Getting out of LA was intolerable. Backed up on the freeway waiting to be released from the endless spread of the city.
We’d defrocked the Great White Shark convertible and the sun and fumes were bubbling our minds. We needed some meds. Once we were clear of town we got into the coke, riding past strip malls a blood red sunset blazing away behind us. I took in a deep breath and felt the familiar cold trickle down back of the throat.
Cocaine’s only real quality is its ability to make you want more, the hooker drug. A cheap, numb fuck you know you’ll be coming back to again and again till the money runs out.
That could be sooner than you think with this economic crisis – a multi-billion dollar bailout from the Bush administration. Amazing. Been so busy jeopardising our future security with pointless foreign wars, the bunch of piss pots running America didn’t seem to notice the shambolic machines of Wall Street reversing right into the Hudson Bay. And now its left to Dear Mr Taxpayer to shoulder the burden, meanwhile all the Free Market Crazies are running around with their pants on fire whimpering about the return of Big Government. Strange times.
The go-slows in LA meant night had fallen by the time we got clear of the city. The stars were out and it was a clear ride through the desert. As the bright neon decadence of Vegas appeared like a godless mirage up ahead we found ourselves behind a truck with the MacDonald’s insignia emblazoned across the back. We followed it into the city, the familiar golden arches leading us along the freeway past the big hotel casinos at the bottom end of the “Strip” -- the Mirage, the Sahara -- until we pulled off into the downtown.
We checked into the Econo Lodge on Las Vegas Boulevard. The motel is notorious as the place where Mohammed Ata, the ringleader of the twin tower attacks is thought to have stayed on a wild weekend with his co-conspirators in the months leading up to 9/11 -- gorging themselves at the altar of capitalist excess before so spectacularly attacking it. Not exactly consistent behaviour for such supposed idealogues. Still, I hear Bin Laden’s mountain cave has a hot tub and a fine collection of body oils and exfoliaters.
We’d defrocked the Great White Shark convertible and the sun and fumes were bubbling our minds. We needed some meds. Once we were clear of town we got into the coke, riding past strip malls a blood red sunset blazing away behind us. I took in a deep breath and felt the familiar cold trickle down back of the throat.
Cocaine’s only real quality is its ability to make you want more, the hooker drug. A cheap, numb fuck you know you’ll be coming back to again and again till the money runs out.
That could be sooner than you think with this economic crisis – a multi-billion dollar bailout from the Bush administration. Amazing. Been so busy jeopardising our future security with pointless foreign wars, the bunch of piss pots running America didn’t seem to notice the shambolic machines of Wall Street reversing right into the Hudson Bay. And now its left to Dear Mr Taxpayer to shoulder the burden, meanwhile all the Free Market Crazies are running around with their pants on fire whimpering about the return of Big Government. Strange times.
The go-slows in LA meant night had fallen by the time we got clear of the city. The stars were out and it was a clear ride through the desert. As the bright neon decadence of Vegas appeared like a godless mirage up ahead we found ourselves behind a truck with the MacDonald’s insignia emblazoned across the back. We followed it into the city, the familiar golden arches leading us along the freeway past the big hotel casinos at the bottom end of the “Strip” -- the Mirage, the Sahara -- until we pulled off into the downtown.
We checked into the Econo Lodge on Las Vegas Boulevard. The motel is notorious as the place where Mohammed Ata, the ringleader of the twin tower attacks is thought to have stayed on a wild weekend with his co-conspirators in the months leading up to 9/11 -- gorging themselves at the altar of capitalist excess before so spectacularly attacking it. Not exactly consistent behaviour for such supposed idealogues. Still, I hear Bin Laden’s mountain cave has a hot tub and a fine collection of body oils and exfoliaters.
The next morning we went to the local Obama office to pick up some registration forms. In charge of the office was a guy called T, a pony-tailed Democrat organizer from California who crossed his eyes in confusion when Whoregyna said we wanted to “reach out to the bums, you know what I mean.”
T was new in town and could offer no advice on where to locate the homeless. A creaky woman in round specs and an ‘Obama for Change’ t-shirt gave us a quick seminar on how to register people but she got cranky after Whoregyna kept asking her questions about voter rights she didn’t know the answer to.
“God damn Californian hippies,” Whoregina spat out as we walked to the Great White Shark with an armful of registration forms and two clipboards. “If that’s what we’ve got to look forward to if Obama wins, I’m heading to Mexico.”
First blood
Later that day we went on a bum hunt. Our first sign ups were two vagrants who rolled up on mountain bikes outside a 99 cents Taco joint on the Las Vegas Boulevard.
Mark – who was the spokesman for the two -- had half his teeth missing on the bottom set but his face was smooth and tanned from riding out all day on his beat up mountain bike. He sold junk to tourists with his friend Jeffrey and didn’t believe in the political process.
Jeffrey, an affable simpleton, had half a set of teeth missing too, but on the opposite side to Mark’s so that if you matched them you would have a full set. A Ying Yang situation if ever there was one.
“Are you registered to vote?” Whoregyna blustered in.
Mark looked sceptical. “Vote for what. Let me ask you, do you know what you’re voting for?”
Under his arm Mark carried a soft toy from the Cirque du Soleil franchise that has six shows running in town, including the homage to The Beatles, “Love.” He’d stole it from the Walgreens pharmacy further down the boulevard he told us.
“Why you care anyway?”
We told him about the mission, the road to Colorado, “Freak Power.”
“Hunter Thompson?” The knitted brow untightened a little. He looked interested.
“You know him?”
“Sure. You read any of his books? I’ve read them. He hung with the Hell’s Angels for a while.”
Thompson’s first published book was about a year spent with the biker gangs in California.
“If Obama gets in they’re going to kill him and this country’s going to explode,” Mark went on. “Believe me. I know what I’m talking about.”
And he did, at least to the extent that he was a signed up member of the Aryan Brotherhood during 20 years behind bars.
Like so many of the homeless we met in Vegas, Mark and Jeffrey are convicted felons. Many are under the impression they can’t vote. Nevada and Colorado recently changed their laws to allow felons to vote with a few exceptions.
Mark said his heritage was Irish though he told me he liked the Brits (“They always back America”). He was 48. “You look young for 48,” Whoregyna cooed.
The charm offensive was working.
“You know who’s the greatest patriot of all, in my opinion,” Mark said. “Timothy Leary.” Oh God. Here we go. Whoregyna, as you may have guessed from the first entry, has strong opinions about, well, pretty much everything. Her current hot potato is the conspiracy theory. She’s convinced Leary was a CIA stooge from the start whose game plan was to discredit the counter-culture. Not as mad as it sounds, if you think about it. “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” got a whole generation of smart kids to opt out of the political process. And we already know Leary was an FBI informer.
At the end of a five minute kick around about conspiracy theories Mark and Jeffrey were won over, realizing we were only marginally less crazy than they were. They agreed to sign up.
To confound everything he’d just said about the Aryan Brotherhood and race wars, Mark left us with this parting shot. He was, he said, planning to vote Democrat.
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