The Desert

So my friend sent me this email which I thought was pretty funny after he came back from a Phish concert in Indio.


I had a pretty weird weekend so I thought I would tell you guys what happened. I guess it is funny in hindsight. Actually it is hilarious in hindsight.

So a couple months ago when I was neck deep in powering up with Sam. He mentioned to me that he was going to a 3 day Phish concert over Halloween in Indio...which is 3 hours east of LA in the middle of the desert. Literally, it is in a mountain basin. He asked if I wanted to come and given that I was in a frame of mind prone to "new experiences", it sounded like a great idea so I gave him $200 and got a ticket.

Tick tock...a couple months elapse and it is 2 pm on Friday...time to leave work early to get natural in the desert and camp with 50,000 hippies. I left the office and we cruised down route 10 to Indio. We got there at 5 with all of our stuff in our car and had to be searched to make sure we didnt have any "glass". I am still not sure why they were only looking for glass...but whatever, I was far more concerned with the 14 canadian research drugs in the glove compartment. In any case, this loser ass 28ish year old white chick who clearly never had a friend in her life and had chunky thighs with nurse pants on and lived in the town in an apartment that definitely featured an old UHF Zenith fake wood tv and a cloth laz-e-boy who probably masterbated with a plastic crayon that a baby would play with because the narrowing tip had the appropriate ergonomic design to massage her beefy clit and was a volunteer and was the one to search our car. She found my friend's bottle of Kahlua and said she was confiscating it. He begged her like a thirsty fetus and she said "once it was hidden and we find it you cant have it back"...somehow implying that if we had just shown it to her in spite of the fact that it was the exact thing they were searching for that somehow it would have all worked out. Sam continued to moan like a demoralized rodent, so she called her superior over...who was a little chocolate fella who looked a lot like a rural lil bow wow. He told Sam, "yo, put twenty in the glove box and i didnt see nothing"....so we escaped the security tent intact and were directed to one of six camp sites. In our case, we were placed in "Electric Ladyland" and I asked our neighbor what the schedule was for the weekend. "2 sets on Friday night, 3 on saturday and 2 on sunday." I then started peeing on my car (because no one told me it was an unspoken rule to not pee in the camp ground) and the guy said "hey bud, can you please not pee here. it makes the site smell." Apparently, it is also an unspoken rule not to tell someone to pee because he felt really bad and kept offering me weed. I told him no and then took a canadian research drug and we started walking over the the venue. It was about a mile. When we got there, people were just wolfing down nitrous like fools and rolling around in the grass. The venue was packed but was pretty cool cuz the backdrop was desert mountains. Phish started playing and i was trying to convince myself that i liked their music even though I have never listened to them before. About 20 min into the show, the drug kicked in and I was having the best time ever. I was pretending to sway back and forth like a hippi. As Erik Ronning would say, I had my hips on a swivel and was just working it. I was texting some of my California friends things like "this is the most beautiful triumph of kindness and kinship that has ever existed" and "music provides the world an alternative for judgement"..things I would later deeply regret. The concert continued and the drug was starting to wear off and in typical fashion I started getting obsessed with finding more, because god forbid I had to return to a normal state of being, I just wouldnt be able to have a good time. I kept harassing Sam and we finally began walking back to Electric Ladyland (we had to go there anyway to bring our stuff to the camp where our other friends were at where they had set up our tent). I was wearing my orange bears hoodie and colgate sweatpants...because even though it was supposed to be a costume party...this was my test to see if the hippies would accept me in the clothing I wanted to wear. They didnt say anything, but I think that is more a function of the "rolls and doses" which I will get to later than anything having to do with them analyzing my dress. Anyway, as we were walkign back to Electric Ladyland (you can tell I just like saying that) I heard someone yell out my name and I turned around and saw Pat Calabro and that Torrie chick from Colgate. Talked to them for a second and then kept mosying to Electric Ladyland. Got back, took another canadian research drug and told Sam I would sleep in the car and was too tired to go to the other campsite and would meet him tomorrow. This was like 1 am. So he left and I layed down in the car and didnt think the drug was working because I thought maybe it had "diminishing maringal returns". Turns out I was wrong. At about 2 am, the moon started to become the most beautiful thing I had ever seen again, so I emerged from the trunk and made some new hippi friends who were making strange bird calls. I started rounding up misfits and outliers and taking them on a journey from "tent land to RV land". There were James and Brad. They were the best. Brad went to Colby and knew Sagiv from HS, but lived in Reno know for some god forsaken reason and had offered to give James a ride who was now at his 200th Phish show. Leaving the rest to the imagination, it is fair to say the 199 other shows took their toll on James mind. I told James he needed to find some more MDMA and needed to start making more bird calls or something. In RV land, he started talking to some guy who he told me had "Pressies". I asked James, "what the fuck are pressies?"...he said, "they are powder that his been pressed into a pill". Fair enough, I thought and I ordered James to purchase them using my seed funding. We got 4 "pressies" and the three of us each took one. They were basically E I think?? At this point, I was three pills deep whose make up I had absolutely no insight into (so stupid) and was journying through RV land looking for a techno party. Looked like the party was week, so we returned to tent land and I tried to lay in the car. It was 4 am at this point. I layed there for an hour and finally fell asleep at 5...to wake up again at 8. I was pretty tired and figured the only way I was going to make it was more canadian research. I called Sam and he came back at 9...gave me a bologna sandwich and a pill. I was pretty exhausted at this point, but figured I could make it. By 10, I was in the highest spirits around and was at the general store fraternizing with the unemployed and shitting in port-o-potties by holding the plastic tube for stability and squatting. I saw Torrie and went over to their camp and started fading at 11, so I took another "pressie". At this point, it was 110 degrees and I was sweating profusely. I couldnt sit still or maintain a coversation with anyone. I suppose it would be fair to describe my state of being as "early stage tweaking". The pressie kicked in at noon and we went over to chill with Calabro who described a different pill as pretty "mellow"...so I decided we should buy one and take it. I took this at 12 in anticipation for the 3 o'clock show. I walked back over to Sam's camp area and sat down to chill. It was outrageously hot and it felt like all the drugs were losing effect, so I had an anger explosion and said "i need to get the fuck out of here, i cant take this anymore. sam give me your keys. i will meet you in LA."....he actually said OK and gave me his keys and told me not to crash. I said the drugs were wearing off...so I did the two mile walk back to Electric Ladyland and got in his card and turned on the AC. I started talking on my phone...just taking a minute to chill out before driving, when all of a sudden, the letters on my bbm screen started melting and the little green arrows on my web browser started turning into moving demons. The music on the mexican station seemed to be playing inside my head and people were like radiating colors. I realized I probably shouldnt drive and got paranoid I was going to faint for some reason. So I went in the trunk and started staring at the ceiling for a while. I walked to the bathroom and the people walking past me looked kind of like they were walking sideways and everyone who was far away who i looked at seemed to be talking in a deep slow motion voice. I wasnt completely zonked and kind of thought it was funny and ironic how i got myself into such an assinine position. I told the mexican guarding the gate "i fucking hate everyone here. i need to get the fuck out of here. these people are fucking psychos" and he told me "i need to get a hold of myself before i leave". I waited another half hour and drove home. I survived. Hehehehehehehe. What a silly little weekend.