When I was age 16 I became all- consumed with getting high—
...anything to elevate myself from the grey dirge of provinciality, anything to get me closer to knock-knock-knocking on heavens door, and finding God in a ring of fire or the Garden of earthly delights.
Sitting in a circle and sparking a spliff did nothing for me; it had to be the total mindgasm of hallucinogenic submission. I’d tried unsuccessfully with a girl I was fond of on my art course, after we’d convinced ourselves some fungus in the adjoining field held promise. Unfortunately, it provoked nothing more than a puking session in the adjoining toilets.
Finally, at a party in some ghastly councilhouse backwater, magic mushrooms were procured at which point without prompting, I chomped the little black headed veggies like candy, before swilling the gritty remnants from a cheap beer can.
An hour later, I find myself in the midst of a spastic freak out-convinced that the Cyprus trees across the road were involved in a brutal fight to the death. I was consumed by mortal terror at the site of this, and took flight, avoiding the chasms that were opening between gaps in the pavement, marveling at my ability to traverse them.
Somehow, I found my way home, and was met by the neighborhood mutt who stood between myself and my front door. The little dog’s head inflated like a balloon and I shrank beneath its bulbous magnificence.
No ring of fire-no God-just a little sausage dog with a fifty-foot head.
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