Repost from old blog, 7/2/2009
This essay is five years old and was published in a now-defunct local magazine, Deek. I came across it the other day and realized it has its moments. I still don’t smoke.

Repost from old blog, 3/28/2008I remember feeling unready. It was my senior year of high school, many of my out-of-town friends had tripped, and they announced that they were coming into town in a few hours, bringing blotter, and we were all going to trip together.

N– had the house to herself that night, a Friday. When everybody got there they had already dropped, so we took ours. First thing I remember is that my friend Neil, always the provocateur, brought along a movie, and we watched this as the acid took hold: “The Miracle Worker.” One clear image: Helen Keller’s father leaning into the crib, realizing that the baby was deaf and blind, and screaming into its face. Oh my God.

I went outside. It was night, but there seemed to be light everywhere, shifting over the yards and houses of the neighborhood in sheeting, nebulous patterns. Matt was on the back porch, having a bad trip, his eyes wide and nervous.

Mike was eating party mix, that all-purpose concoction of mini-Melba toast, cheese crackers, pretzels, peanuts, whatever else. “You know why they call it Party Mix?” he said. “Cause when you’re at a party, you don’t give a fuck what you’re eating.”

Dan was in the dark bathroom, alone. Someone went in to see what he was up to. “Nothing,” he said, sitting on the side of the tub and looking nervous, like he was trying to cover something up. “What’s going on?” they said again, and looked behind him. He’d knocked over a candle, and spilled glorious ribbons of red wax all over the white porcelain.

I remember being distinctly creeped out by The Prodigy’s “Breathe” video. Who wouldnt’ve been?

In the morning we took a tour of Blairsville, my rural town. Somebody wanted to go to Bolivar Falls. Julie hated the idea; had been there a thousand times. “Everybody always wants to go there, and it’s this huge long walk up a hill and it’s not even that great anyway.” But we went still; to a little waterfall and swimming hole deep in the woods. Neil looked around at graffiti’d rocks, trash on the ground. “It’s exactly like I thought it would be,” he said. Nobody wanted to jump in; Neil eventually did, though, out of principle.

Next we went to the abandoned mental hospital. We found an old silo filled with water on which was a layer of fluorescent green algae. “This would be a perfect place to hide a body,” Matt said. He never forgot about that silo, and when I told him years later that it had been torn down, he was sad.

I had been recruited to drive. On the way out of the field I backed into Eric’s car. No damage, just a scare. Oh well.

We went to the park and waded in the stream. God, where didn’t we go? I felt like we’d lived for days in the space of one night. At some point it had to end. I didn’t feel changed from the experience, like everyone said I would. I hadn’t had any huge insights. I felt like I’d taken a drug and that was that.

Repost from old blog, 3/15/2008It was the fall of 1998; I was a freshman in college. N–, my best friend from high school, invited me to come along with her and two other girls to someone’s house in Morgantown, West Virginia, to take ecstasy. I’d already done acid and mushrooms by then.

Kari* was driving, Lisey was riding shotgun, N– and I were in the back seat. I knew Lisey, but I’d never met Kari before. They were sort-of girlfriends. I was struck by the music Kari was playing. “It’s Belle and Sebastian,” she said, and had to repeat the name a few times cause I’d never heard of them before. The album was The Boy with the Arab Strap. “It’s their new album,” Kari said. “I liked their last one a lot, but I’m not too sure about this one.” I immediately fell in love with it; the music hit me deep in a rare way. Already it was feeling like a magical trip.

Night was falling as we reached Tom and Erin’s house, who were Lisey’s friends. They were ravers and were my first exposure to that scene. Everyone said that your first time taking ecstasy was your best. The stuff they sold us was said to be “molly”; close-to-pure MDMA. I’m inclined to think it actually was. It was in a capsule; a whitish powder. In retrospect it had the properties I came to associate with purer forms of ecstasy – a rolling, cresting sensation with intense peaks and vibrating valleys.

I’m shaking as I write this.

We stayed in the house the whole time. The lights were dim. They were playing techno music in the living room; pounding sounds and rainbow lights streaking across the walls. Often this was too intense for the four of us. We would end up on the couch in the next room over. Tom and Erin kept to themselves, letting us have our own experience. N– asked Lisey, “What’s the meaning of life?” “Show your teeth!” Lisey said.

More folks showed up; including an older queer guy who I was instantly voraciously curious about. He was a character, a big hulking guy wearing a feathered top hat. He had a thick West Virginia accent. I hadn’t met many queer people at this point. I was asking him a million questions. “Damn, hippie, you writin a book?” he said, and laughed.

Later I bonded with Kari. We were sitting on the couch together, apart from everyone else. “Sometimes I look at people and I wonder, are they really happy?” she said. This was just the sort of cynicism I could relate to. I knew then that she was a friend.

We started to come down. N– was feeling crappy. “What’s wrong guys?” Tom asked us. “We’re bummed cause we’re coming down,” N– said. “Well, there’s a remedy for that,” Tom said in a knowing way. He brought out a little green plastic snorter, and we did bumps of ecstasy mixed with ketamine. I don’t remember feeling much from that.

Nor do I remember sleeping over. I know we left in the morning. It was a sunny, pretty morning. I felt mellow and good; I think we all did. We stopped at a rest stop. “Who makes rest stops?” N– wondered. “The state, I guess,” I said. “Oh,” N– said. “States are nice.”

We laughed about that one the rest of the way home. “States are nice.” States are nice, because the rest stop is nice; because we can drink water at the rest stop and go to the bathroom and buy a snack, too.

I don’t want to put a negative slant on the experience, though it wasn’t all good; and my further experiences with ecstasy weren’t all good either. But the simple gratitude and empathy the drug often engendered are worth noting. “States are nice.” Why not?

*names changed

Repost from old blog, 3/20/08I was 16? 17? It was late fall and I was in my junior year of high school. My older brother, who I was close with at the time, had been smoking weed forever, and I’d been curious to try it. One weekend he arranged to get me high. After school on Friday I borrowed my parents’s car and drove into the city. He attended college there and lived in a cruddy little off-campus apartment with his roommate Chris.

He’d purchased some high-quality pot, beautiful green-white buds that he stored in a jar in the cupboard for my arrival. Also he’d bought some papers soaked in hash oil, but those came later.

The three of us – me, my brother, and Chris – piled into the bathroom and took hits out of a bowl, I think. I coughed a lot, to where I actually thought I was going to puke.

Afterwards we were standing in the kitchen; Chris was talking and I noticed things getting weird. Time seemed drawn out.

Chris had to pick up his girlfriend at the airport, so we all got into my parents’s car and drove there. I sat in the back. My jaw felt like it was opening on its own, some muscle memory opening my mouth, and I kept having to close it. I articulated this to them; Chris said he knew what I meant. We got to the airport and I went inside with Chris. I’d never been inside the Pittsburgh airport and it kind of blew my mind. It looked so futuristic and modern.

After this my memory is hazy. We went back to their apartment. My brother and I watched “A Thief in the Night” and smoked the hash-oil joints. I remember moments of the film sticking out at me like the most absurd and hilarious things I’d ever seen. We would rewind it and watch it over again and laugh our asses off. Then the movie was over, and it was like I hadn’t even seen it. Time was all fucked up. I didn’t want to smoke anymore. I wanted to be normal again.

Weed was never very good to me.