My head felt as if hot cranberry sauce was injected straight into the gray matter and was burning holes down to my puffy eyes. My lower back cramped, which made sitting up a task. No food or liquids since the day before and I was dehydrated beyond any hangover I ever experienced. The door creaked open. The hall was bright as the spark that ignites when you get punched in the nose. I shuffled in my boxers to the water fountain.
The coolness of the water almost made me weep and I turned around and lumbered back. The lights were left off. As I fell on my back and put my hand behind my head the red dots appeared and skimmed across the ceiling. I closed my eyes and wished to the universe that they would go away.
They did.
I needed to find out if what happened to me happened to Tim so I slung on my sweat pants and tugged a t-shirt over my head. Bracing myself against walls, I slid sideways down to Tim’s room. The door was cracked. He sat there in his bathrobe scratching himself openly. He pulled his hand out and floated a wave and said, “How are you today? Retarded? I am. You better get some orange juice man. Making me better already.”
I plopped on the couch covered with a new rainbow tapestry.
“Did you have a good trip?” I asked.
“Sure, it was great. Why?” he asked.
“Mine scared the fucking shit out of me. You said the Acid was good,” I said.
“Listen bro, that shit was excellent. Hold on. Let me close the door,” he said.
The door clicked shut and he said, “My trip was great. Sorry if yours was bunk but that stuff was pure, no strychnine. It was strong. Are you all right?”
I sighed, propped myself up and said, “I felt like I was going to die. Like I was being crushed to death. The world collapsed on itself and I had an out-of-body experience. It happened again for a moment this morning. I thought this shit was only supposed to last for eight hours or so?”
“Whoa man, sounds intense. Mine wasn’t anything like that, but you get what you bring. I just saw some trails, colors and melting walls. I just laughed and played with things for seven hours straight. You must have some issues man,” he said as he fixed his sheets.
“What do you mean by `you get what you bring’? The bad trip was because the Acid was too powerful. It will go away, right?”
He patted his bed flat and spun to sit down. He rotated his head towards me and said, “The trip was bad because you brought the baggage or your brain just can’t handle it. That’s what I mean. We had the same paper. Sorry to tell you this, but sometimes it stays around and then goes away but comes back. It’s called a flashback.”
“So, this can just come up and bite me on the ass at anytime, great!” I said as my chest emptied of warmth.
“Don’t worry because if you do they’ll come back. It will stop eventually. What you need is orange juice to flush the chemical ghouls out of your head,” he said and reached over to his fridge and threw me a pint carton of O J.
He folded his hands and said, “I’m sorry if it scared you. I had a trip that was bunk too but talking about it doesn’t help. You just have to deal.”
“Well, what did you do while I was in hell?” I asked with a grin.
“Oh, I went to the river and watched fish swim in circles. Played with mud and climbed a tree. Went over to the Three Girls House and hung out with them. I knocked on your door but there was no answer.”
At that point he got up, opened his door and we just watched television until lunch.
We saw George standing at the top of the stairs to the campus center as he was tossing his junk mail in an enclosed garbage can by the handrail. I only checked my mail twice since I got there and couldn’t remember the combination to my box. He slid down the handrail.
“I’m borrowing John’s car and going to town for food. Do you guys want to go? I’m buying. Just cashed a nice check at the Bursar,” George asked. We followed him to the parking lot behind the Kaf.
We turned into a cozy little shop named The Yellow Submarine just off the main street that lead to the highway. It was a fitting name. The leaf yellow curtains mingled with the egg yolk walls and the blue indoor/outdoor carpet under the picnic bench tables with a plastic periscope jutting up in the middle gave the illusion that of being on the water, sort of. Family pictures clung to the walls and three wooden booths framed the windows that overlooked a busy intersection. The best thing was that the old couple who owned the joint served beer to underage kids. We each got the sixteen-inch sandwiches with sodas and a pitcher of amber beer.
I was actually hungry.
We sat silently and ate feeling like adults.
No crumbs survived and we filled our beer glasses and blazed up smokes.
George asked me, “What happened last night?”
“I just freaked out. That is all and you helped last night, I owe you one,” I said.
“No you don’t, I just hope you would do the same in return,” George said.
Tim puffed a storm cloud over the center of the table, raised his pint glass and chugged it. His eyes watered as he put the glass down and said, “To self-induced psychosis.”
We dropped off Tim to see Erin. George and I decided to jam in his room. It was months since I played with anyone.
After dropping off the car, we hiked it back to the dorm. I slipped my acoustic-electric guitar in my gig bag, slung it around my shoulder and strutted like a decapitated rooster down the hall. George had both an acoustic and an electric guitar but we chose to play sans volts. In his cramped room, I slipped my guitar around me, tightened the strap and stood while he sat. A twitch scratched my eye as the sour strings were strummed. I was out of tune. The stings tightened as I wound and felt the tension in the neck. George tossed me a battery operated tuner.
To warm up we played some standard blues in C major just to get acquainted. He wasn’t half bad so I kicked it off with a few licks and played a chord progression in G minor. Head started rocking and feet stomping. We were flowing and reading each other pretty well, and so I moved the progression to D minor. I tossed out a few arpeggios and then we looked at each and stopped.
“You know Pearl Jam’s Animal,” he asked.
“Yup,” I replied and we launched.
We traded vocals but I played the lead when it came.
People began clustered in and out of the room, some leaning the doorway as others stood in the hall. My hands got sweaty and began to cramp as I hammered on notes so we paused so I could grab a paper towel from the dresser.
I spun around and, “Hello” to the crowd.
Two blonde girls, who I had never seen before, pushed their way in and James and Cyrus somehow made their way behind me and were leaning on the wall. When we stopped, we were greeted with claps and I blushed. After we played Little Pink Houses by John Mellancamp, I went to wipe my hands and the fret board. Were I wiped, little red dots appeared and climbed up to my hand as they jumped from finger tip to finger tip I gasped.
Autopilot took hold as I followed George’s simple five part chord progression but the guitar felt weighted and my fingers went numb. A wash of sound blended into white noise and I stopped. George looked at me and said, “What’s up?”
His face stretched out into strands of spaghetti.
“I feel sick. I need to go lie down,” I said and rushed out of the room with my guitar still slung around me as it bounced off the walls.
Bong, bong, bong.
The sickly tones followed me. I leaned my guitar in the corner behind my bed and said, “The trip never ended.”
Numb hands rubbed a numb face and everything was a caricature. The low noise of a swarm of bees swallowed my ears.
Later on I explained what happened to George as we got ready for the Gamma party and he understood. The red dots came back but I drank them away.