I used to love my girlfriend Julia. Julia was a bombshell if I’ve ever seen one. Deep honey brown hair, clear blue eyes that looked like there were light bulbs lit behind them. Peachy, sandy skin with these tiny freckles that were sprinkled around her nose. And that was just her face. Because she was a competitive swimmer the majority of her life, she had the sexiest fucking legs and nicest ass that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing bare in person. She had an awesome rack too. She was a 38 DD, but she hid them so well that you would’ve thought she had a double discectomy at some point in her life.

Jules had a great personality, good sense of humor, and was absolutely gorgeous; and she knew this too. She carried herself with confidence but wasn’t stuck up. She was aware of how guys saw her, and how girls saw her. But she was humble as fuck and authentically friendly to everyone. She never wore anything too girly; she was the “distressed-Capcom- vs.-Marvel-shirt-with-blue-jeans-and-Toms-because-I-rather-spend-my-money-on-Chic-Fil-A,-gadgets,-and-weed-rather- than-spend-my-money-trying-to-convince-girls-to-be-friends-with-me” kind of girl. She was definitely out of my league at the time, but I don’t think she knew that, and if she did, she didn’t care.

Julia was very big on multiple dimensions, “opening your mind”, and getting in tune with your spiritual self, which was more attributed to her semi-strong Christian faith than drugs, but drugs was a key component. So it wasn’t breaking news when she told me she does psychedelics from time to time. Acid, DMT, she told me she even drank ayahuasca when she took a trip to Bolivia a few years back. She could tell you, in detail, what each trip consisted of, the chemical compound of each and why you trip the way you do and the history around it’s recreational use.

She knew her shit because she’s done some shit, but I always respected her because she never pushed that stuff onto me. I was never really around her during her trips because she would either always go up to New Hampshire or do it with her cousin Indy, or whenever her and her friends unanimously wanted to do it, which was always on the weekends, when I worked. Julia would always say how “absolutely amazing” her trips were and would talk in fine detail of what she saw and what it felt like.

“It’s like nirvana manifested.” She told me that Saturday.

“I feel like I’m ready. I think I want to try it.” I said to her while we were driving back from her parents’.

“Mmm, yea of course you do”, she said sarcastically.

“No, I’m serious. I’ve done the research. Watched the videos. Read the wiki articles. And I think I’m ready. Todd and Renil always said how insane and dope their experiences were. And you always described your trips like they were the most coveted Manga story I’ve ever heard of…”

“Morris’ roommate sells shrooms and supposedly his shit is A1. If I’m going to do this for the first time I want to buy from at least one degree of separation rather than some guy who knows a guy type of thing.”

I remember how I could feel her staring at my profile from the passenger seat. In that one quick second I couldn’t sense her expression but it felt empty and cold for some reason, almost as if I pissed her off or she remembered some shit. But by the time I wanted to turn my head to joke around and say “Nah, I’m just playin.” She was like, “Ok cool so let’s pick up a slice today and then do them maybe tomorrow?”

So I texted Morris and asked if his roommate still had those “special shitaki shits”.

“One: don’t ever. again. And two: You know it!” proceeded by his overuse of those bold red exclamation emojis that I feel no one really uses.

I picked up the recommended eighth from his place later that night. Pumped and admittedly a little excited to try it. But also a little pussy.

She liked for the setting and vibe to be as alike as possible whenever she tripped; fearing if anything was off it might affect her trip negatively.

“You still down to do it?” I asked as I inspected the baggy on the kitchen counter with the special shits.

I remember it vividly being 12:11 in the afternoon because I recall looking at the microwave clock and looking back at Jules then rubbing my hands together in preparation.

We split the bag in half. I plopped down on the bean bag chair in the living room area, reaching for my laptop to get some last minute reading in on shrooms, while Jules split up the eighth between two pb&j sandwhiches.

Any visible sign of natural light in our studio apartment was only sparsely coming through the array of tapestries Jules had set up around the living room area to capture the “mood”.

“Just remember to forget that you even consumed it and when you start to feel “different” to just go with it and accept it with positivity.” she said one last time.

At this point I was done with all this pre-trip precautionary BS, so I wolfed down the sandwich which then at this point, Julia saw me and quickly ate hers, like the gluttonous savage I fell in love with 3 years prior.

“Your stomach might feel little weird at first or even throughout the entire trip but you probably knew that.”

With The Beatles playing at just the right volume in the background, Julia got up from our Indian-style of sitting to make herself busy as the magic mushrooms did their uhh… magic.

I decided to lay down and stretch my limbs out across our Galaga rug. I didn’t feel anything yet and I know I should probably have not intentionally put my mindset in anticipation of something going to happen but I couldn’t help it.

Fifteen minutes in, I was feeling good. Not because of the shrooms, because they hadn’t actually kicked in or I didn’t think so, but because I was just in a good space; physically and mentally.

“Oh my god, it’s game over when that Jamaican fusion restaurant opens on fifth.” She said while sitting back down next to me, observing her phone. I mean there’s already a good one on Woodington Park. I don’t think it’s a fusion restaurant but their lunch specials are pretty good.

At this point Julia begins to ramble about Jamaican food. But her voice quickly fades out. Maybe 10 minutes in…

“Julia, I feel different.”

Rubbing my fingers together, it felt like little tiny balls compacted in my fingertips. I knew it was coming and I was prepared for its arrival.

“Really? Already?” she said with this cutest fucking grin.

“Yea…..”

And as I laid there, I felt it start from my fingers and then come from my toes. It felt like the atoms in my body were moving and dancing around to the sweet tunes of “Come Together”.

The onset was real for us both. Julia opted to get up and immediately look at things around our apartment. I wanted to stay stagnant.

How I felt couldn’t be properly described except that my body was moving in waves. It felt like kinetic energy was leaving and reentering my head, my toes, and my fingers was being swayed in and out of position as if I was on a floaty chair in the middle of a pool.

It wasn’t like being drunk as fuck, out of your mind. But I definitely was going through it.

“Yoooo this is… Craaazyyy” I giggled as Julia was singing around the apartment.

“Feeling good Jules?” I said goofily, half giggling, half with a druggy smirk on my face.

“Yea, these tapestries are looking so insane right now it’s unreal.”

She sat down on the couch as I continued to be in a complete trance of unimaginable colors and shapes in my mind. I closed my eyes and fully committed.

The trip at first was fucking awesome honestly.

I saw these spherical like metal bubbles of some sort. They looked like alien planets with a glowing green core that I saw through the cracks. They would retract and expand like bubbles. But they weren’t completely transparent. I struggle to describe it. These squiggly streaks of colors would then burst around from the cracks into like a whole graffiti backdrop. But it wasn’t nearly as juvenile and rough as graffiti. This background, this world, I guess of sorts had structure to it. The colors were like Tetris changing from neon palettes to pastel and moving in an almost human like way. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Then I looked over at Julia on the couch.

She was staring right back at me.

Part 2