"You're a hell of a guru, Hagbard. Sometimes you sound even dumber than me."
"If the Elder Malaclypse were here, he'd tell you a few about some other gurus. And geniuses. Do you think Jesus never whacked off? Shakespeare never got on a crying jag at the Mermaid Tavern? Buddha never picked his nose? Gandhi never had the crabs?"
"I've still got a hard-on. Can't we postpone the philosophy while I go look for Stella- I mean, Mavis?"
"That's Truth."
"What is Truth?"
"Up in the cortex it makes a difference to you whether it's Stella or Mavis. Down in the glands, no difference. My grandmother would do as well."
"That's not Truth. That's just cheap half-assed Freudian cynicism."
"Oh, yes. You saw the mandala with Mavis."
"And you were inside my head somehow. Dirty voyeur."
"Know thyself."
"This will never take its place beside the Platonic Dialogues, not in a million years. We're both stoned out of our gourds."
"I love you, George."
"I guess I love you, too. You're so damned overwhelming. Everybody loves you. Are we gonna fuck?"
"No. You don't need it. You're starting to remember what really happened in Mad Dog jail."
"I'm afraid so."
"Damn it, now I'll never know. Did you put that in my head, or did it really happen? Did I fantasize the interruption then or did I fantasize the rape just now?"
"Know thyself."
"Did you say that twice or did I just hear it twice?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know. I don't know, right now.
"Maybe. Maybe it's a murder plot. Maybe I'm leading up to cutting your throat."
"I wouldn't mind. I've always had a big self-destructive urge. Like all cowards. Cowardice is a defense against suicide."
Hagbard laughed. "I never knew a young man who had so much pussy and risked death so often. And there you sit, still worrying about being whatever it was they called you when you first started letting your hair grow long in your early teens."
"Sissy. That was the word in good old Nutley, New Jersey. It meant both faggot and coward. So I've never cut my hair since then, to prove
"Yeah. I'm tracking a black guy now, a musician, who's balling a white lady, a fair flower from Texas. Partly, because she really turns him on. But partly because she could have a brother who might come after him with a gun. He's proving
"That's the Truth? We spend all our time proving we can't be intimidated? But all the time we are intimidated on another level?" The colors were coming back strong again; it was that kind of trip. Every time you thought you were the pilot, it would go off in an unexpected direction to remind you that you were just a passenger.
"That's part of the Truth, George. Another part is that every time you think you're intimidated you're really rebelling on another level. Oh, what idiots the IIluminati really are, George. I once collected statistics on industrial accidents in a sample city- Birmingham, England, actually. Fed all the relevant facts into FUCKUP and got just what I expected. Sabotage. Unconscious sabotage. Every case was a blind insurrection. Every man and woman is in rebellion, but only a few have the guts to admit it. The others jam the system by accident, har har har, or by stupidity, har har har again. Let me tell you about the Indians, George."
"What Indians?"
"Did you ever wonder why nothing works right? Why the whole world seems completely fucked up all the time?"
"Yeah. Doesn't everybody?"
"I suppose so. Pardon me, I've got to get more stoned. In a little while, I go into FUCKUP and we put our heads together- literally, I attach electrodes to my temples- and I'll try to track down the problem in Las Vegas. I don't spend
"The Indians in Birmingham. How did they get there?"
"There weren't any fucking Indians in Birmingham. You're getting me confused." Hagbard toked deeply.
"You're getting yourself confused. You're bombed out of your skull."
"Look who's talking."
