The posters were all over the campus student center, ‘ORGIES MYSTERIOUS’ 7:00, bring musical instruments. Nobody knew what it was but on a college campus in 1970 we were up for anything.
I was there early waiting for my girlfriend. They wheeled in a cart with what looked like large containers of blood. Then what looked like a dead calf , more boxes, a PA system and movie equipment. The doors closed , the preparations began. People began to arrive till there was a crowd around the door. The title was an irresistible lure.
No one could have anticipated what we saw. The room had rows of long tables with white tablecloths. Organs were placed on them in neat intervals. Eyes, livers, kidneys, brains, entrails. We were each handed a plastic cup of blood. Some people put theirs down only to be knocked over by the increasing crowds. Others walked around with theirs holding the fragile plastic cup cautiously wondering what to do with it. Still others actually took a hesitant sip . There was kind a of mass dazed bewilderment. Wagner was blasting from the speakers. The people with instruments were herded into a corner.
We were all part of an underground film by the controversial German, Herman Neiche.
His theory was that primitive man hunted, then ate the meat raw and still warm. He wanted to recreate this experience with modern young students. The University refused to allow him to slaughter a live calf but he brought in a freshly killed one from a local slaughter house. It was nailed to a board at the front of the room like Jesus on the cross. Every once and a while he would call for the musicians to play all at once, not together but each playing to their own tune as loudly as they could. The white tablecloths became increasingly stained with blood. Other started to get sucked into it.
The ceremony began. An unwitting young volunteer from the film department was sitting under the calf. Among much loud music and noise Neitze gutted the calf. It’s entrials fell on the girl while buckets of blood were poured over both. The girl, who was becoming hysterical was then dragged on the floor through the stunned crowd leaving a trail of blood. People started freaking out. Many headed for the door.
Next they strung the carcass up on a rope which stretched the across the room. It was on a pulley so that it could slide up and down the length of the rope while people beat it with sticks or their hands.
About that time I left. I’d stuck around until then as a kind of bewildered observer.
Six years passed before I ate another piece of meat.
¬