What I Remember

Let's take acid, she said. It'll be fun, she said. We'll go to an underground party in Leipzig. Where the fuck is Leipzig? It's about an hour or so south of Germany; we can take a train. So I asked around and my friends told me that Leipzig is where everyone who's getting forced out of Berlin because of rising costs is going. The art scene is supposed to be thriving and, best of all, it's cheap. I doubted whether we'd see much of the city, given we would be arriving on a post-midnight train and then spending the rest of our time in an old warehouse, but I was up for the adventure. Before the show she cooked us some pasta with leftover spices from our recent trip to Italy and then we hurried off to meet her friends. Her friend, a cute blonde named Nasty, was having a few people over for drinks. N and I arrived before everyone else. On her walls were four large canvases; two in front of me behind the couch, and two to my right against the far wall. The two which were closest were okay, a kind of a Pollocky splattering of paint across a darkish intergalactic void. This one her boyfriend painted. The ones to the right however were more interesting. They were soft, cottony looking clouds that gave me the feeling of a fog clearing. I complimented her on her work and soon more friends arrived. A guy with slicked-back hair and a French looking mustache entered the room. He firmly shook my hand before sitting back onto the couch in a practiced sort of way. He was with a girl, a friend of N's I'd met before. After a brief hug hello she sat on the couch in front of us with Nasty and the mustached man. The girls went for a break, to smoke and chit chat and catch one another up on the latest gossip. This left me and the stache alone. What I mistook at first as a kind of youthful bravado and conditioned indifference quickly translated into a lack of confidence on his part. I cannot speak good English he told me. Ah, it's okay, I said, Ich spreche kein Deutsche, so you're already ahead of me. He looked at me and smiled. In truth I am not very comfortable speaking in English, but there is something about you which makes me feel okay. I thanked him and told him it's because I have a small dick, and then he left to go for a smoke as well.

When they returned I ran downstairs to the late shop to grab a beer and another bottle of wine. N and I left not long after. At this point my memory begins getting fuzzy. At N's I'd had a beer, half a bottle of wine, and a small bottle of liquor that we were to put the liquid acid in. I remember walking to the train with her, but I have little recollection of the ride. Then we were walking on an overpass towards a warehouse at the bottom of a hill. We had to walk around the perimeter and find our way down. People hung out in small groups outside, smoking, talking, tripping. Inside the place was large and the main dancefloor was in the belly of the building which was only accessible by walking down one of two flights of industrial looking metal stairs on each side of the room. The DJ booth was wreathed in a blacklight-sensitive fishnet-patterned fabric that looked like spiderwebs. I don't remember when we took the acid, maybe just before going in, or just after, but the one thing I do remember is taking too much. What was meant to be a sip was more of a swallow. N looked at me with irritation and told me I was supposed to save that to split with her later. Oops. Next I remember a lot of dancing. I remember searching through what I could have sworn were catacombs for a bathroom. Inside each nook and cranny were couples or little bunches of people hanging out and talking. Each time I poked my head through another hole looking for somewhere to piss I was popping little conversational bubbles and temporarily disrupting parties. Eventually I found a bathroom. I don't remember if I pissed or shat, but I hope I wiped.

We were walking back over the bridge and the world was glowing with early morning light. Away from the sound of the music and the cloak of the club's darkness I realized how drunk I was, so I sat on the stairs of the station to regroup while N fiddled with the machine for tickets. The exhaustion that was on me was not unpleasant, but it was near complete. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Instead N handed me a vegan ham sandwich she'd pulled out of her bag. I smiled and told her I couldn't eat that now. She seemed a bit edgy to me but I didn't have the energy to figure out why. Then we were on the train. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up we were almost home, but something felt different to me. There was a quality to the train that felt synthetic, too typical, or too symmetrical, too Wes Anderson. The sleep must have given my mind enough energy to chew on some more of the acid. It started gently at first, like a sneeze coming on slowly. A smile stretched my lips and giggles bubbled up out of my lungs. Then more of them. Soon I was chuckling to myself at nothing. Well, it wasn't nothing exactly, it was something, but something that isn't easy to name. Everything felt wonderfully funny to me. Being alive felt beautiful. And the realization that it could ever appear as anything otherwise seemed so comically absurd. My laughter was self infectious. I'd slipped straight into a perpetual laughter loop, and I was loving it. There was probably little mystery about my condition to those seated in my vicinity; I was dressed outlandishly, with a colorful hippie headpiece draped around my neck and a shimmering golden jacket hanging from my shoulders. We looked like we'd been out all night. I didn't get the impression that my laughter was disturbing anyone, but even if the police had intervened and asked me to stop I doubt I would have been able to do so. It went on this way for about fifteen minutes until the train arrived at the station and then N and I hurried to the train that would take us back to her place. She still seemed a bit off to me, like there was some static coming off of her, but there was little I could do to help.

Soon we were home. Then our clothes were off. Her body looked incredible. It was flawless. I remember thinking about how perfect her pussy looked and how wet it was, about how much I loved her ass, her perky tits, her eyes, those coy breathy sounds she was making, the way her body would shake. I remember feeling numb and tingling, each cell wriggling with wild sexual delight. I remember not wanting it to end.