Uncle Drew's Lysergic Backbrain Apocalypse (Slight Return)

Charlie Brown made his way back. “Fuck are you all so happy about?” Terry and I chuckled in acid headed camaraderie and said nothing.

The lot of us were starting to garner general curiosity---it might have been because we were doing a good job, but I imagine we were probably getting clobbered. Meat and milk and booze and ice cream poured down on us and everyone busted a gut laughing.

Pete looked in between all the meat, bones and dishes. “How you boys doing?” We all meowed back at him. Steve French was beside him, looking bemused.

“What does that mean?” He asked Pete.

“Ahh, it means they’re doing good! Right guys?” Our assembled cast meowed in the affirmative.

I turned around and saw Ralph Johnson, the assistant banquet manager, standing by the swinging door that led right out to the ballroom. He was staring daggers through me. What the hell was his problem?

Maybe he knew.

It was at that point in time the an army of lobsters came riding out of the dish machine---big, red crustaceans saying hello. It was the lobster course from the Tom Jones dinner. The guys had sent all the lobster shells through the dishwasher. I laughed and pointed at the lobsters and the guys laughed and pointed at me and I laughed and pointed at the guys and they meowed at me, and somewhere in the hilarity of it all I imagined that the lobsters were meowing and laughing and pointing as well.

I didn’t think any more about Ralph.

I was about to jump out of my skin, but it felt great. The roar of the dish machine became an endless ring in my head and I started playing phonetical hopscotch with myself. I started thinking of towns to the south of us….Weymouth. Framingham. Braintree. Brain, frame, brate, brange. And what the hell is a brange? I wasn’t sure, but it was what I was feeling. Home, home on the brange…where the deers and the animals are all strange…..

“Deers and the animals?” Came a voice behind me. I turned and saw Candi waiting behind the dish shelf. I fell naturally into a gregarious stare as opposed to the usual embarrassed flush.

“Some deers, or dears,” I smiled, “mostly the two-legged dears.” Several of the guys meowed behind me.

A light of knowing came into Candi’s eyes. “Oh,” she said. “You guys got the flying cats!”

“Meow,” I replied. Suddenly it occurred to me that we were speaking in an exclusive kind of code together.

“I love the flying cats,” she said.

“The flying cats love you, too, Candi,” I said, imagining I was being very clever.

“It’s his first time,” smiled Terry.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing an armload of plates, “you guys going to the party at Jeff’s?”

“Sure,” I said, taking the bait.

“If we can,” said Terry. “You know….the joke hours….”

“I hear ya,” she laughed. “I hope you’re there!”

“We’ll be loaded, “I told her. “We’ll be hunting two-legged dears…”

Candi laughed again. “You’re funny,” she said. The flying cats were my new religion….they were opening up all kinds of doors.

As it turned out, we got out of there at 3:30 or so---many hands and flying cats make light work. We were the last to leave, as usual, but I persuaded the guys to go by Jeff’s. Terry drove. I got shotgun and was privy to the spectacle. Terry seemed pretty comfortable driving on acid, which I wouldn’t have been. I wasn’t tripping balls like I had been a few hours ago, but the acid was still messing with my perceptions. The road in front of us seemed one-dimensional, almost like a big etch-a-sketch board. And I know, again, I’m talking over your head, because you live in a world without the Grateful Dead, and Abraham Lincoln, and Etch-a-sketch. There’s not a lot I can do about that---you just have to humor an old man.

We got to Jeff’s and the party was winding down. Candi was there and Drew was there and some of the prep cooks and busboys and waiters were there. Everyone was drinking and everyone was baked and the lights were off---Jeff’s old lady had turned in and Jeff was gonna do the same. He told us we could stay as long as we didn’t raise too much hell.

The TV was going but the sound was down---there was some TV show about H.G. Wells on with phone sex line commercials popping up in between. Someone had a Grateful Dead bootleg on and so about the fifth half hour version of “Estimated Prophet” I’d ever heard was churning away. When you hang out with Deadheads you get used to this.

I made my way straight to Drew. “Uncle Drew,” I told him, “these flying cats are outstanding, sir!”

“Well, I’m glad you like ‘em,” he said, his sleepy, grinning face glowing at me in the blue light of the TV.

“Where can I get more?”

“Shit, man, I’ll be swingin’ doses next week----lemme know how many you want!”

This is the point where Candi came bounding up and laid a big hug on me. Christ---I always had my doubts as to whether she liked me---I guess she did. “Hey, you,” she smiled. “You come loaded for deer?”

“Meow,” I said, re-establishing our secret code.

“Oh, yeah. How you doin’ on that, buddy---you still flyin’ high?”

I thought about it for a second. “Not so much as before---I’m still having a good time, though.”

“Okay---come on out to the kitchen,” she said, pulling me out by the arm. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

I stood in the darkened kitchen while Candi rummaged through the cupboards and then the fridge. She dropped a good-sized pill in my hand. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Vitamin C,” she said. “It’ll help prolong your trip.” She poured me a glass of orange juice and I downed the horse pill. Out in the living room “The Three Stooges” came on and I was treated to the sound of three or four guys all imitating Curly at once.

I know a young man like you probably has no idea who Curly is, but you have to take my word for it---he’s funny. Especially when you’re ripped on acid.

Candi and I made it back out into the living room and plunked me down into a motheaten loveseat next to her. “You feeling good?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Never been better…”

She cuddled up close to me. “So, tell me all about the two legged dears.”

We made out for what felt like days on end----sitting in the dark in the loveseat somehow on another island from everyone else in that room---lost in a maelstrom of Candi and the Three Stooges and the Flying Cats and the Grateful Dead and the bootleg was playing that inevitable part of their shows where the two drummers are taking this weird solo and Jerry Garcia’s making all this space noise on his guitar, and goddammit, for the first time in my life I understood the Grateful Dead. No, I wasn’t about to junk my Kiss and Runaways records, but I understood. I finally understood the Grateful Dead. God Bless the flying cats.

Finally, Candi took me by the hand and dragged me out to the bathroom---my head was spinning with her and the Three Stooges and the Grateful Dead and H.G. Wells and the roar of the dish machine. We went into the bathroom where she pulled me to the cold linoleum floor and I made love to her----we were quiet so that Jeff and his old lady could keep sleeping the next room over.

My body was ragged with the speeding effect of the acid---the flying cats were coursing through my veins like ground glass. Somewhere in all of it I’m aware that Candi and I were asleep on the bathroom floor and I know that somewhere in there I slept---I had some kind of fantastic, erotic dream of a future city like the one in the old Jetsons cartoons. I know you have no idea what those are. Humor an old man. There were buildings on tall slender pedestals high up in the clouds and people were flying around the skies of their own volition. Everyone was amazing and shiny and sexy. So was I. So was she.