I swallowed a flash of jealousy. If she had to pick between our two new friends, I had a sixth sense she’d rather choose Leon.
Over my dead body.
2:00 p.m.
The rain decided to stay away in the afternoon. Bits of blue peeked through the clouds like tiny forget-me-nots, giving everyone hope fairer times lay ahead. The air felt sticky and humid, though. And the smell of urine and cow poop hung heavy in the air. At times I wanted to gag.
“Marilyn Cohen, Greg wants you to meet him at the information booth,” a shirtless Chip Monck announced. “’Cause he wants to marry you.” People whooped and hollered. “There goes Marilyn. Sydney McGhee, come immediately to backstage right. Your wife is having a baby.” Folks were still whistling and cheering when he gave his next announcement. “Helen Savage, please call your father at the Motel Glory.”
Poor Helen Savage.If Dad finds out my whereabouts and has me paged, I’ll die a thousand deaths.I imagined him in the copilot seat of one of the military choppers we’d been eyeing, flying in to chastise me. Just as I thought about it, another chopper flew overhead.
“Those of you who have partaken of the green acid,” Chip continued after the helicopter buzzed away, “if you would, as soon as convenient, please go to the hospital tent.”
With each of Chip’s chilling words about LSD, I kept asking myself why anyone would “drop acid” in the first place. It made no sense.
After a few more announcements, my new friend Hugh Romney walked out onto the main stage and tapped Chip on the shoulder. Seeing him up there gave me a sense of pride.
“My name is Hugh Romney. I’m with the Hog Farm, and I’m working on a scene,” he told the audience. “Some people call it bum trips. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bum trip. We’ve handled over three hundred, and everybody’s worked out all right. A half hour after we release someone from our section, we turn them into doctors. And they care for the people that were tripping just like they were when they came in. Now people been saying that some of the acid is poisoned. It’s not poisoned. It’s just baaad acid. It’s manufactured poorly. So anybody that thinks they’ve taken some poison, forget it. And if you feel like experimenting ... only take half a tab, okay? Thank you.”
Chip followed. “Uh, there’s a little tremor of paranoia running through the audience about going to the first aid tent if you’re on a bummer, if things are not going well for you, or whatever. Please be assured—again, I repeat,please be assured—there is no bust; there is no hassle. And they’ll make every effort to make no unfortunate occurrence for you if you can’t handle what’s been going down.”
There was no point in talking to Livy about it, so I turned to Leon. “With all that’s been said, why would someone even want to take LSD? I don’t get it.”
“It’s a psychedelic experience.” He chuckled as he said it, but I found nothing funny about LSD.
“Can you definepsychedelic experience? Because I’m not hearing anything that makes me wanna try it.”
He gripped his chin as he glanced skyward. “How can I definepsychedelic experience?” He swirled his fingers next to his ears. “When you drop acid, things get distorted. You might see colors or swirling patterns. A buddy of mine thought the walls in his pad were breathing.”
“Breathing?That’s wild.”
“You’ve seenAlice in Wonderland?”
I nodded.
“Remember all the swirling colors? Alice drinks from the bottle. Then she’s small enough to fit through the keyhole.”
“Shut up.Alice in Wonderlandis not about LSD.”
“Remember the caterpillar sitting on a mushroom, smoking a hookah pipe? He tells her if she eats from one side of the magic mushroom, it’ll make her large. The other side makes her small.”
My hand flew to my chest.
“Grace Slick wrote ‘White Rabbit’ about it. Listen to the words. I’m sure they’ll play it tonight.”
“So that’s why they call it atrip,” I said, nodding.
“Yeah, man. LSD takes you on a journey to wonderland. You experience things you’ve never seen before.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Haveyoudone it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll do it again, though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t dig the feeling of not knowing what’s real. It’s groovy in some ways. But you’re right. You could take a good trip or a bad one.”
“You mean you don’t know if you’ll be poisoned.”
