Drugs x Clothes
Loody and I went out Saturday night for some beers and conversation. I was also convinced Ingrid was going to find herself a manfriend, which looked like it was happening, only to be crushed later by Ingrid’s insistence the dude she had been chatting up for like a fucking HOUR was boring. Yeah, dude! We couldn’t have established this much earlier? I could have saved myself the experience of having amuse his entire group of friends while you talked to him.
One thing that did come up during this time, however, was the topic of weed. Well, the act of smoking it. There was a couple in the group (who I actually liked) named Tim and Kellie who asked me if I smoked weed. I vehemently said YES. OF COURSE. EVERYONE SHOULD. Tim high-fived me, bro-style, and Kellie groaned and they told me it was an issue in their relationship.
Just for visualization’s sake, let me first say I am often told random personal facts about people’s lives after only knowing them for mere minutes. People, as a rule, like talking about themselves, and our instincts are always to confide in new friends to “bond” with them over the common thread of storytelling. Oh, you have an older brother who’s an artist? Me, too! Your secret dream is to be a singer and dress up like 70’s-era Cher every night? Dude. Me too. We have shit in common! We’re friends! Kellie was the one who approached Loody and I in the first place, and I always feel like girls bond with other girls especially easy, multiplied by 1.6 million when there is alcohol involved.
Kellie was a short-ish (5’5” maybe?) attractive NATURAL blonde (this is important to point out just because) wearing jeans, a tweed jacket, and a delicate gold necklace. I pay HEAVY attention to people’s visual cues, and Kellie’s said she was Serious, Driven, Motivated, and Romantic. The tiny gold chain and a few other cues (a pinkish hangbag, her one length, bobbed hair cut in the color the Lord gave her) told me she was romantic and girly. Tweed says you’re serious and conscious of other’s opinions. Jeans with sensible but cute heels says you’re comfortable with yourself but still need to be viewed as a lady (I could write an entire dissertation on women in flats vs. heels).
Tim looked British, but was not. Large, sort of pyramid-esque face with floppy hair, and a black tee and jeans with a large, ivory cardigan over it. The cardigan was double breasted and screamed ENGLISH PREP SCHOOL. It was amazing. I love men when they wear pretty things. A sweater is such a simple statement, but is often thought of as “odd” mentally by men. They equate sweaters with stylish fags; fisherman; their grandfathers; prep school boys they grew up with; tennis players they’ve seen on TV; so many options, none of them clear. Fisherman and Old Gramps are cool; tennis players and spoiled Ivy Leaguers are not. Men: WEAR SWEATERS. They ALWAYS make you look good, regardless of age, body type, or temperament. Tim wearing this sweater told me one thing: confidence. Jeans with understated lace up dress shoes told me he probably worked in business attire but valued casual moments with his ladyfriend. A black tee under a white sweater is an obvious choice, but told me he was open to thinking about the box and not afraid to take criticism. As a couple, they looked similarly understated, but I would have NEVER put them together. Tim looked much more flamboyant than Kellie, and not in an “opposites attract” kind of thing, but they seemed almost…brother and sister-ish.
The issue was: Tim smokes weed, and Kellie does not. She hates the fact he smokes weed and wants him to stop. He says he doesn’t smoke around her or whenever he knows he’ll be with her later. She said that is not always the case-he never smokes around her, but she sees him high all the time and it bugs her. He acts different, she says. Nothing bad different necessarily, just different. And she hated it.
I asked Kellie if she had ever smoked weed. She said once; it made her intensely paranoid and anxious and she hated it. I asked her if she’d give it another chance, just to experiment. She said no. Tim jumped in and started pleading with her to just try it once and I’ll admit I was totally nodding my head the whole time, peer-pressure style. COME ON, KELLIE! SMOKE POOOOOT! IT’S WHAT ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING! JUMP ON THE BANGWAGON!
I did a shit ton of drugs in high school. Oddly enough, smoking weed was the one drug I never particularly enjoyed. It made me sleepy, sluggish, anxious, and just sort of weird. Still, I smoked it ALL THE TIME because I was psychologically unable to say “no” to people I wanted to look cool in front of, and because I was insanely competitive with dudes when I was younger. I always had to do everything BIGGER and BETTER than the dudes I was friends with-just because. This is stupid, pointless, and something I still struggle with occasionally. When I graduated high school, I quit doing drugs. All of them (besides booze). My 18th birthday was an orgy of epic proportions: everyone was drinking and smoking, there was K everywhere, coke some places, and my best friend lost our E pills midway through the party and a household hunt happened which still cracks me up to this day. Get out your magnifying glasses, kids! Find those magic pills! I still owe my friend Gwen 10,000 props for letting me have my party at her gorgeous house in the hills, complete with jacuzzi, patio, pool table and all other sorts of nonsense. As a matter of fact, I am mailing out a gift to her today. I’ll have to add an extra kiss.
After my 18th, I stopped doing drugs. Cold. Peace out. I’m a legal adult now and don’t need a rap sheet any longer than my teenage record. I drank, and that was it. I had boyfriends who smoked weed who I “made” stop, and none of my friends did drugs at all. My longest boyfriend (4 years) sold weed for a living which I was ethically okay with (bitch needs shoes and dinner), but he could not SMOKE weed around me, for the same reasons Kellie hates Tim smoking weed: it made him different, and I didn’t like it. During this time in my life, I was a shrill, condescending, know-it-all asshole; how anyone actually dealt with me WITHOUT being high is a fucking mystery. I continued this cunty behavior for a while before getting slapped in the face with dicks by the universe (figuratively, not literally) and Growing The Fuck Up. Oh shit, I realized. I DON’T know everything.
The last dude I dated smoked weed. It bugged me. Can’t you just stop, I said?Why don’t you just start was his answer. I love you, but you could really use it.I crossed my arms. I was still kind of high strung.
Several things coincided with my decision to start smoking weed again. One, my best friend at the time was “awakened” to pot randomly on a trip to Alaska or something. Her new mission in life became to FIND SOME GOOD WEED and SMOKE IT. My dad got his first prescription, followed by my brothers and almost everyone I knew. Suddenly, that shit was everywhere! Weed smoking dude and I broke up, and I decided I needed to chill out on drinking. But I still needed an escape! A vice! Enter pot, skip to Chapter 10: Tim and Kellie.
Smoking weed is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I smoke on and off, usually every other day but sometimes every day. I’ve cut down insanely on drinking since smoking. I can do all the regular shit I do while I’m high: write, do homework, clean, take pictures, work, whatever. I don’t smoke the strong, super strain shit; I smoke the kind of shit that fades you halfway through a joint, and doesn’t turn you into a surfer, couch or otherwise. I’m a lot chiller when I’m high-my same usual self, without the quickness to anger (my temper is my downfall) or the edge. That dude was totally right-I’m the type that pretty much NEEDS to smoke weed. I think of weed as somewhere in between green tea and a bottle of champagne.
I told Kellie and Tim they were never going to work unless they figured out an answer to this weed issue. It will go from a small thing to a big thing, I said, and Kellie jumped in with “yeah-it’s already a big thing”. She looked at Tim cryptically. Aw man, I said. A man’s love taking away his medicine.
I don’t give a fuck whether you smoke weed. If you do, rad. Not? Fine. I will openly say I would like EVERYONE to smoke weed, on the regular. It would cause less sidewalk dickery (hey, man, watch it!), less speeding (just relax and enjoy the journey!), less general assholery. I’m convinced of it. If it makes ME, just little old me, less of an asshole, it could help EVERYONE. I’d never force it on a person (LEGALIZED WEED AND FORCED INHALATION, 2012!) but I do wish it would stop being compared to fucking meth and coke and heroin and all sorts of other, busted ass drugs that do FOR REAL DAMAGE and inspire people not to calm down, but get AMPED UP and GO BREAK THINGS.
I guess my point is, I love weed. End story. I don’t love all strains, or all methods of obtaining it or consuming it. But “it” as a plant, “drug”, and resource (hemp!!!)-I love.
Tim and Kellie look like they love each other. I hope they work it out, those crazy kids.
