When The Kite String Breaks

This next tale dates back to the early nineties. I know this for sure, because it was the same week that the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head was released. One Saturday afternoon, I was hanging out with a good friend of mine named Jeff Loray. Jeff was a decent guy - fun to party with, but a complete wasteoid. His lifelong claim to fame was that he once sat smoking crack in the basement for so long that the cold floor gave him hemorrhoids. We had already knocked back a twelve pack at my apartment, and it was a nice spring day, so we decide to wander down to the park to look at girls; on our way, we stopped at the liquor store.

If ever there was an omen of bad things to come, it should have been this.

I was a scant sixteen years old at the time, so Jeff went in the liquor store to get Vodka and I go to the adjacent grocery store to buy some orange juice. I am standing in line at the cash register looking at the guy in front of me – I know him, but I can’t place him. While waiting in line, Jeff stumbles into the grocery holding an open bottle of vodka and being a general jackass; drinking it in the store and making a scene. I knew the girl at the cash register; it was probably the only reason we hadn’t been kicked out. So the guy in front of me is paying for his stuff, my friend is waving an open bottle of hooch in my face and the curiosity finally kills me.

“Excuse me, where do I know you from?” I ask the man.

“I was your teacher in driving school,” he responds dryly.

Oh, fuck, that was strange! I had a PhD in GTA when I took his class. No worries; back to the fun. We make it to the park, and it’s a beautiful spring day, so we stay all day drinking screwdrivers, playing hacky sack, and gawking at the high school chicks.

The sun starts to set, so we set forth to my apartment. At the time, I was working for my uncle, as a butcher and slinging a little weed on the side. I get out my box of pre-bagged quarter sacks and notice I had a few stray hits of blotter acid. We’re already pretty drunk, but our plan was to go out that night and see a band. I figured, “Why not keep the fun going and do some acid. Oh, and since I’m really drunk, I might not feel just one hit – we had better take two, just to be sure.”

We come to a decision it would be better to get out of the house before the acid kicks in and we can’t drive. I get in my old 1980-something Ford Tempo dubbed “the Cocktail Mobile” and I’m so fucked up I can’t even make it out of the parking lot.

The acid had already hit me, so I tell Jeff, “I’m too fucked up to do this. This is like a fucking video game.”

So he takes the wheel, careens the wrong direction against traffic, drives around in a few circles, and then over some curbs before he finally reaches the same conclusion. We flip back to my house and call a cab. You know you are some sorry bastards when you need a cab to take you to the bar. On the way to the club Jeff looks in his pocket and realizes that we still have a fat joint from earlier that day. We ask the cabbie if he minds if we spark it up and he obliges. So here we are: in a cab, tripping, having a good time, and smoking some chronic…

WHEN THE KITE STRING BREAKS…

I’m not sure what happened, maybe it was that joint that threw me over the edge. As we started walking up the steps of the club - the insanity took over. First, it crept in the back of my mind - I was thinking that I could ward it off, but the madness was much stronger than my willpower. The feeling is difficult to describe – intense feelings of death, paranoia, and despair -- sort of a hallucinogenic anxiety attack times a billion. My trip had gone bad, and I could no longer control it.

I started telling Jeff, “Dude, I think I’ve overdosed man!”

“Nah, dude you’re alright.”

I’m like, “No, dude, I feel like I’m dying, seriously. Get me some water!”

Among other problems, I had convinced myself my heart had stopped beating, but for some reason, I felt if I drank enough water I would be able to flush the drugs from my system. I was freaking out too much to be in public anymore, for sure, so I go to a quieter, less crowded room at the club and tell my friend to keep bringing water. He brings me probably my twentieth cup of water; I take a drink from it, and look down at the cup. There was blood running off the sides of it! Then I started tasting blood…

“OH MY GOD, JEFF, I AM DYING! LOOK - I’M SPITTING UP BLOOD,” I scream with a salty taste in my mouth.

I hold the cup up to him and he just starts laughing. How can this fuck be laughing at a time like this?!

“Dude, you need to calm down…there’s no blood on that!” he explains.

When I take a closer look; I realize that it’s just a white cup with some red flowers on it. The blood and the taste had all been a hallucination. He leaves the room and I stay, trying to get my shit together, when I am approached by this really young, cute girl. She was maybe seventeen. I realize I’ve met her before and can’t believe, in my fucked up condition, I can remember how I knew her. Winds up: one time I went in a Subway, she was the sandwich girl, and she asked me if I could run next door to get some cigarettes. So I take her money, get her cigs, and leave. That was the only time we ever met.

She walks up to me, “Hey, I know you.”

I’m like, “Yeah, you work at the Subway by my house and I got cigarettes for you once.”

“Oh, my god I can’t believe you remember.”

“Oh yeah, I do. I’m just having a weird night…”

I start explaining what was going on and she just listens; for some reason, talking to this girl was helping me rebound from my bad trip. I could slowly feel myself returning to normal. I finally shake most of my demons, we go back to the other room, and I meet up with a few of my friends as the show is ending. The girl offers Jeff and me a ride home with her and her fat friend.

We get in the car and I am not exaggerating – it was the WORST car ride of all time! Fatty was drunk ass piss, swerving into different lanes - horns were honking at us, and at on point her entire compact car had swerved to where we were traveling under the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler! I wasn’t hallucinating at this point – we really were going to die. Somehow, we manage to make it back to my apartment in one piece. My friends that followed are freaking out over her driving. The girls ask if we want them to come in, we say “hell no” and run for our lives!

I’m at my apartment door - thank god this ordeal was over. I’m just gonna’ kick back and drink a few beers with homies and enjoy what’s left of the evening. As soon as I put my keys in the door, I knew something was wrong. I walk in and see that my kitchen window was smashed in. Someone had broken into my place! I see the drawer where I keep my weed was gone; in my bedroom, I find my 4-track recorder, drum machine, and favorite CD had all been nicked!

I start losing it again and punched a bunch of holes the wall; my friends are trying to calm me down and the black fog in my brain was rolling back in. I am acting like a maniac that my friends can’t take it anymore and split.

I stay there lying on the floor – turning the incident over and over in my head – trying to figure out who could have done this. My brain was too full of acid to sleep – might as well do something constructive. I knew it was someone I know who did this. While listing to the soothing sounds of Adrock’s wa-wa guitar off Check Your Head, I thought of the girl at the supermarket who saw Jeff and me all fucked up earlier during the day. She has a boyfriend named Chris to whom I sold pot. Chris has a penchant for getting drunk and stealing shit. Those facts (plus a few other factors) made me relatively certain I knew who the culprits were; if I wanted to get my stuff back, I needed to act fast.

The time is 9AM. I call Spencer, my drug dealing partner and fellow butcher. First, a couple of words about Spencer: he eats steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; he loves beating on people, and is a complete psycho/all-around thug. I tell him what happened, he comes over, and we drive out to investigate.

It’s noon when we pull up to their house; I still haven’t slept. We creep through the hedges on the side of the house and peer into the windows. It just so happens they were waking up. There were three of them: Chris, Dean, and the girl from the supermarket. This was an excellent chance -- if I saw anything of mine I planned to burst in the door and kill them. We sat there watching for a few minutes – I don’t see any of my musical equipment, but they do have weed and appear to be getting ready for a morning wake n’ bake. Out from under the coffee table the Chris pulls out a bong…THAT HAD BEEN STOLEN FROM MY APARTMENT A FEW WEEKS BEFORE!

That was all I needed! I kicked in the front door and started beating the shit out of Chris on the spot. Startled, Dean was too scared to even jump in.

Dean protests, “John, why don’t you…”

SLAM, SLAM, SLAM – I started laying into Dean and as soon as I had completely fucked him up -- I redirect my rage back toward Chris. Spencer, who was looking forward to doing some ass-whomping, just watched. The girl took off toward the kitchen to call the police. Spencer followed her, unplugged the phone from the wall, and sat it on the coffee table.

“Alright motherfuckers - where is my shit?” I screamed.

Chris was balling his eyes out “John, I never wanted a beef with you – I don’t know what you are talking about!”

We turn their place out like we were the DEA, but only found my bong and some of the weed.

At home, I start reflecting on the events of the past twenty-four hours. Yeah, it was a shitty, shitty experience, but would make for a great story one day. I really redefined the meaning of “having a bad trip” with that one.

That was the day the kite string broke.

Drugs and beating people up are bad.