A few minutes ago I began to write another rant. It was about expatriation and the hurdles it takes. How it's very much like leaving an abusive lover. In classic victimized wife mode, I deleted it before He sees it and I have another doorknob incident. Instead, I am going to tell you about the first time I took acid.
I was seventeen and sitting in a diner, playing with sugar packets. My girlfriend was a few tables down, talking to some of her hippie friends we had run into earlier that night. I didn't like them, so I waited for her to finish. I had almost completed a small ranch-style house across the table, and she came back and sat down across from me.
"What's that?" She asked.
"Ranch house."
"Oh. Want to take acid?"
"Sure."
It was that simple. I put the last few roof tiles on my house and asked; "Where'd you get it?"
"Where do you think I got it?"
"Hippies?"
"Yeah."
"All right. Do we take it now, or... I've never done it." I said.
"Well, let's go outside, so no one sees."
We got up, left some money on the table and walked out. She waved to a flock of grinning scumbags on the way out.
It was summer, and the night was clear and warm. We walked behind the diner, and she took out a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack. In it, were two small pieces of paper. She carefully tapped them out onto her hand, and dropped the cellophane on the ground. "Take it like this, just under your tongue," she said, demonstrating.
I took my tab from her palm, and put it under my tongue. "I just leave it there?"
"Yep."
"For how long?"
"I don't know, a while."
"Then what?" I asked.
"Swallow it, I guess."
"What do you mean, you guess? Haven't you done this before?"
"No."
I felt it under my tongue, and waited. "How long does it take?"
"A few hours I think. Let's go take a walk."
"Okay."
We walked out through the parking lot, and headed into town. The cars with their windows down, their stereos pounding. On nights like that, everyone is celebrating. Headlights rolled past us, bending and twisting shadows. Yellow street lamps gave gas station parking lots dreamlike glows. The world was beautiful.
An hour later, after deciding to walk to one of our friends houses, I scratched my arm. Then I scratched it again.
"Are you all right?" She asked.
"Yeah, itchy. Feels like spiderwebs on me."
She laughed. "That's funny."
"Why?"
"Because they told me it was called Spider-Man."
"It sucks."
Lights in town seemed brighter. More fluid. After another hour, we reached our friends house. She knocked on the door.
Standing on his garbage filled porch, a realization swept over me. The world was clear. I chewed on that for a while, what seemed like months, and then our friend (who we will call Roger) opened the door.
"Hey guys," he said. "Come in."
His house reminded me of a hobbit dwelling, if they had hobbit hoarders who lived in government hobbit housing. It was disgusting. We walked into the living room, and Roger sat down next to a chubby girl with black hair. "This is Sam."
"Hey Sam," my girlfriend said.
"Hi," Sam said.
Roger began telling us the story of how they met. I'll keep it brief for you. They met online in a Yahoo chat room. She was from North Carolina, but Roger had saved up for a few months to buy her a bus ticket to New York. There was something about fighting with her parents, but, I had left the conversation at that poiint, and was wandering around the kitchen trying to guess what laid behind each cabinet door before I opened it. I seem to remember having a perfect success rate, but that might have been Spider-Man adjusting my memory.
After a while, I turned around and my girlfriend was sitting in a chair in the doorway, watching me. "What are you doing?" She asked.
"I know what are behind the doors."
"I'd hope so. I just watched you go through the kitchen three times."
I stopped. "Oh."
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Okay. You?"
"I'm good. I think it kicked in."
"I think you're right," I said.
"Roger and I are going out for a smoke. Want to come?"
"Sure."
She held out her hand and walked me to the front of the house. It seemed much larger then.
Walking through the front door was the difference between dreams and real life. Immediate and disorienting. The comforting light of the kitchen was gone. The world was drenched in darkness. I began to feel anxious.
I didn't smoke at the time. She and Roger lit up their cigarettes, and I watched the cherries buck and bounce against the black backdrop. They created pictures and words. They seemed living, grew, and diminished, grew and diminished. Roger butted his.
"Oh what the fuck!" I said.
My girlfriend was staring at me. Roger went inside. "What did you say?"
"I don't know."
I began wandering around in the front yard. It was mostly dried mud with patches of grass every ten feet or so. The garbage smell from the porch filled the entire yard. I walked onto the sidewalk in front of the house, and it was gone. The air was clean and invigorating. Huge white lights swam by me in pairs, chased by smaller reds. My head felt open. Alive, and for the first time, comprehending of the world around me.
Behind me, I heard three small clicks.
Click. Click. Click.
I turned away from the beauty of the world beyond me, and back into the trash.
Click click click.
The night seemed to be substance. I could move through it, touch it. It waved in front of me like curtains. I pushed them away. My girlfriend stood a few feet away from me. Her face was different. She was holding something.
Click click click.
I couldn't see it, but it was making the noise.
"It's going to get you," she said.
It was.
She began to walk toward me with it.
Click. Click. Click.
Click, click, click.
Then, she began to run at me. I ran.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK!" It yelled.
"CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK!"
Behind me, I heard a loud thud, and the clicking stopped. I turned, and she was on the ground, rolling on the mud, giggling.
Cautiously, I walked up to her. "What are you doing?"
"Laughing." She laughed more.
I looked around for what was clicking. In her hand she held a small lawn ornament. A squirrel. Suddenly to me, she became something else. She was no longer the person I could trust. She was no longer my team mate. She was out to hurt me. To make a fool of me. I picked up the squirrel.
"Hey!" She said.
I threw the squirrel across the road and watched it shatter in a parking lot.
She crouched up on her knees and glared at me.
I went inside.
The house was bright. Warming. The paranoia of the outside seemed to slide right off of me. I glanced into the bedroom and saw a girl laying across the bed, covered in blood and not moving. I walked into the living room and sat down next to Roger.
"Have you seen Sam?" He asked me.
"No."
We watched television for a little while, and Roger got up.
It was a movie on T.V., something about a bear.
A loud, grating scream ripped through the house. I thought my heart was going to explode. I jumped off of the couch and fell over the coffee table, staring out at the front door.
"Oh my god! Sam!" Roger was yelling.
I got up, and trudged through the living room, out toward the bedroom. My girlfriend came in as I passed the front door, and we walked toward Roger. He came bursting out of the bedroom, but now he too was covered in blood, babbling incoherently, and crying.
My girlfriend screeamed and ran out of the house. I was frozen. The whole world was crashing down. Everything that meant anything. All happiness was dead. This was the end. This was judgement. This was the gnashing of teeth. So much blood everywhere. I fell against the wall and slid down it.
Before long, lights flooded the house. Red, Blue, White. Patriotic. America to the rescue. Banging on the front door. Bloody Roger running around the house screaming. Uniforms came in, trying to say something. I didn't know.
They took Sam.
Roger was yelling at me. I couldn't understand him.
He continued to yell, and soon, I heard him.
"Get the fuck up! We have to go now!"
He pulled my arm, and got me to my feet. He dragged me outside, and then we were driving through town.
"I'm sorry man," he said, "but I need you right now."
Guitars poured through the speakers, grinding and beautiful.
More lights.
The car shut off.
"Let's go!" Roger said.
My door opened, and I was being pulled through another parking lot. We came to a bright room full of chairs.
After what seemed like an hour, and a few thousand trips into the bathroom, I came down, and realized we were in the emergency room. Waiting to see if Sam was okay.
She was. She cut herself pretty bad, after having some sort of breakdown on the phone with her mother, but she would see another day (although at this point, I can't be sure that there were too many more she ended up seeing). Roger ended up driving me home, and putting me in the shower. My girlfriend came home later that day after apparently falling asleep in the back of someones pick-up truck.
That was the first time I took acid.
-A.
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