UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO | 1995
That must have been some really good speed. It what seemed like no time at all, Zongo and I had hacked our way through the brambles and were starting to see moonlight coming through the other side. The night was dead quiet except for the hypnotic crashing of surf somewhere far in the distance.
I was the first to break through the undergrowth and heard the distinct sound of a bullet being chambered. Once you’ve been on the wrong side of that sound, you never forget it. I stopped cold. Zongo, clueless to the situation, blundered right into me, knocking us both out into the open.
My mind reeled as it took in the scene of the biggest Moon I had ever seen silhouetting a Victorian mansion and a helicopter with a surfboard lashed to the bottom of it.
“Hey, man, ever been shot?” A voice out of the darkness questioned.
“Holy fuck!” Zongo shoved me aside. “It’s Charlie Fucking Perigo! Who shot you, you fucking maniac?”
“Charlie did,” Perigo said. “Fred Williams, you son-of-a-bitch. What are you and your buddy trying to do, give me the heebie-jeebies? You know I have a delicate constitution.”
“The only thing delicate about you, Chuck, are them fancy panties you wear under those baggies.”
“You ought to know, Freddie, I got them from your sister.”
The two went on and on, playing the dozens until I finally broke in. “So I take it you two know each other?”
It turned out that Zongo and Charlie met right after he’d come back from Vietnam and they had been thick as thieves for a while. I guess they just kind of lost touch when Zongo went south to to be part of the San Francisco scene. Both Charlie and I laughed our asses off when he told us the story about the how the Condor sign spoke to him one night. Who’s to say? I’ve seen—if not crazier things—some pretty weird shit out there on the edge.
Well, we spent a good piece of time there in the courtyard, laughing and smoking some primo weed that Charlie was holding. At one point, we had been talking about all the heads that had been showing up in Mendo, and wouldn’t be cool if we had a place where we could all hang out together where we wouldn’t get hassled.
Zongo took a big hit and looked kind of philosophically up at the moon so that we followed his gaze. “I’ve got an idea!” he said once he had exhaled the smoke, and that was that. Girassol was reborn.
Román Leão 
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