My Best Pot Stories

The Places That Scare Me

“Well, see, there, you forgot to enter your vehicle information.”

By default, I tend to find myself doing silly or strange things to try to impress good looking men- “Sure we can listen to the Dave Mathews Band.” This of course is highly ridiculous behavior, as it only causes me to look completely clueless and uncomfortably weird in an otherwise calm situation. “Show them your BOOBS!” I heard a group of girls giggle-out, trying to single out one of their sororitron brethren to a group of tattooed-military-nipple-shirts smelling like a bottle's worth of Old Spice XXXTreme.

So when “forgot to enter your vehicle info” park ranger handed back my registration card with pen, complete with bulging shoulders and sparkling green eyes- as much as I wish I could have nervously shown him how incomprehensibly stupid I was for forgetting to mark down the license place number plus make and model of my vehicle at the drive-up registration kiosk of his camp ground near Monterey, California... I recognized that I was, instead, going to have to take him down a couple of pegs.

You see, mister tall-dark-and luscious, notice how my brow is all a'sweat, and this huge back pack is strapped to my back like an elephant? And that I'm standing in front of your drive-up kiosk, and not in some kind of futuristic invisible transportation machine? Well, the truth of the matter is, I walked here.

I wrote “n/a” over the appropriate fields, and returned the card.

He looked the card over again, puffing his chest out. Undershirt, fruit-of-the-loom v-neck.

He flipped out with an exasperated exhale, “You walked here from BERKELEY?”

Smart to have checked the address I wrote down, sure, but again, it seemed perhaps the ranger had been kicked in the head by a horse once or twice in his time.

“No, from the bus station, about a mile from here.”

“Oh I see, well, we don't get many walkers around here. Just put your receipt out on the number marker of your camp site so we know you registered.”

When I got to my camp site, I understood why he said they don't get many walkers; RVs and redwoods dotted the cliff line, no tents.

It would be imagination to say I didn't know I was sticking my finger in the socket by diving off into these journeys. Since about November of last year, I have been on tour of sorts- a musician, wandering about California, getting from here to there, playing music, writing music, meeting people, smoking a lot of weed, getting drunk sometimes, getting crazy a lot of the times, and visiting all the places that scare me.

Cumming a lot, basically. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the video-biopic Pumping Iron, “I am cumming all the time.” (If the internet proves of any value in our human history, it is that you can literally type in a search for “Arnold coming” and see the very clip right now. The search engine will probably even finish spelling it for you.)

So when I said my next destination was Oceanside, people's faces began to drop. It didn't take anybody long to figure out what attracted me to Oceanside: the Marines. It is where they go to get drunk and stupid while in San Diego, and I was there for a week.

It's like jumping into the pool of balls at Chuckee Cheese- gay kid in a rainbow candy store.

It fooled no-one that I might be there just to explore different parts of San Diego. I needed a place to get a legitimate flattop, and what better place to do that in, than a beach town where I can stick my finger in 20,000 volts every second.

It jump-starts the heart. It gets the body moving. It tells you you're alive.

It brings you up to the borderline, and asks you if you are ready to jump.

I don't believe that any of us are born without the innermost desire to do just that- do what takes us to the brink, and try to go a little more.

The “how” in that, the window dressing that makes up our stories, is little more than an arbitrary place-holder. The pursuit of window dressing, however, it has fractured off our human existence into believing that there are borders between people and matters of difference worthy of violence or intolerance. If growth is being able to incorporate previously unknown aspects of nature into one's self, then a constant turning away from fear, or the unknown, is akin to stunting one's own growth. Believing that there are borders, either physical or mental, is just another way of saying, “I'm afraid I don't know how to incorporate that yet, so it must be labeled as different.” Fear then is a motivating factor.

Like a cherub with my arrow, puncturing the “how” and getting to the meat of the matter, the secret heart of what drives all of this, I perused Oceanside with my head exploding, nearly unable to keep my eyes from popping out of my head.

“Well, that's idotic.”- My father.

“If I had a more sensible approach, obviously that's what I'd be doing.”
Amanda Palmer- The Dresden Dolls, “Gravity”

People began to question whether I had any sense when hearing my Oceanside plans – to their credit, out of concern, for which I am of course extremely grateful.

But I like the excuse: if I had a more sensible approach, I'd be using it. Life, like art and beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So the way we always contort ourselves to fit what we believe are the expectations of others, is rather humorous, even when, and perhaps especially when I find myself gel-haired and cologned like some a-hole in a magazine. In some ways, artists are nothing but contortionists. And going to Oceanside was a contortion of biblical proportions- epic floods.

Trapped. Stepping off the train, no real place to go, but too much to carry too far, I realized I had made it, but hadn't at all thought through the ramifications of the train pulling away from the station, and having only my two feet to guide me the right way, and my eyes to push me into a zone of racing heart and pinching stomach.

A recollection, a photograph. The setting, outside, San Diego most likely. Still a baby. Naked. Without any explanation, muscle-chested military-shorts-clad studs surround my body. No faces in the shot, there is no reference to who they are. Or why I am there, naked.

In my dreams, or perhaps my fantasies, they were my secret keepers, keeping their influence even secret to me. Vulnerable, they held me, protected me, circumcised me, fed me and raised me, all from under the cloak of their spell. Attached to them like an infant, still unable to let them go, they beacon and I am compelled to follow. The smells and the tastes entrance me, though they leave me bound and gagged. Identities unknown, just a force, encompassing chemical reactions to desire, and growth. And still, they send me out into the world, naked, exposed, unable to help myself, carried along at their command.

I know I can't reach out for them. I have to recognize them when they come to me.

“You smoke pot?”

Back in the wild beach woods of Northern California, I stumbled upon a raggedy looking fellow pushing a bike up hill. Leathery brown skin, dressed in combat-black, nearly head to toe.

“I'm going down the coast on bike. Got some killer bud with me.”

The Way I See It

“Okay, and, what's your name?”

The need to simultan-eously personalize and computerize every man-woman-and child's physical experience has lead to a phenomena of being asked your name before completing any kind of order.

When your order has been completed, a person who was probably separate from and unaware of the conversation you had earlier with the cashier, takes one look at the receipt, calls your name and hands you your meal/coffee/2-sided copies directly, as if they themselves had invested personally into your order, and boy how they hope it reflects well for them and the company they represent.

“Ardi?”

“No, the two initials, R ... D.”

“Are-Dean?”

Sometimes I even wear a t-shirt spray-painted with a huge “RD”, that, like a kindergarten teacher, I'll point to and spell out when the cashier is helplessly confused by the message I'm trying to convey with my name.

I recognize my voice is low and I have a tendency to be shy, and on top of the constant cranking of espresso machines, the fact that people might not be expecting initials when they start writing a name down, plus its short syllabic presence which doesn't lend to framing against other sounds for extrapolation (hence the phantom syllables that turn up in some people's interpretations, “Are-Eee-Dee?” “Are-Dee-Yah?”)- I can see the real barriers to getting it on one pass. Once I do get the point across to the cashier, then the real challenge of meeting the societal/personal dichotomy begins.

The system of entering a customer's name on a receipt along with the short-hand version of what was ordered by the vendor's guest happens in such a routine and precise manner, when something out of the ordinary pops through the pipelines, the employee is temporarily stranded on an island, cast away from the reliable world of ventis and grandes and fraps to try and figure out how to turn a volley ball into a new best friend.

There's a moment, and you can catch it in their eyes, that sheer panic takes control of their being, for instead of a name printed in the “guest” field on the receipt, there are two consonants squeezed together, and nothing more.

As panic seamlessly mutates into “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?,” other “work appropriate” responses start to take shape. The flash cards of useful tips handed down by management start flickering by, with only nano-seconds to produce the correct one. 

Usually, the first card that turns up a positive response is “blame and rise above.”

“They must have entered this wrong. ROD, your order is ready, ROD, or ROB.”

The second most popular stop position on the meter is “Assume the computer is right.”

“Uuuurdd. Double maximo for Errrrd.” They keep trying to stretch the “R” sound into some kind of vowel, sounding more like motor engines revving, while imagining to themselves what kind of exotic place I must be from where they can string letters like R and D together and make a name. Then when they see just a goofy white boy flailing up to the counter, they say “Where are you from, son?” And when I say “East county,” they nod with a half smile pretending that they know what that means.

The third most common reaction is to dissolve into the panic- “You could get fired for this.”

“Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm totally going to screw this up. R .... uh .... D, no, ROAD.”

My favorite version of this story happened while getting lunch the other day at El Pollo Loco , a crazy chicken fast food joint in California. I watched the sweet and tiny abuelita shuffle up to the counter with my order. I saw her take a look at the receipt. She took a breath as if she were going to make an attempt, but she totally swallowed it. Right before the sound was due to leave her throat, all her muscles sent an order to constrict, and she closed right up. This is the card called “Mission: Abort.”

“Pollo bowl,” she announced.

The attempt was brave, and I appreciated it. Figuring that English was probably her second language, I was humbled by the fact that in Spanish, the name RD is much harder to pronounce than “ar Deee”. “ErrE Deh” would be some kind of Spanish equivalent. There are like three stresses, the R is rolled, and the D comes out with enormous thud, both in its attack and release. Unless you do tongue pilates, you may not get through it all. 

Most of us wouldn't even know where to begin with the Chinese name “Xu.” I think our inclination would be to take a breath, then just go with “Pollo bowl!” It's like the English name “Sue,” but I think the sound is colorfully laced with tones that come out only through the trained pallet of native speakers. 

My least favorite card of all, and this is never funny, is the joker card.

“What is this, RD? Research and Development!”

“Receiving and Delivery!”

Unless, of course, the humor is an attempt to be flirty and you're a cocky but not self absorbed honey who has no inhibitions about being photographed for BUTT magazine, and the drink-code scrawled on my cup is actually your number.

But that's usually when I have to play my “The barista does NOT have a crush on you” card, so I can act disaffected when you ask “Is that a Polaroid camera?” when really on the inside I'm txting like crazy “OMG OMG OMG OMG.”

It did take a barista, at Starbucks of all places, to recognize my plight, and met me at the battle ground with an offering of peace that blew my mind.

Now, my slight against Starbucks (which is an attitude that extends towards most of commercial/popular/corporate culture) does need to be explained, justified and defended a little bit here. I always question the validity of making a point if you need to go through a power point presentation of defenses to prove its truth. “Who are you trying to convince anyway?” is the line that always comes to mind when I go on for too long explaining any one thing. 

So, I'll try to convince myself that my indignation comes from a place of symbolic gesturing, while pointing to a much larger societal discomfort.

WHAT?

Okay, I'm only saying Starbucks sucks in the sense that corporate America is man-scaping the happy trail of modern existence into an inevitable blow hole of complacency and obsession. What is it we're missing so much in our lives that we need to pornographize our brains with images that tell us we're not good enough and we need more? Or maybe we want more and don't need it? Or maybe we forgot what the difference is, and, wait, what are we in line for, again?

The sense of security that I might hear my name repeated back to me without making it a “thing” is one those things I seemed to find myself in line for.

This particular barista could see something deep coming out of me when I opened my mouth and expanded my chest to deliver a very deliberate and precise “R” “D”. 

Without skipping a beat, the barista said “Like this?”

He showed me the cup with my name on it:

AGRH DEE

He did it. He cracked the code of what it is I've been getting at all this time. Honestly, I would switch the order of the G and R so it reads more like pirate talk, “Argh...” But he was doing it off the cuff in a matter of seconds, so I take it that's what he meant.

It's deep, it's guttural, it's two sounds, two syllables, and definitely not “Ardi” or anything where the stress would be over the R. 

In this way, the attending server would need only to allow the moment of panic to turn into a moment of relying on a most basic instinct- sounding it out. With more than just the two letters of the name to sound out the beginning and end, they have enough information to get a running start. The loop is complete, the connection is made.

Argh Dee. I am in love. By the style of the writing, I want to say he's also a graffiti artist. I'm very in love.

From going through all of this, I can safely say, this entire situation doesn't even need to happen at all. The whole song and dance of tying people's names to their orders in no way is reflective of the situation that brings about the interaction, which is ubiquitously to consume something.

And if your reaction to such an attitude is “Well, how else would you know your order is ready?” or “Well, it's nice,” then for that, I am glad it exists.

For the record, it stands for Ronald Daniel, which is not a secret. I've never been good at lying about what it stands for and wish I could say I have a favorite fake version. It cracks me up on the occasion when people hear that the R stands for Ronald, the first thing they think is the D must stand for Donald. I understand why you'd have that reaction, but, really, Ronald Donald? I only ever went by anything other than RD in high school, where I was Rawn. Hopefully that means all my friends from high school can't find me on Facebook.. I prefer no periods between the letters, and as long as you digested the concept that it's two letters and not “Ardi”, you can call me any two initials that come to your mind when you first meet me, and you'll ask a few times “JR?” and I'll tell you and it'll eventually stick. 

Or I could just go all out with, IT'S ARGH DEE, matey.