THE OTHERS

Bloomington is where it all started going so terribly wrong, but the seeds of my failure were planted in high school. I wasn't prepared for life after high school. How do you prepare for that? No one told me the things I needed to know, or if they did, I certainly didn't listen. How do you make a kid partake of your wisdom? Especially a know it all smartass like I was. Anything anyone said to me was likely rejected without consideration. I was caught in my own hippie trip. Sure, it was 1985, but in my mind it was 1968. I wanted to protest againsst the war in Vietnam. We didn't have any handy wars in 1985, none that we knew of anyway. Ronald Reagan, Cap Weinberger, John Poindexter, and Ollie North were waging their own little cocaine cowboy shootem-up in Central America, but we didn't find out about that until later. So I had no war against which to hurl my earnest epithets.

So I did the next best thing. I started using drugs. Tune in, turn on, drop out, right? Kick open those doors of perception. I started with beer and then graduated to that great gateway drug marywanna. I found I loved me some marywanna. The more the better. Too much was never enough. And soon enough marijuana didn't have enough bang. I wanted to try the granddaddy of them all, Hoffman's troublesome stepchild, LSD. Man oh man, the feelings those three letters bring up even now, almost twenty years after my last tab. If I had a long weekend coming up and if it wouldn't scare my wife to death, why I'd.... It's best not to think about it.That stuff will rock you right back on your heels and no mistake about it, son. You'll think down is up and up is over there and the Grateful Dead taste like orange Kool Aid. And did you see the phone ringing? You could find yourself wandering in your back yard, your mind a psychedelic riot, staring at the lamplight in your bedroom window, panicking because you're lost. Nope, not for me, thanks. That shit's for young people who don't have jobs yet.

Whenever I think back on that time, I always end up remembering Russell. He was my pot and acid connection. He was an angry tough guy, happy for the opportunity to rap some wiseguy in the teeth. I had a gray felt fedora I'd bought at the Odon Clothing Co. for seventeen bucks. I wrapped a red bandana around it and wore it with my dad's Vietnam era Army blouse. I was so proud of my look. I met Russell one day at the dorm. I still remember his slow appraisal and dawning disgust when he considered my get-up. I'd just gotten my ear pierced, which was quite daring in this area in 1986. I was growing my hair out to here and I felt so smug, so rebellious. There wasn't any rebellion in town, but I was ready to be on its vanguard.

The first time I dropped acid was in Russell's dorm room. He was tripping balls at the time and he bade me to kneel on the floor while he placed the tab on my tongue. I thought that was wonderful. I felt like I was being initiated into an exclusive secret society -- the Golden Esoteric Order of Intrepid Psychenauts, perhaps, daring to go where so many had gone before.

Are you on the bus? Yes sir, captain. Indeedy-do I am, and let's get on with it, mmmkay? There are miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep and I'll barely even leave this musty concrete block dorm room. Whee-hoo! Further!

It was quite banal, actually, but to me it was fresh and new and so, so strange.

Later Russell was disgusted with me. He kept telling me I shouldn't have let him humiliate me like that. "Never get on our knees for another man!" But I thought my first acid trip should be accompanied by some sort of formal ritual. I didn't feel humiliated.

Later Russell gave me his approval. He said that's how he took his first hit. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't been tripping so hard at the time. "I just thought your first trip needed some kind of formal initiation," he said. The zap and zing of my neurons responding to that frisson of coincidence, that validation was audible in my ringing ears. Russell approved! I was in!

Some weeks later when my friend Hippie Steve** tripped with me for the first time, I tried to make him kneel as I did so I could properly induct him, but he refused.

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**Note: I was calling my friend "Hippie Steve" long before I had heard of our mutual friend Hip.

As always,