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a dirty, hippie trick
This week I was making a special effort to not drink or party or do drugs, since last week was such a mind-busting extravaganza. Meanwhile, Jersey Girl is in the middle of her law school final exams. Because of this, I figured we were in for a pretty low key day yesterday.
Of course, we ended up ingesting lots of psychedelic mushrooms, instead, and going completely nuts.
Jersey Girl has been fixated on mushrooms for quite a while since its the only drug she has never done. (I've had them a few times, including the last time that I freaked out at a fourth of July party, and had a powerful delusion that my friends were taking me home in a small cessna type airplane).
Anyway, the shrooms were supposed to be for the weekend. But, the weeked started to seem kind of far away, and yesterday was very drippy and wet and overcast, which is perfect mushroom eating weather. (When you eat shrooms, you sort of become a shroom, and love everything that a shroom loves: moisture, dirt, toads, mold, etc. Well, its not so much that you love it, but you sort of become hyper aware of it, the way spider man has his spidey senses. It's pretty weird. Because of this, I probably could have told Jersey Girl that shrooms aren't really for her. She's more of a Paris Hilton mindset, and prefers to live in a world of expensive and sterile, manmade things. Coke and vodka are appropriate vices for her. Real shroom people kind of stink, and the girls don't shave their armpits, etc).
Anyway, things started out nice enough. We ate a small handful each and then went on a bike ride through a light, drizzly, dusk rain. I told Jersey Girl to pay special attention to the plants and trees which would look really interesting, and sort of say, "hi" to her in a weird sort of way.
But then it started to get kind of windy and chilly, and I started to bug out a little bit. (I am famous for freaking out on all kinds of drugs, millions and millions of times). (But I keep trying).
Anyway, we headed back to my place, where I tried to settle myself down by slamming beers and chain-smoking. But I kept getting antsier and antsier. Jersey Girl would ask me a simple question like,
"do you know where the lighter is?"
and I would be like,
"WHAT????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It was at this point that (Goatbelt) Matt came over. I'd almost forgotten that I had asked him to come by so we could have a "creative meeting" about the next "legend" billboard. I'd found this really great book of "trash," b-movie posters, and I wanted him to see one in particular--Dirty Mary/Crazy Larry-- which would be the inspiration for the next project. (I am almost completely dependent on Matt for photoshop skills, since I've learned almost nothing about the program after dicking around with it for a couple of years).
Of course, I'm completely manic and bugging out when Matt walks in the door. Talking really loud, almost shouting, laughing hysterically, walking in circles, running my fingers through my hair, slamming my beer, standing up and sitting down for no particular reason. Just really bugging out.
But still, the creative meeting must began. I show Matt the trash movie book, and start looking for the "Dirty Mary/Crazy Larry" poster. Of course I can't find it in my frantic state of mind after three and four shuffles through. I start muttering to myself and getting frustrated, and then standing up and walking around, smoking cigarettes etc.
Then me and Matt just start getting into all of the other posters in the book. All of them are pretty funny when you're straight, but they're just hysterical on shrooms. (They have copy and subtitles like: "there's more to the legend than meets the throat--Dracula's Dog!)
It was right around this point that Jersey Girl enters my consciousness again. She sits down next to me in a sensual way and says,
"Ooh! Touch my face. It feels so beautiful!"
Without even thinking for a second I looked up at her and said,
"I know. You're the Angel of Death."
Then I went right back to looking at the poster book with Matt, laughing and jabbering and making plans for the next "legend" sign.
Needless to say, this put a real damper on Jersey Girl's trip. I immediately apologized, but I didn't realize how much damage I had done until after Matt had left.
Jersey Girl had gone from a state of fun and silly high to total miserableness. And suddenly all of the grubbyness of the shroom high was making her skin crawl. When I tried to apologize more strongly(?) it only made her more upset. Soon she was shouting about what jerk I was and stomping around the room. Then she got in the shower to tried to wash and scrub away all of the shroom grubbyness.
I just sat down on the couch for a while and figured she just had to cool off with a little bit of time. But when she got out of the shower she was still steaming mad (eventhough she kept saying that she wasn't mad).
I almost said a really retarded thing as she got out of the shower and was drying herself off in a huff. For some reason she sort of reminded me of that scene in the Shining where theres that naked woman in a bath tub that Jack Nicholson starts making out with before she rots and turns into a corpse in his arms. Just as I was about to mention this, I remembered that she was mad about the angel of death comment, and I realized the corpse from the Shining comment would make things worse.
Instead, I told her that I was really sorry and she just took it the wrong way. The Angel of death is kind of cool and sexy afterall. And I could be the Prince of Darkness. But she just wasn't having any of it. There was no way to spin it or make it okay.
Meanwhile, as I was watching her dry off in the bathroom, the two doorways between us were leaning at a 45 degree angle, and there was a rainbow of color around the edges of things. I was tripping pretty hard.
"This drug is just a dirty, hippie trick," Jersery Girl said. Even after the hot shower and tons and tons of deoderant, she still felt contaminated and disgusting.
I pointed to the caked on deoderant on her armpits that had actually formed white little deoderant worms.
"See, you're just sort of proving the shrooms' point," I said pointing to the white worms on her arm pits. (At the time it made perfect sense and it still kind of does).
So, anyway, the general consensus was that the shroom high sucked and Jersey Girl had to get rid of it as soon as possible. After my initial bug-out, I was kind of having a good time, but when your with someone having a bad time, their bad time beats your good time, sort of like paper beats rock, or scissor beats paper etc. (I used to really ponder the thing about paper beating the rock. I mean, that just didn't make sense to me. Sure, the paper can cover the rock. But is that really beating it? If you found a sharp edge to the rock it could probably rip its way out of the paper. But I guess those rules are said and done and there's no real questioning it at this point).
So anyway, we had one logical way to leave the grubby, earthy mushroom high behind: go out and get drunk.
But first I put on a very bright and loud floral shirt to try to dispell some of the muddy mushroom gloom of my previous wear.
Then we got in my truck and drove downtown, finding a parking space directly in front of cafe alma.
"Isn't there anywhere we can go besides these same old bars we always go to?" Jersey Girl said.
I just kind of looked at her, and she knew it was a stupid question. So we went into cafe alma to try to acquire a new frame of mind.
Unfortunately, it was the slowest, dreariest, most depressing night ever at cafe alma (the local hipster bar). There was just this one withered looking bald dude sitting at the bar. You know how bald dudes can look kind of cool and hip if they wear the right shirt, and work out, and carry themselves with confidence?
Well, this bald dude had none of that. He was all scrawny and sunken and his "hip" shirt looked like the top to some kids pajamas.
(Actually, now I'm just going to have to highlight the rest of the night. Sorry, that's what you get with blogs)
*Cafe Alma was wet and drippy and empty and it didn't help Jersey Girl at all to get rid of her shroom hell.
*We took the extreme measure of driving all the to Tampa, to a club called Mangroves, where Jersey girl felt certain the good DJ and crowd and ambience would cure her funk.
*But unfortunately the first thing we discovered upon walking into Mangroves was Jersey Girls sister having drinks with her (ex)husband.
Now this would be kind of unsettling for her (to say the least) if Jersey Girl was sober. But shrooms adds this extra dimension of paranoia and weirdness, and the sister and husband thing was just multiplied by a million. Jersey Girl's sister rushed after her in the bathroom to try to explain, but there was no explaining. We just out of there fast and didn't look back.
*We were supposed to go home after that, but we ended up at the Hub instead. It was our third attempt to drink away the mushroom weirdness, and at last we had some success. We got a couple of drinks and sat in a dark corner away from al the scary, cackling Hub people.
(I went to the bathroom when I first got there, and while I was peeing at the urinal and staring at the graphitti on the wall, this peeking head rose up over the toilet stall, and then descended again without saying a word).
*Back at our table Jersey Girl and I tried to drink and keep to ourselves. I told her as many sweet and warm things as I could to make her feel better.
But lo and behond, this dude that was using the ATM machine right behind us, gets our attention and says,
"hey, this may sound kind of weird, but were you at the DMV ticket place today?"
(Jersey was infact at the DMV for over an hour that afternoon.)
Then the loud, hair-jelled, ATM guy went on to give a minute and detailed account of everything that Jersey Girl had done at the office that day, including the number
6:56:53 PM 
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