:45:02
just as my father was sinking to his knees
in the entrance foyer in one of his trances.
:45:06
The Indian wheeled in his tracks,
and he said, "I'll be a son of a bitch!"
:45:12
You see, my father
was speaking an Apache dialect...
:45:15
an obscure dialect, at that...
:45:17
spoken only by a ragged band
of unreconstructed Indians...
:45:21
who had rejected the reservation,
and gone to live in isolation...
:45:25
in the Sierra Madre Mountains
in Northern Mexico.
:45:27
What do you say to that?
:45:31
What the hell am I supposed to say to that?
:45:35
I'm sitting here boozing,
and you come in and tell me...
:45:38
some demented story
about your father's religious conversion.
:45:41
You miss the point.
Not my father's conversion, mine.
:45:45
You see, I'd been hitting the acid
pretty regularly at that time.
:45:49
I had achieved a few minor sensory
deformities, some suicidal despairs...
:45:54
but nothing as wild
as fluency in an obscure Apache dialect.
:45:57
I mean, like, "Wow, man!"
:45:59
Here was living afflatus
right before my eyes!
:46:03
Within a week, my father had closed
his Beacon Hill practice...
:46:06
and set out to start a mission
in the Mexican Mountains.
:46:09
I turned in my SDS card
and my crash helmet, and I followed him.
:46:13
It was a disaster, at least for me.
:46:16
My father had received the revelation, not I.
:46:19
He stood gaunt on a mountain slope
and preached the Apocalypse...
:46:22
to solemnly amused Indians.
:46:24
I masturbated a lot.
We lived in a grass wickiup...
:46:27
ate raw rabbit and crushed piñon nuts.
It was hideous.
:46:31
Within two months, I was back in Boston.
:46:33
A hollow shell, disenchanted
with everything, and dizzy with dengue.
:46:38
I turned to austerity, combed my hair
tight, entered nursing school.
:46:42
I became haggard, driven...
:46:45
had shamelessly incestuous dreams
about my father.
:46:49
I took up with some of the senior staff there.
One of them...
:46:52
a portly psychiatrist, explained...
:46:54
I was generated
by an unresolved lust for my father.
:46:58
I cracked up.