New Orleans Story - Chapter 1

New Orleans Story: Chapter 1

The phone rang, its sleak black body vibrating in a dance of alarm across the room from its owner. Its digital speakers pumped out John William's foreboding Imperial March. It sounded like R2-D2 was trying to perform his own interpretation.

"Great, it's my parents." The phones owner said from his resting position on his girlfriend's bed. He was lying on his back with his keyboard across his lap, his head facing the lit screen of his laptop, its gray body resting atop an unsteady tile mosaic corner table.

He set the mouse and keyboard to the side and crawled his way across the full-size bed, disconnecting himself from the blankets and sheets that had not been fixed since who knew when. He walked the short distance to the tall black bookshelf where the phone continued its symphony, his girlfriend sitting in a gray courteroy bowl chair, stared up at him.

Lifting the phone he pressed the tiny green button, accepting the incoming call:

"Hello," he said.

"Hey John, this is dad," came the gentle, yet stern voice of his father.

"What's up?"

"You tell me," came the reply, this time sounding less gentle and more stern.

"Nothing...," came the hesitant answer from John. His father rarely returned a question when he was in a good mood.

"Isn't there something you are supposed to be doing?"

"Like?"

"Well, for starters," John felt the muscles in his shoulder tense, "I talked to your older brother last night. He says you still haven't finished painting his house."

John flinched. He had moved into his older brother's house nearly six months ago. He was given the option of painting the house, which he did for a living, or pay rent. John had opted for the painting.

"I know. We were supposed to do it last Monday, but things got messed up because we didn't have the proper equipment to get it done."

"Uh-huh," came the reply. "What about your room? You have been gone for nearly six months and I've asked you almost every single day since then to clean it up. There's garbage and ferret shit all over the place. Not counting the fact that your mother tricked me into thinking that your ferrets were only going to stay here for the weekend of Mother's Day. Because of this there is ferret shit all over my bedroom and do you think she cares or is going to do anything about it? I'm at my wit's end here!"

At this point John's mind had taken a complete one hundred and eighty degree spin. It scrambled to find an easy a way out of this while sparing himself the least amount of pain.

"I'll take care of it," was the best he could come up with. He felt like he was eight years old again being yelled at for skirting his chores for the tenth time.

"I've asked you a hundred times..."

"I know, I know, I know." John said.

"Just get it done, please. I know you are going on vacation with your mom tomorrow, but get it done as soon as you get back. I love you. Baah." John hung up the phone knowing that his father felt he had won a victory. The anger that had been in his voice only moments ago had evaporated as he said "bye" in his own way. He had also picked up the use of "bah" as his own farewell, often confusing family members and friends while on the phone.

John quietly set the phone back onto the shelf and sat, lotus position, on the ground. He had been reading a lot lately about Buddhism and the many types of meditation techniques and yet he couldn't find the discipline in himself to use a single one of them.

Instead, he grabbed a thumb sized glass bottle from a shelf at eye-level with him. A cork was fastened into its smooth glass rim, its bottom was covered in dusty black electrical tape, and seemed to hover, guard like, over a half-inch of green powder. The powder was called "keif". Although he was unaware of where the name came from, he was quite sure as to where it came from: marijuana.

Keif itself was the actual part of the plant that caused the smoker to become "high" when smoked. There existed a number of ways you could seperate the weed from its bounty of keif, John used a grinder. Coming in all shapes and sizes, some were metal, other wood, and they even came in plastic. Grinders came in different types, designed to fit each owner's specific needs.

For example: John's was a Sweetleaf metal Pollinator. It broke into three pieces: the grinding mechanism, sifter, and pollinator tray.

Removing the larger stems and seeds from the bud, you would put the partially broken marijuana into the top most compartment of the grinder: the grinding mechanism which housed flat-topped metal spikes with interspersed holes at the base. Then, placing the cap, with corresponding spikes, the user then turns the cap clockwise and the freshly ground weed would fall through the metal holes inbetween the spikes and down onto the sifter.

With the seperated weed resting atop the sifter you could either stop there and load it into your smoking device of choice, or you could pollinate it. Pollinating from John's perspective was the most physical aspect of any drug he had ever been exposed to: personal experience or otherwise. Taking the grinder (all in one piece) he would shake it violently, often slamming it against his thigh to get the most out of what was inside. When finished there might be enough keif in one session of griding to fill a contact lense. Although a grinder full of pot wasn't enough to allow you to produce anything too fancy; breaking up a whole ounce of it would.

Grabbing his purple rubber mousepad from beneath his idle mouse he turned it over, where already pressed into the back stood out black-green rings. From beside the bed he picked up a small device made out of copper. It was amazingly simple: a hollow copper tube with an aluminum bar that could slide firmly thru the tube. The aluminum had rusted a bit from whatever it had been previously used for, but it fulfilled their needs.He picked the bottle up and pulled the cap off, creating a "pop" noise as it came loose.

In his other hand he lifted the copper tube, sliding back the aluminum bar so that a small empty shaft appeared. He then tipped the glass jar and slid the tube in, pushing some of the keif inside. He emptied nearly a quarter of the bottle before setting the bottle back. He took a lighter from his pocket, and stared at his reflection coming through the charred tip. He looked young, mostly because he was young at twenty-two. His brown hair was thinning in the front like villagers running from an impending horde. His friends chided him for his round head, and the distortion from the circular tube didn't help that image any. He swore years ago that when his hair had come to a point where it was noticeably thin he would simply shave it all off. Yet, he feared how his round head might look if he was to go through with it. His eyes were subtly sunken in looking with a pale gray coloring the bags under his eyes. It nearly looked like he could have been a heroine addict, but the culprit was not drugs, rather long nights playing games, with early mornings and long days at work.

He flicked the lighter on and watched as the image disappeared.

"Everything okay?" His girlfriend asked peering over the upper crust of the chair. Just over the brink of the chair he could see her neck through her earlobes. Her earlobes had been stretched to an inch and a half gauge and were still growing. Her oddities didn't stop there. They included piercings in her lower lip and four accompanying tattoes from bats and skulls to a solitary star tattoo on her pointer finger. "A kind soul screaming for help," he once thought.

"Yeah," John replied. He lifted a hammer and began to tap the small copper tubing against the purple mouse pad.It caused his girlfriends eyes to wince.

"Are you suuuuure?"

"Yes." The tense sound of his voice sent his girlfriend sinking down below the horizon of her chair.

He lifted the tubing and stared at the barrel. The keif was now compressed at the end. Four more rounds of this.

His brain seemed to be runing in a hundred different directions at once. Inside, his stomach was tight and uneasy. Behind his eyes tears threatened to overwhelm him, yet did not come.
He was a procrastinator to the 't'. He loved to go the extra mile to prove just that and often found himself pushing his luck beyond its bounds. He only found the motivation to do this however when it was someone he was close to: someone he knew he could do it to.

In his mind he didn't do it because he wanted to hurt anyone. However, he thought that of all the people in the world, they would be the ones that would allow him the leniancy.

Unfortunately, they tended to be the one group that didn't give leniancy. At least not when you were supposed to have it done nearly six months ago.

John lifted the warm tubing to the fan that attempted, pitifully, to cool the room.

It felt like someone had vomitted all of their anxiety into his brain. "What can I do?" He thought.

He placed his thumb over the exposed butt of the aluminum bar, pressing upon it and out of the copper tubing came a Reise's Peanut Butter Cup shaped object the size of a pinky nail. The keif had now been reborn as hash, or hashish as it was internationally known. A beautiful metamorphosis.

John shoved the hash into his glass pipe. Its exterior glistened with blue sparkles, brought to life by the morning sun down through the bedroom window. The hash was now at the mercy of the heat that had only moments ago brought it life. John felt the familiar burning sensation claw down the back of his throat and into his lungs, and with it came a calm that dripped from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. "Ying and yang," he thought.

He sat there for a long moment, the pipe hanging from his fingertips. Quiet.