One For The Sun - The Party - 1984 - (Part Two)

Okay, before I go any further, let me state for the record, I have been clean for over twenty years, so has Paulie. We are very serious about our recovery these days. I have a bunch of friends in recovery, they are all cool for the most part, but some of them may get their panties in a wad from time to time if you seem to be glorifying drug use. They kind of remind me of people who used to call you a goddamn bony cocksucker all the time, you know, just breaking balls, but then they found religion later in life, and now they chastise you for saying 'fuck.'
So either lighten up or, if you get triggered by some of these stories, just don't read them. 

WARNING: IT WAS THE 80'S - WE WERE IN A BAND - WE DID DRUGS.

I'm having fun here. I'm sure there are plenty of books about bands that only drank soda and never got laid, I bet they are an awesome read, too.

I ain't glorifying shit, I'm just telling ya what happened.

Acid.
Holy fucking shit, you never knew what was going to happen when LSD was put in the mix.
The first time I ever tripped on acid, I was sixteen. My buddy Scott, gave me and Jeff, a tiny little tab of brown microdot. We laughed! Surely nothing that small could get you off. For thirty minutes, nothing happened, just like Richard Pryor, I was like, "Man, this ain't shit."
Scott smiled at me, knowingly.

A few times that night, I thought I was going to die.

What started out as uncontrollable laughing and mind-blowing hallucinations, morphed into an amazingly scary and intensely deep opening up of my psyche. At sixteen, I had all of the insecurities and fears of a kid and all of the cockiness and false bravado of a sixteen-year-old who wanted to be a rocker. LSD gets in all of those cracks and blows them wide open.

By three o'clock in the morning, I was begging God to let me come down, swearing I would never do it again! 

But, when we were walking back to Scott's house, through the misty pre-dawn morning, I had the sensation of my consciousness, leaving my body. "I" was actually three or four feet above my head, looking down on the three of us walking down the street. I really did feel myself go up and then come back down and in.

Okay, maybe this shit wasn't that bad, after all.

You know, I don't even remember how we got the word out about having a party in 1984. I guess you got on the old touchtone landline and called a few guys, and then they called a few guys, and so on. Maybe we put the word out a few days before at a rehearsal since we always had dudes come over for the jams. 

As long as Bubba knew, that was the main thing.

Bubba had a big score a few weeks before, so the word was out on that. 

However we organized shit in the pre-internet day, a bunch of us ended up at a buddy's house over in Edge-O-Lake, to start the party, which would move over to our place when we started peaking. We wound up riding Big Wheels down this long hill on Creekview Drive, in the old neighborhood. You could do amazing burnouts at the bottom of the hill on a Big Wheel, riding on your knees. God knows what the poor residents thought. We were not ten-year-olds on these Big Wheels, we were all in our twenties.

It didn't take much to have a good time in them days.

By the time we made it back to Antioch, the acid was coming on, big time. There were probably fifteen or twenty dudes by then, somehow we had picked up a few on the way. They all headed over in different cars, and we took the van. How were we all gonna party and trip, and drink beer in that tiny apartment? We didn't even have any furniture.

Planning wasn't one of our big strong points, either.

We stopped at a supermarket by the apartment to get beer. When you are tripping, a brightly lit supermarket, with ordinary people going about their normal routine, is a fucking blank canvas for the artist named LSD.

At one point, the mission to get two cases of Bud felt like a Navy Seal operation. We would go aisle by aisle, slowly looking around the corner to see if someone was there, and if they were, instead of shooting them, we would bust out laughing. It was not just any laugh, either. LSD laughing would go from uncontrollable streams of "Hehehehe, Hehehe, Hehehe," followed by gulps for breath, heart pounding in your chest, to little high pitched whines, and giggles. We sounded like those crazy little demented girls you see in a psych ward in a horror movie.

I would look over at Paulie or Joey, and their eyes would be totally black, all pupil!

The biggest challenge was to keep our shit together while checking out, hands shaking, fumbling for money, giggling under our breath.
They were walking out with the beer and looked back, Paulie shouted, "Mikey, come on, goddamnit! What are you doing?"

I was standing, transfixed, by a little sparkly, pinwheel fan toy.

"Why is it spinning, man? Why? There is no wind in here!"

The cash register lady looked at me like I was an idiot (yes, she nailed it,) and those dudes started to bust out laughing.

"Come on, dumb ass!" Paulie called, chuckling. 

I slowly walked away, still looking.

By the time we rolled into the parking lot at the Simmonz pad, in the Manalishi, there were already a bunch of guys there, drinking beer, laughing, and standing around outside. Bubba and a bunch of his friends were there; then, there was Gary, Bobby, Roger, Joey, Fish, Joe, Glenn, and a bunch of other dudes that I can't remember. 

It was a beautiful summer evening, both the sliding door and the main door to our ground floor apartment were open, and Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden was blasting out of the stereo into the courtyard of the complex. That section of the apartments was a big rectangle, with a courtyard, a closed pool, and dilapidated tennis courts in the middle. There were already other tenants out on their balconies, looking down.

I looked at Paulie, "Dude, what the fuck? If the cops come, we are gonna be so fucked," I said, high as fuck, gulping, "I can hear those motherfuckers from out here!"

There were loud voices and laughs echoing through the place, mixed with the music. We had not been living there long and didn't know who was cool and who wasn't.

We had a saying we had picked up from Easlo and Johnny U, that was based on, 'It'll be all right.' But, this is important, you don't say, "It'll be all right," No, you have to say it right.

Let me try to sound it out for you.

"It'll beee ahhh eat." But, you gotta roll it all together.

Or, if you are really feeling it, and I guess Paulie was feeling it.. it's...

"It'll Baaayyy! <pause> Ahhh Eeeeet!"

That's what he said.

I started giggling.

"Okay, man," then, "FUCK, my guitar!"

I jumped out of the van and ran inside, bumping into two or three guys on the way.

"Whasssup, Mikey?"

"Whoa, dude! Watch it!"

I got in, looked around, whew, it was in the case, safe and sound. I just knew somebody was gonna have their greasy hands all over my Kramer, and I did not play that shit.

"What's up, motherfuckers!" I yelled, grabbing a few hugs and high fives, as I put my baby up in the closet.

I grabbed a beer and tried to chill, which is a wasted effort when you are tripping, there is no chilling.

At first, I went into party control mode...

"Hey motherfuckers, keep it down, shit, if the cops come, we are gonna get kicked out!"

Everybody would get quiet, and be looking around all serious, then start busting out laughing, and then I would too.

At some point, somebody put Richard Pryor's Was It Something I Said album on, and then somebody else flipped it to 78 speed. (I think it was Bobby.)

It was all over then. That was your ass right there, as Richard would say.

You could not stop the laughter, screaming, and yelling.

Any hope of control was over, I just gave up, and decided if the cops came, I would hide in the empty apartment next door. Yeah, we broke in there, like, the first week we lived there.

Things went well for a few hours. We were having a great time, and some girls from the apartments started coming around. Things were flowing in and out, to the parking lot, maybe a couple of other apartments, and out in the courtyard.

It never fails, though, there is always somebody who just can't handle their acid.

Me and Joey, and maybe Fish, were next door in the empty apartment, smoking a joint. It was dark, there was no electricity, but it was eerie cool. We needed that joint man...like we weren't high enough!

Then Paulie busts through the door. "Dudes! It's Glenn! He's totally flipping out! I think Bubba is gonna beat his ass!"

I had seen Glenn hiding behind some bushes at some point during the evening, muttering to himself, I should have known that was gonna be trouble.

Shit.

(To Be Continued.)