Mid morning, it's time take Otto for a walk.
I have a shower first. As I’m getting dressed, I start to survey the pot plant on my bedroom balcony, I used as an ashtray, before Sam gets home. You know, remove the evidence. I find that when I had a full bag of pot in the first week, I had put out four, or more, joints, that were really only half smoked.
It would be true to say that I felt a certain amount of excitement at my discovery.
I pick up one of the remaining halves and smoke it.
15 minutes later, Otto and I exit the house.
I had the fleeting thought that, maybe, it was a bad idea ‘to smoke’ before I take the dog for a walk, that, perhaps, maybe, I should’ve saved smoking the j until I got back? And now that tiny little j is kicking my arse, as Otto and I walk through Fitzroy. And I was feeling no pain. There’s still more sitting up there at home for when I get home. I felt a certain chill of excitement.
It’s grey and overcast.
We avoid a dog (on a rope with a couple of likely lads) that might, or might not, have wanted to fight Otto, corner of Webb Street.
20 minutes later, Otto and I are at Johnson Street
It just shows how wasteful I am when I have marijuana, and is the reason I shouldn’t smoke marijuana, my terrible piggyness, when not even a quarter of a joint has got me quite stoned.
Young Street approaching Curtis Street, I could be staggering just slightly. It’s kind of nice though, you know. A good stagger, one that makes me giggly.
I pick a lemon from a lemon tree hanging over the footpath, as we approach Leicester Street.
The sun is starting to shine as we walk along Westgarth Street. There is a breeze blowing, a lovely breeze coming up behind me.
20 minutes later, Otto and I are crossing back over Johnston Street on our way home.
A girl walking towards us at the crossing between the schools in Napier Street, is smoking a joint. I laugh to myself, that is surely a sign.
20 minutes later, we’re home.
I head straight upstairs to the balcony and the pot plant and I retrieve the other four half smoke joints.
Then I take them downstairs
I do something I have never done before, I emptied the four, or so, nearly smoked js into a container, I add whatever tobacco I can find, just tiny bits from the mull box, and I roll it into a j.
The sun’s gone away, and the grey clouds have moved in, so we now have a white grey sky overhead. The light becomes that slightly over exposed light you get on a silver grey day.
I should keep it until tomorrow, because I’m still feeling tweaked from that first j, but that’s just not how I roll, and it is why I can’t be trusted.
Disgusting, I know. It’s the very last j, you can really call this the dregs.
I get an apple juice from the kitchen before I do this most disgusting thing to my lungs.
It makes me cough, you can be sure of that.
I’m sitting out the back smoking the j, and it’s awful, it really is awful, and of course Sam FaceTimes me while I’m sitting out there. First of all, I hesitate to answer, but then I decide really, am I, really, still, 15 years old, what the fuck, so I answer.
I tried to act just normal, nothing to see here. I tried to act like there’s nothing going on, but I’m sitting out the back on the back veranda, which is a dead giveaway.
Sam asks me what I’m doing? I just avoid the question. I ask him how he is. He doesn’t buy it.
“What are you doing?” he asks again.
I confess. There is no torture involved. I’d be terrible in a war situation, I’d sing like a bird.
Sam is, of course impressed, you can assume that much. He gives me that look. Yes, I get that look.
He doesn’t care. “Really, final j”, he says. He knows the drill, we haven’t been together for 17 and learnt nothing.
Then, of course, because it’s so disgusting what I had cooked up, it, of course, right on time, makes me cough my lungs out, and Sam return coughs sarcastically. Then he says look at you and he laughs. I say it’s the last one you know the very last one.
He says he can see that.
He tells me to clean the house.
I lay back on the couch with my laptop and write my journal.
A bit later, Sam called back. He’s been alone at their city house with Harry, Charlie's brother. We talked about Harry. He’s chattier than Charlie, which wouldn't be hard, Charlie is a man of few words. Harry is shorter, and fatter than his brother.
I lay back on the couch. Otto hops up and lies down with his head on my knee. We both just lie there. The lounge room is dimly lit, the day outside is grey overcast. There are sounds of building work coming from a few doors up.
The world is pretty quiet, even despite my tinnitus.
I feel no pain. I think this is my preferred way to be. Actually, having so little of it stops me from being a pig with it and it turns out to be a much more enjoyable experience.
Why can’t I chill out with it, I think to myself.
I can tell you what, it is just nice lying there.
