Confessions of a Gasoline Huffer

The Stranger's Brendan Kiley has a retrospective piece on his time as a youthful gas huffer, including trip reports, the difficulties of keeping the habit under wraps and more

The next Saturday, I snuck back into the shed and sat next to the squat silver canister. I unscrewed the cap, leaned over the aperture, felt the vaporous tentacles reach into my stomach, and heard the call of the dark-blue bird. A small fairy girl, as tall as my forearm, appeared. She didn't make any real words, but communicated by telepathy and giggling and I admired her wings, all translucent and shiny. She lived in the rose bushes and let me know that these gardens and woods were a special place, a place I'd never been able to really see until now. There was another sound, in a minor key, and the air turned sinister. The toys and tools in the shed—tricycles, pruners, riding lawn mowers—were rumbling, rustling angrily, forming an army that could crush me with wheels, cut me with blades, bludgeon me with handles. I was an interloper, a spy in the secret, vengeful lives of toys and tools. I hoped they wouldn't hurt the Rosebush Fairy.