WOOK

I was looking so uncommonly fresh that it startled my mom. She’d never seen me like this. (Red jacket, Hawaiian shirt, hat with a bird on it, sunglasses. Great lighting.) 

“Are you going to a party?” she asked. She sounded hopeful, which stung. I was 30 then, living with my rich parents and washing dishes 6 days a week at a sorority in Berkeley. I was surrounded by beautiful, horny girls there, but I looked and felt like shit so I just ogled through a hole in the dishpit and blasted Indestructible Beat of Soweto on my little boombox. 

Things were looking up now, though. Kappa Kappa Gamma  was closed for the summer, and I was about to hike up the mountain and do some drugs. On my last day of work, I’d walked down to People’s Park to give the wooks one last styrofoam container of bisque, and they'd given me 4 gel tabs of acid.

None of my friends would do acid with me, due to my penchant for thinking I was a religious prophet and taking my clothes off, but that was fine.

“It’s not really a party” I told my mom.

“Okaaaay” she said. 

I ascended the mountain on foot, took the acid at the top, right as it was getting dark, and realized suddenly that dark was going to be a major theme of my vision quest. 

Hmm.  

How? I asked the mountain. 

Just...be a creature on the mountain it said. 

I inched my way down. Right foot. Pause. Right foot. Pause. 

Maybe I should take my clothes off, to get in the zone I thought. 

I threw my jacket into a ravine and ripped off my shirt. A bunch of jingly shit fell out of my pockets as I was removing my pants. This will save me the step of rejecting technology and throwing my phone into a creek I thought. 

You're doing it again I scolded myself. 

It took me about 8 hours to reassemble my outfit.

As the sun rose, I realized how muddy I was. I’ve turned into a wook I thought. Those wooks gave me drugs to turn me into a wook, and it worked. 

It was beautiful out. I hiked to the top of a ridge and looked down at the seaside village where I was raised. 

Boy, I hope my mom isn’t doing her morning hike today I thought. But of course she was. My mom’s very good at sticking to her fitness regimen. 

“Wow” she said when she saw me. “How was your party?”  

“It...wasn’t really a party” I said.  

She looked at me funny. 

“Ok, bye” I said.