Djarum Blacks (For Workshop)

So I wrote all of the "pieces" below (in time that will become a more comfortable word to me; right now it feels oddly pretentious?) during the first month of my Writing Creative Nonfiction class at Boise State. My professor, Christian Winn, suggested that of them he would like to see the Djarum Blacks one expanded on the most... he wanted it to be more narrative, essentially, wanted me to show him what my friends were like and more of what I was seeing and smelling, etc. Pull you into it more. He's totally right, and that whole sentence about christmas in the last iteration was definitely the product of a lack of interest in the way I was taking it.
I prefer this take by far, although I am under the impression we'll be given advice on how to make it even better. Which will be exciting!
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Djarum Blacks
Exiting an elevator has come to be a point of relief for me, as I can’t help feeling put on the spot during the forced meetings that take place within. Exhaling slowly as the mirrored doors open, I sit back to let everyone else leave first, then light a Camel Menthol cigarette just before pushing through the double doors leading outside my Freshman dorm building. Immediately at my side is an acquaintance from the dorms, pinching between thumb and forefinger a black clove, smoked probably only as a matter of distinguishment. The cigarettes themselves spark brightly as one drags on them, then leave the tongue feeling strangely numb, causing me to find it difficult to take anyone who smokes them seriously. Their scent is intrusive and unique in a different way, paradoxically reminiscent of gingerbread, undeniably delicious, and for myself always nostalgic. Instead of joining my companion actively in our almost ritual education complaints, I go on autopilot, a borrowed drag assisting my internal reminisce.

I hadn’t had a black in at least several months, had actually avoided them on purpose after coughing up black and red lung butter in the rubble of the morning after I purchased and consumed my first hard pack. To fault the clove may be somewhat hasty as the potential for confounding variables was great, so I should note it may simply be memory assigning the blame, if only to classify the particular early June evening in question. I had the fortune to arrive at just such a time when the empty semicircle of discomfort could be seen around whichever surface was being used to roll marijuana cigarettes. This had come to be a nice signal for the few of us who recognized it within our group, one composed of those allegedly confused souls still remaining in Idaho Falls after the Commencement of the rest of our lives. Social tolerance ran high by necessity, and most had even come to appreciate our different perspective.
Closing the gate gently behind me, I made my way to the glass patio table and sat down among my peers, taking scope. 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 months. 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. 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 semi-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.
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.
Someone asked, “But 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.” It wasn’t even the attention that struck me so much as watching how quickly people absorbed and accepted information that could somehow possibly be useful to them. I passed a few out and our attention turned to more pressing matters.
In the backyard of the host, a childhood friend named Josh, was a king-sized trampoline - the kind you don’t realize are larger than normal until half of your body slips between the springs - and with a dry lawn we endeavored to sit beneath it. By this time hospitality had found its amorous way to my belly in the form of none other than that particular drought which allegedly won a blue ribbon so long ago, and I cracked a second open (careful to chug that foam!) as I settled into the circle. There was a small fire pit on the opposite end of the rectangular yard where sat a number of acquaintances chatting, and with my back to them I was able to watch across the fourteen foot circle to where Dee lit and passed the first spliff. It’s a nervous habit, but I wiped my lips on my sleeve before it 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 ubiquitous (but rarely recognized) avarice. I also have the unfortunate tendency to leave a social spliff more moist than before my hit, and only seconds later Colin was telling me to pay attention as he shook it near my face. The larger the circle, naturally, the more drastic the cigarette’s atrophy, and after a second had burned its way around it became apparent that the meeting was disbanding.
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. I was again solicited about the cloves, and took part in another to drive home the interest. Predictably those conversing with me soon ran across the same line of cogitation as I had earlier entertained, and I buffeted their questioning with the same prepared response I would give to my father’s friends at his 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 lied as easily to the people I’d grown up with as to those who’d watched me grow, knowing that one area of study was universally as good as another. I didn’t fault them their formalities, and instead looked to the topic as an exercise in creativity, as well as keeping a straight face. I was also aware that most of them were lying too.
Within different groups of a society come to exist memes which are particular of the members’ knowledge and experience. Among those who are of an age to be reasonably called hooligans are some guiding principles which seem intentionally uncertain. 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 noticing my near-empty box of cigarettes became less alarming than the mere distance I was to take on in my homeward travels. 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. Both the nicotine content and the price had been unsatisfying, and I was fully aware of my desire to enjoy the first cigarette of the following morning. I smoked two while long boarding lazily home and deposited the box in the gutter half a block from my house, where I paused. 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 with its passing was revealed to me in the most passive of ways the bounty which I was to reap. 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. I never let it bother me, claimed it as my own through such misnomers as lung butter, and unpredictably I 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.

Djarum Blacks (LessRealButMoreRealistic)

Exiting an elevator has come to be a point of relief for me, as I can’t help pointing out how awkward the forced meetings that take place within make me feel, either through simply saying it or sheepishly avoiding eye contact. I slowly exhaled as the mirrored doors opened and sat back to let everyone else leave first, then lit a cigarette just before pushing through the double doors leading outside. Immediately at my side was an acquaintance from the dorms, pinching between thumb and forefinger a black clove, smoked probably only as a matter of distinguishment. The cigarettes themselves spark as one drags on them and leave the tongue feeling strangely numb, which is why I find it hard to take anyone who smokes them seriously. I was reminded of the insistence with which I would promote their scent’s similarity to that which flows nebulously from the kitchen to waft and awaken my brothers and I on a winter holiday, and the stark contrast between that image and the chaotic experiences I can only associate the cigarettes themselves to distracted me from the actual content of my companion’s conversation.
I hadn’t had a black in several months, had actually avoided them on purpose after coughing up black and red lung butter the morning following smoking a whole pack. The night hadn’t been stressful in any emotional sense, only in that way which comes with the attempt to ride out a poorly planned evening. We had the fortune to arrive near the end of that period after the opening and introductory drinks had been mixed and before the different cliques split off around the fire pit. It was fortunate because this was also the point at which the empty semicircle of discomfort could be seen around whichever surface was being used to roll blunts. This had come to be a nice signal for the few of us who recognized it within the group of dudes cobbled together from those confused souls still remaining in Idaho Falls after high school which we drank beers with, most of whom came to appreciate our different perspective from a comfortable distance, and it wasn’t until about an hour later when I realized that our arrival time had predicted a poor order of consumption. I had at this point already smoked at least half of the pack and put away a tenth of my body weight in that particular draught which allegedly won a blue ribbon so long ago, when I was suddenly vomiting on top of the cigarette I’d just lit. As with the mythological correct order for drinking beers and liquor, there is a correct order to attaining a stable mixture of different intoxicants, and in my haste I‘d broken it. After suffering the consequences I simply gave up for the night, and during the long ride home I smoked the last eight or so in a recovery state, drunkenly depositing the box in the gutter a block from my house.
It wasn’t even the events of the night that bothered me, they simply served to give context to my distaste for those harsh pseudo-cigarettes. I had felt more personally offended by how I’d been inspired to speak of their seeming healing abilities just the night before, when mere hours later I awoke rubbing dry mucus from my eyes with one hand while the other caught an entirely different form of the same stuff.

FrapFrapFrapFrapFrap

Outside the sun shines brightly, one of those last sunsets you can enjoy as the prolonged summer in Boise finally begins giving way in the dark to the cold waiting but a month, maybe two more before it will render our back porch wet and uncomfortable. In the meantime I reheat some frozen pizza, still unwilling to deal with the fact that I finally have a kitchen to eat like my parents did. Our hookah is smoking from another bowl loaded too full, something I’m also still adjusting to being lord over. My roommate Jim is inside listening to something I can’t quite make out over the white noise I suddenly notice coming from the continual crunch of blackened dough, and I smile in recognition of my greater desire to close my eyes and sink into the strangely deep, rustic aroma of old mozzarella. I swallow and it catches, and I have to force it down with some orange soda. It takes me a moment to catch my breath before I set down the crust and step inside to catch the last verse I’ve suddenly found to be worth ending a narrative to enjoy.

Part I

My thoughts fade in as drops, falling from an unknown sky, and ripple throughout my consciousness in a sky blue pool of light. My torso is eight feet long, twisting under the covers as I continually work to get comfortable. My room is vibrating, just enough to keep me awake a little while longer, and I wonder if it will ever end, as I always do, hoping at the end that I'll be normal again, given enough time. It's always worth it.

We ascend creeking steps, paint fully chipped off, to the apartment door. The bottom half is covered in dried footprints from being pushed open by intoxicated feet, and the top corners fade from black to what was probably once white. I don't know where we are. Residually stoned from hours before, I don't worry about it, trusting to new friends leading me, despite having just spent two hours in the wrong place smoking cigarettes on an external window sill. We've arrived at a third source who could allegedly come through, and does. Eric's just called him, and the door is pulled open in quick stages, hinges cracking at each stop. Inside, the small rooms' walls are bare save the stains, like piss, somehow settled and dried on top of the paint before they were erected, those ubiquitous marks of more pressing concerns. The door is shut behind us, and we shake hands with him separately. His name is meaningless. He cuts a small square into ten thin strips, and we trade for one, uncomfortably making small talk. At two inches in length, it seems too small, but Eric assures me that it doesn't need to be any larger. We cut the strip into five equal pieces. "So I just put it in my mouth?" I ask. "Yeah. Once it's in, it's in." It feels even smaller under my tongue, but it's gone within ten minutes. We have forty-five minutes to get home before the reaction overwhelms us. Ryan's started the truck, and the anticipation begins.

"Fourth floor - going down."
I step out of the elevator and am confronted. "Hey man, Matt's kind of freaking out, come hang out with us in the commons."
Jim looks concerned, but he also looks like he's waxing and waning at the same time, stretching and shrinking, and rather than avoiding the subject I state, "I dropped acid like twenty minutes ago and I already feel really weird. I'm sorry man, I can't help you out." I give a weak smile and march to my room. Inside, I pause and look around, confused. What am I here for again?
My pack of cigarettes, not yet unwrapped, glows on the desk, and with a small laugh to myself I grab them and head up to Eric's room. The common area surrounding his door has three residents talking together, and though they pay me only a cursory glance, I am filled with anxiety about them simply being there - why are they there, what do they want from me, what if they know?
Eric's door opens and I enter, feeling my anxiety flow out with a quickly forgotten sigh, almost passing a mirror - but I stop. Each pore on my face opens up and closes as another near it opens its maw and drowns it out, an endless cycle of shifting patterns. My eyes have never looked so clear, the pupil an inky pool dripping out to the iris, so thin, barely a border to the solid white. It looks like my eyes are filled with water, and as just the thought causes them to be, I turn away.
Ryan grins at me. "How was that?"
Wiping my eyes, I mumble, "My whole face is melting randomly."
"I've gotten lost in my own reflection for an hour or more before, it gets crazy. Come over to Eric's side, let's play some Sonic."
Holy shit! Seriously? The screen is split horizontally and colors are sliding from right to left. I take the offered controller and say, "Hold on. What buttons do what?"
"This jumps." I look at the paddle, then back up, then begin holding right. As Green Hill Zone flashes by, I start to feel emotional. The blues dominate, and feel wistful, while the flashing greens from below spike into this wishful nostalgic chaos with a dirty, almost accusatory glare. I get lost in the frames, each a different experience, gasping during the moments of flight, laughing when rings go flying, and after about ten minutes I begin feeling overwhelmed. I glance over my shoulder at Eric, whose glance I somehow interpret to be upset. "What's up man?"
"What? Sonic. I think this was a bad idea. There's way, way too much going on." He glances down and up quickly, sniffs.
"Yeah, I was just holding right the whole time." I'm scared to look anywhere but his eyes, worried for some reason that maybe I'm the cause for his distress.
"You beat three levels." He glances again at me, then away. Each movement of his eyes rends my consciousness, and I realize that I'm caught in a light breeze, or maybe I've put my head just below the surface of a stream. Every bit of information coming to me is lightly brushing my hair, and as it does so I can feel the tingle of each strand to be the various interpretations possible.
"Uhm." I pause. Ryan's sitting in a chair, still staring at the screen. I realize that he's been saying variations on "Whoa..." the entire time. I look at Eric. "I kinda want a cigarette."
It seems like a simple proposition - take cigarette, walk downstairs, smoke cigarette. Instead it's like suggesting we return to our heyday of literal carhopping through neighborhoods... we spend the next fifteen minutes arguing over what the plan is, and eventually decide to just go for a walk to calm our nerves. This one full pack of cigarettes is looking like less and less.

It's Called A Literary Technique, FRIG.

I only initially joined the high school debate team at the insistence of Alex, who would always take time out of my sardonic monologues to bring attention to what he called my ability to connect seemingly unrelated dilemmas, like I was able to suggest the facades a subject might seem to be hiding behind. I heard it simply as praise of being good at something both generally useful and potentially characteristic of myself, and I was interested simply on the basis of exposure. As I was gently introduced to the structure of the competitive aspects of the extra-curricular activity I observed the social flow within the team itself and soon came to recognize that despite the title of coach and the paychecks being received by our reluctant droopy-eyed overseer Mr. Clifford, the course was actually organized and resultantly controlled by the more veteran members of the team, and through his disinterest our alleged leader unwittingly allowed the indoctrination of the team's novice members to the usually criminal standards of behavior held by those doing his job.
There was an office in the back corner of the classroom that, in the confusion of constantly shuffling out teachers beaten by this sort of thing and recruiting newly graduated experience-seekers to fill their places, had become a supply and storage closet stacked full with old debators' records and a collection of old children's tales used as practice tools for a particular speech event called Retold Story. My varsity mentor sometimes utilized this bunker and its supplies to create, via typewriter, memos addressed to the class concerning book club meetings and the banning of popcorn due to the invading nature of its scent and the detrimental effects being recorded throughout all of the company's accounting divisions. These inventions were then copied thirty times, handed out to all students at the beginning of class, and incorporated into the speeches given opening the class session, as though to reassure those present of another 53 minutes of free time.
About a block from the school was a gas station quaintly emblazoned in red block letters with Kwik Stop, behind which we would go on these common free days to smoke pot and cigarettes and it was there that the majority of my actual tutoring took place. It became a favorite method when composing a debate case negating the National Forensic League's chosen resolution to seek out a key term such as Justice and expose its frailty through the necessity for a subjective interpretation in order to legitimize the stated resolution. Probably this seemed so appealing because it allowed us to essentially avoid debating the actual issues and instead point out the loopholes in a statement's phrasing; we didn't have to strain our consciences to support an argument. This in tandem with Clifford's laissez-faire approach eventually led to apathy for the greater part of the team, and we began intentionally disrupting the imposed order of the organized tournaments to find fulfillment. We were inspired by the rules regulating appearance for students attending Brigham Young University to equip false mustaches before entering student congress and at a critical speaking point throw them dramatically to the floor as if fed up with their juvenility, though we were always careful to collect them again before returning to our seats. We also took it upon ourselves to apprehend and claim in the name of the team several orphaned garbage cans, furniture, and any sort of interesting sign or item we could weave into our post-tournament recap speech to increase the chances of another successful filibuster.
At the end of the debate season there were fewer members of our team who maintained an emotional relationship with their competitive success. Mr. Clifford taught for a second year, then digressed to teaching only Speech and Drama, and finally followed those before him out the door. Which isn't to say he wasn't fun and fairly useful to have around, just that he had unfortunately fallen into what seemed a comfortable stereotype.

I wrote this for school; probably because I don't post here anymore, I will relegate this space for such items as this. So yeah, some of it's not in the right order or whatever, I don't give a shit, and it was just our first sketch for the class. I also wrote it in the wee hours, if you will, and was less worried about consistency with chronological facts than quality and word count. Ha-haaa!