A surreal night and Siamese Bananas

Important: Please read this first.  
I thought long and hard about publishing this blog post as it is rather personal and insightful into my past.  For those that know me in real life, hey, we are all products of our experiences. 

It was January 2002, and I was living in Melbourne.  I shared a house with my best friend Anna, and another girl, Rachael, a messed up drug dealer struggling to complete her masters degree in curatorship.  I was 20 years old.

Anna and I dressed up for a night on the town.  We were going to see a musical ensemble (ok, a band), that was touring Australia.  We had tickets, but could only scrape together $5 between us.  We walked over to an acquaitances house.  His name was Tom.  He once won a competition for stapling his penis to a crucifix and lighting it on fire.  He ended up doing this three times, and being invited onto the Jerry Springer show, but that never eventuated.  Tom was a sexual deviant.  I don't recall why we were going to the gig with him.

Me, on the left, and Anna on the right.  Taken just before we left.

We arrived at the bar (walking all the way, of course, $5 doesn't get you far on public transport), and enjoyed the ambiance and music.  The band was amazing, and we were all blown away.  They sure knew how to blow those horns.  The building was a mass of sweaty bodies, jumping up and down in the dark.  

After the show ended, Anna, Tom and I walked to another bar.  Tom disappeared at this stage.  I excused myself, and went to the ladies room, and upon returning Anna had joined a group of people, including the saxophone player from the band we had just seen.  Things started to get a little strange.

A girl in this group came up to Anna and spoke "I KNOW you, you're Hilary".  I advised her that I was in fact Hilary, and that she obviously didn't know me at all.  This pissed her off.  

Anna had become engrossed in conversation with a man, and then she turned around and said she had just taken a large dose of liquid acid (LCD).  It came on fast, and the next thing I knew I was having to babysit her a bit.

The group of us decided to leave and walk back to the apartment of one of the group.  There was a full moon and we did handstands in the park.  There were sprinklers going.  We were all laughing easily, we were relaxed and happy.

This apartment was small but well appointed.  The guy who lived there was a beautiful gay man.  More of a boy.  He can't have been 20 yet.  He had all sorts of curiosities - a guitar made out of an armadillo shell was of great interest to Anna who was well and truly tripping at this stage.  

There would have been perhaps 6 or 7 of us there.  We sat on the balcony and talked in the darkness.  In the dark it is much easier to share with strangers.  

The guy with the acid offered me some.  I accepted.  When I feel acid coming on, a strange thing happens, I can only think about what I am looking at.  I will forget everything else.  It is a strange and unsettling feeling.  I decided to take a bath.

The bath relaxed me slightly.  Upon getting out I dressed.  I forgot to put my bra on.  I left it hanging in the bathroom.  I went into the lounge and lay down on the couch, and laid my head on the saxaphone players lap.  I must have looked rather fetching.  Warm, fresh and clean from the bath, with a tight white tank top with no bra on.  

We made passionate mad love in the spare room.  It turned out it wasn't the spare room, but it was the bedroom of the guy that lived there.  He was none too impressed.  We then lay in bed and talked about all the important things, true love, art, literature, life.  

I had forgotten about the acid until everyone else came into the room.  The stimulus seemed to immediately put me into an intense state of tripping.  I laughed hysterically and told true stories of the Kingdom of Tonga, about the Kings idea to sell passports, and sell a mythical matchbox sized generator that turned saltwater into drinking water.  I was hungry and someone got some grapes out of the fridge.

It was daylight now.  Everyone looked different to the people I had been with last night.  One guy had waist length red hair.  How had I not noticed something so striking?

So to sum up:

I was lying naked in a gay mans bed, with a straight saxaphone player, being fed slightly old grapes by a man with waist length curly red hair, listening to my best friend attempt to play a song on an armadillo guitar.

What more could you ask from life?

When we left in the morning, I was still hungry.  I wanted a banana.  We went to a fruit shop.  I saw some bananas, and I am not kidding you, they were all 'siamese' bananas.  Each banana was like two bananas stuck together.  I have never seen anything like it before or after.  This was something to see when tripping.  I was shrieking with surprise.  In fact, I believe I was making a scene.  I bought one, and ate it.  It was bizarre.  I contemplated keeping the skin, so that I could show people I wasn't making it up, and that it wasn't an acid induced hallucination.  

See, they do exist.

A bunch of siamese bananas

The saxaphone player and I parted ways.  

I arrived home, and still had the $5 in my pocket.

I learned later that the gay guy died of AIDS not long after.