Last night I went to Beto's place after a grueling shift. I really just wanted to go home and crash but he hooked me with the cutest text "wanna fall down the rabbit hole?" He knows I'm a sucker for hallucinogenic adventures or maybe he just knows I'm a sucker for him. When I arrived he greeted me with a smirk, raised eyebrows and chocolate shake from McDonald's.
"A shake? Really?"
He ignored my snobbery and just clicked his waxy cup against mine and together we sucked down every last earthy drop of the stuff. We stayed in and watched a couple episodes of I love Lucy to wait for the magic to begin. Two episodes in I hadn't felt so much as a tingle and I was getting tired so I pulled out about half a gram to keep us alert, but Beto got all high and mighty about it saying he wanted to feel the affects in their purest form and free from other intrusive substances. I'd forgotten this was his first time and he was excited about it. So I went ahead and did a line myself and wouldn't you know it, five minutes later he walks over to the window and lights up a blunt that was sitting on ashtray. By now I was pretty focused and when that familiar trumpet music sounded the commencement of yet another episode of Lucy, he was coughing out the window and holding the blunt toward me to grab it. So I did the gentlemanly thing and took it... then I took a hit.
Halfway through Lucy trying to concoct a scheme to get into one of Ricky's shows I got up to go to the bathroom. And there with the cool subway tile underneath my black socks I looked at myself in the mirror and I felt as though I hadn't seen my face in forever. I stood at the sink and stared first into my own eyes and then shifted from freckle to blemish to singular follicles of facial hair and wondered when this stuff was gonna kick in. I could see the steam rising from each of my pours as I stood there and just waited... waited... waited...
Behind me the bathroom door stretched at the corners and I felt that it was going to consume me like a wave of white paint. Then suddenly through a sliver of an opening Beto comes in, peering at me through those little black rimmed glasses and when he opened up those pretty lips I heard him say from behind me "what's taking you so long?"
"Oh good its you. I think I got lost." I responded and when I turned to face him I noticed that either he was getting closer and closer to the tile or I was getting closer to the ceiling. I looked at him slowly and fondly wanting only to catch up with his decent toward the tile. But then noticed to my right the rippling of that white door and its incessant desire to envelop me and Beto both. But Beto, my little Beto he didn't seem scared. He only laughed and kept repeating, "no, no its not." How was he reading my thoughts? But I felt that, he must know the truth. Because with him I felt safe. I felt that I could laugh. So I did, right along with him. And before I knew it we were both on the floor surrounded by a valley of shiny, white and black tile and roads of grout that upon closer inspection could use a scrubbing. And the door, the sink, the counter tops and the mirror, they loomed over us both like a canyon. And all we could do was laugh. laugh. laugh. Until it was time to craw out of the bathroom, underneath the crack of the door, only to find myself squinting in the light of a 6 am dawn with Beto at my side... still wondering when I was finally going to feel something.
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