Amazingly, the morning ended peacefully

Sometimes the things you didn't get caught doing are far more amazing than the things you did get caught doing. Case in point.

It was a Saturday night, and I was hanging with a friend of my at his parent's house in the north burbs. His parents were gone, the house was nice, and we didn't plan to go to a party that night. We did, however, still want to get high. We were party kids who had reached the stage where drugs are far more important to us than going to parties. In retrospect that was a sad stage to reach. We had both worked so hard, and spent so much on drugs, becoming great dancers. The rave scene was ostensibly about the music and dancing,  but the reality was that drugs were a major draw and a fundamental part of the success of the scene. As time went on, many people forgot about the music and dancing entirely. We were falling into this group. But on this night, we were striking out with our contacts and it looked like our one option to get some speed was to go to the party that night. Financially this was no small undertaking. Aside from the distance, maybe a bit over an hour from where we were, this was a big, massively promoted and produced party, which meant a $20 cover easy. Plus party prices for whatever we bought inside. Going to a party to buy a couple small bags of speed is like going to a Cubs game to buy a couple beers. Totally inefficient, way expensive, not at all worth it. So that's what we did.

It was late when we left, probably 2am or later, and probably past three when we reached the venue which I think was Sibley blvd, and that's around 147th street (I think). We bartered with the doorman over cover since the party would be ending in an hour or so, but I don't have any clue what success we had. Once inside we split up and began looking for someone selling crystal. These big parties hired "security" for insurance reasons, and this made finding stuff a little tougher. The security at these big parties was a complete joke, just a group of the most ghetto south side flotsam and jetsam that could be given windbreakers. What they were supposed to do was control drug sale/use. What they actually did was watch for people selling, they were ghetto rats they could spot that, they would then confiscate the drugs, throw the person out, and then promptly try to resell what they had just taken off the dude. But being ghetto rats, they had no clue what party drugs were, or what they were worth. I watched a guard bust a kid I knew was selling ecstasy once. The second he had confiscated the stuff I went up to him and asked him what he had taken. He showed me a bag of pills, at least thirty, maybe fifty. I offered the guy fifty bucks for the bag and his eyes lit up, he looked over his shoulders, and jumped on it. Those pills would sell for $25 to $30 a piece at a party, slightly less in regular life. There ended up being close to fifty. So that was security.

After about an hour we had found what we wanted and were ready to go. The party was about to end, it was near four, so we had no rationalization issues with taking off. Get back in the car, start heading north up the highway back to my buddy's house.

About 30 minutes north we see a car pulled over on the left shoulder, hood up, and two girls standing in front of it. They had clearly been at the same party, the clothes were a dead giveaway, but as I remember we both recognized at least one of them. We decided to do the gentlemanly thing and go back to try and help. After all, we both worked at a gas station and had no tools. Clearly we were qualified. My buddy pulls into the left shoulder, puts it in reverse, and backs up to them. As they watched us approach, backward, they looked puzzled, but when they saw us (and our clothes) they were glad for the help. Now we are standing on the left shoulder of a Chicago (nearly, anyway) highway, and it was summer so it was getting light. And all four of us are wearing full party kid dress, so a space shuttle couldn't have missed us. But we have drugs on us, so my buddy comes up with a great idea. At parties people pass out huge amounts of laminated color flyers for other parties, so he pulls one out of his pocket, folds our drugs in it, and when we get out, he sticks it in a crack in the median. The left side median is made of preformed cement blocks, so there are cracks where they meet every twenty or forty feet or whatever.

I don't remember what was wrong with there car, but we got it started pretty easy but there was doubt whether it would get them back home, Indiana I think. This is like 96 or 97, so no one our age had a cell phone. The plan was that my buddy would drive their car to the nearest gas station with a pay phone. I would follow driving his car with the girls. Off we go.

My buddy drives to the next exit and gets off and starts driving. And driving. There is nothing. And now these girls are thinking we are pulling something, and they're are getting hostile. I explain to them we aren't from around here, that he just took the first exit expecting to find something. And on we go. Still nothing. These girls are getting insufferable, what the fuck is he doing? Where are you guys taking us? I don't remember what they were driving, but it was a $200 car, and broken to boot. I point out to them that from a carjack standpoint their car wasn't worth the gas we had spent driving so far. Surprisingly, this did not help. Finally we see a gas station and he immediately pulls in, parks near the phone, and starts walking to us, still friendly and happy having no idea what these idiots had been accusing him of. They got out slightly mollified, but didn't really apologize. I quickly filled in my friend and shared a few thoughts with the girls and off we went. We make it back to the highway, get back on going north, and are back on the way home.

After ten or fifteen minutes for some reason I ask my amigo where our drugs are, glovebox, hatch area,...so on. The look on his face tells me immediately where they are. Still stuck in the median! He forgot to grab them before we left. There are no words in any human language to convey the feelings I had at that moment. We immediately turn around and start heading back south as we try to figure out what to do. Going back to grab them was obviously the intention, even though it was daylight now, on a Sunday morning with no traffic other than us. As we got back to the area we realized that we had no idea where we stopped to help them. We remembered the exit we took them off, so before that. But where do we start? We drove back to a point we remembered passing for sure, and it was pretty far. And then we turned around, headed back north, pulled into the very narrow left hand shoulder, slowed to about twenty, flipped on the hazard lights, and started looking for a brightly colored flyer sticking out of the median. Hopefully. Hopefully he didn't shove it too far in. We turned down the bass music (wouldn't want to call attention to ourselves) and made our way slowly up the left shoulder. While we are doing this we are trying to come up with an explanation for why we are doing this to give to the state trooper who should be showing up, well, anytime now. Fifteen minutes easy, and then I hear my buddy yell Eureka! There it is. But now we are really looking over both shoulders, a cop driving way back seeing him hop out and back in and us drive away would find that peculiar. All the stickers on his civic hatchback and the way we looked would warrant further investigation. Coast looked clear, he jumped out, grabbed it, jumped back in and tore ass up to sixty five, watching the rear view fearfully. But we were fine. No cops, no one at all really. We are just outside Chicago city limits, not out in the sticks. At 6am on a Sunday in this area cops on the road are the only cars you see half the time. That not one drove by when we were helping the ingrates or doing our search was so unlikely. But good, because we never came up with any reason for why we would be driving down the left shoulder for several miles. We made it back to his house, and I have no clue what we did from there. Didn't sleep, that's for sure. But how we didn't get busted throughout this massive sequence or terrible decisions is beyond me.