For Part I, click here.
I stood outside the previously impenetrable aluminum fence waiting for Phlip to hand me the wristband. Even though I had found it, Phlip went Christopher Columbus and took credit for the discovery. He believed that once inside I would become too distracted to double-back and help him get in, high probability of happening in retrospect. Phlip handed me the wristband in an over-animated hand-shake that actually attracted attention – sober do-gooders usually fail to carry out even trivial acts of lawlessness. I had to shake any unwanted police attention so I walked away from the black people and stood near a group of blonde-haired white folks, cops never look there.
As I waited in line to get in I felt like Maximus, in The Gladiator, walking into the Roman Coliseum. I could hardly catch my breath, Phlip disappeared, nothing more than ectoplasm floating at my side, cotton-mouth of such severity that each of my teeth now owed reparations; but I walked at a 45 degree angle towards the loudest stage – Skrillex. I stood at the top of the hill, looking down at a manifest illustration of Id; unfiltered human Id, seeking nothing but gratification. Skrillex raised his right arm as he slowed the beat down with his left, and we waiting, cotton-mouths now wet with salivation over his fucking right arm, the beat slowed, and slowed, everyone facing him was now leaning forward, physically begging him to drop that fucking right arm and with it the beat, and then he did, and then we jumped and screamed and seized.
I needed to get closer to the stage. I turned to find Phlip holding a beer for me; I slammed it and then made my way through. Walking through a crowd at most concerts is such an arduous undertaking, but not here, I felt like I was offending them by not walking past.
We were so close to the stage that the vibrations were giving me an erection – MDMA births a desire to fuck someone with the same vehemence that the drug was unleashing on your spinal cord. I was a couple minutes from popping the other half of the pill in my pocket when a girl tapped me on the arm handing me a blunt. I grabbed it, took a couple of drags, and tried to hand it back to her. She told me to just keep passing it down as she pointed to a skinny white guy wearing ski-goggles who nodded at me; so I turned to Phlip, but he recoiled and tried telling me not to “smoke drugs” from strangers, implying that it may be dangerous. Fucking novice. Drugs are supposed to be dangerous. I called Phlip a narc as I handed the blunt to a more receptive partier when I noticed the girl laugh. I had an in, so I whispered in her ear, “why the hell would you come here if you didn’t wanna get high,” and she laughed some more.
Annie, Annie, Ah-Nee, two syllables, the first an exhale, the second a tongue-tap, a small vibration supplementing the tremors Skrillex was inflicting on my palate. I pulled the blunt out of my sock, licked it twice, ran the lighter across the seam, lit it, took three deep drags, contained my cough so strenuously that my eyes watered, and handed it to her. She complimented the taste with a calm eloquence, a musical language that hung in awkward contrast with the genocidal thumping in the background. As she puffed I took in her placid frame– her rain-soaked dolce vita flats, her distressed-ripped jeans which were the only thing more torn up than she was; a pixie-druggie floating away at DEMF, waiting to be caught. She resembled an emaciated Lisa Loeb with nine less stories, she was captivating, aesthetically arresting.
Phlip was somewhere reciting the rave-appropriate amount of Hail Maries so I couldn’t ask him to grab me a beer – instead, I walked to the beer cart, with Annie in tow. We drank and she wanted to show me some of the other DJs mixing since it was my first DEMF. After walking for a bit we sat under a tree. I lit another joint and reached out for the eerie, blood-red tattooed “A” on her neck, I touched it, I complimented it, “A for Annie.”
“No, ‘A’ for atheist.”
It was the official trademarked atheist logo. First of all, atheists need a new marketing firm to take over promotion and advertising responsibilities. It’s a bit shocking that they haven’t emphatically embraced viral and guerrilla marketing initiatives. Second of all, I was in, I knew that I was going to fuck Annie the Atheist. The imposed morality of religion wasn’t cock-blocking me with Annie, to her God was a shout in the street. She began to explain her beliefs to me and I pretended to care about whatever the fuck she was talking about while my brain slowly bled. I didn’t want to tell her that Atheists were more annoying than other religions; they have an inferiority-complex, a need to validate their inclusion in the zeitgeist. I took a couple small puffs from the joint, priming my lungs, then a cavernous one, I grabbed Annie and blew the smoke into her mouth, and we continued kissing. Shot-gunned dope-hits are one of my most successful moves; significant statistical correlation exists between shot-gunning and sex.
With Phlip leading the way and non servium Annie gripping my hand we walked out of DEMF and into mayhem. Police sirens picked up where the DJs left off. DEMF unleashed thousands of intoxicated, stoners, tripping, rolling, sleep-deprived vagrants back into the streets. The immunity provided by DEMF was now gone and the slobbering pigs were waiting to hand out DUIs, MIPs, DWIs, and other three-letter acronyms that all stood for hypocrisy. The whole of Detroit knew what was going on inside DEMF; they had lax security allowing any and all substance inside, they were selling pacifiers for the ravers, they invited European DJs to perform, they were selling shirts that read “Michigan’s Amsterdam,” they didn’t turn a blind eye, they looked directly at us, a clear and established silent acquiescence in an immune sanctuary we used while they used us; they overcharged us for tickets, drinks, food, and then kicked us out to be chased down by the cops.
The U.S. drug policy’s stated goal of reducing substance abuse is a farce. Faith in the policymakers is as dumbfounded as belief in the invisible hand of the free market. There is a blatantly discernible hand that subjugates the market, and there is also a hand that wields the drug policy as a social control method. Well aware of this, I abuse with the deft touch of a person in a much higher socioeconomic class. My drug-addled brethren are not as stealth; DEMF was a ruse, a ploy, it was tantamount to entrapment as the police arrested my people.
I gripped Annie’s hand, rushed to my car while avoiding all eye-contact like a child praying for a teacher not to call on him. The Arctic Monkey’s screamed from my speakers and before Annie contemplated changing her opinion of me I blamed Phlip, the narc, for playing anything but house music. I pulled out, and tagged a couple other vehicles on my way, I wanted to get out and leave my info on the cars I dented, but my breath smelled like weed, my brain-stem bled like ecstasy, and I didn’t want to legally forfeit the introductory modifier, “functional,” in my “functional addict” claim by getting arrested.
I don’t remember much of the drive on account of my periodic blackouts. I don’t remember throwing my bowl out of the window because I thought I saw a cop. I don’t remember telling Annie that I thought our souls had a cosmic connection. I don’t remember walking into my apartment to a group of people that resembled my friends doing lines of cocaine off my dead pop-pop’s coffee table. I don’t remember watching a baby ride a Pegasus through my living room. I don’t remember stealing a bike helmet from the parking lot to enhance my high. I don’t remember spitting MDMA-laced saliva at my backward-ass friend for breaking up expensive weed on my copy of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. I don’t remember crying because even as a posthumous weed-tray David Foster Wallace was surpassed, only to continue languishing in anonymity while lesser writers flourish in ubiquity. I don’t remember writing the note “call lawyer” so I could sue Frey, Zadie Smith, and Nicholas Sparks as accessories to Wallace’s death. I don’t remember cussing Phlip out when he thought it best for him to spend the night in a hotel with an open bible. I don’t remember chasing him around my apartment threatening to give him a heart attack with the Dalton’s worth of coke-residue I had on my finger. I don’t remember forcing everyone to abandon their religious beliefs so Annie felt at home. I don’t remember screaming at Annie to duck as the Pegasus riding baby barley missed her head. I don’t remember how Annie and I found my bed in our all together. I don’t remember fiddling with the condom until she forgot about it and then tossing it aside. I don’t remember losing my erection on account of Annie the Atheist hypocritically shrieking “Oh God, fuck me… oh my God” in between gasps.
I do remember taking a break to catch my breath, removing the bike-helmet that I was wearing, and smoking a bowl. While lying on my back with Annie draped across my chest I put bowl to lips and sparked my lighter. While inhaling some legitimately dank weed I noticed a rosy glisten on the inside of my left thigh. I ran the lit lighter down the outline of my body, towards my thigh, and I saw blood; I jolted to attention, clapped twice to turn on my lights, and exposed my blood-soaked groin. Annie the Atheist morphed into Annie the Apoplectic and then into Annie the Apologetic as she begged me to believe that her menstrual rivulet had ended a day prior. I erupted in laughter and ran into my living room, with arms raised in triumph, proclaiming “I slayed the beast.” I will never exhibit the type of heroism Russell Crowe displayed in real life or in The Gladiator. I will never turn back Carthaginian invaders in a Punic War reboot. So my blood soaked loins and an emotionally defeated heretic in my bed was as close as I was ever going to come to exhibiting valor and heroism – and I was going to make damn sure my people knew I was a hero.
I cannot, for my being, recall what followed my post-battle elation. I awoke, the next morning; face down on my couch wearing my bike helmet. I was adorned with an old spelling bee medal around my neck that I’m sure we repurposed into some sort of medal-of-honor. I sat up, lit a cigarette, grew disgusted that I hadn’t showered, and wondered if I could get the fresh blood stain off my pop-pop’s old couch. My carpet was littered with bodies that I hoped were just sleeping and not deteriorating. Everything hurt, my bones, my muscles, my ego, my feelings – if there was a God then I was definitely being punished for my dalliance with Evil Annie. I threw on some shorts, walked out onto my balcony, and watched the neighbor kids throw bread at the ducks in the pond, and I wanted to feel nostalgic, feel sorrow for my lost innocence, but I didn’t. I really wanted to yell at the kids to keep down the noise on account of my hangover. I became upset that I wasted so many years throwing bread at ducks; years I could have spent cultivating my now profligate lifestyle. I walked back inside; the children were nauseating; I had a lot more work to do making up for my wasted adolescence. I walked to the shower, I was fucking filthy, I needed to clean up, there was one more day of DEMF left.
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“Cotton-mouth of such severity that each of my teeth now owed reparations”
Brilliant line!
Loved the piece.