It's Not Like I Was Ever Telling A Different Story

Andrew James Bolton
English 204
Mr. Christian Winn
17 September 2008
Djarum Blacks, Rev.
Exiting an elevator has come to be a point of relief for me, as nowadays I can’t help feeling put on the spot during the forced meetings that take place within. I exhale slowly as the mirrored doors open and sit back to let everyone else leave before lighting a Camel Menthol and pushing through the double doors leading outside my dorm. Stepping down the stairs there appears at my side an acquaintance who greets me by name while I just call him Man, glancing down to watch my footing on the ice, or to avoid conveying my memory lapse. Just a few months ago I was more than anything excited to meet people as an incoming freshman at Boise State, but it seems my new friends are always most excited for introductions moments after I’ve gotten stoned and disinterested.
Today the grey Autumn feels more than ever like a transition, not an actual season, with piles of snow buried below plant matter, slowly decomposing in the gutter. We begin our shivering trot toward the Student Union Building for another nondescript campus meal, and I notice him pinching between his thumb and forefinger a black clove cigarette. In high school, before I’d determined my preference through experience, I already knew them as The Goth Kid Cigarettes. They spark brightly as one drags on them, then leave the tongue feeling strangely numb. The smoke is somewhat less offensive but far more intrusive than that of a standard tobacco cigarette, and for me paradoxically reminiscent of both gingerbread and excess. My companion and I walk, engaged as an automatic response in our ritual education complaints, and I squint to soften the trail of clove smoke that blows into my eyes.

In the weeks following my high school graduating class’s Commencement I found myself trying to decide on classes for the coming semester, still lacking the confidence of one who has a plan. Going to college was for me the preferable choice after graduating because it gave me a goal, however nebulous. I felt little internal anxiety over deciding a career mostly because the actual work required to get me to school had already been done by my parents over the course of my youth. More than anything I found myself concerned with finding ways to cope with the barrage of cliché expectations from people I hadn’t felt close to for years. Attempting to sum up what I could already tell was going to be at least a year of confusion just never appealed to me. I knew before anything else that come the end of break I would be leaving Idaho Falls, and I had a euphoric sense of disconnectedness from responsibility. It was essentially the last summer of my youth.
*
I’ve avoided cloves since climbing from the rubble of the night I first tried them, when I awoke coughing up bits of the pink and brown lung butter deposited from an entire pack. Smoking cigarettes in general was still a novelty to me, and I had bought the cloves earlier that day as a novelty for the evening. A neighborhood friend Josh whom I’d known nearly all my life had invited me to come hang out and smoke at the fire pit in his parents’ backyard. I lived within a few blocks and long boarded over around ten o‘clock, the sun still barely lighting the sky from below the horizon as I closed the gate to his backyard behind me. A glass patio table had been pulled out to accommodate the already numerous guests, and as I approached it I could see two of my friends around it, silhouetted against the fire behind them. John and DeWitt were rolling a joint as I sat down next to them and lit a clove. “Yo dawgs. What’s up?”
John glanced up and said “Hey man,“ then continued concentrating on rolling. Dee was giving his standard huge smile, relaxed in a patio loveseat, said “’Sup dawg, ha ha. There’s beer in that cooler over there,” he pointed toward the fire, “Blue Ribbon.” He held his up as evidence.

*
It was always interesting during that summer to see how many people I recognized at any given gathering, and to try to remember where each would disappear to in a few short months. It wouldn’t come for more than a few, partially because it just seemed so unreal at this point. There were hardly any specific memories I could call on to distinguish each person, so melded together had my early life become at that point. I’d known some of them my entire schooling career. Recognizing that I was unlikely to really know most of those around me in only a few years had also led me to a state of detachment from everyone but those whom I had just joined. I had found an aspect of mutual trust in the relationships formed with these cohorts due to the inherent (though truthfully slight) risk in our indulgence that took a quick hold on my emotional availability, and it was with them I found myself feeling most comfortable.
*
Now equipped with an audience, I generously wasted only a few minutes settling in before lighting my first clove, dragging hard to passively show off the sparks. It attracted immediate attention, and I was forced to explain, to my blithe delight, the many details. I am still young enough that this conversation could happen today.
Dee asked, “Well, but wait. How could they put black powder in the paper? Wouldn’t that be like, way bad for you?”
I sniffed. “Well obviously they don’t put in enough for it to be bad for you, dude, they wouldn’t get any customers if they did. It’s economics! Also, smell them.” He was forced to consent his skepticism in the face of the holiday cheer I wafted his way, and I went on. “They make your mouth feel like you ate a bunch of banana Runts after a while, because of the cloves, and the clerk at Tobacco Connection told me she only smokes them when she has a sore throat.”
“What, it‘s like a menthol then.”
“Dude, no, it’s like Novocain.” I gave them each one, and John announced he’d completed his joint.
*
Most of the people who frequented the same gatherings I found myself at were tolerant of, but we still generally smoked away from the main group. Josh had just returned from a beer run and made his way over to our group with a few cans of Pabst.
“Hey guys… probably you could just smoke under the tramp. Neighbors won’t see you.” He stepped over to the fire pit while we found dry patches of grass. Josh had one of the king-sized trampolines, the kind you don’t realize are larger than normal until half of your body slips between the springs. John and I settled under on the side facing the fire, with Dee again silhouetted. We watched him light it from across the way and and crawled across the fourteen foot circle to pass it to John.
Josh returned a moment later with Colin and Mark, who brought a second joint to the circle and sat down. It’s a nervous habit, but I wiped my lips on my sleeve before either was near enough to me for anyone to notice; the folkway of clockwise progression in the sharing of marijuana was under way, and it’s not uncommon to keep on eye on those taking hits, if only out of repressed avarice. I also have the unfortunate tendency to leave spittle on social joints, and only seconds later Colin was telling me to pay attention as he shook it near my face. We worked out a two puff pass and in a few minutes they were done, and our meeting disbanded.
*
At this point I took it upon myself to assume the graciousness of our host with another beverage and a warm seat by the fire. Smoking tobacco immediately after marijuana for some reason seems to amplify their effects, and I lit another clove. I knew most of those around the fire, but was mostly just looking for a place to get warm. It was that time of year, people were just overly curious about the most minute associate’s future. I buffeted their questioning with the same prepared lines I gave to my father’s friends at church.
“Where are you going to school?”
Smiling, I replied, “Boise State actually, and mostly because…”
“Why?”
“…Uhm. Because my major is fairly common and my parents are helping me with my funding, so I’d rather just stay in state to keep the cost low.”
“Oh! What are you majoring in?”
“Train Driving, a minor in Spelling.”
“What?”
*
It was unfortunately never possible to let it end at that, as in my preparations there were no further questions to be asked. When I was pressed for some sort of response that could be found more ‘legitimate’, I would give them whichever answer seemed most likely to appease them; lying to these long-time peers was no different at this point from lying to old religious strangers. Telling them I hadn’t declared a major would just result in more of the same unnecessary pity. I understand that it‘s all just formality, but that doesn‘t make it less of a waste of time. I was also aware that most of them were unsure of what their goals really were anyway.
*
I have found that in different peer groups there come to exist memes which are particular of the members’ knowledge and experience. The general understanding is that nobody is fretting as to the validity of any one over another, but that as with most harmless myths you’re better off just playing it safe. The most common of these little bits of cultural exchange are a pair which endearingly rhyme, the first being “beer before liquor, never sicker” (or alternatively, “throw up quicker”), the second simply the same rule reversed. Throughout the course of the evening I began to wonder whether there were a similar rule which could be applied to the combination of alcohol and any other substance, and that I perhaps ought to have already known it if it existed. These are the thoughts we would forget if there were no irony.
*
As with the natural progression of such social events, things more or less repeated themselves in varyingly humorous ways until around two in the morning. I had embraced the anesthetic quality of the cloves as a sort of tickly mouth euphoria and surpassed the issue by ensuring that there were none to be had the following morning; I’d given out five, smoked thirteen, and broken one. Both the nicotine content and the price had been unsatisfying, and I was fully aware of my desire to enjoy a Camel the following morning. I smoked the last two while long boarding lazily home and deposited the box in the gutter half a block from my house, where I took a deep breath and paused, staring at it for a moment. I noticed suddenly that my mouth was filling with hot saliva completely of its own volition, and I gave in to the expulsion, finding satisfaction only in my privacy. Stumbling through my frustration I cleaned my teeth and fell slowly asleep.

The numbness departed fifteen minutes after I’d smoked the last clove, and as it did so I could already feel how raw the back of my throat was. Only after nights like that do I recall being impartially impressed by the strain of a deep breath, the feeling of breaking through a silk webbing inside my lungs with really only the force of my will to aid. In the morning when I would wipe the dry mucus from my eyes I’d find myself coughing up an entirely different form of the same stuff for at least an hour. To this day I’ve never let it bother me, claimed it as my own through such misnomers as lung butter, and unpredictably I’ve found comfort in the lack of certainty in such simple matters as my hypothetical educational future. Not being bound by any self-created goal prevented any question of success or failure to mar my experience, in turn facilitating the desire to move beyond the life of the town I had grown up in. Seeking order in what was mostly chaos, I’ve managed to convince myself that any decisions which I make that in retrospect I regret are simply another aspect of the transition I’m experiencing between young adult to responsible adult. Those are, of course, the categories.


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And so, that's sort of how it happened. I mean, I got drunk.

I only really edited it to flesh out some stuff, and make it look better... whatever, dudes.