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As a lad during the summer of 2000 I found myself hungrily chewing mushrooms at the Gorge in George, Washington. That's not a typo, someone named the town George. On purpose. With malice aforethought.
One did not chew mushrooms for the flavor. They taste like goat feces distilled into a uniquely concentrated form of evil. They leave the stomach in revolt for several hours and ingesting them quite often leads to absurd situations shortly after.
In this instance, I was closing in on eighteen years old and nowhere near as wise as I conceit myself now. These days, I abuse drugs in more controlled environments. Like my living room or the El Corazon in Seattle.
Back then, I often found myself at the Gorge, an amphitheater and concert space nestled almost precisely in the center of Washington State. It’s out in the desert. It’s bat country.
If one views it on a map, it resembles the rectum of the state square in the center, with the Colombia River forming its noble ass crack. Note to self, this metaphor is clumsy. Quite frankly it stinks. Offensively cleftal. Rewrite someday.
This wasn’t my first encounter with the mystical and mysterious mushroom of myth. Another time, we ate three ounces of the things between six people. I got put in charge of fireworks as the most responsible of the bunch. Work with what you got.
That bears repeating. I was once the most responsible person in a group of persons.
A friend of mine - who my parents utterly adored - was a bit of a mushroom dealer. Despite the statute of limitations for such things, this scourge of sober society shall remain nameless. But his name rhymes with rave.
It is interesting, the idea of someone being just a bit of a mushroom dealer. It seems one either is or is not a mushroom dealer, without any ambiguity. But he also sold pot, so maybe that’s where the confusion creeps in.
Needless to say, neither my parents nor theirs knew anything about any of this.
Aside from an opportunity to eat my veggies as directed by various health experts and weirdly violent hippies called libertarians, I was at the Gorge that summer day to take in what is known as a punk rock show sponsored by name brand footwear.
Of course, events at the Gorge resemble the standard, grungy punk rock show taking place in a dive bar under the freeway in only a few ways.
Live music is played at both, if one is willing to charitably refer to punk rock as music. But you can only fit a few hundred people into the El Corazon at Seattle, whereas you can stuff thousands into Washington State’s rowdy amphitheatrical rectum.
Thousands had willingly inserted themselves this day for a music festival designed mostly to sell shoes, called The Vans Warped Tour. I’d never seen anyone actually buy kicks at one of these things, despite having frequented a few. Vans is a shoe company.
What I have seen is countless shoes being thrown around by the crowd. Presumably, their old pairs. So, I suppose it must go on.
My recollection of the entire affair is somewhat hazy, admittedly. I always get that way after eating vegetables. I fail to see the health benefits considering I usually end up in cuffs and/or vomiting sometime later.
At some point during the day, I literally lost my shirt. I don’t recall what kind of t-shirt it even was. I think it was my Animaniacs shirt with Pinky and the Brain on it. I can’t seem to find it these days and its absence is noted.
To this day I am a huge fan of that show and take any excuse to bust out its introductory song; at dinner, in the shower, work meetings, police lineups, every chance I get. They were zany to the max with loony in their slacks.
As a man, my nipples do not excite or disgust most of my fellow humans. They mostly just incite jealousy in women invested in going topless for one reason or another. Sympathies, ladies. As a progressive male ally, I also wish your breasts were free.
I'm trying to say without my shirt, my exposed, pathetically useless male nipples weren’t much of a problem. For me or anyone else.
It was summertime, I was pretty young, and skinny enough to present an illusion of musculature. Ropy, I think the adjective is. These days I look like something Donkey Kong would chuck at violent Italians.
I came out the other end of this festival quite tan. For me, that meant mostly peach. I don’t tend to burn, but I don’t brown either. Schrodinger’s melanin. I expect at some point I could just immolate, but I have yet to reach that point. Obviously.
Rather than Puritan outrage at my nipples, what I saw instead was people buying beer and water, both at ludicrous premiums. The Desert Highway Robbery Markup on these things was pretty steep and if you didn’t drink something you’d just die.
The Warped Tour - most drop the Vans part of its title like a bag of hot glutens - is a testament to capitalism, of course. The advertising is almost certainly a costly thing, considering the amount of people the festival draws.
Before Vans started throwing money at the thing, it was just The Warped Tour. But that is the least interesting thing about it all.
Someone managed to get all these punks in the same place while also preventing them from overdosing and rioting. I assume some sort of over-coked shoe salesman. Not your average Al Bundy.
One assumes the bands receive a lifetime supply of shoes in return for descending into this vapid pit of commercial consumerism. Here seen as a dangerously decadent, company sponsored, all-around good time entertaining thousands.
Several hundred of which are almost certainly tripping balls on acid and mushrooms. Also, dehydrated, as they spent their wads on mushrooms rather than water. No one goes to Warped to respect their bodies.
The lineup is crowded so each band gets scheduled a pitiful thirty minutes to play across multiple stages. For some of these bands this is enough time to get through their entire discography. For others, it is too long. Not all these bands are winners.
The intrepid festival goer will work out a schedule for themselves. If I want to see No Use For A Name on the south stage at four, I’ll need to head out halfway through Bad Religion’s set at a quarter ‘til.
Mushroom-fueled festivalistas must navigate a sea of sweaty fellows and their adorable girlfriends I’m totally not staring at to get there. Easy tiger, we’re all just here to see The Suicide Machines, all right? No, I don’t have a problem your fist can solve.
Here, have some veggies. They’ll settle your stomach. Yeah! Nice to meet you, too! Stay hydrated! And technicolor! Have you seen my shirt? No, I don't want your Tool shirt. Oh, you left me standing here with it. Okay. It feels wet. I’ll just carry it then.
I’m unsure if my reader, experience and worldly as you are, have ever tried to navigate through the crowds one finds at Warped. I imagine navigating Woodstock would have been similar, if quite a bit stinkier. Somehow.
A sea of people, in all the colors of the rainbow, scream and jump up and down in place like psychedelic dolphins on trampolines. Anyone who goes under in the crowd, presumably stays under.
Sure, there are Good Samaritan types dragging twelve-year-old girls and me out from under certain destruction at the stomping feet of the normal sized individual. But to say the environment is safe would be a gross misstatement.
The threat of being crushed into a viscous, bloody pudding is very real. This threat exists all amidst a backdrop screaming entirely too loud for anyone to hear your pathetic final pleas for mercy.
If you’re lucky, they’ll pass you back over the top of the crowd, picking your pockets as you go. If you’re female, just know that I’m sorry. Men are mostly criminals, primarily between the ages of ten and fifty.
This omnipresent threat to your holiest of holes and living existence does not come without benefit, however. One doesn't see The Suicide Machines play without risk of things getting out of hand. It is worth it.
If you haven’t heard five thousand voices all screaming “I’ll break the glass!” in unison, you have missed out on that.
It is possible one could capture the sense in any of the mostly peaceful riots staged across the United States in 2020.
The scenes are similar at the Gorge, but the music is way better. It is unclear if the drugs are better, but there are certainly less cops around to kill one’s locally sourced and sustainable buzz. Warped is violently happy and doesn’t care if you are not.
I lost complete track of my schedule but even without one you're likely to step in quality. I had a copy of Kerplunk before the band was cool, you know. So, about a year before Green Day appealed to lonely virgins on the radio, they appealed to my own lonesome virginity.
This makes me cool and hip, but it never made me enjoy craft brew IPAs. So, when the band began to play I was shirtless, absolutely swimming in mushroom fueled visuals, and ten years old again. “Look at me, Billie!” And, “Screeching Weasel was better!”
I was completely lost in a crowd of similarly intoxicated individuals seeing more or less the same things I was. I saw what I thought was a roll of toilet paper unfurling midair as it hurtled toward the stage, but it was just a bra, and it turns out I was just very high.
I cheered for progressivism most heartily. Titty shackles were coming undone. I’d inspired it with my own accidental show of solidarity.
Halfway through their set, Green Day asked if anyone in the crowd played guitar, which one assumed was absolutely everyone. Hell, even I play bass. Poorly to be sure, but I have a few sitting around the house. Occasionally, I play No One Knows for myself. It’s a sad but fun song. Like Robin Williams.
Eventually, through some inscrutable means, they picked a fellow out of the crowd, hauled him up on the stage and handed over the guitarist’s ax. The lucky victim was shown the three-chord progression inherent in all Green Day tracks before playing out their cover of Operation Ivy’s Knowledge with the band.
The screams from the crowd were ecstatic joy. The kind I imagine early Christians had prior to theologians and politicians determining the good news was to be treated as bad news and solemnly mourned through rituals and confessional guilt trips.
I once experienced fifty or so individuals screaming at me, but it wasn’t a pleasant affair. There was a definite homicidal edge to the thing.
But this guy basked in an approving glow for a few minutes. It saw it flowing from the crowd into this fortunate wanker. He probably tells whoever will listen about it every day.
Once Green Day’s set was over, their drummer set his drums on fire and sprinted off stage. I assume eight balls of cocaine wait for no man.
With the sun setting over the Colombia River, it lit up the far side of the Gorge in vivacious purples, oozing reds, and an orange pink the human eye cannot see without psychedelic aid. Bands were still playing. The best of the bunch.
Thousands were leaping up and down and anyone who wasn't came there to slam dance. The smell of pot hung low and heavy in the air. I could see it. The smell. Those cubenses were doing me dry, mucking up my senses.
Atop it all, the Suicide Machines were closing things out with their rendition of It’s The End of the World as We Know It and I agreed. If you’ve never heard thousands of people mumbling their way through the verse of that song, you simply haven’t.
It was also time to pop a few more caps, as I was feeling peckish again and hadn’t felt like puking in hours.
Besides, the party was about to start. As Buddha once said, no man should enter the Gorge campground without first having tasted good sake. My sake was mushrooms.
In addition to its concert space at the Gorge, they also have a campground. This is mostly just a flat stretch of dirt with some stubborn tufts of grass poking through here and there. An open field punctuated with Porto-potties like sewer zits.
They looked like Keebler Elf treehouses. Full of little people making sugar dookies.
Folks are invited to drive up, pitch a tent, and get wholly and wildly wasted all night under the stars overseen by a token law enforcement presence. Cops were mostly just there to put out fires, score free drugs, and accept bribes.
Of course, even a token cop can make itself felt, but more on that later.
By the time I’d hoofed it back to the camp site, the sun was fully down, and I was fully high. I reveled in the prophetic quality of that last song about the end of the world as I watched a camp plunge balls deep into apocalyptic and ecstatic enthusiasm.
My comrade campers - hundreds of the social degenerates - were enthusiastically firing off all kinds of fireworks. All kinds of smoke lit up in the sky and on the ground. I'd stumbled into a mostly peaceful riot.
Roman candles, snazzy snappers, Saturn missiles, willy-wammers, nipple-removers, and other incendiary well-wishers were all firing up into the sky or into innocent and until that moment completely not on fire tents.
Couches were ablaze, and I found myself wondering who the hell dragged a couch out into the middle of the desert just to set it on fire. I didn’t consider this too long, however, as I could hardly follow a single coherent thought at all.
I’d convinced myself these campers were celebrating my re-entry into the camp like a Roman triumph. I wasn’t about to deride their enthusiastic embrace of a long, lost brother. The natives had accepted me into the tribe.
It was all quite emotional. I wiped a single tear from my pitch black, iris-free eye.
I mostly hoped someone was enjoying my t-shirt. With all the nipple-removers flying through the air, my concern over my exposed teats became more acute. Over the years I’d grown quite attached to my stupid, useless mipples.
So, I reluctantly put on my Tool shirt that hot-chick-adjacent weirdo gave me a couple dozen paragraphs back.
Like magic, I began to hear the whispering voice of nature all around me. Underneath the explosions, between jubilant screams, I heard it again and again. “Maynard,” it said. I had no idea what it meant. But it kept saying it.
I kept hearing that word all night, delivered through a variety of mouths.
In the midst of my religious epiphany and the mysterious Maynard, I’d managed to locate the bunch of besties I’d arrived at the show with. They were chugging Black Label beer at what I guess was our camp site, no doubt getting ready to man a search party for me. But after just one more beer.
Apparently, they’d misplaced me around thirty minutes after our little mushroom lunch.
Names will be changed to protect the guilty as my lawyer was quite clear on this point prior to my drowning him in the pool. The only good advice the sumbitch gave.
So, I met up with Zack - who is definitely not Zeke - at our tents. We’d also come with Lara and Carol - who are definitely not Lisa and Katherine. They wisely planned to occupy a second tent away from us.
They’d still have to hear us arguing over whether Laurel Aitken or Prince Buster invented ska, but they’d be away from our smell. Laurel Aitken did, for the record. He just called it boogie-woogie. Dude could call it whatever he wanted; it was ska.
You will know it by its chica-chica, mate. Don’t argue with me on this.
For some reason, we got it in what passed for our brains at the time a Honey Bucket would look better with its contents spilled out over the sun-parched dirt. Maybe I figured this was what Maynard meant. The campground continued to whisper it to me.
Sometimes, a person said it. But that isn’t odd to me. People are the universe. So are rocks, social media, supernovas, stomach ulcers, Ana de Armas (gladly), Kanye West (sadly), and Honey Buckets. Upturned or otherwise.
Why we longed to see its viscera gleaming black in the moonlight, I don’t recall. I cannot justify this action, so I won’t, other than to say this isn’t even the most embarrassing bit of bullshit I got up to as a young man-child.
Maynard.
The atrocity is somewhat mitigated by the fact we failed to get it done anyway. Plus, we weren’t attempting to commit crimes against occupied mobile restrooms. We specifically scouted out a dumper non grata.
In retrospect, I have convinced myself I wasn’t all that keen on tipping the thing to begin with, but it was probably my idea to do it.
Our target stood against a waist high fence, which was sturdy enough for me to stand on to start wailing on the back wall of the thing from with all the strength I could muster. I got a few kicks in, not getting anywhere, when I suddenly found myself no longer on the fence.
I’d been tackled off the thing by one of the token droogs. I cannot recall this guy’s name, so I’ll just refer to him as Deputy Dewey.
If the fair Deputy is reading this, rest assured, I mean no offense.
His breath made me want to leap out of my own skin. You’d think I was kicking his favorite buffet over. I mean, seriously. I can still remember it. I can still taste it. Fuck. Gods damn.
“Got you, Maynard,” he whispered with all the seduction of a dump incinerator exhaust. Well now, I thought. The universe appeared to be tackling my ass.
He vigorously cuffed me up and perp-marched my sorry ass between the row of tents and I looked around to see if I could locate my co-conspirator. He was nowhere to be seen, which I took as a great sign justice would not be served for at least one of us.
I'm usually willing to suffer a bit of justice myself, but for both of us to get what we deserved was not a thought I wanted to entertain. There is a time and place for justice and friends spare each other the burden of it if they can.
I was promptly deposited on a stool, hands cuffed behind my back as naughty boys deserve. Deputy Dewey and Friends had brought in other miscreants for judgment as well. One of them wasn't wearing a shirt, the bloody savage.
This little handicapped drum circle without drums wasn’t so bad.
The air was open, and the alcohol and mushrooms had managed to dull the edges of my understanding. It just looked like we were hanging out swapping stories about how we had identification, but you’ll have to pull our wallets out our pants yourself Deputy, because cuffs and fascism.
The whole thing had a fraternal feel to it since we were all dudes.
Either the cops at the Gorge don’t arrest women or the women at the Gorge are sensible. Could be either, really. But one seems way more likely than the other, to be honest. Men are criminals.
This was just a friendly round of story tellers telling stories. When asked where my accomplice had run off to, I prepared a story certain to deflect any suspicion I had any help at all in failing to kick over a Honey Bucket.
“How the fuck would I know, Maynard?”
By now, I’d begun to suspect Maynard was just something you called each other at the Gorge. Like comrade, but with less sickle and no hammer.
This did not go over as well as I’d hoped it would, despite it being the honest truth. Turns out telling the truth to cops doesn’t get you anywhere. Weird.
Deputy Dewey was not amused, despite knowing damned well both he and his breath had pinned me face down in the dirt. This has the tendency to obscure one’s vision.
He said his name wasn't Maynard. It was Dewey. He also told me Tool sucked, which I thought was an odd opinion to offer at that very moment. “What does Tool have to do with anything?” I asked.
“Maynard is their singer.”
“No, he isn't. Moby is.”
I learned some time later this is not correct. But it did reveal the great secret nature had been telling me all night. I wasn't sure why it mattered, in the end. Turns out Maynard was just my adopted t-shirt. Fucking mushrooms.
Rather than continue debating rock band trivia with me, he turned to another fellow who looked like he should have been working a T-top on the lawn rather than handcuffed in a campground.
Over the course of the interrogation the man admitted to, in this order: smoking crack, selling crack, stealing beer, punching a man, pissing on a tent, and firing off mortar shell fireworks at people’s cars.
He seemed disappointed he had failed to set any vehicles on fire. I had sympathies, I’d also failed to commit a crime.
Deputy Dewey found this confession alone to be the best medicine it seems.
He promptly removed this white trash hooligan’s cuffs, delivered a stern’ish warning lacking force, and then released him back into the wild to go forth and sin no more. Our cracked arsonist fairly bounced off into the darkness.
I found this miscarriage of justice to be a most promising sign, as I was attempting to elude justice just as much as that crack-smoking Firestarter appeared to have done. My hopes were high.
As Deputy Dewey turned to interrogate me again, my accomplice was trotted into the area and parked down across from me. Our eyes met and we shared the eternal understanding of criminals caught.
We were totally screwed, though it remained unclear exactly what our crime was. We had failed to commit a crime, which is hardly the same thing as succeeding in a crime. This is another instance my lawyer was quite clear about.
After a vigorous search of our persons, however, our true crime surfaced. We had a miniscule amount of the dread marijuana plant secreted in our private parts, which was dutifully ferreted out by Halitosis Hall Monitor Dewey.
I refer to my pockets as my private parts.
He held his prize up, triumphantly parading about as a prize fighter over the pathetic, shattered body of their opponent, father of three.
Another Deputy took mercy on us, however.
Maybe he didn’t like Dewey. Maybe no one did. I know I didn’t. Maybe he was merely a reasonable individual. But he squirreled away the pot into his own private parts and uncuffed us before shooing us away and admonishing us to sin no more.
We were told no charges would be filed this night, amid the smoke and screams and fires of a celebration which can never go too far, apparently.
I don’t recall much else of the evening.
I do know the morning after was one of the most miserable mornings I’ve ever spent in the mercilessly hot Washington desert. This is saying something, as my previous drug abuses have helped me fine-tune self-inflicted misery into something of an art.
A craft even.
Some weeks later, after having completely forgotten about that weekend at the Gorge, I was packing to move from Spokane to Seattle. That day I received a letter in the mail from the Court of Grant County.
Reading it as one holds a venomous snake, it seemed I had been courteously invited to a court hearing involving possession of a controlled substance. I searched my memory, trying to recall ever having possessed substance of any kind. Or any control.
My Man Benedict Spinoza says there is only one substance and I trust his take far more than the United States Congress’ opinion. I have that one, but not whatever this pushy judge was talking about. I was deeply confused.
Well, I thought to myself, this shouldn’t be too bad. I was headed that direction anyway with the move, so I could swing by on the way and get this obvious mistake cleared up.
The problem is I plain forgot about the whole thing.
My date - with whom I assume was a lovely mustachioed judge in a little black dress - went unattended as I just continued driving to Seattle with my kickass cat Jubei on the passenger seat next to me screaming his head off the entire three hundred miles.
After having moved and settled fully into the Emerald City, I continued to forget the thing. That is, until I received another letter.
These people were weirdly insistent I attend this new date. They didn't seem to think no meant no. Nor did they seem afraid to escalate delicate social situations like the kind I found myself in.
The letter informed me, due to my having blown off my hot date in Grant County, there was now a bench warrant out for my arrest. Seemed somewhat rapey, really.
It also seemed a wakeup call for me, an opportunity to grow up some, and I resolved to do better in the future.
So, from that moment and up until this very day, I do the speed limit in Grant County on the off chance this pushy little judge is still interested in what I carried in my private parts at the Gorge two decades ago.
Some judges just won’t take the hint. What a Maynard.
The adventure continues in Venice.