Drowning in Ecstasy

Written by A.Q.

51 years old

Maine, ME

Content Warning: This story contains references to drugs and alcohol

A thoroughfare of engagements entangled my mind in the steel-town which was devoid of metal.  I had my fair share of Grandpa’s historical descriptions of what it was like when he was a kid:  street lamps on at noon because of the heavy soot; stealing coal to heat his house when he was also taking streetcars for free to do so; the weight of poverty and unknowing.  When I really got there it was different; it was a college town: the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne University, and whatever art college you would like to attach. 

I had found a way to support my academic habit. Namely selling LSD. It is a rather euphoric drug and good for a young mind in a timely manner. Of course I walked around with a super-charged flashlight in the daytime strapped across my chest just so I didn’t miss pinpointing the night sky’s stars.

I was also a trumpet player, a french horn player, landed big status on the east coast...but I never had a tutor. I just had great teachers. I really loved playing brass and had an ear for music. It just so happened that Miles Davis, one of the best horn players of all time, was playing Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Hall. This was around 1990. Damn straight if I wasn’t going to be there.

Now at this time I was living in Pittsburgh, in the South Side. We paid $250 total rent for a 2 story apartment off of Carson Street, and above a deaf old lady. It was gold. And we had a party once called “2001 A Champagne Odyssey”. The cops were called, stuff was stolen and the entire refrigerator was filled with champagne. The address was 2001 Larkins Way, hence the reference. I rolled down to the liquor store a red wagon to fill up the goods. I was seventeen.  And rolled it back up filled for the party.

I had a lot of friends I met there in Pennsylvania. I am so lucky to still have most of them around.  Some went their merry way. But there is a solid token to friendship in PA that doesn’t exist everywhere. Pennsylvania, especially the Pittsburgh area, is beholden to respect, dignity, history, and the capability to survive all odds. I live in Maine presently and it’s even worse here, in those regards. They are more arrogant in Maine.

Back to the brass.  

I had a friend that I met pulling gigs, music gigs, setting up and tearing down. I was the only female on the crew. We ended up having an enthusiastic and platonic amazing relationship.

He was a music fan as well. So we went to see Miles Davis in Pittsburgh, front row seats, blistered on acid and can I tell you, what a show it was. Miles was my hero, or one of them, and the addition of the additive really escalated things. The amount of sheer emotion and respect and just mind-blowing presence was memorable to say the least.

I had come to tears in that hall hearing classical music but this performance was beyond tears, beyond liquid, beyond air or fire or earth. I’ll never forget how happy I was. How happy we were. And how much I miss that innocent emotion and that beautiful man that is no longer with us and how much that shaped my life.

I don’t do acid now. I haven’t for 30 years. I don’t miss it. But I do miss my friend, and Pittsburgh, and all I learned for her city and three rivers. I miss that life but I have had many others since then. Pennsylvania is a big state with a lot of worth and dynamics. But in my opinion the people are the crux of that magnificent landscape. They are the metal that binds all emotions and experiences and makes friends everlasting.