PSYCHEDELIC PARTYING WITH KEN KESEY AND THE MERRY PRANKSTERS

"Let's get some acid!" my friend Darren raves as we stride past the
hallucinatory "art cars" parked in front of the International Ballroom
at 50 Oak Street.

We're heading to the Bon Voyage Party for Ken Kesey and the Merry
Pranksters' WHERESMERLIN? tour, hosted by Anon Salon last Friday
night. The LSD-promoting '60s partiers -- whose trippy exploits are
hyper-narrated in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" -- are
going to the British Isles to hunt for the sleeping wizard who's
supposed to wake up on his home soil soon to guide us into the next
millennium (according to an Edgar Cayce prophecy).

"We need to re-psychedelicize our lives," Darren mourns. "We forgot
all the interconnectedness that we grasped in our youth when we were
eating 'shrooms and acid."

"I can't handle any more chromosome damage," I reply. "My wife wants
to get pregnant -- she'll be pissed if our baby has six eyes and a leg
coming out of its forehead."

"Hmmph!" Darren pouts. "You're either on the bus, or you're off the
bus!"

Tie-dye, face paint, and day-glo are chic here as we queue up with
senior citizen hipsters mingling with hordes of Burning Man fans; the
latter species includes everyone from nerdy cybergeeks to tribal
trance dancer babes.

Darren and I push through the massive mob into the Art Deco Ballroom,
where craggy-faced Ken Kesey -- counterculture Acid King and acclaimed
author of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sometimes A Great
Notion" -- is grinning maniacally onstage in a homemade medieval
costume of chrome-painted padded armor with a rooster weather vane
perched on his helmet. He's a huge, hulking, ex-wrestling-champion
mountain of a man, with gargantuan energy: At 63, he looks like he
could simultaneously maul any five men in the room.

"Ken Kesey's the same age as my Dad," Darren marvels, "but he's having
a helluva lot more fun."

Multi-generational devotees are splayed around the stage, garbed as
faeries, fools, trolls, nobles.... there are even three monks
cassocked in gunnysacks. Everyone's waiting for Kesey to speak. We
resemble castle rabble surrounding a heroic cosmic Crusader.

"We're here because we want to find MAGIC!" Kesey booms soon in his
twangy Oregon-country voice. "Let's talk about why 'spirits' are
called spirits -- BECAUSE THE SPIRITS TRAVELED ON ELIXIRS! Something
MAGIC travels on these chemicals and they can take us where we want to
go!"

"YEEEAAAHHH!" shouts the audience.

Darren wanders off to find some "spirits" for himself....

"Let me tell you some things I know to be true," Kesey roars on.
"There're always going to be more Dumb people than Smart people in the
world, so get used to it... and, the women are more beautiful here in
the Bay Area than in any other place in the world!"

"YEEEAAAHHH!"

"Let's get into this damn thing now!" he continues. "Pranksters, let's
convene onstage -- let's tell our Grail Story. Here they come; here's
Vivian Vixen, King Arthur, Lady Guinevere, The Churl, and Queen Mab of
the Faeries."

Clumsily, the Pranksters deliver a skit, plodding through the lines of
a confusing fable about an orphan named Sir Little Big Mouth.

I try to follow the preposterous playlet, but suddenly Darren returns
with two bottles of beer "spirits" and he's babbling excitedly about
enticements in other chambers:

"Drugs and dancing and naked people!"

Easy decision, huh?

We cruise to the dance room where cock-ringed exhibitionists practice
free-form tai chi in the strobe lights with freaks of all ages. This
is fun, but...

The Underground Swimming Pool of Inflatable Mysteries is truly the hub
of tonight's high hive energies. Dry ice clouds, marijuana scent and
Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" oozes over us as 16 masked and
bathrobed performers of the Burning Man Synchronized Water Ballet Team
slowly strip off their costumes and leap naked into the water of the
International Center's ancient gym pool.

The scene is pagan, Rubenesque, and hysterically sexy, and it prompts
"faeries and elves" all around us to start kissing each other!

"Everybody's totally on X," gushes Darren.

He's right -- the drug Ecstasy rules this arena -- everyone's smiling
like a post-orgasmic Cheshire Cat.

When the manic tribal drumming band Fantuzzi bursts into rhythm the
euphoria escalates. A huge, incredibly-hairy naked man flops out of
the pool and frenetically dances, splashing water everywhere like a
wet Irish setter. Darren rips off his polo shirt; he gyrates
maniacally with a woman who's equally topless...

Various familiar faces float by -- all aglow with glitter and chemical
joy. Languid Bryan and lovely Heather embrace me. "We have to hug you,
we have to hug you because we're on Ecstasy," they say dreamily.

"Yes, yes," I agree, enjoying a very convincing contact
high.

They hug me and kiss me and it feels so good, I decide I have to go
home now to fondle my wife.

On the way out, I check out the Pranksters again -- the Grandparents
of Psychedelia. They're still the drabbest act at their own party, but
everybody here owes everything to them.

SF's world-famous underground party scene is obviously the direct
descendant of these acid ancestors. The current energy traces
ecstatically back to the Merry Pranksters' silly-wisdom seeking LSD
experiments, 30-plus years ago.

We're all Ken Kesey's drug-babies.

Hank Hyena teaches "Subversive Humor" at New College and "Comic
Monologues" at UC Berkeley Extension. He's also a frequent contributor
to Salon.