This was probably seventeen years ago. I was working with some old hippies who really knew where to get good drugs, and one of them had a line on ecstacy. This was back when, at least where I was, ecstacy was the new exciting thing to try out. This guy was able to get ounces or more at a time, in pure powdered form (what do the kids call it now, Molly?). Well, being young and enterprising, I figure I'll split an ounce with him (back then hits were going for 25 bucks a pop), get back what I spent and have free drugs. I didn't realize how many hits were in half an ounce. When I got the bag, I didn't really have a scale adequate to weigh such light amounts, and subsequently the first night I gave myself and my girlfriend about two-and-a-half doses apiece. I figured it would be like acid, and take about forty-five minutes to really hit, so we could take it at my house and then drive out to the nearby park to hang out. This is a 2000 plus acre suburban park with miles of roads through it, and a special spot you could pull off the road and drive into a huge field lined with trees along the road; combined with the topography your vehicle was invisible from those driving by on the road. The park was supposed to be closed at dark, but there were no gates. So usually you might see one or two other cars go by the field all night but overall you had the place to yourself, and on a lovely summer evening with the katydids blasting you could just sit out there and talk and look at the stars and whatever else your mind would conjure.
Like I said, I figured we would have a little bit of time to get out there, but after fifteen minutes, traveling down the road to the park we both noticed the very strong and rapidly approaching effects of our ingestion and looked wildly at each other, I remember seeing her eyes wide open and eyebrows arched over, and feeling mine doing the same, and saying, "let's just get through this together, okay?"
"Okay"
We make it through the few miles of headlight-illuminated shapeshifting forested roadway and park in the field, relieved. We sat there for hours, talking and shaking and hallucinating and laughing. You know, tripping our asses off. She was biting the inside of her cheek without being able to stop herself, I actually put my finger in the side of her mouth to stop her for a while, which sounds really bizarre now, but seemed perfectly appropriate to both of us at the time.
Our sense of time was skewed, but I'm pretty sure we had been there for many hours when we heard a car coming from the distance. The diffused glow of the headlights illuminating the air over the field was so wild, then as the car went along the road that curved around half the perimeter of the field, we saw the light shooting through the gaps in the trees like a fucking spaceship. As the car got to the far end of the field, we heard tires squealing, and then the unreal sound of the crash of metal into something, but it was really hard to comprehend it. The headlights were about 60-80 meters away, shining perpendicular to the road and up into the branches of the trees around the field at a steep angle. I think the engine was off immediately, but I'm not sure. After some unknown amount of time (seconds? minutes?) the lights went out, and all we could hear was the ping of the metal cooling. "Did that just happen?" I asked.
"It was a wreck, right?"
"I think so. I should. I should go over and see."
"Don't go." She was scared, really scared.
"They might be hurt."
"Don't go."
I didn't want to go. But I knew I should, though I had no idea how I could handle it. I am usually the kind of person who can handle really fucked-up situations with some amount of calm, and I really don't think in any normal situation I would ever not go, but this time, I didn't go. I didn't go, and it still bothers me. I don't know how long we sat there until things changed, or exactly how things changed, but the next thing I remember is the field surrounded by emergency vehicles, the lights flashing through the trees and the loud squawk of their radios echoing to us and we were tripping so hard. And then, it was all quiet again and we were alone, no one ever saw us right there, it was like we were invisible and not really participants. Or maybe we made ourselves feel that way, I really don't know. It was a long time ago and our judgement was really impaired.
I looked in the paper the next day, and tried to find out if anything significant had been reported, but I found out nothing. I just hope nothing significant really happened, at least nothing more significant than a minor wreck and our bizarre experience. But I don't know what happened, really, and I still feel guilty about it. I don't know if it makes me a bad person but, um, I'm blaming the drugs. |
I sleep around with people much, much older than me because *I* am so goddamn easy.