If you haven't smoked water, you shouldn't oughta.

Last night, actually early this morning, police responded to a disturbance involving a man in just his Draws, his dunt da daa' s, his crime fighters, or as you square folk like to call them, his underwear. Before I read 4 or 5 lines, I naturally assumed the guy was high on Water, also known as Sherm,Butt Naked, Sherman Hemsley, Angel Dust, PCP, or as I like to refer to it, Cartoon Juice. Apparently the guy was running around acting crazy, violent, and I'm guessing here, but probably feeling hot as hell. I don't mean hot as in sexy, I mean hot as in "damn I'm hot, think I'll rip my clothes off and run naked through the streets," hot. The Cops say the suspect was high, and also added something about Vietnam flash backs. So, I'm not going to riff on this particular incident so much as the strange habit displayed by water heads to tear off all their clothes and run through the streets.

I mentioned a guy I grew up with in previous posts, lets call him Troy, beings that was his name. Troy met an early death, his battered body found in the woods that frame Blue River Road. Two days after his body was discovered, the cops busted Skip Shepard and a couple of his fellow scum bags, driving Troy's car. Skip, recently deceased, was one of the shit heels convicted in the explosion/arson, deaths of the firefighters back in the 1980's. Anyway, Skip managed to avoid any charges in Troys death, but it was common knowledge that he probably killed Troy, beings Skip had a propensity toward violent shit. I digress, back to Troy.

Troy smoked Water, he snorted water, and he had been known to inject water. Only it wasn't really water, or even liquid, it was powder form PCP, which back in the late 70's early 80's, was mistakenly called Tea, or Cannabinal. The claim at the time was that this stuff was really just some super concentrated form of THC, the active ingredient in Hippy Lettuce, of which I occasionally use medicinally as a preventive for glaucoma, or over achievement. In the 70's, people would take anything, and Troy was no exception, but his real jones was for the PCP. I could never figure out the attraction, I tried it once, because, a. I was an idiot. and b. somebody told me it was just super concentrated weed. and c. Because I was an idiot. I thought I was going to die, seriously. But Troy, he took to that shit like a duck to water. I saw him at more than a couple of parties, so high he was frozen, slumped forward in a chair, with a string of spit that hung from his mouth to the floor. This was some very bad stuff, originally intended for tranquillizing large animals, if I recall correctly. Troy wasn't alone in his love of the Tea, alot of people did it back then. Funny thing is, I never saw anyone get butt naked and run through the streets.

Sometime in the early 80's someone discovered that embalming fluid delivered a similar high. Funeral homes were often the targets of burglaries, the magic elixir the prize. Now you would think common sense and a desire to live, would cause dope fiends to avoid ingesting embalming fluid. But it didn't, and it still doesn't. The big difference between embalming fluid, and PCP, embalming fluid makes users so hot, they rip their clothes off and go all Lady Godiva, running through the streets. Water is mostly confined to the inner city, most of the users are black, it's cheap and readily available. Now if you think I'm, a. being racist, b. being a dick, c. blowing smoke up your ass, just google 'smoke embalming fluid". I rest my case. Besides, we white folks have our own cross to bear. We have meth users, toad lickers, and freon huffers, so in the grand scheme of things, embalming fluid doesn't seem much worse. At least with the water your corpse will be well preserved when they find your body.

The police and media still refer to water as PCP in most cases, even though it's not. So now you know. The next time you read about somebody running naked through the streets, sans clothes, and drugs are given as the reason, you can say , "it must be something in the water". Just stay off the water folks, lest you end up like Damon Wayans in the video above.

This has been a public service announcement from your Midtown Miscreant.