Arcata, CA – “Abstain from Cocaine” – Café Tomo – September 7, 2000

I keep buying things at the gas station–plastic rings, gum, keychains with bottle openers–hoping it’ll be the thing I’m missing in my life but it turned out I was missing an hour soak in a hot tub… Found on at the Mokka Cafe in Arcata.

After a decent show at Café Tomo, Noel and Felix, a couple locals invited us back to their hippy-dippy crash pad for some homemade wine. They met us in their doorway with huge smiles and an industrial size mayo jar full of weed. They hoisted fistfuls into our hands as if we were felonious, underdressed trick-or-treaters. There was coke too, copious amounts of it, which Noel chopped on a cheese board, spilling it haphazardly all over the counter. I politely declined. Cocaine is one of the few drugs I’ve never had to try thanks to my dad who when I was 13, took me aside.

“Sal,” he said, “you can try cocaine,” shocking words coming from your father’s mouth, “but first,” he continued, “do me a favor, 1. Drink 20 cups of coffee as quickly as you can. 2. Punch yourself as hard in the nose as possible and 3. Gather all the money you have and light it on fire. If you like that, you’ll love cocaine.” And just like that, I escaped the clutches of that drug.

After two glasses of moonshine, I stumbled out of Noel and Felix’s macraméd drug den. I walked alone through the town square under a full moon to the hotel where I watched Dexter’s Laboratory on Cartoon Network until two in the morning. When I woke up I discovered an expired, crumpled, soggy hot springs pass next to the bed stand,

“Courtesy of Noel and Felix,’ said Soucy who was up for a soak and knew I was in need of some serenity.

Café Mokka was sort of run-down, or maybe it was never built up to begin with. A murky, green duck pond sat stagnant in the center of a circle of changing huts and soft, silvery moss had taken up residence on everything. But when I got into the hot water I could feel the painful pressure that had been weighing on my heart lift, and for two hours I didn’t think about anything– not work or the next gig or the drive back to San Francisco. I just floated in the stillness of the moment with the light filtering through the redwood trees like water through a helpless strainer. I was high for the rest of the day—reborn—a phenox from the ashes of a music career.