[words.gif]
   THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HICKS
   GQ MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 1994
   By Mike Sager. Thanks to Dan Savage. Reprinted without permission.
   
   Part comic, part preacher, part philosopher, Bill Hicks had something
   important to say. And though it didn't make him a star or get him a
   sitcom, he kept right on saying it, brilliantly, till the end.
   
   "Good evening, folks," says the comic, freeing the microphone from its
   stand, charting a course across the stage, his shadow following. His
   right hand searches the pocket of his baggy pants, puddled atop weary
   moccasins. The cool mesh orb grazes his lips, carries his voice over
   the crowd. "It's great to be back here in good ol'...where am I
   again!"
   
   He is joking, of course, sort of. That's what Bill Hicks does. Sort of
   joke, sort of tell the truth. He knows where he is, the Comedy Corner
   in West Palm Beach, Florida-- black walls, flickering candles, glasses
   tinkling in the dark. Though he headlines more than 200 nights a year,
   he is not on the marquee tonight. This is a special performance. In
   the back of the club, little sprockets turn, tape rolls. He wants to
   get this down. The exact set that was canceled.
   
   He was to appear on The Late Show With David Letterman on October 1,
   1993, his twelfth guest spot with Dave. Bill had flown to New York,
   taped his spot, and for the first time, he'd really killed on
   Letterman. Dave had even given him a fat Havana cigar. He was smoking
   it in the hotel bathtub when the producer phoned. It wasn't just a
   matter of "Sorry, we're out of time." It was the material, the
   producer said, too many "hot spots."
   
   Tonight, four nights later, fresh from all the publicity, from Howard
   Stem to the Los Angeles Times, Bill Hicks wants to tape the fated set,
   to play it for as many people as he can.
   
   All this hoopla over a spot no one will ever see. Seven minutes of
   jokes. Seven minutes that have turned his career around. Kind of
   spooky, the timing of everything. The news in June. Now this.
   
   "Bill," the producer had said, "you don't understand our audience."
   
   "What!" Bill had said. "Do you grow them on fucking farms !"
   
   People. That's who's in the audience. And Bill has a little faith in
   the rest of humanity, a belief that they can handle some material with
   an idea attached to it, something a little more weighty than "Boy, the
   food on airplanes sucks, don't it!"
   
   "Folks, this is my final live performance." He hunches his shoulders
   forward as he Paces the stage, back and forth, hanging his head. It is
   hard to catch him all in one frame. The voice shifts from clean to
   rusty, from innocent to foul, from a smooth, lilting tenor to a
   rasping, asthmatic laugh. The face is round and rubbery, pixieish,
   devilish, always in motion, morphing from Sane Man to Goober Dad to
   Goat Boy to Li'l Willie. His eyes are deep and dark and wizened.
   They've been like that since birth, friends say, the eyes of a kid who
   seemed to disembark from the womb with his own special path in mind.
   
   "Don't get me wrong," he says. "I've loved every moment of my sixteen
   years of total anonymity. Every delayed flight. Every Econo-Lodge.
   Every broken relationship. I loved it all. Playing the Comedy Pouch in
   Possum Ridge, Arkansas. It's been my treat."
   
   Whispers ripple through the crowd. Quitting! It's a joke, right!
   Thirty-two years old, a stand-up since 15; Sam Kinison had called him
   the Little Prince. Earlier in the year, Bill was named Hot Stand-up
   Comic by Rolling Stone and was nominated for his third American Comedy
   Award. He's done three albums, two HBO specials, a special for British
   Channel 4. He's been on Letterman eleven times and was the subject of
   a lengthy New Yorker profile by critic John Lahr, who called him "an
   exhilarating comic thinker in a renegade class all his own." Len
   Belter, dean of syndicated comedy radio, once described him as "the
   hippest, most intelligent, cutting-edge comic of our day."
   
   Who?
   
   Bill Hicks: best-known unknown in the business. The comics' comic. The
   critics' comic. In a class, really, all his own. The problem is, the
   stuff he talks about isn't network-ready. He can hardly say good
   evening in seven minutes. Every time he'd appeared On Letterman, he'd
   had to change his act. Written down, worked out, preapproved by the
   production staff, his sweet improvisational melody was sliced and
   diced into a sampled, discordant riff. He just didn't come across. And
   he hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. At least not until that
   twelfth appearance, resonating forever in the memory of the Ed
   Sullivan Theatre, there, center stage, near Elvis's swiveling hips.
   Another really big show, never to be seen.
   
   Seven minutes. That's what they give you. Seven minutes of air before
   15 million people. Once, you were anointed by Paar. Then Carson. Now
   Letterman is the pope of comedians, bestower of Sainthood, steady
   work, big bucks, critical mass. Seven minutes. Where to begin! How to
   translate!
   
   How to say simply that Bill Hicks is a man who believes, that 100
   percent of nonsmokers will someday die. That guns really do kill
   people. That there's something strange about "Just say no" commercial
   followed by one for Budweiser.
   
   And being a fellow who has levitated through meditation, experienced
   altered states in an isolation tank, risen on a wave of pure energy
   into an alien spacecraft, ingested his body weight several times over
   in psilocybin mushroom, Bill Hicks is a man who has come to realize
   that out true nature as humans is spirit and not body, that we are
   eternal beings, that God's love is unconditional. Heaven is here
   heaven is now. To realize that is to achieve it.
   
   Bill believes the comic has a special role, that he's a guy who says
   "Wait a minute!" as the consensus forms. Like Chaplin, Bruce, Sahl and
   Pryor, he's the antithesis of the mob mentality, a flame like Shiva
   the Destroyer, toppling idols, no matter whose they are. A guy who
   stands to the side and speaks a truth. Who plants seeds. Who tells
   dick jokes.
   
   You gotta play to the whole room.
   
   "I'm just very tired of traveling," he tells the audience, "very tired
   of your vacant faces staring back at me, wanting me to fill your empty
   lives with humor."
   
   He stops, mugs. He feels a twinge in his left side, shakes it off. In
   his mind, he punches a stopwatch. Seven minutes. Go....
   
   "Oh, hello. Good evening, folks.
   
   "As I said, I'm very excited. This is my last live performance. I
   finally got my own show on TV, entitled Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray
   Cyrus. I think it's fairly self- explanatory. We're kicking the whole
   series off with our M.C. Hammer/Marky Mark/Vanilla Ice Christmas
   special.
   
   "You know, I consider myself a fairly open-minded person, but have you
   heard about these new grade-school books! One's called Heather Has Two
   Mommies. The other one is Daddy's New Roommate. I gotta draw the line
   here and say this is absolutely disgusting. Grotesque.
   
   "I'm talking, of course, about Daddy's New Roommate.
   
   "Heather Has Two Mommies, on the other hand, is quite fetching. You
   know, they kiss in Chapter 4! Oooh! Go, mommies, go!
   
   "You know what really bugs me these days! These pro-lifers. You ever
   look at them!"
   
   A prune face, southern accent: "I'm pro-life." "Boy, they look it,
   don't they! They just exude joie de vivre. You just want to hang with
   them and play Trivial Pursuit all night long. If you're so pro-life,
   do me a favor: Don't lock arms and block medical clinics, lock arms
   and block cemeteries!"
   
   "I was in Australia during Easter. They celebrate the same way we do
   -- commemorating the death and Resurrection of Jesus by telling our
   children a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night.
   
   "You know, I've read the Bible. I can t find the words 'bunny' or
   'chocolate' anywhere. Where do we get this stuff! No wonder we're so
   messed up as a race. Like wearing crosses around your neck. Nice
   sentiment, but do you think, when Jesus comes back, he's really gonna
   want to look at a cross! Maybe that's why he hasn't shown up yet."
   
   Jesus in Heaven: "I'm not going back, Dad. They're still wearing
   crosses. They totally missed the point, Dad!"
   
   The audience roars.
   
   "Thank you very much." Click. Seven minutes.
   
   Applause. Whistles. Calls for more.
   
   "Beautiful," says Bill. He beams. "I appreciate that, folks.
   
   Friday night, I did that set on Letterman. It was canceled because
   they felt you are too stupid to know that those were jokes. This is
   exactly what's wrong with this country: Networks and politicians
   kowtowing to special-interest groups, to some guy in a trailer with a
   fuckin' crayon in his hand, writing in chicken scrawl: I saw a guy
   talkin' bad 'bout Jesus on your show . I ain't gonna tune in no mo'.
   Come on!
   
   "The truth is, the majority of people are very reasonable. They don't
   write letters when something offends them on TV. 'Cause reasonable
   people know that IT'S JUST FUCKIN' TELEVISION! And not only that,
   reasonable people HAVE A LIFE! They know I was not making fun of
   Jesus. They know I did not make fun of gays. What I made fun of is the
   double standard that exists in this fucking country.
   
   "And you know, the worst thing of all is that I love the Letterman
   show.
   
   They've always been very good to--well, to be honest, every single set
   I've ever done they've de-balled me, okay? And I put up with it
   because I love Dave Letterman. I'm beginning to realize: I'm in an
   abusive fuckin' relationship.
   
   "And do you want to know the punch line of this whole story?
   
   " 'Bill, we really love ya. We want you back on in a coupla weeks.'
   
   "I don't know if I can learn to juggle that fast."
   
   In a bedroom in suburban Houston, two boys giggled into a tape
   recorder. Ladies and germs, Bill & Dwight, a.k.a. the Losers: "We were
   ugly children. Our mother said that when we were born it reminded her
   of the time she got over constipation.
   
   "Our parents punished us cruelly. Once, the took away our legs for a
   week."
   
   It was the summer of 1975, the height of the boom years in Houston,
   home of the largest petroleum companies in America during a decade
   when the price of oil would rise from $2 to $40 a barrel. Helicopters
   hovered over the city's skyline, Rolls-Royces sidled up to lavish
   postmodern skyscrapers. Only the best in Houston, the "Golden Buckle
   of the Sunbelt."
   
   West of the city was the Memorial area, an upscale Levittown for the
   managerial class. Bill Hicks and Dwight Slade, both 12, lived in a
   subdivision called Nottingham Forest. Maybe 60 percent of the fathers
   worked for oil companies. Almost everyone was from somewhere else.
   Bill had been born in Valdosta, Georgia, and had lived in Florida,
   Alabama and New Jersey before arriving here. Dwight had come from
   Portland, Oregon. The houses in their development were mock Tudors,
   Colonials, Georgian Taras with columns, all cramped together on
   quarter-acre lots. The high school, named Stratford, was on Avon
   Street.
   
   In an era of wild possibilities and great expectations, the children
   were the focus in Nottingham Forest. Mothers rose early each morning
   to plug in hot curlers for their daughters. Football began with
   full-contact PeeWee leagues. And everyone went to church on Sunday, no
   exceptions.
   
   Bill and Dwight felt as if the clock were always ticking, as if they
   had to take all the lessons, play on all the teams, or their future
   would be ruined. In Bill's house, there were all sorts of stupid
   rules. Religious rules, social rules, arbitrary rules. The grass had
   to be a certain height. Bill would mow; Mr. Hicks would measure with a
   tape.
   
   On this July day, Bill and Dwight's recording studio was Bill's
   bedroom, just up the stairs from his parents' room, the door of which
   was always locked. On Bill's wall was a silly poster of his idol,
   Woody Alien. Bill's dad, Jim, was a career manager at General Motors.
   He and his wife, Mary, hailed from Mississippi. The Hickses didn't
   consider themselves terribly religious. As his mom said, "We just knew
   to go and went." As his dad said, "It's all written down. Jesus was
   resurrected. There were many people who witnessed it. It's fact."
   
   To get to Bill's room, you had to pass Bill's dad, sitting in his
   chair near the stairs. He'd ask a thousand questions. Mrs. Hicks would
   try to feed you fruit. She was petite with puffy hair, had a certain
   tone of voice, high and super duper friendly. There was tension in the
   house. You could feel it.
   
   Bill kept his door locked, too. To escape from the world, he often
   tied a pillow around his head with a belt. At night, you could hear
   him typing. Now and then he'd steal silently into the hall and slip a
   joke under his older brother Steve's bedroom door. There was a sister
   too, the eldest, Lynn.
   
   Books lined his shelves, were piled on the floor. He always brought a
   book to dinner. He kept a screwdriver hidden near his bed to pry off
   the storm screen over the window, his exit onto the roof. To disguise
   his absence, he'd put a stack of records on the turntable, turn it up
   loud. Bill liked Elvis Presley and Kiss, Alice Cooper and B.B. King.
   Bill played guitar, too. His teacher said he was a prodigy.
   
   Bill's prize possession was a thirteen-inch black-and-white
   television, which he'd gotten the previous summer. He soon discovered
   The Tonight Show. Wow! he thought. Stand-Up comics! These guys get
   paid for being totally irreverent.
   
   Soon after Bill and Dwight met, they became partners in comedy. Bill
   showed Dwight the jokes he'd written, hidden in the locked typewriter
   case beneath his bed. He lent him a book on stand-up comedy.
   
   In truth, Bill was a little hard to be friends with. He was a great
   athlete, good at everything he did. Not just good. He wiped you out.
   Without trying, he made you measure your self against him. It was, in
   a way, even more maddening that Bill was so sweet and humble. If you
   were his friend, he was your biggest fan.
   
   The buys patterned themselves after Woody Allen, thought about calling
   themselves by their middle names: William Melvin Hicks and Dwight
   Haldon Slade. Mel & Hal. That their parents could choose such names
   seemed to sum up their entire existence. In the end, they settled on
   Bill & Dwight, a.k.a. the Losers. The boys worked on jokes, began
   creating characters: Goober Dad, Dumb Jock, Mumsy, Maharishi Fatso.
   
   After honing their routines, they decided they needed an agent. They
   found Universal Entertainment in the Yellow Pages. The agency signed
   them unseen. The secretary told them to send their eight-by ten
   glossies and a tape of their act. The boys rode their bikes eight
   miles downtown pose for the pictures. Now, in Bill's room, they were
   trying to get something down on tape....
   
   "Finally, we got a part-time job, so our parents were nicer to us. On
   Fridays and Saturdays we baby-sat for abortions. It was an easy job.
   The babies didn't make any noise. And we couldn't hurt them inside
   those little jars."
   
   By Labor Day, the boys had their first gig, a forty five-minute spot
   on the Jerry Lewis telethon, scheduled for 2 A.M. Bill's parents said
   no way. Dwight didn't even ask.
   
   In the fall of 1978, when Bill was in tenth grade, he spotted an
   article in the paper: The Theatre Workshop in downtown Houston was
   holding an open-mike night for comics. By now Bill and Dwight had
   added a running mate. Kevin Booth was a year older, kind of a head,
   member of the track team. He also had a driver's license.
   
   That Tuesday night, Bill and Dwight escaped from their bedrooms, met
   Kevin, drove to the 200-seat theater. The place sold liquor, so the
   manager made the kids wait outside for their turn....
   
   "Our father's very lazy. He once worked in a mortuary, measuring
   bodies for tuxedos. But then he was fired. He was accused of having an
   intimate relationship with a corpse. The family was shocked. We all
   knew it was purely platonic" Ten minutes later, the audience was
   howling, and Bill and Dwight were taking their bows. The manager,
   Steve Epstein, a comic himself, was riveted by Bill. The kid's timing
   was impeccable. The faces. The accents. The characters. He was
   blessed.
   
   For the next five or six weeks, Tuesday nights became a ritual: the
   Workshop, followed by a party at the Zipper Lounge, a nearby dive with
   porno movies and lap- dancing. Word spread. Kids from school started
   taking dates to see Bill and Dwight. There were lines to get in, old
   and young, no one was being carded. Inside, the crowd chanted: Bill
   and Dwight! Bill and Dwight!
   
   Home from college one week, Bill's brother, Steve, went to see him at
   the Workshop. The kid who'd slipped jokes under his door! Steve was
   stunned.
   
   So stunned, perhaps, that he thought his parents would be happy to
   learn that their younger son was a star.
   
   Bill was grounded.
   
   A few months later, Dwight's family moved to Oregon.
   
   On the last day of tenth grade, Laurie Mango felt a tap on her
   shoulder.
   
   "Hey, Laurie Mango," said Bill Hicks. "How'd you like to go on a big
   high-school date!"
   
   He'd never spoken to her before. She laughed. "Sure."
   
   It was a magical date, complete with a trip to a toy store and the
   purchase of matching rubber giraffes. Laurie's family was from the Bay
   Area. She had brown hair, dark eyes, was real smart. Like Bill, she
   felt like a lost soul in the suburbs. When Laurie looked at Bill she
   saw very intense brown eyes filled with a mixture of pain and
   amusement. She had the feeling that this guy was not 16. He was more
   like 130, you know!
   
   Bill became very close to the Mangos. Mrs. Mango felt that she could
   talk to Bill on an adult level. She saw him as an iconoclast, a kid
   with a strong wind at his back, blowing him away from all he was born
   into, sailing him into the unknown.
   
   At the end of eleventh grade, Laurie began to feel that Bill was too
   serious about her. She wanted to go to medical school. "We can still
   be friends," she said.
   
   The kid shuffled out into the spotlight, guitar case in one hand,
   suitcase in the other. This was it, the Comedy Store on Sunset
   Boulevard.
   
   It was a Monday night in September 1980. Bill had graduated high
   school in June. He was 17 and more than six feet tall, still skinny,
   with a little paunch, still baby-faced, T-shirt too tight in the
   armpits. Moving across the stage, he played a rube, craning his neck
   at the sights.
   
   He reached the microphone, dropped his luggage in a slapstick heap. He
   squinted into the crowd, one hand shielding his eyes.
   
   'Welp," he said, his doofus voice, "I'm here to be a comic."
   
   After Laurie had broken up with Bill, his father announced that he was
   being transferred to Little Rock, Arkansas. There were fights, but
   Bill ended up staying in Houston to finish his senior year. He had the
   house to himself, the family Cadillac. Kevin came by when he was in
   town, and their garage band, Stress, would reunite and jam, but that
   was about it. Bill went to school every day, then to work at a shoe
   store. After supper, he went to the library and studied.
   
   At least, that's what he was telling his parents.
   
   He was really going to the Comix Annex, a new room adjoining the
   Theatre Workshop. Appearing nightly: Bill Hicks.
   
   The very first evening Bill had gone to the Annex, Sam Kinison was
   performing. The gnomish former boy preacher from Oklahoma had just
   begun his career. He had this bit where he'd put a pair of men's
   bikini briefs over his jeans, sing a song called "I'm Mr. Lonely."
   He'd go down to the audience, pick a guy in the front row, and by the
   end of the song, just when he was singing "I'm a lonely soldier," he
   would throw the guy to the floor and start humping him.
   
   Of course, Bill was sitting in the front row that first night. Of
   course, Sam picked him.
   
   Bill became a regular at the Annex, great friends with Sam, By the end
   of Bill's senior year, Sam was exiled from the Annex after a brawl. At
   the time--spring of 1980-- the only true hallowed ground for stand-up
   was the Improv in New York and the Comedy Store in L.A.
   
   Sam decided to move to L.A. To raise money for his trip, he rented a
   theater and set up a show called "Comics on the Lam." He hired locals
   Riley Barber, Carl LaBove and Bill Hicks, dubbed his quarter "the
   Texas Outlaw Comics." The special guest was Argus Hamilton, a regular
   on The Tonight Show. Bill killed that night at the Tower Theatre.
   Impressed, Hamilton told him that HBO was casting a Young Comedians
   special and that Bill would be perfect.
   
   Bill called his parents in Little Rock to tell them he planned to skip
   college and become a comedian. Both his parents were college
   graduates, as were their two older children. The battle over Bill's
   future was ongoing.
   
   Then, one night when the Hickses were back in town, Bill invited Sam
   to dinner. Sam may have been a wild man onstage, but he knew how to
   talk to church people like Jim and Mary Hicks. He told them that Bill
   was really funny, that this HBO show was a big deal.
   
   And so the Hickses decided that Bill could go to L.A. Mr. Hicks
   arranged for him to pick up a brand-new GM Chevette at a dealership
   out there. Mrs. Hicks lined up an apartment in Burbank. The Hickses
   would pay for food and rent.
   
   Though the bit with the suitcase onstage was theater, Bill actually
   had taken a cab straight from the airport to the Comedy Store and
   walked into the reception area carrying his luggage and a guitar.
   
   Mitzi Shore and her husband, Sammy, an old-school comedian, had opened
   the Store in 1972, and Mitzi had turned it into a three-room comedy
   circus. For years, it was the only game in town for new talent.
   Richard Pryer, Andy Kaufman, Robin Williams, Jay Leno, Richard Belzer
   and Dave Letterman had all gotten their start here.
   
   Now it was time for Bill Hicks....
   
   "I grew up in what's called the Memorial area of Houston. It's a
   well-to-do area. My friends were spoiled. But not me. No, sirree. As a
   12-year-old, I wanted a go-cart. When Christmas rolled around, all my
   friends got go-carts. I got a Webster's college dictionary. Wooh!
   Party! My dad goes, 'Wait a minute, Bill. Go-cart is in the
   dictionary.''Yeah, Dad, so is tightwad.' "
   
   Mitzi had a booth off to the side of the stage, where she sat in
   judgment with her coterie. Often, comics would come over and try to
   distract her when a new act was on. But nothing could cover the sweet
   roar of laughter.
   
   The thumb turned up.
   
   Bill became a regular on open-mike nights at the Comedy Store on
   Sunset and also worked at the club's Westwood venue, where Mitzi sent
   her second team, including Marsha Warfield, Elayne Boosler and Andrew
   DiceClay. Mitzi hired Bill as a gofer. He shuttled liquor between the
   clubs and drove the Shores' son, Pauly, to school.
   
   Bill moved to the Valley, into a tiny efficiency on the second floor
   of a converted motel, overlooking the courtyard pool, not far from NBC
   Studios. It was stifling, and he had no air-conditioning. He wrote
   beneath a wet sheet.
   
   "Well, I finally have my own place, hooray!" he wrote Dwight on
   October 10, 1980, in his tiny, intense scrawl. The two had kept in
   close touch since Dwight had moved away.
   
   He went on to outline his goals. First, there was his "always goal,
   God, please," of improving as a comedian, "ever more funny, original,
   hilarious, refreshing, creative, lovable, wonderful, perfect." Then
   there was the movie he and Dwight had conceived, The Suburbs.
   
   "Our characters will appeal to people because they are people like us,
   hating hypocrisy, mixed-up, confused by stupid people, hating school,"
   wrote Bill. "We can affect movies for generations. We're original,
   we're hilarious, we've got something here, dammit, don't you see! This
   is Classic Comedy."
   
   Though the HBO special didn't happen for Bill, Mitzi put in a good
   word elsewhere. Within a few weeks, he was cast in a pilot and signed
   by William Morris.
   
   The half-hour sitcom was called Bulba and starred Lyle Waggoner. Bill
   played the grit marine guard at a zany American embassy. The pilot
   went nowhere.
   
   Dwight arrived in L.A. the next summer. They shared Bill's tiny
   apartment, worked on The Suburbs, practiced transcendental meditation,
   became vegetarians. Midway through work on the screenplay, Bill's
   agent called. They had a meeting with the head script guy at William
   Morris in one week.
   
   He was impressed. "You guys are 19 years old! How'd you get into my
   office!"
   
   Two days later he got back to them. "You guys are gonna be great
   screenwriters. I want to see another one and another one, and after
   that, maybe we'll start talking.
   
   FIVE IN THE MORNING IN A LIVING ROOM IN AUSTIN, the college digs of
   Kevin Booth and another friend, David Johndrow, an artist and film
   student, Stress's newest drummer. There were books on the floor, on
   the couch, on the table, everywhere. The Bible; Satan's Angels
   Exposed; Listen, America!, by Jerry Falwell; Upanishads; The
   Autobiography of a Yogi. In the middle of it all, Bill and David
   scribbled furiously in their spiral notebooks.
   
   Down on L.A., Bill had moved back to Houston in the winter of 1982. By
   the following spring, the other Outlaws, minus Sam, had also drifted
   back to Houston, figuring to get more stage time themselves. Bill's
   plan was to work at the Comix Annex, see what happened.
   
   Lately, he had been spending a lot of time in Austin, a two-hour drive
   from Houston. He and David read, cross-referenced, made notes, trying
   to build new systems of belief. They felt that the Church and their
   parents had run all these programs on them, intemal things for keeping
   people in line, things that made people unhappy. They felt that
   Fundamentalist religion sought to create unhappy bastards, people who
   never look below the surface of what society tells them is proper. To
   be creatively free, they believed, you had to be spiritually free.
   
   With Kevin they joined Float to Relax, a flotation-tank enterprise,
   got into John Lilly, author of Altered States. They meditated to a
   tape of Guru Muk Tadanda. They tied pillows around their heads with
   belts. They bought books on astrology and did their own charts. They
   worked on telepathy, trying to send cake ingredients to one another in
   separate rooms. On a more terrestrial level, they formed ACE
   Production Company (Absolute Creative Entertainment), later to become
   Sacred Cow Productions, a collaboration that would last more than ten
   years. Stress would record on this label, as would their later band,
   Marblehead Johnson. They also embarked on a decade-long film project
   called Ninja Bachelor Party. The video, a cult item, is still
   available in the Southwest.
   
   As time went by, Bill and David began to realize that there are no
   certain answers to the big questions in the universe. Religions,
   philosophers, political movements--they were lust trying to make sense
   of something way too big to comprehend. As Bill once wrote: "No one
   can give you any answers. There aren't any. You have to discover for
   yourself- You must learn to navigate the mystery.
   
   Bill took an apartment in a run-down section of Houston, bought a
   ferret that he named Neil. He began seeing Laurie again. On nights he
   wasn't working, she'd come over and they'd prop themselves up in bed
   and Bill would read to her from The Princess Bride. Laurie was in
   heaven. He cured her bulimia by feeding her ice cream and making love
   to her. What they had was beyond romance. Laurie felt loved by someone
   with a golden heart.
   
   Happy with his personal life, Bill began struggling with his art. By
   1983, he was working the Comix Annex and touring the South, keeping
   pace with the comedy boom. For a time he worked as a warm-up for Jay
   Leno, who would later get Bill his first shot on Letterman.
   
   Frequently, after a show, Bill would go home and cry. "I suck, I'm not
   going anywhere," he'd tell Laurie. He felt that he had gained all this
   knowledge but didn't know what to do with it. "I can't feel anything,"
   he wrote to Dwight.
   
   One night at the Comix Annex, Bill approached Steve Epstein. Eppy was
   a big partyer, as were the Outlaws. For many years, Bill had stayed
   clear of cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. He had always been a man on a
   mission. He never wanted to waste time. But lately, he kept wondering
   why the real geniuses of comedy-Bruce, Pryer, Carlin, Kinison--had
   been into drinking and drugs.
   
   "I wanna get drunk," Bill told Eppy.
   
   Twelve shots of tequila later, Bill stumbled out of the wings with a
   cigarette dangling from his rubbery lips. He was in a rage.
   
   "You people, you're the ones responsible for Gary Coleman! You're the
   reason why Diffrent Strokes is the number-one show on TV!"
   
   Drunk, slurring, Bill was angrier than anyone had ever seen him.
   Religion, parents, television, war, fire and brimstone. It was as if
   the flood of alcohol had broken a dam inside. Ninety minutes later, he
   was lying on his back onstage, sweating profusely, screaming into the
   mike: "You people, you're the reason for war! You stupid fuckin' old
   people, what the fuck do you care, man, just building up your fucking
   pensions!"
   
   A woman in front stood up. "I lost a boy in the war," she said,
   sobbing. "I don't appreciate you criticizing us. We love our country.
   
   Bill crawled to the woman. She had puffy hair. He smiled, a big, fake
   goober smile. "Listen, lady, maybe I was a little hard, BUT YOU
   FUCKING PEOPLE..."
   
   The woman and her husband walked out. Bill lay there, ear to the
   floor. screaming after her: "YOU CUNT! CUNT! CUUUUUUUUNT!"
   
   After the show, two Vietnam vets approached to complain. A fight
   ensued. They broke Bill's leg.
   
   A NEW BILL EMERGED AFTER THAT NIGHT. Patrons would send drinks up
   onstage, and Bill would suck them down. He'd rant on and on, something
   new every night. It was as if he were having a primal experience up
   there before the audience, chemical group therapy, breaking down his
   old hurts, metamorphosing onstage.
   
   So it went for the next four years. Alcohol, LSD, mushrooms, Cocaine,
   ecstasy, Quaaludes, Valium, crank, meth--everything in heroic doses.
   Onstage, he'd lecture, no jokes, just drinking and
   ranting,chain-smoking,on and on for hours.
   
   On the comedy circuit, he began getting a bad rep. He'd pack his bags
   for a week long date and be back two days later. Still, there were
   clubs that welcomed him. Owners pressed eight balls of coke into his
   hand. Bill's traveling freak show: Wasted Man.
   
   Bill tripped as often as he could. A strange, physical theme
   accompanied his trips. It first came up with Kevin and David. Bill
   said that when he died they would open him up and find a giant golden
   cross stuck upside down in one of the organs in his left side. With
   Laurie one time, he went through a birth experience, recalling the
   pain of forceps grabbing him on his left side. At other times he
   envisioned a Bible in there, an alien creature, a spear wound from an
   earlier life. It was odd, but he never felt the pain any other time.
   
   Soon, Bill was broke. He and the others were spending hundreds,
   sometimes $1,000 a week, on drugs. By early January 1986, he was
   padlocked out of his apartment.
   
   On the periphery of the Outlaw clique was a young wanna-be comic named
   Jack Mark Wilkes. The night Bill was locked out, Wilkes gave him
   shelter. The next day, with Bill's approval, Wilkes met with the
   owners of a luxury high-rise apartment building called Houston House.
   
   Though Bill was having some trouble on the road, he a big name in
   Houston. In 1984 he'd done Letterman the first time. He'd finally made
   it--albeit as the bottom act onto an HBO Young Comedians show, which
   had already launched Andrew Dice Clay. The local papers were writing
   about him; he was featured on the cover of Houston magazine. Wilkes
   pointed all this out to the management of Houston House, and he
   promised that Bill would mention the complex in his act.
   
   Wilkes came away with a rent-free apartment on the twenty-second
   floor. It had a balcony, a killer view of the city. When Bill and Mark
   moved in, they found a book on the floor. It was called Making Your
   Dreams Come True. "Guess we don't need this," Bill said.
   
   Mark gave Bill the only bedroom. Bill covered the windows with
   aluminum foil. Houston House became party central. The core group was
   Andy Huggins, Eppy, Riley Barber, Ron Shock, a lawyer-comic named John
   Farnetti, a Cajun chef-comic named Jimmy Pineapple. Kevin and David
   were in and out, as was Laurie, who was now in medical school and
   seeing less of Bill. Everyone wore Outlaw black. They drank, did coke,
   smoked cigars, listened to Frank Sinatra. They had epic parties,
   lasting days. They hung out and let their egos dream, writing movies
   in their heads, envisioning a new era when Houston would be known as
   the Third Coast. They'd convene raucous late-night dinners at favorite
   restaurants, acting out scenes from The Godfather, throwing food. At
   one bar, after Wilks had persuaded the management to issue them house
   credit cards, they ran up a $3,500 tab. To pay it off, they held a
   show: "The Texas Outlaws Pay Their Bar Tab;
   
   Things continued apace until early 1988, when Bill found himself in a
   club in Raleigh, North Carolina. As he sat in the greenroom before his
   show, a series of well- wishers came by. Every single one was a drug
   dealer or someone offering drugs.
   
   Is this me now! wondered Bill. Are these my friends! Is this what I've
   spent my life for?
   
   He returned home, gave notice at Houston House. He had a lot of work
   to do.
   
   "Yes, I'm drinking water tonight. It's really amazing how much your
   fuckin' life can change. Tonight: water. Four years ago: opium. Night
   and fucking day.
   
   Bill moved to New York, got an apartment, signed with the first in a
   series of managers. For the next four years, he would play almost 300
   nights annually. The metaphor safari that had been his life in
   general--and his Outlaw period in particular-- had yielded a roomful
   of trophies and insights, and Bill worked at breakneck pace to tell
   the stories, play the characters, share the epiphanies, get his point
   of view across. And along the way, he told a few dick jokes.
   
   You gotta play to the whole room.
   
   What he was doing by now wasn't really comedy. Stand-up philosophy,
   maybe, alloyed with a keen sense of mission, a feeling that his
   purpose in life was ministering to his audience, his flock. He thought
   he had found some answers; he thought he had a lot of love to give.
   Sort of joking, sort of telling the truth: That is how he gave.
   
   A few months after he left Houston, he and Kevin and David
   collaborated on Sane Man, his first video. He released his first
   album, Dangerous, in 1989. Following in quick succession came an HBO
   special, One Night Stand; then the Ninja Bachelor Party video; another
   album, Relentless in 1991, then Marblehead Johnson, in 1992; a special
   on Great Britain'sChannel 4, Revelations, filmed in January 1993.
   
   Bill's following grew, especially on the other side of the Atlantic.
   He mounted two sellout tours of theater venues in England, Scotland,
   Ireland and Wales. He won the Critics' Award at the Edinburgh comedy
   festival. On the streets of London, he was mobbed by fans. He began
   writing a column for Scallywag, the British satire magazine. Channel 4
   signed Bill and another American comic, Fallen Woodland, for a
   show--Bill's concept--called Counts of the Netherworld.
   
   In America, comedy was in a slump. Though Bill kept notching the
   Letterman dates, he remained on the periphery, turning down a part in
   a sitcom as a truckdriver, a part as a hospital patient in a movie
   with Dana Carvey.
   
   During his heavy time on the road, Bill stayed in touch with his
   friends by telephone. He talked with Kevin and David and Dwight, who
   was married by then and doing stand-up in Oregon, and to all the
   Outlaws, some of whom would follow him into AA, some of whom he got
   work.
   
   In April 1993, Bill was touring Australia, and the person he was
   speaking with by phone most often was his new manager, Colleen McGarr.
   She was based in West Palm Beach and had a partner in L.A., Duncan
   Strauss.
   
   Colleen had met Bill when she booked him into the Montreal Comedy
   Festival, in 1989, and they'd become friends. Colleen was a gregarious
   Canadian with attentive green eyes, a shock of reddish hair, a quick,
   throaty laugh. In a way, Bill had always taken care of himself and
   nurtured others. But Colleen was also a nurturer. She ministered to
   Bill.
   
   Recently, Colleen and Bill had realized that they were in love. In
   April, calling from Australia, Bill told Colleen that he was feeling
   weak. He was eating badly, he said, couldn't get used to the food. He
   had this sort of malaise, he just felt crummy. And there was this pain
   keeping him up at night, probably just stress or anxiety. A sharp pain
   in his left side....
   
   "Mind if I smoke! You do! Tough. I realize I smoke for only one
   reason: spite. I hate you nonsmokers with all of my little black
   fucking heart. You obnoxious, self-righteous, whining little fucks.
   
   "Ever seen that commercial Yul Brynner did right before he died! 'I'm
   Yul Brynner and I'm dead now because I smoked cigarettes.' Okay.
   That's pretty scary, but they could have done that with anyone. How
   about Jim Fixx! Remember the big runner who died while jogging! 'I'm
   Jim Fixx and I'm dead now and I don't know what the fuck happened. I
   jogged every day, ate nothing but tofu, swam 500 laps every morning.
   Yul Brynner drank, smoked and got laid every night of his life. I'm
   running around a dewy track at dawn, and Yul's passing me on his way
   home in his big, long lime, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other,
   two girls blowing him. Where did I go wrong!'
   
   "Yep, they're both dead. But what a healthy-looking corpse you were,
   Jim--look at the hamstrings on that corpse. Look at the sloppy grin on
   Yul's corpse!"
   
   In mid-June 1993, Bill was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. How much
   time did he have! The doctors couldn't say.
   
   Bill began chemotherapy, told only his family and Colleen, now his
   fiancee, of his illness. He continued to tour, with her at his side.
   He put the finishing touches on his fourth album, Arizona Bay, which
   included an impressive soundtrack--his guitar, voice and
   songs--something new for a comedy album. He started another, Rant in E
   Minor. He started writing a book called New Beginnings and wrote a
   screenplay, The King's Last Tour, about Elvis's turning up, having
   staged his own death. Another movie was in the treatment stage, as was
   a television show, Free Press, a sort of Northern Exposure set at an
   alternative college newspaper.
   
   He had been living in L.A., but now he moved to West Palm Beach to be
   with Colleen, leaving the bad air and the black clothes behind, giving
   away everything else, except his Jeep, the first car he'd ever bought
   himself. (His dad had lobbied for the GM version.)
   
   Bill was happy with the work he was doing, delighted with his shows,
   the seamlessness that he had finally achieved. All the doors were
   starting to open. He felt loved and appreciated, completely happy for
   the first time in his life. Like that book from the day he'd moved
   into Houston House. Making Your Dreams Come True.
   
   The Letterman censorship incident was picked up by the press. Then The
   New Yorker published the lengthy tribute by John Lahr. The Nation
   called and asked him to write a regular column. Four publishers began
   bidding on his book.
   
   It was not to be.
   
   In the end, Bill went home.
   
   In January 1994, he moved into the room of his parents' house in
   Little Rock that was always meant for him. He was losing weight,
   growing weaker, in pain, but the mind was fine. He turned his mother
   on to Course in Miracles; he played her Elvis, John Hiatt, Miles
   Davis; showed her documentaries on Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles;
   burned incense and explained the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He told her
   that death would be his greatest adventure. That he was like a drop of
   water reuniting with the ocean. He sat on the back deck and talked to
   his dad about the lawn, about the trees and the crickets, about the
   year's new line of cars from GM. And he tried to get Jim Hicks to take
   mushrooms. He bet Steve $500 that Dad would do it. Mr. Hicks asked a
   lot of questions and took it under consideration.
   
   Bill set about reading Huckleberry Finn again, then went to work on
   The Hobbit. He spent a lot of rime with Steve, who shared his memories
   of their youth, dragged out photo albums, pictures of the Hickses and
   their cousins at the family farm back in Leakesville, Mississippi.
   
   Bill called all the friends he'd ever had--gave his advice, said his
   good-byes. On Valentine's Day, 1994, he finally got in touch with
   Laurie Mango, now a pathologist in New York.
   
   Then he stopped speaking.
   
   "I've said all I have to say," Bill told Colleen and his family.
   Though he lived for two more weeks, walking around the house, going
   for drives with Steve or his folks, those were his last words.
   
   He died at 11:20 P.M. on February 26. At his own request, William
   Melvin Hicks was buried in the Hicks family plot in Leakesville. Five
   months later, following a special, hour-long documentary on Great
   Britain's Channel 4 and on Comedy Central, following live tributes in
   Houston, San Francisco and New York, Colleen and Bill's family signed
   with Zoo Records to release Rant in E Minor and Arizona Bay. His film
   and TV projects are also being shopped....
   
   "Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography
   and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I
   do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my
   body--as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet! I'm
   not scary. I'm basically just a joke-blower. That's basically all I
   am, a joke-blower on the back of some Mexican gardener, blowing jokes
   all over the driveway, a fairly harmless guy, believer in love and
   truth, antiwar, believer in the values under which this country was
   originally founded: FREEDOM OF FUCKING EXPRESSION.
   
   "And for those of you out there who are having a little moral dilemma
   in your head about this, I'll answer it for you. IT'S NONE OF YOUR
   FUCKING BUSINESS!
   
   "Take that to the bank, cash it, and take it on a fucking vacation out
   of everybody's life."
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