Having Sundays off from work just hit different, and this Sunday hit different than any other Sunday of all the Sundays in my life. I woke up and lazily made coffee in my french press, fed and medicated Ned, pumped up that stubbornly underinflated front tire of my bike before running errands and heading to the studio. I looked out my window at the midwinter grey: partly cloudy with a chance of At Least It’s Not Fucking Raining Again. What’s the next milestone? I thought to myself. That’s right. 30 days to daylight savings and then it’s light when I leave work.

In front of my apartment building, I kick off and ride, the sunlight peering past the clouds and on my face during the ten minute bike ride to my studio. I get there, get organized, lower the bags of balloons from the ceiling by pulley, and start sorting today’s quote out, kicking balloons into place on the floor of the studio.

It’s a long quote and takes me awhile to assemble, as I apologize to my friend and today’s assistant Jared, explaining my delay. I rummage around for snacks, only find the cannabis cookies that someone who works on my webseries gifted me around the holidays. I packed them away then with gratitude, but hadn’t indulged yet- despite my age, I’m pretty inexperienced with edibles and my days off of my day job are often spent being hyperproductive making art and content, not relaxing in a lovely brain fog.

The balloons packed away and assembled, I loaded them up onto my bike trailer, then headed out. It was a long message today, the cloud of silver and gold balloons loomed large behind my bike and provoked smirks and smiles as I trundled by. Any time I take sharp corners on my bike with the balloons, they lean precariously over and I hear the “wicked witch” theme from The Wizard of Oz in my head as I furiously pedal to right them.

I coast to a stop at the wall, today it’s a blue wall with a bold red stripe at a popular salvage business. Jared is there! My friend and assistant for this shoot, he is a being made of smiles and we always have so much fun catching up and dishing on boys.

This shoot is no different than most until later, but for now we enjoy the sun and the uncharacteristically rain-free afternoon. A half-dozen people stop by and say hello, either curious onlookers or, more and more often, people already familiar with my art. It’s still bonkers to me how far the art reaches, and how many people enjoy it. It’s an artists’ dream, but it happened so quickly in the summer of 2020 that it still feels a bit abstract, and I’m still low-key startled when someone stops by a shoot to tell me they know and enjoy my art.

Jared and I are wrapping up, doing the last shot of the shoot, a drone shot, when a car passes me on my bike heading back to where Jared is piloting the drone. The driver shouts something like “idiot” or something (I honestly can’t remember what) and when I coast to a stop near Jared, he and I look at each other like “What was that?!” He shrugs it off and convinces me that it was random ugliness, but there’s a part of me that feels like it was a little more specifically meant for me. It’s confirmed when a second car turns the corner, and the driver starts an obviously rehearsed monologue. They stop and start their car while reciting their piece, Why Balloon Guy Is Bad, and it almost seems like time slows as they pass. Their light green Prius with “Land Back” scrawled on cardboard in their window is art-directed from a moment in Portlandia to a T, as they list why Balloon Guy is problematic, finally time resumes and they drive off as Jared yells “fuck off” cheerily. I imagine the person in their car, smiling and proud like the smug cheerleader gif: they’re an activist now!

Jared and I unpack what just happened for a few minutes, then I bike back to the studio. As I unpack my bike trailer and pulley the clear bags of balloons back into the loft ceiling of the studio, I muse more about the mindset of trolls: I’m largely unaffected and pretty chill about getting online hate in the past year or so. I always try to put myself in the mindset of the person doing the trolling, and I honestly don’t think I’m capable. I see things all the time online that I don’t like, or artist’s work that I think misses the mark entirely, and I just keep scrolling. The impulse to actively seek out and engage with that content with the intention of upsetting the person, is just so weirdly Main Character Syndrome that it’s bizarre, and I’m mildly embarrassed for online trolls. I eventually find out that the culprit or this particular incident was someone who started working relatively recently at Lolo Pass, a local restaurant, filmed me at my shoot, and didn’t discourage others when they offered to come by the location and harass me. Abusers and harassers rarely see themselves as the villains in their own story.

I start feeling a little snacky again. I rummage in my studio pantry: stale chips crumbs at the bottom of the bag. A couple pieces of popcorn. Oh! And the cannabis cookies, baked with love by the sister of someone who works on my tiny puppet webseries. Yes, that would hit the spot on a stressful day like today. I eat half of one, then maybe a little nibble more, then finish cleaning up. The last time I ate an edible was a month or so ago, then before that on my birthday. Both times left me giggly and silly for about three hours.

I’m editing a photo on my phone when suddenly it hits me: that familiar feeling washing over me like a wave or a blanket, and I realize it’s time to get the hell home, since I want to be near my bed. I also set an alarm to get up for work the next morning, before I lose the urgency to do so…before I lose the urgency to do anything. I carry my bike down the stairs, and it’s when I get downstairs that I remember that I left my work phone charging in the studio. Oops.

It’s only through the most herculean effort that I manage to haul my bike back upstairs and scoop up my work phone. I make it back downstairs. When does that giggly silly feeling start? I wonder absently to myself. Dear reader, that feeling never starts.

It’s no surprise to anyone but me, that the vigorous ten minute bike ride back home only serves to supercharge the effects of the pot cookie right into my fucking bloodstream. My thought process during my bike ride home goes something like this:

Minutes 1 to 2: Haha, wow that cookie was something else, take those turns carefully! You’re not wearing a helmet, buster.

Minutes 3 to 4: Whoa, okay, this is definitely why they tell people not to drive motor vehicles while high.

Minutes 4 to 6: Is this the right way home.

Minutes 6 to 8: something is wrong.

Minutes 8 to 10: something is very, very wrong. I have made a huge mistake.

As I approach my building, I think through my options, come to a decision. I leave my bike in the lobby without even going into my apartment, go up the stairs (no I have no idea either), and knock on my neighbor Dorothy’s door. She opens it timidly. I burst out:

“HI Dorothy SO I don’t really have much experience getting high but I just took an edible cookie about an hour ago and I don’t know my doll tailor THAT WELL she gave me the cookies over the holidays that her sister made but now I think it might have been LACED with something I am so scared and I also need water badly I have taken gummies but this doesn’t feel anything like that and maybe this is what meth or heroin or CRACK feels like and I really need to be monitored and maybe can you please call 911?”

Against her better judgement, she lets me in and I sit at her kitchen table, where I immediately and embarrassingly make CLAW HANDS and start SCRATCHING MY THIGHS while ROCKING BACK AND FORTH and TAPPING MY FEET because I am, you know, trying to be chill about the whole thing. I am not even joking. The claw-hands-scratching-my-thighs-rocking-back-and-forth-tapping-feet thing lasts for most of the night, so please, dear reader, please at any point from here on out, assume that I’m doing the claw-hands-scratching-my-own-thighs thing while everything else is happening.

After getting me water, she asks me again: “Mike, are you sure you want me to call 911?” And I really think about it this time. Through the wave after wave of chemicals in my brain, see, I think of my family. As longtime readers know, my family has a history of substance abuse in our past. From alcohol to much worse, most of my close family has had to grapple with their own, or others’ addictions; it would be fair to say it culminated in my big brother’s overdose, and subsequent death, from heroin and coke, about 30 years ago. I think about how I don’t know my doll tailor really well (this is the paranoia talking). I think about how abnormal this feels. But mostly I think of my mom losing another son, in case I’m not just paranoid, in case there is something that shouldn’t be in that cookie. “Yeah. Call them.”

The night is a stew of moments of extreme lucidity mixed with illogical cuts where my editor just decided 45 minutes would pass in a heartbeat. One such moment was when suddenly three EMTs appeared in front of me, red and blue lights of the ambulance out front flickering through Dorothy’s blinds on their faces. One had really nice forearms, by the way.

“So we just took your vitals…”

(I look down, indeed there’s a blood pressure cuff on my arm and EKG pads at my wrists and ankles) “Huh, where did those come from?”

“…and you’re not presenting as someone who is overdosing.”

“I mean. This feels like I am dying.”

“You’re presenting as someone who is way too high. It’s your choice, we can take you to the hospital, but you’ll be waiting in the lobby for two hours and just come down naturally anyway.”

“Uh.”

“How old are you sir?”

“Sigh. 48.” I am a 48 year old tripping balls on THC for the first time in his life.

The quite rational thought then occurs to me: Oh FUCK. They are QAnon crazies, and they recognize me, and they are giving me advice that will KILL ME. Dorothy might even be in on it.

I eventually (how long did it take? Hours? Days?) decline the hospital and take my chances riding it out in Dorothy’s kitchen. The following happens, I have no idea in what order:

I drink glass after glass of water, even when it feels like I’m wearing boxing gloves and have to carefully guide the glass to somewhere even approaching my face.

Dorothy makes eggs, I eat one bite and then can’t eat again.

I realize I have to work the next morning and ask Dorothy to text my boss to call out. She does, vaguely describing a “medical emergency” and then puts my work phone down, just in time for my boss to ask “Is Mike in the hospital?” and have the question be ignored for the rest of the night.

I throw up all of the eggs, water, that day’s lunch, last week’s dinner, maybe even my cake from my eleventh birthday. My vomit contains multitudes, I flow endlessly.

Dorothy calls my friend Nick to come take over from her while I come down. He promptly does? Who knows. Time has no meaning or reason anymore.

Please, I beg you, don’t forget, this entire time I’m still making those stupid claw hands on my stupid thighs and tapping my stupid feet as I stupidly rock back and forth, like a bad method actor in a low budget movie playing the “insane person in an asylum” (or like, Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys). As Nick guides me downstairs to my own apartment, I ask again the questions I’ve asked several times that night: “Why in the world would anyone want to feel this way? How is this enjoyable?? Who is this for??” Nick has no answers. Does Nick even exist.

We sit on my sectional, Nick and I, as I apologize profusely and slowly come down. Occasionally I nod off. This is a good thing! And yes, I finally stop making those claw hands.

I wake up the next day mortified, as usual, but this time there’s an actual reason. I text Nick and Dorothy: “Did that actually happen…?” though I know in my heart it did. I message my friend (and apparent dealer) whose sister made the cookies, asking how much she usually recommends taking. “Oh one or two before bedtime” is the casual answer.

I wonder about the EMTs who came over, hope they recognized me, hope one of them got a viral tweet out of “Balloon Guy had a cannabis overdose and called 911 because he thought he was dying.” I ponder that how no matter how fucked up I was the night before, I kept haranguing Dorothy to make sure Ned was fed and medicated. And I definitely think that home baked edibles, sadly, are not in my future.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy some new joggers, the thighs on these ones are strangely worn-out.