Trip Date

She must’ve really liked me. How else could I explain what my girlfriend did on our first date?

We met in University on the dance floor. She, Linda, got the relationship going. It was early on in the school year, and there were lots of meet and greets for the new students. The local campus pub was putting on a dance, and there was a rumour going around that the DJ was into the “alternative scene.”

I was your typical first-year film school student: Weird, moody, into imported British music, and didn’t care what people thought of me. Linda was sweet, in the photography program, and not a bit strange.

I’d seen her around the campus. The first-year film and photography students shared some classes, and I sat near her in one of our first lectures. I thought she was cute and very European looking, which I loved.

“Hey, do you want to dance?” I looked up, and it was Linda. She’d come over to our table without me realizing she was even in the pub.

“Uh, no, it’s okay, maybe another song though,” I said and she walked back to her table of friends—whom I could see were mad at her for speaking to me.

“How could you do that?” asked my friends, who thought I was a dick.

“Easy, I don’t like that song. That’s all.” Dancing was fun. I loved it. It just had to be a song I knew.

The night went on, and some music from the Cure came on, then some New Order, and a bunch of other bands like that. This was back in the day when what you listened to defined you. I asked Linda to dance many times that night. It was fun, in that just dancing for dancing sake way. I honestly had no further thoughts other than: I hope they put on some Depeche Mode.

At the end of the night, we shared some sloppy beer-soaked kisses, and before we split up, Linda asked if I liked to go out again and I said, “Sure. I’ll pick.”

Our first real date had to be special. I wanted her to know I was different, and really into cinema.

I picked her up at her home. Despite the lack of weirdness between us, we shared a common heritage. Her parents were Austrian, and my dad was German, so there was that.

After being forced to drink one of her dad's specialties, a spritzer, basically sweet homemade white wine with soda, we left in my beat-up Toyota, a car entirely sponsored by my school loans.

It seems hard to believe now in this day when you can stream anything, but when I was in college if you were into film or music that wasn’t mainstream, you had no choice but to go out and find it, and then show up in person to experience it.

In the car, I told her we’d be going to see a silent German film. A local movie buff in the city where we lived had collected 16mm film prints of obscure, but culturally significant films. He gave lectures about the movie he screened in an old church basement. His speeches went on too long, but his choices were entertaining. I’d seen some banned animation and other curiosities there.

This was cinema that you couldn’t see anywhere else so I thought it was special.

But that wasn’t enough for me. The event wasn’t licensed, which was fine, but I wanted to make the evening exotic so my date would remember it. I figured the best way to do that was to buy some acid—two hits of some Golden Sunset.

Driving there I told Linda that the LSD would enhance the film experience and make the night unique.

“How long does it last?” “Umm, about an hour, maybe two at the most,” I lied. Anyone who's taken acid knows it’s impossible to predict how long or what kind of high you’ll get from the drug. The two of us happily swallowed it together in the car.

We got to the church and settled in for our date night. About halfway through the program, the trouble started. The film was Metropolis, a classic, early sci-fi from the German director Fritz Lang. Because it was silent, there were long passages of nothing but title cards, with bits of orchestrated music.

“Shut up! Just let the film play!” I yelled. I quickly covered my mouth just as Linda started kicking me under the seat.

I didn’t want to say that. I was only thinking about it. Somehow the acid was mixing communication up between my mouth and my brain.

Linda started to giggle. At first, it was just a little snicker, but then it got louder.

“Stop it!” I mouthed to her. But that only made it worse. She thought I was silly on purpose. So, I began acting in pantomime, talking and acting like I was also in a silent film.

Of course, that only amplified everything, and now she began to laugh hard, and loud.

“Shhhh!” someone in the audience shouted out.

“Why? It’s a silent film?” I yelled back.

Linda by now was having a fit. She was laughing so much that she was crying, but she wasn’t letting herself laugh out loud. She had her hand over her mouth and was shaking like she was having a fit.

I couldn’t tell if she was having fun or just freaking out. Our film host was desperate to maintain control so he did the only thing he could and started blabbing on again about Metropolis.

“Who friggin’ cares about the proletariat?” “Noo! He wasn’t a Nazi!” “It’s just a robot!” I shouted.

I couldn’t stop. I really couldn’t. The moment a thought popped into my head it came out of my mouth.

Linda by this time was motioning with her whole body for us to leave—now!

The entire audience knew who we were and a few people clapped when they saw us leaving.

“I want it to stop! Please make it stop now!” Poor Linda was looking at me in the car like I had power over her acid trip, which of course I didn’t.

“It won’t last much longer.”

I didn’t know what was worse, the fact I gave her acid or that I kept lying to her.

“Please just take me home,” Linda begged.

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

What I couldn’t tell her was I shouldn’t be driving. My arms were melting every time I looked at them. They were dissolving, and I kept tightening the steering wheel to make sure I still had tissue left on my arms.

The only thing that kept me from screaming was blinking like a crazy person. The constant blinking was like watching a movie projection of everything I did. It amused me and kept me focused somehow.

Eventually, we got to her place.

“Do you want me to come in?”

“Just go please.”

Linda ran into the house and I said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t try to drink a dozen of her dad's spritzers in the nude or some freaky acid trip thing like that.

I went back to my blinking program and drove home.

In my room, I jumped into bed, grabbed my headphones, put on some Joy Division, and tried to enjoy the movie that was playing in my head. In that film, everything worked out, and Linda thought I was an artist and not a jerk.

A few days later she and I went out again, but neither of us ever brought up the acid trip.

We ended up getting engaged and were about to get married until I met the model.

But that’s another story.