Reunion (disgusting content warning)

"CHIPAW!"

My brother's voice echoed across the streets of Victoria like a foghorn. It had been damn near a year sence he'd reunited with any of us, and excitement shocked the air around us with the charge of reunion.

He hopped out of the truck he'd flown past in and attacked us with such powerful hugs that we almost suffocated in love. Sweet. Fernweh was back. We reminisced for a while, before the topic of substance abuse quickly arose. Our night quickly performed into a nostalgic blackout of belligerent proportions.

We awoke the next morning, enetirely usnure of where we were. Our abode consisted of a mass of plastic and tarpaulain surfaces all blowing up against our personal bubbles. Once our hungover minds had ascertained that all seven of us were curled up in a collapsed 4 person tent, we decided everything was okay.

That was, until Fernweh awoke and dove out of the tent. At that moment, the soft serenity of seven soothing breaths was ruptured, like our dreams, by obnoxious screams of "CHIPAW!" and "AWRHHGFH." His voice could rouse a comatose person.

Not one to miss out on the chance to wail and flail, I jumped up from the slumber and joined Fernweh in a storm of shouting. People slowly crawled out of the dilapidated tent, struggling to squint through the blinding glare of the sun so they could see the beautiful bluffs adorning the coast of Victoria. Once everyone awoke, we realized that we'd fucked up.

We'd made the biggest mistake in the book.

We'd awoken before the liquor store was open.

We wandered the streets, abject and depressed, before we realized something: we could spend our money on things besides liquor!! As we came to this realization, a curry restauraunt crested over the horizon and we found ourselves heading towards it. The deal was set: 14.95 a person for all-you-can-eat curry. We all split the bill evenly to ensure everyone could have their fill, then plopped down at a table.

The atmosphere of the restauraunt - beautiful, slick, regal - was so different than us - homeless, festering, and filthy - that the contrast almost impeded on us. We paid no heed though.

We were quick to make a mess, quick to pop the cap off a bottle of cider we'd forgotten we had and share it in the restauraunt, and quick to fill ourselves up. As mangled as we were from the night before, we decided it would be a good idea to purge ourselves so we could eat twice as much. As if the restauraunt was an Roman vomitorium, we headed to the bathrooms to spew chunks relentlessly.

Once we'd released ourselves from the grip of curry, we found ourselves in the brightness of downtown Victoria. Aids started spewing chunks on the sidewalk - apparently the curry, the remnant LSD, and the alcohol didn't mix with her. We felt bad because she was clearly embarassed, so Scrib and Fernweh jammed their hands down their throats and began to puke with her.

Nauseated by the scene, the two other girls with us stepped back in horror as the puke projected itself forward like cannonfire. I wanted to help - I felt it my duty - though I couldn't puke without some due cause. I grabbed a potato from the mass of vomit and dropped it on my tongue. I retched for too long.

Once the scene was finished, we decided we should probably leave Victoria. We'd made some fantastic friends, we'd had some crazy times, and we were reunited with our crazy brother. We figured the last few days we spent before starting our journey would be spent in Nanaimo - a place we could all call home.

Don't buy a fucking poutine!

Well, we'd finally around at our sustinence centre for the day: Wendy's . Feather was getting antzy, as we couldn't find any leftovers in the garbage or on the tables, we sauntered around the restaurant, shooting subtle looks at the patrons, presebnting himself as a sad, unlucky soul in hopes that they'd buy us food.

During this time, me and Scrib decided decided to reminisce on our childhood. We found the playplace, with its slides and small amusements. We decided to recreate a 6 year old reality by jumping down the slides. Feather was absolutely shocked and disgusted by this act, and he had no problem expressing that.

"You guys are fucked!" he shouted at us. "You're causing a huge fucking scene. Those lovely people," he pointed at a table that a couple seniors sat at, looking severely disinterested in us, "were going to buy me a poutine!" His irrational rage was retarded; his face shone redder than the ketchup on the fries those old people weren't going to buy him.

"We're just having a bit of fun."

"No. You're being bitches. They were going to buy me food."

"First off, no they weren't. Second off, we'll just buy you some food."

"No!" Feather shouted. "Spend your money on booze so we can drink! Food is free! I would have a free poutine if not for you stupid fucks."

Scrib just looked at Feather. "I'm going to buy a poutine."

"You're fucking STUPID! Food is FREE! There are dumpsters, garbage cans, what the fuck! Spend your money on booze."

"If you don't want any, just leave.

So, he did. He glared angrily at us through the patio window while we savoured our poutine and decided he
not worth our traveling time. He said the same to us when we regrouped; that he could not travel with us if we were going to continue making such scenes.

This whole time, Julie, a woman whom only days early had had such fine finesse, continued to degrade her sanity.  I couldn't tell her that we were through, because her head was so thickened from the acid that she couldn't process sentences or respond in any sort of articulate manner. She trailed behind the group with her jaw hanging low and her eyes half crossed and faded into our memory.

We returned to my house with a fresh bottle of cider, drank it too fast, and passed the fuck out again before we woke up to another preporatory shit show in the precursor to our journey.

Double Digit IQ

This morning found our haggard faces struggilng to awaken in my mangled excuse for a bedroom. Cider bottles dotted the floor, just like hungover bodies dotted my mattress. The first words of the day rasped out between cracked lips like a rattlesnake slipping between two stones.

"What a night.."

Not that any of us recalled it in its entirety. The walk back to my place was forever lost in a realm of drunken forgetfulness. One of the first things that presented itself to me was an odd, musty, and somehow malevolent smell. I poked my head out of my sleeping bag and instantly discovered the cause: Feather. The smell that arose from the dank depths of his armpits permeated the room like a toxic cloud, threating to asphyxiate me and my friends. We slowly rose from the bed like zombies working their way up from the Earth's epidermis.

When I left the room, I was confronted by one of my roommates.

"We need to talk."

We sidled outside and I was subjkected to a cynical speech about how foul Feather stank and how his stench had suffocated the home's entire atmosphere, making it smell worse than it already had (a feat I'd thought impossible.)

I apologized profusely and hurriedly rushed Feather andthe others out of the house. Once the hobo stink had subsided, the first thing that caught the group's eye was Julie.

Standing slack jawed, the sun's rays reflected off her lifeless eyes. We realized that she hadn't even come close to coming down off the acid.

"Hey, you ok?"

Her gaze bore straight through each of us as the question passed through her left ear, neglected to negotiate with her brain, and slipped out her right ear. The look of amazement that was faceted across her face was incredible; it seemed she had just heard spoken words for the first time.

Satisfied that she wasn't going to answer, we began our trek to Wendy's for breakfast. Ten minutes down the road, Julie finally answered our question.

"Yeah, I'm fine!"

It took us all a moment to realize she was answering an inquiry that had faded into our memories a dozen minutes ago. Had she been thinking about it the whole time? Had she struggled so hard to find an answer? Or had the acid simply rewired her neurological pathways in such a way that it took ten minutes for a  question to pass through her skull?

Who knew? It took too much effort to contemplate her lack of contemplation. We decided to accept the fact that our friend had developed a (hopefully) temporary retardation. The journey went on, though the intelligence was quartered.

The Decline

Life seems a lot brighter with a sheet of acid in your pocket, and with mine held close to my heart, the world was seeming pretty damn lucid - not only because of the promise of a fuck-ton of psychedelic journeys, but also because of the bonds that were presently being formed between me, my new woman, Julie, and and our friends.

Together, as a crew, we'd shown eachother a new frontier of interpersonal development. Our personalities thrived so well together that it seemed we were each growing at an exponential rate - spiritually, mentally, socially, even musically. The preposterous collaboration of instruments we owned (guitars, banjos, didgeridoos, mandolins, harmonicas, jew's harps - to start the list) made for a constant myriad of mystical melodies, propelling us through life with the most magical beauty.

Julie was one of the best parts, though. When our hands were linked, the world seemed to wink at us. It seemed for the first time in ages that I'd found someone who I could really go crazy with. Maybe I wasn't that crazy. Maybe everyone else was, and we could show the world a thing or two.

Those hopes weren't held high for long though. Once we'd taken our first hits of acid, things took a turn for the peculiar (though, what else could we expect from an acid trip?)

Julie and I, having had a lot of psychedelic experiences prior to our relationship, felt as if we were both comfortable enough with each other and the drugs to take things to an entirely new, intense level.

This decision was made before we dropped the acid, but the tides seemed to turn quickly. The moment the acid kicked in, Julie's mind melted into an incoherent blob of blabbering drool. She began dropping ambiguous hints of inuendo towards every guy in the group - particularly those closest to me. Slightly perturbed and a bit annoyed, we went into the forest to effectively have the most awkward moment on acid that the world has ever seen.

Once we found a soft patch of grass, our clothes hit the ground almost faster than we did, and we let the passion pounce onto us like phallic panthers. This didn't last too long, though - the somewhat telepathic connection that LSD grants two individuals told me through the look in her mind that her mind was somewhere else.

I finished us both up as fast as I could and we walked back to the group.

During this whole time, one of my friends - Feather - was drenched in a thick swath of psychedelic intensity. It seemed that while me and Julie had been preoccupied, he had been busy coming out of the closet and declaring that he wanted to come and join me and Julie - not to be with her, but to be with me? Considering he's always built himself a guise of extreme heterosexuality for the entire time I'd known him, I found this a bit funny... acid really brings out a new perspective on people.

Anyway, once we'd returned, we witnessed the most absurd and unbelievable decline into sexual insanity that has possibly ever occurred. As Julie's acid high heightened, her ability to articulate proper sentences faded. Each anecdote, joke, or idea she presented was fractured, retarded, and littered with innuendo to the point of incomprehensibility. Even during philosophical conversations shared between my friends, the only response that we could weasel out of her was that she wanted to fuck everyone, all over, all at once.

Fortunately, my friends were my friends and refused the service while I had a chance to talk to her and tell her what was up. Swearing into a monogamous relationship and then pulling this was a little bit ridiculous. My words were lost on her blank stare as she mumbled something about penises back at me, so I figured I'd let her know in the morning when she was in a bit more rational mindstate.

That hope wasn't held high, however, seeing as she never came down from the trip.

More, next time, in: THE JOURNAL OF DRUNKEN IDIOTS.

Transition.

Hand in hand, me and my new girl arose to the soft touch of the sunlight on our skins. We shared our warmth for a few more moments as we surveyed the room - beer cans stood as monuments that decorated every surface in the room, commemorating our absurd night. Comatose bodies lay passed out in awkward positions on chairs and floors.

We slowly switched our brains on and began to acknowledge our "responsibilities" - if you could call them that. Today was the day that we were going to brighten are journey with the acquisition of a shit-ton of psychedelics.

Jonah, the sanest of us - and the only one with a vehicle - loaded me and Julie into his car and we hit the road, on our way to Victoria.

The irony of the driver of a 4-wheel vehicle being the third wheel of our trio was lost on me while me and Julie lay intertwined in eachother's arms in the back seat.

The ride passed quickly and we finally arrived in the midst of the most ridiculous hailstorm that I think the island's ever seen. We parked the car and made a dash through the mad weather toward's our first destination: Lucy's house.

The First of Many (poetic stance)

Blinded for days by a mindless cloud of head-fuckery;
our neurotic pathways pulsated improperly while they whirled around eachother
like a hypnotist's wheel, colliding into eachother like electrons
sending our brains through a mental massacre

A plan for destruction isn't necessary;
you can break down everything if you want to.
Innocence conceals a lot,
perched atop a mountain of love,
my head soared into the clouds and rested in a realm
where all reality was bliss.
But what comes up must come down,
and smiles can surely turn to frowns,
particularly when the crown that you where atop of your head
is skewed by alcohol;
things can surely fall.

Like handcuffs chained around your wrists,
relationships hold together through the turns and the twists;
friendships are born in the strangest of places,
birthed in hospital beds like the spawn of new faces.

Together, we'll roam what's left of the world,
and at the end of our journey, if there's anything left
we'll stand together, linked closer than the tightest of bonds;
we'll have nothing but happiness, and sing the lightest of songs.

The First of Many

To accurately describe the week-long festival of mind-fuckery would be a feat, even for one with the most photographic of memories. The collective history retained by each individual present will never verbally recreate the level of intoxication we reached, for so many brain cells were phased that nobody could remember all of it if their lives depended on it.

However, the beginning was innocent enough.

A few beers shared between a few homies was nothing special - just another day in the life. It did, however, lead towards the hideously blacked out, liver-lynching week that none of us were prepared for.

On top of that, a romantic relationship sprouted forth between me and a friend, allowing us to share an unparalleled intimacy which brightened both of our faces. The journey ahead couldn't possibly seem any more promising!

That being said, a few beers can turn into a few cases really quick. A small hill of beer rose quickly into a mountain as the days blurred by. It seemed that the liquor store was never open long enough.

Not that we would have needed it, anyways. Our liquor fueled rampage led us into our neighbour's house on the first night of debauchery, where a bottle of vodka led us into some strange situations (not the least of which consisted of Jones unclogging a toilet with his bare hands before promptly jumping into the shower to cleanse his arm of feces.)

As the alcohol was downed, the volume was amped. The drunken rambling reached such a point that the neighbours couldn't handle our idiocy and called the cops on us. Once they arrived, Jones (who had been mid-mack with the home's owner and was lacking all his clothes) fled towards the bedroom and dove under the bed on which Scrib was passed out on.

The cops, however, were determined to find everyone. Sometime between throwing closet doors open and leering behind couches, they discovered Jones's drunken, hairy body huddled under the bed. The stout Asian officer who had uncovered his intoxicated mass only hesitated for a second before he reached under and dragged him out.

Trying to pull Jonah's 6'5 physique to his feet proved quite the task, and the officer bent backwards under his weight. He chose instead to lay Jonah on his stomach and handcuff his hands above the peach fuzz shining on his gleaming buttocks.

Scrib, however - clearly the least offensive character, as he was passed out on the bed - reaped the worst of the situation. The cops roused him from sleep with a violent yank and handcuffed him, dragging him outside to their cop car shouting accusations of his disturbing the peace. Scrib's incoherent and drunken mind couldn't comprehend the entirety of what was happening, but needless to say he was less than happy when he woke up in the cold, dank pit of the drunk tank the next morning.

The rest of us were ushered back to our own starting point across the road to work off our hangovers, where a snore-spangled sleep led us into the first day of our 3 month hangover.