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Sunday, October 9, 2022

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Bernadine Dohrn could take you all by herself in the shape you're in

 

When you use crack cocaine, you're disappointing Pee Wee.

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Up Against the Wall: The Story of Tyrone

This interlude has some pretty delightful writing in it; personally I adore the metaphors "I got feisty, broke into the conversation with a verbal crowbar..." and "[h]e used a verbal hatchet and cut his way back in..." Bon mots like that are paired with some genuinely hilarious reproduction of what late-Sixties-hippie-speed-talk might plausibly have sounded like. While Wilson possessed a tip-top memory, he didn't to my knowledge have an eidetic one, so I assume much of the details are his best attempts at a reconstruction of Tyrone's monologues. But what an attempt at recollection! Given the happy, if sinister in its larger implications, ending of this vignette, I would say this is one of the more enjoyable interludes in Sex, Drugs & Magick. 

At the risk of being gauche, I don't think that Tyrone is anything like we'd imagine someone of his description today. In our era, I'd imagine an individual who is widely known for being relentlessly sexually active at 17 and using speed would  conjure a bespectacled, ringlet-haired, aspiring writer, but that might just be my own prejudices. Today, speed is dirty. Or perhaps, speed is dirty depending on the brand and setting: there was a good reason for the reduction of sentences for crack-cocaine under Obama. One version of the drug was expensive, one was cheap and therefore worse and more punishable under the law. It is a small wonder I think, where crack cocaine and methamphetamine have been equated with the lowest rungs of society most of my life, that I immediately think of it with an aversion derived from a wish for foreignness. And like, mayhap because of, Wilson I have an aversion to uppers based on their danger and what I see as their relative worthlessness. 

I also think this is an odd anecdote-biography to follow the chapter on LSD/psychedelics. Most of the interludes involve people who are involved with the drug for the preceding chapter, here we have a brief mention that Tyrone used LSD when he was 14 and then move on to his speed usage. I would wager that this might be a message about the fleeting nature of LSD and that far from an end-all-be-all experience that some imagine it to be, it is simply something that happens followed by many other events. The discussion of the differences between talking to someone on acid and conversing with someone on uppers is humorous and illustrative. Aside from being able to mentally concentrate (somewhat), I have always felt more-or-less physically sound on psychedelics. I'd say drinking has a much more dire effect on my motor skills. 

Wilson again demonstrates his human decency by being forbearing with a young man who wants to court his daughter who he absolutely does not want around. Another way he was an exemplary human being, I shudder to think of that day. Wilson also guides the young man as best he can until Tyrone takes off and I believe that there is a personal sense of joy at the end of the chapter. But Wilson does cast a shadow over the end with the words of Ram Dass. 

It occurred to me while I was reading the chapter, how many people in life I've heard talk like Wilson has Tyrone talk. The conspiratorial fantasies and patently absurd theories I've heard spout from a few acquaintances at times were recalled to memory while reading this story. I wonder, since I have been trained to associate speed use with a certain stigmatic set of symptoms, if perhaps I was unaware that someone was using at the time. And more frighteningly, it does seem that Ram Dass was absolutely correct about the use of speed in the upper echelons of the government. At least according to that disgraced dick Madison Cawthorn and the late, sainted Carrie Fisher. (It pains me to put them in the same sentence.) 

Stray Thoughts

- I find it hilarious the girl who vandalized Tyrone's apartment had to find someone from the Weather Underground to secure a can of spray paint. 

- Regrettably, Tyrone and many other conspiratorial thinkers were nail-on-the-head correct about the dangers of Catholicism and its continued presence in civilization. 

- Was belladonna really that common in California during the 60s? 

- I'd like to know how Tyrone's life turned out. Like a few other figures in the interludes, I have a (what I hope isn't voyeuristic) interest to hear the rest of their stories. Wherever Tyrone may or may not be, I hope he got to ram a jazz guitar down someone's throat. 

-Turns out "every few days" means "next week." I don't know what to do with myself. 

I imagine a speed freak who was afraid of the draft and pollution,who also liked Lord of the Rings, listened to The Yardbirds. 


6 comments:

  1. Nice post. I confess I read a bit ahead.

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  2. Methamphetamines were a pretty bad scourge in Oklahoma years ago, so to me this chapter seems prescient. Meth is pretty bad stuff.

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  3. I feel a tad confused here. RAW, upon finding Tyrone in Mexico, writes "he hadn't been using methamphetamine lately." But, as far as I know, 'speed' refers to amphetamine, not meth. I understand that they are chemically related, and that both can be used as stimulant or to treat ADHD, but they still aren't the same. Or am I wrong in thinking that speed can only mean amphetamine? As for crack cocaine, it is a free base form of cocaine, so yet another thing.

    In my mind at least, I have much more troubling pictures popping up when thinking of meth or crack cocaine than for speed, which I just think of as cocaine for the poor. Here in Europe, speed is in places very common (Poland, Britain, Berlin or Iceland come to mind). Cool modern day speed freaks typically tend to also sports short hair and be black leather-clad in Berghain or some club, and more importantly for their health, vegan as well. They often sure do look malnourished. But it's so common where I live that it sometimes look as if everyone is doing it, really.
    Frequent cocaine users seem to me much more temperamental and prone to sudden bouts of violence.
    I personally have no interest in uppers. They even tend to bring my mood pretty down after an hour or so, and not even in an "I'd feel much better if only I'd have another line now" kind of way.

    Tyrone made me want to watch The Incredible Shrinking Man again, though.

    I posted something on last week's discussion, but it disappeared.

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    1. I am going assume that Wilson was using "speed" like I was when I wrote the post: as a catch-all term, like "uppers." I appreciate your clearing up our murky terminology. I made a similar mistake talking about benzos and amphetamines in conversation with my wife. I guess this is a major blind spot for me.

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    2. I'm going to restore the comment! I'm sorry that this keeps happening and I have no idea why the bot is going after people who post here regularly.

      I like the film of The Incredible Shrinking Man much more than the novel. However, I read the novel in a collection that included The Space Merchants and The Long Tomorrow, so I might have been comparing it unfairly to books I found more impressive.

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    3. Thank you for restoring the comment and for your answers!

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