Beginning of the End: A Few Bad Choices Pt 2

Taking a deep breath, I came out from around the corner, and caught a glance shot at me from Pablo, the guy whose reputation had just been dumped into my ears. He was scarier than I imagined. He looked at me questioningly with furrowed brow, and with his shaved head cocked back and his tattooed arms crossed tightly against his baggy and stained sleeveless shirt.

“Oh @&$!?@&$!” I thought to myself as I struggled to gain composure.
I held his gaze and decided that if he was sizing me up, I may as well act the part I looked; tall skinny white kid simply looking for a buzz.

He started to laugh out loud to himself and look around at the other 4 guys in the room, who in an awkward way began nervously to laughing with him, apparently at me. I was frozen, but I gained composure.

“Welcome bro!” He said as he reached out and shook my hand, and then pulled me in for one of the most awkward “bro hugs” I’ve ever had before, or since.
Aaa! I was so relieved! He really was nice!
“What’s your poison bro? You want a beer?” He asked with a big smile as he imposingly shoved one practically right in my face. “No, umm, sorry I just smoke, if I drink I lose it. But thanks anyway man!” Hearing this, one of the 4 guys with us looked at me questioningly, and then back at Pablo, to make sure he wasn’t offended. It was clear he was not happy with this response, and wanted to see how Pablo felt.
Apparently not drinking beer is grounds to be seriously offended in that particular circle. I made a mental note, and never forgot to “always take the beer”.

Pablo was generally upbeat and energetic. He started pointing to things in the room and giving out some orders, he was clearly in charge. “Hey! Come on and get this thing prepped!” He yelled as he kicked a five gallon bucket. He was starting to think about something he was not too pleased about, and put both of his hand on his head and closed his eyes tightly and paced throughout the room, then threw his arms down and shook his head. He was clearly trying to get something off his mind, and wanted to “smoke it all away”.

One of the 4 guys began dragging in a hose to a homemade bong and filling it up with water, while another was messing with foil and toothpicks, making a “bowl” that was “fit for a king”, according to Pablo.
“Hey I’m not looking to spend too much time here. I need to be going soon.”, I said to Pablo shyly.
That brought him back from his thoughts into the room. He shook his head again and put on his sunglasses and said, “Ok little brotha! Ha! I gotcha! All about business! A businessman, I like that. Ok, but here’s the deal. To make sure you’re for real, you gotta take a hit out of ‘big boy’!”
Big boy was a homemade gravity bong, and had a fierce reputation. The Tall girl smiled and said “let’s not kill him, haha!”. The bong was made from a 5 gallon sparklets bottle and a 5 gallon white bucket.
I had never even smoked weed before, and now I was about to die from it on the first time? This whole idea was completely daunting at first.
“Hey man, let little brotha have green on this! But we’re smokin’ out of his bag!”
They loaded it, with my weed apparently, then instructed me, and lit it. I remember seeing them light it and slowly lift the sparklets bottle out of the 5 gallon bucket filled with water to create a vacuum which brought the flame down into the bowl resulting in a rich swirl of white smoke on the surface of the water below. I followed their instructions and exhaled, then stooped low over to the bong and sunk the sparklets bottle down as far as I could. I tried to stand but was having trouble because I was nearly choking to death after having my lungs injected with thick smoke. I remember it tasting like nothing I’d ever tasted before. Completely alien to my pallet. After that, I only remember choking, and my legs turning into numb lumps of jelly. I staggered to a couch, almost falling, giving Pablo quite a laugh.
“Dang fool! You gonna make it? Haha”

Then he gave me a little bag with tiny pot leaves printed on, it stuffed with weed and I gave him my $20.

“Mission accomplished.” I thought. I sat on that grimy couch for what dealt like eternity. Glancing at my cell phone, I noted that “eternity” when stoned is only 5 minutes.
I got up and managed to stay balanced, checked my pockets somewhere near a thousand times, continually forgetting what I was looking for. “Oh… Yeah… Car keys.” I mumbled to myself.

I said my farewells and left, leaving the Tall girl in the garage filled with beer bottles and 5 guys, and never saw her again. I never did another deal there again. Later I heard Pablo got busted just a few months later.

When I got to the car u took the long way home out if paranoia to my friends house. I walked in slowly, eyes red and bloodshot, nose running and a big grin on my face.
“No way dude! You are baaaked!” Said my friend J.
“Haha! Yeah bro, let’s go torch it up in the back!” I stammered through unstoppable laughter. We staggered out back and plunged ourselves into fold out chairs and passed the pipe.
This was “cool”. I was just a pair of sunglasses short of being the man.
Little did I know that I’d get knocked off that high horse soon enough.

Looking back, I wonder why I was willing to go so far? The story makes me chuckle a bit, but I always feel stupid for it. Oh how much I have changed!
I still long for the same things, but I find it somewhere else.
The same hunger exists now, the same as it did then. Just as strong, if not stronger. The hunger for that invisible “something” I had was filled with the ever increasing appetite for a “buzz”. Now the hunger is quenched and simultaneously inflamed by prayer, simple, deep, calm and silent.
I have found true life in the quietude of the canyons, and pure joy in the hills behind my parents house. I used to find a momentary physical pleasure at the far side of a hash pipe stuffed with weed. I have abandoned the things of this world for moments at a time, and in those moments found the “Kingdom Within you” as mentioned by Jesus. But not long after this story, I found that selling weed could get me any material thing I wanted, and I excelled at it.
If only I knew then what I know now: that I know nothing at all. And for all my experimenting and my carelessly uttered blasphemies, God stayed by me in His inexplicable love. Glory to God.

After this incident, I started to smoke regularly, and made more friends with more people who had more weed.
And I couldn’t get enough!
My girlfriend threatened to leave me because I was getting high all the time, to which I sarcastically offered her some weed. Guess what she did? Yup. She left, until I straightened up.

Months went by, and the “phase” that most people called what I was going through was only slightly slowing down, but by no means coming to an end. I also began to vandalize my home town and party all the time. How did my parents not know? Or were they merely silent? I don’t know.
But I got worse and worse until one day I was found by my dad and my brother out back by the she at my parents house. I was caught red handed.

Beginning of the End: A Few Bad Choices

My life is composed of these outrageous situations. How the heck do I find myself here in the midst of this turbulent chaos?

I ask myself this far too often! No matter the precautions, I find myself in strange scenarios! But it’s not all precaution. I admit it, I have a love of risking far too much! But its mostly unintentional. It is a subconscious desire that lives within me to be close to the edge, and it gets me in situations like… well, go ahead and read and you’ll see what I mean.
So here I am, telling my story in all of its truth as I remember it happening. Sometimes I may ramble. Feel free to comment or contact.

This is my journal of memories over the last 8 years.

This was before precaution.
In a mindset of “party” I was probably going to say as I pleased.

 

A Few Bad Choices

It was November of 2006, and I had just come out of the cigarette shop from buying another pack of cools and a lighter. I looked around the small shopping center, and saw two girls standing in front of Little Czar’s. They were both very attractive, and had a certain “emo” allure that was more popular at the time. One was tall, and slim, while the other was shorter and curvy, yet they were equally attractive. I was wondering “what are those two girls doing out by themselves in the cold and dark streets of T-Town?”

Half out of concern and friendliness, and half out of hoping to score a number, I ushered them to my dad’s silver F-150 we started a brief dialog:
“hey, don’t I know you?” I asked.
The tall one said, “I don’t know, you look familiar though. Maybe we had a class together or something?”
“No” I responded. “I’m just driving around tonight, and you looked cold, and I figured if you’re as bored as I am in this crap town, maybe we can hang out?”
“Sure!” the Tall one giggled, while the shorter one kept playing with her phone, occasionally glancing up at me with a smile.
They smiled and giggled, and tried to be composed and sexy, like all 18 year old girls seem to do. I told them I’d drive them somewhere if they needed a ride, and they agreed with a flirtatious laugh.
I do not recall their names, but I remember the Tall one being exceedingly bold in her flirtatiousness, and asking me if I wanted to meet up later that week to hang out. I said yes, and took her number. As she left, I asked her shyly if she smoked weed, and she smiled big and said “oh yeah. Come on by sometime and we’ll light you up, then have a real party!”.

I drove home, thinking about what just happened. I’ve always been a deep thinking individual, and I recalled the Tall girl’s last comment a thousand times. What was a “real party”? Who was she really? What made her tick? what makes me tick? I had a girlfriend and I didn’t really want to get laid, but I liked the flirting. I just wanted to smoke, and no one I knew smoked. I hadn’t smoked any weed up to that point.
When I thought about smoking weed I was tossed into a chaotic fog of whether I should or shouldn’t smoke. “Just do it, just do it. Shut up you wimp, just do it. find some, smoke it, and be done with your curiosity”. “no way. look, this is sort of like virginity, and you’ve already screwed that up. Society says that it’s all well and good, but you know better. You shouldn’t have done that, and now you should step back from this, so looking back you can say you made one good choice!” I never listened to my conscience. That thing never left me alone, and I completely ignored it.
I did, however, inhale some “incense” that is sold at cigarette and head shops called Salvia. Salvia is a hallucinogen that I loved to continually take more of. Nothing like thinking you are a 50 foot tall robot on a planet that doesn’t exist, while whales swim through the open air, and the clouds rain a green mist on a desert land! This was my favorite passed time, forget about baseball. While in reality, the pathetic truth is that you are laying on the floor drooling, and laughing like a Hyena at your own secret inexplicable mirage, sometimes flailing like an epileptic. And not every puff lead to a “fun” alternate reality. Things could get quite dark at times. I now see this as a disgrace, and a waste. If only I knew that I would come to see life so differently.

But even then, the metamorphosis of the mind was not completed. I was still afraid to try anything “too hard” and would only smoke cigarettes and Salvia from time to time. Makes me wonder why I thought Salvia was not very hard! It was clearly hard. Now that I look back I can see that. I was not a drug addict, that’s what I would’ve said if you’d have asked me. I liked fun, and people. Drugs were a way to people. The crowd I loved! That damaged and angsty crowd, all who were nostalgic for something hidden deep within their own soul, that they could never fully express to anyone. And they all seemed to have a fantastically active imagination just like mine!
“Finally, people who see things like me!”
Side Ramble:
What an arrogant thought, no? To have to be so unwilling to change, to be so stubborn and incompatible, that you cannot have any real friends except the people who remind you of yourself? What a self-damaging secret pride. Yet, here in the states, we here that we should have pride in ourselves, and that we are special. No, my friend, we are not special, so how can we be proud of our normal old selves? This is delusion; to believe for a minute that you are in some way worthy of self-love. No, we are all damaged children, and we all need each other’s help. how can we be proud? Pride, I believe, is the single thing that lead to the expulsion of satan from the heaven’s, and we treat this thing that we can Biblically say separates us from paradise and God as a virtue? how backwards.
Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, yeah.
Back to my story.

I didn’t feel like an addict, or a trouble maker. I felt like someone who was trying to break free from the bonds of youth and explore the realm of “fun” that I was so adamantly against as a child, even up to just a year before.
I would later become a huge Marijuana advocate to my friends, stating every good thing about it, memorizing even its chemical components, and every effect it could possibly have on anyone! I was a zealot for information and hungry for a good time!

A week went by, and I called the Tall girl, and we set up a time to meet for the soul purpose of buying some pot.
What a funny and awkward thing those conversations can be in the beginning! Full of stammering, and over cautionary tones! I can’t even remember the conversation, I just recall that I was scared, shaky, and nervous, and my three closest friends were gathered around me listening in on my conversation.
I hung up, and my voice cracked at first, “its all set up.” my friends looked at me in half amazement and half judgment. They were impressed that I was willing to risk myself, and were sort of put off by it as well. And of course I wanted to do it in front of them to show them that I was cool.
The day progressed and I got the money. $20 bucks for a gram of some un-named weed.
I then had to go pick up the Tall one, who lived out in a trailer in the middle of a dirt field in the desert about 45 minutes away from town with her mother and grandmother and who knows who else. It was a dump, and she flew out holding a jacket looking annoyed and angry, slamming the door behind her. She got in the truck with me. “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked. “it could be better. Let’s get the hell out of here, I hate this dump!”. She was not so chipper this time around.
We drove into town, and she was telling me a lot about where this weed was coming from, and I recall very specifically hearing “this guy Pablo at this cheap hotel grows most of the stuff in town. He might be there tonight. I hope he like’s you. If not, well… Let’s hope he likes you.”
After those words, I became very astute, and I soaked in every word she said in a rambling tone as though it were gospel! “he carries a gun, and he spent 3… no, 5 years? Well, some time in jail I don’t know. But he’s pretty nice, as long as you don’t piss him off! But we’re just going to be in and out, no big deal.”
Right. I’m supposed to just remain calm. Me, an 18 year old hormonal nervous wreck? Calm? Only superficially at best! I guess she didn’t notice I was sweating bullets, and clamming up the steering wheel.
I was scared. And when we got to where we were going, I was even more scared.

The house we were meeting at was more like a demolition site. Half destroyed, the roof was collapsed, and where perhaps a family happily lived at some point long in the past, there was now crumbling adobe, graffiti and litter. The house was full of cigarette and weed smoke. We parked, and walked into the garage, almost tripping on the beer bottles, making it nearly impossible to be discrete. There were all kinds of homemade gravity bongs and pipes to get one as high as possible in “one shot”.
The garage was occupied by 4 guys, all tattooed and pierced, wearing things like “tap out” shirts about 3 sizes too big. They each held either a cigarette or a 40 oz of MGD, or both. They all wore sideways hats. They looked like they were part of a gang, and just high enough to do anything that might tickle their fancy. I remember wondering if they’d even graduated high school, or if they dropped out to get into “making some money” selling weed. I can’t forget one guy giving me a deadly cold stare, while reaching behind him. I told myself, “he’s psyching me out” and then he actually pulled out a gun, and started playing with it. I acted as if I didn’t care, but I was terrified. I rounded a corner where I was out of sight, and held out my hand, it was trembling. My whole body felt week, and I realized even if I wanted out, it was simply too late.
I remember thinking, “This whole deal is dangerous, and these people will kill me if I say the wrong thing… Oh crap… I might just die today. Stupid! you should never have come!”

The tears wanted to break free from my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them, as I whispered to myself “shut up you wimp. Don’t be stupid, just do this real quick and be on your way. If it hits the fan, then you deal with it like you always do, rationally and with poise. Get it together.”

I tried to talk myself down so to speak. This was not the time to be messing around with my emotions. I would allow one thing into my heart only: Avarice. I just want this weed. Let’s do this.

Taking a deep breath, I came out from around the corner, and caught a glance shot at me from Pablo, the guy whose reputation had just been dumped into my ears. He was scarier than I imagined. He looked at me questioningly with furrowed brow, and with his shaved head cocked back and his tattooed arms crossed tightly against his baggy and stained sleeveless shirt.