[vanilla]

I tried to think of something funny to say to the girl but before I knew it I blurted out “Well I guess this isn’t the best time to tell you this book I wanted isn’t in either…” She just kind of rolled her eyes and scanned the Darwin book. Stupid.
“Yeah… well the one woman back there said I could leave my name and number and you guys would call me when it comes in… can I leave that with you?”
“Are you serious? Did you just yell at this guy so you could have an excuse to hit on me? That’s even more pathetic than him.”
Wow. What a turn of events. I just left the book there and ran out like a little dog with my tail between my legs. I can’t believe that girl, what a psycho.

Once again I was out on my ass feeling not so hot, so I called up this skinhead dealer I knew and took a bus down to his place on the other side of town to pick up some acid. This guy was a real weirdo, I honestly didn’t know if he was french, Spanish, Italian, or something else, but he had some kind of accent and lived in the most rundown piece of shit that I’ve ever seen. It was a notoriously crack infested neighbourhood, and while I’d like to say that I felt confident I could hold my own in this wasteland, my 19 years being raised in the burbs as a skinny whiteboy solidified my position as someone that clearly could not. In anycase, I walked up the ratty stairs to his place and was about to knock on the door when I saw it was open a crack. I slowly opened the door and found DeCarlo strung out on his hideous couch with a mound of coke on a DVD case in front of him. He turned his head and motioned for me to come in.

“So my friend, what brings you here today? You want some white, no?
“Nah man, I’m good. You got any acid though? I’m thinking my pipes could really use a cleaning…”
“Yes yes, sit down, I have for you.” He reached down into some big chest under his table and pulled out a bag of weed and began picking out huge nugs and putting them on a magazine beside the mini avalanche of blow.

“Uh hey, I said I wanted some acid…?”
“Yes yes my friend, I get to it, first we smoke a joint ok?”
“Oh yeah sure… so uh, how’s business? Good? You must be flipping QP’s in like 1-2 days now…”
“Eh, none of your business, ok? Fucking guy…”
“Yeah right, ok… oh yeah, before I forget I’ve got a pretty big amount of some mushrooms, you think you could take it off my hands for me? I just want to get rid of it all at once.”
He stopped grinding the weed for a second and looked up at me.
“How much do you have?”
“I don’t know, a couple ounces I guess?”
“…this is not a big amount, me I eat more in a single time by myself… but yes I will take them from you.”
“Ok that’s cool, we’ll deal with that another time though I don’t want to think about it now…”
DeCarlo finished rolling the joint and lit it immediately, as we awkwardly chatted about punk music and our favourite foods. I wasn’t really paying much attention to him, and when he finally sold me the acid I originally came for, I made some excuse up about having to go back home and rewind some DVD’s so I could return them and left. I strolled out on the shit streets of this ghetto and made my way to the bus stop as I called my friend Pete, and asked him if he felt like tripping today. Obviously he was up for it. Although I was hesitant at first, due to his remarkable history of owing friends, acquaintances, and drug dealers huge debts of money, I felt he would be the best person to chill with considering he was probably the dumbest person that I knew, and the most fun/careless person to be around with a head full of acid. I even had a run in with him a few years back when I sold him some mush he never ended up paying me for, and had to break his car windows and jump him twice. The night of the first time I fought him, I went out to this local bar and had to face a barrage of drunken people congratulating me and buying me drinks for doing this; not that I minded the free drinks, but enough is enough sometimes. I had even heard he went months without riding his infamous bike around town at night because too many people in the area were looking for him, so he had to resort to taking the bus at strategic times throughout the day, avoiding certain people and neighbourhoods. What a clown.

In any case, he agreed to meet me at this park just outside of the downtown area and right by this one university campus. Naturally lots of students were sitting around smoking joints of their own, so the whole scene was real mellow and laid back.