May All Such Disasters End So Well

By Preston Peet for DrugWar.com

published Oct. 8, 2009
Special thanks to V. Cleary, for still putting on her muse hat every so often.

Longboat Key, the city of Saraota across Sarasota Bay to the right, and the causeway connecting Longboat to Lido Key at center-right of the photo.

Flying into Sarasota, Florida from Paris, France in late November, 1984, on the final flight landing at the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport for the night, I had mixed feelings about being back in my hometown. Considering the size of this airport, I’ve never been able to resist an amused chuckle when thinking of the unabashed gall at naming this puny airport "international." That said, flights do arrive from all over the globe, so perhaps size really isn’t everything after all.

Stepping out of the terminal, I got my first big whiff of the breezescoming off Sarasota Bay, laden with the scent of salt water and tropical flowers, blowing across the still warm pavement of the parking lot. That tropical smell never failed to get me quickly thinking, "Why'd I ever leave this place," but know within days I'll have run into enough small brained, testosterorne crammed rednecks to remember the answer as to why I left this beautiful town clear as a bell.

It took mere seconds to flag a cab, directing him to the small but comfortable Palms Hotel on southern Lido Key. I’d stayed at the Palms for the month it took between getting the first installment of my car accident settlement money, before moving to Europe when I turned 18 and gained control of the rest of my money at the end of that month. That was only just over three months before this night's return. Unfortunately, from my 18 year old viewpoint, my Dad's using $20,000 of my money to buy me, for my 18th birthday, these damned Cash Deposits was infuriating. Now I was back in Sarasota to sell these CDs, safely locked in my safety deposit box. The bank wasn’t allowing my best friend Jim, to whom I’d not only left keys to my car, and safety deposit box, but also a signed paper the bank'd had me sign giving Jim power of attorney over all my financial affairs. Even having jumped through all their hoops before leaving town, they were almost maniacal about making my selling the cds as difficult as possible.

Built on the last in a long row of tiny, almost unbelievably short "streets" all named after former, and dead, US presidents, sat my hotel on Taft St. The Palms Hotel, with its inviting outdoor pool directly across the road from South Lido beach’s sugary white sands and beautiful, tanned men and women in all their flesh bared glory, still packing the beach bars at that late hour, I briefly played with the idea I might meander over to check out the action. Instead, in seconds I instead collapsed upon the bed like a sack of bricks unconscious to the world.

Lido Key, off Sarasota, Florida

I slept that first night, and upon waking, immediately washed my face, brushed my teeth, then took a cab to the bank, where I sold all $20,000 worth of cash deposits. I then went directly to the Kawasaki dealership on US 41 near the bridge leading out to Lido and Longboat Keys, and bought a brand new 1984 Kawasaki 250X Enduro, on road/off road motorcycle, then drove the bike directly back to Lido.

1984 Kawasaki Enduro

Calling my friend Long John, as well as some high school "friends" I’d made right after winning the lawsuit settlement, I scored some really good LSD and a few eight balls of blow through Long John, and proceeded to throw a party to end all parties. We were doing so much cocaine, me the youngest, though not by much at 18 years of age, with no experienced person to show me the ropes. I was feeling my way along. I had no idea of the dangers inherent in doing copious amounts of drugs, much less showing off these amounts combined with loads of cash, to a bunch of coked out Florida coke head high school jocks.

But a funny thing about LSD is that it has always allowed me to see through all masks. Masks, to me at least while under the influence of LSD, not even those I try to wear to fool not only others but myself, do not work. I can see right through the fucking things. It’s one of the things I’ve always found proved a genuine magical quality to the LSD experience, in my case for certain. LSD has always lent a bit of "devil may care" into whatever my actions and decisions are while under its influence. Therefore, when I choose to act, I’m very vocal about what I myself am feeling and experiencing through the added channel switch in my brain's reciever, and the subsequent massive sensory input alterations caused by my taking large quantities of LSD, (while perhaps enhanced by the naturally occurring paranoia from large amounts of ingested cocaine).

image from Erowid.org

I first communicated my feeling to the one person in the entire room I felt was my real friend, Long John. I wasn’t surprised to find that he was in complete agreement with me.

Together, we leapt to our feet and began immediately and very loudly, rudely even, kicking all the hangers-on out the fucking door. "Get the hell out of here," I yelled, kicking a small mirror with a good gram of blow spread about it. "You people all suck, literally. Get the fuck out, Now!" The fact Long John stands 6’6", that also lent bravery to my actions. Despite what could have happened, what did was those I wanted gone filed out grumbling and cursing and calling us all sorts of unimaginative names, but at heart they were simply weak freeloaders of the most stereotypical type, their only real strength the leech-like sucking they were capable of when finding a free ride. Once gone, they never returned. I’ve no idea what happened to any of those folk, and can’t remember a single one of their names these days, so many years later.

Everyone leaving did of course mean there was a LOT more drugs for John and I to do with no one else to share them with. Which we did until we both finally passed out later in the afternoon.

At this early point in my life, I was still extremely drug ignorant. I didn’t know one could smoke or even inject cocaine, hadn’t come across most any illegal drugs at all beyond LSD, marijuana, and cocaine, not to mention the most deadly yet still legal if one is old enough (which I still was not) alcohol of course. Therefore, although I did a few small lines out of the pile I had that evening upon waking, by sunset he and I were walking the beach sand, the entire length of the key, tripping hard and smoking good old school Panama Red, one spliff after the next. Young, completely carefree, able to do just about anything my heart desired due to what I felt with my limited experience was a lot of dough from the settlement, I’d already concluded that what I really wanted to do was to continue traveling, at least throughout Europe, for as long as possible.

image from Erowid.org

Upon waking in the morning, I refrained from doing any coke, not yet to the point where it was compulsive behavior (that took a few more years of use and abuse). I walked to a beachside café, after smoking a small bowl of the good green natural, where taking a table outside in what passes for the cooler days of Fall, filled myself with the nutritious fuel I needed to get the errands I had all planned out for my morning successfully completed, topping off my hearty breakfast with some good strong heavily caffeinated coffee.

I then strolled back down the beach until reaching my hotel, where I grabbed a thick cotton jacket I’d brought back from a brief excursion to Denmark, my helmet, and the keys to my new bike.

Since my very first motorcycle was the tiny 100cc Enduro I’d bought four months previously, to learn how to ride a motorcycle, the jump up to a 250cc was fairly large for an inexperienced biker such as myself. When I’d had my old friend Jim drive me to the dealership on US 41 to buy the 250, I was thinking that while bigger a bike it might be, a 250 couldn’t be that much more powerful, and making a few laps in the parking lot before laying down my cash, I was confident I could handle this cool looking green and black, knobby tired Mad Max looking bike with no more trouble than I’d had getting used to the little 100.

Pulling out into traffic, I got my first hint that this assessment on my part might not be entirely accurate, as it was very easy to pop the clutch and drop into gear, surging forward with speed and power quite a bit above and beyond what I was used to with the smaller bike. Plus, I’d not been on a bike for the past nearly four months since I left my bike behind when I left for Europe, so I was out of practice and not so experienced to begin with. I did ok, with Jim following me in his car as we headed back South towards the turn towards the Ringling Causeway, the big bridge linking Crab, St. Armand’s, Lido and Longboat Keys to the mainland. Just before the main thoroughfare turned towards the bridge, there was a turn off a block before that, running alongside the old abandoned Ringling Hotel, built by the Ringling brothers back in the 1920s, whose circus had their Winter home in Sarasota for years. Now 1n the mid-‘80s, it was falling apart, a walled in, seriously dilapidated and overgrown building that despite the appearance, and reality, of its about to simply collapse into itself, was still grand and regal through the thick tropical green that had grown up, around and within the building itself.

The now razed John Ringling Hotel

I took the right off 41 onto this deserted road, a shortcut we locals were familiar with, which enabled us to bypass some spots of serious bottlenecking traffic heading for the bridge. As I straightened out, I popped the clutch and let it into second gear. Suddenly I found myself doing the classic Evil Kenevil wheelie almost the entire length of the street, my feet dangling behind the bike with my crotch pinned to the seat, me doing not much more for most of that tricky, overwhelmingly scary ride than hanging on for dear life, hoping I was going to be able to end the ride by bringing the front tire back down onto the road way pointed forward as I was topping a good 50 miles an hour at that point. Amazingly, I did it, putting the tire down as though I did it every day. But once it was finally back down and I again had control, I stopped the bike, lit a smoke, and sat there until my trembling knees and hands quit shaking.

So here I was, enjoying this typically bright sunny, cool, cloudless November Florida morning. I left my hotel and drove my bike onto the mainland where my first stop was to make and pay for the reservations to return to Europe in a week’s time. Then I drove around the city visiting friends and getting other errands accomplished. All the while, I was both fully aware that I had to keep a sharp eye on my handling of the bike, as I was still getting used to it, as well as having to keep my eyes glued to the roads at all times. Thisn was more important than in amny cities and town I may have found myself biking around, but I was driving a motorcycle around Sarasota, Florida, with its gargantuan retired population hovering at what my guess is mainly 75 years old and older, most all of them insisting they are still in full possession of all their senses, and therefore fully entitled to their drivers’ licenses. I admit that, if they really are able to still safely operate a moving vehicle, give them freedom and independence, so they don't need or have to rely on their children or nursing services to get around town. But there are too many who arbitrarily decide they’re fully capable and need prove it to no one, not even those fuzzy looking men with the badges.

So while I had smoked a tiny amount of grass hours earlier, by this time I was fully sober, and on high alert, heading back towards the route that would take me to my hotel, then the beach for a few hours sun until sunset, always glorious over the Gulf of Mexico. I was on Shade Avenue, which coincidentally happened to run directly behind the shopping complex where I’d been two hours previously making my reservations at my travel agents’ office.

I crossed the railroad tracks that cut through the road right there, and pulled around the curve that lead, dropping down slightly into the long straightaway cuting past a huge trailer park on the left, a lumber yard, and the aforementioned shopping center both on the right, until finally reaching Ringling Boulevard, where I’d turn left and head directly through picturesque, bayside Sarasota and on out to the hotel. When I pulled into the start of the straightaway, a long stretch nearly a mile or so long, I immediately saw a large Cadillac stopped in the oncoming lane with its left turn blinker signaling an upcoming turn into that shopping center, at almost precisely the halfway point through the long stretch of two-lane asphalt strip. I slowed, but he did not turn. I slowed a bit more, and yet, still no turn. As I reached a spot giiving me thirty or thirty-five yards to go before reaching this car and him still sitting there blinking and not turning, I now decided he must have seen me, and realizing I had right of way was waiting for me to pass. So I opened up the throttle, twisting for all it was worth, almost instantly attaining a speed of nearly 45 mps. At exactly the same moment he decided that this was the perfect time for him to go ahead and make a turn at a snails crawls directly across my lane, he in his Caddy and my on my teeny bike, protected only by a cotton jacket, shorts, sneakers, a helmet and some very nice sunglasses.

It was a truly surreal experience. I had plenty of time it seemed to weigh what few options I had open and available to me as possible life-saving reactions.

The first I noticed was that I could simply drive my bike to the right, up and over the curb there, into what the lumber yard had turned into a yard of first sized, decorative yet real and very hard white stones. I knew instantly that I was going to not get over that curb and would be breaking skins and bones upon those blindingly white rocks.

Second instant option was to go left across the center line and try to miss the traffic behind this fucking idiot, but I noticed right away that the trailer park was built upon an asphalt lot, just like the road I was on. If I did by some stroke of luck miss the car behind dumbfuck, I was going to connect very solidly with a chain link fence set into concrete pilings every eight feet of so, surrounding the trailor park with these embedded concrete pilings. This did not look like a friendly healthy choice either.

The third option, the one I inevitably was forced to take, was to simply try my damnedest to stop before plowing full speed into the side of this asshole’s car. So, I kicked down upon both footbrake and gear shift lever, as well as pulling as hard as I could on both hand brake and clutch, knowing full well it was no use whatsoever, that I was about to kiss pavement, hard. The last thing I remember was the feeling of the motorcycle sliding out from under me, the tires leading out in front of me and my falling pretty much onto the bike itself. Or at least, that was what happened in the first few nanoseconds of consciousness. I do vaguely remember a sldgehammer hitting me, one that felt as big as my whole body, but it was a fleeting, passing sensation, and I had no time to be much beyond hardly aware of its beginning before I briefly lost consciousness.

Next thing I knew I was lying on my back underneath this car, the undercarriage of which was right in my face, the muffler just inches from my nose. while struggling to recall why I might be lying on the roadway underneath this strager's car, I suddenly heard the engine of the car begin revving up, and tried to call out to alert others that I was under the car. This was nwhen to my horror I suddenly realising I couldn't breath, couldn't draw breath, and already had no air in my lungs with which to yell, much less make any sound whatsoever, as my slamming into thebike, then street, then apparently car, had completely knocked all wind from my lungs.

I began banging on the muffler with the back of my left hand, unable to use my right arm for some painful reason it seemed even besides the fact he was pulling his back tire up onto my right shoulder before stopping and allowing the car to roll back off again. He did this twice, actually getting his back tire onto my right shoulder two times, and rolling back off.

The third time he began an attempt, an incredibly beautiful black woman grabbed me by my armpits and dragged me out from under the guy’s car to safety. For a split second I actually felt a smidgen of embarrassment when I realized the thin cotton shorts I’d been wearing in the Florida Fall weather had had their front completely shredded off me, leaving me stark naked from the waist down, as my sneakers had also been shredded and torn from my feet. My helmet at some point had gone flying, ending up with a crack right down the center of the thing, leaving it useless.

As I began to be able to breath again, I threw any embarrassed feelings to the wind, thinking fuck it, I just survived yet another accident, which then reminded me to check out my stomach, which had only very recently finally healed from my car accident two years before. My middle finger of my left hand sank all the way into a huge gash into the left side of my abdomen, sending me into immediate shock, and screaming for pain medication. I was simultaneously discovering the horrors of road rash, where the asphalt peels flesh from the body, hence the desire to wear leather no matter how hot it is outside. Leather peels much more slowly and with much greater resistance than mere human flesh. Unfortunately, the only leather in my ensemble was the leather shades on my sunglasses, not much help to say the least.

The ambulance drivers told me I had to wait until I could be examined at the hospital to be sure there were no serious internal injuries before they could give me a shot for my pain, which shouldn’t take long. While impatiently waiting for them to get driving, the sheriff who’d first arrived at the scene poked his head in the anbulance. Visibly angry, he told me the driver of the car was 82, and had stopped getting checked for new licenses five years before, knowing he couldn’t see well enough to pass the drivers’ test with the strongest of glasses, so the officer had already seized his license and begun steps to be sure he never legally got behind the wheel of another car.

In the emergency room and still waiting for a shot to relieve my pain half an hour later, I began spontaneously and eloquently cursing up a storm. One of the surgeons passing by had the balls to tell me to watch my language as there were ladies present, to which I let loose with the bluest, loudest string of strung together curses against every member of this prick’s family going back several generations, as he hadn’t anything to do with me nor my case at all anyway. He was just some bozo passing by my examination being done by others. Unable too withstand my onslaught, he slunk from view, never to make another appearance.

I ended up in the hospital for three weeks, meaning I had to change my tickets to return to Paris. The funniest thing about the whole incident is that when I returned to my hotel room, which they’d kindly kept for me, leaving my belongings in my room safe and sound, on the freshly made bed sat the mirror on which I had both been rolling numerous joints, leaving at least two quarter ounce bags of good herb sitting there. Not only that, I had used at least two eight-balls to create a number of sketches of Long John, his girlfriend, and various visions I‘d been enrapt with while under the influence of all those combined chemicals. The maid hadn’t called the police, she’d simply moved the drug laden mirror from the unmade bed, put fresh sheets on the bed, cleaned the rest of my room, and put the mirror back. As near as I could tell, she hadn’t even helped herself to any of the drugs. Gave me faith in the human race, for her not only NOT having turned me in to the authorities, but also for not stealing from me. I tipped her very well before leaving.

I returned to Paris a week later, walking on a cane due to the broken tibia in my right shin, as well as wearing a shoulder harness as the doctors’ most likely guess was the asshole had snapped my right collar bone, seriously, when driving up and onto it twice while I lay under his car. Another wound that at first appeared fairly trivial in comparison to most of the others I was experiencing was that I’d completely shaved all flesh and muscle from the outer side of my right pinkie, probably getting it stuck between the pavement and the throttle as I slid towards the guy’s car. When I hit his car, I slid between the bike and the car, which is how I ended up underneath the thing in the first place. As I’d gone between bike and car, my stomach and abdomen had cut themselves open on the brake stand, as well as a few other foot pedals on the bike, which is how I managed to stick my finger into my gut.

But all's well that ends well. First night out in Paris using my cane, I was immediatelyapproached by a gorgeous French woman who insisted on taking me home and making me feel as good as she possibly could for three or four days.

The only major downside to my recovery was when on early Christmas eve my room-mate (and LSD connection in Paris) in our hotel room woke me due to my own moans and groans over the excruciating pain I was suffering in that right pinkie finger. He was tired of my keeping him awake and insisted I go to the hospital. I walked through the ice and snow to the Hotel Due, the oldest hospital in Paris, which sits upon the same plaza where sits Notre Dame Cathedral.

I was operated on on Christmas morning and smoked a large hash and tobacco joint rolled from the hash one of my friends from the hotel brought me upon waking from surgery. Finally pain free (as that point in my life-pain these days is a constant, excruciatingly constant living companion, but back then, there were long periods were I fle talmost pain free and normal), this adventure was drawing to a close, and I couldn’t be more thankful. Interestingly, drug use, much less any hint of abuse, caused none of the trauma involved in this tale. To this day I have a bent pinkie to remind me of those times, a fairly good grasp of the French tongue, and a love of that city that will never fade.

May any and all my future disasters end on such positive notes.