Shiitake Happens, Part 1

With friends like these...

I begin by reminding you that I have lived a very boring life. It's not an unhappy life (some days are less better than others), just a relatively dull one.

Sure, I've been on one prime-time game show and have appeared, with my wife and house, on a home-remodeling/reality-type show, and I've accomplished a few things worth blogging/bragging about, but I don't have any real juicy stories to tell.

Most of the challenges facing this blog concern squeezing something worth reading out of the ordinary and mundane. The idea of an entertainment based on "nothing" worked for a show called Seinfeld (kids, ask your parents about that one), but in Jerry's case, he had three cooky friends with whom he shared his wacky urban adventures. In my defense, none of my friends later had a very public case of racism.

Therefore, there are certain kinds of tales that you won't find on The Anthony Show. For instance...


I have never been arrested. I have been pulled over for traffic violations several times, and more often than not, I've driven away without a ticket — and not because I've burned rubber while the cop was running a check on my license. I think this is because I'm one of the least threatening-looking people you'll ever meet, and I'm very polite, and, when called for, I can appear very sympathetic to law enforcement.

I have never overdosed on drugs. My drug use has been very limited, anyway, and those situations never got out of hand. I've suffered the effects of drinking too much, but no more than the average college student -- and nothing worthy of an episode of Campus PD.

SO NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT ONE TIME I DID THIS PARTICULAR DRUG
Even my most drug-experienced friend never crossed the line into the narcotics that will put you on a show featuring Dr. Drew. I have never seen cocaine — I once left a party at a bar where it was served afterward, perhaps in celebration of my departure — and all I know about heroin and meth comes from the hoods on patrol cars on COPS and episodes of Breaking Bad.

I did have a single experience with mushrooms, which is sort of ironic, because I don't eat "regular" mushrooms. In fact, I'm certain that I have consumed more psilocybin in that one serving than shiitake in my entire life.

IF YOU HAD TO GO TO THIS CLUB, YOU'D WANNA TAKE DRUGS, TOO
We were at the home of a friend, we'll call him Steve, and we were getting ready to go out to some club in Long Beach. Even though Steve's home was already deep on the South Shore of Nassau County, it would still take about a half hour to get to Long Beach. Long Beach, for those who know little about Long Island, is considered part of Long Island, but it seems as far away from the rest of Long Island as the Golden Gate Bridge.

So there we were, just waiting to go out to some club that I had no interest in going to, anyway, because I was "attached" (I might have been married by that point), and it was a meat-market club that would have been a bad-enough scene if I were single, worse if I were married. Right before we were ready to leave, Steve whipped out a plastic bag that contained what looked like the remains from a neglected flowerpot: a handfull of lifeless, dessicated root-y things.

I was like, I don't care if that was an aphrodisiac that would make strippers want to pay me, I ain't touching that, let along eating that. Don't worry, Steve replied, there's a simple intake system in order to ingest these items. It was called the peanut-butter sandwich.

CHOOSY MOTHERS CHOOSE JIF-AND-'SHROOMS

Those peanuts are starting
to make me paranoid.

Apparently, you were supposed to conceal the mushrooms in the sandwich, then (naturally) eat the sandwich. Steve made sandwiches for everyone. Steve's girlfriend's female friend outright refused. I found that pretty noble, though I later learned that though she worked in a medical field she became a stripper in her spare time for extra income, and I would've been interested to find out whether she would have been willing to pay me.

As for me, I just watched the others eat their sandwiches. I wrapped mine in a napkin and put it in my pocket. I didn't want to throw it away, because it was probably the most expensive peanut-butter sandwich I'd ever been served.

WELCOME TO HELL

These are not "Jill."

The exotic dancer/medical assistant (I'll call her Jill because I'll be mentioning her again) drove us to The Bridgeview, some club on the water which I think is in Island Park, which is on the way to Long Beach but pretty far nonetheless and which was the type of place that the cast of Jersey Shore would have gone to, even if they were like 7 years old back then.

There were plenty of normal-sized guys, but the club was dominated by thick fellows wearing dress shirts that were entirely unbuttoned so they could show off their tanned, meaty chests. The only difference between that time and now is that no one had tattoos back then; remember those days?

Steve and the rest of my party (other than Jill, who was on the prowl) were starting to feel the effects of the mushrooms, laughing for no discernible reason. I felt like I wasn't in on the joke, not an uncommon feeling when I go out with my friends.

I wandered outside to the patio area of the club, where the music was quiet enough so you only needed to scream through a bullhorn to be heard. I looked out over the railing, staring at the water and the stars, looking for sinking boats that I would have preferred to have been aboard, wondering why the hell I was wasting my Saturday evening, and why I often felt that way even when no one ate mushrooms before we went out.

I put my hands in my pockets and felt that wadded napkin ball. I took it out and unwrapped it to reveal that psilocybin sandwich I'd hidden earlier. Something as pure as peanut butter on white bread with the crusts removed seemed completely out of place in a coven of spray-tanned harpies and granite-headed goons set to a BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick dance soundtrack. There was no Caligula, or even Nero, but if I were to endure an evening in Rome, I'd have to do as my fellow Romans did.

I ate the sandwich.

To be continued. Cue the somewhat-appropriate music: