by Forish, E.
[xxxix] resting inside. I automatically shove the pills into the pocket of my army jacket and return to the living room, where I set the basket down before the two looming bookshelves. I then begin to fling paperbacks on top the already monstrous pile of clothing.
With my mission completed, I lug heaping piles of possessions out of the apartment and into the trunk of my Camry. I return indoors for one final time and stand in the center of the living room, slowly spinning in a broad circle as I scan the area for any items I may have carelessly overlooked. My eyes suddenly lock on an official-looking piece of paper, and, upon closer examination, I identify the slip as Greg’s most recent paycheck. I snatch it from the end table, carefully fold it in half, and stuff it into the depths of my previously empty wallet.
I then retire to the couch with pen and paper in hand. I scribble a goodbye-forever note, which essentially explains that if they want to kick me out, that’sfine, I’ll leave, but that’s not what friends do, so they can go fuck themselves. I sign it, “Luv alwaysAlice” in purple ink and leave it in place of the paycheck. I weigh down the piece of paper with a small houseplant that I purchased two days earlier and decide to add, “P.S. Here’s a plant to remember me by. You could use a little fuckin’ life in here.” I place my copy of the house key inside the potted plant and slam the door to Apartment 6 shut forever, vanishing like a silver fox, sly and unnoticed yet nothing less than a rare creature of pure distinction, into the shield of the early morning haze.
* * *
With over five-hundred dollars in my pocket, courtesy of Greg‘s paycheck and Rosie’s debit account
[xl] , I arrive in Brattleboro later in the evening and appear at the doorstep of my friends Bailey Haden and Jay Fires for an unannounced visit.
“Alice! What a surprise to see you here,” says Bailey, arms wide open for her typical greeting of a warm hug. “C’mon in.”
I cross the threshold and instinctively make my way into the den, where Jay sits cross-legged on an oversized red armchair, intently focused on packing a bowl. He pauses momentarily to say, “Hey, Alice” before returning to the task at hand.
I sit adjacent from Jay on the floor and pull a paper bag from my oversized tanned-leather satchel. In a fluid motion I remove the object from the bag, which I casually crumple into a ball and toss aside, and present to them a bottle of cherry-flavored Effen vodka.
“Got any mixer?” I inquire innocently.
Always an impeccable hostess, Bailey briefly disappears into the kitchen and returns with cranberry juice and several glasses.
“Perfect,” I remark. “We should talk.”
As the majority of the liquor finds its way into my glass, my mouth spews out lies about the psychologically depraved nature of Greg and Rosie’s romantic relationship
[xli] and their vicious intentions to kick me out for refusing to become sexual involved with them in a ménage à trois
[xlii] . As I force myself to cry
[xliii] at the loss of such dear friends and my resulting homelessness
[xliv] , Bailey offers me her sympathies as well as a place to sleep on her broken futon.
I will spend the following three months in Brattleboro and, as a mechanism of survival, will practice the arts of couch surfing, swindling, and storytelling in the various forms in which they manifest themselves within my exaggerated existence. I will begin selling mushrooms as a source of income, pulling in a $200 profit for every ounce that I sell. Consequently, dealing will provide me with the opportunity to trip as often as I desire, which by Halloween equates to a minimum of three times per week.
In combination with my steadily increasing use of alcohol, marijuana, and ‘phetamine as well as my sporadic devouring of K-pins or Z-bars, the ’shrooms will cause my present reality to fracture into a thousand separate stories with slivers of truth slipped into the cracks, stories that will keep me drifting throughout the town like the ghost of that eccentric creature people used to recognize and to comprehend and to, on occasion, even admire, but now she‘s just the shell of her own diluted fairytale existence, dulled and frayed at the edges like the nightmares of yesteryears in which they never knew me.
CHAPTER VI: THE DESCENT
“How much longer must you remain in this dream before I finally figure out if you’re insane or a genius
[xlv] ?”
NOVEMBER 2, 2005. IT’S WEDNESDAY, and my mind swarms with fractured pieces of Monday night’s party like shattered glass with no prospect of reassembly, lost within the ocean’s waves only to reemerge, smooth yet opaque, on distant shorelines.
Adorn in the typical attire of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, I attend the annual on-campus Halloween party on Potash Hill, and, like in the dreams of Wonderland, I enter into a surrealistic world of eccentric characters and abnormal curiosities. The Social Committee has transformed the building that ordinarily holds classrooms into a haunted house for the evening, equipped with cardboard gravestones, excessive black lights, and faux spider webs. Desks have been removed from the largest of classrooms in order to make space for live bands and their audiences. Trumpets and saxophones wail over the blues rifts of the bass and the funk rhythms of the guitar as a group of students performs their jam band melodies with a twist of jazz fusion. Drunken hippies in costume pack the dance floor, mixing the pungent odors of sweat, booze, and marijuana with the fresh autumn air. The dead foliage that carpets the hallways crunches beneath my feet as I move into one of three rooms that houses a makeshift bar, where the line of plastic booze bottles screams, “Drink Me.”
I use the holiday as a justification to overindulge in an exponential variety of intoxicating tablets and elixirs, bouncing between the main building to the dorm rooms in search of any substance that the various cliques may have to offer, but with a population of only 300 students
[xlvi] , the majority of people tend to see a truth in me that I have yet to grasp: my junky mentality lacks the integrity necessary to maintain healthy relationships. Friendships seem like haunting memories as I search for chemical bliss in opposition to quality social time with my former peers, individuals who once cared for me and I for them, but now, perhaps, I’m just too far gone.
Despite my inability to reconnect with the usual suspects, I find a group of freshmen, who, due to a lack of knowledge of my past, possess the most generosity, sharing with me blunt after blunt of marijuana and innumerable cans of Molson. After fully indulging in their free gifts, I grow weary of their questions, of which “who are you?” seems to dominate, and return to the haunted house to refill my tea cup, which, earlier in the evening, overflowed with mushroom tea but now contains straight vodka. The alcohol hits my stomach with a bang as I feel the Z-bars, which I swallowed approximately one hour earlier, dissolve, thereby exploding my buzz into a higher dimension.
My central nervous system kicks into overdrive as it attempts to process a blend of chemical cocktails that would surely cause the mind and body of the average person to shut down completely, but I need to chase the intensity of the moment down that rabbit hole and into a dark and chaotic oblivion. I retreat into the bathroom and unload my supplies on the sink’s ledge in preparation to bump the few lines of blow
[xlvii] that remain inside my purse.
Fully loaded, I rematerialize and merge with the crowd and their strangeness, hunting for Blake amongst the pale zombies, Marilyn Monroes, and even a remarkable imitation of Hunter S. Thompson, all the while desperately grasping onto the belief that Blake, unlike the others, possesses the maturity and experience necessary to empathize with desperation, and, therefore, will prove himself to be my most loyal companion in the end. I wait for him to appear from the shadows and validate my existence, but the sea of costumes viewed from my inebriated perspective makes it difficult to distinguish him from anyone else, and even as the crowd thins out drastically as the clock approaches 2:00 a.m., Blake remains invisible like the Cheshire Cat as Alice’s adventures whir ever closer to a cessation.
&nb
sp; * * *
I awake in Bailey’s apartment two days later. The clock reads 1:02 p.m. I leisurely prepare a pot of coffee, and as it brews I search the apartment for any signs of life. After confirming the absence of both Bailey and Jay, I take a few pills of Adderall from their bureau and retreat to the kitchen, where I then crush them into a fine powder and add it to my coffee mug. I sit and chain-smoke cigarettes on the front balcony as I consider today’s obligations, but as an unemployed college dropout, my daily routine lacks any sense of responsibility beyond consuming more drugs to eliminate the aching feeling of their absence.
I hit my usual locales Harmony Lot, the downtown apartments of various friends and associates, and, of course, Potash College campus and by mid-afternoon am fully restocked with a half-ounce of weed, a month’s worth of Adderall, a handful of Seroquels
[xlviii] , and a few pills of codeine. Having succeeded in my duties of obtaining enough chemicals to last me for at least the next day or two, I decide to then visit Carl Silverman
[xlix] in Fellows Balls
[l] to discuss a potential “business opportunity
[li] .”
I knock on the front door to his wooden farmhouse, toting with me a 12-pack of Magic Hat Hocus Pocus in my right hand. As I wait for him to greet me with his typical jovial welcome, I think back to a distinctive night that unfolded one year earlier in this very spot. With a head full of bathtub ‘cid
[lii] , I enter the house with a group of four other Potash students and one’s visiting guest. We make ourselves comfortable at the kitchen table, where I notice off to the side rests a chess board. As Carl lights a massive joint to share with the tribe, I challenge anyone to the game of intellect.
The visitor accepts the offer, brashly commenting, “Get ready to lose.” Seated adjacent from one another at the Formica table, we set our pieces in place across the chess board. Unable to easily differentiate the various pieces, I spend some time staring at the knight quizzically before I eventually arrange my side of the board accordingly.
My opponent smirks at me before asking, “So, what’s at stake here?”
“Only your pride.”
He chuckles insolently as his fingertips move a white pawn forward two spaces. I stare intently at my side of the board as the pieces swirl across the checkered surface like ants across a picnic table. I, too, move a pawn, positioning him in such a way that leaves an open path for my bishop. The game continues back and forth, each of us swiping a few pawns, but nothing more as Carl dances around the table with his manual camera, shooting pictures of the battle of strategic deduction currently in progress.
The rest of the crowd seems to ignore us, more interested in smoking weed than watching a game of chess. Their laughter appears to infringe upon my opponent’s deep state of contemplation, and while he squints his brow and ponders his next move, I demand to the crowd, “Hey, what’bout me?”
Within seconds, I receive a freshly packed bong, and as I wait for my turn in the game, I rip two massive hits, exhaling the smoke into my opponent’s face. He pretends to ignore its effect on his concentration, but once he finally decides to move his queen, it becomes obvious that I have successfully distracted him. I instantly snatch the white queen with my bishop, thereby putting him in check. Two moves later, its check and mate.
My opponent, dumbfounded, stares blankly at me from across the chess board.
“Who’s pride was at stake again?” I question.
“Fuck you.”
“How much ‘cid am I on again? It was a full strip, right? And you still couldn’t beat me?”
“Whatever.”
“Dude, the pieces were moving around like I was watching a fuckin’ ballet, and I still beat you. Ha. Who’s next?” I light a cigarette in triumph, but no one else seems willing to lose to this psychedelic genius in disguise.
My memories reach an abrupt halt as Carl finally swings open his front door to allow this decadent creature into his personal space. We seat ourselves at that same Formica table and prepare for an afternoon filled with major toking and serious discussion. Carl reveals his Bell jar full of marijuana and a pack of Zig-Zags, and as we chain-smoke joints, we shoot the shit under the pretense of intellectual conversation, covering a range of topics from existential interpretations of our own visual art to Kenneth Keniston’s sociological views of alienation and dispirited youths. I crack open a bottle of Hocus Pocus and offer one to my host, but he declines. Apparently, I will be the only one drinking from the 12-pack this afternoon.
Time meanders forward, and as I take the first sip from the last beer, I explain to Carl that we must say our goodbyes for the evening
[liii] . We part, and I find myself on the familiar drive down Route 9 towards Bailey’s apartment with that last bottle of Hocus Pocus in my right hand and a Camel in my left. I zone out on the roadway, ignoring the surroundings of the Vermont landscape as I enter a state of dejected meditation, for time spent with a former classmate triggers within me a disintegration of all thoughts other than my failed collegiate efforts.
I often blame the design of Potash College for neglecting to account for the insanity that ensues when attracting fringe students to a remote area of wilderness, for mixing a rigorous academic agenda with awkward means of socialization
[liv] creates a lethal combination for any individual, such as myself, already on the mental brink. With semi-annual Naked Parties and free-range peacocks roaming the property, Potash College possesses a certain level of unconventional charm that simultaneously acts as a catalyst for misguided chaos and extreme peculiarities.
In terms of my own experience at Potash College, I have yet to pinpoint the exact cause for my departure, but the records state that I took a medical leave for “clinical depression and anxiety.” Perhaps their approach to education did not properly suit me
[lv] , for I lack direction; perhaps their social scene dragged me down
[lvi] , for I lack self-control; or perhaps I simply lack altogether the drive and intelligence necessary to succeed in life. Either way, I cannot escape the truth that rather than nurturing my scholarly curiosities, Potash College, instead, caused massive doubts in regards to my future in a mind already plagued with serious self-reservations.
I make a second attempt at pursuing my higher education by enrolling part-time at Barre State College for the fall semester, but this, too, proves to drain me of all scholastic ambitions. More concerned with sustaining the perpetual inebriation of my mind through chemical saturation, even a class on social deviation falls short of holding my interest, and within the first month I stop attending night courses altogether, for not only do I lack academic determination, but I also feel like an outsider within the social scene, wandering around campus like a degenerate amongst the anorexic types and their jock boyfriends. I am not one of them, nor do I desire to be, for I simply wish to drown, solitary, in the illicit substances that allow my brain to function on the most basic level of social acceptance, where I can tune out the social games maintained by the hierarchy of the pretty and the popular, and while they remain trapped in their cookie cutter delusions of grandeur, I, caught within my own psychoses, choose to ignore them in hopes that they will grant me the same courtesy.
At this point, I abandon all delusions of ever obtaining my Bachelors, and in an effort to explain to my parents why I had, yet again, dropped out of college, I allow a series of lies to circulate through my head. As my mind toils to generate reasonable false excuses, without warning I am forced back into the present moment as the piercing sound of my Camry grinding against the metal guardrail cuts though all thoughts of quiet contemplation.
“Oh, shit.”
I jerk the wheel suddenly to correct my steering, but rather than rectifying the problem, I create another one, maneuvering the vehicle partially into the on-coming lane. As I swerve between the lines, I quickly glance into the right side mirror to gauge the damage done to the body of my Camry only to notice instead the pulsating
flash of red and blue lights several yards behind me. Within seconds the unmarked cruiser, which seems to just magically materialize from the shadows, activates the wail of its sirens, thereby confirming my own impending legal confrontation.
I guzzle the last of my beer in one quick gulp and toss the empty bottle to the passenger’s side floor as I bring my car to a stop along the road’s shoulder. I reach for the registration inside my glove box, and as I wait for the officer to approach my vehicle, time slams on the brakes, causing stagnation between the moment where my civil freedoms and felony disobedience collide. As I attempt to mentally prepare myself for the conversation about to ensue, my own inability to weigh the severity of the consequences causes my mind to remain in suspended disbelief, and although my inner dialogue whispers, “Everything will be alright,” Common Sense screams, “Karma has finally caught up with you.”
I hear a tap at my passenger’s side window. “How are you doing tonight, Ma’am?” the state trooper asks.
I answer with an unrelated comment. “I’m honestly, like, only a mile away from where I’m going.”