I smoked weed for the first time when I was 14. I remember it pretty well; people always say you don’t get high your first time, and I think that’s probably true. I did though. I got really high. It was freshman year, but it wasn’t a big, scary new school where you don’t know anyone, because I went there for middle school too. It was with some kids I had known since seventh grade, who smoked all the time. I had been invited before, I had just never gone. I had almost gone once, but my mom ended up getting out of work early so I didn’t have time.
I was pretty nervous, because I don’t like breaking the rules. Bending the rules is one of my favorite things in the whole world; I’m the guy who argues that what I am doing is “technically” allowed. We used to go on the roof of the administrative building at school, and I only did that because I read the handbook, and there was nothing specifically prohibiting that, and I was only going through unlocked doors to get there. Sure, a couple locks had been cut off by students before me and laid on the ground below the door, but how was I to know it wasn’t some staff person who had done that? I could claim innocence if I got caught.
We went out to a waterfall, out past Francisco’s. There was a whole semicircle of trampled dirt around the waterfall – we were not the first kids to stand around here and escape the real world for a while. We might have been the last though, who knows. We never went back. Anyways, I made them promise that we would never have to talk to people who might be able to notice, who might be upset at us. This included basically everyone in the world, except for the four of us. I had always just seen videos of people who couldn’t even hold a conversation, who couldn’t walk on a hardwood floor without tripping, whose eyes were flying the flag of the Japanese army. The piece was blue and green and was nice and curvy. I went first, since they were all excited to have me there, which turned out to be a bad idea. As it turns out, smoking weed requires doing several things at once, and I didn’t know how to do any of them except breath in, which I had been practicing half my life. I can light a lighter with the best of them, but at that time it was like the metal part was the size of a pin and the plastic part the size of a pin. There was no chance I was going to spin the first pin and end up with my thumb directly on the second pin, and that would hurt anyways. So I let Carlos light it for me, which also had the advantage that I could operate the smoking machine with two hands. One to hold it and one for operating the little hole which I was supposed to cover and uncover periodically, without any idea of what the period was. By the third try, however, I was a pro. Carlos still had to light the lighter, and I still had to use two hands, and I still had no idea when the hole was supposed to be covered or uncovered, but I was much better at it.
Between the waterfall and my face, I felt just like Peter Frampton in “Lines on My Face.” I have never actually heard that song, but it was all I could think of. It was like my face was covered in a warm, tingly cumulus, but like it was in lines, on my face. I assume that’s what the song is like. I also can make this noise with my mouth that sounds just like Daffy Duck speaking. I can make that noise all the time, not just when I am high. My left was beatboxing and my right was rapping, and so I thought my contribution would be my Daffy Duck noise, which, I had never realized, sounds just like a talk box. This is what made me think of “Lines on My Face,” I think, but I was too busy Daffying at the time to think of it. Several hundred lyrics later, we decided to go grab food, which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid at the beginning, because I knew I would have to order, and then I would be that person I didn’t like seeing at Francisco’s. Kicking rocks into the waterfall wasn’t going to cut it for much longer, though, so off we went. They had bags of Pepperoni Pizza Combos so old the backs were covered in dust. I got the meatball sub, which seemed fitting, what with it being my dad’s favorite, and all. I knew he wouldn’t be proud of me, but this would make him smile.