The Night Before
JT Hilltop
Now I don’t advocate the use of hallucinogens (except in my case) but there was this one time when it did come in pretty handy. Not in an enlightened I see the truth sort of way, though that did occur often while under the influence of psychotropic shenanigans, but the time it basically saved my job. I was working as a dishwasher/cook for a Nursing Home back in my hometown in 1971. It was New Years Eve and I had to be in for the breakfast shift at 6AM new Years Day. At seventeen New years eve is a substantially important party and I was certainly not going to miss it just because I have to work early in the morning. I was hanging with my co-worker and good friend Randy-Man. We called him Randy-Man first because his mane is Randy but more importantly because one day he turned his apron around like a cape and I put a huge letter R on it. He was an awesome friend and was a sort of super hero to me and all the cool supernames were taken so it was Randy-Man became his moniker du jour. Anyway we decided we would bring in the new year tripping and then we would both go to work without sleeping. Sort of a pre-hangover/post-hangover arrangement. And so it goes.

So Randy-Man and I bought us a few hits of microdot mescaline. My Mom and Dad were out so we brought them back to my house to check out our stash of mind enhancers for the evening festivities. Purple Microdot. Tiny purple dots that looked kinda like purple poppy seeds or as we would soon find out like tiny balls of purple play-dough. They were tiny in stature but humongous in the alteration of the brain waves. In the dining room we placed our enhancifiers on the table to organize our highs. It consisted of a sizeable chunk of black hash, a dime or so of Panamanian Red weed, and ten microdots of mescaline. For me the difference between mesc and acid is that mesc is less physical hallucination and more color appreciation, and it planted a smile on my face for the duration of the trip which could only be removed using surgical techniques. It stretched my smile and laugh muscles to the optimum capacity and the next morning much like after doing far too many sit-ups made those muscles sore when using them. Not that I didn’t laugh on acid, but mesc just made everything even funnier. One of the things I liked about both was it gave me the illusion of having major insight, like I was an existential philosopher spending an hour enrapt at the various conclusions I came up with on my own. Like once while under the influences of blotter acid I reached the conclusion that it is impossible to stand in an empty room because it would have at least me in it if I was standing there. Whoa, mind blown! I still think about that moment of cosmic clarity. But back to the business at hand. I took part of the hash stash placing it in my chamber pipe and wrapped the rest in foil. Randy-Man being the superior joint person rolled a few doobs so we could stash what we didn’t need . Next the microdots. We planned to take one microdot each to start and wrap the others in a paper triangle for later orf maybe another time. Randy-Man accidentally knocked a few off the table onto a short shag rug. Much to our horror it was the same place my baby sister played with her play-dough earlier and the rug appeared to be full of multi-colored balls of the claylike crap that looked eerily similar to microdots. Time for a magic carpet ride. We consumed the entire array of colorful poppy like play-dough dots, hopefully consuming at least one microdot each. We opted to eat all the bits and pieces regardless of the play dough issue. I sure didn’t want the dust bunnies in my Moms vacuum cleaner to be tripping on my microdot tomorrow.

At any rate we now had an hour to wait for the concoction of mescaline and play-dough bb’s to get digested. I made a mental note not to freak out if my fecal deposits had a rainbow effect tomorrow. In the meantime might as well get started on the hash. After a lung bursting head exploding bowl Randy-Man and I were abuzz ready to take on whatever this New years Eve held in store for us. We always believed plans were a deterrent when tripping and short of a rock concert or a movie its best just to let the trip unfold how it wants. So off we traipsed into town to check out the local scene.
First stop was a pub called The Watering Can. Great jukebox, great bartender, great crowd. We grabbed a drink each and just grooved on the scene. One of the true benefits of tripping and smoking your high as opposed to only drinking your high is it lends itself well to the lifestyle of a pacifist which both Randy-Man and I were. Some of the others at the bar however found drinking lends itself more aptly to their more aggressive lifestyle and enjoyed the game of drunk bullying. We pacifist opted to take out our meager aggressions in the more mundane exercises such as playing foosball. A pair of drinking bullies saw that as an opportunity to berate a pair of longhair stoners and perhaps lure us into a lopsided confrontation. They sauntered over and placed the quarter on the table as a challenge. The mescaline was raging so we both laughed and told them to come on ahead and try cause we are on fire tonight! Now I was a decent Foosball player, not fantastic merely average, as was my Bud. However, on this particular evening the mescaline had super enhanced our powers of concentration and dexterity. It also loosed up our inhibitions removing all the stress of competition allowing us to play like champions. We showed the bully’s up by kicking their asses at Foosball with ease. I was making stops as if I already had the balls planned trajectory blueprint and Randy-Man was scoring goal with loud table slamming authority. I even scored one or two from my defensemen. We blew them away while laughing wildly a trait usually not etiquette approved in sports. As I said many of the senses become enhanced while under the mesc spell but as a result other senses often become minimized or dulled. One such dulled sense we acquired was our sense of danger or lack thereof. Usually while tripping that sense can only be awakened by a cop or a horror movie while tripping. Sometimes walking in a cemetery can have a similar effect but we just flat out didn’t realize the danger of showing up drunk ass jocks at their own game. Another dulled enhancement from the mescaline was our inability to control our laugh response. So it was we kicked their asses while laughing about it which apparently bully’s find in very bad taste.
The two alpha males feeling their territory had been pissed on disdainfully and had their manhood’s threatened by two weirdo hippie shits invited us to go outside with them. Not to smoke a joint like we would have done but to have our faces rearranged. We politely declined their offer which confused them for the moment but they were watching us like hawks. Feeling a might bit paranoid we decided to leave The Watering Can for another pub. The Cro-Magnon frustrated jock duo followed us outside stopping us when we went to get in my car. By this point the microdots took on a life of their own possessing even our bodies.
I learned a valuable lesson from this incident. It is extremely difficult even for a bully to punch someone who is constantly laughing and shows no sign of willingness to fight back. We laughed about rope-a-dope and the difference between kung fu and kung flu. They attempted to engage us in some basic violent male warfare by shoving us and getting in our faces. I asked my predator not to get to close because I had just gotten over Kung Flu which sent both Randy-Man and myself into a laughing frenzy. The bully’s looked at each other puzzled because they were more confused than when they were asked to chose #2 pencils for the SAT’s. The alphamost of the pair of confounded pit bulls with great distain in his voice said, “lets just get the fuck outta here, these hippie shits ain’t even worth it” to which the other bully apparently agreed with through a head shake. At least I think that was what made the rattling sound. I guess alpha male jocks find profound contemplation difficult so they just follow behind the apex male and sniff his butt. We stood there making our best attempt at composing ourselves as we watched the injured Dingoes fading into night. We had finally gained control of our laugh response when Randy-Man said, “I bet we coulda taken them.” At that moment we once again lost control of our laughter. It was the funniest thing in the entire world we had ever heard so we bestowed on it a most fitting accolade of non stop laughter we could manage until we could barely breath any longer.
The evening continued along those lines, dodging danger, laughing, drinking, smoking, and hallucinating. Like any other typical party night in town we were bar hopping staying as long as we could before it became ridiculously obvious that we were on something. We opted to go low key so we went to a fall back Irish pub, Finnegan’s Rainbow where life was all about drinking, playing pool, shuffle bowling, or pinball. All we need do was mind our own business and stay out of trouble. Good plan with good intentions until we noticed two young ladies looking our way. We had seen them around town but never got up the courage to introduce ourselves. But now here they are wanting to play shuffle bowl with us. There was a distinct aura in the air and all four of us recognized something mutual on a higher plane. When I looked into one of the girls eyes it hit me. They were tripping too! Not sure how, its not like we had a special mescaline users membership handshake or some sonic trip detector but I looked at the tripping young beauty simply inquiring, “microdot?” After three minutes of the four of us laughing she responded, “Are you asking me if I’m on microdot or if I want microdot?” After the perfect amount of pause I answered, “Both” then turned to Randy-Man and said, “Don’t worry I think we could take them.” The four of us began the longest laugh competition for which there would be no clear winner. It wasn’t funny and the ladies had no idea that Randy-Man had used the similar line earlier but that didn’t matter. Once one person laughs everyone laughs at least until they realize they don’t know why they‘re laughing to begin with. Then you’ll think about it an hour later and start laughing again. Like I said, mescaline makes everything funny. Long story short, the four of us became tripping companions, ingested more microdots, and had the time of our lives playing shuffleboard bowling like pro‘s. That is if laughing hyena’s could be considered professional.
Perhaps we were a tad over enthusiastic or as the bartender called it, unruly, but the time had come when we were no longer fit to be out in public. So the four of us jumped in my car, picked up some beers and got a room at The Muller Ridge Inn to party in peace. It was a double room with huge beds each underneath a large mirror. We had intuitively paired up and each couple chosen a bed to sit on where we planned to laugh in the New Year watching Dick Clark but circumstances had us dropping our own balls instead of watching the big drop at Times Square. Between the amphetamine rush giving extra stamina and the hallucinogenic properties making feelings extra intense the New Year was rung in a few times either without noticing ofr without caring that the other bed could hear and see everything. Then again, maybe we were all just to busy to think about it. We had such a great evening but before we even noticed it was 5AM. A quick shower (two at a time) we drove the girls back to their car in the village, got their numbers, grabbed a jumbo coffee, and headed off to the nursing home to prepare breakfast for the seniors. (No names were used for the fun and lovely lady friends we made because a few of the readers are from my hometown may try to figure out their identity the way they picked up on the real names of the bars we went to and the motel we stayed at)