Johnny’s end-of-summer party was one of those wild, manic affairs that you hear about or see in films, but seldom experience for real. There were copious amounts of beer, cider and cheap wine, and everybody got totally sloshed. But there was also loads of dope around, with the different cliques smoking a cross-sectional variety of gear, which they’d obtained independently. A crop-headed Californian guy was giving shotguns of Columbian grass in the kitchen. Two girls from graphics were sharing some extra potent African grass, procured through relatives staying over there. I had my good red Leb, scored in Cardiff, which I hadn’t yet exhausted as I’d been too busy working. And there was the usual circulation of standard joints and the odd pipe.
At one point almost everybody was dancing in the middle of the large lounge, furniture pushed back to the walls, the highlight being a mass freakout to Deep Purple’s Black Night, which was considered retro even then. I positioned myself in front of a crazy chick with long blonde hair, admiring the way her tits swung to the music inside her skimpy vest and how she waved her hands above her head to reveal luxuriant unshaven armpits. Later I got her in a corner and had a snog and a grope, but shortly afterwards she disappeared, much to my consternation.
Both Henry and Sean were there, and as things boiled to a climax, we indulged in a orgy of hugging and backslapping, celebrating the end of an era and wishing each other well for the future. All three of us would now be in separate locations, away from Plymouth, and we made promises of reciprocal visits and conjectured great times ahead. We were all very smashed and I lost track of my two friends after that — I think they must have gone home. I wandered around in a daze, eventually coming upon Patrick, a guy I knew slightly from other parties, who was sitting in a corner with a hash pipe.
Patrick showed me something I’d heard about but never seen before — THC oil. It was a viscous, tacky coal-black liquid contained in a small glass vial. Tetrahydrocannibinol is the active ingredient of dope and grass, and the extracted pure form of the drug is, naturally, a quantum leap up in strength. Patrick confirmed it was dynamite and invited me to try some. The pipe contained ordinary tobacco and Patrick added a few drops of the oil, letting it soak in. After lighting up, he passed it to me and I took a deep toke. It was a heavy smoke and though I was already combination drunk and stoned, I felt its effects cut through that fuzzy layer, adding something remarkable on top.
The oil was much more visual, trippier than regular dope — a lot like acid, in fact. People around me began to look like showroom dummies or characters in a waxworks, their actions strangely mechanical, puppet-like. Sound became unnaturally amplified, with all the talk, laughter and music in the room assembling into an oppressive cacophony. Feeling unsettled, I chatted to Patrick for a while, then I decided I needed some fresh air, so I said my goodbyes and staggered out into the street.
Presently I came upon Crownhill shopping centre, which was deserted and seemed unreal in the theatrical glow of its amber street lighting. It could be a film set, perhaps, and I could be an actor — Gene Kelly in a psychedelic version of Singin’ in the Rain… Yes, the scene reminded me of the set where Kelly does his famous routine with an umbrella in the rain...but I didn’t have an umbrella and it wasn’t raining…
What I did have, however, was a lot of noise inside my head — party noise, circus noise, whooping and squealing, firecrackers, whistles and hooters. There were cartoon voices going Whey-hey-hey! and Zabberdabberdooo! I cast the owners of the voices as clowns in the developing movie in my head. They smiled and laughed and made joky faces, but there was a mocking edge to their behaviour that threatened they could turn more serious and bullying by degrees. The very fact that the clowns ‘existed’ at all was troublesome. I felt the same kind of fear-of-the-bogeyman unease as I had as a very young child.
I turned right into Fort Austin Avenue, which left me a straight two-mile walk back home. The movie continued, becoming regulated to the pace of my footsteps as I put on a spurt. Presently I realised that I’d fallen into a dialogue with the clown voices, which had in turn resolved themselves into a single more integrated ‘entity’. The ‘talk’ was of that typically delirious, tail-chasing kind, endlessly going around in circles and spirals…
What are we doing? What are you saying? What game are we playing? I don’t know. Neither do I. Who are you anyway? I am me. And you are you. And two and two. And up yours too…
Soon I reached the junction where I turned off the main road and entered the Eggbuckland estate. From this point there was a superb view across Leigham to the higher moors beyond the Plym Woods. I paused to look at the various groups of twinkling lights, denoting farms and villages, stretching out into the distance like star clusters.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said the voice.
‘Can’t deny that,’ I replied.
‘Why would you want to deny it?’
‘Why am I talking to you?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Hmmn… I can see this is the start of something.’
‘It’s already started, boy, and you’re in it up to your neck! Ha, ha, ha…’
It was the same pattern as before with the clowns, but now it had gone a stage further. Whatever I thought or did now, this emergent character would chuck it back at me with a comedic spin, always hovering on the edge of nastiness. Even if I tried to ignore him, he would throw that back at me too.
‘Go away.’
‘Make me, Rog.’
‘Look, you are nothing more than a projection of my own thoughts, which have gone a little haywire ’cause I’ve taken too many drugs.’
‘I’m more than that, Rog, and you know it.’
And even as I was trying to deny his existence, I was forming an embodiment for him, a product of the collective unconscious and my own idiosyncrasies of programming and selection. ‘The Man’ was neither short nor tall. His face was pale chalky blue, long in the chin, bright-eyed and perpetually smiling in a leery sinister way. The hair was swept back from a sharp widow’s peak to rest high and dome-like on his head. It was greying at the temples, but mixed in with the grey were luminescent streaks of red, purple and green, all converging into horn-like wisps on top. He wore Edwardian evening dress — tailed coat, wing collar and cape — but his suit was made from some strange iridescent snakeskin-like fabric, and his bow tie was illuminated from within, strobing various bright colours and patterns in an intricate light show. As he talked, he waved his hands, which were white gloved like a magician’s.
‘Who are you anyway?’ I said.
‘I represent the Department of Dope,’ The Man said, smiling. ‘Pretty soon I hope to be promoted to the Department of Acid… Ha, ha, ha...’
‘I know who you remind me of…’
It was the Joker as played by Caesar Romero in the Batman TV series, with a touch of Frank Gorshin’s Riddler thrown in for good measure.
‘Yes, you’ve really started something here, Roger…’ He elongated my name in a suggestive, over-familiar kind of way that I didn’t like.
‘What will it lead to…?’
The Man laughed long and loud. ‘Well, that really is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it, baby? Stay tuned and you’ll find out. Roger and out! Ha, ha, ha… Ha, ha, ha…’
‘Oh, go away.’
‘Hey, Rog, I think you and I can be friends. How about it?’
‘But you don’t exist. How can I be friends with someone who isn’t there?’
‘Well, you’re talking to someone who isn’t there, Roger. And you know what that makes you? A lunatic. A completely decorticated headcase. A schizophrenic…’
The word ‘schizophrenic’ caused a spasm of real fear to go through me. Hearing voices, experiencing unreal beings who controlled you, that’s what madness was about, wasn’t it? But I knew this was all unreal, so I couldn’t be mad. Besides, it was drug induced, not naturally occurring. That thought comforted me — eventually the dope would wear off.
‘Any moment now...any moment you’re going to do something stupid. Now — Bite off your tongue!’
The moment I succeeded in calming myself, he became more aggressive. There was a dreadful logic to it all. I decided I didn’t want to play this game anymore.
‘Go on, do it — now! Ha, ha, ha. Only joking, Rog, baby. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Temper, temper… Come on now, you and can be friends. We really can…’
‘I’m tired of this.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Paranoiaaahh…! Schizophreeniaaahhh…! Ha, ha, ha... For your next trick, you will throw yourself under a passing car… Ha, ha, ha...’
By the time I got near our house, The Man was losing his grip and the sense of having a dialogue was fading. The word streams became less threatening, more circular and tautological like it was with the clown voices at the beginning of this episode. Finally he could be pressed back down like a jack-in-the-box and the lid fastened firmly on top of him. Thank Christ for that! I thought as I let myself in quietly at around three in the morning. I wasn’t going insane — it was just the drugs after all.
That THC oil was indeed different to ordinary dope. It was more than a question of pure strength; there was a pharmacologically elevated element about the stuff, similar in nature to acid. It was something of which I’d be careful in future, I concluded. But I wasn’t too worried. As a druggy of increasing experience, I was getting used to these wobbly moments, learning they were an ongoing hazard that one had to take in one’s stride. The trick was to keep cool, if possible, and not give in to the fear and soon the thing would pass…
It was simple really...wasn’t it?