The History of Penis Envy Mushrooms

 On January 31, 1981, Pollock’s girlfriend sat irritated in a restaurant, waiting for him to finally arrive for dinner.

She was quite sure that he had once again forgotten about the date, sterilizing the test tubes. Eventually, she hurried home from the restaurant to find that it had been ransacked.

Broken glass was scattered everywhere, and a pool of blood spread across the floor. Pollock lay dead on the floor. He was shot exactly in the back of the head, his pockets were opened.

A huge Amazonian proto-penis lay nearby, spattered with blood. The next morning, when the mushrooms were already penis envy mushrooms beginning to die, the police arrived and confiscated 1,578 cans of mushrooms and ten pounds of psychedelic mushrooms.

They took his life’s work to the dump, piled it up and burned it. The investigation into the murder was quickly closed and attributed to drug addicts under the Quaalud.

To this day, it remains undiscovered.

At the funeral, Pollock’s jacket pockets were filled with psychedelic mushrooms. Her arms were crossed on her chest: in one mushroom from the Mexican village of Matyas Romero, in the other the last surviving penis mushroom.

So they followed him into the ground. The grave was left unmarked. Pollock gave his whole life to mushrooms, but no one knew exactly what kind of testament he would leave.

A few days later, an envelope arrived at the door of Washington mycologist Rich Gee. Inside was a single card marked “Penis”.

I was looking for Guy, but unfortunately he is the most mysterious figure in the dark world of magic mushrooms. He is the Salinger of this mysterious craft. In his entire life, Guy gave only one interview.

He lives in seclusion in the forests of the Northwest USA, on the Pacific coast. His only book on mushrooms was a hit in the late seventies, selling 40,000 copies but revealing nothing about the author.

There is not even a biographical note. Countless times I tried to find Guy, but always ended in failure.

I called all 16 Richard Gee in Washington, leaving carefully crafted messages without the words “penis” and “mushroom”, only to find out in the end that Rich Gee was not his real name.

So I ended up calling Ted (a fake name, of course), one of the original suppliers of penis fungus spores, and asked where he got them from. He replied: “I got the penis from Guy. Like all. But looking for him is like chasing a ghost.”

• I asked: “Did Guy tell you where he got this mushroom from?”
• “Yes,” Ted replied. “He told me Terence McKenna designed it.”

Then I called Terence McKenna’s brother Dennis and asked about the penis mushroom. He replied: “The whole story is news to me. This is the first time I’m hearing about it.”

In the end, I called Ted back and told him that Makkena had never touched a penis, to which Ted replied: “Well, why MUSHROOM would Guy give credit to the discovery of Makkena when it was his own hard work? It makes no sense”.

And you know what? Ted was right. There was no point in it, except that someone was lying – but it was hardly Mackenna. I tried even harder to find any information about Guy.

I contacted a former employee of his (another anonymous person, as is customary in the mushroom community) who said, “I spent several thousand dollars on Guy – arguing – on his lies and sick, crazy games. He’s a sociopathic geek.”