Lysergically Yours | Page 3

air of trepidation about him that hovered over the rest of those in attendance. He sat calmly with his Docs up on the back of the seat in front of him, knitting. Whereas almost everyone else in the hall (Johnny included, he was embarrassed to later recall) had brought with them a shiny new binder bought at Wal-Mart (or Grand and Toy for the rich kids) and a pencil case with not only pencils and erasers but pens in blue, black and red, Lyle had three sheets of folded paper which had clearly been pulled from his pockets minutes earlier and a red Bic pen without a cap sitting on his fold-down desk.
The instructor was a frightened looking graduate student named Mohammed Haj-Mosawi who spoke English with a very thick accent and did so in a voice that would have been rather too quiet for polite dinner conversation, never mind lecturing to 800 students. He did however, come armed with some pretty serious PowerPoint slides. By about the third week some combination of the nearly inaudible and indecipherable English and the Monday-morningness had driven attendance down to the point where Johnny was able to permanently stake out a seat in the front row. Soon afterwards, Lyle migrated forward as well. From that vantage point, both were surprised to discover that Haj-Mosawi was quite a compelling speaker once you got used to the way he pronounced all his soft 'i's as hard 'e's.
It was an unseasonably warm day in mid-October when Johnny actually talked to Lyle for the first time. Johnny had stayed around for a few minutes after class to ask Haj-Mosawi a couple of questions about the lecture. When he stepped out the doors of Con Hall and started down the stairs a voice called from behind him: "Nice shirt."
Johnny spun around, met Lyle's grinning eyes and asked: "You're a fan?" Johnny was wearing an old Doors t-shirt, a veritable antique. It had belonged to his father. The words "The Doors" had faded entirely from the back and Jim Morrison's grim visage barely continued to peer out from Johnny's chest. The neckband had frayed to the point that it hardly existed and the sweat stains in the armpits were the kind that didn't wash out. Band shirts weren't really in fitting with Johnny's usual style; in fact this was the only one he owned. He generally wore a plain black hoodie and blue jeans just about every day of the year, but the sun blazing in through his dorm window that autumn morning had dictated an impromptu wardrobe re-evaluation.
Lyle was leaning up against a pillar smoking a cigarette. His pants were a patchwork of leather, denim, plaid flannel and various faded patches for bands Johnny had never heard of. The pants fit Lyle's long legs snugly and were tucked inside the tops of his Docs at his ankles. There were zippers and buttons, which seemed to serve no fastening purpose, set into the pants haphazardly across their surface. Lyle's lower half was always clothed in this way and Johnny suspected from observation that Lyle had three or four similar pairs of pants, but wouldn't be willing to swear that the pants weren't completely different every day. Lyle was also wearing a stained white Sex Pistol's t-shirt on which the printing job was so smeared that it was almost certain that he had done the silk-screening himself. There was a long slash as from a knife running diagonally across Lyle's chest and the dirty white cotton curled outwards around this wound. Through the tear Johnny could see that Lyle's right nipple had a safety pin through it. There was a single thick black line of tattoo ink running down the inside of Lyle's forearm from the divot of his elbow to where it disappeared underneath a black leather bracelet bristling in steel spikes, several of which were rusting. In all, he looked as though he had been fashioned by God for rich girls to date for revenge against their parents.
Lyle spat onto the ground and, ignoring Johnny's question, asked: "Know where I can get some acid?"
Johnny was visibly surprised: "Why are you asking me?"
"I saw you reading 'Doors of Perception' during break."
"Sorry," Johnny said, turning to leave, "but you've got a wrong number." Johnny hopped on his skateboard and sped off in the direction of McLennan Physical Laboratories. He didn't look back, but if he had he would have seen Lyle watching him with more than mild curiosity.
Johnny had been reading 'Doors of Perception' in class, re-reading in fact. That much was true. However, he had been reading 'The Old Man and the Sea' the week before and no one had asked him if he knew where they could get some good marlin. The disconcerting thing was that Johnny did