This story is taken from my book 100 Spinning Plates:

Justin and I didn’t know what we were going to do for New Year’s Eve. He was only 19, so going to a bar was out of the question—not that I wanted to do that. Jack had invited us to a party in the neighborhood that he was going to, but I knew that I wouldn’t know anyone else there and didn’t think it would be much fun.

Justin and I planned to be together, anyhow, regardless of what we ended up doing.On the morning of New Year’s Eve, I got a call from Jack. He told me that if Justin and I came to the party, he’d had a surprise for us. So I finally agreed to come. I called Justin and told him what Jack had said, and he came by that evening. It was cold but not frigid. At about ten o’clock we walked to the party, which was only about half a mile away from my apartment. When we got there we were introduced to Charles, the host, who was a real estate agent in his early 30’s. Then Jack took me into a bedroom and gave me a tiny package wrapped in white tissue paper. I carefully opened it up. Inside was a orange-colored pane of acid. Jack winked at me. I wrapped it back up and put it in the pocket of my overcoat.

Everyone else at the party seemed to be in their early 30’s and white. Against the odds, Justin and I had fun. We wore little party hats and drank a lot. I had Dom Perignon for the first time in my life. We also drank rum and coke, wine, and beer. Charles was playing Pink Martini’s album “Sympathique” throughout the evening. We stayed until just after one o’clock and then stumbled back to my apartment.

We slept in until about noon on New Year’s Day. I had the day off, of course, but I had to go into work the next day at noon. At 12.45, I cut the pane of acid in half. Justin had one half and I had the other. We lay around on my bed, channel surfing and waiting for the acid to kick in. By 1.30 we were noticing things. Maury Povich happened to be on at the time. The episode was entitled “Making Wishes Come True,” and Maury was giving people makeovers, cars, kidney dialysis, trips, family reunions. We turned off the TV for awhile and just laughed for a long time. I put on music. We tried having sex but couldn’t because we weren’t able to focus enough.

Meanwhile, a huge blizzard was on its way to Chicago. We turned on the four o’clock news and that’s all they were talking about. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the anchorman’s wavy hair. It seemed to be pulsating. Three feet of snow were predicted. It started getting dark around the time it started to snow. A few days earlier I had rented The Year of Living Dangerously. We decided to watch it. I turned out all the lights and popped it into the VCR. It was incredibly sensual and very bizarre to be watching a film which took place in the tropics while a blizzard was raging outside.

I later learned from Jack that he’d actually given me four hits of acid, which meant that Justin and I both double-dosed. It was ten o’clock at night and we were still tripping hard. I hadn’t thought ahead and there was barely any food in the apartment. I was very reluctant to go out into public while I was hallucinating but I composed myself enough to get dressed and go to Gold Crown Liquor on the corner to buy a frozen pizza. I left Justin alone in the apartment; it seemed too complicated for him to come with me. I made the pizza and we ate it. We were both exhausted but the acid hadn’t let up. I fell asleep while still seeing things.

The next morning I woke up cranky, annoyed to have to be going into the coffeehouse the day after a blizzard and the day after tripping. It felt like I had a slight hangover. Justin stayed in my apartment and I trudged to work. It took me 25 minutes to get there instead of the usual 15. It was still snowing. The coffeehouse was perfectly operational. All of us had shown up to work, even Shana and Katie who lived so far away that it had taken them both about an hour to get to the coffeehouse. But the decision was made to close at about three o’clock, because otherwise no one would have been able to get home. The roads were already almost impassible. The customers were ticked off that they had to leave.