Acid bath on Halloween night in Arcada California. I took three Altoids from the tin and dropped the clear liquid, one on each, in the palms of my two friends and myself. We looked each other in the eyes, commotion all around us, the madness of Humboldt County in trim season bustling in the town square. Spearmint hit my tung, we stood and started moving and everything went with us. The night was a blur, with the tequila and psychedelics just tossing the chaos into a great whirlwind of colors and sounds, I do remember a woman who really looked dead staggering wide eyed in the rain, drenched in blood and a parking lot sometime around three when, against my better judgement I stuck out my tung, still fizzy from guzzling a Mickeys and that second drop of mind fuck hitting me. We laid beneath a barren tree blowing in the breeze with a light sprinkle falling on our faces, feeling like pools of electric liquid. Then at some point I opened my eyes and a spliff was thrust into my mouth, a man with shock pink hair was playing cumbia in the farmhouse living room. Then the hard jab of a seatbelt in my side, waking up after two hours sleep in the cab of my truck to a pale foggy morning.
My friends and I had been logging ridiculous hours in a half finished house in the boondocks East of Garberville, gunshots in the woods at random hours, tattooed women talking about the bad drugs and pitbulls, always pitbulls. Tedious trim work in a plywood box, one old couch, fold out chairs, a tangle of cables and hanging lights all over. Bins upon bins of dried weed, some of it molding or too scrappy to be worth your time. This was how I was earning extra money for a trip I had been dreaming of for years. I worked during those years that I dreamt but it still wasn't quite enough to pull it off. So this is what somewhat well connected Californians do and for that matter everyone else who wants fast cash in the Fall. It's risky, often shitty work and many people who come from all over the world hoping to make a bunch of money and smoke a bunch of weed just end up doing the latter and spending the former.
After my mind bender on Halloween which was followed by a day in the redwoods trying to see something other than a thousand screaming faces on the back of my eyelids, we went back for another marathon week and I walked away with thousands of dollars in my socks.
My heart sailed when I finally ripped the various packets of money duck taped to the inside of my truck and deposited in the bank. The teller looked at me with a smirk, he knew what time of year it was and I didn't look like a professional of any sort. My mind slowed time down as the cash hit the electric counter, savoring the flitting noise, each flit another day on the road.
