When I was 12 they gave me the gas before the procedure.
I remember him saying “ok I’ll have someone come in in a couple minutes to take it off so don’t touch it”
Got it , don’t touch.
I stared at the ceiling tiles in this silent room. Inhaling, exhaling. Tasting this new air, not sweet but not bitter. The way that bubblegum flavored medicine tastes like neither bubblegum or medicine, it just taste.
Don’t touch.
How long had it been? It was impossible to be sure, somewhere between 2 minutes and 5 years. I had long since stopped worrying about the time. I hadn’t worried much about time ever before. Hell I don’t know if I’ve worried since.
My grandmother never worried about time. She ran coke in the 80s. Grew weed in the 90s. While living out the 00s in a pill induced haze of euphoria.
She told me time didn’t matter, because we are just here.. now. Just now. Live for the now because the past was once the now , and the future while soon be the now. Just live now, in whatever fucked up state you want to live it in.
This was later I think my sophomore year of college but now back to 12 year old me.
Don’t touch.
No , by now time was no longer a concept I could grasp. I guess it disappeared along with the feeling that I was one with my body. No no my body was some other thing completely disconnected from me as a being. For now I was one with the white ceiling tiles that began to dance back in forth. Now the resembled the ghosts in the haunted house level of Super Mario more then they ever resembled ceiling tiles.
Don’t touch.
While the melodic sirens played inside my eardrums. They synced up perfectly with my breathing. Ahh in and out. Breath, yes. The only thing tethering to this world.
I only remember feeling this way once more in life. I was 18 years old bathing in my mothers claw foot bath tub. Before getting in I ripped a major hit of K2 from a gravity bong in the bathroom sink.
For the uninitiated. K2 is a substance similar to weed. Except completely the opposite. Weed chills you out? K2 makes you see your dead grandmother doing cartwheels across your room. But the thing is you don’t care. Because you’re a fiend now, and damnit do you need a fix.
Also for posterity. A gravity bong is a bottle. 20 ounce or 2 liter. With a hole cut in the bottom. You cut another hole in the bottle cap and put socket wrench bit into it. Then you fill the bit with whatever substance you like. The bottle is then filled with water while hold the hole at the bottom. You light your substance in the bit while letting the water drain from the bottom of the bottle. So the gravity does the work for you. It fills the bottle with the smoke until the water is drained. Then when its all done. You unscrew the cap and take all that precious tastey air to your lungs.
“You’re still here?!”
A voice boomed out. Surely King Boo coming to finish the job his lackeys couldn’t.
“Roll over here roll over”
Suddenly King Boo has me face down on the dentists chair. Touch? No don’t touch, wait he touched it. Now I’m watching lava flow onto the floor in front of me. At least it felt like lava.
2 minutes. A breakdown of bureaucracy had turned this 2 minutes into a hellish eternity for me. The dentist forgot to tell the assistant? The assistant forgot to remind the dentist? Either way, they had given a 12 year old boy an hour long trip into a different dimension. Mistakes like these are better left unsaid. Continue on as if everything is normal. But for this 12 year old, normal isn’t a state he ever wants to feel again. He’ll be chasing that high for his whole life. Inhaling anything that tastes, staring at ceilings, and praying to see the ghosts again.