In the 1970s photographer David Godlis took pics of restroom wall graffiti in the legendary NY punk club CBGB’s. I no longer recall those photos other than a few band names, yet it is telling that I was even interested enough to look at them. It would possibly lend relevance to an experience I had later. I don’t attempt to connect dots anymore. For that I’d require a murder board, pushpins, & colored string. Who has those things just lying around?

My rebellious self saw the queer community of the era as imagination-challenged. The gay clubs all disco-based. With poppers. Ick. The lesbian bar sappy folk/country tunes & flannel shirts (hello, grunge!). I liked the oft-times angry, discontented noise of punk rock. It fit my crabbed Holden Caulfield attitude that all was shallow & contrived unless it verged on audial assault. I grew out of that outlook in time, even if it was spot on. It does no good to dwell. I’m dark enough as is.

Altered states (not the 1980 movie by Ken Russell, though that’s when this story takes place) were sought because my normal state was dreary. Psychedelics particularly. Sometimes you could make a whole adventure out of foraging psilocybin mushrooms amongst cow pies from a pasture in the Skagit Valley. Especially without the consent of the pasture’s owner. Ultimately the journey is the thing, & I wanted a mind-expanding one.

For one of my ‘profound’ trips I found a source to something rarely procured. Mescaline, derived from peyote buttons which grow on a cactus in the SW. Peyote is a hallucinogen used in Native American rituals, & where it’s grown are now protected areas. I’d only read about it in Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, & William S. Burroughs books. It sounded like the perfect ride for a deep dive into an alternate consciousness.

The day I obtained some there was a band playing that night called The Troggs. A British band, had a hit with Wild Thing in 1966, but it was a cover of an American band’s song of the previous year. Jimi Hendrix also covered it, & many others. I didn’t like The Troggs’ other stuff; to use Brit slang, it struck me as twee. So I wasn’t eager to see them live. A good experiment to see if a lackluster evening could be made interesting. Maybe this spiritual drug would short-circuit my apathy, recharge my brain. One can always hope.

The Showbox Theater was the venue. It was dingy, a dive really. There was no bar, it was all-ages. There were no amenities save a cigarette vending machine. For a short time there was a coat check counter where I worked, from which someone stole my cool, blue-lens sunglasses. So there was that element. A perfect place for a journey of the mind due to its unassuming ambiance.

I dropped a half hour before leaving for the show. Psychedelics take time to come on. I milled around in the sparse crowd, waiting to feel something. The band came on, started their set, & I was nonplussed. I began to think I didn’t dose enough or was duped. It happens. & now I had to pee, which is not recommended for the squeamish at The Showbox. The restrooms were (perhaps not so) mildly repulsive.

So in this unpleasant room, in a stall with (typical!) no toilet paper, the drug peaked. The walls breathed. Graffiti turned from banal bathroom banter to cryptic. I felt like an archaeologist, wishing I had a camera to capture this for an in-depth study of urban hieroglyphs. The profanities lacked cohesion from one antechamber to the next. “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound & fury,” it seemed. The continual soundtrack in this tomb-raider deal was Wild Thing. Metaphor? In a temporal suspension, room morphing into an Escher construct, I was intrigued.

Our concept of time is blown, I thought. I’m living possibly hours within the space of one song. Women came & went, but they were echoes. One came in saying “It’s not funny anymore,” then eyed me skeptically. I nodded sagely to say ‘this is a most fascinating find.’ Time actually does warp, perhaps not just around matter. I made a mental note to read up on space-time theory.

As all major discoveries reach a zenith, eventually the music stopped & time resumed its forward progression. The walk home was uneventful compared to my vision quest. Plucked from my linear existence & deposited within a space-time bubble, I could only reflect upon what had transpired. Perhaps that was the point. Doesn’t significance get attributed after the fact? Do we all experience time backwards?

Days later I talked with a friend who had also attended the show. She was surprised I was there too, she hadn’t seen me. The Showbox was not large. Was I doing my usual ‘being aloof in a dark corner thing’? she asked. So I told her about my adventure into temporal displacement in the restroom, but that the mescaline must’ve been really short-acting because my whole trip lasted only about five minutes. “Time stretched out for ages like it was elastic, but it all took place in the duration of Wild Thing.” She replied “But they kept playing Wild Thing over & over, between sloppy versions of their other songs, as if it was the only one they’d actually rehearsed.”

There went my time loop theory. Oh well. The visuals were entrancing & it was still a memorable experience. The most extraordinary thing was to to have felt time as nonlinear. From now on I would keep my visions to myself. Nobody likes a mystical buzzkill.