No Man's Land
Lamb ♣ 08 | LGBTQ+ Serial Fiction
Something very special to announce this week: I have a short story appearing tomorrow over at the most excellent
courtesy of founder and editor, Winston Malone.“The Crier” is an adult fairy tale which at its heart is about kindness. Please give it a read and a ❤️ if you feel moved.
A big THANK YOU to Winston, the mad genius behind Storyletter Xpress Publishing, a community-driven publisher of short fiction and poetry which aims to “to break away from traditional publishing norms in order to return attention back to writers and their stories.” He also runs The Library, the directory of long-form fiction, nonfiction, biography and memoirs that picks up where Substack Management falls drastically short for book writers. If you are publishing a work of fiction over 7500 words on Substack, reach out to Winston to get listed—all the cool kids are doing it!
Winston and The Library are also the inspiration behind my new directory of LGBTQ+ Substacks—Qstack—more news about that coming next week.
Start at the beginning:
We Regret to Inform You | Lamb ♣ 01
No Man’s Land
♣ ♣ ♣ 08 ♣ ♣ ♣
I had forgotten about this letter until I dug it up recently—Lamb’s acid trip, one of the most epically bad trips I ever heard of, except maybe those people who jumped off the roof of Barrington at Cal because they thought they could fly. Come to think of it, it came right after the Christmas at his dad’s that he cut short, which is probably why I never really got the whole story.
I also forgot what a stupid dick Fugie was to Lamb, or maybe at the time, like most kids, I just figured no (permanent) harm, no foul. Lamb survived, and he didn’t stop being friends with Fugie, but I smelled a whiff of treachery about him from the get-go.
Still, he didn’t force Lamb to take two hits of acid and go screaming through the streets of Berzerkely naked. And it didn’t stop Lamb from taking acid many more times over the years—we had a ton of fun tripping on the dance floor at Colossus (aka Colostomy,) Pleasuredome, Rave Called Sharon, Mr. Floppy, The EndUp. Good times, until they weren’t.
1/18/89
Caffe MedHey D—
Not sure what I want to say about what happened, but we talked so many times about how much we wanted to do acid, so here goes.
Fugie called me Friday night and said he and his straight roommate got some acid and did I want to do it with them? His roommate’s girlfriend wasn’t going to take any, she’d be sober and look out for us, drive us up to the Berkeley hills and back down, and it was only $5 so perfect time to try it with someone I trust. And it was Friday the 13th! So cool!
What was I expecting? I don’t know. I just remember how the guys used to talk about it at Wolcott, how it was amazing and trippy, that time slowed down and everything came alive, all the lights and sounds would be talking to you like they knew you. Remember that time Jeff Hiller was laughing so hard in his room, and we all went in to see what was going on and he just looked at us and laughed even harder? When he finally could talk again he said it was like a big cosmic joke and he finally got it.
Yeah, so all that happened, only not in a good way. Fuck! So basically I’m just going to say if you do it, be careful because I had the worst trip ever.
So Friday night rolls around, and we meet up around 9:00, Fugie and Chris and Emily and me, and Emily drove us up to this field up in the hills, great view of the whole bay all the way to the GG Bridge and SF. I don’t know how they found this place, there weren’t any houses around, it was just this grassy hillside and we hiked down to a spot a little ways from the road.
Fugie says, “It’s old, you should take 2 hits—me and Chris are going to take 4 hits because it’s kinda weak.” So we took it, and just sat there for awhile smoking, and they were talking and stuff but I was a little nervous. After a while I noticed the lights down around the bay started shimmering, like there were suddenly twice as many as there were before and they were sort of rising up into the air. It looked like a treasure or something, it was so beautiful and I started feeling like, yes, this is cool, this was what I was hoping for—like I was finding out a big secret—THE BIG SECRET.
But then Fugie and Chris started talking shit to each other, like “Oops, you shouldn’t have taken that acid—you know there’s no going back, right?” or “How’s it feel to be the biggest loser ever?” and I really didn’t understand why they were saying that, their voices sounded really weird, and it was like they hated each other or something and I started to get scared, like how well do I really know Fugie? We met freshman year in the dorms, and we partied and stuff, but we weren’t best friends or anything and I didn’t know Chris or Emily at all.
I said, “What’s wrong with you guys?” and all three of them suddenly whipped around and stared at me, Chris and Fugie started laughing, and they seemed really sinister but they didn’t say anything. That’s when I felt like I was the one who made a mistake. You know how they say that every so often someone takes acid and they go crazy, that they never come back down again and they put them away for the rest of their life? Well, that’s what I started thinking was happening to me, that I was tricked—like it only happened to people who were giant losers, and I was the biggest one of all.
At this point, they all decided they had enough of sitting around on the hill and wanted to go back down to Berkeley—I don’t know where we were supposed to be going because getting in the car suddenly felt very wrong. The backseat, the door—it all felt … chewy? Does that make sense? Like metallic, but spongy at the same time, and as Emily was driving down the windy road from the hills, it felt like we were out of control—and that’s when the music started talking to me.
I don’t know what we were listening to, but it was like music was invented to swallow me up, and it was honking and squishing and farting at me, and saying things like “You’re never coming back, you’re really fucked now—LOSER!” and that’s when I really lost it.
All of a sudden Fugie and Chris are saying, “Are you OK?” And I was like, “No! Music is talking to me! I’m scared!” By this time we were down in some neighborhood over by the Claremont Hotel, and Emily pulls the car over and she and Chris jump out and walk around to the front, they didn’t say anything, it was just like: let’s get away from him.
So then Fugie says, “OK, be cool, they want me to walk you back to the dorm, they’re going to take off,” and before you know it, they drive off and we’re stuck in the middle of the night on this dark, silent street—I actually didn’t know where we were until later—and I was terrified that Fugie was going to leave me too, but also, I knew it was all over, I had fucked up, I was that one-in-a-million fool who takes acid and never comes back.
It was like the Twilight Zone—it was going to be dark night forever, and I was stuck there, wandering the cold streets, and at some point Fugie would sneak away from me (like I was infectious or something) and then I really was going to be alone forever. I was now one of those filthy, stinking homeless people wandering around and looking like they don’t really see what’s in front of them but something else, trapped in some strange dark world.
I told Fugie the only way out was for me to kill myself. I thought I had a knife in my hand, I tried to stab myself in the neck but obviously there was nothing there. No Man’s Land—I suddenly knew what that meant—that’s where I was, forever, I couldn’t even kill myself to escape. And when that really sank in, how irrevocably I had fucked myself—not just for the rest of my life, but actually forever, eternity—I thought, well, nothing matters.
I didn’t need clothes anymore, so I took them all off, buck naked. It was just a matter of time before Fugie snuck away, he started laughing at me, so I ran off. I saw the dorms and I ran out into the street, I didn’t even see the car coming at me because all the lights were dancing around, but they slammed on their breaks just in time I guess. I still sort of bounced off the hood and went skidding across the street on my knees, tore them all up really bad but I didn’t even feel it, and then I jumped up and dashed off through the dorms. Fugie was gone, I was lost, and by this time I was getting cold and running out of gas, so I sat down on the ground.
It occurred to me, slowly, that this was just an acid trip, that it wasn’t a permanent thing after all—I must have started coming down a bit—and someone called to me from a window, “Hey, dude, bad trip? Stay there.” I was still pretty off my head, so when the cops came, I went streaking across a lawn, and they tackled me and put me in handcuffs. They had my clothes—I guess they talked to Fugie at some point, and he had picked up my clothes, so they helped me get back into my pants and shirt and boots.
They drove me down to Highland Hospital in Oakland, they strapped me to a gurney in the emergency room, gave me a tetanus shot, and that was it. A few hours later, some psychiatrist came in to ask me some questions because I had threatened to kill myself (Fugie told them.) I said that was just because I was tripping my ass off. They gave me bus fare back to Berkeley (turns out Fugie kept my wallet so I wouldn’t lose it) and I got back to my dorm just as the sun came up. I took a shower and cleaned up my knees, some really bad road rash, and just hid under the covers all Saturday.
Fugie came by later that afternoon to check on me, he said they were really freaked out about what happened. I asked him why he didn’t talk me down, when I was saying I was stuck forever, why he didn’t explain to me it was just an acid trip and it would end, and he said he started to believe the things I was saying, that he was afraid I was right and he was going to be stuck like me. So much for taking acid with someone you trust. You should see the scabs on my knees, totally gross!
Anyway, I guess I just wanted to tell you to be super careful if you do acid at some point. Do it with someone you really trust, like, not a Fugie.
Write back soon,
Lamb
♣ ♣ ♣
Esteemed Readers:
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THREAD: “What we talk about when we talk about ‘Song of Myself’”
SoM, v. 7 | “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.” | AUDIO
This was a fantastic description of a bad trip, Troy! (Not that I would know anything about such things...)
I especially liked these two lines:
“it all felt … chewy?”
“I don’t know what we were listening to, but it was like music was invented to swallow me up”
Wonderful stuff!
Also, congratulations on getting your piece published! That’s awesome :)
Oh, sweet Lamb. Having had my fair share of horrific hallucinogenic experiences this only served to deepen my love for him. That sense of 'this is it, this is my permanent state' is so nauseating--it's a wonder I went back so consistently! Thank you, Troy. I really do cherish every snippet of Lamb's life.