he moved through the "underground" as a snake slides through grass

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

Unfooled by the self-excusing liberalism and the "freedom" rhetoric babbled by Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey or Allen Ginsberg, or the clot of literary and scholarly fringe-kickers looking for late-night T.V. notoriety. "Wads of phlegm in the throat of life," Charlie called them. He saw with socially untarnished eyes, eyes accustomed to walls and basins and uniforms. What he faced in the outside world was nothing more than a jailhouse joke. Seeing himself as standing knee-deep in puke, Charlie says, "I could see these people on the street - see them with clean eyes, you know. These people on the street were like me. Thrown out of life like your paper coffee cups and hamburger sacks and rags and stinking Kotex pads and dirty rubbers. They were the garbage floating around and shit sticking to the sides of your toilet and your drain holes ... That's what they were doing as hippies, floating around like orange peelings and sinking to the bottom like rotten garbage - food for the sharks and for the barracudas ..."