It was that Western posse. That congregation of maturing youth. What ecclecticism. What sharp-minded fervor. Minds with knowledge and wits abound they were, those ragged intellectuals. Let to roam free in that magic between the sea and the redwood mountains, to challenge the mind with collegiate methodology and physical enduring. To test and to push, always outward into the wild. And so the experience laid before me, with Taylor at my side and at his side a sharp blue-eyed, red-headed eighteen-or-so-year-old. Her conspicuous surname, Monster. So her inclusion seemed strangely fitting. And bless that child. She drank so that even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have gotten drunk. She drank for two. Two adults. And she was slappy before we were on the bus. Belligerent before we got through the gates. She fell off a six-foot (why is it so tall?) newspaper stand. Or at least I think it was a newspaper stand. The tab of acid I'd had with breakfast hadn't quite kicked in yet, but then again it was my first time taking acid so what the hell did I know. I was pretty sure the Vivian Erica (monster) had given us was starting to hit though. So maybe I was actually more focused and it was definitely a six-foot (why is it so tall?) newspaper stand. I'm just saying it could just as easily have been a six-foot (why so tall?) mailbox. The details are mine to fabricate, I guess.
And so it happened that we all got through the gates and paid that bogus nominal fee they instilled that year, Taylor, Erica, Jenn, her friends, and I. That was when the world as I knew it changed. The rug wasn't exactly pulled out from under my feet, it wasn't like that. It was like the rug changed into something that was living and growing and breathing, like a bed of flowers sprouting up and budding at my knees. Big flowers with big petals, more vibrant and alive than flowers I'd ever seen before. The rug's matte woven fibers turned to rich topsoil between my toes as they took root. I felt a strength of the mind that had been, up to that point, void from my perception. Now that I think about it, it was a completely different medium of perception altogether. It was something more primal. It was animalistic at times. Feelings were distorted, amplified, and emotions dominated thoughts, but there was a certain simplicity to it wherein every kind of thought and emotion boiled down to a thing either good or bad. I seemed to be continuously aware of how I felt from one moment to the next, either happy or sad in varying degrees. Ecstatic. Morose. Mystified. Bitter. Blown away.
By that time, Monster was in a certain stalwart mindset. That black-out drunk-chick determination to get what she wanted no matter what. And the thing she wanted more than anything was to dance on at least one of the twenty something DJ floats surrounding the civic center. As my hand just so happened to be clamped in hers, I was going to be dragged along for the ride whether I liked it or not. Now that developing mindset of her's wasn't one of the most convenient things to come about because we immediately got separated from everybody else. We went to the bathrooms and she dropped her phone in the porta-potty, before proceeding to fish it back out with her bare hand. The phone was ruined, but she was insistent on saving the SIM card. A small hiccup. Monster, killing it in nothing but a black leotard and a blue tutu just put her head down and soldiered on through the throngs of wild and crazies, plastereds and kite-highs; past naked old men with nooses around their dicks, past young girls in attire all too sexual, past titties with pasties on them, past titties with nothing on them except perky little nips, past Green Man, past people floored on uppers or downers. Through all this, one thing remained markedly poignant to me. I was not hallucinating, visually anyways. Everything looked as it should, just more so; more vivid and more real. We would get stuck, hitting a literal wall of people - big, tall, sweaty people - and Monster would push through and her hand would tighten in mine as our arms stretched at her incessant pulling. I never let go. I just tried to keep that fiery red mane of her's in sight, in part because I was afraid of being alone while this foreign perception crept through my mind and gradually inundated the senses. But mostly I was afraid of Erica being alone. And of those implications, those harrowing possibilities.
Right to the very front , through practically everyone. It felt like everyone. And in the middle of that everyone my skin, all my pores it seemed, danced in a smooth coat of hot air, feather-light or lighter. The coat itself was not tangible. No hallucination, just the feeling of it draped over my shoulders with its arms hanging empty over my own. Sunglasses at a slight tilt and a cowboy-red bandana on my head, invisible sportscoat over my shoulders being pulled around to the back of the float by a blank-eyed red-haired fairy right out of high school. Maybe I felt a little like some Blink-182 cliche, but that's doubtful, I was too busy getting my mind blown. Hmm, bad choice of words. I was too busy bathing in the waves of euphoria brought on by the mixture of loud electronic music and LSD. And Vivian. And sunlight and dancing. I didn't want to stop moving.
When Erica drunkenly tried to climb up the back of the float, some Goliath of a security guard pulled her down and told her that she was too inebriated to be so high. He looked at me, and I looked back at him and shrugged my shoulders, grinning like a damned fool. His faced looked funny.
Erica's mission status: failure. I grabbed her hand now and pulled her back around the float, through the crowd once again, and to a patch of bright green, glorious grass towards the middle of the square. By God's grace we ran into everyone; Taylor, Jenn and her friends. What joy! And they had found Swartz, Conor, and Sam Hillard, all in the most awesomely ridiculous attire I had ever seen. Swatrz was rocking a pink blazer with some hippy button-down underneath, Sam had on a frilly, red pirate blouse on, and Conor, cream of the crop, was holdin' it down in this purple fur vest. Oh, and did I mention they had all purchased platinum blonde Hannah Montana wigs, so that, more than anything, they looked like a trio of manly, trannie hookers? Because they did and every time I looked at them, I would have to try and supress laughter, something I was beginning to learn never works on acid. Minutes later Dillion and D-Pod mozy on by in sparkling silver astronaut onesies, and our little pow-pow turned into another day at 440 Western. Except we were all on drugs. While Monster and I were busy loosing ourselves and our minds, Taylor had taken one of his hits of molly. Dillion and D-Pod were both rolling. Conor, Swartz, and Sam were shit-silly on acid. A proper lovefest it was on that sunny, fall afternoon in San Francisco. Talked turned excitedly to the DJs, notably deadmau5, and the after-party at Ruby Skye. Then it turned rather delightfully to ribbing Monster for being under twenty-one (and just a few months over eighteen). This probably wasn't the best idea in retrospect, as she immediately embarked on a new mission: to get a hold of a red-headed, over-twenty-one ID. And she didn't hesitate to ask anyone; guys, girls, brunettes, blondes, Asians, teenagers, no one was filtered out. We kept an eye on her with curious intrigue as she stumbled between flower gardens (that Matt and Sam peed in), pleading with everyone lounging in the grass, groups at a time, to just trade their IDs for her shit-covered SIM card. But to no avail. And as she kept getting rejected, she started wandering further and further away from the group, until we had to go and drag her back and plop her in the middle of our little circle of buddies, like a little caged, red-headed monster. Erica's mission status: failure.
[stop]
Brian's mission status: accomplished, to infinite and beyond. Faces turned back towards the stage floats in their distant circle around the square. And the throbbing, glistening masses of people amassed about them. They were singular moving beings, yelling banshee screams of ecstacy, barely audible over the monstrous bass chords thumbing through the air. I felt an animalistic attraction to it. To the lights and the color. The pulsing, and the misty sizzling in the background. The trance. The magic. The awe.
And so like pack animals we pounced. We attacked in a single file, like a sewing needle because, well, how the hell else are you going to attack? Striking deep to the core we did, and as we broke through each shell of pleasure-faced peacocks, the air heated, and the skin became more alive and I felt my pores open wide and inhale the sweet moment. Inflated on this palpable energy, the stress on my heels lightened as if on a pillow of air. It was orgasmic. And as I turned to Taylor and Jenn, Matt and Conor and Sam, and to Monster, I saw it. The look of pure joy, all a little different, but each with that little bit of magic in their wide-mouthed grins and wild shouts, like dogs when you get that special spot and the one leg starts runnin'. And not to forget, they all had those special little somethings in front of their eyes. That's right; shaded spectacles. Safety goggles, concealing those windows to our soul, because right then they were wide open. That's when I realized I must look just like them, and that made me even happier. I looked up, arms reaching high, fingers tickling the sauna air, and I closed my eyes. I breathed it in. It was a raucous orchestra; beautiful, skin-tingling, elevating. It was wild thunder.
Lollipops popped into our hands, and inevitably our mouths, and I hadn't the faintest clue as to where they came from. Regardless, they were amazing, and my taste-buds came. I had never experienced a sensation such as that (any of this, really). It was incredibly satiating, pacifying even. All tension in life was gone. Any thought of worry was replaced by an overwhelming urge to dance and move, and stretch outward and spin. But when I grabbed for Monster, she wasn't there. She had wandered off amid the storm of passion and emotion. She was lost at sea, cellphone-less. Taylor and I looked at each other, exacerbated. We looked around, standing on tippy-toe, craning our necks. We had lost our red-haired maiden; aww, sadface. But quickly enough, anxiety turned to coping to nonchalant-ness to losing ourselves, again, in that crazy euphoria.
And so our lives continued on thusly for a certain time until Conor got word that we were going to meet Dylan and Cameron in the tree grooves. I honestly couldn't tell you how long that certain time was, really. I couldn't muster the faintest clue even, because for me, at that moment, all concepts of time had been forgotten. I just lived now, and the things that happened before, happened before in varying distances according to different scales. Thinking back, it was like looking at a timeline through a convex (fish-eye) lens. A convex lens that someone was shaking in their hand. Perspective was distorted and quickly fading into a locked box somewhere in the basement. And it didn't really matter. But at the same time it was all so new and interesting! Hot, damn! I was intrigued beyond words and by everything. I loved it.
And like that, we were in the tree grooves. Dylan was wearing a bright purple button-down buttoned down, and some silly, silly sunshades with no lenses in them. Cameron took the creepy cake with a beaver-skin vest and Aviator's and the uber-beard that it takes him all of five days to grow. He looked like someone you would see at a rest-stop in the Midwest somewhere, leaning on the front wheel well of his eighteen-wheeler. Their friend, (Uncle) Jack, was sporting a national team futbol jersey from Brazil and some black warm-ups with the quick-release buttons going down the side. Our gang, small because of a few losses (namely, Monster and Dillon), was all giggly and wrestling with bouts of uncontrollable laughing when we met those three. And they wanted in. And so we all licked up a little blue tab. Number two down the hatch, boop. Conor took the helm, "Grab water bottles! A shitload of 'em!" Then back into the fray, hydration in hand, safety goggles on, deadmau5 was coming up soon.
Was I ready to take flight? No, obviously. I had no idea what the hell was going on. Luck for me, I'm tall, I have quick, sharp eyes, long arms, and a grip like a vice. I never broke that single-file people train. I was right in the middle of it, friends behind me, friends before me. It was an infinite comfort, and I couldn't help wondering where Monster was as Jenn dragged me deeper and deeper into the hot, heavy contingency of glazed-eyed electronic music fans. There was a pause as the DJs changed sets, and the music from the other floats and the main stage behind us became distantly audible, and there was a soft ringing in my ears and an eagerness on my face. I looked around, and then back forward onto our (not so) little corner of the affair. And there he was. A figure had appeared high up on the stage behind some DJ equipment. He was wearing a large round sparkly mouse-head helmet that didn't quite rest on his shoulders. And then a beat started beating and the stage lit up, and there was a swelling, jumping roar resounding from me and our group and everyone around us. The sun was low on the horizon and we were in the long shadow of the building behind the float. The wind was blowing across the stage, caressing flags softly from the South. And then deadmau5 dropped the bass. It was wild thunder.
Lift-off achieved. Everything became more so, and I felt the horses pulling hard at the reigns so I re-gripped them in my mind's eye, harder this time, stronger, empoweringly so. It was a feeling of intangible control, a flexing of the brain's muscle. I sucked down one of my bottles of water like baby's milk and then I sucked down the other. Jenn's backpack had like five more water bottles and cliff bars in it. So not to worry. And an extra pair of sunglasses. Safety first, kids. And for however long it was until sunset, life was a starry-eyed dreamland, a Cirque du Soleil of the senses and mind. At one point Uncle Jack's pants were ripped off (by Jack) in a fit of dancing ecstacy with Jenn and he rocked the rest of the of the night away in what appeared to be a Brazilian national swim team speedo. Lovely. And we all loved it.
The set finally ended, and the sunset was a thing now passed. The sky turned dark rather quickly, and as we walked dazed through the rental-fence exit corridor, the Monster situation was looming heavier and heavier on our minds. I mean, so heavy as some something so heavy could possibly loom as cell phones and tall cans were melting in my hands. Now that the music was gone, my other senses were picking up the slack left by that ominous lack of audible hyper-stimulation. And everything was hilarious, especially the fact that San Francisco's middle- to late-aged upper-class, seemingly the entire populous of the city's refined and reserved well-to-do-ers were beginning to make their way to the Opera House on the next block west. In tuxedos and elegant, mostly black dinner dresses, the abject contrast in both age, civility, and attire was downright gut-busting. I felt a devious grin stretch across my face and soon realized that I couldn't replace it, try as I might. I looked at Taylor, at Dylan and Kam and Uncle Jack, at the blonde wig boys, and I found comfort in their mutual idiot grinning. Jenn was leading the way up Grove Street, and at a little bit faster pace because she was merely drunk and cold, not high and fried with sunglasses still on like the rest of us.
"Is she going to be all right?" an elderly Queen Elizabeth of a lady discreetly inquired of her husband in passing. She was of course referring to the young, pretty Asian girl walking alone and being not too distantly followed by a group of crazy-grinned, sunglassed trannies. Because, I mean, we really fit that stereotypical description to a tee. And we all retorted with a rolling fit of maniacal laughter, which I don't think assuaged any of the Queen's concerns.
Speaking of concerns, the Monster debacle had taken a considerable number of twists and turns. Taylor had a fair share of missed calls from mutual friends of his and Erica's. Apparently since her phone had gone sayonara, she had been borrowing strangers phones and drunk calling the only numbers she had memorized (which in this day and age isn't many) trying to get Taylor's number. That's the story we put together as we called everyone back anyways. About a block away from Jenn's place, Taylor's phone rang with an anonymous number, and when he picked up, Erica was on the other end and we all sighed that huge sigh of relief that comes from averting a catastrophic disaster. She was in a car on her way to Jenn's, she just needed the cross streets. She was close. So Taylor and I waited outside while everyone else went inside. The mood was lighter than light.
