Members of the audience raise their hands to ask questions, chosen
in advance for their originality, sincerity, and capability of
being answered with a lie.
The first few are too easy. "Do you agree with Andrew Jackson
that there are no necessary evils in government?" "Do
you think the US should trust the Russians?" With questions
that cut and dried, everybody can pretty much agree when Tricky
Dick is lying and when he is telling the truth.
The best kind of questions for the show, all the regular watchers
agree, are questions that result in an emotional reaction of some
kind as well as a factual answer, or questions that bring forth
an elaborate anecdote. This is where Tricky Dick is an artist
with fact and fiction, heartfelt appeal and outright lie.
The familiar hollow vowels: "I'm glad you asked me that
question." Running a hand over the top of his head. "As
a matter of fact, the truth is," Tricky Dick's voice becomes
dramatically husky "yes, I have taken LSD." A subdued
murmur of anticipation from the audience: what a great question!
"Of course, this was before it was declared illegal. I am
not a I've always believed in law and order.
"It was some time back around 1965, after Pat and I had moved
back to California. We had some, uh, show business friends, who
had, who had experimented with LSD. Pat and I were going through
a period of...of withdrawal from politics, and our friends thought
it might help us, uh, if we took some of this LSD." He takes
a deep breath. "Let me tell you what happened." The
camera zooms in on his hands: he's wringing them nervously.
"We arranged for this fellow to come to our house, to be
our 'guide,' and he gave us two little white pills. This cost
about three hundred dollars, which was a lot of money back then,
as you might remember. Well, Pat and I were nervous, but we swallowed
them. Then we sat on the floor and listened to Leonard Bernstein
records. Pat took off her shoes, and I first loosened my tie,
then removed it entirely."
As he relaxes into the story, Tricky Dick seems to confide in
the audience. "Well I tell you, I didn't feel like my usual
cocky, confident self there. I was full of restless energy.
I felt very uneasy. Then I realized that the problem
was that I had no control over what was going to happen to me.
I was accustomed to having control over even the smallest things
in my life. A man had to be in control at all times.
"But then I realized that I did have a choice: I would voluntarily
give up control! I made a gesture of giving, giving control over
to the drug. At that moment a great peace descended on me, and
I felt as though I had passed into another dimension. I cried
freely, letting the tears run down my cheeks and yet, I felt
very happy, and I was smiling."
Tricky Dick's lips are pursed, his eyes slightly unfocussed:
he's transfixed by his own story.
"...then I saw myself as the captain of a submarine, steering
my vessel though seas populated by my enemies, watching them through
the periscope, confident, knowing that not one of them knew where
I was. Suddenly, I realized that I was the submarine,
not the captain! For a moment, I wondered: who's the captain?
who's the captain? and then I realized that I was both
the captain and the submarine! And I was the sea as well,
and the enemy ships! It was all a cosmic game, and we are all
one, all the gameplayers and the game itself."
His voice deepens. "Well, I knew this was a really important
insight, and wanted to write it down, but just then I looked over
and saw that Pat was under the grand piano, weeping. I realized
that she was having a 'bad trip.'
"I piloted my sub over under the piano and extended my periscope,
toward her.
"She looked up at me, her eyes dimmed with tears, and as
we looked at one another, I realized that she knew exactly what
I was thinking, about the submarine and all, and that she'd been
crying for each of us, the whole world, in our separate submarines,
not knowing that we were really all part of the same game, all
one, and I said to her, 'You know, don't you?' And she nodded,
without speaking, because she didn't need to speak, she didn't
need to say one word, she just needed to know, and she knew.
"Of course, afterward when we talked about it, I found out
that she had been crying about all the music trapped in the piano,
but on some level I think she really did know. You know?"
From "Fellow Americans" by Eileen Gunn. comments?
© 1991 by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
design & content: eileen gunn
© 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 by eileen k. gunn