Mouth paralysis, wurblefurble. I couldn't tell any of the random strangers I stopped what was happening to me, with my freakish mumbly and waving arms I was loosing any concept of communication along with the means.
Also I was lurching. Voluntarily I think - it seemed appropriate to my rapidly deteriorating condition and I'm a heart-on-my-sleeve type of guy.
In the midst of the rising fuzzy panic I was trying to get a grip on the situation. In a shopping centre of some sort, didn't remember why or how I was there but that wasn't too immediately relevant.
I hadn't been hit over the head, a quick head-wound triage ticked that off the list, and there was no pain that might indicate a stroke or a haemorrhage or something terminally medical.
I probably wasn't drunk, there is a drink/time window there that can fool you sometimes but the fact that I was both thinking and standing at the same time meant that even if I had been drinking I was far from that topsy-turvy moment. Besides the angles were all wrong, the passers-by were moving left or right to avoid me, rather than up and down or flying horizontally from floating barstools.
I hadn't been eating anything weird or unusual.
Had I?
Hang on there a minute, that hooked something.
An image floating just off-screen.
Night time, a hand held out palm up with a cigar between the second knuckles and a fat gin and tonic shimmering nearby. In the centre of the palm is a small yellow pill, the capsule type.
Ah, that would be the mescaline.
The gin is a smoking gun; if it wasn't my gin it wouldn't be shimmering.
As the pieces click together, both of them, the dream falls away.
My brain was testing the theory that I had maybe inadvertently broken it, having a bit of a worry in the wee small hours when my self wasn't there to assure and assuage.
Sixteen hundred kilometers away and three days previously I had been at a wedding. That was where the cigar/gin vision was imprinted. That was my hand, and my fistful of dynamite. FSOL's "we have explosive" plays in my head every time I pull that image up towards the light. Sends shivery delight up my spine, like listening to classic techno tracks on the bus and having the hairs rise on the back of my neck as random snaps of old craziness paint a big dopey grin.
I held it together pretty well at the start, I've got more and more into my booze over the years and generally don't feel any need for extra pep in my step. Besides, as the years pile on it gets genuinely inconvenient to be getting too far off your face, there's always some other shit that'll have to be dealt with tomorrow and at least regular hangovers are predictable, mostly.
I flew in on thursday evening, the wedding was on friday and I was flying out again on sunday.
There was plenty of coke around on the first night, and it was easy to turn down. I never really got the stuff to be honest, even before I started to loose interest in powder and pills, or to be more accurate, before I started to realise that I had little interest in them, coke always seemed to a bit of a sham. It cost a fortune, although I hear that has changed now, and does fuck all, relatively speaking.
It's a bit like gravity in physics terms. Gravity is commonly perceived as a powerful force, we are all held down by gravity and it takes mind-numbingly huge rockets to get any size of payload into orbit. But compared to the other forces in nature gravity is weak as fuck, the electromagnetic force that binds matter together just shits all over gravity, and also takes a wee in gravitys gravy.
The humble Liberty Cap mushroom grows wild and untamed every october, it costs nothing but the time it takes to go out and pick a few and the psilocybin payload will blow you clear out of your boots for five hours.
So yeah, I avoided the coke because there's no point to the stuff, and also because I had decided to be a good lad and start behaving like an adult. A messy aggressive drunken abusive incontinent adult. That's where I'm at home, that's my zone.
