Within 30 seconds of ingesting the pill, I started to feel a knot in my stomach. What am I doing here? What the hell is going on? Why did I just take that pill? Why are there two black... sorry, African American... prostitutes in my truck? Where am I going? WHAT the hell have I done?
We continued down the road. Music is PUMPING. The girls are dancing and laughing and yelling things to each other that I don’t understand. My hands begin to feel clammy on the wheel. A lump forms in my throat. My heart is racing. I feel very anxious and uneasy, and it is intensifying by the second. I can feel and hear every pounding of my heart throughout my entire body. My skin is becoming damp. My mouth is becoming dry. The muscles in my jaw begin to clench. Beads of sweat are forming on my upper lip. Oh man, WHAT the hell have I done?
Pink noticed my discomfort and hissed "Awwwww Boo, you ok?....". Only it wasn't a caring, re-assuring question of comfort. It was an evil, antagonistic statement of ridicule. And then she got a wicked smile on her face and growled "you look like you need a DRANK!!!!" to which Tre started celebrating and screaming in the backseat, "OH YEAH!! THE MAN NEED A DRANK!!! LETS GET THE MAN A DRANK!!! ". I was freaking out and on the verge of a full blown panic attack. Deep breath. Maybe they were right. Maybe I did need something to balance this out. I turned off the next exit and pulled into the parking lot at 4B's Tavern.
It was a hole in the wall. A dump. The kinda place where a bald, middle-aged businessman can roll in at 8:30am on a Wednesday morning with a couple of geeked-out hookers and no one bats an eye. I ordered a 16oz draft with a sidecar of whiskey. The girls ordered Moscatos and headed for the jukebox. I finished mine off quickly and ordered another round. And then another. I lost track of time. Eventually, my panic subsided and it was gradually replaced with a feeling I had never felt before. It was as if someone was slowly turning up the dial on all of my sensory inputs. Colors became more vibrant, sounds sharpened, and the music suddenly became mesmerizing. By this point, I was ripped and the girls were starting to get rowdy. We needed to get out of there.
We had barely made it to the truck when the E started really kicking in. HARD. It was like I got a sudden boost of energy while being simultaneously overcome with a feeling of complete euphoria. Nothing in the world mattered anymore. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Any problem I could think of from the past now seemed trivial and irrelevant. The three of us were laughing, joking, floating, merging. Expression between us came free and easy. No one in the truck could do or say anything wrong. We were truly living in the moment. I was starting to feel an inexplicable connection with Pink and Tre. It was like we had known each other forever and nothing in the world would seem more natural than for all of us to strip down naked and go at it right there on the spot. I was certain they felt the same.