Freak Outs and Head Trips in Atlantic City
by Harpooner Johnson 

Atlantic City is like the orange shag carpet of a ratty first apartment, brilliantly bright and nasty. Filled with cigarette butts and alcohol stains that come out fully visible in the unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights. And there’s nothing but fluorescent lights in Atlantic City, flat and neon, gross and putrid.

Intelligent beasts don’t go to Atlantic City of their own free will. Neither did I, and would never have set foot in the rectum of America had I not been on assignment for Boner magazine to cover the first of its kind Monty Python Fan Base Convention. Anything better but the scraps of altruistic sex magazines was something I couldn’t ask for, troubled and washed out by all major journalistic outlets for my decadent behavior. Decadent by their standards, my own having fallen far beneath normal human radar. I had seen the best and worst in human kind, aspired for the heights of human achievement and rode on waves into the depths of the worst human endeavors. Saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness and plagiarized Ginsberg without second thought. In short, I took what I could get and what I could get was Atlantic City.

On the advice of my accountant, Mr. Bongo, I loaded a suitcase full of the world’s most powerful stimulants, depressants, and psychedelic substances. He suggested it was in my best financial interest to buy the drugs in the poorer neighborhoods, rent a car with full insurance coverage, and take him with me so we could buy a matching pair of “I’m with stupid” T-shirts. If the Democrats ever got back into office I could probably write it off on my taxes.

The sniveling bureaucrat at the car rental place appeared to have stepped right out of a training film for the John Birch Society. Short, greasy hair that reflected the gleaming “Rental” sign perfectly, a suit with cuffs and pantlegs both just short of stylish, and the sweaty upper lip of a man who had ridden too far on the inheritance of slave traders. His impudently white skin grew paler by the minute as my accountant and I loaded our things into the rental. We had gotten him out of bed at midnight with the promise a big accountant would fill his fat polyester pockets before daybreak.

“Be careful with the car, or we won’t insure it,” he warned us with a snide drawl as I drove the car over ten other rentals lined side by side.

“I always test the tires this way,” I assured him.

With a flittering, forgetful signing of some red-tape document we were on our way. It was a three- or four-day journey from Los Angeles to Atlantic City, but we were confident we could make it in six hours once the heroin set in. I personally filled the tank with my own mixture of half-gasoline, half-nitrous oxide for better mileage, and it appeared to be paying off as we were in Kansas within the first half hour.

Kansas is flatter than a band majorette’s chest and only slightly more alluring, once you’re under the influence of Scandinavian mosquito dung. It was a little something my accountant had picked up in a general store in the 1840s during a bad peyote trip. He had had to pay for it with a pocket watch and five consonant sounds during the rush of the drug. But it was worth every syllable as colors drifted between our eyelids and we both felt the wind sliding into our gullets like warm gravy. We decided to stop and pick up a hitchhiker, but it only turned out to be a hitchhiking camel in a bad disguise. He didn’t speak English but he smoked feverishly. We didn’t bother to ask him where he was going. He was just along for the ride, like we all were.

For more of this great story, buy Harpooner Johnson’s
Freak Outs and Head Trips in Atlantic City Harvey Potluck and the Sophomore Slump
It was peculiar to think he had nearly not made it at all. A mysterious spell and night of binge drinking of hard liquor had caused him to miss his cab ride back to the Academy. The shame of it all!

Hamilton Castlewaite
Such worries were no longer my concern. My frigate had capsized in the dreadful storm, and most of my crew were drowned. Some of them were even white men. A frightful experience, being near-drowned.

The Adventures of Sollsberry Stake
Rush wus’n playin on bein cowboys an injuns, but he’sn all lonesome goin ‘bout it cuz’n it wuz only him. He ast me if’n I wanted to play with ‘im, but I sed I wus’n too busy huntin up treasure.

D.M.Z.
Private Benji Hammond Krunk was not, however, surprised by the bold declaration by the screaming sergeant. He knew war was… hellish.