During the long night flight over the Atlantic, Walter realized the dimensions of what had occurred in America and specifically in Oklahoma. The closer Europe came, the more certain he felt that he did not want to attend afternoon school any more with the goal of acquiring a high-school diploma and ultimately studying psychology. It no longer made any sense to him. He felt strongly that knowledge about life and being as a whole was not taught in a university. He also realized that the desire and need for the status that diploma would provide him had disappeared.
When he told him this in the plane, Dieter replied, “Think about it. I understand you, but perhaps you will change your mind.”
Walter’s luggage was filled with the clothes, gifts, and accessories he had bought, but also contained a small plastic pouch. Wrapped in soft materials, the pouch contained a respectable number of purple-blue pills.
Early in the morning, Walter made his way up the stairs to the third floor with his heavy baggage. He rang the doorbell, and Hilde appeared in her white bathrobe and black hair. She immediately started to ask questions, but Walter said nothing. He just hugged her for a long time, putting his index finger against his mouth to indicate silence. They went into the bedroom, where he quickly took off his clothes and opened her bathrobe to kiss her beautiful breasts. They made passionate love while Walter looked into Hilde’s eyes, hoping he would be able to explain what needed to be said later.
Walter was on a mission. He felt he needed to share the contents of the small plastic bag from Phil with his friends; he hoped to trigger an event comparable to the one that had happened to him near the lake in the Oklahoma countryside.
Irene had been Hilde’s friend for some time before she met Walter; she knew the couple’s secrets and difficulties and turned naturally into their confidante and best friend. Her boyfriend, Gerhard, stayed somewhat in the background, but agreed to the idea of having a group mescaline session. On a few occasions in the past, the two couples had smoked some hash together and had a good time. Irene, with her blue eyes, blond hair, immaculate body and appearance, turned men’s heads wherever she went. She and Walter liked each other a lot. They shared a strong connection with their issues and secrets and could talk about everything in their lives, like brother and sister. Both of them had grown up the only child in their families.
On the first Saturday night after Walter’s return, the four met at Walter and Hilde’s place and exchanged news of their lives, since they had not seen each other for almost two months. They drank a glass of wine together and then Walter pulled the bag out of a drawer and showed them the tablets. There were some remarks about how they looked, still slightly wet and the unusual color, but everybody swallowed a tab and then waited.
Nothing happened for a long time, and Irene said, “It is not working for me; perhaps I should smoke a joint.”
Walter emptied a filter cigarette, crumbled some hot hash onto the tobacco lying on a piece of paper and rubbed it together into one substance, then refilled the cigarette and lightly tapped it on the table. While doing that, he realized something was happening to him. The space of the small living room expanded, and Irene appeared to be farther away than before. The bedside lamp, which stood in a corner on the floor, shone much lighter and engulfed everybody in clear, yellow light.
He heard Irene gently exclaiming, “Wow, I think now it is working.”
For an elusive amount of time, no one spoke. Walter realized the music had stopped playing. He slowly got up from the armchair. It took time because his body appeared to be controlled by an independent, internal force, but he managed to move toward the stereo, select a record, and put it onto the turntable—Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. He stayed with it, sitting in front of a speaker, the music pouring out with brilliant clarity, leaving small moments of silence between the tones and words.
When the initial, powerful effect of the drug subsequently decreased, the participants could communicate with words. They shared what occurred inside of them, and outside the night turned into early morning, birds starting to chirp in the trees on Westendstrasse.
During the week, Walter went to work full time for the Young Democrats, strictly in an administrative office position. He hardly ever met Andreas because of an election campaign on behalf of the liberal party. Hilde accepted Walter’s decision not to attend afternoon school any more, with some reservation; however, she participated in their ongoing experiments at home with different attendees. On Saturday nights there were sometimes up to eight people joining a psychedelic session in their apartment. They also visited at Irene and Gerhard’s apartment.
Events began to happen in the Westendstrasse apartment. The small living room turned into a mattress-covered floor space to which people came and went. One day, when Hilde and Walter visited Dieter and Anne in their apartment, they were introduced to Lisa from New York City, a beautiful girl in her mid-twenties, with curly black hair and a pleasing, sparkling personality. She and Walter connected instantly; he liked her and the fact that she came from the United States. Anne had picked her up at the American Express office where Lisa was exchanging traveler’s checks. The two had started talking, and Anne found out that Lisa needed a place to stay, so she had invited her to their apartment for the night. They all had dinner together, and Walter invited Lisa to visit them the next day.
When Lisa arrived with her backpack, she told them she did not want to stay at Dieter and Anne’s place anymore because of the third person who lived there, a guy she felt uncomfortable with. Since Helmut and Percy were already living in Walter’s apartment, they all discussed having Lisa stay with them as well, and everybody liked the idea.
At night, Lisa asked, “Who would like to share some LSD with me?”
Hilde went to bed because of her work the next morning, and Walter declined. Since his vacation, he had heard and read much about this drug and acquired a deep respect for its effects, but he was afraid to take it. Walter was familiar with Timothy Leary’s studies and experiments through information in the underground newspapers. He liked the motto “turn on, tune in, and drop out”; a joint in the morning and the day is your friend; and once a week a session with LSD. He felt that this might be a miracle cure for any issue humanity faced.
Lisa’s stay extended to three days and then a week. She once again asked everybody, “I have one pill of Orange Sunshine left. Would somebody like to share it?”
This time Walter agreed, but first he went into the bathroom to be alone for a moment. He wanted to make sure this was what he wanted. His heart raced as he stood in front of this huge decision to do something he was afraid of. For a long time he looked into the bathroom mirror, breathing fast and deeply. Suddenly and very slowly, his eyes started to move together in the direction of each other and turned into one eye. Stunned, he looked into his one eye in the middle of his forehead. He could not believe what he saw, but it was there.
A thought arose in his head: “Oh my god! I am Buddha’s son.”
The thought stood there and manifested, became stronger, and went through his whole being; his skinny body trembled. After a long time, someone outside knocking at the bathroom door asked, “Are you OK?” and then Walter opened the door and went to Lisa to take his part of the Orange Sunshine.
The long-feared effects of the drug never materialized. Walter’s mind turned still, and clarity overcame him. He stayed up all night and the next few days and nights. Hilde left for a hospital visit to have minor surgery.
Walter was sitting on the mattress landscape in the middle of their small bedroom when Percy came home from work and asked him, “Would you like to come with me to visit Dieter and Anne?”
He agreed, and then Dieter arrived with his car and picked them up to drive to his apartment. Dinner was ready, but Walter did not eat and continued to talk about his recent experience.
Dieter and his roommate, both in their final phase of becoming certified psychologists, asked Walter questions such as, “When did you sleep last?” and said, “You should rest now.”
Walter wanted neither to eat nor to sleep; he enjoyed having this advanced state of awareness and absolute clarity, combined with limitless energy. The two students tried to convince Walter that it would be better if he lay down for a while in their empty room. They each took one of his arms and mildly forced him to go into the room, then shut the door and locked it from the outside. Walter noticed the stereo equipment in the room and put on a record by Jimi Hendrix. The door opened again, and Dieter and the roommate entered and removed the speakers. Walter laid down on the mattress close to the turntable with the turning Jimi Hendrix record, listening to it. He could clearly hear Jimi’s singing, transmitted by the diamond needle in the spinning vinyl, and then suddenly talking to him. That was mind-blowing because Jimi had died not too long ago of an overdose in London. Walter felt that not only did Jimi talk to him, but also a part of his soul shifted into Walter. It filled him with deep gratitude, and he started to weep.
He cried because Jimi had been a hero for him. A few months before, Hilde and Walter had gone in his Volkswagen Beetle to a three-day open-air concert on the island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea. The weather was rainy and stormy, and they stayed in someone’s tent in sleeping bags. The couple took the last mescaline trip and enjoyed some good music acts while waiting in the mud until the third day when Jimi was scheduled to appear. Jimi had been late, very late. When he finally appeared on stage, everybody whistled and booed, but Jimi plugged the Fender into his amp, said, “Fuck you, I don’t care,” and started playing his magical music. The crowd, including Walter, was fascinated and forgave the long wait.
The door opened again. Dieter appeared with his roommate and told Walter they all would take a drive now. When Walter asked where they would be going, they told him they would take him to a place where they could help him sleep.
Walter said, “I don’t want to go to a place. I want to go home.”
Once again, the students forced him to get dressed and then accompanied him down the stairs, into the car, and through half of the city. They stopped in a parking lot, walked with Walter between them to a gray building, and entered a lobby area and then a room with chairs.
Dieter said, “Good bye, Walter. Please sleep and eat something. You need to get strong again. See you later, and get better.”
After a while, someone in a white outfit ushered Walter into a smaller, darkened room, where a man with a short beard sat behind a desk.
He started to ask questions such as, “Do you know what day and date it is?”
Walter was not sure about the answers. He told the man, in part, what had happened during the last week. After a few tests with needles tickling various parts of Walter’s body, the door opened, and two more men in white appeared. They took Walter into a large room with many beds standing next to each other and three lanes leading through them. About thirty beds were in that one room, most of them occupied by people.
The men in white walked him through the passage on one side into another room, and said, “Undress yourself.”
However, Walter did not want to. They unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down, then took off his shirt. Tears flowed down Walter’s cheeks, as he stood naked in front of them. He just looked at them. They handed him a shirt without collar and wide pants with a strap to tie it with, both white with thin, blue stripes.
A vacant bed was assigned to him, and an assistant nurse handed him a small container with a few pills inside, saying, “You need take them.” But Walter did not.
Another assistant arrived on the scene, and the two nailed him down on the bed while a third injected something into Walter’s right arm. Quickly, all went dark.
Waking slowly, Walter did not realize where he was and what was going on. Many different voices in various languages came through Walter’s senses; he tried to understand them all and finally did. The man resting in the neighboring bed nodded toward him; nobody else paid any attention to his awakening. A lot was going on in the room at the same time. It was ablaze with neon lights, and Walter noticed that four men in uniform pulled a man through a large door. They steered the man like a horse on reins with the help of leather straps around his waist. His hands were tied up behind his back. The uniforms untied him and left him standing on the spot. He was a tall person, perhaps six feet five inches, with broad shoulders and bloody fists. His nose and lips were bleeding as well.
A tray with food had been placed on a movable tabletop next to Walter’s bed. He did not touch anything. Then someone approached his bed again with a small container of pills, which Walter declined to take. The same scene as before occurred until an assistant nurse could safely stick the syringe into his vein, and Walter went nowhere. Next time he awoke, he noticed the dryness in his mouth and an urge to use the bathroom. Almost unable to get up, he made his way through the rows of the beds, past the walking lane, and saw the latrines without doors. Walter also became aware of his own mind, which felt as if it had been tightened, bound, and shackled. When he tried to ask for some water, his words came out garbled, and he almost forgot what he was asking for.
It soon became obvious that the most admired and sought-after person on the unit happened to be the one who possessed the most cigarettes. Walter became friendly with a man his own size but ten years older, who had been delivered to the floor in leather straps and tears in his eyes. He told Walter that he still owned several cases of cigarettes. The two were sitting next to each other in the recreation room, smoking a lot, trying to have some type of fun in this peculiar situation. When the next medication delivery arrived, Walter capitulated and took the pills. Next time he immediately started to reduce the dosage by hiding one of the pills under his tongue. Then he continued the hiding procedure so he did not swallow anything at all. It made his head feel much better, and the dry mouth subsided somewhat.
Hilde visited during all official visiting hours, and some of his friends came by as well. It hurt Walter to see Andreas and Irene while he was locked up in pinstriped white-and-blue. He was hardly able to have a comprehensible conversation; he felt embarrassed but could do nothing about it. Walter went to meetings with a psychiatrist he liked and had the impression that she, in turn, thought he was an interesting case. To get a better understanding of his situation, the doctor also talked to Hilde, and with her support and approval, released Walter before two weeks had gone by.