Dear Giant Squid:

Have you ever tried drugs? I am a teenager from the great state of Nevada and I have been approached by some of my peers with the option of trying some of the new designer drugs that have come about by the glory and majesty of science. For instance, my friend Boyd Masterton, a fine lad from a long line of Shipping magnates sent here by his family to be educated by Howard Hughes, has approached me with a little blue pill which can make one see the faces on the moon.

Or so he claims.

When he has taken it some nights he weeps so much like a rabid hyena that it makes me want to scream. Scream, I say!

Once, when we had driven the entire length of the strip and the lights and the women and all of the sweating humanity had made us dizzy with the richness of it we drove right on through past the Stardust into the black night of the desert. The lizards hid under rocks and the stars glared at us both.

Boyd's Cadillac careened out across the tarmac, it was so smooth and beautiful and strong and silent and the moon was absolutely full and searching, piercing. The air, as empty as space, as clear as crystal, as dry as nothing as beautiful and we drove and drove and drove

Let me back a few spaces.

Boyd had a boyish, pink look to his cheek and his hair, a light sand, was trimmed back to a conservative coif, long enough that one can imagine running one's hands through it slowly, feeling every dip and arch of his skull and the delicate rigidity of his scalp, but short enough that it stayed well out of the way of his sea-green eyes.

All the girls adored him and it made me so jealous.

That the girls didn't like me, I mean.

We were good friends. Don't get me wrong both from excellent families and so, dammit, you should never imply that I could possibly resent Boyd in any way for any God Damn Thing In the World!

So we were in the desert. Boyd slid the car off the road and we rolled, silently, to a stop in front of a large boulder the kind that rattlers would sun themselves on in the height of harsh day.

We got out of the car, the two of us, and lay out on the hood of the Cadillac as it cooled and the engine pinged and we stared up at the brilliant light of the moon.

Hours, minutes, seconds, years later Boyd sat up, his long young torso like a cat's curling over, strong, and for a second he turned to me and his face eclipsed the light of the moon, and as my eyes adjust I saw that he was holding a blue pill in his hand and he held it to his lips. Then, crisply, he bit the pill into two cyan hemispheres like the two extremes of the well, the moon don't you know

He swallowed one half and held out the other to me.

"Randy?" He said, holding out the half of the pill on his upturned palm.

Please! Giant Squid! What should I do? What Should I Do?

Oh, the moaning, giddy weeping of Hyenas!

Desperate: Randy in Nevada

---

Randy in Nevada:

Wrap your consort in the powerful grip of your tentacles and dive! Dive! Pull this desirable one to a deep cave beneath a sea ledge where you may rut, spreading your genetic material and assuring the dominance of your line.