tourguide2

Very ill prepared (I didn't even have any herb!) I slipped
out back again. I found them in the driveway, gazes still
pondering the mystery of the trees.

"Ready?" I figured they would want to move with the
quickness. But in the minutes I'd been gone, a whole
other world had shown itself to them, and they were no
longer in a rush; now they wanted to examine every inch
of tripland meticulously, and beginning in my driveway.

When at last they noticed I was there, it was as if I was
a memory from a place and time that was significantly
different from the one they were in right then.

Watching first timers must be like watching children
play... examining the world, carelessly and effortlessly
soaking up every detail.

They discovered the mirror like quality of my newly
paved driveway when wet from the rain (oh, added
bonus... it was raining their first trip). They covered
themselves with trenchcoats volunteered by Quentin
and I, to make a sort of mobile world of utter darkness.
They philosophized, they laughed, they smoked, they
were in a state of bliss...

...they hadn't even left the driveway yet.

For the first hour or so, we walked through the streets of
suburbia, ending up (as most trips do with us, for some
odd reason) at the highschool.

From the bleachers we watched the field as they
debated whether it looked like a material of
marshmallow consistency, or whether it looked like a
watery surface. They looked at me for a judgement...

"Well... you're tripping... both of you... you're gonna see
different shit sometimes."

Like tree creatures, or patterns or... damn... I could
almost see it.

The walk back to my house was where I had my real
fun. Quentin would be looking at some tree branches...

"It's like a spider web... web... but it's three, two, three D,
but... ahh forget it." followed by giggles.

And then Toothpick would add his two cents...

"I see, like, veins but they're IN the sky."

And then I'd take a turn...

"That's pretty ill. Yo! You see that tree with the face,
dude?"

And they'd look at it and agree... and then look at me,
wondering how I saw what they did. I didn't, of course.
But they didn't know that.

The night slowly became lighter, and so did their trip.
Eventually, they dragged themselves back to
Toothpick's house up my block, slack jawed, smiling,
with a cigarette in the corners of their mouths.

THE END