“Geez, it isn’t going to hurt you. At least toke a joint before we go. We’re going to be tripping and you’re gonna be earthbound.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s fine.” At the moment I didn’t like Charlie all that much, not only because he joined Renato in trying to get me to drop the acid, but because he was being reckless, and I wondered just what else he would willingly get into. I sure hoped he would hold onto his desire for a regular boyfriend, and not just get laid if he got the chance.
Charlie cut the lights and lit a couple of candles, then he gave a joint to each of us. So I reluctantly went ahead and smoked, tonguing mine out about halfway through as I had seen Uncle Sean do. I laid the butt in an ashtray on Charlie’s desk. I became stoned quickly and felt a little more relaxed, though still vaguely uneasy and tried to keep my legs from shaking as the full force of the pot trailed through me.
A little later, I got thirsty and asked Charlie if he had anything to drink. I was about to gag trying to lubricate my mouth with saliva. A moment later, Renato handed me a Dixie cup with what looked like green Kool-Aid. “Here you go, pretty boy,” he said, winking at me and pouting his lips into a sexy air kiss. I thought about smelling it for alcohol when Renato handed it to me, but I downed it in one clean gulp, regretting that it was so sweet and too warm to slack my thirst.
My fingers and hair smelled like smoke and my breath tasted as nasty as we headed out into the warm night toward the stadium. I fell back a little and Charlie fell back with me. I didn’t feel too much like talking right then, but he slid his hand across my shoulder. “Just relax and enjoy, okay, Will?”
Later, I would wonder if he’d said that because he knew what Renato had done, and still later I would try to recall the details of the nightmare or dream state I went into. But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I write, my hand has begun to shake.
Every time I try to write about this night, the concert, and the LSD, I quit before I get this far. So I’m trying to slowly work my way into it. Maybe in writing it down, something more will come to me, something I haven’t remembered.
The stadium was across campus from the dorms so it was a long walk and, as I look back, I remember feeling little things happening about twenty minutes after I drank the Kool-Aid, and hearing: zzzt! zzzt! And feeling a little sting in my head (if that’s possible), like a housefly biting just before a rain.
We eventually came to the stadium and moved through the open gates where we were crushed together like cattle and moved into the arena, already loud and noisy and I could smell pot smoke in the air. Sweat soaked my polo shirt. The concert soon began with what I took to be one of ZZ Top’s signature songs, because only a few bars into it, the crowd went nuts, screaming so loudly I could hardly hear the music. We were far back and the men on the stage were tiny pinpricks of pulsing light and sound. I was getting used to all the people in the city of Austin, but as I looked around I couldn’t begin to grasp how many people there were at the concert. The crowd was just a writhing amorphous sea of human flesh that seemed to be controlled by the music. The beat of the music became the beating heart of the crowd and soon it was difficult to distinguish the two.
I also remember that sometime during the concert, I felt hands moving all over me, running down my neck and back, and even into my butt, and I tried to will away the erection that just budded in my pants. At times I just gave in to the heat and music and, at one point, I realized I was grinding my crotch against Charlie’s butt. I pulled away embarrassed, not knowing how long I had been doing it.
I don’t know how long the concert went on, either, but soon enough I realized that I wasn’t feeling right, as if the flies in my head had become a swarm of bees and were biting nerves that shot out lights, and I could direct the lights down on the stage far away, and the music turned into light and traveled back and entered my head, until I saw trails of light all over the stadium, going back and forth from the band to the crowd. The intensity was almost scary, so all enveloping. The music was like a cocoon that I couldn’t quite break out of; but I knew if I did get free, I would just fly toward the stage. And it became a struggle just to stand on the stadium benches, and the more I struggled, the hotter I became, aware of even the slightest drop of sweat that rolled down my face. Then it felt as if my face was running streams of water, but when I rubbed my cheek and looked at my hand it was just a bright sheen of sweat.
At other times, it seemed like whatever words popped into my head, the band would then sing them. Something wasn’t right. I had never felt this way before, even on marijuana.
And then out-of-sync in my recalling of this night, I thought we were still in Charlie’s dorm room, only this time it was dark except for the flood lights from the stadium. But as I think on this, it’s impossible to have seen the lights of the stadium from his room, so I have no idea where such a memory came from. And for some reason, I was lying on Charlie’s bed, but when I tried to get up, hands held me down, and Charlie was grinning down at me. Then Renato was leaning over me, his glistening chest close enough to my own that I could feel his heat, and his lips had become impossibly large purple petals as he got his face down close to me before I pushed him away, kind of freaking out, because his blue eyes hovered over me like twin beams of light that if I looked at too long, I would be sucked into and would never escape from, and his lips we were so large I thought of some fleshy leech and a moment later it felt as if my neck was being sucked with the force of a vacuum cleaner.
I knew what he wanted and just kept saying “no no no,” and when I finally pushed hard enough, the hands gave way, and I was once more standing with the crowd at the concert. It was like being jerked from one reality to another, and I almost fell over trying to keep my balance.
Then there were the hands all over me, again. This time, I looked down on my sweaty, naked chest and caught the glint of a wedding band on one of the hands, and I thought Lance and I were together. But when I called out his name, all I heard was laughter and a weird reverberating echo of laughter as it bounced off the walls.
And it’s the laughter I keep hearing, even now, seeming to bubble from the walls or as if it were floating around the dorm room, or coming from the brilliant points of light from the candles around the room, the light of which contained a miniature stage and the tiny ZZ Top band, making their huge sound.
When I ‘woke up,’ which is the only way I can describe coming off the LSD, I was fully dressed, groping in the dark, feeling cool instead of hot and sweaty, trying to determine where I was.
Charlie and I were sitting on the grass in front of his dorm and watching the sun come up rosy behind a thin bank of clouds.
I knew I was no longer having the dream, or whatever it was. I also knew that Renato must have slipped the square of windowpane into the green Kool-Aid before the concert. Now it was just me and Charlie.
“I hope you’re happy, Charlie,” I said, feeling stunned and angry at the same time. “You knew Renato put the acid in the Kool-Aid didn’t you?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Answer me, Charlie. You knew he did, didn’t you? That’s why you told me to relax, once we were on our way to the stadium.”
“We didn’t mean to hurt you, Will. If you would have just took the acid like we did, you would’a known what to expect.”
“It was my decision not to, Charlie. I thought you were my friend. I was so freaked I didn’t even know what was real and what wasn’t. Like, did we go back to the dorm? Did you guys hold me down on the bed and strip my clothes off, huh?”
It was light enough I could see the sweat on Charlie’s upper lip, even though it was now cool. He glanced at me, then glanced away, staring straight ahead.
“I said did you guys rape me!”
“C’mon, Will, don’t be upset. I didn’t do anything. Okay?”
“But someone did?”
He shook his head back and forth. “That was pretty strong stuff, Will. I was having my own trip. How should I know wh
at happened to you?”
“So it was just a head thing?”
He shrugged as if my concern was meaningless, and I felt like backhanding him, but I just clinched my fists. I got up off the grass. He didn’t move, just looked up at me, though I couldn’t really see his eyes.
“Well thanks for being a real friend. I hope you got what you wanted last night.”
“Fuck you,” Charlie said, quietly, looking back toward the east.
“Go to hell,” I said. Then turning, I began to trot, then run, until I was racing across campus and up the residential hills toward my apartment. I hoped Uncle Sean wasn’t too worried. I didn’t know how I was going to explain what happened. I hoped I could quit crying, thinking I had been “ruined,” although I wasn’t sure what that meant.
* * *
So, the dream. Sometimes it’s vivid, with a bit of a haze around the edges, much like the humidity is here in the heat of the day. You can see the trees clearly up close, but from a distance, it’s almost as if they have a fog around the edges. It took me a while to figure out that the humidity in this climate is visible it’s so dense. Occasionally, I’ll see distinct images from my dream state when I was on the acid, and sometimes I see new things I didn’t recall right away, like Charlie or Lee, or Tim—or worse—Renato, naked and crouched on top of Charlie’s desk and whacking off. Only I don’t really know if anyone did do that, because I can’t recall any other details beyond the surprisingly vivid whiteness of the other guys’ naked skin, as if at one point we were all naked. Sometimes I’m afraid that we had an orgy in Charlie’s room after the concert; or sometime during the middle of the concert we all went back and had an orgy. At other times I think that when I looked down on my bare chest and felt hands all over me, I was maybe recalling a time when I was lying on my own bed, talking on the phone to Lance, running my hand over my chest, because in the ‘dream’ I saw a wedding band, which none of the other guys wear. Maybe it was mine. Also, when I jumped back and forth between being at the concert and lying on the bed, feeling held down, I know I couldn’t have been at the concert and then back in Charlie’s room and then back at the concert.
I figured out that maybe all LSD does is cause you to free-associate memories, like you do in a dream. So when I ‘came to’ on the grass outside Charlie’s dorm and he was sitting beside me, I knew I was no longer on my head trip. I’ve worried ever since about blaming him for allowing Renato to spike the drink with the little square of windowpane. When I accused him of that, I was just coming back to consciousness and was afraid what I dreamed had really happened.
Later, when I got home and the sun was well up, I tried to sneak into the apartment without Uncle Sean knowing I hadn’t come home during the night. I looked a mess, because I had also been crying, afraid that I had been raped when I dreamed that Renato was in the dorm room and I saw his big purple lips inches from my face. That was an exaggeration, because his lips are nice and soft, darker than mine or Uncle Sean’s, but they’re not big and ugly and purple as they appeared that night.
So I was relieved to see that Uncle Sean’s bedroom door was shut and that the house was quiet. Despite my sorrow and fear, a little thrill shot through me thinking that maybe he and Hank were wrapped up in each others’ arms in bed.
I made my way quickly to my bedroom, stripped, and threw my sweat-dampened clothing into my hamper, then went into my bathroom. I first took stock of myself in the mirror and was freaked all over again to see that I had a huge hickey on my neck, just above my collar bone. So I knew that I had made out with someone and that I must have been lying down at some point. So it wasn’t my imagination about Renato’s lips on my neck like a leech. Then I squatted by the edge of the shower and felt myself back there, pushing in a little with a finger, feeling for tenderness. I couldn’t tell, but thought maybe not. It had been so long since Lance and I had made love, I figured I’d be able to tell if anything had happened when I was on the acid trip.
I showered and pulled on some sweat pants, house shoes, and a T-shirt.
By the time I heard Uncle Sean’s shower go on, and the low voices of him and Hank, I was feeling less freaked out and more anxious to see how they were with each other the morning after. Still, as I got out a pan and cracked eggs into it, vestiges of my nightmare hung just out of reach of my consciousness, causing me to feel a little depressed. I’d give it a couple more hours then call Lance and tell him what happened.
Hank and Uncle Sean came into the kitchen just as I was placing bacon strips onto a paper towel to drain. They were wearing robes, and came in arm in arm, smiling and looking pleased.
And then I just broke down and started crying, barely able to see Uncle Sean’s surprised face and Hank’s look of confusion through my tears.
I tried to make a quick getaway, but Uncle Sean grabbed my arm. “Will? What’s the matter?” he asked.
I didn’t look him in the eye, except for a quick glance. His face was blurry through my tears, but I could see that he was frowning and looked scared at the same time.
Then I caught Hank’s eyes for an even quicker glance, and even though he was not a stranger, I was embarrassed for him to see me like this. So I took a deep breath, wiped the tears from my eyes and tried to smile.
“I...I think I might’ve been raped.”
Uncle Sean and Hank exchanged worried glances, and then Uncle Sean threw his arm around me. “Hank, could you finish getting the breakfast onto plates? We’ll be back in a minute.”
I heard Hank say, “Sure,” and his voice sounded faraway, and I was afraid I was losing grip on reality again, because he was standing not more than two feet from me.
And then Uncle Sean and I were sitting outside on the patio, and I was sobbing quietly, pulling my T-shirt away from my neck, so he could see the hickey.
“Well, at least we know that someone was making out with you, Will, but why do you think you were raped?”
I heard his question, but I didn’t know where to begin. Everything about the patio was familiar, including our potted plants that lined a demi-wall looking down into the street. They were still perky, though I saw that they were also tired looking. The brick floor was dirty and wet in places that hadn’t quite dried from a recent rain. I looked around and noticed a sort of grime in the corners where the outside wall of the building and the patio wall met, with the ever-present hair of thick spider webs. I’d have to bring a broom out here and work on it.
“Will?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Sean. Someone spiked my drink with LSD.”
“You know this for sure?”
“Yeah. I mean I’ve smoked pot, you know? But this was a lot different.”
I told him about the feelings and what I remembered, and how weird it was. “But I don’t think I let them finish. Only I think they had me down on the bed, which is how I got the hickey.”
The whole time I was explaining it to Uncle Sean, my recalling of the trip felt odd, just as it does when I sometimes try to recall a real dream. It seemed to fade just ahead of my telling of it like a mirage of water on the highway disappears the closer you get.
The birds in the neighborhood were going full force and setting up what I would normally think of as a pleasant sound. But this morning their shrieking split my eardrums.
“And you say you don’t think anyone actually penetrated...?”
I could tell Uncle Sean was a little uncomfortable being too graphic even in his questions.
So I shook my head. “I think I would know,” I said, remembering Lance say the same thing one night back in Animas when he was almost castrated, and I had asked if he thought he had been raped.
This morning though, neither Uncle Sean nor I found even grim humor in my declaration. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, though. If anyone tried to take advantage of you when you were on the acid, it’s still rape. Sometimes...”
He trailed off again, looking sad and thoughtful.
“I think I’m going to be all right, thoug
h. I don’t think anything really happened.” I tried to look cheerful. “We need to eat. Hank is probably worried, too.”
So we returned to the kitchen and the three of us carried on uncomfortably. In a little while, I could see Hank and Uncle Sean steal glances at one another. I figured they wanted to return to the bedroom, so I rinsed my dishes and said I needed to get some sleep.
* * *
Water skiers still buzz by the shoreline and the cliffs this early in the fall, but now many of them are wearing rubber suits. Naked guys still lie out in the sun, and the more ostentatious nudists still have their tea parties, punctuating the air with their screaming laughter. I still sit and write and take a dip to wash away the sweat. But I won’t be coming out here so often. I thought I saw Charlie and Lee farther down the hill, closer to the cliffs, but if they saw me, they didn’t want me to know it.
I’ve crossed paths with Charlie a few times on campus since the concert, but we’re still strained in our relationship with each other, and we haven’t had lunch together since then. I see that he and Lee are hanging around together, and I figure maybe Charlie has finally lost his virginity, but I don’t know whether he lost it that night to Renato, Tim, Lee—or me. It’s painful to add myself in there. If there was an orgy in his room that night, I don’t know if I participated or if something within me took hold and I stopped myself, like I remember saying “no” a lot and straining to get up from the bed. I just don’t remember. But I did have that hickey, so I know someone did it to me and I must have let him.
If anything good came from the night of the concert, I think it might be that Charlie has probably lost his virginity to Lee. They seem to be hanging around with each other quite a bit, even if he’s not quite as ‘regular’ a guy as Charlie was hoping to snag as a boyfriend. Lee is tall and lanky, and has long hair that would probably look better if he either washed it every day or cut it a little shorter. I’d like to say that Charlie looks happier these days, but whenever our eyes meet, he looks away quickly, and when I see him when he’s unaware of me, he looks unconsciously preoccupied with something, concentrating too hard to have much expression.
All Over Him Page 12