A psychedelic personal narrative
By Lucy Diamond
To me, he was my California Sunshine. To him, I was his Lucy.
At some point in the night, we decided to adventure into the woods. The rain from earlier in the day still hung on the trees, dripping off in a cosmic rainbow. The droplets kept hitting my head, making my entire body wet. Maybe it was still pouring outside.
We slid through the mud, giggling like kids whose parents let them out in the rain to play in the puddles. We took a trip over our own feet and rolled around each other’s bodies.
We rested on two rocks opposite of each other. Instead of freedom, childlike fear of the dark overcame me. I wasn’t sure if I was scared because of the darkness or because I had just met Mr. California Sunshine a few hours before.
“Hey, I’m not trying to freak you out, but I’m kinda getting scared,” I said, trying to hold onto my last second of sanity. “It’s really dark here.”
What was I thinking wondering off into the woods with a complete stranger? As the battle with myself began in my head, he grabbed my hand. He had the kind caress of a lifelong friend.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” he assured me. “Let’s meditate for a bit. It might make you feel better to see what I see.”
We sat crisscrossed and he held my hands loosely in his own. We each stared into each other’s left eye. The trees behind him started to melt away, then his face started to melt. Not in a terrifying way, but like a cartoon.
His pupil grew smaller and bigger to the beat of “Lost” by Chance the Rapper. The music could have been coming from a phone or from my own head at that point.
“I say oh oh oh ohh.”
His hands fumbled around the waistband on my shorts, unsure of which way was in and which way was out. Somehow, he figured it out. Before I knew it, both of our clothes were off, and we were fumbling around.
It was like having sex for the first time again. Weird, but I liked it. Different, but I wanted more. Neither of us seemed to know what we were doing, but we fit.
My clothes were on. So were his. My eyes were open but just lost in his.
We gathered ourselves together. Not sure at what point, but isn’t that just the beauty?
There is no point.
I made a big deal of jumping into the water. The whole 12-inch jump down might as well have been a mile. The water moved in between my toes like a gentle caress.
Oh wait, that was definitely a hand. And then the water was inside me.
Oh wait. That was Mr. California Sunshine. Again. I think.
And in perfect romantic timing, I sliced my foot on a rock. My guts started spewing out of me through my foot. It was going to have to be amputated. I just knew it.
He sat me up on a rock as I looked away. “I can feel my spleen coming out through my foot!” I yelled. He grabbed his t-shirt which was sitting dry next to me and wiped off my foot.
He pulled himself up on the rock next to me and gently placed his fingertips on my side. “Okay let me check out this spleen you’re talking about. Is it there?”
I burst out laughing, “Stop! That tickles!”
“Well then it must be fine!” he said and kept tickling. Pee was definitely on the verge of bursting out, so I begged him to stop. He did and gently kissed my forehead, right on my third eye.
Every color of the universe burst through that kiss, even the ones that aren’t in that Crayola box. My foot felt healed. It was a cup of hot chocolate and a fire in Ithaca, New York. At the same time, it was a swimming pool with a waterslide in Houston, Texas. It was all the innocent happiness in the first kiss.
I finally stopped seeing stars. At least as clear as it could be. The leaves on the trees were shifting between the primary colors — red, blue and yellow. But they were trees again. And we started making our way home from the adventure, my hand still in his.
They tell you someone is supposed to be tending the light at the end of our tunnel. California Sunshine was tending mine, but only for a night.