I have debated about whether to write this column but this story is such an entertaining one I have always wanted to tell it! My promise to myself when I started this blog was to be brutally honest and tell it all. I have had such amazing experiences, sober and not, and while this is one of the crazier ones, I look back at it with such fondness it begs to be told, we were young, crazy kids! I have been to literally hundreds of concerts over my lifetime, but as far as being completely out of my comfort zone this one takes the cake!
Not long after high school I was living in these shithole apartments at the corner of Hulen and Camp Bowie that are still there today, although I cannot remember the name. It was my first apartment living alone and I had no money, no car, no furniture and I think my rent was $275 a month. It was a really crappy apartment with brown carpet with cigarette and iron burns, white but turned yellow walls and a kitchen that I never used, not once. But it was my very first apartment and I loved it! No one else had an apartment at that time so it was party central every night! I was maybe 18 years old, maybe 19.
A lot of crazy antics happened at that apartment including hook ups, break ups, nude streaking, heavy pot smoking, mass drinking and parties with literally a hundred people packed into my tiny abode! I dont know why the cops never came but thank God they never did! I was barely making my rent and bills every month but I remember being pretty happy. I was waiting tables, going out every night, being young, sleeping 3 hours and doing it all again the next day, just enjoying being social, busy and carefree! Isn’t it funny how you look back when you are older and see it totally differently than you did at the time? I had no idea at the time how easy my life was and how complicated it would turn out to be as I aged. All I cared about was making rent and electric, where the party was and that’s it, very simple.
I have no idea how or where we got the concert tickets but The Lords of Acid were playing at The Bomb Factory in Dallas and we scored 4 tickets. Our friends, Natalie and Lute, also lived close by and along with Brett we piled in his Honda to go to this concert in Dallas. We decided to take shrooms that night, something I had little experience with at the time. They literally tasted like shit but we managed to scarf them down. Brett drove us to Dallas, it was summer and it was really hot. Those shrooms were amazing and I remember everything turning into a cartoon and laughing for hours! Time seemed to slow down and the hallucinations never scared me, I viewed it as entertainment.
So when we arrived at the concert and walked in, we started a new experience, something that was completely out of the normal for a sweet, somewhat naive, suburban white middle-class girl. First of all, apparently the water pipes had busted at The Bomb Factory and there was about 5 inches of nasty, gross, dirty water throughout the venue. I was completely out of my league, wearing slutty, preppy clothes (I am sure I stuck out like a sore thumb as did Brett in his Polo prep gear) and when we walked in I felt like we entered another dimension.
All kidding aside, they had these crazy catwalks set up throughout the place and there was a honest-to-god sex show/orgy going on around and above me. I was surrounded by people in latex and leather, on leashes, being whipped through the water, sex everywhere, people torturing people on the cat walks. I remember looking around in amazement and realizing that I had stumbled into something out of a person’s normal experience. There were people on racks, people dressed as animals, people licking other people’s shoes, masks and whips and chains, debasement, stuff I can’t even describe clearly all these years later. I remember looking around and being totally overwhelmed and deciding that I had to go to the restroom. When I walked in, I realized the restroom was coed and the stalls had no doors. There were people shooting up and having sex in there in 5 inches of dirty, disgusting water. I had never seen that crazy shit before!! I remember walking out of the bathroom shocked and not really sure what to think.
The concert hadn’t even started yet! I can’t describe clearly what The Bomb Factory looked like. All I saw was the crazy acts taking place all around me and all above me on the catwalks. Lights and loud, loud music and strange, freaky people everywhere. Lords of Acid was about to come on and they have a variety of interesting songs including The Crablouse, Out Comes the Evil, Marijuana in the Brain, Rough Sex, Pussy, etc. (with names like those I guess I should have expected crazy!) This was a band/DJ with a female lead singer, Praga Khan, basically singing about drugs and sex over an acid electronic beat. She dominated the stage and was wearing a wedding dress that barely fit, showing her breasts and she was impossible to look away from! She did not stop moving, dancing, writhing on the stage, and she/they put on one hell of a show. Their songs pounded your senses, hard fast base beats, crazy hard lyrics, intense is insufficient to describe it. I was shocked but also completely open to the experience, I remember dancing and dancing for many songs! I was still hallucinating but it was fun, not scary and I knew no one there was judging me except to think Suburban Barbie was in the wrong place! But the heat, God the heat in there was unbearable and the water added 100% humidity and it became too miserable to handle over time. It was time to go. How much was real and how much was a hallucination? I don’t know but the experience has stayed with me.
Brett and I were a little too freaked to drive home so I remember sitting in the backseat of Brett’s car while Lute and Natalie sat in the front seat driving back to Fort Worth and laughing and laughing! I am sure they were no more capable of driving than we were and in 28 years I have seen Brett let other people drive maybe ten times so it was highly unusual. This particular experience is definately the most fish-out-of-water place I have ever been. There was no Internet to see reviews and know what we were going to. I am actually glad there was no Internet because it ended up being something we will always remember and, thank God, there is no proof or pictures of all the stupid, out of control things that I did!
The night is calling... 