An important lesson

[gomaos]

copyright [email protected]

(all persons and places in this story are pure fiction.

any resemblence with reality would be sheer coincidence.

nothing of this ever happened)

The old Citroen Limo was gliding through the fresh crackly snow

Phil sat in the back and watched the white landscape drift by ....

In the front at the wheel sat Carlos who had put his arm around Marie.

Phil didn’t completely agree with this since he was fond of Marie himself.

But then, he should be happy to be here with them at all since he was a 20 year old nobody while Carlos was a dealer (pusher?) with plenty of drugs and money.

Why was he fond of Marie? Easily explained:

Once his friends had told him to go to the strip joint where she worked and ask if she was selling any trips...

Luckily it was her who opened the door and upon stepping to the door she gave him a short cuddle, a hug..

Of course he had no money to go into the club with her, he had heard that the first beer costed 10 Marks, which was a lot in 1972..

You’d get 3 grams of hash or a trip for it..

And she said she had no trips for sale, and that was that.

Since then he had believed that she had the hots for him, and had waited for her to make a move on him since he didn’t really know how to....

No woman had taught him yet...

It must have been his liking for Marie that he invited her and Carlos and his friend Michael into his parents flat who were on holiday at the moment...

Of course all of them had made a horrible mess, and no one had cleaned anything up...his parents would be really pissed of if he didn’t get a chance to clean up before they came back.

At first they had smoked the hash until it came out of their ears and other places...

Carlos kept going on about how this hash contained a lot of opium in it....

Phil didn’t really care he was already so stoned that he thought he couldn’t take any more at all. But the others really couldn’t get enough: Carlos, who must have been very tolerant to thc and opium, Marie because she wanted to be cool with Carlos, and perhaps also could never get enough, and finally Michael, who NEVER said no when someone passed him a joint or a pill or whatever...he also shot up smack occasionally, and however many times Phil would tell Michael if he didn’t stop this then he wouldn’t be his friend anymore, Michael didn’t care. He ignored Phil’s threat and always came back to be his friend, and Phil could never send him away..

especially because Michael had very few places he could go to, certainly not his own home....

Carlos then thought of a way to get even more stoned: He started cooking up an extract of the “o-hash” in a large frying pan. The end result looked disgusting, but everybody ate some, as much as they could, and after that there was still half of it left over....

Now they were on their way to that discotheque in Grossem, which was about 25 Kilometres away, and the only good psychedelic disco for miles and miles...he had been in similar place in Hannover and hadn’t liked them, they were too big, too impersonal..

Grossem was the coolest disco... there were lightshows bubbling over the walls, there was always some smell of incense in the air, the music was the latest and best psychedelic and rock (there was no techno yet) and it had a dance floor with silver walls, a super powerful stereo and the best and biggest speakers that a disco could have in these days.

Dancing in the dance floor which was really a large cubicle a bit away from the rest of the disco, was like dancing inside a loudspeaker itself, or inside a gigantic ear, or inside one’s brain...he never made it very long in there, just too loud....

During the first few years of the disco’s existence some very important alternative bands played there which would later make it big, like for example Kraftwerk

....when they played there it was sold out and he couldn’t get a ticket, so he listened outside...jezzuzz mf christ...Kraftwerk live were good in those days...and loud...even outside you could hear the tiniest tone...

Tangerine Dream played there as well, and Can, and Witthueser &Westrupp(very good but totally forgotten today) and many other good bands...

You could just about ALWAYS get hash and acid outside in the car park...smoking inside was not allowed and they would kick you out, so everybody smoked up in their cars, sometimes people just sat in their cars with all windows shut tightly and would get more and more stoned...the smack wave had not yet hit at the time and that was good...

Later, bad things happened there as usual with places like this: Some raids, temporary closures, other bad things....

One of the worst things:

One night a biker gang came in and started beating up the “hippies”and wanted to rape their girls and women....

One HERO (yes that’s what he was whoever he was)pulled a hand gun and held it to the biker bosses head and said: “Stop it now, take your boys and piss off, or I’ll shoot” The biker didn’t believe him. The hero shot him right between the eyes, he fell down as struck by lightning....the other motherfuckers just left....it is unknown what happened later...

But let’s get back to this particular night.

It was winter and snowing.

Carlos lived in the fast lane and was also a irresponsibly fast driver...a few times the car skidded on the fresh snow and veered over into the opposite lane, Carlos only just avoiding collision, Phil thought his time had come, Michael sitting next to him only smiled dumbly and Marie had a few silly laughs.

At the same time that he feared death Phil also marvelled at the snow covered landscape around them which was giving him this special feeling of “winter magic”...as if a fairy or several of them had spread their dust in the air...he also had a feeling of belonging with this landscape, of being a part of it...

Well perhaps the fairies or elves or whatever saved them and they arrived at the disco.

.it was approximately 9 pm and it would be open till around three...

The four of them lost themselves in the crowd. Outside was the usual line up of cars with people sitting and smoking in them, inside all hell seemed to be breaking loose...the music was VERY strange: Pink Floyd had just released their latest album and it was the most wicked and weirdest yet: Atom Heart Mother! Walking through the crowd to the inside he had the feeling that he was entering the bowels of hell...all the lightshows were going crazy, there was ocean of colours everywhere, and the dance floor was filled with maniacs. He went to order some banana juice, his favourite, but it was almost impossible to penetrate to the bar, so he sat down and waited for better times.

He could now definitely feel the effects of the hash/opium extract, it was enormous and over powering, but still very enjoyable....

After 15 minutes his chances to order a drink at the bar were no better, so he decided to go to the toilet and have a drink from the tab...

Strangely enough none of his friends seemed to be around, there were some people he KNEW but that was all, the rest were strangers. He also could not see Michael, Marie or Carlos anywhere...probably in the car smoking, they never got enough....

He pushed his way through to the toilet...

The tap water tasted foul, but he was VERY thirsty, so he drank, then he also washed his face, it felt so good, he just kept washing his face...

A slim long haired dude came in, he didn’t know him. Or had he seen him sometime in...Hannover?

“Hey man, want to buy trips?” the dude asked.

Trips? He’d been chasing trips for a while, unusually enough, there hadn’t been any for a while...

“What sort are they?”

“The green ones, man, the green ones from Hannover...

Wow! He had heard that they were REAL good....

Yes he wanted one, but damn, he found out all he had left in his pocket was 5 Marks...

“Well they’re ten bucks, man,” said the dude.

“Maybe I can buy a half? Hey, man, I haven’t had one in a while, I’m really hanging out for one...”

“Grrrrr.......a half......but I need money for a drink...okay, just wait...”

The longhaired dude went into the toilet cubicle and locked it from the inside.

“Good that I always carry a razor on me....”

After a couple of minutes he came out again and gave him the half trip, while Phil gave him his 5 bucks.

The tiny pill was only 2 mm in diameter, and would easily be lost on the floor if he dropped it so it went straight into his mouth....

Upon leaving the “rest rooms”he went back inside the disco, and they were playing “Atom Heart Mother” yet again, that one long piece with heavy classical orchestra, electronic noises and the Wagnerian choirs....it was chaos made audible...

Did that trip begin to kick in already? It had only been ten minutes...plus that o/hash extract, he had eaten that 2-3 hrs ago, that was still coming up strongly as well...could it be...was it too much...had he overdosed?

From experience he knew that oral hash took at least 2 hrs to fully work...well it was definitely doing it’s job and getting stronger every minute...

He began to feel hot, very hot...his throat was dry and crying out for a drink. He looked around him, still no chance to go to the bar, too many people and what the hell...he had no money left. Everywhere he looked he saw stoned and out of it people, most of them were probably on those green pills, if not there was enough other things around...There was no friend here to help him...he walked up to Fred, who he knew from his home town and was sort of friendly with. Fred just sat there with his friend Carl and they were smiling, but panicky rabbit smiles. He said to Fred:” Hey, man, can you help? I had this green trip and some other stuff, and I think I’m freaking out...have you got any valium?”

Fred looked at him for one second, then looked away again: “No man, can’t help you; we’re tripping as well and trying very hard to keep it together, so go away with your negative vibrations...piss off!”

Phil tumbled towards the dance floor...maybe he could “dance it off”...but inside the Dance Floor “Atom Heart Mother” was even twice as loud and simply started to cause him psychosis. He could hardly make out the other dancers, everything now dissolved into flowing colours and shapes, the chaos was perfect...and he could not let go and become part of it...he was HOT...he felt SICK....

He made his way to the toilet again for a drink of water when he finally got there after getting by all the other inhabitants of the disco, which did not look human anymore but had turned into some sort of strange animals with horns, and hooves, and cockroach-like protuberances coming out of their heads and bodies...

The toilet looked totally different, this was not the same room he had been in just 20 minutes ago? Couldn’t be , it had to be the “Lady’s”

.... he walked out and towards the other facilities.

The door opened and two girls came out and stared at him with wide-open, large-pupilled eyes

.”Hey dude, that’s the lady’s room, what do you want here?”

“What, why,” he stuttered, “how can that be? The other toilet here has to be the Lady’s, it certainly isn’t the Gent’s...

“Hey dude you’re tripping out?” one of the girls said. “We are too...but this is definitely the rest rooms that you have to go to,” and she pointed at the door he had just come out of.

So he staggered back through that door and leant over the basin and opened the tab for water. He drank some but it tasted even fouler than before, plus now it was dirty, yes definitely not clear... he couldn’t tell whether the colour was brown or blue or reddish, or a mixture of them...and then he looked at his hands...the hands he was drinking the water out of...all the fine lines in his hands were flowing and moving and he could not stop staring t them...Finally somebody pushed him away because he needed water as well... he could not stay in the toilet forever...so he let the flow of extraterrestrial creatures carry him back inside and there they were again...those Wagnerian choirs

seemed to keep going forever...the orchestra of chaos trumpeting right through his inner being...the heat... he could not take it anymore, he felt so hot, he needed to cool down or he would die...die...die..die.

.was this what was going to happen to him? Was he going to die? Well, perhaps too much opium would be like too much heroin, and would kill you.

He stumbled outside of the disco and walked over to the parking lot...

snow,,,he wanted to lie down in the snow to cool down...regrettably most of the fresh snow had melted and there was just some snow lying there that must have fallen off from under car, it was VERY dirty...nevertheless he started rolling in it...he had to cool down, cool down....

The dirty snow felt disgusting as it wetted his shirt and got through to the skin, never mind, he had to cool down...

Two dudes came walking towards him and it turned out they were working for the disco....

“Hey man what are you doing there rolling in the dirt? Have you lost your mind?”

“I’m dying,” he moaned,” I’m dying, I’m so hot, as if I’m burning up on the inside.

I had an opium/hash tea plus an acid trip, and I can’t take it any longer. I need an ambulance...please help me...”

The two exchanged looks. “We can’t have an ambulance here. They call the cops immediately. That means trouble, trouble for you and us. Do you want trouble?”

he growled at Phil. ”Do you want to go to jail?’

“No,” he almost cried.

“Do you have any friends? A car? Somewhere you can crash?”

He gave them the names of his friends and one of them walked away. Soon he came back with Carlos. Carlos looked even more evil on acid. He was pissed off. “So you had too much hey? Not good at it hey? Shouldn’t touch the stuff, grow up first!’

Then he said: “You can crash in the back of the car...damage anything and I’ll kill you.!”

The men guided him to the car and let him lie down on the back seat.

Then he lay there. Around him the car was coldly alive, watching him from another dimension. He could feel and see smooth ripples going through it’s fabric and metal, it was getting ready to swallow him....

Now he was VERY cold and wet and sat there shaking....

as a LIZARD knocked on the car window. Phil looked again and recognized Michael with eyes sticking out of his face like the eyes of a lizard. He had a girl with him...she glittered in all colours

“Let us in we want to smoke a j,” he said and held up a piece of hash.

Shaking, he unlocked the car door and the two got in.

Michael had one look at him and said: “Hell what happened to you?” but didn’t wait for answer. Instead he gave his full attention to the task of making a “j” and the girl who apparently he entertained with non-sense talk. The more Phil tried to listen to what Michael said, the stupider it sounded. If this was how you “chatted up girls” then Phil would never be any good at it....but it seemed to work.

Michael lit the joint and put his arm around the girl and she didn’t seem to mind...they both had a few tokes and then passed the joint on to him.

Immediately Michael started kissing the girl and his hand went for her tits....

Phil found that HE WAS SMOKING THE JOINT!

Damn! If he had gotten better a little, this few tokes had made it worse then ever before.

He swore, threw the joint on the floor of the car and got out.

The whole universe seemed to twist and tumble, and he was very cold and had to get inside or else he would die...DIE!

Somehow he found his way inside again, staggered past all these beings high on drugs, passed by the dance floor, the bar, made his way into the back of the disco hoping to find a seat, but they were all taken...finally he just collapsed between the seats and tables on the floor.

He felt this was the end, he would die for sure. His life had not been very long, he had not experienced much, except drugs, but now he was going to die. He gave himself up into it. Fighting it was pointless. He lay there, feeling his life force leaving the body, ascending or descending into nothingness.

His Heart stopped beating.

His lungs stopped breathing.

He died.

He just lay there dead and started decomposing.

He felt how he was already inside the earth; they must have buried him already.

His flesh decomposed and fell off, leaving just the bones.

He was under the earth, rotting away.

His spirit was...somewhere high above, very high above the earth, beyond the atmosphere, stratosphere, what have you...

His spirit was hanging on a tiny thread, a string, attached to his body....

The string was vibrating viciously, like a guitar string, but it might break any second....

Those vibrations were the most fearful experience he ever had,

he knew if that string broke, it would REALLY be the end....

So hang on...? Maybe he wasn’t really dead?

Impossible. He had died, his flesh had rotted away, and he was six feet under....

DIIIIIIII-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-N-N-N-NG-G-G-G-G-...another vibration of the string, the most vicious so far...but it held...it didn’t break....

Somehow he sensed that people were stepping over his grave, walking over it, ignoring it, disrespecting his grave...that upset him very much.

Even in death they would not respect him!

It upset him so much that he felt he had to do something about it.

If he could only arise from the grave he would show them...

Well maybe he could!

He tried to move his fingers, and yes! They would move. And they were his real fingers, not just bones. He tried to move his feet, and yes, they moved.

Finally he turned his head upward and opened his eyes.

Yes, he was right, there were people stepping over him.

He was lying on the floor in the back of the discotheque and people were stepping over him because the disco was closing and they had to go.

He was alive....and all right.

Dirty and wet and stinky but no further harm done. And he wasn’t tripping as hard anymore. The people stepping over him were mumbling abuses at him, but who cared?

He was alive! And he had experienced death and returned....

Slowly he made his way outside to the car park and soon he found a lift home.