Eight years ago I was living in Los Angeles in a small and fucked-up “apartment,” next door to a pet store where they used to make methamphetamine. On the other side of me lived a Mexican artisté. Our places were connected in back. He knocked on my door at about nine in the morning and said, “Somebody bombed us.”

I got on the phone and called my friend Jack in Ventura. He and I and his sister and his best friend all had to go to Sparks, Nevada, for a hearing: we had been arrested there two weeks prior on the way to Burning Man, for possession of marijuana, drug paraphernelia, and unlicensed prescription drugs. We had almost nothing on us, but still managed to incur five felonies between us due to the harsh laws that governed Nevada at that time.

We’d gotten cuffed and tossed into holding, which was an experience all on its own. Luckily we weren’t herded into big pens but rather locked in two-man cells. I got tossed in with this little red-haired kid who was smaller than me. I looked at him balefully and took the top bunk.

After about 36 hours we saw a judge, who luckily had a son who was going to Burning Man, too. “My son has been building a ROCKET SHIP for the last two months in our backyard!” He killed himself laughing. “I think we can let these nice folks go.” So he released us on our own recognizance and we went to Burning Man. Black kids our age who were being held on felony drug charges would not have been so lucky, I felt; nevertheless, I left.

We got to Burning Man on Thursday night and went bananas with crazed energy. We had missed most of the festivities and tried to make up for lost time by having sex standing up under the moonlight. I ate mushrooms right away and found myself unable to speak. It was a weird night. I danced the whole night, but sitting down on a couch. Couldn’t get up. Nor could I speak. Oh well.

We went home and my system was shot. I made a porn movie a day or so later in a Chatsworth motel room with a soon-to-be-forgotten actress named Misty Parks. She was a young-looking blonde who wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up and who had done three other scenes that day - this was her fourth. Her pussy was slammed and swollen and she wouldn’t let my actors have sex with her with any force or speed at all. They almost cried, they were so upset: she was really, really cute. We got some horrible unpassionate footage and I netted $425 from the shoot and I shipped the tape off and I thought I had the best job in the universe. But I still had to go back to Sparks for a hearing to deal with the charges and the date was September 12th. So I called Jack, in Ventura.

“Um, did someone bomb us?”

“Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center. We’re getting a bunch of ammo together. We have a place to go in the hills. Do you need a place to go?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I was thinking about calling the courthouse. See if court’s still going to be in session.”

“This is a lot bigger than court.”

As it turned out, it was and it wasn’t. I called the courthouse and they said get your ass here on time. Nothing’s going to be postponed. I drove to Ventura that day and we ate a late lunch at Jack in the Box and then we drove all night to get to Reno and then Sparks, listening to AM radio over the 10-hour jaunt which felt apocalyptic, indeed. I was driving with Jack’s best friend. He kept on hoping it would be a war and he would fight. He’d been expecting this for a while, he said.

We got to the courthouse on September 12th at about 6:45 in the morning. There was a light rain in Sparks and we had cigarettes in the parking lot. I brushed my teeth and spat out the paste underneath my car. They let us an hour later and we had our hearing. They knocked all the felonies down to a single misdemeanor for drug paraphernelia. I pled guilty to it and my friends chipped in to pay my fine. We walked out of the courthouse elated. None of us were going to war.