When it was finally my turn, I coughed before I could breathe in all the smoke, but I stayed high all day from the single hit.
It was on Louisa Street where I continued my education of the cannabis plant; the art of how to get high before class, where to find weed during the severest droughts and to sit in ciphers while high and attempt to intellectually discuss and debate a variety of topics in smoky living rooms.
I became familiar with all the vocabulary associated with the plant and its various names, was an avid reader of High Times Magazine, learned the prices and measurements— nicks, sold for $5, dime bags for $10, eighths for $20 to $25—and even turned into somewhat of a connoisseur, distinguishing between the different qualities of the drug, from its various textures, to its diverse levels of potencies.
My spacious one-bedroom apartment served its purpose as a place to crash at the end of a long day, but it also had its disadvantages. It only had one view out of every window—the brick wall of the building next door.
The ceiling in the bathroom often leaked, and the radiators never seemed to get warm enough in the winter.
I quickly found out that I couldn’t afford the rent, the electric bill, and the groceries on my income alone, so I made “Roommate Wanted” flyers and posted them all over campus. It wasn’t until a month later that I got my first response from a guy named Owen.
Owen had come to Pittsburgh from the Florida Keys and reminded me of everything I had seen, heard, or read about people who lived on the beach. He was of medium build with sandy blonde hair, big blue eyes, had a beard, and talked with a laid-back drawl. He said the word yeah a lot at the beginning of his sentences.
“You don’t mind living with a smoker?” he asked during our first conversation on the phone.
“No, not at all,” I said. “I’ll have a cigarette every now and then, so it’s really not a big deal.”
As far as I was concerned, if he could pay half the rent, he could smoke as much as he wanted.
Owen worked as a manager for a local band called Left on Dorris, and when he came home late in the evenings, we’d sit around and smoke Marlboro Lights and pot before bed and talk about what went on in each other’s day. Owen liked smoking pot out of little pipes, which I later found out were called bowls. He would pack his little marble bowl, light it, take a hit, and quickly cover it with the lighter so the pot wouldn’t burn out. He didn’t waste a bit. He’d pass it to me, and I’d do the same.
I didn’t mind smoking a bowl every once in a while, but I preferred to smoke blunts. I enjoyed the mystique of the process—splitting the cigar, dumping out the tobacco, and rolling the leaf. It was just a preference, not a requirement. I had smoked with a lot of people while in school, and for some reason, there were those who only liked to smoke pot out of bowls or rolled joints. Then, there were others who only smoked their marijuana in blunts. I best fit into the “other” category—those who didn’t care as long as they were high when finished.
Owen always complained when I wanted to roll a blunt. He said it was a waste of money and weed. I argued that the same amount needed to pack a bowl could be used to roll a blunt. I also seemed to get higher when I smoked blunts. Owen said he got too high. He said the direct inhalation of the smoke through the cigar seemed to go faster to his brain. It was true. Bigger hits could be taken with the blunt, whereas the bowl only allowed a certain level of drag. So, when we smoked his weed, we smoked out of a bowl. When we smoked my weed, we smoked blunts.
I had come home from a late class one evening and noticed a large cardboard box sitting in the middle of the living room floor. When I peeked inside, I saw something that looked like a large octagon shaped aquarium that stood about four feet tall. There were lights and mirrors all around the inside.
“I picked up some really good seeds,” Owen began explaining to me. “Hopefully I can grow four of five plants, so we don’t always have to buy weed.”
He placed the contraption in the closet of our living room and ran an electrical cord under the rug from the bedroom. Then he bought a bag of fertilized dirt, planted the seeds, and we waited for the plants to grow.
Incredibly, it worked.
Personally, I thought the idea was smart and absolutely foolproof. After the spaces around the hinges and on all sides of the closet door were taped up, it was impossible to tell that there was anything inside. But unfortunately, there ended up being a few glitches we couldn’t get around.
The marijuana-growing closet was the only door in our small living room, and the couch next to it barely allowed enough space for it to open. The blocked, shut door was sure to pique the curiosity of any visitors we might invite over. If someone couldn’t contain their inquisitiveness about what was in there and opened it, they would have thought a UFO had dropped through the roof because of the bright lights. On top of that, when the room was dark, even with tape, the lights and the mirrors shone through the cracks around the frame.
After the weed started to grow, the heat from the lights made the living room smell like cooked vegetables. There was a total of five plants in all, and surprisingly, they all budded. The temptation of having a budding marijuana plant in my living room was much stronger than I imagined. Though I knew it was wrong, I must admit, when Owen wasn’t around and I didn’t have any money to buy weed, I’d sometimes sneak into the closet and pick off buds to smoke. I rationalized it as “pruning.”
Soon, the plants grew too big, and their large leaves began to dry up because they came too close to the lights.
Immediately, Owen recognized that it wasn’t working out very well and decided to abort the entire project.
He uprooted all the plants, picked them clean, and sat a
“significant pile” of leaves and buds on our coffee table.
For a few moments, we sat on the couch and just stared at it, awed at the idea of what was about to take place.
With three cigar wrappers, I proceeded to roll the mother of all blunts, and together, we to smoked every bit of it.
CHAPTER TWO
On a cool, rainy evening en route to a sociology class I was taking in the Forbes Quadrangle building, I saw the person I’d been wanting to speak to for some time—a black girl who I’d seen on several occasions coming in and out of my apartment building. She was traveling from the opposite direction and carrying an umbrella, though it was only sprinkling. Her aloof nature, apparent independence, and the fact that she was one of the only girls residing in our living quarters captured my curiosity.
“Don’t you live in my building?” I asked as we neared one another. “The one on Louisa Street?”
“Yes, I think so,” she answered.
“My name’s Jovon,” I said, extending my hand. She took it loosely and told me her name was Nicole.
“Well, I have to get to class, but I’ll see you around.
Maybe we can hang out