PART 7
I shuddered involuntarily as the bitter taste of the LSD went down my throat. (For the rest of my acid-tripping career, every time I took acid I would get that same shudder effect in my cheeks, this YING!-YING! feeling as I called it. Or even if I just THOUGHT of taking acid I would get the shudder reaction, like some weird Pavlov's Dog reflex.)
"It takes about an hour to take effect," said Donna. The plan was to sit in the bleachers and watch the baseball game while we tripped on acid. My friend Roger was pitching in the game...
"Do you feel anything yet?" asked Donna. I looked over at Donna, her eyes were glassy and she was grinning wildly.
"Yeah," I said.
Now is there anything more boring than acid stories? (Guess I should have thought about that before I started writing this damn book) Or, as 60s cartoonist R. Crumb put it: "Our generation told acid stories like the previous generation told war stories! ....AND THERE I WAS!! TRIPPING ON 100 MIKES ON THE FREAKIN' SUBWAY...!!!"
And besides, I've never been able to convey the LSD experience in words. Its kind of like trying to describe a dream, usually the imagery is too personal and symbolic to make any sense to anybody else. The closest I've come to describing the LSD experience is: "Its kind of like having somebody else's brain suddenly stuck inside your head, and not necessarily a human brain, perhaps the brain of an ancient reptile or some alien creature from another dimension." Which is perhaps the first shock of the LSD experience. Because you suddenly realize that your own brain is creating the pictures. And that when you alter the chemicals in your brain, the world that you thought was Out There -- the so-called Real World --changes along with it.
"What are you doing?" asked Donna.
"I'm staring at my hand," I explained. The palm of my hand was glowing, throbbing, udulating, with this transluscent beauty. I could see through the transparency of the skin to the little green veins and cells, and underneath that was something else...the most precious and mysterious gem, my own fucking hand. I stared at the palm of my hand wth utter fascination, as if seeing it for the first time. The intricate patterns of lines carved in my flesh seemed as if a road-map that explained some ancient secret from the beginning of time. If only I could read the patterns. I stared at my hand with rapt fascination. At the center of my palm was this glowing, diamond-like pin of light, shining and throbbing like the eye of a chrystal ball, like the portal, the very doorway, leading to some fantastic cosmic realm. I felt myself getting sucked into it.
"Why are you staring at your hand?" asked Donna.
"I just realized something incredible!" I explained, beaming with happiness. "All this time people have been looking at baseball games thinking it was the national past-time. When looking at your hand should have been the national past-time all along! Its been there all along, only nobody noticed it before. If only they would take the time to look at their own hand. Its all right there in the palm of their hand!"
"Wow!" said Donna.
I was over-joyed by this profound revelation. I went back to studying my hand, amazed at the cosmic joke of it all. It had been right there under my nose all along. I looked over at Donna and tried to explain this keen insight to her, but i was transfixed by the shape of her skull. She was ginning wildly, her skin was stretched so tightly across her skull that I thought it would burst any second.
I tried to follow the baseball game, but it was as if time had shattered. The pictures came as if on broken shards of glass, each moment disconnected from all the other moments. One moment Roger would be on the pitcher's mounds as if ready to pitch. And then the next moment people would be walking back and forth from the mound to the dug-out And then suddenly I realized the game was over and Donna and I were sitting alone in the bleachers.
Donna ran across the deserted field, her bra-less cone-like breasts swiveled aroundnd and around in strange patterns. Then I was home alone, in my parent's bedroom, staring at my shining transluscent face in the full-length mirror. The phone rang, and it was Donna, her voice pouring into my brain from a million galazies away. Are you alright?" she asked. "Yes," I said. I glanced at the center of my palm to see if It was still there. That magic glow. It was, only slightly fainter.