the writing machine

My adolescence was a monster truck rally and tractor pull of bad decisions.  I was arrested and put in mandatory drug counseling and probation for a ludicrous amount of weed, I ate acid in wood shop, I went with a hippie to a second location on numerous occasions, I did drugs on the gravitron and threw up slow gin, I passed out in my work Christmas party bathroom at the hot dog restaurant, I had my nose broken, twice and had it coming both times, all before my 14^th birthday.

The fact that I am alive at all, is a kind of weird and impossible luck. People who have snorted hot crystal meth through a blowtorch-warmed metal tube in someone’s grandmas trailer at 4 in the morning do not usually live to the ripe age that I find myself, so every day is a little discovery, a little surprise. It’s nice, and I am thankful for it. It is something to celebrate, survival.

The story I want to tell you about, begins on a warm spring day, in which I was 13 years old in the college town of Athens Ohio. I was walking down the street with my best friend Keith. Keith was 23 at the time, and had done some time. He had a scar from a knife fight that cut diagonally across his chest and stomach, and he used to show it off in the video arcade to girls, to piss off his girlfriend Keith would later become kind of famous, and make Chuck Shepard’s news of the weird, when he escaped from jail by convincing his jailers that he believed himself to be in contact with an invisible spirit named “OVOMBO” who lived in a jar filled with cigarette ashes, and once he was transferred to the mental asylum for evaluation, he tied bed sheets together and climbed out a window and went into the woods to live in a cave. While he was in county, I used to sneak him joints and speed, bu walking down an alley, they had broken a corner of a window and would drop down nail clippers hooked to thread, and I would clip it on a cellophane of drugs and they would pull it up into the jail. We also used to do Whip Its in the jail parking lot, but that is another story, for another day. For those who don’t know, whip its are little silver canisters filled with laughing gas used to whip cream that you open with a brass cracker and fill a punching bag and then inhale. Not terribly inconspicuous. Anyway.

Like I said, beautiful spring day. Pre-OVOMBO .We were walking down the street with Randy, who was obsessed with kickboxing and used to spin kick mailboxes. Randy is spin-kicking parking meters and we are headed to The Silver ball Arcade, to smoke terrible shake, hook up with people to drink Old Milwaukee with. We are passing a bottle of RUSH brand amyl nitrate and huffing it, which makes your head have an incredible density and rush and purple spots to appear in your peripheral vision. I stole this particular bottle from my parents, who keep the egg holder in the fridge filled with poppers for anal and orgasm increasing effects I am sure, but we are just huffing the RUSH to get high. I have never known amyl nitrate to cause the rumored asshole dilation, but would you even know, if your asshole dilated? Your asshole could be dilated right now. Think about it.

So we are huffing RUSH and I notice, leaning against the window outside Tony’s Bar, a folder, and because it is stealable, I steal it. It is filled with Ohio University information. In one pocket is a paper envelope. I open the envelope, and it is filled with more cash than I have ever seen in one place up to this point. I put the envelope in my pocket, we drop the folder, and we run up the street. Inconspicuous, I know.

We go a few blocks up the street, and sit on the steps of the courthouse, and we deal out the 1500 dollars in twenties that is in the fat little envelope. We decide we are having a party. A celebration. For my birthday.

As broke hillbilly youth I want you to understand, that we partied all the time. We drank Old Milwaukee, and Kessler whiskey, we smoked shake, and at that particular moment in time, my particular favorite activity was doing Dime, as the kids call it these days. Doing dime, or going dime a dozen, or dramatizing, is to shoplift a box of Dramamine travel sickness medicine and then eat the whole fucking thing. In fact, we had stolen so much Dramamine, that on one occasion I had to steal two boxes of chewables and eat that, which is a lot of chalky tablets to chew. 24 to be exact.

So, little known to most of you, over the counter travel sickness medicine Dramamine , is a nasty little concoction of Diphenhydramin 8-chlorotheophyline. Diphenhydramine is a delirient and sedative, related chemically to atropine, the active, weird witchy ingredient in Jimson weed, and Ayahuasca

8-chlorotheophyline is a stimulant related to caffeine, so, Belushi time.

Wikipedia says the following of the compound:

Many users report a side effect profile consistent with tropane alkaloid (e.g. atropine) poisoning as both show antagonism of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors in both the central and autonomic nervous system, which inhibits various signal transduction pathways.[5] In the CNS, diphenhydramine readily crosses the blood–brain barrier, exerting effects within the visual and auditory cortex.

Other CNS effects occur within the limbic system and hippocampus, causing confusion and temporary amnesia due to decreased acetylcholine signaling. Toxicology also manifests in the autonomic nervous system, primarily at the neuromuscular junction, resulting in ataxia and extrapyramidal side effects and the feeling of heaviness in the legs, and at sympathetic post-ganglionic junctions, causing urinary retention, pupil dilation, tachycardia, irregular urination, and dry red skin caused by decreased exocrine gland secretions, and mucous membranes. Considerable overdosage can lead to myocardial infarction (heart attack), serious ventricular dysrhythmias, coma, and death.[9] Such a side effect profile is thought to give ethanolamine-class antihistamines a relatively low abuse liability. 

Low abuse liability, my ass. I ate that shit twice a week. It turns you into a fucking lunatic. We watched television static for hours. I sat and wrote with a pencil that was not there for 45 minutes. I saw giant blue panthers slither around my coffee table. I could not speak or remember my own name on numerous occasions.

So when we knew we were throwing a party, I sure as hell was going to get some Dramamine with my new money.

Keith bought a boom box that was enormous, sounded like shit and had tons of blinky lights, and he walked around town with it, like a demented Pied piper, blasting guns and roses Appetite for Destruction, and telling everyone we knew that there was going to be a party at my house. We bought something like 24 cases of Old Mil, and put them in a kiddie pool. Randy bought a pillowcase of Shake.

We duct taped a pentagram onto a metal folding table, and had solo cups for quarters. We got out the Kesslers.

Everyone was there. Lisa and all her criminal brothers. Everyone that would be in Athens first death metal band in a few years. My friend Ike Tabler, who was so shy he could barely talk, Cinnamon Holley, and her boyfriend that hit that guy in the head with a cinderblock. Adam Weiner came, and he brought me a present, a bong made out of a grape juice bottle, umbrella parts and sockets, filled with a little bit of every kind of booze from his parents liquor cabinet, topped off with cold medicine. There was the metal dude who wore the suede fringe jacket. There were some truly scary backwoods dudes that Randy knew who just drank and spit snuff into solo cups and did not talk. A guy I knew who was into demonology, and shoplifting. My neighbors crawled out of their bedroom window and came over. Someone gave me a sword.

We only had 2 tapes to play in the boombox, Appetite for Destruction and Aerosmith Dream on, so we just played them over and over and over again. I hardly even noticed, once the Dramamine started kicking in. At some point, Randy spunkicked the back door down, and it was lying in the grass. Off its hinges. People were pissing into the tall, unmown grass, and someone shouted “what the fuck” . It was Ike, who had passed out in the weeds, and awoken to a stream of lightly used Old Mil, cascading over him as he slept in the dirt,

Mister Brownstone Played like 900 times.

The room slowed for me, and filled with giant blue Luna moths that slowly beat their wings to Night Train, as a choir of metal heads and hillbillies sang about gas station wine while pounding cheap beer and smoking comical, oversize Cheech and Chong joints rolled in Bible pages. I love that stuff. I could never get enough. We finished the RUSH. I crawled behind the cheap, flea market powder blue sofa and passed out. Dream On, Dream On. And when I awoke, I was 14. My head felt like it had been used to strain sewage. I had survived. And someone had stolen my sword. Probably fucking Randy.