Claude was one of the best friends a guy like me could ask for. Sarcastic, honest, nerdy, freaky smart, really funny, and weirder than me. I would have said AS weird as me, but the man shaved pink pigtails in his head. Me and Claud went to a charter school together and immediately became best friends, trading CDs and mixtapes, and doing a lot drugs together. Not like the horrible mug people for the money to fuel the addiction drugs. More like the, let's eat these and stare at the stars drugs. We liked hallucinogens...a lot. We liked X...a lot. Most of all we liked doing them together.
It's rare for me to find people I like to trip with. People freak me out to begin with. I've been diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder. That means people make me nervous. Nervous and hallucinogens don't mix. That sends you into what they call a "bad trip". A bad trip means living your darkest nightmares. It also makes you examine everything you hate about yourself, but ignore. Bad trips make grown ass men cry. Like snot bubble in the nose cry. But Claud kept me comfortable when I was tripping and I did the same for him. We fucked with each other. But it was ok because it was us. With him around I could drop acid at a crowded party and be just fine.
Claud wanted to have a get together one night. Five friends and a bottle of GHB. You know, kid stuff. Just me, him, Aaron, Ari, and some girl who's name I don't remember so I'll call her steph. Aaron and Ari are two other people that I had fun doing copious amounts of drugs with. Steph was a girl from subway that gave us free subs. Steph asked if a couple people could come with her. Given what we decided the night would be, Claud said "sure, why the fuck not". What could go wrong?
They invited two friends, and they invited two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on, into infinity. This, by the way, is pre everyone having a cellphone. Getting people together was trickier then. You had to actually catch people while they were home. Me and Ari had gone to his house to get his turntables then we got a call from Claud. It went something like " holy shit there are like a hundred people here! Get here now!". We did. He down played the number of people there. It was maybe 10:30 and there were at least 200 people people in this three bedroom house. This would be the calmest point of the night.
First Ari set up his tables and started spinning. At the time Ari was a hardcore, gabber, and jungle Dj. The crowed apparently decided that this would not do. The crowd produced a new set of tables, more sound, and a schedule of djs that did not include Ari. This pissed us off. We said nothing. The crowd was alive. The crowd was large. The crowd could turn. We didn't want that. To be fair, there were some impressive djs there. No idea who they were...but they were good.
The crowd grew. People from all walks of life were there. Bloods, crypts, skin heads, ravers, punks, goths, and pretty much any other group that existed in the mid 90s. It was beautiful actually. They all came together, no beef, no fights, no tension. They all just had one goal. Ruin Claud's house and life forever. And in many ways, they did. A window was kicked out to steal a DVD player (DVDs were new and fucking valuable), a bottle of wine his mom was saving got poured down his stairs, neighbors were bothered, and property destroyed.
All the local and not so local dealers found out about the party and came a knocking. The dealers were so flooded with people buying at once that I would just walk up to the crowd, put my hand in, and the dealers assumed I payed. They were all acid dealers. I got puddled every time. A puddle is were an acid dealer just squirts some acid out of the vial into your hand. A hit is about one drop. A puddle is somewhere between five and ten drops....maybe fifteen. I got puddled about five or six times using the just put my hand in tactic.
I started feeling pretty good. I was going through that tingly, the space between my shoulders is lighter than air, feeling of LSD kicking in. I felt like I had to sit down. I head out to the back yard to sit down on some patio furniture. Holy shit there was a chair open. Holy shit it was next to Aaron. We sat, we chuckled, we talked about Claud. A girl at the table asked who the fuck is Claud? I said, hey cunt, who's fucking house do you think you're in? Before she could give her reaction to being called a cunt by a stranger, a guy ran out the back door screaming "cooooooooops!", followed by a wave of, I shit you not, five hundred people jumping his fence at once. That is our actual and realistic estimate of how many people were in, and then suddenly out of, Claud's house.
Aaron and myself decided that watching everyone run was more interesting than running. And it was. Pure chaos and uniformity combined to make this violent wave of people climbing and fighting over Claud's back fence. It looked like a school of sardines trying to confuse a predator. And then the cops came running out after everyone, grabbed some of them, then turn to see me and Aaron calmly sitting and laughing. "Evening officer. Is there a problem?"
Everyone who didn't run or who were caught were sat down on the couches in the living room. They ran our IDs and those of us that were under 18 got our parent called. Mine could not be reached. But at least I got to watch the show. Claud was openly mocking a female cop for being terrible at her job. "Can we get a man to handle this? This little lady seems to be in over her head." This was funnier than my acid soaked brain could handle but I was struggling not to let out a laugh that's too "acidy". That weird fear was going through me that if I go with any natural impulse then the world will know I'm tripping. This was unacceptable in a house filled with cops...it was also hilarious. I kept giggling, and Claud kept giving me reasons to laugh, including critiquing the cop who's photographing the houses technique.
"Do you smell smoke?" Beep beep beep beep. Smoke comes billowing out of the oven. The girl I'm sitting next to screams "my tomatoes!", and runs for the kitchen. This girl went to a party, never met the host, and the bitch just started baking his produce....tomatoes. She slices up her baked tomatoes and throws Claud's hot sauce on them...a lot of it. This was some of that one drop for a pot of chili hot sauce. She bit into that thing and the look of pain and horror was right out of Texas chainsaw massacre. I was laughing so hard that I was making dolphin noises, and I wasn't the only one. The cops were dying laughing. She finally was able to explain that she didn't think it would be that hot, blah blah blah, and the black gentleman on the other side of her takes a bite and give a "meh, it's kinda hot".
Parents are picking up their kids, more people are going to jail, and my mother still can't be found. Tomato girl leaves and one of the cops asks "who got her number?" In unison all the guys in the room said "FUCK!". The cop said "I'm disappointed in all of you" looks at Aaron "especially you". Aaron gives a "what the fuck?" Hand gesture. The cop gets a copy thinly look on his face and checks Aaron's ID again.
"You're 18"
"Yes I am"
"You know you can leave right?"
"Do I have too?"
"......yes"
".......bye"
And Aaron was free...against his will. Watching him leave was like watching an old Eskimo woman being set out to sea on an ice flow. A look of fear, rejection, and duty was set on his face as he walked to the door. And Aaron was gone. I'm sure it was an epic journey, especially with the hundreds of drunk teenagers that were out driving that night. But to sum it up, he lived.
The house was now just me, Claud, and the cops. "We can't get your mom on the line". Those words, in Littleton Colorado, mean that you're about to get quasi arrested. They take you to the juvenile assessment center. This is a place were you sit on a fluffy couch, drink Capri suns, eat animal crackers, and take a bunch of physiological surveys. While walking in I can feel the acid approaching its peak. The cop takes off my cuffs, takes my backpack and hat, and then, from my perspective, was eaten whole by a security camera.
I drink my Capri sun, I eat my animal crackers, and I explain to my interviewer what I mean by justifiable homicide. They found mommy. Mommy picks me and Claud up. Mommy makes fun of me when she realizes I'm tripping my face off. Claude screams "fuck!....the bottle of G never showed up"....that was probably for the best.
So the house was trashed and we did our best to fix it. A random party goer showed up with a professional grade steam cleaner and that got all the wine up. I think the guy was a football player from columbine that was fallowing Claude around acting as a bouncer. Good guy. We didn't keep in touch. Anyway, the house for the most part was still wrecked and Claud's mom made him move in with his dad then sold the house and left the state. Some might call it an over reaction but you didn't see the damage. I'm surprised that she didn't just burn it down and start over....that's what I would have done.
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