Chapter 20 - True Colors (Summer 2009) - PSPS: My Life As A Rave Outlaw

This is the full 20th chapter of my book Paper Squares and Purple Stars: My Life as a Rave Outlaw. I have decided to share the whole book here for free. The book is already available for purchase at www.raveoutlaw.com, and the mobile game is coming soon, www.immortalgames.co.uk.

If you missed chapters 1,  2,  3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19 go back and read those in order first.

Chapter 20 - True Colors (Summer 2009)A few weeks later, we traveled out to West Virginia for a festival in the mountains, but the whole thing ended up being a total shitshow. The party was being thrown by this guy who was notorious for sketchy events and for not paying DJs. A few of my people were playing the show, so I went out there to make sure they didn't get jerked around. If the promoter didn’t pay up this time, we planned to take his sound system home with us. Gordon knew a girl that was involved with the event somehow, and she got him on the guest list in exchange for a ride. I guess we can call her Jane because I can't remember her name and I doubt that she would want to be mentioned in this book. We showed up on the last day because I had a party at Galaxy that weekend. When I arrived, Gordon had already been there for a few days, and I immediately noticed that he was in a horrible mood. He couldn't stop complaining about Jane. He said that she was a total mess, even by our standards. On the first night, she got so wasted that she fell over and broke her leg. She spent the weekend on crutches, but she was determined to continue the party. At the time, she was somewhere else, he said they needed a break from one another. I didn't think much of his drama and just went about my business passing out flyers and getting rid of pills. This party wasn't your average festival either, it was a total mess. There wasn't a single trash can, food vendor or bathroom on the entire mountain and the crowd was pathetically immature. Kids were driving wildly through campsites, with people riding on car rooftops and hanging out of windows. I’m seriously surprised that no one was killed. I was shocked by the situation because I was used to people being a little bit more responsible with their freedom, but all bets were off here. It really is odd how sometimes the promoter can set the entire vibe for the event, and how we tend to attract crowds that reflect the frequency that we are putting out to the world. We tried our best to enjoy the show and check out some of the DJs, but the music sounded terrible because the speakers were blown, which also meant that they wouldn’t be worth taking at the end of the night if push came to shove. We spent most of the day walking through the campsites, just taking it all in until we came upon a group of ravers we recognized from Galaxy. I tried to make a few sales, but they were already trippin and didn't need anything else. I hung out for a while to hear what they thought of the party, and most of them had the same opinion that I did, there were a ton of idiots out here. Everyone seemed to be laughing about the situation and making light of how crazy it was, except for this one guy named Luke, he seemed to grow more uneasy with every potential disaster that someone mentioned. At one point, Luke yelled, “Something is going to happen out here, I need to call my lawyer or my parents and see what I should do about this!”

Everyone gasped as he took out his phone and began scrolling through his contact list. Before he found the numbers he was looking for, a friend of his reached over and snatched the phone from his hand.

“You'll thank me later Luke, friends don't let friends dial trippin,” his friend said.

Luke jumped back and looked around at everyone suspiciously, “I can't trust any of you!” he shouted.

“Dude, they are just trying to protect you from doing something you’ll regret. I think you are getting overwhelmed. Do you want to go for a walk or something? You might need a change of scenery,” I suggested.

After a moment or two of trying to get him to settle down, Luke randomly said, “I want to go ride one of those boats in the lake.”

In the middle of the festival grounds, there was a small pond with a few boats that people were free to use, and the water couldn’t have been more than a few feet deep. As soon as he made the suggestion, his friends began to shake their heads and expressed that it would be a bad idea.

“Actually, that might work, he needs to get away from all the chaos, I’ll go with him,” I said.

Everyone agreed, and we walked down to the pond, then Luke and I set out on the boat while everyone else watched from the shore. When we got to the middle of the pond, away from the madness of the party, he began to calm down a bit.

“So, what are you afraid of?” I asked

“This place is gonna get raided man, the cops are gonna come here, and we’ll be fucked,” he said.

“Yeah, cops are scary, I understand that. You ate all your drugs though right? That means you destroyed the evidence. If they come in here, they won't find anything on you, will they?” I asked.

He nodded his head, “Yeah it’s all gone, but can't they arrest me for just being here?” he asked.

“Nah, the jail for this town can probably just hold ten people anyway, there are hundreds of people here, and even though there is a lot of illegal shit going down, it's an event that is open to the public. They can't charge people for coming out to an event, unless we were trespassing or something, which we aren’t,” I said.

“Really, so you don't think I have anything to worry about?” he asked.

“Nah, not at all. It's just the drugs blowing everything outta proportion. It happens to me sometimes too,” I said.

“Really, it happens to you, you get like this?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, one time I was trippin, and I fled Galaxy thinking that it was getting raided when nothing was wrong. Then down the street, I thought they had a roadblock set up for me, but it was just a random cop with someone pulled over, the whole time all of it was in my head,” I explained.

It took a few more minutes to bring him down, but eventually, he asked if we could row back to shore. On the way back he said, “I guess it was kinda crazy wanting to call my parents and my lawyer huh?”

“Don't worry about it, it happens, but you know, always take a few minutes to check yourself when your mind is altered and try to calm your reactions. Always remind yourself that you are on a drug,” I said.

When we got back to the shore, his friends were relieved that he was finally somewhat back to reality, and so was I. We hung out for a little while longer just to make sure that everything was OK, and as the sun began to go down, we continued our adventure through the festival. The best thing about that night was the view, since you can't really fuck up a night sky on a mountaintop, especially in the mental state that we were all in. Late in the night, we went back to Gordon’s car because it was starting to get cold and he needed a hoodie. At this point, there was still no sign of Jane, but her crutches were leaning up against the car, so she must have come back to the campsite at some point in the evening, and she must have also been stumbling around the festival without crutches. When Gordon opened up the car, I noticed a foul smell, but I just ignored it because I assumed it was the drugs playing tricks with my imagination. Then I heard him scream.

“What the fuck!? That nasty fucking bitch shit all over my fucking car!” Gordon shouted, shining the flashlight back and forth, scanning the vehicle.

“Wait...She did what?” I asked, trying to make sense of what he just said.

“Look!” He said, shining the light onto the side of the vehicle where the door meets the frame.

Sure enough, there it was, on both the outside and the inside of the car.

“Motherfucker! She wiped her ass with my fucking shirt!” Gordon screamed louder this time.

We all couldn't help but laugh, we were all tripping balls, and this was the most ridiculous situation ever. Gordon was obviously not amused though. As Gordon yelled obscenities, the rest of us examined the scene of the crime to determine what the hell happened. Ultimately, we concluded that she didn't want to walk somewhere appropriate to go to the bathroom, so she just opened the door of the car and hung her ass out of it and went. Unfortunately, it seems that she missed the grass and got some in the car, which caused her to panic, step in it, and then run away without her crutches. We aren't sure if that was what actually happened, but that was the conclusion that we reached using our amateur CSI skills. We wanted to leave after that incident, but also really wanted to see how this was going to play out whenever she returned to the campsite. After sitting there laughing hysterically for what had to be hours, we realized that she was probably not coming back. We wished Gordon good luck and decided to make our way home after seeing that all the DJs got paid. I was officially done for the night, I saw everything there was to see, and then some.

Later that night, when I called Gordon to ask him about the awkward ride home, he said that he left all her stuff at the campsite and drove home without her. I can't say I blame him for reacting that way, I certainly can't imagine what I would have done in that situation, but it did seem like this sort of strange drama was always following Gordon around. When he joined the crew, he was very kind and agreeable and was always trying to help, but as time went on, he became less trustworthy and more aggressive. It became a regular thing for him to come up short when it was time to pay me out for the pills at the end of the night, and whenever I called him on it, he would yell at me and call me greedy, trying to deflect the situation. There were also rumors going around that he was seen pocketing money while he was working the door for me at Rollin On Dubs. My suspicions of his dishonesty were confirmed when I got a call from his girlfriend one day, threatening to call the cops on me if I didn't repay the money that she loaned me for my party back in June. Only I did pay that money back, I gave it to Gordon after Moonscape and assumed that he could be trusted, but he actually never gave her the money, and now she was pissed. Of course, when I told her that I paid him, she refused to believe me, and then he totally lost his shit on me for telling her the truth. He freaked out and accused me of causing trouble for him at home and putting his "free place to live" at risk. It was obvious that he was using her, but she trusted him and didn't want to believe me. When she threatened to call the cops on me, I had no choice but to pay her again, plunging me deeper into debt. When that was finally over, I cut Gordon off for good, which caused his threats to become more violent than ever. It got to the point where we had to have him totally banned from the club. He became somewhat of a stalker after that, sending me messages with threats of physical violence on a regular basis and doing everything he could to destroy my name. He also regularly threatened to call the cops on me, which scared me more than anything. He hung over me like a dark cloud, and even though no one was paying attention to him, the whole situation made me a nervous wreck. I was shaken by the threats of violence, but more than that, it shattered my idealistic view of the scene. I took everything he said at face value, and why wouldn’t I? I thought that this community was about peace, love, unity, and respect. Sadly, peaceful and accepting communities like this often attract narcissistic predators who seek out trusting, good-natured people to take advantage of. All along, while Gordon was offering help, paying compliments and professing allegiance to the cause, he was secretly hating me and plotting against me. I know this because he said this all to my face during one of his rants. He said that our entire friendship was a lie and that he even lied about his philosophical and musical interests in order to get what he wanted from me. This was hard for me to take because I was so naive at the time, and I honestly thought that all the new people in my life were friends. I had confidence in myself for the very first time in my life because so many people seemed to support my ideas and my vision, but in the aftermath of this, I began to feel like it was all a lie. How many of these people actually care about me and believe in me, and how many of them are just trying to get bookings, cheap pills, and guest list spots? This was really the first time I considered that many of the people around me could just be using me for their own gains, and that thought broke my heart.