The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

there's a Cadillac with Marie Antoinette—"
    —and the speakers wail, and the mandolin wails and the ! weird laugh wails, and the variable lag wails-ails-ails-ails-ails-ails, and somebody—who?—hell, everybody wails,
    "—we're finally beginning to move, after three fucking days!"

    ON THE SECOND DAY THEY REACHED WIKIEUP, AN OLD WILD
    West oasis out in the Arizona desert along Route 60. It was all gray-brown desert and sun and this lake, which was like a huge slimy kelp pond, but the air was fantastic.
    Sandy felt great. Then Kesey held the second briefing. They were going to take their first acid of the trip here and have their first major movie production. He and Babbs and the gorgeous sexy Paula Sundsten were going to take acid— Wikieup! —and the others were going to record what happened. Hagen and Walker were going to film it, Sandy was going to handle the sound, and Ron Bevirt was going to take photographs.
    Sandy feels his first twinge of—what? Like ... there is going to be Authorized Acid only. And like ... they are going to be separated into performers and workers, stars and backstage. Like . .. there is an inner circle and an outer circle. This was illogical, because Hagen and Walker, certainly, were closer to Kesey than any other Pranksters besides Babbs, and they were "workers," too, but that was the way he feels. But he doesn't say anything. Not... out front.
    Kesey and Babbs and Paula hook down some acid orange juice from the refrigerator and wait for the vibrations. Paula is in a hell of a great mood. She has never taken LSD before, but she looks fearless and immune and ready for all, and she hooks down a good slug of it. They wait for the vibrations ... and here they come.
    Babbs has a big cane, a walking stick, and he is waving it around in the air, and the three of them, Babbs, Kesey and Paula, go running and kicking and screaming toward the lake and she dives in—and comes up with her head covered in muck and great kelpy strands of green pond slime—and beaming in a way that practically radiates out over the face of the lake and the desert. She has surfaced euphoric—
    "Oooooh! It sparkles!"
    —pulling her long strands of slime-slithering hair outward with her hands and grokking and freaking over it—
    "Ooooooooh! It sparkles!"
    —the beads of water on her slime strands are like diamonds to her, and everybody feels her feeling at once, even Sandy—
    "Oooooooooh! It sparkles!"
    —surfaced euphoric! euphorically garlanded in long greasy garlands of pond slime, the happiest slime freak in the West—
    —and Babbs is euphoric for her—
    Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen!" he yells and waves his cane at the sky.
    "Ooooooooh! It sparkles!"
    "Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen!"
    "It sparkles!"
    "Gretchen Fetchin!"
    And it is beautiful. Everybody goes manic and euphoric like a vast contact high, like they have all suddenly taken acid themselves. Kesey is in an athletic romp, tackling the ferns and other slimy greenery in the lake. Babbs and Paula—Gretchen Fetchin!—are yahooing at the sky. Hagen is feverishly filming it all, Sandy has a set of huge cables stretched out to the very edge of the lake, picking up the sound, Ron Bevirt is banging away with his camera. Babbs and Paula—Gretchen Fetchin!—and Kesey keep plunging out into the mucky innards of the lake.
    "Come back!" Hagen the cameraman starts yelling. "You're out of range ! "
    But Babbs and Paula and Kesey can't hear him. They are cartwheeling further and further out into the paradise muck—
    "It sparkles!"
    "Gretchen Fetchin—Queen of the Slime!"

    But meanwhile Hagen's Beauty Witch, in the contagion of the moment, has slipped to the refrigerator and taken some acid, and now she is outside of the bus on the desert sand wearing a black snakeskin blouse and a black mantle, with her long black hair coming down over it like in a pre-Raphaelite painting and a cosmic grin on her witch-white face, lying down on the desert, striking poses