The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Simon went down to Vancouver to meet them: neutral ground, so to speak. They spent a few days there, did some skiing, and then came up. The parents didn’t spend much time at the farm. After about a day and a half they retreated to the Marine Inn back in town. It was probably the outhouse that did it as much as anything else. We all thought they were pretty good sports to come at all.

  There were little awkward moments, like when someone passed a joint to Simon’s little brother, but all in all it went very well. We enjoyed having them there and I think they enjoyed being there. They weren’t tickled pink that Simon had chosen this way of life but they weren’t foaming at the mouth about it either.

  There were lots of the usual conversations you have with parents about this sort of thing. Throwing away a good college education. Don’t you get bored? Money? What about working in the system? Would you fill in an absentee ballot if I sent you one? Dope.

  Same conversations but with a difference. The difference was it was taking place on our turf and not theirs. We were the ones who could afford to be indulgent and polite about their screwy ideas. Somehow, watching their reactions to this new situation gave the farm a solidity and reality that the previous inspection by peers had only hinted at.

  On the way to the farm with his family Simon had picked up a Christmas package from Barnstable addressed to Virge and me. Red and green DO NOT OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS stickers were on all sides. We went along with it and just let it sit there till December 25, in spite of our talk about moving Christmas back to the winter solstice, where it belonged.

  When we opened the box, it was all I could do to keep from crying. The two little bottles of champagne had broken en route. The champagne had all evaporated but the joint letter from everyone was stained and the pages of the books were warped. Nothing but the wine was really destroyed, my Christmas stocking and my mother’s rum cake were OK, but the accident seemed fraught with tragic symbolism. It triggered off thoughts of Christmas a year ago.

  Each of us in the family knew that it was “the last Christmas.” The last Christmas we would all spend together. The last Christmas that would be anything like the Christmases of the past.

  Something was dying. It was more than Christmas. The magic that had filled the Barnstable house was dying. Our childhood was dying.

  What was killing it? Father’s getting to be famous? The changing times? The fact that we weren’t children any more? Nothing goes on forever, but we didn’t let it die gracefully, we just had to try to squeeze one more Christmas out of it, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening, trying to make like it wasn’t the last Christmas, trying to be twelve again. It seemed like we were compelled to play a cruel joke on ourselves and insult what had been so precious and real with a farce.

  I honestly tried to coast through it and maybe in another mood at another time I wouldn’t have taken it so seriously. I could have played the game like everyone else and just let it go. But this wasn’t that time and mine wasn’t that mood. I was too upset, too desperate, too scared and unsure of what lay ahead.

  There we were, my family, my blood. Cousin brother Jim, twenty-five, tormentor of my late childhood and adolescence, my replacement as eldest son, two-time college flunk-out, no particular direction, a couple thousand dollars in photographic equipment, his inheritance, shrinking fast. Cousin brother Steve, twenty-two, three months older than I, Most Popular Barnstable High School Class of ’65, B.A. Dartmouth, teaching English in Barnstable High, his alma mater, hating every minute of it, planning to quit but without the faintest idea what he was going to do next. Cousin brother Tiger with a year to go at U. Mass. No real plans but with a pilot’s instructor license and reasonable prospects, undoubtedly in the best shape of anyone there. They were my father’s sister’s sons. We had adopted them when their parents died when I was eleven. It was a real bitch at first but things worked out.

  Sister Edie, twenty, two-time college dropout, no direction, hooked up with and apparently unable to get free from Brad, a second-rate Charlie Manson. Sister Nanny, fifteen, very unhappy about school and lots of other things. My father having difficulties adjusting to super-stardom, not wanting to be a writer any more, very restless, not very happy about anything. My mother going through menopausal stuff, wondering what the hell to do with her life with the kids all grown and the marriage not in the greatest of shape. And myself, twenty-two, B.A. in religion, fed up with do-gooder work in Boston, no plans and less hope for what the future held.

  Christmas Eve. Everyone got drunk the way they used to get drunk, everyone talked the way they used to talk. It was a sham. Christmas morning all the “kids” gathered at the top of the stairs, waited for the “OK,” and rushed down the stairs squealing with glee.

  It was Edie I talked to first. “Look, this is really a nightmare. I can’t take it any more.” We had a good talk. She understood. If this was the last time we were going to be together as a family, and it most likely was, then there were real things to talk about, real things that should be said if our being a family was going to mean anything. This manic desperation wasn’t doing anybody any good.

  After talking with her I felt a whole lot less lonely. Eventually I managed to have sober conversations with everyone and the whole thing became less of a nightmare. That didn’t stop it from being the last Christmas, but I needed a family now and not just something that was a family five years ago. And I got it. Not that everything was all cleared up and everyone had hope and direction, but at least we had love and not just memories of a past love distorted by some twisted resurrection.

  Right after Christmas Luke’s rotten teeth reached the critical point. He claimed that he had been born with lousy teeth but I doubt that his speed days in Berkeley helped much. They were all crumbling. The only thing to do was to yank the stumps and put in some falsies. He looked awful. He was in constant pain. His spirits were deteriorating too. All those rotting teeth were poisoning him.

  One way or another enough money was gotten together and all of Luke’s teeth came out. Afterward he was in even more pain and couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t do anything but try to smile.

  I never saw him recover. He left a few days after the operation. All he knew was that he was heading south. Some months later we got a letter from South America.

  Although I only dimly realized it at the time, Luke’s leaving broke my heart.

  Maybe if I hadn’t hunted grouse, or maybe if I had thrown the chain saw into the lake, maybe…

  My love for Luke was important to me then. It was very important to me when I went nuts and it’s still important to me. If at the last judgment I’m confronted with a list of all my sins, my defense will be that I loved Luke. Proof that I was capable of higher emotion, proof that no matter how many ugly things I might have done I knew beauty when I saw it, proof that I didn’t have to fuck to have fun.

  JANUARY 1971. A new spirit settled on the farm. We had arrived. Thanksgiving and Christmas had been confirmation rituals and we had passed both with flying colors. There had been a slightly disturbing tentativeness to the place before.

  There had been pressure to work work work to get the house ready for winter. All of a sudden we noticed that winter was half over. The house still wasn’t ready and no one was dying or even sick. It was too cold to work very comfortably. Fingers didn’t behave; they dropped things all the time. We stopped trying to get the house ready for winter. It was cold at times, but we had our down bags and the kitchen could be made plenty toasty by revving up the stoves.

  We had a big laugh about the whole thing. What had we been worried about? Local people were saying this was the roughest winter in years. If this was the worst winter could do to us, our survival was a piece of cake.

  The die-hard regulars, Simon, Jack, Kathy, Virge, and I, settled in. We had time to look around and try to figure out exactly what it was we had. By and large, we concluded it was pretty good and would get even better. The hardest time had been a snap and was behind us. We had enough wo
od and enough food, so we just sat back, carved wooden spoons, knit scarves, wrote letters, read books, made music, and waited for our goats to have their kids.

  2

  ARRIVING

  If God is one, How can I be Evil?

  —C. Manson

  The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself. The moment its isolation breaks down and there comes an actual mixing and confusion, death sets in.

  —D. H. Lawrence

  DRUGS. Most of the people at the farm were well-seasoned trippers. It hadn’t rotted their brains or taken over their lives. It was just something they had done several times a year for the past three or four, something they enjoyed and felt helped them grow and understand more. From the way I looked and talked and the friends I hung around with, people who didn’t know me well assumed that I had done my share of tripping. They were always a little surprised to find out that I had never dropped acid and that my sum-total experience with psychedelics was one mescaline trip, and that not until I was an old man of twenty-two and out of college.

  I rarely admitted even to myself that I might be afraid of drugs. I just kept saying that feelings of love, beauty, peace, and cosmic insights could be achieved more lastingly and meaningfully in other ways. But the drugs were always there and more and more tempting, if only to find out what the hell everyone was so excited about. So one fine and sunny day, two weeks after graduating from Swarthmore, Vincent, his girl friend of the moment, and Virge and I headed down from Boston to the incomparable dunes of Sandy Neck to do something about Mark’s virginity. Vincent had four caps of super organic mescaline.

  Oh, well, thought I, I’m going to trip. Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. I had a slight feeling of anxiety in the pit of my stomach but I laughed at it. No one ever has a bad trip on mescaline. It’s not like it’s acid or something. What bad could happen anyway? Down the hatch went the little pill.

  When’s it gonna start? When’s it gonna start? How silly. Here we are on an absolutely beautiful day, four beautiful people in one of the world’s most amazingly beautiful places. What are we messing around with some drug for? What more could we want? What more could there be?

  I never called it a “bad trip.” Sometimes other people would call it that when I told them what had happened. “Bad trip” didn’t really describe it. It wasn’t saying enough. It was saying too much.

  If you had a bad trip it was because you were a bad person. If you weren’t a bad person, then at the very least having a bad trip indicated that work was needed on this or that part of your head; a lack of wisdom or something like it was at the root of your bad trip. People would always talk about what a terrible trip someone like Nixon would have and what a nice wonderful beautiful trip someone they really loved or admired would have. I found the logic appealing. It made sense to me that the drug somehow opened you up and that if you were somehow pure, everything would go fine, but if you were twisted and kinky, you’d have a bad trip. Finding myself on the other end of the stick, the end of the stick I had hoped to use on Nixon, Mitchell, etc., didn’t lessen the appeal of the logic.

  I was shaking, I was crying, I was scared. Not the whole time but for quite a bit of it. The only honest thing to say is it was a bad trip. And that thought became an obsession.

  I was different from other people. That was the meat of it. Vincent, Virginia, and Gloria were all fine. They didn’t end up crying, shaking, scared. For them it seemed to end after eight hours. They all felt a tinge of regret about it. “If only it could be like this all the time.” The hell of it was that for me it was.

  Had I had a rock-stable world to start with, I might well have enjoyed an extracurricular jaunt into psychedelic perception. But it was just too close to home and accelerated everything I was trying to keep a lid on.

  It had really been acid. I was grasping at straws, something to make the fact that I was shaking, scared, crying, more reasonable. An honest mistake? It happened all the time. Mescaline was in big demand. Some bastard had sold Vincent acid as mescaline.

  And the bastard got closer and closer, as bastards always do. It became Vincent and it wasn’t for money. It was to show Virginia what a fucked-up person I was deep down inside. Maybe they had all taken dummy capsules and I had been given a whomping dose of acid. That was too heavy. In a switch I decided that yes, I had been deceived but I was deceived because they loved me so much.

  They knew me better than I knew myself. They had given me this acid to straighten out my kinks, to make me see how beautiful I was. To make me love myself as much as they loved me. They knew I wouldn’t have taken it if I had known it was acid. That was part of the stupid but charming thing about me that they were trying to help me with.

  It went back and forth. Bad plot, no plot, good plot, no plot, bad plot, no plot, good plot. Back and forth, faster and faster, and then a few days later, after many cold showers and lots of staying in bed, it finally started slowing down and then went away. But the nasty fact that mescaline had made me crying, shaking, scared remained. It haunted me. If the good fairy had appeared and granted me one wish, it would have been a good trip.

  It wasn’t just the psychedelics that hit me differently. Enough speed to keep most people up one night spaced me out for three. Amyl nitrate—poppers—was a fine two-minute high that blasted me for hours. Lots of the time I couldn’t even smoke grass right. Everyone else would get drowsy and mellow and I’d get activated and hyper. Grass was still pleasant for me so I smoked my share, but I couldn’t help worrying about what the hell made drugs so different for me.

  And then it happened. I got my wish. Just after Christmas, a year and a half after my mescaline disaster, I had a “normal” acid trip. I went up, got high, and came down just like my fellow trippers, Virge and a couple from the Prior Road commune. Unlike the mescaline, which had woven itself too well into the fabric of my mind, the acid let me tell when it came and what it was doing and when it went. It was a pleasant, giggly day, and a huge relief to me. The farm or simply the passage of time had cured whatever it was that made me so different from my friends.

  GOATS. The goats didn’t like me. I knew it and it hurt. The goats didn’t really dig anyone but they seemed to like me least. Maybe it was because I had played the heavy when we first got them. It was I who picked them up and took them away from their happy home, put them in the back of the truck, and held them there while we drove to the marina. They appreciated even less being dragged into the boat. In an attempt to make up I offered Martha a joint on the way up the lake. She just curled her lip menacingly.

  I did my best to make friends. I’d bring them apples and other treats and hang around in their house not saying or doing much, just trying to get them to accept me. They’d accept the treats but I never got the feeling I was making much progress.

  Alice didn’t seem to mind me much, but Alice was stupid so her acceptance didn’t mean a whole lot. It was Martha I really wanted to like me. Realizing that the deep hatred in her eyes went far beyond her and me, I started apologizing for all the awful things that people had done to goats. Man had taken a wild animal and bent nature to his selfish needs, distorting it horribly and making it dependent on him for its survival. Martha’s was the hatred of all animals that man had messed with and the resentment of all life for what man had done to what could have been such a nice planet. I even started feeling some of this resentment from Zeke.

  The apple trees were sore about it too. Before I had felt gratitude from these beaten old trees for my help in patching them up and making them healthy. I imagined sighs of relief and appreciation as I cut away the dead wood, scraped their bark, and bound their wounds. But now I felt unanswerable bitterness. Cutting firewood became unthinkable.

  I’m getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t till several weeks after the birth of Nancy that these feelings really got to me. When I had given up hope of ever having a close friendship with Martha or Alice, Martha
because her hate was implacable and Alice because she was so dumb, I placed my hopes for a good man-goat relationship on their kids. I figured they’d be much happier here than their mothers, who had known other fields.

  None of us had any experience with goats, and the woman who had sold them to us didn’t have any exact dates, so we just watched Martha and Alice swell up bigger and bigger, expecting the kids to come almost any time.

  One morning, as I was out feeding the goats and making small talk with them, I noticed that Alice was acting strangely. At first I thought there was something wrong. There was some strange tumor sticking out of her ass. Then I figured out what was happening and ran back to the house to alert the folks to the impending blessed event.

  Jack, Kathy, Simon, Virginia, and I all charged out to watch the miracle, hoping there would be no complications, since none of us had the faintest idea what to do to help if anything should go wrong. Their little shed had a space between the roof and the wall, so everybody watched from there. Everybody but me. I went into the shed. I had heard about farmers holding cows’ heads and comforting them while they gave birth. I wanted to be involved. It was Alice’s first kid and I thought maybe she could use some moral support. There was room in there for other people but no one else came in. I felt Virginia looking at me as if I were making some dreadful mistake but I tried to ignore it. After staying in there long enough so that it wouldn’t look like I felt I had blundered, I made some sort of excuse and went out. The goats, of course, did fine without me.

  In the middle of all this Vincent showed up. Wet and cold, he was warmly welcomed and hugged all around. He was even more distracted and fuzzy than usual. He had been unable to get a ride up in a boat, so rather than waiting for us to come into town or for someone to bring him up, he had attempted the overland route. No one had done that before. He had started up in the afternoon the day before and had gotten lost and had to sleep in the bush. There was a heavy snowfall that night. In the morning, soaked and half frozen, he made his way to the lake, where he was lucky enough to find a boat and some oars, and he rowed about four miles to our dock. I attributed his more than usual abstraction to physical exhaustion.