Throw um in the ocean
Occurred: Fall 2001

I don’t even begin to know where to start. I guess for this story I have to start with Rex. I’ve known Rex for a long time. When I was fourteen and he was seventeen we had the same history class. Sometime during that year he left school to pursue jail. Later he got his GED. Rex had a penchant for mischief, violence, and drug dealing. Naturally, we became friends. I always knew that Rex was a trustworthy person on whom I could depend. I also knew what he was capable of.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as Acid or LSD. This drug can have many different affects on its user. I’m not going to waste any time describing the various ways it can warp your mind. You will find out soon enough. Kids please remember the words of the ever-jubilant Chef from South Park, “There is a time and place for everything children and that’s college”.

It was approaching Thanksgiving 2001. I had just taken midterms for the first semester of college. I had recently been arrested for the “Priceless” incident (READ: http://www.jimbastard.net/The_World_Famous_Priceless_story.html) and the entire country was in shock over the recent terrorists attacks. I was out on bail and it was a particularly dark time my life. I had a random encounter with a friend of an old friend in New York City who was selling acid. I had never tried acid (or any hallucinogen for that matter) and I was curious. Being the Bastard that I am, I purchased three sheets for a considerably low price. A sheet is one hundred hits of acid soaked paper separated by perforated marks. One hit is enough to cause a normal person to start “tripping”.  

I had spent almost a week at home and the majority of the tabs were gone. I was feeling good. It was the night before thanksgiving and there was something in the air. It was also was the night of the Leonid meteor shower. I had decided to celebrate and try some of the acid with my friends. The idea was to watch the meteor shower from the comfort of our deck and enjoy the night at home. Safe familiar soundings would ease us on our psychedelic journey.

I was with Batman and Phil, two of my very good friends at the time. We each decided to take three tabs each. This was my first time taking acid so my plan was to take one, see how it felt and then take more if I was feeling okay. About an hour after chewing up my first piece of paper with its beautiful green Celtic logo I was ready to smoke. I needed the calming effects of THC and I needed them immediately. My brain had begun to melt. I didn’t feel it was safe to smoke in my basement, which we had smoked in a thousand times before. My parents were upstairs and they generally didn’t care if we smoked weed but the off chance that one of them would come down while we were tripping on acid and catch us smoking was too much for me. I was unsure if I’d be able to form coherent sentences. It was decided that we would walk across the street to smoke a bowl.

At the time I lived across from a marina. It was a fairly open area but if you walked slightly to the left there was a great spot at the very end of a floating dock complete with an enclosed gazebo. It had a great view of the water and was far way enough from the road to be noticed. We had a smoke and began to walk back to my house. As I walked I noticed the combination of dew, coldness and streetlights was causing the grass to emit a bling. The wet grass was shining brightly and refracting any light that touched it. Every drop of moisture on each leaf looked like a sparkling diamond. I immediately alerted Batman and Phil of the situation. After a few minutes of deliberation they all concluded that the grass was in fact blinging. I decided it was time to eat the other two tabs. It was approximately 9:45pm.

As the drugs kicked in my senses began to intertwine and my perception became a miasma of synesthetic is that the word archer mentioned? Transposition of senses? waves. I was having difficultly walking up a small hill on the way back to my house. I slipped on the grass and couldn’t tell if it felts wet or dry. I begin to rub my fingers together. I hear a cell phone ring. An idea enters my head, “Rex is coming over”.

10:30 p.m.

Rex’s car is idling in my driveway and Batman summons me outside. Rex wants a little bit of my very nice ganja. I go upstairs and attempt to put some nuggets into a cube. I’m having difficulty not staring at the brightly pulsating red hairs and crystalline structure of the dankness. I find a small cardboard box from an old fashion tin wind up toy I had gotten a long time ago. I put the nugget in the box and went back downstairs. I got in the back of the car and attempted to give Rex his nugget. He tries to argue with me over the price but I stand firm. When it comes to one of us giving money to the other we always break each other balls. To an outsider it might seem that a fight is about to occur. Most of the time we are just joking around. Normally this exchange of conversation comes naturally but as I try to make my points to Rex I find my mind drifting towards much larger issues such as trying to figure out which surfaces are wet and which are dry.

I have a clear memory of Rex looking at me and saying, “Damn those must be really good. Let me get some, how many did you take?”

I mindlessly responded back, “I took three.”

Rex asked me for three tabs. I know better then to give Rex these types of drugs. I know to stay away from him in situations like this. I keep telling myself these things as I sit in the back of Rex’s four-door Toyota. I’m accompanied by Batman, Phil, Rex, and Rex’s pit bull. We are driving to the end of Long Island, the Montauk lighthouse.

11:10 p.m.

Errrrrrrrr! The car is skidding very hard to the right and I can feel the back axle fish tailing. 

I scream, “REX WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

Rex screams back in his raspy voice, “Yo, I thought I saw a deer!”

We had reached the Montauk lighthouse and were driving the wrong way on its one-way entrance trying to run down an imaginary deer.

I scream again, “Rex there is no deer what are you doing!”

Rex gives up and turns around. We pull up to the parking lot of the lighthouse.

I get out of the car and the view is amazing. I’m tripping pretty hard. I look up into the sky and can see a few meteors every couple of minutes. The shower had begun but had not reached its climax.  To give you an idea of what some of these meteors looked like I’ve found an animated image online from the actual 2001 Leonid meteor shower.

(http://spaceweather.com/meteors/images/18nov01/varros1_movie.gif)

The night was very clear. Each meteor that passed by created an audible popping sound. It was awesome. A few people met up with us at the lighthouse. I couldn’t really manage any small talk and spent most of the night mumbling crazy thoughts back and forth with Phil. As the night passed people began to trail off and it started getting very cold. We all got back in the car to leave. Rex decided he was too “twisted” to drive and we sat in the car listening to music and watching the meteors.

2:00 a.m.

A guy pulls up next to us in a Crown Victoria. He rolls down his window and starts talking to Rex. He was a big tall Italian guy and Rex was having a pretty hard time talking to him. I couldn’t really make out what they were talking about but it was apparent that Rex insulted the guy, badly. The guy takes out a handgun and I lose my mind. My heart stops beating and I freeze in terror.

It turns out the man is an associate of Rex that is mad about some drug transaction. After seeing the gun Rex laughs a little and so does the other guy. I’m unsure what was said but the guy leaves. I’m still convinced he was a cop. I try to convince everyone else but they insist he wasn’t. A car alarm goes off in the distance and Rex begins beeping his horn with the purpose of fighting the other car alarm. I think he won. Rex’s pitbull jumps on my lap and its legs feel like ten-foot wooden poles burying into my legs. I try not to freak out.

5:00 a.m

Phil and I decided it was time to get out of the car and go for a walk. The meteor shower had faded away and the sun was beginning rise. The parking lot was desolate. The morning sunlight irradiated my well-dilated pupils. Everything looked as if the contrast was set too high. I stumbled towards the sand and started taking a piss. I wasn’t tripping as hard as I was earlier that night but the effects of my chewed up paper tabs were far from gone. I felt a cold wind blowing against my face. Waves melodically crashed against the picturesque Montauk beach. The view of the horizon was endless. I was in complete harmony with nature. I looked down and realized I had peed on myself a little bit.

As I started to walk back towards the car I noticed Phil standing next to the car’s rear door in a confused stupor.

As I get closer Phil causally says, “The doors are locked.”

It begins.

I try to open the door; it's definitely locked. I knock on Rex’s window, “Rex let us back in.”

Rex turns towards me and doesn’t answer. His pupils have swelled to the diameter of quarters, and he has a look of panic and fear spread across his face. Batman was silently sitting hoodied up in the passenger’s seat facing the ocean. I asked Batman to open the door. He laughed a little to himself and continued staring towards the water.

I asked Rex a few more times to let us back in but he adamantly refused. He wasn’t speaking, he just violently shook his head side to side indicating no.

I decided it was a fool’s errand to try and reason with Rex at the moment so I might as well enjoy being outside. I start walking back towards the beach and Phil follows me. We are both in great spirits, laughing and smiling. Despite tripping for the past eight hours we were still feeling great. Our dose had peaked hours ago and we were slowly fading back to sanity. We had no idea what was transpiring in the car or what was about to happen.

I should take a moment here to reflect on Batman. Batman was short, angry, and Italian. He was the youngest member of our crew by a few years but never showed it. We use to sneak him off the school’s campus during our free periods when he was a freshman to smoke blunts. He wasn’t very smart or big but he was strong and fearless. I’d seen him knock out guys much bigger then he was on a few occasions. He got his nickname from the Batman logo weed sacks he was constantly selling. Even after he changed baggie logos up for being too “hot” the name stuck. Batman slept with at least one loaded shotgun and one loaded handgun next to his bed every night. The kid was pretty gangster for a sixteen year old from ___ Hampton.

Batman was also an inciter, an instigator. He could smell conflict miles away. One time he got Rex’s girlfriend to beat up another girl by making up some story about how the other girl was hooking up with Rex. The story, like many of Batman’s was not true.

Back to the parking lot…

Unbeknownst to Phil and I the situation in the car was slowly approaching critical mass. We were playing around with an old fashion twenty-five cent viewfinder near the edge of the parking lot. The viewfinder stood about five feet tall with two eyes slits. You placed a quarter at the top of the machine and the slits opened open for a couple of minutes. You could also rotate the viewfinder three hundred and sixty degrees. Phil and I deposited a quarter and turned the viewfinder away from the scenic ocean view and pointed it at Rex’s car. As Rex looked at us we pretended to hide behind the viewfinder so he couldn’t see us. Rex was looking more perturbed by the moment. He started the car engine and began driving violently in circles. After a few minutes of this he put the car in park and Phil and I approached the vehicle. Rex shifted his sitting position. Instead of sitting normally in the drivers seat he was in a crouching position with his feet on the seat. His back was facing the driver’s side window and his shoulders were sprawled out from the front windshield to the headrest of the drivers seat. As I got closer to him I could clearly see white foam forming around the edges of his mouth. He looked like a rabid monkey.

Not being in any state capable of reason or logic Phil and I started laughing at Rex. He was obviously losing it and we thought it was hilarious. Instead of trying to talk him down I began running around the car in circles hitting various parts of the body with the palm of my hand. Phil joined in and all the sudden noise caused Rex to panic.

What we didn’t know was that Batman had been working his magic on Rex for the past hour. We wouldn’t know until the next day. I’ll never know the exact details of the conversation, as I wasn’t inside the car but apparently after a long build up Batman had given Rex an ultimatum.

“It’s gotta be one of us son, they're coming for us”.

Batman had worked Rex into a frenzy. Phil and I banging on the car was the last straw.

 Rex spoke up loud and clearly for the first time in a few hours. “I AIN’T GOING BACK (to jail) SON”. 

Then Rex pulled out a switchblade.

He shifted his position of crouching on his seat to hovering over Batman in the passengers seat. Rex firmly pressed the blade against Batman’s throat. I see a small amount of blood drip down onto Batman’s hoody.

To be continued……