Thanks, Elle

It was another warm summer night and me and my friend Johnny were entirely too bored. We had gone through our usual outlets to try and score some MDMA from Tommy the Asian, but he was too smacked out of his mind to try and do anything productive. Tommy was on the outs with his Laotian friends because of his increased heroin use. At this point in my life I had no idea what heroin was about, I just knew that from watching Tommy's downward spiral that I wanted no part of it. Previously, Tommy had the best rolls in town. They were always the same; blue Porches. They were pure MDMA, no speed, no MDA, no PMA, no bullshit. Well, as previously stated, this wasn't going to happen tonight.

Johnny had given me money for "some rolls or some trip or some shit like that". Johnny and I had a language no other person on the planet could really understand. That was in part to his nearly incomprehensible accent. No, accent is not even the right word. The man barely spoke English. When we first began hanging out, he would call me on the phone and without his body language and being able to read his lips, I had no fucking clue what the man was talking about. Initially, his girlfriend, Amy, had to translate everything for me. You see, he was from Cullman County, Alabama, and his teeth were rotting out from years of abuse. His accent was so heavy that he pronounced, and for months, I thought he was from Oldeman County, Alabama, a place I could not find on any map.

The third player tonight was Elle Boogy. I love Elle like a little sister. She and I grew up together since elementary school. If you took a Barbie doll and shrunk her down to about 4'4", that would be Elle. She and her beau Paul were broken up and she was with some new guy named Bear. I'm not even changing this guy's name. His Christian name on his fucking birth certificate was Bear. He was only slightly taller than Elle and from what I could tell, White trash. Now, I'm not one to judge and given my past I hardly have a leg to stand on and presently I only have one leg I can really stand on, but Bear was no good. Through him she had connections to mushroom chocolates. A week prior I had gotten some from her that were almost no good. I had eaten one and it was so weak that outside of a few chills, slightly distorted vision, and a little head change that only peaked at slight confusion. I was sorely disappointed.

I had taken the money Johnny had given me, called her, complained, and she swore that the new chocolates were a lot better. She said that half of one was stronger than the two she had eaten last week and she apologized profusely. Now, I had no reason to doubt Elle, she was a sweet little girl, and I do mean little, but I didn't trust Bear. I really didn't trust his redneck friends and this was the source. I picked up 6 of the chocolates and she gave me two extra. I rode over to her mom's house on my motorcycle, picked them up, and rode back over to Johnny's.

"What de fuck is dis shit? Deez ain't no fuckin' trips! Dis' is fuckin' candy. That purty little girl dun ripped you off." He interjected with his laugh, which if spelled phonetically would be something like, "Ah-haw. Ah-haw. Ah-haw."

"Germy," (he has never pronounced my name with three syllables) "boy, I don't know what to do about you. We ain't even goin' to get to try these out tonight. Casey is commin' over here so here, you try a few before we all do them tomorrow night and tell me how they treat you."

He gave me two of the chocolates, wrapped in foil. I nodded, unwrapped one, and ate it just as I had eaten the one the week prior. This time, however, something was a little different. It was the same kind of baker's chocolate, but this time, it was horribly more bitter, grittier, and I even came across some straw like material. I bit the second one in half and examined the middle of it. The center was full of this whiteish gray like straw and powder that was held together with chocolate. Johnny kept me there until Casey arrived. Within the ten minutes that had passed, I began to feel disassociated, off balance, and the lights in the room had gotten considerably brighter. I knew this was going to be different when I got the goose bumps and cold chills that start at my elbows and shot both up and down my arms at the same time. The hair on my arms was standing at attention, and I looked like I was slowly turning into Teen Wolf. I decided it was time to go.

On my way to my bike, I nearly tripped over the curb, my own shoes, and then almost fell over my the Kawasaki and planted both it and myself onto the pavement. Lucky for me it was a very light bike and when I fell, I was able to keep it from completely dropping and caught myself with the other arm. This would indeed be a very different experience. I noticed on the ride home that the cold chills had subsided and I was very much enjoying the warm night air. One by one as I passed under the street lights I noticed my attention was being diverted from the road in front of me and up to them. At one stop sign I took my glasses off and just stared up at the stars. They were beautiful, not only twinkling, but together they were winking at me, as if they were collectively trying to tell me something in Morse code, some cosmic secret that they were always trying to tap out but I was ordinarily too busy to notice.

I decided not to go straight home, but rather, to ride around a bit through some of the winding country roads. I enjoyed this until I had to come to a stop and then pick back up again. I realized that my motor skills were so badly distorted that I had trouble working the clutch and the gear shift. I stalled the bike out, it puttered and convulsed to a stop, and then I had trouble cranking it back up. A police officer was passing and slowed down once he realized I was having trouble. Luckily, I was able to get the bike going again and he didn't pull me over. This was a good thing on many levels. For one, I'm sure my eyes were dilated, two I had no motorcycle endorsement on my license, no insurance, and I don't think I could have effectively communicated my identity or address to him with an English sentence. I made my way back home and almost spilled pulling into the drive way.

Once I had gotten off of my bike I noticed that when walking I certainly was very dizzy, but had a lot more energy, was moving very quickly, and all of this combined with the auras and halos I was seeing around everything made me very nauseous. I decided at this point to cool off, I went to lay down and my head felt extraordinarily heavy. I hadn't even taken off my helmet. I collapsed on my back in my front yard. I'm very glad that my neighbors were good sports. I looked up at the stars and watched as they began to move around one another. Organizing in clusters, making patterns, and then systematically scattering back into their original formations. I felt lighter and the grass felt cool against my skin. For a moment I felt like I was hovering above the grass. I felt kind of itchy, then I felt bugs on me. I jumped up swiping them away, but there were none there. I started scratching all over and I felt like something was in my throat. It was scratchy. I tried to cough it up, but I couldn't. My hair felt like it was growing and the physical sensations I felt were very unnerving. The itching became much worse. I took my shirt off and began clawing at my chest and back. Then as if I weren't uncomfortable enough, my mucus membranes woke up. Here I was, in my front yard, shirtless, scratching like a caveman, all while snorting, sniffing, blowing, coughing, and spitting, trying to expel all the mucus that I was producing. I don't know for how long this continued, but after a while I felt even more nauseous and went to the side of the house where I dry heaved a few times and drenched myself with the water hose and dried myself off with my shirt.

After this show in the front yard at 1AM, I decided to go inside. I felt really warm and decided to strip down to my boxers. It felt very good to take off my clunky boots. I remember spreading out on my bed and wiggling my toes, but I could not get this almost allergic reaction to stop. I turned the lights off and put on some music. I listened to Jack Johnson on repeat for a few hours. The music must have really gotten me going, because I went into a frenzy and decided to clean my room. I use the word "clean" because at the time, that's what I decided to do, because I couldn't find anything and I was getting increasingly more frustrated with the condition of my room. I began to think that my life was just as cluttered and that I hadn't found my purpose or rather that I was avoiding it. This really made me mad and instead of cleaning my room, I went into the kitchen, got several large lawn bags out of the pantry and returned. I started searching my rooms in the manner of a drug enforcement agent. I was emptying drawers into the floor, flipping the mattress over, taking the mattress off of the box springs and the bed frame. I took everything out from under the bed and threw it into the center of the room and then I moved to the closet, the dark, ominous walk-in closet.

At first I was completely mortified by the idea. I knew I wouldn't like what I would find. The door was slightly cracked open and that really bothered me. It reminded me of the scene from Lost Boys when the mother puts the youngest to bed. I flipped out, dove to the floor and covered myself with my blankets. I still don't know what I was scared of or why I had any negative thoughts at all, but then I started hearing this bell going off. I was taking random objects that were on the floor and began tossing them at the closet door wondering what it could have been making that noise: a shoe, darts, a dirty balled-up sock... Then I realized that the sound was coming from my computer. I realized further, that I was getting instant messages from my friend, Dove. I began laughing hysterically. I went to the computer, sat down, and began chatting with her. She made me feel much more at ease and I was able to very easily pound out my ideas on the keyboard. After she went to bed I attacked the closet, going through my things, trying to throw out everything that I didn't need. I eventually nodded off and fell asleep on a pile of clothes in my closet.

I awoke the next morning to a shit storm in my room, I was exhausted, and I really wanted to just relax. I did however finish the task I started, and cleaned out and completely rearranged my room. I felt beter about my situation in life afterwards and had come to the conclusion that I had to et out of my dad's house and get a better job than what I had at MCI. The trip would change my train of thought for the better, and my life would undergo some major changes in the following weeks.