Текст книги "The Marijuana Chronicles"

Автор книги: Jonathan Santlofer

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

With the clock ticking and on the verge of a total physical and mental collapse, I threw a Hail Mary into the end zone and called Jack Herer, a man famous for writing a book called The Emperor Wears No Clothes, about the history of hemp in America. The book reminds readers that the cover of every wagon that crossed the plains was made of hemp, that the Mona Lisa was painted on a canvas made of hemp, that the sails of the Mayflower, along with its ropes and riggings, were all made of hemp, that the Constitution of the United States was drafted on paper made of hemp fiber! In many respects, the hysteria that led to Godfrey Jackson being dubbed an enemy combatant and deported to Guantánamo was the same hysteria that had helped underwrite the prohibition of hemp.

When I was making The Incarceration of Godfrey Jackson, I had visited Jack Herer in the Florida Everglades to interview him, but at this point in his life, his sole interest was in the psychoactive fungus, Amanita muscaria. (Through a series of academic texts and clues from the Vatican, Herer had become convinced that Jesus Christ was a mushroom, as were Santa Claus and the prophet Mohammad.)

Calling Herer again was grasping at straws, but as it turned out, my hunch was right. The day after I reached out to him, he called me back with a very powerful lead.

Graham DeLorme was a Vietnam vet who, soon after coming back to the US from his third tour of duty, had discovered that the Federal Reserve was burning its old currency. Millions and millions in paper currency was going up in smoke every few weeks in incinerators, only to be replaced by crisp new government-issue bills. Upon learning this surreal detail about America’s hair-raising banking system, DeLorme and several of his vet buddies from ’Nam had infiltrated the Federal Reserve’s currency incinerators and, in the most clownishly simple heist of all time, made off with close to half a billion dollars in old bills without a trace.

I called DeLorme at his home on a private island in the Caribbean. He listened intently as I reeled out my tale of woe. He chuckled the whole time, and then, with no hesitation, offered to send me $500,000—some of those dirty bills—in a shoe box. It would be his pleasure, he said, to see a naïve idiot like me win the day after all the hell I’d been through for thinking I could actually alter a broken and corrupt world with a puff piece about an opportunistic comedian.

And then, just as suddenly, he said, “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you move here with us? You can have a plot of land to build your own house with a view of the ocean and become a member of our small but growing utopian cooperative. Live off the grid, get laid, and frolic on the dunes where clothes are optional. The American judicial system is fucked and always will be. Maybe it’s time to take your endless idealism and hope for a better world and focus it on growing organic tomatoes.”

At the time, I was determined to get back on my corporate career path, not off it—way off of it—on some remote island in the Caribbean to live with a bunch of fruity utopian money launderers. And yet my calculated risk of choosing a life of creative self-direction and shortcuts to greatness hadn’t panned out. And in addition to everything else I was dealing with, I’d received numerous death threats and more than one brick through my living room window, so taking DeLorme up on his random generous offer was a calculated risk as well.

After abandoning my film to Jackson, Leona, and Munsey, I never looked back. I had done my work and made my statement about our crazy government. Recently, a friend called to tell me Pepperpot and Jackson were reunited and touring the globe making millions of dollars, in part due to the film I’d made about Jackson’s indictment, and I told him I was happy to hear it—but in truth, I couldn’t have cared less.

As of this writing, I’m sitting on the deck of my small house, built with sustainable materials including bamboo and hemp. I just read the New York Times cover to cover with a bialy and a hot cup of coffee, while enjoying the view of the budding Lamb’s Bread growing in my garden.

E

DWARD

M. G

ÓMEZ

is an art critic and historian, graphic designer, and environmental activist. He grew up in Morocco and Switzerland, and has lived and worked around the world. A former writer/correspondent at

TIME

, he has written for the

New York Times

, the

Japan Times

(Tokyo),

Reforma

(Mexico City),

Art in America, Art & Antiques, Metropolis, ARTnews, Raw Vision

(UK), and many other publications.

no smoking

by edward m. gómez

1.

I never smoked pot correctly.

Smoking pot never had an effect on me.

Sure, like many other kids in high school, I tried the occasional puff. However, compared to the high-volume consumption of the school’s most devoted potheads-in-residence—theirs could have been measured in bushels, not ounces—my experiments with the legendary herb were, well, dopey at best. Laughable. Half-assed. Lame.

One time, having learned about my plight from one of the less-frequent but still avid tokers who, like me, was a straight-A nerd, one of the PIRs took it upon himself to come to my rescue and initiate me in the art and pleasures of reefer madness. But it was no go. Even that well-meaning tutorial failed, or I failed it. Either I did not inhale correctly or I did not hold enough of the holy smoke in my skinny frame long enough to feel its magic or I simply did not believe.

Perhaps that was it, for never before had I felt a need to escape from so-called reality, and even if I had, for me, this stinky stuff probably would not have been the ticket I would have chosen to take me where I wanted to go.

In fact, at school what I had wanted was to be able to penetrate and understand the “real” world more profoundly, with a richer sense of awareness than the average guy walking around in torn jeans and a rock-band T-shirt. I wanted to soar to new heights of consciousness and understanding, not be pulled down into the muck of pulse-stopping stoner bliss.

Maybe it was no accident that, while still in high school, during one of my routine prowls through a nearby college’s library, I discovered the branch of philosophy known as phenomenology and the existentialist writings it had inspired, as well as Aldous Huxley’s little book from 1954, The Doors of Perception, in which he described his experience taking mescaline, a hallucinogenic in the peyote cactus, which had been used for generations by indigenous peoples of the Americas. Still, although I found it fascinating to learn how certain chemicals could make a person view reality differently or even experience new, different realities, it was the one in which I was stuck that I still wished to inhabit—I still didn’t have a license to drive around in it—albeit with more of the sense of unpredictable adventure that characterized the movements of Alice and her cohorts in Wonderland than with the passivity and resignation with which so many people around me seemed to slog through their days.

Had I walked into my chemistry class to find a gigantic egg perched on the edge of the lab table, reciting indecipherable verse, I would have wanted to know how it got there; by contrast, the PIRs would have found in such a vision an irresistible affirmation of pot love and a good reason to light up.

Time passed. I was many years older when I got high for the first time. It was in a garden in which a single, exemplary pot plant grew—in a tidy collection of horticultural gems, it was more of a scientific specimen than its owner’s private, illicit indulgence—but even today I still don’t know for sure whether or not it was the marijuana that got me high. Instead, there was something else that flourished in that oasis, something else that must have intoxicated me on a balmy summer night many years ago. It was some other kind of elixir, not a rare herb or a strange vegetable or the essential oil pressed from the leaf of some exotic shrub. Instead it was the wafting scent of a spirit, and that spirit was Claire’s.

2.

High school, college, graduate school: I could not get enough of philosophy or art. In the past, having been the precocious kid who had covered the blackboard in “psychedelic” drawings when the class was out to lunch, I enjoyed nothing more than being left alone with my books to read for hours or with my colored pencils to create my own worlds on paper in long art-making sessions that stretched into the night. When I learned that skilled doodlers could make a living creating pictures for books and magazines, I focused my studies on that goal and became an illustrator.

For a while, after moving to New York, an artists’ agency represented me and found me jobs; nowadays, on my own, I’m able to find enough work to support my cat and myself. That summer, in fact, I was very busy. I was working on a children’s book and on a set of images of household appliances for a volume about twentieth-century inventions.

Then came the call. It was sometime during that very hot summer, and I was not expecting a new project to pop up.

“Hello, Eric? The illustrator?”

“Yes, this is Eric,” I replied. The voice was that of an older woman, raspy and friendly at the same time. I asked: “Who’s calling, please?”

“Oh, great. Glad I got you. I was leafing through some old magazines, and I came across your lovely illustrations. You have a charming style.”

“Thanks,” I said. “How did you track me down? How may I help you?”

“Well, I saw the name of an artists’ agency in one of those magazines, a company that represents you, and I called them and—”

“Right. That was a few years ago,” I interjected. “I’m on my own now.”

“That’s wonderful,” the woman said. “Talented people deserve to succeed. I hope you’re doing well. So, can you come over?”

“Uh, but you haven’t told me who you are and what it is you’re calling about,” I said politely. “Are you looking for an illustrator for a publishing project?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Barbara—but everyone calls me Booba, although recently there’s been something of a backlash, or maybe it’s the heat—it’s so hot!—and some people have started calling me Baboo—anyway, it should be Babs, right? Isn’t Babs the nickname for Barbara?”

Barbara-Booba-Babs rattled on for a while before explaining that she lived in a town in the Hudson Valley, north of Manhattan. She and her husband would soon celebrate their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. She wanted to commission some illustrations of her home as a gift for her husband.

“You mean pictures of your house?” I asked. I wanted to be sure my caller did not want portraits of herself and her husband, either separate pictures or a double portrait. I did not like making portraits, for I always became too psychological about it; I always ended up seeing too much and then capturing it too obviously—too much of the anxiety, insecurity, and indecision I felt emanating from any sitter. People always wanted attractive pictures of their clothes or hairstyles. I gave them X-ray-like portraits of their vulnerability instead.

“Well, yes, pictures of the house and the yard,” Barbara-Babs said. “I don’t have much of a garden. You can have the run of the place and find any spots you think might capture its spirit. That’s the idea. I want to give Bob something special, a reminder of the home we’ve built together over—”

Suddenly B. went silent, as though responding to her own admonishment to stop rambling.

“Well,” I said, “it’s a bit of an unusual assignment. In effect, you’re asking me to produce a portrait of your home.”

“Exactly!” B. replied enthusiastically, her energy revived. “That’s just what I’m looking for! Could you do it?”

As busy as I was with other work, I was not eager to take up a new assignment, but it sounded like a challenge, and, I admit, my caller intrigued me. It was clear that if I accepted the assignment, I would have to meet her in person.

We discussed a deadline and my proposed fee. We set a date for a rendezvous at her house, at which time I would meet B. and make some preliminary sketches of what I found there. Confirming our plans, I thanked her for her call and double-checked the directions she had given me.

“I’ll make us a little snack; I’ll have some refreshments ready,” B. added before saying goodbye. “I love desserts.”

3.

“Hi, there! Nice to meet ya. Let’s smoke a joint!”

That was how Barbara-Booba-Babs greeted me when I showed up at her house in the late afternoon a few days after her phone call. In the scorching heat, I wore a nerd’s summer uniform of khaki shorts, a white polo shirt, and new sneakers with white ankle socks. B. arrived at the door holding a big, round pitcher of lemonade in one hand. She appeared in a billowing pink kaftan printed with blue and white polka dots, and her hair—I could see some dyed-red blond strands peeking out—was wrapped in what appeared to be a dish towel masquerading as a turban. Her face was round, like the pitcher, pale and glowing, with neatly plucked brows that formed perfectly symmetrical arches above lively brown eyes. I could tell she was a thin woman under all that fabric. Before I could respond to her invitation, though, B. had grabbed my hand and pulled me firmly into the house.

“Take a look around,” she ordered, “then head out back.”

As she darted to the kitchen at the back of the house, I took in the content and character of Barbara and Bob’s living room and dining room, and a short hallway that led to a staircase down to a lower floor. The house was built into the side of a hill, with its front yard and main entrance, where I had come in, on the upper level. Downstairs, I assumed, were the bedrooms. Out front I had noticed a gravel-covered driveway but no garage.

What I surveyed was a catalog of clutter, from 1960s Italian movie posters and large, animal-shaped sculptures of blown, colored glass to clear-plastic cubes at either end of a red-leather, club-room sofa and steel-framed armchairs with fuzzy, black-and-white-striped seats and backs. There was a cuckoo clock. There was a Mr. Peanut cookie jar. There were braided-macramé plant holders hanging from the ceiling with no flowerpots in their pockets; they held wine bottles instead. The dining room was packed with chairs—bar stools, bean bags, a Shaker straight-back, an antique rocker, an upholstered recliner—but no table at which to sit and eat a meal. An Oriental rug in the living room was old and faded; the green wall-to-wall shag carpet beneath it, which covered the entire upper floor of the house, was matted and needed to be raked—or ripped out and destroyed.

“Eric!” B. barked from the back of the house. “Come!”

I made my way through the kitchen to a screened-in porch overlooking, like a watchtower, a backyard dotted with a few large oak trees. The deep expanse of lawn appeared to be well-tended, and, catching my inquisitive gaze, B. explained: “That’s Bob, my husband. He’s good with grass. He takes care of the outside, and I take care of the inside—and Bob.” For a moment B. looked sad. Then, as I sat down, she cheerfully poured me a glass of lemonade and added, with a wink, “And I’m good with grass too. Here, try this.”

“What I was going to say before was, I’ve never been good at smoking pot,” I offered sheepishly. “Maybe we should talk about the pictures you want and—”

“Huh? What’s not to be good at?” my hostess retorted as she sucked on a joint the size of a carrot. “Here,” she said, shoving it into my hand and wrapping my fingers around it. She lifted it to my lips and placed it in my mouth like a mother teaching an infant to lick its first lollipop. “Now, I’m gonna light this, and you’re gonna breathe in and hold it—hold it till kingdom come, till the cows come home, till pigs start to fly. Just hold it!”

I wondered if watercolors, colored pencils, or my new set of colored felt-tip markers would be the best materials to use to capture, in art, the look and personality of Babs and Bob’s home. I breathed in. I recognized the sweet burning-grass smell. I tried to hold the smoke in my lungs. I also lost track of the time and started coughing and gasping for air.

“That wasn’t very good, Eric!” B. admonished. “Ya gotta do better than that in order to feel the effect.”

I gulped my lemonade.

“Here, don’t drink that. Drink this!” B. commanded, handing me a new glass, freshly poured from another pitcher that had been tucked away somewhere at her side. “This one has vodka. Drink up!” She watched me as, reluctantly, I guzzled the cool liquid like an obedient youngster drinking up all his milk.

“What are you looking at?” B. asked as she caught my eyes wandering across her backyard to her neighbor’s. The next-door property was filled with neatly planted shrubs, young trees surrounded by deer-intimidating protectors, exuberantly colorful flower beds, and a very full-looking vegetable garden enclosed by a fence made of chicken wire and old tree branches.

“Come on,” B. said, seizing my hand. “Let’s take a walk around the house so you can see the outside.” Pulling me down steep wooden stairs that led from the porch to the backyard, she led me around her house, back up to the front, where oak trees shaded the simple structure and big rocks surrounded untended flower beds. I made quick plain-pencil sketches in my notebook. B. sucked on the remains of the joint.

In the backyard again, we stood near the bottom of the stairs that led up to the screened-in porch. “I think I have it,” I announced.

“What’s that?” B. replied with a little cough. She pounded her chest with her fist.

“The views I’d like to paint to represent your home,” I said.

“That’s great, Eric! What do you have in mind?”

“Inside, the room with all the chairs—”

“Genius!” Babs declared. “I knew you were a real artist!”

“And outside, a view of the back of the house, looking up to the watchtower porch.”

“I like the way you think, kid,” B. cooed.

“But in order to get the right perspective, I’m going to have to set up my easel over there …” I pointed to a spot in her neighbor’s backyard, near the enclosed vegetable garden.

“Oh, Eric,” B. sighed, removing the remaining scrap of reefer from her lips and stashing it in the folds of her kaftan. “I don’t know. That would mean asking that girl for permission to let you set up in her backyard, and I …”

“Well, unless your neighbor’s really unfriendly, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind allowing me to work there. It wouldn’t take long.”

B. looked at me and then glanced over at her neighbor’s backyard. “Are you feeling any buzz from that joint?” she asked. “That was supposed to be pretty good stuff.”

I replied that, unfortunately, I had not felt any notable effect. “Maybe next time,” I said, adding: “So, what do you think? I could go next door and ask your neighbor for permission to set up my things in her yard and set a date for—”

“No, no, no, dear, we’ll go together,” B. replied, taking my arm and pulling me up the stairs to the back porch and into the kitchen. “But first let’s get the lemonade—and we’ll also bring the brownies.”

4.

B. did not stand on ceremony when the time came to announce our arrival at her neighbor’s home, even though, during the few seconds it took us to walk across her front yard to the house next door, she admitted that she had never even spoken with this person before; she had never even met her.

“Hi! I’m Barbara, but you can call me Booba or maybe Babs or whatever the heck else you might come up with, and this is Eric, and we’re stopping by to say hello and ask if Eric might be allowed to stand in your backyard to paint a picture—of the back of my house, that is, not of your place; that would be an invasion of privacy, and I assure you that we’re decent people and not into snooping or anything like that.” B. managed to blurt out all of this before her neighbor, a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than myself, could even utter a word to welcome us. “Oh! And we brought a little snack. Very refreshing on a day like this. It’s so hot.”

“Well, hello. Nice to meet you,” the younger woman replied. “I’m Claire. You live next door? Come in. Come in. You’re right, it’s hot. Don’t stand there melting.”

We stepped into a cool living room—there was no air-conditioning, but dark curtains were pulled shut to keep out the sun—outfitted with a large, oval-shaped rug and very little furniture. Near the center of the room lay four cats in various positions of repose.

“Let’s go to the back porch,” Claire said. “Here, let me carry that pitcher. I’ll get some glasses.”

“Thanks, dear. I’m delighted to meet you and also very embarrassed that I haven’t made an effort to say hello before today.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve been here awhile but mostly I’ve kept to myself,” Claire responded, piquing B.’s curiosity.

“Why’s that, dear? You’re on the lam? Running from the law?” B. chuckled and added: “Just kidding, of course.”

“No, nothing so dramatic,” Claire said. “I had been working as a schoolteacher a few towns over, closer to the river …”

“The community college?” B. asked.

“No, an elementary school. Let’s just say that I was getting tired of it, and I also had to undergo an operation …”

“Nothing serious?”

“Not really, just routine, but after that I wanted a change. So I looked around and I moved here. I wanted room for a vegetable garden.”

“What do you do now?” I asked, anticipating B.’s next question.

“I copy-edit material for medical journals. Work at home. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I’m good with technical language. I’ve copy-edited users’ manuals for all kinds of appliances too. Really anonymous literary work, you could say.”

We all laughed, and I mentioned that I was illustrating a book about modern inventions.

“Is that what you do?” Claire asked. “Barbara said something about painting.”

“Yes, I’m an illustrator, and she has commissioned me to draw some pictures of her house …”

“For my husband, Bob, for our wedding anniversary; I thought it would be something different, you know,” B. explained.

“I think that’s a very original idea for an anniversary gift,” Claire said. “You must be very attached to your home.”

“Or to Bob,” B. said reflexively.

“What do you all do?” Claire asked.

“Oh, I used to do this and that; I used to be a secretary at Bob’s company, in fact. As for my husband, he’s in gravel.”

“Gravel?” Claire and I responded in unison.

“Yes. He owns a company that sells gravel for driveways, for private roads, for gardens.”

“I suppose most people don’t think much about gravel,” I said.

“No, dear, it’s not the sexiest subject. But hey, it bought us a house and all the junk that’s in it, and here we are!”

Claire’s screened-in back porch was smaller than B.’s. Because Claire’s house was also built into the side of the same hill, its top floor overlooked the backyard from what felt like a high perch. She disappeared into her kitchen to fetch some glasses, plates, and a tray, and soon returned.

“Even though it’s hot out there, would you like to see the garden?” she proposed. “In fact, there’s a part of the vegetable garden that’s covered. It’s shady, and I think it would be fun to enjoy this snack together down there.”

“Sounds good!” B. replied.

We placed the pitcher, brownies, and other items on the tray and left it on the lowest step of the staircase that led down to the backyard, then followed Claire as first she led us on a tour around the exterior of her house.

“Did you do all of the landscaping yourself?” I asked. “Did you make the flower bed walls?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I saved the branches I had cut down off the trees at the lower end of the yard and just started stacking them; I liked the way they looked and I like the way they’ve aged.”

Around the house, everything looked as though it had very naturally sprung up on its own—flower beds, groups of flowering shrubs or young trees with very thin trunks—but Claire explained that she had carefully planned the layout of every inch of her garden.

“What’s this gang over here?” B. asked as we made our way around the far side of the house and returned to the backyard.

Claire told us that the shaded patch Barbara had noticed was filled with Christmas fern, maidenhair fern, lady fern, and Japanese painted fern.

“There really are so many kinds of fern? Who knew?” B. said, as she poked around in the pockets of her kaftan.

“Over there you have a butterfly bush, a beauty bush, and a spice bush,” Claire pointed out, “and besides the big oaks—you have some too, Barbara—among the trees, there are some dogwoods, a white pine, and a Stewartia, which the Japanese call the ‘summer camellia’; it’s native to Korea and southern Japan. They have a beautiful flower.”

“I think I noticed them earlier this summer,” B. said as she bent down to pick up our refreshments. We all headed over to Claire’s fenced-in vegetable and herb garden. As she had indicated, a light-colored tarp covered about a fourth of the large enclosure, casting shade over a patch of grass where nothing had been planted. We spread out there, on the ground. B. poured three glasses of lemonade, and Claire cut and served the brownies on small clear-glass plates.

“That’s where I’d like to set up my easel to paint my picture of Babs’s house,” I said, pointing to a spot a few feet away from the far end of the enclosed garden.

“That’s fine,” Claire replied. “Whenever you want, just come and set up your things.”

“Hey, everybody!” B. exclaimed. “Let’s smoke some pot!”

“Huh?” Claire responded. “Really? I’m growing some, you know.”

“What! Seriously?”

“Well, I decided to grow it just as a kind of experiment, just like I’m trying to grow tulsi, or holy basil—it’s from India and used for tea—and wild bergamot and lemon verbena and apple mint. They’re all used to make teas.”

B. had fished out a little plastic bag of marijuana and some rolling papers from the depths of her kaftan and was busy rolling a joint as Claire described her plantings. As she spoke, she nibbled a brownie, stood up, and walked over to a tiny wooden table within the enclosed garden. She pulled open a drawer and removed a pair of gardening gloves, some tools, and a neatly folded white handkerchief, which she brought back and handed to B.

“Barbara,” Claire asked, “what’s in these brownies? Why do they taste like freshly mown grass?”

“That’s because there’s pot in them, dear,” B. said. I choked on my own brownie as she divulged the secret of her recipe, which prompted B. to look at me and remark: “So, Eric, if smoking it doesn’t work for you, maybe eating it will.”

“Here, Barbara, you can have this,” Claire said, handing B. the folded cloth. “I removed the stems and dried the leaves myself. But I warn you, I know nothing about cultivating pot. That’s my lone plant right there.” We all glanced over at what appeared to be a healthy marijuana plant growing tall among the other vegetables and herbs. Then Claire looked at me and asked, “What does she mean, smoking pot doesn’t affect you? Have you tried many times?”

“No. I mean, I’m not a pothead or anything …”

“I am,” B. weighed in from the side as she unfolded Claire’s handkerchief, found a fluffy pile of dried leaves inside, and began to roll a second joint.

“It’s not as though I’m always trying to get high,” I added.

“I am,” B. chimed in as she labored.

“Well, I hardly ever smoke pot either,” Claire explained. “I really don’t know why I planted it this year. Like I said, it’s just an experiment.”

B. knocked back the last of her drink and poured herself a second glass. As I had expected, she had brought the spiked lemonade with us to Claire’s place. My head began to spin.

Holding up the two joints, B. declared: “Okay, kids. We’re going to do a taste test and we’re going to get Eric high.”

5.

There are times in life when the best thing to do, perhaps the only thing to do, is to throw dumb hesitation to the wind—to strike back hard at the underlying fear that fuels it—and peel off all your clothes and jump in the pool while everybody is watching, or hold your nose and take a bite of the escargots in garlic sauce that look like twice-boiled pencil erasers, or dare to place a kiss on a pair of lips that, until or unless you do, will never know the urgency of your desire. There are times when resistance to whatever may be calling is futile.

So it was that I allowed B. to place the first of her freshly prepared joints between my lips. Claire watched and reached for her drink. “Barbara, what’s in this lemonade?” she asked.

“Mama’s special recipe,” B. replied as she massaged my shoulders. I was sitting up, with my legs stretched out in front of me. “Now, Eric, I already lit that joint and got it started. I’m gonna light it again, and you’re gonna breathe in and hold it, then slowly release the smoke. That’s the idea.”

Mama slid forward to face me and lit the joint. I tried to follow her instructions. Claire observed me with a serious look. At that moment I assumed that, until recently, when she had worked as a schoolteacher in a nearby town, she must have been a science teacher—and probably a very good one.

I exhaled.

“Again!” B. commanded. I thought the taste of the just-smoked pot had been somewhat muted by the strong, lingering taste of the pot brownie I had just finished eating. “This time take a puff of Claire’s blend.”

“Claire’s blend?” Claire asked.

“Actually, it’s not a blend. It’s one hundred percent your pot,” B. said. “Here we go.”

I took the second joint and repeated the inhale-exhale routine. “May I have a sip of lemonade,” I asked my examiners.

“It’s like a taste test of the finest wines!” B. noted. “Now he wants to cleanse his palate.”

Claire handed me a glass. I took a gulp and managed to eliminate some of the strong, overlapping tastes in my mouth. I felt dizzy.

“Give him some time,” B. instructed. “Relax, Eric. Let me know when you’re ready for more.” Then she puffed on each joint, one after the other, performing a taste test of her own. Taking a break from her indulgence, she said, “Oh, Claire! I’m sorry, I completely forgot about you. Would you like … ?”