More importantly, I did not get high. I just got really tired. I left the nerd's room, the nerd slouching on his hoisted bed, mouth full of raw pop tart.

Good Weed
I didn't try Marijuana again until I graduated from college. I was living in San Antonio, and my thyroid problem was bad. After a couple of jerky reactions to alcohol I decided to quit drinking.

A good friend of mine from high school came to visit me. I took her to a bar on the Riverwalk, where she guzzled Margaritas and I jealously watched, sipping at Diet Cokes and scratching my new tattoo. This is where we met the most beautiful man in existence.

His appearance is forever burned into my memory for its sheer implausibility. His name was Jose. He was Columbian, his parents in the import/export business. Mom was white, dad was Hispanic. He was some outrageous hybrid only a gay Renaissance master could dream up; eyes the color of grass, skin the color of walnuts, hair thick and a little bit unruly, just the right amount of playful discontent. His lips were like two breasts pushed together. They had the same pull as good cleavage. It was ludicrous.

He took us to his house. I don't remember anything about it aside from the dumbbells scattered about. He rolled a joint, which we took little puffs from, the smoke wetter and sweeter than any I'd tried before. Nothing happened at first. But later, lying on a couch with my feet on my friend, my head on Jose's lap, staring at this man, this pussy demagogue, the greatest high of my life hit me. Everything was hilarious. I was a genius. Life's mysteries were easily charted by the rearranging of dumbbells into interesting patterns.

We three went to Jose's bed. We took turns kissing this implausible man, and then fell asleep.

The Chronic
I was living in Tampa with BunnySis when I discovered a potent type of weed called "Chronic," the same strain made famous by Dr. Dre. I was a few days into dating a guy who seemed to have a lot of drugs on him when we went out. He also had a lot of drugs at his home, and the glove box of his car was littered with sandwich baggies full of white stuff. As he was obviously a drug dealer, I broke it off, and in an act of retaliation, he slid a large joint full of weed into my jacket pocket. It stayed there for a week. I went everywhere with it, the grocery store, the gym, several restaurants and bars, South Tampa, North Tampa, to and fro about the bay, speeding and committing unsafe lane changes with a huge joint in my pocket.

When I discovered it, I cursed him. Then I breathed a sigh of relief and called BunnySis.

"Guess what you're doing tonight..."
BS: "What?"
"Poppin' your Marijuana cherry!"
BS: "Ssssshhhhh... Oh my... I can't do that!"
"Yes you can. And you will."

Though BunnySis is quite the partier today, back then she found things like this to be scandalous. She was 27, and had never smoked weed before. I was determined to corrupt her, and I figured this particular joint was a good starter joint; it didn't smell like it was all that strong.

When she got home from Happy Hour with her coworkers, we lit up the joint and passed it back and forth. I still had relatively pink lungs, so I coughed when I took drags, but BunnySis was fine. She had recently taken up smoking cigarettes because all her friends told her it was cool. She would hold the cigs awkwardly, examining the way her friends held them, and then repeating their form. When she blew the smoke out, she would jut her bottom lip forward and blow the refuse upward and right back into her nose. It was preposterous to watch.

She held the joint the same way and took long drags at it, just right for cigarettes, but too long for weed. I told her to slow down, that she shouldn't smoke too much of the joint because I didn't know how strong it was.

"It's not a cigarette, BunnySis. You have to be careful."
BS: "I'll be fine. Don't worry."

We sat and smoked, and soon the living room that separated our bedrooms was clouded with thick, psychotropic fog. I had painted the room a citrusy green when we moved in. One wall was a loose checkerboard pattern trimmed with gold, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Within minutes of sitting on the couch with BunnySis and the joint, it began to move. It would drift southwesterly then snap back into its original position.

"Hey, do you feel anything?"
BS: "Nope."
"Hmmm... maybe this stuff is bad."
BS: "Maybe. I'm gonna go put my stuff away." BunnySis got up and went into her bedroom with her gym bag. I walked around our couch, and petted our Himalayan cat a little bit, which was never a good idea. The cat had daddy issues. It was constantly starved for attention, so petting it once was like opening a Pandora's Box, sentencing your face to four hours of chewing a bushy cat ass. BunnySis was busy picking up the dead laundry on her bedroom floor.

"What do you want me to make for dinner?"
BS: "I don't know. Make that rice thingy."
"Okay."

I went into our kitchen pantry and got out a box of rice and vermicelli. The cat fol lowed me there and rubbed herself between my legs which tickled more-so than usual. I found a saucepan in the cabinet under the stove.

The directions on the back of the rice and vermicelli box were difficult to read, more-so than usual. I spent a long time deciphering what to do with the stuff. It suddenly seemed very difficult to cook, though I had done it a million times before.

Hmmm... I need to melt some butter. Then I need to put the vermicelli stuff into the butter and... sauté the vermicelli. That doesn't seem right. Did I do that the last time?

I kicked the cat off my legs and went into the fridge for the butter, which was hard to find, but I didn't mind because bending over at a 45 degree angle was super fun.

This feels awful nice. I like bending over. Yay for bending over.

I dropped a pat of butter into the pan. It landed with a slap and refused to melt. I did not understand why until I looked under the saucepan and saw that there was no burner running. Silly me. I lit a burner and the butter liquefied quickly, began to burn on the outskirts of the pan, bubbling where the surface tension held the blobs of it together. It was fascinating.

BS: [From the other room] "What's burnin'?"

Oh shit. I ripped open the vermicelli packet. Half of it landed on the floor, which was very funny considering I had just cleaned the floor. I had just cleaned the thing, and now there was vermicelli all over it. God it was funny. My belly ached for the funniness.

The rest of the vermicelli went into the burnt butter, where it coagulated and stuck together. I didn't understand why. I got a bottle of BunnySis' fat free butter spray out of the fridge, neon yellow liquid that resembles butter in taste, and vigorously sprayed it over the vermicelli. The little logs crackled and then came back to life.

I was annoyed that the weed had not kicked in. However, my mouth was astoundingly dry, as if the cells in my mouth and cheeks had replicated seven times and then died. I went back to the fridge for the Brita cooler, poured myself a glass of water, and also one for BunnySis. I took her glass into her bedroom, where she was still picking up laundry.

BS: "Thanks.
"I wonder why this shit hasn't kicked in yet?"
BS: "Yeah I know. It's weird. Weeeiiiird."
"Weeeeerrrrraaaad."
BS: "Hee hee. Yeah. Weeeeerrrraaaaad."

I went back to the vermicelli. It was doing well, boiling in the plastic butter. God, my mouth had never been so dry. Kitty, my mouth is fucking dry. I can barely talk it's so dry.

I finished my first glass of water and poured another. Then I called to BunnySis: "You need more water?"
BS: "Yeah."

BunnySis came out of her bedroom in a bra and skirt. She still had half a glass of water, but as she walked toward me with it, she was holding it at face level. As she got closer, I noticed she had the glass pressed against her nose. She was staring at the water in it.

"What are you doing?"
BS: "Shhhh..."
"You're high."
BS: "Shhhh... you'll scare it."
"Scare what?"
BS: "Don't you see it?"
"No."
BS: "You don't see the fish?"
"No."

I laughed so that a little bit of urine came out of my pee hole. I went into the bathroom and peed, choking with laughter, the obnoxious kind that leaves you breathless. BunnySis refilled her glass and went back into her bedroom to clean some more.

I went back to the vermicelli, which had taken on new life in the chemistry like the six million dollar man did when they gave him all those artificial parts. It was like six million dollar vermicelli. Just then, the cat rubbed against my legs. It tickled. I looked down at the thing, a yeti of a creature who shed more in a day than a half dozen golden retrievers combined. I became annoyed and decided to do something about all the cat hair in our apartment. But what to do?

I spied a lint brush in the refuse of BunnySis' bedroom. I took it out into our living room and got onto my knees in a corner, rolling the carpet with the lint brush an inch at a time. It was like putting a band aid on a gaping head wound, but at the time it seemed more logical than using the vacuum cleaner. I was really making headway with the cat hair problem.

The vermicelli began to burn in its plastic butter. I ran to the kitchen to take it off the burner, and this is when I saw BunnySis come out of the pantry with a Costco bulk box of Cocoa Puffs on her head. She bent her knees and elbows, pointed her forefingers like a cowboy and said, "Do you like my... HAT?"
"Uh, yes."
BS: "But do you LOVE my HAT?"
"Sure."
BS: "You see, Bunny, LOVE is what it's all about."
"Its all about love, eh?"
BS: "Yes. It's LOVE that makes it all work."
"Why are you talking like that?"
BS: "You see, Bunny, this is the LANGUAGE of LOVE I'm using."
"The Language of Love?"
BS: "Yes. The LANGUAGE of LOVE. It's all about the LOVE."

I took the blackened vermicelli off the burner. BunnySis inspected the carnage.

BS: "Maybe you should ADD more spray butter."
"I don't think so."
BS: "You see, Bunny, I think you were SUPPOSED to boil it." She shot off the finger guns and made little lazer sound effects like "Pew pew."

I picked up the box to make sure she wasn't right. It clearly said to sauté the vermicelli on the box.

"It says here that you have to sauté it."
BS: "Lemme see THAT BOX."

I handed it to her.

BS: "Nope. You see, Bunny. They say here that you're SUPPOSED to 'SAUT' the vermicelli [she pronounced the word so that it rhymed with 'south']."
"How do you 'saut' something?"
BS: "I DON'T know." She readjusted the Cocoa Pebbles box on her head. "But it's ALL about the LOVE."

I tried to decipher the instructions on the box. BunnySis stood in the living room performing a strange dance move with the box of Cocoa Pebbles on her head. She held her arms out straight and spun them like a windmill in a counterclockwise direction. Then, simultaneously, she kicked one leg around in the opposite direction. She would get halfway through the move when the leg would smack into the arms disrupting the whole thing.

BS: "Whoa, this is INCREDIBLE."
"What's incredible?"
BS: "This MOVE I just made up is AMAZING . Look, my arms go like this, and my legs go like that, and they're passing through each other." She would do the move and nothing would pass through anything. Rotate, THWACK, rotate, THWACK, rotate, THWACK. It looked painful.

"That looks painful."
"It's ALL about the LOVE."

I went back to the vermicelli. The next step was boiling the rice, and it seemed impossible to do. I played with the level of the water for an indeterminate amount of time trying to get it just right. In the background I heard BunnySis doing her dance and talking in the Language of Love. Rotate, THWACK, rotate, THWACK... "It's ALL about the LOVE."

At one point, she began singing Rod Stewart's "Do you Think I'm Sexy" in the Language of Love. It sounded quite natural because of the emphasis on the words "if," "and," and "come." IF you want my body, AND you think I'm sexy, COME on sugar let me know.

I watched the water intently, waited for bubbles to arise. The cat kept tickling my legs and taunting my inability to keep the carpet free from her yeti fur. Damn you, kitty!

Bubbles began to form on the bottom of the pan. My face was really hot, burning, actually. The dropped vermicelli was sticking to the bottom of my feet. I kept watching the boiling water while I scraped the soles of my feet on Kitty to get them free from vermicelli.

When the water began to pulse and pop, I couldn't stand the heat any more and took my face away. This is when I realized the whole point of boiling the water was so that I could put the rice in it. I did this, and when I had finished tediously stirring the concoction, I noticed that BunnySis was missing. It was very quiet in the apartment. No THWACK. No Language of Love.

I went into her bedroom. She was standing in her bra and skirt, staring into the floor of her closet like mental patients stare out windows in the movies. The box of Cocoa Puffs was on the floor next to her. I moved forward, and she held a hand out. I stopped moving. What is wrong?

"Are you okay?"

She put a finger to her lips to hush me, but said nothing, just stared into the floor of her closet. She motioned for me to join her. I stood next to her and looked into the closet, half expecting to see an escaped python. But there was nothing out of the ordinary in her closet. It was the same mess of fashionable accessories and bright tops.

I whispered, "What are we looking at?"
She put up her finger again, but this time sound came out. "Shhhhhhhhh..."
"Why do we have to be quiet?"
BS: "Because. He. Will. Hear us."
"Who will hear us?"
BS: "Shhhhhhhh..."

This conversation went on three times before I got an answer. I assumed the ghost fish had come back, but I was wrong.

"Who will hear us?"
BS: "Richard Pryor."
"Richard Pryor is in your closet?"
BS: "Yes."
"Oh."
BS: "Yes."
"Why are you staring at his feet?"
BS: "I'm not."
"You're looking at Richard Pryor's feet."
BS: "No I'm not."
"Then look him in the eye."
BS: "I am. He's only a foot tall."
"There's a miniature Richard Pryor in your closet?"
BS: "Yes."
"Is he on fire?"
BS: "That's the STUPIDEST question EVER."

Out in the kitchen, boiling rice and water had exploded. It was everywhere. I rushed to the mess, took the pot off the burner and shut it down. The rice was still soupy and unsettled when I dumped the vermicelli into it. The vermicelli had cooled into a plastic brick. It dropped onto the boiled rice pan in one piece and broke upon impact. I decided to give up cooking and throw it all away.

After I had cleaned up as best as I could, I needed to get my shameful attempt at cooking out of the apartment. I needed to bury it forever, to cleanse my kitchen of this terrible mistake, to take out the trash. As it was dark out, BunnySis had to come with me to the dumpster.

I found her inside her closet looking down at miniature Richard Pryor.

"I have to take out the trash."
BS: "Okey DOKEY." She pointed the guns at me and made the "Pew pew" noises.

I carried the open trash bag full of mess to the door, where I bent over to tie a knot in its top. Once again, bending over felt really great. It felt so good, in fact, that I couldn't bring myself to stop. Instead I picked up the bag, and bent at a 45 degree angle, I headed out the door.

BunnySis followed me, and found my posture to be hilarious. She laughed and pointed at me, and as she did this, her legs began to wobble back and forth like she was a compulsive chicken dancer. We walked all the way down the stairs bent over at a 45 degree angle, and doing the compulsive chicken dance.

It felt so natural. We did it all the way to the dumpster.

"Geez, this is super fun."
BS: "Yeah, EVERYbody should WALK like this."

When we finally got to the dumpster, at twice the amount of time it normally took, I threw the bag in. We high-fived, then turned around and walked, bent over and chicken dancing, all the way back to the apartment.

BS: "You see, Bunny, I'm LOVIN' my LEGS. Pew Pew."

When we got back to the apartment, I still couldn't move my back. I decided to sit down, which was a brilliant idea. All I had to do was bend my knees and flop onto the couch, and I could still do the super fun 45 degree angle.

BunnySis went to the DVD player and tried to put a disc in for us to watch. This was impossible for her, the equivalent of learning Latin in two hours. As I watched her struggle to find the 'play' button, I realized that my eye holes were very narrow. I couldn't see much at all. I decided to find out just how narrow they were by poking my fingers into them to measure. This hurt a lot.

I pulled my fingers off my eyeballs. A minute later I decided to measure them again. This hurt a lot. I pulled my fingers off my eyeballs. A minute later I decided to measure them again. BunnySis was still trying to find the 'play' button when I faded into a deep sleep.

I woke up sometime in the early morning hours in the same position, the 45 degree angle not super fun anymore. Kitty was mocking me, rubbing her bushy ass into my face. My eyes were burning from being repeatedly poked. Vermicelli was stuck to the soles of my feet.

BunnySis had somehow made it to her bed in the night. I don't know what happened to miniature Richard Pryor, as he was never seen nor heard from again.

Later that week I called the drug dealer and asked him what he had slipped into my pocket. "That's Chronic," he said. "But be careful; it can get ugly."

Thanks for the warning, fuckface.