Discombobulated

Tomorrow is Daylight Savings.  I usually work at 2 in the afternoon but on rare, weekend, occasions I work at 7 in the morning as well.  Tomorrow is one of those nifty rarities.  It’s a good thing I’m have such a good excuse to be late because I’ll genuinely need one.  We just got to the shop.  It’s Dakota’s fathers sound cancellation panel factory that has one hundred pound barrels of glue and tough foam boards that line the thirty foot white walls.  Floating stairs that have no railing lead you up to the second floor.  On the second floor, away from the equipment and flammable material is where we usually jam.  My best friends Adam, Jon, Dakota and I have recently started a band named “The New Born Babies” as a joke to poke fun at our amateur musical capabilities.  We went for the stylish indie-rock that we grew up to love.  Dakota was the only one who knew anything about guitars and the complexity of sound that goes behind making music.   He know goes to school to be a sound engineer. 

    A typical night at the shop would be us sitting in his upstairs that has a black leather couch and seating that we made by stacking carpet squares.  There was two humongous amplifiers for guitars, a bass amp, a drum kit in the back underneath an American flag, a condenser microphone in the middle to pick up the instruments when we recorded, a wire that leads from the microphone that is set in the middle of the room to another amp that we rigged from carpet squares to hang from the ceiling with another condenser microphone record the vocals which is above the organ.  Everything was elevated so we could move around and be free while we played.  We would occasionally move around for each take to try and find the best way we could play.  I would usually light up a cigarette while singing.  Adam would take a seat.  Dakota would stand or sit and Jon was stuck behind the kit. 
    We would get at the shop after work, usually eleven o’clock at night and jam our pain away from our monotonous work days.  We all worked some slave labor jobs.  I worked at a supermarket, Jon and Adam both worked at an ice cream shop and Dakota worked at a skateboarding culture clothes shop.   We would, probably like any band, either try to perfect a song meticulously, step by step until we could properly record it or just jam until we created a new song to overly produce.  The more you play a song the less you particularly like it.  But the easier it is to do with your body because it becomes a routine. 
    But tonight was different.  It was not just us coming but non-musicians were coming to hang out with us.  We were no where near embarrasing ourselves to our friends so we just decided to cancel band night and to chill out and sit in a cirlc illuminated by a spinning circle fan and a blue light tube that casted false shadows on the surrounding walls.  It was difficult to judge depth in the room because everything was so well organized that they felt randomly placed.  The six of us begin to sit in a circle and just started talking.  I didn’t realy know the two strangers as well as the rest of them so I just kept to myself, a task I usually do in these occasion.  Dakota, being bored and already graduated a half a year earlier then us has picked up a habit of smoking pot.  I have only tried it once but I didn’t get high.  It was on his birthday a month prior and the only spontaneous thing it lead me to was picking up the microphone and doing a rendition of the happy birthday song.  Tonight though seemed like the right night to diverge in the cannabis practices.  He asked around to the rest of the remaining group.
    “No.” said Jon.
    “No.” said Adam.
    “No.” said Mark who was a 6 foot soccer player that worked at the ice cream shop.
    “No” said some girl that worked at the same place of business as the other three.  I didn’t get to learn her name because this was a common etiquette from Jon and Adam.  Adam has only ever dated girls that he worked with.
    “Yes.” said I.
    A bong is an intimidating contraption at your first glance because it’s a well put together machine that feels so distant and foreign.  There is a slide that goes into the bottom sphere that is under water then their is a tube that holds smoke when you light the weed in the slide.  Your mouth goes over the top like you were trying to block a chimney from smoking.  He packed the slide for the first time and light it.  I just watched to learn how and it’s probably one of the only things that you can get a hang of on the first try.  Then he passes it to me.  An inexperienced smoker like myself would light it and watch the smoke fill up.  It’s exhilarating but also frightening too.  You can never gage the smoke unless you owned the bong yourself.  I watched it fill up as much as I could stand and pulled the slide watching all the smoke leave, tracing it back to my lungs, holding it in and letting the THC soak into my lungs, then exhaling the smog until it is out of my system.  We pass it back and forth until it the slide is cashed or if you are not a smoker, empty. 
    Dakota gives me a head nod because he is not as familiar with words as he is with gestures.  He could have a whole conversation with you through signals.  A nod meant how you were feeling, I’m having a good time and let’s do another in one quick, solid motion.  I look at the already unfamiliar faces that were blending into one another becoming automatically the same.  They still were chit chatting about work as if we all worked there or cared.  That’s all the ever talked about.  I just looked up to them, sitting on their chairs and a metal oil barrel while us pot smokers sat on the ground, with disgust.  Adam gave me some half hearted grin every time I would look up.  He has tried salvia only because it was legal at the time and he didn’t want to miss out on it but since weed was illegal and Adam has changed his ways since breaking the law in his juvenility.  He needed to prove that he was a responsible adult so he got a job and got a car. 
    Dakota packs another one taking it from his sandwich bag into the metal slide and passes it to me.  I take another after another.  We pack three slides and I took at nine hits and then we both stopped.  I just star to space out and everything everyone is saying which I can not remember is immediately hilarious.  I giggle like a hyena.  Then, you know when you take two water bottles and tape the ends together and fill them with water and create a whirlpool, I imagined it was just like that but in my throat.  A tornado was filling up my esophagus.  Then I imagined myself throwing up.  This was the first time I ever felt like that but now I know from to many experiences to count.  If you imagine yourself throwing up then you are going to throw up.  It’s the only physic ability that I have ever possessed and it’s probably the worst super power I could imagine.  Then I decided to look up after imaging the tornado was sucking the oxygen from my lungs and everyone still looked like themselves but they all moved like a figurine and the background seemed to close for comfort.  The drum kit and American flag was also drawn as a cartoon and swaying like a backdrop.  I just continued to laugh as everyone’s faces were turning and staring at me.  Something was wrong and their eyes looked blinded by my highness. 
    I start to stand up and the tornado was starting to lurch it’s way up farther and farther up my throat.  I needed to get it out or it would come forcible.  I tell no one but I begin zombieing my way down the floating stairs and just look at my feet because every step I take I was worrying about if I would fall or not.  The bathroom was right underneath the stair set so I took a left and went right in.  I took a long look at my face and I looked like a stranger.  I hardly ever looked into mirrors.  I didn’t partake in the American way, our superior vanity and our grasp to obtain it, so I surprised myself.  The person that was looking back at me resembled a ghost and my faceless stubble as my eyes tried to find a match with my soul.  The tornado was still coming but I couldn’t stop staring.  I burped up a burritoey taste because I had one earlier.  I looked around and just wanted it all to go away.  I didn’t want to be high anymore, was I even high, and how could I stop this instantly.  Maybe if I thought about it hard enough and came to terms with the new found trait, I could easily end it and just become normal once again.  Was I ever normal?  Did someone just turn on Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.  I can hear it on the sound system and it almost was too loud to hear my thoughts so it intertwined with them.  The speed of the drums mixed with the hyper tenacities of my thoughts made me just puke.  I couldn't reach the toilet so I spewed corn and brown bile into the sink below the mirror.  Okay back up for air.  See I am fine, I can control this.  Then the reasoning behind me smoking, the idiocy of my actions and the distance from my friends left me to puke again but this time I have moved my selfish body to the toilet.  Kneeling and smelling my own filth I begin to realize I am sick.  In the breaks of the vocals I could hear my friends speak about my drug abuse.
    “Maybe he O.Ded” said Adam as everyone seemed to nod.
    I begin to worry even more.  I come out of the bathroom and sit underneath the staircase on a rail made for skateboarding and just sink into my own thoughts.  I sit with my elbows on my knees and my hands on my eyes and watch the green squiggilies form into memories.  The first thing I need is my bed.  I just imagine laying in it, the drive home in the backseat, the walk through my house all without peripherals just a straight zoom from the shop to my bed.  I just need to lay down.  Then I start retracing my steps throughout my life.  I try and tie every memory I currently have and find a match throughout my antiquity.  I go from school to friends to career to relationships.  I think about everything I ever wanted to be.  5th grade I wanted to be a scientist.  In middle school I wanted to be a high school teacher.  In high school I wanted to be a computer scientist.  Now I want to be a writer.  How can a night out drinking with your crush then lead you to the first picture of yourself on a tricycle?  I kept on going back and back until, in probably 5 minutes of doing this, I hit a wall.  Everything was black and there was no more memories to sift.  It was like if the one’s that just were recalled were the only ones I could hold onto anymore and the THC burned the rest.  I just stayed in limbo, floating in darkness, thinking that my eyes were actually open until Jon came up to me, nudged me and talked to me.  If it wasn’t for him I would of been stuck, possibly dead, in my own unconsciousness.
    “Are you okay?” He says with a look of concern on his eyes.  They were a little droopier then usual and he was wide eyed.
    I explain to him what just happened and he seems confused.  He’s never tried it and I try to tell him that I thought my eyes were open already.  He told me that his brother Wills was on his way to pick us up and he would drive me home.  I stand back up and head to the bathroom before he comes.  I am starting to get a little tired but I need to reach my bed.  I throw up until I start to dry heave into the sink again because I couldn’t reach the toilet.  It felt like everyone there was just watching me at this point.  Watching me make a total fool out of myself.  Watching me throw up my dinner.  Watching me cry.  But Wills finally showed up and good thing he had a plastic Hurley’s bag because I just cradled it while sitting shotgun.  I couldn’t stop puking air.  Nothing has come out of me the last ten times I have tried.  I just want this to be over with so I figure the more I puke, the more I might be able to stop being stoned.  I need to calm myself down before heading home because my father sleeps on the couch right in front of the entrance to my door.  We get to my house and I get out.  I need to go in because I need to get to work tomorrow.  I just started my new job three months ago and I am still on the chopping block.  I first head to the garbage can and throw away my plastic bag full of barf fumes.  I then stumble around through my open front yard to the door.  It’s already unlocked for me so I head inside.  My dad asks me when I work and I just tell him that I worked at 7.  It was 1 in the morning by the time I finally got home.  I don’t know how the time went by so fast but 3 hours got absorbed into what felt like twenty five minutes.  We both look at each other and then I head to bed.  I walked into my cluttered room and usually on any night would turn on the television and watch a show or a movie I have seen dozens of time.  But tonight I just hopped on my bed and sank.