What do you do on Sundays? ... Stay in bed all day reading the Sunday newspapers… Go to your parents’ house for Sunday lunch. Sit down to the table and eat roast lamb, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, Brussel sprouts and peas with mint sauce. Listen to the sounds of a midday Sunday laugh come wafting through the open dining room window … Promenade along the seafront at Hastings as they love to do in Italy, Spain and the South of France … Go for a Sunday picnic in a breathtaking beauty spot … Go and see the deer in Richmond Park and take afternoon tea … Go out to that special restaurant in Soho, famous for their Sunday roasts … Go fishing … Go for a drive out into the countryside … Go along to Ham Common. Sit in the car looking at the wandering river Thames. Eat Marmite and cheddar cheese on buttered Ryvita. Drink tea from a flask. Stretch your legs along the towpath. Look at how the anglers are doing and once beyond them, throw bits of stale bread to the swans and ducks … Wash the car … Go and pay a visit to friends. Play cards, laugh, watch television, eat a meal, listen to problems … Go to the only mass entertainment available on a Sunday, the cinema … Go to church …
Washed-out Linda begged Scott to stay over on Sunday. She just can’t stand to be alone … Her room in Elgin Avenue is still bare and minimalistic but showing some signs of improvement. The cooker now has a full Calor Gaz bottle. A Calor Gaz lamp has appeared from who knows where. A piece of cloth is tacked across the naked window with drawing pins at night. There's a box of food with coffee, tea, milk, biscuits, bread, butter and plenty of chocolate bars. Washed-out Linda seems to exist mainly on Aeros, Crunchies and Mars bars. Her food of choice. Scott’s old mattress on the floor is quite large, not too lumpy and another blanket and a real sheet have materialized …
Ricky, the Elgin Avenue dealer, has given Scott two tabs of microdot acid. Just arrived in London. A thank you for all of the introductions and contacts, new business and friendship that pass down the Elgin Avenue lifeline. Just a friendly gesture of brotherhood … You should always be very careful of who you choose to trip with … Scott has stayed over a couple of nights with washed-out Linda. She’s only just twenty so she says. If Scott takes any girl back to the Millner Square squat, Patricia turns nasty. Scott took washed-out Linda back with him last Thursday. The promised luxury of the futon bed. Within minutes, a scowling-faced Patricia comes barging in through the flat door in full sail. No time for pleasantries,
‘Who’s this fucking bitch? Get her and her fucking germs out of here! I don’t want this fucking bitch in my house!’ Washed-out Linda looks even paler than ever … Of course, this smart looking legal secretary, now working in a well-paid position for a Greek shipping tycoon, disappears when the sun goes down. Her eyes change completely. Her house, she says. Well really! Property developers have it in their sights, though Patricia is somehow managing to fend them off for a while. In her mind, Scott is reserved for her, and no other young bitch is going to have him. Not in her house. She makes that very clear … Scott has stayed over with washed-out Linda a few times to avoid Patricia late at night. She comes on strong in the middle of the night. Walks right in totally naked through the flat door. Shakes it all about before Scott’s sleepy-filled eyes. Having to confess to fatigue. Spending half an hour fighting her off, protesting. Then having to resort to freebasing some charley for her at four o’clock in the morning just to get rid of her. Exhausting. Patricia has this habit of coming back through the door after she has left. Truly annoying. She just stands there. Scott chants ‘Monster babies as big as dinosaurs eating black flies by the thousand’ ... That finally does the trick. Patricia’s fat naked bottom wobbles off for good …
Scott having to drop the tabs of acid with washed-out Linda on a Saturday evening. This microdot is encouragingly strong. The trip could last up to twenty-four hours full on. Expecting vivid flashbacks for a few days afterwards … Finishing the sales-run quite early on the Saturday. Six o’ clock and done. Turn over the hand-in money on Monday morning. This week’s work was already complete before the crew even ventured out on Saturday. Five cracking days. Already eighty-five points in the bag … Tonight, a quick run out to Sutton … Scott and Tom selling eight and a half points between them by four-thirty … Time to go. The maximum bonus of fifty pounds has been reached. Already a points- carryover for next week. Scott having to remember to box clever and constantly juggle all the various options …
You should always think very carefully and plan your immediate surroundings, secure where you are, before you trip on acid. Consider who you are tripping with. Demons can be released and you have to be prepared for any eventuality. Taking all that into consideration, Scott’s impetuosity springs forth getting the better of him. Washed-out Linda seems like she would agree to anything to keep Scott with her. Can’t wait to trip on acid. Has she tripped before? She nods and says a yes but looks away as she says it. A sure sign of lying. So many human beings are liars. As if who they really are has to be hidden from view. Could be dangerous on acid. Tripping on Sundays has a religious connotation to it. A beatitude of modern worship on the Lord’s Day. Devotions and orisons on lysergic acid diethylamide …
Christ! Scott is starting to hallucinate already and he hasn’t even dropped the tab yet! ... Just making sure that they have plenty of liquid. Juice and water. And snacks. Plenty of chocolate bars to satisfy sweet-toothed Linda. She may have that washed-out look but no sign of any spots on her face which is a miracle considering all the chocolate bars she packs away in a day … Sitting down opposite one another on the mattress on the floor. Holding hands for a moment. Promising to look after one another no matter what happens. Looking each other in the eyes and placing the tabs on the tongues. Holding them there for a moment to let the saliva get to work. Thinking about what you are about to do. Then swallowing. The die is cast … Washed-out Linda laughing with Scott. She starts taking off all her clothes and they haven’t even started tripping yet. She must have it in her mind that acid is an aphrodisiac. She could be in for a rude awakening. It can be. But sometimes you can feel sexless. Androgynous. A spiritual body floating above carnal desires. Other times, you imagine you are fucking endlessly with representatives of the Devil. As if the Devil was the most beautiful, intelligent, exotic creature that God ever made. Tripping on Sundays can have that effect …
Washed-out Linda and Scott dropped their tabs of microdot acid at precisely ten o’ clock Saturday night. Tripping into the early night-time and a naked, washed-out Linda is munching on a mint Crunchie and rubbing her left foot along Scott’s legs … Best thing to do when you start a trip? Why, roll a strong joint of course, lay back and relax. A book of colour prints to gaze on. Scott has his pen and pad at the ready to write, tripping on ‘The Children of the Empire’. Whether he’ll get a word down or not is another matter. Sometimes you can read back days later after you’ve tripped and it sounds like pure gibberish. So much mumbo-jumbo. Yet at the time, you felt and imagined you were an extended hand floating in the sky. Writing as if the whole force of the world was with you. Your hand and arm an extension of cosmic rays delivering untold truths and mysteries for you to reveal to man/fem kind. Afterwards, you sense that an intelligent ape could possibly come up with something better and more profound … Very important to keep some semblance of time. It doesn’t just shred on acid, it dissolves. Time becomes a total illusion. A fake game that is played upon the human race to keep everybody working and controlled like a colossal colony of giant ants. The animals in the fields have no sense of time. They just are. They exist in the moment for all eternity then die, timeless.
At first, as the acid takes hold, washed-out Linda seems very beautiful. Then over the next hour, which seems to last for an eternity, she ages to an old lady. Like Ryder Haggard’s She. Aging a thousand years after the sexual act and turning to so much dust and bone. Lost to timeless infinity … Washed-out Linda’s pain is acute, etched on her ancient face. She hasn’t said a word in a very long time. Sometimes on acid it becomes impossible to speak. You feel like you will never, ever communicate again … Washed-out Linda has made friends with Vanessa and young Tuesday over the last few days. Hence the kettle and the Calor lamp. Also, a transistor radio … The radio is full of junk. Washed-out Linda turning it on and off as if she can’t make up her mind. Playing with it aimlessly. Scott careful not to say anything, not to criticize her. Stay calm. Any strange word or action can set people off … The radio is back on again. She keeps tuning it into different channels as if searching for an answer of some kind. Maybe just trying to hear music she likes … The lamp was giving off an eerie light. Shining very brightly. Hurting the eyes and casting long black shadows. Scott lit three candles, spread them around the room and turned the lamp off. Now soft, lambent light that flickers across this room. It took so long to accomplish such a simple task. The candles have produced pictures on washed-out Linda’s skin. A little girl laughing. Now running to the edge of a stream. Shrieking with delight. Trying to catch the birds as all young children do. She is so beautiful and her young childish face is full of colour …
Washed-out Linda lingers on a radio station for a time. Her left foot seems permanently attached to Scott’s right leg. A posh radio announcer’s voice, like the sound of the old Empire talking, instructs the glowing candles in the room …
‘The city of Venice is sinking. The sea is rising each year and the land is shrinking. All the buildings in the heart of the old city are being corroded by the fall-out from the industries that have grown up along the Venetian coast.’
Washed-out Linda turns off the radio. She is crying. She feels Venetian. She could be Venusian ... Suddenly our bodies are together, naked. Her body assumes the divine shape of the first woman of the human race. She is the most beautiful Eve and the wicked Lilleth. She is the snake in the tree dangling her seductive fruit in the Garden of Eden … Washed-out Linda wants to be loved and kissed forever yet demands dirty sex to support these feelings. Writhing in pure ecstasy. Clawing and biting, wild with lust and excitement. This room a pleasure dome of insatiable delights … An orgasm on microdot acid can feel as if your whole being is an atomic bomb exploding. The moment of sheer primal pleasure seems to stretch from late Saturday night right through Sunday and beyond. The history of the human race written in semen … It feels like Scott and washed-out Linda are the first couple ever to make love and fuck. The beauty of eroticism … Scott is now lost in her all-consuming flesh. Her smell is intoxicating. Licking her sweet sweat. Kissing her lips and slowly moving downward to her taut brown nipples. Streams of sweat rivering down the valley between her breasts. Slowly kissing and licking every part of her body. She is woman incarnate. Playing with her clitoris. Tonguing her dripping cunt. Pubic hairs caught in the mouth. She jerks in spasms and orgasms again. She shrieks and kicks when Scott kisses and bites her toes. Forcing her to turn over and kissing her passionately from the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet. She gets most excited when her arsehole and the soles of her feet are licked … The touch of soft flesh and the pain of bare, exposed emotions, submerged in the all-consuming, embracing thrust and heave, thrills and screams, the intoxicating delights of orgasms on acid …
Their bodies are both wasted, totally spent. Passion for the moment exhausted. Scott just laying on his back with his arm around washed-out Linda’s neck. Staring up at the peeling white paint, what’s left of it, flaking and bubbling across the ceiling in snatches of candlelight and shadow. Just for a few moments totally at peace. Even their breathing seems as one. Lost in the pleasure of bodies and the enrapturing thrill of sex on acid. A tenth of a second can seem like an eternity on acid. You seem able to catch and see all of this time that is usually lost to you. It is always there, always available. Yet the hectic hustle and bustle of daily existence seems to preclude it. Put it out of reach. We are lost to ourselves in the desperate fight to survive. The mannered politeness of dog eat dog. Do unto others … Get your retaliation in first. The savagery and greed of men and the conniving duplicity of women. Only now are the layers exposed, peeled away. True time and knowledge are made clear. The sadness is that, come Monday morning, you struggle to recall the seeds of enlightenment. They have receded like the tide when you thought you had them in your grasp ...
People can change very quickly on acid. Their actual shape alters. You see their ectoplasm. Features become twisted. Scott can see washed-out Linda from the cradle to the grave … Scott waking from a vivid sleep of fire-breathing dragons dancing in the sky. White clouds mushrooming into atomic explosions and black rain … Linda is sat cross-legged on the mattress eating a Mars bar with some of the gooey chocolate on her chin. She’s studying Scott intently, as if she can penetrate his very skin and become one with him … The sun is straining to peep through the makeshift curtain. A couple of tacks have fallen out allowing a shaft of sunlight to penetrate this musty room. If only the quality of this moment could be frozen forever. But they pass so quickly, the magic moments of time when life seems so delicious in all its forms … Scott taking on board water to slake his raging thirst. The fire-breathing dragons and atomic explosions are still drifting around his head. Demanding attention … his watch on the floor beside the mattress. Ten minutes past ten on a Sunday morning. Surely it must still be Sunday. Still lightly tripping. The depth of focus is nowhere near so intense but it is still there. Scott can feel it … Out of nothing Linda starts crying. Tears pouring out of her. All the pent-up pain and hurt comes cascading out from her. Scott just holding onto her for what seems like hours. Gradually Scott gets her to talk. Holding her lovingly as she rocks to and fro assuming a womblike position. Endless crying … She finds her voice and Scott manages to prise her story out of her … She comes from Cheam. Her father died of a heart attack in his late forties when she was eleven and her younger brother just seven. Her mother was forced to take a job as a part-time shop assistant in a chemist to make ends meet.
Then everything changed. Her mother met this man called Charlie and within six weeks of whirlwind romance, they were married in a registry office in East Cheam. Their lives changed. Charlie was a forty-something successful salesman for a pharmaceutical company. Her mother no longer had to work. All the bills were paid on time and they could go on holidays abroad again to Spain. Then Charlie forced himself on Linda when her mother was out one evening. Washed-out Linda doesn’t explain how. It’s all come a-tumbling out. Jumbled up without explanations. Scott doesn’t say a word. Just encourages her by holding her and stroking her … It became a regular weekly occurrence. Her stepfather Charlie made her suck his old, flabby-skinned cock. Sometimes he takes her from behind without ever taking his clothes off. Just unzips his fly and pushes her face down on a bed. Across a table. Up against a wall. If her mother or younger brother should appear, he can zip up quickly at the sound of their footsteps and pretend that he and Linda are playing some sort of game. Linda couldn’t tell her mother; it would have spoilt everything. Her young brother was so pleased to have a father again and not have his vicious classmates taunt him about his dead father the way that children do.
Linda felt so guilty. She hates her stepfather and fantasizes about killing him. Chopping off his old, flabby cock. She’s guilty inside because when he thrusts right into her, she likes it and sometimes comes to orgasm. She starts to daydream about a young man who will make passionate love to her with a fresh young prick. Scott is that young man. She knew it the first moment she clapped eyes on him … Washed-out Linda taking on board more orange juice. Wolfing down the last Aero bar. She’s stopped rocking to and fro. The tears have ceased with the telling … It carried on for four years with Linda being sexually abused like this. When one day aged seventeen, she plucked up the courage to blurt it out to her mother, she had her face slapped. Her mother flatly refused to believe her. Said she could see Linda was blatantly flirting with Charlie. Her own stepfather! Was Linda trying to ruin their lives with her dirty, filthy lies …? Washed-out Linda becoming breathless with the telling now. Her chest is heaving. Her naked breasts bobbing up and down, which is proving a distraction to Scott …
On her eighteenth birthday her mother threw her out. Could not, would not, accept Linda’s story. Jealous of the younger woman, her daughter … Refusing to see what was happening in her own house. Her Charlie would never do a disgusting thing like that. It was too wicked to contemplate. Linda was nothing but a lying, wicked little girl envious of her mother … The last green Crunchie has been demolished. Washed-out Linda is so caught up with her story she talked and ate at the same time … Goes to live with her elderly grandmother. It’s her dead father’s mother. But she is an old lady, not very well. She seems to believe the little bits that Linda squeezes out to her but is too old and infirm to be able to do anything about it. Within eighteen months, her grandmother dies. Linda leaves her job at the Macfisheries supermarket in Cheam and comes to central London … Her voice trails away ‘The rest you know Scott.’ … she smiles. Gets up from the mattress and goes and pulls the makeshift curtain down. Glides back naked across the room … Getting out all this hurt and pain has been a cathartic experience for her. Scott is the first person she has really been able to talk to … So many of us are hurt and damaged irrevocably as young boys and girls. The last Children of the Empire scarred for life. Adults can be so cruel and unthinking. Inflicting their own suffering onto the next generation as some sort of act of revenge for all their own untold suffering ...
Washed-out Linda is a body in Scott’s arms now. She clings to him and he kisses her and whispers sweet nothings of comfort and joy in her ears. He is her father and she is his little baby girl. Then wham! She changes into this dynamic vixen. Washed-out features and a vibrant, lustful smile and knowing hands that take possession of Scott’s cock. She wants to be kissed and caressed everywhere. Wants the instant reassurance of touch and the belly rub of bodies to support her idea of loving communication. We do it again in the Sunday morning sunshine streaming in through the window and the acid is still with us. Yet again we feel like the first human beings ever to experience the joy of the sexual act. As before, an orgasm on strong acid is like an atomic explosion. Rita Hayworth’s face is forever imprinted on Scott’s DNA, Paul Tibbets or no Paul Tibbetts …
Thrusting inside washed-out Linda as she moans with pleasure. Claws Scott’s back. Bites his lips furiously … Tripping on Sundays has become exhausting and a great pleasure. Scott feeling like he is restoring another human being back from the dead … Scott and washed-out Linda must have fallen asleep again. It’s now four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Scott wants to do something before the day dissolves away. Washed-out Linda doesn’t want to move, though all the chocolate bars and soft drinks have gone. Scott has a copy of What’s on in London. Thumbing through it as washed-out Linda tries to revive interest in his spent force. He would like to see the current exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Siege of Paris and the Commune circa eighteen seventy-one. It’s on until the twenty-third of May but doubtful if Scott will ever find the time to get there. Love the V&A … A film. Oh, lucky Sunday of all Sundays! Five Easy Pieces is showing at the Paris Pullman. Scott’s favourite cinema. The next showing starts at seven-ten. It’s only listed as ninety-eight minutes long. Want to see Jack Nicholson … Washed-out Linda isn’t enthusiastic. Has to be coerced with the promise of more chocolate and Coca-Cola. She doesn’t want to put on any clothes. Plans to go naked. Scott protests. He desperately wants to see this film. Advanced Art has ruined his movie going life. He missed Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and he’s not going to miss Five Easy Pieces. Finally persuading washed-out Linda that if she just wears that blue denim skirt and the attractive silver top Vanessa has given her, that will be enough. She doesn’t have to wear her bra or knickers and she can go bare-footed. Why not!...
The Paris Pullman is a wonderful independent cinema in Drayton Gardens. Not far along from the famous Art Deco frontage of the ‘Forum’ cinema, part of the ABC chain. Scott first became aware of the Paris Pullman as a boy, in a very long queue down the side of the Forum. Stretching for nearly a quarter of a mile, with chattering, expectant faces hoping to get in to see the film High Society. This colourfully designed little cinema looked so inviting to Scott. Because it is an independent they can show whatever films they like. Sometimes incredible late-night double bills that stretch until four o’ clock in the morning. Many French and Italian films … Parking the Cortina further down Drayton Gardens and walking to the Paris Pullman. Scott wearing dark glasses to shield his eyes from the glare of the light. The aftermath of an acid trip can do that. Washed-out Linda holding on to his arm in case she falls face down on the uneven slabs of grey, cracked pavement … Buying washed-out Linda the largest red packet of Maltesers available. A giant-sized plastic cup of ice-cold Coca-Cola …
This cinema isn’t large. Holds no more than say six hundred people. Scott’s never worked out the seating numbers to count it. Too interested in the brilliant films they show. The audience is different from other cinemas except ‘The Electric Cinema’ in Portobello Road. Modern, freakish, artistic, screwball. The smell of dope lingers in the air. They all appear as regular as clockwork … Washed-out Linda has her right bare foot on Scott’s left shoe. Her arm through his on the red upholstered armrest. Devouring Maltesers in an absent-minded manner …
Walking towards the Cortina car in the dark. Five Easy Pieces is a really good film and Jack Nicholson was magic as Scott knew he would be. Washed-out Linda doesn’t say anything. They don’t speak. She seems happy enough. She had a tub of chocolate ice cream. Another large, ice-cold Coca-Cola and Scott bought her a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate when they left. She’s already halfway through it. For the moment, washed-out Linda seems released. Free from the crippling hurt and sorrow and pain of an abusive stepfather...