Esalen, and what we found there

Hey, it’s Adam, writing on the way to The Iron Hand in Monterey after spending the whole day waiting for Darlo to get out of jail. Yes, that’s right, jail . . . to be more exact, the Big Sur police station. I thought I should be the one to write about it since everyone else has gone so crazy. I mean, we’re not even a week in and already two guys have broken bones. What do I have to do to civilize these freaks?

So as you read yesterday, we’re all pretty upset with Abraxas. She’s got to be the most irresponsible tour manager in the universe. So Darlo and Joey got so upset that they decided they would visit her at Esalen, where she’s spending a squillion bucks to go hang out with a bunch of her fellow rich hippies, “eating free-range Salmon and organic buckwheat and taking ten-hour yoga classes” (I am quoting from her blog). We had a show at the Iron Hand, but Darlo managed to reschedule it for tonight, which is not a good sign for demand for Blood Orphans in Monterey. When the club doesn’t care that you want to take a rain check . . . . well anyway, after a tasty meal at Tommy’s Fish Fry in Pacific Grove, we headed over to Esalen to extract penance from Abraxas. “I want a piece of that hundred-dollar Salmon anyway, and get me a clinic in Ass-tunga yoga!” Darlo said. Not surprising, upon entering the grounds — which is like a bunch of million-dollar huts, we got a lot of looks. I mean, the Rust Rocket makes Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus look like a Rolls. Just imagine this rolling down the driveway of your Champagne Socialist estate:

Now imagine a bunch of dirty louts and one white chicken-hawked manager peering out from those windows. We messed up a lot of rich hippie flow, let me tell you. After getting out walking around and enduring Darlo and Bobby taking a piss against a tree right near some short haired James Franco wannabe doing his Downward Dog — boy was that guy weirded out — we found Abraxas eating tofu and smoking cigarettes talking to a girl that I’m pretty sure was a dwarf, or just really short, but who didn’t appreciate it when Darlo said, “Man, you are one short little girl.” Abraxas choked on her Marlboro right there; it was like she had made us up in her dippy head and we had come back to haunt her for being such an a-hole. While this was going on, Shane was hobbling around on his crutches, and Bobby and Joey were busy racing up a tree to see who could climb it faster — always so competitive, and Abraxas was whining about how we couldn’t just barge into her life, and anyway, she was just doing us a big favor and that Joey owed her $500 and she was pissed about it. The dwarf was looking smarmy and got even more upset when Darlo said, “What the fuck are you looking at, you fucking pygmy bitch?” Of course, no richy-rich resort is complete without their own security force, and Darlo soon found himself on the rough end of some long-haired, granola eating toughs, but Darlo hassled them enough that they called the police — I thought hippies hate the cops? — who showed awfully fast (must have been a slow crime day in Monterey) and hauled his ass into the clink. Of course, Darlo loves being in the clink, and spent the night comparing tats with some guy named “Old Rick” who seems to have been living there since 1978, until Esalen Central decided they wouldn’t press charges. And off we go! I wonder if we still have a booking agent!