This is probably not going to make my mother all that happy, but I've done a fair amount of drugs. Not anything like crackor heroin or Rohypnol enemas or anything, just the usual high-school slack regimen of marijuana and LSD, perfect fora neurotic punk with disassociative-consciousness disorders anda healthy disrespect for authority. You may have noticed that Ididn't mention alcohol in the above; at that tender age, I considered hooch lame, and had no real desire to attend anykeggers with half-crocked teenagers and our mongoloid, circle-jerking football team. Thankfully, I am now a functionalalcoholic. But I'm getting off track. When I first dropped acid, I was at this party. In one of thosemaneuvers that only a teenage girl can think up, my chumSara decided to throw a party in her basement conjunctivelywith a party her mother, the dean of a catholic girl's school(do I have to repeat that?) was holding upstairs. Needless tosay, tragedy struck, but before it did, I had a chunk of LSD-dunked blotter paper installed comfortably on the back of my tongue, seeping goofball straight to my cortex. Not agood idea, as it would turn out.I got happy, which is rare, and a wee tad loopy, which is not.The party was broken up, but not before I honked a fewhits on a cracky wooden pipe of her dad's, said pipe whichJacob Carroll, my best friend and co-reprobate promptly chucked into the bushes upon basemental arrival of 300 pound angry Dean-Mom. I started to scatter, and the partyfollowed suit. Picked up and babysat by the endemicallyvile hippy who had provided me with aforementioned drugs (not to mention his distressingly appealing girlfriend,with whom E.V.H. (real name long forgotten) would engage in sporadic periods of face-suck in my general vicinity, not provoking any kind of sex-excitement but ratheran unfocusable disgust at tongues & associated parts.We walked to a bus stop, hopped the transit and fell toa hellhole called Beth's, grease-as-food taken to it's limit.Their specialty was an omelet with some obscene egg count,like 21 or 22 or so. I was in no mood to eat, which was forthe best, as I and E.V.H. sans girlfriend were piled into theback of a cliché-on-wheels Volkswagen Beetle.

Hypnotized and soothed by streetlight's rhythm, I didn't notice the length of the journey.

Walking back through brush and scrub, E.V.H. and two compatriots leading the way, we arrived at what looked like half a barn, built as a functional structure, with what looked like a huge hole in the roof.

Inside, rolling hills of clothing and garbage, with sadly convenient mattresses in the center of the room, and a TV/VCR combo action on the other end. The car's driver put a cassette in the VCR and they lay down on two mattresses between the three of them.

My eyes would not shut. Fixated on the blue cathode, I sat through "Puppet Master," "Puppet Master 2," and the first 45 minutes of an astonishingly unpleasant soft-porn feature called "Takin' It Off," the interruption of which was caused by E.V.H. rising from phlegmatic slumber to turn it off. Catching eye on my quivering, nerves-exposed jelly-self in the corner, he rolled off a perfunctory "You O.K., man?" before returning to sleep.

I was not O.K. and knew it. Triggered by the first rays of sunlight, I clambered to my feet, pins and needles and sleep deprivation making it virtually impossible to walk a straight line, I unlatched the door and stepped outside into Monday, a Monday in which I had no idea where I was.

Street signs meant nothing; I staggered out from the brush into a strip-mall landscape; suburbs, I thought. Probably to the south or east of Seattle. Now to find a bus home, and try to convince the driver to take me without me giving him any money. My pockets were mysteriously empty.

A bus pulled up within minutes of my arrival at the stop.I looked at the driver, the bags under my eyes shining purple and black in the cool, crisp morning light. "I don't have the fare..." I began, only to have him interrupt me with a jovial "That's all right! Today's a day when nobody should have to pay to ride the bus!"

My weary brain couldn't connect, and I stood there on the second step of the bus, mouth retardedly open, emitting stupid-waves (or S-waves, a common feature of daily KThor operations,) and sweating dully.

"It's Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday, guy," said the driver, and my relief that I wasn't skipping school could be felt for miles.