It all started when I returned from yoga and looked at my phone. I hadn't brought my phone with me to the yoga-studio because I was afraid some radical feminist might steal it while I lay contorted on the floor in pigeon pose - soaked in sweat, trembling, crying out "shanti shanti." I think it means mercy.
When I arrived home I discovered I had 10 new text-messages, all of them from the Profuser. Apparently I had not responded to his initial messages fast enough, and he sent numerous followups to ensure a more expedited reply. His terms were stated in his initial message: we were to go to the park and do drugs. As to what park and what drugs, I was unsure. He seemed to be having the conversation with himself, figuring out all the details in the message-thread. Unsure if I wanted to embark on such a trip, I decided I would bide time by telling him I had to shower. Which wasn't a lie. I had achieved a pungent and acrid odor on my path toward transcendence during yoga. A mix of sweet smelling berries of dingle, and sharp frumunda emanated from the chakra nearest to my anus.
Not long after the shower, I heard my doorbell ring. I went downstairs to greet the Profuser and his lady, and I noticed he had a peculiar look in his eye. Which was impressive really, given he was wearing sunglasses. Without saying hello, he asked me if I had brought the drugs. Confused, I told him that I had not, because I didn't want to eat any psychedelics today. He stood staring in silence, his hair swirling in the breeze like snakes. He stepped towards me, seemingly without moving, and slid his glasses slowly down the bridge of his nose. "Get the drugs," he said. I looked down at his hands, which were in his jacket pocket, and saw he was clutching something. It was pointed toward me and was about the size of a taser. I thought it best to comply, and told him I'd get the drugs, but I wouldn't be taking them. I had to work Sunday.
When I walked back outside, I found the size of our party had multiplied, and another friend had joined us. A well muscled black male with impressive dreadlocks. The more the merrier, I told myself. The Profuser walked with a caricature-esque gait, and would compulsively stop, quickly turning his head from side to side to take in his surroundings, like Linda Blair reincarnated as a pigeon. I just googled Linda Blair and realized she isn't dead; poetic license. We arrived at Golden Gate park, and sat down. The Prof had taken the backpack off of his one good shoulder, and began emptying the contents. He had unearthed a quantity of food that could feed a morbidly obese man on Thanksgiving. Three gargantuan slices of pizza - some topped with pepperoni and others mushrooms - countless bars of chocolate, rolls of sushi the size of loaves of bread, and some beer. He then riffled through has jacket pocket - which he had removed - and extracted a pocket vaporizer. Relieved that I had been mistaken earlier, I began to relax a bit.
He handed me the vape and said "smoke up." I told him that I was fine, and lifted my arm to pass it to our friend with the dreads. Prof snatched my wrist with his right hand, and depressed the button to ignite the vaporizer with his left. Realizing he meant business, and that he might have snorted enough bath-salts to have stalagmites forming in his nasal cavity, I decided I would oblige. The device went around a few times and, before I knew it, I was lost in a foggy haze beneath the shining sun. My eyes were like an important page in a chemistry textbook, completely highlighted in pink. As he prepared to dine, now sufficiently stoned, he removed two portable speakers from the bottomless pit that was his backpack. He turned the volume all the way up, and began playing the soundtrack to The Man of Steel, composed by Hans Zimmer. It was a deafening cacophony amplified by his madness. Concerned parents began to stare. Infants started to cry, and young boys began to press their palms into their ears screaming "make it stop!"
Unaware of the discord, lost in his dark world, the Profuser gluttonously gorged himself. Seeing I needed to take matters into my own hands, I said "hey, I think maybe we should turn the volume down a bit." He said he would if I helped him finish the pizza. I turned down the music and ate a slice. After lounging in the sun a bit, we agreed it was time to relocate and avoid sunburn. I burned my scalp last weekend while in Dolores Park, during Mud-Butt Mayhem, and now it's badly peeling. My head looks like it was liberally sprinkled with flakes of grated parmesan cheese. We set the course for my place, for the interim. On the way, my friend James texted and asked about our whereabouts. I told him we were en route to my apartment. He met us there, and we all entered together.
I put on music and poured some wine. James ate the rest of the pizza. We began playing Cards Against Humanity, and discussing Burning Man. Somehow things struck me as funnier than usual. I felt silly, like I had been gassed at the dentist. I noticed the Profuser had been laughing a bit too, and I chalked it up to the wine and weed.
Then I remembered the drugs. I asked the Profuser what his plan was regarding the psychedelics. I didn't know if or when he wanted to take them, and had already expressed my disinterest due to work the next morning. "What do you mean," he said, "I already took them." Glad that he wasn't opposed to taking them alone, I smiled and said "I should've known." Then he looked up with that gleam in his blue eye and said, "it was on the pizza."
James and I began to panic, and as calmly as we could we said "what the fuck do you mean it was on the pizza? How much did we eat?" The Profuser explained that it wasn't much; it was just a micro-dose. He explained that the effects should be almost imperceptible. He cited scholarly journals and quoted studies that supported the notion that micro-doses are healthy and good for the psyche. He said the word psyche, but I heard sighhh keeyyyy, and as I turned my head to look at James, my field of vision smeared his face like paint. I saw geometric shapes dance across the white wall, billowing out from the top of James' skull like an Alex Grey painting.
Somehow I won the game. How is still a mystery to me. After the game ended things continued to get weird as walls began breathing and waves of euphoria rendered me autistic. I sat in a chair, convinced that I had pooped my pants and everyone was going to smell it. I was angry that the yoga practice earlier hadn't properly cleaned out my anus-chakra. I worried that my aura was radiating too powerfully. It was about to make communion with the nasal-chakras of my guests. All of this was going on in my head; a sad internal monologue. But when James replied to me, and told me it was all in my head, I realized it was in fact, a soliloquy.
Or was his reply a trick by my mind, designed to make me believe I had said those things aloud. Maybe his voice was actually my voice spoken through his, and it was all in my head. My mind had become wild and untamed, almost feral, like a dog off a leash.
I felt as though I were in a dream; my grip on reality was fading fast.
I imagined everyone in the room naked, to test my hypothesis. Horrified, I saw them all disrobe, and then felt uncomfortable that I was the only one that wasn't naked, like a man with an incredibly small penis wearing shorts at a hot-springs. I was slave to my insecurities and needed to break free from the confines of the white walls. Immediately upon exiting, the breeze rubbed itself against my sunburned skin. It felt incredible, ineffably pleasurable. I was afraid it had overloaded my penis-chakra, causing an explosion of concentrated energy all over my pantaloons. Thankfully, this too was in my head.
We galavanted in the fading sunlight, as everything glowed gold. It was like walking in the wake of King Midas. Everything glimmering, breathing and pregnant with magic. We saw a homeless man in a wheelchair on Haight Street. He seemed to have eaten some of the pizza too. I handed him a dollar, he thanked me, blinked, and had forgotten me. He asked me again if I had any change. Thinking he was joking, I laughed and told him I had just given him the dollar in his hand. He looked down at the dollar and then back up at me and was gripped by hysterical laughter. He began pushing himself, with his legs, backwards into oncoming traffic, cackling and speaking in tongues. James screamed "it's a miracle; his legs, they're healed!" I could've sworn I smelt his aura as he blew away in the breeze.
No comments:
Post a Comment