Bill remembered the green room. It was a bathroom. He sat in the bathtub of that bathroom for just about eight hours straight, looking at the green walls and saying “Wow, look at the green.”
Wasn’t his first trip. Wasn’t his last trip.
His first trip happened on his way to the Filmore East to see one of the best rock concerts of all time. Heading through the Midtown Tunnel they popped purple-dot acid.
Where they parked, they had to walk past a police precinct to get to the theater. Stand up straight, he thought. Stand up straight they both thought, Bill and his best friend. His best friend was into music and knew they had to go to see this show.
Stand up straight.
As they passed the precinct building they both cracked up and couldn’t help themselves from laughing so hard they almost peed their pants. Only way Bill could stop himself was to reach in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. But that pocket was like miles away from his hand.
By the time he’d passed his friend a cigarette and put one in his own mouth they were well beyond where the cops were. Safe. Home-run. But the match, he struck it and it was sooo far from his mouth.
Goddamn.
Where the hell is my mouth?
Where the hell was the cigarette?
Green room. Bathroom. Annabelle. Naked. She was tripping too and she wanted to get laid.
There were others in the house as well, and the cats, for real, they had found a mouse. The mouse was alive. They were playing with it, not attempting to kill it.
Later, out from the tub, he and Annabelle found the cats in the kitchen, one cat on either end of the room. They were batting the mouse to each other, watching it slide across the linoleum floor. By this time the mouse was near-dead.
“Get undressed.” Annabelle stood before him. Bill sat in the tub fully dressed. He was just looking at the green walls saying over and over, “Look at the green.”
Not able to get him to do anything, Annabelle disappeared. She came back a moment later.
Bill had no clue as to when, what time it was or how much time had elapsed. Now she wore heavy, hooker make-up. Her lips were so red all he could think about was watching her put red lip marks on the green paint. She was wearing his shirt, open, sleeves rolled up, and high-heels. She was smoking a joint and passed it to him.
The first hit on the joint shot him into the stratosphere. The second and third hits just kept him up there.
She also had a bottle of wine. She reached out for him to give her back the joint, which he did. She handed him the wine and he drank from the bottle.
“Kiss the wall,” he said. “I want to see lipstick lips on the wall.”
“I want some,” Annabelle said.
“Kiss the wall.”
“I got a better idea.”
She stepped into the tub and sat on the rim. She let the shirt settle on either side of her spread legs. She spread her legs far as she could. In her shoes, the open shirt and the fiercely red lipstick, she sat there before him.
“Rise and Shine and give God your glory, glory!” She sang.
From another room heavy rock music blasted out. Then the three others in the house found them as they were in the bathroom. Annabelle would have taken care of her needs with them—all of them at once for how messed up she was—except they were gay.
That was a whole other story.
“Get lost,” she said to them. “I’m getting me some.”
After they left the green room, she leaned in and lifted up Bill’s T-shirt. She planted a full red-lipstick lip imprint on his belly just below his chest.
Coming in a few weeks
and
