When I was kid, I generally lived in ghettos. The North Valley was pretty nice, the Student Ghetto had its charms. North Portland was interesting.

Up there in NoPo I had two friends. Jeff was brilliant and ruthless, Derek was dumb and clumsy and had zero conscience. We lived in a three-bedroom, two-story house that rented for $250 a month. Why so cheap? No furniture. No appliances. No lock on the front door, no back door at all. No heat. The previous tenant had been a hooker who wrote filthy stuff on the walls with a Marks-A-Lot. We found that pen in a drawer (built-in, remember no furniture) with pubic hairs on it. Probably the landlord had rendered the place uninhabitable just to get rid of her. When we moved in, they saw no reason to make the place habitable again. The first day or two, if you wanted a bath (there was no shower), you had to go out the front door, walk around back and go in the nonexistent back door, go down in the basement and reset the breaker on the water heater (okay, there was one appliance), which usually resulted in a shock.

I got the prime upstairs bedroom. I slept on the hardwood floor in a sleeping bag. One time, I vomited in a peanut butter jar until it was nearly full. I put that jar on the windowsill and forgot about it. For all I know, it’s still there.

Anyway, we were living like that, and there was a Butthole Surfers concert on Halloween, and we went. I’ve seen the Butthole Surfers live three times. This was the second time.

The venue was miles from where we lived, and our only transportation was on foot. We dropped acid and started walking. After about 45 minutes we came to the Denny’s and I fancied I felt hungry. There was a huge illuminated sign that said ALWAYS OPEN. That made no sense to me at all. How can something always be open? What about the age of the dinosaurs?

We went in the Denny’s and were seated at a booth table which could have accommodated about nine people. The staff all snarled at us, and the whole place was so shiny and geometric and kind of oscillating, we all realized we can’t handle this, so we bugged out leaving our place settings and glasses of water behind.

We walked about 45 minutes more and came to the venue, and we got our tickets and got inside. There were about three hundred underage punks jammed into that tiny place, and everybody, literally everybody under that roof was tripping balls. No eye color to be seen, just gigantic, cannonballed pupils.

The opening act was a band called Smegma. Smegma’s signature act was to toss animal heads into the audience. On this occasion they presented the audience with a couple of skinned sheep heads. One guy tried to gouge an eyeball out of one of those heads while his friend egged him on. I don’t think he succeeded.

Then the Butthole Surfers came on.

From the point of view of a musical connoisseur, the Butthole Surfers are pretty much indefensible. Their music (if you care to call it that) evinces talent, but almost any noise can evince talent. What really makes the Butthole Surfers tick is the drummer, King Koffee.

That and the spectacle. That Halloween show was probably the most spectacular they ever played. There was a gigantic screen behind the stage, with a powerful overhead projector, on which were situated two layers of plastic with drops of various-colored food coloring between. Someone was smearing the food coloring around in time with the rhythm, so it looked as though the music was splattering all over the wall. The light and smoke effects were insane in that small space; people reached up to grab the rays of light.

At one point I was milling and moshing around, and a rather sharp and heavy blow landed on my right eyebrow. Recovering my balance, I saw the stage-diver whose boot collided with my head. That is, I saw his boots. I didn’t care much about the rest of him. I moved to a different part of the dance floor.

We were walking home, savoring the experience, and we passed through a small park in a business district. It was a shadowy Halloween night, and Derek remarked something to the effect that this was the perfect place for a criminal ambush, a place someone could make into our worst nightmare.

We reached Broadway Boulevard and walked along by a parking garage next to the Safeway. A fellow crossed the street in front of us, towards us, walking rapidly on an agressive diagonal. Instinctively I checked my six, and there he was! I squirted out of there like a watermelon seed just as the trap closed. I guess I must have sprinted, but it was more like I teleported. I came to my senses and turned around about half a block away.

Derek screamed my name twice, and I felt honor-bound to help him, so I ran back. His assailant was the one who had come up from behind. He had Derek by the hair and was dragging him around saying “Gimme your money!” He paid no attention to me at all as I circled around him. I got behind him. He was in a crouching position with knees apart, totally ignoring me. So I carefully curled my toes back and let fly with the hardest kick my acid- and fear-soaked brain could drive. I hit that dude square in the asshole and I hope he needed dental work as a result. He wilted; he deflated; every muscle in his body lost tone. He dropped Derek and looked over his shoulder at me with the most woeful expression.

Jeff had to contend with the attacker who came from the front. I didn’t witness any of that action, but Jeff says he punched that guy in the face, receiving no damage himself. Somehow or other, both our assailants were neutralized if not exactly incapacitated. An overweight black male security guard came out of the Safeway. I yelled at him, “call the cops!” He sized up the situation and said, “are you sure?” All he had witnessed was three wild-eyed white kids beating the shit out of what turned out to be a couple of scrawny, unarmed Mexicans. Gotta hand it to those guys, whether from psychopathy, desperation, or hatred they tried it on against superior numbers and force. And now they put on a Cheech and Chong act, like, why were you looking at me, man? So everyone just kind of moved on. That guy I kicked went away with a noticeable limp.

We strolled along another block and stopped for refreshments at a convenience store. In the parking lot we were accosted by another overweight, black male, stylishly but rather lightly dressed for the weather, with a chrome-plated 1911 tucked in the elastic front of his athletic shorts. This dude witnessed the attack and he wanted to recruit us. There was some rival gangster working the streets and he wanted us to find that dude and kick his ass or kill him or something. Yeah, we’ll be in touch, we said.

It didn’t get any weirder after that, until the next day.

Derek said, “Man, I did the best stage dive!” and he told us all about it. I looked at Derek’s boot.