In which I tell you a story.

Once upon a time, way back in the late 80’s when I was in junior college and majoring in voice, I was a stoner. I smoked pot all the time. I smoked it in the walk-in cooler at work at 7-Eleven, I smoked it at Dead shows, I smoked it in public parks and in friends’ living rooms and at parties. Sometimes I kept my bong on the shelf by my bed and smoked before even getting up, but usually I kept my bong in the ‘fridge.

My drug dealer was this guy out in Gresham. I can’t remember how I met him originally, but he was a few years older than me, and both myself and my highschool girlfriend D. had slept with him at one time or another. He wasn’t terribly good in bed, but we both gave him an A for enthusiasm. He had been the guitar player in the local band Quarterflash at one point, but carpel tunnel or something had ruined his hands before they ‘made it’. He had a bunch of gear set up in his bedroom – keyboards and guitars and sequencers.

He was incredibly anal. His house was completely spic and span all the time.

He grew dope up in his attic. I only saw the grow room once, early on, even though he offered to show it to me again later when he went totally hydroponic. He had an air exchange system that blew the pot-scented air out of the top of his house; you couldn’t smell anything on or near his property, but on certain days there was an area several hundred feet away in the middle of a nearby intersection that absolutely reeked of skunk.

I think he was doing two crops in rotation because he always, always had dope. When I went to his house to pick some up, it was always at minimum a three hour visit; he was paranoid about traffic in and out of his house. It was somewhat gruelling to have to be there that long because he was something of a dork, but he was a sweet dork and he always made it worth my while.

He kept his pot in a closet in those rectangular, stackable plastic containers with lids that were rare then but are ubiquitous now. The topmost container in the stack was the shallowest, and contained the absolute cream of the crop: nothing but crystally cola bud, his own stash. The container beneath that one had kind bud. The one beneath that had bud. And so on in decending order of quality to the bottom container, which held shake.

He’d get out the scales and the baggies and bag up whatever I needed, usually a couple ounces bagged up in 8ths and quarters to sell, and he made it take forever. Eventually he’d give me a bud out of the top container “for my trouble,” and I’d stick in in a cellophane in my pocket for later. And he always gave me a bag full of shake. It was good shake, and I’d roll cigarettes out of it with one of those little roller devices you can get at head shops and pass them out to my friends.

I sold pot out of my appartment for awhile, but stopped when the people I was selling to started bringing people I’d never seen before along, or telling strangers to just drop by. I lived in a really busy apartment complex, half college students and half families, but when guys you’ve never seen before knock on your door and say, “You the one with the dope?” while still standing in the hallway, you get pissed off.

My dumb boyfriend got into the habit of just coming over and helping himself, too, which pissed me off even more. At first he just pinched out of my stash, but later he’d just take stuff that was bagged – stuff I had to pay for. He was a schmuck.

Anyway, I never sold pot again, and I quit smoking it altogether in ’91 because I was getting into Eastern spirituality and yoga and meditation and felt like it was the right thing to do. (It was a decision that lost me most of my friends, which surprized and hurt me. But it taught me the difference between a real friendship and a relationship based on chemicals.)

A few years later after I’d moved to Iowa I tried to get stoned again at a party, but my body decided that I no longer liked it. Over the past decade or so I think I’ve tried to smoke maybe ten times, and usually because I was tempted by hash (which I used to love), and each time it was basically a tiny toke followed by extreme discomfort and paranoia followed by a long nap. I think I can no longer handle the plummeting blood sugar levels; the shit makes me wretchedly uncomfortable.

And yes, I realize that half the world prolly thinks I’m a stoner still because of the way I look and act, but hey. There’s worse things it could think.

Even though I can’t smoke it any more, I still occasionally find the smell interesting. Unless it’s that stinky Mexican crap.