Greetings from The Big Easy—New Orleans, LA!

I’m writing to you from the bar at Beachbum Berry’s Lattitude 29, where I’ve just successfully left my body. Yes, you read that right. I just shed the weight of my physical body and took my very first flight through the astral plane. How did you do this? You may be wondering. Well, stay tuned. More on that next week. First, let me tell you all about WILLIEZ BIG ADVENTURE.

It all started with a yard sale.

Last week, I was digging through my closets, looking for junk to unload onto my neighbors, when I came across a curious object. It was a blue and purple box with the words ASTRAL PROJECTION KIT written boldly on the face of it. At first, I thought it was one of those prank gift boxes you see around the holidays, you know the one’s that typically feature smiling children doing dangerous things, like “My First Fire,” “Extreme Chores,” and “Hay in a Needle Stack.” But to my amazement, the box was no prank. It actually contained all the materials I needed to shed my skin.

Problem was…the directions were on cassette tape, and I, like most of the world, haven’t owned a tape deck in something like 20 years. I immediately looked at the date on the back of the box and was surprised to see it was made in 1988. I was surprised because 1) the thing hadn’t been opened. It was still in its shrink wrap up until yesterday. 2) Because the damn thing has been in my house for 25 years and the kit and I somehow managed to not cross paths in that entire time.

Let me take a second now to say that I don’t know where the fuck this thing came from. I’ve had a lot of visitors over the years, and many of them like to fuck with me. I’m looking at you Joe Bouthiette, Zach Owen, Andy Prunty, and CV Hunt. I could see one—or hell, all—of them hiding an astral projection kit in my house, patiently waiting in the shadows for me to find it and freak the fuck out.

Well, jokes on you all, cause I tried the thing…and IT WORKS.

Although, I have to admit, my experience with it wasn’t exactly pleasurable. Something went wrong, I mean, it must have gone wrong, cause the tape suggested the astral plane was something that would bring about calm and inner peace, but all it did was stress me out. There was nothing calm about it, and as interested as I am in this subject—especially now that I know it’s actually possible—I don’t think I’ll ever be trying it again.

I’m getting ahead of myself…anyway, so I texted my buddy Tom Stripper and asked him if he still had any of his old tape decks. I knew if any of my friends still had one, I knew it would be Tom. He texted back simply, “I HAVE ALL OF THEM.” I asked if he’d meet me at Beachbum Berry’s (because I didn’t want to astral project at home, just in case something went horribly wrong—and I admit because I was also craving a piña colada) and he texted back, “OKEE DOKE.”

He arrived about an hour later, toting something like 12 tape decks, all stacked in a little red wagon. I told him I appreciated the effort, but I only needed one. Much to his annoyance, I picked the smallest one to use, a handheld deck that was about the size of a paperback book.

That’s when the problems started.

You see, once I listened to the tape and my spirit projected from my physical body, it didn’t go soaring through some haze of rainbows and flashing lights, like you see in the movies. Instead, my spirit jumped straight into an empty stall inside the boys’ bathroom of my old middle school.

I was very confused why my spirit traveled there, of all places, but a few seconds later, it was all explained to me.

I was just sitting there, staring at the crude drawings etched into the walls of the bathroom stall, when I heard the toilet flush, over in the stall next to me.

Then it flushed again…and again.

“Goddamn it,” I heard someone say, then the toilet flushed again.

“You okay over there?” I asked, not even sure if they’d be able to hear me. I was still very green when it came to the whole astral projection thing. Even though I listened to the entire tape, front to back, I still wasn’t sure how everything worked just yet.

“The fuck? Who said that?” they said, then spun around and opened the door to their stall. For some reason this terrified me, although it was likely just some middle school kid who was more scared than I was. After all, he certainly seemed to be up to something, and I caught him red handed.

He kicked open the door to my stall, and my heart would’ve stopped right there if I had one, for the person looking me straight in the eye was none other than the me from 2004.

You’re going to have to read that sentence again, cause it’s not like other sentences you’re used to reading. And that’s a good thing! You shouldn’t have to read sentences like that every day. It’s absurd! What I just wrote should never have happened in the first place, and I shouldn’t be writing about it now! I suppose I just feel compelled to share this story with you, you know, more as a cautionary tale than anything. Don’t let this happen to you! If an Astral Projection Kit from 1988 randomly appears in your home, don’t open it! Don’t call up your friend Tom! And damn sure don’t listen to the tape inside!

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” was all he said to me, then he leaned over and removed the roll of toilet paper from the dispenser. He seemed to be another astral projection, one from earlier in my timeline.

“What the hell is going on here?” I asked, following him as he walked back over to his stall.

“I’m fixing us,” he said, then stuffed the entire roll of paper down into the toilet. He flushed once again, and the water inside the bowl raised and began to overflow out onto the tiled floor. “Fuck yeah!” he shouted.

“This is fixing us?” I asked. “Are we broken?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” he asked, then walked over to one of the sinks and sat up on the countertop. He pulled out a pack of smokes and lit one up. He offered one to me, but I waved it off.

“We quit smoking back in 2017,” I said. He laughed and exhaled a lungful of smoke.

“Jesus, how old are you now? Like forty?”

“Not quite,” I said, then caught him looking at his watch. He was staring at it intently. “What about you? You’re like 19 years old. What are you doing in our old middle school?”

“Goddamn it, I’m slow in my middle age,” I said…I mean, he said. “I told you, I’m fixing us. Everything that’s ever gone wrong in our lives I’ve been able to trace back to this one incident.”

I didn’t have any significant memories involving a middle school bathroom. “What incident?”

He was looking at his watch again.

“Look, I don’t have time to explain everything to you, okay? Just trust me when I say that I’ve thoroughly examined every shitty event in our life and all my research points back to this one singular event.”

“To a toilet overflowing?” I asked, thankful the inch of water now covering the floor wasn’t able to seep into my astral sneakers.

“Man, you’re not getting it!’“ he shouted, then flicked his cigarette at me. It would’ve burned my arm had I brought my body with me. “When we were in the eighth grade—on this exact day—Joey Tribbiani came into this bathroom and flooded that toilet, two minutes from now. We walk into this restroom 2 minutes and ten seconds from now, and Mr. Belding walks in 3 seconds after us. Joey’s long gone by then. We end up getting blamed for it. Monica tells our parents and we get grounded for two weeks, causing us to miss out on taking Jennifer Aniston to the Sweetheart’s dance. It’s the one thing that fucked us up. I’m here to correct it. Joey’s about to walk in at any moment. We gotta keep him here…”

“Joey and Monica?” I asked, totally confused. “Those aren’t real people. They’re characters on the popular 90s sitcom Friends.”

He looked down at his watch. A bead of astral sweat ran down the side of his face.

“And Jennifer Aniston is the actresses real name,” I continued. “Her character’s name was Rachel.”

He stood up and walked closer to the door.

“And Mr. Belding, that’s way off,” I said. “That’s a different show entirely.”

“Come over here. Stand on the other side,” he said, pointing to the left of where he was standing. I walked over and got into position.

“Saved By the Bell,” I said, finally remembering the name of the other show. “Mr. Belding was from Saved By the Bell. That was another popular 90s sitcom. You remember that one, right?”

“Any second now,” he said, as if I wasn’t speaking at all.

Suddenly, the door was thrown open and an impossibly bright light blinded us both.

When the light faded, I was back inside my body, on the floor of Beachbum Berry’s Lattitude 29, where my buddy Tom Stripper was leaning over, looking directly into my face.

He helped me to my feet. He said I was snoring pretty loud. I told him about my journey, how I left my body, met myself, the toilet, everything. He didn’t seem too convinced.

Oh well, there will always be naysayers.