Hello all! For the past year I have been terrified of blank screens, but I finally got up my courage and braved that awful white to do something new...non-fiction! I used to think I was a writer, and maybe with your help (and criticism), I can get back in the swing of things. Sadly, last time this non-fiction newbie saw these downtrodden characters they were in very dire straights.

Be Gentle and thanks in advance!

Everything in Transit: That gay ass album from that gay ass band

45 minutes. My friends picked me up from Baltimore-Washington International airport and in 45 minutes I was in familiar surroundings. In 50 minutes I was high. I’ve smoked out of blunts, joints, bowls, bongs, but I have class, I’ve never smoked out of apple cores, soda cans, or plastic bags. Myself, JB, Jack, and most of the people I know, we’re lifestyle stoners.

JB, short for Jack Bender, is rich. The school he withdrew from for the second time has a Bender arena, compliments of his father who retired, got bored, bought a bank, and now enjoys suing and being sued by everyone around him. He lives in the old Korean embassy in North East DC. The high point and low point of JB’s life was his gorgeous girlfriend, LB, short for Laura Beth. He spent his first term fucking her more than he went to class and they were truly in love. But, life is more than pot and playing world of warcraft, she realized, and left him to ‘find herself’. At this point, we thought we had lost him to emo music and despair, but, he cried, we talked into the long hours of the night, and he moved on. Those two are still fuck buddies and I don’t know what bothered me more, the fact that he spent more time with her than me, or the fact that his girlfriend was hotter than mine. It hardly matters now.

Jack got tossed out of UVM for failing almost all of his classes and, in the process, learned that you can’t learn shit with a hangover. This was during my first term of college. Now, in my first term of sophomore year, he recently quit his job as a bagger at Giant Grocery store and is currently ‘looking’ for a job. He tells me he has something set up at the video game store, the Electronics Boutique, at White Flint Mall in Rockville. He told me this two weeks ago.

These kids were my core group of friends in high school, not to say there weren’t others, but they most easily followed my life’s path, were at parallel stages of growth, so there were no awkward moments where we naturally ‘grew apart’ because we just weren’t into the same things. Or perhaps JB, who was the unquestioned leader back in the day, projected his life more thoroughly, shared a subtle apathetic excitement for the fancies of that stage of life that we could do no more than follow. It doesn’t matter anymore. They were my companions, my life. I lived six years of my life with them, from sixth through twelfth grade. In that time, we became a part of eachothers’ daily routine, simultaneously changing eachothers’ lives, hopefully for the better. Sometimes I ask myself who I would be if I had never known them, if I would be a better person. I try not to think about things like that.

On my last night in town, I was on the pike, Rockville Pike, where the bustle of commerce should be familiar. But I’m high. I’m stuck in the world where I’m anxious about homework, scared of ever-looming papers, and terrified by the talk of my dreaded future. I was riding in the front passenger seat, with my friend Jack in the backseat behind me. The speakers in JB’s lexus SUV with heated leather seats and a stereo system that gets louder the faster you drive are concentrated in the back creating a distinct wall of sound between the two front passengers and those behind them. The driver and the front passenger are there to enjoy each other’s company, while the backseat third is just there for the ride.

“What do you want to do?” JB asked. That was a loaded question, we don’t do anything, but, for show, I came up with a few suggestions.

“Hit up the Rio, go to the lan center…or we could go smoke up again.”

They relented, “Let’s go smoke.”

It’s the only option anymore.

As we drove, I pulled out my prized treasure from college, my Rise Against CD, punk with emo flair. After an entire summer spent smoking with JB and listening to emo music while he obsessed over his girlfriend, I got an acquired taste for that sort of music. Coffee is an acquired taste, like booze. Acquired taste basically means, it tastes like shit but we do it anyway. I turned to my favorite song, a life less frightening. The speakers screamed: If there’s no war outside our heads, why are we losing?

“Our life is in transit,” I began during the lull in the song leading to the inevitable build up and life affirming screams, “We just drive around DC looking for a good place to smoke, get high, than drive around listening to music.”

“Oh yeah?” Jack yelled from the back. He was competing with the music.

“Yeah,” I said, louder for his benefit, “We’re living a life in transit, we never really settle down to do much of anything.”

“Life in transit,” JB said from his trance. Should he really be driving? “That’s a Jack’s Mannequin CD.”

I ignored him because when I’m high I’m very prophetic and would rather not be interrupted. “In the larger sense, I think I’m really living in transit. I hate college, can’t relive the past, and am terrified of my future. I’m just living, always moving, and never stopping. I’m just looking ahead while trying not to see what’s in front of me.”

“Yeah,” they said in chorus. I find pot sometimes slows down the brain, but it expands your acceptable domains of thought. Metaphor, the basis of our creative world, could be considered the unique and insightful use of comparison between two separate domains, the further away the domains are from each other, the more creative the metaphor. They were on the same train of thought because they completely understood as if it were their original thought. You don’t need to be high to understand this, but you need to be high to believe this.

I was going to go on, but the song began to climb. We felt higher and lighter. It was getting louder, drums and guitars began to synch up, building on themselves, it got to the breaking point, everything grew quiet, and then the speakers began to scream with us in tow: Is there a God tonight! Up in the Sky! Or is it emp-ty just like me! We all sang along, but I was the only one who sounded decent. I always wanted to sing, but had no music talent. Not to mention that I could never get that gravely sound that all my favorite singers have. My voice is too clean, too pure. I’ve been told that real singers aren’t supposed to sound gravely, that, in fact, my voice is what ‘real’ singers strive to sound like. I guess I’ve always been attracted to the dirty notes in this world. Look at who I spend my time with.

The song ended and Jack asked for his cigarettes, which he left in the pocket of the passenger side door. Doors have pockets, just like your pants. I’m sure at one point doors with pockets were more popular than doors without pockets, so all manufactures started putting pockets in doors. I bet it was the same way with pants. Commercialism gives utility to out lives. Cell phones, laptops, e-tickets.

I twisted around to give him his cigarettes with a serious tone. In my body language, I was telling him that this was a moment I would describe at his eulogy during a point in which I would blame myself for his cancer. JB and Jack touched the wrapped paper to their lips, lighting up a toxic brew of over 43 known carcinogens, but opening the window for my sake. I don’t smoke cigarettes and it’s always a small point of contention, a small act of arrogance.

Once the song was over, JB pulled into the nearest smoking spot marked by a little red flag on his GPS, short for Global Positioning System. We were stoners with military technology, but here’s the rub. It was a game of ours to never mark a smoking spot until after we had smoked there, that way we’d know whether or not it was a good place. Looks can be deceiving and you never know what kind of traffic a place gets. The catch is, we aren’t lightweights. We’ll hotbox a gram blunt of dank stuff between the three of us and than whip up another bowl just for kicks. It may be the most secluded spot, the shaded dead end of an elderly community where everyone goes to bed at seven pm, can’t see far enough to notice us, and are too deaf to hear the music, but if we can’t remember to mark it, it will be lost to us, for a little bit anyway. Our stoned self knows these spots better than any satellite and we will eventually find our way back. That’s why I’m convinced that if a civil war ever breaks out in DC, George Bush should draft every stoner he can find because we know every back alley in the city, not to mention the places you have to go to buy this stuff. Sometimes I look at myself, crawling around the city at all hours of the night, looking for a place to do illegal substances and then drive around town intoxicated and wonder, Is this alright? I usually just take another hit.

We pulled up behind the nearest car and got right down to business. JB gutted the 80 cent Philly cigar with the pocket knife he keeps in the console between the driver and passenger seats while Jack began to pick apart the weed with his fingers, laying it on a bent piece of paper. If you want to roll a blunt, you have to pick apart the weed not only so it can be rolled easier, but so that any stray stems don’t tear the paper as you are trying to roll the blunt. There’s an art to it all and in the time I had been away, they both had gotten smoking down to a science. They were professional stoners who rolled tight blunts, knew every smoking spot in the city, got cozy with dealers, knew Pink Floyd by heart, kept Visine in their coat pockets, and often ignored life to go drive around DC. I was insanely jealous and a little sad. I wasn’t used to them growing without me.

After he rolled the blunt, JB asked if any of us had any good ideas for a special place to smoke it, since I was only here for a few days before going back to real life. There was one place I wanted to go, “Let’s smoke at Saint Andrews, I think it would be pretty awesome to just wander the halls at night stoned, reliving old times, and maybe, finding a little closure.” They felt the same way and we were off, this time heading to the tiny green school icon on JB’s GPS. His GPS still lived in the past, JB didn’t even go to school.

Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School. It’s a clean, green place. We played soccer on the fields, dodgeball in the gym, Magic the Gathering around the old well where slaves used to hide from their masters, suffered through classes, and claimed territory in just about every hall. I got used to this place and now I love this place. I think that life has lowered my standards.

We pulled around back to the middle school circle, now an empty façade from out of our middle school memories, devoid of life and cast in ominous shadows from the criss-crossing street lights. While we lit up, watching the smoke envelop the breathable air in the car, JB turned on one of his CDs. The speakers screamed: So here’s your holiday! It was a Blink 182 song.

“This is like our experience here,” I was really high and honestly felt like I was in my mother’s car with JB and Jack, waiting to have a sleepover at my house, where we sat there, hung out, and played video games. In some ways, my video game dominated past was the anti-thesis of my now illegal present. Then, I never went anywhere, now I’m afraid to stop.

“Actually, man,” JB interjected, “It’s about a couple that hates each other but stays together for their kid, but in the end, just winds up making it worse for him.”

That really struck me. I was in the middle school circle, smoking pot, breaking the law, in the epicenter of my childhood, and it struck me. I saw a young child with all his precious things in a backpack screaming at his parents just before he slammed the door and left their life forever. It was tight, it was a great summation: “Here’s you holiday!”. I felt it! They don’t understand how they hurt us! They don’t get us! I wanted to cry. I’m high.

After we got sufficiently stoned, Jack decided that he wanted to stand in the goalie crease where he used to defend the net for the Saint Andrews lion’s varsity lacrosse team. We relented, stepped tentatively out of the car, and began to walk down the hill towards the field. As we got closer, JB’s eyes began to dart around with little huffs to accompany the almost whimsical leap of his pupils. He began to look at the darkened trees, I looked too. Jack moved ahead, standing in goal with his hands vertical, pretending to make the big saves, while JB and I freaked out. There were people in the trees. Dirty people, different people. They were watching, they were stalking, they were vicious.

I looked back at the school for comfort. All the lights were on, even though it was the middle of the night.

“It’s not the same,” JB said, “It’s all wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s corrupted. A disease spread over this place. It’s a foreign entity, an alien land.”

Jack made another save to imaginary cheers.

“Let’s go!” I yelled to Jack, stressing urgency. He was off in his own world.

“Come on!” I yelled even louder, beginning to approach him. The dirty ones slithered around the trees, licking their chops.

“Let’s go, Jack! Please!” He was lost, I was terrified.

I ran up to Jack and tugged him back towards the car.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” JB shouted, now in full retreat.

Once back in the car, we took a breather, than it was my turn to choose the music. I turned to the last song on the Rise Against album. The pre-chorus narrated our escape from Saint Andrews. Once on open road, the speakers gave us the real chorus: The time that we kill keeps us alive!

It was getting late, and I had an early plane. We had time for one last smoke. This time, we picked a forested neighborhood near my home where the houses are far back from the road and cops don’t bother to patrol. After two bowls, I had something I had to say.

“Let’s do something with our lives. Let’s just fuck this place and go somewhere weird. Hawaii or something like that, and just for one year, I want to do nothing but live. Find jobs, have an apartment together, it will be scary, but we’ll be there for each other. Then, when we’re neck deep in bullshit we always know that we have a life waiting for us. A life like this where we can be happy, always just waiting for the next semester so we can get back into college.”

“I’ve got nothing,” Jack added. When he was high, he was transparent, often talking about how fat he was or how much he hated his job. “I can throw my life in a suitcase and leave right now.”

“I’m game,” JB said. His girlfriend used to live in Hawaii and he had fond memories of the place.

“Then we’ll do it. Next year.”

“Yeah,” they said, drawing out the word as the idea floated through their brain. You don’t have to be high to understand this, but you do have to be high to believe this.

When they dropped me off at my house, we allowed for chaste hugs, than they drove off. I placed my duffle bag, the sign that I was just visiting, down on the driveway and punched in the key code ingrained into my hand throughout childhood. I don’t know the key code unless I need it. I think life is like that sometimes.

The dogs barked when I got home, but I rushed past them and slipped into my room. It was as I remembered. The small bed with the red wings blanket, the bookcase stuffed with dungeons and dragons books, magic cards, science fiction books I meant to read, CD cases with all the wrong CDs in them, dice, playstation games, and a small picture of me and my current girlfriend. I began to cry. I haven’t cried in eight years, but I was bawling. I was high and because of it I could actually feel my emotions. Everything was familiar, but corrupted. I was surrounded by my past, trapped by my past, and I was supposed to sleep in my past. I choked on my own sobs. I thought back on my life and began a new round of wailing. I stumbled back into my computer chair where I played endless hours of online video games. My hand reached for the on button so I could look at porn, but my computer was back at school. I wept over my dead past for fifteen minutes than wept for my dead future for another fifteen. For the next thirty minutes I wept for the eight years of weeping I didn’t do.

In the end, this is my life. When I’m feeling sexy, I am that tight pantsed faggot listening to music I always hated. It’s because I’m rich, because I’m white, because I’m a good students who’s smart, creative, and talented, but the only thing I want is this – to live life in transit, yet, safe. I want something stable but all I want to do is drive around, smoke pot, chill with friends, and listen to gay ass music that makes me dramatic. I’m ready to spit out my silver spoon and that’s my angst.

Gay, huh?