Palindrome of Power

It was about Exit 95 when the pasty mixture beneath my tongue got to work, sending sharp signals to my brain to enter into Stupid Mode.

About 20 minutes before, my friend and I had sprinted to his apartment to throw what would become a completely unnecessary log of delusion onto the fires that were burning in our heads. To use the analogy of throwing gas on a fire would be to short-change the enormity of what was to come. This was jet fuel. This was a ballistic missile. This was Tsar Bomba.

I climbed into the passenger seat of the taxi, a hell-on-wheels molester van from the mid-1980s with a top speed of about 50 mph. The cavernous vehicle had been gutted of all creature comforts and it was apparent that its only use was to haul as many drunken assholes as often as possible. “Big Daddy Taxi” was emblazoned on the side in a jagged, slicing font you might expect to find on a Black Sabbath album cover.

My three friends and I had decided that it would be wise to head to the casino after our several-hour session of binging. Alcohol does an amazingly effective job lubricating the mind’s machinery before the soon-to-come blowing of precious resources, marinating the logic centers of the cerebellum, turning it into a gelatinous, semi-functioning mass of tissue similar to a bowl of warm Co-Co Wheats.

Tim, our black-toothed chauffer to the casino, was from some backwoods bayou shit hole in southern Mississippi. He was off the clock when my pal, the one with the perverted penchant for poker, called up in a frenzy to get to the casino “as quickly as possible.”

Tim, a self-admitted gambling junky, was happy to oblige. We were all along for the ride now. He pressed the accelerator to the floorboard and the engine gurgled and belched us down I-94, the cabin rattling and shaking with such intense violence that the thought of a large piece of metal tearing off, setting sail and plunging into the windshield of a car behind us was not a far-fetched one. The image of a soon to be headless middle-aged woman in a Ford Windstar came to mind almost immediately.

It was hard to make out what Tim was saying, as the noise that surged from the twisting bolts and rusted suspension was so great that it seemed like the entire van might disintegrate in a matter of seconds, leaving behind a trail of bits and parts, like a meteor being eaten as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

The guys behind me were inquiring about the empty cups swirling on the floor behind me.

“I wouldn’t use those,” Tim said. “Seriously.”

Tim then began to talk about the difference between race relations in the north and the south. It seems as though tensions between blacks and whites are much higher north of the Mason-Dixon line, at least in Tim’s erudite opinion, although he was quick to admit that the calm seen in the south might also have something to do with blacks “knowing their place,” he said.

Tim, it turned out, didn’t discriminate with his drugs either. All substances were welcome in Tim’s body: pills, powders, liquids, tabs, sheets – he’d done it all in every way they could be done. So I inquired about the drug I was on, Xanax.

“Good one,” Tim said. “Gets the job done, gets it done real good. You’ll be having a good time, chief.”

I had no reason to doubt him. I’d never been on this drug, which my friend earlier had nonchalantly thrown into my mouth like so many Tic-Tacs. I was feeling good, a blanket of relaxation wrapped snuggly around my entire body. I was warm, giddy, chain-smoking and laughing at Tim’s hillbilly charm.

We arrived at the casino sometime around 3 a.m., a kind of witching hour at a place like this. It’s an in-between time of strangeness, when society’s rejects come out to play: your meth-addled grandmothers who can’t get to sleep, truckers with time and trouble on their hands and whiskey-soaked fools like us, ready to take chances for the sheer thrill of seeing hard-earned cash turn into plastic discs and disappear into a little hole next to the dealer, click-click-clicking all the way in a Morse code message that’s telling you you’re an idiot and should be in bed.

Tim pulled up close to the front door and we all spilled out into the brightness of the airport hangar-esque entrance to Firekeepers Casino. The marketing motto – “Getting to our hot new casino is easy, leaving will be difficult” – would turn out to be exactly right. For the customer’s convenience – ever the motivation at ‘Keepers – several ATMs line a wall just inside the front door to the sprawling place. I took out $60. Just enough, I thought to myself, to play with, have a little fun.

Then, out of nowhere, things started to swirl. For a moment, I thought it might have been the effect of the oxygen I’d heard casinos pump into their gambling pits to calm patrons, which, in turn, makes them blow more money. No deal. This was much more intense than a whiff of stale casino air, bubba. This was that all powerful of palindromes, the drug that only a half hour earlier had me bonding with a hillbilly who was likely wanted for child rape in several southern states.

This was Xanax and I was firmly in its grasp. No going back, not yet anyway. “Leaving will be difficult.” That’s goddamned right.

Things went black, deep black, and most of the rest of the evening has had to be re-constructed from eye-witness accounts of my behavior, the way investigators catch a serial killer or solve a cold case involving a disgruntled Gander Mtn. employee who took off one day with a crossbow and crate of arrows intent on “fixing things at corporate,” only never to be seen again.

I made my way to the roulette table, put $60 on black and then stared at the wall, like some dead-to-the-world schizophrenic who broke away from his handlers and wound up at the casino because he was attracted by the pulsating lights. The only thing is, I kept winning. The first spin of the wheel hit black. So did the second and the third. I kept my chips on black, ignoring the dealer’s questions, not for lack of interest in doing what I was told to do, but because the drug – now firmly lapping in the folds of my brain – had turned me into a catatonic zombie, capable of anything except communication, but very able to amble through his surroundings on instinct alone. A modern day pill-popping caveman, lusting for the essentials of life, like food and money, but unable to wipe his ass after defecating in the men’s room with the stall door fully agape.

The ill effects of Xanax on the human body can range from the relatively benign (drowsiness, dizziness) to more severe (problems with coordination, memory problems) and my favorite (unusual behavior). I got all of them, the 5-Star Xanax ride.

Because I was totally incapable of even the most basic of responses to the dealer’s questions, I was kicked off the roulette table. I gathered my chips, which, according to several witnesses, I was dropping a la Hansel and Gretel as I made my way toward Café 24/7, the casino’s all night restaurant serving “classic comfort food with a fashionable flair” and where patrons can “immerse themselves in the energetic atmosphere.”

The hunger was intense, so much so that the stomach shredding made me awaken from my stupefied state for a moment or two. I remember ordering a steak or some other meat dish and arguing with the wait staff. Then I got pulled back into the darkness and the strangeness began. I ordered shrimp, chicken wings and other assorted meals, which when they didn’t arrive as expeditiously as I’d expected prompted me to grab food off the plates of my fellow Café 24/7 guests, undoubtedly ignoring their protests, like some glazed-eyed Uber Retard. I doubt this was the energetic atmosphere they'd come for.

Unusual behavior indeed.

I got the food, threw it in a plastic bag and began walking around the casino, eating the wings and throwing the bones in the air. Witnesses state that I was speaking, but the words sounded like the noise that marshmallow fluff makes when you throw it against the wall. The next hour or so found me trying to stave off death as I entered a sleeping state 10 clicks past REM, a place where a gorilla uses a unicorn’s horn for a toothpick and the Empire State Building is being overrun by an army of wild, communist chinchillas. Shit like that. Security guards mocked me. A janitor mopped around me. My friends checked to make sure I was still breathing. There was a pilot light of life still in me, yes, Keeping the Fire lit.

On the ride home, I had my head in the shoulder of one of my friends and was dropped off at my home with my bag of wings. The next morning, after thinking about how the body operates on such an extended autopilot, I wondered why there were bar-be-cue blotches on the carpet and why I only had $50 in my wallet.

Fuck it. Small price to pay for a ride like that. To the dark side of the moon and back again, like an alien re-animated. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think at least once that day that I was happy to be alive. I bet Tim would have approved.