r e a l i t y s l a p Copyright ©1992 Neil Ollivierra Permanent Address: 4827 Fairway Ridge South West Bloomfield, Michigan 48323 United States TEL: 0101. 313. 737. 9173 d e t r o i t t h e e a r l y n i n e t i e s Sure. L.S.D. lysergic acid diethylamide. The shit lands on a man like a rolled-up copy of the Detroit News lands on a cockroach. A cockroach that braves the kitchen counter during daylight. Lift the paper to reveal the stain-your shit is all mixed-up and different. If you have to ask me what it is like before trying it yourself, i will tell you that you are probably not cut out for the experience. At least, not for the moment. Because, no offense, it is a dumb question, rooted in fear and insecurity-two bits of baggage you simply do not want to carry along with you on an acid trip. Unless you enjoy fucking with your self. I know. I’ve been there. But then again, this is only my experience; the details of which may or may not be of any use to you. And I can say this about anything, I can say this about the tofu burger i ate last night, what i think about right before i start painting, guilt, Marxism, premature ejaculation (Captain Shizzo), gun control, zen, the ethics of laughter in the twentieth century. It is a dumb question, finally, it is like asking someone for their life story. What is it like? I can’t tell you that. Have you ever suspected that everything surrounding you is like a cheap, hollywood backdrop reality that can be ripped away to reveal something else? Well if you have, and you didn’t particularly like that feeling, you can sit there and watch me do this drug. You can sit there and watch me do it, and if my behavior startles you, you can walk away thinking you saved yourself from a bad experience by using a little good old-fashioned observation. You can think that if you want to. I will, however, talk about the first time it happened, the first time i tried it. I will talk about it because something very strange happened the first time, something interesting. It was only a year ago, a night like any other, no different from any other night. Except for this, the experiment i had on the agenda for the evening. Faris had given me the shit, a single hit wrapped in a tiny origami square of tinfoil with ultra-sharp creases. I popped the tab, alone, in the apartment, and after waiting through a half hour of nothing, i turned off the lights and went to bed. Hours later, i awoke in the middle of the night to the soft glow of peach-colored streetlights illuminating the slackened bows of telephone lines outside the window. Everything seemed so still, so quiet. I sat up in bed. and i knew that time had stopped. I listened for noises, sounds in my building, in the city surrounding the building. There was nothing. Nothing. I had the curious idea that while i was asleep, a great cosmic billy goat had come along and taken a bigass bite out of the blue apple. Everyone knew it but me; the whole world had been stunned into silence while the core of the earth bubbled and dribbled down to the south pole. I tried to laugh at the idea of it, i tried laughing, but only managed to expel a strange tittering noise that echoed about the room, bouncing off the walls. It startled me. I kept my mouth shut after that. I wasn’t ready to move yet, so i just lay there, in bed, tasting the quiet metronome of no time; gauging the gathering energies that networked warmly through my crotch and demanded masturbation. Everything was the same. Everything was the same, but I could feel something moving toward me in the darkness, like a window, like a comet that comes once every 86 years. And it didn’t feel ridiculous to suddenly roll out of bed, nude in the chill stillness, to sit crosslegged on the hard, thin rug. I closed my eyes, one at a time, and slipped into the warm bath of easy breathing. Slackened my arms as if to send two white rolls of toilet paper across the floor, unraveling in different directions. At first there was only darkness-it took some time before the satellite eye opened and began to blink like a wakening salamander. And then i was weirdly watching my self sitting in the room. I was outside of my self, if you can dig it. I slowly orbited the large head- the size of it scared me, it was like approaching Jupiter. I balked like a frightened deer and tried to get back inside-i entered through the open lolling mouth, but it wasn’t the same, it was like entering a hot humid cave. I sat there like a hermit crab that had installed itself in another creature’s empty shell. I turned around and looked back upon the mountainous teeth and tongue; I sat there until it became obvious that this was not the way to do it. Then i moved on down the throat, illuminating the wet pink fleshy walls of the lungs-everything smelled bad and the many noises were loud and confusing and scary. I got lost in the arteries and chambers, and eventually sperlunked through a strange rocky landscape of stiff jutting hairs, taller than desert cacti. There was a warm gentle wind behind me, pushing me, and i rolled out of my left nostril and paused at the soft perspiring shelf of my upper lip. Which was a relief-it would have taken six months or more to make it to my asshole. Next time, I’m going to South America, goddamnit. I’m now alone, alone and naked to the waist in the vast empty space of the loft on Gratiot Avenue, downtown. Home. One vast plaintive room of whitewashed brick, stained in places with the ghostly gray smudges of palm and fingerprints. The building was built in the earliest part of the century as a detergent warehouse. Seven floors. 10,000 square feet per floor. Open staircase. Freight elevator. Shitty duct heating. In the 1920’s, i understand, it became a speakeasy. It was one of the few large buildings on the east side whose skeletal structure survived the riots of Ô67. A guy who owns a lot of Greek restaurants bought the building a few years ago, and had it converted into lofts. My place, the third floor, right before i moved in, served as a crackhouse. When i first came to look at the place, a few years ago, the door had been kicked off the hinges by the police. There were bullet holes in the drywall. And every now and then, when i get the urge to sweep up this pit, i find a spent shell or two, just lying around. I looked around for cocaine. The next tenant might find some. I didn’t. A stream of seemingly cancerous moonlight cuts through the window to cast a trapezoidal pool on the bed. I am lying on the bed, waiting. Waiting to go to South America. I am already sure that it is not going to happen. I am sure of this only because I am not completely sure that it is going to happen. And this, if i remember correctly, is exactly what i need to get there. So, now convinced, I roll over to the edge of the mattress to grab at a sweater, pulling it on over my hairy nakedness. I am, however, tripping. I can tell. I dropped only two hours ago. The scariest thing about taking hallucinogens these days is that the shit isn’t much different from how i think anyway. I mean, i look around, you know. I look around and i know that the only thing i do know is that i don’t know anything. I don’t know shizzy. Only when I’m on acid, I’m even more sure of this. It’s a comforting kind of freedom. For me. It’s liberating. It’s like stripping off your clothes and getting into a cardboard box. I am still here. I’ve simply exchanged realities-this one altered to slightly surreal proportions by a precise mix of chemical bonds. What else? My eyes are caked shut with the meat of sleep-a thick, gluey crust that is fun to pick off and roll between my fingers. My mouth is a petri-dish, a platter stained with the dried vestiges of phlegm that coat my tongue in a slick film. My teeth are hollowed-out stones; the urge to grit them together is irresistible and the set of my jawline feels numb-strange and unfamiliar. Slowly, i move off the bed. Walk to the stereo and pop in a tape. The sugar-sweet vibrations of a familiar funk tune buzz around my head like a moth around an open flame. There are subliminal jazzy undercurrents within, and a brooding bassline that I feel more with my ribcage than hear with my ears. 1:37 a.m. I am definitely feeling it now; my insides are wound tight, like a warm smile. It is time now. Time. to make a phone call.