Camp Echo - The Missing Chapters - 1. Leon, Aeriol, Billy, and a Smiley!

It all looked the same, of course, the only change was that they were now in the sixth-form house. Separated from the rest of the school; with a few privileges, some of them were prefects, but not Max. He was a rebel without a cause. In two months Max would be seventeen, he'd been through this school and he’d learnt how to get by.

When Max was younger he’d attended a huge old Victorian red bricked junior school. It was an imposing edifice. At that time where he lived, in a North London inner suburb, there were not too many foreign kids, not like today’s multiculturalism. One black boy and another black girl, the only two coloured children in the school.

For five years Max had taken on the that role, the only non-Catholic in a Catholic Grammar School. When he was led to school aged five, holding his mother’s hand, and was left in the classroom, it’s huge window and tiny little tables and chairs, he’d cried. The first day he came home from that Catholic Grammar School, he’d cried. If you think that Max was a sensitive boy, he was, but he was also a victim of circumstance. He was a loner, a boy whose life was full of contradictions.

School was a jungle which he had to survive, and the next two years he thought would be no different, but he was wrong. Max was destined to meet Leon and he would change Max’s life. The first week of term went by with everyone settling into lessons and their new environment. Max talked with his comrades, but he set himself apart from everyone. He didn't find any little group which he fitted into, and he tried a few.

Max was a seeker, but he had no idea what he was searching for. He was different, possibly he was the only one of his kind. That was what he almost believed. He knew he was different from the rest of the world. He’d known it a long time, and that left him lonely. Even with his friends outside school, it was something he could never share, never tell. Not to anyone, not his best friend, no one.

He found this book on Astral Projection on the shelves of the local library and was reading it. Intrigued at the idea that maybe he could escape his body, float free, like in a dream, and speed across the sky looking down on everything that was going on. If you were a psychologist you might draw conclusions from this fascination and a certain desire to escape. Back in the real world, with no group of friends, Max passed his breaks reading.

It was Leon who broke the solitude. “Are you into that?” He asked, nodding at the book resting on the desk.

Max had a mouthful of pie and looked up surprised, almost choking.

“Ah, yeah. I guess. It seems interesting.”

He stopped eating and took in the other boy standing in front of him. He recognised him, he knew everyone in the sixth-form, but they’d never spoken before. The most obvious impression he got of Leon was his pockmarked face.

“Have you tried it?”

“Sort of,” Max replied. “But it’s not easy to do what it says in the book.”

Leon smiled. “But you’re interested in this sort of stuff?”

“Sure, yeah, I am,” Max returned the smile.

This was the first real contact with anyone since returning to school and it felt good to be talking to someone. Someone who he might at least have something in common with, a shared interest.

“You should come and join us.”

It was an invitation Max wasn’t about to refuse.

“Let me finish this first.”

Leon sat down and watched as Max ate the rest of his chicken and mushroom pie. That was one advantage of being in the sixth-form, they were allowed out of the school grounds at lunch time. Max would take a walk up to the main road and join the queue outside the bakers, waiting to be served a hot pie. It was not a great diet, but better than crisps and chocolate from the tuck shop, and no way was he eating school dinners.

“This is Aeriol,” Leon introduced the two boys. “And, Simon.”

They sat down across from Aeriol and Simon.

“We’ve got games this afternoon,” Aeriol spoke first, looking at Max.

“Yeah, I know,” Max tried a little smile.

Aeriol seemed nice. He’d seen them around together, him and Simon, they always hung out together.

“You wanna skip games?” Aeriol asked, staring at him. “We’re going round to Simon’s, his parents are out.”

Max thought about it. It had never ever crossed his mind to skip classes, even if it was only games.

“Nobody will notice,” Leon butted in.

“Yeah, okay.” Max said it, but he wasn’t at all sure about what he was doing.

“You ever get stoned?” Simon asked.

Max thought about it. He’d never got stoned, he sort of knew what they were talking about, but not really. He recalled the announcement one assembly, about boys smoking funny cigarettes, but he had no idea what it actually was. Well except it was drugs. There was his dilemma. Max always promised his parents, well his mother, not to take any pills, but this wasn’t any pills.

“No,” he answered honestly.

Aeriol smiled, Simon looked disinterested, not hostile, just not concerned at all about any of this. Yet he’d asked the question.

“So we’ll skip games this afternoon?” Leon was sort of insistent.

It was an odd encounter. They were not your normal group of school kids, or young adults.

“Yeah, okay,” Max agreed.

Games period was the second half of the afternoon and so instead of walking out of school and around to the sports field, they slipped away in the opposite direction. Up to the high street and off to Simon’s house.

Max received instructions from Aeriol to “Hold it in,” meaning the drag he took on the joint Simon had rolled and which they were passing around.

That afternoon changed everything. It was hilarious, they finished up eating an omelette that Simon whipped up, but with the bizarre idea to add blue food dye. It was a weird, but beautiful experience. Somehow Max felt he now belonged.

Where things would go from here he had no idea, but these guys were open and friendly. Not enthusiastic, quite the contrary, very laid back. But now Max was part of it, part of a secret alternative world. It suited him just fine. What could be better for someone like him? He was already an outcast, the only one of his kind, now he was a rebel with a band of stoners. And things had only just begun.

*****

“Do you really believe all that stuff?”

Max was sitting on the bed in Leon’s bedroom.

Leon turned back from his desk, swivelling on the chair. “Yeah, I do. I think it takes practice. That’s all. Dedication.”

Max didn’t want to contradict his new friend, the boy who’d introduced him to the little group.

“I know it works,” Leon insisted, “you can float out of your body. Astral Projection is real.”

“How long have you and Aeriol been friends?” Max asked, changing the subject.

“Sort of since we started school here, but properly a couple of years.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, we were like friends, but around two years ago, sometime in the fourth year I went round his house. Met Jake and started getting stoned.”

“Who's Jake?”

“Aeriol's older brother. They share a bedroom.”

“You were getting stoned in the fourth year?”

Leon nodded. “Well, a bit.”

“And what do think of Aeriol and Simon?”

“How d’you mean?”

“What are they like?”

“Aeriol's okay. Him and Jake have problems with their parents.”

“Because...” Max hesitated, but as they were being open and sharing things, “of the drugs?”

“Yes. I think his parents know they get stoned in their bedroom and that’s a big issue.”

“Do you smoke at home?”

“No. Never. It smells too strong. My parents would totally freak.”

“So why do Aeriol and Jake do it?”

“You’d have to ask them. But they’ve got this big confrontation going on with their parents.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, but Jake’s got a strong character and he drags Aeriol along with him.”

“What’s he doing? Jake. Now he’s left school.”

“I’m not sure. I think he got a job in a music factory. Making musical instruments.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think they make guitars, but I doubt he'll stay there.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s Jake. He doesn’t stick at anything.”

“And Aeriol?”

“He’s different. They aren’t the same, but Aeriol is easily led by Jake.”

“What you gonna do when you finish school?”

“Art college or Uni, but probably art. And you?”

“I’ve got no idea. Only thing I know I want to leave home.”

“Why’s that?”

“I need my own space. I don’t have a room like this.” Max looked around at Leon’s large bedroom. “I got a tiny, tiny, bedroom. I’ll invite you over and you can see for yourself.”

“Yeah, okay,” Leon smiled.

He was the kind of guy you couldn’t help but like, and Max did. Leon had become a good friend.

*****

The common argument used against soft drugs like cannabis is that they lead on to hard drugs. Max was always aware of this and never took speed, because he would never take pills. That wasn’t the only reason, he’d witnessed the effects, which weren’t good. Years later he never even took poppers, when inhaling amyl nitrate for a quick high was all the rage in gay clubs. However, like smoking a joint no one ever said anything about blotting paper!

Aeriol had been thrown out by his parents. Things had finally come to a head, whether they actually told him to go or the choice was his, is less clear. Jake had moved back home, so it rather seemed like a choice that if he was to live at home it was by their rules and his parents did not want drugs in the house.

Max met Billy for the first time in the room they had rented together in a house owned by a Greek family. There they were one Friday night, Aeriol, Billy, Max and Leon, listening to the Moody Blues on one of those turntables with built in speaker that close up like a suitcase. Billy took Max by surprise, he had not expected that all of a sudden he would find himself in close proximity with such a gorgeous guy. Long blond hair, blue eyes, simply stunning. Billy was very tactile and a touch of his hand sent tiny shivers vibrating through Max’s body.

How he felt, scared the hell out of him. He liked Leon, as a best friend, and Aeriol too. Maybe there was something more with Aeriol, almost like a brotherly relationship, but Billy... He was instantly in love with this blond Adonis.

They spent many weekend nights listening to music, talking, and getting stoned together, way into the early hours of the morning. Leon was always the first to leave because he had to catch the last bus home, Max had his motor scooter and could stay for as long as he could keep awake. It was odd whenever he thought about it, all this going on in a bedroom of a three bedroom house owned and occupied by a family.

They talked about everything; imagining, speculating, posing questions and attempting to find answers. One evening it was suggested to Max he should do a trip. They talked about it, Aeriol and Billy had both done trips. Who suggested it, he wasn’t sure, Billy or Aeriol? It didn’t matter, it was the next step, but Max was apprehensive.

Aeriol said they would be there to guide him.

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Aeriol told him.

“You say that, but I am.” He looked from one to the other.

“The first trip is easy. Pure fun,” Billy smiled.

And what a smile, perfect white teeth, irresistible.

“I’ll read the passages from Timothy Leary's Book of the Dead. It’s a guide. You can’t go wrong.”

Aeriol rested a hand on the large book that was like some sort of secret initiation into an alternate reality. Billy took out the piece of blotting paper from a little plastic bag. Tiny smiley faces printed in a row.

“You take one now. It lasts about eight hours.”

And so he did. Max lay down on one of the single beds and swallowed the little smiley. Like other nights the Moody Blues were playing. Nothing happened. He lay there watching Aeriol and Billy smoking a joint.

“Move your arms,” Billy’s whiter than white teeth gleamed at him.

Max moved his arm up into the air.

“Oh wow! Fuck! That’s fucking amazing.”

Max watched the electric traces of vibrant colours trail behind his arm as it arced up from the bed. He moved the other arm and watched. Aeriol was reading a passage from the book.

I’m home, Max thought to himself. He had finally come home. He had been seeking and he had found. He was one with the universe, with everything.

“This is... too much,” Max grinned like the Cheshire Cat, but Alice in Wonderland came nowhere near describing the feeling.

Billy smiled at him. Aeriol read on...

“All individuals who have received the practical teachings of this manual will, if the text be remembered, be set face to face with the ecstatic radiance and will win illumination instantaneously...”

That was not the start of the voyage of self-discovery, but as someone famously said, it was a giant step!

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