It was me, Eric, and Steve. Eric had done acid once before, so he was playing the “expert on this shit” card. That said, I’m glad we weren’t all first-timers. It’s good to have someone around who can bring you back to reality and say “I know, it’s all very weird – but you’re just trippin’, and everything’s fine”.

Before you actually take acid, you might get some ideas about what’s “trippy” or would be fun to see/do on acid. We thought watching Fantasia would just be WILD. About 30 minutes in, we realized it’s just as painfully boring as it ever was (except for the first minute or two of Night on Bald Mountain, natch). So, we turned off the movie and decided to wander. We ended up at a drugstore where a girl I was seeing worked. She knew we weren’t “normal” – she kept saying “you… don’t seem normal” – but I didn’t tell her we were frying. Part of the paranoia you get when you’re on acid is “oh shit! everyone knows!”. Why it matters that “everyone knows!” is completely beside the point, cause.. frankly, no one would give a shit. But you think they would, if they knew.

We did a lot of walking around in parks. The night sky, even with light pollution, looks like a whole ‘nother beast when you’re frying. My favorite thing to show people while we’re on acid has become : “look up at the night sky. imagine that the stars are actually pinholes of light, poked through a HUGE piece of black construction paper draped over the earth”. Gets ’em every time. Makes you feel like even the universe itself has been lying to you.

Back at Eric’s house, my mom paged me. I called her and she asked me to come to the house (I lived down the street from Eric) and get her car to pick up my sister from work. I tried to feign fatigue “ohh mom, I’m so tired…”. She said “it’s 9 o clock and you woke up at noon, how are you tired?”. So I walked home, knocked on my mom’s bedroom door and tried to remember why I was knocking. I heard her say “Mitcz?” – “yeah, it’s me” – “you okay?” – “yeah, mom, I’m good… how are YOU?” – “I thought you were at Eric’s” – “uhh.. you told me to come over? get the car?” – she just said “what?” and I said “nevermind” and went back to Eric’s. On acid, you have a tendency to think “is this normal?” so you can kinda fake normalcy when needed. I verified, the next day, that my mom DID in fact page me. Whatever happened with my sister needing a ride, however, I haven’t a clue.

Eric’s brother came home. He was something of a thuggish character. Or, at least, wanted to project that image. He said “come here and smoke this”, so we did. I THINK it was just normal-ass weed, but.. his giggle when we smoked it made me think “eh.. maybe not”. I don’t know. Eric, Steve, and I went into Eric’s room. Eric crashed out. I sat in a chair in the middle of the room, staring around and talking to Steve. Until he, too, crashed out. I was alone, it was quiet save for the low volume music we had going, and I closed my eyes to think.

Over the course of what felt like 10 minutes (but, it’s acid, could’ve been 1 min, could’ve been 45 mins), I saw my life literally flash before my eyes. Every memory I could conjur up at that moment flashed through my head, like I was watching a fast-forward highlight reel, and it sped up as it got closer to the actual time I was living. Suddenly.. white. Like the kind of “white” you see if your eyes were closed and someone put a flashlight in your face.

I opened my eyes (I think), but I saw.. across from me, in a chair that didn’t exist in Eric’s room, a man in a black suit with a red tie. Neck-length black hair. There was almost a spotlight on him. Everything in the background was dark and blurred out. I remember thinking “this guy looks like.. me in the future”, like what I thought I would look like in the future (had I kept my hair long). He said “it’s been wild, right?”. I just nodded. He said “y’know.. it’s gonna be okay. you need to press on, because it’ll be worth it. It won’t happen the way you think it will. Everything changes. You’ll change. A lot. You’re going to go through some serious shit, but you’ll come out at the end, and it’ll be okay. Just great. You’ll do what you set out to do”.

I closed my eyes for a second (I think), and opened them and all was normal again. Eric and Steve were asleep. The chair, and the man, were gone.

In a way, the man was right. At the time, I thought “ohh I’m gonna be a big rockstar!”. Never even thought about doing comedy. And I have gone through some shit. But, it’s easy to make vague predictions about life in your own imagination. Especially when you still haven’t done “what you set out to do”.

I just wonder if I’ll have to go visit 18 year old Mitcz some day.