Some people can’t even handle the thought of tripping, but I’ve always been okay with it. My mom had a talk with me when she found out I was doing acid. She found out the very first time. I was thirteen and by then our rule was that I could pretty much do whatever I wanted but I had to call her and let her know where I was. (They didn’t do the same for me; they could disappear for days and I wasn’t allowed to say anything. But no one ever told me life was going to be fair.)

So I called her up to say we’re all going to a gig and then crashing at my friend Shaggy’s, which was completely true, and immediately she goes, “Are you tripping?” Like I wasn’t actually talking but singing or moaning or something. And I thought I’d been so cool; I’d practiced what I was going to say standing by the pay phone while the cigarette butts and globs of discarded bubble gum on the sidewalk swam around my feet, before I’d slipped in my quarter and dime and punched my number in.

The next day she sat me down and told me everything I needed to know, laying it down in a firm voice, a whole new set of rules: ice cream to come down, orange juice to trip harder, never talk to cops, avoid hospitals unless your life literally depends on it, and remember that wherever you go, no matter how far away, no matter how fucking weird it gets, you’ll always come back. People always come back.

One feeling I used to get all the time was the sense of having no body. It wasn’t weightlessness, or some awesome floating or flying thing, or an out-of-body experience. All the normal things you can see on yourself, like the tip of your nose or your feet and maybe your cheeks a little or your hair at the sides, I didn’t have any of that. I’d look down and just see the floor.

I had one trip that I really loved. I was convinced that I was a minor character in someone else’s dream. The feeling was intensely relaxing. I didn’t have to do anything, because everything I did was just a metaphor. And since it wasn’t my dream, I didn’t have to decode the signs. Nothing made sense but nothing had to. It was the greatest experience I’ve ever had; for an entire afternoon I didn’t have to exist. And I came back.

There’s nothing to be afraid of. People come back.

Chapter Ten

I look hard. I blink and strain. Nothing works. I keep trying to say where, where, where? but there’s no breath in me.