The Dung Eaters: Chapter 3

Organic Alice

Alice Ward had teeth. Big ones! She never considered corrective dentistry, though every person she ever knew well had made the suggestion.

"Have you ever thought about getting braces, Alice?"

"Ever thought about seeing an orthodontist, Alice?"

On two occasions, local business men even offered to pay for the dental work. But Alice wasn't interested. She didn't much care about the maya--the illusion of the world. She could remember realizing that this Earth was merely lila--the play of the gods--even before she was born!

Both her father (an interior decorator) and mother (a "Zen" poet) had gone through more white and saffron-robed gurus than toilet paper. Their quest for inner truth, not to mention massive monetary outlays for mantras, flying lessons, guru chariots (Rolls Royces), and the like, had earned them great Karmic power. No doubt, Alice was a boon! They told her as much all her life.

She didn't need braces at all! No, in a thousand or so years, all human beings would evolve to look like her! Cosmically speaking, she was dentally advantaged.

Being so thoroughly advantaged, Alice spent nearly all her time travelling from town to town--witnessing the drama--as something of a chemically inspired bodhisattva. She could have written anything down on the scrap of cardboard that day. Somehow, San Diego, felt right. It must have been, because she sure didn't have to wait long before a man in an old yellow Volkswagen rabbit, stopped to give her a lift. Of course, this encounter was meant to be.

Alice found the driver of the car--Jimmy O'Brien--to be a typical, hung up, psycho-conditioned, thoroughly unenlightened buffoon. O'Brien in turn felt Alice was a seriously mixed up kid who probably needed a good swift kick in the pants. However, both occupants were gregarious enough and both soon felt more or less at ease. Each also decided quickly that they could help straighten out the other and that's just what they set out to do.