ANTICHRIS_

By Chris Garvey

Bruno once ate two ecstasy pills and he tripped for a day. That was back in ’96; I was 19 at the time. I had been around my share of people fucked up on various chemicals, including myself, but I’d never once been that freaked out. I wasn’t on anything, but it was my ecstasy, and it was my fault. Bruno was 18 months old.

Ecstasy trips or ‘rolls’ aren’t generally scary. They’re not as heady as other hallucinogenic experiences. You don’t have profound realizations or tear-inducing laughing sessions. There’s no purple and green geometric matrix in front of your eyes, but you don’t bug out and think people are talking about you, either. It’s mostly a body-high: some euphoria, thirstiness, heightened senses and a lot of sweat. Then the comedown, when you feel like complete shit.

It was Bruno’s first time rolling. He didn’t plan on it; it was an accident. His baseball-sized jaw muscles could eat and destroy anything, and he did. Candles, books, windowsills, car gear-shifters, table legs, sweaters, pillows, CDs…I pulled socks, pantyhose and shit-laden plastic grocery bags from his ass—several times. I’d find pennies and Heineken bottle caps in his poop. He’d regularly risk asphyxiation by swallowing my girlfriends’ panties, and I’d wake up to him barfing them up. It sounded like a plunger. I’d stand over him, patting his back until he regurgitated a pair of green thongs, for example. Then I’d pull them from the pile of bile-covered kibble and throw them in the garbage before my girlfriend could realize she’d lost another pair of skivvies. It was a compliment really. He must have loved her smell. I did, too, but I never ate her panties, and up until that point, he’d never eaten any controlled substances. Except for the Phenobarbital I gave him twice daily for his occasional seizures.

Back to the E-pills. I bought them from a hippy drug dealer friend of mine. The plan was to take them with my girlfriend, cost me forty bucks but we never got the chance. He told me they were speedy and kids were getting spun on one, so to eat half. If you don’t know already, ecstasy is derived from MDMA, but often times it’s cut with other substances like heroin, amphetamine or acetaminophen. The cut makes the source MDMA go further, and, therefore, makes more money for those who manufacture it. Of course, this makes the effects of the high vary while also making it more dangerous for the user, as they have no idea what they’re ingesting. In Bruno’s case, he had no clue at all.

At the time, I was taking a break from college to work as a housepainter, live in a rough neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut and learn how hard the real world really is. I shared a huge, three-floor, early 20th Century townhouse with a former high school classmate. He ran a skateboard company out of the 2nd floor. His parents owned the building and me and another friend shared the top floor—two full rooms for two-hundred-fifty bucks a month. What I’d give for rent like that now.

Sorry, I’m getting off topic. So, I’d go to work early and get home early. My boss was a pretty good guy; he knew a motivated crew could do in six and a half hours what another couldn’t do in eight, so we’d wrap up early. We ended up getting into a fight, my boss and I. On a jobsite, the homeowners were there, so were a bunch of construction workers. It was a bad scene. We grappled on an ice-covered stoop for thirty seconds, trying to get stable enough to punch each other. Neither of us really landed one. He’d been staining stairway banisters and had on rubber gloves that were slick with fumy Minwax. He stuck his hand in my face. It stung my eyes so I bit down hard on his thumb, tearing rubber and breaking skin. He screamed like a banshee. I got in my car and sped away, my face the color of burnt sienna, like the white actors who stole roles from real Indian dudes in old Westerns. Needless to say, he fired me.

Again, I’m digressing. So, before the fight, Bruno tripped. I remember it was a Wednesday, and as I walked through our front door, I could hear him barking. He never barked. He was howling in a strange tone. He never howled. When I got to the top floor, he was cowering. He never cowered. I bent down to pet him, and his ears were swollen three-quarters of an inch thick, his eyebrows all puffed-up.

I immediately called my veterinarian. I had worked for Dr. F for a few years before I got Bruno. We were friends, still are. He’s a great vet, a great guy and was always good to us. He let me pay off my bills in time and with no interest. It was the only way I could’ve, considering how much I was there in Bruno’s first few years. First, it was the seizures, then two surgeries to correct elbow dysplasia, and two more to remove a chunk of rubber and then a metal zipper that he ate and got stuck in him. And then of course this.

Dr. F figured it was an allergic reaction to a spider bite or something. He gave him a shot of prednisone, a prescription and sent us on our way. I stopped by my mom’s house. We were all perplexed by Bruno’s behavior. We’d never seen him like this. By the time I got back home it was 9 o’clock, and I was still in my painter’s outfit. I never left the house without scrubbing the paint and putty from under my fingernails and changing my clothes. I was getting ready to take a shower when I looked down at Bruno. He was panting. He’d seemed content, smiling the way dogs do, but then the house would creak from the wind, he’d grow visibly worried.

Then it hit me: the E-pills. I had stashed them in a camping backpack that I’d received from smoking Marlboros and keeping the ‘miles,’ which were just UPC codes. My old man was a bartender, so he’d collect them for me. In no time, I had enough for the large pack where I had put the baggie of ecstasy in a side pouch. On the zipper was a yellow toggle strap that made it easier to open if you had a pair of gloves on. It also made it possible for Bruno to unzip the pouch with his mouth and scoff down the baggie with its contents. I looked at him, frightened. He looked at me. I grew frantic and started crying. I thought he’d die—I thought I’d killed my dog. He was already on opiates for his seizures, and now he had two speedy E-pills in his system. It definitely wasn’t a spider bite.

I called Dr. F back and left a message with his emergency service. He called me back five minutes later.

“Dr. F, it wasn’t a spider bite. Bruno ate ecstasy,” I told him.

“I don’t even know what that is, bring him in.”

I raced to the vet, hysterical. I tried to soothe Bruno as we flew a few towns over in my ’90 Sentra. Dr. F lived above his office, so he was there waiting for me. We went inside. I was beside myself. I loved Bruno so much. I was young, but I was a good dog owner. I never ignored even the smallest symptom, no matter what little money I had, but now I had bought some drugs on a whim, drugs that could have taken him away from me.

Dr. F gave him a shot of Thorazine. He grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to calm down.

“You see all those diplomas on the wall?”

“Yeah.”

Tufts, Columbia…

“You know how many hits of acid I took before I got those?”

“No,” I wasn’t getting the correlation.

“My point is I’m fine. You’ve had your fun and you’re fine, right?

“Right,” I said, uncertainly.

“He’s a dog, they forget, they’re resilient. He’s gonna ride this out, sleep it off, and tomorrow he’ll be the same old Bruno.”

Okay, I thought. My wallet wouldn’t be quite the same after adding another $190 to my tab, but I had to take his word for it. He’d been right about everything else. We drove back to Hartford. Bruno was rolling his ass off, looking out the window, and my right arm was behind me petting him, apologizing and telling him everything was gonna be all right.