Purple Mike (Original)

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Stage backdrop


(Thick drapery curtains of purple satin set the scene of a stage...wresting on top glossed wooden floors where a solitary stage light creates a strobe).


Narrator (Seussical V/O)

This is the story of Purple Mike, your hipsta-gangsta every-body-loves-him (squeak-oops!) squeezable acid tab. He’s your quick-as-a-button, scamp. The too-live-talking baby-bud hallucinogen whose dad just so happens to be a giant LSD tab. He likes to throw shadows and carelessly toss thoughts in two. Your imagination he can cross as he gleefully high jacks and hotwires your brain until pink elephants are plain sight in view.

This is the repartee of how he came to be and how easily he can morph his way into the sanctity of your home and into the heads of ordinary teens, adults and even young children.

He is the embodiment of all substances as they relate to your family, all rolled into one. A travail he will take you on, so if you please... Ladies and gentlemen, the curtain call is in. Take yourself a bow. Be seated, get reading and ready for this journey-show, drug-spun tale about Purple Mike to begin.

(Curtain is lifted to story open.)

Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. That’s the beat you hear of a heel strumming the pavement.

Clip. Clop. Clip. Up and down the walk, brown leather loafers poking beneath denim fabric, molding the strut; lightly tap-clapping black asphalt. Steadily march along. Clip. Clop. The heel happy in his role as wedge to shoe—enjoying the crunch of occasional debris that meets him beneath a carefree boyish walk.

Now perchance, a dried twig has come upon the path. Merrily the sole tramples it, along with a few unable-to-scurry-fast-enough fire ants.

Clip Clop. Clip Clop. How about a deft sideways swift kick to an already dented can?

Oh, the life of a sole tied to a shoe, worn by a foot attached to a leg, all belonging to an ordinary boy named Johnny. Clip. Clop. Steadily march along with the boy aimlessly whistling an unnamed tune.

Doo wop diddy, diddy dum diddy doo.

Here comes this boy named Johnny just a walkin’ down the street. In his loafers, life is pretty sweet. He’s feeling good, looking fine and on a mission to chemically blow his mind. Doo wop diddy, just a happily roaming in his hood. Now it’s late in the day on a Saturday. Do wop diddy, to this tune move his feet, straight to the pedestrian neighborhood cross-block.

Oh-uh, barely escaped a puddle two stone throws ago bemuses Johnny’s sole to the shoe. Doo wop diddy, dum diddy doo Johnny hums along to his own strut.

Only moments earlier, a car whirred by. And you would never guess, the driver, at this precise moment in time, was ceasing a cell phone call. He rolled down the window to pucker up and out-blow a big blob of chewed bubble gum goo. Gum he grabbed from a package carelessly left on the kitchen counter and belonging to his son. Thoughtlessly tossed into his mouth before leaving home.

Neither strutting boy nor gum-chewing man could have guessed that father and son just about crossed paths. Never-you-less, if anyone at this time were to off-hand suggest and ask Dad whether his youngest son could be experimenting with drugs, Dad would fervently, back and forth, shake his head and say. “No way, not my kid. He’s young, robust, athletic and middle class to boot. Besides, Dad really hasn’t given the subject much thought as a possible threat. He’s too preoccupied with matters of business, and upset he had to cut his golf game short. Now he’s on his way to the office to settle a matter or two, one of accounting and another related to a dwindling 401k.

He has time while step-mom is visiting with that ‘what’s-her-name’ friend, shrink and tennis guru. Dad’s name happens to be Grady and this woman he’s married to is Wife Number Two.” He and Marianne, well they like community sports and staying in top form. He thinks what a good job of him it was to find her…tall, blonde, fit and slim.

Without a second thought, he spits out this blobby gum residue suddenly occupying too much space in his mouth.

And where it landed, by gosh, on the white stripe of the cross block, too, fresh and in time to meet the sole beneath his own son Johnny’s shoe. Whistling Johnny, not minding his feet, can’t stop the left shoe landing a footprint smack-dab stop on top this fresh blob of purple gummy residue—now firmly adhesively stuck.

With nothing about his feet yet amiss, Johnny continues to head to the local candy corner block store, anxious to make a score in the middla of the neighborhood in afternoon daylight. After several blocks more, he arrives at the step, to a door jerry-rigged to a shrill little customer announcement bell.

Johnny steps in, and immediately begins to scour, combing the inventory with wide eyes. He picks up a rootbeer soda can from an assortment of refrigerated beverages, and grabs some candied Nerds off the shelf. He adds gummies too from a slew of sugar options from which to choose. Arms full, he struts to the counter with his pillage and arranges it for the cash register’s unequivocal count.


Johnny boy!

Here you go.

He spreads out a layer of five single dollars to the red-haired boy manning the front counter.

Hey man, is Jay-man round back? I want to go and check out the “lab” (that masquerades as the out back inventory shack).

With a grim nod go-ahead from the clerk, Johnny, gum stuck to shoe and all, darts for the cobwebby room primely located to the rear of the store. Johnny, head first, pokes his way in, where a magazine cut-up, pin-up of Britney Spears is there to catch his adolescent eye; a boyhood touch to sport the barren walls of a dark and dingy “out back” no larger than an office cubicle that exists in a serious state of irrepair.

Hey dude, what you got?” smartly to Jay, a mate his own age with hair brown and eyes gray.

Jay

Yo dog! How’s it hanging bro? (Replies, with a slight nod and wink).

Johnny boy!

Cut class on Friday you know. (Eager to pipe in and catch up on teen-related current events).

Skipped Miss Ellis in the afternoon. Who wants to sit around and listen to her jabber jobber ‘bout geographical land mass shmoo. After that, ran out to jam with Jimmy who just picked up the latest lyrical masterpiece by Eminem. Damn. Has he got it said! Does he know how to spin off a lyrical PSA to all our age!

Meanwhile in Johnny’s head, he decides not to inform Jay that he missed geography because his homework was only half-complete. Not only that, he hoped to see Amanda, the object of every boy’s dream at Grey Hilton High. He waited until 10 past 2 to see if he could catch her by her locker positioned precisely four lockers down between classrooms Math 321 and English 420. When he finally glimpsed her, dejectedly, he realized, she didn’t know whether he was alive or horribly dead.




Jay

Yeah, cool, dog, pipes up the boy in full teen-to-teen jargon.

I’m finishing up with some blotter. Is that what you’re looking for? I accrued new sketches, potent stuff, this LSD. Be the first from this batch to feed your head.

Johnny boy!

How about the G? Have you got any substance such as that? As in the letter that preceeds H and B?” (Smartly inquires).

Jay

Nah, my old man just about busted me. I had to quick pour a fresh GHB (Gamma hydroxy butyrate) batch down the sink. But hey, these microdots have just dried, he adds, hoping to close a different sale. Johnny, I’ve got a half-smoked blunt in the bowl. Want to hit it, while you decide?

Johnny boy!

(Suddenly in a playful mood, Johnny’s face lights up). Hey, what’s a little marijuana Mary-J going to do? Except fancy my mood. Yeah. Go ahead. Stoke it.

The two boys sit in. Puff. Puff. Give. That’s the way we do it. Puff. Puff. Give. A big wide grin sets in for both boys, as the inhaled effect of the drug marijuana sets in.

The two boys are starting feel more relaxed and slightly sedated. Marijuana is a mood lifter, easing mental tensions, making the user feel tranquil, slow, laidback and pleasant; connecting better to each other, and giggling as they lose strings and beads of conversation forever lost as half-formed thoughts.

While high, this pair has difficulty following a single train of thought. With that the two toke and pass. With GHB unavailable, Johnny decides now to revise his plans for the night.

Johnny boy!

I’ll buy one lick of LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) plus another to go.

These ones are liquid pasted to a small bite-sized piece of dissolvable paper colored with the cartoon mug of Stan the off-color character from cable television’s South Park. He pops it in his mouth and abruptly gets up, shaking the rickety card tabletop crammed in the back room. In his haste, he makes it wobble to and fro, and inside the glass, he causes a liquid commotion. Sitting on top is a vial full of LSD, all liquid, yet-to-be blotted substance.

Johnny boy!
(Awed by the young chemist’s illicit concoction). Yo how is this stuff made, anyway?

Jay

Watch the vial, you’re knocking it to and fro. Careful bro!

My uncle is a scientist, with his own lab. He makes it and sells it too, plus taught me everything I know. You have to be a real chemist to make this stuff. (says with ill-begotten pride, the kind you have at the ripe age of 17).

Marveling at the mysterious liquid, Johnny escapes an “Uh oh.” The vial tips and oh boy, a light spill we go. A sprinkle splash on denim, and guess what? A purple blob of you-know-who gets splashed. Yeah, that’s right, remember the bubblegum adhesively stuck to Johnny’s shoe? Dries pretty fast, this liquid hit. And that was all of it—an immediate fusion of essence.

Now in the world of un-human thoughts and things, objects and other soul-less matter, the gum is active, alive and purple with a bubble gob mass for a head. Bubble gum turned inside out and spiked with toxic juice to make something new. Cemented and transformed into a mass of LSD drying on chewed goo.

No postage stamp, Bayer aspirin or colorful paper inkblot to circumcise you into a ready-to-consume mind-altering substance. This gum is now an original one-of-a-kind acid tab of deep purple hue. And his name, now that he’s come to and brightly alive, is Purple Mike.

Leaving the neighborhood corner candy store, Johnny struts on out with an unbeknownst score of LSD gum on his shoe. He continues his hop strut down the hood. Making his way to his home base, anxious to reach the privacy of his room. Along the way he chances to find Old Man O’Mally mowing his front lawn.

Johnny boy!

Hey Mr. O’Mally. How are you? (He calls out in his best neighborly boy-next-door voice).

Mr. O’Mally

Fine son. Thanks for asking. Why it turned out to be a mighty fine afternoon, when it called for rain, son-of-a-gun.

Johnny boy!

Yes, Mr. O’malley, it’s great weather we’re having, isn’t it.

In gest, Johnny boy! raises his hand to flick the tip of his baseball starter cap. He continues on his walk.

Mr. O’Mally

Good day, Johnny.

Skip along. Hip hop strut. Johnny moving a little faster now, with an added scot-free wiggle to his walk. Meanwhile, somewhere beneath his knees, all the way down to the bottom of his left foot, under the loafer, the sole of the shoe is growing increasingly perturbed.

Johnny’s sole

Hey you! (Calls out to the purple wad of bubblegum transformed into LSD chewable goo).

Purple Mike

Squiggle err heerm. You talking to me?

Purple eyes flare to bubble beneath thick purple skin. They now protrude as invisible eye molds.

Johnny’s sole

Yeah. I happen to be talking to you. Who else would I be addressing who’s causing such an unwelcome wrinkle in my step? (says sole to goo). You’re an unwelcome cad to my loafer, now off and away with you.

Purple Mike

Are those fighting words I’m hearing? (Getting a little revved with a touch of anger).

(Quips). On the bottom of the likes of you is not the choice of where I want to stick!

Now with the birth of eyes, Purple Mike easily adds a little sauce to a newborn attitude. This dose of tough guy juice bodes well.
Johnny’s sole

Oh Yeah? (Remarks the sole, getting a little bubbled himself beneath Johnny’s toes).

Purple Mike

Yeah-z. (Now floating an all of a sudden stiff upper lip as an additional morph characteristic).

No longer such a goo, Purple Mike inherently learns more about his kind, now that he’s sporting eyes and a mouth too. But guess what, Purple Mike, you’re in store to soon discover you can grow some hair, if you like. Make it a little spiked while you’re at it.

In this world of powerful matter and substance little understood by ordinary human notions, you can do anything you set a thought to. Why you’re a little scamp; a morph that can travel far and wide. Into parties and living rooms, through monitors and TV screens and even able to poke your head into topsy-turvy pink and satin bedrooms, melding between TV stands; you’re a bubble that can morph into any shape or size, even squeeze between a doorknob and its screw.

With this added information Purple Mike morphs a bubblehead and is ready to challenge yet again. He blurts.

Purple Mike

Hey sole. Psst. It’s you know who. I’m really a microgram of LSD molded to your shoe.

Make no mistake about this purple goo as you’re overlooking above me. Pretty soon you’re going to learn you’re really no match to me. Let’s see what you can do besides clip, clop and stomp. With less than a microgram I can slip on a tongue and adjust the filters in a human brain. Don’t dare underestimate this wad on your shoe.

Take a curling look to the top tower of you know who…the head of the kid who’s feet you adorn… what I can do to him, his mind, I can affect a lifetime.

I can catch him in a flashback that can unexpectedly occur at any time. Maybe never, or once a year. As a tab, I can leave a permanent psychedelic imprint in his head.

No one yet knows the why or the how it affects the varied wirations of the human brain. All that matters is that flashbacks have been documented for at least 25 years.

One can happen at any time even if only for a minute or two, without giving a thought about the moment to strike. This kid, he could be driving, flying, or diving, and suddenly, I can make his head swim pink and yellow with blue bunny rabbits too. He won’t know what hit him. And besides all of this…do you know who my daddy is? Hee hee?

(Now eager to go on a tangent, Purple Mike chatters on).

Why how long has it been that you’ve been put out of the shoebox and on the department store shelf, looking for a home for your high top?

You look pretty new. You couldn’t have been thumping the street very long? And in case I haven’t made myself clear, my daddy, even you must have heard of him! He’s the Mach Daddy hallucinogen, get it! The mind-bending all-powerful drug.

Within a single hour he can completely wipe your mind; make life pink…or blue, and why not add a few drops of yellow and a pachyderm of white elephants too?

He can make walls breathe if he dares to. So forget you, who’ll be long worn and forgotten by the time this boy hits 32. And I’ll still be here—on a blot, postage stamp, aspirin tab—anything you can add a quick-drying lick to.

Why, I could even be a piece of bubble gum that’s already been chewed. It doesn’t really matter--I’ll be here forever, tripping up the natural molding of minds—and not just here on this 49th intersection of Pinecrest and Mountainview.

I’ve got brothers in the heart of country fields and smack dab in the middle of city dens. Urban, rural, royal and broke, I’m not selective with which school grounds, concerts and parties I scope. If you look hard enough, I’m in your face (or one of my kind) from coast to coast.

Hee hee. (Purple Mike finishes off with a satisfactory huff. Morphing a balloon-shaped chest for added effect).

Don’t make me morph a finger to wave a sharp Tsk! Tsk! It’s always a mistake to underestimate!

Put in his place, the sole clears his pebbles and shifts his weight away to the pressing clip clop of the foot.

Doo wop diddy. Dum diddy do.

There goes Johnny boy! still thrumming down the street. He looks good, feels fine; and is increasingly psyched to psychedelically blow his mind for the heck of it smell of it on a parentless afternoon. Do wop diddy, march up the porch. Tagging along in his loafers is a cross-browed sole who frowns on account of sharing space with this inimitable purple wad of goo.

Clip. Clop. Johnny makes it up the stairs. Looking for nobody to infringe on a dusk-ridden end to Saturday afternoon. Johnny marches to his room. Flicks on the stereo. Blast it full, to the max. A little Snoop Dog is the latest rap he’s been into. Befriending a shag look in the mirror, puckering up for a come ladies hither look of smart, “you still got it” look, he tosses himself a wink before he says goodbye to his played up reflection.
He moves to the side and to the bedside shelf drawer. Peeks inside, then wrestles his hand inwardly to poke around to take inventory of his private stash.

He’s been experimenting with drugs steadily now for at least a month or two. Hmmm…here’s powder (cocaine) leftover from a party he went to a couple weeks back. Whose party, he never had a clue, ended up there with some of his boys one Friday scheming for something to do.

Johnny boy!

Save you for the right time lady, you just hang tight and sit back (mutters to no one). Count your rails, pretty your nails or just take a restful nap.

And low-behold, we’ve also got a pill (ecstasy). I remember when I met you at an all night dance party. I had your twin imprinted with the same emblem, but I think I’ll just save you for an upcoming time when there’s a live crew of boys and girls to hang with and chill.

And ey…good man pot (marijuana), you be there still. Hey…how do you do? Oops, quit losing your leafy resin and residue.

Johnny boy! lays out his full stash on the counter shelf…amid leftover lollipops he sucked on the night he took an ecstasy-brand pill to alleviate the jaw-clenching side effect. He now adds rootbeer, gummies and candied Nerds for a fruit crunch chew to the whole entire stash. He picks up the little pieces and scatterings of weed and funnels them back into the flip top head of pot. Scratch the flint, and put the lighter to spark, Johnny fires up pot.

Cough. Cough. Sputter. Inhale. Now laying pot down in the center spot, he eyes a piece of incense, and lights it next. Don’t want a waft of smoke to linger and affront that motherly-step pest.

With a swig of rootbeer and a hand-selected microdot wrapped in a recycled paper napkin, fingers one and dabs it carefully into his index, erect for function, finger and squarely examines the tab, identical to the one he had at the corner candy store. With some of the initial mental sensations filtering in, Johnny realizes it’s too late to turn back now. Psychedelic fun is apt to begin.

Folding the napkin and carefully placing its contents back inside, Johnny sits comfortably on the side of his bed, unties his left shoe only to find next a big gob of purple residue stuck to the sole of his favorite walking moccasins. He picks up the gob.

Purple Mike

(Exudes. Whisperful). Hee hee.

Johnny boy!

(Shakes his head as if to clear his ears and examines the goo close up). Did you just speak to me?

Purple Mike

(Giggles, gleeful). Hee hee. I’m Purple Mike, a morph-talkin’ LSD tab; you know, the one you’ve been sporting around on your shoe.

Tossing his head once again, Johnny dismisses the conversation as a mild hallucination.

I’m Purple Mike. I’ll say it again. I see you’ve found my good friends, pot, pills and powder. I’m looking to hook up.

Blotting him out again, Johnny peels him off and lays him aside a smattering of the corner store candy slew. Now Johnny’s attention turns to the other shoe and tosses it haphazardly onto the floor, into a mix of denim blue jeans crumpled up and a shirt worn the night before.

Aah! A sigh to relax. He lays back, arms folded behind head, shaking it to and fro to the beat of the stereo.

Some time between time passed and a quarter of eight, the sun has long ago set in wait for tomorrow. As it grew dark, Johnny felt restless. He sits up and decides to grab some air by the window. He decides to take a gander at the backyard majestic oak tree. Hmmm…there goes a yelp from the neighbor’s dog again to interrupt his thought. Meanwhile, the LSD tab he took is starting to work its magical effects.

Peering out the window, Johnny can’t believe his eyes and his haphazard thoughts. He thinks to himself…
This may sound crazy, but I swear it smiled in an upside down, side-to-side sauntering way. It did. The moon wiggled and I swore it let out a frozen giggle too.

Johnny boy!

(To Purple Mike). Enh-eee-eee-eee-eee. Quick, you may catch it again. Look close Purple Mike, you’ll see it too.

Now the night wrapped around it and it is closing in. The moon is an oyster and the night its shell.

Wild dude. Did you see it? It did it again. How in the world can air breathe like me and you? I ain’t looking through that window any more.

Johnny boy! is suddenly a little frightened and taken aback. He careens his neck back in, slides the glass down and closes the curtain firm. There’s a plain crazy universe outside where the elements are thick and lifelike in an unnatural way…cut it out to a close. Wacko-show.

Johnny boy!

(To no one). I oughtta get my sight checked, height checked and maybe the old noggin’ too. I’ll step inside and lay back down to the merry-go-round twirl of the walls, on this big comfy brown bed. The square cushion that takes up most the room is where I’ll lie down for a minute or two. Quit looking out that window. Stop talking to goo. Stop the outside filter into my malleable cranium. Get him out. Gotta shake him out. Out of my head. Look at the patterns in the ceiling—A 3-dimensional virtual Michaelangelo couldn’t have painted a better spread.

Grady

Johnny boy! You in there? (Rat-a-tat-tat-tat). Why isn’t the grass cut, mowed, clipped and neatly trimmed? Hey? I don’t hear you? Johnny boy! You in there?

Don’t make me come in and check on you. I know you’re home because you left candy wrappers in the sink again—you did.

Johnny boy! (Rap. Rap. Rap on the door). I’m coming in…

Johnny boy!

Oh poop. Oh crap. Dad’s coming in! I gotta grab a single train of thought. I’m high as a kite and I just can’t let him come in. (Johnny boy! freak outs).

Purple Mike

Get a grip Johnny. This might be fun. A short trip—a new dimension in familial interaction. (Perching on Johnny boy!’s shoulder, whispering in his ear).

Let an amusing game begin. C’mon. You know how. It’ll be 1-2-3 pie-easy. Gurgle, gurgle howzza hee hee!

It’s a purple day shining, ready and waiting to unfold. (The small voice escapes the goo from his vantage point, now moved to the top of the bedside counter shelf).

Johnny boy!

Quit it Stop. Stop. These deviant voices in and around my head. Dad’s gonna know I popped a microdot only less than two hours ago! My high is barely spent. (Gotta sober up).

Scatter guys. Hurry away. (Johnny boy! Hides the stash about his room).

Purple Mike, as you call yourself—hmmm…I don’t need to stash you. You’re nothing more that a chewed piece of goo. But as long as you remain silent, you’ll do fine to blend in next to the candy box on the shelf beside the bed. Hide among a scattering smattering of edible candy clues. Candied Nerds, maybe beside a few gummies too. You’ll blend safe, just pretend.

Pot. You slide in here. Quick. Gather up that raggedy half-smoked blunt, weed and weed seeds, papers and residue. Slide yourselves into this open drawer where you and your paraphernalia are safe from prying parental eyes. Oops. Powder, run a-long in here. Lady, have I got a Ziploc baggy just your size. Nestle in and catch some zzzzz’s. I know you don’t get to rest much. Uh-oh pill. L’il wanderlust pal, I almost forgot you. Can’t take a chance, in my own shirt pocket with you.

(Rap. Rap. Rap on the door. Ready. Set. Stable (Stumble. Under control). Coming dad.

Grady

Johnny boy! You getting high in here? What’s that I smell? What’s a swarthy boy on the football team burning incense like a girl? Get on, boy. What say you?
Johnny boy!

Umm dad…umm…it’s this way…




Purple Mike

Go on. Tell him how the moon wiggled and the night began to breathe. Get started with that tongue. He’ll understand all the cherry, grape and orange flavors it speaks.

Johnny boy!

Shhh. Shush. Stop. Quiet Purple Mike. Keep quiet. You know that’s not true.

Grady

Johnny boy!(Louder).

Johnny boy!

Dad. Don’t come in! Please wait! (Fearful and panicked).

Grady

I’m in. I’m in. I’m already in. Oh, my good lord in heaven, look at you. You’re high. Oh my God, Johnny boy! How could you? So asinine and stupid; you’re a total knucklehead!

Look at your eyes…two tiny pinpoint pinpricks in place of pupils. Why do your eyes look so funny?

Now you did it. You finally did it!

I’m so mad I could take a pistol to your head, why you draconian fool! You drone! Wait until your mother gets wind of this.

Johnny boy!

She’s not my mother. She’s the lady you married that you met at the gym. (With a flat tone being said).

Grady

As long as you’re in my house, under my roof, I’ll not tolerate an insolent tongue. And I swear. I swear, you’ll never see that kid Glenn you run around with again. You hear me son? Do you? Do you?

Johnny boy!’s thoughts. Dad has a dancing head and his ears are wrap-around flap-jacks. Are his lips moving really that fast? What’s that noise coming from his lips? It sounds like the electric whir of a handheld mixer.

Grady

Johnny boy! You hear me? (Dad’s angry bark interrupts).

Oh my God. Oh my God. Your mother is going to be so ashamed. She’s gonna cry. You’re going to make her cry, I know it. (Defeated, letting the fracture in this pistol-whipped conversation spread).

Johnny boy!

She’s not my mother. (Small hisper, snot-stifled reply).

Grady

What are you on? What have you taken? Look at me straight when I talk to you.

Purple Mike

Uh-oh, stone-cold busted. Hee hee. Look at me straight he says…straight, that’s funny, hee hee.

Johnny boy!

(A slightly sullen, slightly reflective, remote Johnny boy! inwardly supposes in his mind-altered state). Purple Mike maybe you can explain. He just doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get half the time I’m bored and the other…well somehow it’s just easier to give in.

My friends talk tough, big and proud…sometimes you do what you need to just to belong to the crowd.

Anyway, how much harm can you be? A little pill, a sprinkle of powder or herb from the ground…you’re everywhere, every-body-does-‘em pal-arounds.

C’mon Purple Mike, if you’re a goo that talks, I know you can help me get the message out!

Purple Mike

(Calls out an inaudible morphin whistle heard only in the other world of all matter, commanding his very own team to attention). My substances, my pals. You know where one is found, another type is not often far behind.

Pot. Pills. Powder. Gather round. Now slink you’re way forward.

Beckoning the call, Powder sneaks in, while pill unfolds from Johnny boy!’s own shirt pocket and plops himself among his pals.
Pot

(Clears his throat and chides). Yeah, let’s go. (Discreetly burns his way in to out of the desk drawer).

Grady

(Obtuse and unaware of anything outside his own frame of reference, bellows). Johnny boy! What have we here? I just can’t believe this, especially from someone of your IQ.

Purple Mike

Psst. Gurgle, gurgle howza hee hee. Check this old man out. What a hypocrite he must be!

Now just between you and me—once upon a long time ago— I swear he knew me, or maybe mescaline, but there was a definite time or two he took part of my crew. He had to know a brother or a sister who hooked up with one of my pack. And if he didn’t, someone in his squad experimented.

Stop pretending I’m such a big surprise. I’ve been round and round for at least a tripping generation or two to induce temptations in unlimited supplies.

Ever since my Daddy made his way out of the good doctor Hoffman’s lab. A chemical concoction, an accident really, created from every man’s own hidden desire to explore unknown and lightly traveled boundaries of the mind, since thereabouts of 1949.

I’m the strongest of the Hallucinogen. I’m a bad-ass drug, you hear me? Heck, just a glassful of liquid me is enough to get the entire state of New York reeling and high-flying for 12 hours straight…Hee hee. Imagine what a sight that would be!

(Loving to lecture and exercise his tongue). I know I partied with his crew. And if it wasn’t him…well he at one time or another he’s seen my friends. He knew about pot. He heard about pill. And he definitely met powder for an intercourse or two. Or could it have been the drink. That’s ever-popular.

It could be possible he was one of those unbendy straight-laces too. Every so often meandering from the sidelines of the self-righteous to snatch a view; or at the very least would from time to time quip up to say: ‘Hey….did you hear about what happened to you know who? He took a bad turn and drugs got a hold of him.’
Pill

Yeah. Tell’im Purple Mike. Even though he can’t hear you.

Pill rolls, ending his pitch with a color-me haphazard lackadaisical grin. Now pill is a rolly, twolly, twirly l’il pill that’s a morph button of palest pink. A foolhardy imp, Pill is a fleeting promise to capsize the imagination into dimensions unknown. A visual loop de loop, Pill’s signature face is a wide-eyed blank expression.

With gaping round eyes, pill ain’t none too bright, as he agreeably follows any pack, wiggling to and fro. With little else to say for itself than mildly curious and playfully demure, Pill begets blanks, haze and dumbfoundedness like a cloak. A twerp indeed, he flies both very high and very low, ready to react like a pet pooch’s squeeze toy. He’s got his own feet that he neatly tucks in when he’s ready to roll.

No stranger to slipping into palms of hands, nor hiding in pockets nor peeking out from a medley of miscellany containers. Pill is easily provoked and perplexed. And it’s not unlikely for him to take ordinary events and get them terrifically misconstrued. Pill looks to Purple Mike to hear more.

Purple Mike

Either way, I’ll show him…doo-wop didley. Hee hee. Just who does he think he is going to mess with? Me? ‘Take a pistol to his head…’ geesh whowee. Hear him talking so big? Ugly don’t know what else to say or do dog bark. Why, let’s show him!

Pot

Sheesh. (apes) Eeew, you tell him Purple Mike. Sheeh, has he got us on a drill. And where is powder? She hiding still?

Feetless Pot, addles up, wheezing and raking his raggedy-taggedy blunt physique above the crack, clambering up, falling fast, then finally poking through the drawer, heisting himself to the surface, obtaining ground.

Huzzah. Hey dudes. Thanks for helping me make it through. Can’t eww eww count on any of you’z lousy excuse for substances to catch my back. No chance any of you’z actually look out for me.

Powder pipes up with her slow moving tone intended to take notice and interrupt. Liquid and velvet truncated speech. She’s wise beyond any age considering she comes from the stuff who’s played willful advocate and witness to a domestic incidence or two.

Deceptively appearing so pure, she’s actually a real hardcore drug. Don’t let her fool you with her white demeanor. Famously grown in the fields of Columbia, she’s snuck aboard freight, containers and cargos, smuggled into the country like a secret treasure…any way humans and things can travel. She’s fair and pristine. Carefully packaged, sealed and taped and tucked away. With true harvest beginnings but then you meet her sisters or her kind on ordinary streets, she’s polluted and diluted, packaged like fast food in clear plastic baggies that Zip-lock, and cut (blended) with anything from laxatives to baby powder, so there’s more of her to pass around.

Powder

Look at him scolding the boy…is he hearing a single word? Shame. Shame. Tsk. Tsk.

To those who don’t know her well or where she originates, she can be powerfully mystical in small doses and addictive personality. To some, all it takes is a chance encounter and they’re left running after her false promises of authority and control.

She makes no effort to hide her invisible ball and chain. Slightly woeful and head bent downward, she reveals a headdress of trailing streams of fresh powder that glisten and gleam. Powder is svelte, like a line on a mirror, with pixie dust falling from her head that settles in a puddle around her feet. She is quietly, unambiguously seductive in her traps, and is on any time playful standby to engage you in a chase for her high and delude you with her trailing charms. She says not much, but can oft times shoot back a pleasurably wicked stare. Powder confidently trusts in her unassuming powers to hook, sink and snare.

Chin up she harshly sets a stark gaze on the father-son pair.

Pill

Hee hee twitters. He looks set adrift to me. Blissfully unaware of even you and me. Hee hee. Oh. Here comes pot now. He’s made his way free.

Pot

Wheeze. Wheeze. Cough and remember to breathe. Ooooooow—he finally gasps and woos.

It’s a hit, he’s belted out a Barry White songful note. Who? Just whooooooo is heeeeeeee to be giving that boy such a talking to? Oui. Oui. Hee hee.

Now if you haven’t yet met pot, you’ll soon understand. He’s second in chain command to Purple Mike. He’s the red-eyed tempest that sports a black beret. Your run-of-the-mill, rascal; a dime-a-dozen paraphernalia smoking bowl that blows continuous “bones” from his oversized, plain paper bag brown blunt.

No leader of the pack on his own, he’s the kind of pipe that walks with his nose to the ground, smoking to the tune of a deadhead stoner with a little Bob Marley tempo strumming his no-feet beat.

He’s everyone’s best boy in da’ hood, on da’ street and anywhere in middle America to middl’a anywhere. Pot is a pass-around dog and pony show that putters with a lop-sided grin. His big, baleful eyes are beaded with red veins. Pupils dilated and vision askewed, pot typically greets you like a Frenchman yet mutters 2 Live Crew.

His color is muddy unclear but his body is a kaleidoscope of colors purple, yellow, green and blue hues. The big ol’ brown blunt he dangles from puckered, ready-to-inhale lips, is there to kick off raspy coughs and blow chimney rings way past me and you. He’s often in an absent frame of mind and sometimes dim.

Now let’s try this again…

Rewind. Slip into the real world yet again. Face forward and SNAP.
Grady

Oh Johnny boy! Answer me, what have you done? (Dad’s angry voice drones on, even louder than before).

Johnny boy!

(Excuses. Excuses). Dad, dad…it’s this way. Jay was over and we hung out and maybe acted up...but I swear it wasn’t me, dad. It’s not what you think. Dad, I just don’t feel good. Dad, I swear…

If only Johnny’s thoughts could form words…Please. Please let me free myself from this entanglement. I could do this…meander my way out of this uncomfortable situation. If only, if only, dad weren’t wearing a kitchen appliance for a head.

Purple Mike

Any more excuses come to mind. How about Dad! Dad! I’ve been abducted by aliens… and they anal probed me too. With a purple microdot, they did, dad I swear this to be true.

Hee hee. Would you believe him then, Dad, huh? Would you? Hee hee. Look at him dumbfounded and defeated, not knowing what to say or do. Fancy tales in the end are easier to swallow than this parental predicament of, ‘I don’t know what to say, snafu.’

Humpff goes a gruff admission of fatherly-I-say-therefore-I-know best. When really in Grady’s head plays the tape of I-don’t-really-know what next! He’d rather not fight this beat circumstance. And he certainly doesn’t want Johnny boy! to see his classic ineptitude. Gotta hide that blank “what now?” ability to carry this conversation further.

Should he ground him? Put a halting stop to watching channels 21 and 52? Or should he trim the allowance perhaps down to a paltry nickel or dime? Heck, maybe step-mom will have a better clue.

Pill

Good luck getting through to Johnny boy! while high! (Twitters Pill with a commentary jab, Silently escaping a gleeful gurgling giggle). Go ahead…react like wounded bear with a just-clipped paw. Grizzly-like, bearish, un-proud. Emotional too.

A silence is frozen, etch-a-sketched in time and the minutes growing deliriously awkward. Finally ready to make a move as the clock ticked an eternal minute of quiet between the two. Scooping up a handwrestle full of loose and jingly, slightly pebbly, bed-side shelf counter candy spill to satisfy a sudden immediate craving of a sweet tooth. Couldn’t think of anything better to end this growing cold conversation.

In da mouth Grady accidentally is gobbling a pile of candy, an assortment of substances, and that includes a big gob of Purple Mike goo.

With his head poking between Dad’s forefinger and thumb, Purple Mike is tossed in, and for a second time, finds himself nestled on Dad’s tongue.

Purple Mike

(With a sudden quick swallow, gleeful shout). Wheeeeeeee hee hee. The ride in is always fun!

Find the bloodstream. Find the bloodstream—c’mon hee hee. This time I’m shooting straight for the noggin. He’s gonna know about Purple Mike. Yimminiy, bimminy, hee hee. My friends, Pot. Pills and Powder, full steam ahead. Are we all heading straight for dad’s head?

Oh goody. It’s time to play. Call it adventuresome, we’re ready to get some. In through the membranes, it’s time to dance. Kick it up a notch, twist and shout. We’ll get a hold of him and show him a thing. Pot. Pot. Do what you have to. Relax him. Calm the nerves. Get him to sit still; drain the vitality from his skin. You’re still the best gateway for us all to get by.

Pot

Eww. Eww. Oh, how I thank you, Purple Mike.

Here I come, here I come, gonna break on through. Weaken. Settle, leaving fatty acids in your bloodstream behind.

Impotent, red-eyed bloody fool. Calm you down, slow your heartbeat a notch of one or two. I sedate. I cloud; glaze your brain’s operating system with a fuzz. And the younger I encounter, the more damage I can do.

Ask for lazy? You got it. Giggly pound-foolish too.

Ask for disrupting your concentration and ability to learn…why don’t mention it.

Pack the fridge with munchies, cuz when I’m ready to exit, that’s what I spur you to do.

Powder says nothing, but gets busy to her speedy work. Her magic of producing immediate short-term euphoria is always welcome. Always dressed for any occasion, she’s rip, raring and ready to go. She’ll make sure Dad is high-wired and alert for this misadventure. Meanwhile Pill will require 30 to 90 minutes before he can messily effect the human membranes. But together with pot, as a pair, it’s likely the process gets speeded up.

Grady

Johnny boy! What’s happening? How come colors are melting in my head? (Grady sits to catch breath and wait for this to unfurl).

I see light trails. Effervescents, streams and flickers buzzing around within. It feels like I’m wearing a flat screen for a head, while someone is shifting all the channels.

It’s official. My own ability for my mind control has swiftly taken an exit from my skull…and replaced with an existential foreign substance to call the shots!

Johnny boy! Who’s been left in charge of the brainwaves in my head? What’s happening, with all this flickering? Oh look, visions of nursery rhymes, a colorfully impossible reality just floated behind my eyes and darted through my head. Now hold up? Is that really a toadstool close up?

Johnny boy! Now what? Look at these external manifestations planted square in my head.

Johnny boy!

Oh shoot. Oh crap. Wowzee dad, you’re gonna buzz, real hard! You swallowed Purple Mike, and from what I can tell, he is of the republic of LSD!

Inside Grady’s head, it’s mostly dark and black. A solar system centered by a flabby brain that’s of late, contracted by small preoccupied thoughts of everyday distractions. Ones connected to reducing the housing mortgage rate, and others related to monthly expenses. Inside are also dreams of securing a fat family nest egg, woven with morbid thoughts of fizzling stocks; a portfolio procession passing the way of a grisly dot.com death. His mind, serious thoughts included; begin to soften and drift a galaxy away.

Purple Mike is plopped squarely on top of the center of Grady’s gray matter. He decides he needs to wear a pair of hands for convenience and adds fingers to morph to the task.

Purple Mike

Let’s see what we can find in here. (Rummages in Dad’s brain).

Looking to knock around a few thoughts and shake some memories loose, with his fingers he pokes his left arm in and pulls out a small chunk of rectangular gray matter that he examines for a close up. He peers at it, curious.

Purple Mike

What have we here? Oh no, this simply won’t do. More bad news about Lucent that dipped all day. And oh crap, just look at this sickly 401k.

Purple Mike tosses the first one, and then the other. Too boring for his purpose, he simply throws them away.

Hmmm….what else have we got?

Purple Mike scoops in again and pulls out one pout about a recent spousal skirmish with Marianne and two simultaneously recurring deliberations about finally getting to painting the house. Meeting with little success, Purple Mike perseveres, and digs deeper into Grady’s head.

Finally, escaping a whisperful, hee, hee, Purple Mike grabs a lumpy one, and oh my gosh! This wobbly thought is just too juicy to toss! A little fantasy about Paula Abdul, himself and shock of all shocks, Richard Gere. Storing this one for later, Purple Mike morphs a pocket and secures it.

Oh look, here’s another and how cute. Here’s what must be Dad at 2 wearing footy pajamas in baby blue.

Purple Mike grabs a fistful of opinions, a few Polaroid snapshots of moments capsulized in time along with socially conditioned verdicts, history, memories, estimations and conclusions. He adds them to his total sum. A good mix and satisfied, Purple Mike closes his eyes, and randomly snatches a few more. Stolen brain-power pocketed by Purple Mike. He takes two randomly selected ones and gets to work.

Purple Mike

I say day doo say day, doo say day. Dum dee dee.

Hums along, enjoying his work, randomly crossing and wiring new thought formations in two. Groping in his morphin pockets, he grabs thoughts 3, 4 and 6 to toss in the mix. Electric snap of mind juice takes place, just as pill’s effects begin to filter in. Pot let’s out a gleeful giggle.

Releasing a chemical called dopamine into the nervous system. Purple Mike scooches an arm over and finds Grady at 16–a memory of junior prom.

I knew you weren’t perfect…plain as day you are with your hair styled in a mod mop top. Smoking a little marijuana Mary-J. Hmmpff…I bet you didn’t inhale! (Sarcastically).

The chemical release in Dad’s brain continues to transpire.

Grady shouts out and simultaneously throws back his skull and succumbs to the effects, knowing his head has been highjacked by substances. Aghast, Johnny boy! looks on, and for half a second has a vision of dad slumped in his chair, blue and fuzzy and wildy distorted.

In his fear, he grabs his wallet, cell phone, loafers, the remains of his stash, and runs past dad, out the door and into the thick of the night. Afraid for being high plus all the trouble he’s bound to cause, Johnny is unable to cope or deal with it all. He runs away.

Grady

Johnny boy! Where are you going? panicked.

Purple Mike

Shh. Shh. I’m sure it’s going to be okay. He’ll be safe. Don’t you think? Oh, I forgot. Why the sudden worry anyway? You’ve done your job, haven’t you? You’ve warned him about me and my kind. Haven’t you, Grady? Hee Hee.

Dad flings his head back. He shuts his eyes and takes inventory of his illusions.

Hotwired and ready to go, Purple Mike strings Dad’s thoughts together with his crew, ceremoniously leaking dopamine, the chemical responsible for controlling pleasure zones in humans. Now with substances affecting this zone, changes in precept trickle in to create wonderful disruptions of risk and reward sensation effects, filters and patterns in the brain; the center where substances run the gamut for their effects. It’s where addiction can take root and grow. And with all humans being equal but genetically, socially, mentally, and hereditarily different, you never know how drugs will effect.




Purple Mike

Shouts out. Ah ha, hee hee. I’m in control now. And do you know who my Daddy is? He mimics his voice when it was previously addressing Johnny’s sole.

He tucks a morph finger behind his back and pulls out a purple roll from the rear. Wonderful for it to appear, he unrolls and low and behold it’s a magic carpet. Feeling phantasmly terrific, he conjures up a familiar tune, one he stole from Grady’s head only moments ago. Ready to groove, he shouts

All aboard…Pot, Pill and Powder, hop on… Cuz you don’t know what we can find, why don’t you come along with me in big daddy’s mind—for a magic carpet ride.

Well you don’t know what we could see, why don’t you tell all your dreams to me? Fantasy will set you free!

Powder flickers and trails her pixie dust behind, creating a spark and tossing sprinkles in her midst. Pill simply gapes, a little puzzled, unable to relate.

Seize the imagination on this carpet ride. Purple Mike and the gang disappear through the thick viscous gray matter that is dad’s head, deep into the little understood psyche. Pulling the carpet to a full stop.

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