I ran the target out to fifteen yards. I picked up the Beretta 92FS and fitted the fifteen-shot magazine. I racked the slide and let it fly home. (I always like that bit of the routine. That’s the first time I really feel the machine working like a machine.)

This is the part where the new print began: Instead of taking my customary closed stance, with my right arm crossing my body toward downrange, I opened up to a square-front stance; knees slightly bent (of course), and breathing from the bottom, up (as usual), but shoulders and hips parallel to the target sheet, now.

Finally, I flipped the safety lever past its speed cam, cocked the hammer, and laid sights. The first five shots off the top of the magazine surprised me, because I’d never seen the sight picture settle so rapidly after each shot, and I was very pleased to see holes opening through the target in a group less than two inches in diameter, just at the left edge of the bright orange 5X bull’s-eye dot.

"Still pulling ‘em a tad left. That’s an amazing group, though."

Sitting here now and looking at those holes in that sheet of paper causes all kinds of reflection on what they mean. The main reason for that is the wonder at how I’ll shoot that new stance the next time - without LSD.

Oh, it’s been a long time. Anyone who really knows me, also knows how long it’s been. I could name a couple of them here, but it doesn’t seem really fair to do that to them, what with McCaffrey loose in the land. But they know because they were there in the days when we first began to print ourselves on the Leary side of the acid dichotomy - apart, that is, from simply playing the Kesey side. (That’s what the rock and roll was for.) High above Cayuga’s waters, it was, where the chem kids cooked so well that that marvelous little town was a thriving agora steeped in competition to bring the state of the late-70’s art to discerning consumers. They were really good up there on the East Hill, and all the best heads for hundreds of miles knew it.

The only really class competition they ever had came up from Philly. We called her "The Bucket". Some people explained to me that it was a reference to her anatomy, but I never saw it. It didn’t matter, though. What mattered was those sheets of hers: she brought the goddamnedest acid to my little town that anyone ever saw, and when it came, the sensation rippled like the sounds of wind chimes. Within hours, the word went out: "Pyramids, babe. They’re in." She worked out of an Adams Family-looking Victorian house downtown and, for the length of time necessary to distributing 2500 hits or so (three days, tops), nobody felt like climbing the Buffalo Street hill, and the chem kids were rather lonely.

They were so sweet, those tiny gelatin shapes of hers, that we would sometimes fit three or four doses into the same week - a really remarkable thing, as any experienced person will tell you. Of course, something like that isn’t easily sorted Leary-from-Kesey, but we made it work.

We made it work because we were serious about our LSD.

Now, I am fully aware that this is a proposition that sails straight through the average consciousness like neutrons through air. It always has, and there really isn’t anything to be done for that. After all: some people are still paying their taxes in awesome defiance of both common sense and the very fact of The Lying Bastard’s existence. This fact tells me that there are people all around me who have a hard time at thinking about what they’re doing, but I’ve never been afflicted with that.

As evidence, I would submit the very first time I ever melted a sugar cube in my mouth. The damned thing was about half-gone when I thought about it again and got the shakes: "You fool - that’s LSD in your mouth!" I spit it out. About thirty minutes later, the first sensations started rolling. With admittedly youthful abandon, I figured, "Well, you’re in it now, kid. To hell with it." An hour later, I was leaning on my friends for another cube, and they were laughing in sympathy because the evening’s supply was exhausted.

What I learned that night was that I had been correct the first time I’d thought about it. Essentially, I’d thought, "Hey. Wait a minute. I know these people and there’s nothing wrong with them. I’ve known this guy for years now, been through a lot with him, and he’s nothing like what I’ve been hearing from teachers and other pigeon-holers telling me about people who take acid."

That’s the hard nut of why I did it: I simply observed the reality around me, and the second thoughts didn’t serve me well when I spit out that cube.

I wish I had that bitch back, today.

It’s long gone, but that night’s print is the important thing: a turning point.

I’m not here to tell anyone about what it means to me, really. I’m only here to relate that it was really important to me in ways that compare to my first woman, for instance. Lots of people have written about how LSD alters one’s look at the world. What gets lost in a lot of the noise is that some peoples’ look at the world is pretty drastically altered by their first 454-inch V-8 engine, too. Everybody has their pet moments when another piece of the puzzle, the one that’s been building since birth, falls into place with a fine fit, and a contented sense of things properly ordered fills the space between their very own "here" and something that someone else is pushing at them across the boundaries. Thinking people learn how to manage that push, and they find their own moments, for themselves.

I was privileged to the company of thinking people about twenty years ago, and they were as fitted as me to a sense of adventure: we had a thing about searching the world for richness beyond what we could see right in front of us. Of course, in those same days, we saw others not quite so thoughtful in their adventures, and getting badly hurt. But I’m here to strike a blow affirming those who know what they’re doing, even if they’re doing something that horrifies the first glance of ordinary souls.

I never got over my taste for fine acid, and I never thought I would. I had a period in the mid-80’s when I moderated a bit, just because I was entering new work markets and I wasn’t sure what new associates would make of it. One can imagine how I was pleasantly surprised to learn that nobody really cared how I did what I did, as long as I did it as well as their checks made clear to all of us. What did happen is that I kept learning about acid: at thirty-five years of age, I knew the old robot wasn’t quite so resilient to the physiological test as it had been at twenty-two, but that’s only natural. After all: if I tried to ski today, at forty-one, the way I did at twenty-two, I’d probably be in surgery within an hour.

It’s been a bit disappointing to observe the decline in US markets, though. That’s for sure. On the one hand, when I think back on the work that the chem kids did for us in the old days, I could just about weep at what’s gone. On the other hand, and on a bad day when I’ve had just about enough bloody bullshit from CNN or Dan Rather, I could cheer another exploding federal building.

I know it’s not worth the latter option, though, mainly because thinking people find ways to make things work out.

So, when a pal of mine rang me up last week and told me that he had a line on a batch of gel-tabs, I thought about it. I thought about who I was talking with, and what I knew about him. I knew he was experienced. A couple of times a year, he had set me up with samples that had made, for instance, my Harley-Davidson Sportster a uniquely delightful world-richness.

(Hmm. Perhaps a note is called for here. That’s right: I rode my bike fast and hard on LSD. Now, anyone who reads this can just go out and try to do that, too. I’m here to tell you, though, that you’d better bloody-well know everything about what’s going on, if you do. This is not for the faint of heart, mind, or body, and believe me: there is no violence quite like that un-leashed in a bike crash. Reality will have its way with you, and damn you to hell if you involve anyone else in it.)

I thought about it all, and I told him, "Don’t tease me, mate."

He laughed, of course, and assured me that it was the real thing, at which point I placed a modest order.

For religious purposes only.

I get my religion in action, kids. I am god, itself, when I’m able to mindfully wrack myself through demanding action. Reach me out to an edge of performance where my mind is the main thing between my body and some kind of bloody disaster or other ignominious failure, and I’m right at home. Now, LSD isn’t the kind of thing that’s really open to that all the time. That’s because it really does get to be a burn after a while. (Moderation is key, in this realm. Especially as one gets older.) At just the right time, though, I’ve climbed roof-beams in major sports arenas, flown light planes, been jailed (DMV paper charges, as any true political should be at least once), properly adored women, torn the final part of Blue Oyster Cult’s "The Red & The Black" off the frets of my guitar live onstage (go ahead and try it if you can find an ensemble who knows that piece), and done just about anything else I care to do, on LSD.

The market having been depressed lately, though, it had been awhile.

My boy was right. For the outrageously inflated, but nonetheless happily paid, price of ten dollars per, I landed the loveliest tiny blue 750-mic gelatin tabs I could hope for.

I picked my moment. It was a day when I’d had just about enough of morons in Usenet twisting themselves into frankly incredible knots over an imperial presidency. I’d had enough, for one day, of bleating pretty-boys & girls earnestly burning through a magnificent propaganda machine with endless broadcasts of "coverage" of idiotic veneer sheeted over predatory institutions laying waste to my homeland.

I dropped acid and I picked up my pistol.

On the way to the range, driving my ‘72 Chevelle amid herding soccer-moms and the occasional blind cop, I actually thought about Janet Reno and Barry McCaffrey. I laughed out loud when I did, and hoped they would each feel an inexplicable shudder run up and down their bent spines, right at the very moment when everything they fear was far beyond their control.

I checked in at the range and was about to pick a lane when something really neat caught my eye. It was a Taurus model 99 slung on the hip of a US marshal who was loading magazines. Nice gun. Being god, and with nothing to fear, I casually ambled over to the guy, tapped him on the shoulder, and admired his weapon. He looked me right in the eye with his warm Hispanic way, and we immediately started wasting expensive time at comparing his 99 to my 92FS. "Same basic design–Yeah, it’s got the same locking block under the barrel–But I don’t like the rolling safety on yours–Well, I know it can take some getting used to–"

Gear-heads admiring machines. Sarah Brady should have been there, but I guess it’s just as well she wasn’t. After all, neither of us needed her or anyone else to tell us why we "need" these kinds of guns.

I parted from the US marshal, and printed my new shooting stance.

Now, I don’t expect anyone to believe that I never shot a better first magazine than I did today, on LSD, but I’m looking at the holes in the paper.

As usual, it’s something for me to think about.