Shane Stevens Saturday: Acid Trip in the East Village...

While re-reading Way Uptown In Another World lots of things struck me. This is one of them. Marcus Garvey Black, the main character, young African-American conman, asks an East Villiage dealer named Super Spade about this new "acid thing" going around. Garvey wants to know if Super Spade is worried about what's gonna go down when the heavies try to take over.

Super Spade isn't worried about that. He knows it'll never happen. Acid, he tells, Marcus is too dangerous.

Marcus wants to know for whom. Super Spade tells him:

'"For whoever ain't taking it. Listen, baby, this acid ain't like the hard stuff. Society don't care nothing about the junkies cause they ain't no threat really. They just got a job like everyone else. Their job is taking junk. They steal and kill sometimes but that gives the po-lice something to do. And everybody's happy, you dig?  But acid's a whole other thing. It lets you see what life oughtta be like. It makes you a revolutionary. Not for one stupid fuckin' country over another, that's just a game. But for a whole diff'rent kinda life where there's no power shit at all. You dig?"

I nodded.

"Now society ain't about to let go of the golden apple. Too many power junkies got their teeth in it. And they already getting hip to the acid message. Soon they gonna come down and wipe out all the acid freaks like they was some kinda disease, man. And if they don't do that, they'll get some science shit out front to scare everybody off. But whatever they do, they ain't gonne let love take over 'cause that'd be the end of the world."'

It's about the power trip. And like always, Stevens is telling us it doesn't have to be.

Popular posts from this blog

Why I No Longer Watch SVU Even Though I Think Mariska Hargitay Is Hot

T.E.D. Klein's 13 Most Terrifying Stories

Disinformation