Anonymous asked: This is excellent. More please!
Cool, thanks. I didn’t even know anyone could find this blog, as it’s currently “in development,” but I’m happy to see the initial offering getting support. Things will pick up in the coming weeks, with some kind of opening ceremonial wake n bake, and reader submissions.
I somehow knew it was meant to be. As if by instinct or some kind of genetic pre-disposition, I could feel my most basic animal logic kicking in; I was 15 and ready to get stoned. Somewhere in my gut I knew, even as a kid, that this green leafy substance and I would have a long and giggly relationship.
When we were exposed to those “anti-drug” films in 5th-8th grade, the guys with the big afros and glassy eyes always caught my attention. Usually wearing a colorful muumuu, and speaking of love and peace slowly and melodically, it was hard to believe that whatever these guys were on could actually be harmful.
On the other hand, the interviews with nose-bleeding trust fund kids and tweaked out street hustlers showed us that things like coke and speed weren’t really that fun. But they could never say anything bad about pot. How could you when your stock footage included not much more than dancing girls and guys saying “Groovy, man.” One film tried to scare us from pot by saying our acne would get worse from eating too much junk food, and that we might get laid a lot. Yeah, it really sucks when you’re a closeted 15 year old homosexual, to have the problem of getting laid too much. The stage was set; I was already a Pink Floyd fan, my hair was down to my shoulders, and my maroon ten-eye Dr. Marten’s screamed “teenage-counter-culture.” I was also perfectly playing the part of the spacey intellectual; a smart honors student, but completely in my own giggly world. My appearance and personality type were there, I just needed the actual weed to fill in the gap and complete the picture. My friends patiently waited to see when I would finally take the plunge. I think my football-jock-buddy, Zach, gave himself a pat on the back when he realized he would be my first supplier. I’ll never forget conjuring up the nerve to approach him about it. I practiced all night the night before to make sure I could get the words out of my mouth, and that I wouldn’t chicken out and say I meant to ask for “a pot” instead. “Yeah, my mom’s pots broke. All of them. And I need one. And you’re the only person I could think of to ask. I swear this is not a thinly veiled attempt at something else.” Despite his football jock status, and my nature to be immediately intimidated by such people, Zach was a very approachable, caring and gentle soul, who I knew I could trust. When the time came to ask him about it, he smiled a big smile just as I started in on “I was wondering if you might be able to get me…” Knowing what was coming next, he saved me the embarrassment of having to say the words, gave me a big hug and said, “No worries kid, I’ve got you covered.” But my naiveté tripped me up at the first question, “how much do you want?” Uh, do I measure by putting my hand up and showing you a space between my thumb and index finger? Do I measure in joints? Is a pound enough? Clearly perplexed, he said “We’ll start you off with a nickel bag.” Cool, my first foray into pot lingo, “a nickel bag.”
Back then, my $5 nickel bag was enough to last me at least nine months, if not more. I recall looking at my first bag of pot in complete amazement, like the Christmas present I’d been waiting for all my life. But having never actually been near pot before, the bag was also kind of baffling. Where were the big seven pointed leaves everyone draws? What do you mean don’t smoke the seeds; there are seeds in this? How much do I smoke? Is this one joint’s worth? “Just smoke it until you get high dude, that’s all there is to it. Your mouth might dry up, and you might get hungry. And since it’s your first time, you may not feel anything, but don’t worry, it happens. Just relax and enjoy!”
My mom was leaving town for a week, and my dad is an early-to-bed heavy sleeper type, so I saw a perfect window of opportunity to introduce myself to this new world. My dad had been given some kind of antique Russian pipe from a co-worker as a souvenir, which I happened to know he kept in the dresser drawer right by his bed. He had never used it, probably didn’t even remember he had it, and would never notice if it went missing, or suddenly smelled like his 15 year old son had stolen it to smoke pot with.
Armed with an antique Russian pipe shaped like Lenin, a cordless phone to call my best friend Jamie (so she could harass me while stoned), a lighter and my precious nickel bag, I walked outside to take the first dip into what was about to become my all-time favorite activity.
The calm and warm evening provided the perfect blanket for my inaugural pot experience. The stars shine bright in east county San Diego, so I felt the magic of the heavens cupping me and keeping me safe. By this time in my life I had smoked a cigarette or two, and vaguely knew what kind of feeling to expect when the smoke hit my lungs. First hit. Ready to be blasted with a choking sensation followed by nausea, I was relieved to feel the smoke wasn’t harsh at all, it almost felt alive in my body, like it was going down in some hippy bus saying “Yay, we’re getting high!”
Second hit. Was I feeling it yet? I didn’t think so. I kept thinking about what Zach had told me, that I may not feel anything the first time. I thought, maybe food will help it kick in. I walked back into the house where some cold pizza was hanging out in the fridge. I started macking on it when I realized I had the worst cotton mouth ever. I had a mouthful of partially chewed pizza, and zero saliva to swallow it down with. My attempt at swallowing ended with the thought “Oh my god, I have a bullet train stuck in my throat,” so I reached for cranberry juice which did a fine job at getting the pizza down.
Still, I wasn’t convinced that anything was happening, so I grabbed the rest of my pizza slice and went back outside. A couple hits later and I was wondering if I was going to be one of those first time casualties, and not get it on my first attempt. I could see the headlights of a car coming up the road, and as it neared my house I instantly got paranoid thinking I had been busted, and crouched down to hide behind a bush. As soon as I crouched down, my entire world turned upside-down, and I stood back up into a whole other universe entirely.
My whole body felt a foreign to me, which at first was a little scary, but it quickly turned into “Oh my god, my fingers are so cool. Wow, I’ve never really felt my legs before, I mean really FELT my legs. Whoa, look at all this hair I have, it’s so long! Isn’t hair great?” Somehow I managed to remember to call my friend Jamie so she could make me laugh or some shit like that and I realized two things, I had no idea how a phone worked, and I had forgotten how to speak. But that’s cool, no need to panic, because everything is rather, well, groovy. I knew if I made the green light on the phone come on, that I could use my fingers to do stuff on the lit up green buttons and Jamie would end up on the other end. Cool. But in the mean time, all these other buttons were causing the phone to beep and blink, and they were infinitely more cool than whatever else I was planning on doing.
At some point after staring and laughing at the phone, I remembered what I was doing and actually called Jamie. Somehow though I managed to press a certain combination of buttons at the right time, and I ended playing Jamie’s messages off her answering machine. Of course I figured that it was the cops playing a trick on me, and they were tracing my call and were going to come and bust me, because, you know, 15 year olds smoking pot in their homes is the highest concern above everything that could be happening on the streets of East County San Diego. Tossing the phone into the bushes was clearly the best way to get around that. Sadly though, with the phone I tossed my beloved piece of pizza. I knelt down to try and find it, but just kept bringing up leaves and pine cones… is this a piece of pizza? No, it’s a dog turd.
Fleeing from the cops that were no doubt hot on my tail, I dashed inside the house and turned on the TV. Superman was on, and good thing too, because I was Superman, only no one knew it because I didn’t have my cape on. With a crochet blanket draped over my back, I flew across the living room a couple dozen times, saving a dust bunny from leaping to its death off of the ottoman, assisting the citizens of Fort Couch after Dr. Vacuum took out their tallest building, and stopping Love Seat from staging a coup against Lazy Boy.
After a job well done I retired to my bedroom, and in a move that can only be described as fulfilling karmic destiny, I reached for my tape collection and grabbed Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Oh, if there is a stoner utopia, I found it. I laid in my bed with the lights out while the faint heartbeat opening of the album began to fill the room. As the heartbeats crescendo’ed into the blissful slide guitars and Hammond organs of “Breathe,” my body became one large rubber band that stretched and contracted in response to every sound the band was making. My legs stretched out to infinity in front of me. Every turn of the head lasted minutes, and echoed all around me.
“Breathe in the air,” they sang.
“Okay.” And I took what felt to be the first breath of my life. I could feel the molecules of oxygen binding to my blood cells and keeping me alive. I became the wave forms pulsating through out “On The Run,” and “Time” was like arriving at the steps of the building of your life, and realizing it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
I fell asleep somewhere around “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and woke up at 5am, craving a Pepsi.
I didn’t really put it all together, the events of the evening, until I saw the sofa cushions all heaped together in the corner of the living room, the cordless phone in the bushes, and that piece of pizza, which was actually in my hoodie pocket the whole time. While cleaning up, the realization struck that I had touched a very beautiful part of humanity, and wished the whole world could have been a part of that with me.
Zach scoped me out the next morning at school. Perhaps my grin was just a smidgen wider than normal, because he saw me and knew exactly where I had been the night before. With a big hug, we celebrated knowing we now shared a connection to this little private piece of utopia.