-And she starts driving
 really fast.
I go, like,
"Why are you driving so fast?
There's all these people up
there crossing the street."
She goes, like, "You pussies
in Black Flag always talk about
"the end of the world
and destruction!
"The destruction starts now!
We're gonna kill all these
fucking people!"
[laughter]
 [electronic music]
 ♪ 
- [laughing, rattling]
 ♪ 
- [growling]
- [heavy breathing]
- Welcome to
"This Is Not Happening."
I'm your host, Ari Shaffir,
and tonight the topic
is psychedelia.
 Please give it up
 for Mr. Henry Rollins,
 everybody.
- Like a lot of you
you live in Southern California,
in Los Angeles, as do I,
and for a few of you,
this is not your native city
of your birth.
That's my story,
and many, many years ago,
I arrived here in 1981
in the summer,
and I graduated
from a military prep school
in Potomac, Maryland,
on the east coast
with a--an awful education,
'cause I resisted education.
I just--I couldn't get it.
High on Ritalin
for most of the time,
so I was tightly controlled,
yet a-a psycho underneath.
And so I graduated
from high school,
and I stopped taking
the Ritalin, and my body said,
"Okay, the arrow's
been drawn back,
and now it's time
to let it fly."
And so I went in through
a series of minimum wage jobs
thinking, "Well,
that's going to be my life.
"I'm gonna live
in a Bruce Springsteen lyric
for the rest of my life."
♪ He's working-- 
You know, just--
it's gonna be tough.
My feet are gonna hurt
and I'm gonna get
really acquainted
with Top Ramen noodles.
And right around that time
I found out about a band
called Black Flag
from Los Angeles,
and they were as angry
and as crazy as I was.
I'd hear their music
and, like, "Finally!
That's--that's what
I'm talking about,"
and they came back to the
east coast, and they saw me,
and they said,
"You're pretty crazy,"
and I said, "You have no idea,"
because I'm very polite,
and that throws people off.
I say,
"Yes, ma'am, yes, sir."
"Are you in the military?"
"No, sir."
"Are you a cop?"
"Never."
"Then why are you so polite?"
"Ritalin, and, uh, a lot
of schooling, actually."
I'm unnervingly polite,
but I'm also capably violent.
[laughter and applause]
So when you do it with a smile
someone almost thanks you.
Uh, and so they said,
"Hey, you want to audition
to be the singer in this band?"
I was like...
[hyperventilating]
"Yeah, yes."
Everything said--
my DNA screamed "yes."
And so I made it,
and so I jumped in this van
and I came out
to southern California
and I am now running
with a group of men
who are older than I am
by about five or six years,
and they are the wise elders
of Black Flag.
I am--I am the grasshopper.
I am the stepchild,
and I learned
to keep my mouth shut,
and my eyes and ears open
'cause they knew
way more than I did,
and so there's one
particular guy in the band
who I was in awe of immediately.
I am in awe of him to this day.
He was an intellectual
terrorist.
He's the first truly cerebral
person I ever met in my life.
He's not a tough guy.
He does not fight.
He doesn't do any of that.
It's his mind
that terrifies you,
and he would have this book.
He'd be always writing
in this small book.
He'd say,
"Hey, Henry, come here."
Like, "Yes?"
And I'd sit on the floor
and look up,
and he'd read out of his book.
[as bandmate]
"One day
"we'll give everyone
knives and guns
"and let them
kill each other off,
"and the people who remain
will be the true rulers
of mankind."
[pops mouth]
And you're like, "Really?
How about we just
go to band practice?"
But he was so persuasive.
He wore shirts with no sleeves,
so he had the biceps going,
and he had this scuba knife,
and he would plunge it
into a can of pineapple...
and he was able to open it
just with his...
Like, how does anyone do that?
Like, he's, like, the alpha
and he would stab the pineapple
and come out,
and he'd just
hand you the blade.
"Pineapple?"
You're like...
Thank you.
And he was always
really intense,
and one day he looked at me
and said,
"Come on, let's go."
I'm like...
And so big dog takes little dog,
and we're walking--
we were living down
in Redondo Beach,
and so we're walking
and walking and walking
towards the sea,
and we make a left
into some huge supermarket,
and we go right
to the meat section
and he grabs a steak
in its cellophane and Styrofoam.
Tears it open.
Rips the meat in half.
Just hands me half of it.
And he plunges part of it into
his mouth and he's eating it.
I'm like...
And I start eating it too.
The entire supermarket
is just silent
looking at these two men...
[grunting]
And like,
and I'm such a good boy.
I was raised honest.
I worked for a living.
"Well, golly, don't we
have to pay for this?"
And, like,
alpha males don't pay.
Like, we're on the Serengeti
of the South Bay.
We just take meat.
We are punk rock hyenas.
We do not pay.
And if this meat stood still
long enough to be eaten,
we deserve to have it.
And so we walk out
and everyone's like,
"Yeah, that's okay.
Have a great day."
We're like...
"We'll be back later."
And we walked all the way back
to SST Records
where we were living and our
hands covered in gristle,
and I ate the whole damn thing.
I was that hungry.
And we would go to gigs,
and my life was changing
with these, like, these adults
who were incredibly intense.
We would go to shows,
check out other bands,
and I'm a young guy, I'm looking
at all these beautiful girls.
I'm like, "Whoa, there's
a really beautiful girl."
[as bandmate]
"Go up and talk to her."
Ah, you know,
I don't have a line.
I don't know what to say.
"Tell her about death."
[laughing]
What?
"Walk up to her and say,
'Hey, my flower child,'
"'before the streets
become rivers of blood,
"'let's get down.
Now.'"
You really want me
to say that?
"Yeah, go ahead."
And so I took everything
this guy said really seriously.
"Come here."
Yeah?
"Love is the monster."
Okay, thank you.
Like... [chuckles]
It was like being in a band
with Colonel Kurtz
from "Apocalypse Now."
And so everything he said,
I hung on every word.
And to this day,
I'm still in awe of this guy,
'cause he hasn't changed.
I mean, his mind is terrifying,
and he's a really nice guy,
but his mind is dangerous!
And so one day
we're at SST Records
and he said,
"You know, you should do LSD."
I'm like...
And I am not a drug type.
I'm one of those
where I would probably
have a very bad reaction
to any stimulant.
I mean, it wouldn't go well.
And so I said, "Well, golly,
why should I take LSD?"
"'Cause you're a real asshole...
[laughter]
And it would help."
And since he said it,
well, by golly,
I better get some drugs.
And so I go at everything
with kind of a boy scout
samurai zeal.
"Well, I better get on the phone
and get into
some LSD acquisition."
And so there's one
utterly psychotic,
brainiac woman
I knew who did drugs
and I had her phone number,
so I called her.
"Uh, excuse me, this is--
"this is Henry Rollins
from Black Flag,
"and I'm calling you today.
"I need to acquire some LSD
"and I don't have
any money, really,
"so I can only afford
a couple of ounces, so--
"so if you could find a dealer
"or some kind of vendor
in the South Bay area
"who could maybe trade
for a Minutemen cassette
"or a release
by the Meat Puppets,
it would--that I can vend
pretty easily."
She said, "Oh, I've got LSD.
"I've got LSD I bought
from a leper in Studio City.
It's some great shit!"
Well, fantastic.
I need to buy
whatever it comes in.
She goes, "Oh, no, no,
no charge.
"I'll bring it over right now,
but the only rule is
I get to watch."
And I said, "Well, fantastic.
It'll be a date."
And so within 45 minutes
of this guy saying,
"Take some acid
because you're an asshole.
It'll help,"
the car pulls up.
She had, like,
a Gremlin or something.
Just something
that just says, like,
"I'm crazy.
This is my car."
And she comes in, I think,
with her boots up to her knees.
She just looked like an outtake
from "Josie and the Pussycats,"
and she pulls out
a small, plastic bag
with small squares of paper.
She said,
"Here's a tab of acid."
Well, fantastic.
What do I do with it?
So she says, "Put it on
your tongue and let it melt."
I go, "Well, paper doesn't melt,
"and at 98.6 degrees, it's--
a carbon-based product,
certainly, but--"
She said, "Just hush.
Don't swallow it, and just
let it melt on your tongue."
And so after a minute
it goes away.
So we wait like 20 minutes,
and I'm waiting--
I'm waiting to be on acid.
And she says,
"Well, how do you feel?"
I'm like,
"Uh, I'm fine, thank you.
How are you?"
And she said, "No, no.
Do you feel high?"
I'm like, "I don't--
"I'm unable to answer
that question
"'cause I really don't
understand
what I'm supposed
to be feeling."
She goes, "Okay, take another."
I'm like, "Well, fine."
Thank you--I thanked her
for her generosity.
I took another one.
I know how to let it melt...
[hums]
And it melts, and--
and so she said, "And?"
and we've been sitting there
for, like,
you know, 30 minutes or so.
I said, "I don't know.
"Feeling okay.
"I feel a little warm,
"but I think that's just
the temperature.
"I'm sweating a little.
"A little sweat on my upper lip,
"but otherwise, I don't know.
"Am I high on acid now?
"'Cause I think I'm still
an asshole.
So I don't know."
And she says,
"Well, take a third one."
And meanwhile, just--
in all transparent--
she's taking them with me,
so we are going one-for-one,
two-for-two, three-for-three,
and so now we've waited
a long time.
She said,
"Does anything seem strange?"
I'm like, "Nope, just spending
the afternoon here with you,
"eating bits of paper.
Are you--are you sure
this is good stuff?"
Trying to speak in her patois.
And she goes, "No, no, no,
I've used this stuff before.
"I saw through walls
and Jesus touched me,"
and so she was like,
"Let's do another."
Fantastic!
And I figure
I'm so young and intense
the acid can't get to me.
That's why.
I'm acid-proof.
And so we both have
four hits of acid
circulating through our system,
and she says,
"Okay, I'm bored, let's go."
So we get in her car
and we start driving west
towards Santa Monica,
and she said, "Are you hungry?"
and I'm, like, always hungry.
I said,
"Yeah, I'm always hungry,
"but I don't have any money.
I have, you know,
like, three bucks."
And she said,
"Don't worry, I got this."
She said, um, "We're gonna eat
some hamburgers."
And so we are at an intersection
waiting to go into a parking lot
to get the fast food, and I look
out the window of her car
and there's a motorcycle parked
right next to me
at the red light,
but its wheels
are still spinning.
I'm like, "Wow."
I said, "The wheels of that
motorcycle are still spinning."
She's like, "Oh, here we go!"
[laughter, applause]
And then she said,
"Acid 101, look at your hand."
"Wow!
I could do this
for the rest of my life."
She goes, "Oh, you're high."
And so we pull
into the parking lot,
she goes, "Let's go in
and get some food."
I'm like, "People, food--
I can...
[gasps, squeals]
And she said, "No, no, no.
Sit, sit, sit, sit.
What do you want?"
"A hamburger...
[slurring gibberish]
And so she comes back,
like, days, eons later,
with this food, and she
hands me a hamburger,
like, there... [imitates bang]
and I open up the foil
and I look down at it,
and I start eating--I just
start smashing it into my face,
and then I pull it down,
I just look at it doing nothing.
She goes, "What are you
doing over there?"
I said, "I'm eating an
infant's head.
I'm eating an infant's head."
She goes, "Wow!
This is great."
And so we finish
the meal or something,
and then she says,
"Let's go to the beach,
'cause you'll like
seeing water."
I'm like,
"I'll talk to the water."
And we're driving, and now
everything is happening.
You're living next to
your own mind.
It's--it's incredible.
And you're like,
"Wow, am I breathing?"
I mean, you--it's really
a different experience
for a guy who's never done
anything more than
three or four Michelobs
and promptly vomited.
And so there's those
long parking lots
along the shore, a little
bit north of Santa Monica
as you get towards Malibu,
and it's a Tuesday, Wednesday.
It's mid-week.
The weather is nice,
so it's not weekend traffic,
but there are some people
in the parking lot,
and so she starts driving
through the parking lots
going north up the coast,
and she starts driving
really fast.
I go, like,
"Why are you driving so fast?
There's all these people up
there crossing the street."
She goes, like,
"You pussies in Black Flag
"always talk about the end
of the world and destruction!
"The destruction starts now!
We're gonna kill all these
fucking people!"
[laughter, applause]
And when she floors it,
you see everyone look up
as they hear an engine
screaming in fury
as like a cheap car
is being floored
and the engine's like,
"I can't really do this...
[squealing]
And you see people start
moving differently.
"I'm walki--
I'm running for my life!"
And you see people grabbing kids
and picnic items and running.
She's like,
"They're just like ants."
I'm like, "This is--
really isn't happening.
"The sky is talking to the sea,
"and the sand
is screaming at me,
"and the first
Jimi Hendrix album does
"sound really good right now,
"and if I pretend
I'm Casper the Ghost,
"I can float out of the car
and land as a blue ball,
"and roll all the way back
"to the hovel by the sea
where I live.
Please, don't kill
these people!"
And she slows down
and looks at me like,
"God, you're so lightweight."
Like, "All right, for you
I will kill everyone I can."
And so I'm like, "Okay, okay,
so let's--how about
we just drive?"
I'm trying to be sane now
rocketing on four hits of acid.
And so we now are driving up
in the canyon somewhere,
and it's very, very nice, and
we're driving up and up and up,
and then we start driving down
and the speed goes faster
and fas--and I go like,
"Shouldn't you be driving
a little slower?"
She goes, "No, it's just like
a video game."
[mimics engine roaring]
I'm like, "Whoa, oh,
this is really dangerous!"
She looks at me, she said,
"Tell me right now
"why I should not drive this car
off a cliff and kill us both."
And I'm like, "You know,
that is a pretty amazing idea
"because the car will float and
we'll live in a different life,
"and we'll call each other
as eagles in the sky
"from our vision quest--
No!
No, I don't want to die!"
She goes,
"Give me one good reason."
And I'm going through
my LSD-poisoned mind
trying to come up with
a sane reason
for her not to send
the car flying
Thelma and Louise-esque
off the--some cliff,
and finally, I come up with it.
"I have to finish the vocals
"on the next Black Flag album,
and if I don't finish it,
the rest of the band
will be really mad."
[mimics engine slowing]
She goes,
"Yeah, I like those songs.
"Okay, okay.
You can live."
And so we come down
and I honestly
do not really know
where we are at this point.
She just, like,
"We'll go to a Zen garden
and we can look at flowers."
I'm like, "Fantastic, flowers."
And so in about an hour
and a half, I went from,
"I'm in Black Flag
and I hang out with this guy
"who wants the end of the world,
and I'm a--really
an intense guy."
and this, like, 90-pound woman
just, like,
tried to kill people.
I'm like, "Oh, please,
don't kill people!"
Like, you're in Black Flag.
"Yes, but I don't want
anyone to die."
And so she's the heavyweight,
and she totally showed me out
for the fairly rational human
I am most of the time
where vehicular manslaughter
is really not my thing.
And so we go to some garden
and look at flowers,
and the flower's, like,
"Hey, Henry, how are you?"
They are talking right back,
and it was
a wonderful afternoon.
Then we go back to her home.
She lives with her parents,
and so, like,
"We're gonna walk by
my mom and dad.
Just don't say anything."
I'm like, "But that's impolite."
You have say,
"Hello, I'm Henry."
And she goes, "No, your eyes
look really crazy--don't worry."
'Cause she's--she's good
at taking drugs.
She can maintain.
I'm all over the place.
And so we walk into her house,
and there her two incredibly
straight parents.
"Uh, is this your friend?"
I'm like, "Uh--"
And so she puts me in her room
and closes the door.
She says,
"Sit against the door."
I'm like, "Okay," and I'm
sitting against the door.
And I said, "Why am I sitting
against the door?"
She said, "To block it
if my parents come in.
I'm gonna shoot some heroin
to take the edge off."
You're going to do what?
So she ties off and she starts
heating up a spoon of heroin.
I'm like, "What, am I
in an episode of, like,
the "Serpico" sitcom?"
I mean, like, you're doing
heroin, like, wow!
And so she does heroin.
I'm like,
"I don't want to look.
I don't want to look."
And she goes, "You want some?"
I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, I don't want
any heroin,"
and I did something
I've never done ever since.
I opened up the window
of her room
and just jumped out.
[laughter]
Not even thinking,
like, what's below.
Thankfully, ground floor.
I went...
the ground was right there.
I mean, the window's here
but I kind of went, "Aah!"
Like, 'cause I don't want to be
in a room with heroin
'cause I'm too high on acid
to deal with it.
And the most amazing part
of this incredible day,
was I got from somewhere
in Santa Monica near UCLA,
all the way back
to Redondo Beach.
Two public bus rides, at least
with no memory whatsoever
how I got back there.
And I come staggering in to SST
like, I don't know,
like 12 hours later
and I come in, I'm like...
[groans]
And there's, uh,
there's the guy in the band.
[as bandmate]
"Hey, how was it?"
I'm like...
"It was incredible!
But I think I'm still
an asshole!"
Thanks.
[cheers, applause]
 [electronic music]
 ♪♪
