The Grey Eminence of psychedelic letters walked into the Vancouver Yacht Club as gracefully as he had thirty-five years before into an Oxford lecture hall with his vision of a Brave New World. He glided effortlessly, though with a walking stick, bathed in flannel, toward a window table where Al Hubbard sat waiting.
The Captain knew Aldous Huxley's time was limited on this earth, but the pain never showed. Hubbard stood up at his seat and grabbed Huxley fully around the body, holding him at stunned attention. "We owe it all to you, you old sonofabitch!" Hubbard bellowed, his eyes completely swallowed by the pupils -- black pools of burning conviction.
Huxley, standing six-foot seven, a mile above the Captain, began to smile a wizened, toothy ear-stretching grin, which gave way to a laugh that caused his frail body to shudder uncontrollably. "I do believe you are under the influence," Huxley rolled.
"Well, it's a damn fine place to be!" the Captain roared, letting Huxley free. "It truly is."
Fire and ice, the two sat down and gabbed until some internal and inexplicable sense order was manifest, at which point Huxley became silent, withdrawing a small magnifying glass, placing it over the menu, line-by-line, restoring sight to a pair of retinas damaged by an untreated bout of strep throat while at Eton. "How appropriate," Huxley said, and began to order the quail on a bed of wild rice.
"And the soup, sir?" the waiter asked.
"Why, the mushroom!" Huxley cried, caving both men into a volley of helpless laughter.
The lunch crowd was beginning to focus on the odd pair, sensing, perhaps, a muted genius beneath Huxley's stork-like physique, the regal elegance of a long line of British dignitaries, author of some 84 novels and plays. But there was also something strange about the man. Something distinctly ungrandfatherly: something, no doubt, having to do with his conversion in 1953 to Psychedelic Drugs.
He was the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the British '20s, a mind new and brilliant and captivating; they bowed at his feet in the '30s, and shuddered at his satiric pen, which spared none...but by 1935 something had happened. Nobody was quite sure what to call it, but it appeared to be madness, or genius, because nothing else could possibly explain Brave New World. It was as if God, Himself, had lunched with Huxley and explained to him the ills of the human condition.
Madness. Genius. Essence of peyote...rhythms of the Cosmos, sending open the Doors of Perception.
"We owe it all to you," the Captain repeated.
"Nonsense," Huxley frowned. "I knew nothing of LSD-25 until I met you, Captain Hubbard. I have said it before, and will, no doubt, again, that you are the membrane through which all must pass to enter into the Mysteries. You are the key, good Captain," Huxley maintained. "The civilized world may occasionally be amused by my talents, but, when worshipping, pays homage to Al Hubbard."
"Wow," the Captain muttered, "a guy could get a big head hanging around you, Aldous."
Outside the restaurant, across Puget Sound, a sleek racing boat pulled up to Hubbard's yacht, then cut its engine. Hubbard stood abruptly. "Looks like lunch's over."
Major General William Creasy and Dr. Sidney Gottlieb gripped a narrow ladder and pulled themselves aboard, waiting for the Captain and his foreign charge as they slipped out a side door of the restaurant and strolled down the dock, then onto the deck of the Wisdom. Al Hubbard saluted General Creasy, who waved him immediately at-ease.
Sidney Gottlieb, tan and fit like an aging tennis pro, walked over to Huxley and shook his hand. "It's been a long time, Aldous."
Huxley nodded, reddening in the eyes. "It has, Sidney. But we will make up for it, and the world will be a better place."
The four sat at a small table on the deck. Hubbard opened a bottle of Louis-Mouton Courvasier, pouring a long round into deep snifters to warm their toes from a crisp wind cutting over the Sound. "General Creasy is Chairman of the Army Chemical Corps, Aldous. He's our resident populist," Hubbard chuckled.
Creasy snickered, his pale face offset by a pair of black eyebrows that flickered as he spoke. "Aldous, I believe in drugs for the masses. To each, according to their needs, from me, who owns the whole stash."
Dr. Gottlieb smiled. "Bill has a special contract with Sandoz Laboratories for virtually their total output of lysergic acid diethylamide."
"It's a monopoly," Creasy grinned.
"Actually, a cartel," Gottlieb corrected, "because he's sharing it with the Company."
"And I," Hubbard said, with a glitter in his eye, "am sharing it with you." He unlocked the pouch on his waist, extracted a black vial, and dropped a clean two-hundred micrograms into each of the four cognacs.
"Bon ami," Gottlieb said, lifting his glass, and the Wisdom, under the direction of Captain Hubbard's personal driver and the power of twin Chevy 317's, raced out of the harbor toward the estate of Captain Alfred M. Hubbard, indeed a Man for All Eons.
Forty minutes later, the approaching shore glowed orange, covered bulbs forming an ascending line from the steps of the dock to Al Hubbard's estate. The Wisdom slowed and entered the slip. All four men were consumed by the LSD, their bodies reverberating some inner magic, a vibrant aura illuminating everything around them.
"Feel it?" Hubbard wondered. "I keep thinking one day the stuff won't hit me. That I'll be immune."
"Maybe we should just talk here," Huxley said, running his hands over his frail thighs. "I'm afraid I've forgotten how to walk."
Creasy broke up laughing, which embarrassed Huxley. "I thought I pissed my pants once," Creasy admitted, by way of apology. "Got so fucking high I just forgot what I was doing. Lucky for me, it was pouring rain and I had a coat on. Then I got to a bathroom, and saw that I was perfectly dry."
After Captain Hubbard got Huxley aright, the author moved on his own volition to the lakefront home, feeling a strange softness in his feet, as if walking on sponge. Hubbard unlocked the front door and let the men inside.
"Amazing!" Dr. Gottlieb marveled. "I never realized..." he said, walking the length of Hubbard's living room, where a long teak table sat majestically on bone-white carpet, surrounded by objects d'art of the first order. Over the fireplace, a great, curved sword, with etchings of hunts in the Savannah on the blade, refracted the room's light; a stuffed elephant's head, three-foot tusks intact, adorned a far mantle. General Creasy stood inspecting a glass case devoted to Civil War revolvers. In grainy celluloid, Harry S. Truman stood on the deck of the Wisdom. On the same wall, unknown photographers had captured Al Hubbard with Lucky Luciano at the opening of the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas; with Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, at its national headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts; and drinking whiskey with Papa Joe Kennedy in Hyannis Port.
"You keep weird company, Al," Creasy said, staring at the photos. "Bob Welch, I can handle, but the other two give me gas."
The Captain laughed raucously. "I believe in the diversity of mankind, General. I have lots of friends: Jews, goys...even know some Fellow Travelers who pitch a mean contract bridge."
Aldous Huxley radiated into the living room and sank down into an immense leather sofa. "Shall we?" he smiled. "I will need to know Franklin Moore. His character. His morals, his weaknesses...his very essence before I meet with him. I should not like to be remembered for a failed experiment."
Dr. Gottlieb straightened in his chair. "You won't, Aldous. I've looked over the kid's medical records, his psychiatric profile, his background, and I think he's perfect. He just needs some guidance."
"That's what you said about Neal Cassady," Creasy muttered, "and look what a fucking head-case he's turned out to be."
Captain Hubbard disagreed. "We've gotten some good mileage out of Neal. He's the model for our whole program. The Übermentsch, right Aldous?"
General Creasy shook his head suddenly. "I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm not giving away any more of my Delysid to something I don't understand."
After an uneasy silence, Aldous Huxley rose from the couch, like Jesus from the tomb. "General, the Übermentsch is my dream. It is a perfect human being, a superman, if you will. He is an athlete, a field sergeant, an actor, an irresistible mind and body..."
The men sat rapt as Huxley began creating this perfect man, cell by resplendent cell, one protean layer atop another, until Frederic Nietzsche's original philosophical invention virtually sprang to life. The world had seen facets of the Übermentsch: Mozart, Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson...but he had disappeared in recent times, and Aldous Huxley wanted him resurrected. Indeed, to Huxley, creating the Übermentsch was the only way to a perfect utopia. In some ways, Huxley was, himself, this hero: the perfect intelligence, the sharpest wit, the keenest sensibilities. But he was also nearly blind, walked with a cane, and was dying of cancer.
"Gentlemen, I have little time to spare. My contribution to this world will be measured not in my literature, but by the calibre of man that I may cultivate from his baser instincts."
General Creasy stared skeptically at Huxley. "Why would a guy change for you?"
Captain Hubbard shifted in his chair. Dr. Gottlieb sat silently.
"I once had a student at Oxford by the name of Eric Blair," Huxley said softly. "A very timid creature, fairly handsome, but somewhat dyslexic. He came to me for help in the rudiments of the English language. I told him to realize his vision. Conceive of it in his mind, live in it, then transfer it onto paper. As he did, he altered the outlook of the English-speaking world."
"George Orwell," Creasy said, eyes open, suddenly understanding. "1984, Animal Farm ... that was you!"
Huxley closed his eyes. "When Eric succumbed to tuberculosis much too early, I was devastated. He had been my prized model and a dear friend, and he was dead."
William Creasy came alive, a believer. "Now...now, what were you saying about Neal Cassady? What kind of mileage? You've been keeping me in the dark!"
"MK-ULTRA has always been on a need-to-know basis, Bill," Gottlieb said. "And you've never needed to know."
"Well, goddamnit, I do now!" he yelled.
"Of course," the Doctor nodded. "The Company's Behavioral Research Division has been working on personality modification since the early '50s, sometimes on its own agents, sometimes with contract employees, but most of the time with volunteer citizens. When the poetry movement started getting noisy in San Francisco, we decided to try out this Übermentsch concept on a couple of its leaders. A couple proved worthwhile to a degree, a few did not," Gottlieb said.
"Names!" Creasy shouted. "I want to know who we've got out there as moles."
Captain Hubbard cut in. "Yeah, well, we tried with Jack Kerouac. What a waste. Handsomest man I've ever seen, looked like Clark Gable...then he found whiskey. He's living with his mom on Long Island now, our men couldn't get at him if we wanted to. She won't even put a call through from his friends."
"How did you attach him to MK-ULTRA?" Creasy wondered. "What's the hook?"
"It's different every time," Hubbard said. "We got Kerouac through his buddy Carlo Marx, the fag poet from the Bronx. He wrote Growl ...`I've seen the great minds of my era destroyed by anguish, grieving, delirious, hostile, pulling themselves through the vacant city weeds at dusk, looking for a final thrill'..."
"Jesus," Creasy nodded. "I remember when that thing came out. The bookstores wouldn't carry it. I think he beat a federal obscenity rap."
Hubbard nodded. "That's him. He was also an accomplice to a murder back in '52. One of his friends stabbed a lover to death and weighted him down into the Hudson. Carlo got rid of the knife. Lucky for us, the guy bubbled back up," Hubbard chuckled. "Marx got off as a nut-case and was shipped off to New York Neuro-Psychiatric. We planted a young agent named Aaron Fischbein in as his roommate, and cooked up a story that Fischbein's pop owned a little press. When they got out, they started publishing some of Kerouac and Willy Burroughs, who's kookier than seven chickens."
Sidney Gottlieb smiled and shook his head. "What a plan. Where did we go wrong?"
Hubbard pursed his lips. "It broke my heart, but in '52 America wasn't ready for something like On the Road. McCarthy was swinging for the bleachers. We just kept hoping ol' Joe would drink himself to death, or that someone would put a bullet into his brain, because there was no way in hell the public would accept a book about sex with Negroes, and dope and hitchhiking to Mexico when the Activities Committee was hauling actors into jail for even sounding like Democrats.
"We kept putting Kerouac off," Hubbard continued, "getting him $1,000 here and $500 there for some magazine work...I mean, the guy was really good, there was never any doubt. But by the time McCarthy's liver quit, Kerouac was boozing it pretty bad himself. His looks have gone to hell. He has no following. He's just biding his days now until he pickles his innards."
"And what about Neal Cassady?" Creasy wondered.
"Amazing intellect," Huxley smiled, assimilating the classified information. "I should like to know him better. He has an extraordinary capacity of not only listening and digesting every word, but holding multiple conversations simultaneously. I had occasion to meet Mr. Cassady at a Hollywood party. He was listening to Dr. Oscar Janiger talk about LSD therapy in chronic alcoholics, while Stanley Kubrick was discussing the latest film techniques, and Mr. Cassady managed to fondle the back of Candice Bergen's thighs, while answering both men and puff a marihuana cigarette all in the same instance," Huxley giggled. "I went to bed knowing there is still hope for the human condition."
"So why's he such a loser," Creasy grumbled. "Last time I heard, he was down in San Quentin for running dope."
Captain Hubbard groaned. "Some redneck Kern County cops found him with a baggy of joints. Any one of us could have inhaled them all at once and still driven home," Hubbard said. "They gave him five-to-life. We got him out in two and a half, but then he started eating speed. His brain's wired like a bomb. He'll aneurism before he hits forty if he doesn't stay off the bennies. We tried to get him the same deal we gave Kerouac, but he doesn't want to sit still at a typewriter for as long as it takes to write his story. He'd rather be stealing cars."
The LSD was wearing down, and the men were getting tired.
"Don't suppose I could interest any of you gentlemen in another dose," the Captain shrugged, eyeing his leather satchel, but noticed no takers.
Bill Creasy was nodding at the ground, still trying to deal with it all. "So where are we now? Where's the goddamned Übermentsch now!?"
The men looked at each other, then at the Captain.
"He's down at Stanford University," Hubbard smiled. "It's a little early to tell, but I have a feeling he's Captain America."
. . .
resides in Lafayette, Louisiana, and is currently a Teaching Fellow
in the doctoral-level Creative Writing Program at University of Southwestern
Louisiana. He holds a Master's degree in Professional Writing from the University
of Southern California, and has published work in Utah Holiday,
High Times, Fling, and InterText.
His poetry has appeared in Riverwind, Ellipsis
, Utah Holiday, Beat Scene Magazine (UK)),
and George Garrett's Poultry: A Magazine of Voice. As an
active participant in the little magazine arena, he also edits and publishes
Far Gone.
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Copyright Circuit Traces Communications 1995