Unintended Consequences

Part 2: Sticks and Seeds and the Burning Map of Africa

More was in store for me a few nights later. Or so I thought. The post dinner curfew apparently ended (so long as I could testify that the homework was under control), I set off to my friend Randy's house. I’d spent some afternoons and weekends at Randy’s and liked his friendly British mother and quiet father. From there we went next door to Chris's. Randy, Chris and his neighbor Jim's house all backed up on a wide, heavily wooded ravine--providing a lovely setting in the daylight and a discrete backdrop for inappropriate teenage behavior at night.

I had been informed that a treat was in store for me at Chris’s. We were going to get high. From cigarettes to the evil weed. On just my second night out. Wild life. Arleigh and Jimmy T were already there, and we all crowded into Chris's room. He pulled out a folding double-record album cover and opened it carefully to reveal the gutter filled with a mound of...seeds. Okay--more accurately seeds and sticks. Chris proceeded to shake it back and forth, teasing from the  abundant seeds bit of leaf here and there that was scraped into and wrapped, along with some of the seeds and sticks, into a pink, strawberry-flavored double rolling paper, which was squeezed, twisted and licked into a misshapen joint. A fine one, I was told. And we set out for the woods.

It had a harsh taste, and they showed me how to pull it in deep--the sticks crackling, the seeds popping--and hold it... then hack. Mostly hack. Lots of hacking. I think the thin reefer may have gone around no more than twice and I felt...nothing. Not even the light-headed queasy dizziness that the cigarettes provided. I confessed that I was unaffected, and there was scoffing and various explanations. "Sometimes it takes a few times." "You just need to get your blood moving for the THC to get to your brain." "You're too stupid to know it." "Figures--you're so high on life, you prima dick-weed." (Jimmy always had such nice things to say). Chris, always a little bug-eyed to begin with, had a wild look as he pushed his long, stringy hair back and laughed, “Maybe it’ll catch up with you, J.D. It’ll sneak up on you!”

So we took off to wander the lightly graveled, poorly illuminated, winding streets of the neighborhoods strewn between the hills and ravines of our village. Five or six teenage boys with nothing to do but experience the buzz, or lack thereof. After a few blocks, I still felt nothing, but my comrades were convinced the seeds, bits, and twigs--however much they had perforated the rolling paper--had bent their minds. Most amusing was Arleigh, who claimed to be hallucinating and related his vision--"Oh, man. Holy shit. I am so buzzed. It's like, I can see the whole map of Africa, burning from the top, and all the niggers are running off the bottom and dropping off in the ocean!" Kevin elbowed me. A couple of us stifled laughs. We scuffled along, sharing cigarettes we'd purloined from parents: a Lark, a Kent, a Parliament--any butt in a pinch. Kevin and I, the two who lived a bit out of that neighborhood, eventually peeled off and went home, scoffing and giggling about Arleigh’s vision. And me wondering when I might have a vision of my own.