Poor boarding school boy Gil Freeman awakes after a long horrible night spent in a tired and dreary Scottish hospital. He is alone in the desolation of the mindless white room. Where was his woman? There was no one to be seen.
He must’ve been drinking, smoked too much weed, beaten in the streets, succumbed to hypothermia, lost himself due to dehydration and lack of food? anything but a seizure on ACID! The acid of the children of heresy caught him by the throat, now brought upon the legacy of Andover Royalty forever and more, plaguing his history, and the history of his Harvard Grad parents. The statute of limitations of familial prosperity had run out. The parents forgot to check the date. There would be no will.
The Freeman family wisped away in smoke, lost and beaten, confused with no where to go—spiritual illness grew—hearts closed—little remnants of the old Royal world.
A weakened and shallow American history is the sign of broken families, broken educations, weak minds and hearts with nothing to live for, everything was already accomplished at Harvard long ago, so he’s at the end of the line, nothing more to do, except to weep, but he doesn’t know how to as he was never taught how to in the grand American boarding school fit merely for the mindless formation of politicians and general assembly peoples, and the children of artists who will never become true artists, even after burning millions of dollars in the NAME of what they believe is ART.
They are merely trying to ESCAPE.
Weeping and loving of this mind kind were exempt from these sort of spaces in America, and most of all prohibited was the discovery of fright in the mad night.
It is the nature of the night—nothing is there—leave before you get hurt, especially if you don’t know the trouble of your birth.
Soon, Gil Freeman leaves the hospital room and returns to the university town by taxi and finds his way back into his smoke-filled living room—well what happened? Must be nothing. He doesn’t care to think, boy just wants pasta with salt and olive oil. And a shot of Italian chlorophyll on the side.
In the morning time after a light lunch of confusion, he comes to the phone and answers his mother after seeing a dozen calls already missed. He murmurs over the phone for some time while his mother of Russian origin sternly breathes huskily over the phone, and there he finally yelps out “Mother, I’ve had a seizure . . . on ACID,” and begins to stupidly laugh over the foreseen sorrows awaiting him.
And the mother sternly says, “You see son the devil does dirty things with your mind when you take those kind of poisons, temptations, hallucinations, places of desolations—God has to short-circuit your brain to bring you back to the light, by opening your eyes to the darkness of the abyss, to the suffering of paralytic delusions, electric mania, which brings you of course in all proper duty back to the light, where you’ll now be fit for church, reading the Bible, finding the confessionary box in Bologna, or in the Russian church back home, speaking in Russian like you should. Soon you’ll be well and fit to be return back to normal to swallow up your lectures and bend over to the ones above you, and begin to pray for your salvation along with the required Hail Mary’s.”
“But mother, it really wasn’t my fault, none of my doing. I am Christian and go to church and read the bible and pray to the gilded saint by my bedside,” Gil says as he tries to become serious and profound, although he is profound in the sense of being inane. He knows not where he is or who he is, but he goes on blindly goofing and puffing.
There is no connection.
His mother beckons on lecturing, “this experience has brought you a chance to find salvation by the way of god who has saved you from the mindless suffering of the starved and the insane—and stoned. Now God may take you in his arms and bring you to the confessional pew of the gilded hall, which is the cathedral where you must reacquaint yourself with, well that is if you want to belong, and you must bring a little money along to give too, so get on with getting a job too, forget about this whole mess of seizures, just get on with it and confess! be at the church by Monday morning otherwise you’ll be on a plane to New York the very next day, or worse, Italy.”
The father and mother both read too much Dostoyevsky, interpreting it through modern half-assed thought of the soul, and thereby often forget they were modern parents in a Godless world.
Without God, everything is permissible.
Gil in the meantime sat there dumbfounded as always, thought of nothing, let his mother murmur some more until she hung up the phone. The couch he sat on was tarnished with cigarette and joint burns, and the grey suede material had become half black and ashen. In the kitchen right in the other room beside him were puddles of dirtied dishes, moldy clothes still in the laundry, ash in the sink from the terrible night of before, and vomit sitting just outside the window on the muddied terrace.
He sat in the murkiness of confusion in the dimness of the grey Scottish day, where dismalness had become his name. And on these days he bended in the cool breeze of May, looking onward at the pit of despair that awaited him forever and more, most especially so without the plague of weed and overbearing women who’d cook, clean, do the dishes and laundry for him, and feed him by mouth when he was too glossy eyed and high to do anything.
No one came to visit him, everyone knew what had happened and were scared of the act of mere association.
Gil Freeman was left to find his way, but there’d never be a way out of this terrible place of mind—a stagnating presence built up upon the altar serving nothingness. The time was bleak and cold. Back in New York it was cold. Over in Italy it was mildly warm, but he knew the confessionary box was rather warm, which the mere thought of provoked in him a mild nausea, which pushed him to smoke again, yet there was no way out and no way to go elsewhere—except the prospect of expulsion from university.
All that was thought of was smoke, wisping smoke, wisped into the northern sea, where everything dissipated into a high grey day.
Freeman would rather starve than be a banker or mathematician or student or politician, but don’t you worry, his folks sure have him covered, even after the drama as you must be starting to suspect—more!—expulsion from the university—and his visa revoked. A forced return to New York was imminent, and there he would be set up working at a local farmers market. His mother would be teaching and lectured away at the local Russian school she owned, while his sister was off in Italy studying at boarding school. His father would be playing the game of marriage with another woman somewhere in Boston town. Elsewhere, Brooklyn sat cold and silent, and for once not stoned.
The terrible ACID dream was over, but the boy was still STONED and HIGH on timelessness.
There is nothing more to say, except to learn your true name before there are more no chances to ESCAPE.