Ketamine

There is probably a million among none of you who remember that summer when I was bringing vials of Ketamine to anyone who’d have them. Them with bud and those that'd just jam a milligram into a muscle and wonder where they'd end up, them that got a taste of dimension K for no other reason than being in proximity of A and B. Them that went to it and then felt the wind ripping past their fingertips as they fell into it.

My buddy John called that exprerience "It" because really, there's nothing to call it, really. Experiencing the entire life of a butterfly in a few seconds or realizing what some Hindu deity did in another dimension, the key to the secret of everything that matters. Something dirty smelling, blood-soaked soil and the essence of pure light, really; some thing, the it and the rest, bits of life strewn down a dark unknown street, shimmering on junk oil in a gutter, chipped stars tipped to this side and that by jet tadpoles swimming in another mirror sky looking back. That it there, thrtipping through the uni-verthe.

Once I was standing in the patio of a Spanish Villa, the bricks of the patio slick beneath my feet, looking at a fountain, listening to the sound of splashing water echoed across the compound, staring at the stars that screamed for me to return. I'd just been the Number 6 or something, for some time, and suddenly it was a warm night, exquisite, in balance, alive. The echo of a fountain resounded all around me, the chatter of falling water calling back from the soft shadows that rimmed the plaza. I could feel humidity glistening on my skin, the tiles of the piazza slick with dew, bits of moss clinging tenaciously to the lines of grout fed by the damp air.

Each breath I took was heavy, verdant with its immediacy, full, deep, the clarity of the cloudless night sky above steeped with the complete experience of my vision. There I was, in it, the thick of it, dripping off me; then it spun me off into something else, plunged headlong into some other corner of the universe, without knowledge nor even an indication of what I needed to navigate the next labyrinth. The unforgiving and uncaring It that tosses everyone objectively across space/time with no concern with where the dice will land.

It was that full-bore condition of the trip that, I think, made most people uncomfortable. In the summer of lost hours, I remember people embracing the vials and almost immediately rejecting the effect, their fear of losing who they acyually were a litle too much for them to handle. A little E and some weed, big booze tossed back forcefully while kneeling in piss – all that was fine, safe. Getting ripped from here to there and no face to show the universe, well, that was tolerable. But a K-Hole is real, more real than you’ll ever know; the ‘more real’ part that scared the be-jeebus out of of almost anyone who fell into it. Not junkies but adventurers. Being a junkie just requires getting lost inside one’s self; in a K-Hole, 'Self' is discarded with cold disregard. Poof, it’s gone, the rest of you go there, now. Then there and there and so on.

After that, back to earth. Feeling a bit vertically challenged sure, (kinda' shitfaced drunk) but otherwise intact, mind body and soul. Whatever Rubick's Cube minds remain in disarray and unsolved - I mean, someone's always switching the stickers and shit anyway, checking the answers, flipping the paper back and forth, sereptitiously, like no one's looking.

It was a weird summer and things shifted in chaotic ways. John said he'd suck my cock; so did his girlfriend, Jane. Just to jam something into muscles and go away for an hour. John claimed it improved sex with Jane and she swore it cured her migraines. Not junkies but them, then, scrabbling and scratching, scratching, the itch, fill it, please, whatever it takes. Junkies keep scratching but as far as I was concerned, so do the rest of us; sucking cock and curing our headaches.