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It was the fall of 1988, my junior year at UCSD. For the past two summers I’d been interning at Grumman Aerospace, the same facility where Barry worked, right off the factory floor where they were building the F-14 Tomcat. My desk window overlooked the test runway. I’d sit there and watch the jets go vertical under full afterburner, roaring into the sky as if trying to outrun something.
The job, on paper, was perfect. I was coding a custom aircraft supply chain system in Pascal, a language I already knew.
But the machine of a large corporation ground the life out of software. The gears turned too slowly. Everything needed a decision, an approval, a meeting, a spec.
It wasn’t creation. It was monotony.
The joy I’d felt—the spark—was gone.
I spent more time watching men lean against filing cabinets, nursing styrofoam cups of coffee, than writing code. Each day the ceiling seemed to drop an inch.
By midsummer, I was napping under my desk.
My boss eventually noticed and called Barry. After that, I got better at pretending to work—along with everyone else.
That experience flattened my interest in computer engineering. At twenty, I didn’t yet understand the difference between one bad job and an entire profession. So when we returned to school that fall, I changed my major to visual arts.
That same fall, by some miracle, my roommates found a house in Del Mar—on 20th Street, just a stone’s throw from the ocean.
Oceanfront. You could stand on the wooden balcony and watch sets rolling in.
Absurd. Unreal. A student’s dream.
There were five of us.
Only three bedrooms.
Two garages.
If two of us slept in the garages, we could afford the rent. It was already a stretch financially. My future was obvious. I said yes before I had a chance to consider what sleeping in a garage might mean.
On move-in day, I stared at the stained concrete floor, the decades-old washer and dryer, the one tiny window with a limp curtain. It reminded me of the month Barry banished me to the basement as punishment. I felt it in my chest. But I had nowhere else to go.
Soft light filtered through, but I didn’t notice that. All I saw were the stains etched into the floor—years of oil and radiator fluid dripping from tired engines. The plywood garage door, warped by sea air into a broken geometry of odd angles.
A moment of panic.
A flashback.
The musty smell. Laundry hanging above my head.
The basement ...
I shook it off. I had no choice. I transformed it.
By sunset, the garage had begun to change. Mexican serapes hung from the walls—broad swaths of color like giant brush strokes. The floor was carpeted with thick woven blankets. A crisp white sheet hung between the laundry and the rest of the room.
Surfing was now at the center of my life. I could paddle out between classes, squeeze in multiple sessions a day. At night, our house became a revolving door of parties, kegs, and recreational drugs. And somehow, we all kept our grades up.
I expanded from ding repairs into shaping full surfboards. I converted the carport next to my garage-room into a shaping bay. My first boards were messy—foam dust, resin spills, frustrated roommates.
But I loved it. It felt like art.
Somewhere in that blur of salt and resin and late nights, LSD found its way in.
I wasn’t much of a drinker. I could get drunk, but I didn’t enjoy it like my friends did.
But acid? That was different.
One night the previous summer in New York, I dropped a tab of LSD on a whim and headed to the beach to meet old high school friends. The gathering wasn’t nostalgia. It was habit—the same stories, the same laughter, worn smooth with repetition. After a few hours, I walked away, pulled by a curiosity I couldn’t name, the acid already threading through my mind.
I went home and lay on top of my bed with a picture book called Masquerade by Kit Williams. It wasn’t just art. It was a real treasure hunt—each painting laced with riddles and hidden clues leading to a bejeweled golden hare, cast in pure 24k gold, buried in the English countryside. People all over the world were searching.
Everything had meaning. Patterns emerged. Concepts linked. It felt like touching the structure behind things. Masquerade was no longer just paintings on a page—it was reality itself, the golden hare hidden not only in England, but woven into the fabric of existence.
The images pulled me deeper.
I turned the pages slowly, disappearing into them.
The room went quiet.
Time softened.
I wasn’t just high. I was seeing.
By morning, the magic had receded.
But something had been opened.
Just a crack.
A doorway on the edge of the universe.
Many readers have told me they set aside time for each chapter, letting it echo into their own lives. If the bell rings in you, consider passing it on—someone else may be listening for the same tone. And if you’d like, leave your reflections below; your voice adds another note to the resonance.
I have that book! I had never heard of it before or since buying it at a used bookstore about 15 years ago, until reading this chapter. I’ll go pull it out and look very closely and slowly (sans the drugs). 😊