My First Trip

My First Trip - MMMC #184


It was a beautiful spring Sunday in 1969. I was in my junior year at Charlotte Hall Military Academy. Newt said he would have some LSD for us to try. He promised to be back early Sunday AM. We would have the whole day to trip.

Other than morning mess and church formation, cadets pretty much had Sundays to themselves. Sundays at Charlotte Hall were some of my fondest memories of high school.

A popular activity for the cadets still on campus was to take a blanket from their footlocker and spread them at the fringes of the pucker brush behind the New Barracks. Someone would throw up a window and turn their stereo up to wow. Good times. Other than some tight ass Officer of the Day pulling a recon and sneaking up on us from behind to break our balls, we could get away with almost anything.

Stuck on campus on a Sunday lent itself to all manner of rule breaking. We smoked cigarettes. We blasphemed. We smoked pot. We blasphemed some more. We drank what alcohol was available and blasphemed a lot. We huffed Carbona, a spot remover we bought at the campus PX.

Today four of us would experience LSD for the first time.

After collecting payment, Newt handed each of us a hit of Strawberry Fields. They were small little red pills. He called them “microdots”. I remember a heated discussion over the size of them. Snake claimed his cousin had Orange Sunshine for cheaper and the pills were much bigger.

Newt said nothing except, “Drop the pills boys. You’ll be fine in forty-five.”

It was all very ritualistic. Each of us lifted the pills like glasses ready to toast. Newt spewed some hippie mumbo jumbo and we each swallowed our pills.

Newt was wrong. I was fine in 30 minutes. I remember lying on my back and studying the various cumulous constructions being erected in the brilliantly blue sky over me when I suddenly burst out laughing. I did not stop laughing until I ran out of tears. When I did manage to collect myself, through my spent tears I noticed everything around me was distorted dramatically or moving in very mysterious ways or both. I had gotten off and it was glorious. There was nothing finer in the whole of Existence than LSD. Of that I was sure.

That day I watched ants with my head inches off the ground. I scrutinized the crusty, rusty metal dinosaurs from wars long past that were scattered around campus. I was stung by a wasp when I held it near my ear to listen. Damn ear swelled up and hurt for a week. There were other adventures that day and none of them were anything but wonderful.

I had a grand time and vowed when I was lying awake in bed two hours after Taps that night; there was no doubt in my mind that I would drop LSD again.

I stopped counting 185 trips later.

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A Gun in His Ear

Sunday Writing Prompt,
SWP, MLMM, Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie.

A Gun in His Ear

Final Exams were over. The boys were celebrating. Mike had just sparked a third joint when the three of them heard Bill up on the third floor. If they could hear Bill on the third floor, it meant Bill was probably having self-control issues again.

Bob looked at Mike, shrugged and motioned him to pass that joint. Tom sat between them on the couch and snickered. He was always useless when he mixed pot and beer.

The boys were not unsympathetic to Bill and his struggles. The guy had just come back from Nam ferchrisakes. They knew he had seen some shit, done some shit and he had night terrors regularly. But tonight was a celebration two extra semesters coming. Two of them finally snagged enough credits to graduate and they wanted to party. Damn Bill and his personal demons. They turned up the stereo.

Sometime later, loud banging on their door broke through their drunken fog. Mike was the first to crack an eye. He wiped the spittle off his chin and rubbed his eyes. He stood and found his footing. Barely awake, he staggered to the door and opened it. It was Bill’s girlfriend wide eyed frantic and incoherent.

“Bill’s threatening to shoot himself.”

Mike leaned into the edge of the door. “What? Bill has a gun? When did he get a gun?” Mike’s return to Reality picked up its pace. He turned and yelled, “Hey assholes, Bill has a gun.”

Mike, with girlfriend in tow, began the trek up to Bill’s apartment.

“I have never seen him this bad. I only wanted to use your phone …… Please, don’t go.” She continued her warnings right up to the moment Mike pounded on Bill’s door.

The door opened. Bill’s six-five, 250 pound body filled the doorway. Mike looked up into his neighbor’s face.

“What are you doing Bill?”

Bill stuck his .45 in Mike’s ear. “I will blow you away.”

Really pissed now, Mike grabbed the gun and pushed it down.

“Meet me in the alley asshole. And leave the gun.”

Mike turned around. With Bill on his heels, they tromped back down the stairs. Bill’s girlfriend followed, her weeping eyes bulging and wondering which one was the craziest.

The drunken warriors passed Mike’s open door. He shouts, “No one sticks a gun in my ear.”

In the alley Mike and Bill faced off. Before Bill could focus, Mike knocked him down, rendered him helpless and pushed his face into the gravel. “Never, ever stick a gun in my face again. Got it asshole?”

Bill mumbled. Mark lifted Bill’s head and said, “What was that? You give up?”

“Yeah”.

Just like that the fight was over. The two of them staggered back to their respective apartments and life returned to normal. The next morning Mike’s roommates asked how it was possible he was able to best Bill. The man was a scary monster ferchriskes. Mike took a moment to answer.

“He was drunker than I was.”

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Mindovermisery - Sunday writing prompt - "Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys 

        Is sticking one's nose in other people's affairs wise?  In this real situation 

        from my college days in th eearly 1970s, I must have thought so.

I whittled this story down from 763 words initially to the 500 you see now.

BTW - As I wrote this I kept wondering if I was mis-remembering some of the details.  The big moments happened as I wrote them , but now in retrospect, I did mis-remember some things worthy of note and maybe should have been part of the story.  Bill had gone to Nam, but his most recent issues stemmed from his three years as an inmate at a state prison in Jessup, MD. He was on parole when this happened and he was definitely not allowed to own a gun.  No one called the cops and Bill was not put back in jail.  Not sure if that lasted as we were out of that apartment within the next year.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..........................

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Cross posted at the BoZone

The Portal

500 Words  - written for Facebook Writers Link  Group - Due 7/29/19

Crum and Maggie stepped into the early morning light.  Crum decided it would be hot today.  Maggie, well, she only wondered why the hold up?  “Let’s kick it into gear fercrisakes.  There’s fresh scat to find and roll in.” She pulled on the leash.

Once across Sam Page Road, Crum released Maggie from her bonds and thus any obligation to follow the rules of Man.  Tail wagging frantically, she threw herself into the off trail pucker of Mary’s Woods.

Most mornings Crum was ambivalent at best and often downright hostile to walking of any kind.  His old body woke cranky these days, so his mood depended on his sleep the night before.  Good mood or bad though, he always felt an obligation to be a contrary old fart in all matters public. Being contrary was a life style choice and he reveled in it.

The morning Sun flickered erratically through the sway of the tall trees.  Moments of light settled here and there causing Crum to notice things he had not before.  Today, the light landed on a hole in the old stone wall to his right. He stopped and pondered the wall.  Had that hole in the wall always been there?  Was it really a break or some kind of new mischief? 

Crum stepped off the trail and headed towards the wall.  Maggie ran past him and into the void.   She disappeared the second she passed through.

“Dammit Mag….”, he stopped mid sentence.  Not a sound, not even license tags jingling.

Crum picked up a stick.  Holding it bayonet style, he followed it through the break in the wall.  The stick began to disappear. A moment of disorientation came and now Crum was staring at a big neon sign.   

The sign read, “STOP! Portal is one way only.  Think about this before entering.  This is a no whining, no bitching, and no complaining community.  Life is perfect here.  And BTW – No Dogs!  Questions?  Push the button to your left and speak up.”

Looking around, Crum was pretty sure he was no longer in the pucker of Mary’s Woods.  Every bush and tree was manicured like “Better Homes and Garden”.  The place was immaculate.  In the distance a huge smokestack belched smoke in perfect circles. 

Crum reconsidered the sign and pushed the button.  He pushed it again.  The speaker erupted with an ear drum punishing screech.

“What?  Who’s there?  What do you want?  Calm down and speak up. I can’t hear you.”

Crum winced at the volume and impoliteness of the inquiry.  He spoke.

“Uh, So Life is perfect here huh?  And you don’t take dogs?”

The speaker screeched.  A voice said, “What does the sign say bub?  Can’t you read?”

“Just wanted to verify.  Might like to live in a perfect world.”  

Crum looked at Maggie, scratched her head and continued, “But if I couldn’t bitch about it, what would be the point?  Think I’ll pass.”

Crum leashed Maggie and they walked back through the break in the wall.
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This is my first piece submitted to the Facebook group - The Writers Link Group.  Not sure how I like it, but I did work more than usual on it trying to polish up the 800 plus word turd I started with.

As always, any comments are welcome.