Spin

Its Tim’s twenty third birthday. We’re at a bon fire at his girlfriends house somewhere next to a tall bridge in Indiana. Tim’s girlfriend family is there, they wear mustaches and shirts with tour dates on the back. They look at Tim strange, they don’t look at me at all. They’re nice enough, except for the fact they drink Samuel Adams. Tim’s friends are there, I know a few. We sit in the kitchen and talk. About Tim mostly, about the time he walked through a glass door. We talk about he got to drunk and threw up in Kyle’s car and used his dirty sock to clean the chunks off of his mouth. When Normet brings up the night Tim stole a cake from Diary Queen and in the semi epic chase with an employee, he trips over a curb and falls. Ruining the cake and skinning his chin. Tim’s a klutz, gauche in every aspect, he has become one of my dearest friends. The lovable loser, he lives in his mom’s basement. His walls plastered with video game magazine covers, he has maps to places that don’t exist. He jokes about ending his life, but I don’t think he’s joking all the time.



Tim’s girlfriend’s gay Uncle’s boyfriend made Tim a cake. Its shaped like sonic the hedgehog, Tim’s favorite video game character. We sing happy birthday, Tim blows out the candles and cracks a sheepish half smile. Sincerity incarnate. We dig in, the frosting is delicious. I sit back down at the kitchen table with my slice of cake and my fourth beer of the night. It’s weird, beer and birthday cake, not the taste, just the sentiment. Birthday cake are innocent, a remnant of a simpler time. And beer gives me headaches and makes me buy lottery tickets. There are a few little kids their, Tim’s Girlfriends cousins, they look at me while I eat. Their eyes are innocent but level, waiting to follow or judge. I laugh and open my mouth as wide as I can, showing them the half chewed birthday cake mush, all blue and green and gross. They giggle, kids love stupid shit like that.

We get kicked out the kitchen so we sit around the fire. Tim’s Girlfriend said I could have some of their vodka, but I took more than I should. I’m pretty drunk and Brian is talking about ACEN. The annual Anime and Comic Convention. He tells me about how they have a rave going on out in some Hilton hotel in Palatine, Illinois. The only time I’ve been to a comic book convention was when I was seven, I have no solid, reliable memory of that day but I do remember a man dressed as wolverine and giant Ren from “Ren and Stimpy.”
“It was trippy.” I mutter. Looking as the fire eats the woods. Fire pits are a lot like being drunk, you never want to burn out.
“Haha, its interesting you say that.” Brian says while he digs in his coat pockets. He tells me to open my hand, I peer at him, and then lean over and outstretch my hand., open my sweaty palms and Brian plants a bag in my hand. The bag is full of fungus. Mushrooms.
“You don’t put these on pizza. Do you?” I joke. Its hard to say if the smile I wear is because of the mushrooms or because after 7 beers and three shots I right on top of the happy drunk that has sailed and sank many a ship.
Brian says he’ll sell me half and he’ll pay for parking if I convince Tim to drive of to ACEN. This proposal sends my baked brain into thought. The concept of being drunk and tripping amongst a bouquet of people dressed like Super Mario and Darth Maul and Goku and all types of other freaky character excited me.

Back in the Kitchen Tim sits with his girlfriend, holding hands across the table. She is good for him. Tim is introverted, gullible, near sighted and unemployed. He has deep anxiety and is in all God fearing, Flag flying honesty, a terrible candidate for mushrooms. The fungus can spin your head, hard. And to a guy with a thought pattern like Tim’s a 48 hour head spin surrounded by people in costumes carrying fake swords isn’t the ideal atmosphere. Soon it becomes a question of ethics, with enough pressure Tim will do just about anything, hell a few hours before I convinced him to jump over the fire pit. The trip would be new to Tim, he’d never ate mushrooms but had been wanting to for awhile, I knew how intense it could be. Sinking feelings, shrinking feelings, paranoid feelings, feelings of scales and rats and people with no faces. It can get scary, it can really spin your head. But sometime a good head spin is what we need, because when (if) our heads settle, the world will seem a bit smaller, and we will seem a bit bigger.


Tim’s Girlfriend’s Gay Uncle’s Boyfriend has had too much to drink and he’s now sitting Indian style in the grass sniffling, crying a little. The two had got into a spat, a shouting match. I’ve often when arguments between to men should turn physical, there is only so much verbal abuse pride will allow. But I suppose between lovers the line is a bit further. Once I was seeing this girl and during one of our weekly arguments she threw shoes and a can of axe body spray at my head. After that she charged my, bawling her eyes out screaming an incoherent frenzy of swears and threats. She wailed on my face for awhile and yanked my hair. I was scared. Eventually I had enough and threw her on the ground, she said I had hurt her back, I said she busted my lip. We made sweaty love. I am glad I don’t talk to her any longer.



At around 12 am we are on the highway too the anime convention. We all ate the shrooms and the trip was starting to manifest in are actions. I feel bad for dragging Tim away from his own party but I figure his girlfriends always around and ACEN only comes once every year. Tim drove and Brian was in the passenger seat, I was laid out in back. Out of my peripheral I see the clouds darking to an almost green tint, but when ever I would look directly at them, they’d clumsily morph back into the deep grey the night sky permitted, like a child pretending to sleep. Yeah, it wouldn’t be long to the drugs kicked in, and we freaked out. I ask Brian how he got the money for the fungus and the parking voucher. He tells me he works. I ask where.
“At a rehabilitation clinic by cook county jail.”
“That sounds hella interesting.” I say, still trying to catch the green clouds.
“Yeah, he has all types of crazy stories, the craziest stuff happens there right, Brian.” Tims voice is in a higher pitch, jovial. He’s trippin, but his driving isn’t affected which was one of my main concerns. Granted on these long stretches of Midwest road there aren’t many cars driving this late. Brian tells me a story about how he works sanitation at the clinic. Mopping, cleaning windows, changing bed pans. He tells me about funny patients with eye patches and lisps. He tells me about how he walked in on a man in a wheel chair getting oral sex from a nurse. He has good delivery I think, He’s make a fine comedian.
“You know what the most fucked up thing about my job is?” Brian asks sincerely. “Taking the bus back home, I work by cook county jail and a lot of former inmates and shit take the bus with me. They be trying to look all hard and shit, but I sit back and think, damn, I wonder how many of these niggas got fucked in the butt.” I laugh hard, but the though of buttsex on mushroom makes me queasy so I cut the laugh short and close my eyes.



Driving up I can tell we are close by the amount of weird people I see, cosplayers they are called. For those of you who don’t know, cosplayers are people who dress in costumes resembling a fictional cartoon character. I see light sabers and platform boots and helmets. There are demons and giant scorpions and men with wings and women’s with whiskers in high cut skirts. Tim is looking out the window and smiling, seeing Tim happy makes me innately happy. Soon our happiness shifts gear into panic because Tim drives straight into one of those flashing lights on those wooden structures. Cracks the window, a nasty spider web crack. Brian is laughing, I pat Tim on the back and say at least we made it. He sighs. We park.



Inside the lobby of one of the many hotels sponsoring the event I’m tripping and making a scene.
“Ok, I get it. It’s pretend I know. But listen, please could you find it. Find it in your heart to just TELL me that, that head isn’t real.”
‘Dude, you know it isn’t real.”
“Yes, yes I realize but I need you too say it. I know dude, its weird but, trust me, I need you to say that the head isn’t real.”
“Why would they even let me in if it was a real head?” He’s chuckling, but this isn’t funny. On mushrooms reality is warped. You’re unstable, and nothing helps more than validation. At that moment. I need this man to tell me that the bloody, severed rubber head wasn’t real. But he would not, and I began to spiral into insanity .
“Kratos, listen man, I’m not joking ok? You need to tell me that head is fake.”
“Whatever man, you’re creepy me out.” He walks off. Clutching his fake swords tight, just in case I lunge after him, which I’m not sure I won’t.
“Fuck you, you dirty dick eating fish fucking son of a bitch.” I point to him violently. Then I notice my yelling attracted the attention of about 100 costumes adolescents, their eyes were burning me. I ran off, I pass a man dressed like Chewbacca holding a girls hand. The girl has a impressive chest.




Tim and Brian come tumbling toward me as I sit outside smoking a cigarette Tim asks can he get one but I tell him I gave my last smoke to the man with the top hat wearing the trench coat with glowing lights. No body knows if I’m lying or not. We barter our way into acquiring three VIP passes. These passes get you into the rave. And that exactly wear we go. We dance for a little bit. Brian runs into some friends and they offer use glow in the dark body art, me and Tim declined but Brian rips his shirt off and begins having everybody write on him. The rave becomes hot and menacing so I exit.

I meet a girl from Kentucky. She is dressed as Mugen from Samurai Shamploo, says her names Christine.
“This your first ACEN?” She looks over to me, and right into my dilated eyes.
“Yeah, this is pretty amazing. I’ve always wanted to go to one. Happy I finally made it out. This is refreshing.”
“Refreshing?” She takes I sip from a water bottle that I’m almost positive isn’t full of water. There were a lot of drunk nerds out that night. I had a conversation with a valet and he told me the police had been called 3 times in the last day.
“Yeah its like. People are here. For this. No, no ulterior motives. Just here, for this.” I shake my head and beat myself up for claiming myself a writer and fumbling with words.
“Everyone is hear to bond man, its all good fun.” She smiles like a millionaire. Her hair moves, it’s the mushrooms making me see that thou, there is no wind this late at night.



i'll finish it, i promise