Cold Case Martinez

If one is good, two must be better, right?

I told you I’m haunted by my stupidity, right?

I was young and broke and immortal, trying to hold it together with a series of crappy jobs and bad food and some classes at junior college. Just trying to learn to live life. Which included a bout of bad judgment on a sunny afternoon at an arcade in Walnut Creek that centered on two hits of acid. A couple hours later, while peaking my tits off, driving down Contra Costa Boulevard, with one headlight out in my Mercury Comet (formerly a Valiant), and my girlfriend at the wheel, we got pulled over. 

Remember that warrant for my arrest I mentioned a while back? For failing to appear in court for a ticket? Well, whether you do or you don’t, that warrant was real, it was alive, it was in the system. Yessir. One minute you’re playing the Centipedes video game laughing at the wrong things, and the next you’re in a cell in Martinez tripping hard and doing that heel-clicking thing Dorothy did to try to get back to Kansas.

During interrogation, I was matter-of-factly informed that I had stolen a child’s bicycle—while the kid was on it. And then I threw it over a fence surrounding an electrical embankment. I still can’t get my head around this—who would do such a thing? But I was tripping. And full of empathy. I wanted to help these cops. I wanted to help them solve this crime. I nearly confessed just so they could close the case. With my imagination and the acid reflecting the story back to me in glorious technicolor as they described all that I had supposedly done.... maybe I almost did get to thinking I was guilty. It didn’t sound like something I would do. But they were so sure. They said they knew it was me: the kid had given them my license plate number. Still, I couldn’t help them locate the bicycle. I had no recollection of it at all. But maybe… you see these head-scratching documentaries on cable where people confess to heinous crimes? Crimes they didn’t commit. Well, I get it. I really do.

Things get fuzzy from there. I suppose they played their good cop/bad cop game and eventually ran out of moves, then calmed down and gave me my one phone call.

But it wasn’t quite over. There was the small matter of the ticket. The ticket for illegally knocking on doors to sell discount coupons to get your car detailed. The ticket that led to the missed court date that led to the warrant for my arrest. The ticket came with a $270 fine. I didn’t have $270. I hated that job.

My one call was to my father. He had $270! It must’ve been 2 AM or later, so I got him out of bed. He had to drive quite a ways. Was it really 50 miles? Well, it must’ve felt like a thousand miles to him. We had been estranged. I didn’t see much of my folks in those days. I’m not sure why. But as I’m writing this, I feel bad for my poor father. And not just now; for the longest time, when I’d think back about this episode, a cold wave would rush over me. God knows how I was behaving or what kind of psychedelic soliloquy was coming out of my mouth as he drove me back to the apartment I shared with my girlfriend Kara. He had problems of his own, and I hated to be one more problem. (Did I ever pay him back the $270? I can’t remember doing so, but I hope I did. Though I doubt it.)

While I was tripping in that police station holding cell, I could see the wires. I could travel through time and understand just how I ended up in that cell. The acid was connecting all the circuits. The patch bay in my brain filtered out the white noise and everything else became a 440 Hz clear crystal. Hard to explain. But, yeah.

God help my father if I tried explaining that to him as he drove me back to my apartment. Then he left to go back to his own life and probably regret the day I was born. I never brought up the episode. Neither did he.

After he left, though, I went out to the parking lot and found my Mercury Comet, climbed in and started digging through all the papers. Rifling around in the glove compartment, on the floor, in the back seat. Trying to find that ticket. And make sense of everything. I remember the sun coming up. And eventually, I came down. And things started to make less and less sense. 

These days LSD seems to be making a comeback. Mega-dose, micro-dose or otherwise. I’m not so big on psychedelics, on rewiring God’s circuit board. Then again, your mileage may vary. I’m sure it’s a different experience if you’re a calm, contented, more or less happy person. But show me someone at that age who is. 

Once again, it would seem you’ve made it this far into the great newsletter experiment. In which case: Why not become a paid subscriber today, if you’re not already? It would mean a lot to me. Or you can just carry on with the free model. Either way, we’re happy to have you.

Onwards,

– CP