"David Gerrold - [SS] The Equally Strange Reappearance of David Gerrold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

Although he did come close to a near-death experience when he started talking about
rabbit transit and rabbit Baptists and finished off by singing, “You’re getting to be a
rabbit with me.” And he hadn’t even gotten to the inevitable “hare raid” and “hare
apparent” remarks. But it wasn’t the puns as much as it was his loud gravelly voice.
We really didn’t want to attract any attention—or scare anything off either. Finally, I
turned to him, walked right up to his face, and whispered intensely, “Be vewwwy
vewwwy quiet.” I was wearing my ugly face when I did that, the one I use when
talking to lawyers, so that seemed to calm him down. For a while.
That first night, the temperature dropped to near-freezing, or maybe below
freezing; hard to tell when you’re shivering too hard to read the thermometer. We
found a hollow, a place where a meter-high shelf aspired toward cliffdom, and
parked ourselves under it, out of the wind. We set up our tent in the triangular space
under a fallen log, and stretched the camouflage netting over everything. From half a
mile away, we were probably invisible. We didn’t want to risk a fire, so we ate
something called an MRE for dinner. It stands for Meals-Ready-to-Eat. I’m told that
soldiers out in the field eat these things. If that’s true, then I honestly don’t think we
pay our soldiers enough. On the other hand, an MRE is a good test of a person’s
courage. If he can face one of these, he can face anything.
After that, we talked for a while, studied our U.S. Geological Survey maps,
and speculated about how the green people of the northwest could survive
near-freezing temperatures while they ran around naked.
Bert didn’t talk much about his past, but I got the sense he’d been around.
He’d worked his way through college playing a giant mouse at that park in Southern
California. During his breaks, he read Kerouac and Ginsberg and Lawrence
Ferlinghetti—they fired him for reading Ferlinghetti; he enlisted and went to Nam,
where he’d done things that hadn’t happened and nobody knew about. Eventually,
he chewed off a leg to escape, changed his name and appearance so they couldn’t
track him down—he didn’t say who they were, because everybody already knows
who they are—came back and smoked Panama Red at the Hog Farm with Wavy
Gravy. (At the end of the dirt road leading to the Hog Farm, the sign declares, “No
left turn unstoned.” Ernie did twenty minutes of variations on that one. Don’t ask.)
Later, Bert dropped acid with Timothy Leary, and studied the Yaqui Way of
Knowledge with Don Juan. He’d been vegan before it had a name, done iridology,
numerology, systemology, fasting, body-cleansing, and self-analysis with the
Enneagram. He could also read Tarot cards, plot your natal chart, compute your
biorhythms in his head, and read your aura. He used his insights into systemic
patterns to become one of the hottest day-traders on Wall Street. On the day that
someone called him a gecko, he had an acid flashback, bought a hog, and rode
directly to the left coast, without passing go.
He was a male model in West Hollywood, with a semi-starring role in the
gay-for-pay “Bare Country” video. After that he did “escort” work for a few
months, both men and women. He’d chanted at the temple with the Gohonzon
Buddhists and on the streets of Hollywood Boulevard with the Hare Krishnas. He’d
been deconstructed, he’d been rebirthed, he’d floated in sensory deprivation tanks
and listened to hallucinatory committees, he’d been born again. He went to the
Synanon games; then he graduated to Esalen and Findhorn. He studied Transactional
Analysis, flirted with Scientology, spent three months in a Moonie retreat, done est
and Lifespring and the Landmark Forum. He became a junior trainer and an
enrollment captain, and socked away a lot of money in a very short time. He took a
sabbatical, flew sailplanes with Richard Bach, and rebuilt a classic Indian motorcycle