I was taking my time walking north on the road, stopping every few yards to examine the assorted wares being sold. Many of the storefronts were selling stuff like incense, tapestries, sarongs, glassware, and basically every type of jewelry you can imagine(and by “storefronts” I mean the 10’ x 10’ tents that held the vendors’ goods and the makeshift tables in front of them). I didn’t see the blanket anywhere, and I grew discouraged as I reached the top of Shakedown. I turned and started the walk back to the venue, opting to join the more central current, made swifter through the absence of those inspecting the various vendors’ wares (they stayed off to the side). As I migrated downstream, I started noticing a lot of people—mostly dudes with backpacks—saying things quietly under their breath with every few yards they travelled, almost as if they were trying to get up the nerve to start a conversation with those they passed, yet only managed to timidly sputter the same nonsensical word over and over.

“Boomers.”

That was the first of the words I really craned my hearing to try to comprehend.

“Boomers.”  It echoed in my ear.

Is he saying ‘bloomers’? Like underwear? I thought to myself. What is this, the 1950s? Puzzled yet intrigued, I moved a little closer, matching his stride yet hanging a foot or so behind. I leaned in a little closer. He caught me out of the corner of his eye and turned my way.

“Boomers?”

This time it was more inquisitive, as if he was offering something. Startled by his sudden interest and embarrassed by my confusion, I shook my head and slid away from his side, trying to vanish within the mob to my left. He shrugged and continued his journey, muttering the same indecipherable word to the other travelers that crossed his path.

I had barely gone ten feet or so before I heard it again, this time from someone coming from the opposite direction who said it just as he lips passed my eardrum. Not twenty seconds later, I heard another unfamiliar term.

“Pharmies.”

What? Farmies?

And then another: “Molly.”

That one sounded a little more recognizable, but that’s maybe because I’ve always had a penchant for world geography, and so maybe I was just thinking of the country in northwestern Africa. Next came a pair of words from the same kind of guy, somewhat shorter but more vocal than the others.

“Rolls, doses."

Typical day view of the Bonnaroo camp compound (when it's not pouring).

That’s when I stopped, finally realizing what I was in the midst of.  I was walking through an enormous drug marketplace.  I had heard the terms “rolls” and “doses” on only a few occasions, having tried LSD a handful of times before (doses) and had been present when a friend of mine was picking up some ecstasy (rolls) from her neighbor. I still had no idea what “boomers” or “pharmies” were (though I would later learn they referred to psilocybin—or “magic”— mushrooms, and pharmaceutical medications, respectively), but I encountered several dealers offering wares I was assuredly familiar with, namely “nuggets” and “blow.” With each passing offer, my curiosity grew, as did an urge to indulge in a little...enhancement.

I paused by a beer tent for a minute, grabbed a can of cheap domestic and weighed my options. To be honest I was very much intrigued about the prospect of doing some drugs that day, and the veritable smorgasbord beckoning at my relatively diluted bloodstream was tempting. I was also very wary. I’m not one to actively seek out hard drugs—especially from strangers, who can do a number of things to the drugs they sell without their fleeting client base ever becoming the wiser. Their drugs may be cut to death with cheap—even highly toxic—cutting agents, or on the other hand, they might be completely fake and thus a total waste of money (of which I did not have much of to begin with). With some drugs—like coke and weed—you can pretty much tell right away if what you’ve got is any good, but with some of the stronger, trickier drugs—like acid and ecstasy—the effects are far less immediate, and with only a vial of clear liquid or a bunch of multicolored pills to go off of as a first impression, there’s only so much examination you can perform before deciding whether or not to take the plunge down the proverbial rabbit hole.

I decided immediately that LSD was out of the question. The environment was too new and the weather too volatile for my mental state to cope with eight hours of moderate psychosis. Coke was too expensive and too hard to do in a wet and crowded environment, and the short half-life of the euphoria would make it almost impossible to enjoy fully. And there was no way I would be able to stomach a handful of nasty dried out mushrooms that literally taste like feces, especially after the amount of tequila and beer I had already consumed earlier in the day. There was only one thing that remained, and it was the only thing on the menu I had never tried before.

The shorter dude was back within earshot, and caught my eye as I sipped on my can of Miller Lite. I nodded in his direction and he approached confidently, motioning towards me to follow me down one of the tent-lined side streets that fed into Shakedown. We walked about twenty feet or so before he stopped between two short, stout tents and dug into his brown knit shoulder bag.

“So what are you in the market for, my friend?” He asked, brandishing a sandwich bag full of sugar cubes and a smaller bag filled with pills that resembled tiny green hexagonal pebbles. “You lookin’ to blast off? Or roll with the tide?” He chuckled at the wit behind his euphemisms—clearly he had been dying to say this to someone all day.

I felt like Neo at the beginning of the Matrix, and this miniature, pie-eyed man before me was my Morpheus. I examined the offered selection for a few minutes before asking him about the cost.

“Everything is $10 a pop, man. These babies [referring to the acid-dosed sugar cubes] will probably do you fine with just one, but these [holding up the pills I assumed were ecstasy] might take you two to get you where you want to be,” he giggled a little bit to himself before continuing, “but once you’re there ... hahaha ... wowza!”

A very loud procurer of drugs was in front of us during Dave Matthews.

I shot him an uneasy look, and he read me like a Bible, finally getting a little more serious. “Don’t trust me, huh?” He shook his head, opened up the bag and popped one of the pills in his mouth. “There! Now if you die, I’ll die too.” A wide smile returned to his face as he snatched the beer out of my hand and downed his little pick-me-up.

I usually don’t buy drugs from strangers—though I have been known to bend that rule at Bonnaroo—but I had to admire his methods. However unconventional they were, they were also effective. I smiled back at him in minor disbelief at what had just transpired and snickered as I reached into my pocket for two twenties, in exchange for four of the fluorescent green pills. He popped them into the cellophane from the bottom of my cigarette pack and handed them over to me before shoving the money in his little brown purse, gave me goofy old-timey bow and said, “I bid you adieu, good sir!” In a matter of seconds, he was back in the fray, continuing his business, and I started working my way back to the venue.

Fifteen minutes later I was back in Centeroo, walking with a little spring in my step as I made my way across the grounds towards our meeting spot by the Comedy Tent. I stopped every so often to jump in a puddle, unaffected by the murky slop thanks to my new shoes and my new sense of how much of a badass I had become within the last fifteen minutes. I thought I was cock of the walk! Not only had I purchased drugs in the middle of a field in Tennessee with incredible ease, I also was able to sneak them past security and into the venue. In my mind, I was George Jung; to everyone else, I was just another drunk weirdo in pink shoes acting like a four-year old.

As I approached the Comedy Tent, I caught sight of Ben and Caleb, as well as the few girls from my class we were supposed to meet. As we all exchanged hugs and hey- how-are-yous, I could barely contain my giggles. One of the girls asked me what I was so happy about, and after a split-second of toying with whether or not to play it cool (Spoiler--I didn’t), I presented my latest purchase.

“Dude, is that X?” Ben asked me, somehow blending incredulousness with being totally unsurprised in his tone. I nodded cheerily, still pretty proud of myself. The others looked nonplussed but not disinterested.

“Are you going to do all four of those now?” one of the girls piped in, and I could tell that she was a little more intrigued than the others.

“Hell no!” I spurted, “I’ve actually never done it before, so I was hoping one or two of you wouldn’t mind joining me?”

Ben gave me the expected hell-no-dude look, while two of the four girls looked at each other in unspoken accord. Without saying a word I snatched three of the four pills, placed one in each of their hands and popped one in my own mouth.  It felt like confetti on my tongue, and tasted like chemical toilet water dipped in glitter.

The next few minutes were spent figuring out logistics as to who was going to do what and where. Ben, Caleb, and the two of the others decided to head to Rilo Kiley (“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with Jenny Lewis,” Ben declared, “so there’s no way I’m missing that”) and the two girls I had just supplied with drugs and I opted to check out the next comedian at the Comedy Tent, who happened to be Jim Breuer, known best as the lovable goofball stoner from the 90s comedy Half Baked. The Comedy Tent was one of the only venues on-site that was completely enclosed on all sides (the other being the Cinema Tent, where they show movies all day and night for attendees to enjoy, but mostly people just go in there to escape the heat and take naps in the dark).

Breuer’s stand-up was hilarious, even from the back edge of the tent where we were standing, as the circular circus-like tent was almost at capacity. Twenty or so minutes into his set, I started to feel very warm and quite thirsty, yet the feeling did not last very long. I decided to pop the remaining pill, not knowing that MDMA— methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, the active chemical in ecstasy that gives the user the fabled euphoria and sensory amplification—works in the body in a wave-like fashion. Not two minutes after I swallowed my second pill did the feeling return, stronger than before, and I realized that I might have just signed my own death warrant.

Whatever paranoia or anxiety that had previously threatened to commandeer my altered state was briskly shoved away, as the full effect of the drugs began to wash over me. My vision became shaky and blurred, my tongue started smacking against my lips, and my eyelids grew impatient in trying to decide what to do with themselves. I remember feeling like everything finally made sense to me, and that the world around was too beautiful to ignore, even if it was covered in six inches of mud. Before either of my two companions could protest, I declared that I would be leaving the tent to smoke. I walked out in the rain with my new umbrella hanging limp at my side and opened my arms towards the sky. Each drop that ricocheted off my chin and cheeks felt like new energy being created, and somehow I was aiding it in its dispersion into its new surroundings.

"Is that MY arm???"

I had no idea how long I had been standing out there before the two girls came out to meet me, stirring me from my reverie to return me to reality. I regained lucidity for a brief moment as they suggested we move on to the main stage to catch Black Crowes, but then it was lost again as we bounced over the field, stepping in time with one another like some demented marching band.

The remainder of the evening was caked in blissful haze. The memories I do have are fairly few and far between, but each one that remains echoes a sensation of complete and utter joy: stomping my feet to The Black Crowes’ “Hard To Handle” not fifty feet from the edge of the towering main stage, swaying hypnotically to the dizzying sound of Keller Williams and his looping machine, and finally lying down in the sticky bed of earth outside one of the tents as Iron & Wine’s soft serenade washed over me in blankets of delicate acoustic guitar and hushed vocals, completely apathetic to the fact that I had basically turned into a filth-dipped popsicle in the process.

By the time Iron & Wine had finished, the group had decided to split up into two parties: one heading back to one of the campsites for drinks and some grub, while the other wished to catch the first of Widespread Panic’s headlining sets back at the main stage. I was torn, but chose music over sustenance, a decision I soon retracted once I gained full composure and found out that Panic would be playing for three and a half hours. I managed to make it through about forty-five minutes of the set before heading back. The road back to camp seemed somehow both longer and shorter at the same time, as the walk was more pleasurable than before (despite being more sober I still felt lighter than a hot air balloon), but corporeal exhaustion was clearly winning the battle over my mind, and so the journey dragged a bit more than expected.

Upon returning to the campsite, I said a brief hello to Jack and Matt, both of them anchored to their usual spots under the canopy, and politely declined their invitation to sit and chat as I was in desperate need of a quick siesta. As I turned away, both started laughing hysterically, to my bewilderment. I tried to ask why they were so tickled by my needing to nap, but they could barely speak between their howling and exaggerated guffaws—even their laughter had a southern twang to it. After several seconds, Jack composed himself well enough to leave his seat and retrieve one of the many gallon jugs of water they kept underneath the truck.

“I think you might need this,” he said, gasping between laughs, his face as red as a Budweiser can, and opened the jug and began pouring it slowly down the back of my head. The water was surprisingly warm, and that’s when I realized I had been walking for almost a mile with practically ten pounds of grime and clay stuck to my back. I cringed at my stupidity, but that’s all the frustration I could muster. The afternoon had been too grand to be dismayed by something so minor, especially considering that pretty much everyone else at the festival was in the same nasty, swampy boat as me. I thanked Jack and Matt for my makeshift shower, found some clean clothes and collapsed on the mattress in the car, removed my sister’s gift from its bag and cocooned myself in it.

The last thing I remember hearing before falling asleep was hearing the guy in the tent on the other side of us, sitting alone in his tent and listening to Barry White and huffing nitrous, giggling at the temporary deepening of his own voice as he tried to sing along. I attempted one final indignant “Shut up!” in his direction, but I don’t think the words ever escaped my lips.

To be continued...

The Journey Continues Tomorrow ... Stay Tuned.