Florida- May 1973
Brian and I had scored a pound of great smoke the night of high school graduation. We spent all night picking the seeds and stems out of it. Sin Semilla! We divided the weed into twenty good size bags, all the while toking from a huge blue bong. Brian, a real 'head' from Miami, was telling me tall tales of acid, smack, 'luudes, and other weird drug shit that I had never heard of. After all, I was a beginner: just a few joints under my belt, and now here I sat with mound of dope of my very own. I was getting really loaded from the BONG! BONG! BONG!, and right there before my eyes, Brian's face morphed into a strange blob. He thought it was funny that I would hallucinate from plain old pot! He told me, "You ain't seen nothin', yet. Just wait til you down some acid." ACID, thought. I started to read about it. Lysergic acid diethyamide. LSD. Rye Ergot. A fungus. Psychoactive in minute quanties. "Real" drug shit. No pussy pot. But where in the hell could I get some?
Chicago-June 1973
Brian and I both got kicked out of the house after graduation. I had a car, and twenty bags of good weed, so we took off to his old home town of Chicago. After 18 hours of driving and binging on the sin semilla (which was really from Mexico--good green shit), we arrived in Chicago. We were hungry, so we ended up at a Diary Queen where we met The Freak. Certainly, The Freak could direct us to the local Heads. The Freak took us to Deer Grove Park, a well manicured public park near Chicago where EVERYTHING was going on. The park was a Drug Fair! People were smoking dope out in the open. People were fucking under the picnic tables. Hendrix was playing from somebody's van that doubled as a giant stereo. I sold ten bags of weed in five minutes. Everybody wanted some of the good Florida shit. THEN. Then HE came up to me. "Wanna trade?" He was a real road warrior--grizzled, with a beard--at least 25. "Trade what?", I asked.
THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY
The Warrior traded me 100 hits of Brown Window Pane for 3 bags of smoke! (I am a real wheeler-dealer!). Now get the gist of this: I had been smoking pot for about two months, and by now I already had purchased a pound of weed, sold half of it, and ended up with 100 hits of acid! There it was: LSD. Timothy Leary and all the scary tales right in the palm of my hand! Tiny little squares of adventure! The Freak had done the Brown Window Pane before, and he certified it was the real deal. I was scared.
Thursday 2:00pm
When Brian came back to the car from buying some cigarettes, I had moved from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat. "You better drive, man. I just did the acid." Oh shit!
2:30pm
We were in the car on the way to the Park when it started to creep up on me. My legs were long. The road stretched out to infinity, and my arms fell off.
3:00pm
We must be at the Park now. I recognize the giant green beans. And what is that noise that taste like oranges? Why do I feel large? I lay on the ground staring up into space. I am the Earth. An airplane streaks across the sky leaving trails and I am the Color Black. Soap bubbles explode in my liver, and I smell like a new car. I am floating away. I may never come back to the cat.
4:00pm
I remember my mother. The trees are throwing reflections of gold and pink spots at me. It feels good. I am laughing. What is laughing? Powdery butterflies are in formation like fighter planes, darting to the right, always to the right. Zoom, zoom, zoom. I think I hear a baby crying, and it is sharp like glass. A mass of blue blots out my tongue, my eyes are hard. I can breath if I want. Swirling and churning, crushing and flying apart and building a new moon, nothing like the waving arms of WHAT??? Am I real? I walk like a skeleton and my hands are new toys. The buzzing. The buzzing is blue like the sky and it looks like a quivering egg, and I want to go up into it. Red. Red is funny. I am never going to be sane again.
7:00pm
I know who I am again. But the cheese is huge! A giant piece of Swiss Cheese and I am a small bug inside of it. If I shout in this direction, the cheese echoes my voice back as a symphony. Make beautiful music! Shout. Hear the cheese! I am so very small now. I am hungry. But I can't eat the cheese.
Twenty Seven Years later
If I had a dying wish, then I would wish for a few hits of Brown Window Pane.