Mushrooms And Skydiving

Okay:

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to jump out of a plane.

I’m not an adrenaline freak or anything like that. In fact, I try to stay as far away from danger as possible. I would never do rafting or run with the bulls. I’m one of those old school scared Negroes. I stay in the house for the most part, where it’s warm and safe.

I don’t even like planes. I have a mild case of acrophobia.

But I have always imagined that if I were to muster up enough courage to jump out of a plane, then everything else would get the volume turned down.

“Ask that pretty girl for her phone number? Sheeeeit! I once jumped out of a plane. This is nothing.”

“Quit my job and write full time? Sheeeeit! I once jumped out of a plane. This is nothing.”

You see?

I’m coming to the point now.

Like I said last week, I’ve experimented with a few different kinds of drugs. Today I want to tell you about the time I ate mushrooms.

When I was college my closest friend and I used to work at this Italian chain restaurant. Of course we had oodles and oodles of white co-workers, which was both a blessing and a curse. Nothing wrong with the whites, it’s just that cultural differences can get magnified in high-intensity environments. And this little dive was the company’s most profitable location in the region. We busted our asses every night, but made great tips.

One night my friend and I inquired amongst the whites about some mushrooms.

“What’s it all about?”

“How does it make you feel?”

So, one of the whites said, “Why don’t I just bring an ounce past your crib later and we can chew up and watch The Sopranos or something?”

My friend and I eagerly agreed and set about getting mentally prepared for this new adventure. Since we didn’t know whether or not we were going to get the munchies, we went out and bought a shitload of food. Chips, cheeseburgers, soda and a bunch of other more shit. We also bought lots of Newports in case the stuff made you nervous-like, in which case cigarettes would come in handy.

We were stockpiling like we were preparing for a hurricane. The logic was that we didn’t know whether or not we’d be able to drive once the mushrooms took hold, so we wanted to have everything we could possibly need at our disposal.

When we got to my apartment, I hid my car keys from myself in case the shit made me freak out and want to go do something stupid in my car.

See? I was a responsible stoner.

So, the white boy arrived with an ounce of mushrooms. A really nice guy. Fire-engine red hair with freckles. Like something out of a 1960s sit com.

He warned us, “These things taste like shit. In fact, that’s where they get ‘em. Off of cow shit.”

“They grow on cow shit?”

“They grow on cow shit.”

“Oh…continue.”

“It’s like acid but cleaner. You may get nauseous though.”

We start digging in. We sit and watch an entire episode of The Sopranos and nothing happens. We’re just sitting there chatting it up, waiting for the damn things to take hold.

“It may take a while,” he said. “Plus, you generally wouldn’t split and ounce between three people.”
Then all of a sudden, I felt the need to lie down. It was more than a need. I had to fucking straighten out my body onto a flat surface or I was going to die. So I lied down on the floor. Then my stomach started to turn and I thought I may have to shit, but I couldn’t get up. I was stuck on the floor there, moaning quietly to myself and holding my stomach for twenty minutes. No one seemed to notice me.

Then I snapped out of it.

Literally.

All of a sudden I felt great. Greater than I ever felt in my life.

I jumped up like Roger Rabbit and sat down next to the white boy.

“White boy,” I said, “These things are fucking great. I love you, man.”

“I love you, man.”

“Listen,” I said, “Have you ever jumped out of a fucking plane?”

“No,” he said.

“Then you’re not a real man. How you can be a real man if you’ve never jumped out of a fucking plane?"

“You can’t.”

“You’re goddamn right. That’s what a real man does. A real man jumps out of a fucking plane.”

“Fucking A.”

“White boy,” I said, “Will you jump out of a plane with me?”

“Shit yeah.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, white boy.”

I went on like that for hours. No one slept that night. We couldn’t. Those things wire you up.

I haven’t touched them since. And no, me and the white boy did not jump out of a plane together. But every now and then, I still feel the urge.



Thanks for reading.

GOBAMA!

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Confession: One of my secret sex fantasies is to have sex while free-falling naked from a plane. I hear you can’t get pregnant at certain altitudes.