"No line, no wait!"
"No line, no wait!"

This, of course, a learned and highly practiced mating call.

_{No line, no wait!"}

Shrilled, cat-called, and repeated over the hisssssss of balloons filling. The tank’s valve opening and closing as operators cut deals - crumpled $5s, $10s, $20s spilling from clenched hands and stuffed pockets.

A small crowd forms.

"No line, no wait!" they shout.

Of course,
we get in line to wait.

Nitrous. Gas. Whippets. Balloons.

Hippie crack. Two minutes of bliss. A Diet coke to your fridge's cigarette.

Dentist's office? Root canal? That's premium-grade.

In a lot, on shakedown, after a show - tucked between two beat-up cars with peeling stickers and dented grilles - you’ll find another variety. Effective, but...different. Welding grade, the kind intended to fuse steel - or maybe nitro, so your IROC-Z to get reckless for a few seconds.

“No public whomping,” is as good an instruction as any.

I first met my friend The Hermanator in a field at Arrowhead Ranch in 1991. He huffed repeatedly on a balloon, turned a shade of baby blue, lips peeled back revealing a pumpkin-crooked grin. Then he froze, stiffened, and face-planted onto the grass-patched dirt.

This is public whomping.

We take a curb, a short distance from the tanks, balloons five times the size of our heads. We huff. In, out, in, out, with limited oxygen in between.

The world goes muddy. Sounds stretch like cheese pulled between halves of a pressed sandwich. Visuals go oblong, a cat eye's view through a fisheye lens. You sense structure, a pattern, the matrix, and everything begins to breathe gloriously, pounding at you like a rubber mallet.

This is the whomp.

"No line, no wait!" they call

Buddy John buys five balloons in the park adjacent to Bill Graham Civic Center. We lose him immediately.

An hour later, we’re on all fours, scrambling through pods of hippies - backpacks, threadbare blankets, lost Nalgenes, pods of mangy tour mutts. We find John, laughing maniacally, and carry him out over a shoulder like a wounded soldier.

The Nitrous Mafia runs smash-and-grabs anywhere jam bands play.

They set up in the flow of post-show crowds, which bend around them like schools of fish around a branch in a river.

It's gruff teamwork: one fills balloons, one cuts deals and one stands watch, beady-eyed, a crow among hyenas.

Suddenly, two beefy cops burst onto the scene, shouting, chests puffed with creatine.

The gas crew moves instantly in pre-planned synchronicity: one tucks the tank into a sweater and disappears into trees, two others scatter in opposite directions, zigzagging like running backs.

Hours after the show, outside, say, MSG or the Worcester Centrum, the ground will be littered with thousands of used balloons - drab detritus against pigeon shît and stained concrete.

Passersby are confused and assume they missed a parade. Or a party for someone famous.

The cops are irate. Batons. Bat-wing shades. Mustaches. Megaphones and tasers. They swat balloons from hands and scream in faces.

They do. not. like. you. huffing. some. brain-cell. melting. GAS.

I panic, and do the dumbest thing possible:

I run.

At hotels, valets hand out business cards offering tanks delivered at any hour; Venmo, Paypal, Credit Cards accepted plus a kickback for the referral.

In an elevator, two twenty-somethings roll in a battered suitcase big enough for a month in India. Inside: a tank headed to an after-party.

My cop is fast, and gives chase instinctually. Then, in one practiced motion, he slams me onto the hood of a car, pulling my arms behind my back.

"Why you running?" he barks; my whomp begins to wear off.

I'm suddenly as sober as a church mouse. He's smelling salts. The paddles of a crash cart. He lets go of one arm and spins me around. I stare at him, cleanly and clearly, a schoolboy in front of a headmaster. "I'm sorry, officer," I plead.

He grunts. I'm not worth the paperwork. He unhands me.

I skulk away.

The gas dealers are all long gone, but I've had my fun.

And so has the cop. Two minutes of something - adrenaline, a power trip, aggression.

I imagine it's a feeling he seeks out.

And one that's not so different from the whomp from an ice-cold fatty balloon.