washing machine

I keep thinking about this one thing that happened the fall of my senior year in college. I was living with A.G. in a cute little house everyone called "Bonita". We had gone with a group to the Sonic Youth concert on campus and we had all dropped acid. My friend Jimmy recently remided me how I had told him the story of going to this concert, maybe that's what brought it back into my mind. It's sort of a funny story to tell (if you can handle listening to other people's acid stories which if you can't you've probably already stopped reading this). The story is that while I was at the show, I started really tripping on the fact that I felt like I was inside of a washing machine. They had designed the lights in this certain way so that they would go around the concert hall and then stop and spin back the other way, like a wahing machine does. Then the music, the music was swirling around us like water and soap and I turned to A.G. and said, "Oh my God, this is so cool. I feel exaclty like I'm inside of a washing machine." Then it occured to me that this was the name of the album. It was the "Washing Machine" tour. Then I really freaked. I was like, "Hooooolllymoootheerfuuucckiingshiiit! That's the name of the album!" I was so excited that no body could calm me down. After the show I made A.G. come with me to go try and find Kim Gordon so that I could tell her that she had succeeded in making me feel like I was inside of a washing machine. I told A.G. that they would definitely let us backstage to see her because A.G. has the same last name as Kim Gordon and all we would have to do is tell them this and they would let us backstage to see her. This logic didn't work on the security guards for some reason.

That's the funny story but it's not the part of the night I keep thinking about. The part I keep thinking about is this moment I had with my friend N. after the concert. N. and I had spent the whole summer together doing summer stock and we had become really close. I played "Chava" in Fiddler on the Roof and he played the Gentile I ran away with. N. has the driest sense of humor out of everyone I know. He's so funny and he introduced me to all of this cool hip hop music like KRS1. We got to be really good friends that summer but we never made out or had anything romantic between us. He's super cute. We were just strangely platonic. N. got married last summer to the coolest girl. He's living in LA now and he seems so happy. Hopefully we can hang out a lot when dup and I move out there.

The thing I keep thinking about happened after the concert. There were about five of us that went to the show and we were hanging out in the living room of Bonita high out of our minds, laughing our asses off. It was a group of really funny people and we all got on this kick where we couldn't stop laughing. I was laughing so hard that I was crying. You know that feeling where you cross over from laughing to crying and sometimes you pee your pants? It super fun and funny obviously but it can also feel really uncomfortable and sometimes scary because you're so out of control of your emotions. It's amazing really, how similar laughing and crying are. It's the same physical response, the same release of emotion. It's interesting.

We were all laughing and laughing and finally I said something through my hysterics like, "It's so hard not to laugh!" We all agreed that we weren't going to ever be able to stop laughing. It started to feel like we had been laughing for years and years. It was becoming exhausting. Especially with N. and I. I would stop laughing for a second and just start to catch my breath and feel okay and then I would look at him and start right back up again. I was like, "I can't look at you and not laugh. It's too hard." He was laughing too but then he said to me, "I'll bet you can." Just then we both non-verbally agreed to try and look at eachother without laughing. Of course, the only way to do this is to think of something really sad. I decided to think about the saddest thing I knew and he did the same. Then he said, "Are you ready?"

We both looked up and right into eachother's eyes and stared for about a minute. What I saw in his eyes was the saddest thing he could think of and it killed me. I guess he was seeing the same thing in me. Let me tell you, we were no longer laughing. "I was wrong. It's not hard at all." I said. "No, no it's not. It's not hard at all." and then he stood up and walked upstairs to be alone.

Oh man. Talk about a buzz-kill. You could hear a pin drop in that room. Everyone had seen it go down. The energy had shifted in an instant. A.G. had to go up and talk N. down off his bad trip the rest of the night. I pulled out of it and started thinking happy thoughts again but it pretty much ruined the remainder of the evening. He and I never talked about it after that, what we had seen or why he was unable to recover from it.

I don't know why I keep thinking about it. It must be the fall.

xo,
La Ketch