He was apologizing for the set, which wasn’t even a set. It feels like he was on stage a really long time, but I’m sure he wasn’t.”
The retirement didn’t last long. More than a month, less than two. Considering that Bill would “quit” comedy dozens of times over the course of his career, it was actually fairly impressive. His other attempts to get out of stand-up usually lasted just a day or two.
Kevin Booth
Bill called me up, “Dude, I’m back in Houston.” I wasn’t surprised to hear Bill’s voice on the other end of my phone, but I was surprised by what he was saying. “Oh yeah. Cool,” I said. Bill had taken a break from LA once before. It wasn’t for very long, maybe a couple of weeks. But he spent so much time talking about it in advance that it seemed longer. This one was unexpected. The first time, in every phone call and every letter he made mention of how he was taking a brief hiatus from LA. This time he had barely said anything until he was already back.
“Dude, I’m here to stay.” Again a surprise. And a much bigger one at that. “What about Los Angeles?” Never let it be said I didn’t have a flair for the obvious.
“Nope. I’m done. I think Texas is going to be the Third Coast,” he opined. That was a term that had been bandied about regionally in recent years. There was New York and LA, but Texas was teeming with creative types as well who didn’t much care for the arrogance and narcissism offered in either main option. So with the Gulf of Mexico to the right, locals proclaimed themselves the Third Coast.
“We can make it happen here. The Outlaw Comics are as good as anything going on in LA. And they just don’t like me out there. I’m just not getting anywhere.” Bill was certainly selling himself short again – they adored him at the Store and he had already done network TV – but he wasn’t the first Texan to go west, get bummed out and bored, and come home. Hell, Riley Barber and Steve Epstein had both done it within the last year, give or take. Still, his coming back to Houston was kind of like his admitting defeat in Hollywood. On one hand, Bill felt that’s what he was doing. But deep down, he also really did feel that he could do more in Houston. It had a real comedy scene. He had a whole base of friends there. It was a real city (the 4th largest in the US). He could still tour all over the place.
So here he was, back in Texas. Bill wasn’t done dropping surprises on me though, and the next was Hiroshima. “Dude, hear me out.
I know you are going to freak when I say this, but tomorrow night you and I are going to take psilocybic mushrooms together.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, dude. Seriously.”
All I had ever heard about mushrooms was that they caused people to go insane. My parents had convinced me that tripping had triggered my brother Curt’s schizophrenia. Even all my pot-smoking friends had bizarre stories about hallucinations. I drew a line and became categorical. “I’ll drink. I’ll smoke pot, but I’m never going to trip. I’m never going to take acid and I’m never going to take mushrooms.”
Bill was telling me: “No, it’s not like that. It totally depends on who you do it with. Nothing can harm us because we are so close. We will keep this positive ball of light around us.”
“No, I can’t, Bill. I can’t.”
“Kevin. You’re going to do it. You’re going to do it.”
I’ve always said it: only Bill Hicks could have gotten me to try hallucinogenic drugs. Why? Because he was so against it. He was more against it than my parents – shit, my parents watched what they believed was the destruction of their son at the hands of hallucinogens — than I was, than anybody I had ever met outside of the priesthood! He was against any chemical. He and Dwight, they were like the self-righteous brothers. After getting over the I-can’t-believe-it aspect of it, I started to think about reconsidering my stance.
Even my girlfriend, Jere, who had an extensive drug background before we met, was telling me: “No Kevin, you don’t want to do that. I can’t believe, after all the things you’ve said, putting down people for doing drugs, now you are actually going to go out and do it.”
Bill: “You’re going to try this, Kevin. Trust me.” Bill was Obi-Wan Kenobi: “These aren’t the droids you are looking for.” And this was his Jedi mind trick.
I drove down to Houston from Austin. Late that afternoon Bill came and picked me up, and we took mushrooms. One of the other comics, Steve Epstein, I think, had procured them for Bill. He had been going out to a field by the airport to pick them. A little cowshit. A little rain. A little East Texas warmth. Boom. It really was like magic. These suckers were fresh from the field.
We drove down to the Montrose area where Bill was performing that night. We had dinner in the gay area of Houston at a vegetarian restaurant called The Hobbit. “Gay” couldn’t have been more appropriate because we sat there and laughed our asses off.
Bill went on stage that night and described it afterwards by saying he thought he could read the entire audience’s mind. Collectively. Individually. He had established some kind of connection.
Even before drugs, Bill was trying to push the envelope. He was always saying to me, “There’s gotta be something else out there. There has to be more meaning.” Bill felt like there was something he was missing, some secret psychological passage or some track to try to take things to another level. Suddenly, he thought he had found it.
That night he had an incredible mind meld with the audience, and I was right there with him. Totally in sync.
That launched the next incarnation of Bill. After that night on stage he told me, “This is it. This is the trick. I’ve got to start taking mushrooms every night before I go on stage.” He did. Again Bill wasn’t an 85 per cent kind of guy. Once he made the decision, he was committed. Full on.
Bill spent every night after that chasing the same experience. He was textbook in his failure. The same dosage came up a bit short on night two. “Maybe if I just take more mushrooms.” So night three he took more mushrooms. Same result? Still can’t read the audience’s mind? Night four he took even more. Ad infinitum.
It didn’t work. It never works. That’s the thing about drugs: you can never recapture that virgin moment where you get that rush and that new part of the world just opens up.
His frustration was compounded by the fact he was sharing it with an audience who was watching him bomb more spectacularly each time out. Bill was speeding down a dead-end alley; and the closer he was getting to the wall, the faster he was going, the more fuel he was trying to pump into his body. He was going full tilt when he hit the wall.
Bill lay on stage curled up in a fetal position. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Throughout his life, Bill made comments about how he felt like an alien on this planet. Like there was something about him that was different. He didn’t know how to have a pleasant but inane conversation, didn’t know how to watch football with the guys; didn’t know how to play golf and would not talk about it like it was a fucking spiritual journey – all of the things that allow you to pass through this world undetected, Bill was no good at. So he felt.
Then you watched him, or you were around him, and he would say and do things that made you think, “God he really is like an alien.” And the way he put it was so funny, because he sounded like someone who had just landed on this planet. He turned to me and asked: “What’s alcohol?”
This was after ages of hanging out in clubs watching people get inebriated and ruthlessly making fun of them; after years of him and Dwight doing impersonations, imitating drunks and the dumb things they say and do. But Bill was looking for what might be next. “What’s alcohol. What does it do?”
I told him: “Well, it kills your inhibitions. It makes it so you don’t give a fuck about anything or what you do in front of other people.” Shit, wrong answer. I mean, it was the right answer but it was