After brushing my teeth, I filled a glass with tap water and stared myself in the mirror for too long, the pink Lithium tablet in my palm.
I didn't want to half-live my life wrapped in cotton anymore, and the pill knew this. So it warned me, like an impatient nurse:
LITHIUM: Doctor Arnold already explained to you the dangers of quitting cold turkey. "Elevated risk of stroke" is written right on the pharmacy label!
I looked at myself in my toothpaste-splattered mirror – crooked eyes, double chin, jangle of bottom-row teeth, a broken child – and twisted open the child-proof bottle, dropped the pill back in with its siblings.
++++
Over Sanka and microwaved eggs, Grant named our impending holy adventure "Escape Velocity" and it began to breathe and make its own decisions. With a long weekend coming up, we could both play a few days of hooky on either side without losing his job or flunking out of my classes. We were both playing this game on "Fuck It" mode.
Grant left and crossed the parking lot to the gas station, coming back with a pack of Camel Lights:
GRANT [lighting two and passing me one]: We don't have money to fly anywhere, and it takes a long time to drive out of Florida.
ME: Isn't the whole point of this adventure that it’s “into the unknown”..?
He looked at me like I was a silly child and tapped two fingers over his heart:
GRANT: The uncharted territory is here. Besides, how well do you know the Panhandle?
ME: I’ve been as far as Jacksonville. Once.
GRANT: You can't just fart around without a destination. Otherwise you're just asking for it.
ME: What is "it"...?
He hissed back "WHAT IS IT?” imitating Mike Patton from Faith No More's "Epic." We'd seen them live together three times. Grant got up, slapped his scratched CD in the tray and we metal-rapped together around the living room until we were fully-awake and sweating.
I made us more coffee, milk and three sugars. Grant stared into his mug, hypnotized by billowing clouds of 2%, and had an idea:
GRANT: Let's go see Beau.
ME: From high school? He's up in Gainesville, right?
GRANT: He is. I visited him there before I left for Ethpaña.
++++
I'd known Beau before I met Grant, from our school's art department. We never took any classes together, but for three years we both held dedicated spaces in the semi-private studio lofts that overlooked the common art room. We were always there, self-absorbed in drawing and painting whenever we weren’t in class. But Beau was also on Grant's champion Chess Team; they'd been friends since fourth grade. When Grant heard my “Canterbury Cannibal” story and invited me to eat lunch with the Chess Team, Beau was the only other face I knew at that table.
The son of well-known local ceramicists, he was laid-back and mysterious, cool without trying: Beau knew who he was and didn't care what you thought of him. That kind of confidence was the antithesis of the nerve-jangled insecurity I was raised around; I berated myself for every fumbled social interaction for months/years/decades, fired judgmental bullets at myself from every reflective surface.
Even though we were "high school buddies" going on six years, Beau and I never had spent time together to actually get to know each other. Until that trip to Gainesville.
++++
On the back of a pizza delivery menu slipped under our door the night before, I started a list of supplies for the roadtrip: peanut butter, granola bars, carton of cigarettes, extra lighters, rolling papers, graham crackers...
GRANT [looking over my shoulder]: "Graham crackers"...? [takes pen away] You just want to what... smoke weed and pig out on junk food? You can do that here, why not just stay home?
He tore the pizza menu up, let coupon confetti fall all over the kitchen floor where it would remain until we returned from our adventure, battered.
GRANT: Top of list? More Red Bird acid tabs.
ME: Wait, what?
GRANT: The plan is to find unfamiliar ground where you can crack yourself open and release your infection.
ME: Yes, but I'm worried about... drug interactions, and--
He glared at me and I stopped talking. We'd never defined "Escape Velocity" as specifically an LSD outing. I still wasn't sure I could handle that or even wanted to try to; I'd never taken any psychedelic before. Of course I wanted to break free of this heaviness, to return to my body, become a stronger, purer version of myself.
Like Grant had done months ago.
With all that acid. Shit.
ME: Let me go ask Chuck if he has any more Red Birds.
++++
It was just after 9am when I rapped on Chuck and Parrish's door, three down from ours. Someone inside called out:
SOMEONE: It's not locked!
My entrance was met with childish cheers and slow applause, a guest star on their stoner sitcom:
CHUCK: Dan the Man! How you living, brother?
Inside, Chuck and Eddie were curled up on separate futons, watching 1930s Silly Symphonies cartoons on their TV/VCR combo. Cartoon violins with legs and shoes leapt through fields of flowers that were also saxophones with arms and legs, playing themselves, playing each other. Eddie skootched over to make space for my ass, passed me the lit joint hanging off his lip.
ME [looking around]: Where's Parrish?
EDDIE: Cogendo una chica en su cuarto. [Fucking a girl in his room.]
On the other side of Parrish's door, a young woman grunted and came loudly like a charging Valkyrie. Chuck and Eddie rolled their eyes and giggled.
CHUCK: He met her last night at the Dairy Queen.
Chuck blew his wavy blonde locks off his face; he was small-town America nice, down-to-earth. I dreamt of walking through the world in his open-toed Teva sandals, carefree, unlocking hearts with his chill vibes and kindness. Deep in my frozen heart, a crustacean breathed tiny bubbles into cold mud, waiting.
++++
At the time, I had no idea what it took to become Chuck. But months after everything had blown apart and I was left alone to pick up the pieces, Chuck offered to help me move out of the apartment. Clean-up and disposal took three days and since I was still in quasi-shock, he filled the silence by opening up to me.
He told about being an "ex-fatty," how growing up he weighed nearly three hundred pounds, how he’d lost that weight the summer before college by eating nothing but hard-boiled eggs, how his baggy Phish tie-dye and muslin yoga pants hid flaps of extra skin, how back home he was molested for years by an uncle who he still had to sit across from at holiday dinners because no one in the family believed him.
When my move was complete and I had my own new studio apartment to unpack, I took Chuck out for full-veg Indian food, both our favorites. It took him seeing my open wounds and showing me his own as we boxed up my CDs and books and vintage toys, scrubbed bathrooms and floors, for us to see each other for the first time.
But that was still a ways down the road.
+++++
Parrish walked out of his bedroom, the Dairy Queen girl still inside. He was sweaty, sticky, nodded to us and went to the bathroom to clean himself. When all eyes returned to me, it was time to get down to business:
ME: So, Grant and I are heading out soon on a road trip. Up north, probably to Gainesville..?
EDDIE: Vete a Nueva Orleans, Danny. Es una locura allí. [Go to New Orleans, Danny. It’s crazy.]
Eddie lived on Chuck and Parrish’s couch for a year already without speaking English – and neither of them spoke Spanish – but somehow everyone understood each other just fine.
ME: New Orleans? Maybe. [to business] Grant asked me to check if you had any of those Red Bird tabs left?
Chuck's ears instantly reddened; maybe I’d hurt his feelings, my neighborly surprise visit just a hopeful drug deal.
CHUCK: Sorry, man. Jackie and I stopped seeing each other a while back. Wait, weren't you here that night? When she kicked in our TV? I swear you were here that night, brother.
Another memory I couldn't access – thanks Lithium – but I actually was there.
With no Red Birds to cop, Grant and I still needed to hit the road... but Chuck leapt up and went to his fridge, came back with a baking tray of very lumpy brownies dusted with less than a tablespoon rainbow sprinkles:
CHUCK: Take these spacecakes, I made too many! Watch out though; they creep up on you.
ME: The whole tray? How much do you–
CHUCK [waving away money talk]: Nah brother, take 'em and have a blast. If they're in the fridge, I'm just gonna eat them all... I'm trying to watch my figure.
He folded me up in a hug, wished me safe travels, a happy 21st birthday. Standing there with an armload of free pot brownies, I was a taker of kindness, a transactional goblin.
++++
GRANT: Damn. What took you so long?
ME: Chuck didn't have any more Red Birds, but he gave us these.
I held up the tray.
GRANT [not impressed]: So, I just talked to Beau. He's on break too. He says to just come on up; he has plenty of connections up there.
I nodded and went to my room to pack. In the pit of my stomach, I wondered if "Escape Velocity" would be less road, more trip. I definitely wanted to shed this old, slimy skin of mine, but Grant was acting almost priestly, like he was called on to purify me by fire. Probably himself in the process too.
++++
We threw supplies into our backpacks: mine held clean underwear and socks, toiletries, a few t-shirts, snacks. Grant brought condoms, a Swiss Army knife, two lighters, his second novel notebook, a bundle of pens secured with a rubber band.
In the kitchen, I double-wrapped our spacecakes tray in aluminium foil but the weed still reeked from a mile away.
ME: Let’s keep these bad boys in the trunk.
GRANT: Good thinking. Police can't open your trunk without probable cause. [looking around] Are we ready?
I thought for a moment, realized I'd forgotten something to write in. Handing off the spacecakes, I went back to my bedroom and grabbed a pocket-sized spiral notepad with “FILM NOTES” written on the front, stuffed it into my front pocket. At the beginning of the year, I'd bought this pad to work on a passion project but it was May and the pad was still blank inside.
Looking back towards the living room, I felt a skritch-skritch behind my left eye, a microscopic claw dragging through nerve and tissue on the inside of my skull. The skritch was coming from my bathroom, from the medicine cabinet, behind the mirror.
PILLS [muffled]: Daniel. Don’t do this, Daniel.
My mind flashed inside the mirror, showing me the bottle’s label.
PILLS [muffled]: Risk of stroke, Daniel.
My mouth filled with watery saliva that I spit into the sink.
ME: Fuck you.
I swallowed hard, understanding the consequences, but doubt skittered beneath me on tiny insect legs, scratching and chittering closer and louder until it surfaced: a twitching pair of long brown antennae from the sink drain, tapping metal and porcelain, testing the air for danger.
It was the largest palmetto bug – a flying Florida cockroach – I'd ever seen, its head peering up out of the sink’s drain like a gopher, locking its compound eyes with me, unfolding sets of legs slowly as it assessed the threat level.
Before I could even leap back, it climbed completely out, its oval body the size of a duck egg. And I knew: I’d brought this forth, called it with my energy, up from depths literal and metaphorical, through pipes and through emotions to remind me of my broken old shit.
The idea of going out into the world without my chemical cushion, to try and fail and prove my doubts were right all along, to confront my demons only to realize at the last moment before they devour me that I never had a chance.
Under the cabinet was half a can of Raid aerosol spray, specifically the roach-killer formula. As the palmetto bug skittered up the side of the sink, ringing its way around the faucet, I uncapped the can and silently shook the poison inside.
The roach stood on the end of the faucet like a gargoyle, bracing itself on two pairs of hairy brown legs, its top two bent at angular elbows like arms. Mandibles quivering, antennae twitching, it was alive, had lived, was not afraid. It defied me.
If it was a messenger I’d called forth and needed to heed, was it a four-dimensional angel trying to save me from a fatal future drug interaction... or was it a devil tricking me back down into the cottony prison of a sexless, peakless existence. Slowly my arm rose, finger ready on the spray cap. Only its antennae moved as we breathed together, we watched each other in silence. I felt the wordless vibration of its concern, but still didn’t know its reason for meeting me here in this particular moment.
What I did know was that I refused to go backwards, even if forwards meant an early grave. The insect caught my attack pheromones a second too late, starting to skitter a split second before I sprayed it with Raid. It didn’t get far, oily clear poison coating its exoskeleton, seeping into the holes that it breathed through, and I heard the insect vocalize. I heard it scream.
High pitched, fully conscious of meeting its own end, it tensed up and slid from the top of the faucet with a smear, hanging down beneath it by just two legs that ended with tiny hooked feet. Its other legs pulsed outward, feeling out for anything, oxygen, its mother, its Cockroach God. Barely-visible foam bubbling up from its chitin armor as it asphyxiated on Raid in open air.
My blood turned to lead. I felt I’d murdered an emissary, something repulsive but natural and innocent, for wanting to stay alive. Tears filled my eyes as I leaned in to observe its passing. I felt I owed it that respect. I'd taken its life, for more reason than most humans kill one of its kind, but this was my conscious choice: whatever the message it brought up from the sewer pipes to deliver that I could not understand, I would not return to that pill bottle.
After its scream faded, the bug’s carapace opened and it spread its thick-veined wings, flapping them in vain against the faucet, unable to make liftoff. Loosened, it dropped from the faucet onto its back in the sink, bubbling chemicals, and died. I could feel it go.
I lit the scented candle on the tank of my toilet and closed my eyes, apologizing for taking its life, wishing it a safe passage. When I opened my eyes, Grant was staring back at me in the mirror.
GRANT [eyes flicking between me and cockroach]: What the fuck are you doing, man?
I turned my back on the corpse, the candle, the Lithium, and we hit the road.
++++
Back outside, we piled into Grant's car, a 1970 Porsche Carerra that belonged to his father during his cocaine phase. Bright orange and rusted, its tiny trunk had barely space for the spacecake tray and both our backpacks. Its floorboards beneath the passenger seat had long rotted and fallen out, forcing you to keep your feet elevated at all times or they’d be friction-burned by concrete.
As we climbed in, Grant turned to me, asked in his usual calm tone:
GRANT: Are you… okay, Dan?
I nodded. He turned the key in the ignition and all I could hear was the slow whine of the suffocating cockroach. Grant turned his key, pumped the clutch, seven, nine, twelve times, producing increasingly softer groans from its engine until... nothing. He gave up.
GRANT: Fuck. I guess I haven't driven the old bitch in a while.
ME: It definitely won't get us to Gainesville. Come on, we can take my car.
We unloaded the trunk again and walked over to my less-beat-to-shit Toyota. Spacecakes in the trunk, backpacks in the backseat. My engine started just fine, gas tank already three-quarters full.
Grant laughed as he lit a Camel:
GRANT: You think we're just going to hang out in Gainesville? [laughs] We're going there to pick up Beau, man.
There was clearly more of a plan than he was letting on. I turned the ignition and all four cylinders of my Toyota purred to life:
ME: Escape Velocity begins now..?
End of Episode Two
