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Dare The DevilChapter 5 - Peter
I wish I had dreams like that. But all I did for 40 days was lay in bed trying not to die. Nobody sent any homework for me to do, because there was no homework, and I knew it all anyway, and I was too sick to do any even if there had been some. No friends, TV hurt my eyes, even reading was impossible because the Darvon painkiller, the father of Darvoset, made my brain really fuzzy. The only place my sickness took me was in a resolution to live life to the fullest. Being a new Christian I was up on the whole death and resurrection thing, and vowed to make my 40 days and 40 nights in bed worth it. About the only “good” thing that resulted was I lost 35 pounds. At 6’ 1” I had started at a bit chubby 200 lbs, and reappeared as a sickly, emaciated 165. All the people who talk about that being just about the ideal weight are psychotic, because I have lived on both sides of the weight coin, and I will tell you my butt was so skinny I could not even sit on a chair. It hurt. I’ll never advocate obesity, but those doctor charts putting your “idea weight” at 170 for 6’ 1” are simply wrong. I think it’s all a conspiracy to keep us buying weight-loss programs and always feeling neurotic, but that’s another story. Frankly, the only reason I was able to survive was because I had been fat….Just imagine if I’d started at my “ideal” weight of 170 and then spent 40 days not moving or being able to eat. Lovely. My first public appearance was, indeed, at the Opening Night of the play I was supposed to star in. It was, of course, horrible. The star was all wrong, and had none of the depth I would have brought to the role. But everyone at least pretended to be happy to see me, and gushed over “how good” I looked, and how glad they were to have me back. Yeah, right. I had developed quite an attitude as I lay in my deathbed. Nothing like gratitude, mind you. More like being the risen one, having stared death in the face and won, and how none of the small people around me could possibly understand. Different. Special. Stand-out in a crowd. These, since my earliest memories, were my primary world-view, either reinforced or created by those around me. My dearest Mother had this cute little speech, “I see where your sister comes from, she’s just like me. And your brother is so much like your father. But Sam, you are the strangest person I ever met in my life, and I have no idea where you came from.” Heady stuff for a 10 year old to hear at the evening dinner hour, but that’s the way it was….My Dad stopped playing chess with me in 3rd grade because he couldn’t stay even, I was inventing my own systems of mathematics, and even spent a couple years absolutely convinced that I was born on Mars and had been implanted here by mistake. All of which had become reinforced over the years, and compounded by my little 40 day vacation. I was resurrected. I was new, improved. I had looked death in the face and won. Of course the rational reader can rightly say “What stupidity. All you did was get over being sick.” But this is the essential point here, and in this story this one factor stands as the character flaw which would lead to so much Shakespearian tragedy. I was always amazed by Hamlet, where the one relatively small character flaw (Hamlet’s indecisiveness) leads to 9 dead bodies on stage in the final scene. My Shakespearian character flaw was that my life was beginning to take on mythic proportions and significance. Look, I just got sick, right? No…For Sam that was Satan’s retribution. I just got better, right? No…I was resurrected from the dead. I was just a gawky teenager, right? No…I was a survivor of a cosmic battle, which no one around me could hope to understand. Ego? Bravura? It was far beyond that. I was a superman among sheep. So life returned, after a fashion, to normalcy. I attended school, was surprised when the girls didn’t find my new, slender body any more attractive than the previous version, still didn’t have any homework to do, and eventually got another role in the next play. Not the lead, but a good role. It was performed in the middle of May. And the Saturday night of the last performance was the traditional cast party. High school drama group cast parties are quite an affair. Children challenged with encroaching adulthood, who tend toward the flamboyant under the most controlled circumstances, go absolutely crazy the night of the Cast Party. Drugs, alcohol, always held at the house of the parents with the biggest stereo, with the biggest house so people could pair-off to consummate whatever emotions or attractions had been percolating over the previous months. It was our mission to reanimate every stereotype of the “Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll” generation. And as long as we had any two of the three we were ok. In addition this was the first major party in spring, the seniors could smell the freedom and fright of their post-high school from here, I had just turned 17, and no one was feeling any pain. And I stood and watched in awe as Peter Krenic entered the room. Kind of like how people feel when they see the President’s entourage pass by. Always fashionably late, guys like Peter didn’t just show-up, they made an entrance. And tonight Peter had his black velvet, purple-lined cape on. Of course he had to remove it almost as soon as he got in because the night was way too hot for such a costume, but things like that weren’t for comfort, they were for effect. And it had an effect on me, even if no one else noticed. I still remembered my chat with Debbie in the library about Peter, and her cryptic statement that she’d “see what she could do.” Tonight was going to be the night. So after The Man wandered and mingled for a while, he walked over to me. Normal people say hello. Peter said, “I hear you’re looking for me.” “Uh, sure.” Something brilliant like that. I didn’t want to seem weird, you know. After some silly chit-chat (the play, music, what he’s doing next year cause Peter was a senior and I was only a Junior and it was great that he was talking to me and stuff like that) he wanted to know if I felt like taking a drive. I said sure. The Krenic car! Me! The first thing he did when we got in his car was to show me his “resources.” Seedless marijuana from Hawaii, an exotic blend wrapped around a stick from Thailand, and a tiny vial of extracted hashish oil. As he spoke I was in awe. Enthralled. Like how the doorman must feel when the company owner asks his opinion. I felt important and special. I mean, this stuff was expensive, and exotic like I didn’t even know existed let alone actually smoked. There was more mind-altering potency in a single puff of this stuff that I’d seen in my entire life combined. And Peter just had this mannerism about him. His mouth was the tiniest bit crooked, with a very pronounced jaw. He was a singer in the school musicals, and had a very lyrical voice, and spoke with an entrancing ever-so-slight lisp. And the darkest of dark eyes, just like Debbie’s, I thought in passing. I do wish my literary skills were more adept, that I might be able to actually paint the picture, but it will need to suffice that I found the entire effect amazing…Hypnotic, really. Peter Krenic Himself, Senior, in his private car, showing me his exotic stash of illegal drugs that held such promise to take the minds where minds can’t usually go…Here comes another cliché, but I probably would have literally followed him anywhere. He didn’t want to light-up right there, that being a bit conspicuous. Plus, the powerful stereo (another one of my passions, music, stereos, speakers, the whole male-bonding-look-at-all-this-cool-stuff thing) would drain the battery and it was best to run the car anyway. We drove around the block a few times. I sat in Peter Krenic’s car, listened to Led Zeppelin, and smoked Thai stick dipped in Hash oil, and got really, really, really stoned. We never even discussed weed (other than his little floor-show), and he never even asked if I smoked, the whole thing being quite obvious any, and even if the Bible studies I was able to attend now that I was off my deathbed were making it quite clear this was not the best thing well that was for the normal people and I was not one of the normal people and there was no way I was going to blow this chance. I mattered. I was cool. I was with Peter. We drove back to the party, listened to the end of the song playing, and got out of the car, when Peter half-shouted “Shit” as he smacked the hood. “What?” I managed to somehow articulate. “Look, idiot! God, how stupid, I can’t believe I did that!” The car was locked, the keys were inside, and the engine was running. Hey, these things happen when you’re stoned. No big deal. You just work the problem. Spare? No. Key under the bumper? No. Coat hanger? No, the fancy-car security system didn’t allow “normal” windows. Somebody to give us a ride? Nope, no one wanted to get involved, and besides, we have this car sitting in the street running while it’s all locked up. The only one who could fix this was me. I wanted to. I had to. It was a matter of moral necessity and personal survival. I wanted, needed to show Peter that I could be counted on….He was in a spot, and when The Man is in a fix, helping The Man is the best way to become The Man yourself. So, the plan was very simple. Actually it was convoluted and stupid, but it seemed simple in my state of mind, whatever that state was and I assure you that state is not on any map. I would ride my bike the mile home, get my parent’s car, drive back to the party, pick-up Peter, drive him to his house where he would sneak into his mom’s house and grab the spare set of keys and he had to sneak because if she new he locked the keys in the car with the engine on she’d know he was smoking weed again and that would not be good oh no that would not be good at all and then drive Peter back to the party where he could unlock the car and turn it off and we could get back to the drama freaks and enjoy the buzz. The rational thing of course would have been to call Peter’s Mom, but we were out on a limb here and that was quite out of the question, so as silly as it was we would have to go with my plan. The only problem, the one teeny, tiny problem in the whole plan was, I could barely walk. I was not exactly a doper or a stoner, having actually been high only about 10 times in my life, and just barely high at that, smoking just the plain-ole garden variety dirt weed they sold for $10 an ounce in the 70s. I was quite out of my league here, like a kid who’s had a couple lifetime beers getting into a drinking contest with a fifth-of-gin-a-day barfly. But there was no way, no way in hell, that I would ever admit that to myself, let alone Peter. One of the things substance users look for to bond with are people who can “handle the buzz” and maintain an outward appearance of normalcy while the inner would spins, dips and dives. And bonding with Peter was the most important thing in the world to me. So I would maintain. No matter what. And I did. I honestly do not know how, but I did. It took about an hour, because I had great trouble remembering where I was or where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, and had to ride the bike very slowly, but as I stood outside my parents house I eventually remembered (come on, I know it’s something very important, focus here!) who I was and what I was doing and what I needed to do. What I thought would be the hard part, namely thinking up a story that I’d tell my parents about why I needed the car, was very easy. In one of those revelatory drug-induced moments that just seems to come out of nowhere, I decided I’d just tell them the truth. I left out the weed part of course, but I said a friend had locked his keys in the car and so on. My eyes were red I said because it was late and I was tired but my friend (my friend, Peter Krenic my Friend!) needed help and I was going to go help him if that was ok, please? After that it’s all black. I know I was somehow able to drive back to the party, get Peter and accomplish the rest of the mission, but for the first time in my young life I experienced a blackout. The next day, and even to this day, I cannot remember one bit of Sam’s Wild Ride. And that’s how I met Peter Krenic. |
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