CDMills
Bluelighter
Hello!
I had a two part experience with prescription and street drugs within two days that made me look at drugs in general in a different light. I'm a freelance journalist (about to get promoted to staff writer hopefully) and I would prefer it if people would critique this as if it was their own paper and they were trying to improve it. Should I break it up into two separate stories? Or keep it as one? If I keep it as one, how could I corralate them more smoothly? How could I make the ending better? Does the story just sound too boring and lifeless? I've got a bottomless pit for suggestions and criticisms. Thank you for helping!
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The names in this true story have remained unchanged so as to keep it real. My girlfriend Becca and I each swallowed three “magic” mushroom pills at my sister’s apartment in Grandview, MO the night after St. Patty’s. Before Becca took them, she let me know exactly how nervous she was. In the three and a half years we’ve been together, she had never even been stoned before.
We set up to chill at my sister’s place, with about four or five other people. I cracked some jokes with my sister and her friends while the effect was beginning to kick in for Becca. After about a half an hour, she said she was seeing red and orange colors across the entire room. I wasn’t tripping at all. No body high, no colors, no laughing, nothing. She said many objects in the room were “moving in and out.” I may have been a bit jealous of her, so I wrote her delusions off as baloney in my own mind. I should’ve known that she was feeling it by her laughing and drunken style walking.
My sister brought up an incident which occurred on St. Patty’s night at her apartment. I had taken a monumental dump in the toilet of my sister’s bathroom that night. With my green shirt on, I had a hectic day earlier (forgot my ID at the bars in Westport and spent the rest of the day in Harrisonville, MO trying to get a new license) and must’ve simply been holding it all day. Anyway, when I finished my business I went back out into the living room and announced that the “water was little high” after somebody asked if I clogged the toilet. The males in the room laughed while the girls expressed their disgust. About an hour later (after somebody fucked with it) the toilet overflowed, inciting screams from my sister and her friends. I ended up having to clean it all up before I left.
On the next night with Becca, I sarcastically asked my sister’s roommate if I could “take the Browns to the Super Bowl, again,” again to much amusement of the guys in the room. Then her and my sister began talking about the sanitary things they put in the toilet that they “shouldn’t.” I didn’t really have an idea of what they were talking about, unless they were talking about female care items.
“Yea, that’s the numba’ one clogga’,” Becca said, looking up from her cell phone. The unusual way she said it was hilarious and the room erupted into laughter.
“Like the Numba’ One Stunna’?” I asked, to more laughter.
Oddly enough, we were all passing around high school yearbooks while we lounged on the couches and I in a “Nintendo chair.” I still wasn’t feeling anything at all from the shroom pills. Just a week before, Ryan, Joel, Trevor and I tripped balls at Trevor’s apartment in Gladstone. He had a perfect view of the downtown Kansas City skyline from his small deck outside the back door. Aside from Trevor “spazzing out” (he said later that he felt like he was drowning, and I believe it), we hysterically, uncontrollably, unreasonably laughed until our smiles and stomachs hurt for close to four hours straight.
Wondering why I wasn’t tripping whatsoever with Becca on Friday night, I remembered something Ryan had told me that I mistakenly ignored. “You can’t trip shrooms multiple times in a short period, “he explained, “You’ve gotta wait a couple months. It’s too much sensory overload.” I knew the possibility of having the same trip as I did a week ago was 50/50, but I simply didn’t feel a thing from the shrooms. Becca on the other hand, was in her own experience. Becca was still telling my sister and me that her “legs tingled” and the window shades were swaying forcibly.
The rest of my sister’s guests left, with the time approaching three a.m. Becca and I decided to leave also. I walked down the stairs to the door leading to outside the apartment building, and looked behind me, not hearing Becca’s footsteps pacing along with me. She was still at the top step, looking in every direction except down and at me. “What are you doing?” I asked bluntly.
“Hold on, I’m trying to see something.”
I waited for her as she took small, slow steps down the stairs. I was getting frustrated. We walked out the door and I walked briskly to my car, parked right outside the building. I looked behind, amazed that Becca seemed to be slithering along, way behind me still. “Do you know you’re walking really slow?” I asked, trying not to piss her off.
“Yes!”
“Why are you walking so slowly?” I inquired.
“Because you’re a jerk,” she informed me.
All I could do was leave my mouth open, speechless. I hadn’t done anything to her. I even “cuddled” somewhat, which she often times requires. She picked up the pace a bit and we got in the car, where I noticed she was crying. We argued about what we were feeling, a dead end debate we’ve had many times.
We jetted out of Grandview, hopping onto 71 highway south towards Raymore. Becca was still crying and we were still arguing until we got to the Raymore exit. I wished she would just shut up. I wanted to go home but I knew if we didn’t settle this now, we’d just make it worse by dragging it into the house. I decided to roll 58 highway, a four lane road that cuts Raymore in half.
“Everything just got really dark,” I said. The road at a couple points doesn’t have many streetlights, and darkness fell.
“I know!” she said laughing.
“Do you want to go out in the country some-” I asked, offering a truce.
“Okay,” she said quickly, as if eager to explore on her trip.
“I know the perfect place.” From then on Becca laughed and cried simultaneously for almost three hours straight. I hung a left on Hubach Hill and took it over J highway to a new housing development under construction, but completely deserted at night. I turned the car around so it was facing out onto the road we had come. It is kind of a creepy place until you get used to it after a few minutes.
As we got out of the car, she kept telling me how “beautiful” the Chicago poster was in my sister’s living room. She said the colors were transfixing and glowing, topped off with moving traffic in the scene, appearing to be aglow.
“I came here by myself last summer to watch the meteor shower,” I reminded her. “I probably saw almost twenty of them.”
The night air wasn’t too bad, but with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour it was agony to stand out there with short sleeves on. I had given her my navy blue jacket which my dad used more than I did nowadays. My dad and I tend to wear each others clothes quite often. He was actually voted “best dressed” in high school. He joked later with the family that “I guess no one noticed that I wore the same clothes everyday.“
I held Becca for a long time in the cold and dark. She suddenly pulled away and said, “Why is that stop sign so small and the telephone pole so big?” I didn’t say anything.
“What do you mean?” I finally asked.
“The pole is getting bigger. No. I mean the pole is getting closer,” she described.
“Joel said the same thing was happening to different things in Trevor’s apartment,” I told her. She didn’t say it, but she seemed happy that she wasn’t the only one. She stared at the night sky for a minute.
“It looks like a ceiling,” she said of the sky.
“Yea and it doesn’t look all that far away does it?” I added. She nodded in agreement. If the wind wasn’t so strong, we would’ve been able to hear the “mooing” of cows surrounding the area.
“It feels like I’m in a movie out here,” she said.
I couldn’t believe that Becca wanted to stay outside, when I urged her to get back in the car, for I was cold. We closed the doors, and Becca was overcome, crying more still. After about thirty seconds, the interior light inside my car went off.
She gasped and looked out hastily through the windows in all directions. “Everything just turned purple.” I laughed hard at that, as I could definitely see what she was talking about. The dark location caused the horizon to pose the faintest shade of deep purple. I drove off to find another place to go.
“How about we go to the place where me and Mike used to smoke way back in the day,” I proclaimed. The spot was off of School Road in Recreation Park, fixed behind four baseball fields. Mike and I used to get “old school high” off marijuana and we would rock out to smoking tunes like Scarface, Taproot, Korn and Nas.
As soon as I parked in a dark, lonely place behind a playground, Becca said, “We’ve had sex here before haven’t we?” I laughed, having nearly forgotten.
By that point, there was no doubt in my mind that Becca was tripping. I rolled the window down and lit a cigarette while she spewed everything that was racing through her mind. She even had the competence to go back to a point she made ten stories before. Once, she grabbed some pictures from under my sun visor.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if you put a picture in you dashboard of yourself?” she asked.
“Yea I guess so.”
I put a picture of myself with a beer can raised to my head with a cheesy smile on my face. It looked very sarcastic. Around four thirty in the morning, Becca was still crying and laughing at the same time. She got quiet for a brief moment. I wiped tears away from under her right eye. She turned her face for a fraction of a second so that shadows fell over her face. She turned her head right back around in the light, and it was as if I hadn’t even tried.
A light pole in the middle of the baseball complex would come on and go off, then come on and go off, over and over again. It was very odd; I could only imagine what it would’ve been like for someone tripping. I had serious déjà vu from the days me and Mike got smoked out at the park.
Becca then gradually slipped into her introspective and thoughtful phase. I knew she was still tripping stronger than ever, but it was destined to come to an end soon. “Does it suck when you come down off shrooms?” she asked.
“Yea. But it’s not too bad with this batch, it seems.”
“I don’t want that to happen!” she said ghastly, sending her into another episode of crying and laughing.
She was talking about something having to do with experiences, and had a revelation.
“You can’t go back to a moment,” she said looking into my eyes thoughtfully, “Remember that I said that.”
I thought about it for a minute and it made complete sense. “I will sweetie.” My eyes welled up, but quickly dissipated after I blinked a couple times.
“Can we get more shrooms, like tomorrow?” She said laughing. Then I explained to her why I wasn’t tripping. And only then did we figure out why we weren’t on the same page at my sister’s apartment. She and I both were mutually frustrated that we weren’t tripping together.
“I want to call Joel,” she said.
“He was pretty pissed last night when you called him, looking for me at five in the morning. Do what you want, but you better tell him something monumental!” and we laughed.
“I feel like I completely understand you and you’re friends now,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She elaborated, “I just feel like I can understand the things that you laugh about. And I know why you guys did drugs all the time. I never knew drugs could be like this.”
“Remember the days where I would get so stoned that I wouldn’t call you, and leave you worrying for hours?”
“Yea, like that!” she cried out.
“It was funny over at Trevor’s when we were tripping and my cell phone rang and Ryan said, “Whoa, news from the outside world.”
“Exactly!” she said. “You might as well tell me now if you’ve ever cheated on me because I’d probably just start laughing.” I always hated when she said things like that. We’ve been together for three and a half years, and not once had I so much as touched another girl. She told me that she was having the greatest night of her life.
By now, she was cramped on the floor below the passenger seat with her knees tucked under her chin. I asked her why she wasn’t sitting in her seat, and she replied while laughing, “I don’t know!”
Crying now all of a sudden, she said, “I’m a mess. I feel so dirty.” I didn’t say so, but she looked nothing like her regular self.
Suddenly she looked as if she’d seen a ghost, and froze. “Oh my God,” she said “It’s gone.” I knew she had been tripping for a while, and I was fully expecting her to come down soon. The thing with these shroom pills as I‘ve come to find out, is that when you come down, you know it immediately. Her expression saddened, and she fantasized, “I wish I could find a way to feel just like this everyday.”
For some reason I wanted to leave our spot and go drive to another park that I knew of. She protested, “I don’t want to leave!” She was obviously trying to hold on to her experience for as long as possible.
“Okay, alright,” and I began to turn around in the parking lot.
“No!” she wailed, “You can’t go back to a moment, remember?!”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I drove the two of us back to my house where Becca was to spend the night. I turned of the engine and we just sat in the driveway. I was hoping that she wouldn’t wake up my parents when we went inside, but I figured that this night and our new connection was worth more.
“This town creeps me out,” she said strangely.
I wondered aloud, “Why is that?”
“Because it’s almost too perfect. The houses, the neighborhoods, the trees, the people…it’s like I’m in the movie “Pleasantville,” with Reese Witherspoon and Toby Maguire.” I had never heard of that movie, but I thought her explanation was amusing.
Then she told me that she wished I’d have “realistic goals.” Now I knew she was coming down because that statement had to be the first negative point brought up by her since we left my sister’s apartment.
She was still wearing my navy jacket. “I’m sorry; I’ve been wiping my tears and my nose on the sleeves.”
“You can keep it,” I told her.
“Really? Whenever I wear it, I’ll think of you and of this night. She lunged at me from the passenger seat towards me and hugged me tight. “This is the best gift anyone’s ever given me,” she said solemnly.
About twenty minutes later, still in the car, she said, “I love you more.” This was a very common phrase that we said to each other after the first one says, “I love you.” But her voice sounded so serious this time.
I felt amazed and curious, “You mean you love me more after tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked, almost taking offense to it. It was not uncommon for me to tell Becca that she looked more gorgeous everyday, and that I loved her more everyday, but this was different.
“I already love you more than anything, but I feel like my love for you has been strengthened even more after tonight.”
With that, we went inside and sat at the kitchen table in the dark, drinking water. Her posture was still a wreck of sorts. “I feel like stick-girl,” she said. Her legs were wobbly and she was walking a little awkwardly, in an odd, “skeletal” way.
We sat at the kitchen table and I asked her what she thought of her trip. “I didn’t think it was weird, just beautiful. The only thing I could relate it to would be alcohol, because that’s all I’ve done before tonight, you know?” I nodded. “You don’t forget things like you do when you’re drunk. I feel like my mind and imagination have been replenished.” Her speech was now labored a bit.
“Let me tell you something,” I began, “You had the classic first time shroom experience, honestly.”
“I really did have the best night of my life,” she said.
“I believe you sweetie.”
We came close for a slow, passionate kiss. Our lips came apart just as slowly, and as I leaned back into my seat, I said, “It feels so real to kiss you right now.” She couldn’t contain her smile, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
Mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted, with nothing on my mind but my girlfriend, I arrived at Joel’s house (a close friend) at around 8:45 p.m. the next night. The plan was to go to Westport when Ryan got off work where he was a waiter at a fancy, upscale Italian restaurant on the Kansas side of the state line. One of his relatives answered the door. I made my way downstairs to Joel’s spacious “bedroom.” Standing behind the bar, decorated with bottles and liquor signs, he earnestly and sarcastically asked with one question, “What can I get you?”
I laughed and said, “I’ll go for a Miller Lite, what else?” Since I started hanging out with Joel on a regular basis (about nine to twelve months ago) he has turned me on to Miller Lite rather than Bud Light. A weed smoker since his childhood, he’s proven to be more aware of the ways of the world than practically anyone I know. He played a CD for us that he had just picked up earlier that day; somebody or somebody’s named Cornershop.
“This reminds me of that Mushroom Jazz shit we were listening to over at Trevor’s when we were tripping, “ he mentioned. I agreed starkly, for Mark Farina was one of my favorite DJ’s in the world. Awaiting a call from Ryan, we drank a couple beers a piece and decided to head to a bar called Tanner’s in Lee’s Summit, a KC suburb with a surprisingly decent amount of bars and clubs to pick from.
“Man!,” I called out as we cruised down the highway, “Nothing feels as though it could go wrong while listening to this shit!”
“Hell yea!” he replied. In retrospect, I should’ve had that album pouring out of personal headphones for the remainder of the night.
Tanner’s was packed on this Saturday night. Joel ordered a Miller Lite in a bottle.
Since I turned 21, I’ve learned what to ask before blindly wasting money at the bars. “What kind of drink specials do you have tonight,” I inquired. After I paid just two dollars and fifty cents for a big draw, Joel regretted making his own decision.
“Let’s go sit at a table,” he suggested. We found one of the few empty tables in the whole place and casually sipped our beers. I usually don’t baby my alcohol, but somehow I knew my Miller Lite was going to be lukewarm by the time I finished it. NCAA tournament highlights flashed across the huge screen behind us.
After concluding a phone call Joel received, he informed me that Trevor was going to be meeting us at the bar. Within twenty minutes, all three of us were shaking hands and toasting. I told Trevor and Joel about the “greatest night” of Becca’s life the day before. We began talking about the summer, and about possibly tripping again on the Fourth of July. I had been anxious about the pick up basketball games sure to go down during these increasingly warm months. Trevor was adamant about his personal goals for the summer, including ditching cigarettes.
The three of us finished our drinks and headed to the parking lot where Joel was to transport us to Buffalo Wild Wings, another bar in town. Trevor was enamored with the danceable CD Joel had just purchased. We stepped through the doors of Wild Wings to meet a bunch of acquaintances and friends we knew who worked at On The Border, just next door. A longtime friend of mine, Mike approached the group and we shook hands. “Becca had the greatest night of her life last night,” I happily reported to him. He seemed drunk, because he was rather unemotional and very flat.
We sat at the bar and ordered another round of Miller Lite. Before long, Trevor said he would put three “fire ass” shots for us on his tab. I don’t remember what was in it, other than a lot of hot sauce. I decided to chill on my beer and let myself regulate for a few minutes. Joel received another call on his cell phone about an hour later.
“Ryan said there was a party at Aaron’s house for Steve Stone.” I hadn’t seen Steve since he went to the Middle East for the military. We used to be tight back in the day and I desperately wanted to at least shout him a holler. Chances were, I figured, he was heading back to the front lines within the next few days. Every time Steve came in or out of town, there was a party waiting just for him.
“Let’s go!” I said to Joel. Trevor concurred.
Joel replied, “I’m tired, so I think I’m gonna go home. I’ll lead you two out there if you want.”
I had been over to Aaron’s before, but I was usually inebriated and never could remember the way to his house. Trevor and I chose to take Joel up on his gracious offer. We burned out and went back to pick up Trevor’s car at Tanner’s. I rode shotgun in Trevor’s Del Sol to a gas station up the street where Joel and Trevor filled up their tanks.
“Don’t come over here, I’m pissing in a water bottle,” Joel said, immediately triggering hysteria from Trevor and me in the car. Joel even came over to show us his job, raising a bottle filled with sixteen ounces of warm urine. It was too much to not bust out laughing again. He threw the bottle in the trash can and the two cars took off for Raytown Road.
We talked mostly about his car on the way to the party. We got to a long windy back road in Kansas City and said our “peace outs” to Joel as he fled away. Me and Trevor passed a long line of cars on parked on the side of the street, leading up to the house where there were two fires burning in a couple barrels, people cursing and being belligerent. Trevor and I split up immediately, as he went inside the front door and I hung around talking to Monique, an old friend from years back. The days of the “High Five.” We chatted about what had been going on lately and other small talk. Memories of the past resurfaced like a dead body in a lake. There were so many people there who I hadn’t seen in two or three years. It was quite refreshing to give hugs and half-hugs to everyone.
Three people I noticed were particularly fucked up. Ryan (whom I’ve known longer than anyone, barring his family) was shouting up a storm very uncharacteristically, though he is the funniest person I know. His cousin Jesse (whom I’ve known for almost as long) was more wasted than I’ve ever seen her. As she “tried” to have a conversation with me, her eyes seemingly rolled back into her head with every sentence, somehow maintaining her balance all the while. Then I went inside.
I ran into Chad, Crystal, TJ, Laci, Aaron and Nick Davis (aka Dick Navis). I felt like I could stay there and party all night long. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Ryan’s cousin Scotty (who’s at least 25 years old) struggling to keep his balance as he leaned on the wall, Ryan urgently whispering something into his ear. I went up to Scotty and reminded him that I was Ryan’s best buddy from grade school and up until the current time. He said something but I couldn’t understand. He mumbled some other stuff but he was completely incoherent. I noticed his eyes were floating towards the ceiling, as well. He was by far the most fucked up person in the place. I didn’t make the connection of the condition between all three of the relatives who I had grown up with until a little later that night. It was clear they were all blasted, but that’s what you do at party’s right? I shrugged it off. I walked into the kitchen where Trevor was sharing his Crown Royal with Nick Davis, who used to play on the same 18+ baseball team as I a few years ago. Just as I had left Scotty’s side in the living room, he fell over…hard.
I socialized a little more; surprised by a few people who I had never met that said they remembered me from somewhere. I replied, “I used to hang out with Steve a lot back in the day.” Then I ran in to Steve Stone himself. We hugged, but it was so difficult for me to small talk with him, knowing that he was fighting a war in Iraq that I thought was unjust. It was all I could do to not tell him my own cousin had just taken shrapnel in his spinal cord while serving Military Police in Baghdad just weeks ago. Steve seemed very pleased to see me. I think he enjoys those going away parties thrown for him by his close friends because everybody knows it could be their last chance to see Steve (God forbid).
I walked back into the living room and noticed Trevor and Ryan trying to plead to Scotty. Scotty was set on driving home, but none of us were about to let that happen. Now I’ve seen enough people fucked up on various substances before, and I’ve made my own decisions in life, but it doesn’t take long to know a funeral waiting to happen when you see it. Trevor and Ryan grabbed Scotty by the arms and walked him outside. Aaron was trying to corral at least two people who could drive for Ryan, Scotty and in my own mind Jesse.
Trevor, Aaron and I were the most sober out of the group of five. We had to get Scotty home without him driving his car. That was the main objective. I wasn’t about to let them get in a wreck and leave me stranded at the party until the wee hours of the morning. Trevor and I convinced Ryan to fork his keys over to me, and Jesse (unwisely) sat in Scotty’s driver’s seat, ready to take off as soon as Scotty was inside. I grabbed Ryan by his arm pit and walked him down to the cars. He couldn’t walk a straight line if his future depended on it. “Man we got fucked up on some Xanax,“ he told me. Then I made the connection. Jesse, Ryan and Scotty were all under the influence of Xanax, mixed with lots of alcohol. I’ve done nearly every street drug there is in my twenty one years, but abusing prescription medicine was never my thing at all. Jesse’s been hooked on Xanax for much too long. By a strange coincidence, I remembered a conversation that Ryan, Joel, Trevor and I had about dreams just nights before. I told them of a nightmare I had a year ago, in which Ryan held me down on the ground and Jesse approached from behind him with a syringe in her hand (ready to inject me just before I woke up, as I seemingly resisted). Joel thought it meant that I’m suspicious about who my friends really are. I related it to the drugs we all used to do, and the strong influence Ryan and Jesse had on me in doing them.
It took us almost a half an hour to get Scotty into his car. After he asked my name at least seven times in five minutes, and I finally sat Scotty in the passenger seat of his own car, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Chris!”
“You saved my life…”
“One way ticket home awaits you, man,” I said, finally convincing him to take the empty seat in the front. In Scotty’s Cavalier was Scotty in the passenger seat, Jesse driving, and Ryan in the backseat.
“Give me my keys,” Ryan demanded.
“No, you’re fucked up!” I told him.
“Just give ‘em to me. I’m gonna come back up here and get my car later tonight.”
“Jesse, try to tell him he’s not safe to drive,” and I shut the passenger side door and walked to Ryan’s Taurus up the street. I noticed Trevor already had his car running, sitting idly up the street even further. By the time I managed to get the door open on the vehicle, Jesse and Trevor had sped away. Nearly panicking, I struggled to find the ignition, and turn on the head lights. I went back the way we had originally come with Joel and took a left onto Raytown Road…taking my sweet time so as to not make a bad situation turn worse. With no idea where the other two cars had gone, I took Ryan’s car to where else? His own house. After making a bee line to Ryan’s parents place, I turned off the car and sat, waiting. Ten minutes went by and I decided to go by Jesse’s house, just about six or seven blocks away from Ryan’s in South Kansas City. No luck in finding any of there cars there. I went to a gas station and bought a bag of cool ranch Doritos, I was famished. I yelled to no one in particular at a stoplight, “Am I the only one using fucking common sense?!“
I went back to Ryan’s house and munched, waiting for over 45 minutes. I had a strong urge to knock on Ryan’s door and tell his parents what happened, and that I was afraid he or someone else had been in a car wreck. I needed to call Ryan dreadfully, and I didn’t have a cell phone on me. I don’t know how I maintained patience, but I continued to wait for Trevor or anyone else to come. I really wished Joel was with us, he tends to be very level headed in these kinds of situations. I fully expected myself to be waiting in front of Ryan’s house for many hours. I kept my eyes on the rear view mirrors to check for cars coming from the top of the street, hoping one would be familiar. Two cars at separate times showed their headlights coming down Crescent (where I grew up just up the street from Ryan’s family as a kid) but they just pulled into driveways before even passing near my camp out. I put the car into drive and was pulling away slowly, ready to go back and check at Jesse’s, when a third pair of headlights appeared at the top of the street. It was Trevor.
He pulled up next to me and rolled his window down. “Chris, park the car in the driveway,” as if I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d been in situations like this more than Trevor, Ryan and Jesse combined. Ryan sat in the passenger seat but had a hand covering his face as if he was embarrassed.
“I’ve been waiting here for an hour,“ I told them. I knew something had gone terribly wrong, and I still suspected a car wreck, unfortunately. I obeyed Trevor’s request and got out. I noticed Ryan struggling to keep himself from falling over as he tried to get out of Trevor’s tiny car. I approached and saw tears streaming down Ryan’s face. He was a physical and emotional wreck. Before I could even ask what happened the three of us clung together for a group hug. “You guys are my boys…”, he said sobbing lightly.
I slapped him on the back as if to say, “It’s okay.” Ryan trudged to his front door and went inside.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked Trevor.
“I had to knock Ryan the fuck out!”
“What?!”
“He was shoving me and trying to punch out my windows! Look at my hand!” he said. Trevor raised his right hand with his fingers loose. The hand was shaking. Trevor was almost as distraught as Ryan. His voice was even shaky.
We pulled out of the neighborhood, and I knew we’d have time to talk about it as we made the twenty minute drive to Joel’s house where I could finally pick up my own car and go home.
“Just slow down and tell me what happened from the time you left the party,” I eased.
“Jesse was going like sixty through those windy roads leading up to Raytown Road! I couldn’t even keep up with her. She was driving like a complete idiot. We got back to Scotty’s and I had to fireman him into his house.”
“You had to what?” I solicited.
“I had to throw him over my shoulder and carry him in.” Now, our core group of friends has had enough “sausage fests” to know that Trevor was quite strong, but it was hard to picture that.
“Ryan was punching my windows and then he started pushing me, wanting to know where his car was.“ I knew Ryan would have a problem with me driving his car. “Then I laid him out. He was on the ground for ten minutes.”
“This is fucked,” I said.
“I dropped to my knees and started crying after I knocked him out,” he elaborated. “Then Jesse jumped in my car. The keys were still in the ignition and she started it up and started coasting down the street like it was hers!” That right there was probably the most bizarre, pointless part of the whole story, I thought to myself, other than Jesse thinking she was decent enough to drive Scotty and Ryan home. “She came screeching to a stop in the middle of the street. She came within inches of hitting me! Ryan’s demeanor changed after that. He was complying with everything I said and we got back in my car and came to his house. He cried the whole way home.”
I was now sitting in Trevor’s car in front of Joel’s house, about to get in my car and leave to come home to write this story. “I really didn’t want to punch him, but he was about to fuck up my car. Do you think I did the right thing?”
It took me a while to answer. I’ve known Ryan long enough to know that he would never throw the first punch. But I think he needed a wake up call in that situation, honestly.
“Look, none of this would’ve happened if they weren’t all fucked up on Xanax.”
“I know it!” Trev’ replied.
“We’ve got to get it across to Jesse that she’s got to quit that Xanax shit, she’s been hooked for probably at least a year, I’m guessing. That’s why she doesn’t hang out anymore. Because she’s obsessed with pills. We’ve got to push the issue with them. I know Ryan will at least hear us out, but I highly doubt Jesse will even give a fuck.”
I told Trevor I actually respected him more after the night. I now look at prescription drugs and street drugs in a completely different light.
I had a two part experience with prescription and street drugs within two days that made me look at drugs in general in a different light. I'm a freelance journalist (about to get promoted to staff writer hopefully) and I would prefer it if people would critique this as if it was their own paper and they were trying to improve it. Should I break it up into two separate stories? Or keep it as one? If I keep it as one, how could I corralate them more smoothly? How could I make the ending better? Does the story just sound too boring and lifeless? I've got a bottomless pit for suggestions and criticisms. Thank you for helping!
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The names in this true story have remained unchanged so as to keep it real. My girlfriend Becca and I each swallowed three “magic” mushroom pills at my sister’s apartment in Grandview, MO the night after St. Patty’s. Before Becca took them, she let me know exactly how nervous she was. In the three and a half years we’ve been together, she had never even been stoned before.
We set up to chill at my sister’s place, with about four or five other people. I cracked some jokes with my sister and her friends while the effect was beginning to kick in for Becca. After about a half an hour, she said she was seeing red and orange colors across the entire room. I wasn’t tripping at all. No body high, no colors, no laughing, nothing. She said many objects in the room were “moving in and out.” I may have been a bit jealous of her, so I wrote her delusions off as baloney in my own mind. I should’ve known that she was feeling it by her laughing and drunken style walking.
My sister brought up an incident which occurred on St. Patty’s night at her apartment. I had taken a monumental dump in the toilet of my sister’s bathroom that night. With my green shirt on, I had a hectic day earlier (forgot my ID at the bars in Westport and spent the rest of the day in Harrisonville, MO trying to get a new license) and must’ve simply been holding it all day. Anyway, when I finished my business I went back out into the living room and announced that the “water was little high” after somebody asked if I clogged the toilet. The males in the room laughed while the girls expressed their disgust. About an hour later (after somebody fucked with it) the toilet overflowed, inciting screams from my sister and her friends. I ended up having to clean it all up before I left.
On the next night with Becca, I sarcastically asked my sister’s roommate if I could “take the Browns to the Super Bowl, again,” again to much amusement of the guys in the room. Then her and my sister began talking about the sanitary things they put in the toilet that they “shouldn’t.” I didn’t really have an idea of what they were talking about, unless they were talking about female care items.
“Yea, that’s the numba’ one clogga’,” Becca said, looking up from her cell phone. The unusual way she said it was hilarious and the room erupted into laughter.
“Like the Numba’ One Stunna’?” I asked, to more laughter.
Oddly enough, we were all passing around high school yearbooks while we lounged on the couches and I in a “Nintendo chair.” I still wasn’t feeling anything at all from the shroom pills. Just a week before, Ryan, Joel, Trevor and I tripped balls at Trevor’s apartment in Gladstone. He had a perfect view of the downtown Kansas City skyline from his small deck outside the back door. Aside from Trevor “spazzing out” (he said later that he felt like he was drowning, and I believe it), we hysterically, uncontrollably, unreasonably laughed until our smiles and stomachs hurt for close to four hours straight.
Wondering why I wasn’t tripping whatsoever with Becca on Friday night, I remembered something Ryan had told me that I mistakenly ignored. “You can’t trip shrooms multiple times in a short period, “he explained, “You’ve gotta wait a couple months. It’s too much sensory overload.” I knew the possibility of having the same trip as I did a week ago was 50/50, but I simply didn’t feel a thing from the shrooms. Becca on the other hand, was in her own experience. Becca was still telling my sister and me that her “legs tingled” and the window shades were swaying forcibly.
The rest of my sister’s guests left, with the time approaching three a.m. Becca and I decided to leave also. I walked down the stairs to the door leading to outside the apartment building, and looked behind me, not hearing Becca’s footsteps pacing along with me. She was still at the top step, looking in every direction except down and at me. “What are you doing?” I asked bluntly.
“Hold on, I’m trying to see something.”
I waited for her as she took small, slow steps down the stairs. I was getting frustrated. We walked out the door and I walked briskly to my car, parked right outside the building. I looked behind, amazed that Becca seemed to be slithering along, way behind me still. “Do you know you’re walking really slow?” I asked, trying not to piss her off.
“Yes!”
“Why are you walking so slowly?” I inquired.
“Because you’re a jerk,” she informed me.
All I could do was leave my mouth open, speechless. I hadn’t done anything to her. I even “cuddled” somewhat, which she often times requires. She picked up the pace a bit and we got in the car, where I noticed she was crying. We argued about what we were feeling, a dead end debate we’ve had many times.
We jetted out of Grandview, hopping onto 71 highway south towards Raymore. Becca was still crying and we were still arguing until we got to the Raymore exit. I wished she would just shut up. I wanted to go home but I knew if we didn’t settle this now, we’d just make it worse by dragging it into the house. I decided to roll 58 highway, a four lane road that cuts Raymore in half.
“Everything just got really dark,” I said. The road at a couple points doesn’t have many streetlights, and darkness fell.
“I know!” she said laughing.
“Do you want to go out in the country some-” I asked, offering a truce.
“Okay,” she said quickly, as if eager to explore on her trip.
“I know the perfect place.” From then on Becca laughed and cried simultaneously for almost three hours straight. I hung a left on Hubach Hill and took it over J highway to a new housing development under construction, but completely deserted at night. I turned the car around so it was facing out onto the road we had come. It is kind of a creepy place until you get used to it after a few minutes.
As we got out of the car, she kept telling me how “beautiful” the Chicago poster was in my sister’s living room. She said the colors were transfixing and glowing, topped off with moving traffic in the scene, appearing to be aglow.
“I came here by myself last summer to watch the meteor shower,” I reminded her. “I probably saw almost twenty of them.”
The night air wasn’t too bad, but with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour it was agony to stand out there with short sleeves on. I had given her my navy blue jacket which my dad used more than I did nowadays. My dad and I tend to wear each others clothes quite often. He was actually voted “best dressed” in high school. He joked later with the family that “I guess no one noticed that I wore the same clothes everyday.“
I held Becca for a long time in the cold and dark. She suddenly pulled away and said, “Why is that stop sign so small and the telephone pole so big?” I didn’t say anything.
“What do you mean?” I finally asked.
“The pole is getting bigger. No. I mean the pole is getting closer,” she described.
“Joel said the same thing was happening to different things in Trevor’s apartment,” I told her. She didn’t say it, but she seemed happy that she wasn’t the only one. She stared at the night sky for a minute.
“It looks like a ceiling,” she said of the sky.
“Yea and it doesn’t look all that far away does it?” I added. She nodded in agreement. If the wind wasn’t so strong, we would’ve been able to hear the “mooing” of cows surrounding the area.
“It feels like I’m in a movie out here,” she said.
I couldn’t believe that Becca wanted to stay outside, when I urged her to get back in the car, for I was cold. We closed the doors, and Becca was overcome, crying more still. After about thirty seconds, the interior light inside my car went off.
She gasped and looked out hastily through the windows in all directions. “Everything just turned purple.” I laughed hard at that, as I could definitely see what she was talking about. The dark location caused the horizon to pose the faintest shade of deep purple. I drove off to find another place to go.
“How about we go to the place where me and Mike used to smoke way back in the day,” I proclaimed. The spot was off of School Road in Recreation Park, fixed behind four baseball fields. Mike and I used to get “old school high” off marijuana and we would rock out to smoking tunes like Scarface, Taproot, Korn and Nas.
As soon as I parked in a dark, lonely place behind a playground, Becca said, “We’ve had sex here before haven’t we?” I laughed, having nearly forgotten.
By that point, there was no doubt in my mind that Becca was tripping. I rolled the window down and lit a cigarette while she spewed everything that was racing through her mind. She even had the competence to go back to a point she made ten stories before. Once, she grabbed some pictures from under my sun visor.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if you put a picture in you dashboard of yourself?” she asked.
“Yea I guess so.”
I put a picture of myself with a beer can raised to my head with a cheesy smile on my face. It looked very sarcastic. Around four thirty in the morning, Becca was still crying and laughing at the same time. She got quiet for a brief moment. I wiped tears away from under her right eye. She turned her face for a fraction of a second so that shadows fell over her face. She turned her head right back around in the light, and it was as if I hadn’t even tried.
A light pole in the middle of the baseball complex would come on and go off, then come on and go off, over and over again. It was very odd; I could only imagine what it would’ve been like for someone tripping. I had serious déjà vu from the days me and Mike got smoked out at the park.
Becca then gradually slipped into her introspective and thoughtful phase. I knew she was still tripping stronger than ever, but it was destined to come to an end soon. “Does it suck when you come down off shrooms?” she asked.
“Yea. But it’s not too bad with this batch, it seems.”
“I don’t want that to happen!” she said ghastly, sending her into another episode of crying and laughing.
She was talking about something having to do with experiences, and had a revelation.
“You can’t go back to a moment,” she said looking into my eyes thoughtfully, “Remember that I said that.”
I thought about it for a minute and it made complete sense. “I will sweetie.” My eyes welled up, but quickly dissipated after I blinked a couple times.
“Can we get more shrooms, like tomorrow?” She said laughing. Then I explained to her why I wasn’t tripping. And only then did we figure out why we weren’t on the same page at my sister’s apartment. She and I both were mutually frustrated that we weren’t tripping together.
“I want to call Joel,” she said.
“He was pretty pissed last night when you called him, looking for me at five in the morning. Do what you want, but you better tell him something monumental!” and we laughed.
“I feel like I completely understand you and you’re friends now,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She elaborated, “I just feel like I can understand the things that you laugh about. And I know why you guys did drugs all the time. I never knew drugs could be like this.”
“Remember the days where I would get so stoned that I wouldn’t call you, and leave you worrying for hours?”
“Yea, like that!” she cried out.
“It was funny over at Trevor’s when we were tripping and my cell phone rang and Ryan said, “Whoa, news from the outside world.”
“Exactly!” she said. “You might as well tell me now if you’ve ever cheated on me because I’d probably just start laughing.” I always hated when she said things like that. We’ve been together for three and a half years, and not once had I so much as touched another girl. She told me that she was having the greatest night of her life.
By now, she was cramped on the floor below the passenger seat with her knees tucked under her chin. I asked her why she wasn’t sitting in her seat, and she replied while laughing, “I don’t know!”
Crying now all of a sudden, she said, “I’m a mess. I feel so dirty.” I didn’t say so, but she looked nothing like her regular self.
Suddenly she looked as if she’d seen a ghost, and froze. “Oh my God,” she said “It’s gone.” I knew she had been tripping for a while, and I was fully expecting her to come down soon. The thing with these shroom pills as I‘ve come to find out, is that when you come down, you know it immediately. Her expression saddened, and she fantasized, “I wish I could find a way to feel just like this everyday.”
For some reason I wanted to leave our spot and go drive to another park that I knew of. She protested, “I don’t want to leave!” She was obviously trying to hold on to her experience for as long as possible.
“Okay, alright,” and I began to turn around in the parking lot.
“No!” she wailed, “You can’t go back to a moment, remember?!”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I drove the two of us back to my house where Becca was to spend the night. I turned of the engine and we just sat in the driveway. I was hoping that she wouldn’t wake up my parents when we went inside, but I figured that this night and our new connection was worth more.
“This town creeps me out,” she said strangely.
I wondered aloud, “Why is that?”
“Because it’s almost too perfect. The houses, the neighborhoods, the trees, the people…it’s like I’m in the movie “Pleasantville,” with Reese Witherspoon and Toby Maguire.” I had never heard of that movie, but I thought her explanation was amusing.
Then she told me that she wished I’d have “realistic goals.” Now I knew she was coming down because that statement had to be the first negative point brought up by her since we left my sister’s apartment.
She was still wearing my navy jacket. “I’m sorry; I’ve been wiping my tears and my nose on the sleeves.”
“You can keep it,” I told her.
“Really? Whenever I wear it, I’ll think of you and of this night. She lunged at me from the passenger seat towards me and hugged me tight. “This is the best gift anyone’s ever given me,” she said solemnly.
About twenty minutes later, still in the car, she said, “I love you more.” This was a very common phrase that we said to each other after the first one says, “I love you.” But her voice sounded so serious this time.
I felt amazed and curious, “You mean you love me more after tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked, almost taking offense to it. It was not uncommon for me to tell Becca that she looked more gorgeous everyday, and that I loved her more everyday, but this was different.
“I already love you more than anything, but I feel like my love for you has been strengthened even more after tonight.”
With that, we went inside and sat at the kitchen table in the dark, drinking water. Her posture was still a wreck of sorts. “I feel like stick-girl,” she said. Her legs were wobbly and she was walking a little awkwardly, in an odd, “skeletal” way.
We sat at the kitchen table and I asked her what she thought of her trip. “I didn’t think it was weird, just beautiful. The only thing I could relate it to would be alcohol, because that’s all I’ve done before tonight, you know?” I nodded. “You don’t forget things like you do when you’re drunk. I feel like my mind and imagination have been replenished.” Her speech was now labored a bit.
“Let me tell you something,” I began, “You had the classic first time shroom experience, honestly.”
“I really did have the best night of my life,” she said.
“I believe you sweetie.”
We came close for a slow, passionate kiss. Our lips came apart just as slowly, and as I leaned back into my seat, I said, “It feels so real to kiss you right now.” She couldn’t contain her smile, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
Mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted, with nothing on my mind but my girlfriend, I arrived at Joel’s house (a close friend) at around 8:45 p.m. the next night. The plan was to go to Westport when Ryan got off work where he was a waiter at a fancy, upscale Italian restaurant on the Kansas side of the state line. One of his relatives answered the door. I made my way downstairs to Joel’s spacious “bedroom.” Standing behind the bar, decorated with bottles and liquor signs, he earnestly and sarcastically asked with one question, “What can I get you?”
I laughed and said, “I’ll go for a Miller Lite, what else?” Since I started hanging out with Joel on a regular basis (about nine to twelve months ago) he has turned me on to Miller Lite rather than Bud Light. A weed smoker since his childhood, he’s proven to be more aware of the ways of the world than practically anyone I know. He played a CD for us that he had just picked up earlier that day; somebody or somebody’s named Cornershop.
“This reminds me of that Mushroom Jazz shit we were listening to over at Trevor’s when we were tripping, “ he mentioned. I agreed starkly, for Mark Farina was one of my favorite DJ’s in the world. Awaiting a call from Ryan, we drank a couple beers a piece and decided to head to a bar called Tanner’s in Lee’s Summit, a KC suburb with a surprisingly decent amount of bars and clubs to pick from.
“Man!,” I called out as we cruised down the highway, “Nothing feels as though it could go wrong while listening to this shit!”
“Hell yea!” he replied. In retrospect, I should’ve had that album pouring out of personal headphones for the remainder of the night.
Tanner’s was packed on this Saturday night. Joel ordered a Miller Lite in a bottle.
Since I turned 21, I’ve learned what to ask before blindly wasting money at the bars. “What kind of drink specials do you have tonight,” I inquired. After I paid just two dollars and fifty cents for a big draw, Joel regretted making his own decision.
“Let’s go sit at a table,” he suggested. We found one of the few empty tables in the whole place and casually sipped our beers. I usually don’t baby my alcohol, but somehow I knew my Miller Lite was going to be lukewarm by the time I finished it. NCAA tournament highlights flashed across the huge screen behind us.
After concluding a phone call Joel received, he informed me that Trevor was going to be meeting us at the bar. Within twenty minutes, all three of us were shaking hands and toasting. I told Trevor and Joel about the “greatest night” of Becca’s life the day before. We began talking about the summer, and about possibly tripping again on the Fourth of July. I had been anxious about the pick up basketball games sure to go down during these increasingly warm months. Trevor was adamant about his personal goals for the summer, including ditching cigarettes.
The three of us finished our drinks and headed to the parking lot where Joel was to transport us to Buffalo Wild Wings, another bar in town. Trevor was enamored with the danceable CD Joel had just purchased. We stepped through the doors of Wild Wings to meet a bunch of acquaintances and friends we knew who worked at On The Border, just next door. A longtime friend of mine, Mike approached the group and we shook hands. “Becca had the greatest night of her life last night,” I happily reported to him. He seemed drunk, because he was rather unemotional and very flat.
We sat at the bar and ordered another round of Miller Lite. Before long, Trevor said he would put three “fire ass” shots for us on his tab. I don’t remember what was in it, other than a lot of hot sauce. I decided to chill on my beer and let myself regulate for a few minutes. Joel received another call on his cell phone about an hour later.
“Ryan said there was a party at Aaron’s house for Steve Stone.” I hadn’t seen Steve since he went to the Middle East for the military. We used to be tight back in the day and I desperately wanted to at least shout him a holler. Chances were, I figured, he was heading back to the front lines within the next few days. Every time Steve came in or out of town, there was a party waiting just for him.
“Let’s go!” I said to Joel. Trevor concurred.
Joel replied, “I’m tired, so I think I’m gonna go home. I’ll lead you two out there if you want.”
I had been over to Aaron’s before, but I was usually inebriated and never could remember the way to his house. Trevor and I chose to take Joel up on his gracious offer. We burned out and went back to pick up Trevor’s car at Tanner’s. I rode shotgun in Trevor’s Del Sol to a gas station up the street where Joel and Trevor filled up their tanks.
“Don’t come over here, I’m pissing in a water bottle,” Joel said, immediately triggering hysteria from Trevor and me in the car. Joel even came over to show us his job, raising a bottle filled with sixteen ounces of warm urine. It was too much to not bust out laughing again. He threw the bottle in the trash can and the two cars took off for Raytown Road.
We talked mostly about his car on the way to the party. We got to a long windy back road in Kansas City and said our “peace outs” to Joel as he fled away. Me and Trevor passed a long line of cars on parked on the side of the street, leading up to the house where there were two fires burning in a couple barrels, people cursing and being belligerent. Trevor and I split up immediately, as he went inside the front door and I hung around talking to Monique, an old friend from years back. The days of the “High Five.” We chatted about what had been going on lately and other small talk. Memories of the past resurfaced like a dead body in a lake. There were so many people there who I hadn’t seen in two or three years. It was quite refreshing to give hugs and half-hugs to everyone.
Three people I noticed were particularly fucked up. Ryan (whom I’ve known longer than anyone, barring his family) was shouting up a storm very uncharacteristically, though he is the funniest person I know. His cousin Jesse (whom I’ve known for almost as long) was more wasted than I’ve ever seen her. As she “tried” to have a conversation with me, her eyes seemingly rolled back into her head with every sentence, somehow maintaining her balance all the while. Then I went inside.
I ran into Chad, Crystal, TJ, Laci, Aaron and Nick Davis (aka Dick Navis). I felt like I could stay there and party all night long. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Ryan’s cousin Scotty (who’s at least 25 years old) struggling to keep his balance as he leaned on the wall, Ryan urgently whispering something into his ear. I went up to Scotty and reminded him that I was Ryan’s best buddy from grade school and up until the current time. He said something but I couldn’t understand. He mumbled some other stuff but he was completely incoherent. I noticed his eyes were floating towards the ceiling, as well. He was by far the most fucked up person in the place. I didn’t make the connection of the condition between all three of the relatives who I had grown up with until a little later that night. It was clear they were all blasted, but that’s what you do at party’s right? I shrugged it off. I walked into the kitchen where Trevor was sharing his Crown Royal with Nick Davis, who used to play on the same 18+ baseball team as I a few years ago. Just as I had left Scotty’s side in the living room, he fell over…hard.
I socialized a little more; surprised by a few people who I had never met that said they remembered me from somewhere. I replied, “I used to hang out with Steve a lot back in the day.” Then I ran in to Steve Stone himself. We hugged, but it was so difficult for me to small talk with him, knowing that he was fighting a war in Iraq that I thought was unjust. It was all I could do to not tell him my own cousin had just taken shrapnel in his spinal cord while serving Military Police in Baghdad just weeks ago. Steve seemed very pleased to see me. I think he enjoys those going away parties thrown for him by his close friends because everybody knows it could be their last chance to see Steve (God forbid).
I walked back into the living room and noticed Trevor and Ryan trying to plead to Scotty. Scotty was set on driving home, but none of us were about to let that happen. Now I’ve seen enough people fucked up on various substances before, and I’ve made my own decisions in life, but it doesn’t take long to know a funeral waiting to happen when you see it. Trevor and Ryan grabbed Scotty by the arms and walked him outside. Aaron was trying to corral at least two people who could drive for Ryan, Scotty and in my own mind Jesse.
Trevor, Aaron and I were the most sober out of the group of five. We had to get Scotty home without him driving his car. That was the main objective. I wasn’t about to let them get in a wreck and leave me stranded at the party until the wee hours of the morning. Trevor and I convinced Ryan to fork his keys over to me, and Jesse (unwisely) sat in Scotty’s driver’s seat, ready to take off as soon as Scotty was inside. I grabbed Ryan by his arm pit and walked him down to the cars. He couldn’t walk a straight line if his future depended on it. “Man we got fucked up on some Xanax,“ he told me. Then I made the connection. Jesse, Ryan and Scotty were all under the influence of Xanax, mixed with lots of alcohol. I’ve done nearly every street drug there is in my twenty one years, but abusing prescription medicine was never my thing at all. Jesse’s been hooked on Xanax for much too long. By a strange coincidence, I remembered a conversation that Ryan, Joel, Trevor and I had about dreams just nights before. I told them of a nightmare I had a year ago, in which Ryan held me down on the ground and Jesse approached from behind him with a syringe in her hand (ready to inject me just before I woke up, as I seemingly resisted). Joel thought it meant that I’m suspicious about who my friends really are. I related it to the drugs we all used to do, and the strong influence Ryan and Jesse had on me in doing them.
It took us almost a half an hour to get Scotty into his car. After he asked my name at least seven times in five minutes, and I finally sat Scotty in the passenger seat of his own car, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Chris!”
“You saved my life…”
“One way ticket home awaits you, man,” I said, finally convincing him to take the empty seat in the front. In Scotty’s Cavalier was Scotty in the passenger seat, Jesse driving, and Ryan in the backseat.
“Give me my keys,” Ryan demanded.
“No, you’re fucked up!” I told him.
“Just give ‘em to me. I’m gonna come back up here and get my car later tonight.”
“Jesse, try to tell him he’s not safe to drive,” and I shut the passenger side door and walked to Ryan’s Taurus up the street. I noticed Trevor already had his car running, sitting idly up the street even further. By the time I managed to get the door open on the vehicle, Jesse and Trevor had sped away. Nearly panicking, I struggled to find the ignition, and turn on the head lights. I went back the way we had originally come with Joel and took a left onto Raytown Road…taking my sweet time so as to not make a bad situation turn worse. With no idea where the other two cars had gone, I took Ryan’s car to where else? His own house. After making a bee line to Ryan’s parents place, I turned off the car and sat, waiting. Ten minutes went by and I decided to go by Jesse’s house, just about six or seven blocks away from Ryan’s in South Kansas City. No luck in finding any of there cars there. I went to a gas station and bought a bag of cool ranch Doritos, I was famished. I yelled to no one in particular at a stoplight, “Am I the only one using fucking common sense?!“
I went back to Ryan’s house and munched, waiting for over 45 minutes. I had a strong urge to knock on Ryan’s door and tell his parents what happened, and that I was afraid he or someone else had been in a car wreck. I needed to call Ryan dreadfully, and I didn’t have a cell phone on me. I don’t know how I maintained patience, but I continued to wait for Trevor or anyone else to come. I really wished Joel was with us, he tends to be very level headed in these kinds of situations. I fully expected myself to be waiting in front of Ryan’s house for many hours. I kept my eyes on the rear view mirrors to check for cars coming from the top of the street, hoping one would be familiar. Two cars at separate times showed their headlights coming down Crescent (where I grew up just up the street from Ryan’s family as a kid) but they just pulled into driveways before even passing near my camp out. I put the car into drive and was pulling away slowly, ready to go back and check at Jesse’s, when a third pair of headlights appeared at the top of the street. It was Trevor.
He pulled up next to me and rolled his window down. “Chris, park the car in the driveway,” as if I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d been in situations like this more than Trevor, Ryan and Jesse combined. Ryan sat in the passenger seat but had a hand covering his face as if he was embarrassed.
“I’ve been waiting here for an hour,“ I told them. I knew something had gone terribly wrong, and I still suspected a car wreck, unfortunately. I obeyed Trevor’s request and got out. I noticed Ryan struggling to keep himself from falling over as he tried to get out of Trevor’s tiny car. I approached and saw tears streaming down Ryan’s face. He was a physical and emotional wreck. Before I could even ask what happened the three of us clung together for a group hug. “You guys are my boys…”, he said sobbing lightly.
I slapped him on the back as if to say, “It’s okay.” Ryan trudged to his front door and went inside.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked Trevor.
“I had to knock Ryan the fuck out!”
“What?!”
“He was shoving me and trying to punch out my windows! Look at my hand!” he said. Trevor raised his right hand with his fingers loose. The hand was shaking. Trevor was almost as distraught as Ryan. His voice was even shaky.
We pulled out of the neighborhood, and I knew we’d have time to talk about it as we made the twenty minute drive to Joel’s house where I could finally pick up my own car and go home.
“Just slow down and tell me what happened from the time you left the party,” I eased.
“Jesse was going like sixty through those windy roads leading up to Raytown Road! I couldn’t even keep up with her. She was driving like a complete idiot. We got back to Scotty’s and I had to fireman him into his house.”
“You had to what?” I solicited.
“I had to throw him over my shoulder and carry him in.” Now, our core group of friends has had enough “sausage fests” to know that Trevor was quite strong, but it was hard to picture that.
“Ryan was punching my windows and then he started pushing me, wanting to know where his car was.“ I knew Ryan would have a problem with me driving his car. “Then I laid him out. He was on the ground for ten minutes.”
“This is fucked,” I said.
“I dropped to my knees and started crying after I knocked him out,” he elaborated. “Then Jesse jumped in my car. The keys were still in the ignition and she started it up and started coasting down the street like it was hers!” That right there was probably the most bizarre, pointless part of the whole story, I thought to myself, other than Jesse thinking she was decent enough to drive Scotty and Ryan home. “She came screeching to a stop in the middle of the street. She came within inches of hitting me! Ryan’s demeanor changed after that. He was complying with everything I said and we got back in my car and came to his house. He cried the whole way home.”
I was now sitting in Trevor’s car in front of Joel’s house, about to get in my car and leave to come home to write this story. “I really didn’t want to punch him, but he was about to fuck up my car. Do you think I did the right thing?”
It took me a while to answer. I’ve known Ryan long enough to know that he would never throw the first punch. But I think he needed a wake up call in that situation, honestly.
“Look, none of this would’ve happened if they weren’t all fucked up on Xanax.”
“I know it!” Trev’ replied.
“We’ve got to get it across to Jesse that she’s got to quit that Xanax shit, she’s been hooked for probably at least a year, I’m guessing. That’s why she doesn’t hang out anymore. Because she’s obsessed with pills. We’ve got to push the issue with them. I know Ryan will at least hear us out, but I highly doubt Jesse will even give a fuck.”
I told Trevor I actually respected him more after the night. I now look at prescription drugs and street drugs in a completely different light.
