More questions than answers: an essay about recreational drugs

What were you doing there? How did you come to be there? What did you have in mind, exactly?

What were you and your girlfriend doing up there?

On that hot autumn night, on the queen-size bed, in the big dark soul-less house in northern Virginia that wasn’t yours, the one with the drab wallpaper and the tile job in the kitchen that would have been more appropriate for an aquarium and the curtains in the living room that had been staple-gunned to the window frames, what were you up to in there?

Wasn’t your landlord that Air Force captain, the friend of a friend of a friend who rented you his big house sight-unseen when you were getting tossed out of your first rental, that nice little cottage on the quiet side street, that guy had wanted his daughter to move into it, so, out you go? Well, so what, right? Wasn’t there a good lesson to be drawn from that experience: don’t rent, but own? And didn’t it all start to unravel for you at about that point? Or had it already started to unravel long before you moved into the captain’s big dark house, on that busy street where, later on, your favorite cat got run over? And weren’t you two just kids anyway, 23, 24, trying things out, sorting things out, and didn’t you know that... well, didn’t you know... umm... well... why can’t I think of the words?

Anyhow, wasn’t that the night with the purple joint that you got from that guy where you worked? What was his name, Douglas, Geoffrey, Bradley, something formal-sounding like that? Didn’t he hand them out at work towards the end of that particular day, kind of on the sly? Didn’t he make sure you got one, though the two of you weren’t especially friends or anything? It was because of his new baby, right? Hadn’t he just become a father? And these were like the cigars that new dads used to hand out to their pals at work, to celebrate their new baby and their being new dads?

And so, this purple joint and you and Maureen, couple of ex-pats from Boston, did you ever see a broker pair of college grads? With no money, both of your paychecks going 100% for the groceries and the rent and your one car? You didn’t even have a TV, right? Really, is this purple joint maybe your big entertainment for the evening?

So, up on the bedspread, nice and comfy, OK? No worries, right? Hadn’t you two smoked your share of pot in college? Didn’t you know a thing or two? And hadn’t Maureen bought dope a few times while she was at UMass and maybe she sold some, too, and maybe done some mescaline, sometime, and some pills here and some pills there with that old boyfriend of hers on that broken-down scow, locked in the ice off the old wharf in Eastie there under the flight path? And didn’t all of us tend to talk knowingly about the drug experience as if we were tough guys, as if it were hard work, smart work, “doing” some dope, “scoring” some dope, I know a guy who knows a guy, gonna “do” some acid some day? And wasn’t it always just a little creepy, this thing with these powders and dried little leaves from who knows where? Or maybe it was a lot creepy? All of it?

Do you remember how it was, lighting up the purple joint (why was it purple?) on the bed with a yellow table lamp glowing dimly in the corner? Do you remember, the little painting you had made the previous month, it was propped up on your desk over by the window (which was closed tight despite the heat... can’t have the smoke drifting outdoors), the little painting with the orange tree and the red leaves, all on a bright bright cadmium-yellow background? Remember that? Had you painted it weird on purpose? Or had you just been trying out some acrylic paints from the art store, employee discount, push a few paints around on a dull Sunday? And weren’t your Sundays with Maureen always kind of dull, your one day off in common, not enough money to drive anywhere or go to a restaurant or go see a movie? Or were they dull maybe because you (the two of you) were actually dull people? Because, isn’t that what it felt like? And how were you to know for sure?

Did you take a long drag on the joint? In for a dime, in for a dollar? Did the two of you enjoy it? Did you, in particular, enjoy it, at all? Wasn’t that the thing about the Dope Smoking Amateur Hour, you were always supposed to be, above all, cool about it? With quick little sideways glances? As in, am I doing it right? Am I being cool? Would you observe other people as they smoked, so as to pick up the knack? How would they behave? How would they act? Could they hold the smoke in without coughing? (You always coughed, didn’t you?) Would they then exhale fully and smoothly and in a self-satisfied way — yep, some pretty rare shit here, we sure didn’t get taken this time like we got taken last time, you know? That shit was flat, but this shit is fine, is that the kind of thing they’d say? Confirming, then, that overall it had been a good investment, dear old Dad would certainly be proud, assuming that dear old Dad could overlook certain seamy... aspects of it?

And the room, didn’t it begin to tip a little bit now, the mattress beginning to rock a bit like the deck of a small boat, and the walls, those dark, dumb, olive-drab walls, didn’t they start to sway and swirl? Was that part of what you wanted? And then your yellow-and-red painting, didn’t your attention go straight to it, and didn’t you start to wander into it, a window into a warm world of vivider-than-vivid colors and the sounds of rushing wind, and weren’t you now inhabiting that world, a world entirely of your own making, and wasn’t it exciting and peaceful also, and right, and as it should be, and, surprisingly, very very funny? Almost breathlessly funny, yes?

Was it your goofy nonstop laughter that tipped Maureen off? Which would you say her sudden cry was more like: an alarm bell, or a police siren, or the blast of a foghorn?

What was it she said — David, what’s wrong?? There’s something WRONG with this, isn’t there??

Would it have been all right if she hadn’t said that? If she only hadn’t said that?

And how soon were you up and off the bed, staggering — three beats? A half a beat? Didn’t the bedroom suddenly seem unbearably warm, the walls unbearably close? Hadn’t everything turned completely inside out? Hadn’t the joy and the bright colors and the peaceful feeling disappeared? What would you say had taken their place now? Bafflement? Panic? Terror? A sudden and terrible sense of loss? An inability to breathe? The urgent desire to stop it all from happening, and a sinking feeling that you couldn’t stop it from happening? Because you took a drug? One that you actually knew nothing about? The need to run away then, to escape from the room, to escape from yourself, like maybe it would be all right if you could just get outdoors? Would you please check all that apply?

Do you remember not making it beyond the second-floor landing? Wasn’t it just as well that you didn’t get as far as the main staircase? Do you remember losing your footing and collapsing on the wall-to-wall carpet and letting out something between a moan and a howl as you skinned your knee raw on the carpet and smacked your head against the wall? You blacked out then, didn’t you?

Do you need more time to formulate your answers?

When you came to, wasn’t Maureen trying to towel you off and you just kept sweating, as they say in novels, profusely? And then she was on the phone with someone from her work, right? A radio producer who moonlighted as a guy who knew almost everything there was to know about recreational drugs and could and would dispense advice? And didn’t he and his wife make the late-night car ride from northeast D.C. to do what they could to help? Because, you know, here in Virginia in the 70’s, would it have been an especially bright idea to call emergency services about a problem you were having with a joint you’d been smoking? (Who gave you this marijuana cigarette, sir?)

Did it seem like an hour, or two, or three, before Ron and Kay arrived at your house and came upstairs to see you and to try to figure out what had happened? Weren’t you still crumpled up next to the wall where you’d fallen, a bump on your noggin, blood from the burn on your knee staining the carpet? The Air Force landlord’s carpet? And didn’t Ron examine what was left of the joint, roll it around in his fingertips, sniff it, and carefully take a quick lick of it? And then did he look up and quietly say, “angel dust”?

So were there any bandages anywhere in the house for your knee? Did you maybe have a fresh gauze bandage at the ready and a roll of clean white tape for securing it to your leg, to protect the wound over the next few days? Did you own so much as a tube of Bacitracin? Or did you just put on your same pair of super-slim Levi’s the following morning and go off to work like usual, winceing, putting up with it, because you see you’d made a mistake, and now you were going to have to pay for that mistake, with your bleeding knee sticking to the inside of your jeans all day, and by quitting time the blood had soaked through to the outside, an embarrassing, dark, grim-looking stain? But not a word, right? Because you couldn’t let on to anyone how it had happened, could you?

Is there any question why you wouldn’t want to smoke anything, pop anything, snort anything, or god forbid inject anything, after that? Were drugs ever going to be the way you were going to become less dull, less mixed-up, more yourself, whoever that was? Doesn’t sound like it, does it? Did you feel, after that episode, that someone, somehow, had failed you? Did you feel, after that episode, that somehow you had failed yourself?

Would you care for a glass of wine?