Menagerie

“You wanna do something fun?” asked my roommate, Roger. A tall and wiry man from Trinidad, he grinned at Manuela and me and placed a tiny blue pill on each of our outstretched palms. “It’ll blow your minds!” he twittered in falsetto. Roger was flamboyantly gay, and liked to wear false eyelashes, which he batted provocatively as if daring us.

It was 1967.  I was seventeen, and had left home to rent a one-bedroom apartment with my two fellow clubbers. I’d met them at a groovy spot on Yonge Street called the Blue Note.

The tablet was the size of a speck. I figured it couldn’t possibly be as strong as Roger insisted. Swallowing it, I concentrated on washing my face, backcombing my hair, and applying thick makeup in preparation for a night of dancing. As I applied black eyeliner, I watched my pupils enlarge into deep and bottomless wells, sucking me down, down, down into a void. Startled, I jerked backward to stare at a stranger in the mirror. Relief came with sudden recognition, and I avoided further eye-contact as I hastily applied lipstick.

           As we meandered south on Yonge Street toward the club, a rainbow of neon storefronts pulsated, keeping beat with a thrum that vibrated in and around everything. Cars and pedestrians drifted by, leaving wispy trails of colored light in their wake. I floated a foot off the ground, out of body, in a dream. This was my first psychedelic experience.

           Manuela shattered my reverie when she clutched my arm and pointed at a bearded man with scraggly hair.  “Look!” she shrieked.

           “What?”

           “He looks like a lion!”

           I turned to gawk. The man’s shoulder-length hair was filthy and tangled, his clothes torn and disheveled. He hauled a shopping cart full of tattered garments.

           “What’s your problem?” he snarled.

           His angry grimace shimmered like a reflection in troubled waters. Something was emerging from the murky depth. A lion, with sprouting, mangy hair, bounded toward me, glaring with angry, yellow eyes and exposing jagged teeth. I lurched away in terror.

           This can’t be real, I thought, as I willed my eyes to stop seeing, my heart to stop thudding.

           The vision disintegrated, morphed into an explosion of colors that faded as the homeless man, shaking his mop-covered head, ambled off down the street.

           I realized with fascination that I’d just had a hallucination. I chased after my two companions, bursting to share my experience. They were a few strides ahead.

           “That’s far out, girl!” laughed Roger. “You know how to trip!”

           Feeling successfully initiated as an “acid head,” I wondered what I’d see and hear next. Remember, it’s all in your mind, I assured myself as I followed my friends into the Blue Note.

           A gum-chewing receptionist with thick eye-shadow and false eyelashes grabbed my five dollar admission and stamped the back of my hand. I studied her face. Her features rippled, and what I saw next catapulted me back to early childhood. I was face to face with Lizzie, the camel at the High Park Zoo. Back when I’d been little, small enough for Daddy to raise me up on his shoulders to the top of the chain-link fence, I’d gazed into her long-lashed eyes, stared at her grinding brown teeth, and caught a whiff of her foul breath. The vision of long ago quickly faded. I had a fit of giggles. The receptionist was not amused.

           Roger, Manuela, and I walked onto the crowded dance floor. A sea of creatures throbbed and bounced to the thud of music. Roger leaned toward my ear and shouted, “What a zoo!”

           As I processed this remark, I had another fit of laughter. Roger smiled at my antics. Suddenly, his long and slender face became that of a grinning, black and tan German Sheppard, with a lolling tongue and sharp, alert ears.

 “You look like a dog!” I announced, laughing so hard I could barely catch my breath.

Roger, doing a dance called the Funky Broadway, turned around, bent at the waist and wiggled his rear.

           “I’m wagging my tail,” he howled.

           At this point, tears of hilarity streamed down my face. Several dancers stopped to stare, tentative smiles on their faces.

           Next, my attention meandered to the House Band. In an instant, the musicians became drumming, strumming, head slapping chimpanzees raving about Red Rose Tea. I thought about having a tea party. I looked to my right and watched a giant white rabbit with a twitchy, rosebud nose. dance with a cud-chewing brown cow. Daisy’s eyes were huge, watery, brown globes that turned slowly and deliberately to stare into mine. Within those suspicious eyes, I spied scrambling spiders, and fear suddenly clutched at my throat.

           I looked across the room and caught sight of Val, a guy I lusted over, who barely knew I existed.  To my horror, he was breaking out in ulcers, changing into a huge, lumpy, bloated toad. His beady eyes surveyed the room and his long tongue slithered toward a pretty girl standing near him. I tumbled backward through the years to my childhood at the cottage, to the time when I’d captured toads to keep me company, until one day an enormous toad had refused to be my possession and had lunged at my finger.

“Breathe!” urged Roger as he led me outside. My chest was heavy. I struggled to inhale, finally gulping a lungful of fresh air. The street tilted. Menacing, alien creatures skulked by. I clutched Roger’s arm on one side and Manuela’s on the other.

           I’m safe now. It’s dark and the only sound is a dull, repetitive thump. I’ll stay right here…I’ve been here forever, and I’ll stay forever…

           Something heavy presses on my skull. I lift it off and squint at the light. I’m squatting under my kitchen table. How did I get here? Roger and Manuela coax me over to the couch with soft, slow, comforting suggestions. They squeeze my shoulders and rub my back. I feel babied, soothed, blanketed. I’m back.

           When I settled, Roger told me I’d had a “bum voyage” and freaked out. He had to hold my hand all the way home and I babbled like an infant. When we got inside, I rummaged in the cupboard for a large pot and a wooden mixing spoon. Then I crawled under the table, plunked the pot over my head, and used the utensil as a drum stick. They thought it was hilarious and decided to leave me there until I “came down.”

           “Let’s trip again next weekend,” Manuela suggested.

           Why not? I thought.

           My erratic and brain-damaging life as a wannabe hippie had begun, and would continue for seven more years, until I decided to become an elementary schoolteacher. The two life styles didn’t mix.