Memorial Day Trip + Holy First Day Of Work
By Gina Tron
âLove and acid. Love and acid. Goes together like a horse and carriage. You canât have one without the otherâ
Fuck Diamonds. Acid is forever. Up until this point, and perhaps forever more, acid and love go hand and hand in my books. I just canât imagine a better way to permanently imprint somebody into your mind, for better or worse. It was Monday, Memorial Day 2009: one day before I began my job as a technical director at a Catholic Television Channel and I was in love. I had a boyfriend that I enjoyed spending time with. I use the term boyfriend loosely as when I met Mick he was already in a multiple-year open relationship with a model-stripper who lived overseas and he was about to leave New York to be with her.
Itâs so easy to be head-over-heels with an individual that is preparing to leave, as âtrue commitmentâ becomes a non-issue, and the limited time allotment creates an illusion of romanticism. It was interesting. If he was destined to live in New York forever, the sense of urgency to hang out would be diminished and the interest-level would be destroyed. But, logical explanations for my desire to be with him aside, I was convinced about my feelings. Now that I had made the executive decision that we were in love I figured that taking acid was the only next logical step in the romantic timeline.
My dress was ripped apart from the after-after-party we created not long after I met up with him at a post-kickball game event. I donât often date athletes, but when I do its usually for sports like that. I wore a strapless dress I purchased at Express years before and have loathed ever since. It wasnât stylish but it showed off my shoulders and as Cosmo tells me that makes me more attractive to boyzies. Thank you Cosmo: It sure did work! Mick and I made out the entire time, much to the disgust of his teammates. In spite of our very public lust-fest, I could sense the flame of boredom already starting to spark from within his ADHD-drenched mind. I frequently teased him lovingly about his ADHD, although I was just as bad if not epically worse. So I had to up the ante to keep his attention, which resulted in the annihilation of the dress.
Memorial Day morning: a morning of patriotism and destroyed garments. I had to borrow clothes from Mickâs female roommate and think of a good way to celebrate what little time we had left together. I thought about the 4 hits of acid in Mickâs fridge, just begging to be taken on a special occasion. I mentioned that this day would be perfect, and I said this knowing my aura of acid influence always shone bright.
We roamed around Prospect Park feeling mildly disoriented. It was one of those highs in which you didnât really realize the full extent of how altered you were until you tried to converse with other people. Within our acid bubble, the interactions between the two of us seemed perfectly normal. Outside of it, not so much. We wanted to go to Coney Island to see the theme park (which ended up being boring; it paled in comparison to the patterns of the bathroom floor.) We tried asking a woman for directions to the subway to do so and Mick and I both caught each other smirking and giggling at our pathetic attempt to form normal sentences.
This only worsened when we made it to Coney Island and fell victim to a form of the munchies. We attempted to enter 6 different restaurants before actually being able to stop laughing enough to sit down and order. Sometimes we would make it in the door, tell them âtable for twoâ and the preparations for us to sit would begin. But then we would notice a âhystericalâ event taking place in the establishment, such as a seemingly sad man resting his head on his hands. It was funny because it looked like he lost the will to live, and then we lost the will to behave in a civilized manner. Even when we found a restaurant in which we were able to successfully sit down in, was a complete fail. I couldnât eat anything and we thought people were laughing at us, which they probably were and rightly so. After our non-meal, we fucked up a proper coupleâs proper date; two people who were sitting by a pond looking at swans. We splashed water at the swans while laughing like maniacs; that was our immature idea of romance.
We took the train to Williamsburg, and then we failed at having sex inside a Uhaul truck. The truck was parked in an unattended truck lot, the same lot Mick would later pick up a truck to leave the city. The door to get into one of the Uhaul-mobiles was unlocked, so we opened it, climbed in, and brought the door down. Then we turned into tripping pussies. It was dark, and thus scary. Anytime we heard a noise we got nervous that someone was lurking outside the truck. We tried leaving the door open a crack but that didnât really help our paranoia. Something about being in such a vulnerable trapped space just wasnât very sexy.
We went in and out of the truck so many times that the vehicle received more intercourse than us at this point. We spent about an hour debating whether or not to have sex inside the truck. Eventually, we made the educated and proper decision to have sex on the outside of it. Banging on acid is always weird. You canât focus and you usually begin thinking about ribbons and rainbows and hippie shit. And hippies turn me off.
Earlier that day, I had harbored a delusion that I would get a restful amount of sleep in order for me to look like a presentable human the next day. That didn’t happen. I didn’t sleep and I had to borrow more clothes from Mickâs roommate. I didn’t even brush my hair. âFuck it, who cares,” I thought. “I probably wonât be at this job long. How long will a religious television station tolerate my behavior, anyhow?â
Turns out, a long time. Iâm still employed there to this day. It’s funny but I wasnât doing it to be funny; it was a result of being impulsive and being in love and it certainly wasnât very funny to me at the time. I arrived at that station and tried to focus on my #1 goal, which was to not get fired.
Looking into the mirror in the bathroom, I felt I looked like an owl. Lucky for me, it was doubtful that anyone would be seeking out clues that I was on drugs. Why would the idea even seep into their minds? It was my first fucking day. But hey, if you begin your first day of a job on LSD then all future bizarre behavior will merely be attributed to your âquirkyâ personality. It sets the bar high. Mission accomplished. Not that itâs any achievement to go to oneâs job on acid. Any asshole can stick a piece of paper in their mouth and go to work. I just happen to be one of those assholes, and I happen to be working for the church.
Forming intelligent sentences proved difficult and the lights of the control room were hurting my eyes. The control room is essentially a spaceship, which would possibly be cool if I had a nice buzz going, but at this point it was irritating. A dark room with hundreds of bright buttons and multiple massive monitors were massively unnerving.
The Catholic control room and the studio were brand new, and this required a lot of equipment testing. The anchor wasnât in that day and they asked me to sit in for her. I sat at the news desk while about 30 bright lights were raised and lowered in intensity to match my nearly transparent skin tone. I held up an assortment of color charts and some weird swirly chart that looked like it came straight out of a 1960s psychiatristâs office. There is nothing like seeing yourself on a huge monitor, cameras zooming into your all-black eyes, while your new boss, your new bigger boss, and the stationâs general manager analyze the details.
A classic moment: the beginning of the end of one my many acid-laced love affairs. Things didnât end up very well for Mick and I. We spent some time in 2010 arguing on an airplane to Amsterdam over who got to take the 10 hits of acid that I had smuggled onto the plane. While in Amsterdam, he suffered a drug-induced seizure of sorts. For our breakup, a few days later, he threw said what remained of that acid in my face while calling me a dangerous person. Sometimes I feel I myself am very much comparable to an acid trip. Being with me will blow your mind, possibly heighten your senses, and probably fuck you up for life.
