The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

kill somebody.” And he meant it, which terrified me.
    An exit was conveniently and temporarily provided for me when a friendly looking guy walked up and said he knew me. I remembered him vaguely as a bartender at the Reunion Room, where we had played some of our earliest shows. “This is my club,” he said. “I run this place.”
    â€œGreat,” I replied. “Is there somewhere you could take me to get away from all this? I’m freaking out.”
    He led me to the back of the club and opened the door to a giant cooler. I walked in and he followed me, closing the door behind him. “You know,” he said, “you used to go out with one of my ex-girlfriends.”
    It was a cruel thing to do to someone in my precarious mental state. I felt set up. I tried to tune him out and stared at the walls, out of which grotesque gargoyles were leering back threateningly at me. I tried to think about something else, and all I could imagine was that Pogo was probably killing someone right now, and I was going to have to talk to the cops. I didn’t care who he was killing or whether he was going to fry for it; I just didn’t want to face the police while I was on mushrooms.
    Suddenly, the door of the cooler heaved open and a dozen people piled in who had been scouring the club for me. “Are you okay?” someone asked, concerned. I couldn’t speak. I was scared, I was confused, I had to piss, I had to shit, I had to do something. Twiggy was with them, but all he could do was talk nonsense about stealing a paddleboat and escaping into the harbor.
    I fled to another room and found an alcove under the stairs that, for some reason, was stuffed with pillows. I lay on them and enjoyed the solitude. I could hear everybody else outside, particularly Twiggy, who was trying to jump in the water in search of a paddleboat. I kept worrying that he’d drown and I’d have to talk to the cops. That was my main concern: I didn’t care who died or was killed. I just didn’t want to deal with the cops and have to tell them I was tripping.
    When the sun came up, I began to grow more lucid. I stumbled into the hot, humid morning air and about fourteen of us piled in a minivan built for ten. On the way home, Trent suggested stopping at a McDonald’s drive-through, where he ordered enough Egg McMuffins, hash browns, orange juices, large cokes, coffees and sausage biscuits to feed the entire Jacksonville penitentiary.
    Before we had time to eat, Trent, who like myself is an instigator, tossed a soggy hash brown at Twiggy. Wiping potato from his face, Twiggy grabbed an Egg McMuffin, picked it apart and threw it at Trent layer by layer. Soon meat, eggs, drinks, bread, syrup and food morsels in various states of digestion were being tossed and spit all over the crowded van. It was an all out McWar, but with ketchup everywhere instead of blood. Meanwhile, the car was swerving recklessly from lane to lane as our driver, who was sober, tried to keep from barreling over the median.
    If Trent is an instigator, Twiggy is an accelerator, always adding an extra veneer of mischief, recklessness or decadence to a situation. He threw up all over his lap several times. Robin, the guitarist from Nine Inch Nails whose dick I sucked on stage, was sitting next to him. He did what anyone in his situation would have done: he picked up the vomit and threw it at me. I flung it at someone else, and soon we were in the midst not of a food fight, but of a postfood fight. Twiggy at this point was actually throwing up into Robin’s hands, who was sharing the bounty with all of us. By the time we returned to the hotel, those of us who hadn’t thrown up were ready to. At great expense to royalties from “Head Like a Hole,” we left the contents of the van to bake and dry in the heat.
    The first thing we saw upon stepping outside was a drag queen coming out of a club, a black Mr. Clean with a bald head, a tutu and gold gloves. “Hey, baby,” he greeted us. “Hey, Mr. Queen,” someone said, and invited him back to our room to do drugs with us.
    Once inside, the first thing I did was call Missi, who had decided to go out with me again. Relationships never break cleanly. Like a valuable vase, they are smashed and then glued back together, smashed and glued, smashed and glued until the pieces just don’t fit together anymore. I was covered with hash browns and vomit, I had a bag