Another Damn Night On the Town

We took the mushrooms at the Green Eye bar near Western and Armitage, by the Western blue line stop. She brought them cooked in tea in a 1 liter bottle of RC Cola. “Here” she said, “drink this down”. I took the bottle from her hand and finished up what was left, about three large swallows. An hour or so went by and the beer was going down good and the conversation bordered along the lines of humorous, beautiful, and downright obnoxious. Susan announced to me that she was now feeling “it” and asked if I was. “No. Yes. Well, I guess…” I blurted out before the two of us began laughing uncontrollably at the world, people’s facial expressions, the amazing brilliance of an artificial fireplace in the bar, and at well, everything.
Soon I couldn’t stand to be in the bar anymore so we huddled outside and bought beer at a liquor store where I tried straight-faced to speak Spanish with the man behind the counter before finally admitting to him, Susan, and myself that I indeed, can not speak a single word of Spanish. The man looked at me with a vicious, cruel, and eerily contorted reptilian-like face and shooed me out the door, but not before the swine took my last ten dollars for the 12 pack of Old Style.
Outside it was cold and cars were whizzing by and Susan was dancing and I was losing my mind. We stood for twenty or so minutes tripping on the street corner and screaming out our discontentment at the moon and stars and busses and pedestrians whilst waiting for that damn cab. This was hell, a living seething hallucinogenic hell that I’d sent myself to for some God forsaken reason. I looked at Susan and her face was red from the cold and her blue eyes shone pretty and brilliant and then it all became perfect, completely twisted, but what isn’t twisted in this world?
Finally a cab showed up and we hopped in and a cab ride couldn’t be more perfect. Sitting back relaxed in a cab with a beer buzz and a brain tweaked out from hallucinogens with a beautiful girl that’s just as twisted as me with Let It Be from the Beatles pushing me into a euphoric ecstatic high that you only feel every once in a blue moon. The lights shining in the car painting Susan’s face a light yellow made for a soothing yet somehow seething trip and I felt like I may be in heaven. I broke out a tape recorder and we began speaking into the recorder about the unbelievable and bold endless amounts of plastic bag we felt we were wrapped in.
The cab dropped us off at the corner of Ashland and Grand and we went into the show. At first it was all very surreal, seeing these people, these friends and fellow show-goers alike as my mind was more twisted than they’d ever seen before. Leaning back against a wall I felt a swinging door nearly collapsing from the weight of my back only to turn around and realize I was not leaning against a door, but a solid oak wood beam. These drugs were really starting to get to me and just then it became very clear to me that there were more and more people coming into the room where Susan and I and now a hundred or so others were drinking. What are these people really here for? Who are they and what the hell do they want out of me? They’re serpents, snakes, parasites, they’ve come here to suck the life out of me and I know it. I can tell. I’ve got one of those built-in radars. One of those bullshit detectors, or maybe I’m just fucked up on a drug I’m not that familiar with and am just paranoid? Nah…
The show finally came to an end after these people nearly swallowed me whole and I left for the bar with a couple friends and Susan left with another boy. Of course I was disappointed but there are more fish in the sea. I just haven’t found those other fish yet. What can you do? Drink to your miseries, forget her, and try to find another. The night ended in a sloppy drunken free for all fiasco and I ended up in two or three different bars, depending on who you ask. The night went black and my head went clack and I woke up freezing to death in the back seat of a car I’d never seen in my life in Wicker Park where I caught the train and rode that fucker until I could collect my senses and wandered on home. Another night out in the city and another one where I can say at least I made it home alive.