It's Brooklyn, sometime in the early 90's. I'm living in a brownstone somewhere nondescript, aside from being a touch seedy. A group of my best friends are there, and we're all tripping. Acid, as usual. I brought my rock-solid boombox up to the roof, powered by a dangling extension cord. We went up there and plugged in what had to be the soundtrack to my life at the time, Beastie Boys "Check Your Head".
I don't know who started it, but we ended up dancing up there - banging on the roof with our feet and mouthing lyrics. It was raining. We went around in a circle and danced and shouted and lost ourselves in the falling water. Eventually, I must have passed out, because I woke up lying on the roof, utterly soaked.
My eyes opened and the first thing I noticed was that I was freezing. When you're tripping, sensations are amplified by quite a bit so I wasn't worried about catching cold or getting sick but I was confused about where I was and where my friends were. Lying there on the roof, I looked to my right and just under the Manhattan skyline I saw my boombox, still playing the CD - on loop.
For a moment I was happy to hear it. I released my worries about myself and my friends and just listened for a bit, allowing the rain to fall on my face and feeling my body shiver from the cold. After some time, a thought crept into my head. It went something like: water. Water. Rain. Radio. Electronics. Water. Electronics. Electricity. Water and electricity is ... dangerous.
I sat up and looked at my boombox. It was soaked. For a moment I was impressed with JVC technology and design, but then I looked at the deep puddle of water it was sitting in and noticed what else was in that puddle. I was lying in a puddle of water with an extension cord from the bathroom downstairs running into it.
Reaching over, I turned it off. I sat there for a while thinking about what an incredibly stupid, dangerous, and potentially lethal situation I was sitting in. Then, I got up and kicked the cord out. I picked up the box and went down the fire escape to seek out my friends and give them hell for being so careless.
As glad as I am of my fortune in surviving this event, and many others like it, I'm also unavoidably aware of how much I miss being in situations like that. Maybe it's the comfort of naivete I miss. Maybe it's the rush of death washing by me. Maybe it's how cleanly I embraced life. I don't know. I wasn't afraid then. Of anything.
Posted by Matt at February 18, 2005 10:59 PM