My heart is pounding. I can hear it like it’s outside my chest. Wait, it’s not my heart.
Someone’s banging on the door.
Sir? Sir? This bathroom is for employees only.
I work here.
No, you don’t.
Yes, I do. I just started.
I saw you go in. You don’t work here. You need to leave, or we’re calling the police.
Call ’em. I can’t hurry this up. I’m in pain.
You’re getting high. I can smell it.
What do you smell?
Marijuana and something else like burnt plastic. Crack? Meth?
You’re getting warmer.
Seriously, asshole.
Yes. I’m totally serious. Five minutes, and I swear, I will leave and never come back.
Smoke me out?
Really?
Yeah. This job sucks. Smoke me out and we’re cool.
Done.
I let the kid in.
He’s late teens or maybe twenty. His hair looks like he spent a long time getting it to look shitty.
Okay, hurry, pass it.
You don’t want to know what it is?
I, sir, give not one fuck. I hate this job. If it gets me through the day here, all the better.
Here. It’s called black hole.
Sick.
The kid tries to fire it a couple of times and inhale, and nothing happens. Then he fires it and holds it until it starts smoking. This kid’s been high before. I see the change happen in his face.
Oh fuck. This is good.
Yeah, it does the job.
You mind if I hit it a little more?
All you want.
The kid takes a huge hit and holds it until I think he’s going to pass out. His eyes are closed. He opens them for a bit and he’s totally yakked.
There’s a weird guilt about turning someone on to a drug you know will probably fuck them up. But you know, every time someone got me high for free, I really appreciated it. If you’re giving someone drugs who wouldn’t normally need or take them, that’s one thing, but for someone like me, the only thing standing between me and not getting high was not having drugs. Someone not sharing with me was only delaying something that would happen anyway.
He exhales. Laughs.
This shit is AMAZING.
It is, isn’t it?
We should get out of here. My manager told me to run you out.
I open the door.
The store looks different.
I turn around. The kid is gone. The books on the shelf are different.
I walk out. There’s a stack of newspapers by the front door.
It’s 1988.
There’s nowhere better to hide than the past. Vietnam John will never find me here. The feds will never find me. None of that shit has happened yet.
I have ten grand in cash in 1988, and that’s like twenty or thirty now, or will be. Or however this works.
Fuck. The new hundreds. Those goofy big-headed Franklins don’t exist yet.
I duck back in the bathroom. Sort out the bills. Out of the hundred hundred-dollar bills, ten of them are old enough to use. That’s more money than I ever had then. I’ll be fine.
1988. What to do now?
Where am I? I think I’m in LA right now, planning a move to SF. Should I try to warn myself of all this? Should I convince myself to get my shit together and go to a good school and learn computers?
That wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t listen.
So what should I do?
If you don’t know what to do in 1988, you look at flyers. There’s no Internet, no social media, and no apps to check. Phones are still attached to poles and walls. TV sucks.
I look at a wall of an empty storefront. It’s covered with layer upon layer of flyers. And finally, I see what I’m looking for. A punk show at a warehouse in the Mission. Who else but Op Ivy?
I’m by far the oldest guy at this show. They probably think I’m some creep or maybe someone’s dad. This band is as good as everyone said it was. Out in the parking lot, a younger me is passed out in a van.
I could try to warn myself, but young me is way too fucked up right now, and even if I did get me awake, I would never believe this bullshit.
In true East Bay punk fashion, Op Ivy broke up way too early, and they became legends having never played in their prime; all their shows were their early days, if you think about it one way. The amount of people who claim to have seen them is about four or five times as many as people who actually saw them.
There’s probably a dozen or so people I know in here right now, right before I will meet them in a few months to a year. These are their teenage selves.
I walk through the crowds, looking into faces. The skin is young and unscarred for the most part. These are teens who feel like old people—god, I felt like I had seen it all; I felt washed up and done at nineteen. I looked like all of these kids. There was so much future, but it felt like the world was ending at dawn.
When I started listening to punk, Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys had already broken up, other bands like Minor Threat were long gone, and the bands like the Ramones were playing huge venues and already seemed like a nostalgia act. I thought I had missed everything.
Everything I was into—music, film, poetry—had just passed its heyday if you asked anyone who was involved. The story was that everything was better and cheaper five years ago and now it sucks and its all been ruined by posers or yuppies or Christians or some shit.
Of course, things were great, and there was a lot of great shit around, but it’s hard to notice when you’re there. When it’s in front of you, you don’t realize how special it is, how much it will mean to you. It’s all the other things—the shows were better because of the friends you went with, the getting there and back, when it wasn’t easy to get to a show, cramming six into a car that seats four and getting all of you in for fifteen dollars when it should cost eighteen.
I think I see Liza at the front of the stage. God, she’s so cute. She’s like seventeen or something. She would’ve made my teenage brain explode. She has that Chelsea fringe that was popular with the skinhead and mod girls at the time. It’s bleached bright—must’ve done it right before the show. The little skull tattoos right below her neck are new. She got those on the run from teenage rehab. Later, she’ll get them covered with roses. I want to say hi to her, but I can’t. How would I explain any of that? Just enjoy the band.
More often than not, how you remember things is not how they happened. You remember how you felt while they were happening. You remember your emotions. But what was happening is not what caused those emotions. Being with your friends made you feel good, and the band, in reality, sucked ass, but you didn’t care because you had a crew full of guys you cared about, they had your back, and you had theirs.
Now that you’re old enough to get to a show without a problem, you’ve forgotten what that’s like; you drive your Prius to a punk show and pay to park. You watch the show and someone tells you the guitarist was from another band, the drummer is nineteen, and well, this isn’t really the band anymore, is it? The singer is the same, and he’s playing all the hits, and the sold-out crowd at The Warfield gives up a cheer as each song starts as if to tell everyone, I like this song, this is my favorite, I’m a real fan. But it’s only slightly better than a karaoke band; it’s a wedding band for rich aging punks. What happened? The songs are the same, but you’ve changed. You went to a show by yourself because you lost touch with your old friends or they moved away or they won’t go out on a night when they work the next day. Instead of enjoying the band’s songs, you spend the whole show worried about whether or not someone’s breaking into your car.
Op Ivy finishes up. I wish I could just rewind all this and watch it again. There’s a drug for that, or there will be in the future, and I’d love to have it right now.
Hotel room on Sixteenth smells like an old sock. Ears are ringing from the show. Haven’t eaten i
n . . . since the ’80s started, I guess. Exhausted but won’t be able to sleep real sleep.
That half sleep of the strung out and coming down. It’s like you’re staring at the insides of your eyelids. It’s a Rothko painting. It’s the void. It’s a red that any darker would be black, but red enough that you can’t sleep. Not really. Sometimes your body shuts down, it has sleep paralysis; sometimes you can hear yourself snore, but you’re stuck there, for hours, with your body passed out and your mind wide awake in freakout mode.
It’s the boredom that makes me crazy. The pure boredom. Alone with my thoughts, there’s nothing worse for me. I need stimulation. TV. Talk radio. Books. Podcasts. Movies. I don’t care. I need to hear things, other thoughts than my own. My own thoughts while coming down are like a pop song played repeatedly.
I could smoke more. Get high. But who knows where I’d end up. When I’d end up. If I don’t smoke again, I can stay here. Move to Reno or Vegas or something and make millions betting on sports. I should buy some Starbucks stock. Fuck. Microsoft, Apple. I could build a crazy portfolio. Just don’t smoke anything.
But I’m itchy. I’m itchy and stiff. Nothing’s comfortable.
Fuck, I need a drink.
Walk across the street. Cars honking, headlights trail off. Feet hurt. I should get new shoes.
Liquor store. Bright lights, tinnitus hum. Fluorescents flickering in a pattern. Round mirror in the corner. I look like shit. I look like a crackhead, and there’s plenty out right now. Luckily, no one gives a shit about another crackhead on San Pablo.
Six pack of cokes. Bag of ice.
Fifth of Jim Beam, please.
Do you have money?
What? Yes, I have fucking money.
I take out a twenty and throw it on the counter. He puts all the stuff in a thin plastic bag.
There’s a junkie wearing Saran Wrap underneath his shirt. He’s like a clear plastic mummy under his clothes. I can see it sticking out. I don’t know why, and I don’t want to know. It’s more drug-addict bullshit. He has a hood pulled down over his face. Creepy as fuck.
Bag strains, stretches out with the weight of the cans and ice. Don’t let it tear open. Hold it like a baby.
Saran Wrap wants to talk to me. I can feel it.
Hey. Hey man, let me talk to you for a minute.
Ignore him. Keep walking. Don’t engage.
Hey. Hold up.
Fuck this guy. He wants what’s in my bag, and he has nothing I want.
Hey, I just want to talk to you.
Switch tactics: Fuck you.
Hey, don’t be like that.
I don’t want to talk with you. Beat it.
I know you.
No, you don’t.
I know you, from the future. Chuck. Right? That’s it, right?
Stops me. Chills. Fuck. I do know that voice. Andy. NSA Andy.
Please, I just want to talk to you.
Okay, yes, follow me. Hurry.
Shoes feel like lumpy steel. Joints ache. Headlights trail off. Doppler honking.
Hotel room. TV on. WKRP rerun. I make Beam and Coke cocktails in plastic cups. Take a long drink. Doesn’t feel like much, but it’s refreshing going down. I hand one to Andy.
I swear to god, I thought turkeys could fly.
What? Andy says, taking his drink.
It’s the last line of this episode.
Did you get sucked here through the black hole, too?
Yeah.
How do we get back?
I don’t know if we do. Well, I don’t know how to get back to the right place. But if we smoke up again, we’ll be somewhere else.
Let’s do it. Do you have yours still? I lost mine.
No. I’m good here. The ’80s were better. Easier to navigate. I go back, and it’s all bullshit. And I’ve seen what happens to you.
What?
Sorry. No. I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe it still won’t happen.
I flip around on TV. It’s the World Series game with the Dodgers and the A’s. Gibson is up.
Oh, I love this game, I say, It’s a classic.
Baseball is corporate bullshit.
You’re in my hotel room, Andy, drinking my liquor. Shut up, drink, and watch. I just want to get drunk and see if it takes the edge off these withdrawals.
Baseball is a tool of the government.
Shut up, Andy. Drink. Watch.
Hoping this shit hits my system. It burns in my throat and cools it right after. Hell yes.
Gibson strikes out.
That’s not what happens.
What?
This game . . . this game is a famous game. Gibson comes up to bat and wins the game with a home run.
That’s not what happened this time.
That’s exactly my fucking point. Gibson gets the home run.
That’s not set in stone. In every universe in which this guy . . . what’s his name?
Gibson. Kirk Gibson.
In every universe in which this precise moment happens, he has a chance to either hit it or get an out, right?
No. I’ve seen this happen.
Listen to me. You saw this guy at this moment once before. Right?
Yes.
Every time, in every universe in which this precise moment happens, it plays out any number of ways: a base hit, a home run, a strikeout, whatever. You’ve seen it be a home run. This time, it’s a strikeout. It wasn’t some kind of pure destiny that Kirk Gibson hits this home run. What are the chances of him hitting one?
Slim to none. He was hurt; he could barely walk.
And that’s what makes it a great moment. You saw something that probably exists in less than 1 percent of the universes in which this moment exists.
You’re hurting my brain.
No, I’m helping you. Listen. No matter what the humans do on this earth, the earth still spins. That’s what matters to the space-time continuum. Not whether your parents meet or not, not this home run, not any of the fucking wars or anything you think really matters on earth. Not even if humans ever evolved. The earth forms, and there’s this tiny chance over billions of years that humans end up happening, so if you think that some poem you write or some baby you make matters one way or another to the way the planet spins, you’re fucking out of your god damned mind. The planet doesn’t give a shit whether or not you’re on it. Neither does the solar system, the galaxy, or anything else in fucking space. Got it?
No, someone else tried to explain this to me another time, and I feel a lot like I do now.
Trust me. This is how the shit is.
So the Oakland A’s take game one of the ’88 World Series. Fuck. Maybe they still take game two. That would put them at two up rather than tied. Then the Dodgers win the next two, but instead of that winning the whole thing, they just tie up the series. Maybe the A’s take it.
Sure. Whatever. Let me ask you this: does any of it matter? Really?
Yes. What happens matters.
Yes, what happens in each universe does matter, to that universe only. Things have a way of evening out. Picture pouring water through a pipe. Each time you pour it through, the molecules have an infinite amount of ways to interact and get through the pipe, but at the end of the day, all you care about is did the water get through the pipe or not? Imagine each water molecule was sentient and wrote thesis statements and opened small businesses and got on Star Search—they would all be thinking they’re important when, in fact, they don’t matter to you, me, or the pipe one fucking bit. You take the same water and pass it through the pipe again. It all comes out, but infinitely different each time.
I still don’t get how this has to do with me.
The black hole puts us at different points in the time pipe. We’re the water, and we’re pouring through the time pipe over and over again.
Your mind is pouring through a crack pipe. You’re fucking nuts.
I’m the only sane one left.
Just you wait. I’ll be getting high with strippers whil
e you’re smeared in shit and running down the street.
Now who’s crazy?
Let’s just watch TV and drink.
I wake up. Something’s gripping my spine. Fuck this hurts. I move, it calms, then hurts. I move and it calms again.
The lights come on. Interrogation lights. Floodlights. Where am I?
Black hole smoke gets in my nose. I inhale. Hold it.
Easy, bro, you’ll be okay.
Andy’s blowing smoke into my face. Good god, these are just withdrawals. The pain subsides. My fists unclench. Yes. It’s good. Drugs are good.
I snatch the pipe from him and hit it like I stole it.
I hold my breath and wait for it to hit my brain.
The world is a good place. It’s full of love, and I am a vessel for its energy. Energy and matter. That’s all we are, and we think we’re special and unique, but from the point of view of the universe, we’re all just slow energy that fucks and eats and kills. Hell yeah.
I open my eyes. Andy is gone.
Someone’s banging on the door. They’re yelling something.
Fuck it.
Smoke more.
Where the fuck am I?
Blackness. Cold metal. I stand and hit my head. Dumpster.
I lift the lid and stand up. German and Japanese tourists take pictures like it’s their last day ever to take pictures.
Scream. They scream and run.
I get out. Sore as fuck. Wander around the side of the building.
I check my teeth. They’re all there. I could swear I lost them all.
I’m at the party-bus rental place. If I can find this bus and get high on it, maybe I can get back in the timestream before everything goes to shit and everyone dies. Maybe I can save Liza.
I did this before. I remember this.
I pat my pockets. Gun. Twenty-five. Yes. I storm in.
The receptionist hangs up when she sees me. Then she yells into the intercom.
Ron, we have a crazy homeless guy in here.
She’s talking about me.
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