cont'd... A funny thing happens to one's perception of other human beings while on shrooms. If one doesn't concentrate too carefully on them, they seem to look normal enough, but their movements appear to be excruciatingly slow, and they move past like images on the glass of a house of mirrors. Listening to the piledriver slam of Axl Rose & Company that day, I felt like a god among sloths, moving to the beat at breakneck speed while the rest of the traffic crawled as if wading through honey. GODDAM, DO I LOVE MUSIC! I was hearing familiar songs in a new language, with a new set of ears. "Mr. Brownstone" hadn't come on that hard since the day I bought Appetite for Destruction. Unfortunately, my joyful demeanor became a bit hampered by the realization that I was lost. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten how to get back to the building where Rachel and Lucas were no doubt performing gruesome acts of sexual deviance in some out-of-the-way corner. This knowledge brought on a rush of embarrassment, and I knew I was probably right to be chagrined, but my spatial perceptions and short-term memory were comparable to those of a goldfish. It must have taken me a good fifteen minutes to finally get in the right building. If you know anything about the Getty Center, you can understand that this is a mammoth expenditure of time in what is relatively small gallery. Still, I was eventually able to get a hold of Lucas and Rachel, who had put all their clothing back on just in time. They had news for me, and it didn't involve me dragging them to the next exhibit I wanted to explore. They weren't really digging the whole art scene anymore. They wanted to go home. This meant I, in my role "the responsible one," would have to figure out a way to get us home on the Los Angeles bus system while still tripping balls. No mean feat. The first problem was monetary. None of us had the exact change necessary to procure the initial bus ride and transfer the journey required (I had a roll of quarters, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice it because I would need it later in the week for laundry). Sitting in the lobby of the museum, I attempted to present our options to the group. "Okay, look guys, there's a place here where we can eat and get some change so we can get on the bus." "I'm not hungry," Lucas slurred at me, pawing at Rachel's hair as he did so. He seemed to have devolved, and was more ape than human. "Then we have to stay here until you are so we can break up our twenties." "I want to go home." Exasperated, I looked to Rachel for support. "Rach, are you hungry?" "Huh?" Rachel, who had been busy being pawed at, wasn't up on the details of the conversation. "Do you want to get something to eat so…" "Rachel, I love you," Lucas broke in. "…we can get something to eat?" Rachel turned away from Lucas, who was nipping at her neck, to face me once more. "I'm sorry, what?" And so on. After a while, I decided to be brave and take them out to find a gas station where we could purchase beverages or some other harmless items and get our currency in order. We rode the shuttle down from the mountaintop where the Getty was located and began to walk the long road back to the rest of civilization. Apparently, this is not what one is supposed to do upon exiting the Getty. The road stretched out for eons, and the sidewalk disappeared altogether. We were tramping through grass, our heads in the cosmos, while no establishment resembling a convenience store came into view. I grew weary, I grew irritated. Under pressure from Lucas to stop forcing him to march, I threw in the towel and took them back to the bus stop where I pulled out my lovely, newly acquired roll of quarters for their consumption. Oh, how the children wept, how the mothers wailed! Waiting for the bus, I laid down on the ground, allowing Lucas and Rachel to get back to their dearly missed making-out extravaganza. My peak had been reached a while ago, and I was sliding down fast, clutch as I might as the remaining quivering strands of ecstasy that were left me. When I put my headphones back on, the music no longer packed as much of a transcendent wallop. I too wanted to get back to the Radisson quickly, so as not to squander the rest of my high. But the bus ride home was a long and daunting obstacle to that goal, and I would have to concentrate on keeping the group's focus if we were to succeed. As we boarded, I looked at my companions and I came to the startling conclusion that I was the father in this little family unit we had developed. Rachel, as a slightly less responsible figure, was the mother. And Lucas… there was no hope for Lucas. He was our rambunctious, incorrigible son. Which, I gathered, meant that he must be some kind of Oedipus, or so I could judge from his relationship with Rachel, though he hadn't gotten around to killing me yet. So far, so good. We were forced to wait in a drizzling rain for our connecting bus in Bruin territory, outside a Subway in Westwood. Rachel and Lucas cuddled under an awning, while I got restless and prowled the curb expectantly. When the next bus did come after roughly thirty minutes, I played the oaf and dropped my entire roll of quarters to the ground, allowing them to scatter every which way. My companions, unaware that I was quite capable of picking up the currency myself, came uselessly to my aid, neglecting to stop the bus so we could get on. It drove away, and we were stuck with another thirty minute delay. By the time all was said and done, we came back to our dorms totally sober and pretty worn out. A day well spent, followed by highly competitive games of Halo. "So did I glean anything from all this?" you might ask. Am I any wiser for the experience? Have I gained insight into myself and others? Well, aside from the obvious need to get bus fare worked out before getting stoned off my ass, I can say that the world is still a mysterious and beautiful place. I need more drugs to figure it out. Copyright and all that shit. |