Tripping my brains out, I managed to rip my gaze from the horrified faces of my three also tripping band mates and I looked at the source of their terror... my armpits.
They were the deepest, darkest purple anyone had ever seen. And the purple spread out almost as far as my tit and up onto my shoulder. It was the same on both sides. The purple death virus was spreading!
My stomach dropped. I was sure I didn't have long to live and when my friends saw the look on my face, they realized the severity of the situation and sprung up, plastering themselves on the far wall, as far away from ground zero as possible.
Ebola, bird flu, whatever all those ones are... please, this was way before those. This was the 1977 Vermontian purple underarm flesh eating bacteria virus. God only knew what pain and torment I was in for as this heinous viral death tribe marched it's way towards my brain, stopping for snacks on my heart and throat along the way before devouring my head and face.
"What the fuck is that?!" McCartney said, more frightened than he had ever been.
"I don't know!" I went to touch it.
"NO! DON'T TOUCH IT!!!" Ringo screamed.
"What the fuck, man! I have to inspect it!" I prodded it. Nothing. It didn't seem to have a mouth, this purple patch. It didn't bite.
"Does it hurt?" Harrison asked.
"No. I feel fine. I mean, I'm tripping my cunt off but other than that I feel normal." I pushed it, pulled it, rubbed and squoze it. Nothing.
Slowly, led by the courageous Paul, my three friends, like scared dogs convinced the devil they saw was only a shadow, okay maybe only a little convinced, crept towards the freak with the purple disease.
"You're sure it doesn't hurt?" Harrison asked again.
"Not at all."
"Maybe it's from the acid?" Ringo theorized.
"Could be. Do you guys have it?" Shit. No one had thought of that. With the grace and urgency of an Olympic Synchronized swimming team convinced they must score a perfect 10 to beat the Russians, they all simultaneously ripped off their shirts and checked their underarms. NOTHING! I was still the only freak in the room. They sighed a collective relief from deep inside their drugged out beings. I was happy for my friends that they weren't going to die along with me, but that joy was short lived as suddenly an evil thought burst into my mind.
What if it has spread to my dick and balls?
I immediately ripped off my pants and underwear.
"What the fuck are you..." Harrison asked, figuring it out before the "doing" had made it from his brain to his mouth. Again, like their nose plugged heroes, the boys followed suit and frantically ripped every stitch of clothing off until they joined me, buck naked in the freezing cold living room, tripping our asses off, searching for the purple plague all over our bodies with the microscopic attention to each pour of our skin as if this malady wasn't a large territorial dweller like under my arms, but might also be or start off small as a scabie, which, unfortunately, we had all had the year before.
While scabies are gross, at least they don't move. They're just tiny black dots buried under your skin. One friend gets em, you all get them. They're not as gross as lice, which actually crawl around. Another right of passage for the ninth grade alcoholic drug addict who will fuck anything that moves or doesn't.
I especially liked when, the first time I had my little new girlfriend over to family dinner, my dad asked straight out at the table, "How are your lice doing, Eric? Is the Quell helping?" I fucking shit you not.
Anyway, after a thorough inspection, nobody had any purple death on them anywhere except for me, and it didn't appear to be spreading. Everyone put their clothes back on and we decided smoking a joint would be the best course of action, you know, so we could figure this out. Waking my dad, going to the hospital, trying to cut it off with a knife were all considered, but getting more fucked up was settled on as the winner.
As we smoked the joint, sick Panama Red I had stolen from my dad's not so secret stash, we calmed down a bit and tried to wrap our minds around this conundrum. We traced the events of the entire day ending with the moment I had found the purple on me.
"We set up for the gig. Dropped the acid. Drank the rum. Smoked some joints. I changed into my outfit backstage and it definitely wasn't there then. We played. I made out with Hope Stillwell..."
"You did?!" Ringo apparently hadn't known.
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"In the balcony."
"When?"
"While you guys were putting the gear away."
"How far did you get?"
"She might be my new girlfriend so don't talk like that please."
"Wow." They all nodded their heads in agreement. I had scored. Back to less important things, like sussing out why I had an ailment that very well might kill me at any second.
"Then we came here and started playing that weird Weeble game and then I took off my Dashiki because it was soaked from me performing and then we saw the purple... Where the fuck?! Could it have come from the Dashiki?" I picked up the Dashiki. The Dashiki my step mother had loaned me to wear for the gig because it went really well with my platform boots. The p...u...r...p...l...e mirrored Dashiki that went... really... well. MOTHER FUCKER!!!
Everyone got it at the same time. I had sweat so much that the fucking purple Dashiki had run and stained my underarms. Hey come on, we were fucked up on enough drugs and booze to kill a small town, give us a break.
The next two hours were spent in that endless uproarious pot/acid induced laughing fit that only happens when you're that stoned and would cease to be funny to anyone else after ten seconds.
At least I wasn't going to die. And it did look kinda cool.
Those are the kinds of memories I get when I cross the border into the green mountain state.
So I got to my house in Vermont at around 5. I had stopped at the co-op in town and done a big shop in anticipation of the storm. I rarely leave my house in Vermont under normal circumstance let alone when 3 feet of snow are coming. I opened the front door, waiting to be hit by one of my favorite smells in the world. The combination of old candles, red cedar, and the country. Instead I was hit by a wall of pungent oil fumes.
My eyes started watering and I got a headache before I could but my groceries down on the kitchen table. Fuck! I opened the door to the cellar, home to where the furnace is and the smell intensified. It was 15 degrees outside and a massive storm was on the way in a couple hours. I needed to have heat. I shut the emergency switch off and the system shut down.
I better start a fire ASAP. A little light headed and not thinking straight anyway because I was hungry, I grabbed the box of matches. I figured I should open some windows and doors to fumigate the place but let me first just get the fire going. My caretaker had one all ready to go in the fire place, all I had to do was light it.
Wait. I know you're not supposed to light a match if the gas is leaking. Is it the same for oil fumes? Naaaa. That's just gas I think.
I opened the box of stick matches, took one out, and with the part of me that just can't not touch an electric fence to see if I can take the shock, I swiped the match across the box...
To be Continued...
Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 7:00 AM