The Last Interview with Alexander Shulgin

When I arrived at Shulgin's home in Lafayette, California, he was peacefully sitting at the kitchen table. I walked through the sliding glass door, greeted him, and then embraced him, which produced a euphoria far greater than that of MDMA and a time dilation more profound than the effects of 2C-T-4. We disengaged and, without pause, he began to riddle me: "Can you name the two words in the English language that begin with two consecutive a's?"

I thought for a moment before answering, "Aardvark is one?"

"Yes, good, and the other?"

"I don't know, I can't think of another."

He bent down his head and said in a low whisper, "Aardwolf."

"Aardwolf?" I asked, and with that he had already risen from his chair and shuffled into the hallway to retrieve a giant yellow dictionary, which he dropped onto the kitchen table and pushed toward me. Sure enough, it's there, and on his prompt I read the definition aloud:

aard-wolf \-'wu-lf\ n, pl aard-wolves \--lvz\ [Affric, fr. aard earth + wolf; akin to OE wolf wolf--more at WOLF] 1: a hyenalike quadruped of South Africa having a striped coat, five-toed forefeet, and a distinct mane, feeds chiefly on carrion and insects (as termites), and is usu. placed in the Hyaenidae though formerly separated in another family (Protelidae). 2: an (extremely) unexpected nonpsychedelic-related thing, which confuses me [see more at I'M NOT PREPARED FOR THIS].

"OK," Shulgin said, satisfied. "We've solved that problem. But now, for example, do you know what a lowena is?"

"No, what's that?" I asked credulously.

"It's the opposite of a highena."

"Aha!" I urinated a microliter in my pants and changed the subject. "I brought you a peach pie. Would you like a slice?"

He answered the question with another question: "How many numbers are to the right of the decimal point in pi?"

"Just one." I had nervously confused right and left, but Shulgin immediately adjusted his line of questioning.

"OK, so what is the value of pi? 3.14159265" But how many numbers can appear in front of the decimal point in pi or in any rational number?"

"Potentially an infinite amount of numbers."

"Right, and how large is this infinity?"

"Excuse me?"

"How large is this infinity?"

"That's a difficult question to answer," I replied.

"I'll give you another question and let you do a comparison: How many numbers are there to the right of the decimal point? One? An infinite number? Not only an infinite number but an infinitely larger infinite number."

"How can? OK, wait..."

[Thanks mj!]