L.A. To Sacramento: A Road Trip Story by Michele Christopher
There are a couple of trips to Sacto from LA that I remember, but I don’t remember each of them clearly. I cant always figure out which incident happened on which trip. We’ll just start with the time-released acid trip packed into a VW Jetta with 7 other people.
We tied the rubber boat to the roof and got on the road. No spare clothes. No food. No money. We were just going to Sacto to go fishing. On acid. From Los Angeles. That fuckin acid never hit. Apparently, everyone else in the car was balls out frying, except for me. I was pissed, and I was sitting on Billy’s lap with hours to go and everyone was all stoked on the trip, and I wasn’t tripping yet, and yeah I was pissed. The actual drive up the 99 was uneventful, mostly, except for when Dirthead Steve went to pass us, blatantly smoking a fatty at us, only to get pulled over, ticketed and released. We stopped just south of Sacto at some place so everyone could finally get out and stretch. I opened the car door, I put my foot on the ground, I put my other foot on the ground, and suddenly I was peaking on the acid I took eight hours prior. I went into this place, and there was a black dude in a white pimp suit, greeting everyone. What the fuck? I asked him where I might find the bathrooms and he pointed me in the right direction. And the hall was that bordello red flocked fuzzy wallpaper. I cant find a place in my head for any of this. There… up ahead… two doors. One with a King card on it and one with a Queen card on it. I’m stumped. Dude, I have no idea what this shit is. It COULD be a Nex stop was the F&L down the road for some beer and smokes. I’ll never get the taste of either of them out of my head, the generic blue and orange packages of F&L cigs and F&L beer. Someone grabbed a gallon of red drink, too. This is actually where it gets very fuzzy, and I’m not sure which trip this happened on, but it must have been this one because the LSD fucked with me for a whole weekend. We get to the cheap hotel we are staying at, and I’m in the room trying to get the gallon of red drink open. Cant do it. Too retarded. I ended up slamming the sliding bathroom door on my hand, and red drink went all over the fucking place. All over me. Smashed the shit out of my hand. Refused to look at it. Too freaky. Everyone else looked at my now mangled, and apparently broken, middle right finger. Bleeding everywhere. Cara Lee made me hold it under the water for a while. Then she wrapped a towel around my hand. So for the weekend I was running around Sacto with this bloody towel around my hand. That finger is still dumb looking, I call it my third big toe.
Came back to town and went to Bertha Henschal park. Some people there started a fight. One of them threw something at us, and Cara Lee hit the ground like a sack of bricks. Then it was all cowboys and indians, and we got the cowboys down on the ground and beat them, badly. I sort of feel bad about it, but not really. Cara Lee was still unconscious on the ground. We carried her to the car, left the cowboys bleeding next to a picnic table, and headed to someone’s house. Got some frozen peas on her head. She woke up. And then we went to a party full of skinheads. Which I guess was pretty fun? Yeah. That night we found a building to sleep in. To my surprise and glee, it was an abandoned mortuary. Next to some train tracks, which none of us realized until like 4 AM when a fucking train came roaring by and scared the shit out of everyone. And then I think we went home the next day, but I don’t remember. I was still sort of tripping. But I DO remember, a day or so later, I went to a show at Fender’s and got kicked in the hand, the one with the now retarded middle finger, and broke the last two fingers on the same hand. I spent the summer painting leather jackets for people being able to only use my thumb and pointy finger o hold brushes. I learned how to write with my left hand, too. And still, when I taste a cheap can of beer, like Milwaukee’s Beast or something similar, I still taste the cheap F&L cigarettes and beer.
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Comments
Is it Bertha Henshaw? Henshell? I never did figure that out.
Posted by: pril | November 4, 2006 1:10 AM