Nitrous!

I'll be honest, I'm no saint. I've tried nitrous a few times at concerts. It's a crazy, gone-all-too-soon high that can get your head spinning and your mouth giggling. My nitrous huffing began and ended over 15 years ago, seemingly before the racket became a huge business.

"Fatty whippets!" yell the balloon man's eight or nine dealers, holding balloon clusters high in the air. Some of the dealers are locals, contracted out for the night, while the rest hail from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. When a police car is seen from a distance, a trio of spotters yells, "Six-Up"—a warning to keep cool. Selling nitrous oxide for the purpose of getting high is illegal, but the club's bouncers don't seem to mind the huffing. "The security here is cool," says a dealer named Chrystal, a single mother who is dating the Boston capo, whom we'll call Dmitri.

Pretty sure my purchase in no way supported the Nitrous Mafia, but who knows?