Asheville Stories 1

Buster was not cool. He was so not cool that it would take a crucifixion for him to become cool. Jesus would have to die on the cross to absolve Buster of his uncool attitude. He was tall, pale, and skinny, with an aquiline nose and long, dark hair. He was some sort of drug dealer, but his own drugs of choice were MDMA and ephedrine. Ephedrine as in trucker pills. He was always taking those god damned things, which made him paranoid, high-strung, and irritable. Well, Adam Delfina was a friend of ours who paid rent on this big house with Buster and some other people. I knew Adam from Florida. He was an attractive, talented musician who was hopelessly addicted to Klonopin. He wasn’t exactly stable, and he was into crap like astrology, but he was a far less unsavory individual than Buster.

It was very cold outside and we’d been kicked out of the catshit apartment (what happened to the cats?) and Kiev said Adam would let us (Being me, Shabaka, Lucas, and him) stay in their basement for awhile.

The catshit apartment was the first place I stayed in Asheville. We were there for at least a week. Kiev’s friends had left him the key to the apartment and left. I don’t think they were paying rent. I never saw them.

The place was empty, but there were two kittens There was no litter box so they always shit in the bathroom sink. It was up to us to clean up the catshit. The plumbing was off, and the place - the whole place being one room - really smelled like catshit. There was no furniture.

Lucas, me, Shabaka, and Kiev would sit along the wall, drinking beer and playing worms on the laptop. Ostensibly the plan was to get jobs and an apartment, but I never once entertained the notion seriously myself. After awhile, we got found out and that was us kicked out into the snow. I knew this would happen because we all had a bum’s philosophy of life and we spent our days drinking downtown.

This brings me to Adam and Buster’s place where we stayed for a few days until it was not too cold to sleep outside, but still snowy, or until we all had warmer gear.

You know you’re a real bum when, faced with the prospect of sleeping outside in snowy weather, you still won’t get a job. We just drank beer all day and lie to each other about how we were going to get jobs and pay rent.

Well, on the day we went to stay at Adam’s house, there was an actual snowstorm. The basement was huge, and it was cold too,

Buster was a tool about us being there. He told us not to steal his weed. He complained about his weed while smoking it. He complained about everything. He was like a small, angry dog.

When he left the room, Kiev cracked open his weed jar and took about a half gram for us.

”He’ll never miss it”, said Kiev.

The next day was a weekend and there was a Papadosio show. Buster was planning on having a party and needed food for that party, So I let him use my EBT card for an eight all of shrooms.

I wasn’t very interested in a party like this. I was not a participating member of the world these people lived in They either looked down upon or up to people, sometimes both at the same time.

I also was uninterested in Papadosio. It was colder than hell outside.

So I ate the shrooms. Buster, Kiev, Adam, and probably some girl left for the Papadosio concert. As far as I can remember, this was the highest dose of mushrooms I’d taken yet all at once, 3.5 grams. I don’t remember what happened after they left. Shabazz was around. More than likely I just sat on the couch for hours, because of the mushrooms.

Suddenly there were four other people in the room, including Kiev, Buster, and Adam. They were talking. I didn’t like this. I was in too vulnerable a place to be around those fuckers. So I went into the cold basement and got under a blanket.

Magic happened.

That blanket was like a sensory deprivation tank. In fact, my natural instinct while tripping is to get under a blanket.

There was this waiting room I was seeing. They were telling me something about aliens and a microchip that I could have put in my head, if I wanted. I saw this device, like something you could place your head in. It had all these colorful panels and needle-like extensions. I somehow communicated that I did not want an alien microchip in my head.

Eventually, I got out from under my blanket and went upstairs. Lucas was passed out on the couch. I sat down across from him and began drinking the unfinished beers on the coffee table. I was aware of some kind of fuss going on in one of the other rooms. Pretty soon, a girl came out into the livingroom. She had red hair and a skirt. It wasn’t natural red, but dye. She was making funny noises and moving her hips around in front of me. In retrospect, she was probably on MDMA.

“Unh,” said the girl.

“Whoo!” said Lucas, half asleep on the couch.

I was so high I didn’t know what to do. I was vaguely aware this was Buster’s girl or something. Is that a sexist way of putting it? Sorry. Well, she sat on the couch and put her face closer to mine. I was pretty unnerved. I wasn’t really in the mood either. If she had really went for it, I probably wouldn’t have stopped her. But when it comes to situations like this, I can be sort of cold. If I’m gonna get with a girl I don’t know, I have to get the right vibe. I was not getting the right vibe. She made a frustrated noise and left.

We stayed at Buster’s house for another day or so. At some point, I remember Buster was on his knees, probably on MDMA. He had his hands clasped in supplication, saying to Adam: “Don’t hate me Adam please don’t hate me!

“I’m not gonna deal with this. Get up” said Adam.

Have I ever seen such a pathetic display? I shudder to think of it. I’ve said and done some pretty pathetic shit myself, mind. I know.

After Buster’s house we slept at “Ravenscroft” on Church Street. Snow was still on the ground. Ravenscroft was a sort of alcove in a car park that no one used. I wasn’t worried. I didn’t have a moment where I felt like “oh now we have to sleep outside, damn it all”. For one thing, I’d done it before. You had to have a job to pay for a house and you had to have a house to get a job. It seemed pretty stupid to me - without a job or a house, I could live like King Henry VIII, drinking all the time and eating the finest bounty of the dumpsters. What was the point in working when all I wanted was within my grasp at the liquor store, or so it seemed to me.