August 23, 2009
Parting Glass
To the 8 years I’ve spent in this city, I raise to you the Parting Glass. I toast to the heartbreak and the joyousness. I raise my glass of Jameson to all those who I’ve known and all those I’ve let write a story on my heart. I feel honored and humbled that I’ve been able to love here; the sunny days and the snow-swept streets, the long nights glued to my laptop, typing out what I’ve seen and heard and lived, the hearty laughs and streams of tears, the friends that I will forever be indebted to because they made me better than I was before I met them. To the days on the beach and the lonely walks down allies. To the places where I frequented and knew every name and every line on every face. To the best coffee on Earth served at the dirtiest place in the world. To the bar that will forever be the place where I feel at home, close to the dark wood and the smoke-stained ceiling tiles and the old man in the corner sipping on a glass of Pabst. Last call. Be well. Live lots and laugh hard. I raise to you the Parting Glass. Now let’s drink awhile.
August 17, 2009
The Box
Duane Funches came in from the thick, swampy night looking like so many others that I’d seen before, and I placed him almost immediately in one of those many boxes one has in their mind that house a certain kind of person. He was a black man, tall and thin, with a baseball cap and white whiskers in his splotchy beard. He smelled ripe and musty and carried a white plastic garbage bag that was straining against the contents inside of it.
He sat down next to me, near the corner of the counter, and ordered a pint of beer and “a shot of vodka. A double shot of vodka,” he said. The bartender seemed less than impressed with him, a look of complete ambivalence on her face, like Duane had just stolen something from her. I talked with my friend for a few moments while Duane fumbled through some items he’d placed on the bar. Something stirred in me and I knew I had to talk with him. I was curious about him. I wanted to know who he was.
For a few moments, Duane sat with himself, even though he was right next to me. He spoke to himself in a low voice and then lit a long Newport cigarette. I asked him how he was doing and he sprung to life almost immediately, like I’d just plunged a shot of adrenaline into one of the thick veins that snaked just beneath the chalky skin on his skinny arms.
“Oh, man, I’m good, I’m good,” he said, in a voice that started high and ended low, the ashes from the cigarette falling like snow onto the bar. I asked him where he was from and he began talking angrily about Chicago. “It’s fucked up there, man. Gang bangin’, gangs, all that shit.” Then he placed his face next to mine and whispered: “You know they even got gangs of homosexuals? Yep, five, six of them, they’ll jump your ass and fuck you up.”
“On Halstead Street? Boystown?” I said.
“Fuck yeah, man,” he said. “You know I ain’t fuckin’ around,” he said.
Duane is from “all sides” of Chicago; “Northside, Southside, Eastside, Westside,” he said. There, apparently on “all sides,” he told me he worked the third shift, cleaning the floors at Burger King, Subway, Quiznos and other chain fast food joints.
He didn’t much like to talk about Chicago – I could tell. He wasn’t in that city anymore for a reason, I thought. He ran away, got out, came to Kalamazoo to see his sister and brother-in-law. He wanted to start something new, even at 53-years-old.
“Look at this,” he said, pulling a soaking wet wad of papers from a pocket in his light blue coat that hung from the back of his chair. He placed the wad on the bar and I went through it, finding a Greyhound bus ticket to Chicago. He was to leave on August 10 on the 1:25 p.m. bus. He never got on.
We shook hands and I could feel the heaps of heavy calluses that circled around his right palm. They were working hands, the kind that aren’t nice on the eyes, but are functional for the person whose arms they are attached to. He didn’t want to talk much about what those hands had been doing since he got to Kalamazoo, but I could sense it involved a lot of loneliness. I decided not to press.
My friend gave Duane a taste of his Guinness. Duane was impressed. He’d never tried the stuff, but being a “connoisseur,” as he called himself, he gave a running commentary of the goodness of the drink. “It’s got taste. It’s got class. It feels good in your mouth,” he said.
“It stays with you,” I said. “Hell yeah it does!” he said matter-of-factly.
I don’t know why, but I asked Duane if he liked Marvin Gaye. He did, a lot. Duane seemed to like everything, well, except for the City of Broad Shoulders.
I felt an urge to touch his back, to run it up and down just to make him feel somehow safe, at home. It felt like the back of a dying man, thin from the chemotherapy or the unwillingness to eat anymore. His scapulas felt like dull knives. I put my left arm around his shoulders and we sang together.
“Ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough baby…”
“Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying…”
We laughed together, and I could look deep into Duane’s mouth. I could see what life had done to his teeth, the edges of which were a dark brown, like he forgot to brush them after eating a big brownie. As he laughed, tiny drops of saliva spewed from between his teeth, landing on my left arm and the left side of my face. I didn’t care.
A Michael Jackson song came on and Duane got up to show my friend and I “a few moves.” He stood just behind us, and flapped his arms ever so slightly, nodding his head to the beat. He had mad rhythm, and had for his whole life, I thought.
He slapped me on the back. “Chris, we’re brothers, you and me,” he said. A waitress stood nearby, fumbling with something on a table. “Hey, you know what?” he asked her. “Me and this man are brothers.”
“Yeah, brothers from another mother,” she said. He laughed again.
“Can I have some of that big baboon booty sliced real thin,” he said to the bartender, who wasn’t quite able to make out what he said. Duane laughed, like an 8-year-old would when they just got away with a joke on an adult. At that moment, he seemed at once completely innocent, almost childlike in his antics and sincerity. He just wanted to laugh with someone, have them acknowledge him, make them know that he was a man, a human being, a soul.
“If the whole world stopped spinning tomorrow, we’d all be gone,” he said. “It don’t matter who you are. You got one shot, just one shot.”
My friend and I had to go. Off to another establishment on one of the ever waning nights I was to have in this city.
“We got to go, Duane,” I said. “Got to work in the morning.”
His face changed and I felt a little guilty about the work comment because it wasn’t true. I felt like I owed this man complete sincerity, because he was giving it to me.
“Oh, no, Chris. Now I’m going to be all alone here, just by myself,” he said. “I’m going to be sad.” I knew that he was not lying. His eyes got long and looked misty. He seemed like a little boy who was about to be abandoned.
“I’ll see you around, man. I will,” I said. “Give me a hug.”
We embraced and Duane spoke softly into my ear.
“I love you Chris, I do,” he said. “I love you, too, Duane,” I responded.
I meant it.
My friend and I walked out of the bar and into the night’s thickness, made that way from a recent thundershower. I looked up at a streetlight and enjoyed how the amber glow was all fuzzy from the humidity that hung in the air like a blanket.
Then I thought of Duane. I took that box out of my mind and I crushed it, then threw it in a dirty dumpster in the back of the bar.
He sat down next to me, near the corner of the counter, and ordered a pint of beer and “a shot of vodka. A double shot of vodka,” he said. The bartender seemed less than impressed with him, a look of complete ambivalence on her face, like Duane had just stolen something from her. I talked with my friend for a few moments while Duane fumbled through some items he’d placed on the bar. Something stirred in me and I knew I had to talk with him. I was curious about him. I wanted to know who he was.
For a few moments, Duane sat with himself, even though he was right next to me. He spoke to himself in a low voice and then lit a long Newport cigarette. I asked him how he was doing and he sprung to life almost immediately, like I’d just plunged a shot of adrenaline into one of the thick veins that snaked just beneath the chalky skin on his skinny arms.
“Oh, man, I’m good, I’m good,” he said, in a voice that started high and ended low, the ashes from the cigarette falling like snow onto the bar. I asked him where he was from and he began talking angrily about Chicago. “It’s fucked up there, man. Gang bangin’, gangs, all that shit.” Then he placed his face next to mine and whispered: “You know they even got gangs of homosexuals? Yep, five, six of them, they’ll jump your ass and fuck you up.”
“On Halstead Street? Boystown?” I said.
“Fuck yeah, man,” he said. “You know I ain’t fuckin’ around,” he said.
Duane is from “all sides” of Chicago; “Northside, Southside, Eastside, Westside,” he said. There, apparently on “all sides,” he told me he worked the third shift, cleaning the floors at Burger King, Subway, Quiznos and other chain fast food joints.
He didn’t much like to talk about Chicago – I could tell. He wasn’t in that city anymore for a reason, I thought. He ran away, got out, came to Kalamazoo to see his sister and brother-in-law. He wanted to start something new, even at 53-years-old.
“Look at this,” he said, pulling a soaking wet wad of papers from a pocket in his light blue coat that hung from the back of his chair. He placed the wad on the bar and I went through it, finding a Greyhound bus ticket to Chicago. He was to leave on August 10 on the 1:25 p.m. bus. He never got on.
We shook hands and I could feel the heaps of heavy calluses that circled around his right palm. They were working hands, the kind that aren’t nice on the eyes, but are functional for the person whose arms they are attached to. He didn’t want to talk much about what those hands had been doing since he got to Kalamazoo, but I could sense it involved a lot of loneliness. I decided not to press.
My friend gave Duane a taste of his Guinness. Duane was impressed. He’d never tried the stuff, but being a “connoisseur,” as he called himself, he gave a running commentary of the goodness of the drink. “It’s got taste. It’s got class. It feels good in your mouth,” he said.
“It stays with you,” I said. “Hell yeah it does!” he said matter-of-factly.
I don’t know why, but I asked Duane if he liked Marvin Gaye. He did, a lot. Duane seemed to like everything, well, except for the City of Broad Shoulders.
I felt an urge to touch his back, to run it up and down just to make him feel somehow safe, at home. It felt like the back of a dying man, thin from the chemotherapy or the unwillingness to eat anymore. His scapulas felt like dull knives. I put my left arm around his shoulders and we sang together.
“Ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough baby…”
“Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying…”
We laughed together, and I could look deep into Duane’s mouth. I could see what life had done to his teeth, the edges of which were a dark brown, like he forgot to brush them after eating a big brownie. As he laughed, tiny drops of saliva spewed from between his teeth, landing on my left arm and the left side of my face. I didn’t care.
A Michael Jackson song came on and Duane got up to show my friend and I “a few moves.” He stood just behind us, and flapped his arms ever so slightly, nodding his head to the beat. He had mad rhythm, and had for his whole life, I thought.
He slapped me on the back. “Chris, we’re brothers, you and me,” he said. A waitress stood nearby, fumbling with something on a table. “Hey, you know what?” he asked her. “Me and this man are brothers.”
“Yeah, brothers from another mother,” she said. He laughed again.
“Can I have some of that big baboon booty sliced real thin,” he said to the bartender, who wasn’t quite able to make out what he said. Duane laughed, like an 8-year-old would when they just got away with a joke on an adult. At that moment, he seemed at once completely innocent, almost childlike in his antics and sincerity. He just wanted to laugh with someone, have them acknowledge him, make them know that he was a man, a human being, a soul.
“If the whole world stopped spinning tomorrow, we’d all be gone,” he said. “It don’t matter who you are. You got one shot, just one shot.”
My friend and I had to go. Off to another establishment on one of the ever waning nights I was to have in this city.
“We got to go, Duane,” I said. “Got to work in the morning.”
His face changed and I felt a little guilty about the work comment because it wasn’t true. I felt like I owed this man complete sincerity, because he was giving it to me.
“Oh, no, Chris. Now I’m going to be all alone here, just by myself,” he said. “I’m going to be sad.” I knew that he was not lying. His eyes got long and looked misty. He seemed like a little boy who was about to be abandoned.
“I’ll see you around, man. I will,” I said. “Give me a hug.”
We embraced and Duane spoke softly into my ear.
“I love you Chris, I do,” he said. “I love you, too, Duane,” I responded.
I meant it.
My friend and I walked out of the bar and into the night’s thickness, made that way from a recent thundershower. I looked up at a streetlight and enjoyed how the amber glow was all fuzzy from the humidity that hung in the air like a blanket.
Then I thought of Duane. I took that box out of my mind and I crushed it, then threw it in a dirty dumpster in the back of the bar.
Which side are you on?
It’s about 3:30 p.m. and the Amtrak train from Chicago is hurtling into the city, its horn blaring out all the other noise as I stand near Rose Street. A few haggard looking men rush across the tracks and head toward the homeless drop-in shelter, down a rocky makeshift path strewn with thousands of cigarette butts, broken pints of cheap liquor and discarded shitty diapers.
The train tracks cut the city in two here. Starting at Westnedge Avenue and heading east for more than a mile, there are two Kalamazoos: the downtown area to the south with its shops, bars, parks and people wearing sunglasses and walking around with briefcases and places to go and an area to the north seemingly abandoned.
It’s here, on “the other side of the tracks,” that an area very much unknown even to those who have called Kalamazoo home for decades languishes beneath the fear and ignorance of the rest of the city’s residents.
Welcome to The Northside.
It’s a word that describes more than just a neighborhood. It has become part of the lexicon of this city, a word that has become synonymous with drugs and violence, prostitution and poverty, laziness and ineptitude.
One of the largest of Kalamazoo’s neighborhoods, it’s a place where the dreams of the city go to die, it’s said, an area where well-intentioned programs passed by city leaders fizzle and fail in the face of a residential population that could care less.
But there burning questions that swirl around the Northside that no media outlet in the city would dare ask because of the big issues that would undoubtedly bubble to the top. Thorny issues like race, class, poverty and lack of economic opportunity.
Hell, most reporters won’t even dare walk the streets here. I know, because I’ve seen the anxiety-filled inaction. It’s too dangerous, they say. Better to make a phone call to the police or find a person to talk to close to a major road. No sense in heading into the guts of the place. Lord knows the only thing they might find of you is your tattered reporter’s notebook with “HELP ME!” hurriedly written on the first page.
But that is exactly what drew me to this place.
Take a few seconds. Think of that word: Northside. What comes to mind? Perhaps you are one of those who wish you could drive faster than the 30 mph speed limit on the two main roads that cut north and south through the neighborhood. When do you frequent the area? An afternoon beer in the Bell’s beer garden?
The train tracks cut the city in two here. Starting at Westnedge Avenue and heading east for more than a mile, there are two Kalamazoos: the downtown area to the south with its shops, bars, parks and people wearing sunglasses and walking around with briefcases and places to go and an area to the north seemingly abandoned.
It’s here, on “the other side of the tracks,” that an area very much unknown even to those who have called Kalamazoo home for decades languishes beneath the fear and ignorance of the rest of the city’s residents.
Welcome to The Northside.
It’s a word that describes more than just a neighborhood. It has become part of the lexicon of this city, a word that has become synonymous with drugs and violence, prostitution and poverty, laziness and ineptitude.
One of the largest of Kalamazoo’s neighborhoods, it’s a place where the dreams of the city go to die, it’s said, an area where well-intentioned programs passed by city leaders fizzle and fail in the face of a residential population that could care less.
But there burning questions that swirl around the Northside that no media outlet in the city would dare ask because of the big issues that would undoubtedly bubble to the top. Thorny issues like race, class, poverty and lack of economic opportunity.
Hell, most reporters won’t even dare walk the streets here. I know, because I’ve seen the anxiety-filled inaction. It’s too dangerous, they say. Better to make a phone call to the police or find a person to talk to close to a major road. No sense in heading into the guts of the place. Lord knows the only thing they might find of you is your tattered reporter’s notebook with “HELP ME!” hurriedly written on the first page.
But that is exactly what drew me to this place.
Take a few seconds. Think of that word: Northside. What comes to mind? Perhaps you are one of those who wish you could drive faster than the 30 mph speed limit on the two main roads that cut north and south through the neighborhood. When do you frequent the area? An afternoon beer in the Bell’s beer garden?
August 2, 2009
To Lando, with affection
Never go into a small room in the basement of a bar. Nothing good happens there – ever.
However, being just barely intoxicated – the kind of buzz where you’ll do things you normally wouldn’t but where you are still able to remember whatever it is that you do – I didn’t take this advice on a recent night. And the consequences were nothing short of mind-numbing.
The setting: A college bar called “The Grotto at Capone’s,” one of those flair-riddled bars with the kind of overblown kitsch that makes you feel like you’re in your grandmother’s basement, only a lot cleaner.
The notorious Chicago gangster is well represented here. Tommy guns line the walls, pictures of Capone with a freshly lit cigar between his teeth are within eyeshot of any particular place as is, of course, his famous mug shot.
The Grotto used to be a hippy bar, full of patchouli-oiled, dred-locked hobo co-eds who would sip microbrews and sneak hits off a bowl in the bathroom.
Those were the good old days, and I wanted to return to them one last time.
The bar was already filling-up when my best friend – who happens to be old pals with the manager – led me down a short hallway, through a door with the feel and look of balsa wood and into the break room, a small space lit by two, long fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling.
The room was full of shit – cigarette butts littered the floor, various hardware implements were thrown in the corner, un-matching chairs circled around a white thrift store table.
It didn’t take long for things to get down to brass tacks.
The manager packed weed so tightly into a short, glass bowl that I thought a marijuana diamond would emerge from the ashes of the last hit.
Four semi-intoxicated men sat at the table. Something about gangster rap was uttered and then the bowl – with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on the glass (which didn’t ally my fears one bit) – made its crazed carousel from hand to hand to hand to hand.
I can’t speak for the others, as pot packs a different punch for everyone, but this is how the session went for me.
After hit No. 1: Rising euphoria.
After hit No. 2: Growing concern.
After hit No. 3: Loss of feeling of feet.
After hit No. 4: Complete panic.
For the sometimes pot puffer, smoking with professional pot-partakers is dangerous in two ways.
First, you don’t want to seem like some kind of pot pussy, so you try to keep up. And you better inhale, because they’re watching you. “Are they watching me? I think they’re watching me. Oh my god, are they watching me?”
Second…well, fuck it. You just get blown out of your mind.
The only reason we left that room was because the weed had been cashed. What wasn’t cashed was my tab, and the four of us had every intention of taking this lightheadedness to BuzzCon 4.
As we emerged from the man cave/pot den, the bar seemed to be overflowing. It seemed like every slut and douche bag multiplied themselves five times over, like Gremlins do – with the bubbles on their back that steam and froth after they get wet, eventually spewing forth a new
Gremlin from each back pod.
This was not a pleasant thought.
Neither was the fact that we were in a dimly lit basement with capacity for about 100 but was filled with 200. One staircase, 200 people, someone drops a cigarette, bar lights on fire, mob scene to escape flesh melting fire, pathetic death.
At this point my mind was reeling. I scared two women I was talking to because I told one of them they’d never get a job because corporate America was “a big slut that fucks everybody.”
They hastily moved to another table.
The air was thick and my ears had a constant furry buzz in them, like someone was ripping apart a pad of steel wool inside my eardrums. I sipped a pint of PBR and told my friend that we should go outside for some fresh air.
Outside, I made a mistake of lighting a cigarette. It seemed like it was 10 minutes, but I took probably only four puffs. Then my legs started to give way, like my torso was being held up with over-cooked angel hair pasta. I was laughing the whole time – for no reason – and reminiscing about the time I took a landscape rock from outside the “old bar” and threw it at a frat establishment across the parking lot.
Turned out I almost hit a cop in the head. My friends at the time told me to rush into a video store in the area, but I never made it. The cop came up like gangbusters and asked me “what the fuck are you doing, you asshole?” and took my information. The stars aligned, however, and he was called to more pressing matters.
So by this time, me and my pasta legs noodled our way back down to the basement.
By now, the entire scene was a sea of tube tops, popped-collars, cleavage, gelled hair and high heels. It moved and began to drive itself into a massive, whirling mess. IT whirled faster and faster, tighter and tighter, and I thought that at any moment the energy would either crack space-time and usher in some kind of demon legion or create a black hole that would suck us all to another dimension.
It was now that I swore the manager laced the pot with crystal meth or crystal light or some kind of heavy shit that has crystals in it.
I had to leave.
“Dude, I’m out,” I said to my friend, now shooting a glass of Jameson, which made me puke in me head.
“Just hold on, you’re fine,” he said.
“Dude, I’m out.”
“What the fuck? Just stay. You’re freaking out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”
“Why? Now you’re freaking me out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”
And then I was.
I made my way through the Capone mob, past the two girls and frat guys that seemed to be 10 feet tall at the time. They reminded me of oak trees.
I made it up the stairs, clutching the railing for dear life – literally – through the upstairs malay and in to the street.
I made a zig-zag pattern through the parking lot and somehow ended up – ok, purposefully ended up – at the Campus Kitchen Chinese restaurant, an establishment that specializes in mystery meat concoctions that are sucked up with reckless abandon by drunk college kids who throw food at the help and scream about the pussy their going to get later with voices that could cut through marble.
I ordered a pint of chicken lo mein and a side of crab rangoons. I paid at 1:30 a.m. and got the meal at 1:45 a.m., but it actually took 45 minutes to make the food.
As I stumbled out, I was looking for some ambiance. I like to be inspired when I’m stoned.
The WMU campus would be perfect, I thought.
So I made my way in to the heart of this fine institution – my alma mater – a place where you go when you can’t get into MSU or U of M. In the hazy, yellowness of the streetlights, I ate my rangoons and a deep blanket of calm wrapped around me. A campus cop drove by and I waved.
He didn’t wave back.
I walked over to the Honors College, where I’d spent many semesters, and looked at my image in the mirrored front door for probably 10 minutes, noting the way the rangoons greased-up my lips and admiring how well I chew my food.
The college’s dean, a man who I’d had many philosophical conversations with, would have been so proud.
The lo mein had to be eaten in a more quiet setting. The paranoia was setting in quick now. Ten freshmen drunks were making their way back to their dorm and I didn’t want to be spotted, so I found a pine tree and sat underneath it on a bed of wet wood chips.
After each bite, I looked over both my shoulders, like I was some kind of cave man looking for a horde to come over a non-existent hill in the distance. I’ve never finished a pint of lo mein, but I did that night. Even the soybean stragglers were slurped up.
Thirst overwhelmed me now, probably from the MSG. Water? No. Salt-splattered, dirt-encrusted snowbanks? Yes. I took a handful and ate it like a snow cone. I must have looked like a transient with nothing to lose.
Now to get home, about a mile and a half away.
I walked gingerly. Why is it that, when your mind is swimming in THC, that everything you want takes forever and everything you don’t want takes a few seconds?
I cut through campus, avoiding people like they had darts tipped with the AIDS virus that they intended on throwing at me. I ducked behind bushes, dumpsters, cars. A few people honked at me as they drove by, and my heart jumped against my rib cage.
One last hurdle.
I tried to time my walk across Stadium Drive so that the least amount of cars would be to my right and left, and I timed it perfectly. Running would have looked too strange, but I had to do something different. A regular gait would not do, so I chewed my fingernails as I crossed the five lanes.
Up the hill, down the hill, then up another hill, next to the football stadium. I tried to jump the fence and get on the field, where I intended to run the entire length of the gridiron for the only reason that I was stoned. Seeing the outlines on the snow of other people’s failed attempts, I gave up, imagining a broken leg, collar bone, face, and other assorted maladies.
I was now five minutes away from my flannel sheets.
Up another hill and I ended up at East Hall, overlooking the city. I screamed with all I could “I
LOVE YOU!” and scampered off, down a staircase that leads to my street. It was so packed with snow and ice – from snowboarders, residential skiers and drunk stoners like myself – that I had to schuss my way down, which was easy because my kicks have no traction. I had to hunch the whole way, like some kind of half-alive Quasimodo, and I’m sure it appeared to the sober observer that I was about to toss the recently ingested lo mein onto the dirty snow.
I made it home unscathed, however. In the bathroom, I flipped on the lights and peered into the mirror. It looked like my eyes just had an artery explode in them. Red, everywhere, like a thousand tiny blood drenched streets converging together in a twisted, non-sensical pattern drawn up by a city planner on an acid trip.
But all was well. I was safe.
I went to bed with my shoes on.
However, being just barely intoxicated – the kind of buzz where you’ll do things you normally wouldn’t but where you are still able to remember whatever it is that you do – I didn’t take this advice on a recent night. And the consequences were nothing short of mind-numbing.
The setting: A college bar called “The Grotto at Capone’s,” one of those flair-riddled bars with the kind of overblown kitsch that makes you feel like you’re in your grandmother’s basement, only a lot cleaner.
The notorious Chicago gangster is well represented here. Tommy guns line the walls, pictures of Capone with a freshly lit cigar between his teeth are within eyeshot of any particular place as is, of course, his famous mug shot.
The Grotto used to be a hippy bar, full of patchouli-oiled, dred-locked hobo co-eds who would sip microbrews and sneak hits off a bowl in the bathroom.
Those were the good old days, and I wanted to return to them one last time.
The bar was already filling-up when my best friend – who happens to be old pals with the manager – led me down a short hallway, through a door with the feel and look of balsa wood and into the break room, a small space lit by two, long fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling.
The room was full of shit – cigarette butts littered the floor, various hardware implements were thrown in the corner, un-matching chairs circled around a white thrift store table.
It didn’t take long for things to get down to brass tacks.
The manager packed weed so tightly into a short, glass bowl that I thought a marijuana diamond would emerge from the ashes of the last hit.
Four semi-intoxicated men sat at the table. Something about gangster rap was uttered and then the bowl – with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on the glass (which didn’t ally my fears one bit) – made its crazed carousel from hand to hand to hand to hand.
I can’t speak for the others, as pot packs a different punch for everyone, but this is how the session went for me.
After hit No. 1: Rising euphoria.
After hit No. 2: Growing concern.
After hit No. 3: Loss of feeling of feet.
After hit No. 4: Complete panic.
For the sometimes pot puffer, smoking with professional pot-partakers is dangerous in two ways.
First, you don’t want to seem like some kind of pot pussy, so you try to keep up. And you better inhale, because they’re watching you. “Are they watching me? I think they’re watching me. Oh my god, are they watching me?”
Second…well, fuck it. You just get blown out of your mind.
The only reason we left that room was because the weed had been cashed. What wasn’t cashed was my tab, and the four of us had every intention of taking this lightheadedness to BuzzCon 4.
As we emerged from the man cave/pot den, the bar seemed to be overflowing. It seemed like every slut and douche bag multiplied themselves five times over, like Gremlins do – with the bubbles on their back that steam and froth after they get wet, eventually spewing forth a new
Gremlin from each back pod.
This was not a pleasant thought.
Neither was the fact that we were in a dimly lit basement with capacity for about 100 but was filled with 200. One staircase, 200 people, someone drops a cigarette, bar lights on fire, mob scene to escape flesh melting fire, pathetic death.
At this point my mind was reeling. I scared two women I was talking to because I told one of them they’d never get a job because corporate America was “a big slut that fucks everybody.”
They hastily moved to another table.
The air was thick and my ears had a constant furry buzz in them, like someone was ripping apart a pad of steel wool inside my eardrums. I sipped a pint of PBR and told my friend that we should go outside for some fresh air.
Outside, I made a mistake of lighting a cigarette. It seemed like it was 10 minutes, but I took probably only four puffs. Then my legs started to give way, like my torso was being held up with over-cooked angel hair pasta. I was laughing the whole time – for no reason – and reminiscing about the time I took a landscape rock from outside the “old bar” and threw it at a frat establishment across the parking lot.
Turned out I almost hit a cop in the head. My friends at the time told me to rush into a video store in the area, but I never made it. The cop came up like gangbusters and asked me “what the fuck are you doing, you asshole?” and took my information. The stars aligned, however, and he was called to more pressing matters.
So by this time, me and my pasta legs noodled our way back down to the basement.
By now, the entire scene was a sea of tube tops, popped-collars, cleavage, gelled hair and high heels. It moved and began to drive itself into a massive, whirling mess. IT whirled faster and faster, tighter and tighter, and I thought that at any moment the energy would either crack space-time and usher in some kind of demon legion or create a black hole that would suck us all to another dimension.
It was now that I swore the manager laced the pot with crystal meth or crystal light or some kind of heavy shit that has crystals in it.
I had to leave.
“Dude, I’m out,” I said to my friend, now shooting a glass of Jameson, which made me puke in me head.
“Just hold on, you’re fine,” he said.
“Dude, I’m out.”
“What the fuck? Just stay. You’re freaking out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”
“Why? Now you’re freaking me out.”
“Dude, I’m out.”
And then I was.
I made my way through the Capone mob, past the two girls and frat guys that seemed to be 10 feet tall at the time. They reminded me of oak trees.
I made it up the stairs, clutching the railing for dear life – literally – through the upstairs malay and in to the street.
I made a zig-zag pattern through the parking lot and somehow ended up – ok, purposefully ended up – at the Campus Kitchen Chinese restaurant, an establishment that specializes in mystery meat concoctions that are sucked up with reckless abandon by drunk college kids who throw food at the help and scream about the pussy their going to get later with voices that could cut through marble.
I ordered a pint of chicken lo mein and a side of crab rangoons. I paid at 1:30 a.m. and got the meal at 1:45 a.m., but it actually took 45 minutes to make the food.
As I stumbled out, I was looking for some ambiance. I like to be inspired when I’m stoned.
The WMU campus would be perfect, I thought.
So I made my way in to the heart of this fine institution – my alma mater – a place where you go when you can’t get into MSU or U of M. In the hazy, yellowness of the streetlights, I ate my rangoons and a deep blanket of calm wrapped around me. A campus cop drove by and I waved.
He didn’t wave back.
I walked over to the Honors College, where I’d spent many semesters, and looked at my image in the mirrored front door for probably 10 minutes, noting the way the rangoons greased-up my lips and admiring how well I chew my food.
The college’s dean, a man who I’d had many philosophical conversations with, would have been so proud.
The lo mein had to be eaten in a more quiet setting. The paranoia was setting in quick now. Ten freshmen drunks were making their way back to their dorm and I didn’t want to be spotted, so I found a pine tree and sat underneath it on a bed of wet wood chips.
After each bite, I looked over both my shoulders, like I was some kind of cave man looking for a horde to come over a non-existent hill in the distance. I’ve never finished a pint of lo mein, but I did that night. Even the soybean stragglers were slurped up.
Thirst overwhelmed me now, probably from the MSG. Water? No. Salt-splattered, dirt-encrusted snowbanks? Yes. I took a handful and ate it like a snow cone. I must have looked like a transient with nothing to lose.
Now to get home, about a mile and a half away.
I walked gingerly. Why is it that, when your mind is swimming in THC, that everything you want takes forever and everything you don’t want takes a few seconds?
I cut through campus, avoiding people like they had darts tipped with the AIDS virus that they intended on throwing at me. I ducked behind bushes, dumpsters, cars. A few people honked at me as they drove by, and my heart jumped against my rib cage.
One last hurdle.
I tried to time my walk across Stadium Drive so that the least amount of cars would be to my right and left, and I timed it perfectly. Running would have looked too strange, but I had to do something different. A regular gait would not do, so I chewed my fingernails as I crossed the five lanes.
Up the hill, down the hill, then up another hill, next to the football stadium. I tried to jump the fence and get on the field, where I intended to run the entire length of the gridiron for the only reason that I was stoned. Seeing the outlines on the snow of other people’s failed attempts, I gave up, imagining a broken leg, collar bone, face, and other assorted maladies.
I was now five minutes away from my flannel sheets.
Up another hill and I ended up at East Hall, overlooking the city. I screamed with all I could “I
LOVE YOU!” and scampered off, down a staircase that leads to my street. It was so packed with snow and ice – from snowboarders, residential skiers and drunk stoners like myself – that I had to schuss my way down, which was easy because my kicks have no traction. I had to hunch the whole way, like some kind of half-alive Quasimodo, and I’m sure it appeared to the sober observer that I was about to toss the recently ingested lo mein onto the dirty snow.
I made it home unscathed, however. In the bathroom, I flipped on the lights and peered into the mirror. It looked like my eyes just had an artery explode in them. Red, everywhere, like a thousand tiny blood drenched streets converging together in a twisted, non-sensical pattern drawn up by a city planner on an acid trip.
But all was well. I was safe.
I went to bed with my shoes on.
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