Have you ever lived through an experience eerily similar to your favourite book?
One of the last scenes from Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” takes place at a party. The narrator enters the venue, packed with friends and acquaintances he hasn’t seen in a long time (about a couple decades, if memory serves). At first he has trouble recognising all these familiar faces. He feels like they’re all disguised, dressed up, because they all look so old. It takes him a while to figure out these aren’t disguises: these people from his youth have *become* old. And then the realisation hits him like a ton of bricks: so has he! That’s the moment when the narrator realises he is very much mortal and decides to memorialise his world by creating a cathedral of frozen time: the novel we’ve just read.
Well, the first time I took MDMA, I was due to attend a party with uni classmates I hadn’t seen since my 20’s, a decade prior. These people I hadn’t seen in a long time were now all about 30 years old. As I stood in front of the door, ringing the bell, the ecstasy started coursing through me. I’d never had it before, so obviously I’d taken a bit too much (you think it’s not working, so you impatiently up the dose, classic mistake).
So there I was, suddenly high as a kite, when the door opened up to the party — a typical parisian flat filled with rowdy business school morons (sorry, I am one myself but frankly do not care for these people, hence the decade without seeing them). It was a fancy dress party. The theme: “We’re Old”. They were all dressed up as senior citizens.
In a flash, I was transported to that Proustian moment: not only had they aged for real (check out a pic from your 20s with one from your 30s: it’s rarely flattering), their costumes made them seem even older! I totally freaked out. The worse was I had not dressed up for the occasion (yes, I’m kind of a grinch that way), and they still thought I had haha. So I felt like the oldest fossil in the world, surrounded by idiots who flashed their own mortality in my face.
It turned into an unpleasant trip for a few hours, before I was able to get out of there and enjoy the rest of my ecstatic happiness in peace 😉
Anyone had an experience like that, straight out of a book?
by CriticalBlueGorilla