You haven’t seen her in over a year, not since that Labor Day weekend you took her up to your family’s lake house and she got so pissed at you for shooting up right away. “Danny, I was serious,” she said, like you were supposed to know that. But how the hell could you tell she was serious this time when she’d never been serious before . . . ?
Mrs. O’Connor liked Burger King because it was cheap. When I arrived the next day, she was putting on makeup and drinking Coca-Cola from a large glass. “I’m almost ready,” she said. “That’s good,” I answered, “because I hate going into Mass late.” “I always love to go places late,” she said. “I hate to be on time . . .”
It was one of those days when the snow started and wouldn’t quit, so we bought beers and drank them and didn’t stop until long after dark and anyway, we were out. The apartment seemed all stained and yellow and stank of rancid burger grease. The snow just kept coming. We needed escape . . .
I met her at work. I was five years younger than her, and shy. She always smiled, was loud and outspoken . . .
We used to sit in my friend Stevie’s tree house and huff nitrous oxide out of a gas cracker we had stolen from Crate & Barrel at the mall. Stevie’s older brother bought the cartridges for us at the local head shop. They were silver and shaped like bullets. They looked the same as the CO2 cartridges we used to operate Stevie’s BB gun, which we also kept in the tree house. The tree house was where we kept everything we held dear that summer . . .
My friend, if I don’t put up things for you to “like” it’s not because I don’t love you, but because I remember what you and I used to be . . .
Every Friday, the Akashic team highlights industry news, reviews, and features from around the web. This week’s roundup comes to you from Akashic intern Alia Maria Almeida!
Which reminds you of the first time you ever dropped acid.
Hardly anyone then had ever heard of LSD. But rumors dawned of a great new drug which let you see God, or someone similar. Apocryphal stories drifted like alien blimps through misty skies. How LSD had been discovered by an atheist Swiss chemist who got some on his hands and became a holy man. How Aldous Huxley had taken tons of it and left his dying body behind, rising like a comet into heaven . . .