Lydia and the Cluttered Yard
Lydia and I secretly dropped acid on the way to Paragon Park which was an amusement park in Hull, Massachusetts. It’s long gone now. Lydia and I were in the marching band together. She played the flute, beautifully, and I beat the bass drum like a caveman. The whole band got excused from regular classes to spend the day at the park, so in that sense it was a field trip. Lydia and I had already tried acid and we both found it fun. It was a fun trip, exploring our minds in a dazzling new way. Our hallucinations matched; watching things soften and melt, shooting moondrops from our fingernails, etc. The idea was to merge two fun things into one BIG FUN. It seemed like a sensible plan. But when we got to the park and the acid lit up our brains we grew nervous and the two funs conflicted with each other. We were afraid to go on the rides. The crowds grew monstrous. The funs cancelled each other out and we were anxious to go home and let things wear off. The bus ride back felt like a slow-motion emergency.
Lydia’s family moved away the next year and I never heard from her again. I don’t even remember her last name.
There was a long circuitous road in my hometown called Ichabod Lane (yes, really). 27 Ichabod Lane was an old dump of a house that was rotting apart. It had peeling tar paper on the sides and windows with broken, patched-up panes. I always wanted to take a picture of that house because of the stuff in front of it. There was so much furniture in the yard. Enough for three houses. Bureaus and tables. A bed with a sodden, ruptured mattress. A tipped-over stove. A bathtub filled with rusted car parts. A rusted car. That yard went on and on in its strange way. Crowded and loud and teeming with chaos and confusion.
I never did get around to taking a picture of it and eventually the yard was cleared and cleaned up and the house was torn down. By then it was too late. Today it’s a vacant lot.
Nowadays people take pictures all the time but I never did and still don’t. I’m keeping my yard clean.
***
From: Everything Dissolves
Horror Sleaze Trash 