A night of slaphappy trippiness (long as hell)

I am a 16 year old, 170 lbs. and I ate about four grams of Treasure Coast shrooms that my friend grew in some jars with vermiculite and brown rice flour; as i sit here revising this 2 years later it occurs to me that they were probably some of the most potent shrooms i've ever encountered.

Sometimes, when you sit around too long, you forget you have a body. I stepped out of the car with cool, clear ozone-drenched air massaging my pores, hedges and cars arrayed all around me, streetlights illuminating the parking lot. The dusk was intensely beautiful, and my tripping veins were throbbing with the fresh joy of a night with limitless potential. We had just come down the mountain, clouds glowing purple and orange and emanating beauty in their every fold and crease, a true gorgeous Colorado sunset glowing and spewing with natural light and beauty. If I had seen it any other time, it would have been nice, when my tripping eyes gazed upon it I saw nothing but beauty, a life affirming portrait of the universe. Me, Colin, Steve and Taylor were parked at the Colorado Mills, Taylor hoping to pick up a sack of weed and us tripping hard enough that we didn’t need weed. I wandered aimlessly in the lot a little bit, walking past shoppers and cars, then turned around and saw Taylor looking at me, “Can you try and act a little bit normal?” he said out the side of his blue Ford Expedition.
“Yeah sure man, I’m just trying to stretch my legs a little bit,” I replied, then jaunted back to the car, stood around, looked at the sky, “I’m gonna go into Gart’s for a bit.” I wanted to get out and see the world.
“I’m comin’ with you man.” Steve hopped out, walked towards me, brown shirt on, khaki shorts and flip flops on the feet. Around his neck was a green yellow and white plastic necklace which was made of the same plastic in garbage bags and had an infinity of little strands of the aforementioned colors. It waved in the breeze, the colors bled together freely, making beautiful hexagon patterns and generally emanating a good glow. Steve’s eyes had that crazy glow that all tripping people get, his pupils swollen to the size of dimes. I looked up at the mall we were walking towards, noticed something,
“Hey, did you know it’s not a Gart’s anymore? It’s Sports Authority now.” I asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know when that happened.” Said Steve, and I could see he was feeling that same generational angst as I, that weird hoodoo black magic shiver that comes over me whenever I realize what a massive business conglomerate super-subsidized surreal dreamworld we live in. That building, that gargantuan building, was created as a Gart’s Sports and for whatever reason the sign on the front had changed-with no noticeable change to the interior-to Sports Authority.
“Story of our generation man: Same monster, different clothes.” Was all I said.
Then out of the blackness behind us came running Colin Jimmyson Stewart, arms and legs pumping, but really just flying across the asphalt, and it took him all of seven seconds to bridge the gap between us and the Ford, which was at the end of the crowded lot. Following came Taylor, just as fast but with more effort, and he was smiling-totally sober, just the temporary caretaker for our smashed psychedelic minds.
“Why are we goin’ in here?” Said Taylor, and I could tell it didn’t make a tremendous difference to him, he was just curious.
“I have no idea.” I replied. I who had organized the expedition in the first place, but now was along for the ride just as much as any of them.
We entered the store and the buzzing fluorescents 30 feet above us cast the entire store into trippy netherworld ghost light, shiny golf clubs arrayed along the wall like the weapons of some strange holy war. Steve and Colin walked together, whispering slightly, glancing around in a gleeful paranoid kind of way, enjoying the scenery but still quite aware of the strangeness of the situation.
“Look at all these golf clubs.” I said, turning to speak to them.
“Yeah, I guess.” Said Colin, and his eyes informed me that Yes, we were Definitely Tripping and this was a weird place to be and Why, my Good Sir, are you turned around like that? So I rotated my body and looked at the shining clubs and said,
“I wish I could golf.”
“I do golf.” Said Steve, and an employee walked directly past me with his laminated name tag on and seemed to give me a look. Taylor was leading and we followed him past the gun section to the bathroom, where he said,
“I’m just going to the bathroom, are you guys following me?” and laughed a little.
“No, just walkin’ around.” I said, although I had been following him. We walked among the outdoor section for a time, then Taylor came out and asked for my cell phone and walked off. An employee approached and gave us the Suspicious-Mall-Employee Eye, looking us up and down, then said,
“Hey guys, we’re closing in fifteen minutes, so if you could head out…”
“Oh, yeah sure.” And we started leaving, but Taylor was nowhere to be found among the endless shelves and racks, until Steve turned a corner and found him, and they two walked out on the rubber path through the middle of the store. As we were walking out, Colin and I blazed a bold trail through the circular stainless steel racks, full of bright red and green and yellow and blue shirts and they each looked like some infinite kaleidoscope flower with millions of petals, and me and Colin began following very different paths through the endless racks and I looked at him over all that, and his eyes were somewhat wild with tripping glee, and I began to walk faster, and he giggled a little, and I giggled a little, and as we walked out past the cashiers and the customers-all of them glancing at us askance- little laughs kept burbling out of my mouth, and I was glad we were gone from the place where police and security and Good Samaritans could punish us for our acts.
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The plan had originally been to see The Wall at Red Rocks, and that was the primary motivation for our choosing this night to trip out, but once we realized that there were other things to do, and that we didn’t really want to see the film THAT badly, and that Taylor was totally sober, a condition that needed immediate consolation, we decided to go to Chris’ apartment to chill with Taylor’s sister and many other people. Steve and I had never met Chris, but Taylor assured us that Chris was like family to him.
The drive was incredible. Traffic lights glowed red yellow green, restaurant signs buzzing neon, street lamps emanating pacific orange glow-they made a visual cocktail which buzzed with spidery tendrils of light, shooting, sparking, twisting, like electric sperm swimming in a psychedelic stew. “Taylor, put on some music man.” Said I.
“What do you wanna listen to?” He said, and I saw a light in his eyes that told me, “I think I’m gonna let you pick Taylor.” Which was my thought and my words, occurring at exactly the same time.
“Oh I know the perfect song for you guys!”
The song came on, buzzing hissing crackling, then electronic bloops and bleeps.
“Who is this?”
“The Faint” and the beat came in, a pounding techno beat that made my head thump back and forth like a madman, and Taylor was doing it too, and so were Colin and Steve in the back, the whole car and the whole of our beings thrumming to the music, and Taylor with a huge grin on his face like some tour guide taking us on the trip of our lives, and it didn’t stop there, we soon came to a crest, the top of a hill, and Colin gripped my shoulder and said,
“Dude check out this drop, it’s insane.” And we plummeted down this very steep drop like a roller coaster, and the music was pounding so hard and crackling so intensely that I became no longer Bean Martin, but a sensory organ, a tripped-out sponge--absorbing pure energy, pure light, pure color and sound blowing through the Anti-matter universe.
Finally, after what seemed like years, we pulled into an apartment complex, the air somewhat crisp and unforgiving, and I was unsure of what the future held. We walked up some steps and stood in a cramped hallway, Colin saying,
“This place is so awesome.” and Shane and me saying,
“I’ve never been here in my life.” I felt serious nervousness about this new place, but held my faith in Taylor, who said,
“This place is like my second home.”
We stood in front for several long moments, Taylor knocked a couple times, waited, then he pushed the door open, and the apartment was empty,
“Oops, looks like no one’s home.” Taylor laughed, then stepped in, and we followed.
“This is kind of weird.” Colin said. I nodded my agreement and sat down on the couch, feeling somewhat tense and awkward.
“They’re probably just picking up some alc right now.” Said Taylor, and sat next to me.
“Will he be okay with us being here?” I said, imagining some dark and angry drunken twenty-something that got wasted and fucked around and loved to get pissed off and did not want anything to do with faced teenagers.
“Naw dude, he’ll think its hella funny that you guys are all trippin’.” Taylor said, grabbing a dark glass pipe from the table, already full of bud, and started smoking.
“Did you just find that here?” Steve asked from near the kitchen, about ten steps from the couch.
“Yeah dude.” Taylor laughed. We waited there for maybe five minutes, Then all of a sudden through the door burst Brooke Appleby, bag in hand, smiling, arms outstretched, a maroon fedora on her head, and behind her many more, one with a 30 pack of Keystone Lights in hand, and I didn’t know any of them. I had taken my shoes off when I first came in, but now, seeing everyone wearing shoes I felt some serious anxiousness, and put my shoes on. Then I saw Chris and Brooke sitting down on the couch and said,
“Can I sit here?” and they looked at me for a second and said,
“Yeah, that’s fine.” And I sat and truly became comfortable.
“So this is where you live?” I asked Chris, who was wearing a green shirt and had strange, oddly pointed teeth in his smiling mouth.
“Yeah dude, what’s your name again?”
“That’s Bean Martin, I swam with him for like 8 years,” said Brooke, leaning around Chris with his arm around her side, “These kids are all tripping.” And she laughed and Chris laughed and he said, “I know what you’re going through right now.” And looked at me, and giggled a little,
“This is a nice place,” I said, surveying the pictures of The Beatles, Bob Marley, the thick carpet, two big comfy couches centered around a TV with a Super Nintendo hooked up to it, “I wouldn’t mind spending a few million years here.” Chris laughed a little and turned to talk to Brooke.
I looked up at the ceiling. It was very clearly drywall, but not ordinary drywall. It was drywall with millions of vines and limbs and sprouting tentacles with eyes on the end and it was all pristinely detailed right on down to the black and white irises of the tiny eyes, and they all crawled over each other and squirmed and swelled and blinked and more tentacles kept pushing their way through, it was like some strange forest except they were all made of plaster, and there were so many, I could never have counted them-better to count the stars in the sky, or the atoms in an apple- the shrooms were creating more hallucination than I could take in at once.
“This ceiling is so trippy.” Said Colin, and I brought my head back down and looked at him,
“Holy shit, that’s exactly what I was about to say.” And we looked at each other and laughed.
“Is there anything on this ceiling? Is it just normal plaster?” I asked Chris, and he looked up at the ceiling and back down at me, “Cuz its doin’ some crazy shit right now.”
“Yeah its just regular ceiling,” he laughed. I stood up and ran my hand along it, and looked at it, but this inspection didn’t reveal anything to me, and I started walking around a little bit, then sat down at a table with a guy in a hoodie that said, I think, RESCUE in denim lettering on the front.
“What’s your name, man?” I said to the guy, who had dark hair styled to the left in a vaguely emo cut and thick stubble covering his chin.
“I’m Donald Trump.” He said, smiling, looked at our blank faces (although I couldn’t tell you who else was sitting at the kitchen table with us.)
“You’re kidding me, none of you guys know who Donald Trump is?” he said, and we all assured him that we knew, and he started doing a really horrible ‘You’re Fired’ impression, but it was funny nonetheless. For the first time I looked closely at the letters on his hoody, and noticed that the material inside was oozing and melting and waving like deep blue water, and I was completely entranced.
“Dude, this kid’s trippin’ out right now.” He laughed, and I laughed too, and looked up at him, and said,
“That’s a sick fuckin’ hoodie man.” And got up and left him at the table so I could relax on one of the couches again, where someone was playing Super Mario Kart.
I sat on the couch next to a Hispanic guy in a Broncos jersey, with a lanyard around his neck, a little goatee on his chin. Taylor had informed us when he walked in that this guy, Donald, was “a little bit retarded.” The game looked like it was being played on auto-pilot, with Steve and Colin on the other couch, and me and Donald on this couch, none of us with controllers in our hands.
“What the fuck?! Who’s playing this game?!” I asked, looking around.
“I am.” Said a girl I hadn’t noticed-she was lying in front of the TV, head on a pillow, and I had mistaken her for a pile of clothing.
“oh shit, I didn’t see you there at all.” But now I was actually paying attention to the game, old school Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, and the colors were brighter than they had ever been before. She finished the race and I asked for the controller. She looked at me very seriously and for the first time I noticed that she was a pretty good looking girl, with ripped up jeans and a sideways trucker cap and some kind of maroon shirt on.
“Hey, you have to win alright?” she said, giving me the Serious Eye.
“Are you kidding me? I’m a Zen fuckin’ master at this game.” I said with mock confidence. The level came up and I recognized it as one of the first levels-I was playing as Yoshi.
“This one’s easy.” Said Donald on my right, who was sitting in a very odd position, with the posture of a young child, and something seemed very off about him.
The game started and I was holding down the wrong button, I didn’t move at all, the other karts just rushed past me, then I found the right button and took off, hitting the wall on my first turn, everyone yelled at me, laughing, and I started going again, but it seemed like I was going way too fast, there was no way I could make those turns, and I hit a wall and got turned around and had to flip a bitch, and everyone was laughing and yelling at me, and Donald started tittering like a little kid and clapping his hands, and his hands moved so fast they were just a blur and he kept squealing like some demented man-child and when I looked back up at the screen Yoshi was driving into the water, so I handed the controller to Donald and said,
“I don’t wanna play, I just want to watch someone.” And turned to Colin and said, “I thought I was good at that game! What happened?” He just laughed.
Donald seemed to be doing alright, then all of a sudden, a gopher leapt from the ground and hopped on Yoshi’s head, and Donald started making little screeching noises, the gopher clinging to Yoshi’s head and vibrating around, and it was so crazy, so bizarre that we started laughing hysterically with Colin on the floor laughing and it was all such an information overload that I got up and sat on the floor in front of Chris’ enormous Patton Industrial Fan, Colin still laughing. I looked at the fan for a moment in total shock. Two days before, I had been in the kitchen at my work when the interior ventilation went out, and the heat rose to triple digits inside there, the grill smoke just hung in the air suffocating us, and they brought in a Patton Industrial Fan which totally failed to get the smoke out. It was a sight indeed to be reminded of that while I was here in the apartment having the trip of my life.
The apartment had a sliding glass door that lead out to a little porch with some chairs, and I went to the door and opened it, seeing Taylor, Donald Trump, Mario Kart girl (who was introduced later as Caitlin), Chris with Brooke on his lap, all sitting on four folding chairs, the kind with metal frames and nylon seats. Between the four of them was a little glass coffee table holding an ashtray that was vomiting cigarette butts in every direction, it was like some deranged nicotine cactus. I looked at them sitting there quietly and said,
“Just like two days ago, I was in a fiery hot kitchen with that exact same fan, smoke clogging my lungs and my balls sweating like crazy with some asshole cook yelling at me to make milkshakes. That seems like a fuckin’ dream right now. I don’t need any of that shit man, this is all I need.” And I closed the door and turned to sit down in front of the fan again, and I saw them turning and looking at me and laughing.
Later on I went and sat outside, and the cool air was perfect, there were some telephone lines and a street just below, and I sat back in my little folding chair with the breeze on my face and my mind just settled down and relaxed for, it felt, the first time in my life. Then I went back inside, to the craziness.
Everyone was sitting and talking inside and Colin was laughing his brains out, laying on the couch, huge peals of laughter erupting from him, it was the most hysterical hyena laughter I had ever heard, and someone said, “Is he alright?” so I asked him, and he said,
“I’ve never had so much fun in my life.” And just kept laughing, holding his sides, kicking his legs-he wouldn’t stop laughing for another 45 minutes.