The cats, man, the cats.

July 2004 Dave's first fucking trip.

Finally, the day had come. My best friends Matt and Mike and I (Age 17) had attained our magical mushrooms. It was the middle of the summer in Michigan, which, for those ignorant or uninformed, is very hot. It was early evening, around 8 PM, and we were in a very nicely decorated condo. This condo was being house-sitted by a friend of ours. She and two other girlfriends of hers were there, and they were drinking.

Anyhow, we decided to make shroom tea. We were told it gets you fucked up proper. We had half an ounce of shrooms and we saved 1/8 of them to eat fresh after the tea. So we drank the tea, ate the rest. It took about a half an hour to kick in, but man, did it kick in. This was about 10 PM.

I had my brand new laptop there, playing crazy Radiohead songs with Media Player's colorful visualizations that come in the program. We all felt strange at first. Energetic, 'high,' if you will. We were very talkative. We started drawing pictures soon after, and they were pretty crazy. Nothing worth talking about.

What was very amsing is we also were hanging out with this fucked up wierdo named Jon who wasn't on anything, even alcohol. Jon was antagonizing the shit out of us, saying these totally pointless things to confuse us. I thought it was hilarious. My attention was fixed on him for a while, and soon he picked up a pencil and began to draw a picture of his own. Once he was finished it was hard to believe he hadn't eaten any shrooms, because it was insane. In a sea of scribbles I saw a cross, some evil faces and some random strings of letters and numbers. We discussed and interpreted it for what seemed like hours.

Then we were sitting in the bathroom, and it was kind of dim, where we had smoked weed the previous day (And plenty of it) and we began to pay attention to a little decoration on the floor next to the shower. It was three little porcelain cats, and one was bigger than the other two. It was their leader. They looked like they were plotting, and their eyes watched and often fixed on whoever was speaking at the time. Then we began to talk about how we thought cats were evil and how they all were conspiring against the human race, and then we even considered Jon to be part of the conspiracy. He was watching Howard Stern in the living room during this conversation.

I somehow ended up being the only one in the bathroom and I started shouting, "The cats, man! The cats!" I don't know why it didn't occur to me I could've opened the door and walked out. Eventually someone came and I left the bathroom.

We were wandering the house. It was quite an adventure. There were all kinds of unusual pieces of art and decor all around that kept us amazed. It seemed as if every time one of us would say we saw something happening, the other two would see it immediately after. There was a little statue of a butler holding up a coffee table. Matt said, "It's James' dad!" Lo and behold, it became James' dad.

We ended up sitting on the couches in the dimly lit living room once again. There was a three-candle candlestick thing and it looked hazy, like with static from a TV or something, and then it looked like 3 menacing cobra heads, swaying back and forth. I said I saw the snakes and the rest of them said they saw it too. All this while the ground was flowing like an ocean and the TV displayed the most ridiculous news reporter I'd ever seen. He resembled a pig in a way.

Matt had to leave because it was his curfew (Ha ha), and two of the girls went to sleep. So it was Mike, me, and this girl Kellie. She sat there sipping on her vodka when I went preaching some philosophy that hit me after Matt left. I talked about how pointless the structure or society is, along with the routines and lifestyles that people have come to take as normal. I also talked about how inherently evil the Christian school system is.

Eventually Kellie left and Mike and I went outside for a walk, barefoot, of course, to fit the stereotype ever-so-perfectly. There were flowers outside the front door. We stared at them. They pulsated, looking so literally full of life and the most vibrant shade of yellow we had ever seen. Then Mike said, "They're dying now," and before my eyes they turned grey and withered into nothing. We continued to walk on the pavement, and the sky seemed to be made of every color in the spectrum.

Suddenly I began to imagine that there were people on the rooftops, behind the chimneys, watching us, and then everything turned grey. The world lost its color. But soon we shook off the anxiety, and went back to the condo. We took my laptop with us into the dark basement where there was a very comfortable king size bed. We were listening to Silverchair's album Diorama and I was overtaken with what I took to be the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my entire life. Then we both realized that sleep was just not going to happen.

I had some closed-eye visuals. On second thought, it didn't matter if my eyes were open or shut because the room was pitch black to begin with. The most intricate patterns unraveled in my brain and I followed the lines as the patterns expanded even more. Then, by 8 AM, I was fed up. So I clumsily gathered my things, and drove my car home. This was a mistake, although nothing happened and I arrived home safely.

I declared this the best experience of my life. And Mike and I made it our mission to get more shrooms.

(Afterwards Mike ended up ripping Matt and I off with shrooms that didn't work and I haven't spoken to him since)