So. I’ve been feeling a little bit off-kilter lately, and with the perfectly-timed Weed Issue of the Independent, I have decided that this is the perfect excuse to engage in my favorite form of catharsis: writing while high off my ass.
This week, I plan to get high and write every single night. (Okay, so not much of a change from my usual routine. But this time, with purpose! The purpose being writing a bunch of bullshit in EB Garamond font size 12 so I can publish it in the Independent.)
Sometimes humorous, often incomprehensible, these words come straight from the marijuana-addled mind. Enjoy.
Monday
Happy Monday! We have a lot to talk about.
I’m tired, so my writing today may be a bit short. But do you guys remember when—
Suddenly, a torrent of childhood memories floods your mind, like I’m some sort of witch or psychedelic drug forcing you to have visions—think the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse intro, H2O: Just Add Water, and how Emma was probably your first gay crush, not Rikki, but Emma! Crazy! Think the Christmas in Camelot Magic Tree House book, the Polly Pocket pool, Littlest Pet Shop videos, resisting the urge to shove a Squinkie up your ass, that one parody song, your parents spraying sunscreen into your eyes, stealing your mom’s lipstick, being asked out by a boy for the first time (a mere two days after he called you an “awkward fatty”—flirting was crazy back then!) Think running wild around your suburban streets, playing, really playing, to the point of scraped knees and dirt on your cheek, and it’s something quite beautiful because the memory still burns white hot in your mind all these years later.
All these flashbacks are making me crave the dialogue. So now, a conversation:
Wanna know a secret?
Yes!
I’m writing this on Tuesday. Surprise, bitch!!!
What the fuck? Reneging on your promise?
Holy shit, the voices are using the word reneging.
Yeah. I have a better vocabulary than you, idiot. Not just an idiot, but a hypocrite who can’t keep to her promise of writing high every night of the week. Where’s your dedication to the craft?
Damn. Harsh. I have a good excuse. Last night
When I was high, instead of writing, I watched a two-hour
History Channel YouTube video about the evidence of aliens
in Da Vinci’s work.
Terrible excuse. I heard that that’s exactly what the less intellectually gifted do when they’re high.
Oh, wow, the voice I’ve invented to make my piece
more tonally varied is getting all elitist on me!
Fuck you then! I’m going to bed.
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday
Happy Tuesday (okay, Wednesday morning. But we’ll be back on track soon). Today, there’s something in the air. It’s not just the smell of weed. It’s nostalgia. Well, it’s both. So, to imbue this piece with the two things that I sense in the air around me, memories and marijuana, I’m going to tell you about my first time smoking weed. It’s a good story, I swear.
Let’s rewind a few years. I was two weeks into my freshman year of college. Two of my favorite new friends were a girl from Ohio and a boy from Massachusetts, both of whom smoked together most nights (and then hooked up, but I didn’t realize that at the time). Our little trio was a love-at-first-sight situation—two stoners and one soon-to-be stoner. They were like my weed parents. They adopted me. I owe all of this to them.
The clock had struck 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday, and the three of us gathered at the most inconspicuous smoke spot on campus—the Widener steps. Some lingering students milled around us, entering and exiting the library and sitting, chatting with each other. The boy produced a dab pen from the depths of a North Face backpack that looked like it had seen things.
My friends sucked the air from the pen with ease. They passed it to me, and I stared at it, thoroughly confused. I had not revealed my status as a weed virgin to them, as I was very dedicated to maintaining my cover. I had to obscure the fact that I was still early in my metamorphosis from high school weird to college cool. The pen barely worked, and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out how to take a hit. But eventually, I was successful. I knew I was high when I looked up at the leaves and thought they looked really fucking cool. I did not realize quite how high I was until I stood up and had trouble walking.
The Massachusetts boy and the Ohio girl laughed at me as I figured out how to walk again. Eventually, we made it to what is still the best smoking post-game I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing—Annenberg Brain Break. I waddled into the servery, where I was struck by just how deeply I wanted to consume every single kind of cereal. So, of course, I filled up three bowls with different types of cereal and one bowl with milk. I balanced all four paper bowls on my forearm and began my trek back down the center aisle of the Annenberg tables.
The journey felt like an hour, each step careful yet wobbly. Every time I took another step forward, a little bit of milk spilled out of my milk bowl, or an off-brand Cheerio rolled onto the floor and through the feet of some of my unsuspecting classmates. When I finally made it to my table at the end of the hall, I looked back. I immediately noticed that I had left a long, very noticeable trail of milk drops and cereal bits all down the center walkway of Annenberg. I instantly felt sort of guilty and shameful—like I’d just carried some cloth-wrapped dead body parts down the aisle and let the blood drip out like some really shitty failure of an axe murderer.
I then tried to set the milk bowl down at my table, where some friends and acquaintances were working on p-sets. As I attempted to place the milk bowl down without spilling my bowls of cereal, my hand slipped a little, and unfortunately, upon contact with the table, my entire bowl of milk spilled all over some poor guy’s iPad.
I paused, frozen in shock, and attempted to restrain myself from uttering the inevitable.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
To no avail, my inhibitions were lowered! I could not help myself. Forgive me.
“Don’t cry over spilled milk!” I exclaimed.
Shocked at my own utterance, I immediately burst into laughter. Everyone at the table gave me tempered yet obvious looks of horror and concern, peppered with the occasional courtesy laugh. My mood quickly turned from silly to embarrassed. I haphazardly wiped some of the milk off the guy’s iPad and then trudged over, ashamed, to visit some friends at a different Annenberg table. When I arrived, I slouched over their table and blinked all empty and dead-eyed at everyone, by that point having gone completely nonverbal out of humiliation. One of the girls I was vaguely friends with gave me a weird look.
“Are you high?” she mouthed at me, looking bemused.
Exhilaration rushed through me. She noticed. Redemption! She knows I smoke. She must think I’m so fucking cool.
I gave her a weird, lopsided smile, nodded slowly, and winked at her. Winked. I winked. By the time I realized what I’d done, she had laughed, and I felt slightly less self-conscious. With returned confidence, I went back to my original table, where Ohio girl suggested we go to Insomnia Cookies.
After a long, arduous walk from Annenberg, I made it inside Insomnia Cookies and successfully ordered a cookie. I was brimming with self-pride, grinning at my cookie like I’d just won an award. Finally, a moment of success. A moment of being both high and functional! But, alas, storms of tragedy were brewing. My successful cookie acquisition had made me overconfident, and this cost me dearly. I became complacent. And complacency is the enemy of composure.
As I descended the Insomnia Cookies stairs, I made a grave miscalculation. Thinking I’d reached the bottom of the staircase, I was taken by surprise by an extra step where I thought there wasn’t one. Time entered slow motion. I toppled forward. The cookie launched from my hand. My legs flew out from under me. The next thing I knew, I was lying face-first on the ground, left hand grasping the empty paper my cookie had once rested in, right hand grasping a freshly cracked phone. Suddenly—a moment of clarity.
Wow. I just ate shit in the Insomnia Cookies stairwell.
That’s not all. The boy I was sort of hooking up with at the time was standing just outside with our group of friends. He had witnessed the whole disastrous fall. Somehow, it was decided that he would walk me home. I cannot remember if he offered or if he was told. He led my sorry, stoned ass back to my freshman dorm, where he dropped me off and left quickly. I hung my head and didn’t even attempt a flirty farewell as I trudged into my bedroom. To this day, I credit that moment as the beginning of the untimely and rapid demise of our “relationship.”
When I woke up the next morning, my first thought was something along the lines of “That was really embarrassing. That can never happen again.” But, being the high-achieving and driven individual I am, rather than vowing to never smoke again, I instead resolved to become really fucking good at getting high.
Several years later, I like to think I’ve achieved the mastery I once sought. Hopefully, by this point, it is obvious to you that I can perfectly meter my marijuana consumption to the ideal point of literary productivity. And then produce a fantastic piece of writing. (Clearly). See you tomorrow.
Wednesday
Guys, in all honesty, I’m not high right now. I’m drunk. And in this newfound spirit of honesty, I cannot ethically write an entry for Wednesday. See you tomorrow.
Thursday
Just like Sunday is the day of the lord, Thursday is the day of the vignette. Here you go:
“I’m not feeling very inspired,” she says.
A whisper, then a yell, then an echo. I take my jagged thumbnail and run it under the lip of the round metal table. The unpleasant texture abuses the sliver of skin just under my nail, rough and cold. Next, an unexpected interruption—no longer able to move my thumb, as a hardened glob of gum blocks it. I shudder and lean back.
My Brilliant Friend sets her glass of wine down with a hint of force. Its round base slams against the metal table, making a dramatic clang. Her hand lingers by the stem of the glass, resting on the table. I wonder if the metal is cold against her fingers. Tap. Tap. Tap. Now, the long red acrylic nail on her pointer finger taps the table. As it taps, the wine sloshes around in the glass a little, recovering from the jolt of impact. Small waves of red rise up to meet the glass’s edges, where faint lip gloss stains mark the intimacy with which My Brilliant Friend knows glass and wine and words.
Her eyes have pivoted upwards. I recognize the look in them (not consciously, of course, only thanks to brain-stem brine)—exasperation. Exasperation at the lack of inspiration, a tragic downward exchange of four syllables to five. Combined with a sharp outward breath, she absent-mindedly pets the dog in her lap’s head.
Little dog, small and white and fluffy, sitting all small and dainty and perfect. A product, no, a prop, of a poorly thought-out favor to a family friend. It is the perfect accessory for the moment, occupying her right hand so gestures can occupy her left.
She tilts her head in the other direction, but her earrings swing more than her jaw, creating a ridiculous flourish of metal. A moment’s thought. Another moment, but with her eyes looking to the right. Then, a resolve. She moves to pick up her wine glass again. But her exasperation has muddied her coordination. The sewage of the cortex has drained into the brainstem, turning it into a momentary cesspool.
Acid exhaust from the base of her skull travels to her hand as it shoots toward her glass. Her hand jerks a little to the right. Contact with the stem of the glass. A tip, then a tilt. Red flies out everywhere, freed like arterial blood from the body. Formed glass falls through the air until it hits metal with a force greater than it can bear. Formed glass becomes shattered glass. Silence.
Next, a blur of course correction. She laughs at her clumsiness and attempts to clean up the mess. I laugh too. The waiter comes to help. The little dog barks. I notice splotches of red marring his perfect white fur. This makes me laugh, and then it makes me scared. Poor little victim, all covered in blood or wine or both! A quick inspection reveals the dog is fine. My Brilliant Friend takes a napkin and dabs some of the wine off its fur. Another laugh, or two.
“Wow, am I drunk already?” More laughter. “Give it to me straight.”
Okay. The waiter brings a new glass of wine, and you are thrilled as it is even more full than your previous.
Eventually, things settle down, and you take a breath in, a breath you will use to repeat your previous gripe. You exhale. With it, words:
“As I was saying, I’m not feeling very inspired.”
I wager a reply, some naked utterance of confusion, in no way encapsulating everything but in all ways encapsulating nothing.
“But you’re so beautiful?”
A laugh, as if I’m joking. I know you know I’m not. You know I know you know I’m not.
Friday
I’d like to conclude my week of weed writing with gratitude—gratitude for my ability to consume a substance that oils my synaptic joints to a point so slick I can run in wicked loops around my memories, connecting one to the other in strange, impossible-to-translate ways. But then to try to put them on paper anyway! Thrilling.
I am grateful, and I have run out of steam, and I am over my word count. Let’s wrap this up.
Written anonymously for the Harvard Independent.