Citizens of the Galaxy: Grassfest, Topanga and Rooftop raves

Tuesday July 27

Im sitting in a friend of a friend’s yard smoking weed and cigarettes and sitting on a blanket next to a tree wrapped in lightbulbs. My past weekend was intense in a good and bad way like… ok

So friday july 23 i wake up super duper early and finish packing for the desert. My friend Alai pulls up in her 1985 chevy van and we throw everything in. I have my huge zebra print adidas backpack and a bag my friend designed with plushie keychains and a raccoon tail hanging from the strap and my yoga mat and my fluffy boots and my $7 goodwill adidas. I light a joint and we’re on the road. 

The drive is hot and shaky and filled with music and weed and arizona iced tea and chex mix and when we pull up to the location its pretty dead but we decide it's because it's still early. Our camp is cute. I set up my tent and the wind keeps knocking it over. We get a beautiful fucking sunset that night and as I start to take some shrooms and smoke more weed the night gets really weird.

They didn’t have a dj, first of all. So they had me dj more than half the night and I meet a man named Greg Flieshmann that makes sculptures at burning man and was planning on making one there. We’re wearing bunny ears and scarves and as new wave starts playing we join him in his trailer and sit in chairs he designed and he talks about the lamps he makes that are hanging from his rug covered trailer. Theres a queen sized bed and shelves and knickknacks and posters all over the walls. We leave quickly to get water and join some people making music with the instruments a man who’s also wearing bunny ears brought with him. We play some drums and sit next to some sort of alter on a small table with rocks and crystals and feathers and a skull and essential oils and instruments strewn all over it. The shrooms start to kick in and i sit next to someone with their head shaved and a girl named Uni who’s friends with Alai (I had met her earlier that day). They’re playing along with the music on a keyboard and Yuni’s singing softly. She has a beautiful voice btw.

At this point i’ve had a bit of shrooms, tons of weed and endless hits of my vape. Also 60mg of vyvanse and im blissful and on top of the world but i have to pee. I regret taking that second vyvanse. 

All they have is porta potties and I have this thing with porta potties where i just dont use them. I dont want to.

I chill in front of the campfire for awhile and a couple dance in front of me in some sort of ritual. Its beautiful and intimate and orgasmic. I still have to pee. I stare into the campfire and imagine a small horse trying to escape the burning wood tipi. I wish bunny man was here. 

It started with my friend giving me a sound-bath and then things started to slowly meld and muddle as the night got weirder.

Everyone starts to go to bed around 1am and someone has their phone connected to the speakers blasting one hour loops of water sounds that help people fall asleep but for me and what sounded like everyone else it didn’t help at all. Neither did the mushrooms. I was up the entire night in my tent with my imagination running wild drawing bodies and flowers and sentences passing through my brain in the back of my folded and bent up paperback of the electric kool-aid acid test by tom wolfe.

I wake up at 9am but it feels like 12pm as the heat rolls in and the wind follows. I pack up my tent pretty early as me, Alai and Uni make a collective plan to leave the desert and go to the farm in Topanga that Uni lives on with friends. Packing everything up and rolling another joint, we head out and bump and shake down the dirt roads towards the freeway.

When we get to topanga you can feel the weather change. The sea breeze and green trees are refreshing and immediately calm my mushroom-clouded mind after only seeing flat dry land and sand for a day and a half. We pull into a cafe and walk in. The vibe is weird and the place is expensive but we take a seat outside and its warm but not too warm and we have avocado toast and I accidentally bought a $10 jet black charcoal smoothie but its delicious and even though my teeth start to turn grey I drink the entire thing.

We drive to her farm afterwards and it’s beautiful and the sun is setting. We lounge around in a circular canopy bed hanging from a tree overlooking the mountains and neighborhoods and i roll another crooked joint as we talk about co-creation.

After we smoke and hang out we decide to make chocolate tea. Uni boils water and adds freshly shaven cacao flakes and herbs and oils and honey and gets out ceramic goblets painted in dark greens and blues. She pours the tea in and we all move to the living room to lie on the hardwood floor where the sun hits it and makes it extra warm. 

We doze and talk as we drink our heart healing tea and it warms my stomach and makes me feel fuzzy and sleepy, along with the sun hitting my face. I feel like a child. Small and carefree and safe. Especially with this electric bubble me and my friends have created. It’s like a collective organism of feminine energy and it's something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Especially with the absence of looking at my phone those past couple of days. It was really beautiful and special and it was a moment I especially enjoyed from this weekend, this summer and this lifetime!

Afterwards Alai and I drove to the general store and got cheese and drinks and bread and chocolate and ate it in the parked van. Then she drove me home and I started getting ready for a rave I had been invited to. 

I leave my house drunk off fucking boochcraft and high as a kite zooming down venice blvd in an uber blasting 92.3 while I blast daft punk at 8% on my crap wire headphones. I remember my friend said I remind them of a ferret earlier today.

It’s down an alley and up an elevator and there’s two people dressed really cute going up with me. I ask them their names as the elevator opens on to a rooftop where speakers are blasting and people are dancing and standing around. They ask if I came alone and I hesitate and then nod and they invite me to dance with them. 

I dance but get tired pretty quickly. I noticed after the weekend in the desert I felt a lot more reflective and introspective and a hell of a lot less social. I kind of liked it. After smoking my last cigarette I call an uber home and make my way down to the street.

My uber back to my apartment is funny as hell. He points to a gas station and says he saw a white girl butt ass naked digging through the trash and how he picked up girls arguing on the phone about someone else’s man and talking about the first african american fire station turning into a museum. Im high enough to care but I start to feel nauseous as I write and all I really want is more boochcraft.