Calaveras Station 2004 - The World Still

The World Still

Joseph T. Atkins

Saturday morning, before I met up with JP, I put the plastic bag of acid in my pocket and headed out the door, looking for nothing less than a shift in consciousness and some cigarettes, nothing more than a glimpse at divinity.
We skated over cracked and chipped sidewalks, and heat distorted asphalt through old town to McDonald's, and Paul was working when we got there. I'd snorted speed with Paul and JP once. I said it felt like I'd sucked up a line of Tylenol; they asked if I wanted to High-ball. Instead I looked at my dilated pupils for an hour at home in the bathroom mirror.
When he saw us, Paul came out with a tray full of hash browns, and five breakfast McSandwiches, two cups upside down on the corner of the brown plastic tray. Then he acted like he was sweeping as he talked.
"I just can't make eggs," said Paul.
"What's wrong with eggs?" JP asked.
"It's the smell," Paul said. "After I crack them open. I just can't stand the smell. It comes up at you and you have to cook them in these small metal circles. It makes me want to puke."
I said, "They taste alright."
"You don't have to cook them man." Then Paul said, "That's why they have me clean up now because I refuse to cook eggs in the morning."
"So you'll cook them at night?" I said.
"No, I sweep. But this job sucks anyways."
Then JP asked him when he got off and we left as Paul was getting yelled at by his manager. Some time later I found out that Paul got fired that day.

The high school wasn't far, a friend of JP's was getting out of detention and JP had wanted to smoke with him. He walked out of the courtyard to the front of school slipping two doses onto his tongue, sticking it out, his index and pinky finger raised as sounds fell from the cracks of his throat.
JP did the same.

I watched cars, searching for eyes from open windows but I couldn't see anything. Except Casey.
"Joe!"
I didn't want to bring him with us; he was fat, annoying and acted like he was high on bunk drugs.
"We're just dropping some doses," I said, taking two from my pocket and setting them in my mouth. Then I asked JP, "Do I just leave them on my tongue?"
"You can swallow them if you want, it doesnÍt matter," JP said. "Let's go smoke a bowl."
"After that I'm going to go to Herb's," said JP's friend.
"Let's do that," I said. Herb always had pot and someone there could get us some Mad Dog or something.
We went across the street from the school into the ravine of some ancient creek condemned to flow through town in gated off areas many feet below the cracked asphalt streets where the weeds could die and we could smoke. My heart beat as the pipe was passed to me. We toked up in the ditch and JP's friend left and then we went to Papa's and after the Quickie-Mart we ran and found ourselves in the shade on dead logs smoking cigarettes.

Behind Papa's Pizza Casey wanted to see the acid. He kept bringing it up until we showed him. JP explained about the different types, pyramids, white-water, using whatever big words he could use. I was stoned but things were different. Things were starting to come alive as we sat out back smoking on old red chipped bricks. Casey was getting obnoxious.
He was laughing unstoppably at nothing and kids came by asking us what was wrong and then I started laughing too, saying that Casey was high. But I couldnÍt stop myself. And I thought the kids were laughing at him and they kept laughing until the laughter stopped. And they were gone.
Then JP had the idea to get some orange juice.
"Orange Juice has acid in it too, it'll help the trip man," JP said.
"Let's do that," I said. But first I made a phone call.

I called from the pay phone across the street, using a silver nickel. I put the nickel in and quickly tapped the switch to hang up and the nickel dropped and I put it back in the slot four more times until I'd earned a quarter and dialed my house.
"Hey mom I'm just checking in," I said, looking at the phone booth.
"Ok. Where are you?" she said.
"IÍm at Papa's getting lunch and then we're going to go skate some more," I said.
I was watching the numbers on the phone.
"You need to be home by five," she said.
The numbers turned from silver to white and they started switching places, mixing up. I thought I'd never be able to make another phone call again.
"Joey."
"Why?" I said.
"We're going out to dinner and a movie downtown. Ok?"
"Yeah. Home by five, right?" I said.
"Yes. And Joey," she said.
"Yeah mom."
"Thanks for calling," she said.
I hung up the phone and ran back across the street to JP and Casey and we went into the Quickie-Mart.

Except inside the liquor store, while JP grabbed a Swank magazine, heckling the guy, trying to buy it and I was stealing orange juice with Casey, I started peaking. And the floor tiles were shifting under my feet like a sliding puzzle to create a picture. Except there was only tiles and I couldn't find a picture.

Casey hit me on the back, "Come-on man. LetÍs go." And for a second the world wasn't moving anymore as I turned holding an orange juice and followed him out the door as the Hindi clerk started yelling inside and JP came running and we followed him through a jungle with shinning black lions to our left before we ran through a graveyard marked by white lines, some corpses unburied, others emerging from their coffins looking at us confused in what was once a Schools credit union and then we hopped a chain link vine and then a brick Aztec wall, carrying orange juice and we didn't leave the forest behind until the shade disappeared and all of a sudden we're in sunlight and the world was melting around us. And we panted smiles.
As we walked I asked JP for a cigarette. I lit it and watched as the small lines circling the white paper of the Marlboro twisted the cigarette forcing smoke to waft from the burning nose of it. The lines contracted and expanded and the cigarette was respirating and bent, looking at me now and I sat down on a rotted tree branch in a shade with JP and Casey and breathed because I was having trouble.

We sat on the logs while cars drove by and yelled things at us. But I was sitting on my skateboard, everyone else was sitting on the dead trunks next to a yellow church that never had service. The entire parking lot was cracked and gravely, small black rocks that lined a dried dirt black desert making it impossible to skate and no one did. But we were next to the asphalt chugging orange juice, having a conversation.
"Are you peaking?" I said to JP.
"Yeah this is good," he said. "That was some good bud," said Casey.
"Are trails just your eyes adjusting to time?" I said.
"My friend sells it. He grows it in his closet under a heat lamp," said JP. "But his mom just got busted."
"Do you think that the ground is always moving like that?" I said.
"Wow."
"I only feel normal when I'm on drugs," said JP. "Are you ready to go?" He looked at me.
"Where?"
"To Paul's, he's supposed to be there. At his house."
"What time is it?" I said.
Casey looked at his watch, "ItÍs three-forty-five."
"JP, I gotta be home by five," I said.
"You can get back by then," he said.

But I just sat there looking at the dirt smoking a cigarette and watching the stones in the ground sink under the brown earth and then pop back up again from the waves. And then JP was walking.
"What time is it, Casey?" I said. "Four thirty," he said.
"I gotta go," I said.
Casey nodded.
I got up and said, "JP wait up."
And then I turned around, "My board." I sat back down.
I looked at Casey and said, "I gotta go." Then I got up, "JP wait up." And then I turned around "My board!" And I sat back down.
Casey looked at me. "I gotta go," I said.
He started laughing as I got up and talked to JP and sat back down on my skateboard again. He was still laughing when I said, "I gotta go."
Then he said, "JP."
"JP wait up!" I shouted jumping to my feet.
"Your board!" said Casey.
"My board!" I said falling back to a squat.
"You gotta go," said Casey

Then these two older guys showed up. One was wearing black pants and the other was wearing a white wife beater. They asked Casey for a cigarette while I jumped to my feet and sat.
"Hey what did you have?" one asked.
"Pyramids," I said. Then I said "JP wait up."
"Do you have any on you?" one asked.
I pulled my plastic bag from my pocket and showed them the paper tabs I was saving.
"Can I see em?"
I handed him the bag and looked at Casey and they were walking. "I gotta go," I said.

Casey gave me a cigarette and we smoked it while we walked.
"I lost my doses," I said.
"Aren't you supposed to be home," said Casey.
"I can't go home yet," I said.
I stopped and laid on the sidewalk looking into the leaves of an old tree, grown out of the crumbling asphalt of the road built around it, so old that no one would think to cut it down. I smoked the cigarette, lying half a block from the boulevard and Casey told me he was leaving over rushing traffic but I didnÍt care because the branches were more important. "I'm coming down," I said. And only the leaves were there to hear me as they opened and closed in paisley patterns. Small fingers reaching out to the sunlight of that early fall day letting the rays fall through the cracks between them onto my face pushing me down into the sidewalk and I was sinking but I didn't sink, I watched. This was what I was waiting for, this was an entire level above normal interaction, in visual. And then the cigarette was gone and they slowed and showed me how tired I was and I got up and started.
I walked holding my board under my arm, watching the sidewalk and all it's cracks lead me forward.
And then I was inside the Meat Store and there was a midget next to me tall enough to pour water into a coffee pot sitting on the counter but shorter than me. And at the register, which stood on some podium type pillar, there was another midget looking at me as I walked through the door.
I knew, things were moving slower and I was. I quickly turned to the fridge filled with sodas. I pulled out a Pepsi and looked at the candy boxes and turned.
The room was empty and I heard flies in the back. I went to the counter looking down on the register from above but no one came.
So I left.

At home the counters were twisted into static bow-ties and I put my Pepsi straight up on the island cocked at a forty-five degree slant towards the floor. Over hallucinogenic excuses my mom chewed me out. I was trying to stay straight but everything was Van Gogh crooked and I focused on the cracks in the ground trying to manifest the world still. And all I could tell my mom was that I'd skated all day, in flawless communication.

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