Chapter 4
Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, I turn quickly into the room filled with red light- turned out it was a hallway. The smoke seemed thick, but was easy to breathe, I think it was a combination of black light and red light that gave this smoke an eerie lingering feeling but it was all just the lights, it was almost fun to play within your hand- I stopped for a second to twirl the smoke around my hand. It was thick, but I was unsure if it was just my mind playing visual tricks on me.
The long hallway with doorless rooms to the left and right of the hallway. I walked down the hall slowly and peaked into a room. It was just people sitting on floor pillows smoking hookah- seeing such a calm sight I was instantly relieved. It’s just some private room stuff, I’d seen stuff like this at other venues, it’s like for performers to get ready in and when they aren’t used for that they are rented as private clubrooms.
One of the men who saw me peeking in waves toward me to come in. Older guy I think. I sneak in next to him, tiptoeing over the 7 or 8 relaxed bodies that lay around the hookah. I try to find a comfortable spot to sit in, my head spinning from the drugs.
“Not from around here huh?” he says, passing me a rhinestone nozzle, grizzled smirk across his face. He had a smirk like he was missing a few teeth, though I couldn’t really tell.
“Nah, I’ve seen things like this but never joined,” I said, lifting my mask up to welcome in some sheesha. The sweet smoke filled my lungs and exhaled as though it was air, a nice nicotine rush went right to my head. The psychedelics hadn’t kicked in yet. I looked to the man, seeing his old tanned face smirking, his white and grey whiskers twirling around the shape of his head. “You do these things often? Hey you know what I’m looking for somebody, maybe wonder if you might have seen them…”
“I feel like all I do is linger in dens like these- who are you looking for?”
“This guy named Michael (Ryan)- he’s been gone a few days, I think I found his clothes upstairs, I think he might be here- and this chic, she has short greasy black hair, flat-chested… nose piercing like you know in the middle” I clamp at my nose to try to demonstrate the piercing I was talking about “She’s real baby faced”.
“Your friend- I bet he’s in one of these rooms then. This stuff can be quite addicting, and you can lose a real stretch of time smoking it.”
I look at the nozzle exhaling out another small cloud of smoke and decide to pass the nozzle back to the man. “Oh yeah? What about the girl?”
“Lots of lookers down below- best stay focused on your friend yeah? Hate to forget about him over a face.”
“Yeah, man- hey thanks… I’m gonna keep looking around” I say as I stand up, slip my mask back on, and tiptoe through the crowd of dozy smokers.
Leaving the room I notice a door at the end of the hallway I hadn’t seen before, no light at all on the other side. It sent a chill down my spine, but I decided to glance through the rooms at first for Ryan. Without a doubt, I found him in a room just two doors down, sitting shirtless in a stupor twirling around in his own head.
I crouch down next to him and be like “Hey, it’s time to go, man, we gotta get going. C’mon, get up” I pull him up, and he starts murmuring to me “Oh man, it’s such a trip, I’m swimming” as his body goes half limp. “I heard his name” he murmurs “I heard his name man” I pull him up to my shoulder, and drag him across the legs of a few of the smokers into the hallway. Steadying his legs I try to get him to hold more of his body weight because I am not as strong as I should be for a man my age.
I pull him toward the stairway up, and we start clamming up.
“Oh my god,” Christie exclaims, hearing us, “I thought it was security coming to take you out of here! Who do you got there?”
I pull Ryan all the way up the stairs with a thanks for the help to look on my face as I sit Ryan up and help him get his shirt back on. I guess the pants weren’t his. I go back to the trash bag but I can’t find him any socks or shoes or anything like that to wear.
“This is the Michael I was looking for… they got him drugged up or something…” I say watching Ryan be unable to keep his head up for more than a second, he keeps dropping in and out of being awake. It’s actually not too rare a sight to see when you mix drugs in just a bad time and place.
“Looks bad,” she says behind my shoulder
“Hey will you pop off your heels and help me climb him out to the curb? I’ll uber him home” I comment as I try to pull Ryan back up to his feet. Damn, she didn’t care. She’s rolling and wants to dance. Aw shit, I’ve lost my chance to grind against her as we move to this drum and bass.
She puts her heels in her hand and helps me carry Michael up out of the club (two more fricken flights of stairs) and I wait outside for an uber to come take us back to his place. I’m worried an Uber wouldn’t want to touch us with him bobbing his head around the way it is.
“Hey Ryan, you awake man? What year is it?” I ask, trying to straighten his head a bit.
“It’s so weird man… it’s like” I see him finally starting to stay straight up and stable”. It’s like I learned something and every time I remember it I fall asleep instead of knowing it. Have you ever felt a thing like that?”
I feel a little bent as is, and have to say to him “Nah man I’ve never felt anything like that. Gotta admit though that’s what all this drug nonsense is about? Finding some new truths? Let’s get you home and let’s write down what you are feeling”.
The night sky seems to bend further and further away until a car pulls up and asks me if I’m waiting for him. I wish I had taken a bad with me when I left, as I carried the gold mask up with me- I noticed I had been getting sweaty, uncomfortably warm from the exercise, and what I was wearing. I wonder if I could slip out of Ryan’s clothes before he noticed I was wearing his under the extra-large black hoodie.
—
Ryan passes out when we get back to his house. I was worried about him OD’ing with how hard it was to keep him awake, but it was hard to really watch him because it was so boring. I try for a little bit and end up goofing off on my phone.
I looked up Christie on Instagram and her name is Christine so that was pretty close. I was tempted to message her something but decided I would rather just be left alone to whatever she would write back. She wasn’t the brightest and seemed to get mad easily, which is a bad combination as she’d always be getting upset and she wouldn’t understand why she shouldn’t be after you explained it to her.
I end up passing out listening to YouTube videos on my phone.
The next morning we talk about our experiences the day before. Ryan explained what happened:
“Look, pretty simple, less interesting than you’d think it to be.
Out at the club night, and you know, feeling the walls, mixing the drinks, was a good time.
I get invited downstairs, and then downstairs again, and man, I am frying. I mean frying hard. People are passing me this pipe shit until like 8 am the next day, and it’s keeping my level strong. And at some point, in the smoke, I pass out.
I have this dream, where I meet a smoke demon, and he introduces himself to me in the room of smoke. His name is the story of his whole life, from start to finish, said in an instant but stretched out in a dream. From that moment, if I remember his name, I fall asleep. I can half get out of it but not really. And it’s such a trip to be able to knock myself out like that- so for basically a day, I was trying to force myself to just get the name right in my head and falling back to sleep. It was like a trap, there was no escaping it.
