I'm off today. That didn't stop me from waking up early though. In the dark, just before sunrise, the omnivorous metal mouth of a foraging garbage truck functioned as an alarm clock as it chomped loudly on trash and recyclables outside my window. One of the things I love most about my apartment is how paper-thin the windows are. It's as if each pane is made from a single wine glass, flattened and stretched comically beyond its means, waiting to crack the moment I look at it wrong. This allows me to hear all sorts of sounds in the quiet of night; ricocheted and amplified by the natural acoustics of my apartment walls, the disturbed mumbling of homeless men seem to come from within my apartment instead of outside it. Then there are the drunken bouts of laughter, the whooping and hollering of young college men trying to impress girls with their puffed out chests and slurring, songbird bravado. There are the more subtle sounds, too; the whoosh of a car displacing air as it passes; the electric hum of an accelerating bus; a bead of sweat falling from a cyclist's head onto hard pavement; the tightening of fabric around a growing erection. Once, I even heard a bird, perched sleepily on a muni line outside my window, farting in the dark.
Ffffffffttttt.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass begins today in Golden Gate Park. I told James I'd meet him there early this afternoon. After the show I have tickets to go to another show: Explosions in the Sky. It's been some time since I've seen them, but I have several strong memories of their shows I won't soon forget. I don't know if I've ever told the story here of the time an ex-girlfriend and I got so stoned at a show we had to illegally park the car and brave a night in downtown Baltimore. I just checked. I haven't. Without further adieu:
We'd taken some time off from work and left New York to stay in Maryland, where her parents lived. Explosions in the Sky were touring and they were playing a show in nearby Baltimore. The industrious little potheads that we were, we toiled away in the kitchen with illicit recipes out of the anarchist's cookbook, baking a kind of marijuana smores cookie called a firecracker. Essentially, we sprinkled weed on top of some nutella and sandwiched it in between two graham crackers. Then, we wrapped it in aluminum foil and placed it in the oven at a precise temperature which allowed the fatty oils of the nutella to leech out the THC. Voila! We placed them inside a tupperware container and brought one each, to be eaten after we parked the car.
We arrived at the show and scarfed down the firecrackers while sitting in her dad's Prius. The baked goods weren't as tasty as you'd think. It was a chore to chew them up and swallow them, but we were determined. The show was inside an old, abandoned looking church, the architecture of which lent a sonic brilliance to each and every sound that reverberated off the walls. When the opening band came on I felt the firecrackers starting to kick in. I was giddy, my depth perception was distorted and everything seemed just slightly off balance. I walked to the bathroom after the opening band wrapped up, to expel my demons before Explosions came on. Once I got to the bathroom though, a piss turned into a shit and I had some explosions of my own. That's when things really started getting weird. It seemed to me that I was in the of latrine of a space ship, the engine of which cooed and buzzed oddly as it stretched out time, vibrating the porcelain toilet like a bell. The walls wiggled and winked at me while I wiped my ass and I couldn't help but wonder how my lady was holding up. As I exited the bathroom and made my way back to the ornate church column I'd left her standing beside, I saw in the distance a giant, bearded man. He seemed to be at least eight feet tall, resting against a pillar only slightly taller than his head. "Am I crazy," I asked her, "or is that guy ten feet tall?" I saw her eyes widen when she looked and then squint as she began to giggle. "I don't know," she said, "I can't tell. He does look gigantic, though."
The lights dimmed and the room started to breathe. Soft guitars and low, rumbling drums opened their eyes, adjusting to the dark. With a crash and a sigh the symbols exhaled and lit up the room. We were carried away to dizzying heights and, from below me, the earth seemed to tremble. I could've sworn the floor was moving in waves. I was high. Really high. There were moments were I'd disassociated from my body almost entirely and felt myself become a breeze, or a swaying piece of plankton at the ocean's floor. Before I knew it the concert was over and the lights had come on. Like a gang of undead cattle on ketamine, we were herded out into the streets, back to her car. I remember thinking that I was in no shape to drive, that I was still really high, when all of a sudden I spotted my friend Alf from New York. Given how high I was, this was not a pleasant surprise. The coincidence of him being there was bothersome to me, perplexing. "Ugh, great show, right dude?!" I told him I was high off of some pot I'd eaten. "That's cool man. Hey, do you guys want to come hangout backstage with me and the band? We're going to a bar after, too; you could meet us there." The crushing realization that I was too stoned to engage with anyone, my heroes no less, began to sink in. I thanked him and hurried off to the Prius.
Before I knew it she was starting the car. How did I get in the passenger seat? I looked over at her and asked: "Hey, babe, you okay to drive?" It was a rhetorical question. I knew she wasn't; because I wasn't. So we switched seats, quite chivalrously. Anyone who's ever been put into a position where they have to drive a car while fucked up on psychedelics can tell you - it isn't fun. I'd agreed to drive, the caveat being that if I felt unsafe, I would pull over. So we drove for what seemed like tens of minutes before I parked and shut off the car. She looked at me and asked, "you okay, babe?" She seemed nervous. "Yea," I told her. "Okay, then, we should get going." That's when I realized we hadn't yet left the front of the church. This was bad. I steadied my trembling fingers, took a deep breath and started the car.
We drove on in the dark until my vision became useless and kaleidoscopic. We pulled over and I let my eyes take a break. Taking in my surroundings, I soon realized something was wrong. The blue lights affixed to the top of the streetlights told me all I needed to know. We were in the ghetto. I considered my options and said: "Hey, babe, I don't want to alarm you, but we can't stay here." She didn't understand why. Her head was droopy and she was exhausted, so was I. I suggested we find a hotel, park the car there, sleep for a few hours and head back home in the morning. We pulled off and I turned the corner into a police roadblock. Once I realized what I'd done, my heart went off in my chest like a gong, shaking my limbs as if I were a cartoon rabbit. In life there are moments that define you; moments that stand out above the rest. This wasn't one of them. My luck was bad and getting worse. I couldn't make a U-turn, couldn't pass a sobriety test, couldn't speak sensibly. I was doomed. Panic pulled seconds into thirds and fourths, stopped time. There was so much adrenaline in my blood it felt like cement was hardening in my veins. There was only one car ahead of us and it was being waved on. I rolled my window down and pulled up to the presiding officer. He shined the flashlight into my face, temporarily blinded me, and then waved me on too.
Holy fuck! I swore I would pull over into the next parking lot we saw and then we'd find a nearby hotel. We found a garage a few blocks away and pulled in. It was late and the streets looked especially unsafe. I think I should take a moment to provide explanation here, to better convey what I mean by unsafe. I grew up in New York, in Queens. I was born in the Bronx, spent time in Brooklyn, and hung out in some shifty parts of the Lower East Side. When you live all your life in a place like New York City, you become adept at spotting places where you don't belong. I had friends who were drug dealers and I'd been to projects and ghettos before, so I was familiar with this unique brand of danger. There were dudes wearing chains standing on the corner in front of a bodega waiting for someone to look at them wrong; drinking 40oz and rolling blunts; leaning against tricked out hoopty's and glaring out into the night in search of trouble. Just before pulling into the garage we watched a guy wearing a wife beater walk into the middle of the street with blood on his shirt holding a weapon. This wasn't a place we wanted to be.
From inside the gated garage we used our phones to try and find a nearby hotel. There was one two blocks from where we were. Reluctantly, I got out of the car and we walked to the gate. As we arrived, a gang of about six walked by with flags hanging from their back pockets. I paused and inventoried my outfit; red cap, red shoes, red shirt. Shit. Shit. I stopped her and explained that I was wearing colors I shouldn't be. We were already targets, but this made things worse. She was tall, attractive, wearing a dress. Horrific images came to me, augmented weed cookie anxieties; of being overpowered and beaten, forced to watch her raped. Two blocks seemed suddenly a very, very long walk. Successfully, with the help of firecracker fears popping off in our hearts, I convinced her that we should recede back into the garage. I figured that if I had an hour to nap, I could sleep it off and we'd be out of there in no time.
For an hour, as she slept peacefully beside me, I kept guard; watching phantoms on my periphery. And also in the rearview, hearing and seeing things that weren't there, ready at a moment's notice to throw the car in reverse and screech out of there like a bat out of hell. It was awful. Suddenly she woke. "Babe, I have to go to the bathroom." Fuck. I hadn't thought of this. "One, or two," I asked. "One," she said. "Babe, I hate to tell you this, but I think you're gonna have to piss right here." She looked at me with sleepy, stoned, sad, puppy dog eyes. I felt miserable and helpless. "Oh, babe, I can't. Where am I gonna go," she asked. She was right. There might be video cameras; she couldn't just squat and spray right here. We became frantic; out of ideas. Too high to drive anywhere, too scared to walk, too ashamed to piss outside. I didn't know what to do. Hopelessly, I surveyed the car. Then, I looked down at the floor and she caught my gaze. I looked away quickly, embarrassed by what I had unintentionally suggested, but it was too late. She reached down, picked up the container and slid it under her dress. I heard the sound of piss streaming into the tupperware container. As it filled, I too filled - with guilt. We were so fucked up that we were reduced to cowering in a dirty car-park, pissing in tupperware.
We both began to laugh, until the laughter wilted and became more of a sad wallow. "This is terrible," I said. "We are shamefully high. We need to get out of here, now." The smell of fresh urine goaded me on, woke me up, like coffee. The best part of waking up. They say smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. It made me remember we were both better than this, that we would never again suffer the indignity of having to piss into tupperware containers.
We drove off into the darkness, out of downtown Baltimore and onto the highway. Highway dashes become insidious when driving in such a state. They mesmerize your eyes like staccato siren songs. My love cheered me on the whole way, massaging me with confidence, keeping me focused and in tune, whispering softly, "you're doing great." The ride required every last bit of energy and concentration I could muster, until finally, we parked the car in her driveway, right beside her father's garden. Sweet, glorious relief. We were safe; back at Eden.
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