Let me tell you something I learned last year in the middle of Bushwick; ecstasy doesn't do shit. It felt real good for about 30 minutes until it wore off. By minute 31, it was reminiscent of the last hours of what was my personal 9/11; the two tabs of acid mixed with champagne, ketamine and blow that dropped my cognitive functions to an all-time low on New Year's Eve.
Sure, you had a good 30 of hehe haha hoho. Eventually, it would lead to dryness of the brain that felt like 1940s diagnosis "hysteria" where they prescribe you a vibrator. It felt just like acid did in hour 8.
I retold the acid story on Sunday taking the L train, when asked if I'd ever had a bad trip. In my mind, the experience seemed fine until I said it out loud. It was like when I was SA'd and the university counsellor looked at me and said "Yeah girl, that's bad." Maybe not verbatim, but that was the energy that exuded off her pity-induced frown. Too much? Reread it but as if it were a little funny.
One, it didn't feel like we were in NYC. Maybe Toronto was similar to NYC, the sounds were relatively similar, they were both expensive, and the people that filled both cities would never pick up the pace. Mind you, I walk like an agro version of the Road Runner double fisting a coffee and a smoke. So maybe the problem was me. Two, that feeling didn't matter, because by 10 p.m. I had a mic singing What You Waiting For? swinging back soju water that was mostly soju. I could've been back in Mumbai, it didn't matter, I was happy.
Our first night felt like an outdated film that would come out in 10-plus years. "333, lucky number," the coat check guy told me. By the elevators, a duo stood in all-black suits and British-looking faces.
The Dare spawns conversing about the club's allure. Soon, in the elevator, a woman would drunkenly ask us what our pronouns were and point at us one by one, "Faggot! Faggot! Faggot! And...faggot!"
Perhaps, I was a faggot that night. Perhaps, I've always been...a faggot. When I pissed, and the sounds of birds played in the bathroom, I should've reflected more on this. Or maybe on the rooftop when we all piled on the couch and passed the vile. Maybe, instead, the faggots are the friends we made along the way.
When I get a therapist, I'll dissect this.
I found myself back on Myrtle Ave, looking at the Market Hotel window I saw a year ago from the subway stop. "Hey, I'm on the other side!"