All the things he took for granted were crumbling around him and his friends, being replaced with an exciting feeling of change.

I


n her relatively spacious basement apartment, I drank coffee with Kelly, the mysterious girl who had abducted me Saturday night. She dropped me off at Kappa Mutha Fucka and continued on to work: Shenanigans, an upscale toystore in the Barracks Road Shopping Center.

Matthew Hart appeared soon after I got home. We sat around and discussed all that had happened on Saturday night (conflict with Rory, Leah's sudden social difficulties, the Kelly situation, etc.). According to Matthew, Kelly is more of a rock star than I had imagined.

We were joined by Deya. I started drinking Natural Ices and Matthew put on REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It and I feel Fine"; it's the only song that will play on my badly scratched Best of REM CD. Matthew mentioned how it seemed as though the end of the world really was upon us. All the things he took for granted were crumbling around him and his friends, being replaced with an exciting feeling of change.

When Deya was out of earshot he said, "The only thing that needs to happen now is for Deya to get together with Aaron [Angela's old boyfriend]."

My vision was chaotic, fragmented into shimmering pastel negative space between foreground objects in a jarringly impressionistic manner, like the painted backdrop for one of my nightmares.

T


o further complicate my life, I decided to take some Dextromethorphan powder. I didn't just take the usual 300 or 400 milligrams; I took an entire 600 or 700 milligram dose, washing it down with a Natural Ice, experiencing almost none of its intense bitter flavour. I started feeling it within an hour. It came on much more quickly and decisively than the smaller dose I had a week ago.

Deya dropped me off on the Corner and I went directly to Comet to pick up a paycheck from some time ago. I was feeling woosy by this point and didn't hang around, even to check my email. I went directly across University Avenue to the Grounds of UVA and lay down under a magnolia tree. The day was warmer than it had been in weeks and the sun shown down brightly through the thick shiny plastic leaves above me. The magnolia tree looked very flat against the sky. I was nauseated and disoriented. My vision was chaotic, fragmented into shimmering pastel negative space between foreground objects in a jarringly impressionistic manner, like the painted backdrop for one of my nightmares. It was painful to look at things, so I mostly kept my eyes shut. I was distressed; at this point the drug didn't seem worth the ordeal. I was feeling more physically sick than psychologically altered.

I crawled out into the intensely green grass, like a dehydrated man crawling through the desert. I was sure the passersby would think I looked odd, so I tried my best to resemble just another sunbathing Wahoo.

I walked to my bank and cashed my paycheck without difficulty, though I felt like an egregious imposter in this temple of the undrugged.

With me, I had a package that my old college chum Matt Rogers had sent me in the mail. Deya was off listening to the mix tape he'd included, so I was left to read the letter. I don't really remember what it said. It was just a wonderful reaffirmation of alliances. Alliances and the perception of them is one of the major features of Dextromethorphan experiences.

I lay in the grass for hours I think, unable to even imagine standing. But when I finally got to my feet, I found walking to be a fairly easy if deliberate process. The world was a disturbing riot of forms and brightness, not noticeably distorted, but disturbingly intense and chaotic. I walked to my bank and cashed my paycheck without difficulty, though I felt like an egregious imposter in this temple of the undrugged. A girl behind me in line forged a momentary alliance. It was only a smile, but it came several times in the same way. It seemed to touch on something profound in society, I don't know what, but it moved me.

Another alliance was forged in UVA's Cocke Hall with a well-dressed sorority sister who had the diminuitive strong-handed sharp-featured sensuality of my old girlfriend Leslie Montalto. We smiled at each other and then conspired to get the only two Macintoshes unoccupied in the lab, and equally shared (again with just a glance and a smile) the misery of discovering them unusably misconfigured.

My writing rambled delightfully (and, for me, uncharacteristically) as I told her about the weekend abduction by a rock star.

When I finally got a working Macintosh, I put on my headphones and listened to REM's Dead Letter Office and checked my email. I wasn't good for much; my fingers were terribly uncoordinated, and the entire world seemed to be pressed close to my face. It was mostly in focus, but I felt like I was towering far above the keyboard, stretching way down and leaning way back to type. It was a wonderfully controllable feeling of vertigo.

About the only thing I did was type a long email to Jessika. My writing rambled delightfully (and, for me, uncharacteristically) as I told her about the weekend abduction by a rock star. I lapsed into and out of pure stream of consciousness non-sequitur leading through shady forest paths, around fairy rings of alliterated exhuberance and over logs of nonsense back to logical, matter-of-fact revelations of internal truths. I wish I saved a copy for myself.

I had a bite of essentially raw catfish and it gave me little cramps in my belly and chest for the rest of the evening.

I walked back to Kappa Mutha Fucka and set up an old Mac SE in the living room so I could type my thoughts as they came to me. One such thought was about decadence and leadership in America, and how the former shouldn't be disingenuously denied or concealed by the latter.

Matthew and Deya showed up, and by this time I had become giddy from the drugs (beer and DXM). I told them I wanted to start a literary renaissance, and that we should have a computer set up at all times to record our thoughts whenever we feel like typing. As usual, my friends were enthusiastically lethargically enthusiastic.

Matthew attempted to batter-fry some catfish steaks that his redneck friend CJ had given him, but the steaks ended up being dreadfully undercooked. I had a bite of essentially raw catfish and it gave me little cramps in my belly and chest for the rest of the evening.

I threw a tennis ball for Nigel the Pekinese several times, but it kept ending up stuck above the ground in bushes, and Nigel wouldn't let me rest until I'd rescue them.

I began my prework nap shortly after 7pm.

Read some more tales of tussin.

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Get a sense of what I was like exactly eight years ago and one year ago today.

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