OF ACID AND WOODS
by Hernaldo Bernardo
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He nearly jumped with excitement and relief, but made a conscious effort not, and instead looked into his coffee. When the phone vibrated for a second time, indicating that he was receiving a call and not a text, excitement and a host of other feelings that make for clammy palms erupted. She’s calling, he thought. He couldn’t help but consider that maybe this heralded a step for him and Rose, because up until this point theirs had always been a purely text-based relationship. He heard her voice gently telling him that she was sorry, that she’d overslept because her sister — her crazy sister — had called her from California and they’d spoken until nearly sunrise; heard her asking what he was doing later; telling him that she would call him after she had finish getting a new shower mat because hers had become so disgusting that showering made her dirtier, which made him laugh and smile, once she had gone to see her mother uptown because she’s trying to be a better daughter, but it’s hard when your mother is such an asshole who only criticizes and makes you want to do drugs, which also made him laugh and smile.
Then he took his phone out of his pocket to answer it. Rose wasn’t calling. Scotty was. He hit ignore.
Though he didn’t register it, he began to feel relief. The real kind that could never be mixed with excitement. He looked back into his coffee and stood still in the spot on 2nd Avenue where he’d been standing still for some time. He didn’t usually drink coffee so early on Saturday mornings, but he’d awoken without his alarm thinking it was a workday, only realizing his mistake after he’d ordered his coffee. He hadn’t put his phone back in his pocket, but was holding it instead. Maybe he was waiting for it to ring again, or maybe he was thinking he might throw the thing across the avenue, or squeeze it until it shattered and made his hand bleed. Then it rang and he was glad he hadn’t destroyed it.
Rose wasn’t calling. Matt was. He picked up.
“Yo, man.”
“Thanks for answering my call, bitch.”
“Scotty? Scott-oh! My man! What.. is… the… happumo?” (Friend code.)
“You are The Worst.”
“You keep callin’ and callin’.”
“He’ll keep calling me, he’ll keep calling me-”
“Until I come over. Ferris Bueller, you’re my hero.”
“Dude, what are you doing right now, and don’t say you’re waiting for Rose to call you back because we all know that’s a lie.”
“Don’t be a faggot, dude.” Michael didn’t typically like to use the word, especially in public, but the sudden confrontation with a truth he didn’t want to accept brought out it out.
“You don’t be a faggot.”
“No, you.”
“No, you!”
“If you must know-”
“Yes?”
“Scott…”
“I’m here, talk to me…”
“I am waiting for a call from Rose.”
“Oh, here we go-”
“A call back from Rose.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So… ya know…”
“Well, Michael, when you are ready to be a man again, our good friend Matt, whose calls you answer but not mine, and I are going to Sling Dog’s country house and we think that you should come with us because when you’re not acting like a crying baby boy we actually enjoy your company. We’re not sure why, to be honest, but we do.”
“You enjoy it because I have a car.”
“We like taking rides in your car, yes. But it’s more fun when you’re there. And you’re such a good driver!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Just come with us, dude. It’ll be fun. And Matt’s bringing acid.”
Michael overhead Matt in the background say “none for you, though.”
Scotty continued, “I mean, look, we all know Matt is going to chicken out and no one is doing any acid, but there will be beer, Michael, and there will be cigarettes, and hot dogs, Michael…. I think we will have a great time. I think you will have a great time and, if I may interject a theory I’ve devised-”
“Nothing’s ever stopped you before.”
“OK, you don’t want to hear what I have to say, that’s alright. I don’t need to share helpful information with you or anyone else I care about as a good friend.”
“Fine, fine… what is this theory of yours?”
“My theory is that you are creating a fantasy, and I say this with the utmost respect, but I think you are creating a fantasy around this Rose girl, who you honestly don’t know very well, and I think that you are adjusting to life that does not revolve around the fraternity and all of the perks that come with it; and I think you might be grasping for something to hold on to when there is nothing there, and really you should just be spending time with your good friends, enjoying life and being the great guy we all care so much about and like so much.”
Matt in the background: “you’re doing really well.”
“And you need my car.”
“And, yes, can we please have your car? And can you please come with us? I don’t want to drive and Matt is already hammered.”
“Dude, I could drive faster than you!” Matt exclaimed over the sound of his own loud chip-chewing.
Michael sighed. And thought. And fought his instinct. And, finally, said “fine.”
Per usual, Michael turned what Google maps deemed a 2 hour and 15 minute trip into nearly 4 hours. Three boxes of Entenmann’s variety packs, two road-side piss stops (for Matt) and one wrong turn down Balltown Road (a named that induced furious choruses of laughter) later, Michael turned the car into Sling Dog’s driveway. The three of them, 24-year old recent college graduates, didn’t particularly care for Sling Dog, whose real name was Sam. The way he grinned his way through his awkwardness and his poor comedic timing made them assume he was an idiot. He wasn’t in fact an idiot, not by any stretch, but there was even additional humor in the fabrication.
It was 2:25 in the afternoon when they’d arrived. A summary of the conversations that went on between then and when night fell is below.
SAM: What up, fellas? I hope you all brought your drinking gloves.
SCOTTY, MATT or MICHAEL: Got em in the car!
SAM: So, all the girls just canceled, but I figured we men would just, ya know, watch some ball, maybe sit by the pool and just, ya know, hang out.
SCOTTY, MATT or MICHAEL: That doesn’t sound terrible at all. I mean, it is terrible, it just doesn’t sound terrible. Do you have any pets we could fuck with?
SAM: Penny is locked in my dad’s room, please don’t go in there.
SCOTTY, MATT or MICHAEL: Oh, we are going to fuck Penny in the ass!
SAM: Seriously, guys.
SCOTTY, MATT or MICHAEL: Dude, where is the beer and also where are the girls and where should I drop a deuce before I drop this acid?
The four of them sat by the pool and enjoyed the unseasonable warmth.
“I think I’ve sent 10,000 texts to roughly… mmmm… four girls in the past… mmmm… six hours.”
“And not one of them has responded to you, Scott, is that correct?”
“That is correct, Michael.”
A number of things went simultaneously unspoken and unnoticed at that very moment. Sam began to worry that his plan to re-introduce himself to the group as a new and cooler man was falling apart. Scotty thought about how stupid Sam must be to drag them out into the middle of nowhere and treat them like a bunch of nobodies. Matt wondered if it was even worth taking acid if things were going to be lame. And, as Michael once again considered destroying his phone, this time by tossing it into the pool, he stood up and addressed the group. “Guys. Men. We are down, but we are not out. We are lonely, but we are not alone. Sling Dog — sorry — Samuel, you stud, you. This is a great fucking piece of property and you are a host with a kind heart and great swimming trunks. Scotty, you have tried to get girls here and, for that, I think you are terrific. But what we have here, men- what we have come to is a point where only one of us — though we each be great in our own way — only one of us brings anything to the table. Matt. Matt, my dear friend. Give us your drugs and also take those drugs yourself and then let’s get the fuck in those goddamn woods because it’s getting dark and it’s time to get fucking dark, too. Do you feel me?”
“I feel you!”
“Are you with me?”
“We are with you!”
Sam wasn’t irresponsible like they. He had gentler ways to lick his social wounds. Sam would retreat into his house and watch football, give Penny her dinner and text with the girl he had been seeing until he fell asleep with brushed teeth. Matt, Scott and Michael each took two tabs of LCD and drank beer by the pool, waiting for the effects to kick in before walking into the woods that bordered Sam’s father’s property.
Dusk brought a lull. Sam had retreated into the house, while Scotty, Matt and Michael retreated into their own anxieties. Psychedelic anticipation comes in two forms: nonchalance and dread. The three young men were currently experiencing the second form, something that was to have been expected for Scott and Michael, but Matt was a guarded figure who was not prone to the influence of fear. But, as Michael was consumed by an unusual fixation on Rose, unbeknownst to the other two, so Matt had recently entered a state of unusual self-consideration. That is, it had been long enough since graduation that he ought to be more productive than he currently was, and he had been having a tough time since summer ended dealing with that.
It was getting more difficult for each to drink beer as warming electrical sensations swelled in them. Each began to pattern his movements: dry hands on thighs, massage palms with fingers three times and then breathe in deeply while tilting the head back. Their stomachs grew uncomfortable. They shared an unspoken regret. Michael found it hard to look at Matt but found it irresistible to look at Scott. Scott plucked dandruff from his hair and lamented it with an abject sort of sincerity. Matt could not remove his gaze from the swimming pool, the waves of which he could not comprehend. So many, so many, so many. From where? Waves in a pool? But why? Why so many? Michael wanted terribly to resist what was beginning to overwhelm him, so he broke his pattern of hand-wiping by thinking about space and celestial objects, and so he locked eyes with the moon.
It was a perfect moon. Michael thought of how wonderful it would be to be unedited like it; pot-marked and flying. It was indeed flying. It always is. It’s neither hung on a wall nor pinned to a board as it appears, but it is in perpetual flight. A lost rocket. Its light was not its own, but Michael understood its nature to make use of the universe and tried to incorporate that nature into his own. His throat tightened and his chest swelled as he tried to absorb the light that the moon reflected. But it was in his very trying that he failed and found himself desperate and sad. Reacquainting with his human-ness he disengaged his gaze, he again stood in front of his friends to rally them to action, stoically, more William Hurt than Jack Nicholson. “It’s time. It’s woods time,” the words crisp with certainty.
Not a word was spoken on the walk from the pool to the edge of the woods, but as each took his first exaggerated step into un-mowed grass, Michael — who wanted to reach out and touch Matt’s shoulder but couldn’t muster the strength — told his friend instead, “this is your story now. I know it’s strange, but; this is your story now. These woods are for you, man. They’re yours.” It was, for all intents and purposes, gibberish. But it nonetheless created a meaningful transfer from one old friend to another. I would love to tell you that the three friends strode into the dark woods that fall night and reconnected with all that is real about the world and all that is real about a person’s self. Or, I wish I could tell you of some odd strangers they’d encountered, perhaps a triad of beautiful girls. But I can’t tell you such things, just as I can’t tell you that they’d accidentally separated from one another only to discover in daylight that one had slipped and fallen to his death because none of these things happened. Well, actually, they did separate, though. Or rather, Scotty and Michael implored Matt to join them as they left the woods in order to expel their bowls that had become unendurable, but Matt was under the spell of psychedelic hypnosis. His mother’s measured coolness spring from him for the first time in his life, and he reassured his friends that he would “just chill for a bit” in the woods on his own.
Matt counted the steps as his friends walked away. After 13 he could no longer hear them. The adventure he’d imagined, the adventure wherein he would wander a vast and mystical forest in search of himself or some other mythical destiny, vanished in a moment. That is, the moment the sound of his friends feet pushing piled-up dead leaves into the ground was gone and the sound of his own feet, inching him nervously deeper into the woods, was the only sound he could hear, he sat down and surrendered himself to the drugs and to the woods. He tested out leaning his back against a tree but it was uncomfortable. He tried lying down but it made him dizzy. So he sat cross-legged, convinced himself into a state of security, dropped his head into his hands and shut his eyes.
Some contend that alcohol and LSD are synergistic, but they are not. LSD either overwhelms a person’s drunk or a drunk negates anything special about an acid trip. Matt’s drunk had given way to an internal contemplation, which was something that he had been on the verge of for several months. The scattering dots of dulled colors in his vision turned into a feeling that he was sitting in a subway car looking at his reflection in the window. His cheekbones were obvious and carved by shadows as if photo-filtered. He had never considered whether or not he liked his own face before, but sitting there in the woods seeing his face in the reflection of a subway car window he decided that he did. He did like his face. The seats of the car were empty at first, but as his gaze drifted from the reflecting window to other parts of the car. He saw a copy of himself sitting, reading from a textbook, twirling the curls of his hair. Then another copy and another, cascading down the length of the car, each immersed in a book or something on a cell phone screen, each twirling the hair curls or pushing back a pair of slipping glasses. At the farthest end, past the many versions of himself, he could just barely decipher what looked like his mother and father. He could feel them more than he could see them. It felt like they were talking about him; then like they were talking about themselves; then making out like stoned teenagers; then talking about him again. A pattern of threes.
With effort he returned to his reflection. He had his mother’s mouth. He focused in on it. The lips swelled up, pursed and kissed. He felt dirty and ashamed for being attracted by them. They were his lips, but they were also his mother’s; the very lips his father was kissing at the far end of the train. Don’t fuck her, he thought as he looked back towards his parents. The many copies of himself were now all fixated upon the action at the far end, but since many of them were now standing up he couldn’t see past them to see what exactly was going on. He wanted to get up and go over, but fear of embarrassment drew his attention back to the window, and his reflection in it.
In the reflected image his glasses had fogged up and his face was sweaty. Beyond sweaty: drenched in sweat. He couldn’t lift an arm to dry himself, though, because this arms were jammed, stuck holding his hips — glued to his hips, gripping them fiercely. Just what the hell was happening at the far end? He couldn’t see, but now sweat poured from the faces of each of the Matt-copies. Their glasses were now fogged, too. Sweat stained their shirts.
He looked back to the reflection and he was a dog or a wolf, he couldn’t quite tell, blood seeping — no — squirting from his mouth. He was biting his own tongue, turning it into a frothy jelly; a viscus fluid that made him feel lascivious, scandalous, deprave. What the hell was going on at the far end of the fucking train?! Heat in his chest (his real chest) prevented him from getting up to check it out. Back in the window of the subway car his own face had returned. It was shadowed, chiseled and scowling. It was the face of someone who knows something you don’t. At the far end of the train the commotion had ceased.
The versions of himself were gone.
His parents were gone, too, and it was as though none of it had ever existed. Vacancy in a vacuum. He looked back once more at the window of the subway car, hoping to see a placid image of himself calm with relief; but he didn’t see anything at all other than the rusted dirty beams of steel that kept the street from caving in on the tunnel.
And then he opened his eyes (his real eyes). The woods were loud but peaceful. There was no wind but the leaves were bade to vibrate by the moon’s soft light. The very soft light that gathered itself in small pools on the ground of dark leaves. Now reacquainted with real things Matt stood up, dusted the dirt from his jeans, and took out his phone. It was impossible to decipher the time through the blaring brightness of the screen, but he speculated that it was both later than he thought and earlier than it should be. (Though the effects of the drugs had descended from their peak intensity, they were as yet strong enough to induce him to tie himself in psychological knots like this one.) In fact it, was 1:30 in the morning, but only because the phone had adjusted for the end of daylight savings. So, in a way, all that had happened in Matt’s mind had not only occurred in a place of imagination but over a period of time that was erased.
He took a sip of warm beer, pushed his glasses back to the crick of his nose, wiped his brow and walked back to the house where Sam was asleep, and Michael and Scott were sharing a couch, Doritos, ice cream and deli-sliced ham.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that Matt’s experience in the woods had the sort of transformative effect on him that an author would hope for. His life, like pretty much any other, — be that the life of a star, a man, a blade of grass — would continue in a pattern, or a series of patterns. Years later he would forget bags of trash by the front door like he did years prior. And he would only fall in love when there was no chance of developing a sustainable relationship. But, every now and again, he would catch a glimpse of himself in a shop window or in the distorted reflection of someone else’s sunglasses and he would notice his cheekbones, and the shadows that carve them. •••
