“Wild Billy was a crazy cat, and shook some dust from out of his coon-skin cap. ‘said trust some of this, it’ll show you where you’re at, or at least it really help you feel it”
Part I
Thursday afternoon, 3:30pm
Nads heard them fucking with the stereo and immediately decided he wouldn’t be watching The Wall. He loved it, of course. He was the one who had told Crowe’s ignorant ass about the movie to begin with. But now, with his trip stalking him like an approaching tornado, Paul “Nads” Nadet felt like getting into something a little more unique, a little more high profile. He headed for the kitchen, noticing, on the way, his fucked up friends cuddling into the AV equipment like two piglets mushing down on a fresh teat.
Banishing his silly friend’s puzzling activities from his mind, Nadet opened up Crowe’s fridge and began pulling out the things he needed. After ten minutes he closed the fridge, moved to the drawers, and began to study and reject various types of cutlery. Nad’s focus was total, his purpose clear in his tumbling mind: He was looking for first quality sharpness and strength. He would seek his quarry with the psychotic myopia that only mega-powerful, totally pure LSD can elicit.
***
Thursday Afternoon, 4:30pm
Silver…
The hippie called it, counting out the five twenties the boys had forked him and still pushing a hard sell despite the fact the deal was done.
The real thing!
he proclaimed, scanning his marks for reactions. Then, after pocketing the bills in the sketchiest way possible and mock-glancing a full 360 degrees around them, the kid dropped his voice to a stage whisper and ducked closer to the boys:
Bet you never thought you’d see that again, right? Am I right?
The boys said nothing.
Taking a step back, the hippie extended his hand in a dramatic, “I’m-passing-you-the--drugs-now” type of motion that both Jeff and Crowe felt was at least twice the attention grabber as simply handing the fuckers over. There was an awkward silence as the hippie waited for proper drug quality appreciation.
They were in the food court of the Providence Place Mall, and both Jeff and Crowe suddenly found themselves wanting to punch the hippie in the throat. They resisted, of course, mostly because they both knew there was a police radio unit actually stationed in the mall. To punch a throat here were would mean instant arrest, and Thursday night was no night for incarceration. Thursday night was Acid Night at Nad’s apartment. Jeff and Crowe loved Acid Night.
***
Thursday Night, 8:30pm
“Silver” turned out to be a silly name for a severely potent incarnation of Lysergic-25. It had taken two hours for Crowe to figure out how to operate the stereo system, which he’d owned for 12 years before donating it to Nadet’s apartment. Everything worked out eventually, however, and for the last 48 minutes he and Jeff had been tripping heroically to Pink Floyd's The Wall, giggling like Saigon geishas circa November ’69. The giant bird animation sequence was coming up. JM and Crow both knew that, because they’d each seen The Wall 86 times, the last 78 of which had occurred together - in this very apartment - over the last seven months. It was at this time that Nads began screaming, loudly, from the kitchen, mere feet from where Crowe and Jeff were freaking out.
The giant bird animation was a shared favorite part, easily the highlight of the whole affair, and so Jeff and Crowe heard no screaming. Using an ancient-looking remote, Crowe tweaked the volume to beyond full power, as the enormous avian on TV ripped out an Africa-size chunk of cartoon continent. Nad’s apartment, a railroad penthouse halving the top floor of an ancient tinderbox tenement, heaved and vibrated with each surreal frame. Crowe smelled ozone. Too much electricity? Fire risk? He found himself momentarily tormented.
di-di-di-di-joo see the frightened ones?
Crowe looked like he’d been tear-gassed. He was pounding his own head with two throw pillows and bouncing like a monkey. Crowe always acted like this when the Wall was on, as if he’d not seen, and committed to memory, the entire screenplay - director’s edits included - a long time ago. As if he didn’t knew exactly what was going to happen and when. Nads continued screaming from the kitchen. The TV continued to drown him out.
Di-di-di-did you hear the falling bombs?
Crowe and Jeff both sang in involuntary whispers. Nad’s screams died out just as the animation became photography, and Jeff found himself watching in helpless horror as Crowe stopped his spazzing out, grabbed - lightning-quick - for the remote, and shut the VCR off. The tv volume was inconsistently calibrated with the Cable. When Crowe hit “stop”, the sound feeding back into the apartment was like the screaming jet-wash of an F-16 heard from inside the turbine. Jeff shit a tiny shit into his pants. Both Crowe and Jeff hit the floor and, succumbing to some cowardly stoner reflex, screamed as loud as they possibly could. The effort was robust, but apparently wasted, as their alarm sounded insignificant against the angry entertainment center. Ironically, the screaming din coincided directly with Paul Nadet’s latest, hoarse lamentations from the kitchen. Seconds later, the hellish noise crested and died with a final angry burst of static. The apartment went silent in ozone-smelling blackness.
***
Thursday Night, 10:37pm
Crowe’s pit bull Eric Clapton (the dog) came trundling in to the room to investigate the commotion. Jeff watched intently, saying “ah!” as if he’d been expecting the dog to show up. He said:
Clappy Clappy! Here girl
Instead, Clapton went to Crowe, who hadn’t moved since his stereo euthanasia moments before. The dog jumped on Crowe's back and sat down. Crowe was clearly dazed but attempted communication regardless:
Clappy…Girl…
The dog jumped down after a few seconds, sniffing his way over to the now very ozone-smelling, former entertainment center. He combed around for his nose in a very particular kind of way that seemed to signal to Crowe, who began twitching and leaning in, shouting:
Oh no. Fuck. Clap…No…Fuck!
But no sooner had he started than the tiny orange pit bull assumed a wide legged stance, thrust out his white doggy butt, and began to shit on the floor in front of the boys. JM saw the pooch begin to vibrate with muscle tension, heard a tiny fart escape its tiny, white, doggy asshole. At this, Crowe and JM became insane with laughter. They both doubled over, tears streaming down faces, making hardly a sound beyond the occasional desperate breath. For 15 whole minutes the Hilarity held the two boys in its sway. They were rolling around and kicking legs. Crowe began to fear disk herniation. They’d only just seized control of themselves and begun to quiet down, when Clapton began sniffing and nudging the poop, feeling at his fresh rug turds like a head chef picking through a shipment of oysters. By the time Clapton (the dog) began to eat the poop, Crowe felt like he might be dying. Once again, he and Crowe went rolling around the floor, clutching stomachs, tears streaming down perma-grin cheeks, trying desperately to breathe through it all. They went reeling around the room like that for a long time, trying hard to stop power-laughing, and laughing even more because they could not.
***
Thursday Night, 11:30pm
Oh…Jesus that’s fuckin’ gross
Jeff rose first, rolling over to one of the stained, ancient couches that comprised his living room set, and pulling himself seated.
Crowe did the same to the opposite couch and then the two boys just sat still, silently trying to reassemble their spatial awareness. They’d taken the drug 3.5 hours ago, and both of them were beaming away like cartoon characters. The ozone smell was still pervasive, but now Jeff had mistaken it for a color. He was sitting back, getting comfortable, pleased to be still and watch the florescent ozone rainbow slowly filling the room.
Crowe saw all this, and understood everything that was going on from one hard glance at his buddy. He stood and moved over to Jeff, speaking once more in that creepy stage whisper:
Dooood…Dooood…
But Jeff had flown, leaving only a perplexed, look-alike shell of Jeff color-gazing on the nasty couch. Crowe kept coming, allowed himself a few tentative steps, advancing until he was standing over his friend. He tried to begin speaking, but found he’d forgotten what he’d been about to say. He tried to press on, opened his lips to form words, but still, there was nothing:
Uhhhhh. Ohhhh. Uh…
Crowe was standing right over Jeff now, looking down into his friend’s moony leer. Suddenly he remembered what he’d meant to say, but before he could let fly a single word, a fresh scream came blowing in from the kitchen.
The scream was horrible. Broken and desperate, it sent dense rainbow clouds laser-beaming across Crowe’s mind where they congealed, and began flowing from his nostrils, ears, and eyes with a weird sizzling noise. Crowe poked about his face and ears for a few moments, trying to staunch the flow, but it was no use. He watched, helpless and bereft, as the last rainbow flavored mists left his body, then he collapsed and began to cry. The fact that he was crying made him feel hopeless and that’s when he REALLY started crying, letting all manner of sob, weep, and snarf come flooding out him like he was auditioning for a chorus role in “HAIR”. The tantrum lasted almost 20 minutes, and afterwards Crowe shut down completely, content to watch eyelid fireworks and leave Jeff and Nads to their own.
***
Thursday Night, 11:49pm
When the stocky black dude kicked the open the apt. door, the two boys remained silent, and perfectly still for almost a whole minute. When the same gentleman brandished a very large, very shiny Remington .12 gauge at them, shouting “On the floor faggots!” in a thick Dominican drawl (onaflaw fah-gots!). Crowe moved, but not as instructed, trying – instead - to dart straight for the kitchen door. Unfortunately, Crowe looked only after he’d leapt, and found he’d not allowed for the correct height, and density of Nad’s glass-top coffee table. Crowe went down hard on the paleolithic shag wall-to-wall. His field of vision went spinning off in a blue flash, while another part of his mind was feeding back phantom helicopter rotor-noise (whup whup whup whup…). The guy with the shotgun took two big steps, and was now standing over the up-facing Crowe, who opened his mouth to speak.
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