prophetnoise

The year was 2000, and we had just arrived at a small Arts/Liberal Arts school in Westchester County, NY. Nobody knew each other, groups were barely formed. It was my 3rd freshman year at my 3rd college (Another story for another time )

I was walking back to the dorms from one of the dining halls with my friend Mellissa when, for whatever reason, i decided i wanted to do some E. No sooner did i say, "I know where i can find some E, i just gotta find Pete," does Pete storm out of the dorm and charge towards me.

Pete grabs me by my shoulders and shouts, "Rob, we need to go to Camden, NJ. Right Now!." Ignoring his ramblings I tell him i need to find some E and ask where i could find some.

"Fuck E man, we have to go to Camden right now and buy a vial of liquid acid at the Further Festival!" he shouts in his heavy Queens NYC/Polish accent.

I thought about the utter stupidity of randomly driving down to Camden, NJ to some stupid hippy festival to buy an entire Vial of Liquid acid, and immediately agreed. It was at this point that he also tried to volunteer me to test the acid because he had just gotten back from some stupid Phish show and was tripping for the past 2 days.

No, i'm not testing the acid. I stopped doing acid, and if it was real, i'd somehow have to drive up the entire length of the NJ Turnpike tripping face. No. Oh, but Melissa was stil standing next to us.

"Hey, Melissa, you want some free acid?"

She thought about it for .0003 seconds before she agreed to come down to Camden with us and be our honorary "Dose Fairy", and take a sample on her tongue as a means of "Quality Control."

"Awesome, i'm just gonna go to my room, piss, and get my jacket. Pete, Melissa, meet me right here in exactly 5 minutes." Away i ran up to my room with a cause. I get there and my roommate Rob is sitting there chewing on a pen and doing something on my computer, probably school related. Yes, Rob and Rob. Roommates. Both from Brooklyn, living on Staten Island. The need for nicknames as a means of differentiation was apparent quite early.

I start rifling through my things and he starts staring at me.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm looking for my jacket."

"Where are you going?"

"Camden."

"New Jersey?"

"Yep"

"Why the hell would you want to go to Camden, NJ?"

"To buy a vial of liquid acid."

"Oh." He looks back at the computer screen, pauses, and then turns back to me. "You mind if come?"

"Nope, be my guest."

A little about my roommate. He went to an all Male Catholic High School. He was a real 1st year freshman. He did Field Events in his High School Track and Field team. This team consistantly won consecutive championships and took their sports seriously. He was a straight laced sports & liquor kinda guy. The guy who (might have) tried pot once and claims he "Didn't like it." He was the closest thing our school had to a Jock; an All American Kid. We jokingly called him a jock, and eventually, his name became, simply, Jock.

Why someone like this would want to have ANYTHING to do with the purchase of an entire bottle of Liquid LSD is beyond me. But who am i to judge? I finally find my hoodie, and he grabs his NYPD Coat. (Yeah, i got the comedic value at the time as well.) We collect everyone else and head to my car.

If you checked what my car looked like, i'd bet you figured out that the back seat was virtually non-existant. I'm 6'1" give or take. Jock is about my hight, and wieghed about 100 pounds more than me. Pete was a little bit taller than me, and Mellissa was almost as tall as the rest of us as well. Remember this, because it plays into the story later.

So we start down the road that leaves campus, and Pete hands me some Mapquest Map Printouts, that i proced to throw out the window of the car. Yes, i threw the directions to Camden out the window of the car.

-Fast forward-

So we get into the city of Camden thanks to my super internal-mind-map. I did my part.

I ask, "Pete, where's the venue?"

"I don't know." He replies.

"You don't know where the concert is?"

"Nope."

"Well, do you know the name of the venue?"

"Nope."

"Did you think we might need to know this before we got here and started looking around the entire city of Camden NJ for some random concert?"

"I just figured we'd find it."

Good job Pete. It almost serves me right for listening to a word you said in the first place.

So I'm driving and for whatever reason i decided that i needed to turn down this one random street. After a few comments about how i shouldn't have turned off the main road, we start seeing hippies. The further we go, the more hippies seem to be around. Fucking Hippies. We get to the end of the street and there it is, the fucking Concert.

We park and head towards the parking lot that they turn into the little Hippie Village at every hippie show. It's got all the vending booths, food, and most importantly, drug dealers.

The search is on. Pete and I switch over to uber-druggie-business mode. Jock and Mellissa are walking around with looks of uneasiness as they try to keep up with us, yet try to dissassociate themselves from the actual transaction. The NYPD jacket didn't help Jock's cause at the same time. He might as well have been Snoop Dogg at a Klan Rally.

For productivity and increased coverage, Pete and I split up, leaving Jock and Mellissa to just stand around like lost puppies. A few minutes later, in soon to be "classic" Pete fashion, he storms over to me and grabs me on my shoulders. "Dude! I found some!" he yells as the two guys who were following him finally catch up.

Score!

Except for the fact that Pete is a fucking retard and only had $10 cash on him. How he planned on buying a vial of liquid with $10 is. . .oh wait, that's why i was there. Fortunately i had $105 on me and Pete had a little nug of pot to throw into the deal. Buck-fifteen and a Nug later and the vial was ours.

Pete tilts his head back. Drip Drip. He holds it out for me, i decline. He offers Jock, who declines. Mellissa tilts her head back and sticks out her tongue. Drip Drip. I tell him i want to hold the bottle because he's tripping and it was mostly my money. I just didn't trust the fuck. He hands me the bottle.

This is the point i decide to tell everyone that i don't have enough money to pay for parking and fill up the gas tank if this shit isn't real. We have to wait to see if it works. If it is real, i'll quickly make back the money to pay off my credit card. If it isn't, we have to sell fake acid for the money to get back to school.

We wander around. Jock is bored. Mellissa is teeming with anticipations. Pete is getting on my nerves. I'm thinking about ways to kill Pete if this shit is fake. 60 minutes have gone by, nothing. We sit on an overpass.

Jock is still bored. Mellissa is still anxious awaiting her trip. Pete and I have turned all our focus onto Mellissa, repeatedly demanding that she start tripping.

An hour and a half after the dose was ingested I'm about ready to go around trying to sell fake acid to people.

Mellissa chirps, "Guys?"

What?

"I don't think i'm sober anymore."

GLORY BE MINE! IT'S REAL!!!!! And we walk back to the car.

This is also the point where i remind you that this is still the very first month of school and none of us really know each other.

As we're walking, without any warning or explanation, i turn 90 degrees and walk straight towards the Sherriff's car sitting by the gate.

What i'm saying:
"Excuse me officer. Could you please tell me how to get back to the Turnpike from here?"

What i'm thinking:
"HAHAHAHAH! I don't need directions back to the Turnpike. I know how to get there. I have an entire vial of liquid acid in my pocket. This pocket right here. A vial of liquid LSD and You can't do shit about it! You have no idea!!"

I look over to see the three of them standing about 50 yards away with the look of sheer terror on their faces. I shoot them a grin that could stop a freight train..

When the officer was done rambling on and on, i walk back to them like I didn't do anything out of the ordinary or uncalled for.

Remeber my car from way back in the beginning of the story? Remember how small the back seat was? Now picture the two tall goofballs, tripping face in my back seat with my stereo speakers directly to their sides, and my subwoofer directly behind their heads. And i know i said this already, but i must emphasise. They were bugging out hard-core.

Always prepared, i put in certain mix tapes that get progressvely more and more bugged out as they go along. I put on a tape my friend from back home made with me. A mock-noise-based-music tape. They flip out and insist that i turn it off.

Sure. Ok.

I switch back to the mix tapes. When i felt the mixed tapes had gone far enough into the realm of psycho-psychadelia, i put my tape back in. This time, i refuse to take it out, no matter how much they screammed for mercy. Well, Mellissa thought it was fucking hillarious. Pete was bugging the fuck out.

I played the tape straight through. 45 minutes of mind bending, atonal, screaching, screaming noise. Such wonderfully obnoxious sounds blasting at full volume directly into his LSD soaked brain. The tape ends.

Pete was in awe. He declared me a prophet. A superiour being who had heard the sounds of the universe and destroyed them. He called it pure auditory destruction.

Back at school the shit sells like hotcakes. Untill i dosed myself. Then i got really angry. I couldn't trust myself. I took the money we made to that point, and gave Pete the rest of the Vial. Unfortunately for Pete, he couln't control himself either, and wound up using MOST of the 75% FULL bottle HIMSELF.

Not only that, but E had arrived on campus. Every single time i saw him he was either tripping, rolling, or candy-flipping. And every time he saw me, he would stomp up to me, grab my shoulders and demand i play him the Noise. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. Like 2 or 3 times a day sometimes.

In the beginning it was kinda funny. A big group of us would go just to watch him bugging out to the Nosie in my car. Eventually i got fed up and sick of taking him to my car every time he wanted to hear it, so I made him his very own tape of the Noise he could listen to whenever he wanted.

One day I decided it would be a good idea to put about 10 pills of ritalin up my nose. Needless to say i was jacked. Who do i run into, but Pete. He insists i have Coke and i'm holding out on him. I argue till i'm blue in the face that it's not Coke. We go back and forth. Finally i reach into my pocket and give him the remaining 15 pills.

At the same time, i was also giving Pete a new favorite thing to do. Put ritalin up his nose. He would hunt down everyone on campus who sold, took, or was prescribed ritalin at least 5 times a day. It got to the point where dealers wouldn't even sell to him, and they made the rest of us promise not to let Pete know we got our rit from them.

That, plust he's still doing acid almost every day. Oh, and listening to the Noise constantly too.

One random night while Pete is tripping (Big surprise), he seriously flips out. He thinks EVERYONE is a narc. He thinks the Campus Police are after him (We have NY State Troopers as our campus police). He's basically lost his mind. He tells us, "I'm gonna go climb to the roof of the Library (tallest building on campus) and call out Joe Walsh (Head of the Campus Troopers)."

Instead of suggesting otherwise, we told him that would be really funny. Then, when he actually does go up there, we decide it's in our best interest to leave and not be associated with the whole situation.

Fast forward to 5 AM and i run into my friend Johnny Rockstar. (yeah, we all have nicknames) Johnny was just forced to leave the Library area by the cops, who were currently trying to talk Pete off the roof.

Not too long after that, a officer comes over to us and tells Rockstar he needs to come back and help them talk to Pete. Pete wants to talk to Rockstar and Rockstar's girlfriend Paula. Fifteen minutes later Rockstar comes back and says that they're looking for me, that Pete want's to talk to me. If the cops had any way of know what a terrible idea that was. . .

We're there for three hours trying to talk him down, and watching as the cops were trying, but were making things worse. Councelors too. They had his parents show up. They had the entire Academic end of campus closed and taped off. He made Rockstar and me join him in an acapella version of "No Woman No Cry." He snapped instantly from arguing and yelling at the Authorities, to talking to Paula, Rockstar and me like we were hanging out on a normal night. We knew. It was just a matter of time. And then he dissapeared.

I let out an "awww shit" because i knew what was about to happen. Everyone around me looked up to see why i groaned. They saw Pete's head come into frame followed by his body, running a full speed towards the edge of the building. And then he jumped. And fell. Everyone turned their heads away. And he fell. I stared. He hit the ground. I stared. He bounced about six feet in the air and then rolled a few yards on the ground.

Silence; nobody moved. And then I heard a noise like i'd never heard before. A noise that made my tape sound like a symphony. A noise i'd never have guessed would have come from a human. But it was coming from Pete. Everyone was frozen in shock. I yelled, "Get him!" As if on cue, the emergency professionals snapped out of it and ran over. He was carried away on a stretcher. Rockstar and Paula were crying in each others arms. They stared at me and i walked over. They burried their heads in my chest as i embraced them.

In case you were wondering, no, Pete did not die. He shattered his jaw, his wrists, his ankles, broke his legs, his arms, ribs, pelvis, fused some vertibrae. There was probably more. I don't remember. I don't care. They said he had about 35 pills worth of ritalin in his system. They said they didn't know how much LSD he had taken, but i had an idea.

I was friends with his roommate Adam. Adam was allowed to be present as they searched their room. He said, in Pete's stereo was the tape of Noise, at the end of the reel. They confiscated it because it belonged to Pete.

You know how when something terrible happens, people try as hard as they can to attach themselves to the event? Even if they had nothing to do with it, they look for any possible connection they had to the event? That shit ran rampant. I'd overhear people saying how it was "partly their fault." "They bought acid from him," "they saw him earlier that night." "They should have known! They should have seen it coming! They should have done something!"

Assholes. They would even tell this shit to me, not knowing who i was, or what my involvement was. I just laughed at them. These leeches were trying to latch onto this event any way they could for the attention, trying to take blame and involvement. Meanwhile, our group of friends would joke that it was all 100% my fault:

-I had the car and got us to Camden
-I was the one who had the money to buy the vial
-I gave him the vial
-I introduced him to ritalin
-I made and played him the noise
-I gave him the noise.
-I was there when he climbed on the roof
-I was there joking with him that it would be a good idea to go up there
-And i was one of the 3 people other than the authorities and his parents who actually saw him jump.

Now, we all know it wasn't actually my fault. We all could have seen this coming a long way off, and in reality, Pete did this to himself, from start to finish. But it's fun for my friends to joke that i did it.

But, Pete did call me Noise. And the name stuck. For the past 6 years i've been Noise. Sometimes i would introduce myself as Rob, and my friend would interject, "Yeah, but we all call him Noise."

"Oh, you're Noise? I've heard your name is <such and such a story>"

This story is a huge part of SUNY Purchase lore. And that's how i became Noise. I did not make that nickname up for myself. I fucking earned it. And i'm fucking proud of it.

It's just funny that this story has nothing to do with why I don't really do drugs anymore.

Hope you enjoyed. Sorry if it was too long.