Editor's Column

by Benjamin Tertin

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Rambling, I Sought
Freedom with Phish

I plunged into a sea of 50,000 Phish fans. I had already been soaking my brain with the band's recorded music, but this was my first live show.

I discovered a new world -- a free world -- thriving on the grassy parking lot outside Alpine Valley's massive amphitheater in East Troy, Wis.

Tan women in patchwork dresses strolled up and down the aisles between cars, selling hemp weavings, beaded jewelry and veggie burritos. Leathery, sun-browned dudes stopped now and then, opened aluminum briefcases and tempted onlookers with beautiful glass pipes and hand-blown bongs. Everything was for sale.

"Doses," one passerby whispered, "doses...doses...."

Someone muttered, "I've got your liquid right here."

Another said, "Gel-tabs, who wants some gel?"

All three offered a particular form of LSD, and every imaginable drug, each with a cool nickname, circulated through the lot.

How is this possible? I thought. Was I still on Earth? A guy balancing atop a blue cooler shouted, "Two for five bucks! Icy cold beers!" A dreadlocked mamma trailed by her two tiny daughters sold ganja brownies from her flowery basket. These people are free, I thought. They are truly alive.

Walking past rows of tie-dyed tapestries, under fluttering kites and through barefoot children playing tag, I realized that this crowd knew the most important truth in life; they understood the dangers of moral restraint. And I wanted in.

So I set my mind free with a dose of LSD sticking to my tongue and the smoke from smoldering, crystalline ganja buds filling my lungs.

Through early adulthood, I spent each summer and fall wandering cross-country with Phish worshippers. We followed the band everywhere, some flying solo and others cruising in sticker-covered caravans of overstuffed cars, trucks and buses. I, along with all "tour kids," funded every travel expense and narcotic lust with profits from the parking lot markets we created. My partner, Joe, and I specialized in liquor and drug sales.

Hazy recollections from the previous night dissipated like exhaust when we arrived at the next town and rekindled the party. And what joy, what undulation and happiness filled our hearts as our gods walked on stage, night after night.

When the lights dropped, our "family" erupted. The screaming roar lifted like a wave until our bodies pulsed in psychedelic unison. Page, Trey, Mike and Jon played on, collectively absorbing our praise. Then in Denver, during the 2001 fall tour, I climbed atop my own blue beer cooler, swallowed a cool mouthful of pale ale and started yelling, "Two for five bucks! Icy cold...." I had become that guy.

But my precious freedom felt tainted. I saw a sniffling, dirty toddler crawl across broken beer bottles to her daddy. He was passed out, sprawled between a trash bag and his van. Her mommy wandered slow circles, looking for a spoon in the grass, basking in the joy of a drug-soaked bloodstream. I walked away. And as my heart sank, I took a hit from my pipe.

After the show, Joe and I dragged an unconscious man out from under our Ford Explorer. No sense driving over his head. Brown sludge, a mixture of scotch and vomit, seeped from his mouth. I had sold him that scotch, one Dixie cup at a time. Guilt plagued me; I took a shot.

While his liver struggled in its single-malt bath, I purchased 20 hits of acid from his 14-year-old son, ate two hits and then sold the rest to make money for the next show. I longed for the next show. I needed the next show.

The following day, I crossed paths with the fellow at the show in Kansas and asked him, "Shouldn't your kid be in school?"

"Why?" he replied. "To let my own son -- born to live, born to be free -- get programmed like a robot?"

I met the father-son duo again in Nevada and then saw them twice, from a distance, in California.

Three years and many shows later, I sat at the edge of a Pennsylvania meadow, alone, gasping, crying. My body trembled, coming down from the previous night's high.

For a second, I wondered how free I really was, but the numbing burn of a good-morning whiskey swill chased away the truth.

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