The Neko Bus
By Erik Nielsen Jan. 1997Editor's Note: "Neko" means "cat" in Japanese. It's a reference to the movie My Neighbor Totoro (1988) by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. A nice film but totally unrelated to the Cult of Ecstasy.
Turn on, tune in, drop out. With a slogan like that, how could the Cult of Ecstasy fail to be one of the largest Traditions in the world, right? Wrong. Following on the heels of the Reagan/Bush Era, rampant capitalism, cocaine for the masses, and "Just Say No," the free-floating, paradigm-subverting, neo-beat lifestyle of the modern Cultist is misunderstood, misquoted and often viewed with fear and derision. Too many young people are falling into the trap of running-away drugs instead of realizing the potential of running-toward drugs. LSD, peyote, mescaline and even 'shrooms, the old mainstays of the Cult, are being replaced by heroin, PCP, crack, speed and alcohol, the choice of a nowhere generation.
Quite a few Cultists are willing to respect this apathy on the part of the young. A choice not to choose is still a choice, they say, and who the hell are we to force them? Indeed, forcing or coercing anyone runs counter to the Tradition's message of individual Ascension. But some Ecstatics believe they have found a way around this apathy.
"Dude, have you seen this?" Barney sounded totally excited on the phone, which is rare for him. "Says here they got a tour going from downtown to LA, and, check this out. It's just twenty bucks!"
I took another swig of my beer before I answered. "What is it? Some weekend flight? Special deal? Gotta buy your ticket twenty days in advance?"
"Nah, man. Says it's a bus."
The beer went down the wrong tube and I ended up spraying it across the room. "Dude," I said, "there's no way you can get to LA in a weekend."
I could hear Barney reading the flier before answering me. "Says here it's a three week trip."
"Say what? Man, what drugs are these guys on? It's a four day trip, maybe. Three weeks?" The problem was, I really needed to get to LA and I didn't have a car. This town was nowhere and LA was the Promised Land. I had a job lined up, if I could get there within the month.
"Three weeks is what it says. Says they stop in the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco and then LA." Barney had nothing going for him in LA but he had nothing going for him here, either.
"All right, but what about hotel, food, that kinda stuff? Bet that's why it's cheap. They got some deal with the hotels along the way, right?" This was too good to be true.
"It says here the driver takes care of all of the food, and you camp on the road."
I could hear my heart racing in my chest. Three weeks on the road, everything taken care of, and all for twenty bucks? This was surreal. This couldn't be happening to me. "Barney, man. When do they leave?"
"Day after tomorrow, but we gott call them right away. Make a reservation, y'know?"
"Barney. Call 'em."
The Neko Bus started running in the early 1970s as a kind of tour bus for kids following the Grateful Dead. In those days, the rules were simple: community food, sleeping facilities, money and drugs. Most of the kids who rode on the bus didn't have a penny to their name but they were willing to travel and the Ecstatics were happy to have a constant stream of disciples to teach. The Bus (named by a Cultist with a penchant for watching Japanese animation that wasn't due to come out for years) would pull into town just ahead of the Dead, drop off its load of kids, catch the show, pick up a new batch of kids and take off for the next concert location. In all of the years that the Neko Bus followed the Dead, it never missed a concert, never got a flat tire and never, ever, got hassled by the cops. It also had no schedule that anyone could ever really figure out. If you were on the Bus, you were on the Bus. If you were off the Bus, oh well. The whole thing was a matter of chance, helped along by the trio of Cultists who took turns driving the Bus.
In the 1980s, bus service faltered and then stopped altogether. Some blamed Reaganism, some blamed the yuppies and some (as always) blamed themselves. The truth of the matter was nothing as simple as all of that. It was simpler. The three Cultists in question just got sick of driving the damn bus, started their own band and now own an independent record label that refuses to do business with Ticketmaster. More power to them.
Toward the end of the 80s, a small group of Cultists were sitting around with the older trio, kicking back, when the conversation turned to the old days of the Neko Bus. After a marathon 24 hour binge of psychedelics and uppers, the entire group decided to reinstate the Bus, only this time as a legitimate tour company.
"You have got to be kidding," said Barney, not looking so excited now that we were finally standing in front of the bus. Bus. That's the word, I think. It was hard to tell, exactly.
You see, the entire bus was painted in this shade of beige that looked exactly like cat fur. The tires had cat-feet painted on the hubcaps. The back of the bus had a humongous tail painted on it. The front had whiskers and the headlights were painted to resemble big cat's eyes. And there were honest-to-God metal cat ears on top. It looked like Salvador Dali's kids' school bus. The only part that looked like a bus was the destination marquee and that was in Japanese.
Of course, it wasn't quite a school bus. It was a city bus but the back half had had the seats torn out and replaced with hanging cots. The remaining seats were very comfortable, if you like fake lambskin. It was like a dream come true, if my head had been more screwed up at the time.
The driver was a Native American guy named Chris and he had long hair and John Lennon sunglasses. He was wearing tie-dye and Mardis Gras beads. I kept expecting him to break out into "Imagine" but he never did.
"Hey, you guys Barney and Ray?" he asked, smiling like he'd known us forever.
"Um, yeah," I managed. "That's us." Barney just looked at him like he was from another planet.
"You're going to LA, right?"
"Uh, huh."
"Cool." And he sounded like he meant it. "I got people out in LA. Good folks."
"Yeah?" I didn't know what to say. I mean, he was being so cool and all, and all I could think was, is this for real?
The Neko Bus Tour Company runs through several dozen cities all across the U.S. but its headquarters are located in San Francisco. Most of its publicity comes from word of mouth but it is located in the Bay Area phone books and there's an actual office just off Haight Street where the legitimate aspects of the business are conducted. There you can book a tour to just about anywhere in the country. If one bus doesn't go there, you can transfer to another bus that is headed where you want to go.
Most people who use the Neko Bus are more interested in the tours than in actually getting from one place to another. Each tour includes meals and camping. If the weather isn't nice enough for camping, there are beds on the bus. The drivers (and occasionally their assistants, on long trips) buy the food for the evening and the cooking and cleaning are done cooperatively. The meals are all vegetarian but there's nothing to stop you from running over the nearest McDonald's, if you're a dedicated carnivore. The tours themselves tend to be roundabout affairs. Many tours go through Yosemite National Park, taking a few leisurely days to allow the passengers to enjoy the camping and wilderness. Usually the day's entertainment is left up to the driver and the people on the bus. Depending on who's on the bus, the day's entertainment could be bungie-jumping, wilderness hikes, a psychedelic excursion, tribal drumming or just a campfire.
The most popular tour is the Gathering Tour. Every year, a group of old hippies, Cultists and people who enjoy communal living get together in a pre-determined location and throw one huge three day party. Usually the Gathering is held on a reservation so as to avoid normal police intervention. The Gathering Tour leaves from Haight Street three days in advance and always arrives just in time. When the Gathering is over, the bus takes another three days to get back, no matter where the Gathering is actually held.
"Y'know, I have no idea where we are," said Barney as he stared out of the window at the desert we were riding through. "What day is it, anyway?"
I started giggling. I couldn't help it. Pretty soon Barney was giggling, too. Chris looked over his shoulder at us and grinned. "Having a good time, guys?"
"Dude!" I managed to say, "where are we?"
"Mojave Desert, Califor-ni-A," he replied, looking back at the road. "We've got to stop and pick up two kids who are going to Chicago."
My head whirled. "Man, we left from Pennsylvania. How can we be in California already? And how the hell are the kids going to get to Chicago by traveling to LA first?"
Chris smiled at me in his rear-view mirror. "Actually, we're dropping them off on the way to LA."
"Oh," I said. And somehow that made some kind of sense. Must've been the drugs.
While the Neko Bus Tour Company is a business which actually does conduct legitimate tours all across the States, it's also a front for Cult of Ecstasy recruitment. By offering rock bottom prices, the Cult manages to get a lot of younger or more bohemian customers. During the tour, the drivers are careful to quietly and tactfully espouse the Ecstatic creed of individual responsibility and freedom. This policy of evangelism by example can be awfully attractive for people who have grown up on a steady diet of authority figures telling them what to do and what to think. Even if the Cultists don't convert everyone who takes a Tour, most people who ride on a Neko Bus leave it with a new respect for the creed.
Of course, while the drivers are letting the passengers check out the Cult of Ecstasy lifestyle (or one facet of it), they're also checking out the passengers for magickal aptitude or sympathetic attitudes. A Cultist would very rarely force a Sleeper to Awaken, but most Cultists have no problem with helping Sleepers into Awakenings of their own choosing. Those who do Awaken on the Tour are free to join the company or wander on their own, as their Bliss takes them.
Sometimes a passenger may have a different path to take. The Neko Bus tours often stop by and join friendly Dreamspeaker rituals. Occasionally, a passenger who hasn't wholly embraced the Cultist path will find that his path lies on the Dreamspeaker path instead. Less frequently, buses stop by Verbena nature communes. In exchange for this courtesy, the Verbena often hold a feast for the participants. While only a few participants ever decide to stay with the Verbena, the Cultists feel obligated to make the choice available.
When we dropped the kids off in Chicago, I started to feel like I was a veteran on the bus. I'd learned how to gather common cooking herbs and even how to cook them, and Chris sometimes even let me go get the food for the evening. Barney kept getting more and more spaced out. Chris said he was on a visionquest or something, but that he'd be okay. I had to make sure he ate properly, but otherwise he seemed fine, just... not really there.
I figured out that we had about four days left to go, which really surprised me. I mean, we'd been all over the country now and it had only taken a couple of weeks. Time flies, I guess, but I didn't expect it to stop occasionally.
Anyway, after Chicago we made one last detour through Yosemite. It was just Chris, Barney and me, so there was no real rush. Chris suggested we go check out this bridge he knew. I said sure.
When we got there, it was incredible. There was a drop of at least two hundred feet down to the river and rocks. Chris said a friend told him about this bridge and it was impossible to find unless you knew where it was. I could believe it. It felt totally otherworldly. I just looked down, grinning. It was unbelievable.
We stopped there for lunch and Chris broke out the 'shrooms. They never seemed to affect his driving and I was really getting to like them. We ate them with our lunch, and I didn't even feel sick, which is weird because 'shrooms made me throw up the first time I took them. Just as the colors were starting to come in hardcore, Chris says, and I quote, "Hey, you ever bungie-jumped?" I grinned from ear to ear.
Next thing I know, he's got these cords and ropes and stuff out and attached to the bridge. Then he attaches the other end to my legs. "You sure you want to do this?" he asked.
"Are you kidding?" I said, the 'shrooms making the cords look like the roots of a massive tuber. My grin was threatening to spread right off my face. I hopped over to the rail and climbed over so I was standing on the other side. Chris moved about five feet down the bridge. "Hey," I said, "aren't you going to push me?"
"Ray," he said, his face as serious as I've ever seen it, "I will never push you. That's not our way." And I knew right then that he meant it. Everything I'd done on this tour had been my own idea, my own choice. This was exactly the same way. "Just promise me one thing."
"Anything."
"Don't say 'Geronimo.' I really hate that." And he grinned big enough to match my grin.
I gave him the thumbs up and then dove straight into oblivion. My heart stopped beating. The air rushing in my ears stopped rushing. The water below me stopped flowing. I stopped falling. Hanging there, suspended, almost two-hundred feet above rocks and water, with nothing between me and death but my will, I knew. It was all my choice. All of reality was my choice. The distance between Levittown, Pennsylvania and Los Angeles, California was my choice. The fall was my choice. I decided to fall. I screamed all the way down and all the way up, a war cry, a declaration of existence, the cry of the newly Awakened.
We never did make it to LA. Barney stopped off with a Mexican Indian wise woman down in Baja and Chris and me, we just kept going. You know, I still don't know where we are, but I know I chose to come here.