“In sterquiliniis invenitur”
[In filth it will be found]
- Latin Proverb
…
19 miles outside of Las Vegas,
Nevada – 6:41 AM
...
Hot, dry winds out here on the edge
of the Mojave desert. The plants that grow here are tough - the animals that
survive here are tough. No room for flawed evolution or awkward chromosome
defects – no forgiveness for the weak and damned and yes, that includes you, Bubba.
Out here, the degenerate swine of this blue-green planet will wither and die
& only the beautiful and insane can thrive – which might explain why hardly
anything can be found here at all.
I had just been dropped here by a
confused freelance Haitian cab driver who picked me up in a battered old chevy
truck outside the last casino on the Western edge of town. We left the City
limits and the road turned sharply and went straight for about 7 miles before
bending down towards the red rocks, canyons and mountains of the sierra. Holy
Shit, I thought. 19 miles outside of Las Vegas and look what we found – what
I discovered. Meanwhile, the fat whores and psychotic greed junkies of the
city would still be crowded around the roulette wheels & slot machines in every
gas station, 7/11, sleazy motel lobby and billion dollar resort between
Henderson and Paradise. Maybe it is ignorance that keeps them paralyzed or some
kind of deep-seated paranoia of the unknown – Fear of the dust & fear of
the way it creeps past the lips and into the pink, pulsing sponge of the lungs
– fear of the monsters that might be hiding out there beyond the glittering
ridge of the desert mountain line. Fear of all those foreigners, fear of all
their thoughts and lust for fire and death – fear of a Black planet, fear of
the stars and fluid sex and blended race – fear of life, afterlife and the
machine precision of the Asian types – fear of crime and fear of the edge –
fear of the good life – fear of the tough bitch crowd and anything that might trigger
the petrol skies of the apocalypse and even a powerful fear of naked Latina
pussy & all the hearts and souls that it will devour. These poisonous
little bastards are driven by fear, and their fear keeps them all in line, and
they seem to like it that way. Perhaps it is the single and final factor that
has always stopped them from taking a car and speeding south on highway 159 to
join me here at the edge of the great divide.
And I am not surprised... After all
-
This is Snake Country.
Yes, long fucking things with
2-inch fangs and an unending appetite for rape and fresh human connective
tissue – and I have always imagined that they would love to feed on the fat,
bloated carcass of exactly the kind of depraved creep that I have just wasted
ten minutes and a long slug of tequila trying to pin down. Ah, the green
twisted serpent, the biblical snake of chaos. The enduring enemy of man; and
woman, actually. As mighty and powerful as we have grown, we are all quite
useless out here among the cactus and sand when a big fucking snake grabs you
by the ankle. You probably won't even
see it coming, but just fall to the ground – clutching and clawing at
your neck and bleeding red stuff from your eyes. Indeed, I have a friend up in
the great plains of Montana and another from the social elite of Dubai in the
Middle East who both hated snakes, and considered them the greatest threat to
their personal peace and aura of Love – and they had their reasons. I remember
the nights when we would drive out of town after midnight and head North until
we reached the edge of the wilderness where we would stop the car at the brink
of the rimrocks to smoke a bag of grass and watch the stars and meteor showers
of the big sky. Those nights were beautiful but they had a vicious tendency to
spiral down into a savage party of freak power and weird, uncomfortable
encounters and always, usually at around 3 AM, Gabbie would make a direct phone
call to the local zoo; to explain the 'snake problem'.
“Hello? Is this Billings zoo?
…
Yeah I have a big fucking pest
problem,
…
I know it's not your fault and I'm
sorry – but you should come out here, we're at the cliff edge and I can see the
city glowing in, um, that direction – this snake is fucking disgusting and
guess what? It's really big too, Oh Jeez...
…
It's staring in my dirty, bad
face... remove it now.”
I don't think the zoo paid anyone
to stay in the office for those hours, and so no one ever got the memo or came
out to our car with a .357 revolver and
the appropriate training for our situation – but it did no harm to try, and we
would all feel relieved when she hung up the phone with tears in her eyes,
pleading that she had done all she could to save us. Now, just one month later,
she and Vafa will call me from across the ocean and let me know how ugly things
have become since I was last with them. They tell me all about the drugs, the
snakes and more importantly, about the people that have come to behave like
snakes – ruthless and deceitful. It's no wonder that we hate them – they will
betray you and suffocate you to death or snap your spinal column. And yes, it's
pretty hard to come back from betrayal -
it could ruin your life or even mine if I don't plan things very
carefully. That's why Nixon had to resign and why Michael Flynn and Paul
Manafort are headed to Federal prison, maybe with Jared Kushner and Trump Jr.
to follow – unless their lawyers can get them out of it, which wouldn't really
surprise me either – these people learn early on to cover their tracks and
watch their back, their training is impeccable, really, and that should
frighten us all – the Blacks and Whites, Latin-types, Asians, Muslims,
supermodels, reality TV stars, wrestlers, whores and depressed maniacs. Even
snakes. O.K., Maybe not snakes – Why not snakes? Well, because it's true that
snakes – as treacherous and subtle as they are – do not have enough IQ to
properly analyze the political landscape of their environment... And maybe that
is why they cannot control their environment and must slither on their stomach
forever. That is the main flaw of the snake, as far as I can tell, and I have
been thinking about this for a long time – no lawyers or knowledge of the legal
system – it might be the only obstacle to their final rule over planet earth –
a cruel Marxist dictatorship of serpents in suits – sitting in tall chairs
& waiting for any excuse to kill you or me, maybe together at the same
time, by firing squad or a clean double hanging. OK pause, please – this is
becoming the dark stuff of a nervous acid trip – Mad flashbacks to a strange
Saturday night in November driving around the Hollywood Hills... and we are
both better off without those right now, I feel.
So, that's all to say that snakes
might be a big problem out here. They might kill me actually; there is a
chance. The Haitian warned me about them, and then he reversed around in the
scrub of the unpaved parking lot and thrust his dented truck back towards the
city in a rising plume of yellow dust.
But I might be able to kill a
snake, if it really comes to that – there might be worse things here, more evil
beings... I once had a paranoid vision of finding the ghost of Nixon here, 2500
miles from Washington. Yes, picture that – the animated and zombified corpse of
the child-killer and crooked swine-lord Richard Milhouse Nixon himself,
scrabbling around in the sand like a mutant pig. Should we set the rattlesnakes
on him? O.K. But we will have to make friends with them first and give them a
peace offering. The human mind is incredible and strong beyond belief, I think.
It can recover from almost anything – I know people who have survived having a
gun put to their head, being held and strip-searched without explanation for
three hours at Denver airport... and Gabbie spent most of 2016 campaigning for
Bernie Sanders balls-deep in the red state of Montana only to see the female
Clinton kill him off behind the scenes and for a fat villain to get elected to
the Oval office instead – and they are all good people. But no, dealing with
Nixon's zombie under these circumstances would be the end of someone. As for
me, I didn't see Nixon out there, but if I did, I would have elbowed him in the
throat and jabbed my sharp, pointed bone into the soft and decaying flesh –
feeling the stringy muscle fibres and loose network of veins split open and
leak beneath me – hopefully hard enough to send him to a local ER room in a Las
Vegas hospital. Like Tupac.
Fuck Nixon. And Tupac? Well...
forget about him too. We are in a new age now and we have no time or cash left
for a dwarfed and deformed creep like President Nixon. This journey to the
heart of the American desert was a testimony to our ability to overcome
– a last stand against the wave of evil horse shit that they are trying to put
onto You & I.
These are the thoughts that were
running through the fried circuitry of my mind as the sun came up and chased
back the bruised skies of the pre-dawn. Unbearable and terrible thoughts. I
walked through the cactus and sage towards the red edge of the mountain line
for about half an hour. Two large jackrabbits ran ahead of me, the female stood
upright and stared back at me, and then they both disappeared forever into the
undergrowth.
...
How would the Haitian overcome this
situation? Precisely how much of the immigrant mentality is needed for a trip
like this? I remembered what he said.
“Mescalito Peak is straight North
from here, you'll be able to see it when you reach the top of the ridge”
“OK, man”
“It's gonna take you a while
though, I haven't been there in years but it's pretty far and it's gonna get
very hot here, I think, very quick, you understand?”
“Yeah, I have a tonne of water”
“Some people died here before, you
know...”
“Yeah, it happens...”
“Anyway, good luck – you can even
climb up the peak if you make it all the way out there, you can see all the way
back out to Vegas, unless the dust starts to blow around...”
Well, why not? Mountains are a
useful and constant reminder of the human desire to conquer & control – and
that's the proper way to think about it. It's no surprise that each year, a
weird selection of sleazy Americans find the time and funds to rent an addled
little Asian mountain guide and take a trip to the summit of Mount Everest on
the edge of Nepal – even if some of them are too dumb or pathological to make it
back down alive. There are many good ways to die, but being frozen to death in
an icestorm on a mountain in Nepal is not one of them. But then again, it is
not good either to die alone with shrivelled kidneys and bleached bones in the
wastelands of Southern Nevada.
So that is why we must push on and
carry our suffering like a dead deer in the harshest of winters and wield it
like the loaded rifle from which the bullet was fired – the original and
essential story of Man. The snakes will come creeping in if you don't – and you
don't want to be a snake killer, because there are lots of fucking snakes, and
one of the psychotic bastards will eat you sooner or later - probably sooner.
You want to be someone who the snakes don't even prey on in the first place –
and you can have that advice for free, although I suspect that in a shark-tank
city like Las Vegas, it could be worth around $45.
I stopped under the fractured shade
of a cactus and soaked my face and shirt with water – to prolong the survival
process. I remember looking out to Mescalito Peak - Sweet Jesus, I thought.
What am I doing out here alone? Who forced me? What became of that wise
and ruthless Haitian? Well, I'm not sure those questions matter now; because,
an hour later I had made it to the base of the peak – a 300 ft cone of ragged
sandstone streaked with veins of crimson red rock. It rises from the Mesquite
scrubland like the twisted horn of a great and savage beast – breathing slowly
and deeply under the sand and rock – and above all else, just waiting. How else
would you expect a great and savage beast to behave? Because THAT IS WHAT I
CALLED IT – and although we have replaced the era of the great and savage
beasts with a generation of filthy apes and pigs – the toughest and most
beautiful beasts of this planet seem to have found ways to survive, and that's
how it is always going to be.
I began to climb. Slowly and
carefully, because as we have established – savage beasts live here and they
are not to be fucked with. I was riding the crooked and ridged spine of the
beast and rising up and up above the desert floor. The air is clearer here, and
free from dust – and so that's one thing on our side, huh? This climate is
refreshing, and I think that without it – the whole venture would have been doomed
and I probably would have had to admit failure before heading back to the City
to make friends with the methamphetamine-addicts and cocaine-sluts of North Las
Vegas and drink myself half to death in the bath tub of room 1239 in the Golden
Nugget. Some people have a problem with the desert air – they hate the way the
heat crushes their lungs and burns their feet, and maybe that's understandable
too, but it is their problem & not ours. I have been able to thrive in this
climate – my reflexes turn cat-like and my adrenal glands run in a hateful kind
of endless frenzied overdrive. Maybe it is brutal luck, or maybe I was born
into the superior gene pool.
The sun is higher now, and she is
smiling with sharp, pointed teeth of crystal white. I climbed still, always
searching for the higher ground. The time is 7:57 AM and that is about when I
first saw the Peyote cactus – maybe hundreds of them, all growing up and out of
the bare red rock. I knew then that the stories were true – Yes, the great
Indian Nations of this country really had discovered the line – that fine
knife-edge between Order and Chaos. It seems obvious to me now, how it became
quite necessary for the Navajo tribespeople to slice the new Peyote buds with a
razor-sharp hunting knife, dry them under the sun and then finally, to chew
them for their psychedelic and spiritual potential. It is a brilliant idea,
really. And so maybe it is no surprise that it was a European man who pushed it
all too far and turned it into pure white Mescaline powder at some point in the
last century – and may the Gods forgive his cursed name. And maybe it is not
surprising either that the stuff was immediately classed as a Schedule I
hallucinogen under Federal law... I mean, really – I have spoken with some
serious people since the summer, and most of them have told me that pure Peyote
Mescaline is not to be fucked with at all. But bad shit happens all the time,
and like always, those of us with our eyes wide open will live for a while yet,
and that is something we can all celebrate.
And of course, we have to ask the
evil question: What kind of rat-bastard psychotic would name a 300 ft spike of
desert rock after such a heinous thing as Mescaline at all? Maybe Vafa knows
what kind of person would do such a thing – and maybe I will even have to call
her at 4 AM again, just to make sure that we are the lucky ones, and that what
we are doing is right and true.
The time is 8:11 A.M – and I am
near the top – about to reach the main nerve. I had left the ground and all of
the venomous snakes that live there – that was the old earth and we are in a
new earth now. Oh well, I thought. It is not quite a crisis yet, but I saw that
it could be, there was the distinct possibility. Mostly, I have
learned to listen to my conscience. It is, after all, like some kind of
parasitic alarm clock with a vicious habit of turning entire days and nights
into paranoid freak-out sessions. But now, I was climbing - and no internal
voice of reason or fear would dare to fuck with the mission at hand. That much,
I understood. The light was growing stronger now, and I leaned my weight into
it as I rose up and over the spine of the great God of the Desert. The apex was
close and now, there is nothing – only the green velvet circles of the pure
Peyote cactus. I remember staring at my feet and pulling myself finally onto
the pointed top of Mescalito Peak. The black silhouette of a hawk screeched and
tumbled across the sky like a falling jet liner above the dustland.
Ah, we have made it then... And it
was time, I felt, for some serious meditation – or if I was incapable - to just
stop and stare for a while. The sun is burning – rising high like a giant
orange eyeball of congealed fire. All of the body and soul is consumed. I
remember feeling a little light-headed, and the red rock beneath my feet seemed
to bend and melt away. Everything is in constant motion now, and I feel the
veins in my thighs open up while the red blood runs faster still, rushing
through again and again. The eyes bulge and pulsate and the shoulders lock
backwards, tight and rigid. The noise is deafening now and foul creatures are
stirring all around. First, it is those snakes of the basin floor – I looked
down and saw them erupting from twisted, dark burrows in the ground in a cruel
hysteria, forming a full circle around the base of the peak. I rub my eyes – and look down a second time.
The snakes are killing each other, hissing, biting and fucking among the
writhing corpses – and they are joined now, by a swarm of fat Mexican toads –
hundreds of them, crawling slowly through the carnage on bloated feet. High
above, I threw water into my eyes and gripped harder to the rock. The toads are
sat among the snakes, moving slowly across the dust until I see a vulture swoop
in and carry one of them away. Two sets of razor-sharp talons smash into the
side of the toad and pierce right through the outer skin to bury themselves
deep in the guts before they clench tight like a vice and the vulture beats its
great wings, kicking up a cloud of dust as it gathers speed again and flies
East, leaving only a nine-inch red smear across the sand. Now they are
descending on the killing field – a whole army of hooked vultures in proper
formation. They arc and dive about in unpredictable patterns of movement,
screaming fury and death across the white sky. The noise rises higher still and
the blood runs freely now, soaking slowly into the desert floor 300 ft below.
Sweet Jesus – This orgy of chaos... Who sent these goddam animals, and why have
they come for me?
I felt it before I saw it. The sky
opened up over Mescalito Peak and the rain poured for three days and three
nights. Thunder split the sky and everything became broken. I fell then,
spiralling downwards where the red rock splintered and smashed underneath me –
hitting a new world at every drop. And then everything was blank...
Still, the desert stretched out
beneath me – but gone were the snakes, and gone were the fat Mexican toads and
the diseased vultures that killed them. Yes, this is it – the final battlefield
of our time. When the moment comes to kill and be killed, here is the place
where it will be done. When the moment comes that we are forced to stand and
stare across at the fat whores of greed and death, here is the land where it
will be done. The flood will come, and when it does, I will come back to
Mescalito Peak and climb again up the ridges and knots of its spine. And then,
I will sit among the Peyote and dip my feet under the sun until the water
recedes, leaving only the trace of its high water-mark here on the rock.
...
The rest of that morning was a blur
to me, but then again, so are many mornings, and sometimes it is even my own
fault... Maybe the only hope for finishing this last page is to piece things
together using the panicked notes I scribbled on Hotel stationery in my room at
3 AM the next night... O.K....
A kingdom of dust and ruin –
everything, including me, glows fiercely under the sun – 9:37 AM. More
jackrabbits, how the fuck do they survive the snakes? - 9:49 A.M. The climb
down was easy and too quiet – Things are less strange now, there is more peace
and less fear in my brain - About 10 AM. Alongside the highway, speaking with
three bikers from Arizona – they told me strange and perverse stories for ten
minutes longer than I wanted or needed – I did not want to ride with those
people back to the city – 10:15 AM. Another desert guy stopped on the highway
to offer me a lift, I told him the truth, I demand to be left alone NOW – 10:16
AM. Where the fuck is he going anyway and why is he trying to take me back to
the city if he is headed South, the wrong damn direction – 10:17 AM. Never
mind, he is clearly a psychopath and we can forget all about him and focus
instead on ugly things like jackrabbits and my dull reflection in this faded
and broken road sign... - 10:18 AM. No Mr President, I don't want to sponsor
your god damned highway...
Further notes from the desert –
10:45 AM. A ranger from the National Park Service took me into his office while
I tried to get into the Visitor Center – apparently it was dumb to walk here
from Mescalito – He's happy I have so much water though and I am happy to make
him proud – He checked me out and asked the usual questions – Aching feet in
the visitor center – fire in the loins and an empty kind of burning twist in
the lower intestine – weird fat tourists from Boston are in the corner staring
at a stuffed cougar with sharp, open jaws and bright green eyes – What if that
comes alive too? - get me a drink please, officer – Yeah, I'm from Europe,
across the ocean – talking to slim man on the front desk – trying to call taxi
- “I want to request a specific Haitian man…” - No taxis apparently… like I
said, they won't come out here because they are pathetic and pathological –
slim front desk man said he will take me back to the edge of Las Vegas proper,
but why? And how? - An hour later and we are driving together through the
desert – he puts on Led Zeppelin II while I put down the window and search for
signs of life – Ah shit - He is a gambling man, he is in the right city I think
– We made it back to West Las Vegas and our journey is done, we have both
benefited I feel, but the deal is never quite fair, but I don't think he would
want to swap our places, and neither would I for that matter – He is 57 – 12:25
P.M. Getting back to Fremont Street – Why are black people fighting each other
on this bus?
It went against all of my chemical
instincts, but I made it back to my room and locked the door. I turned the air
conditioning unit to ice-cold. Just ignore the crazy shit – Just Ride it out.
OK, Doc. Thanks for the advice. Besides, I just need two hours of sleep and
then I will hit a second wind and be ready again... – Here comes the night
time. I stared out of my window and saw the World market center rising up on
the other side of the Interstate-15 that splits Las Vegas in half and to my
right and much closer, there is the trashy neon tower of the Plaza hotel. The
sun sets between them, dropping nearer and nearer to that blurred ridge of the
sierra and then slipping suddenly beneath it and plunging the city into the
dark of the night. I lit another cigarette and turned away from the
dust-streaked window, and then I filled the tub with water and a strange
selection of Brazilian herbal oils...
This is the first time that there
is no noise - just the flickering hum of neon and the muffled sounds of a loud
porno film playing in the room above. There is only silence, the setting sun
and a sharp pain in the back of my leg... It was not until later that I
identified the cause - A single spine of the Peyote cactus, picked up from the
desert and brought here to the city, embedded deep in the pink flesh of my leg
and surrounded by a circle of pulsing red – that place where the thin veins and
arteries could not resist, the place where they gave way - and finally broke
apart.
