July 23, 2001
San Diego, CA
I took acid a week ago and I probably shouldn’t have. Ever since, and things have been sliding around. Shadows vibrate and phones ring and there’s no shadows or phones actually there.
I am smoking cigarettes at the tables at the strip mall where we all hang out. Some people are playing cards. I am not playing cards. I am sitting there, doing nothing, just smoking. People are saying things, joking, talking with each other. I have nothing to say. I try to come up with something but everything in my brain is just noise.
My breaths get short and I know I have to get out of there, tripping over the heavy metal chair as I stand up. I walk quickly until I am out of sight, and then I run. I go behind the movie theater, where there is a stucco wall fencing in the theater’s emergency exits. I lay down on the cement. It is cold. I take deep breaths and look at the sky. The sky is warm. I have a Sharpie in my pocketbook and I pull it out. I am lying on the cement. I write on it: CEMENT. My head is next to the stairs. I write on them: STAIRS. My legs are next to a wall. I write on it: WALL. I know where I am in relation to other things. I feel them solid under the tip of the pen.
For the next few weeks, when I feel like things are crowding in, I take out my Sharpie and label what’s around me. Soon everything at the strip mall has my handwriting on it.
PLANTER
SIDEWALK
CURB
CHAIR
TABLE
ASHTRAY
BATHROOM
The other kids look at me funny when I do this. They already think I am weird and this is just a reinforcing act, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice. Maybe they think I’m the charming kind of weird. If that doesn’t work—well, at least I have a pretty face.