full point wrote:Do tell, 'Supe!!
This is actually a chapter from a book my friend wrote and it deals with that very night. I know it's long but it cracks me up.
here goes. Names have been changes, well mine anyway.
From time to time I’ve veered a bit from my profound wisdom and have made a mistake or two. I’m only human.
One such mistake was ingesting enough LSD to induce a two day psychonautic mind-fuck when the concert I was going to see would last only a couple of hours. I probably should’ve dropped half a hit. I dropped six at once. Excess was my motto. I would regularly traumatize myself with massive amounts of LSD, mushrooms, and ecstasy, all of which were readily available and cheap at the time. I never wanted to just trip and see little trails and shit. I wanted to be out of my fucking head.
I was working with a group of lunatics, and every Friday we’d find something cool to do while we sizzled away our brain cells with handfuls of dope. On any given outing we’d have enough narcotics on us to supply a rock band for the evening. That night we were going to The Metro to see The Boredoms, a crazy Japanese rock band.
My friend Marsupialized and I, along with two other friends packed into his car and headed out in the hopes of a great show. All of us, except for my sober friend Rob (who’d never touched a drug or drink in his life) dropped lots of acid about a half hour from the place. We barely managed to get there on time and get inside without incident.
I’ll skip past the insane concert and get right to the dialogue that ensued once we finally found the car after the show. We were like one of those Partnership for A Drug Free America commercials. I might even send them this story now that I think about it. We were a MESS. Rob was the only one among us that wasn’t a tripping idiot. I doubt we ever would’ve found the car without him.
We all should’ve just hailed a cab and gone home safely. That thought never even registered in our drug-soaked brains. We just figured that if Marsupialized’s car had gotten us there, Marsupialized’s car would get us back. Why my sober friend didn’t abandon our suicidal trek is beyond me. He got in the car just like the rest of us and just decided to take his chances, I guess. We were clearly fucked. Anyone could have seen that much at a casual glance.
Rob did try to bring some rationality to the table, at least once. He’d tried to suggest that we “chill out for a while” and maybe we’d “find something cool to do” while we waited for our trip to end, or at least wind down. He saw the shape that Marsupialized was in, and knew that he was in no condition to drive us all home.
“No.” Marsupialized cut his suggestion short, “We can’t turn back now. We’ve made it this far and I’m not about to turn back now, and neither is anyone else. We started this and we’re going to finish this.”
He spoke with complete conviction that left no room for argument. His eyes were all pupils and I could plainly see there would be no further consideration of the matter. No amount of protest would be heard. He was a man on a mission.
“You’ll be fine dude.” I offered my blue-skinned, fanged friend.
“Yep, just fine.” he answered, and lit his cigarette. He was the picture of confidence.
“Gimme that manual from inside the glove compartment.” He instructed me.
I rooted through the black and white, yet shimmering glove box for a while before finding the GM owners manual. The car had a stick shift so the book was thick, and Marsupialized sat and studied for a few moments. After flipping through the pages several times he handed the book back to me muttering,
“It’s not in there.”
“What’s not in there?” I asked.
“Starting the fucking car!” he screamed at me.
“It’s in here.” I insisted, and searched the manual. It made absolutely no sense at all. One page was in Chinese, another in Spanish, another in Arabic. One page consisted entirely of arithmetic and mathematical formulas. The entire book swelled and pulsed along with my breathing. I knew that if I concentrated hard enough I could see through these confusing hallucinations and read.
So I closed my eyes tightly and willed myself to concentrate as hard as I could manage. Then I checked the index and found “ignition”.
“Here man I found it.” I held the open manual for him to see. He seemed immediately interested, and snatched the thick book from my hands to study the text beneath my thumb intently.
“This says ignition.”
“Yes.” I confirmed.
“That starts the car on fire.”
“There’s no switch that starts the car on fire man, that’s fucking stupid.” I argued.
I turned a page or two and kept reading.
“Did you read about the clutch?” I asked.
“What?!?” That startled him more than a little bit. The word “clutch” is really uncomfortable when tripping, and Marsupialized looked worried.
“The clutch,” I explained, “You have to push it down to start the car.” I showed him the manual’s pages that proved me right. It even had twisting and pulsing illustrations.
He carefully and meticulously went over the schematic for several minutes before proclaiming,
“Wait, I’ve got it! The key!” he erupted in huge red chicken pox.
“Don’t worry everyone, I’ve got it. I’ve got it.” Marsupialized assured us, and I believed that he had suddenly just remembered how to drive again. He put the key in, and pressed the clutch, and started the car. We were on our way. Just like old times.
We pulled from the parallel space and began our journey home.
About twenty feet down the road we pulled right back over.
“Something’s wrong.” Marsupialized declared.
“Yeah dude. A whole lot is wrong.” I answered.
“No, I mean there’s something wrong with the car. The pedals feel spongy, and they push down way too far.”
“Hmmm.” I thought for a minute before pulling the manual back out.
I couldn’t find anything about the pedals in the glowing manual. I checked again, and then a third time before the flickering pages and scuttling letters became too much to take. When I put the confusing manual back into the glove compartment I narrowly avoided losing my hand to the monstrous teeth that had sprouted inside of it.
“Let’s just sit and smoke some weed, and get our wits about us.” I suggested.
In hindsight I marvel at that logic; that smoking some pot would put us in a more rational frame of mind. It seemed to make sense at the time though, and once our joint was finished a flash of drug-inspired problem solving hit me.
“Wait! I’ve got it!” I exclaimed excitedly.
I could tell from Marsupialized's blank expression that he had no idea what I was talking about. From the puffs of colored smoke that came with each breath I knew that I’d best explain myself, before my LSD-sodden mind had forgotten my point.
I’d taken WAY too much acid.
“You said the pedals pushed down too far, right?”
“Yeah, way too far.” he spoke but his mouth never opened or moved. He seemed interested though.
“We should put something under the pedals so they don’t push down so far.”
“Like what?” he looked doubtful, suspicious of the simplicity of my plan.
I scanned the impossibly cluttered car’s floor, sifting through the thick layer of trash until I found an empty glass Starbucks bottle.
“Here!” I presented my find as though I had solved all of our problems.
I was proud of myself.
Marsupialized snatched the bottle from me irritably and wedged it under one of the pedals while I searched for more. Meanwhile, Rob was watching all of this from the backseat, and thankfully for all of us my sober friend decided to pipe up.
“Hey guys, I wouldn’t shove those bottles under the pedals like that. If they can’t go down they won’t work. We don’t want to hit anyone.”
Marsupialized switched the car off and turned to address Rob.
“You should drive, man. I can’t make heads or tails of this shit.”
“I can’t drive stick.”
“Bill,” he commanded me. “Give him the manual.”
Rob was stricken with fear. He was trembling.
“I can’t drive stick dude, I’ll fuck your car all up if I don’t get us all killed.” Rob spouted his explanation while I sat and pondered, deep in thought.
“Wait, I’ve got it!”
All eyes were on me.
“He’s right, the bottles are all wrong.” I explained. “But what if we used something less solid? Something with some give to it? We’ve got enough old newspaper in here, let’s bunch some up!”
I was proud of myself again.
The bunched up newspaper must’ve worked well enough because not long after we were turning onto Interstate 55, on our way home. I can’t begin to describe the exhilaration that comes with hurtling down the highway, in the middle of the night, on enough LSD to kill a small horse. Especially since Marsupialized had insisted that the radio blast god-awful techno music at full volume, and that the windows be rolled all the way down during the dead of the Chicago winter.
“The road’s a snake!” Marsupialized hollered at me over the ruckus.
“What?” I yelled back.
“The road, it’s all over the place!” he was leaning forward, his eyes rapidly darting across the lanes. His hands both clenched the wheel as tightly as possible, and I found myself wondering how much longer we had until our ride home ended in twisted, bloody steel. Like I said, it was exhilarating. The freezing, whipping wind and torturous music overrode any concern that I might’ve had for my safety.
“Just follow the lines!” I yelled at him over the horrid music and icy wind.
“Which lines?!?”
I knew what he meant by “the road’s a snake”, because when I tried to point the painted lines out for him I saw that they were twisting and dancing around one another, and I didn’t know what the hell to tell him.
The highway streetlights shone a multitude of colors as we raced under them, and some even flickered like strobe lights. Each overhead directional sign seemed to shine with a new confusing message. One read, “Angsterambecame #4219127527”. Another looked to be childish scribbles, and all the roadside billboards were in motion like T.V. screens.
I was lost.
And loving it.
Marsupialized broke the silence of our surreal and terrifying ride by half-turning to our freezing and terrified passengers in the backseat and admitting,
“I’m sorry everyone. We’re all going to die. I don’t know who the fuck put me behind the wheel of a car, but we’re going to crash any minute now. I’m sorry.” At least he’d turned the radio off.
Well, that sure didn’t sit well with the backseat. If they were afraid before they were mortified now. I almost felt bad for them. I was sure that we were about to crash, but I was alright with it. I could see that they weren’t, so I tried to reassure our driver.
“We’re probably not gonna die dude. We’ll probably just wind up getting real fucked up. Let’s put our seat belts on.” I pulled my seat belt on and tried to find somewhere softer for us to crash, some bushes or something that might cushion the impact. Unfortunately all I could see were concrete walls to either side of us. At least there weren’t many other cars on the highway with us.
“Maybe we can scrape the side of the car on those concrete walls to slow us down before we crash,” I offered. “Then at least maybe we’ll just wind up in the emergency room instead of dead, right?”
I turned to get some feedback on my plan from the backseat, and the look on their faces told me that I wasn’t helping them feel any better at all. They’d put their seatbelts on and stared at me with pale, blank faces.
“No,” Marsupialized answered, “I don’t wanna come to in any emergency room. I’d rather just die in the crash.”
He was still leaned forward and trying his best to drive, only half listening to me. A sliver of hope crept into my mind so I decided to share it, thinking it might help. I was running out of supportive things to say.
“It’s been a while now dude, we might not crash. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing. You’re doing o.k.” The wind made it hard to talk so I had to lean in to be heard.
“No,” he answered, still half listening. “No I’m not doing o.k.! We’re doing almost 800 miles an hour and I can’t tell where I’m going. I’m pretty goddamn far from o.k.!”
So we rocketed down the highway in freezing, bewildered silence. When I tried to consult the manual again, Marsupialized grabbed it from me and flung it out his window without so much as an explanation. I think he blamed it for getting us into this mess. It certainly hadn’t helped much.
We never did crash, which I think is amazing.
We didn’t hit anyone or anything, which I think is unbelievable.
And our terrified friends in the backseat still talk to us, which I think is just weird.