Take Ecstasy With Me
“Take Ecstasy With Me” is the closing track on The Magnetic Fields’ Holiday album. This band was one of my favorites in high school—with its gay brooding lyricism often accompanied by inappropriately upbeat synth. I must have listened to this song a thousand times before I first tried ecstasy.
The last verse,
You had a black snowmobile
We drove out under the northern lights
A vodka bottle gave you
Those raccoon eyes
We got beat up
Just for holding hands
paints a painful scene wherein a queer couple takes one last innocent holiday together before being attacked over a public display of affection.
I took ecstasy for the first time with my first girlfriend when I was around 19 or 20. Fortunately, we were safe at home, without fear of being attacked by bigots and homophobes.
It was a pressed pill with a Superman symbol on it. I swigged it down with grape-flavored Gatorade. We danced in the living room for as long as our legs allowed, eventually giving in to the weight of the euphoria. We played with each other’s hair and whispered sweet-nothings while staring into one another’s massively dilated pupils.
Ecstasy (aka molly or MDMA) is a substance that makes you feel warm, loved, and connected to everything and everyone around you. It has close ties to the queer community as a club drug due to its excitatory powers—the euphoria afforded by drugs like MDMA allows queer folks to express themselves freely in a society that often seeks to snuff out their light.
I never considered myself addicted to MDMA. It doesn’t produce the same kind of cravings or withdrawal symptoms that come from drinking alcohol or using other drugs. I would do it once or twice a year, for “special occasions” most notably, Pride.
Pride weekend is a time for free and open expression when we can celebrate the queer body as a work of art and queer sexuality as a human right. Drugs are just part of the Pride package, I thought.
It sometimes feels as if rampant alcohol and drug use is inherent to being queer. 90% of my romantic relationships and queer friendships have revolved around heavy intoxication of some kind. It’s hard not to wonder if that’s all there is.
I have to remind myself that the life I created, and the people I surrounded myself with while in active addiction were people who liked what I liked, which was drugs. That doesn’t mean those are the only people that exist in the world.
Taking ecstasy was no different from all the alcohol and other drugs I took—they were a desperate form of escapism.
In the song by The Magnetic Fields, the refrain “Take ecstasy with me” is a hopeless plea for the only escape the queer couple has left.
The terrible thing about holidays is that they’ll always just be a temporary break from reality.