LSD Trip Memior

 

I'm from the East Side of Milwaukee; I have so many stories, about everywhere, or anywhere.

Let's put it this way I've been bipolar for decades, but I've learned to balance things out, I dose myself during downers.

I couldn't do much so I took shit jobs, working 5 months maybe and quitting, I was a good worker but the whole thing felt stuffy to me.

Like being a Security guard, it's a loser's job, for people on the bottom. 

I stay as far as I can away from guns, the rental guards don't carry guns, a guy's trained in a few hours, you're lent mildewed uniforms, navy blue shirts with official-looking insignias sown on, blue striped pants, cheesy baseball caps. 

My first day of work I bathed in English Leather my first assignment was the Harley Davidson Museum on Chestnut St., in the  Milwaukees hood, the night shift.

I show up at 9 PM; the guard who works the first shift, Jimmy Till, is in the box, watching the factory workers walk out, going home.

Anyway, I’m alone in a 2 story brown brick building, built in 1906, it’s winter and the heat isn’t on.

I run upstairs hoping the activity will warm me up and I notice the assembly line of freshly painted motorcycle tanks hanging on hooks; the scent of spray is in the air and I take a few whiffs.

Back on the first floor, the museum part, I eyeball the Harleys, there’s; 

the 1st model made, the 1907 Model 3 Atmospheric-Valve Single, the WW2 bike, 

the streamliner V-twin, and so on, none of which turn me on much.

By midnight I drop a quaalude, and at 9AM the day guy, Jim Tinn, nudges me saying, 

Henry whatza doin man? You’re supposed to be at the gate checking in the day crew, get out there now.

So I walk to the box,  sleeping in standing posture as the working stiffs parade by for another day of paint sniffin.

The watchmen gig lasted a month or so, till I spun out; havin a ball all the way down.

Later that summer I drive my old car from Milwaukee to the Lake Geneva Playboy Club to see the acid band Mountain play. 

 

The Playboy Club was a ski resort in the winter.

I park my car in a field with other cars that are parked any which way, nice, compared to the tidy in-line parking one finds these days.

I get out of my car, walk a few steps to the top of the hill, and then walk down; people not hippies are scattered about, and a lovely girl wearing a knitted halter top hands me an orange wedge of LSD, which I drop immediately. 

Coming on, I circle and look up the hill; it looks like a giant wave with people surfing horizontally on boogie boards.

The sound man plays Gimme Shelter over and over again, it’s a great acid groove. 

Then Mountain comes on the small stage, Felix Poppalardi, the bass player's wearing a blue judo key, over blue jean short shorts, and wooden Geta slippers. Leslie West is wearing a dye died teddy drape over leather pants. 

I walk to the side of the small stage to the right and run into Joe Powers, someone I grew up with in Illinois, he's drinking beer with other straights, guys he works with at a garage in Kenosha. 

We shake hands; hanging out a little because I’m tripping and he’s buzzed on beer.

I don’t remember much of the concert but I remember driving towards Milwaukee, lost on a treelined country road, headed toward deep shit, and going off the road in Janesville. 

It was the weirdest derailment ever, I was lying crossways on the front seat blind to it all, and the car misses trees, then resurfacing on the highway without a scratch; I get the feeling it’s part of the acid dream, but it’s not.

In no time a county sheriff shows, I roll down my window, and he looks at me saying, 

have yous been drinkin, son? 

I tell him, 

no I’m comin down off acid, and he says, 

don’t bullshit me boy. 

He cuffs me and drives me to the station where I’m given a breathalyzer test that registers, 0.00, then without cause I'm thrown into the drunk tank for the night. 

The following morning, after a first-rate breakfast of kool-lade and rancid salami sandwiches, I’m driven to the holding lot to get my car and the dick behind the counter says, 

that’ll be 350 mister, 

the rigs not worth that much so I tell him,

keep the car its  yours.

So, I hitchhike back to Milwaukee on Highway 11 because it’s illegal to hitch on Federal Highway 43.

In no time I get a ride from a farmer driving a rig with baskets of apples in the back, planning on delivering them to the Saturday farmer's market. 

He’s an old guy looking just how you’d think a farmer would look, overalls and all, so he says, how about an apple son? 

Sure I say, 

he hands me a Gala apple; I bite into it and juice spills down on my face and chest, the taste is out of this world. 

The farmer drops me off on Locust Street and I walk west to Suga’s Place in the hood for sweet potato pie. 

Inside I sit at the counter ordering coffee and a whole pie, eating it all, then a black girl walks in, a tall girl with a butt you could balance a champagne glass on. 

She’s sitting in a booth, uninvited I sit down across from her and she says, 

Did I say you could sit here, boy? 

How bout I buy your meal, what’s your name, girl?

Willa Mae, 

I’m Henry, 

your’e cute Henry. 

Willa Mae orders catfish, black-eyed peas, greens, and cornbread which she shares. 

When we finish eating I spring for a Veterans cab back to my place.

The cabby's a local legend with hair to his waist and a scraggly beard. Pooch drops us at my second-floor apparent, we walk up the stairs, and in no time Willa Mae drops her drawers and I fuck her standing; her pussy smells fishy and I like it.

We cum, then Willa Mae calls her brother to take her home, and we exchange numbers.

I think I fucked most of the women on the East Side that summer, I felt like Will Chamberlain.