unload." I can't stop a sarcastic little laugh and say, "Why not? Can't keep no secrets here anyway." I tell him about how jealous I'd been, like a real brat, and how ashamed that makes me feel; like a real shit. Adam's a good listener, probably part of his Orator's Tool Kit, he understands every word you don't say. He tells me about his worst enemy in Aket-- that squatch teacher who'd punched him in the gut, a big fat nasty pompous GURU of oration, the Fucking Great Dambaraggan Himself. Later on he finally realizes just how much he had actually learned from his most hated teacher. Now they're best friends. Then he tells me: "You're not a shit, Mike, you're an Orator, just like me. I've had that feeling too. That jealousy is built into our talent sets-- believe me, I know. All Orators automatically HATE other Orators, it's a competition thing. Orators, musicians: not much difference." Then he laughs: "Hey, you know? I'll bet that kid would feel the same way if he ever heard you play." "Oh, he's probably heard me, at least on the radio-- after all, yo soy el famoso Miguel deSanto," I laugh a little. Adam plays the game, "And then the kid would say, Wow, Miguel deSanto...?" Then both of us, in perfect syncopation say "...hey, I'm his greatest fan!" We both start laughing. I suddenly feel a lot better. Adam makes a pretty good Guru himself. So we have a discussion about musicians and their Egos. How we'd both been there. Hey, I sure had; feeling myself better and cooler than anyone else because I was A Big Star. All of us in Chrome Pie went through it too, we got into arguments and almost broke up the band three or four times, always about ego. But luckily we had Scott Richter leading us and being our friend. He was our guru, always the most ready to sacrifice his own ego to solve a problem. I'd like to think I was equally ego-free, but learned that I wasn't-- if my guitar wasn't way out in front I'd... I'd hold my breath until I turned blue, or something equally stupid. Charlie Madison on bass has his quirks, Lee Springer on keyboards quit at least three times; Benny Joe on drums may have been the most problematic (ex-con, bad temper). We were all shitheads at some point, but we were also okay too. Just us typical humans, you know. But Adam is not a typical human at all. And I have to say that he is the most ego-free, most "human" guy I've ever known. Unless you regard having absolute faith in the infallibility of Your Very Own Shaman Vision as egocentric. You know: "Listen to ME, for I have seen the light!" Well, maybe he has, because it sure does seem to be showing him the way. But what I am getting around to is that EGO is usually what fucks up a band, no matter how well they play music together. Or a chick in the band who every guy wants: poison incarnate. And here we have not so much ego (except mine), but four really wantable chicks-- five, if you count Maki; even though she isn't a musician, she's still cute enough to cause trouble. And everything's hanging together just fine because of how Adam's ego works. So far.
Palenque is famous not only for the ruins but also for the Magic Mushrooms (psilocybin) that grow there, usually just after it rains, so there's a flock of hippies staying in the campground. They don't even have to go looking for mushrooms because local kids gather them in the meadows and sell them here. There's one local Mayan girl who shows up with plastic bags of mushrooms to sell, and all the guys in camp are fantasizing about her. Understandably; she's strikingly pretty, bit of a hippy herself, adolescent going on sexy, dresses in colorful tribal clothes, has her hair tied in ribbons around a long black braid, has a ring in her nose. She speaks only Mayan and no one knows her name so they call her The Princess of Mushrooms. But if we think she's exotic, she feels the same way about squatches. She freezes solid when she sees Adam for the first time. He's sitting outside the bus, playing his guitar. He gives her a big toothy smile and she looks about ready to toss everything and run away screaming. So he plays a riff on his guitar. It's a great riff, in fact it leads into a fascinating melody I've never heard before. Neither has that girl, but she understands that it is for her. She does not run, she smiles, she's fascinated. And Adam sings her this amazing song from out of nowhere:
The Princess of Mushrooms is smiling at me,
With her olivine eyes and the ring in her nose, I am blown away, much more than the girl is. It's in English so she can't understand the words or the symbolism. She doesn't know that she has just inspired magic. Or maybe she does: she tries to give Adam a free bag of mushrooms.
Back to San Christobal. Adam had promised that we would visit Don & Kissy Benson and their daughter Shiianne, although he wasn't sure how welcome we'd be after their teenage daughter had been hit by Masnia's surprise shyøma attack. She had been as totally embarrassed as only a teen-aged girl can be. There might be some explaining to do. Some of us (me) suggest passing on by, forget the visit and just keep going. But Adam can't break a promise-- seems to be an Orator thing --so we have to go through with it. The Bensons have a nice place, an old hacienda just outside town. Classic, laid out in a big square with all rooms surrounding an open patio in the middle of it all, a little river of clean running water passing through, like a park right inside their home. We park the bus on the street just outside, ready to make a break if we need to: we're not sure if we'll be there for dinner or be chased out of town. Sure enough, Kissy is upset and surprised that we've came to visit at all. Shiianne had been mortified and can't understand how she had made such a fool of herself and been so... so... well, so-- although nothing had happened. Don, the man of the house, isn't sure about what is going on, wondering why his ladies are acting so weird, so he's vacillating between being honored and happy to have a visit from Adam's famous band, and confused about his women's mood. So Adam charms them into being polite, although Kissy demands an explanation-- just not with Don listening, because she's not sure what happened either. So it somehow becomes MY job to charm both of those women into understanding just why Shiianne had a harmless little attack of hysterical desire when we last saw them. I concentrate on making Shiianne feel good about us being there, because she is the innocent victim, so I give her a hug and hint that what happened had been my fault because I'm always posing as a rock star and sometimes get carried away by my own macho image, confusing young girls with my Hollywood bullshit. The mother calls me on that, saying bullshit, right. She almost accuses me of having given Shiianne a drug of some kind-- which is too close to the truth, although it was Masnia, not me. But I say, no, it's just that Shiianne's a teen-aged girl-fan and that sometimes they get hysterical-- scream and faint at concerts-- not really her fault or mine. But Kissy is really not buying that. So to prove my point I play guitar for them. "Tears In Heaven", of course --giving both of them the full-blast guitar-stud routine. Really hamming it up, deliberately turning them on. Her mother believes me after that. If her husband hadn't been there... well, I know groupie behavior when I see it, and Kissie'd gotten turned on. Shiianne did too, but now she understood that it was only normal and hardly embarrassing at all. Mell, who had previously established that she and I "fuck a lot", made a discreet little show of being turned on too (or maybe she was) so that the evidence was complete: we were innocent of any wrong-doing, it was all just the Power of Art. Don likes the music too, is impressed and all that, but the groupie-effect goes right over his head. Although he does catch the Melly & Lissandra effect full blast and has to deal with that. Just to make sure, we have Masnia get close and bat those innocent eyes at him. So he ends up on our side too, poor guy doesn't have a chance. So it's a nice visit after all, we have dinner with them, take pictures to show to Art and Elaine, and leave that evening, heading back towards Oaxaca State, Masnia driving. As we drive through the night Melly lets me know that she hadn't been pretending to be turned on. Adam and Magga make the bus rock. Liss is busy with Pokey and Maki. Life on the bus goes back to normal.
|