Chapter 7: Benji and Me

I’d known about Benji for years. We attended the same grammar school, but I always kept my distance from him. Of all the kids at school, Benji scared me the most, and that’s ironic because he wasn’t the least bit threatening. In fact, he was the one boy who I knew I could easily win in a fistfight, and that’s because Benji was the most girly-boy on campus. While I might have suffered from bullying, I at least knew that one other boy had it worse than I did, and that was Benji. The kids targeted him for the flamboyant way he dressed and the girly way he walked and talked, and that’s why he terrified me: I didn’t want to be associated with him and end up with an even worse reputation than the one I already had. In my mind, Benji had a bigger target on his back than I did, so I always made it a point to distance myself from him. All throughout grammar school, Benji hung around with the girls. He didn’t hang out with them after school as far as I knew, but during school, he surrounded himself with girls while on the playground gleefully joining in while they twirled on the monkey bars or hit the tetherball during recess. The boys mocked Benji and openly teased him calling him a litany of names. 

I never had an interest in befriending Benji, and it never would have happened if it weren’t for my meddling mother. This all took place during the summer between grammar school and junior high. My mother saw me moping around the house and she recognized that I didn’t have any friends, so she intervened on my behalf. Benji worked as a paperboy for our neighborhood, and one morning, he came to collect his money. That’s when my mother invited Benji into the house. Ordinarily, she paid him at the front door and then he went on his way, but on the morning I’m recalling, she invited him into the house and then called me into the living room so that I could say hello. 

“You two go to the same school,” she said. “I thought you boys would like to say hello.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Benji said. While she retrieved her money from the kitchen, Benji stood awkwardly in the living room and we briefly spoke. 

“Hey,” I said to him. 

“Hi!” he replied. 

“How’s life as the paperboy?” I asked. 

“It’s stupid,” he said. “My mom makes me do it. She says it’s good for me.” 

“Is it?” 

“Is it what?” 

“Is it good for you?” 

“I don’t think so.” He said, “I’m no good at it.” 

“Why not?” 

“I can’t throw too well.” He said, “Everyone complains that their papers aren’t on their porch. You should hear what most of the people say when I come to collect my money. You’re mom’s nice, though. She never complains.” 

Benji had a funny way about him, something that made me feel instantly guarded, but I also felt intrigued at the same time. He spoke with a soft, lilting twang, as if he were always on the verge of overexcitement, and whenever he talked, he flailed his hands as if to accentuate what he said. When he ran—which I remember seeing him do at school—his arms swung out loosely at his sides, and when it came to choosing teams in PE, Benji came in dead last, just after me. In my mind, Benji was the real pansy, and he represented everything that I hated about myself. 

On the morning that my mother invited him into our house, I at first feigned annoyance, but the annoyance didn’t last long. That summer, I found myself alone, and having no friends whatsoever, I appreciated even this brief moment of company. While he and I spoke in the living room, I immediately recognized the potential for a friend, even if I expected the friendship to only last through the summer. 

“You know, I could teach you to throw a newspaper,” I said. 

“Really?” 

“I could try.” 

This was a lie. I couldn’t throw anything to save my life, but I said it anyway. “If you ever want to practice throwing, I could help you out.” I added, “I was on a baseball team for two years. I wasn’t any good at it, but I could still try to help out.” 

Benji said, “My father made me play baseball for one season. I wasn’t any good at it either.” 

I said, “I played right field.” 

“Me too!” 

As the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together, so it came as no real surprise when Benji and I made plans to hang out with each other later that day. We met over at the park right near where we both lived. 

“So do you want to play catch?” I asked him. “I brought a ball. I could help you practice with your aim.” 

“Do you mind if we don’t play?” Benji said, “I hate catch.” 

I laughed at his response. No, I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I felt relieved. 

“What do you want to do then?” I asked. 

“We could walk down to the store, or we could go to my house and watch TV or play video games.” 

I said, “Well, I don’t have any money.” 

“So let’s go to my house.” Benji said, “We can eat some lunch.” 

Benji lived only a block away from my own house, but it felt worlds away. He lived in a two-story home with a well-kept yard, and it stood out from the other houses because of the colorful flowerbeds that grew near the door. Even from the outside, it looked like the perfect American household. When we made it through the front door, Benji’s mother immediately greeted us. She knew me from the neighborhood, but I don’t think she expected to see me stopping by. She seemed taken back, though not in a bad way. 

“Nice to see you, Bill,” she said smiling. 

I said hello, and then I followed Benji into the kitchen. The room had a distinct smell to it. It smelled good to me. 

Benji’s house felt different than my own. I couldn’t put my finger on the difference, but I liked the way that the house felt. It felt airy and inviting, and the kitchen seemed noticeably lived in, somehow brighter and more inviting than my own, and I didn’t have any fears of an older brother coming out of nowhere to beat the shit out of me. My own mother had to work long hours so I didn't get to see her very often during the afternoons; it felt nice to be around the hustle and bustle of daily life. Benji’s mother treated me kindly. She reminded me of one of those mothers from an old TV show. She immediately asked what Benji and I wanted for lunch. 

“Do you like tuna fish?” she asked with a smile. 

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.” 

Benji turned to me and asked, “Do you want to go to the mall later?” 

Without waiting for my answer, he said, “Mom? Will you drive us over to the mall later?” 

“By yourselves?” 

“Yes, mom! We’ll be fine. I promise.” 

Mrs. Sanders thought for a moment, and then she said, “If I agree to this, you’ll have to take your little brother, and only if it’s ok with Bill’s mother.” 

“Will your mom let you go?” Benji asked me. 

“I think so. She’s at work now, so I can call and ask.” 

I called her, and she agreed to let me go so long as I would be home in time for dinner. After I made the call, Benji and I sat down at the kitchen table and ate our lunches. During lunch, we mostly talked about what life would be like when we finally got to junior high. We exchanged stories about myriad stories we’d heard, most of them which were too grotesque to mention in front of Benji’s mother. We’d both heard how awful junior high could be. My brother Max and my sister Rhea described junior high as the worst years of their lives. 

Benji said, “You know Jimmy Esquivel?” 

“Yeah,” I replied. “He’s that dirty kid from school.” 

“I heard him saying that kids got raped in junior high.” 

“Raped?” Mrs. Sanders said. “That’s ridiculous.” 

“We know it’s ridiculous,” Benji said sarcastically. “We don’t really believe him, mom.” 

“No, I don’t believe it,” I added. “That’s just the sort of thing that Jimmy Esquivel says.”  

Benji’s little brother asked, “Hey Mom! What’s raped mean?” 

She stammered for a moment, and then she said, “Ask your father when he gets home.” 

Benji and I couldn’t contain our laughter. 

Throughout lunch, Benji’s little brother Donny kept buzzing around me trying to get my attention. He liked that someone new sat at the table, so he bombarded me with a series of nonsensical, random questions, and I did my best to remain polite and answer them all, though I was annoyed by all of the attention. As Donny continued to poke and prod me, Benji finally intervened. 

“Donny, leave Bill alone!” Benji said. 

“I’m not doing anything,” Donny replied. 

“Yes you are, you little shit!” 

“Benji!” Mrs. Sander’s scolded him. “Don’t talk to your little brother that way.” 

Benji rolled his eyes at her to show just what he thought of that, and then he gave a mock apology.  He said to his brother, “Sorry… dick head.” 

“Benji!” Mrs. Sanders said, “You won’t be going to the mall with that type of language.” 

Benji apologized a second time, though I could tell that he didn’t really mean it, and then we disappeared into a downstairs bedroom where we sat around and played video games while waiting for his mother to get ready to take us to the mall. 

“What’s it like to be the oldest child?” I asked. 

“I hate it,” Benji said. “Donny gets to do whatever he wants, and I always have to look out for him. He gets away with more than I did, too.” 

“It’s better than being the youngest,” I said. “At least you don’t have to deal with getting beat up or teased all of the time.” 

When Mrs. Sanders dropped us off at the mall, she gave us $20.00 and told us to meet her in two hours exactly where she’d dropped us off. We agreed, said thank you, and then said goodbye. 

I freely admit that it felt a bit strange walking around the mall with Benji and his little brother. I initially worried what people would think if they saw us together. Would they notice the way Benji walked and talked? Would someone from school recognize us as the two rejects that nobody liked? No. That afternoon, the mall seemed especially crowded; it felt so crowded that we were instantly lost amid all of the people. Had the mall been emptier, perhaps people might have recognized us, but with so many people packed into all of the stores, nobody seemed aware of our presence, and that’s how I preferred it. We blended in. 

It’s sad to see malls today. Today, they’re mostly run down, and the only people who visit are what some folks would call the undesirables. It wasn’t always that way. In the early 80s, malls served as the town square. They were the hub of daily activities, and people of all walks of life congregated there just to experience what was happening. 

We had a great time that afternoon, even with Benji’s little brother tagging along. We ducked through the crowds of people and made our way into the poster store where we puzzled over the 3-D posters that made shapes when you stared at them for long enough. Then, we wandered through both record stores and I showed Benji all the albums that I wanted to buy. Since I had an older brother and sister, my tastes were largely shaped by their interests. I liked rock ‘n’ roll, and I associated New Wave or British music with being a pansy. I got that from my brother Max. Having no older siblings, Benji followed the newer and more popular trends. At the second record store, Benji showed me a prized Cyndi Lauper vinyl picture disk that he wanted to buy. When he showed me the record, I immediately thought of Max and what his reaction would be to that type of music. Max drew thick clear lines when it came to music, and artists like Cyndi Lauper simply weren’t allowed in my house. It struck me again that Benji didn’t have to worry about what an overbearing older brother thought. Being the oldest in his family, Benji got to do as he pleased, and that meant he could listen to whatever music he wanted. 

After spending nearly half an hour at the record stores, Donny complained that we were ignoring him. 

“I want to go to the arcade,” he whined. “I’m bored.” 

We agreed to take him. When we got to the arcade, Benji exchanged several dollars into quarters. He handed some of the coins to Donny, and we took the rest. Benji beat me twice at Frogger, and I conceded that he played much better than I did. I won him at Centipede, though, so I didn’t have my ego completely destroyed. After playing several other games, we burned through most of the money. Donny wanted to take the last of our money and spend it on more video games, but we instead decided to take the rest of the money and go to Mrs. Fields to buy cookies. We had enough for each of us to get a cookie. During our remaining time, we walked around the mall and ate our cookies while watching all of the people. 

It felt nice being out of the house. It felt as if I were somehow almost an adult. More so, it felt nice to be with a friend especially because I didn’t have any. Was this what it was like to have a best friend? 

Many more of those days followed. 

Most of the summer was spent at Benji’s house where we would lounge around the house and listen to music. Sometimes, we would lay out in the backyard and try to get suntans. Conversation came easily between us, and we never ran out of topics to discuss. We were like two little girls at a tea party, and we brought enthusiasm and excitement every time we met. 

Sadly, when I look back on that time, I was a real asshole to Benji. I unknowingly played a domineering role in our friendship. I nagged Benji about everything. I nagged him about the way he walked and the way he talked and even the way he positioned his hands. Every time I tried to imagine junior high, I couldn’t help but think that Benji would be a liability if I maintained my friendship with him. I saw the ways that the boys teased him, and I didn’t want to align myself with him. Still, I enjoyed the friendship. 

As the summer came to an end, I realized that if I wanted to keep Benji as my friend, I would have to do something to change his reputation. I would have to make him more masculine. I wanted to give him a makeover. 

Why did all of the Hollywood movies only show makeovers with homely girls getting transformed into prom queens? Why couldn’t there be movies that showed what to do with a nelly gay-boy begin transformed into a jock? Was it even possible? Was it possible for me to change Benji? 

“You sound so girly!” I said to him one afternoon. In my mind, I didn’t mean to be cruel, but my words came with a certain sting. 

 “Girly?” 

“Yes,” I said. “You sound girly.” I said it more as a warning to him about junior high and how to behave so that he didn’t draw attention to himself and to me. I wanted to keep being friends with Benji, but I also wanted him to be more masculine. I said, “It’s your voice. It doesn’t sound like a boy’s voice.” 

He didn’t deny my claim. In fact, he knew it, and he said, “I just can’t help it.” 

“Yes you can! Just lower your voice,” I advised him. Then, in an even flat tone, I said, “Just talk just like this. Repeat after me.” I was careful to eliminate any emotion from my own voice, and I spoke slowly so that he could mimic my voice and its tone. “Just talk like this.” 

He repeated the words: “Just talk like this?” 

“I don’t sound like that,” I said. “You say everything like it’s a question. I don’t do that.” 

He repeated, “Just talk like this?” 

“No,” I said. 

“Oh my God! I’ll never get it right.” 

I let out a sigh of exasperation, and then I said, “How about this: just don’t say ‘oh my God’ so much. Can you at least do that?” 

“OK,” he agreed. He remained quiet for a moment. I could tell that he had something on his mind. He put his hands to his face and then explained the reason he talked so funny, the reason why he sounded like a girl. “It was because of that song ‘Valley Girl,’” he said. “You know the song, right?” 

“Yeah, I know it.” I said, “Of course I know it.” The song featured the affected voice of a teenage girl from LA. Neither Benji nor I understood that the song was satirical, but we both knew the tune. 

Benji said, “I memorized all the lyrics for my older cousin. She thought it was funny to hear me sing all of the lyrics, so that’s what did it. I sang it for her and her friends all the time. I sang it over and over, and that’s the reason I talk like this. It’s because of the song.” 

“A song made you talk like that?” I said incredulously. 

“Yes,” he said. “I swear to God!” 

As he explained it, the song should have come with a warning label because it permanently affected his voice. 

“I hate that song,” he said. “I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true. It changed the way I talk, and I wish I could change my voice, but I don’t think I can.” Then he added, “You know, it’s not easy being picked on all of the time.” 

“You don’t think I know that?” 

“Well maybe you do, but you don’t get teased as bad as I do. You don’t have to deal with all of the things they call me. When everyone sees me, they think I’m funny acting. It’s not my fault, though. I swear to God.” 

Poor Benji. He definitely had it worse than I did and I knew it. 

I didn’t hear him, though. I didn’t recognize his genuine sorrow. I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I said, “Don’t say ‘I swear to God’ or ‘Oh my God’ or anything with God....” Then, to add to his shame, I said, “It makes you sound like a girl, but you don’t have to sound like one.” 

He agreed. 

I felt badly for him. I really did. 

When my brother Max found out about my friendship with Benji, he launched into me. 

“Why am I not surprised that two fruits would find each other?” 

I tried to ignore him. 

“Well, at least you have a girlfriend now,” he said. 

“Unlike you,” I snapped back. 

“What did you say, faggot?” 

I didn’t say anything more. My simple retort was enough. I didn’t want to agitate Max and cause him to retaliate. No, I wanted to keep my new friend, and I didn’t want Max to ruin it. I finally had someone to hang out with; I had a place to spend my summer afternoons, an escape from my own house. 

 Looking back, I honestly don’t think I deserved to have a friend like Benji. He was a friendly and funny guy, and he didn’t deserve me hammering my insecurities into him. Was I truly that insecure about myself? The answer is yes. On some level, I needed to make him feel the same amount of shame that I carried inside myself. I shouldn’t have cared what other people thought, but I was too young to have a strong sense of myself, and I was far too damaged by my father and brother. 

I let my insecurities overflow onto Benji. 

Not only did I admonish Benji for his voice, but I also got after him about the way he swooshed when he walked. In my mind, he swung his hips like a wide-open gate, and I worried that if anyone from school saw us, he would draw negative attention to us. In my mind, I just wanted Benji to “butch it up” so that I could continue to be his friend in junior high. When alone, I honestly didn’t care how he acted: he could parade around like a prom queen for all I cared, and quite often, that’s exactly what he did. I only cared when it came to school, when people could actually see us. Then, I cringed at the idea of Benji strutting back and forth mouthing the words to Culture Club songs. What would people think? What would people say? That’s why I insisted he tone it down. 

“You know, when school starts, I don’t know if we’ll still be able to be friends.” 

“Why not?” 

“Well… We can’t gossip and giggle about girly stuff all of the time,” I said. “We’ve got to be careful. Junior high will be different than elementary school. You’ve heard what people say.” 

“I know,” he said. 

When the summer ended, Benji and I continued being friends, but we kept a low profile at school. I was right about junior high: it was nothing like grammar school. Middle school proved to be an entirely different world, and it was a world with completely different rules and expectations. Our town only had one middle school, and all of the students from the four grammar schools went there. This meant that we were surrounded by mostly new kids. Some of the kids came from the rougher side of town, so they acted much tougher, much stronger, and much more defiant. Contrary to rumors, nobody was raped, but within the first week, I saw several fights break out, and homophobic slurs were commonplace. 

“Homo!” 

“Faggot!” 

“Queer!” 

Thankfully, another student already had a bigger target on his back, and that turned out to be a blessing. Every school has its misfit, and our new junior high school was no different. While Benji and I were the most bullied in our grammar school, nobody noticed us in the first few weeks of junior high. A kid named Steven Rays had earned his place as the most bullied. He was an eighth grader, and everyone seemed to hate him. I think, in retrospect, Steven Rays’ biggest fault lied in the fact that he tried to befriend the kids who tormented him. He wasn’t gay (though people often hurled the insult at him). His crime was the fact that he trailed at the heels of his tormentors and hoped that they would accept him, but they didn’t. He was a scrappy little kid; he reminded me of a small dog that constantly wags his tail. The more he wanted their acceptance, the more they antagonized him. 

The first time I saw Steven, we were waiting for our PE instructor, and a group of boys huddled near the water fountain. The boys were troublemakers. They considered themselves the “bad-ass-motherfuckers.” They came from a different side of town, and most of them probably had older brothers either incarcerated or on probation. 

On the day I’m remembering, these boys circled around Steven. 

“You’re fucking dead, you know,” one of the boys said. “You’re fucking dead!” I recognized the threatening tone, so I walked away. 

Steven tried to free himself of their trap; he also tried to walk away, but the boys encircled him and began their savage chant: “Get him! Get him!” They had no intention of letting him escape from their circle. 

The dangerous threat: “You’re a faggot, aren’t you?” 

Julio, an eighth grader who took pride in bullying the weaker kids, spat on Steven Rays. I watched the whole thing, though I hid on the fringes of the circle and remained at a safe distance. Steven Rays sensed the trouble, and he looked to the other kids for help, but none of us moved. We didn’t want to be next. 

That’s when the biggest kid of the bunch lashed out, pushing Steven Rays to the blacktop. I think Steven deliberately fell because he knew that fighting back would only make it worse. 

He fell to the blacktop and then, while lying down, he tried to laugh as if this were some kind of joke that he was in on. He said, “Come on, guys!” 

Maybe he thought if he threw the fight, he could avoid the fight all together. But no. Not this time. 

By now, even more students gathered around to watch what would happen next. 

Things got ugly, really fast. 

With Steven laying flat on the blacktop, his back to the ground, two boys grabbed his legs. One guy grabbed one leg, and the second guy grabbed the other leg. Then, they spread his legs open as if they were making a wish, and before anyone knew what would happen next, they began pulling him across the asphalt. They dragged him across the asphault and his head skipped on the blacktop like a smooth rock skips across a lake. The whole time, Steven screamed and laughed at the same time. 

 “Come on, guys,” he said as they dragged him to the basketball court. He laughed as his head bounced painfully across the blacktop. Though he tried to kick his legs loose, the kids wouldn’t let him go. They dragged Steven Rays right over to a basketball pole. 

They’d devised a particularly barbaric torture. It was called being “poled.” The two students spread his legs open and then pulled him into the metal pole. They used every ounce of their strength to crush his testicles, to pull him into the pole with as much force as they could muster. With his legs spread apart so wide, he couldn’t kick free. 

We saw blood dripping down the left side of Steven Rays’ mouth. He’d nearly bitten off his own tongue, but nothing would stop this troupe of boys from hurting him. The whole time, he tried to laugh. 

“Come on guys!” he howled. 

When the P.E. teacher, Mr. Bunkis, ran from the gym, we watched his face turn deathly pale, and we knew that the bad-ass-motherfuckers had gone too far. 

“What the hell is going on?” Mr. Bunkis screamed. 

The boys let go of Steven’s legs, but they’d already crushed his testicle. 

The ambulance raced Steven to the hospital and he underwent major surgery. According to rumor, he ended up losing one of his testicles. The boys had crushed it against the pole. Steven refused to finger the culprits and the principal refused to pursue the case because he didn’t want the public embarrassment, so the “bad-ass-motherfuckers” got away with their crime. 

When I saw this barbaric torture, I immediately devised a plan. 

I said to Benji, “We need to become stoners.” 

“Stoners?” 

“Yes.” I said, “You don’t want to be like Steven Rays, do you?” 

“No.” 

“People don’t mess with stoners. They’re left alone. It’s as if they don’t exist. We could both wear heavy metal t-shirts, grow our hair out, and do drugs.” 

“Drugs?” Benji asked. 

“Yes!” 

“What type of drugs?” 

“I don’t know. Any drugs!” I added, “I can get them from my sister or brother. Plus, have you seen the way everyone looks at Bobby McIntire? He’s a stoner and nobody bothers him. They’re afraid of him. We could do the same thing.” 

“I don’t even like heavy metal,” Benji said. 

“So what! You’ll learn to like it. It’s good.” 

“Yeah?” Benji thought for a moment, and then he said, “I could get alcohol from my father.” 

“Yeah? Let’s do it.” 

Both of us felt excited to put our plan into motion. Benji’s father was younger than mine, and he liked to have parties where lots of people drank. As such, he never seemed to notice when we pilfered his supply. He kept a fully stocked bar along with a refrigerator of beer in the garage. Benji and I had no problem taking enough alcohol to get good and drunk.  

Drinking came easily to both of us, unlike the complexities of throwing a baseball or scoring a goal in soccer. Unlike with sports, we didn’t have to stumble over drinking, and we didn’t have to struggle to figure out how it worked. Drinking came naturally: we filled a glass, swallowed it down, and enjoyed the burn. Unlike most kids our age, we could stomach the taste, and we had no problems holding it down. It took some practice, but we managed it. Moreover, we enjoyed the warm radiating feeling that a drink provided. I think we both wanted it to erase the uncomfortable feelings that we’d buried inside ourselves. Under the influence, we found courage we ordinarily didn’t have. We were twelve years old that first time we got truly hammered, and we loved it from the start. Alcohol welcomed us with banners and balloons, and it sang familiar songs like “Hip-Hip Hurray!” and “The Gang’s All Here.” We finally found a way to experience a sliver of freedom. 

For the first two months of junior high, I groomed Benji on heavy metal music, and we studied the culture like you’d study for a test. Benji memorized every Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin record I brought him, and it wasn’t hard to grow out our hair and wear heavy metal t-shirts. It also wasn’t hard to find the alcohol or drugs. They say that alcohol is a gateway drug for teens, and this proved true for Benji and me. Once we decided to become metal heads, once we found ways to sneak alcohol out of Benji’s house, we quickly landed ourselves some marijuana. I stole it from my brother, and while walking home from school one afternoon, I shared it with some of the older kids from school. I did it to earn their respect. Jessica Sanders, who did not partake in the pot, made sure that the word spread quickly. She told everyone at school that Benji and I smoked pot in the alley on the way home, and once word spread, people treated us differently. 

As strange as this sounds, it felt wonderful to go from pansy to stoner. In our minds, we stood out as reckless rebels. I loved our new reputation! We were fuck-ups, and as fuck-ups, we had a certain reputation that afforded us more liberties. Of course, Benji and I hid behind the heavy metal music, which perhaps made us “posers,” but what choice did we have? 

Benji and I remained friends all through junior high and up to the summer of our sophomore year in high school. From time to time, we were called out as posers, but our penchant for drugs and alcohol allowed us relatively safe passage among the stoners. They accepted us because we always had something to contribute. Thinking back, I wonder how many of the “stoners” from junior high were just like Benji and me: scared kids trying to put up a front for just long enough to get by. 

In truth, we were heading down a dangerous path. We didn’t stop with the alcohol and marijuana. My sister began hooking up with some of the local bikers, and she introduced Benji and me to crank, a form of speed popular with the bikers in our area. Rhea had a constant flow of the stuff, and we would either buy it from her or steal it from her. When your older sister is a drug dealer, drugs are easily had, and we took advantage of her connection. As a side note, she’s since apologized to me for giving us drugs at such a young age, but we would have found them if she didn’t give them to us. We were determined. 

It’s shocking to imagine myself in the junior high high on meth. It’s sad, too. I’m still amazed that we weren’t discovered or that we didn’t do anything more stupid than what we did. Benji and I would get our crank on a Friday and then we would snort it all weekend. I even remember during school going out to my locker and literally snorting a line before heading back into class. I cringe to think of it now. 

For the entire weekend, Benji and I stayed up wired, and we would carry on marathon conversations that lasted well into the morning. Our town did not have a heavy police presence at that time, so Benji and I could be found at two o’clock in the morning wandering around in the local parks while we talked about our lives and our futures. 

Sometimes, we’d climb up on top of the school’s roof and we would sit and talk about everything and nothing at the same time; then we would walk around the perimeter of the school’s roof while looking down from above. Once, while wired, we got it into our heads that we were closely connected to God. I came up with the idea because I’d had a near death experience in the 6th grade. I was riding my bike home from the store when a car driving fifty miles and hour slammed into me. I was thrown from my bike and I landed face-first into the asphalt. That’s when I saw God for the first time. He appeared as a shadow of light in a long tunnel. I carried the experience with me, and while high on meth, I told Benji about my connection to God. 

We decided to steal a can of spray paint and write graffiti that pertained to God. We mostly painted the school’s roof where it couldn’t been seen, but we did spray paint the word “God” on the side of an enormous dumpster where everyone could see it. In our drug-fueled minds, we truly believed that we were bringing a positive message to the school, as if students would see the word God and then perhaps think about something beyond themselves, but when kids came to school on Monday and saw the word painted on a dumpster, they thought it was done in disrespect, as if to say, “God lives here in this dumpster.” 

I can’t explain exactly why we did a lot of what we’d done. Some of it gets chalked up as the behavior of middle schoolers, and some of it gets blamed on the fact that we were high on meth. My mother worked nearly every day, so all of her kids managed to get away with a lot during those times. Benji’s parents might have known that we snuck alcohol, but they certainly could never have guessed that we were snorting meth, and my mother never understood how serious her children’s addictions ran or she would have done something to intervene. 

One afternoon, while walking through a park, one of the older kids from high school approached us and asked us whether we wanted to buy some acid. Both of us had never tried it, though we wanted to. Living in the Bay Area, we knew about LSD because of its popularity. We’d also both read Go Ask Alice, and we glamorized the lead character. We imagined that LSD would be like living in a giant cartoon. On the afternoon when we had it offered to us, we lit up with smiles and paid the kid his money. We thought nothing of putting the little hits onto our tongues as we walked back to Benji’s parents' house. 

His parents and little brother were gone for the weekend so we had the house to ourselves. 

I remember taking the drug, and after some time had passed, I sat down in his parents’ living room in front of an enormous picture of a landscape. The feeling came on slowly. In fact, the initial feeling was so subtle that I might have thought it was all in my mind. Colors seemed a bit brighter and somehow softer at the same time. I had a warm sensation flowing through me, and something felt spiritual. I sat there for an hour while feeling myself melt into the picture. I remember the colors and brush strokes surrounding me, and I remember feeling insanely happy. As the trip intensified, I sank further into the picture and began full on hallucinating. At first, I enjoyed it. I wasn’t afraid at first because I had no experience with LSD. I didn’t realize how intense an acid trip could be, and I didn’t realize how long it would last. Initially, I thought I could somehow will myself out of the trip whenever I chose, but early into the trip, I had no reason to want to surface back to an ordinary world, and so I let myself go deeper into it, and I enjoyed myself. 

As the trip intensified, I saw vibrant colors in everything around me, and then I saw textures on all of the surfaces around me: the wall, the table, my hand. My focus was drawn into the little lines of the texture. I saw the texture as a microcosmic roadmap, and if I looked long enough, the roadmap formed geometric patterns. “How amazing!” I thought. The texture looked like tessellated honeycomb patterns, like a billion stop signs set atop and next to one another, and--in my mind--I imagined myself face-to-face with a wall of these honeycomb shapes. I stared at them for a while, and then, in my mind, I fell into one of the honeycombs and it swallowed me whole until I disappeared into an entirely different world. I’d opened a door. There, in the new world, I encountered another wall of tessellated geometric honeycomb patterns where again I chose one to fall into. 

I must have spent an hour imagining myself opening honeycomb doorways that brought me to a deeper, far off place until finally my thoughts were no longer capable of words. I remember being so lost in the trip that I nearly panicked. I’d dug myself deep into the geometry. In my mind, I suddenly wanted to turn around and go back—I wanted to be normal again—but when I turned back, I was still lost in the trip. All I saw were billions of honeycombs--each that would take me to a different place--and all I remember thinking is that it would be impossible to find the right honeycomb to get me back home. an unknown world, and I hadn't left so much as a breadcrumb trail to get me back home. 

If you haven’t done LSD, all of this must sound absurd. The human brain is wired according to a delicate chemical balance. The same is true for schizophrenia. If you don’t suffer from it, it won’t make sense. But still, I’ll try. 

I was surrounded by cold, geometric patterns incapable of sympathy or love, and I felt so very lost. In a bad trip, there is nothing but confused, fragmented memories, but the memories appear only half-real because they’re washed in confusion. During the trip, I saw fragments of my life: bits of television shows, strange childhood memories, and random words that twisted like dough. 

I was frying on acid, and I was only 13 years old. 

Poor kid. I think about him--myself--right now as I sit here pecking away at this keyboard. Part of me still feels like I’m on that trip. Is that strange to say? I feel really badly for the past incarnation of myself because he doesn't yet know that something worse is coming: the peak. LSD plays out like a great Shakespearean drama. Each of its five acts waxes and wanes and grows progressively more intense, all leading up to a culmination of events. My metaphor is perhaps faulty because it implies that the LSD trip can be witnessed and observed in a few hours' time, which--as I learned--was not the case. 

The kid, who is me, slipped into the geometric nowhere-land probably around the end of Act II. 

By Act III, the kid forgot even his own name. His conscious thoughts were replaced with strong wordless emotions that stretched out from here to infinity. Occasionally a word would surface in his brain, but his mind would twist the word out of shape before the kid could accurately identify its meaning. In one example--the only specific example I can remember of this--the word “mother” came to him, but before he attached a new meaning to the word, it shifted and twisted and turned from mother to muther to mooder to mooderyer to moodadayooder to moodadayoodermarderma. 

The word mother became a tangle of sound echoed in his head. 

While somewhere in the night sky, a distant Nebulae gave birth to ten thousand Brown Dwarfs, and the kid--who is me--buckled under the weight and the implications of this moodadayoodermaderma. The Word lost its meaning just like this story will lose its meaning, and a wave of sadness overtook the kid because he knew that somewhere in the echo of the original word--the word “mother” that first came to him--there was some sort of meaningful connection, but he couldn’t remember it. 

He thought, "Help!" But before he could say "help,” it distorted to “hell” and “ell” and “elp,” and when “helpalelp” repeated in his mind, it was impossible to attach any meaning to any of it. 

Maybe a more levelheaded kid would have laughed at the absurdity of the trip, maybe a proper stoner would have kept his wits about him, but I cowered in the corner and cried. As I lost the meaning of words I’d once known, I seemed to lose the meaning of myself. 

I’d forgotten where I was or what I was, all within the word. 

Even now, I suspect I’m still lost in one of those honeycombs, and even now I'm sending messages to the kid to try to give him comfort. I am sending signals through space. You can’t have such a bad trip and not be affected by it. 

In my mind, I call out to the boy who I once was, and I consciously try to guide him and wake him from that terrible place. Perhaps it's my very voice that will pull him out of the bad acid trip. Perhaps it’s these future thoughts that will allow him to eventually come down. 

By Act IV, the kid is upstairs in a dark room and he's in physical pain because he keeps imagining drills and hooks being pushed into his nasal passages. He's in a dark place of pain, and he keeps seeing a hook raking through the cartilage of his nose. He's been in this place for a long time now—he’s been here forever—and he is crying, but it's good because the pain has anchored him onto one thing, albeit unpleasant. Time slows down now, and I am willing to exchange places with him. I love him. 

He looks feverish and his body is jerking and shaking as if he has epilepsy. Ricardo is somewhere in one of the honeycombs. You are in one of them, too. The kid will stay in this state of mind for quite some time. 

He is frying. 

At the end of Act IV, his friend Benji will come to him with a class yearbook from the 6th grade. Benji will turn on the light and sit next to him and put on a record, and familiar sounds will carry him up through the honeycombs and back into the real world where familiar faces look from the pages and at him with a sort of kindness. Slowly throughout Act V, he will surface like a bubble from the bottom of the sea to break free from the nightmare just as the sun rises into the sky. 

I never touched another hallucinogenic again. In college, some of the kids would experiment with mushrooms, and they made it sound like LSD's kinder, friendlier half-cousin, but I refused to mess around with it because I knew how much of our identity is affected by a delicate chemical balance, as Dr. Wong would say, and I didn't want to offset that balance. 

Later in life, I marveled at how much of our identity can actually be taken away from us if our chemistry is altered. When I was so intoxicated by LSD that I no longer even understood the word mother--let alone the concept of it--I wept.