I stopped to visit Ramo at the home where he had lived in New Boston when we had both been in high school. After Ramo greeted me, I walked into the front room. He looked about 25 years old and I felt about that same age. As soon as I had entered the front room, I saw myself in a green-framed mirror. I was wearing a sweater which had emblem-patches sewn all over it. Walking into the house brought back the memory of the time as a teenager I had returned to New Boston with a pound of marijuana after a trip to Mexico; I had come straight to Ramo's house after that trip.
I asked Ramo who he hung around with these days and he replied, "Brown." When I asked if he meant Mark Brown (a schoolmate from high school), he scoffed and said that he meant Duff (one of my former high school classmates). Ramo said that "Brown" was a nickname for Duff. I told Ramo I would like to see Duff. I thought it seemed strange that Ramo and Duff would be hanging around together because the previous week Duff had sent me an email in which he had mentioned Ramo. In the email, Duff had said that "Ramo" was a name he hadn't heard in a long time.
Ramo's mother – a thin, rather frail woman – entered the room. Ramo still lived there with his mother. He didn't work and he had done nothing with his life. The mother spoke to me and our conversation soon turned to LSD. I told her LSD was the most pleasurable experience imaginable. It was possible, I told her, to have a bad trip, but there was only about one chance in 75 of having a bad trip. I thought about telling her how Birdie and I had often taken LSD together and about the time we had taken orange-sunshine-LSD while we had been on the Hill in New Boston. That was the first time Birdie and I had truly had a heavy dose of LSD. We had been hallucinating so intensely, we had been forced to leave our car atop the Hill and walk down. But I didn't tell the story to Ramo's mother. I also thought about, but didn't tell her I had probably taken LSD approximately 75 times when I had been a teenager, but now I hadn't taken any in more than 20 years.
Ramo and I finally walked outside together. We were now both wearing white shirts and ties. Ramo was pulling a string from a rip on his clothes, and I seemed to be doing the same. As we headed toward the car, I told Ramo we might go drink a couple beers. If we started drinking, anything could happen. I mentioned I would also like to smoke some pot. I told Ramo that looking for pot would give us a goal. He didn't want to look for any, but he said he had already arranged to buy a bag. He said there were two different sizes of baggies of marijuana to choose from. After Ramo and I had boarded the car, his mother also climbed in. Apparently she followed him around.
Copyright 2011 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
