Trippy-Trippy Trip-Trip, by Daragh Fleming
An extract from A Brief Inhalation
He stumbled over the rocks, clambering towards us, a plastic cup filled with vodka in his left hand, the other hand working to steady himself, a lit rollie hanging from a drying bottom lip. His smile was drunk and wet, his eyes not focused on our world, his arms descending from sunburned shoulders.
This short hill, a 3-foot incline of man-placed rocks separating our part of the campsite from his, was this young man’s Everest. His legs wouldn’t obey his mind’s intention. He made progress, but then his next footing would be a misstep and he’d find himself once again at the bottom of the short slope, cursing his useless legs, looking up at us, pure helplessness embodied.
We sat there watching in a sort of grimaced laughter, unsure what to make of his attempt to join us. Wondering what he planned to do once successfully up the rocky hill. Hoping he’d never make it. He had not been invited to join us, nor had we ever spoken to him in the few days we’d been camped there.
His eyes pleaded at us to get rid of the hill that kept him from us. As if we could take away the rocks and make it easier for him to ascend. Not one of us moved to help him, and after several minutes of watching, we all turned back to our conversation and the music emanating from Eoin’s portable speaker. Eventually we heard him shout what he’d been shouting all week, his catchphrase, as if he was a Pokémon and this was all he could say.
“TRIPPY-TRIPPY TRIP-TRIP!” he blared, before giving up and collapsing into a nearby tent. It was unclear whether it was actually his own.
We were never given a name so his catchphrase became his unofficial title. Trippy-Trippy Trip-Trip was on the periphery of our experience for most of the music festival, heard screaming in the distance, or stumbling around, never sober, and always after consuming too much of whatever drug he was taking. At one stage he emerged from a half-assembled tent with a clearly infected new ear piercing, a detail his equally intoxicated friends seemed unbothered by. They were the type of people you knew instinctively to avoid. It rose up the hill from them, a psychic stench, a warning to keep to yourself as much as possible.
“TRIPPY-TRIPPY TRIP-TRIP!”
A call to announce peak intoxication. I didn’t speak a single sentence to him, but he became unforgettable. A myth. A fable. As the months passed, far beyond the week-long festival in the south of Spain, his features were still embedded in my mind. The pig-like snout, two lazy eyes with big rings beneath them, ears that stuck out, sore thumbs on either side of his red cheeks. An overbite, hair bleached horribly blonde. A pale body scorched crimson. Whenever I became too drunk from then on, I’d use this phrase—his phrase—as an ode to the party troll of Benicàssim, a sign of respect to a man lost in the chaos. Whenever people asked me how the festival went, tales of Trippy were sure to follow. He was the ultimate enigma.
A year passed. Trippy-Trippy Trip-Trip faded into memory.
His hallucinogenic aura became lost in the entropy of the universe. I went to the festival again the following year—the same campsite but with different people. We spent the week with men from Glasgow and women from Kent. We drank heavily and swam in the ocean and stayed up all night listening to music. I don’t remember much but I remember being happy. I remember smoking weed on the beach and tumbling in the warm ocean at night.
It was the Friday afternoon, I think. We’d been there since Monday. Live music started on the Thursday, and there we were on the Friday, our fourth day in a row of heavy drinking. Our part of the campsite had become the focal point for good craic, somehow, for whatever reason. Broken tents, and smashed camping chairs, crushed cans and cups littered the flattened grass all around. Pure hedonistic ignorance. It was glorious for all but the environment.
Around our camp, young men and women flocked to pitch camping chairs and drink like fish. Among them was a chap with a surprising ego. There was no shame at all in him. Maybe it was the drink coursing through him. Or the dehydration. Either way, he had the confidence of an armada.
“It’s my birthday today.”
An answer to an unasked question. Met with uncomfortable acknowledgments.
“Happy birthday, man.” A general response from the crowd gathering to drink. It’s always a bit strange when someone demands that you celebrate them.
Minutes passed. Music bumped. Shite talk was shite talked. “Will I rap for you lot?” Again he chirped up, an unsolicited offer from the birthday boy. It felt more like an FYI than a genuine question. It was met with palpable unease.
Without waiting for a response, he rose from his camping chair to turn down the music pumping from a portable speaker in the middle of the circle. We were all too heat exhausted and drunk to stop him. He was going to rap no matter what happened. This was clearly fated.
He sat back down, cleared his throat, drew in a few essential deep breaths. And then he began to rap, in an English accent not designed for such things.
To this day I don’t know what he thought was going to happen. I do not recall the performance, but I know it wasn’t at all good. Maybe he thought he’d be discovered, that we’d all sit there in awe of his lyrical prowess, becoming undone by his sheer talent. I suppose if you were confident enough to rap for a group of strangers without any request for you to do so, it would suggest that you have an ego so abnormally sized as to expect the sun and the moon for your efforts.
