Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
— Macbeth, V.iii.40
There is no documented case of a fatal overdose of psilocybin mushrooms. Unlike many fungi, they’re not actually poison; about the worst that’s likely to befall you physically from eating them — assuming you resist any temptation to fly off a tall building or stop a speeding train with your outstretched hand — is an upset tummy. There’s also no documentation of permanent psychic damage from psilocybin. You get high; you trip; it could be fun and silly, could be intense and scary, but whatever happens, after four or five hours the high drifts away and you’re yourself again.
Or, sometimes, an updated, rebooted version of yourself.
Willie spent five hours in the costume trunk. The sounds of crowd noise, Faire parades, drug busts, and Romeo and Juliet bumping about in their comical death throes turned into colors. The black, musty closeness of the trunk turned into a hum. The hum and the color became one and melted into endless geometric patterns that turned into mandalas on his eyelids. Then his eyelids melted, and then his eyes did, too, and he saw nothing and everything in dazzling light. The hum grew so loud he thought his ears would burst. And then suddenly the light became a single beam that lit a bed. On the bed was a shape . . . a familiar shape . . . his mother’s hair, loose about her face, a starburst. Shades of gold pulsated in an aura around it. Her lips moved.
She said: “Given the choice to be or not to be, always choose to be.” She took his arm gently, and he could feel the light enveloping him. “Be who you are. Be . . . be . . .” and she was having difficulty speaking, but then she took a last strained breath. “Be my Will Shakespeare.” And then she smiled weakly and died.
The hum of the light and the darkness burst back upon him at once and exploded into a million million shards. He was simultaneously the hum, the light, the darkness, the destruction, and the birth of it all. He was no longer himself. He was no one. He was everyone.
He was Shakespeare. Will Shakespeare.
When the lid to the costume trunk opened, Willie had been coming down for long enough that he was reasonably confident it wasn’t the lid of his own coffin. Short Sharp Shakespeare’s props and costumes mistress shrieked as though it were, but she calmed down surprisingly quickly when Willie said:
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she responded, without missing a beat. “Lemme guess . . . Jack?”
As Willie looked up out of the box, Pete, the guy in the dress, leaned over and peered in.
“Oh, hey! We were wondering where you went.” He helped Willie out of the trunk. “You know you kinda fucked up our fart joke, right?”
Willie winced as his limbs uncurled like Saran wrap. “I know, and I truly apologize. I hope the addition of a few lines of Mercutio to Romeo and Juliet wasn’t too far out of line.”
“No,” said Pete, “not at all. Actually, we might keep it.” Then, after a short pause, he asked lightly, “Hey, you want to join a comedy Shakespeare troupe?”
Willie didn’t answer right away. He just nodded for a few moments, thinking. Finally he asked, “Was it but my idle fancy . . . or was there a DEA raid during Romeo and Juliet?”
Pete nodded in disbelief. “Yeah. There was.”
Willie thought for another moment. Then he said, “I like the political material in your show. If I joined, could we do even more?”
Pete nodded back. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
When Willie came back out into the Faire, it was the end of the day. Everyone was tired and dirty, drunk and happy. A wind had kicked up. The dust of the day blew through the canyon and caught the golden afternoon light filtering through the oak trees. Willie asked a passing girl — dressed inexplicably as a vampire — the time. “Five o’clock,” she said. He went straight to the ale stand, where Anne should just be getting off of work. As he approached, she emerged from the workers’ entrance.
She smiled at seeing him, and spoke to him in character. “How now, good sir?”
“God ye good den, Anne Whateley, tap mistress of the Inn Yard Tavern,” Willie responded, and the Faire-speak came easily to him.
“I thought mayhap I’d ne’er see thee again,” Anne said.
Willie nodded thoughtfully. “Marry, I feared me the selfsame thing. And yet, here I am.” He bowed to her, sweeping the foolish cuckold’s coxcomb from his head with a jingle.
They both watched as a woman, obviously a Faire patron, walked by in a pointy, peaked princess hat with silk flowing from the top.
Anne laughed. “How out of period is that?”
“Anne,” said Willie. He took a deep breath, and he looked steadily into her eyes. “I want to do the right thing.”
Anne cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“Only if you want to. Entirely your call. But if you do . . . if you want a father — unworthy me — around in any way . . . I’m saying, we could get married.”
Anne stood for a moment, stunned. When a sound finally came, it was an involuntary laugh. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh, but . . . ohmigod, that’s so sweet. But . . . Willie . . .”
She put her hand on his arm gently. “I had an abortion last month. This isn’t the fucking Middle Ages, thank God.”
“Oh,” Willie stammered, “I — I’m sorry. Okay — ”
“I’m sorry, I would’ve talked about it with you but I didn’t know where to find you — ”
“I’m sorry, I should have — ”
Anne stopped him. “No. That’s okay. Thanks. I mean, thank you, Willie.”
“My name is Will,” Willie said, surprised to hear himself say so. “I’m going by Will, now.”
“Okay,” she chirped, then nodded up the hill toward actors’ camp. “Hey, I’m filthy. I was going to go grab a shower. You wanna join me, Will?”
Willie remembered the giggles coming from the shower the night before. He felt the familiar call from his groin.
“Tempting,” said Willie. “But, no, thanks. I should get back to Berkeley before it gets too late.”
Anne pouted, mock-miserably. “Boo.”
“It’s nothing personal,” Willie said. “But as long as we’re not walking down the aisle anytime soon, I believe I have some issues to work out about women. I haven’t dealt with my mother’s death well,” Willie said, and he couldn’t quite believe that he was speaking honestly and openly about it. “So I’ve been trying to be something she said, instead of what she meant.”
Anne was staring at him blankly. “And more prosaically,” Willie continued — he hadn’t even told this to Robin before — “my stepmom hit on me when I was sixteen.”
“Wow,” said Anne again, overwhelmed. But then she recovered. “Well, who can blame her? You were probably cute when you were sixteen.”
They chatted a little more, and hugged and said awkward good-byes, and finally Anne said, “One last thing: if you ever find yourself in this situation again, ‘Are you sure it was me?’ is the exact wrong thing to say.”
Willie went to where he’d left his backpack and duffel just before the mushroom hit; they sat undisturbed on their hay bale. He found a privy, wet and smelly after a day’s use. To his senses, still heightened and sensitized from the mushrooms, it was almost unbearable. He held his breath, and changed out of his borrowed fool’s costume, trying to keep from getting urine on either it or his jeans and t-shirt. He was tired, but determined to get back to Berkeley that night. He wanted to talk to Robin. He had so much to explain, and to apologize for. There was nasty weekend traffic on US 101 through San Rafael, and an accident on I-80 headed into Berkeley. By the time he found a parking space on Webster Street it had been dark for a couple of hours. He saw faint light flickering in Robin’s second-story window. The security gate was ajar. He ran up the stairs to her apartment. The door was unlocked. He opened it and went in.
Bill, the president of the Committee to F$¢K Reagan, said, “Oh, shit,” and quickly rolled off of Robin onto the couch.
Robin pulled a skimpy dress over her naked lap with one hand, and put a trembling hand to her forehead. “Get out. You were supposed to be back yesterday!”
Willie stood silent as his stomach dropped to the floor. Then, his voice quavering but controlled, he said, “I’m sorry I lied.”
Robin helplessly shook her head, a look of utter confusion and rage on her face as tears welled in her brown eyes. “Get OUT!!!!”
He turned, walked out, and closed the door. As he stumbled down the stairs, the stinging in his own eyes resolved into tears, just as though he had been slapped in the face.