Untitled, Pt. 1 (Fiction)

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, about 30-35 years ago, I knew this guy named Gerry. Gerry was about 40 or 45, and he used to let me and my buddies come up to his apartment and drink beer, smoke dope, drop acid, whatever. Gerry was a serious glue-sniffer. He was always shoving a bag of glue into his face and then offering the bag to anyone who happened to be around. Me and my buddies used to joke about Gerry's "generosity" with his $1.98 tube of glue. Aside from his somewhat unhealthy habit of sniffing glue though, Gerry was a pretty good guy. Sure, he was kinda an old fart, but he let us hang out and he never tried to fruit us up or anything. Another important thing to know about Gerry is that he was the ultimate Black Sabbath fan. It was a bit weird watching this geezer sniff his glue and then totally space to Sabbath but, like I said, he was an ok guy.

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He remembers when he was 13. "Don't hold it too close to your face," Nancy said. "It" was a plastic bag with lighter fluid at the bottom. He held it to his face and inhaled... way too fucking deeply. Lighter fluid gushed into and through his entire breathing apparatus, his mouth, nose, throat, and lungs. It seemed to land like a flaming bomb in his stomach. He may have gotten "high", but he would never really be quite sure. He puked. A few weeks later large flakes of skin appeared on his scalp and, strangely, around his ass hole. He'd been poisoned, but he never realized it. It only lasted a few weeks, so he never told anyone about it. He would never hold a plastic bag to his face again.

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One night we were at Gerry's and we were all completely out of it--we'd all been drinking and smoking, and Gerry, of course, was on the bag. A knock came on the door. Gerry opened the door and there was a friend of ours, Mary, with 3 or 4 black guys. Gerry let them all in, so now there were about 10 people in his one-room apartment. We'd been listening (of course) to Sabbath before this arrival, but right away the black guys wanted to change the music. I was too wasted to give a shit, but my buddies put up a mild protest, which was slapped down by Gerry. "Play what you like," he said. The black dudes stuck in a James Brown tape. Yeah, this is ok, I thought. Later, Gerry wondered (to me) how Black Sabbath became "black power"...

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He's 14 and he's dropped his first hit of acid, the night before the first day of school. It's his "first time", so it's a completely subjective experience for him. There's nothing to measure it against, nothing to compare it to. He can't analyze it and he wouldn't care to even if he could. Colors. Colors rushing to him, colors rushing from him. There's a vague ache in his gut. He's walking down the street, and he sees some older girls. He thinks they're very pretty. One of them says, "nice ass"! He doesn't quite understand, but thinks this might be good. He's only 14.

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