This sample chapter is also available in .pdf download, "lsd.pdf,"
These chapters are from "Back From the Other Side," a novel that connects the soul to salvation using the awareness of madness and sexuality to chart its course.

Chapter – LSD Brings the Sexual Shadow

I had tried LSD a couple of times before. Or I thought I had. On two occasions I don’t think it was real LSD. Probably weak doses or Belladonna, which was also making a brief appearance on the 1967 psychotropic stage. Brief, because in a matter of months chemists all over the country were discovering that with the right ingredients, you could make millions of hits of pure LSD within hours in something smaller than your bathtub. Since LSD had been legal up till 1966, ingredients were not that hard to come by. Soon pure LSD was available everywhere for less than $5 a dose.

I had gone to hear Tim Leary speak (finally) at the Fillmore East, a renovated movie theatre named after its more illustrious relation, the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Definitely not the same lecture he would have given to the psychoanalytic group the year before, this was a “how to take LSD to get the most benefit type of lecture. He was talking about the book he co-authored with Dr. Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) and Dr. Ralph Metzner. It was applying the LSD experience to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It made little sense to me, and all I could remember was ‘”get in a quiet setting, and flow, don’t react to thought, just flow out…” Well, that didn’t mean too much to me at the time.

I had trouble in paradise on the home front. The Puerto Ricans who ganged up the neighborhood outside my Lower East Side apartment accused us of selling grass without giving them any. They were 100% right. One had come to my friend’s window with the threat of a gun, had robbed my friend of his rifle on this bluff, shook us up and we all decided to leave the Lower East Side for Brooklyn. Rhonda and I find out we can only move into our new Brooklyn digs the day after moving out of the Village apartment. I discover we can stay at my Aunt and Uncle’s house on Long Island for one night because everyone there except one cousin was out of town. We decided we would take some LSD at my cousin’s house, and we are suddenly like hobos-on-holiday; feeling pretty excited and care-free. We will sleep in the same bedroom I almost murdered my cousin in seven years before.

I was expecting the same effects I had experienced in the past when I had “dropped acid.” Some brief interludes of sensory alteration with increased emotionless insight. Maybe some “trails” where you slowly wave one hand and see a few hands following it. It would be a fun way to spend the night with Ronnie as we adventured away from the East Village and into Brooklyn dappled and starry eyed. I had gotten the tablets from some guys I met who went to Yale. It was called “Purple Owsley” after a chemist of the same name. About an hour after swallowing our purple tablets, Ronnie and I were sitting upstairs in my Aunt and Uncle’s living room, and as my cousin left the room, and I realized I bore no ill will towards the young man, a kind of unemotional and neutral state came over me, which, strangely enough, appeared as perfect to seal the strange spiritual state stealing over me. I noticed that I wasn’t thinking any thoughts in the normal way, as if my mind had been emptied of its normal reverie processes and mental chatter.

The Doors were starting up Light My Fire on Ronnie’s boombox and a guitar chord took my thoughts along for the ride further and further out to the edge of the universe where I bade normal reality goodbye and sailed out into paradise. Colors that don’t exist here on earth filled my mind, my consciousness, and my total being. Marty no longer existed. I found the more I let go whenever thought returned to “me” or didn’t react to whatever thought returned to “my mind” the more dazzling shapes and colors I got – along with hints of cosmic understandings beyond any man’s wisdom. As I allowed my mind to “turn off,” I was taken into mansions of greater and greater paradise where mysteries of life were effortlessly revealed, but I would later see that these things could not be retained by my ego-dominated mind What is “un”conscious cannot be made conscious. What is of the spirit cannot be handled by the ego.I would mentally return to the living room filled with the understanding that all it took to go up into heaven was to remember to be effortless. By doing so, - or literally doing nothing – not doing – a door opened deep in my psyche to a collective unconscious/heaven which nothing on earth could have prepared me for. It was like having the drug introduced into my system by my own mental decision to simply be effortless. It could all be “controlled” by turning off my “controlling” thought process, and by ‘floating downstream,’ as Leary and the Beatles had recently been telling me. I was experiencing a universe unlike anything I had ever heard about, read about or imagined existed.

There was no way of telling how much time actually transpired before I “returned” to the radio announcer’s voice on the radio. I was becoming aware of consciousness and mental concepts on an incredible cosmic scale, and I saw what Leary had been trying to say in his lecture: that the key to the entire experience is to just to let go and let your thoughts float off – as far out as you can, and I’d be suddenly “tripping.” Far from the drug appearing to “do” anything, it seemed that it’s entire purpose was to bring one to a doorway of sorts in which the stillness of the moment allowed a crack in time where eternity could be entered. I was also inspired to realize that the coin-of-the-realm with which to navigate in this strange universe was love! The idea that “all you need is love” seemed to reinforce the spiritual logic that this enlightenment had nothing to do with any pharmaceutical element in the drug. It was not a kissy-face emotional love, however. More simply it was a state of trustful not-hating.

I glanced at Ronnie. The colors and energy waves had dissipated somewhat with my eyes now open, and I could tell Ronnie was in trouble. She was anxious and scared while her outer personality tried to put on a persona of cool control when she noticed my glance. I was experiencing true joy and a real love for her, and I so wanted her to experience what I had just experienced that I started to communicate what she needed to do, but my personality/ego apparatus was not even close to being connected and working. Nor was my understanding. Hurtling on recklessly, however, I unthinkingly took on the role of  loving “guide” while ignoring the indelicacy of assigning myself that role. All LSD sessions profit by discussing these role understandings beforehand. The super-ego cultural sensor – by which I could have adjudged Ronnie’s ego-needs - was in another universe, and all kinds of mental concepts were being made known to various disconnected stages of my personality as I attempted to hook up my voice with what I thought I wanted to say. Finally, I haltingly and falteringly blurted out something like “if you just relax and let your mind flow…” and she whirled on me… smirked, and said in an airy dismissive tone, “first time you’ve dropped acid, huh?”

At first I didn’t have so much “thought” as I did experience pictures with large letters spelling E-G-O and symbols of the game Ronnie was playing on me, and my hesitation to not respond spontaneously was the mistake which allowed for the intimidation to take effect. Hence I began to lose myself in the reaction to her, the resentment of her. I began to tumble mentally as under an emotional wave every bit the kind where the wave and the undertow flip you around helplessly as I saw myself filled with images representing lack of confidence on my part while I placed injustice to her part.Somewhere my ego was scrambling and screaming “Foul! I came down for you!” I found love is a lot easier to consider when you’re floating by yourself in a fifth-dimensional paradise.

I was suddenly not a happy camper. My mind was literally tumbling with changing realities crashing and burning into unconscious worlds of ‘good guy-bad-guy’ thought. Vivid pictures playing ping-pong with judgmental and highly troubling energies overflowed my consciousness. Dizzying fruit from the tree of resentment sent me spinning into terrifying images, suddenly bruised and out of control.Rhonda, after giving me a patronizing look, continued to play the wise old hand at LSD, and I the confused novice. Then she took control. Bringing out the persona of the temptress, she purred a sex vibe to suggest we ascend to the bedroom with the rhetorical question “Ya’ ever make it on acid?” Our love nest would be in the same bedroom in which I had almost murdered my cousin seven years ago.

The walk upstairs was accompanied by the continued falling into confusion and inability to remember what had happened in my ‘psychedelic experience.’ I was utterly unable to deal with these changes I was going through. When one has been ‘far out’ into galaxies unspeakable, the homecoming is itself a magical experience of a sort not easily discerned. Magical and full of potential danger, who can say how much of the personality is being accurately reflected in these animated states? The colors and shapes had not yet dissipated. They were still more like thick confetti or streamers continually in the air around me. Magic was everywhere, but not gaiety. Rather there were wounded feelings, gloom, hurt and betrayal with my body feeling like grayish rubber – as this texture reflected what the walls and bed looked like – as I lay down with Ronnie. I believed that to dive into sex was the only course of action to avoid a possible emotional schism with Rhonda, which was unthinkable.

I was surprised to realize that the phenomenon I could only discern as colors - were in reality much more. They were like signposts or buttons that grew into full-blown energies as I delved into the thoughts and emotions which they represented. They had dynamism in that way. They in turn formed sub-dynamisms of groups forming a complex. As I realized what was necessary for me to perform sexually, the colored air itself within these thin lines of energy began to come alive with the spirits that enveloped and ingested the fantasies of my sexual bedroom. The heavy outlines of multiple energies – not unlike neon – surrounded everything. Compared to the free-flowing jewels of my previously enlightened state, it was deadness now coming alive, but there was an electricity, a telepathy, that was not only unmistakable, but rapidly making me aware of my new realities. I had left heavenly elements for 42^nd and Broadway.

Here, amidst the dripping melting browns and rubbery grays of my bum trip, Ronnie is pretending bliss as we embrace naked on the bed. I’m very far away from being excited sexually. But excitement was all around me, tempting me to allow it entrance. ‘You know what you want, you know what you need’ seemed a tempting advertisement for hot sex ‘on the edge of town.’ It was to allow myself to mosey into those energy-thoughts and I would be over the top-of-the-roller-coaster-and-descending out-of-control. It was as if the only way I could embrace these tempting sexual excitements was to pay with my attention. Oh, it looks way too dangerous. I can’t believe this is really happening. A thought sizzles through the soul: ‘it’s all real.’ Yes, you. We’re here for you. This IS you. The inside you. This is your sexuality!’

It was as if these small slivers of pastel colors were a jet-engine fuel and all it would take would be my spark of sexual submergence into imagination to make them come alive. The jet-fueled-mist was everywhere, spiritual energies just beyond my sight, but showing their presence in occasionally glowing opacities as I turn to give it some attention. But I dissociate them enough, react resentfully enough to their presence that I know that to submerge into them is to offer my mind and body to be ravaged, to invaded, to re-created. These are infrahuman spirits.

I hope to barter the degree of my own submergence; my worship, my becoming… in a world that’s not so much imagination as it is subconscious complex, collective unconscious, or, in this deep reality, perhaps the truth of the matter is that all these concepts represent simply another name for the spirit world. Can I just dip my toe in enough to get the job done?Ronnie had started to give me oral sex, which did absolutely nothing for me, and I immediately realized with horror that I was actually shrinking more under her skillful ministrations, until I decided to stop arguing, and… capitulate. I surrendered my lust to the energy flow. I relaxed and in doing so crooned inwardly for my unseen spirit, seeking to allow all those imaginative vulnerabilities to a lust which will marry my sexual submergence into hard body deliverance. I sought these tempting forces without censorship, without a thought for inhibition.

As they entered and filled me I heard Ronnie moan even though my cock was still small and had not yet responded. I understood. The confetti colors of strips and spots grew quick and large into three and then four dimensions, and an inspired collection of live beings began to grow out of the air. A budding petal started to open peeling off its outer shell to reveal the emergence of something like a Chiquita-banana pornstar. Nothing laughable, her burning red-eyed gaze looked so deep into my soul there was no question of disobedience.

I surrendered and became that female spirit that was part of this fiery demon madam,  and I assumed an identical role to that which Ronnie was giving to me. The pleasure, however, was being received by someone (or something?) else but using my body as a channel for that somebody (or something) else. I could feel how much I pleasured him, and cared not which name or real-world identity the demons threw out to put on the mysterious ‘other.’ Was it an enemy? Another male who intimidated me? I knew I dared not turn back. I dove into the humiliation of seeing a boy from my class, then a social nemesis each taking a turn, pleasured by me as Ronnie. I knew I would shrink to rubber the moment I took this committed libido off the accelerator to question what I was giving myself to. What I was really worshipping. Now I was past such concern. With devotion I dove and drove deeper. I took them all, serviced each as the spirit willed, and the spirits coming up through this plantlike opening were unlike any representations I had ever seen on earth nor are their likenesses portrayed in any media ever created. The sexual energy-imagery was a plethora of spirits of submissiveness and humiliation, domination and romance; betrayal, wickedness, sadism and masochism, half human, half demon, half male, half female and their hermaphrodite nature a mere signature of – or a compliment to – their inhumanity.

Shameless scenarios linked up to unabashed excitement hardened my body bringing Ronnie’s energy to a now raging life as well. As I entered her, endless faces of sensuality, sexuality, cunning, enslavement, humiliation and betrayal enveloped me, abused me, cuckolded me, and as the height of excitement and physical release approached, demanded greater commitment and a total submergence to this eager worship. As I gave up my mental, emotional and spiritual soul to it, Ronnie was crying out loudly. As I poured out my release into her eager body, a spirit which was to haunt me for forty years showed itself.

As the orgasmic satisfaction planed my consciousness free of anxieties, a dramatic, devilish hermaphrodite with an intense opacity of yellow, red and fleshtone showed itself. It’s blue eyes burned with a temptation that turned from teasing concupiscence to coldly hateful, and it came to stay within my inner world, and it let me know just how it was going to set up residence. It completed its demonstration and declaration in front of my eyes by turning and showing me its two perfectly round childlike buttocks as if in a desire to be sodomized, and then, bending slightly over as if in invitation to be entered, spun the one butt cheek on its left in an east to west 180 degree spin and the butt cheek on its right going west to east in a minus 180 degree spin; both staying in place anatomically but as if each butt cheek was spinning on its own axis away from the other; and in doing so tore its own anus to pieces from its ripped-open dark middle, introducing the entrance of a greater spirit that it served by having its master emerge through this opening into my reality and thus acquaint me with true madness. I tore silently shrieking like wet toilet paper shredding apart, and became deeply psychotic, finally finding a quiet place of relief by accepting my insanity, staying there in post-orgasmic catatonic afterglow. I had fallen into a state of dull catatonia in which my mind stopped raging. The word “psychotic” floated across the theatre of my mind in big thick letters, but I didn’t have the energy to care any more.

I reintegrated into “reality” within a few hours.The next day we moved into our Brooklyn apartment. We decided we’d been through some pretty ‘heavy tripping,” so in order to be responsible, we agreed it prudent to wait another two weeks taking LSD again.