Dying Inside

On the Friday of our seventh week Toni came home from her office with two small squares of white blotting paper in her purse. In the center of each square was a faint blue-green stain. I studied them a moment or two, without comprehending.

“Acid,” she said finally.

“Acid?”

“You know. LSD. Teddy gave them to me.”

Teddy was her boss, the editor-in-chief. LSD, yes. I knew. I had read Huxley on mescaline in 1957. I was fascinated and tempted. For years I had flirted with the psychedelic experience, even once attempting to volunteer for an LSD research program at the Columbia Medical Center. I was too late signing up, though; and then, as the drug became a fad, came all the horror stories of suicides, psychoses, bad trips. Knowing my vulnerabilities, I decided it was the part of wisdom to leave acid to others. Though still I was curious about it. And now these squares of blotting paper sitting in the palm of Toni’s hand.

“It’s supposed to be dynamite stuff,” she said. “Absolutely pure, laboratory quality. Teddy’s already tripped on a tab from this batch and he says it’s very smooth, very clean, no speed in it or any crap like that. I thought we could spend tomorrow tripping, and sleep it off on Sunday.”

“Both of us?”

“Why not?”

“Do you think it’s safe for both of us to be out of our minds at the same time?”

She gave me a peculiar look. “Do you think acid drives you out of your mind?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of scary stories.”

“You’ve never tripped?”

“No,” I said. “Have you?”

“Well, no. But I’ve watched friends of mine while they were tripping.” I felt a pang at this reminder of the life she had led before I met her. “They don’t go out of their minds, David. There’s a kind of wild high for an hour or so when things sometimes get jumbled up, but basically somebody who’s tripping sits there as lucid and as calm as — well, Aldous Huxley. Can you imagine Huxley out of his mind? Gibbering and drooling and smashing furniture?”

“What about the fellow who killed his mother-in-law while he was on acid, though? And the girl who jumped out of a window?”

Toni shrugged. “They were unstable,” she said loftily. “Perhaps murder or suicide was where they were really at, and the acid just gave them the push they needed to go and do it. But that doesn’t mean you would, or me. Or maybe the doses were too strong, or the stuff was cut with some other drug. Who knows? Those are one-in-a-million cases. I have friends who’ve tripped fifty, sixty times, and they’ve never had any trouble.” She sounded impatient with me. There was a patronizing, lecturing tone in her voice. Her esteem for me seemed clearly diminished by these old-maid hesitations of mine; we were on the threshold of a real rift. “What’s the matter, David? Are you afraid to trip?”

“I think it’s unwise for both of us to trip at once, that’s all. When we aren’t sure where the stuff is going to take us.”

“Tripping together is the most loving thing two people can do,” she said.

“But it’s a risky thing. We just don’t know. Look, you can get more acid if you want it, can’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Okay, then. Let’s do this thing in an orderly way, one step at a time. There’s no hurry. You trip tomorrow and I’ll watch. I’ll trip on Sunday and you’ll watch. If we both like what the acid does to our heads, we can trip together next time. All right, Toni? All right?”

It wasn’t all right. I saw her begin to speak, begin to frame some argument, some objection; but also I saw her catch herself, back up, rethink her position, and decide not to make an issue of it. Although I at no time entered her mind, her facial expressions made her sequence of thoughts wholly evident to me. “All right,” she said softly. “It isn’t worth a hassle.”

Saturday morning she skipped breakfast — she’d been told to trip on an empty stomach — and, after I had eaten, we sat for a time in the kitchen with one of the squares of blotting paper lying i

“How long will it take to hit?” I asked.

“About an hour and a half,” she said.

In fact it was more like fifty minutes. We were back in our own room, the door locked, faint scratchy sounds of Bach coming from the portable phonograph. I was trying to read, and so was Toni; the pages weren’t turning very fast. She looked up suddenly and said, “I’m starting to feel a little fu

“Fu

“Dizzy. A slight touch of nausea. There’s a prickling at the back of my neck.”

“Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Juice?”

“Nothing, thanks. I’m fine. Really I am.” A smile, timid but genuine. She seemed a little apprehensive but not at all frightened. Eager for the voyage. I put down my book and watched her vigilantly, feeling protective, almost wishing that I’d have some occasion to be of service to her. I didn’t want her to have a bad trip but I wanted her to need me.

She gave me bulletins on the progress of the acid through her nervous system. I took notes until she indicated that the scratching of pencil against paper was distracting her. Visual effects were begi