the first time i dropped acid
was on the people mover at disneyland. sometimes people reach epiphanies. some of them see god. others find a better life in a new career selling real estate. for those who don't believe in god or real estate, they take acid. i suppose i could have done it in some secluded little place in the woods where i wouldn't embarrass myself by stripping naked for no readily apparent reason, but at that very moment the people mover at disneyland seemed to be the right time.
"give me one," i told dan as he was handing out tiny squares of paper to adam and christina. he looked at me, contemplated any arguments that he could make and shrugged his shoulders. we were floating over tomorrowland.
"there are three things you should always remember if you ever decide to take any kind of hallucinogens," warned my friend alex, long before my trip on the people mover.
"cliffs are real. cars are real. mirrors are evil. remember those three things and you're on your way to a happy, healthy, successful drug trip." his words echoed in my head, reminding me of the sage voice in an early jackie chan kung fu movie.
at the time, alex wasn't really thinking that i would go ahead and melt my brains at disneyland. as long as i could avoid the materhorn, autopia or the haunted house. i should be fine i thought to myself.
the walls were breathing. i suspected that they were really breathing but i'm still not sure since the haunted house was where the acid first started to hit. i remember looking at the walls and thinking "now wait a goddamned minute here. are the walls breathing or not?" before i had too much longer to contemplate it, our little bubblecar moved steadily along on its haunted house track.
i grew up in los angeles and my parents used to take me to disneyland every year. when i was a lot younger, the haunted house was the place that would always reduce me to screaming fits of tears. shit jumping out from behind gravestones and ghosts dancing in gigantic ballrooms was just a little bit too much for my little head to handle. it wasn't until my uncle sat with me in the 'doom car' and pointed out all the strings lifting the ghosts and the mirror reflection in the ballroom. it was the first time i realized that some of the most impressive things are all about smoke and mirrors.
so there i sat, some fifteen years later with my eyes trying to swim out of my skull and the mirrors had ghosts in them. sweet jesus, the walls are breathing and mirrors have ghosts in them, what had i gotten myself into?? the ride had finally ended and we all fumbled out of the haunted house car, stepped away from the ghosts, mirrors and screaming things and studied each other's dilated pupils for a few split seconds. the show had begun.
pirates of the caribbean has always been my favorite disney ride. even after the big mouse decided that they needed to make the pirates behave a little bit more chivalrous, i have always waited eagerly in line to ride through that disney standard and today was absolutely no exception. it's because of the sky.
the sky in the pirates of the caribbean ride looks incredible. the ceiling is painted and lit as an exact, accurate replica of twilight just eight and a half minutes after the sun has gone down. it always amazes me that i can feel so temporally displaced by such a simple illusion, but the effect becomes so much more real as i float past the diners eating their deep fried monte carlo sandwiches on the patio of the french restaurant located in the same building. there's something about being on a boat on a rail and hearing the cricket noises and the people talking quietly over their dinners that makes it a really weird place to be on acid. of course, there are the pirates. they yo ho ho themselves in their animatronic frenzy, chase their gold, drink their liquor and fire canonballs at us, innocent bystanders with lsd jumping from synapse to synapse. what a grand time for both pirate and spectator alike.
one of the more confusing places to be on our drug of choice would have to have been fantasyland. there were so many wonderful, safe looking rides and cool witches popping out from behind windows, but there were also so many horrible, horrible tourists wielding their little kids on leashes and telling them to shut the hell up or they'd never take their kid to disneyland ever, ever again. the peter pan ride was the only place where i uncontrollably burst out crying. some bastard was yelling at his daughter in line, threatening to hit her in front of everyone and god. the poor little girl was absolutely terrified, which meant that she just kept on crying. i was ready to tear this guy's eyes out right there in the middle of the happiest place on earth with the kind of drug-induced rage that's shown only in poorly-budgeted educational films. adam held me back.
"it's ok. he's a jerk," said adam, doing his best to calm me down, "you're only going to get him more pissed off and then we won't be able to get on the peter pan ride." he was right. if i killed this man right here and now i wouldn't be able to ride the peter pan cars because the happy disney police would slap on some happy disney handcuffs and drag me down to the happy disney underground jail. time to pull myself together.
we decided that now was not the time to be at fantasyland. all those pin-headed horrible families would be gone by evening and then we could take fantasyland by force at night. we slalomed past the strollers, assholes and undercover cops to make it over to tomorrowland. tomorrowland! the world of the future!!!
one thing that makes disneyland a great place for acid is that there's a hell of a lot to look at while you're in line. star tours has hundreds of lucasfilm (tm) animatronics to look at and space mountain is bathed in spaceships and neon and happy, happy screaming people flying down the roller coaster at 32 feet per second. we were going to be one of those people!!! we were going to be able to scream our lungs out in the middle of disneyland in complete darkness and nobody would yell at us. the anticipation was going to kill me. i just knew it.
fortunately, the anticipation did not kill me. the ride was absolutely fantastic and did well in refueling our artificially enhanced wild-eyed enthusiasm for lysergic acid diethylamide and the kingdom of the mouse. ahhh yes. we were superheroes in the land of tomorrow and nobody could stop us now.
when night finally fell, the four of us staggered back to fantasyland with our renewed exuberance. sleeping beauty's castle was a lot calmer without the bastards and their progeny infecting the place. lovers in pairs and other brain-addled trippers converged on the kid's rides like vampires on virgins. the lines were reduced to acid-seconds and soon we found ourselves jumping off the alice in wonderland cars and running around to jump back on. alice in wonderland has got to be the biggest in-joke for all the stoner employees and guests of disneyland. the caterpillar smoking a hookah and the chesire cat is coughing up huge bonghits at the end of the ride! twice, three times, maybe even four, our cyclical, repetitious mindsets returned us to the beginning of the ride more times than we could bother counting. the spell was finally broken when i saw the seven foot skinny man with the gigantic mouse hands.
the strangest things can break a spell when you're on acid and this was one of them. he was just walking along, minding his own business, when my eyes caught the mouse hands. they were so disturbingly disproportionate from the rest of his body that i just couldn't resist. we followed him over to the storybook land ride and settled ourselves into the peaceful serenity of the boat going into the whale. our guide was an innocent sweet woman who proceeded to tell us about the calming tales of pinnochio, sleeping beauty and other disney appropriated myths. it was difficult to contain ourselves in such peaceful surroundings.
"and over there," said our calming, happy female guide, unaware that she was trapped on a small boat with four heads full of acid "is what we like to call never never land! do you know why we call it never never land?" she asked with her matronly smile, getting ready to build up to a joke that all four of us had already known from previous, sober trips to the magic kingdom.
"it's because we never never go there!" we all yelled a little too loudly. did we yell that too loudly??? maybe we could cover it up if we just giggled a lot. so we sat there and giggled a lot as she continued her uncomfortable monologue over our incessant tittering. she laughed nervously and kept her eye on the undercover security who was no doubt very close by.
despite all my previous journeys to disneyland as a kid. i had never been there all the way to closing. the acid had finally dissipated enough in my brain to make me a fully cognitive individual once again and night had fallen. it wasn't the pirates of the caribbean night that i was so fond of, but it was a good night nonetheless. our brains and bodies were wiped out from exhaustion and the kingdom of the mouse was closing. we jumped back onto the people mover and rode it back to the entrance of the park. we hallucinated fireworks then realized that the fireworks were really happening. tinkerbell flew through the technicolor explosives on a guide wire and then everything returned to being unnaturally quiet.
we were one of the last people out of the park. chuckling, stumbling and exhausted, we found our way to the parking lot to see my car, sitting all alone in the midst of the gigantic sea of concrete. never in my life had i been able to so quickly find my car in the disney parking lot. this was certainly a magical day indeed.
several years later i had returned to disneyland with a couple of friends. we were waiting in line at the materhorn and saw some guys ahead of us in line looking fidgety and wild-eyed. just as they were getting into their car, i yelled at them.
"i know what you're up to!" they looked back at me, eyes dilated and stupid grins on their faces. the materhorn car whisked them away and they careened ahead towards the mountain. <2.27.00>
all words (c) filmfatale industries 2000