Delightful First Trip: Riders on the Storm

The other afternoon, my sister, M, received a call from our friend, C, who informed her that he could provide some mushrooms for us. Since the two of us had long grown rather bored with the highs afforded us by pot, we were very eager to experiment with shrooms. When M returned from C's place, we decided to ingest the mushrooms and stems immediately, equally splitting a $40 bag (about three caps and stems to each of us, though we didn't eat of all of the stems).

Bubbling with joy, excitement, and apprehension, we waited for the shrooms to disrupt our sobriety while relaxing in my mother's effulgent summer garden. After about a half-hour of waiting, we were growing impatient, until we began to gaze at the puffy clouds bumbling past us in the colorful evening sky. The clouds seemed to us very purposeful in their designs and resemblances. We began to giggle as we spotted Mickey Mouse and two lovers sharing a kiss in the heavens. She was convinced that the pair of lovers comprised a man and woman, while I insisted that they were both men. We then marveled at the wonder that is perspective, how we could gaze at the same image and see different meanings, different happinesses.

Tearing our eyes away from the sky, we glanced at the garden, and I noticed that the garden and its forest backdrop seemed somehow denser, as if it were closing in on us, some gentle gesture, like an embrace. Our setting had acquired a lovely aura, as the shades of green and rose, of violet and yellow began to glow softly under the influence of the mushrooms.

We then decided to walk around the yard, on an adventure to explore the kinetic swarms of June bugs that had gathered around the foliage of each tree. I dared M to shake one of the trees, to loosen and madden the June bugs. Bravely, she walked right up to the young maple and gave it a good jiggle. The June bugs flew after us (or at least I thought they did), and I ran away in disgust and fear, though a brand of fear that has a strain of contentedness to it--the kind of fear that reminds you that you are, in fact, quite safe. M told me that the June bugs could "sense my fear," which freaked me the hell out.

By now (after about an hour), the shrooms' effects had grown more potent, and our hilarity had gone deliriously out of control. Every sentence we uttered was funnier to us than the last. A warm, oceanic feeling of all-over bodily pleasure washed over us as our fingers, hands, legs, necks, and feet became less and less capable of movement and coordination. I could hardly smoke a cigarette.

The evening sky had turned a dark violet, and, to our utter astonishment and delight, the sky began to flash with expansive lightning. However, nothing about our environment was threatening. Together, we were alive in a kind world. I looked down our familiar street, and it seemed to have a new quality to it, as if it were a lush painting, or a scene from my favorite movie. That's when I turned to my sister and told her that she is my best friend. Everything was clear to me then: Why do we rarely speak the things that are most important to us? Why not always remind our friends that we love them?

We spent the rest of the trip under the summer-storm sky, a wonderful first time.