SHIT FOR THE HEAD HAPPENS

(An excerpt from the forthcoming memoir Hella)

Halloween of 1985. I was watching TV in the living room with my parents. My two brothers (one older, one younger) were in the back bedroom chugging away on a bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum. My mom handed out her sweet treats to the ghosts and goblins of Berkeley, as my step-father Henry sat nearby devouring a steamy bowl macaroni and cheese. A familiar fire started to blaze inside of my belly, the kind of fire that raged out of control and rendered my dreams to ashes when the hard stuff like rum was involved. Crazed nights of excess and debauchery usually followed.

I suddenly spang up from the couch as if on auto-pilot, and scooted briskly across the floor to the phone. I called my friend Nick and begged him to deliver some LSD. Less than an hour later, he arrived at our front door.

“Trick or treat?” he said, wearing a leather motorcycle jacket while cradling a brown paper bag in his arms, presumably full of more booze.

I stepped outside, beyond earshot of my parents.

“Did you score the acid?” I asked.

“Of course I did,” Nick replied. “I got us ten hits for tonight. We’ll get the rest tomorrow.”

“I was hoping for at least twenty, but that’s cool. Come inside real quick, before my brothers finish off the rest of the Captains.”

We walked down a dimly-lit L-shaped hallway where I opened the door to my bedroom.

“Nick’s here. He’s got some Scooby snacks,” I announced.

“Hey. I’m Squeaky,” my older brother said. “Have some Captain Morgans, holmes.”

“Why is it they call you Squeaky again?” Nick asked, while accepting the bottle.

“You see this here Fu-Manchu mustache?” Squeaky asked, squeezing his finger and thumb together in a V shape where his mustache met his goatee. “One day, out of the blue, I shaved it all off.”

“I remember that,” my younger brother Joe said. “You came out of the bathroom all squeaky clean. I said, ‘Hey Squeakyyyy!’ ”

“That’s how my nickname was born, holmes. Even though I was clean shaven for about a week eh’, these guys still call me that. My real name’s Robert.”

Nick took a good chug of rum and handed the acid over to me.

Joe got up from his bed and came over. We were both like art snobs in a museum when it came to psychedelics, although he was more of a connoisseur than I was, always proffering theories and speculation on tripping culture. We stared in awe of them together, like we were just handed the Shroud of Turin. These seemingly ordinary paper blotters had the faintest blue tint to them, not all bleachy like most of the acid that we came across looked like. No cartoon characters or pictures of planets — just plain white squares, the way we liked ’em.

“You see this?” Joe asked. He pulled a delicate strand from a perforated edge, like stringy filaments of bleached out cotton candy. “There’s probably half a microdot just in this right here.”

“This stuff is called White Lightning,” Nick said. “The hippies up on Durant and Telegraph still take it. Even across the Bay, out in the Haight/Ashbury. It’s pretty good shit.”

I fished a twenty dollar bill out of my jeans pocket and handed it over to Nick. I peeled off two hits each, and then put the last two doses inside a secret hole at the bottom of my jacket pocket that only I knew about.

Squeaky immediately tossed the tiny squares of blotter into his mouth, then growled like a rambunctious puppy, daring us to take his bone away from him. Joe and Nick deposited two hits each on their tongues. I grinded away on my two blotters using my back molars, making sure to mash every last microdot of magic into my bloodstream. It’d been two agonizingly long weeks since the last time we scored good acid.

“Nick, what’s in the bag?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I picked up a few Pink Champales and a three Club Cocktails. You know me, just came from Jay-Vee Liquor.”

“Eh’ man, I have this trippy Halloween mask,” Squeaky said. “I’ll go grab it.” I handed my brother a cold Pink Champale as he bolted out the door.

“Nick, you know Squeaky’s not all there?” Joe said, making the circular gesture with his fingers to the side his head, the well-known international sign for crazy.

“He can’t be much crazier than the two of you!” Nick said.

“Dude, he’s beyond a nut-case,” I replied, after gulping the spiced rum nervously. “Check this out, the State of California declared him Criminally Insane, and yet he just got released from San Quentin.”

“Seriously? What’d he do?”

“Petty theft type of stuff like stealing car stereos,” I said. “But his rap sheet is pretty damn long.”

“Longer than a ’64 Impala,” Joe added.

“Plus he’s twenty-two years old, been taking acid much longer than us.”

“Well, you guys have been tripping for years already. Especially you Joe, you David Cloverdale wannabe.”

“What?!” Joe exclaimed in his usual incredulous tone. “I just got my perm done! I look more like Robert Plant now than Cloverdale. You look like, I don’t know, like a sleazy blackjack dealer from Reno trying to hit on one of those runaway girls from the backs of milk-cartons!”

“Gene, what are you laughing about you poser,” Nick said. “Trying to look all like James Hetfield from Metallica!”

“What?!” I said, with a tone equally incredulous. “I prolly look more like motherfucking Patrick Swayze than James Hetfield.”

“You’re gonna look like James Hetfield on acid in about an hour,” Joe said.

“Hey, whatever it takes. I’ll look like Milton Berle on acid, as long as I’m on acid.”

Squeaky walked back in the room with perfect timing, and with his mask on. Inspired from ‘The Fly,’ a classic movie from the 50’s, it was made of green latex and covered the whole of his oversized head. Giant fly eyeballs crept up the sides and top, looking like a Salvador Dali meets Robert Crumb painting. The damn thing was creepy beyond belief.

“I need some SHIT for the head!” he said, donning the mask and sipping from the Pink Champale through a slit in the mouth. The acid was still an hour away from taking effect, but The Fly had me feeling like I was tripping on the acid already.

“Odelay holmes, let’s go for a cruise,” he said.

“Wait a second,” Joe interrupted. “Look at us. Three long-haired white boys and a low-riding ex-con, driving around Berkeley in a beat-up hoopty. A little suspicious, don’t ya think?”

I took three hurried swallows of the Champale causing the carbonation to creep up my throat and siphoning some of the rum back up with it. Weird moments just like that one had happened quite often in the past year. Some mysterious process usually swelled up inside of me — my eyes got big and wide — I usually got swept into the mania like a feather drifting toward a black hole. The promise of unhinged lunacy and the peril of acting out without a conscience often disabled all of my common sense. All it took to kick it off was Squeaky providing his usual deranged character like The Fly, and some ‘liquid invincibility.’ Then one of us (typically Joe) usually presented an idea that could get us in serious trouble and I became a magnet for the unpredictable nature of what a night like this could become.

“Dude, fuck it!” I said. “Let’s go for that cruise. You, The Fly, go fly or whatever it is that you do.”

Joe polished off the last sip of rum. “Let’s do that thing.”

“Like a chicken wing,” Nick added.

We hurried down the hallway and made a beeline for the front door, intent on making sure my parents didn’t find out what we were up to.

“Nick, you want some mac and cheese?” asked Henry in his steadfast native Kentucky drawl, pointing at the green plastic bowl of leftovers.

“No thanks Henry. I ate dinner already.”

“Well, you know what they say Nick? You cayn’t survive on just love.”

“We’re going to a Halloween party,” Joe interrupted.

“Bye Rose, see ya Henry,” Nick said.

“You guys be safe and stay out of trouble,” Henry said. “I don’t want any phone calls in the middle of the night.”

We climbed into my light blue 1976 Plymouth Fury, similar to what the CHP drove, but with a few slight modifications. My front bumper was attached by a rope, windshield was cracked, tail light was busted, and the engine belt was chirping like a chipmunk on a triple espresso. And as I took the wheel in spite of having an expired registration, a suspended driver’s license, and no insurance, the last thing on my mind was belting up.

Squeaky was riding shotgun decked out in his Fly mask. Joe and Nick sat in back. I put the key in, twisted the ignition and fired up the eight-cylinder engine. A slight flutter tickled my tummy internally like Tinkerbell waving her magic wand. I dropped the column shifter down to the D position and proceeded to cruise the blue Fury up Dwight Way, then down Telegraph Avenue, right into the heart of Oakland, all four of us waiting on the first lightning strikes.

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely starting to feel it,” Joe said.

“All I feel is strychnine, holmes,” Squeaky said.

“That’s an urban myth,” I said. “Nick, you did say this was White Lightning, right?”

“Yep. I got it from a squid. It’s hella clean.”

“Actually I don’t mind a ’lil bit of dirt in my acid,” Joe said. “Having a ’lil dirt lends it that extra edge. What’s a squid anyway?”

“A squid’s a Navy guy. They get the best drugs,” Nick said.

“Naw man. Deadheads get the best drugs,” Squeaky said.

“Well we might not have a squid, but check out The Fly in front there,” Joe said.

I stopped at an intersection. Three people were waiting for the AC Transit bus. The Fly leaned out of the window to the point where he almost fell out.

“Hey! You know where I can get some SHIT for the head?” Even on Halloween, the three bus catchers looked more than slightly bewildered with their jaws dropping.

“Hey Gene, the crack in the windshield looks like a damn spider-web,” The Fly said.

“Yeah I know. When the acid kicks in this spider’s gonna jump out and eat you up Fly.”

“Hey Squeaky, have you ever dosed on this White Lightning before?” Nick asked.

“Naw. I’ve had lots of acid before, but not this stuff.”

“I know you had lots of acid, but was that how they declared you Criminally Insane?”

“Naw man, basically, I always tell the evaluating psychiatrist that whenever a football team gets into a huddle on TV, I think they’re talking about me.”

“You forgot the part about actually being fucking insane,” Joe said.

At the next stoplight, an Oakland motorcycle cop pulled up on our right. Squeaky rolled down the window.

“How ya doin’ officer? You know where I can get some SHIT for the head?”

The cop just laughed. “Have a great Halloween guys!” as he accelerated straight through the intersection.

In order to gain a safe distance from the cop, I waited. Then I felt something. My head was suddenly floating up like a helium balloon, then settling back down onto my neck again. Usually when the acid kicked in after just a half-hour, it meant I was about to get really high, so high, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Not only that, but I was supposed to be the most responsible one of this motley group.

I sheepishly accelerated the Fury through a complex dance of criss-crossing pedestrians and vehicles, but the stoplights were starting to confuse me. The traffic signals were bunching up real close together. I wasn’t sure if, the red light was for stopping. Green was um, green was going. Right. I started to think… maybe we should’ve just gotten out, taken the bus back home? That’s when I found it — the freeway entrance!

I pushed hard on the gas pedal, forcing the Fury to howl up the I-880 South on-ramp. Heavy metal music combined with the air that was thundering through the windows as we wobbled across several lanes of incredibly fast moving vehicles that were starting to leave visually striking neon-ish trails behind them. Driving on acid infused the experience with the manic fervor of a good war film. The deafening roar temporarily pulled my attention away from my increasingly paranoid thought processes.

“Let’s check out the 69th Ville!” Squeaky suggested.

“OK, but we have to get somewhere safe before we start tripping too hard on the acid,” I said. “And it definitely won’t be out there.”

I took the 66th Avenue exit, past the Oakland Coliseum, and zig-zagged over to one of the most dangerous hoods in America — the San Antonio Villa Housing Projects. Puddles of motor oil, broken windshield glass, and abandoned furniture littered the curbs and sidewalks. Many people who live there gave their dreams over to the infamous Felix Mitchell, the reigning drug-lord of Oakland. He and his cronies, ‘The 69-Mob,’ fired bullets like cheap firecrackers at that time of night, protecting their heroin and crack-cocaine profits. We saw them up ahead wearing sweat-suits, gold chains draped around their necks.

“Eh’ holmes, pull up to those dudes over there so I can bust out with The Fly.” I slowed the car down and dialed down the stereo knob. The flutter of Tinkerbell’s wand tickled at my gut once again as I pulled beside the curb.

“Wha’chu need?” they asked.

The Fly leaned out. “You know where I can get some SHIT for the head?”

Squeaky laughed his best madman cackle, and it evoked the spirits of Halloween. The 69-Mob laughed along with us. Good, they got the joke. As I pushed the gas pedal down with the tips of my toes, I felt the gears of paranoia accelerating inside of me.

“We never should’ve come here to begin with,” I snapped.

“Holmes, that was hella funny, let’s go back!” Squeaky demanded.

“Fuck that! Don’t you realize we’re on hella acid?”

He didn’t. He tripped out on my tripping out. I tripped out on his tripping out on my tripping out, and I thought the others were starting to trip out on my tripping out. It took the concentration of a rat escaping a maze to get out of those dreadful projects, but at least I had a goal of getting us safely back home.

Rolling past the Eastmont Mall I noticed a police substation to the left, which notched up the bad vibes. The flutter in my gut increased as the helium feeling in my head came and went again. I entered I-580 West at Edwards Avenue. The highway immediately swelled up and down like the Pacific Ocean. I blazed up the onramp while semi-transparent skeletons, goblins, and ghouls floated about in my peripheral vision. I was entertained by the paisley patterns swirling across the front of the hood, until the blue and red flashes twinkling off the rear-view mirror ensnared my vision. But strangely, there was no red or blue when I looked directly into the mirror. Making matters worse, the power steering belt was chirping with a tense urgency. The feedback loop of chirping penetrated my ears like a dentist’s drill, digging deeper into my frenzied nerves. The dashboard dripped down with melting black vinyl. The steering wheel warped in my hands. I was out of my league, riding atop the knife-edge of unspeakably bad things that certainly awaited us.

I looked to Squeaky for assurance. He yanked off his mask, revealing big round pupils. The universe threatened to end itself in a cataclysm right there in his dilations. The mask went back on again. The Fly was mad-doggin me big time! That shit-loving, oversized eyeball was staring at me with nightmarish freakiness, taking me right to the edge. Another madman cackle escaped from his mask. He must be possessed. What kind of terrifying demonic poltergeist took over his soul? The metamorphosis of Robert Anthony Gonzales was complete. His Fly face swirled together with manic molecules and agitated amoebas. Ungodly amounts of strange organisms came oozing out of his monstrous mask.

“Hey Squeaky, play this,” Nick said, handing him the tape. Squeaky shoved it into the deck. It was Mercyful Fate, one of the wickedest heavy metal bands ever recorded. The lead singer King Diamond’s ear-shrieking falsetto fused together with the chirping engine belt, driving a heavy metal spike right through my cranium. Deep red streaks illuminated from the brake lights on the car up ahead, swaying back and forth then up and down, morphing into a dance of two pitchfork-wielding Lucifers. The Fly dug deeper. The chirping belt dug deeper. King Diamond dug deeper!

My grip on the warping steering wheel would’ve crushed bones to powder.

Who was who? What was what?

Then it happened again: Flash-twinkle-red-flash-twinkle-blue.

I quickly checked the rear view mirror. No cops, but both Joe and Nick were staring out the window with astonished faces, like they were out cruising the Las Vegas strip for the first time. I managed to navigate to the Berkeley exit right above the CHP station on Telegraph. The angle of the bank exposed us to a parking lot of patrol cars below. I slowed the car down to about 10 m.p.h. The officers had a detailed look at our felonious pupils. They scattered to their patrol cars — flash twinkling away, more red and blue.

Driving like an old lady won’t cut it once we were trapped in this classic Atari video game of Nightrider. I’m not sure how I was to win the game, except to go faster and try to avoid crashing into other cars. Avoiding permanent insanity would’ve probably helped, too.

“What’s the next level? How many more points do we need?” I uttered in classic drawly near unintelligible freak-out speak.

The Fly needed to know. “Eh’ holmes, are you OK?”

“I got this!” I said.

I took Grove Street and headed into a Berkeley neighborhood just north of Ashby Avenue. The chirping belt had softened up a bit at lower speed, but then King Diamond suddenly had total dominion over my soul.

“Enough! I can’t handle Mercyful fucking Fate right now, and I’m not driving this damn video game anymore!”

I pulled over and parked the car. A portly flip-flop wearing dark haired white woman came outside from her ground level apartment unit, looked our way, then did an about-face and headed back inside.

“That lady is calling the cops,” I announced.

“Fuck holmes, I think you’re right!” Squeaky said.

“Just be cool Gene, she’s not tripping on us,” Nick said, as if he was in cahoots with the whole deal.

“Dude, why you freakin’ out? I’m not freakin’ out,” I replied.

Nick’s face was morphing all over the place. First he was this sleazy blackjack dealer from Reno with a sinister glint in his eyes. Then, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“You’re King Diamond!” I exclaimed, handing the car keys over to him anyway. “And I’m not freakin’ out!” I insisted once again. That’s when I took off running.

Joe and Squeaky took off running in the opposite direction as my terror spiraled rapidly out of control. I heard the sound of a walky-talky crackling the airspace around me, reverberating around with its trademark squelch.

“The suspect is a male Caucasian, late teens or early twenties, between five-feet five inches, and six-feet tall. Approximately 170 lbs., shoulder length brown hair, black leather jacket, black jeans.”

I dodged left, parried right, then skipped back like a frightened cat before bolting up the nearest driveway. I glanced through a window of someone’s house. Ted Koppel of ABC News was glowing brightly from a big screen TV. But what was he saying? Suddenly, I had superb lip-reading capabilities.

“Good evening, I’m Ted Koppel and this is Nightline. We begin tonight’s program with this breaking story: A wild chase is now in progress through the streets of Berkeley, California, where police are after a man suspected of ingesting LSD.”

Shit — half of America was hanging off the edge of their seats awaiting word of my capture. Not only that, but every single badge-bearing citizen had been deployed to apprehend me! Now there was a helicopter overhead! And not just one, but several of them crisscrossed! It was not just your typical law enforcement deployment either. They had marshaled in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the County Sheriff, U.S. Coast Guard, and the security guard from The Keystone Berkeley!

I ran up another driveway and hopped a short redwood fence, grasping the handle to a basement door that jiggled but wouldn’t open. I did a double-take and jumped back over as my shirt got ripped on the fence pickets. Somehow I managed to land while the upper half of me was still coming over the top. I caught up with the rest of me in the accordion motion of a Slinky, and then dove underneath a beige Dodge Dart in the driveway. I scrawled belly down under the car and found myself in the depths of a Vietnamese Jungle. Fucking salamanders were slithering all over the place as the world wiggled around like a bowl of shaken Jell-O. I scrunched my body up tight and narrow to avoid detection by the copters. The spotlight would certainly illuminate the frost coming from my breath, then a one-way gunfight would ensue, and I’d be riddled with bullets like they did to Bonnie & Clyde. If I moved just an inch America would see this barbaric killing live!

Then I imagined Joe, Squeaky and Nick getting captured. They’d march them in front of the cameras like they did to Lee Harvey Oswald, scrutinizing every one of their particular mannerisms. ‘Who are these monsters?’ the viewers would ask. ‘Who takes acid before getting behind the wheel?’

The vibration from the helicopter increased, penetrating straight through to my bones. I quickly realized what a delusion it was to be hiding under a Dodge Dart in the country of Vietnam, and then I got it, I might have been high as the sky, but I was still in Berkeley. That meant I had home court advantage over that posse. I told the salamanders to fuck off and then crawled out from under the car.

“I’m unarmed!” I hollered out to avoid being shot at.

I looked around. I expected cops and soldiers but the street was eerily empty. They must’ve migrated over to sweep the next block… unless they’d set a trap for me. Yes it was definitely a trap! I made like Carl Lewis and ran, heels never touching the ground.

When I heard the snarling of dogs I pushed myself even harder, until my heart reached the upper limits. I was running out of fucking breath… I crossed the street… They nipped right at my heels the fucking blood thirsty canines. I cut a right through a prickly cactus garden. A dim blue glow of a TV flickered through a wispy curtain. They’re watching too.

“This is Tom Brokaw with Breaking News out in California. The suspect is now surrounded.”

Damn! I heard that! I was burning up in my leather jacket, so I took it off and wrapped it around my waist. I was running in what seemed like super slow-motion, like on a treadmill. It was not the best strategy for escaping this dragnet I knew. The crisp marine air of Berkeley caressed my face and felt exquisite. It was supposed to be the last time I’d ever experience that kind of freedom. I conjured up nothing but worse case scenarios as my run became a jog. They’ll disemboweled me with snarling Dobermans before a live studio audience! Dan Rather will be there to issue the final command: ‘Let the dogs eat,’ he’d announce.

That’s when it got really weird.

Somewhat transparent green aliens started bouncing up and down in meticulously arranged rows, resembling ‘The Great Gazoo’ from The Flintstones. They had coils under them, like suspension struts from a mid-seventies muscle car. ‘Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing…!’ Those little bastards were definitely trying to communicate with me, but I was not having any of it because I was sure they were in cahoots with the rest of ‘em. I avoided eye contact with the Gazoos just like I did with the humans who were out to get me.

I headed down Ashby, past Shattuck, down to San Pablo. I tried to maintain my dwindling faith that my house was down one of those streets, but my attention got easily snagged by an overhead billboard ad. A suave and sophisticated African-American man presented a luscious looking glass of cognac. It was copper colored with cinnamon notes. A sexy freak hung on his shoulder, ready to cater to his every whim. I felt the confidence of that self-contended dude radiating from his gleaming white teeth. I knew a glass of that cognac would’ve cleansed my soul, got me back to the land of sane people, but I didn’t dare enter a liquor store with people in them saying stuff like, ‘Dude, you hella fucked up!’ so I just kept on moving.

An hour was lost to all eternity as I wound through a frantic and not at all familiar psychedelic rat’s maze. Over to University, back down San Pablo, back to University. Guided by instincts, and a few lucky guesses, I finally found my way back home.

My Fury was parked across the street with Nick and both my brothers sitting in it. All of America knew what was happening to me, but they surely didn’t. My parents were probably watching the news, usually Dennis Richmond on Channel 2, so I decided to just let them know that I’d safely escaped the manhunt, but Joe and Squeaky exited the vehicle and hurried towards me. I lunged up the steps headed for the front door, but my brothers closed in and intercepted me before I could push the doorbell button. I stumbled, thrashed about and made a few primal grunts. Rose thorns scratched up the left sleeve of my leather jacket. I stared an unnaturally long time at the scratch. The beauty of it was dumbfounding to me.

“Gene, come on over to your car,” Joe said.

“But look at this fucking scratch.”

“Dude, come over to the car!”

“Gotta let Mom and Henry know I escaped!” I blurted, making a run for the door again, and thrashing over my mom’s plastic pink flamingos before stumbling to the ground again. Joe and Squeaky lifted me up by my arms and escorted me to the back seat of my Fury where I tried to re-asses the situation.

My brain, fast, can’t communicate. Adrenaline darts my eyes around trying to make sense. I got this now. I’m in a car. The guy sitting next to me is Nick. I took a drug that will wear off soon, and all of this will be normal again. I strap in my seat-belt. The car will be touching down. I’m preparing for the landing… and… we’re back on the ground.

Squeaky handed me a Club cocktail. “Slam this Gene,” he said. It was a Manhattan. Excellent. The alcohol slid down my esophagus and exploded into my gut with the force of an atomic bomb, bathing me in a toasty glow of sugary comfort, just as I’d envisioned this night was going to unfold. But this was no ‘high end’ SHIT for the head.

“Never did like yo kinda drink,” I said.

“Huh? What did you say?” Joe asked. He looked at me with his usual ‘what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you’ look.

“I’m Courvoisier Dude!” I replied.

Courvoisier Dude embodied all of the qualities I strove for. Nice teeth. Sexy girlfriend. Plus he was drunk, which made him a pretty good choice when you needed to be somebody, anybody, to feel human again. I guzzled the last couple of ounces of my Manhattan. My gaze softened up and moments later, I was floating around in a smoky jazz club.

“I’m telling you blood, this mug’s seriously in need of some sophisticated spirits. I won’t even show my face in clubs ’less they pour Courvoisier!”

“Courvoisier? Gene, what the fuck happened to you?” asked Joe.

“Dude, it was on all the networks!”

“You took too much SHIT for the head, holmes.”

“You guys don’t know. Remember we took off in opposite directions? I saw all the shit. Dan Rather said, “LET THEM EAT!”

“Eat what?”

“Oh yeah, the Army! They had this helicopter up there looking for me!”

“Wait a second. What about Dan Rather?” Joe asked.

“Oh My God! Check this out. Tom Brokaw knew what was happening! Remember how they were chasing Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers? It was like that. Mom and Henry were probably watching the whole thing on TV!”

“Huh? Mom and Henry were watching The Blues Brothers?”

“No! They were watching the chase. I ditched the military. Dude, I even ditched the security guard at the Keystone. Remember, we saw Slayer there?”

“Whoa, just calm down dude. You’re OK,” Joe said.

“I’m OK? I’m telling you, they were gonna shoot me like they did to Bonny & Clyde! That’s not OK!”

“Dude, me and Squeaky tripped out also,” Joe said. “But we soon realized that the whole thing got blown way out of proportion.”

“Yeah man, this acid is hella strong,” Nick added.

“Holmes, this is some of the best shit ever. Helicopters? Did you take those other two hits, or what?” Squeaky asked.

“Naw. Just two. But I didn’t freak out I’m telling you.”

“Don’t you remember calling me King Diamond? I drove the car back here and found your brothers out front. We were speculating about what happened to you,” Nick said.

“I remember you morphing into King Diamond. Now that was cool. How’d you do that?”

“I didn’t morph into King Diamond you trippin’ fool!”

“OK look, I admit I freaked out a little bit. Actually, now that I think about it… I freaked out a lot. But you try driving a damn car around while tripping on this stuff. It’s not so easy man. I’m still tripping pretty hard though. Any more booze?”

Squeaky passed me a Champale. “Slam this ’esse,” he said.

I was sipping away on my beverage wondering how the hell all that insanity could have happened to me. How did it all go so wrong? There was so much to ponder. Obviously, no cops or anyone else hadn’t chased me around. What an awesome delusion it was though, almost as good as the green Gazoos and right up there in my personal top ten delusions of all time. Squeaky put the Fly mask back on again. I wished he’d just be himself for a change.

“Gene, seriously, you alright?” Nick asked.

“Whoa dude! What just happened back there? Damn, that was some crazy shit. I’m definitely coming back down to normal though.”

“Well you ain’t never been normal, Gene.”

As I was sitting there feeling grateful for not becoming permanently insane, and coming down from the acid a little more, I noticed a figure of a man across the street, just standing there in front of our house. I recognized him as our next-door neighbor. In the two years that we’d lived there we’d never even talked to him. He was of Middle Eastern descent, middle-aged, still lived with his mom, and quite possibly suffered from schizophrenia.

“Check this out you guys. Our neighbor is standing on the sidewalk across the street. Looks like he’s coming this way,” I informed them.

“It’s The Worm,” Squeaky said. “Reminds me of a character from One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, eh’.”

The Worm had a coffee mug in his hand as he continued walking towards us. Every step of his seemed longer than the previous one. Squeaky had a special antenna for bizarre people so he took off his mask and shoved it into the glove box, opened the passenger door and stepped out.

“What’s your name?” The Worm asked.

“My name’s Robert, but my brothers call me Squeaky.”

“Well, do you have a cigarette, Bob?”

Squeaky pulled out and lit a Camel for The Worm, who took a couple of drags into his tall lungs. They conversed a few minutes. The Worm took off his tee-shirt.

“What the fuck’s up with this guy?” Nick asked. I looked on in disbelief as The Worm reached down, grabbed his mug, and poured his steamy brown liquid on the hood of my car. The Worm proceeded to wipe the hood with his tee-shirt, exuding the kind of attention to detail to which I’d imagined Vincent Van Gough might have done with his paintings. The Worm finished the composition, wrung out the grimy chocolate-soaked shirt and put it back on his frame. Squeaky poked his mug through the back window, looking like a child watching Bozo The Clown for the first time… he was pulsating with low-voltage electricity, dazzled, deranged, and delirious.

“The Wooorm is out!” he said, as if he’d been waiting his whole life just for that moment.

The Worm put his cigarette out on the curb, borrowed another one from ‘Bob’ and crawled back into his hole for the night. And so did we.

* * *

A sleepless night morphed into a cold but bright day, daring me to make sense of the previous night’s insanity. How could I have lost my cool so profoundly? I’d taken large doses of acid many times before. Five hits. Six hits. But two?

I still ended up feeling pretty shitty about the whole thing though. Who am I to endanger innocent people like that? Who am I to put us in harms way just for a good time? We could’ve been killed. We could’ve been maimed for life, burned beyond recognition, arrested and sent to jail for a good long while. I feel that question branding an imprint in my brain like a cattle prod, searing it white hot. Who am I? The damn question bugged me and I wished it would just simply go away.

I walked outside and took a gander at the blue Fury in daylight, hoping that the familiarity would spark an insight. The hot chocolate coating was still there, swirling around in an awkward spiral, telling no secrets. The acid’s after effects still fed me with subtle undulations as I walked to the store and dug $5 out of my pants pocket. It was just enough for a microwaved burrito and a 40 ounce bottle of Olde English 800. The spicy burrito had never tasted better as the malt liquor went down easily and quelled my restless, inquisitive mind. Too much unraveling to do, and I wouldn’t have even known where to start. Then I fished the two remaining hits of acid out of the hole in my secret pocket and examined them. Shit for the head? No doubt.

I walked back home, already jazzed about taking the stuff again. Bad trips either end a psychedelic career, or the tripper sees an opportunity for redemption, or mastery over the drug. Just as I entered the front door, the phone rang…

“Hello?”

“What’s up James Hetfield?”

“Hey, what’s happening King Diamond.”

“I just picked up the rest of that White Lightning.”

“Cool. I’ll come through later today to pick it up. Later.”

“Late.”

I hung up the phone as the alcohol in my head seemed to thin out a little bit, allowing that question to resurface. Who am I? Damn. It’s think it’s going away this time.