The party in Richmond came to a slow end at around 5:30 in
the morning, but once it started dying down strange people began showing up.
One gentleman notably came in covered in sweat, visibly annihilated on drugs
with a towel around his neck and a ketchup squeeze bottle full of booze. It
seemed like just as all of the metal heads we had met during the night made
their way home, more and more drug-addled lunatics began showing up to have a
late night drug binge party in the attached bedroom that separated the living
room with the only bathroom. At one point a girl, belligerent and haggard,
emerged into the living room from the drug shack, took off her pants and
underwear and pressed her naked ass on a gentleman who was sleeping on the
futon in the living room while party goers laughed and took pictures in
relative discomfort. We eventually gained control of the living room as though
it were a game of RISK and eagerly
turned down the deafening record player as I found a hot piece of floor
between the TV and the coffee table to rest my troubled head. The users in the next room
began getting aggravated and “pill sick”, as the hesitant
sun began to rise. We also heard the group aggressivly turn on one of the individuals for doing needle drugs. I closed my eyes, put in my ear plugs and began focusing on
sleep in hopes of getting a couple hours of floor rest before we needed to head
back to the van we left at a parking lot that was to be ticketed and towed when
our parking slip expired at 10am. I heard doors slamming, screaming and
relentless conflict in the next room as we listened to the soundtrack of
withdrawal, sorrow, and unbridled discomfort as the drugs began to wear off.
At around 6 in the morning I had the unmanageable need to
urinate and had the ill-fated realization that the only way to the bathroom was
through the gauntlet of savages that had regrettably ran out of drugs hours
ago. I tiptoed to the door and overheard their conversation. They had become
increasingly sick, angry and paranoid; particularly of the unknown Canadians
who were subsided in the living room next to them. “Lets kick them the fuck out
of here! Who the hell are they anyways?” I heard one of them say as I began
running through my choices for urination. Do I pee in the sink, take my chances
on the street and risk getting locked out, or do I brave the drug gauntlet? I
put my hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath and opened the door. There were
5 people in there, a few of them curled up and visibly ill.
Sweaty-towel-ketchup-man was pacing around the room and a woman was sitting on
the end of the bed awkwardly awaiting relief from the after affects of drug
use. When they saw me enter the room, I can only describe the look on their
collective faces as sheer terror as I whizzed by to take a super loud early
morning endurance piss with the door locked. I made my way back to the floor
and got an hour of pained half-sleep before the alarm went off and we needed to
trek back to the van by foot.
We were all annoyed, overtired and cranky as we made our way
through the downtown core clinging to our personal belongings like a walk of
shame after one of the most uncomfortable evenings in recent memory. However,
our style while traveling is to make the best out of any situation and do our
best to become positive and energized. We made our way to the ocean and
gleefully splashed around in the waves, then headed to Wilmington, North
Carolina, part of a region known as Cape Fear, and arrived nice and early to
have a no-holds-barred BBQ in the parking lot and got our energy back up to
full and got ready for our gig at Reggies.
It was the promoter’s birthday party and everyone was in
good spirits. We played first and spent the rest of the night playing pool, sitting
at the bar enjoying dollar beers while watching Happy Gilmore muted with
subtitles and checking out the local bands. We stayed with Carlos from Salvacion and his
girlfriend Erin and listened to great albums, drank beer and of course slept
until 2 in the afternoon. Apparently they had just put up our friends in
Cauldron when they played through there a few weeks ago. Carlos and Erin were
gracious enough to let us stay the following night as well and we made them a
nice healthy vegetarian stir fry and went to a party in town on our day off. So
nice to make new friends and have a clean place to rest after such a wild and
restless week.
Time for another swim,
Spencer “please don’t stab me, I just need to pee” LeVon
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