Echoes

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non-subject:  "clothing"

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I stood at my gray school locker in the cream-color tiled hallway in Hickory High School.  The stale aroma of  waxed tile, not fragrant or odiferous but rather somewhere between a musty book and janitorial smell, filled my nostrils. If I wasn't standing there alone, I felt alone.  I wanted to be invisible.

At 16 years old, toward the end of 10th grade,  I wanted no one to sign my annual, The Hickoy Log; and no one did.  I placed it in my locker to take home later. I felt withdrawn.  I felt ugly.  Too often I felt paranoid and so very stupid and unintelligent, even though I continued to make the honor roll in academics.

I figured it might pass, this phase of feeling so stupid, this phase of feeling like I was insane, this phase of paranoia and withdrawnness. What was wrong with me?  The foreboding feeling was like a shadow, at times more dominant than others, but eternally present...lurking. Yet, when tripping, my mind and body were always free, at one with the universe; earthly cares were distant, non-important, mundane, beneath me.

In early June after the completion of 10th Grade, I headed southeast to the beach for a week of pure freedom.  Mike and Beth and Ron and I rented a cottage at Ocean Drive, South Carolina.  O.D., as Ocean Drive was called,  was the place to party.  I was the youngest of our crew of four. I don't know why my parents let me go.  Perhaps I had lied to them that a chaperone was going with us.  I seldom asked them permission for anything anyway, so I may have simply told them a bunch of us were going to the beach.

O.D. Boulevard, the main drag, ran parallel with the beach.  On the seaside of the boulevard were hotels and the pavilion; behind those lay the outstretched sand, day and night lapped by the wide salty Atlantic. The boulevard's west side was lined with hotels, restaurants, and cottages.  Our cottage was about two blocks inland, on a street that teed perpendicular with the boulevard.  The cottage was small and quaint, on stilts, with gray-white wooden siding and tiled floors.  Lots of the cottages were on stilts, in case of flooding.  Hurricanes are a regular occurence on the Southeast coast.

After we checked in on Saturday, we began the partying. That afternoon Ron pulled out the MDA.  It was nicknamed the love drug.  We were regular  MDA users; it was my favorite psychedelic along with mescaline, which made me laugh a lot.  MDA was hornifying.  After a dose, two people could make love for hours.  The world became magical; everyone was in love with everyone else.  The world was a wonderful place with nothing to fear; there was only love that radiated from all creation, only openness to share as one.

Beth, Mike, Ron, and I each swallowed a half gram of the bitter white powder.  I'd learned to tolerate the taste, often chasing it with Ginger Ale or orange juice.  It wasn't long before the drug took effect.  But it wasn't like regular MDA; something wasn't right.  I was afraid to leave the cottage; there was too much stimulation outside the walls, outside in the streets, outside with the lights. I have little recollection of following events other than a small glimpse of memory sitting naked on a bed, sweating, and stroking Ron's face.  Ron's face looked like a rose. I was fascinated with the shape and color.  I kept stroking and stroking it.

MDA, the love drug. I have no idea what happend over the next 14 hours in that cottage.  I'm sure we didn't sleep; MDA is not sleep inducing.

Mike and Beth, Ron and Carol again diving deep into dangerous territory.  We regularly tripped together; it was amazing we were still alive from the previous nine months of regularly delving into oneness with the universe.

Sometime Sunday afternoon, Ron was coaxing me to leave the cottage.  The four of us were still feeling the effects of the drug taken the day before.  Ron was a little concerned that the powder had been cut with strychnine, producing ill effects.  But he also explained to me that the experience of psychedelics at the beach was different than the experience inland.  Inland we were often out in the woods, where it was dark and quiet.  Or we were in a controlled environment with our particular music to take our minds wherever we supposedly commanded.  It was my first time taking psychedelics at the beach.

At the beach, the sound of the waves from the ocean produced a background echo, echo, echo, echo, echo.  The sound of all the different music from the open-aired cottage porches where people were partying, intensified the ocean roll.  The traffic with its constant hum produced an undercurrent echo, echo, echo, echo, echo.  People laughing and talking all around brought more stimulation to the senses and the echo, echo, echo, echo, echo. All that stimulation added to the intensity of the high.  "It's o.k.," Ron assured. "It's all just part of the scenery."

I timidly left the cottage to enter the mixed jungle with all its echos. I stuck close by Ron. We walked down the street; Ron with that boyhood grin on his face that always seemed to appear when we were high on psychedelics, our regular pass time.  We walked the two blocks to O.D. Boulevard.  On the left corner was a large cottage. The cottage was on stilts. We climbed the stairs to the screened-in L-shaped porch.  Music was blaring on the stereo.

I think Rick and Pam were there, along with Steve, David, Twirp, Ronda, Karen and other folks.  Now Mike and Beth and Ron and Carol showed up.  I was probably the youngest at 16.  Ron was 17 or 18. Some guys were girl watching as bikini clad young girls with shapely figures passed by on the sidewalk below.  Most people were sitting around the porch in chairs; mingling or spacing out while passing joints. Maybe they'd done some of the MDA too. I didn't smoke pot at the time. I'd quit 7 months earlier after overdosing on jimson seed.  The jimson seed had changed the chemistry in my body and for some reason every time I'd tried to smoke pot after the jimson seed experience, I'd get deathly paranoid.  So I'd quit toking; I only drank alcohol and used psychadelics and chemicals.  I seemed to handle those o.k., well, until the MDA experience the night before.

I took a seat at the far end of the porch, the side of the L that faced the side street perpendicular to O.D. Boulevard. It wasn't so busy with cars.  I don't know where Ron disappeared to. I just sat in my chair looking around and not saying anything and trying to make sense of my surroundings.  I couldn't talk; I was unable to retrieve words. I could think them, but I couldn't get the words to my tongue to say anything.  It scared me, but I knew it would pass.  It'll be o.k. once some of the MDA effects wear off, I assured myself.

David walked up to me.  With glassy eyes, a gentle grin, and intoxicated stupor he asked, "Carol, do you want a peanut butter sandwich and some milk?"  He had a boyish looking face, though he was at least 21 years old.  He blankly stared at me awaiting my answer.  I just stared back, never saying a word.  He staggered off, I guess to ask someone else.

By Monday, the MDA effect had subsided. Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't do any drugs, other than alcohol.  When Thursday afternoon rolled around, we were ready to dive again, each ingesting another 1/2 gram of MDA. This time it was right.

We ventured out in the daylight and walked on the beach. We went to a park where Ron pushed me high in a swing.  As I pumped my legs, I could taste the clouds. This time the high was magical. The mix of echoes, colors, sounds, aromas, the wind...oh the blessed wind.  It was all beautiful.  We were all one; we were all in love.

Then back at the cottage, Ron's face no longer a rose.  It was him, fully him.  I was me, fully me.  Horny, naked, and sweating.

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