Shiitake Happens, Part 2

Peanut butter put me in a jam!

Previously on The Anthony Show, I was just about to take a bite of a magic-mushroom-embedded peanut-butter sandwich in order to stave off the boredom of hanging out in a club I had no business hanging out in.

Eating a regular peanut-butter-sans-jelly sandwich would have been no small task. I'd only recently begun eating PB&Js, as I hated nut-related foods until I left college; even Snickers bars were eaten with great reluctance. And the only thing that made the PB&J remotely edible was the J.

There was no J, this time...


LEGUME + FUNGUS = GROSS
...only a bunch of M. (For mushrooms, get it?) The "sandwich" was probably one of the worst-tasting things I've ever had to eat since the days when I was child and I'd spend two hours at the kitchen table, lacking the permission to leave until my plate was clean.

To be fair, I didn't have to eat that sandwich. But I did, and it was almost impossible to swallow because the dried mushrooms were even more arid than the peanut butter, which might have been the chunky variety. I remember hearing a tale about a sorority with the retarded hazing technique pledge contest requiring the girls to eat a ridiculous amount of Skippy in a short amount of time with the assistance of a mere cracker and an inadequate amount of beverage. This resulted in lots of vomiting, but I assume this prepared the pledges for when they became true "sisters" for whom self-induced purging was a weekly activity.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about as I was attempting to slide the Timothy Leary Lunch down my dry gullet. I somehow consumed the sandwich, then I went back inside to let the fun begin.

IT'S ALMOST LIKE BEING DRUNK, BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO URINATE AS MUCH

If only!

I was hoping that I'd immediately enter a world that resembled the film Yellow Submarine, which I highly recommend if you like The Beatles and/or trippy animation. But nothing seemed to happen. The floor didn't open up to reveal the inferno below, the shot girls didn't turn into snakes, and I wasn't having any better of a time than when I walked in.

Apparently a little time is required before the mushrooms "kick in," so I was trying to estimate how long ago my friends had their sandwiches so I could estimate when I'd be feeling anything beyond a desire to be anywhere else on Earth. Eventually, I started to feel kind of, well, "funny," but I don't know if was from the drug content or because I was being hyperaware of how I was feeling.

Before long, it was two in the morning: time to leave. When we hit the light, which was actually night but lighter than it was inside, I noticed that the streetlights were kind of hazy. We parked on the street not far from the entrance, and we decided to wait until the traffic (human and auto) cleared out before heading back to my friend Steve's place, where my car was parked.

THE WASTED PARADE
We watched wave after wave of people stream from the Bridgeview, and each successive wave was in a worse state of dishevelment and drunkenness. It started to remind me, considering the state I was in, of an unreleased George Romero zombie film, Night of the Brainless Clubbers.

The last people to leave were young women who were dressed in their best clothes but the clothes were either ripped or fit on their bodies oddly as if they had shapeshifted into some other creature then returned to their original form once they became exposed to non-club air. I think one of them had a footprint on her face. From her own foot.

One unfortunate woman tipped as she was walking and fell onto a section of fence, which collapsed. It was taking her a long time to get up, though she seemed unhurt, so a crowd of people gathered around her. Everyone in the crowd looked the same — I know they were different sizes and genders and wore different clothes and all, but trust me, they all looked the same — except for this one guy. He was Asian, with a thin mustache and long hair tied in a ponytail, and he wore a black leather vest and black leather pants.

THIS IS HOW I KNEW I WAS ON MUSHROOMS
Mr. Leatherpants bent over to help the girl, and I said to Steve, "Check out that guy. He looks like some kind of slick ninja opium dealer." And Steve immediately replied, "Yeah, I'll be he smuggles drugs in his colon."

On a dull night, "he smuggles drugs in his colon" would probably make me laugh. But on this kind of night, I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Then I had to hide in the back seat of Steve's car. And I laughed and laughed some more. And then I rubbed my eyes.

IT'S LIKE LOOKING AT THE INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD, IF THE INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD SCREENS FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
When I was very young, I used to enjoy rubbing my eyes because it would produce a cheap thrill: the vision of a gelatin checkerboard designed by Salvador Dalí. On this evening, as I finally began to calm down from  my laughing fit while sitting in the back seat of Steve's car, I rubbed my eyes and I saw a beautiful, horrible image.

It was a mosaic of Chicklet-shaped titles, like the one of the more colorful subway stations, and in the middle was a drawing of a Japanese shogun warrior, complete with sinister mustache and that thing in the bun in his hair. The shogun looked very pissed off, like he was snatched from somewhere comfortable and transported to the insides of my eye sockets. At the same moment I heard a loud, sustained sound, like someone wowwwwwmmmmm-ing an electric guitar to herald the beginning of a rock concert.

And this was even funnier than "he smuggles drugs in his colon." I laughed until I cried, and in short gulps like I was being stabbed in the pancreas with a samurai sword. The drunks who passed the car looked through the open window as if I were an exhibit at the Freak Zoo.

AT LEAST IT WASN'T JOE TORRE'S FACE

My hallucination hopes to get
its 3,000th hit this season.

Eventually we returned to Steve's. It was close to 4am by that point. I'd thought I was no longer affected by the "sandwich" until I went to the bathroom to relieve myself — I completed that part went without incident — and after I washed my hands, I rubbed my eyes.

Sadly, the Angry Shogun had left town by this point, but when I looked at my balled fists I saw hundreds of eyelashes on them: it looked like I'd bunched a tub of chocolate sprinkles. I blinked, then looked in the mirror, and for the briefest moment I saw not my face but Derek Jeter's staring back at me.

I blinked again and my actual, non-million-dollar-earning face returned.

By about 5am, I finally felt good enough to drove home. The roads were post-apocalyptic empty and a friendly sun was starting to rise. It was a quiet ride home, except for the split-second of panic while on was on the Meadowbrook Parkway and the dashboard tricked me into thinking I was no longer driving my current car but Mrs. The Anthony Show's automobile.

I rolled into bed a little before 6, and woke up around 1 in the afternoon. And my friends and I forever referred to this evening as Mushroom Night. It was never repeated.

AND IN CONCLUSION
To illustrate my current state of affairs and how things have changed since then, until I had kids I would introduce this story as That One Time I Did Mushrooms And Some Crazy Stuff Happened, but thinking about it now, I consider it more of a There Was A Time When I Could Stay Out Until Five In The Morning And Sleep Undisturbed Until One In The Afternoon story. At my age, the "sleeping till 1pm" part sounds as outrageous as if I said I rode home on a chocolate unicorn.

And these days sleep is much more of a rarity than a chocolate unicorn.