Black Microdots

Some blue penguins, yesterday

My second trip was a black microdot. it looked something like this:

                                                                       .

I was a naive and impressionable Drama/English student at the time and the size of it led me to conclude it wouldn't do terribly much. So after trying and failing to cut it in half, I ate the whole dot, despite warnings it was off the scale compared to my previous dosage.
I took it with three of my housemates- Paul, who had had a bad trip on Blue Penguins the week before- was the only one who didn't drop.

Within ten minutes, I was unable to get out of my chair. I looked over at the poster on the wall, to find that I could see the shadows around it were a composite of red, green and blue. The curtains started breathing. Then the walls did.

I was aware I needed a drink of water, but couldn't get it myself.

"Paul... Paul," I croaked weakly, "Do you think you could get me a drink?"

Paul tutted and looked at me with bewilderment. I looked over at John who was locked rigid at the other end of the sofa in his own private grinning world. He slowly turned, first into a wolf then into a toad.

"All right now," he said. "All. Right. Now."

"I can't take this. John's turning into a toad," said Ollie. "I'm going upstairs."

I looked back at Paul, the roar of madness ringing in my ears. "Wa-ter..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" he snapped, going into the kitchen.

I took the glass off him and sipped at it gingerly.

"You can't be that fucked," he said.

"No. No, I can't be that fucked," I agreed, trying to put the glass down on the floor. The pattern of the carpet was playing up my depth of vision, however. I couldn't work out how to get the glass down.

I turned to John. "How long ago did we take this?"

"About. Fifteen. Minutes," he melted.

I wanted my mum.


*    *    *

Five hours later we started to finish peaking. By which I don't mean the trip was over. Far from it. But the initial sensory onslaught, in which I lay on the floor being bombarded by Ollie's happy hardcore tapes whilst tesselating roses and eyes and mouths opened up to eat me., started calming down and something approaching reality began to reinstate itself.

The next thing I was aware of was a knock on the front door. I heard John shouting in his room but the door was closed. I went down the stairs, wondering what was going on.

I opened the door up and there was no-one there. I closed it again, then walked into my room, puzzled. The front door went again. I went to open it again, but once again the street was deserted.

"What the hell are you doing?" Paul had come down to see what the noise was.

"There's no-one there," I said, pointing.

"Why are you knocking on the door?" he asked, folding his arms.

"No, there was a knock on the door," I said.

"No, it was you who was knocking."

I shook my head, dumbfounded.

"Look, I've got a lecture in the morning. Stop knocking the door. And keep it down." He turned and went upstairs.


*  *  *

Several hours of psychotic delusions awaited in my bedroom. I couldn't bear the bare 100 watt bulb and darkness spawned hallucinations. I lay there terrified until dawn came, when the demons on my plaster rose turned into angels.

I later found out that John had spent the night in his room staring at a large knife and wrestling with the overpowering urge to cut into himself and so retrieve his undescended testicle.

Ollie had listened to Sasha tapes in his room.

Daylight gave greater clarity to the hallucinations. I looked out my window at the grey, sleeping terraces which were ultra real under their patchwork of lichen.

Feeling a little better with the sun shining, I decided to go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. When I went to the kettle it was full of baked beans.

I sat down. Time passed. The phone rang. It was Marny.

"Ron, what the fuck are you doing?" she hissed.

"I'm sitting down right now. I've been making tea. But the kettle's full of beans," I said.

"And have you forgotten the get-in and technical rehearsal for my bloody play which started an hour ago? Or have you been too busy taking drugs with your housemates?"

Sudden waves of sickness and paranoia crashed over me.

"You make me sick. If you can't get here then you can forget it. for-get it!"

She didn't say what I could forget, but it didn't sound good.

"I- I'll be there as soon as I can," I stammered, putting the phone down.

*  *  *

When I arrived at the drama studio (studio is the term in the theatre trade for any poorly-equipped and cramped space that could conceivably be used as a venue), a full-scale row was in progress. I was at least partly to blame, by my lateness, by allowing the time to let lingering resentments reach flash point.

"Get up that fucking ladder!" Marny screamed at me. I grabbed a parcan and started shifting upwards.

Now, it is in the nature of LSD that certain spacial confusions occur. So, looking down from my vantage point in the rigging, the cast looked far away and the ground seemed hard and unavoidable. I span out, nearly losing my footing.

"I think you'll have to do this without me," I said, inching my way down.

"And what the fuck is up with you?" Marny asked.

"Well, since you must know I'm tripping my nuts off. I have had a night you people would not believe. I think I'll go home now."

I left.

Looking up into the sky, clouds that looked like Laurel and Hardy rolled into view. Stan Laurel winked at me. It was all going to end happily after all.

Another fifteen hours, and a whole bottle of whiskey later, it finally did.

*  *  *

Of course, it didn't. The microdot sent us all over the edge leading to three months of mutually-reinforced suspicion, paranoia and loathing. None of us could even be in the same room with each other, let alone communicate. These problems strangely cleared up when I moved out and got a place with some nice girls.

I confess it was reckless and irresponsible of me to do acid the night before something important, but if you can't be reckless and irresponsible when you're young, when can you be?

That's right. When you're older.