We parked our car near a Vons Supermarket where we stood around looking for something, anything, to help us find this party. We were so desperate that we went inside of the 24 hour Vons for a clue as to where we were supposed to be. We saw raver cars in the parking lot, the kind that are filled with rave fliers and covered with rave stickers, and we knew that we had to be on the right track. A round of Snapple later we were half way through the Diesel Boy vs DJ DB CD, when Lila saw what appeared to be a homeless guy. While he appeared to be a homeless guy at first glance, he was sporting a pair of brand new Adidas cross trainers and his T-shirt said “Earnware ... Rapid E-Commerce.” We came within 15 feet of him, and I still didn’t know what to think. Did he know how to get to the party, or was he some random fool?

“So where’s the party?” asked Lila, with her usual street smarts and not a hint of doubt in
her voice.

“10 minutes that way.” said the stranger, without hesitation, pointing into the woods.

10 minutes later we were in unfamiliar woods in the middle of the night. Marcus and I were talking about "The Blair Witch Project", as minimal light from the full moon overhead kept us from being completely lost.

“Could you please stop talking about that stupid movie?” said Lila, “It's really starting to bother me.”

“Where the hell is this party?” I wondered out loud just as Matt spotted glowsticks, yes glowsticks, hanging from a tree about 50 feet away. I had never been so happy to see glowsticks in my life, and that includes my days as an E-tard.

Once we got to the tree with the glowsticks, we noticed a laser pointer that was carefully
aimed through the woods, directly at the door of a large house.

Marcus: “This is the craziest map point I have ever seen.”

Matt: “Well, God Dammit, let’s hurry. I want to get to this party.”

Lila: “What the fuck, these shoes were brand new. I don’t need to go to a party this bad.”

Mark: “We can detail your shoes later Lila, this party is fuckin unda-ground!”

Finally, we saw what we thought was the “venue.” A huge house in the middle of plush Rancho Bernardo, surrounded by orange trees and rolling hills of green grass. I would normally never have knocked on the door, but after all this and the fact that the laser pointer was aimed directly on it, I just had to.

“Knock-knock-knock-knock.”

A blond girl in a white “Sugarbeats” t-shirt opens the 12-foot tall door and welcomes us into “Limited Slip,” with a tray FULL of Candy. This wasn’t a Sugarbeats party, not in the least, but the vibe seemed like it just could have been. We were in! (But what kind of rave was this?) I’ve never been to a rave at a house before, and who in their right mind would even consider having hundreds of party kids trash their very expensive Rancho Bernardo home anyway?

“That will be $15.” says her hot friend in a matching Sugarbeats T-shirt.

“Wow, I’m getting change back from a 20!” I thought to myself as I unwrapped the Chupa Chupa lollipop. We were in a venue more interesting than I could ever imagine. I walked toward the bass in the main room (which was actually somebody’s living room), and it was steady booming. Leaving the large foyer I saw exactly what I remembered a rave being like a years ago, before every single party was carefully monitored by police and filled with security. It was dark, it was loud, and there were hundreds of kids dancing the night away like there was no tomorrow. The room was void of furniture and rugs, instead it was decorated with dozens of speakers and a disco ball mounted from the tall cathedral ceiling. I watched the mirrored ball fragment light from the colorful spotlights and lasers onto the walls and hardwood floor. Waves rippled across my field of vision like a flag in the wind, I thought it was because of the lights. A house bass line pounded, testing how much the windows could take. “Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump! ... Vvvump!” The bass metaphysically aligned every mind in the crowd into one agreed upon thought. Was it, could it be... PLUR?

At 1 a.m. I understood some of this event’s meaning. It was a temporary slip back in time to the days when there were real raves, when you had to be lucky and courageous to even get to the party. There was no security, there were no rules, there was just freedom. Freedom from the outside world, freedom from people that would rather stay home and watch T.V. or go to a bar and drink. Tonight we created a temporary culture that would only exist at this event, this night, for these few hours, and I was part of it. I was entranced by the colors and lights, by how they changed the hue of everyone and kept me guessing about what the true forms that surrounded me were.

I thought back to the days of Ravers Digest, and for one brief moment I wished that Sam were here with his Pentax and 50 mm lens, so that he could preserve these moments, so they would never dissolve into faded memories. Or did I?

No, I didn’t. I wanted tonight to be temporary, I wanted to do whatever I felt like doing
all night, and I wanted these acts to be free of links to the outside for myself and for everyone else. I wanted to feel it and to pour energy into it, and to rid myself of every toxic thought, emotion, and feeling in the process. I wanted to treat the following hours like they were precious and scarce, because they were. Once the sun had begun to rise, once the speakers had finally stopped pounding, once everyone had become separate individuals with separate lives, I would be back in the lame regular world. And with that in mind, I wanted to make the most out of every single minute. Every single minute, every single, every single, every single, minute, minute. Minute. Min, it. Minute.

I pulled the once round lollipop out of my mouth and as it moved away from my lips, I noticed that it was not round anymore, but in a way it was. It was not hard anymore, but
then again, it was. It was hard when I put in in my mouth, and it was hard when I flicked
it with my fingernail, but when it moved, it was pliable and fluid, like an egg yolk. As I whipped it around in the air, it looked like a noodle in water. What time was it? Where was Matt? I turned my head, and there is Matt with two lollipops in his mouth, and a huge grin on his face. “Yo, fool, this things are dosed!” he says.

“Oh man, what the hell? Where are Lila and Marcus? Did they eat any?” I ask.

“I don’t know fool.” Matt says with crushed candy still on his chin.

“Well, let’s find them, it can’t be that hard, this party only has one room.”

“I figured you didn’t know there was a Jungle room.”

We walk, glide, float, whatever we are doing, to the other side of the House room,
passing by party kids housing it up, and go into the garage. This was a pretty big house,
and it had an equally big garage. There was room for at least four cars, or in this case, no
cars and lots of speakers. In the middle of the room was the DJ booth. I have no idea
who was spinning, but it was a “jump up” jungle set that I did not want to end. This was
Jungle at it’s purest, quick broken beats and funky bass lines, an MC on vinyl and
complicated loops of special effects that took my mind so far away from where it was
only minutes ago - how long ago was that, anyway? It couldn’t have been that long ago,
we just walked from that there to here. How long could it have been? Fuck, I am
TRIP-IN!

I take a deep breath purely to feel the sensation. Wow, it is so cool. I do it again, wow.
My jaw is clamped shut now, and a surge of energy radiates from my spine to the tips of
my fingers. I notice my hands reflexively snap shut. “Taa Ts Tatata Ts Taa Ts Tatata Ts Taa Ts Tatata Ts Taa Ts Tatata Ts” says jungle. It’s been years since I have listened to jungle frying, and I am amazed at how complicated and layered and crisp and burly it is.

“Taa” My body coils up, storing energy in it’s muscles. I can’t wait for the next beat, it seems like it’s taking forever, even at 175 bpm. I know that I am going to spring like mad, the urge to move is multiplied one thousand times by the acid in my system. I am dying to snap from the current geometry into the next, where is that next kicker? Without thought, my body snaps. I am a few inches of the ground, and my limbs are taking a new geometry all together.

“Ts” hits, and I’m sprung into a new form, I am one with the music. I don’t try to identify anything or anyone around me. I am alone in a bubble, just me and jungle. Between each beat there is madness, chaos, twisting and writhing, sometime a shake of the hips or shoulders. “Tatata” On each beat is crystal perfect alignment, complete stops even if for only a split instant, then back to chaos, then ... “Ts” ... back to a complete stop.

I stay in that spot and dance until the Jungle turns into Hip Hop, and then I dance some more, but not with the same vigor. I’m in tune with the funky asymmetrical bass line, but I want to take a break. I look around the room in search of Matt, who I have not seen since I started busting out to Jungle about an hour ago. I walk around the garage looking in every corner for Matt, who is always in the Jungle Room of any rave. After an “LSD triple check” of the uncrowded garage, I feel confident that Matt is not here, so I start to head back into the house. As I reach for the door knob I am gripped by a strong sense of doubt and I carefully search the garage once again. Matt is nowhere to be found, again. I make a diligent effort to go back into the house, and again feel like Matt is in the Jungle/Hip Hop Room. Just as I am about to finally leave the garage and go back into the house, I see Lila for the first time since we got to the party, or rather Lila sees me.

“What up!” she says as a bubble pops on her lips.

“Lila, you ate the candy too?”

“Yeah, mine turned into a tea cup.”

“Oh shit, mine turned into an egg yolk!”

“You ate egg yolk-on-a-stick?”

Did I eat egg yolk-on-a-stick? I had to think about it for a second. “No babe, it was a blow pop, but it looked like an egg yolk because of how it moved, because of the trails it left.”

“Your frying? Mark that’s not chill.” Lila tells me as the gum, surely dosed just as well as
all the other candy, makes a smaking noise in her mouth. Lila is full of sid, and she is
telling me that I shouldn’t be frying! Hah!

“Lila, you know that the candy is dosed, right?”

“Fuck.” she said, with a look on her face like “this is going to be a long night.”

“How many lollipops did you eat, Lila?”

“Mark, it was a TEACUP, a hollowed out blow pop full of liquid!” and that was that last
thing she said that made any sense, to me at least. Then Lila said something I will never
forget, she looked me right in the eye and said, “Enkubine. I drill outerbean aim hershey. Wood eyes till autoban.”

Damn, that little girl had a lot of acid. Compared to what Lila must be feeling, I’m not
even trippin’. I build up my courage and fully accept that Matt is not in the fucking
Jungle room. Hey, I’m cool, I have the sid under control. Then I go inside, and it turns
out that I am not at the same house anymore, and right before my very eyes is Matt,
standing in the kitchen. Then I realized that this was the same house, but I had left the
garage through a different door than I entered. Ok, so maybe I am still pretty fucked up.

“Matt, I should have known that this would your favorite room: the kitchen!”

“Yo fool, I don’t know. This is fuct.” says Matt, with a blank look on his face.

“What the party? This party is pretty cool.” I said

“This trip.”

While I don’t know for sure what Matt was thinking, I do know that he must have ate as
many lollipops as possible, simply because they were free. I counted the different colors
of candy bits on his hoodie from the various flavors of lollipops he ate and thought about
how representative of Matt’s gluttonous character this was. I thought about the time that
he broke my pipe trying to scrape the resin out of it, and shrugged my shoulders. Usually
Matt’s eyes and grin are lit up as if he was connected to a 120V socket when he is frying,
but tonight he was different. I don’t think that he was having the type of bad trip where
he should be put in a straight jacket or needed a to settle down, but instead the kind that
makes people revaluate how they are living their life, and what they should change.

“Matt, you should have just had one piece of candy. You wanted it for the acid, and that
was what fuct you.”

“I know.” said Matt. I think that this was the first time that I ever heard Matt acknowledge the error of his ways. I wanted to see Lila’s reaction, but when I turned my head she was not there. That’s funny, I figured that Lila would have followed me, but she didn’t. Oh well, I’ll see her again, this house isn’t that big.

I walked to the fridge and opened it to see gallons of Orange Juice and dozens of bottled
waters. Wow, what a great party, how could they possibly afford to have all this sound,
all this music, all this free water and juice, and let’s not forget, all this free acid for only
$15? And what a cool venue, too! Then in a moment of LSD crystal clarity, I realized
how they could afford this. Whoever own’s this house probably has no idea that they are
hosting a rave with hundreds of party kids dancing through the night trippin balls on what
must have been thousands of hits of acid. This party is fuckin dope !!! And I guess since
the house was on such a huge piece of land, and there weren't any cars parked near by,
there was no clue as to what was going on. Damn, pretty cool party. Until it gets busted,
but that might not happen. If it does, I can get out of here fast, but what about the others?
will we be able to get back to that car in time? OK, this party is not getting busted, it
can’t, right? I need to stop trippin’ on this shit.

“So Matt, what do you want to now?”

“Dude, I think that I’m gonna just chill here for a minute.”

“Lates.” I leave Matt alone to deal with his own shit, and am off to the House room, where I am sure I will find Marcus. Instead of going back through the garage, I decide to go on an adventure through the house. Damn, this place IS big.

As I looked at the wrinkled flier, I thought about the last few years in the rave scene, about how I saw the whole scene grow from big to huge, explode and die, and from it’s ashes came the original recipe. Who threw this party? And then, in walks the blond girl in a Sugarbeats T-shirt.

“I was just thinking about you.” I said, and just as the words left my lips, I felt embarrassed. I must have sounded like such a nerd!

“You were just thinking about me?” she said with a smile.

I closed my eyes for a second, and before I made another attempt at speaking, I transformed into my ultra-cool acid super-self. “I was just thinking about what a great party this is, and how I needed this so bad, and how I would like to thank whoever threw it. In this case, you.” Then, she didn’t say anything, which surprised me. She sat down next to me, which surprised me even more.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Mark, what’s yours?”

“Jessica.”

“Cool, I’m so happy you didn’t just say ‘Tinkerbell.’”

Jessica covered her mouth with her hand and her eyelids squeezed shut. She was trying not to giggle, but a few squeaks slipped out none the less.

“Your cute.” she said.

I knew now that she was rolling, after all, I’ve been here before. Her uninhibited demeanor, her candid language, how she practically melted when I told her that “I was just thinking about you,” even though she didn’t know who I was.

I always feel guilty when I am around girls that are rolling. They inevitably think that I am “cute”, and that I am the funniest and most interesting person in the world, but that’s how girls are when they are on E. Whatev, I’m cool, I sit back and we start to talk. She tells me about herself, what she wants out of life, and what she thinks of me. God, she is so sweet, and so pretty. I know she’ll let me kiss her, and it would do me a world of good. This year has been so shitty in terms of everything.

I feel like I don’t have that special something in my life since the rave scene fell apart. I mean, sure there are still parties once in a while, but I used to go every single week. Even on weeks where I would try NOT to go out, by Sunday I had find some crazy ass party to hit up. I needed that rinse, both in terms of a physical workout, and as a chance to get away from the problems and the stresses of day to day life. It was the only place where I could go and not worry about what I had to do or what people thought of me, and now it had been all but wiped out.

“What are you thinking about?” said Jessica.

“I was thinking about you.” I said, and in a way I was thinking about her, but more so it was an automatic response to whenever a girl asks me that question. From her smile I knew that's what she wanted to hear.

I forgot about everything in my life and let myself slip into this night, into this temporal reality, I let myself become lost in Jessica. I looked into her eyes, squeezed the back of her neck, and waited for her to exhale. I took a breath and I kissed her bottom lip. She opened her mouth and I kissed her again, and again, and again, and again, but I never felt guilty. Jessica needed to feel loved and to feel special, and to know that even if it was just for tonight, just for these precious few hours, and even if it was in part due to the effects of E, it was still enough. And I felt the same way. Regardless of how I got here or where here was, I needed it and I loved it with all my heart, which felt full and warm for the first time in years.