We dropped the mescaline at sunset and by nine o’clock I was driving a car full of lunacy through a swath of headlight-lit ever-changing quicksilver forms of strange particularity come alive for just a moment until others took their place for just a moment in a string of moments this dance of transformation was creating from out of the nothingness of night. In the back seat sat Joey and his two younger cousins. In the front seat was my cousin Paula. Joey’s cousins had never taken hallucinogens before and their reactions were loud and getting louder. Although Joey was attempting to lead them towards a quieter place of appreciation, he was losing the way himself and his laughter at their antics was beginning to outdistance their own clamor. Between the visionary chaos through the windshield and the cacophony of sounds within the car itself, I was beginning to lose the ability to follow the way of the road. So I turned to Paula and whispered loudly, “I think I need your help; I’m starting to freak out!”
This was a first for me. All previous trips had been enjoyable. There had been intense moments but never anxious ones. But although I had never had one, I knew enough to know a bad trip when having one. And I was having one, my eyes were telling Paula. “I know a place,” she said. “It’s near the Center. Some friends of George have an apartment there. Good people.” She emphasized the good. Her words were like a rope and I grabbed on to them. They led me to the state highway and down to Center Homestead where I stopped at her direction. Joey’s cousins were screaming something but I ignored them, as I also ignored the fact we hadn’t seen George all this summer and he wouldn’t be too happy about Joey invading his newfound secret territory.
I don’t remember any of the introductions or even the faces of the people I met. All I remember is the couch, the music, and the egg. For a timeless span of the album Brave New World played repeatedly, I disappeared into the supple folds of a blue couch. At first I felt relief like none ever experienced. Every anxious thought dissolved into the low-lit ambience until the only thing remaining was the wonder of music and a marvelous couch. It wasn’t as if I had disappeared completely but had simply become music and couch. I had always been music and couch. And music and couch were just this one thing. “God...” I finally spoke.
Paula must have heard me, because she suddenly appeared before me, and said previous to our leaving, I need to visit the egg room. I followed her away from the music and couch and she pointed to a door. I walked though it alone and found myself inside an egg. It was completely yellow. On the yellow floor there was a yellow bean bag chair. I sat. Paula closed the yellow door. A small yellow lamp glowed softly from a yellow wall. There is this interesting fact I now note: because everything was yellow, there was no yellow. And because there was no yellow, there was no room. There’s a crack called space-time through which the world appears and I had come back through it to see my original form.
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