UNDER THE CHERRY TREE
By
Rev. Jesse Penfield Gibson, MDiv, DMin
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are purely imaginary. Any resemblence to any living persion is coincidental. This story is primarily a romance but does contain some scenes of explicit sex, primarily homosexual but not exclusively.
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ELEVEN
"Just get your ass to the park entrance. By the Music School. We'll pick you up there," Cass told me when he called me on my cell. It was Friday afternoon and Halloween, a holiday that Xander and his friends took seriously. I hurried from Reade and down to the Chapel waiting for Cass to show. When he got there, I ducked in the back seat.
"Thanks for picking me up," I said belting myself in. "Hey, Ashley."
"Not having a car must suck," Ashley said, turning around in her seat. "So you and Xander are together now? He's gone completely fairy, right?"
"I keep on telling you people that just because he takes it up the ass doesn't make him a fairy," Cass said as he sped off, going around the park and down a side street.
"I'm pretty sure he still likes girls, too."
Cass drove like a maniac, which was doubly worse because it was Friday afternoon traffic. He would talk and drive, not paying enough attention as he switched from lane to lane, trying to get ahead of traffic. We were headed to Xander's place, the one he wasn't supposed to have, instead of back to Cass's. When we got there, Dex's car was all ready there.
Cass bounded up the steps and banged through the door. "Hey dude, look here. I got your boyfriend here all safe and sound."
Xander was in the kitchen, pouring himself a coke. "Thank you, Cassidy. You definitely do ordinary things adequately."
Cass shot him a bird and then took his coke from him. Going into the living room, he jumped over the back of the couch, landing on the other side in a seated position. He announced that they were officially all tapped out.
"Hey, you guys," Xander said, turning to me and Ashley. "Would you mind going up to the house. Kerry's got some make-up and stuff."
"You boys got business to discuss?" Ashley asked.
I must have been looking at Xander with a disgusted look on my face. "Look, Dylan. It's how I pay the bills. I just ..."
"It's okay, we'll go" I said.
"When you do, see if she's got any drugs up there because we're fresh out," Cass yelled.
Dex pulled a bag out from under the cushion's of the couch. "Not so much. He made a quick trip yesterday. It's a feminized hybrid of the super strain white widow and strawberry ice. Gonna call it strawberries and cream."
Cass opened the bag and smelled it. "Shit" he said approvingly.
"Well I guess you might as well stay. The Brothers Clueless can't hold their shit. We're sort of the beta test," Xander said as he continued to look at me. His expression seemed to say that he was sorry that I had to see him functioning as a drug dealer. "Tests out at about 18%THC and under 0.3% CBD. It's got a pretty balanced high, is about 50/50 sativa and indica."
Cass loaded a bowl and lit it. "That's nice. How much did we spend?"
"$ 800 for 4 1/2 ounces. Next time the half won't be included, straight 200 bucks per"
"The friend price is 90, everybody else 120," Dex added.
"You're shitting me. For a quarter?" Cass exclaimed.
"We're only going to get 4 ounces of this at a time. So, there's no reason to not to charge. That's first. Second, that's going to be about the street price in ATL next month. That's our deal. We don't undercut the Atlanta price."
"More for you anyway," Ashley said, taking the pipe from Cass. "So where's the party?"
"Greg's" Dex said. It meant nothing to me.
"Well, I won't have to worry about any of the guys trying to get it with my chick. I'd hate to be tripping my balls off and have to kick the ass of some redneck. So, is your BF going to be joining us, there X?"
"Um, yeah, Dill," Xander stammered. "It's kind of our thing, you know. It's Halloween, so we do it up right. That means psychedelics. You don't have to if you don't want to. If you do, it's totally cool. It'd be more fun. But no pressure."
"Hold up there, little bro," Dex said, getting up from the couch. "First things first. Gotta decide who's the pilot. It was Cass last time, so it's between you and me."
"Pilot?" I asked
"It's a safety thing. One of us stays cool, does the driving, and makes sure nobody does anything too stupid. Babysits the trippers." Cass said
"Well, if I decide not to, I can be your pilot" I offered. It seemed like an easy out.
"Sorry, Dill," Xander said. "You have to have tripped before. It's a trust thing. You have to know what the people tripping are going through, what they need. And what to do if somebody has a bad trip. It's the deal between the three of us. One of us stays sober."
Dex nodded. "No offense. We trust you and all, but this is the way it is. It's why Cass and me were so pissed at pea brain at that party doing the B alone. Because he doesn't follow the rules. Rock, paper, scissors?"
They slammed their fist in their palms three times. Dex had rock. Xander had paper.
"Sorry, dude" Xander said. I asked if they wanted to do it best two out of three. They didn't but I sensed that it wasn't final. A lot depended on me. If I didn't trip with them, I sensed that Xander wouldn't either.
"Speaking of B, you have any of that?" Ashley asked Cass.
"Don't look at me. Ask the candy man."
The candy man, it turned out, was Xander. He went into the bedroom and got a box. Inside were 6 small vials of a white powder, small baggy of white powder, a small glass bottle of white powder and a vial of a clear liquid.
"Okay, we got enough 2CB to go around, a single dose of Ace, enough Alpha O for everybody and acid. So what's the poison?"
Well, this is serious, I thought. We're not talking pot here, these are serious drugs. Dangerous drugs. I am crossing a line here. One that I won't be able to take back. Then I reminded myself that I had taken molly all ready so the line had all ready been crossed. Plus, I trusted Xander, however crazy that may seem.
"I vote for the B," Ashley said.
"It's not a good idea," Dex said. "It makes you too much like the Energizer bunny and there are 4 of you to keep track of. Just keeping up with you two would be hard enough. Remember Burning Man? Me and Xander were like wild men. And the sexual politics of Alpha O would be tricky. And this is Dylan's first time. You've got to take that into account."
"A is cool," Cass said. He turned to me and said, "We'll share it together. No pressure dude, but if you're going to hang out with X, the fucked up fairy is going to get you sooner or later. He's the pied piper. Think about it, the coolest tripping night of the year, surrounded by your friends."
Xander nodded. He took out two of the small vials and handed them to Cass. "Here take the B for later. I'll even babysit you two."
"All right, brother. You in, Dylan?"
I decided that I was. I guess it was the sense of being accepted that made the decision. Xander held up the vial for inspection. I asked if you took the whole thing, which they thought was hilarious. I agreed when Xander told me it contained 100 hits of LSD. He went and got some sugar cubes. Sitting them on the coffee table, he got a small syringe, a tuberculin syringe, out. He asked Ashley how many times she had done acid, which turned out to have been twice.
"Okay, 100 mics for you. Let it dry on the cube then pop it in and let it melt in your mouth. A 100 for Dylan. 250 for me and Cass."
Nothing happened. I looked at my watch involuntarily shortly after taking the dose and noted that it was almost 8:30. We sat around for a while and talked and nothing happened. I figured it was like E and took a while to kick in but it seemed to be taking a long time. I even remarked on it but Cass told me to just wait. We left shortly after 9 for the party, going in Dex's car because we could all squeeze into it. Ashley by then was clearly feeling something. She was smiling and acting distracted, looking at thing very intently. I still felt basically nothing.
As we drove, essentially back toward campus, I noticed that everything had become more vivid and vibrant. The lights surrounding us, the streetlights, car lights, red lights, everything seemed to be light, were streaking and waving. I didn't feel intoxicated, there was no buzz to it, but I did feel different. Happy, I suppose. Aware was more like it. The colors and shapes of the scenery were endlessly fascinating to me. Things that I had always seen as solid and immutable seemed plastic and changeable. It was as if I seeing the reality of matter for the first time. It was strange.
"Coming up yet?" Xander asked as he leaned toward me.
"I think so," I answered as simply as I could. He took my hand in his. That simple act seemed incredibly intimate.
By the time we got to the party, there was no mistaking it. Everything that I had thought of as real had been ripped to small pieces and rearranged in a far more fascinating mosaic. Solid objects breathed. Flat surfaces undulated. Colors swirled and, despite all of that, it seemed almost mathematical in way. Not digital really, but more like fractals. My hearing seemed super keen but I honestly don't know if what I heard was real or not. The biggest change was in my head. I was at peace. I felt connected. It was blissful.
I don't know how many people were at the party. Not many, I think, or perhaps a lot. I wasn't intimidated by the crowd at all. They seemed, in a way, insignificant. I was lost in my own head. We entered through the kitchen door and went into the living room of the small house. They had decorated for Halloween and most of the guests were in costume. I was surprised that I found that aspect of it uninteresting. For some reason, I didn't care about the weird or the strange, what held my fascination was the ordinary and how I had never noticed the beauty in the ordinary. There was a punch bowl at the far end of the living room. Apparently, it had dry ice it in because it was smoking. I looked at that for ... Hours? Seconds? I had no idea. Time was meaningless. Someone handed me a cup of punch. It tasted fruity. In fact, I thought I could separate out each type of fruit that had gone into making it but perhaps that was my imagination. Hesitantly, I dipped out another cup. I considered whether it had alcohol in it and decided it must. I wondered, in an abstract sort of way, completely divorced way, whether alcohol would have an effect on my all ready hyper acute brain. It didn't seem to matter.
Somehow, I had become separated from Xander. That too seemed unimportant. I felt safe. And I wanted to explore. In the hallway, they had decorated by hanging rubber snakes down from the ceiling. I have a morbid fear of snakes. Just being in the same general location of a snake, even common black snakes, scares me completely. This didn't. I knew they weren't real. To the degree that I had any emotion at all to them was to think it a terrible Halloween cliché. It just seemed obvious. But, I walked very slowly through the hall, carefully avoiding each one. I examined them; looking at the colors they were painted. I was trying not to disturb the space they inhabited. Even lifeless rubber, they inhabited their space.
The back room had only a few people in it. A pair of boys against the back windows, talking. Another couple of boys sitting in a corner, mostly shielded by the darkness. In the center of the room was chair, a recliner. Above was a disco ball. The room was black and the ball swirled throwing a kaleidoscope of stars all around the room. I sank into the chair and flowed into the universe of this single room. I melted away, joining a limited cosmos.
How long was I there for? It was just a disco ball and pinpricks of light playing on a wall but I was on a different plane all together. I didn't want to move. It seemed like I could feel every cell in my body but I was paralyzed. At some point, Xander came in the room, sat between my legs and rested his head on my lap. I began to play with his hair. Neither of us spoke.
Finally, after a day or a minute, Xander exhaled and said, "Let's go outside."
The night air was chilly but I felt surrounded by a warm jacket of my own body heat. Xander held my hand. It was utterly peaceful.
"Wow" I said, amazed at the scenery of an untidy yard, amazed at the force of the hallucinations I was having, and amazed at the incredible closeness I felt for my lover.
"Yeah" Xander said. "Kinda cool."
Inside they were playing electronic dance music. We migrated back to it. The rhythm seemed comforting. For the first time in my life I appreciated the artistry of it. It was the perfect sound track. A boy with magenta hair came up to us. Xander smiled and hugged him.
"Hey, Liam" he said.
"Fucked up?" the boy with magenta hair asked.
"Acid" Xander answered.
Liam nodded; it seemed too vigorously to be really true.
"It's a party then. Can I crash at your place? I saw Dex."
"Of course" Xander answered.
"Boyfriend?"
"Yeah. Dylan. His first time."
The boy with magenta stuck out his hand. "Brother. Half-brother actually."
"Glad to meet you" I said, shaking his hand.
"There's a shit load of people here, let's go outside. I got a whippet."
We went outside again although we had just been there. We stood by some cars and I stared at the ground. I could still see the green of the grass despite the darkness and the overlay of a purple swirl that shouldn't have been there. The bushes and tree seemed to moving in the wind but there was, in fact, no wind at all that I could feel. If I stared too hard, they seemed to take on an abstract shape.
Xander held the small charger in his hand and took a hit. He didn't offer it to me and I didn't want it. What I was feeling was all ready almost too much.
"So how do you like my Dad's acid?" Liam asked.
"That's where you got it from?" I asked idly.
Xander shuddered involuntarily. "Yeah, it's kind of the family business."
"It is the most incredible thing I have ever done," I answered truthfully.
Liam smiled. "I'm glad"
Soon, we were heading back to Xander's apartment. Cass and Ashley decided they wanted to go so all 6 of us crammed into a car. I had completely lost track of time but there was still traffic out so it couldn't have been too late. I noticed that the sensation seemed to be coming in waves now, with periods where I felt more like normal but not entirely interspersed with full on waves of hallucinations and deep spiritual insight. When it hit, I seemed to lose track of the exact boundary where "me" ended and the universe began. Not that it bothered me. On the contrary, that feeling of connectedness to all things was profoundly satisfying.
After we got back to Xander's, there was a brief discussion about the music to be played. An early REM album, which I had never heard, was selected. I sat there in the darkened room, on the floor propped up against the couch with Xander next to me, soaking up the music. The music was perfect, whether the predominate bass, complexity of the music or the obscurity of the lyrics, I couldn't say. But I did have an intense relation with it. I got lost in my own head, floating through the cracks in time and space in time with the music.
I wasn't keeping track of the songs because each one was a new sensation. Then I found myself outside with Xander in the still of the night. We were on a small stone wall overlooking the garden, bedded down for the coming winter.
"I'm really feeling it" I said.
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "It's an old friend."
"Everything seems more alive."
"Its possibilities," Xander blurted out, his speech pressured. "It's stripping away the conventions and seeing things in a truer light."
I agreed. This view of reality did seem truer than conventional reality. We let the night surround us unafraid, seeing the mysteries of the dark as a challenge to explore.
"You know I love you," Xander said to me.
"Yeah, but I don't know why," I answered. I regretted saying it. It seemed like a plea for affirmation which was totally unnecessary or a plea for him to praise me, which I did not want. "Actually, I do. It's because I am."
He took my hand and leaned against me. It was non-sexual but intimate. Liam came out and jumped down from the wall onto the ground, sitting beside us.
"They left. It's late," Liam said. "I'm beginning to come down"
"Yeah, us too" Xander said. "It was good, though"
We eventually made our way back inside and listened to the music some more but the waves were beginning to ebb. Liam fell asleep on the couch and I went into the bedroom. Xander laid there with me for a time and we just held each other. I wasn't surprised though that he didn't fall asleep or even seem to be making an attempt. I had learned all ready how little he slept. Finally, I fell off to sleep.