Moi, Jeanne

 

 

Twice in my life I have had the good fortune to share a house with a woman who possessed a bag of psilocybin mushrooms the size of a pillow, or rather, a series of bags that size. Coincidence is not a factor in strokes of luck like that.

I was in college for the first mushroom binge. We had numerous fungoid parties at my house, a co-op with ten residents, most memorably a Led Zeppelin-Liberace party held to mourn or celebrate, whichever, the passing of Liberace; the only music played was Led Zeppelin, amplified until we could barely hear each other raving and giggling, until three o'clock in the morning, when someone mutinied and put on Siouxsie and the Banshees. Our cities lay in dust indeed as dawn lit the horizon. At about four o'clock I walked past the kitchen to see my friends Jen and Mark sitting at the Cock Table, so called because of the bas-relief penises carved into each corner. Grinning like jack-o-lanterns, they were shredding newspaper into strips and then placing them into a huge, brimming bowl before them while chanting, "Listen to the pain, listen to the pain." Were I to sit down and ponder, surely I could commit more epic trips from that period of time to print, but those are not the focus of my attention at present. Thus, my collegiate mushroom experiences must fade from literary scrutiny, perhaps to spawn some few scholarly treatises centuries hence, although now that I think about it, I do recall walking around campus one sunny day and marveling at the intricate Maori tattoos on everyone's faces.

A few years later, I was living in another house with another woman (and two other men), and behold, she bore a sack of mushrooms in the fullness of time. By this time I'd stumbled across LSD that had made my previous trips seem like walks down the block with grandma, and so I was not at all timid about testing the perimeters. I took to brewing mushroom tea and sipping it on the weekends and even on a few school nights; one Wednesday after finishing my Spanish homework, I downed a cup and laid quietly on the couch in our Day-Glo living room. The room's centerpiece was a black-and-white TV whose contrast and brilliance controls had been skewed such that the screen always appeared black except for occasional, shapeless blobs of dim white and powdery gray, like sharks passing by in deep water; it was kept on twenty-four hours a day. Eyes closed, I passed into a reverie in which I shrank and somehow managed to enter the normal-sized version of myself, which I discovered to be composed of glowing, multicolored wedges shaped like orange slices. I understood this to be the true spiritual composition of my body, something waiting just on the other side of meat. On other nights, we would host movie festivals featuring Dr. Seuss or Fassbinder (the latter not recommended for psilocybin fanciers by this author). Many times dusk came to my corner of the world heralded by sunsets flaming in greens and oranges and blues that wailed like saxophones, sharpening just before going out.

Three of us four in the house--the woman, named Bianca, Fred, and myself--had been tossing around the idea of tripping together during spring break, which we were spending quietly. No expensive, drunken voyages to places where it was already as horribly hot and humid as it would be for us at home soon enough; we were all responsible students, our predilection for drugs notwithstanding, and had piles of books to read and papers to write. Fred was spending time in his room, poring over flowcharts of his own design full of circled terms such as Hypertext and HTML and arrows pointing everywhere but to someone who could explain to me what it all meant. Fred tried, but this was 1990, and no one had heard of the Internet yet. At least, no one I knew. We all thought he was living in a castle in the air until a few years later when he could just about afford to move into a real one, his efforts having paid off big time. He was tall and good-looking, with sandy blond hair and a look of perpetual mischief, given to peppering the campus with subversive posters and quite active in leftist politics. Bianca was either working or seeing her boyfriend or one or more of her girlfriends, and when she wasn't doing that, she was casting spells, plying us with drugs, or designing and creating her own clothes, which reflected her interest in spells and drugs. I was redeeming myself after my first stint as an undergraduate; this time, I was actually reading everything on the syllabus (of course, at this university, unlike the private liberal arts college I'd gone to previously, they tested you to make sure you'd read everything, so maybe I hadn't so much matured as met my match). But surely, we thought, there would be one day in the week when we could drink lots of mushroom tea and have a grand old time. Thursday, for instance.

The appointed day dawned as the trees on our property twisted in a strong breeze that soon strengthened to a near gale. Creaking of boughs and swishings of branches against the roof and walls gave me the impression that I was walking on the deck of a ship as I made my way to the kitchen after finishing my coffee, a quarter ounce of dried mushrooms in my hand. Water was brought to boil, but just as I was going to add the main ingredient, Bianca wandered in to say that she'd have to postpone her trip until later in the day. Then she left for work. The mushrooms went into a cabinet, and I repaired to read some Emerson. Fred was still sleeping.

I found Emerson less than riveting. In fact, that particular essay worked better than warm milk on me, as I remember waking up around two o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was strong but the wind was stronger; I'd left a window open, and the curtain was doing a dance in my room that would have made Salome jealous. I flung on my clothes and within minutes had the powdered psilocybin mushrooms soaking in the steaming water. The tea smelled savory, not sweet or fragrant as would ordinary tea, more like soup.

Both household cars were out front, so I made the rounds to announce the imminence of tea time. Bianca was leaning over a piece of fabric on her sewing machine when I visited her; she was busy, she wasn't in the mood, she was going to pass. Checking with Fred found him yet once again hunched over a flowchart; he said he'd try some later. Disappointed, I marched down to the kitchen and regarded the tea, now brown and inviting, as the wind buffeted the house.

I had a seat on the back porch, regarding the green sprouts in the garden and the housing project across the alley as I sipped my first cup. Mmmm, mmm, good. Commercial soup makers really should get on this, I thought to myself as I downed it all and went back for more. The second cup tasted even better, and the third was heaven. If I had a fourth, would there be some left for Fred? Why, surely there would. The steam from the cup whipped past my face and increased my delight. Now sitting inside to avoid the wind, which had ceased being entertaining--trying to smoke a cigarette on the porch had been impossible--I nursed the fourth cup, still not quite sure why I'd been so gung-ho to drink almost the entire pot myself but happy to have obliged. The results of my drinking deep the Pierian spring didn't concern me; I figured I would just get really high, that's all.

I was getting in the mood, watching the sun speckles shifting across the light blue carpet as the intervening trees bounced and writhed, when the room went dark. Then light again. Then pitch black. Sirens rose to harmonize with the gale blowing outside, now playing with the house like a cat. Not good. No. Not at all. I ran to the TV and fiddled with its settings, finally achieving a normal picture. The tell-tale solid funnel symbol at the bottom left of the screen confirmed my fears, and then the weatherman gave the details: extraordinarily dangerous situation, likelihood of F5 tornadoes, take cover immediately. By this time Fred and Bianca had run downstairs from their rooms, and as I turned to run for the cellar, they were standing behind me. Seeing my reaction to what I'd seen on the television, they turned and followed without a word as I sprinted to the back door.

Part of the back porch floor served as the door to the storm cellar. The name was apt enough as there was no other reason to be there, unless you liked spiders.

At this point I must explain that tornadoes and spiders were among my least favorite things. I don't know why I suffered from arachnophobia, as they'd never done anything to me, but it faded with time like a tattoo. Recently, a small, black, very furry spider, like a common jumping spider on steroids, has taken up lodging with me, and I am astonished to find that I enjoy its company, even feel affection for it in a way. Perhaps it was walking up to my house in 1968 under heavy, dark clouds and watching as (to my young eyes and mind, which could not comprehend such a thing) one of the clouds up-ended and sank to the earth that has given me my horror of tornadoes. I was terrified, yet I was forced to run toward home for security, which meant running toward it. No memory after that, just running and screaming. I know that I developed an interest in tornado science after the event. All this to say that no worse configuration of circumstances could possibly have been about to occur to me even had I not just downed enough mushroom juice to wig out an entire Aztec village. But I had. I could feel it coming on like a semi. The sky was boiling tar making faces at me, the wind was shrieking and clawing at everything, funnels were forming and coalescing overhead, and as the porch door opened, a large spider was framed against the lightbulb, hanging just where our heads would have to pass as we descended into the many-legged safety below.

The minor muscular incoordination I often felt at the start of a psilocybin trip never bothered me too much, but I had taken more than a minor dose. I had to brace myself against the walls as we lowered ourselves in. I was shaking from the thought of the sky about to reach down and kill us and the millions of emerald eyes shining out from webs all around us, but the sky was scarier by far. None of us were speaking; we would have had to yell like banshees to be heard over the wind. No rain was falling, no hail, no lightning or thunder, just the howling. After a few minutes, I relaxed a bit because the sound wasn't increasing, which was good news, and then the sun hit Bianca in the face through a chink in the wood. Fred grinned at me, knowing that I was tripping, and opened the door.

I clambered out, shaking the dust from my body, and dared to look up at the awful clouds racing away. A huge funnel was hanging near the south end of town, but it was quickly shrinking into the distance. Whereas the leading edge of the storm had been the color of lead, on this side the sun was hitting the clouds and suddenly I saw the Transfiguration right there, the white shining like the robes of God himself against the blue sky. My mouth gaped as I was lifted out of myself into an ecstasy I never thought I could merit, the blue filling me, pouring into my marrow, and the white carrying me yet further, a multitude of me's popping out of each other in series like those Russian wooden dolls.

When I could turn around, I did so. Fred and Bianca had repaired to the living room, and I was going to join them when Steve, Bianca's boyfriend, came strolling in. He was a big guy with a thick beard.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked me in his good-natured way as the walls bubbled behind him and his ears turned green.

"Oh, pretty good," I replied, smiling. I didn't want to make a big deal out of the fact that I was so high. It would raise too many inquiries, too many opportunities for me not to know what a sane person would say and thus just stand there staring or grin like a fool.

"Guess what?" he said, reaching into his pocket. "I have this great Mexican sinsemilla."

"Oh, cool," I cried. This was getting good. The mushrooms were carrying me along now; the beauty of our rescue from the storm had me in a fine mood, and here was this rare treat. We smoked about two-thirds of the joint, talking about something or other, and then he excused himself to visit with Bianca, who didn't smoke much. (Funny that Fred didn't immediately manifest next to Steve as soon as his arm began its descent to his shirt pocket, now that I think of it.) I saw my opportunity to run upstairs and I seized it.

My room at the time had salmon pink walls with salmon carpet (a happy coincidence, as the carpet was given to me by a friend, and it fit the room to within four inches). In truth it was a suite of sorts, as it consisted of a main room and nook, complete with window, just big enough for a king-size mattress and six inches of clearance on either side and demarcated with a beaded curtain. Couches and chairs and cushions, paintings and drawings and Christmas lights, ashtrays and hookahs and bongs. I put some Chopin on the turntable and laid back on the couch, folding my hands over my chest and smiling as I tumbled into the blackness.

My name was Jeanne Avril, and during the principal part of the vision--which spanned maybe ten minutes of ordinary time but was in reality all eighty-six of her years on earth simultaneously--I was in my late seventies. I wore a black dress with a frilly white apron, and my cottage was set amidst a thick garden of about four feet in height, a riot of flowers. People in the area came to me for cures because I worked with herbs and knew a little about magic, but what really drew them was my clairvoyance. I was incredibly gifted. I could pass my hand over objects and know who had touched them, probe into the deepest secrets of their lives, find out what they needed to know, and tell them. I had lived in the village all my life, although my parents had both died when I was quite young. I knew this and the rest of her--my--life because my name was Jeanne and I had always been the one living in it, no? My French was lilting and yet somewhat throaty, with a southern accent. I went to church and the priest had no problem with me because everyone knew I was too good a person to be a witch and my powers had to be from God. I knew this and everything else about me, and I knew it for all my life, all the years of my life.

At the edge of Jeanne's consciousness a strange thought unfurled itself like the flag of a band of infiltrators into foreign territory. Je ne suis pas un vieux femme francais et clairvoyante de un epoque ancienne. Je m'appelle Greg, et je suis americaine, et je deteste le langue francais! You speak English and Spanish and a little Sanskrit. Your name's not Jeanne. Get that through your head. Fear suddenly cooled me, as if Jeanne were a pool from which I were emerging naked into chilly air. Whoa, I thought, what the fuck was that? Who the fuck was that? Creepy. That was too real. I sat up and then ducked as a crew of Indian shamans barnstormed through the room on eagle wings. They vanished into a glowing haze of blue and orange shot with pure white stars, just like the background of Blake's painting of Jacob's ladder. So intense was my love for these colors that I'd already forgotten about Jeanne.

The door opened and my friend Eric strolled in. He'd been by a week or so ago to buy some mushrooms from Bianca; I'd referred him. He lived in a house with fifteen other people whose enormous parties featured frenzied dancing to Jimi Hendrix and any number of drink-drug combinations. Sitting down on a cushion next to the couch, on which I had resumed reclining, he seemed rather serious and in a hurry.

"How are you, man?" he inquired.

"Oh, just fine," I deadpanned, not wanting to reveal that I was in fact seeing his face glint like polished marble and then resolve into a relief map of some foreign country. A mountain range reared up across his forehead. "How about you?"

He lowered his head and made his eyebrows meet, scattering glaciers across the cordilleras of his cheekbones. "Well, I'm full of shit," he spat. He then proceeded to rip himself apart, dissecting all his perceived character flaws and excoriating himself for all his failures.

"How long ago did you take them? How many did you take?"

"About two hours ago. About half what she sold me."

He was only about one-third as high as I was. The poor boy was lost amidst the rings of Saturn and now I had to guide him back to Earth from my lofty position somewhere around Alpha Centauri. And I did my best to offer him compassionate positive regard, trying to turn him toward seeing himself as being that much more fertile ground for perfection. After a while he started agreeing with me and I sighed in relief. Maybe now he'd go away and leave me to my reveries.

"Oh, and there's one more thing," he said, licking his lower lip.

"Okay, out with it."

Before I could even take another breath he was on top of me, just lying there, not trying to embrace me or kiss me. "I think I'm gay," he informed me.

I didn't really find him attractive, although he was conventionally quite pretty I suppose, and I was so out of it that any attempt at sex would have ended in hilarity. So I talked with him about coming out quite rationally, and he responded in a measured fashion, with at least me trying to ignore the fact that I had a man pressing his body into mine.

At length he felt better enough (and perhaps realized that I wasn't going to help him prove his hypothesis) to get up and go on his merry, hallucinated way. I honestly hope I helped him.

I laid back on the couch and for hours experienced that for which no words in any language yet exist. Go look at a page in Cyrillic or Devanagari or Arabic (assuming you don't know how to read any of those) if you want to know what it was like. But after a while, the dusk thickening outside as the wind died, I got up to see how the rest of the house was faring. Fred was in his room, a demitasse cup on his flowchart. As I peered in, I could tell he had discovered the last of the psilocybin tea, and upon seeing him, I figured he'd downed it at least an hour ago. He giggled, confirming my suspicions. I'd left only that small bit, so he was just elated and heightened, not insane.

"So," he began in his inimitable friendly and mock-arrogant way, "how was your day, Mr. Everitt?"

So much had happened so fast, with so little time to categorize, reflect upon, or even name it all, that I faltered for an answer. Then a memory presented itself and I uttered it, looking at him as if discussing the weather.

"Well, I became a clairvoyant Frenchwoman of the nineteenth century named Jeanne Avril."

No sooner had the words left my lips when the full import of what I had just said struck me, and both of us fell to the floor in paroxysms of laughter, shrieking like loons and pounding the wooden beams. Our German housemate was downstairs cooking dinner with his girlfriend, and if the sounds coming from upstairs were disturbing during our initial episode of hysterics, I can only guess what they were thinking as I stumbled, still gasping for air, into my room and put on an Edith Piaf album at full blast, her Gallic trilling blending with the sound of us laughing on and on.

 

*****

 

About a week later, my father called me on the telephone. He's very much interested in genealogy, specifically ours, and was always popping up with some new bit of information about our Scots forebears or our Norman origins, and sure enough, during our conversation things began to take an ancestral turn.

"You know what, son?" he boomed. "I just found out that there was a French branch of the family."

"Is that so?" I answered, shifting onto my other foot and staring ahead.

"Yes. The family name over there was Avril."

What a drag for you, Dad, I thought, having to do all that musty research for days to glean that knowledge when all I had to do was drink some tea. But there is, after all, something to be said for doing things the hard way.

 

© 2000 Gregor Everitt