We were fifteen years old and creating our experience on a daily basis. Most involving the consumption of fist fulls of various drugs of varying effect. Gnashing at the bit desperate to feel the blood of life drip down our chest… But mostly we were just fucking high… Really fucking high. One of our closest friends of the time fancied himself a bit of a modern age Timothy Leary but mostly he was just high… Really fucking high. It was not entirely uncommon for him to call me at any given moment of the day requesting that I come over to his house so that I could closely watch as he swallowed/smoked/snorted some new experimental drug so that he could be sure he didn’t freak out or choke on his own tongue. Granted, a fairly heavy trip for a fifteen-year-old. At one point he had acquired a decent shipment of a new hallucinogen from some Swedish pharmaceutical lab. He described the drug as children’s chewable acid. We were children and we could chew and boy did we ever love acid. Around this time Nickelodeon was having puff-a-palooza marathons which consisted of full weekends of Sid and Marty Croft shows. I’m sure there were legions of kids all over the US dropping acid and taking the ride. We were not about to miss out on this. We locked ourselves in a friend’s bedroom strapped with bag loads of our new drug.  You may be assuming that this story is winding its way towards a good freak out. No, that comes later. Just hang in there.
As a child Mac was a kinetic beast. He rarely sat down and never stopped moving unless he was passed out or had dosed over. So sitting still to watch TV for 8 to 12 hours was quite a request. Needless to say it didn’t happen he was bouncing off the walls, literally. At one point Mac was perched atop the bed marveling at the feel of rice chex in his mouth when he threw himself full force back into the bed. Unfortunately, his head did not make it to the desired destination. The back of his skull made contact with the wall with a sickening crack. Everything froze and he stared at me in disbelief. Now maybe it was the hallucinogen but I’m fairly sure I could see the knot rising on the back of his head like a fucking cartoon. At full size it had grown to the size of a grapefruit. He shook as he daintily felt the new head growing out of the back of his own.
“Oh jesus… Oh fuck… This is bad… Really bad.”
He frantically looked around the room for help or assurance or more drugs. I had Mac turn around so that I could inspect the knot. It was freakish, insane, the largest knot I had EVER seen in my life. We should or could have taken him to the doctor but none of us were in any state to go on that sort of trip. So I did the only thing I could… I lied.
“Oh, shit that’s nothing. I’ve seen way bigger.”
Bullshit.
I slapped a band-aid in his hair and turned toward the TV.
“Shut up. I’m missing Land of the Lost here.”

She smelled of sex. It was mind numbing. Her lipstick had pulled outside of the confines of her lips, dragged out onto her chin and various places it obviously should not have been. Her eyes lightly rolled back into her head leaving no doubt that she was under the influence of a litany of psychotropic drugs. Her chest heaved as she moved in my direction. she flipped her hair back. A flash of glistening metal. She had been modified. A shaft of medical grade stainless steel implanted directly behind the right ear. At specific intervals a dose of a high quality derivative of MDMA was injected directly into the ventral tegmentum. I’ve often wondered if Fritz Haber’s intent was to aid in the creation of mindless sexual automatons for the personal use of the rich and powerful in the 21^st century.

In my line of work I have often had the misfortune of running into individuals such as this young woman. She once had a life, plans, dreams and family. Now her dreams consisted of heavy petting and hot violent copulation. The first time I encountered one of these poor souls I was not aware of the reality of the situation until my pants were around my ankles and she was bent over the hood of my Chrysler. Her screams were, I’m sure heard in the next province as I took core samples. Once I understood that her advances were not made at the behest of my stunning good looks I was appalled and even a little hurt. I held her down and unscrewed the reservoir of drugs from her skull. I now know that there is no going back for these people. The unspeakable acts that are performed on these young women are only tolerated under the influence of massive quantities of massively expensive drugs. The girl I liberated is now spending the rest of her life in a maximum security mental institution. The last male guard assigned to her cell block was found with his cock manually removed and forced into his lower intestine. I suppose it’s arguable that she was better off before I got to her.

I was standing in one of worlds best known underground members only sex clubs. I struggled to keep the whiskey in my glass as a lovely young lady who may have once been a literature major savagely pawed at my meaty parts. Just another day at the office. Lawrence Bishop was a revolting meatball of a man. I smelled his cheap cologne before I saw him. The irony that this man could buy and sell entire countries and yet still insisted on wearing the most inexpensive cologne available was not lost on me.

“Stacy! Come here!”

Bishops voice was all at once commanding and nauseating. Stacy’s head snapped in his direction as her hand froze on my manhood. Her eyes again began to burn with unexplainable passion as she sauntered over to Bishop and ran her hands over his elephantine chest.

“You will have to excuse Stacy here. If it has a cock she wants a piece of it.”

“If she didn’t you might never get laid Bishop.”

Bishop threw back his head and his numerous chins jiggled as he let out a horrendous gurgling laugh. Stacy looked up at me hungrily as she pulled Bishop’s flaccid lesion covered cock out of his pants.

“That’s why I like you Evan’s you don’t pull any punches do you, you old son of a bitch?”

I turned away from repulsive scene next to me and looked at the bartender as I drank down the rest of my whiskey. I needed to get this over with and soon.

“McCarthy sent me Bishop.”

Bishop ran his meaty paw through Stacy’s matted hair while I watched reality sink into his thick skull. I caressed the handle of the knife in my jacket pocket.

“And what precisely does Mr. McCarthy want from me?”

The bartender poured me another drink. Bishop continued,

“You can tell him he can have his daughter back if that would make things right between us.”

I swallowed the whiskey feeling it warm my stomach. I turned to face Bishop trying to avoid taking in the vision of Stacy suckling at his mutilated cock.

“You and I both know it’s too late for Stacy to go back. She can never truly go back.”

In one deft move I pulled my blade from my jacket and plunged all ten inches into Bishop’s non existent neck. Blood sprayed across the room spattering various stunned rich and powerful men. He fell to the ground clawing at the crimson gash. I bent down and pulled the knife from his body allowing more of his vital juices to splash out onto the floor. I wiped the blade on his 10,000 dollar Fioravanti suit and lit up a 5 cent smoke. I made my way to the door as Stacy continued to ravish the corpse of what was once one of the most powerful men in the world.

There are people who simply never fail to blow me away. Granted there may be an easy win for folks who are incredibly talented, creative or beautiful but I’m not talking about people like that. I’m referring to folks with absolutely no sense of self awareness.

Morbidly obese women with shirts that say “naughty” or “princess” dragging filthy faced toddlers by the arm.

Old people who smoke.

Individuals whose lives are unequivocally unsatisfying yet make to move to change.

Now those people are tragic blind heroes, People who boldly continue a long pattern of stupidity in the face of a whole world that disputes their very lifestyle. There is no doubt you’ve seen these people, grown men with thin finely braided rat tails. At first blush these folks may appear to be clueless and yes, in a way they are. However the fact of the matter is these people are heroes. They are the Davies to realities Goliath.

Often times when I am graced by the presence of these types my reaction is much the same as most of society.

            “Good god what horrible timeless rock did this person crawl out from under so that I may avoid tripping over it and falling into the time rift?”

            However, there are occasions when I am able to swallow my repulsion and see them for what they are; freedom fighters.

            A few nights ago I was out in front of a club at about one in the morning and one such majestic creature brought his reality colliding with mine. I was sitting on the curb enjoying a smoke and a cup of coffee when said individual walked by. He was sporting the aforementioned rat tail and he was well past drunk. As he made his way past he eyed me and stopped to pose a query.

            “Hey bro, what’s up with you, just drinking coffee?”

            “Yeah well, I’ve got to drive later.”

He started to stagger away and here’s where the magic happened. Once he was about 10 feet away he whirled around and declared,

            “I gotta do drugs later”.

I have no doubt that he did have to do drugs later. He had to do drugs later, tomorrow and every moment for the rest of his life. In his mind I was the fool and perhaps the reality of the situation is that I am.

By the age of eighteen I had consumed an ungodly amount of drugs. It not as if I left the house on a daily basis with an implicit desire to seek out and experience strange and exciting new kicks. The fact of the matter is that drugs most often found their way to me. Granted I did by choice immerse myself in situations where drugs seemed to be the common currency.

            While harder drugs and hallucinogens were save for the most special occasions. My daily stock and trade was marijuana. I often wonder how without jobs we managed to satiate our near unquenchable desire for grass. When cash was low however we had our methods. During our time at the Cattle Club we devised a hideous and effective little con for the procurement of marijuana. On a night when we found ourselves lacking in incendiaries we would head out to the back patio to find our mark. Grass smokers are painfully easy to spot. The most effective way to keep your dope smoking covert is to keep it entirely out in the open. No square would expect a doper to have the audacity to just stand there smoking grass. Would he? In the desperation to make it appear as if they’re not up the anything most folks may as well raise a bright red flag emblazoned with the words ‘We’re smoking dope over here!’. Huddled together in small groups, heads alternately bent down with faces awash in amber flickering light it’s as if they’re begging to be caught.

            Once we had a confirmed visual ID phase two of the plan would go into effect. We would casually walk back into the club leaving the dopers secure in the belief that we were clueless of their actions. Within moment of our departure two of The Cattle Clubs finest would purposefully descend upon them. Being the incredibly friendly bouncers that they were captured pot heads were often let go with a stern warning. However, they never left with their grass. That was ours, a well earned payment for helping to maintain law and order.

(If you have not read the previous post you should do so before you read this.)

There are those moments in everyone’s lives where just as everything seems to be falling to pieces the world regains its composure and at very least offers you a slightly less fucked circumstance. Said moments are rare and magical and should be cherished. Not unlike the exceptional occasion where you drop your beer and by the grace of the gods you manage to catch it or it lands on the ground right side up. In a matter of moments our walls had come crumbling down upon us. Although I didn’t know it at the time I would escape this predicament relatively unscathed.

            The back of a police cruiser is not built to be comfortable. The hard plastic seats are constructed with purpose of reminding you that you have somehow managed to blow it so badly that you are no longer worthy of anything soft. The words of the officers who had taken us into custody seemed to be chosen by the same premise. Nothing soft here, only hard words meant to frighten. Declarations meant to inform you that you had chosen the wrong path and that there is heavy price to be paid for walking the road of the one percenter.

            We were taken to the parking lot of the nearest super market where we were made to wait for our parents who had been called at three in the morning and made aware of their children’s indiscretions. While we waited the officers did their best to instill the fear of god and prison in us. Unfortunately for them I did not believe in god. I did however believe in prison and despite my cool exterior I DID know what they did to soft little boys like us in prison. I prayed only that it would be my mother to come retrieve me. She would be understanding and comforting.

My heart sank as I watched my father pull into the parking lot. He was livid and only half awake. As far as my father’s disposition went this was a deadly combination. He had been woken at three in the morning out of a dead sleep and he was obviously not happy about it. It had been a long night it was apparently not ending any time soon. He stepped out of the truck, greeted the officers and proceeded to initiate a conversation which would solidify his place in my mind as the single coolest parent ever known. The officers made him aware of what had taken place in the soccer field at Star King. He stood stoic, silent, listening as the officers rambled. It was at this point that one of the officers dropped what he suspected to be the major bomb.

            “Did you know that you son is smoking marijuana?”

            “yeah.”

            “And don’t you think there’s something you should do about that?”

            There was a pause that seemed like an eternity of time and space spreading out before me. Then it happened.

            “My dad couldn’t have done anything to stop me from smoking grass and I suspect that I can’t do anything to stop him.”

I looked over at my dad flabbergasted at his response and then to the officer in charge who seemed to be more dumbfounded than I. This was not how it was supposed to happen. Upon being informed that your child has been consuming illicit drugs you are supposed to fly into a blind rage. The officer at this point was supposed to be restraining my father from brutally beating some sense into me. Things were not going according to plan. I folded my arms and smirked. Victory was mine. My dad did fly into a rage. However it was not of the physical variety and it was not directed at me. He launched into a long winded, high volume diatribe regarding being woken at three in the morning on a work day for “nothing”, tax dollars wasted and rapists and murderers that needed catching. I was right. My father was angry but not at me. Not for taking drugs, not for drinking booze, and certainly not for being picked up by the police. We drove home in silence which was only broken when he turned to offer me some advice.

            “Be more careful next time.”

            I later learned that the exchange between Roric’s dad and the police was not unlike ours. Unfortunately for Mac however his parent knew how to play the part properly and they played it well. They had taken the officer’s business card and for the next year or so would wave it front of Mac’s face for almost any reason. He was promptly checked into rehab and there he learned about more powerful effective drugs.

            I guess when it comes right down to it they really only caught one of us that night. We did learn some lessons that evening but despite the best efforts of the police they were not the lessons they had intended. We learned that cops really are dicks, Never let booze go to waste no matter how cheap and you can not hide from a helicopter under a tree.